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Debt Rattle February 1 2025

Feb 012025
 
 February 1, 2025  Posted by at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Edward Hopper New York movie 1938

 

• Replace the Income Tax With Tariffs? (Jeffrey Tucker)
• Trump Slaps 25% Tariffs On Canada & Mexico, 10% On China (ZH)
• Trump Vows To ‘Absolutely’ Impose Tariffs On EU (RT)
• Trump Says DC Black Hawk “Was Flying Too High… By A Lot” (ZH)
• Trump Confirms ‘Serious Discussions’ With Moscow Over Ukraine (RT)
• EU Divided Over Western Troops In Ukraine – Times (RT)
• Is The EU Finally Coming To Its Senses On Russian Energy? (Amar)
• EU Energy Policy Row Triggers Norway Government Collapse (RT)
• Hungary Calls For Lifting Russia Sanctions (RT)
• Merkel Joins Virtue-Signaling Outcry Over AfD (ZH)
• Tulsi Slams Deep State At Confirmation Hearing: I Refuse To Be Their Puppet (MN)
• The Arbitrary Hypocrisy of American “Justice” (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Six Ways From Sunday (Jim Kunstler)
• Trump is Not Going to Make US Into ‘Bitcoin Superpower’ (Sp.)
• Third World US Cannot Get Its Astronauts Home From Space (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Wants To Revive ‘Star Wars’ – Zakharova (RT)
• The US is Turning Into a Crybaby Empire (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885084376242835534

Watters

Tariffs etc etc

Kash J6

 

 

 

 

Leavitt
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885402197027909925

Laken

Calley Means

Hawley

Tucker Piers

 

 

 

 

For sure an interesting topic. And it’s not B/W: you don’t have to switch from one to the other in one fell swoop. But you can gradually raise tariffs, and lower income tax “accordingly”. That would raise citizens’ prosperity. Combine it with DOGE, and you get somewhere.

• Replace the Income Tax With Tariffs? (Jeffrey Tucker)

There was a time, before 1913, when you could keep every penny you earned. You did not have to file with the federal government, telling them what you earned and giving the feds their cut. Your finances were your business and no one else’s. You had the right to earn, own, and keep property, and it was sacrosanct, guaranteed by U.S. law and tradition. There were no audits, investigations, account freezes, withholdings, or any other forms of payment. There was your productivity and you and that’s all. How was the government funded? It earned revenue through tariffs. These are paid directly by importers and indirectly by producers and consumers if the costs can be passed through. As strategies for gaining revenue, this approach is relatively noninvasive. It left the population alone.

Back in those days, however, the federal government barely existed as compared with today. More precisely, in real terms, the federal government in 1885 spent in inflation-adjusted dollars about 0.05 percent of what it spends today. Even then, people believed that it was too big and wanted it cut back to size. Donald Trump has recently been schooling people in the history of revenue strategies and he is teaching something that people have not known. He has explained how this period of American history saw the greatest amount of economic growth we’ve ever seen. He is correct about that and he is also correct that this was the period of the tariff. The cause and effect, however, is murky. The main themes of this period were freedom and sound money. The dollar was governed by the gold standard and there was no central bank.

The federal government itself had no presence in the life of the American family or typical American business. Those facts more than tariffs account for the difference between then and now. As an aside, I cannot remember another U.S. president having as clear an opinion on 19th-century economic history. Most comments by presidents have been limited to pieties about the Founding Fathers or Lincoln but skip over details concerning revenue sources or controversies concerning national banks and the like. Trump is clearly different, highly confident in these details of history that are lost even on most economists. Trump has explained that the income tax came along in 1913 as a replacement for the tariff. That is correct in design but the historical reality was slightly different.

Tariffs were not abolished entirely. The income tax just became a second and additional source of revenue. Then the Great War came, financed in large part by the central bank (the Federal Reserve) that was created the same year. The income tax and the Fed became the financial source of Leviathan power. Both came about in 1913, along with the direct election of Senators that blew up the bicameral structure of Congress and put the big cities in charge of America’s equivalent of the House of Lords. Trump’s history lesson opens up the opportunity to examine all of this more closely. In 19th-century terms, he seems to be siding with the Hamilton faction inherited by Henry Clay, the Senator from Virginia who advocated what came to be called “the American System.”

This was a policy of protective tariffs, a national bank, and federal subsidies for internal improvements to promote economic growth and national cohesion. That’s a pretty good summary of what seems to be Trump’s position. In historical terms, the Clay view contrasted with the Jeffersonian view, which favored a tiny government, free trade, no national bank, no industrial subsidies, and a society of small farmers to serve as the economic engine. These days, the debates between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians seem far less relevant to the current situation. Both Hamilton and Clay would be appalled by the size and scope of government power, and would happily link arms with Jefferson and John Randolph of Roanoke to cut the beast down to size. That seems to be the actual ambition of Trump, to be an agent of change that makes the federal government manageable again.

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“..we would expect to see USDCAD move decidedly higher come Monday..”

• Trump Slaps 25% Tariffs On Canada & Mexico, 10% On China (ZH)

Tomorrow, February 1, the Trump administration will slap 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff on China, as announced during Friday’s press briefing by White House spox Karoline Leavitt, who denied reports of a delay to March 1. There will be no delay, selective targeting, or slow roll-out of phased-in tariffs as speculated by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885393819098898702

That said, there could be certain exemptions – such as for oil and gas, which Leavitt did not elaborate on. For now, all we have to go on is Trump’s most recent comments on oil: “It depends on what the price is. If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly — which they don’t,” he said Thursday while speaking with reporters. The United States imported nearly 4.6 million barrels of oil per day from Canada in October, and 563,000 barrels from Mexico. Daily US production over the same period averaged nearly 13.5 million barrels per day. So in this scenario – full tariffs with zero quarter given, “we would expect to see USDCAD move decidedly higher come Monday, challenging the 1.50 level and representing a more than 3% move higher in the cross relative to current spot. To be clear, Canada could retaliate with dollar-for-dollar tariffs in absolute terms since its trade relationship with the US is balanced, however, USDCAD will still be higher given that the US economy is more than 10x the size of its Canadian counterpart,” according to DB.

On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that any tariffs would stoke an ‘immediate’ and ‘forceful’ response. “We’re ready with a response – a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response. It’s not what we want, but if he moves forward, we will also act,” said Trudeau, adding that all options were on the table. Canada sends 75% of its goods and services exports to the US, meaning that the tariffs will sting. “I won’t sugarcoat it – our nation could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks,” Trudeau continued. “I know Canadians might be anxious and worried, but I want them to know the federal government, and indeed, all orders of government, have their backs.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford has already vowed to slap back by pulling American alcohol off of store shelves (and into his pantry?) – as Canada is the world’s second largest market for America’s distilled spirits, behind the 27-nation EU.

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“Am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union? You want the truthful answer, or should I give you a political answer?”

• Trump Vows To ‘Absolutely’ Impose Tariffs On EU (RT)

US President Donald Trump has announced his intention to impose tariffs on the European Union, citing unfair treatment in trade practices. This follows the implementation of 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, and 10% on Chinese goods, effective February 1. The European bloc has been bracing for possible trade restrictions under the new US administration for months after Trump issued multiple threats to impose tariffs on the EU unless specific conditions are met. In December, Trump demanded that the EU reduce its trade deficit with the US by significantly increasing purchases of American oil and gas. “Am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union? You want the truthful answer, or should I give you a political answer? Absolutely, absolutely,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.

“The European Union has treated us so terribly,” the US leader added. He confirmed plans for “something substantial” against the EU but did not provide specific details regarding the targeted goods or the exact tariff rates. This is not the first instance of trade tensions between the US and the EU under Trump’s administration. In 2018, during his first term, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports from the EU, Canada, and Mexico, citing national security concerns. In response, the EU implemented retaliatory tariffs on American products such as bourbon whiskey and motorcycles. The new tariffs on Mexico and Canada were justified by the Trump administration as measures to address issues like illegal immigration and the influx of fentanyl into the United States.

Despite warnings from economists about potential global economic repercussions, including increased inflation and disrupted supply chains, Trump has remained steadfast in his approach. On Thursday, Trump also threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS nations if they attempt to undermine the “mighty US dollar” by creating an alternative currency. Members of the economic bloc have accelerated efforts to reduce reliance on third-party currencies in bilateral trade in recent years, especially after Western sanctions led to the freezing of Russia’s reserves held in dollars and euros, following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

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Intentionally? Ceiling is 200 feet. Chopper was at 380.

• Trump Says DC Black Hawk “Was Flying Too High… By A Lot” (ZH)

While there are countless facts still left to be uncovered and scrutinized, there’s an early indication that the worst US air disaster since 9/11 may have resulted from a flight-path deviation by the Army helicopter that collided with a passenger jet landing at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. Remarkably, it appears an identical disaster may have been narrowly avoided just one day earlier, when an airline pilot chose to abort landing after deeming another helicopter was dangerously close. Control-tower staffing is also emerging as a major concern — including a decision to allow one controller to leave work early.

Based on a determination of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter’s last location before colliding with American Airlines 5342 from Wichita, the Army chopper was flying above its authorized flight path, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the New York Times. The American CRJ300 stopped transmitting tracking data at 375 feet — suggesting impact occurred far above the 200-foot ceiling imposed on helicopters in that area. The Black Hawk was reportedly under the command of a female pilot with more than 500 hours of flight time. The male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours, while the crew chief is also said to have logged hundreds of hours. Given the shorter duration of helicopter flights, those hours are substantial, according to Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chopper pilot who’s assigned to the Unified Command Post that’s been organized to coordinate the post-disaster efforts at the airport.

The Army has not released the names of the crew members, but the names of the two males aboard the Black Hawk have emerged via other channels: Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves. All were assigned to Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, headquartered at nearby Fort Belvoir. While there are many social media posts purporting to identify the female pilot as a male-to-female trans National Guard member who on Tuesday publicized his transition, ZeroHedge cannot find authoritative confirmation of those claims as this article is being written. On Monday, President Trump issued an executive order barring transgender people from openly serving in the military. Update: The trans pilot in question, Jo Ellis, has released a video confirming he is still alive and was not piloting the Black Hawk.

The Army says the crew was conducting a routine nighttime qualification flight, with the focus on safely navigating helicopter routes in and around Washington. However, more specifically, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the crew was training for a “continuity of government mission.” That’s the name given for a response to an attack on the capital, or a major disaster that hits the city. In such an event, helicopters would be used to evacuate senior federal officials. The crashed helicopter was a standard UH-60; the battalion also flies the VH-60M variant: Distinguished by its gold top, it’s used for VIP transport.

Every day, more than a hundred helicopters buzz around Reagan National’s flight paths. Roughly 24 hours before Wednesday’s catastrophe, one of those helicopters alarmed the pilot of another commercial flight to the extent she aborted landing and went around. There are no reports on the type of helicopter. A female voice in the cockpit of Republic Airways Flight 4514 informed the tower of the problem at roughly 8:05 p.m. Tuesday, according to the audio recording of air traffic control traffic. The plane took a sharp turn to the west, made a loop to try to make a second approach, and safely landed at 8:16 p.m., flight tracking records indicate. — Washington Post. Meanwhile, concerning details have also emerged about the workloads assigned to the Reagan National air traffic controllers at the time of Wednesday night’s crash that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft.

Staffing was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to a preliminary FAA document reviewed by the New York Times. Under normal staffing, one air traffic controller is responsible for helicopter traffic, while another guides landing and departing planes. However, on Wednesday night, one man was juggling both responsibilities. According to the Times, that’s because a supervisor allowed a different air traffic controller to leave before that individual’s shift had ended. There are several other factors that could have contributed to the accident. Among them: It’s not clear if the Black Hawk pilot was using night vision goggles, which can limit peripheral vision and depth perception, while also being problematic in an urban environment with its abundant lights.

Given the angles of the two flight paths, city lights may have camouflaged the lights of the American Airlines jet. “Going beak-to-beak at night, the lights of the [jet] tend to blend in with the city lights behind [it],” notes aviation YouTuber “blancolirio” in a detailed analysis of Wednesday’s scenario. “Another problem when you’re going head to head with each other is — if there’s no lateral movement in the windscreen — that light [of the other aircraft] is very hard to detect.” Potential miscommunication: While the tower asked the Black Hawk (“PAT25”) if it had the American Airlines “CRJ” (Canadair Regional Jet) in sight, some are speculating the Army pilots thought the controller was referring to a jet that was taking off to their right, rather than the doomed jet that was landing from their left. Others think they may have been looking at another jet on approach — behind American 5342.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885116473217032426

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They’re waiting to meet until they can get tangible results.

• Trump Confirms ‘Serious Discussions’ With Moscow Over Ukraine (RT)

US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that he expects something “significant” to happen once he speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, confirming that serious discussions with Moscow are already underway. Trump, who took office last Monday, has repeatedly stated that he is ready to speak with his Russian counterpart as soon as possible to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict. The Kremlin previously said it was awaiting clear signals from the Trump administration. “We’ll be speaking, and I think we will, perhaps, do something that will be significant,” Trump said on Friday. “It’s just a senseless situation, and it’s got to stop. So whatever I can do to stop it… and we are having discussions, yes.”

