tankers Archives - The Automatic Earth

The survey by BritainThinks reveals an astonishing lack of faith in the political system among the British people, with less than 6% believing their politicians understand them. Some 75% say that UK politics is not fit for purpose. As the Conservative party focuses on who its new leader should be, and the Brexit impasse continues with no solution in sight, 86% think the UK needs a strong leader more than ever – but only 21% think the next prime minister, whoever it may be, will be up to the job. Some 52% believe the country is heading for a Boris Johnson premiership.

Pollster Deborah Mattinson said she was shocked by the findings. “I have been listening to people in focus groups since the late 1980s and I cannot recall a time when the national mood was more despairing. ‘Broken’, ‘sad’, ‘worried’, ‘angry’– the negatives tumble out, as does the long list of grievances. I’m hearing anxieties voiced in a way that I haven’t heard since the 1990s: a rundown NHS, job insecurity, teacher shortages.” BritainThinks polled more than 2,000 people and hosted several focus groups in London and Leicester to gauge the national mood.

Almost three-quarters of the British public believe the divisions on Brexit between Leavers and Remainers will deepen and get worse within the next year. Two-thirds feel depressed by rising poverty and homelessness. While people say Brexit has made them more politically engaged – 40% are paying more attention since the 2016 referendum, rising to 50% in those aged between 18 and 24 – the polling suggests the bitter political debate over leaving the EU has shattered public trust in the way the nation is governed. Some 83% feel let down by the political establishment and almost three-quarters (73%) believe the country has become an international laughing stock and that British values are in decline.

Ralph Nader says the 737 MAX should never fly again.

• Boeing May Never Recover From 737 Debacle (Auerback)

Many of us are familiar with the acronym “FUBAR.” A recent New York Times article on the Boeing 737 fiasco provides a perfect illustration of the concept. We’re now learning that the company “built deadly assumptions” into its newly designed 737 Max aircraft and, specifically, its Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Even worse, the Times account concludes that the recent air crashes that have resulted in a worldwide grounding of the Boeing Max plane “might have been avoided, if employees and regulators had a better understanding of MCAS” and if the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) itself was not operating with outdated data on the software changes (which Boeing failed to provide).

The analysis is excellent as far as it goes. But the most damning fact only briefly hinted at in the article is that the problems were evident as early as 2012, some five years before the newest 737 version was marketed and sold across the globe. “At its core, this was a hardware problem, not a software issue. Even when Boeing was using a relatively “safer” version of the early MCAS software (that was later changed to a more dangerous version), the new 737 still had an engine too large to be accommodated in its traditional spot on the plane, which ultimately distorted “the relationship between the engine’s ‘thrust’ and its center of gravity,” as I’ve written before. The resultant aerodynamic problems could not be solved with a software “solution,” no matter how “safe” the original MCAS version (that was ultimately changed to an even more dangerous version) was purported to be.”

Just don’t expect any blowback from Washington. The whole episode provides yet another sick illustration of how the entire system of governance in the US has degenerated into a fully fledged “predator state.” About the only good thing that might emerge from this whole fiasco is that Boeing will provide future Master of Business Administration students with a textbook example of how not to manage a crisis. Likewise, future historians and political scientists will marvel in incredulity at the magnitude of corruption that enveloped the US during this very dark time in the life of the republic. Assuming, of course, that there still anything left worth studying by that point.

[..] Recall that the genesis of this disaster was a problem of hardware, not just MCAS. The extra lift of the far larger-diameter engines of the 737 Max (placed on a different position on the wing) caused the plane to pitch up whenever it approached stall angles of attack at both high and low speeds. This is a problem that should have become glaringly obvious to the greenest of aerodynamics personnel at Boeing the moment the first wind-tunnel model was tested at angles of attack higher than stall (it may have even been obvious on even earlier fluid-dynamics computer-simulation results).

“.. In order to offset overseas decline, Huawei is aiming to grab up to half of China’s smartphone market in 2019..”

• Huawei Prepares For 40%-60% Fall In International Smartphone Shipments (R.)

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is preparing for a 40% to 60% decline in international smartphone shipments, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. The Chinese technology company is looking at options that include pulling the latest model of its marquee overseas smartphone, the Honor 20, according to the article, which cited people familiar with the matter. The device will begin selling in parts of Europe, including Britain and France, on June 21, the report said. Executives will be monitoring the launch and may cut off shipments if the sales are poor, it said. Marketing and sales managers at the tech giant are internally expecting a drop in volumes of anywhere between 40 million to 60 million smartphones this year, the report said. In order to offset overseas decline, Huawei is aiming to grab up to half of China’s smartphone market in 2019, Bloomberg said.

Be careful what you wish for. Sanctions made Russia stronger too.

• Huawei Moves To Russia-China Operating System (Escobar)

Google cuts Huawei off Android; so Huawei may migrate to Aurora. Call it mobile Eurasia integration; the evolving Russia-China strategic partnership may be on the verge of spawning its own operating system – and that is not a metaphor. Aurora is a mobile operating system currently developed by Russian Open Mobile Platform, based in Moscow. It is based on the Sailfish operating system, designed by Finnish technology company Jolla, which featured a batch of Russians in the development team. Quite a few top coders at Google and Apple also come from the former USSR – exponents of a brilliant scientific academy tradition.

In 2014, Russian entrepreneur Grigory Berezkin started co-owning Jolla, and from 2016 his Mobile Platform company started developing a Russian version of the operating system. In 2018, Rostelecom, a state company, bought a 75% share in Open Mobile Platform. Ahead of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum last week, Huawei chairman Guo Ping discussed the possibility of adopting Aurora with Russian minister of digital development and communications, Konstantin Noskov. According to Guo, “China is already testing devices with the Aurora pre-installed.” In Moscow, before moving to St Petersburg, Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping discussed multiple possible deals; and these include Huawei-Aurora, as well as where to locate some of Huawei’s production lines in Russia.

Aurora could be regarded as part of Huawei’s fast-evolving Plan B. Huawei is now turbo-charging the development and implementation of its own operating system, HongMeng, a process that started no less than seven years ago. Most of the work on an operating system is writing drivers and APIs (application programming interfaces). Huawei would be able to integrate their code to the Russian system in no time. HongMeng, for its part, is a key project of Huawei 2012 Laboratories, the innovation, research and technological development arm of the Shenzhen colossus. No Google? Who cares? Tencent, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo are already testing the HongMeng operating system, as part of a batch of one million devices already distributed.

Mutti is not happy.

• Deutsche Bank To Set Up €50 Billion Bad Bank (R.)

Deutsche Bank is planning to overhaul its trading operations by creating a “bad bank” to hold tens of billions of euros of assets and shrinking or shutting its U.S. equity and trading businesses, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The bad bank would house or sell assets valued at up to 50 billion euros ($56.06 billion)- after adjusting for risk – and comprise mainly long-dated derivatives, the FT reported, citing four people briefed on the plan. With the creation of the bad bank, Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing is shifting the German lender away from investment banking and focusing on transaction banking and private wealth management, the newspaper said.

As part of the restructuring, the lender’s equity and rates trading units outside continental Europe will be shrunk or closed entirely, the report said. The bank is planning cuts at its U.S. equities business, including prime brokerage and equity derivatives, to win over shareholders unhappy about its performance, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in May. “As we said at the AGM on May 23, Deutsche Bank is working on measures to accelerate its transformation so as to improve its sustainable profitability. We will update all stakeholders if and when required,” Deutsche Bank said in an emailed statement on Sunday in response to the FT report.

Grand theft auto made legal.

• How Wall Street Got Rich Off The Fresh Market Deal (Cohan)

Take the case of the March 2016, $1.36 billion cash buyout of a supermarket chain, Fresh Market, by Apollo Global Management, the firm started by Leon Black nearly 30 years ago that now manages more than $300 billion. In that deal Apollo teamed up with Ray Berry, the company’s founder, and his son, Brett, to buy out the company’s public stockholders. Before the buyout the Berrys owned about 10% of the public Fresh Market. They agreed to roll over that stake into the newly private Fresh Market, giving them about the same ownership in the private company—worth somewhere between $136 million and $930 million, if the alchemy of leveraged buyouts worked out. Apollo would own the remaining 90% of the equity of the private company.

Because the deal was, in effect, a management buyout of the company, Fresh Market set up a special three-member committee of independent directors to evaluate the Apollo proposal, as well as any others that might come in over the transom after the company decided to put itself up for sale shortly after September 1, 2015. As professional referees, the special committee hired JPMorgan Chase as its financial adviser, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore as one of its legal advisers. Their job was to evaluate the various proposals to buy Fresh Market, a collection of 186 stores in 27 states as of March 2016, and to make sure that the one chosen was, in the parlance of Wall Street, “fair” to the public shareholders of the company “from a financial point of view.”

That’s when things got interesting, especially since Apollo was the only final bid the company received. According to a class action shareholder lawsuit that is still wending its way through the Delaware Court of Chancery, Apollo used its long-standing financial ties to JPMorgan Chase and Cravath to co-opt the process for the benefit of itself and the Berrys, allowing them to buy the company on the cheap. In effect, the lawsuit alleges, by teaming up with the Berrys on an exclusive basis, Apollo was able to buy Fresh Market knowing that its competition for the company would be at a severe disadvantage, without being able to count on the Berrys support, and that JPMorgan Chase would likely bless the fairness of the deal.