When asked by a reporter whether that means he had already spoken with Putin or had a call scheduled, Trump responded, “I don’t want to say that.” Pressed on why he was withholding the information, he reiterated, “I just don’t want to say that.” “We’re having very serious discussions about that war, trying to get it ended,” he added, confirming that these talks are taking place “with Russia.” On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stated that a phone call between the two presidents was not currently planned, as no agreement or understanding had been reached on the matter. He noted that all communication is presently being conducted at the embassy level.

Trump has pledged to negotiate a resolution to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev and has reportedly given his Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, 100 days to hammer out such a settlement.Last week, the US president threatened to impose new sanctions if Moscow refused to accept an unspecified “deal” to end the conflict but maintained that he is “not looking to hurt Russia.” Russia has insisted that hostilities will only end if Ukraine commits to permanent neutrality, demilitarization and denazification, while also recognizing the territorial “realities on the ground.” Moscow has stated that it remains open to negotiations but insists that any agreement must include “reliable, legally binding agreements eliminating the root causes of the conflict.”

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Not the EU’s call. European parents don’t want their kids to be used for target practice.

• EU Divided Over Western Troops In Ukraine – Times (RT)

The European Union remains divided over the prospect of deploying a Western-led peacekeeping force to Ukraine if a ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow is reached, The Times reported on Friday, citing multiple military and diplomatic sources. Berlin opposes the idea, partly because it does not want to commit ahead of its February elections, according to the British newspaper. The Baltic states and Poland – among Kiev’s most vocal supporters throughout the conflict – are reportedly concerned that such a deployment would divert NATO’s attention and resources away from their own defense, leaving them “exposed.”

The UK, France, and the Nordic nations are the most vocal advocates for a Western peacekeeping mission. However, even among them, officials worry that the EU would not be able to carry out the operation without US involvement. A European diplomatic source told The Times that Washington’s participation would be necessary because “they have capabilities that all of Europe lacks,” including the “ability to retaliate at scale if needed.” US President Donald Trump has previously stated that Washington should not provide troops or funding for such a mission. Kiev’s European backers were also reportedly “irked” by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s recent demand for a “minimum” of 200,000 peacekeepers – a number the EU alone would struggle to provide.

Moscow has consistently rejected the idea of Western-led peacekeepers in Ukraine. Earlier this week, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik warned that any military force entering Ukraine without Russia’s consent would be considered a legitimate military target. “If Russia does not buy the idea it is dead and if the US does not provide a hammer the idea is dead,” an unnamed senior Western military official admitted, according to The Times. The Kremlin could perceive a large-scale NATO troop deployment in Ukraine as a significant threat to Russia, potentially serious enough to trigger another mobilization wave, Aleksey Zhuravlev, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, warned on Friday.

Some EU officials believe a non-Western UN peacekeeping force, composed of troops from more neutral countries such as India, Bangladesh, or China, would be a “wiser alternative.” This approach, they argue, would not require US participation and might be more acceptable to Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in December that any talk of deploying peacekeepers is moot at this point, given that Zelensky signed a law banning any talks with the current Russian leadership. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has warned that the West could use peacekeepers to “occupy” Ukraine and once again buy time for a new conflict with Moscow.

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aka will they admit they lost?!

• Is The EU Finally Coming To Its Senses On Russian Energy? (Amar)

All that is solid melts into air,” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels famously proclaimed almost 180 years ago. Their Communist Manifesto was published against the backdrop of the European revolutions of 1848. But they should have seen 2025 – we are beginning to witness a mighty melting of what is un-solid about EU-NATO Europe. This time, the backdrop is not (yet) a typical revolution – street fighting, barricades, and all. But there are two historic events that, in their combined geopolitical impact, will be revolutionary, though they have been anything but unforeseeable. These are, in order of importance, Russia’s defeat of the West in Ukraine, and America’s doubling down on Trumpism. The two developments have made the sands on which the EU-NATO Europeans have built their rickety policy edifice not merely shift but cave in.

Relentless obedience to Washington has always been self-damaging, but now a reckoning is at hand with accumulating self-harm reaching a tipping point into self-destruction. It is true, on the surface, that EU-NATO Europe is still digging in its heels. The EU has just produced its umpteenth renewal of sweeping – and constantly increasing – sanctions against Russia. A faction of ten among its member countries are shouting for even more. A top energy official of the European Commission is in Washington to explore ways in which the Europeans can give in, again, to ever-increasing US pressure and buy even more ruinously expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from their great insatiable “ally.” Yet some, even among Europe’s current elites, are still capable of intuiting that things are so desperate that they must, finally, question even apparent axioms.

As the Financial Times has just reported, there are voices, including from EU heavyweight countries such as Germany, that dare think about the unthinkable, namely returning to openly buying inexpensive fossil fuel energy from Russia. In a less topsy-turvy world, the EU should, of course, never have stopped doing so. But as it is, one aspect of Western economic warfare against Russia was the EU’s declared – if non-binding, nota bene – intention to completely abandon its best source of cheap energy by 2027. Not that this plan has really worked. In reality, the results have been mixed. Yes, the EU has managed to make its energy supply more expensive, so that its industry is struggling to remain globally competitive, with gas costs “typically three to four times higher than in the US.”

But no, the EU has not, actually, been able to ween itself off Russian energy. Instead, Moscow, according to Bloomberg, remains one of the EU’s “top gas providers.” Indeed, 2024 has just seen record imports of LNG from Russia. It is, of course, more expensive that way than by pipeline. The (still) legal but oddly underhanded way of buying and consuming this LNG stokes tension inside the EU, but that’s apparently the way its elites prefer their commerce and politics – inconsistent, unusually dishonest, a tad absurd, and held together only by a thick glue made of foul compromises and bad blood all around. In a broader perspective, EU-NATO Europe’s current, self-inflicted energy fiasco is, of course, only one aspect of its fundamentally unsound (polite expression) decision to obediently and even fanatically join the American proxy war against Russia via Ukraine.

Since then, nothing has worked out as expected. The Ukrainian Army was beefed up with Western arms, training, intelligence, mercenaries, and “advisers” to become the West’s strongest anti-Russian proxy in history. In that shape, it was supposed to inflict a military defeat on Moscow. Yet it is Ukraine now that is struggling to survive on an increasingly desperate defensive, as even the Washington Post has recently admitted (while still, obstinately, calling for more war). Western economic warfare strategists, meanwhile, boasted that they would not just impede but ruin Russia. Yet now its economy (estimated GDP growth in 2024 of between 3.8% and 4%) is doing better than that of the EU heavyweights France (0.8%) and Germany (no growth, instead minus 0.2%), as well as the EU as a whole (0.9%).

Spain, it is true, is an outlier in Western Europe (with 3.2%) but this being an exception is the point. Its success, the Wall Street Journal reports, depends on mass tourism and the use of so much migrant labor that, without immigration, Spain’s population would be shrinking. Good luck, Germany (for instance), with replicating that recipe… In addition, Western international clout would, so Western elites made themselves believe just a few years ago, compel everyone else on Planet Earth to isolate Russia. Yet now it is the West that looks lonely. First, most of the world refused to freeze out Russia, and then the West’s ongoing massive complicity in Israel’s genocidal ethnic-cleansing attack on the Palestinians shredded the last sorry remnants of the West’s Orwellian claim to global leadership based on “value” and “rules” superiority.

As for Moscow, it’s doing just fine, quietly – and not so quietly – admired by the Global South for standing its ground against sanctions that have harmed the interests of nations of that region too, while building out Moscow’s multilateral relationships in associations such as BRICS and with partners such as North Korea and Iran, and deepening its de facto alliance with China.

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“What we were clear about all along is that beginning the process of linking ourselves more closely to the EU’s dysfunctional electricity market and energy policy is completely out of the question..”

• EU Energy Policy Row Triggers Norway Government Collapse (RT)

Norway’s coalition government collapsed on Thursday after the Euroskeptic Center Party rejected EU energy policy regulations advocated by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. The move would subject people to an electricity price hike, the party leader and finance minister, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, warned. It leaves Store heading a minority Labor Party government. The cabinet can govern until the next elections, which are scheduled for September, but has lost its majority in the parliament and could struggle to pass legislation. At the heart of the dispute is the fourth EU energy package, which is also known as “clean energy for all Europeans.” Adopted in 2019, it introduced a set of policies with a focus on renewables and “energy efficiency,” including reduced CO2 emissions, as well as a “robust governance system” for energy in the bloc.

Norway, which is not a member of the EU, is still closely tied to the bloc through the European Economic Area (EEA) and normally has to adopt the bloc’s rules unless it invokes a right of reservation. The Nordic nation is also a major oil and gas producer and exporter. The Center Party has argued that the changes advocated by Store would erode the nation’s autonomy, and maintained that Oslo should instead reclaim its authority in the area of energy policy. Earlier this week, Verdum blamed previous Conservative governments for contributing to energy price hikes in Norway by allowing the construction of undersea power lines to Germany and the UK.

“When the Labor leadership, instead of solving the problem, chooses to make the problem even bigger by tying Norway even closer to the EU in electricity policy through the introduction of the EU’s fourth energy market package, the Center Party chooses to leave the government,” he said. “We believe it is wrong to become more closely linked to the EU’s energy policy,” Vedum told NRK broadcaster on Thursday. “What we were clear about all along is that beginning the process of linking ourselves more closely to the EU’s dysfunctional electricity market and energy policy is completely out of the question,” the Center Party leader told a press conference following the decision to leave the cabinet.

The development drew criticism from Brussels. “We are not happy with Norway. The sentiment is as bad as I have known it,” an EU ambassador to Oslo told the Financial Times on Thursday, calling the Nordic nation “selfish” for “trying to keep this electricity for itself,” and profiteering off the EU through its gas exports. It’s not the first time that Norway and the EU have clashed over energy issues. In August 2022, Oslo said it could ration its electricity exports to the EU and the UK against the backdrop of a heatwave affecting its hydroelectric power production and domestic electricity price hikes. The announcement was slammed by Germany as a thinly veiled threat to put pressure on the bloc.

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“..we just need to get on our heels and say: dear Ukrainian friends, we understand everything, but we need this. Let the Russian gas through.”

• Hungary Calls For Lifting Russia Sanctions (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has renewed calls on the EU to lift its sanction on Russia in order to realign the bloc’s policies with the new US government. Budapest has long criticized Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine conflict as being incapable of ending hostilities and damaging to the bloc’s member states. On Monday, the EU extended its existing sanctions until the end of July. Hungary refrained from blocking the measure despite its declared opposition. In a weekly interview with state-owned Kossuth Radio, Orban said Budapest has to consider the positions of other members of the economic bloc who favor the restrictions, imposed on Russia in response to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

”The Hungarian interest is clear: we have lost 19.5 billion ($20bn) in three years,” Orban stressed, adding that Kiev’s behavior has become more “impudent” recently, referring to Ukraine’s refusal last year to extend a contract that had been allowing the supply of Russian natural gas to European consumers, including to Hungary. Budapest has been assured that the matter would be addressed, the prime minister explained, which contributed to its decision on Monday not to block the sanctions.Given Kiev’s total dependence on foreign aid, Orban said, “we just need to get on our heels and say: dear Ukrainian friends, we understand everything, but we need this. Let the Russian gas through.”

The Hungarian leader contrasted the EU’s approach with that of newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump. Washington is pursuing a policy of peace while Brussels opts for war, Orban pointed out. In a recent interview with journalist Megyn Kelly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that under President Joe Biden, the US had “somehow led people to believe” that Ukraine could achieve a military victory over Russia, resulting in a protracted stalemate that has regressed Ukraine’s development by a century. Slovakia, another consumer of Russian gas, has also criticized Ukraine’s shutdown of the transit pipeline through its territory. On Thursday, Prime Minister Robert Fico claimed that his pressure campaign against Kiev is yielding results, saying he perceived a shift in its position.

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Mutti saves the day one last time. Barely.

• Merkel Joins Virtue-Signaling Outcry Over AfD (ZH)

German mainstream politicians and media have presented that the real ‘threat’ the country is facing is not brutal terror rampages and attacks like those recently seen in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg (both perpetrated by asylum-seeking migrants), but the fact that Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been polling better than ever before and having serious national influence as Friedrich Merz – Merkel’s successor as leader of the country’s conservatives – seeks to push through tighter immigration controls. All of this has triggered former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s intervention, given the supposed ’embarrassment’ of witnessing the Christian Democrats currently relying on the AfD help to pass the new immigration bill.

The conservative CDU-CSU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria) has broken the longstanding taboo of working with the AfD when on Wednesday they together passed a motion calling for a crackdown on new arrivals and strengthened border controls. Former Chancellor Merkel has blasted Merz. “I believe it is wrong,” she began in fresh comments. It marks an unprecedented intervention by the former leader since she stepped down from politics in December 2021. As is custom the former chancellor has been silent for years after leaving power. It appears the intervention worked as the conservatives on Friday have failed to pass the measure.

According to the vote and the latest:
• GERMAN CONSERVATIVES FAIL WITH FAR RIGHT-BACKED MIGRATION BILL
• GERMAN LOWER HOUSE REJECTS OPPOSITION’S DRAFT LAW ON TIGHTENING MIGRATION POLICY
• The breakdown: For: 338; Against: 350; Abstentions: 5
• Apart from Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc, which submitted the immigration bill, three other opposition parties — the far-right AfD, the pro-business Free Democrats and the far-left BSW — had signaled their support. Together, they had 372 seats in parliament, more than the 367 required for a majority, and there’s a handful of independents who may also support it.
• BBG: After that result and a moment of shocked silence, the conservative leader Friedrich Merz left the chamber with sunken shoulders, his immigration bill having been unexpectedly defeated. The breakdown of the vote showing which lawmakers might have broken ranks will be an interesting read.
• Early reaction from Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats, a post on X from SPD Health Minister Karl Lauterbach: “What a disgrace. The whole maneuver was in vain and only damaged democracy.”

She had used the opportunity to ‘remind’ everyone there should never be any association whatsoever between the mainstream parties and the AfD. She wagged her finger at Merz for breaching the longstanding “firewall” against the AfD. They are supposed to be shunned politically… but no longer. “I think it is wrong to no longer feel bound to this proposal, thereby allowing a majority with the votes of the AfD in a vote in the German Bundestag for the first time on 29 January 2025,” she wrote on her website. The walls are closing in, and AfD party officials are grabbing the popcorn to enjoy the mainstream fallout and shrieking. Without doubt, panic is truly setting in, revealed also in how quickly anti-AfD politicians have been in invoking fears of a return to Nazis and the Holocaust:

Centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz charged that Merz’s tactical manoeuvre was a breach of his previous promises to shun the AfD and left him “open to the accusation that he is untrustworthy”. Scholz even raised the spectre of Merz, if he wins, one day allowing the AfD into a government — a scenario that horrifies the mainstream parties in the country still seeking to atone for the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. “Conservatives who are supporters of Nazis cannot become coalition partners,” said the co-leader of the Green Youth, Jakob Blasel. He described that this means under Merz, the “Greens must not enter a coalition with the CDU and CSU.” And Robert Habeck, the chancellor candidate for the Greens, dramatically declared it a “turning point” in Germany. “Friedrich Merz and the Union have abandoned the consensus of the political center of this house not to make common cause with the extremes,” wrote Habeck.

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“President Trump has reportedly indicated that if Republicans torpedo either Tulsi or RFK Jr., it will mean “war”.

• Tulsi Slams Deep State At Confirmation Hearing: I Refuse To Be Their Puppet (MN)

During her confirmation hearing to become President Trump’s head of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard hit back at Democrats and RINO ‘conservatives’ who have spent months smearing her as a Russian asset or a threat to national security. During opening remarks, Gabbard cited examples of how the intelligence community agencies have been politicised against Trump and his supporters, asserting “this must end.” Gabbard urged that Trump’s massive victory serves as a mandate from Americans to overhaul the intelligence apparatus which has been infested and weaponised by deep state operatives. Gabbard emphasized that the reason she has been so vilified and even placed on a terror watchlist is because she refuses to act as just another puppet.

“Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience, and the Constitution of the United States—accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, and Modi’s puppet—without recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters,” Gabbard stated. She added, “The same tactic was used against President Trump and failed. The American people elected President Trump with a decisive victory and a mandate for change. The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is that I refuse to be their puppet.” In a Fox News interview following the hearing, GOP Senator Josh Hawley warned Gabbard’s confirmation could be in jeopardy because of Republicans bowing to the deep state.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885142057309921590

President Trump has reportedly indicated that if Republicans torpedo either Tulsi or RFK Jr., it will mean “war”.

Read more …

Bob Menendez gets 11 years for accepting bribes from Egypt. Bernie and Pocahontas get to keep their Senate seats despite millions from big Pharma.. “How does this differ from the $1,417,811 bribe that Big Pharma pays in campaign contributions to Senator Bernie Sanders or the $821,941 campaign contribution Big Pharma pays to Senator Elizabeth Warren?”

• The Arbitrary Hypocrisy of American “Justice” (Paul Craig Roberts)

US Democrat Senator Bob Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was sentenced to eleven years in prison by federal district judge Sidney Stein for acting as an illegal agent for Egypt and accepting cash and gold bars as payment. How does this differ from the $1,417,811 bribe that Big Pharma pays in campaign contributions to Senator Bernie Sanders or the $821,941 campaign contribution Big Pharma pays to Senator Elizabeth Warren? If you think these sums don’t make Sanders and Warren agents of Big Pharma, you are out of your mind. Warren is doing her Big Pharma assigned job by trying to block Robert Kennedy’s confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Congress is up for sale, and it is purchased with campaign contributions. Everyone in Washington knows that members are purchased by lobby groups, such as Big Pharma, the military/security complex, agribusiness, energy, the Israel Lobby, and so on.

A corrupt or stupid Supreme Court legalized the purchase of the US government by lobby groups. This is the reason that Congress does not represent the people who elect Congress. You can blame your lack of representation squarely on the US Supreme Court. One can’t help but wonder if there were under the table payoffs. An uninformed person might answer that Menendez was paid personally, whereas campaign contributions are not personal money. But, in fact, retiring members are entitled to take their election war fund with them. Those planning to retire pay attention to building up their re-election funds. An uninformed person might say that Menendez’s payments came from a foreign government, whereas campaign contributions are coming from American interests.

But what about the vast sums that Israel pours into purchasing the US government? What is the difference between Egypt and Israel? The difference is that AIPAC is not required to register as foreign agent and is treated as an American lobby group. All efforts to have AIPAC register as a foreign agent have been blocked. Many Zionist neoconservatives have gotten away with accepting money from Israel without having to register as representing a foreign agent. Consider also that every year the Congress appropriates billions of dollars to Israel which Israel uses to purchase the US government with campaign contributions. Our own money is used to enslave us to Israel and Jewish interests. You can see how complete Israel’s ownership of the US government is by Congress’ invitation to Genocide Netanyahu to address the US Congress and award him 53 standing ovations while he conducts genocide against Palestine.

Generally speaking, when a senator or representative is prosecuted by the Justice (sic) Department it means someone wants him out of the way. It is unclear why Menendez was in the way. He was essential on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in getting the sanctions on Russia in place. It is unclear what he could have done for Egypt that would harm any of Washington’s interests. The sanctimonious judge Stein said: “The public cannot be led to the belief that you can get away with bribery, fraud, and betrayal.” The judge doesn’t know what he is talking about. Lobbies get away with bribing every member of the House and Senate every day. How can Trump make America Great Again when lobbies own the government?

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“Behind these histrionics by the big gators and peccaries of the collapsing Democratic Party is pure scintillating fear.”

• Six Ways From Sunday (Jim Kunstler)

Was it the miasma of cognitive dissonance blackening the air-space over the DC swamp that caused the deadly collision of AA Flight 5342 and a Blackhawk Helicopter this week — an impenetrable fog arising from the fetid exhalations of so many hyperventilating swamp creatures brooding between the urges of fight-or-flight as Mr. Trump deploys his chosen pest-controllers across the Potomac Basin? Altogether, these many parasitical swamp creatures make up the greater DC blob, and the blob convulsing and fibrillating is what you witness in these committee hearings with Bobby, Tulsi, and Kash. For instance, fake “progressive” Bernie Sanders (D-VT) faced with the reveal that he leads his colleagues in pharma “contributions” (just under $2-million) . . . or fake Cherokee Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in a fugue state over the perceived threat of Mr. Kennedy to pharma profits . . . or presidential pardon recipient Adam Schiff (D-CA) lecturing Mr. Patel on ethical behavior. . . or Ms. Gabbard enduring the meltdown of Senate Intel Committee tool Michael Bennet (D-CO).

Behind these histrionics by the big gators and peccaries of the collapsing Democratic Party is pure scintillating fear. They are afraid that all of their hoaxes and lies of recent years will be exposed in the months ahead. And they fear that such exposure might lead eventually to legal complications for them. All of that implies loss-of-power, the single element that demonically drives their careers. The fact is they have already lost their grip on the levers of power and, for the moment, that is all that matters. They especially no longer control the Department of Justice, its subsidiary, the FBI, the many public health agencies under Health and Human Services, and the many-footed intel “community,” as it styles itself. These agencies are where the truth about our national affairs has been locked up.

Now, the citizens will either see what’s there, or find out what has been deliberately destroyed — such as the internal agency email correspondence over RussiaGate, the Covid-19 operation (and the deadly vaxx campaign), the J-6 affair (and the pipe-bomb sideshow), the weird, documented irregularities of the 2020 election, the Ukraine War money-laundering shenanigans, the manifold janky DOJ prosecutions of Mr. Trump, and much more. Every day now since January 20, heads explode all over DC as the executive orders roll out and the insanity of whatever lurked behind “Joe Biden” gets systematically expunged from the order of things. And as this happens, the more plainly deranged the past four years looks. Did they really believe that men dressing-up as women would improve the US military? Or was it a traitorous effort to weaken and demoralize our armed forces? Was DEI a public ethics exercise or a massive jobs program for incompetents?

In what way did “Joe Biden’s” Department of Homeland Security imagine that funneling known criminals, certified lunatics, and saboteurs across the border squared with their duty to protect and defend the country? And how did it happen that US taxpayers’ money got shelled out to fake “religious” NGOs in Mexico minting debit cards for border-jumpers, handing them wads of cash, cell phones, airplane tickets, fully-equipped backpacks, and apps for evading arrest? In effect these NGOs took over the exact job description of “coyote” formerly performed by the criminal cartels — leaving the cartels free for the more lucrative rackets of dealing fentanyl and trafficking women and children.

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Leave Bitcoin to the people.

• Trump is Not Going to Make US Into ‘Bitcoin Superpower’ (Sp.)

The 46th POTUS’ boasts about making the United States a global cryptocurrency powerhouse are likely just that, boasts, veteran financial analyst Paul Goncharoff tells Sputnik. The fact is that Trump is the president of the United States, “which governs the trust in, use, and control of the US dollar and not a trustless cryptocurrency like BTC, XRP, USDT, or USDC.” The US government establishing a “100% ownership and control” of a cryptocurrency, on the other hand, would simply “defeat the purpose of trustless crypto,” so the odds of a US dollar CBDC emerging anytime soon are pretty low. That said, there are no obstacles for the US government to hold crypto assets as part of its reserves – all it needs it proper legislation and congressional approval.

The loosening of crypto regulations expected under Trump, however, carries certain risks as “the clarity of what will be regulated is still missing” and “markets dislike uncertainty; it makes them jittery.” There is also “every chance” that, just like “with any other investable that comes under the influence of hype, reality, and again hype,” Trump’s actions would lead to a crypto bubble. For example, some crypto could be hyped as “the crypto of choice for classic institutional investors” and experience mass investment, only for the ensuing bubble to burst when “sobering fact of reality and the complex interaction of politics and finance make themselves known.”

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“..President Trump [..] has asked Elon Musk “to go get our astronauts stranded in orbit.” Musk responded: “will do.” Most likely it will be at his own expense..”

• Third World US Cannot Get Its Astronauts Home From Space (Paul Craig Roberts)

US Corporations, Universities, and government have driven America so deep into third world existence that Washington is incapable of rescuing its astronauts trapped in space for 200 days. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams made what was supposed to be an eight day trip to the International Space Station and have been suck there for seven months because the United States is no longer sufficiently competent to bring them home. It was 55 years ago that Americans walked on the moon. In the years since, DEI universities have graduated ignorance instead of competence, US corporations have offshored American manufacturing and industrial capability, and a corrupt government has favored wars in behalf of Israel over everything else.

So the great, hegemonic, “superpower” cannot bring its astronauts home. Biden was too embarrassed to ask Putin to rescue the Americans. So President Trump, acknowledging America’s incapacity as a government, has asked Elon Musk “to go get our astronauts stranded in orbit.” Musk responded: “will do.” Most likely it will be at his own expense as Washington has spent its money financing Israel’s wars against Arabs and NATO’s war against Russia. To make America Great Again, a country run deep into the ground by scum Democrats, scum RINOs, scum presstitutes, and scum Woke leftwing sub-creatures, Trump has a huge task, one that scum Democrat and RINO Republican judges will try to block at every turn.” It is a fight to the death. If MAGA Americans are not prepared to fight to the death, they will lose.

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“..legally binding instruments for preventing an arms race in outer space, including tools to prohibit the deployment of space-based weapons..”

• Trump Wants To Revive ‘Star Wars’ – Zakharova (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s directive to create an American ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system is a destabilizing step towards the weaponization of space, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Trump’s executive order to develop advanced missile defenses, issued earlier this week, authorizes the creation of “space-based interceptors,” among other things, the diplomat told reporters on Friday. “We see this as yet another confirmation of the US focus on turning space into an arena for armed confrontation, warfare, and the deployment of weapons,” Zakharova said.

This would “completely discredit” the previous US administration’s initiative to develop “certain norms, rules and principles” of behavior in space, and would violate the ban on testing direct-ascent and satellite-killer missiles, she added. Trump’s decisions “indicate Washington’s intention to actively develop and expand deeply destabilizing military programs,” Zakharova said, noting that it would expand missile defenses “to a scale comparable to Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’.” President Ronald Reagan had envisioned a missile shield as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a Cold War program nicknamed ‘Star Wars’ at the time. Reagan’s proposal touched off an arms race between the US and the Soviet Union.