Japan, Germany, Corbyn…

• Japan Demands More Proof From US That Iran Attacked Tankers (JT)

The Japanese government has been requesting the United States for concrete evidence to back its assertion that Iran is to blame for the attacks on two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, government sources said Sunday. The request came after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a statement hours after the attacks blaming Iran but without offering proof. The Department of Defense later released a video allegedly showing an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded mine attached to the side of the Japanese-operated tanker Kokuka Courageous. But Japanese government officials remain unconvinced, the sources said. “The U.S. explanation has not helped us go beyond speculation,” said one senior government official.

Japan has been seeking more concrete evidence through various channels, including Foreign Minister Taro Kono who is likely to have made the request during a call with his counterpart on Friday, the sources said. Pompeo said in a press conference Thursday that the United States’ assessment was based on their “intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.” A source close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “These are not definite proof that it’s Iran.” “Even if it’s the United States that makes the assertion, we cannot simply say we believe it,” he said.

AI at its best.

• The S-400 Is a Formidable Threat to US Arms Industry (Pieraccini)

The US finds itself faced with a situation it has not found itself in over the last 50 years, namely, an environment where it does not expect to automatically enjoy air superiority. Whatever semblance of an air defense that may have hitherto been able to pose any conceivable threat to Uncle Sam’s war machine was rudely dismissed by a wave of cruise missiles. To give two prime examples that occurred in Syria in 2018, latest-generation missiles were intercepted and shot down by decades-old Russian and Syrian systems. While the S-400 system has never been employed in Syria, it is noteworthy that the Serbian S-125 systems succeeded in identifying and shooting down an American F-117 stealth aircraft during the war in the Balkans.

There is a more secret aspect of the S-400 that is little disclosed, either within Russia itself or without. It concerns the S-400’s ability to collect data through its radar systems. It is worth noting Department of Defense spokesman Eric Pahon’s alarm over Turkey’s planned purchase of the S-400: “We have been clear that purchasing the S-400 would create an unacceptable risk because its radar system could provide the Russian military sensitive information on the F-35. Those concerns cannot be mitigated. The S-400 is a system built in Russia to try to shoot down aircraft like the F-35, and it is inconceivable to imagine.

Certainly, in the event of an armed conflict, the S-400’s ability to shoot down fifth-generation aircraft is a huge concern for the United States and her allies who have invested so heavily in such aircraft. Similarly, a NATO country preferring Russian to American systems is cause for alarm. This is leaving aside the fact that the S-400 is spreading around the world, from China to Belarus, with dozens of countries waiting in line for the ability to seal their skies from the benevolent bombs of freedom. It is an excellent stick with which to keep a prowling Washington at bay.

[..] The ability of the S-400 to collect data on both the F-35 and F-22 – the crown jewels of the US military-industrial complex – is a cause for sleepless nights for US military planners. What in particular causes them nightmares is that, for the S-400 to function in Turkey, it will have to be integrated into Turkey’s current “identification friend or foe” (IFF) systems, which in turn are part of NATO’s military tactical data-link network, known as Link 16.

2 million. Beijing has said it stands behind her.

• While Lam Relents, Hong Kong Calls Massively For Her Ouster (AT)

Hong Kong’s embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam issued a public apology Sunday evening (June 16) as hundreds of thousands of protestors dressed in black clogged the city’s streets in another massive protest demanding her resignation and the scrapping of a contentious bill that would allow for the extradition of suspects to mainland China. A day after Lam announced a surprise decision to indefinitely postpone the bill in a press conference on Saturday, the city’s leader vowed to “sincerely and humbly accept all criticism and to improve and serve the public” in a statement released at 8:30 pm as chanting crowds stood outside the gates of her office calling for her to step down.

“Carrie Lam’s press conference yesterday just made Hong Kong people angrier. We don’t think she will step down, but we must force her out,” said 27-year-old Chiew minutes before demonstrators began marching from Victoria Park in the scorching afternoon heat with the aim of forcing the government to rescind, rather than postpone, the controversial bill. Gripped by a surge of mass dissent, the Asian financial hub has been thrust into political crisis amid the largest political demonstrations and some of the worst scenes of violence since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. Organizers from the Civil Human Rights Front said almost two million people took part in Sunday’s march.

Protest organizers said almost two million people took part in a mammoth June 16 protest march. Photo: Nile Bowie

Yeah, that’s going to happen.

• Chinese Activists Seek UN Investigation Into Tiananmen Crackdown (R.)

More than 20 Chinese activists who took part in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement called on Monday on the United Nations’ top human rights body to investigate Beijing’s deadly crackdown 30 years ago. Wang Dan and 21 others, backed by the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said they had submitted the complaint to the U.N. Human Rights Council, a Geneva forum which opens a three-week session on June 24. “We request the HRC investigate the gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms committed by the Chinese government during its military assault on peaceful protests,” they said in statement.

They also sought action over “the consistent pattern of human rights violations in persecuting Chinese citizens during the past three decades who broke the silence” about the events of June 3-4, 1989. The anniversary remains taboo in China. Beijing has not held a public inquiry nor permitted an independent investigation, the statement said. Beijing enjoys strong support among developing countries at the Human Rights Council, a 47-member state forum that has never adopted a resolution on China since being set up in 2006.

Debt Rattle June 15 2019

Jun 152019

June 15, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Brennan, bubbles, Corbyn, DOJ, Fed, Iran, Japan, pensions, real estate, Russiagate, tankers, Wikileaks 4 Responses »

Arnold Böcklin Mermaids at play 1886

• Freeing Julian Assange: Part Two (Suzie Dawson)

• Well Guess What? He Was Right Again! Free Julian Assange (CJ)

• DOJ Bloodhounds on the Scent of John Brennan (Ray McGovern)

• System To Circumvent US Sanctions On Iran Ready Soon: German FM (AlJ)

• Jeremy Corbyn Challenges UK Government’s Iran Tanker Accusations (BBC)

• Brexit Britain Wallows In Dangerous Talk Of National Humiliation (O’Toole)

• All Eyes On Fed As Stock Market Pines For Rate Cut (R.)

• US Commercial Real Estate Is Another Dangerous Bubble In The Making (Colombo)

• The “Deficits Don’t Matter” Folly (Stockman)

• Beijing Yields To Hong Kong’s Financial Clout (R.)

• Meanwhile, over on Planet Japan (Simon Black)

Trump was merely added years after the Russia-WikiLeaks slander had started.

• Freeing Julian Assange: Part Two (Suzie Dawson)

The public has been led to believe that the 2016 election and the resulting Mueller Report is the definitive evidence that WikiLeaks was somehow in cahoots with Russia, reinforcing the premise that they were in a political alliance with, or favoured, Donald Trump and his Presidential election campaign. Prominent Russiagate-skeptics have long pointed out the multitude of gaping holes inherent in those theories, including the advocacy group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) who have produced credible forensic work analysing the 2016 WikiLeaks releases, that resoundingly debunks officials claims.

In the course of researching this article, I stumbled across a major discovery that augments that: the false notion of WikiLeaks being a front for Russian intelligence isn’t new – it has been pushed by media since 2009. It turns out the circulation of the WikiLeaks-Russia myth was a tried and true diversionary, smear tactic that was simply regurgitated in 2016. Julian Assange believed that UK intelligence agencies were behind the pushing of that narrative, and he was publicly stating so at the end of last decade. He wouldn’t make such claims lightly, and other emerging facts support his suspicion.

“Otherwise you are just the establishment’s PR firm.”

• Well Guess What? He Was Right Again! Free Julian Assange (CJ)

“Today’s the day that journalism gets put on trial,” Dimmack said. “And it’s interesting that behind me there are this many cameras. There haven’t been this many cameras for quite a while. It’s interesting that when Julian was dragged out and kidnapped from within that Ecuadorian embassy, all of you guys had actually gone home, and it was a Russian TV station that actually caught it, Ruptly. It’s almost as if you don’t care.”

“For seven years you have smeared and slandered that man who is going to appear on video in that court in about fifteen minutes,” Dimmack told the mainstream press, right to their fucking faces. “You are all responsible for what has happened today! All of you in the media! Every one of you. You have got blood on your hands. When he released those documents that Chelsea Manning gave him, all he did was the job of a publisher. That’s it. Right now Julian Assange is going to court and put on trial for exposing war criminals as war criminals. And all of you for seven years have smeared and slandered him. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“You have all got a chance right now to actually do a U-turn and repair some of the damage that you have done over the last seven years,” Dimmack roared. “The Fourth Estate is extremely important. You know this. This is why journalism is such a noble profession; you are meant to hold power accountable, not to suck up to it sycophantically and just repeat propaganda. Otherwise you are just the establishment’s PR firm.” “Stand up for Julian Assange and tell the truth,” he continued. “Ask yourselves why is it for seven years you have printed lie after lie after lie about him? Why is it for seven years you have said that he went to the Ecuadorian embassy to escape a rape charge? No he didn’t! How many times have I said it? He went in there to escape extradition to the United States.” “Well guess what?” Dimmack concluded, gesturing to the courthouse. “He was right again! Free Julian Assange.”

More Russiagate.

• DOJ Bloodhounds on the Scent of John Brennan (Ray McGovern)

The New York Times Thursday morning has bad news for one of its favorite anonymous sources, former CIA Director John Brennan. The Times reports that the Justice Department plans to interview senior CIA officers to focus on the allegation that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian intelligence to intervene in the 2016 election to help Donald J. Trump. DOJ investigators will be looking for evidence to support that remarkable claim that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report failed to establish. Despite the collusion conspiracy theory having been put to rest, many Americans, including members of Congress, right and left, continue to accept the evidence-impoverished, media-cum-“former-intelligence-officer” meme that the Kremlin interfered massively in the 2016 presidential election.

One cannot escape the analogy with the fraudulent evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As in 2002 and 2003, when the mania for the invasion of Iraq mounted, Establishment media have simply regurgitated what intelligence sources like Brennan told them about Russia-gate. No one batted an eye when Brennan told a House committee in May 2017, “I don’t do evidence.” As we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have warned numerous times over the past two plus years, there is no reliable forensic evidence to support the story that Russia hacked into the DNC. Moreover, in a piece I wrote in May, “Orwellian Cloud Hovers Over Russia-gate,” I again noted that accumulating forensic evidence from metadata clearly points to an inside DNC job — a leak, not a hack, by Russia or anyone else.

So Brennan and his partners, FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James Clapper were making stuff up and feeding thin but explosive gruel to the hungry stenographers that pass today for Russiagate obsessed journalists. With Justice Department investigators’ noses to the ground, it should be just a matter of time before they identify Brennan conclusively as fabricator-in-chief of the Russiagate story. Evidence, real evidence in this case, abounds, since the Brennan-Comey-Clapper gang of three were sure Hillary Clinton would become president. Consequently, they did not perform due diligence to hide their tracks.

From Monday. A few days later, the tankers were attacked. And not with mines either.

• System To Circumvent US Sanctions On Iran Ready Soon: German FM (AlJ)

A European payment system designed to circumvent US sanctions on Iran will be ready soon, Germany announced on Monday. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran as part of European efforts to salvage the historic JCPOA nuclear pact and defuse rising US-Iranian tension. Iran and Germany held “frank and serious” talks on saving the 2015 deal with world powers, Zarif told a joint press conference. “Tehran will cooperate with EU signatories of the deal to save it,” Zarif said. Maas said earlier the payment system, known as INSTEX, (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) will soon be ready to go after months of work.

“This is an instrument of a new kind so it’s not straightforward to operationalise it,” he said, pointing to the complexity of trying to install a totally new payment system. “But all the formal requirements are in place now, and so I’m assuming we’ll be ready to use it in the foreseeable future,” added Maas about the system for barter-based trade with Iran. A cautious thaw in relations between Tehran and Washington began in 2015 when the deal was struck between six world powers and Iran, limiting its nuclear activity. But tensions with the US have mounted since President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions. Iran has criticised the European signatories of the JCPOA for failing to salvage the pact after Trump pulled the US out. “There is a serious situation in the region. An escalation of tension is becoming uncontrollable and military action wouldn’t be in line with the interests of any party,” Maas said.

From Skripal to Iran.

• Jeremy Corbyn Challenges UK Government’s Iran Tanker Accusations (BBC)

Jeremy Corbyn has questioned whether the government has “credible evidence” to show Iran is behind the attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said responsibility for Thursday’s attack in the Gulf of Oman “almost certainly” lies with the Iranian regime. But the Labour leader tweeted that there was no evidence for this. Mr Hunt responded that Mr Corbyn’s comments were “pathetic” and said he should back British intelligence. It is the second time in the past few weeks that tankers appear to have been attacked in the region and comes amid escalating tension between Iran and the United States.

The US military released video footage which it said proved Iran was behind Thursday’s attacks on the Norwegian and Japanese tankers – something Iran has categorically denied. The UK Foreign Office said it was “almost certain” that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – attacked the two tankers on 13 June, adding that “no other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible”. “These latest attacks build on a pattern of destabilising Iranian behaviour and pose a serious danger to the region,” Mr Hunt said. However, in a tweet Mr Corbyn questioned that assessment and said the UK should ease tensions in the region, not fuel a military escalation.

And it works!

• Brexit Britain Wallows In Dangerous Talk Of National Humiliation (O’Toole)

Launching his bid for the Tory leadership this week, Dominic Raab announced, histrionically: “We’ve been humiliated as a country.” For those of us who do not live on planet Brexit, this might have been mistaken for a belated reaction to the genuinely demeaning spectacle of Donald Trump’s state visit a week earlier. But, of course, like almost all of his fellow contenders to be the next prime minister, Raab was playing his part in a strange performance in which the national honour has been so horribly besmirched by the European Union that it can be salved only by taking the pain of a no-deal Brexit.

Perhaps if you keep acting out phoney feelings, you end up not being able to recognise the real thing. Brexit Britain has been wallowing in a hyped-up psychodrama of national humiliation. It is, indeed, one of the very few things that remainers and leavers still share, even if they feel mortified for very different reasons. In relation to the EU, this sense of humiliation is wildly overplayed. But when Trump comes to town and really does degrade Britain, the sense of wounded dignity that ought to be felt seems curiously absent.

[..] how come the idea of national humiliation has loomed so large in Brexit? Shortly before the missed departure date of 29 March, a Sky Data poll asked: “Is the way Britain is dealing with Brexit a national humiliation?” Ninety per cent of respondents said yes. This idea of collective abasement is everywhere in the Brexit narrative. A random sample of headlines from across the spectrum tells the story: “Brexit and the prospect of national humiliation” (Financial Times); “Voice of the Mirror: Theresa May’s Brexit is a national humiliation”; “A national humiliation: Never was so much embarrassment caused to so many by so few” (Telegraph); “‘Humiliating to have to beg’ for EU exit, says Arlene Foster” (Irish Times). And so, endlessly, on.

There is something hysterical in this constant evocation of humiliation. It is a cry of outraged self-regard: how dare they treat us like this? Yes, of course, the Brexit debacle has reduced Britain’s prestige around the world. And the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May is indeed a miserable thing when compared with the glorious visions that preceded it. But Britain has not been humiliated by the EU – the deal was shaped by May’s (and Arlene Foster’s) red lines. Britain did not get what the Brexiters fantasised about, but it did get what it actually asked for. That’s not humiliation.

Markets my ass. The only thing that’s left is the Fed. Markets are dead.

• All Eyes On Fed As Stock Market Pines For Rate Cut (R.)

The Federal Open Market Committee meeting next week is shaping up as a pivotal one for Wall Street, with stocks primed for a selloff should the Fed fail to take an even more dovish tilt after policymakers raised expectations for a rate cut in recent weeks. The benchmark S&P 500 has rallied more than 5% this month as softening economic data coupled with comments by Fed officials heightened expectations the Fed will cut rates by the end of the year and, at the very least, telegraph it is leaning toward a later rate cut at its June 18-19 meeting. Those gains came on the heels of a selloff in May of nearly 7% in the S&P, largely fueled by investor concerns that trade wars were escalating, slowing the economy and putting it at risk of falling into a recession.

Bets for a rate cut were amplified by comments from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on June 4, who said the central bank will respond “as appropriate” to the risks from a global trade war and other developments, and after a weak May payrolls report on June 7. Bank of America Merrill Lynch Chief Economist Michelle Meyer expects the Fed’s “dot plots” projection of interest rates, which represents the anonymous, individual rate projections of Fed policymakers for the next few years, to shift lower as officials start to factor in cuts. However, “the median dot will signal a Fed on hold,” Meyer said in a note. “The market has somehow convinced themselves that we are in an easing cycle. I am not sure how we got so far ahead of ourselves,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York.

Virtual wealth in a virtual reality.

• US Commercial Real Estate Is Another Dangerous Bubble In The Making (Colombo)

As a result of the Fed’s ZIRP and QE programs in the past decade, virtually all types of assets soared in value: stocks, bonds, art, classic cars, farmland, residential real estate, and commercial real estate. On average, U.S. commercial real estate prices have surged by 111%, or more than double, since their 2009 low. Interestingly, most people don’t realize that U.S. commercial real estate also experienced a bubble from 2004 to 2008 at the same time as the U.S. housing bubble. This early bubble inflated for many of the same reasons as the housing bubble, which were ultra-low borrowing costs and loose lending standards. From 2004 to 2008, commercial real estate prices rose 66%, but crashed by nearly 40% during the 2008 financial crisis. Commercial real estate prices have increased even more in the current bubble (111% vs. 66%), which means that the coming commercial real estate bust is likely to be even worse than the 2008 bust.