The US never managed to develop the space-based weapons Reagan wanted, however, and the tensions eventually waned with the signing of several arms-control treaties. Washington has since abrogated almost all of them, including the ABM treaty banning strategic missile defenses to the INF treaty limiting short- and intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Trump’s program is “openly aimed” at devaluing the Russian and Chinese strategic deterrent, which “will not contribute to reducing tensions or improving the situation in the strategic sphere, including creating a basis for a fruitful dialogue on strategic armaments,” Zakharova said on Friday. Such dangerous ideas reinforce the importance of Russia’s proposals to create legally binding instruments for preventing an arms race in outer space, including tools to prohibit the deployment of space-based weapons, she added.

The January 27 executive order instructs the Pentagon to create a plan for protecting the US territory from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries” using a multi-layered missile shield. Such an “Iron Dome” – a name borrowed from Israel’s short-range missile defense – would include the “development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors,” capable of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles during their boost phase, as well as unspecified “capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch,” according to the text of the order.

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Who is stealing from whom?

• The US is Turning Into a Crybaby Empire (Sp.)

Washington seems to have developed a new habit — throwing tantrums whenever it falls behind. When did “American greatness” turn into nonstop whining?

‘Hostile’ BRICS dares to challenge ‘mighty US dollar’ US President Donald Trump has once again threatened BRICS countries with 100% tariffs if they dare to create a new currency — despite Russian President Vladimir Putin already clarifying that a unified BRICS currency isn’t even on the table.

DeepSeek: the latest ‘stolen’ US tech scandal Trump declared that the Chinese DeepSeek platform’s market success “should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.” (Jan 28). His commerce secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick, immediately jumped in to claim that China’s powerful AI model was built on “stolen” US technology and advanced semiconductors. (Jan 29)

Hypersonic weapons: Russia ‘stole’ those too? Trump alleged — without evidence — that Russia “stole” US hypersonic missile designs during the Obama administration. (Jan 23) He made the same claim in 2020, again in 2023, and now, yet again in 2024. Moscow has consistently shredded and mocked these accusations.

China ‘stole’ American jobs Trump has repeatedly blamed China for “stealing” American manufacturing jobs. However, it was American companies that eagerly rushed to China in the 1980s after its economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping.

TikTok is bad… because it calls the shots “Essentially, with TikTok, I have the right to sell it or close it,” Trump declared on Jan 20. Washington has repeatedly tried to ban the popular Chinese social media app — which is used by at least one-third of US adults — and twist China’s arm to force the sale of TikTok’s US operations.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

DeepSeek

 

 

Hornbill

 

 

Tape
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885071149702287721

 

 

Duck support
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885140945395765688

 

 

Herds
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884996373067472967

 

 

ATGB
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885069255374147648

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 20 2024

Jan 202024
 
 January 20, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Man with knife 1938-40

 

• Dems Have Resurrected Law as a Weapon that Serves Power (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Fani Willis: Wife of Lover an Adulterer and Political Conspirator (Turley)
• Atlanta DA Fani Willis Just Stepped on a Rake (CTH)
• Georgia Prosecutors Should Go, But That Won’t End the Trump Case (Turley)
• Trump’s Lawyers Warn Of Nationwide ‘Chaos’ (RT)
• Trump Warns Of Years Of Trauma If Presidents Don’t Have Total Immunity (Hill)
• Gaza Will Be The Grave Of The Western-Led World Order (Takahashi)
• Houthis Declare Safe Passage For All Russian, Chinese Ships In Red Sea (ZH)
• Russia and the US Are Set For A Long Confrontation (Sushentsov)
• The Ukraine Charade, Revisited (Pepe Escobar)
• Western Mercenaries Used To Fill Kiev’s Expertise Gaps – Larry Johnson (RT)
• French Mercenaries Dying For A Nazi Regime – Russia’s Top MP (RT)
• Americans Enslaved Themselves to the State When They Accepted Income Tax (PCR)
• The Biden Laptop is Proven Authentic as Past Deniers Double Down (Turley)
• The Goddess of the WEF (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Crooke
https://twitter.com/i/status/1748027526666965195

 

 

Heritage

 

 

Tucker Robbins

 

 

Orban

 

 

 

 

We may be in for a full year+ of this. Why would it stop on November 8?

• Dems Have Resurrected Law as a Weapon that Serves Power (Paul Craig Roberts)

Fani Willis, the incompetent and apparently corrupt black female Atlanta district attorney reportedly put in office by George Soros’ billions, is in more hot water than Trump is in from her fabricated case against him. Fani appointed Nathan Wade, who is believed to be her lover, special prosecutor to aid in Trump’s kangaroo trial. According to county records reviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County paid Wade $654,000 in tax payers’ money since January 2022. The money appears to be what financed the couple’s lavish vacations. The white liberal Democrats are disturbed that Willis was so stupid as to damage her case against Trump by destroying her credibility and public perception of her integrity. Fani’s defense is, of course, that the race card is being played against her as she and her lover are black. There are two ways you can look at her self-justification.

One is that blacks have learned from Jews that a claim of victimhood is a shield against being held accountable. The other is that she has no comprehension of acceptable behavior for public officials. We have an interesting situation in which the prosecutions at the state and county level against Trump are in the hands of black women put in office by George Soros. Why is Soros doing this? Some people think that Soros himself got away with stealing his billions from the Bank of England via his manipulation of the British currency. Where was James Bond when the British needed him? Criminal justice in America is in a serious situation when one billionaire can staff up state and local district attorneys with blacks taught to hate “white exploiters” who are sicced on Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. The trials are unconstitutional, because a black jury consisting of people taught to hate “white racists” does not constitute a “jury of peers” for a white person.

What happened to the justice system that a president of the US finds himself the target of weaponized law used for racial, ideological, and political reasons, and there is not a peep from law schools, bar associations, judges, or media? How can citizens have confidence in the veracity of prosecutions, the veracity of judges, law schools, bar associations? “Fulton County Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade allegedly did not disclose payments he received from working on the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump to his wife, leaving her without financial support throughout their divorce proceedings, according to a court document obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Wade, who was appointed to work on Trump’s case by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, is allegedly romantically involved with her and used the compensation he received from his position to take her on cruises and vacations, according to a motion filed Monday by a Trump co-defendant.

In separate filings for his divorce case obtained by the DCNF, Wade’s wife alleges he did not disclose to her over $700,000 in earnings from the county. “Wade’s wife alleges he has continued to draw from her bank account, leaving it “routinely overdrawn” despite “the clear inequity in financial circumstances.” His wife has been a stay-at-home mom for 20 years and relied on Wade for support during the course of their marriage, according to the filing. “Willis was subpoenaed earlier this week to testify in Wade’s divorce proceedings, according to CNN. “Wade filed for divorce on November 2, 2021, the day after his contract with Willis began, according to court filings. He had his divorce case sealed on February 10, 2022, according to the Monday motion filed by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman.

“Republican US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a criminal referral Wednesday to Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr asking for an investigation into Willis and expressing “serious concerns” about the allegations. Greene suggested Willis could have violated a number of Georgia statutes, including violations of public oath, bribery, improper influence of a government official and more.”

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A DA should not be throwing mud.

• Fani Willis: Wife of Lover an Adulterer and Political Conspirator (Turley)

In an surprising filing, Fulton County’s district attorney Fani Willis has accused the estranged wife of her alleged lover of conspiring to undermine the Trump prosecution by seeking her deposition in the messy divorce case of Nathan Wade. Willis, again, does not deny having an affair with Wade, who she appointed lead prosecutor in the case. Instead, she accuses Joycelyn Wade of an affair that broke up the marriage and suggests that she is coordinating with Trump forces to interfere with the prosecution. Willis is accused of major ethical violations in appointing her alleged lover to the position as she went on lavish vacations with him. She previously denounced those raising obvious ethical concerns as being racist due to the fact that both Willis and Wade are black. She did not, however, deny the intimate relationship or the allegation that Wade paid for her vacation expenses.

At issue in the filing is the demand for a pretrial deposition in the divorce case of Nathan and Joycelyn Wade on January 23. Willis’ counsel leveled a full attack on the motivations and associations of Joycelyn Wade. She accused Joycelyn Wade of having an adulterous relationship with a longtime friend of Nathan Wade’s. Willis’ counsel Cinque Axam then added that Joycelyn Wade “has conspired with interested parties in the criminal election interference case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass and oppress District Attorney Willis.” The filing noted that the allegations against Willis were used by Trump codefendant Mike Roman to seek judicial review and remedy for the alleged conflict of interest. A hearing has now been set by the court for Feb. 28th.

Willis bases her conspiracy theory on the fact that, on January 8, Roman’s filing was made public and on the same day, she was served a subpoena and Merchant moved to unseal the Wades’ divorce case. That certainly makes this all a bit different from the usual “other woman” element in the divorce case. However, it is not a smart move. The level of animus and vexatious language in the filing only magnifies the concern over the Willis-Wade relationship. By attacking the estranged wife of her alleged lover, Willis only increases concerns over the professional separation between Willis and Wade in making decisions in the case. Accusing the estranged wife of your alleged lover of being a political conspirator is about as compelling at accusing people raising ethical concerns of being virulent racists.

For example, if Wade were to exceed his authority or act unprofessionally in the case, Willis would be forced to take action against not only an alleged lover but someone she has had to defend as the ideal choice for the position. Their personal relationship would presumably weigh in the balance in any supervisory review or decision. Likewise, if Willis was taken on vacations by Wade and their relationship is continuing, the termination of his contract could have an economic impact on Willis. In the end, the accusatory motion was a mistake in my view. Willis could have objected to the necessity of the deposition on factual and legal grounds (as she does) without escalating the rhetoric and recriminations.

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”The scale of Lawfare stupid, perhaps driven by hubris and/or an entitled sense of just being above the rules, is simply off-the-charts. Crazy stuff.”

• Atlanta DA Fani Willis Just Stepped on a Rake (CTH)

Boy howdy… when things get interesting, they REALLY get interesting. In an effort to deflect attention from the gross corruption she initiated in the prosecution of Donald Trump, Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis stepped into the middle of a contentious divorce between Willis’s married lover and appointed Special Prosecutor, Nathan Wade, and his wife, Joycelyn Wade. After discovering details of the relationship between Nathan Wade and Fani Willis, lawyers representing Mrs. Joycelyn Wade wanted a deposition of Fani Willis. At issue are the finances in the marriage and Mrs. Wade’s discovery that her husband, Nathan Wade, and Fani Willis had been living a life of indulgence from the marital income received (more than $650, 000) as a result of DA Willis hiring Nathan Wade to prosecute Donald Trump.

In an over-the-top court filing trying to avoid the deposition, the Fulton County’s district attorney accused the estranged wife of conspiring to undermine the Trump prosecution by seeking her testimony. Fani Willis does not deny the affair; instead, she accuses Joycelyn Wade of coordinating with Trump people and co-defendants to interfere with the prosecution. (VIA AJC Politics) – “Fulton County’s district attorney on Thursday fired back at allegations she has engaged in an “improper” relationship with her top deputy, accusing his estranged wife of trying to obstruct her prosecution of Donald Trump and his allies.” That approach by Fani Willis opened up a can of worms the district attorney likely didn’t expect. Because Mrs. Jocelyn Wade has credit card statements and receipts showing how her husband booked and paid for lavish travel, expenses and indulgences using Fani Willis’s real name as his companion.

The details and credit card statements are attached to the filing, which substantiates and supports the originating court filing by one of the co-defendants who made the allegation against Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. (via AJC Politics) […] “The records have emerged as part of the Wades’ contentious divorce proceedings in Cobb County Superior Court and have rocked Fulton’s sweeping racketeering case against the former president and 14 remaining defendants. One defendant is seeking to disqualify Willis and her office because of her alleged “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Wade.”

[..] Nathan Wade was a lawyer specializing in family matters prior to being appointed by District Attorney Fani Willis. Mr. Wade never prosecuted a single felony case in his legal career. Judge Scott McAfee ordered District Attorney Fani Willis to file a written response by Feb. 2. He said he will hold a hearing on the allegations on Feb. 15.

Additionally, according to White House visitor logs, Mr. Nathan Wade visited White House lawyers prior to the indictment of President Trump. Also, DA Willis met with staff (Mary McCord) from the January 6 Committee prior to the indictment. The Georgia prosecutor meeting with Biden lawyers, prior to the indictment against Biden’s political opposition, is a big issue that has yet to surface in front of Judge McAfee. Something is going to change in this case as a result of these explosive findings. I suspect by Monday of next week Ms. Fani Willis will have to remove herself from any involvement in the case. Something substantive is going to change in Atlanta as a result of the discovery of her grossly inappropriate/unethical conduct, and the now exposed financial and personal relationship with the prosecutor she hired, Nathan Wade. The scale of Lawfare stupid, perhaps driven by hubris and/or an entitled sense of just being above the rules, is simply off-the-charts. Crazy stuff.

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“If these allegations are true, Willis is not just outside of the ethical navigational beacons. She is off the map.”

• Georgia Prosecutors Should Go, But That Won’t End the Trump Case (Turley)

Chris Christie once said that Donald Trump is often portrayed by legal counsel as “the unluckiest S.O.B. in the world.” Perhaps, but when it comes to his enemies, Trump sometimes seems to find advantages despite his worst efforts. Many of us have criticized Trump for his personal attacks on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as being racist and unethical; he even accused her of having an affair with a gang member, a claim that was widely contested as unfounded and denied by key figures. This month, however, Willis has seemingly imploded with an ethical scandal which, unlike Trump’s prior claims, appears perhaps to be more well-founded, as it appears in an official court filing. It involves reports of an intimate relationship with Nathan Wade, appointed by Willis as lead prosecutor in the Trump case.