As discussed earlier, low interest rate environments often cause dangerous bubbles to develop by encouraging borrowing booms. Like the U.S. commercial real estate bubble of 2004 to 2008, commercial real estate lending has flourished during the current bubble. Since 2012, total commercial real estate loans at U.S. banks have increased by an alarming $700 billion or 50%.

“There haven’t been any cataclysmic consequences, so why worry about it?”

• The “Deficits Don’t Matter” Folly (Stockman)

Well, that was timely. The US Treasury just posted a record $207 billion deficit for May and record monthly spending of $440 billion. That brought the rolling 12 month deficit to just shy of the trillion dollar mark at $986 billion. The timely part is two-fold. First, it just so happens that May marked month #119 of the current expansion, making it tied for the duration record with the 1990s cycle. But even JM Keynes himself would be rolling in his grave in light of the chart below. To wit, even by the lights of hardcore Keynesians of yore, fiscal deficits were supposed to be falling sharply at the end of a business cycle or even moving into surplus as they did in 1999-2000, not erupting toward 5% of GDP as has now happened.

The second timely note, of sorts, is that the Wall Street Journal was Johnny on the Spot this AM with a front page story entitled, “How Washington Learned to Love Debt and Deficits”. The story’s quote from the current Dem Chairman of the House Budget Committee, John Yarmouth, says it all. There simply has never been such bipartisan complacency about the nation’s public finances in all of modern history – including during the biggest borrow and spend days of FDR, LBJ and every president since Gerald Ford: “Rep. John Yarmuth (D., Ky.), House Budget Committee chairman, says he rarely hears from constituents concerned about rising deficits and debt. Many voters’ attitudes, he says: “There haven’t been any cataclysmic consequences, so why worry about it?”

The WSJ story is a dog’s breakfast of rationalizations, non sequitirs, political double-talk and Keynesian tommyrot. What is the most telling, however, is that it was co-authored by Jon Hilsenrath, who was the paper’s long-time Fed reporter. Yet it contains not a single word about the role of central banks in fostering the utter collapse of fiscal responsibility described by his lengthy report. So for want of doubt, here is the culprit. The central banks of the world have expanded their balance sheets by upwards of $22 trillion since the turn of the century, thereby massively monetizing the erupting public debt of the US and most of the world via fiat credit snatched from thin air.

So did that massive $22 trillion “buy” order from the central banks weigh heavily on the supply of funds side of the scales in the fixed income market, thereby driving bond prices skyward and yields ever lower? Why, goodness gracious, yes it did!

Really?

• Beijing Yields To Hong Kong’s Financial Clout (R.)

Beijing has yielded to Hong Kong’s unique economic status. Carrie Lam, chief executive of the special administrative region, on Saturday indefinitely suspended a bill that would have allowed extradition to the mainland, responding to mass rallies and violent street protests that rocked the city. It’s a defeat for her, and leaves the central government embarrassed. But for the Chinese Communist Party, preserving Hong Kong’s financial role still trumps the desire for more political control. Lam took office in 2017, and is considered a reliable Beijing loyalist. Pushing through the extradition bill, however, came from her, she said. Either way, the central government endorsed it enthusiastically as well. Yet the strength and breadth of the protests caught both Lam and Beijing off guard.

The backlash was not confined to democracy advocates, much less to a radical minority that began calling for independence after the Occupy movement in 2014. It extended to anyone who distrusted the Chinese legal system. In the end, that seemed to be almost everyone. Some tycoons began moving funds out of Hong Kong to Singapore in advance of the bill’s passage, Reuters reported, a hint of the outflows before the 1997 handover from Britain. And not only did the pro-Beijing camp fail to mobilise against the demonstrations in force – as it did in 2014 – the conservative business community began expressing public doubts about the agenda almost immediately. Financial markets wobbled. Worse still, U.S. politicians threatened to re-evaluate Hong Kong’s unique status, which could affect everything from visas to trade.

We’re all on planet Japan. Pension systems everywhere are imploding.

• Meanwhile, over on Planet Japan (Simon Black)

It was only a few days ago that the Japanese government’s Financial Services Agency published its oddly-titled “Annual Report on Ageing Society”. (Like everything in Japan, English translations often hilariously miss the mark…) This is a report that the Ministry of Finance puts out every year. And as the name implies, the report discusses the state of Japan’s pension fund, and its future prospects for taking care of its senior citizens. Bear in mind that Japan has the oldest population in the world; Japan ranks #2 in the world for average age (46.9, just behind Monaco), #1 in the world for the greatest percentage of citizens over the age of 70, and #1 in the world for life expectancy. In a nutshell, this means that Planet Japan has more people collecting pension benefits, for more years, than anywhere else.

Yet at the same time, Japan’s pension fund is completely insolvent. There simply aren’t enough people paying into the system to make good on the promises that have been made. At present there are only 2 workers paying into the pension program for every 1 retiree receiving benefits in Japan. The math simply doesn’t add up, and it’s only getting worse. Planet Japan’s birth rate is infamously low, and the population here is actually DECLINING. So, fast forward another 10-15 years, and there will be even MORE people collecting pension benefits, and even FEWER people paying into the system. This year’s ‘Annual Report on Ageing Society’ plainly stated this reality; it was a brutally honest assessment of Japan’s underfunded pension program.

The report went on to tell people that they needed to save their own money for retirement because the pension fund wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. This terrified a lot of Japanese workers and pensioners. So the government stepped in to quickly solve the problem… by making the report disappear. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the report, calling it “inaccurate and misleading.” And Finance Minister Taro Aso– himself a pensioner at age 78 (though in typical Japanese form he looks like he’s 45)– simply un-published the report.

Debt Rattle June 14 2019

Jun 142019

June 14, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:39 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Canada, Corbyn, cruise, Fed, Help To Buy, indoctrination, Iran, Japan, Oman, Pompeo, retirement, tankers 13 Responses »

Henri Matisse Woman with a hat 1905

• US Consults Allies On How To Protect Shipping In Wake Of Tanker Attacks (R.)

• Julian Assange Is Not On Trial, British Justice Is (Wight)

• The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn – Among Others (Hopkins)

• US Retirement Savings Gap Grows By $3 Trillion Each Year (MW)

• The Fed Is Pushing On A String

• The State of the Canadian Debt Slaves (WS)

• Canada Rejects Idea Of Halting Extradition Of Top Huawei Executive To US (R.)

• Elizabeth Warren To Propose Cancelling Up To $50,000 In Student Debt (MW)

• UK Government Blew Billions on “Help to Buy” Scheme (DQ)

• Varoufakis, Kotzias And The Dwindling ‘Progressive Army’ (K.)

• School’s Purpose is Indoctrination (Carbone)

• Carnival Cruise Ships Pollute 10 Times More Than All Cars in Europe (D.)

There are Japanese ships in the Persian Gulf literally every moment of every day. But Iran only decides to attack them when the first Japanese PM ever(?!) visits the country. Bolton is dementing.

• US Consults Allies On How To Protect Shipping In Wake Of Tanker Attacks (R.)

The United States is discussing with its allies a variety of options on how to protect international shipping in the Gulf of Oman in the wake of tanker attacks that Washington has blamed on Iran, senior Trump administration officials said on Thursday. Two officials, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States wants to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and make sure international commerce is not disrupted. Two oil tankers were attacked on Thursday and left adrift in the Gulf of Oman. “We don’t think this is over,” one official said of the possibility of more such attacks. The official said options are being reviewed.

“We’re discussing and will be discussing with our partners and allies suggestions on how we collectively can take steps to ensure, one, that we maintain freedom of navigation and international commerce is not disrupted and, second, that we protect our forces’ interests and our commercial assets and those of our partners and allies,” the official said. The official said the attacks appeared “designed to have a political outcome” and suggested it could have been an attempt to disrupt a visit to Tehran by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We are going to obviously evaluate our presence in the region and the growing threat and make subsequent decisions,” the official said. “We have to look at the threat, as we always do, to our personnel and our forces but the threat to a strategic chokepoint. There’s a significant amount of trade that transits the Strait of Hormuz every day.”

Another hearing today.

• Julian Assange Is Not On Trial, British Justice Is (Wight)

The most honest man in Britain today is Julian Assange, while the most dishonest are those who are engaged in his ongoing persecution. The latest instalment in that persecution is a court hearing in London on June 14, where details of the request for his extradition to the US, it is expected, will be revealed for the first time. The formal request for the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks was made to the UK by US authorities earlier in the week – and with British Home Secretary Sajid Javid signing the relevant papers sanctioning it, the final decision on whether Julian Assange’s extradition to the US goes ahead now rests with the courts.

[..] In revealing to the world the beast of US hegemony that resides behind the velvet curtains of democracy and human rights, Julian Assange exposed the lie upon which this American Empire (and make no mistake, it is an empire) depends. It depends on it in order to persuade its supposed beneficiaries – i.e. people living in the West – to continue to suspend disbelief as to the reality of a system they’ve been conditioned to believe is rooted in values that emanate from the human heart rather than from the heart of the machine. The end result is that in exposing this lie, Assange and WikiLeaks became a bigger threat to the ability of US hegemony to function normally than a million bayonets. As such, it became imperative that he, as the founder and face of WikiLeaks, be destroyed.

Britain’s role in this process couldn’t be any more sordid or shameful. Its legal system and judiciary has effectively been turned into a subsidiary of its US counterpart; its function not to dispense justice but to deliver a man into the arms of injustice. The fate to befall Assange proves that there’s a world of difference between believing that you live in a free society and behaving as if you do. He is the canary down the coalmine of Western democracy, signalling the warning that its foundations are rotten to the core.

“..American Hitler (i.e., Donald Trump) will “push back” (i.e., intervene) against British Hitler (i.e., Jeremy Corbyn)..”

• The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn – Among Others (Hopkins)

Apparently, American Hitler and his cronies are conspiring with some secret group of “Jewish leaders” to stop British Hitler from becoming prime minister and wiping out all the Jews in Great Britain. Weird, right? But that’s not the weird part, because maybe American Hitler wants to wipe out all the Jews in Great Britain himself, rather than leaving it to British Hitler … Hitlers being notoriously jealous regarding their genocidal accomplishments. No, the weird part is that everyone knows that American Hitler does not make a move without the approval of Russian Hitler, who is also obsessed with wiping out the Jews, and with destroying the fabric of Western democracy. So why would Russian Hitler want to let American Hitler and his goons thwart the ascendancy of British Hitler, who, in addition to wanting to wipe out all the Jews, also wants to destroy democracy by fascistically refunding the NHS, renationalizing the rail system, and so on?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? In any event, here’s the official story. In “a recording leaked to The Washington Post,” and then flogged by the rest of the corporate media, Reichsminister des Auswärtigen, Mike Pompeo, told a group of unnamed “Jewish leaders” that American Hitler (i.e., Donald Trump) will “push back” (i.e., intervene) against British Hitler (i.e., Jeremy Corbyn) to protect the lives of Jews in Great Britain if British Hitler becomes prime minister (and is possibly already doing so now). The identities of these “Jewish leaders” have not been disclosed by the corporate media, presumably in order to protect them from being murdered by Corbyn’s Nazi hit squad.

Whoever they were, they wanted to know whether American Hitler and his fascist cabinet were “willing to work with [them] to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews” after Jeremy Corbyn seizes power, declares himself Führer of Communist Britannia, and orders the immediate invasion of France. To anyone who has been closely following the corporate media’s relentless coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s Nazi Death Cult (i.e., the UK Labour Party) and the global Anti-Semitism Pandemic, it comes as no real surprise that this group of “Jewish leaders” (whoever they are) would want to stop him from becoming prime minister. I doubt that their motives have much to do with fighting anti-Semitism, or anything else specifically “Jewish,” but … well, I’m kind of old-fashioned that way. I still believe there’s a fundamental difference between “the Jews” and the global capitalist ruling classes.

Thanks to the Fed.

• US Retirement Savings Gap Grows By $3 Trillion Each Year (MW)

Many Americans haven’t saved as much money as they need for retirement — and the gap is expected to widen dramatically in the next 30 years. The retirement savings gap — between what people have and should have — was $28 trillion in the U.S. in 2015, but by 2050, it’s expected to swell to $137 trillion, according to the World Economic Forum, a Cologny-Geneva, Switzerland-based nonprofit that researched international financial affairs. The disparity grows $3 trillion every year in the U.S.

The organization calculated this gap assuming most individuals’ retirement income sources would include a combination of government-provided pensions (such as Social Security), employer pensions in the public or private workforce and individual savings. They also analyzed the level of savings across expectations of income needs and life expectancies, assuming individuals would retire between 60 and 70 years old, for countries including China, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. The gap is most pronounced in the U.S., followed by China and Japan tied for $11 trillion in 2015. China is also expected to see a significantly wider discrepancy in 2050, at $119 trillion, followed by India, with an $85 trillion gap. Overall, the eight countries the WEF analyzed will see a $400 trillion disparity.

Velocity of money and inflation.

• The Fed Is Pushing On A String (Roberts)

Historically, the reason the Fed cuts rates, and interest are falling, is because the Fed has acted in response to a crisis, recession, or both. [..] Secondly, after a decade of QE and zero interest rates inflation, outside of asset prices, (as measured by CPI), remains muted at best. The reason that QE does not cause “inflationary” pressures is that it is an “asset swap” and doesn’t affect the money supply or the velocity of money. QE remains confined to the financial markets which lifts asset prices, but it does not impact the broader economy.

Unfortunately, the Fed is still misdiagnosing what ails the economy, and monetary policy is unlikely to change the outcome in the U.S., just as it failed in Japan. The reason is simple. You can’t cure a debt problem with more debt. Therefore, monetary interventions, and government spending, don’t create organic, sustainable, economic growth. Simply pulling forward future consumption through monetary policy continues to leave an ever growing void in the future that must be filled. Eventually, the void will be too great to fill.

Time to start defaulting?

• The State of the Canadian Debt Slaves (WS)

Canadian households are known around the world for their uncanny ability to pile on debt. And American debt slaves, who’d gotten trampled during the Great Recession, turn out to be lackadaisical these days in comparison. The share of disposable income (total incomes from all sources minus taxes) that Canadian households spent on making principal and interest payments on their ballooning mortgage debts and non-mortgage debts reached a new record of 14.9% in the first quarter, despite still ultra-low interest rates and despite the highest disposable income ever, according to data released today by Statistics Canada:

[..] So how do Canadian debt slaves stack up against American debt slaves? Statistics Canada released a report on just this topic at the end of March perhaps because authorities in Canada should get a tad nervous. [..] The annualized data it provided included the household debt-to-disposable income ratios for Canada and for the US through 2018. The ratio shows how large debt is relative to disposable income. For Canada, this ratio was 175% annualized in 2018, one of the highest in the world, and rising. For the US, it was 103%, and declining:

Canada’s household debts have continued to surge since the year 2000 except for a brief dip during the Financial Crisis. But US household debts plunged during years of deleveraging after the Financial Crisis, in part by consumers defaulting on their mortgages and credit cards. Household debts didn’t start growing again until 2013. And it took until 2017 before they surpassed the pre-Financial Crisis peak. But over the decade since the Financial Crisis, the US population has grown, and the number of working people has grown, and the national disposable income has increased, and so the ratio of household debt to disposable income has continued to drop.

“..could make Canadians around the world less safe..”

• Canada Rejects Idea Of Halting Extradition Of Top Huawei Executive To US (R.)

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday dismissed a suggestion that Ottawa block the extradition of a top executive from China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to the United States, saying it would set a dangerous precedent. Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested on U.S. fraud charges in Vancouver last December, will challenge Washington’s extradition request at hearings that are set to begin next January. China angrily demanded Canada release Meng and detained two Canadians on spying charges. It has also blocked imports of Canadian canola seed and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he fears further retaliation.

The Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday said former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had floated the idea of the government intervening to stop the extradition case and thereby improve ties with Beijing. “When it comes to Ms Meng there has been no political interference … and that is the right way for extradition requests to proceed,” Freeland told a televised news conference in Washington. “It would be a very dangerous precedent indeed for Canada to alter its behavior when it comes to honoring an extradition treaty in response to external pressure,” she added, saying to do so could make Canadians around the world less safe.

And what about all the others?

• Elizabeth Warren To Propose Cancelling Up To $50,000 In Student Debt (MW)

Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to cancel student debt will soon be one step closer to reality — even if she doesn’t become president. The Democratic Senator of Massachusetts plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that mirrors her presidential campaign proposal to cancel at least a portion of the student debt held by many of the nation’s 44 million borrowers, her Senate office announced Thursday. Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the house majority whip, will introduce companion legislation in the House of Representatives. Warren’s office hasn’t yet released a draft of the legislative text, but the bill is slated to propose cancelling up to $50,000 in student debt for the bulk of student loan borrowers, her office said.

Under the proposal Warren released as part of her presidential campaign in April, borrowers with a household income of less than $100,000 would have $50,000 of their student debt cancelled and borrowers with an income between $100,000 and $250,000 would be eligible for some student debt cancellation — though not the full $50,000. Borrowers earning $250,000 or more would receive no debt cancellation. Her campaign estimated the plan would cost $640 billion, which would be paid through a tax on the ultra-wealthy. The idea of student debt cancellation has been popular in some circles for years, but Warren’s campaign proposal nudged it into the mainstream. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent seeking the Democratic nomination, has vowed to cancel “massive amounts of student debt,” though hasn’t offered specifics.

All governments blow housing bubbles.

• UK Government Blew Billions on “Help to Buy” Scheme (DQ)

Here’s how the scheme works: First-time property buyers get to put down a deposit of as little as 5% on a new-build home worth as much as £600,000 ($761,000) and receive an “equity loan” from the government. The size of the loan varies depending on where borrowers live. In London, where the price of property is an order of magnitude higher than in most other places, buyers can receive as much as 40% of the property price. Across the rest of the country the upper limit is 20%. The rest of the financing is covered by a traditional mortgage. While Help to Buy may have had a limited effect in terms of making housing affordable for first time buyers who are genuinely priced out of the market, it has proven to be effective at sustaining the UK’s all-important housing bubble by jacking up the prices of new-build houses, resulting in even less affordable housing.