While a recusal or removal of Willis may delay the case, it will not end the legal threat for Trump. Willis is accused of having a romantic relationship with Wade when she appointed him in this historic prosecution of a former president. Wade has no experience in racketeering law, yet he reportedly was paid more than an expert on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) cases. Willis and Wade allegedly went on lavish vacations together, and the costs allegedly were covered by Wade, who has received nearly $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022 — approved, ultimately, by Willis. Wade has presented himself as the “only individual in the DA’s office who had authority to enter into agreements pertaining to the investigation.” Wade also has been held in contempt in his messy divorce.

The Georgia courts have established that a district attorney should be disqualified when there is a personal interest in the defendant’s conviction (Whitworth v. State, 275 Ga. App. 790, 793, 622 S.E.2d 21 [2005]). In this instance, Willis has staked much of her career on this case and appointed a prosecutor who’s alleged to be romantically involved with her; likewise, if the allegations are true, Willis may have an interest in furthering Wade’s career and benefits. Of course, Trump, the other defendants, and the public are entitled to disinterested prosecutors in this major case. Moreover, the Fulton County Code of Laws § 2-66 bars conflicts of interest “in fact and in appearance.” It expressly states that no “officer or employee shall, by his or her conduct, give reasonable basis for the impression that any person can improperly influence him or her, or unduly enjoy his or her favor, in the performance of any official acts or actions.”

These provisions are in addition to prohibitions on the receipt of gifts due to one’s office, such as possibly receiving alleged lavish vacations paid for by your subordinate. These are just some of the grounds supporting a motion by Michael Roman, one of the defendants in the massive racketeering case brought by Willis. If these allegations are true, Willis is not just outside of the ethical navigational beacons. She is off the map.

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“..if other states follow Colorado’s lead, it would “unleash chaos and bedlam.”

• Trump’s Lawyers Warn Of Nationwide ‘Chaos’ (RT)

Donald Trump’s lawyers have warned that the entire entire US could be plunged into chaos if the country’s Supreme Court upholds the state of Colorado’s decision to remove the republican presidential frontrunner from its ballot. Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump ineligible to run for re-election and removed him from the ballot for the presidential primary on March 5. The court cited the 14th Amendment, which bans insurrectionists from holding public office. Trump’s lawyers argued again on Thursday that the former president had not instigated the riot on January 6, 2021. The Colorado ruling, which was the first of its kind, has been left in limbo pending a decision by the US Supreme Court, with the first oral arguments in the case set for February 8.

“The court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. They added that, if other states follow Colorado’s lead, it would “unleash chaos and bedlam.” The former president’s legal team also noted that the piece of legislation invoked by the Colorado Supreme Court can only be applied to an “officer of the United States,” which Trump is not. The attorneys insisted that the Republican firebrand was not inciting insurrection when he called on his supporters to “fight like hell” on January 6, and was merely “raising concerns about the integrity of the recent federal election.”

According to Trump’s defense team, he used the phrase strictly metaphorically, not expecting his supporters to interpret it as a call for violence. They added that, as events began to unfold on Capitol Hill that day, Trump “repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and law and order.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and several other Republican lawmakers have also called on the US Supreme Court to void Colorado’s “insurrectionist ban.” A number of GOP secretaries of state also warned the judges that Trump’s potential removal from ballots would lead to a “foreseeable and unfortunate parade of horribles.” On January 6, the Maine secretary of state passed a tentative ballot ban similar to that in Colorado, with multiple lawsuits filed in other states as well. The final say, however, rests with the US Supreme Court.

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“..full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him/her to properly function. Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met with almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term end..”

• Trump Warns Of Years Of Trauma If Presidents Don’t Have Total Immunity (Hill)

Former President Trump said there would be “years of trauma” if presidents are not awarded total immunity from prosecution for their actions in the White House — even if those actions “cross the line.” “A president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him/her to properly function. Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met with almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term end,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post early Thursday morning, writing in all capital letters. “Even events that ‘cross the line’ must fall under total immunity, or it will be years of trauma trying to determine good from bad,” he added. “There must be certainty.”

Trump compared the president to a police officer, who Trump argued should not be stopped from “doing the job of strong and effective crime prevention” simply because of a “bad apple,” adding, “Sometimes you just have to live with ‘great but slightly imperfect.’” Trump’s comments come one week after his attorney, John Sauer, made a similar case before a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals for a motion from Trump’s team to toss his election interference federal charges. During the hearing, the judges appeared skeptical of the argument that presidents could only be prosecuted if they had already been impeached and convicted by the Senate.

When asked whether a president who directed SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent would then be immune from prosecution for that action, Sauer answered with a “qualified yes,” unless the president was convicted by the Senate first. One judge on the panel noted that, under that framework, a president could take any action on his or her last day in office without fear of criminal prosecution or simply resign shortly thereafter — preventing Congress from impeaching and convicting in time.

The appeals court seems poised to reject Trump’s argument in the case, and Trump has signaled his intention to appeal an unsatisfactory ruling to the Supreme Court. Trump again hinted at his intention to appeal to the high court in his post Thursday. “All presidents must have complete & total presidential immunity, or the authority & decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped & gone forever,” Trump wrote. “Hopefully this will be an easy decision. God bless the Supreme Court!” he added.

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“..However, it is too little, too late. Western credibility has been shredded irrevocably..”

• Gaza Will Be The Grave Of The Western-Led World Order (Takahashi)

No matter how it concludes, South Africa’s lawsuit in the International Court of Justice arguing Israel has violated the Genocide Convention will go down in history. It will either be remembered as the first step towards finally holding a rogue state accountable for repeated, longstanding violations of international law; or as the last, dying breath of a dysfunctional, Western-led international system. For the hypocrisy of Western governments (and the Western political elite as a whole) has finally brought the so-called “rules-based world order” they purport to lead to the point of no return. Full-throttled Western support for Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza has truly exposed the double standards of the West with regard to human rights and international law. There is no turning back, and the West has only its own arrogance to blame.

The litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza are clear as the light of day for anybody who has access to a smartphone. Social media feeds are overflowing with videoclips of hospitals and schools being bombed, fathers pulling out the lifeless bodies of their children from under destroyed buildings, mothers crying over the corpses of their babies. And yet, the reaction of Western governments – besides seemingly limitless military and political support – has been to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism and attempt to ban outright any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Regardless of this oppression, tens of thousands of people are coming out on the streets day after day expressing their disgust at Israeli atrocities and Western complicity. Desperate to regain some semblance of credibility, Western governments (including the US) have recently started to be marginally critical of Israeli attacks. However, it is too little, too late. Western credibility has been shredded irrevocably.

Of course, Western hypocrisy is nothing new. According to Western governments, the world should be up in arms about Russian aggression but should be perfectly happy with Israeli brutality and flouting of international norms. Ukrainians who throw Molotov cocktails at Russian occupation forces are heroes and freedom fighters, while Palestinians (and others) who dare to speak out against Israeli apartheid are terrorists. White-skinned refugees from Ukraine are more than welcome, while black and brown-skinned refugees from conflicts in the Middle East, Asia and Africa (most of which the West are behind) can sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The Western attitude has truly been: rules for thee, not for me. The Western position towards China exhibits the same insincerity. China is virtually encircled by American and allied military bases, armed to the hilt. Yet it is China that is guilty of… what? Unable to point to any concrete infraction, Western governments and media can only accuse China of “increased assertiveness”, ie, not knowing its assigned subjugate place in the Western hegemonic order.

International justice has become a sick joke. Were the International Criminal Court (ICC) functioning effectively, Israeli leaders would be on trial even as we speak, and there would have been no need for South Africa to approach the ICJ. As it stands, though, the ICC only indicted Africans until 2022, when it announced an investigation into the Russian invasion of Ukraine less than a week after its start. The ICC issued indictments, including for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, in less than a year. Conversely, it took over six years for the ICC to open an investigation into the situation in Palestine, and even now, years later, meaningful action has yet to be taken. While Israel continued its orgy of violence against the people of Gaza, Karim Khan, the British Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, visited Israel and stressed the need for Hamas’s crimes to be prosecuted, while going soft on Israeli crimes. Little wonder many civil society organisations are calling for him to be fired.

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“It represented pressure on Israel only, it did not represent pressure on any country in the world.”

• Houthis Declare Safe Passage For All Russian, Chinese Ships In Red Sea (ZH)

In a remarkable development, and at a moment European retailers and factories are beginning to bear the brunt of the global shipping chaos and soaring Red Sea transit risk, the Houthis have declared safe passage for Russia and China. A senior Houthi official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, mentioned these US rivals by name in an interview with the Russian outlet Izvestia on Friday. “As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” he said, stipulating this will remain as long as they are not linked to Israel or its supporters. “Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country,” he added, but then underscored that attacks on ships will continue if they are “in any way connected with Israel.”

The spokesman went on to blame the Red Sea crisis on Israel’s (and its backers) refusal to reverse course in Gaza, given its aerial and ground campaign as continued. “Ansar Allah [the group’s formal name] does not pursue the goal of capturing or sinking this or that sea vessel,” he claimed. “Our goal is to raise the economic costs for [Israel] in order to stop the carnage in Gaza.” Some of the vessels which have come under attack thus far actually have connection to dozens of countries, but ships with Russian or Chinese ownership, or deep ties, have yet to be attacked. Another Houthi official told Reuters separately that the group doesn’t seek to expand its campaign, after a fragile peace took effect with Saudi Arabia and the EUA concerning the Yemeni civil war:

Yemen’s Houthis have said they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes. In an interview with Reuters, spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam, who is also the chief Houthi negotiator in peace talks over Yemen’s decade-old civil war, said the group had no plans to target its longstanding foes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “We do not want the escalation to expand. This is not our demand. We imposed rules of engagement in which not a single drop of blood was shed or major material losses,” said Abdulsalam. “It represented pressure on Israel only, it did not represent pressure on any country in the world.”

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“.It was that the West would deal Russia a quick defeat, a lot of economic resources would be freed up, and relations with Moscow would be rebuilt on a different platform, more favorable to the EU..”

• Russia and the US Are Set For A Long Confrontation (Sushentsov)

Relations between Russia and the United States have entered a prolonged phase that can be described as a “long confrontation.” If the interaction between Moscow and Washington were still the central process of international life, as was the case during the Cold War, this new phase might be considered temporary. But the Moscow-Washington confrontation is now one of many. More importantly, it is taking place in conditions that occur once every few centuries – a period of global redistribution of power and resource potential. This process affects our country and the US only in part. Within a few decades, the center of global production and consumption will finally shift to Asia, and the center of world economic gravity will be on the border of India and China. In this context, the long-standing Russian-American confrontation will remain one of the main fault-lines, but certainly not the only one.

Why do I think this confrontation will be protracted? Despite significant resource advantages and strong positions in key areas, the US finds itself in a situation where its pursuers are catching up fast. Washington is faced with an increasingly dense international environment that poses obstacles to previously unfettered American action. The four US strengths that underpin its offensive strategy are: first, its still-advanced military power; second, its central global financial system, which provides an international settlement infrastructure and a convertible currency; third, its strong position in a number of technological fields; and fourth, its ideology and values platform, which, together with the other three dimensions, provide what can be tentatively called a “pyramid of credibility” for American strategy in the world.

This pyramid exists in the economic and financial spheres as well as in foreign policy. Trust explains the irrational behavior of some European states. Incapable of a balanced analysis of the consequences of their decisions, for example on the Ukraine crisis, they are now forced to ask themselves, as the German magazine Der Spiegel does: “What if the United States has no permanent allies? Western Europeans trusted the logic offered by the United States, they literally ‘bought’ the proposal. It was that the West would deal Russia a quick defeat, a lot of economic resources would be freed up, and relations with Moscow would be rebuilt on a different platform, more favorable to the EU. The belief was that it would be an effective strategy.”

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“..There is no “Biden”. Just Team Biden: a corporate combo featuring low-rent messengers such as de facto neocon Little Blinkie..”

• The Ukraine Charade, Revisited (Pepe Escobar)

Selected players scattered around the Beltway silos of power, diligently working as messengers for the people who really run the show in the Hegemon, have concluded that a no holds barred confrontation with Russia would lead to the collapse of all of NATO; undo decades of US iron grip on Europe; and ultimately cause the Empire’s downfall. Playing brinkmanship games sooner or later would meet the indestructible red lines inbuilt in the unmovable Russian object. US elites are smarter than that. They may excel on calculated risk. But when the stakes are this high, they know when to hedge and when to fold. The “loss” of Ukraine – now a graphic imperative – is not worth risking the loss of the whole Hegemonic ride. That would be too much for the Empire to lose.

So even as they get increasingly desperate with the accelerated imperial plunge into a geopolitical and geoeconomic abyss, they’re frantically changing the narrative – a domain in which they excel. And that explains why discombobulated European vassals in NATO-controlled EU are now in total panic. Davos this week offered bucketloads of Orwellian salad. The key, frantic messages: War is peace. Ukraine is not (italics mine) losing and Russia is not winning. Hence Ukraine needs way more weaponizing. Yet even Norwegian Wood Stoltenberg was told to toe the new line that matters: “NATO is not moving into Asia. It’s China that is coming close to us.” That certainly adds a new wacky meaning to the notion of moving tectonic plates. There is a total void of “leadership” in Washington.