Since Help to Buy was first launched in 2013, average UK house prices have increased by 35%, from £167,000 to £226,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. Through the scheme, the government has so far issued around 211,000 loans worth £11.7 billion ($14.8 billion) to home buyers. According to the NAO, this has helped increase sales of new-build properties from 61,357 a year in 2013-14 to 104,245 a year in 2017-18. That, in turn, has helped fuel a spike in profits for the UK’s biggest home builders. The nine largest builders dished out £2.3 billion in dividends in their most recent financial year, 39 times greater than the £53 million they paid out in 2012, a year before the scheme was introduced.

Greeks have had enough of ‘left’; look what it brought them.

• Varoufakis, Kotzias And The Dwindling ‘Progressive Army’ (K.)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been blindsided and thrown completely off his game plan. His narrative of a “progressive army” and a fresh rally of forces for elections “that will determine the future” is coming under constant attack. The Progressive Alliance was intended to move SYRIZA closer to the center so that it could resonate more strongly with the broader “progressive” section of voters – though what constitutes progressive and conservative in today’s world is a matter of debate – and to more fully acquire the characteristics of one of the two pillars of the two-party system, pushing center-left Movement for Change to the sidelines.

Tsipras’ plan, however, has been scuppered by two developments in the broader area of the Left, which are of significant symbolic importance and may affect the balance of power. What he hopes to achieve in the next few weeks is to convince many of the voters who chose not to vote in the European elections and who are mainly former supporters of SYRIZA to return to the fold and put their weight behind the big battle against the “socially insensitive, neoliberal” Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the opposition New Democracy party. His path in this ambitious plan, however, is littered with obstacles. The first was the surprisingly strong performance of Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25 party in the European elections, which shook things up.

There is now a party to the left of SYRIZA that is pro-European and has a leader with what a leftist voter might see as a convincing position. Moreover, he is neither Zoe Constantopoulou nor Panagiotis Lafazanis. He is a TV star who is in a position to boost his popularity thanks to his strong social media presence. It is also quite likely, if not certain, that he will make it into Parliament next month, and not just by scraping by with 3 percent. You can say a lot about Varoufakis, but what is certain is that he represents the thinking of a significant portion of the people who voted for SYRIZA in January 2015. He exercises charm over this portion of voters, and this is something that will be evident at the polls.

Has been true for a very long time. Still poorly written though.

• School’s Purpose is Indoctrination (Carbone)

The near sole purpose of present-day academia is indoctrination. This is a fairly bold thesis, but the evidence is in its favor. The increasingly progressive leftist agenda is sweeping through academia and conservatives are passively watching it happen. The main indoctrination stories you hear are those of radical professors on college campuses, outlandish majors created to forward social justice movements, and, on occasion, a political outburst by a high school teacher. Although these issues need addressing, by far the biggest – and the one that should scare everyone the most – is the silent indoctrination.

Indoctrination is no longer dependent upon the political beliefs of teachers. We are now past that. Course material is blatant political propaganda. Not just the course material for gender studies and similar. The core curricula of grade school through college. Sciences, economics, literature – any core course you can think of is politically influenced. The only course that may still be an exception is mathematics. Unless you account for the left-wing system of common core – which is a complete disaster. If you don’t believe this, sit through a grade school math class or open up your child’s text book. Disaster.

But who ever measures sulfur oxides?

• Carnival Cruise Ships Pollute 10 Times More Than All Cars in Europe (D.)

Commercial cruise lines are some of the world’s worst polluters, and Carnival is near the top of that list according to a study of European cruise line operators. Research found that Carnival alone is responsible for almost 10 times as much sulfur dioxide release as all 260 million of Europe’s cars combined. The study from Transport & Environment says that the 203 cruise ships that operated in European waters in 2017 emitted a combined total of 62 kilotons of sulfur oxides (SOx), which form airborne gases known to cause lung cancer and acid rain. During the same period, Europe’s 260 million known registered vehicles let out just 3.2 kilotons, the study found.

Of these 62 kilotons of SOx, more than half allegedly were the product of the 47 ships operated by Carnival Cruise Lines or its subsidiaries. Of the 20 worst offenders, seven are Carnival properties, which together made up half of the industry’s SOx emissions in Europe. Carnival denied any wrongdoing when asked for comment by Fast Company, pointed the finger at the rest of the maritime transportation industry, and insinuated that the study’s methodology was unscientific. [..] This statement arrived days after Carnival agreed to a $20 million fine and undergo increased scrutiny of its plastic and sewage disposal practices, which included dumping both directly into the ocean in large quantities. Carnival allegedly tried to hide these activities from regulators by falsifying records or pressuring the United States Coast Guard to relax the terms of its environmental compliance agreement.

Debt Rattle April 20 2016

Apr 202016

April 20, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: China, coral, dark age, deflation, Germany, oil, redundant, refugees, tankers, Turkey 2 Responses »

Esther Bubley Passengers on Memphis-Chattanooga Greyhound bus 1943

• Shanghai Stocks Slide 3.6% As China Markets Tumble (MW)

• China’s Rapid Development Under Communist Party May Be Coming To An End (BBG)

• 1.3 Million Redundant Chinese Coal Workers To Be Relocated (PD)

• As Global Steel Crisis Grips, China Says March Output Was A Record (Reuters)

• Goldman Posts Weakest Results In 4 Years, Revenue Tumbles 40% (Reuters)

• Saudi $10 Billion Financial District Is Missing One Thing: Banks (BBG)

• Iran Struggles To Find Enough Ships For Oil Exports (Reuters)

• Deflation Is A Master From Germany – And The ECB Is Its Victim (Flassbeck)

• German Producer Prices Post Sharp Annual Drop (WSJ)

• EU Has Lost Favour With Citizens, EC President Juncker Warns

• How American Neocons Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace (PCR)

• A New Dark Age Looms (Gail)

• Coral Bleaching Hits 93% Of Great Barrier Reef (AFP)

• Turkish Border Guards Kill 8 Syrians Including Women And Children (DM)

“.. the market acted like it hit an air pocket.”

• Shanghai Stocks Slide 3.6% As China Markets Tumble (MW)

Chinese stocks plunged in trading, with more than 1,000 stocks in Shanghai retreating into negative territory. The Shanghai Composite Index was last down 3.6%, meaning it was headed for its biggest daily percentage drop since Feb 25., when the benchmark fell 6.4%. China’s smaller Shenzhen Composite Index plunged 4.9%, while the Nasdaq-style ChiNext benchmark dropped 5.6%. Chinese shares had mostly been trending higher since January, so Wednesday’s plunge was a jolt for traders. Overall, the Shanghai benchmark is down about 17% for the year. “What’s most scary is that everyone is guessing about what’s the negative news,” says Deng Wenyuan, analyst at Soochow Securities, “And this magnifies irrational panic mood.”

Bill Bowler, equities trader at Forsyth Barr Asia Ltd. said that once the Shanghai benchmark dipped below the 3,000 level, “the market acted like it hit an air pocket.” The benchmark was last at 2,928.25. Elsewhere in the region, stock markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.1%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 1.4%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX was last up 0.4% In China, traders and analysts cited a number of possible reasons for selling, from short-term liquidity pressures to worries about less-than-stellar figures as first-quarter earnings results roll in. A lack of confidence in the recent recovery of the market hasn’t helped, they said. A total of 72 companies have been approved to go public so far this year, stoking expectation for fresh shares on the market. Analysts also expect more Chinese firms currently listed in the U.S. to return to the mainland. Both developments would put further pressure on existing shares.

I’d say it already has.

• China’s Rapid Development Under Communist Party May Be Coming To An End (BBG)

China’s decades of rapid development under tight Communist Party control may be coming to an end, according to Roy Smith, the New York University academic who as a banker in 1990 anticipated Japan’s decline. “China has now arrived at an existential moment after nearly 40 years of extraordinary economic progress,” said Smith, who also warned about budding Japan-like financial strains ahead of the Chinese stock rout in 2015. The country’s “increasingly complex and troubled economic and social system with all its scarcities” will make it tougher for Communist cadres to manage, he said. While President Xi Jinping committed in 2013 to giving markets a “decisive” role in steering the economy, much of the financial system remains dominated by state-owned lenders directing credit toward the leadership’s preferred borrowers.

Restrictive social policies limiting services available to some urban residents who migrated from rural areas have seen little change as yet under Xi. Changes to rural property ownership rules have also been limited. And foreign companies are vocal in criticizing the lack of western-style rule of law in a country where the judicial system is under the Communist Party. Authorities need to “move much further to adopt reforms that allow the country meaningfully to be shaped by market forces in the future,” said Smith, who specializes in international banking and finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Xi “has fortified his personal power base to be able to do so, but in the end, his may be a test of whether a ‘red state’ superpower, with all its vulnerabilities, can be made to succeed and endure.”

Rising debt adds to the imperative for reform, as do demands from citizens for higher-quality and more expensive health care, improved education and pensions provision. Smith continues to see parallels with Japan’s build-up of bad loans that ended up hobbling the economy. To be sure, there are plenty of differences too. China is at a much lower stage of development compared with Japan in 1990 and, on a per-capita basis, China’s GDP in 2013 was still just half of where Japan was in 1960, according to World Bank data.

Yet overall debt has grown to almost 2.5 times the economy’s size and is showing few signs of slowing down. A fresh surge in borrowing was needed for policy makers to generate a first-quarter annual growth rate of 6.7%, keeping the pace within the government’s 2016 target of 6.5% to 7%. In Japan’s case, the economy stagnated as banks became impaired by losses in the wake of a property-bubble collapse and manufacturers shifted production overseas. It’s a tale of caution for China, according to the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker. “China has followed Japan’s economic development model, and may now too be facing a financial crisis like Japan’s that it may not be able to control, and that could diminish its ability to become the next Asian superpower,” said Smith.

Add that to the 1.8 million (?!) steel workers and before you know it you have a bit of a problem.

• 1.3 Million Redundant Chinese Coal Workers To Be Relocated (PD)

China aims to cut coal output by as much as 500 million tons in the next three to five years, the State Council said at the start of 2016. Meanwhile, China also plans to consolidate its remaining coal industry, meaning that fewer miners will be employed. Due to the cuts, 1.3 million employees have to be relocated. The central government has earmarked 100 billion yuan to support those relocation efforts. In spite of the government’s financial support, many coal miners have to give much thoughts about a relocation plan. An anonymous employee said that it forces young people to start over again, even if it isn’t so difficult to find a new job in another industry. As for employees who have already spent many years in the coal industry, they are less competitive in the job market as they have developed no other specialized skills.

In response to the current situation, China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released new guidelines for the relocation of redundant employees in China’s coal and steel industries. Local authorities and organizations are encouraged to provide the laid-off workers with free training and career guidance, and they should give workers training subsidies, the guidelines stated. Authorities have also been asked to enhance trans-regional cooperation in order to help workers relocate to regions with better employment opportunities. In addition, public welfare job opportunities will be offered to older people for whom it is more difficult to find new jobs, as well as to families suddenly lacking a primary breadwinner.

This is turning into a full-blown trade war that nobody dares call by its name.

• As Global Steel Crisis Grips, China Says March Output Was A Record (Reuters)

Under pressure to curb steel output and relieve a global glut, China said on Tuesday its production actually hit a record high last month as rising prices, and profits, encouraged mills that had been shut or suspended to resume production. The China Iron & Steel Association (CISA) said March steel production hit 70.65 million tonnes, amounting to 834 million tonnes on an annualized basis. Traders and analysts predicted more increases in April and May. The data comes as major steel producing countries failed to agree measures to tackle an industry crisis, with differing views over the causes of overcapacity. A meeting of ministers and trade officials from over 30 countries, hosted by Belgium and the OECD on Monday, concluded only that overcapacity had to be dealt with in a swift and structural way.

Washington pointed the finger at China, saying Beijing needed to cut overcapacity or face possible trade action from other countries. “Unless China starts to take timely and concrete actions to reduce its excess production and capacity … the fundamental structural problems in the industry will remain and affected governments – including the United States – will have no alternatives other than trade action to avoid harm to their domestic industries and workers,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement. Asked what steps the Chinese government would take following the unsuccessful talks, Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told reporters on Tuesday: “China has already done more than enough. What more do you want us to do?”

“Steel is the food of industry, the food of economic development. At present, the major problem is that countries that need food have a poor appetite so it looks like there’s too much food.” In a monthly report, the CISA said a recent rally in steel prices in China – up 42% so far this year – was unsustainable given the rising production, and it warned that increased protectionism in Southeast Asia and Europe would make steel exports more difficult. “The big rise in steel prices has led to a rapid reopening of capacity that had been shut or suspended … a large rise in output will not be good for the gap between market demand and supply,” the CISA said.

When TBTF starts to fail.

• Goldman Posts Weakest Results In 4 Years, Revenue Tumbles 40% (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs reported the worst quarterly results in more than four years on Tuesday as volatile markets kept clients from trading, investing or issuing new securities. Goldman’s report wrapped up a dismal quarter for big U.S. banks. The previous day, its most comparable rival, Morgan Stanley, also said its profit fell by more than one-half due to tough markets. Goldman’s first-quarter revenues tumbled 40%, hit by sliding commodity prices, worries about the Chinese economy and uncertainty about U.S. interest rates. Profit fell even more sharply, emphasizing Goldman’s reliance on the capital markets business, particularly bond trading which can be volatile. Analysts peppered CFO Harvey Schwartz with questions about Goldman’s commitment to bond trading as well as its unusually low returns during the quarter, and his outlook for the rest of the year.

“I certainly would not sit here and tell you we were happy about this quarter,” he said. “But we will do what it takes over time to make sure that we deliver for our clients and maximize the returns for shareholders.” Goldman executives have repeatedly said they believe difficulties in trading are short term and that the business will come back. But as Wall Street approaches its sixth year of weak volumes and unexpected price swings that are hurting results, some investors are wondering how long the pain will last. Overall, Goldman’s profit fell by more than one-half from a year ago and quarterly revenue was the weakest in over four years. Highlighting the challenges, return on average common equity (ROE) – a measure of how well it uses shareholder money to generate profit – was 6.4% in the quarter, down from 14.7% a year earlier.

Hubris rules before the fall.

• Saudi $10 Billion Financial District Is Missing One Thing: Banks (BBG)

Saudi Arabia’s $10 billion financial hub in Riyadh will have gleaming towers connected by sky bridges, cutting-edge climate technology and a monorail that can circle the whole area in 11 minutes. What it doesn’t have yet are banks. Not a single financial institution has agreed to take space in the 73 buildings the state is constructing at the King Abdullah Financial District, according to Waleed Aleisa, chief executive officer and project manager of the district at developer Al Ra’idah. The one lender on the 1.6 million square-meter (17.2 million square-foot) site north of the city center is Samba Financial Group, which bought a plot of land and is building its own tower. “Saudi banks want to own their own buildings and want to pay as little as possible,” Aliesa said in an interview.

“They don’t appreciate the brand as much as we see in the West, where banks will pay a premium to be in financial hubs.” As Saudi Arabia prepares for a post-oil future by boosting other industries, its plan to strengthen Riyadh’s position as a financial center is plagued with delays, cost overruns and a failure to understand the needs of local banks, according to Aliesa. Attracting financial clients now will be challenging given that the work, about 70% finished, has largely ground to a halt and the developer is considering replacing the main contractor. “There will be demand without a doubt, but it is still uncertain as to when the construction will be concluded,” Ramzi Darwish, a consultant with Cluttons LLC, said in an interview. “Once completed, there may be some challenges in filling all of the space because of the huge amount of offices being built.”

The government is looking at ways to lure banks with incentives that could include tax breaks lasting a decade or more as well as separate regulation that makes it easier to hire and issue work visas, Aliesa said. Al Ra’idah, which is developing the district for the Saudi Public Pension Agency, will look for another developer to take over from Saudi Bin Laden Group – which has about half of the project’s contracts by value – if the builder can’t restart construction within about two months, he said Tuesday. “What has been impacting the project progress is the project owner’s non-fulfillment of agreed contractual terms, especially those related to timely payments of our entitlements,” Saudi Bin Laden Group said by e-mail. “Our contractual position is robust and supported with the necessary evidence and documents.”

If there’s money to be made, the ships will be there.

• Iran Struggles To Find Enough Ships For Oil Exports (Reuters)

Iran faces a struggle to increase oil exports because many of its tankers are tied up storing crude, some are not seaworthy, and foreign shipowners remain reluctant to carry its cargoes. Tehran is seeking to make up for lost trade to Europe following the lifting of EU sanctions imposed in 2011 and 2012, which deprived it of a market that accounted for over a third of its exports and left it relying completely on Asian buyers. Iran has 55-60 oil tankers in its fleet, a senior Iranian government official told Reuters. He declined to say how many were being used to store unsold cargoes, but industry sources said 25-27 tankers were parked in sea lanes close to terminals including Assaluyeh and Kharg Island for this purpose.

Asked how many tankers were not seaworthy and needed to go to dry docks for refits to meet international shipping standards, the senior official said: “Around 20 large tankers … need to be modernised.” A further 11 Iranian tankers from the fleet were carrying oil to Asian buyers on Tuesday, according to Reuters shipping data and a source who tracks tanker movements. That was broadly in line with the number consistently committed to Asian runs since sanctions were lifted in January, putting more strain on the remaining available fleet. This means foreign ships are needed for Iran’s plans for a big export push to Europe and elsewhere, to meet its target of reaching pre-sanctions sales levels this year. But many owners, who are not short of business in a booming tanker market, are unwilling to take Iranian cargoes.