There is no “Biden”. Just Team Biden: a corporate combo featuring low-rent messengers such as de facto neocon Little Blinkie. They do what they’re told by wealthy “donors” and the financial-military interests that really run the show, reciting the same old cliché-saturated lines day after day, bit players in a Theatre of the Absurd. Only one exhibit suffices. Reporter: “Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?” The President of the United States: “Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.” The same in what passes for “strategic thinking” applies to Ukraine. The Hegemon is not being lured into fighting in West Asia – as much as the genocidal arrangement in Tel Aviv, in tandem with US Zio-cons, wants to drag it into a war on Iran.

Still, the imperial machine is being steered to keep the Forever Wars engine running, non-stop, at varying speeds. The elites in charge are way more clinical than the whole Team Biden. They know they will not win in what will soon be country 404. But the tactical victory, so far, is massive: enormous profits out of the frantic weaponizing; totally gutting European industry and sovereignty; reducing the EU to the sub-status of a lowly vassal; and from now on plenty of time to find new proxy warriors against Russia – from Polish and Baltic fanatics to the whole Takfiri-neo ISIS galaxy.

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“I think Russia sent a very clear message in killing these mercenaries: If you are going to send them over here, if you are going to send that materiel, we’re gonna kill you..”

• Western Mercenaries Used To Fill Kiev’s Expertise Gaps – Larry Johnson (RT)

Ukraine is probably experiencing a shortage of soldiers who can handle complex Western weapons systems, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has told RT. A Russian report this week about a strike on “French mercenaries” in Kharkov may be a warning to would-be clandestine arms technicians that Paris plans to supply, he believes. France has denied having mercenaries in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world, responding to the statement by the Defense Ministry of Russia. Moscow said some 60 foreign fighters, most of them French, died in the long-range attack. Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to supply additional air-launched SCALP cruise missiles to support Kiev’s fight.

“I strongly suspect that many of those French ‘mercenaries’ – and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Brits and Americans scattered in there as well – are being brought in to help operate systems that they’ve been trained on previously in prior military careers,” Johnson said. He named the US-made long-range Patriot anti-aircraft missile and the Storm Shadow, the British counterpart to SCALP, as examples of donated arms that may require competent foreign staff to deploy. France is making itself a target by openly arming Kiev, Johnson told the broadcaster, contrasting current events with how the US acted in the past, when it sought to undermine the USSR. “When the US ran covert operations through the CIA to fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets, it was done with some measure of secrecy and at least keeping up a pretense that we were not directly in conflict,” he pointed out.

“I think Russia sent a very clear message in killing these mercenaries: If you are going to send them over here, if you are going to send that materiel, we’re gonna kill you,” the analyst added. Johnson believes that Moscow could have acted in a far bolder manner in targeting Ukraine’s foreign donors, and that its reluctance to do so has been taken in the West as a sign of weakness. “It’s not that, but the West has a track record of misinterpreting Russia on many points,” he commented.

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“There was a time when our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought together against fascism. Now, it turns out that French mercenaries are dying for the Nazi regime in Ukraine..”

• French Mercenaries Dying For A Nazi Regime – Russia’s Top MP (RT)

The French public and lawmakers should be aware that their compatriots are fighting and dying as mercenaries in Ukraine, Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said on Friday. The senior lawmaker was commenting on an announcement by the Defense Ministry in Moscow earlier this week, which said some 60 foreign fighters, most of them French citizens, were killed by a Russian long-range strike on the city of Kharkov on Tuesday. The Russian military described them as “mercenaries,” although the French Foreign Ministry disputed this description, insisting that Paris “has no ‘mercenaries’ either in Ukraine or anywhere else.”

In a post on social media, Volodin said the lower chamber of the Russian parliament will soon consider a formal request to French lawmakers about the incident. “There was a time when our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought together against fascism. Now, it turns out that French mercenaries are dying for the Nazi regime in Ukraine,” he stressed. On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned French Ambassador to Moscow Pierre Levy in connection with the incident. Ukrainian officials have denied the veracity of the Russian military’s announcement and have claimed that Moscow’s forces only hit civilian targets in Kharkov on Tuesday.

Last summer, the Le Monde newspaper reported that French national intelligence estimated the number of its nationals fighting in Ukraine at 320. The overall pool of would-be recruits was put at 800, including 120 identified as far-right and 40 deemed ultra-left in terms of ideology. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to fight for Kiev rather than Moscow. The report followed the arrest in April of two men who had returned to Paris from Ukraine, illegally carrying assault rifle magazines and optical sights. The local press described them as far-right individuals who were previously known to the French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI). Both were sentenced to 15 months in jail, nine of which were suspended.

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“A “free American” has ceased to exist. Such an American predates 1913..”

• Americans Enslaved Themselves to the State When They Accepted Income Tax (PCR)

It was not until 1913, 137 years after the Declaration of Independence established a free people who are no longer free, that there was an income tax. Years ago I researched and wrote the story of how it happened. It exists somewhere in print. In the old analogue, library card file days, it would have been easy to find. The income tax required a Constitutional Amendment. I remember some of the story. What I remember is this: The threshold for being subject to income tax was high, and the first rate was 1%. The Georgia legislature voted to ratify the amendment because as one legislative leader concluded, “there’s no one in Georgia with an income high enough to be subject to the tax. Let the Yankees tax themselves. Why should we object.” There was no vision of the future. 1913 was also the year that the Federal Reserve, with its policy of depression, inflation, recession, and inflation, was established and unleashed on America, and it was also the year that World War I and its inflation was about to be launched by the French, Russian, and British Governments.

War and inflation quickly brought income tax home to insouciant Americans who thought they were exempt.In 1963 prior to the Kennedy tax rate reductions the top tax rate was 91% on incomes above $200,000. Kennedy left it at 70%. Reagan left it at 50%. Today it is 39.6%, or with rounding 40% The highest medieval tax rate on serfs was 30%. Anything higher and they revolted and killed the feudal lords. 50% was the highest tax rate on cotton plantation slaves. The other 50% of their work went for their food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. What is indisputable is that for more than a hundred years the tax rate on American citizens has been higher or equal to the tax rate on medieval serfs and 19th century plantation slaves. What does this mean? It means that Americans and the entirety of Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders are slaves in the same sense that blacks were slaves on southern cotton plantations.

The historical fact is that a free person is a person who owns his own labor. Just as a slave does not own his own labor, neither does any person who is subject to income tax. In the anti-South propaganda in the 19th century, such as the propagandistic “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” southern slave owners are portrayed unrealistically as demoralizing their work force and destroying their capital investments in human labor by demoralizing and alienating their slaves by separating families and whipping, beating, and raping their work force. A slave was expensive. To abuse him or her is the equivalent of abusing an expensive piece of machinery. It makes no sense for an owner to abuse his own resources. Yet southern planation owners are portrayed as people who ran torture prisons.

Neither the South nor the United States are responsible for black slaves in America. The slaves that came to the New World came from the Black Kingdom of Dahomey’s slave wars. The captured slaves were carried to the New World in ships often financed by Jews. The southern plantations were not responsible for the origin of their work force. Indeed, it was an inherited institution. For decades as April 15 approached, I pointed out that it is today’s white people who pay the income taxes who are the real victims of slavery. Even after the Reagan marginal tax rate reductions, Americans pay a higher rate of tax, that is, they are more enslaved, than medieval serfs and are almost exploited by “their government” to the same extent as 19th century black slaves. So what is “white privilege”? It is to be a slave owned by Washington, used to support privileged people of color, including millions of immigrant-invaders settled by Democrats on American slaves who pay for their upkeep?

A “free American” has ceased to exist. Such an American predates 1913. The American liberal-left doesn’t mind being enslaved to a good cause–the coercive use of American citizens to support causes that the people reject, such as the normalization of sexual perversion, the genocide of the Palestinians, the demonization of white people, the use of the “justice system” to destroy ideological and political opponents. Today the insouciant American people are enslaved for causes that are to their detriment, unlike the plantation’s agenda of growing cotton. The American people voluntarily accepted slavery, because they thought it would apply to others–the rich. But as multi-billionaire Warren Buffet has said, his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.

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“I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”

• The Biden Laptop is Proven Authentic as Past Deniers Double Down (Turley)

After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, many in the media in the last year have belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) in hearings. The Justice Department has now again confirmed the authenticity and added details on why these denials are unsupported. This week, the Justice Department confirmed that the laptop was authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the Cloud and “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

That is only the latest such confirmation, but some have continued to desperately cast doubts the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop. Goldman attacked Journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared “You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.” Goldman has never revealed the “actual evidence” showing that the laptop is fake or why the Justice Department and FBI are making the same false claim in court if such evidence exists.

The same week that the Biden Administration again confirmed the authenticity of the laptop, one of the loudest laptop deniers wrote a telling column on why the public should avoid researching such questions on their own. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has repeatedly pushed false stories from Lafayette Park to Russian collusion to the laptop. Even after many in the media admitted that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Recently, in response to a column on these false claims, the Post remarkably declared that Bump’s original claims on Lafayette Park, the Hunter Biden laptop, and Russian collusion were true and they stand by them. This week, Bump warned citizens that they needed to continue to get their news from the media and not try to learn the truth on their own.

In a column titled “Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong,” Bump states without an sense of self-awareness that citizens will often “embrace dubious information supporting their belief than information that corroborates the allegations” — precisely what critics have accused Bump of doing for years on the laptop and other false stories. Bump’s column is a must read for understanding the sense of entitlement of columnists in today’s age of “advocacy journalism.” It is consistent with what Bump said in an interview last year before he walked out after being confronted about false stories. In a podcast interview with Noam Dworman, Bump became exasperated and said “I’m gonna lose my mind” when Dworman offered facts contradicting his view. Ironically, when Dworman noted that half of the country does not believe his positions, Bump shot back “I know, because half the country doesn’t actually dig into the issues.”

However, Bump does not believe that they should actually dig into the issues but accept his view. He chastised Dworman and the public “because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen … you refuse to listen to what I’m saying to you. You asked me on to present evidence. I keep telling you.” Indeed, Bump and others kept telling people that the laptop was a “conspiracy theory” and possible Russian disinformation. Now, he is reminding people not to do their own research as the Post expressly declared that the prior false claims in his columns were actually true. This is why, at the start of our Republic, alternative media sprang up with pamphleteers like Thomas Paine. Citizens rejected the state-supporting media and searched for their own sources. Today citizen journalists can be found on the Internet in blogs and other sites that carry opposing views or accounts.

The media is already moving to be sure that the public is limited in what they are allowed to see or hear. After Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained to viewers that the network had decided that they should not hear Trump’s victory speech because he would only tell them “untrue things.” As noted by Bump, citizens are much safer to just accept what they are given and avoid the temptation to do their own research. Censorship is now actually proclaimed as a form of virtue signaling, assuring viewers that they will not have to hear certain opposing views or figures. There is little tolerance for those who insist on seeking out such news. After all, as the Post’s Bump explained, “I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”

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“.. the loving smile of the life-giver caressing humanity like a spring zephyr wafting through the piney Schwarzwald on a June morning..”

• The Goddess of the WEF (Kunstler)

Tell me: is there a fairer grandmotherly face than this in all of Western Civ? Does it not seem to radiate eons of aggregate wisdom, maternal kindness, bountiful nurture, caring, and healing, and even a hint of fun in the nursury. . . the rectified essence of Teutonic beauty, fertility, vitality, and virtue. . . the loving smile of the life-giver caressing humanity like a spring zephyr wafting through the piney Schwarzwald on a June morning? That is exactly why Ursula von der Leyen was (s)elected President of the European Commission, and why she was sent out to front the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week in her keynote speech to the assembled global grandees of Davos in the dead chill of January. It’s one thing when a cadaverous goblin such as Yuval Noah Harari tells you to eat bugs, and quite another thing when Oma Ursula tells you Keine Sorge, Kinder. Alles ist gut.

Ursula did offer us children-of-the-world one wee note of caution, though, as every good “grammy” might give to the global kindergarten: watch out for misinformation and disinformation on the internet! Like the evil imps of the Germanic Märchen, these wicked forces lurk and propagate on the internet — waiting to dash all of the WEF’s benevolent plans for our utopian future. That’s why, she explained, the European Commission has drawn up the Digital Services Act — because misinfo and disinfo can fluoresce into hate speech, the most dangerous thing in the world. It must be stomped out! Ground into the dirt under a boot heel! Misinfo and disinfo about what, exactly? Ursula omitted to specify, but we can guess, can’t we? For instance, about how more and more every year the WEF seems to operate like a global racketeering operation, seeking the levers of control in all the naughtiest sovereign nations of the earth overpopulated with “useless eaters” who are remorselessly busy wrecking the climate to enjoy, say, in the case of the USA, their loathsome motor-sports, mega-churches, gun shows, hot-tubs, and Golden Corral All-You-Can-Eat buffets!

The WEF, a racket? A cabal of haughty control freaks? What a hateful thing to say, after everything kindly onkel Schwabenklaus has done for mankind! It hurts our feelings to hear this! Yet, why do scores of billionaires flock to the yearly Davos meet-up and coordinate their funding streams into countless NGOs and shadowy activist organizations aimed at manipulating the activities of governments around the world? I assure you it’s hardly for the fabulous hors d’oeuvre platters or the even more fabulous on-call hookers. (The nabobs of finance must be satisfied with the services of their personal chefs and masseuses.) Ursula says the WEF notables meet annually “because our democracies and our businesses have interests that align: creating prosperity, wealth and security for people, creating a stable environment to unlock innovation and investment, and creating equal opportunity and freedom.”

I have some disappointing news for you: grandmother Ursula is lying (alas, we live in time of epic disappointments). If the WEF wanted “stability” you would not see Alex (and papa George) Soros pouring money into every county DA election from Maine to California to make sure that looting, car-jacking, and mayhem go unpunished. . . or that men of military age from every failed state on the planet get flown across the oceans to NGO-supported waystations in Central America so that the cartels of Mexico can take over the final leg of their illegal entry into the USA. . . or ditto the boats ferrying Africans and Arabs across the Mediterranean to overwhelm the societies of Europe — including especially Grammy Ursula’s Germany.

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Ruyi bridge

 

 

Elephant

 

 

 

 

Lynx


“One of the best examples of cryptic plumage and mimicry in Australian birds is seen in the tawny frogmouth, which perch low on tree branches during the day camouflaged as part of the tree”

Meet my mum
https://twitter.com/i/status/1748296319381176655

 

 

 

 

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Of Course The Fed Is Crazy

Oct 112018
 
 October 11, 2018  Posted by at 1:22 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Triumph of Death 1562

 

Finally financial ‘markets’ go through a substantial dip, which Steve Mnuchin claims is just temporary and Donald Trump says is caused by the fact that the Fed is ‘loco’. Mnuchin may well be right, but it won’t be because he knows something you don’t.

And Trump is certainly right, but in reality the Fed has been loco for many years, so why be surprised if it acts crazy now? The reason Mnuchin and a million other ‘experts’ may be right without realizing it is that the Fed has been crazy enough to kill the financial markets.

Or at least killed what made the markets functional, and beneficial to society. And that may well be exactly what Jay Powell is trying to repair, but he may well not be aware of that either. Looked at from a ‘benign’ angle, Powell is perhaps raising rates so people can regain insight into what they’re buying.

The pre-Powell Fed pushed up asset prices (don’t let’s say ‘values’) to such heights nobody has any insight anymore into what anything is truly worth. And in what was formerly known as the financial markets that was not important, because what were formerly known as investors were making heaps of money regardless.

Surely they must all have known that this wouldn’t continue?! That it’s just a matter of timing, of knowing when it would end? Oh, but that’s not really possible, is it, without the very price discovery process the Fed successfully strangulated?

Still, there must also be tons of people left thinking the Fed can kick that can six times to the moon and back, or sixty. If only because they’ve never bothered to think about price discovery, and what role it plays in the very ‘markets’ they volunteer to spend their money in.

And along those same lines, many acknowledge housing bubbles in Sydney and Vancouver but think the US has learned its lesson a decade ago. And the loco Fed plays its role there too: mortgage rates have been ultra-low, enticing the last left batch of greater fools not mortally wounded by the last fire to jump in this time. Wolf Richter’s Case-Shiller graph says plenty in that regard:

 

 

But of course things tend back to normalcy, and it doesn’t take all the overleveraged stock- and home buyers longing for price discovery; it takes just a few to get the engine started. And then everyone will be along for the ride. So from that angle Jay Powell looks anything but crazy raising rates, we just can’t be sure if he knows what the consequences will be.

Not that it matters all that much what he does or does not know. What was formerly the market is like a pendulum swung so far out of balance that it costs ever more effort and money to keep it from moving towards equilibrium, and that process has only one possible outcome.

For mortgage rates, it looks something like this, and to make anyone able to buy any home at all higher rates will of necessity mean lower prices. You can’t, nobody can, not the Fed or the government can, keep that pendulum away from its tendency towards equilibrium forever.

 

 

For stocks it looks much the same. So why try, you’d think?! To prevent incumbents and ruling classes from being exposed as swimming naked, that’s why. They invented a way to make the entire nation swim naked, thinking they’d never be found out because the water levels were so high.

Whether yesterday’s 831-point Dow dip is temporary or not is of little interest. Much more important is that the entire asset prices situation is temporary. It doesn’t matter if the Fed pumps $1, $10, or $100 trillion into what once were markets, in the end it all comes down to how many people can pay how much money for the assets.

And since there is never an unending supply of greater fools, we know where this is going. The easy money and low rates and asset purchases at central banks and stock buybacks by companies can and will result only in more profits and more wealth for a few, and sheer endlessly less for the many.

Inequality in the US has now reached such extremities that the country’s AAA rating threatens to be taken away –as Moody’s indicated-; the government has so many people it must support financially (or let perish) that its financial position comes under pressure. Which is, again, negative for the many, for the few; they don’t care about that rating.

Yes, too many people are on some form of welfare in America. And Washington would love to throw many of them off of it. The many have no representation on Capitol Hill anymore. Just about any senator and congress(wo)man is a millionaire or certainly well-off.

 

How can the country get its rating back, or at least not lose it due to its increasing inequality? There seem to be two ways: let the 80 million now on welfare die by the side of the road, or provide them with jobs that allow them a fruitful life. That may sound like socialism or something, but it’s really the exact opposite.

It’s not the government’s role to give people jobs, but it is its role to make sure conditions are in place for the private sector to provide them. Trump’s ‘trade wars’ look crazy to many, but the intent is to get jobs back to the US. But there is much more.

America was once prosperous. What changed?

Here’s one thing: In what was -arguably?- America’s wealthiest time as a nation, the post-World War II period, income taxes for the richest were as high as 90% (1952: 92%); they were slowly brought down towards 70%. Only when Ronald Reagan took over in 1980 did they really fall (1982: 50%). This was ‘justified’ by lowering the highest income bracket (1982: $85,600, it had been between $200,000 and $400,000 for years).

In 1988, the top rate plunged to 28%, and the highest bracket to $29,750. Today, the top rate is 39.6% and the high bracket $400,000. In a graph, the consequences look like this:

 

 

The corporate tax rate, meanwhile, pulled this one, and don’t get started on tax havens etc.:

 

 

And that situation has led to a huge financial crisis, to the Fed going crazy and handing out trillions to the exact wrong part of society, those who already have a lot of money, and the result has been an absolute disaster, at least for the country; not so much for its elites.

But as even Moody’s now recognizes, you can’t run an AAA-rated country on elites alone. Despite the crazy Fed trillions, the US has achieved negative growth (imagine where it would be without):

 

 

Something must be done. Problem is, with only those millionaires in charge in the House and Senate, the likelihood of boosting income tax levels up to where they were when America was most prosperous is extremely low. And Trump’s tariffs are not on their own going to bring back the jobs; they can’t rebuild the lost infrastructure, for one thing.

Something must be done, and it’s entirely unclear what, or rather, who’s going to do it. The Democrats have nothing, or nothing but frustrated millionaires and Bernie Sanders. The GOP has only Trump. None of these people are going to vote to double their income taxes.

Much of what needs to be done will be classified as socialism, ridiculed and thrown out the window, even if the country was anything but socialist under Eisenhower and Kennedy, during its -at least economic- Golden Age.

It’s a nice puzzle, isn’t it? Well, maybe not so nice after all.

 

 

Debt Rattle April 12 2015

Apr 122015
 
 April 12, 2015  Posted by at 9:14 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Byron Street haberdashery, New York 1900

• Top 20% of US Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax (WSJ)
• Stocks Surge: Nikkei Tops 20,000, Europe Hits 15-Year High (Reuters)
• Eurozone Officials Shocked By Greece’s Stance, Says German Newspaper (Reuters)
• Yanis Varoufakis and Joseph Stiglitz (INET)
• ECB Sees Risks In Greece’s Planned Home Foreclosure Law (Reuters)
• Druckenmiller: This Could End ‘Very Badly’ (CNBC)
• GE Plan Opens Escape Path From Fed Too-Big-To-Fail Label (Bloomberg)
• New Zealand Rock Star Economy Takes Centre Stage As Currency Climbs (Guardian)
• Italy Rescues 978 Migrants Attempting to Cross the Mediterranean (Bloomberg)
• China-Led Infrastructure Bank to Welcome U.S. ‘Anytime’ (Bloomberg)
• Anonymous Declares Cyber War On ISIS Twitter Users (RT)
• China Said to Use Powerful New Weapon to Censor Internet (NY Times)
• The Universe May Not Be Expanding As Fast As We Thought (NatMon)

And get 99% of income?!

• Top 20% of US Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax (WSJ)

Who pays what in income taxes? With April 15 just around the corner, filers may be curious about where they fit into the system as a whole. The individual income tax remains the most important levy in the U.S., providing nearly half of federal revenue. This is unusual: On average, developed nations get only one-third of their revenue from income taxes. Typically they also impose national consumption taxes, such as a value-added tax, that raise as much revenue as their income tax. The pressure on the U.S. income tax has prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to seriously consider a national consumption tax. But liberals worry that such a levy could unduly burden the poor, while conservatives fear it would be too easy to dial up the rate and collect more revenue.

As a result, experts say, there is little chance of tax overhaul this year. The data come from estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a Washington-based research group, as Internal Revenue Service data for 2014 won’t be available for at least two years. Unlike IRS data, it includes information about nonfilers—both people who didn’t need to file and people who should have filed but didn’t. The total also includes Americans living overseas and others, which is why it is greater than the U.S. Census estimate of 319 million. Another important difference: The income cited in the tables includes untaxed amounts for employer-provided health coverage, tax-exempt interest and retirement-plan contributions and growth, among other things. This can be significant.

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When this bubble bursts, an awful lot of ‘money’ will be lost.

• Stocks Surge: Nikkei Tops 20,000, Europe Hits 15-Year High (Reuters)

World equity markets tested record highs on Friday on hopes of more stimulus from top central banks, while the dollar strengthened on favorable government debt yields compared to those of most other developed countries. Wall Street scored solid gains after U.S. conglomerate General Electric said it plans to sell assets and buy back up to $50 billion of its stock. This propelled GE shares to their highest since September 2008, ending up 10.8% at $28.51 in heavy volume. Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei index rose above 20,000 points for the first time in 15 years while top European shares advanced to their highest since 2000. Oil prices rose on lowered expectations of an Iran nuclear deal that would allow more Iranian oil into the market. Gold rose on the day but snapped a three-week winning streak on a stronger dollar.

“We are in a honeymoon period for risk assets, and will be for another quarter,” said Sandra Crowl, an investment committee member at Paris-based asset managers Carmignac Gestion. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 98.92 points, or 0.55%, to 18,057.65, the S&P 500 ended up 10.88 points, or 0.52%, to 2,102.06 and the Nasdaq Composite finished 21.41 points, or 0.43%, higher at 4,995.98. Tokyo’s Nikkei closed down 0.2% after breaching the 20,000-point mark. Buoyed by gains in Asia and the renewed drop in the euro, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 share index reached a 15-year high of over 1,640 as its ninth week of rises in the last 10 took it to its highest since 2000. Germany’s DAX also scored a record high. The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 45 nations, rose 0.4% to 435.72, a shade below its record high.

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“..in particular its reluctance to talk about cutting civil servants’ pensions.” Ergo, Syriza can’t allow for Greece to remain in the eurozone.

• Eurozone Officials Shocked By Greece’s Stance, Says German Newspaper (Reuters)

Eurozone officials were shocked at Greece’s failure to outline plans for structural reforms at last week’s talks in Brussels, a German newspaper on Saturday cited participants as saying, adding the Greek representative behaved like a “taxi driver”. A meeting of deputy finance ministers on Thursday gave Athens a six working day deadline to present revised economic reform plans before eurozone finance ministers meet on April 24 to consider unlocking emergency funding to keep Greece afloat. Eurozone sources told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that they were disappointed and shocked at Athens’ lack of movement in its plans, and in particular its reluctance to talk about cutting civil servants’ pensions.

The mood between Greece’s leftist government and its eurozone partners, especially Germany, has deteriorated in the last few weeks, with personal recriminations flying between ministers and calls from Athens for Berlin to pay war reparations. The paper said at last week’s meeting the Greek representative just asked where the money was “like a taxi driver”, according to sources, and insisted his country would soon be bankrupt. The eurozone sources told the paper that Greece’s creditors do not believe this is the case and that it would be a domestic political issue if Athens is unable to fully pay salaries and pensions. The paper also said that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who has taken a tough line towards Greece in bailout talks, would have to get the Bundestag lower house of parliament to vote on any fundamental changes to the reform programme.

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Very impressive.

• Yanis Varoufakis and Joseph Stiglitz (INET)

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“About 28.1% of home loans extended by Greek banks, which were worth a combined €69 billion, were non-performing or unpaid for more than 90 days, as of September 2014..”

• ECB Sees Risks In Greece’s Planned Home Foreclosure Law (Reuters)

Greece’s draft law to protect primary residences from foreclosures goes beyond protecting low-income debtors and could encourage strategic defaults, the ECB said in a legal opinion on Saturday in a potential setback to the plan. Greece’s Economy Ministry had asked for the ECB’s views on the draft legislation, which seeks to protect indebted citizens from losing their primary homes – and fulfills a pledge by the governing SYRIZA party to deal with a humanitarian crisis brought on by the country’s debt crisis. The draft law offers protection to primary homes valued up to €300,000 and requires that borrowers do not have an annual income of more than €50,000 to be eligible. It also sets an upper limit of €500,000 for borrowers’ total wealth, of which bank deposits and other liquid assets cannot exceed €30,000.

The conditions are more generous than under Greece’s previous foreclosure law, which expired last year. It provided protection for homes valued at 200,000 euros or less and required that borrowers had an annual income of 35,000 euros maximum and total wealth of 270,000 euros or less. “The very broad scope of eligible debtors, which goes beyond the protection of vulnerable and low-income debtors, may create moral hazard and could lead to strategic defaults, undermining the payment culture and future credit growth,” the ECB said. “The draft law sets out significantly broader eligibility criteria in terms of the value of the protected property, the annual household income, the value of immovable and movable assets and the amount of deposits,” the ECB said, comparing it to the previous law.

It said that broad-based prohibitions on primary home auctions was not a sustainable solution to tackle the high level of non-performing loans at Greek banks. “It is likely that the prohibitions in the draft law will incentivize debtors who are not in real need of protection to stop meeting their obligations or reduce them significantly, even if they have the means to meet them in full.” The ECB supervises Greek and other eurozone banks. Greek banks’ bad loans rose to 34.2% of their loan portfolios by the end of the third quarter of last year, from 31.9% in December 2013, according to Greek central bank data.

About 28.1% of home loans extended by Greek banks, which were worth a combined €69 billion, were non-performing or unpaid for more than 90 days, as of September 2014, according to latest Bank of Greece data. That was up from 26.1% in 2013. Home loans accounted for a third of banks’ total loans as of last September.

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“..we’ve had money building up four to six years in terms of a risk pattern, I think it could end very badly.”

• Druckenmiller: This Could End ‘Very Badly’ (CNBC)

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller has once again warned that the easy money policies of recent years could end poorly. “I know it’s so tempting to go ahead and make investments and it looks good for today,” the retired founder of Duquense Capital Management said, “but when this thing ends, because we’ve had speculation, we’ve had money building up four to six years in terms of a risk pattern, I think it could end very badly.” The investor’s comments were made at an event in Palm Beach, Florida on Jan. 18, but the transcript was just circulated on Friday. Druckenmiller cited warning signs like the high number of initial public offerings of companies that are unprofitable, and high levels of debt issued to companies, often with poor credit ratings and without many lending restrictions—so called covenants.

Druckenmiller also said that comparing modern day economic policy to that of the Great Depression-era was totally inaccurate. He implied that the U.S. Federal Reserve would not cause to another recession by tightening the flow of money into the system. Druckenmiller showed slides at the event displaying how net worth per household hadn’t returned to pre-1929 levels in 1937, before rates began rising. He compared that to how wealth has risen today far beyond pre-crash levels in 2007. “We’re not even close to the kind of numbers we had in 1937,” he said.

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Fooling the system.

• GE Plan Opens Escape Path From Fed Too-Big-To-Fail Label (Bloomberg)

General Electric’s plan to exit most lending operations could make its finance arm the first entity to escape the grip of the Federal Reserve’s too-big-to-fail oversight, a move that would free the company from strict capital requirements and reduce government monitoring. As part of a broad restructuring announced Friday, GE General Counsel Brackett Denniston said the finance unit will apply to lose its systemically important label sometime next year. GE has already discussed its overhaul, which includes the sale of $26 billion of real estate, with U.S. regulators who will decide whether the company can go free. “We think we’ve come a long way and you can argue we’re not systemic right now,” Denniston said an in interview.

“When the plan is further advanced, when we think the argument is even stronger and more compelling, that’s the right way to do it.” GE Capital is one of four non-banks hit with the tighter scrutiny, which applies to firms that regulators believe could threaten the U.S. economy if they failed. Companies have sought to avoid the capital, liquidity and leverage constraints that can come with being selected, with insurer Metlife Inc. suing the U.S. government to try to escape. Instead of fighting, Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE is slimming down. The company’s shares rose $2.48 to $28.21, or 9.6%, at 2:41 p.m. in New York trading. It was the biggest daily increase since March 2009, according to Bloomberg data.

Decisions on which companies are systemically important are made by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of regulators set up under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew leads. A designation subjects a company to supervision by the Fed, allowing the central bank to scrutinize it the same way it does large banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan. To get out, GE Capital will have to convince the FSOC that its collapse wouldn’t hurt the broader financial system. Once the restructuring is complete, GE’s ending net investment in GE Capital – a balance-sheet gauge that excludes non-interest bearing liabilities and cash – will fall to $90 billion from $363 billion, the company said. Just $40 billion of that will be in the U.S., making it “inconceivable” that the company could be considered systemic, Denniston said.

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NZ exports fell 27% in 2014. What more does anyone need to know?

• New Zealand Rock Star Economy Takes Centre Stage As Currency Climbs (Guardian)

Australians are going to have to get used to New Zealanders going on about how much better their economy is. Paul Bloxham, the HSBC economist who first called New Zealand a rock star economy, says the New Zealand dollar is going to be strong for some time because the NZ economy is strong. The New Zealand dollar was at 98.27 Australian cents on Friday, up from 98.18 cents on Thursday and it is expected to reach parity. The last time the New Zealand dollar passed the Aussie dollar was on 18 October 1973 and it only managed it for a few hours, Bloxham said on TVNZ’s Q+A program on Sunday. The New Zealand economy is outperforming every other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economy. “That’s why we’ve been describing New Zealand as a rock star,” Bloxham said.

It was the fastest growing of the 34 OECD economies in the past year. “And, we think that situation’s going to continue this year as well,” Bloxham said. The Australian economy, in contrast, is at the end of a mining boom. Mining investment is falling and the rest of the economy is “so-so”. “So it makes sense that the New Zealand dollar is strong relative to the Aussie dollar, and we expect the situation to persist for some time,” Bloxham said. In New Zealand, there was an upturn in construction from the Canterbury rebuild and the housing market was booming in Auckland. Bloxham acknowledged dairy prices had fallen sharply but said dairy production was still rising and the domestic economy was doing very well.

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So what does Brussels say? Nothing.

• Italy Rescues 978 Migrants Attempting to Cross the Mediterranean (Bloomberg)

The Italian navy and coast guard engaged in three different rescue operations Friday in order to bring to safety 978 migrants attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea, according to a coast guard Twitter post. The migrants were rescued off the Libyan coast following distress calls made from the boats via satellite phone, daily Corriere della Sera reported in its online edition. The government is continuing its “taxi service” to help the criminals that ferry these people over the sea, leader of the opposition Northern League party Matteo Salvini posted on social media following the rescues.

Migration to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea has increased as people flee wars and conflict in countries like Libya, Syria and Somalia. Last year, 218,000 irregular migrants tried to reach Europe, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The same year, Italy saved 100,250 people through its rescue operation Mare Nostrum at a cost of 114 million euros ($120 million), according to the Italian Interior Ministry. That operation was discontinued in November due to its high cost and criticism from politicians like Salvini that it was helping criminals exploit migrants. Operation Triton, a more limited effort coordinated by European Union border police agency Frontex, has replaced it.

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Ha! Let’s see what Hillary thinks.

• China-Led Infrastructure Bank to Welcome U.S. ‘Anytime’ (Bloomberg)

China is keeping the door open for the U.S. to join its new development bank “anytime,” the lender’s chief said, after the Obama administration failed to persuade most allies to snub the lender. The U.S. is “welcome to the kitchen to work with us,’ Jin Liqun, secretary general of the secretariat for establishing the bank, told reporters in Singapore on Saturday. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s founding membership will probably be ‘‘short of 60,” he said. “China itself has benefited enormously from contributions by the World Bank” and Asian Development Bank, Jin said at a forum in Singapore. “Now it’s time for China to contribute more to this region, and hopefully China’s contributions will spill over to other regions.”

The U.S. suffered a diplomatic setback as allies including Australia, the U.K, and Germany opted to become founding members of the China-led bank. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said this week he doesn’t view the development lender as heralding an end to the global economic order forged by the U.S. The AIIB will be owned by all members, not solely China, and will have a mandate to promote broad-based socio-economic development, Jin said. As it will focus exclusively on infrastructure funding, while the World Bank and Asian Development Bank address poverty reduction, there is more complementary territory than “head-on competition,” he said.

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Enemies and friends?!

• Anonymous Declares Cyber War On ISIS Twitter Users (RT)

Hacktivists from the Anonymous group have attacked hundreds of pro-Islamic State websites and thousands of social networks’ accounts used by the terrorist group. ISIS has hit back though, threatening another 9/11 terror act against the US. A faction of the Anonymous group, called GhostSec, is carrying out a cyber campaign called #OpISIS against the Islamic State (IS). They are looking to target members and supporters of the terrorist organization, who want to spread propaganda over the internet. Anonymous are monitoring social media accounts as well as websites operated by the group formerly known as ISIS/ISIL to disrupt their online operations as they try to “cure the ISIS virus.”

The GhostSec division of Anonymous has been keeping itself busy. They have been compiling a list (f websites “frequently used by the Islamic State through Twitter and other social media platforms for transmission of propaganda, religion, recruitment, communications and intelligence gathering purposes,” the group said in a statement. On Wednesday, the Anonymous group reported of “casualties” among the enemy ranks, which included 233 websites, which had been attacked, 85 websites that had been “destroyed” and 25,000 “terminated” Twitter accounts. Not everyone is happy with the actions undertaken by Anonymous. Security services have criticised the group for taking matters into their own hands. These intelligence bodies say the elimination of jihadist websites and social media accounts prevents them from gathering valuable information concerning their activities.

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“..a “man in the middle attack.”

• China Said to Use Powerful New Weapon to Censor Internet (NY Times)

Late last month, China began flooding American websites with a barrage of Internet traffic in an apparent effort to take out services that allow China’s Internet users to view websites otherwise blocked in the country. Initial security reports suggested that China had crippled the services by exploiting its own Internet filter — known as the Great Firewall — to redirect overwhelming amounts of traffic to its targets. Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto say China did not use the Great Firewall after all, but rather a powerful new weapon that they are calling the Great Cannon. The Great Cannon, the researchers said in a report published on Friday, allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit.

The system was used, they said, to intercept web and advertising traffic intended for Baidu — China’s biggest search engine company — and fire it at GitHub, a popular site for programmers, and GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that runs mirror images of sites that are blocked inside China. The attacks against the services continued on Thursday, the researchers said, even though both sites appeared to be operating normally. But the researchers suggested that the system could have more powerful capabilities. With a few tweaks, the Great Cannon could be used to spy on anyone who happens to fetch content hosted on a Chinese computer, even by visiting a non-Chinese website that contains Chinese advertising content.

“The operational deployment of the Great Cannon represents a significant escalation in state-level information control,” the researchers said in their report. It is, they said, “the normalization of widespread and public use of an attack tool to enforce censorship.” The researchers, who have previously done extensive research into government surveillance tools, found that while the infrastructure and code for the attacks bear similarities to the Great Firewall, the attacks came from a separate device. The device has the ability not only to snoop on Internet traffic but also to alter the traffic and direct it — on a giant scale — to any website, in what is called a “man in the middle attack.”

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Guesstimating dark matter.

• The Universe May Not Be Expanding As Fast As We Thought (NatMon)

Two papers recently published in the Astrophysical Journal suggest that the universe may not be expanding at the rate that textbooks claim that it is. That conclusion would also imply that the amount of dark energy in the universe is less than current estimates claim it is. The team reached this conclusion by studying Ia supernovae, which are thought to be uniform enough to be used as beacons to measure distances in the cosmos. The team found that the supernovae were not, in fact, uniform but fell into different populations. “ The findings are analogous to sampling a selection of 100-watt light bulbs at the hardware store and discovering that they vary in brightness,” according to a statement. If their findings are correct, it means that a great deal of the math which astronomers use to measure the universe needs to be re-done.

Among other things it would mean that many of the measured distances to objects, the rate at which the universe is expanding and the amount of dark energy involved are currently wrong. “We found that the differences are not random, but lead to separating Ia supernovae into two groups, where the group that is in the minority near us are in the majority at large distances — and thus when the universe was younger. There are different populations out there, and they have not been recognized. The big assumption has been that as you go from near to far, type Ia supernovae are the same. That doesn’t appear to be the case,” said Milne, an associate astronomer with the UA’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory.

The current view of the universe is that it is continuing to expand at an ever increasing rate, pulled apart by dark energy. This view resulted in the Nobel Prize for Physics for Brian Schmidt, Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess in 2011. The three researchers independently arrived at the conclusion that many supernovae appeared to be fainter than predicted because they had moved farther away than they should have given the accepted rate of universal expansion. “The idea behind this reasoning. is that type Ia supernovae happen to be the same brightness – they all end up pretty similar when they explode. Once people knew why, they started using them as mileposts for the far side of the universe. The faraway supernovae should be like the ones nearby because they look like them, but because they’re fainter than expected, it led people to conclude they’re farther away than expected, and this in turn has led to the conclusion that the universe is expanding faster than it did in the past,” explained Milne.

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