The main reason is that some U.S. restrictions on Tehran remain in place and prohibit any trade in dollars or the involvement of U.S. firms including banks – a major hurdle for the oil and tanker trades, which are priced in dollars. Eight foreign tankers, carrying a total of around 8 million barrels of oil, have shipped Iranian crude to European destinations since sanctions were lifted in January, according to data from the tanker-tracking source and ship brokers. That equates to only around 10 days’ worth of sales at the levels of pre-2012, when European buyers were purchasing as much as 800,000 bpd from the OPEC producer. So far no Iranian tankers have made deliveries to Europe, according to data from the tanker-tracking source.

Nice try, and Germany does a lot wrong, but German Christian parties did not cause deflation, which is not a European issue either, but a global one. Moreover, one can argue that German-induced austerity causes deflation, but just as well that it’s QE that causes deflation, which Germany is against.

• Deflation Is A Master From Germany – And The ECB Is Its Victim (Flassbeck)

These days, we are witnessing a tragedy of historic proportions in Europe. A country called Germany stubbornly and almost unanimously refuses to come to terms with the economic consequences of its own mistakes. It blames all the others but never accepts its own responsibility for what is happening. In particular, the Christian parties, who persuaded the German people for decades that independence of the central bank is one of the main achievements and pillars of democracy, show with their rabid attacks on the ECB and its current interest rate policy that they know no principles and that laws do not count for them when it comes to their primitive party interests. The intellectual level of these attacks is very low. The lack of intelligence and insight is being outweighed by far by their political brutality, which has recently been increasing on an almost daily basis.

The personal attacks are more and more directed towards ECB president, Mario Draghi. Where does European deflation, which makes up the core of the whole problem comes from? It is mainly because of increasing deflation that the ECB decided to lower the interest rate to zero. Did deflation fall out of the sky? Did the ECB cause it? Are other European countries responsible for it? Such simple questions should be asked in the critical media in Germany every day. Anyone who is intellectually even halfway honest can answer them immediately. Instead, the majority of the German media continue spreading platitudes, giving the impression that there is still some reason behind the madness (Der Spiegel’s long history in this is a sad case in point).

Evolution of price levels in France (green line: labour units costs; black line: the ECB inflation target; red line: prices of goods for exports; blue line: economy in total) (2).

Figures 1 and 2 show the evolution in Germany and in France. They tell you who is responsible for the deflation and the low interest rates. There is no doubt about it that it is Germany. European deflation has its origins in Germany and nowhere else.

Evolution of price levels in Germany (green line: labour units costs; black line: the ECB inflation target; red line: prices of goods for exports; blue line: economy in total) (2).

Deflation is here to stay no matter what.

• German Producer Prices Post Sharp Annual Drop (WSJ)

The prices of goods leaving Germany’s factory gates in March registered their sharpest annual drop in over six years, pulled lower by energy prices, the Federal Statistical Office said Wednesday. Producer prices in March were unchanged from February, but fell 3.1% from March last year, the sharpest annual fall since January 2010. By comparison, economists polled by the WSJ forecast a monthly rise of 0.1%, but an annual decline of 2.9%. The data indicate there is only limited upward pressure on German consumer prices from the production side. Energy prices once again had the largest effect on producer prices, Destatis said. Excluding energy prices, which can be volatile, producer prices in Europe’s largest economy slipped 0.1% from February and declined 0.9% from March last year.

How is this not his cue to step down?!

• EU Has Lost Favour With Citizens, EC President Juncker Warns

Europe’s citizens are increasingly abandoning the European project because the EU has interfered too much with their lives, the commission president has warned. Jean-Claude Juncker told a meeting of the Council of Europe – not an EU body – in Strasbourg that people were “stepping away” from the EU, which he said had “lost a part of its attractiveness”. Juncker said one of the reasons EU citizens were losing faith in the union was because “we are interfering in too many areas of their private lives, and in too many areas where member states are better placed to act”. European commissions had been “wrong to over-regulate and interfere too much in the lives of our citizens”, he said, stressing that the EU’s current executive was trying to cut new legislation to a minimum.

The comments were Juncker’s sharpest since his inaugural state of the union speech in September last year, when he warned the EU was “not in a good place” and that it needed to move far beyond business as usual to address the daunting political challenges facing the bloc. He told the Council of Europe on Tuesday that EU officials were not very popular at home when they pleaded the European cause, and “no longer respected” when they said the EU had to be given priority. Juncker warned that a slowing birthrate and shrinking economic potential meant Europe faced losing respect on the world stage. Europe made up 20% of the world population a century ago, but by the end of this century will account for barely 4%, he said. “We are losing economic clout in a very visible way,” the commission president said, adding that the combination of long-term decline and more immediate crises such as the refugee crisis and Islamist terror attacks left the EU facing “very tough times”.

Vintage Paul Craig Roberts.

• How American Neocons Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace (PCR)

When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev. The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers. I know about this, because I was part of it. I helped Reagan create the economic base for bringing the threat of a new arms race to a failing Soviet economy in order to pressure the Soviets into agreement to end the Cold War, and I was appointed to a secret presidential committee with subpeona power over the CIA. The secret committee was authorized by President Reagan to evaluate the CIA’s claim that the Soviets would prevail in an arms race.

The secret committee concluded that this was the CIA’s way of perpetuting the Cold War and the CIA’s importance. The George H. W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State James Baker kept Reagan’s promises to Gorbachev and achieved the reunification of Germany with promises that NATO would not move one inch to the East. The corrupt Clintons, for whom the accumulation of riches seems to be their main purpose in life, violated the assurances given by the United States that had ended the Cold War. The two puppet presidents – George W. Bush and Obama – who followed the Clintons lost control of the US government to the neocons, who promptly restarted the Cold War, believing in their hubris and arrogance that History has chosen the US to exercise hegemony over the world.

Thus was mankind’s chance for peace lost along with America’s leadership of the world. Under neocon influence, the United States government threw away its soft power and its ability to lead the world into a harmonious existance over which American influence would have prevailed. Instead the neocons threatened the world with coercion and violence, attacking eight countries and fomenting “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics. The consequence of this crazed insanity was to create an economic and military strategic alliance between Russia and China. Without the neocons’ arrogant policy, this alliance would not exist. It was a decade ago that I began writing about the strategic alliance between Russia and China that is a response to the neocon claim of US world hegemony.

The strategic alliance between Russia and China is militarily and economically too strong for Washington. China controls the production of the products of many of America’s leading corporations, such as Apple. China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. China can, if the government wishes, cause a massive increase in the American money supply by dumping its trillions of dollars of US financial assets. To prevent a collapse of US Treasury prices, the Federal Reserve would have to create trillions of new dollars in order to purchase the dumped financial instruments. The rest of the world would see another expansion of dollars without an expansion of real US output and become skeptical of the US dollar. If the world abandoned the US dollar, the US government could no longer pay its bills.

Very interesting angle: “..as Earth warms, our historical understanding will turn obsolete faster than we can replace it with new knowledge..”

• A New Dark Age Looms (Gail)

Imagine a future in which humanity’s accumulated wisdom about Earth – our vast experience with weather trends, fish spawning and migration patterns, plant pollination and much more – turns increasingly obsolete. As each decade passes, knowledge of Earth’s past becomes progressively less effective as a guide to the future. Civilization enters a dark age in its practical understanding of our planet. To comprehend how this could occur, picture yourself in our grandchildren’s time, a century hence. Significant global warming has occurred, as scientists predicted. Nature’s longstanding, repeatable patterns – relied on for millenniums by humanity to plan everything from infrastructure to agriculture – are no longer so reliable. Cycles that have been largely unwavering during modern human history are disrupted by substantial changes in temperature and precipitation.

As Earth’s warming stabilizes, new patterns begin to appear. At first, they are confusing and hard to identify. Scientists note similarities to Earth’s emergence from the last ice age. These new patterns need many years — sometimes decades or more — to reveal themselves fully, even when monitored with our sophisticated observing systems. Until then, farmers will struggle to reliably predict new seasonal patterns and regularly plant the wrong crops. Early signs of major drought will go unrecognized, so costly irrigation will be built in the wrong places. Disruptive societal impacts will be widespread. Such a dark age is a growing possibility. In a recent report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that human-caused global warming was already altering patterns of some extreme weather events.

But the report did not address the broader implication — that disrupting nature’s patterns could extend well beyond extreme weather, with far more pervasive impacts. Our foundation of Earth knowledge, largely derived from historically observed patterns, has been central to society’s progress. Early cultures kept track of nature’s ebb and flow, passing improved knowledge about hunting and agriculture to each new generation. Science has accelerated this learning process through advanced observation methods and pattern discovery techniques. These allow us to anticipate the future with a consistency unimaginable to our ancestors. But as Earth warms, our historical understanding will turn obsolete faster than we can replace it with new knowledge. Some patterns will change significantly; others will be largely unaffected, though it will be difficult to say what will change, by how much, and when.

“..the big question is how many of these events can it handle? And I think the answer is not many more.”

• Coral Bleaching Hits 93% Of Great Barrier Reef (AFP)

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is suffering its worst coral bleaching in recorded history with 93% of the World Heritage site affected, scientists said Wednesday as they revealed the phenomenon is also hitting the other side of the country. After extensive aerial and underwater surveys, researchers at James Cook University said only seven% of the site had escaped the whitening triggered by warmer water temperatures. “We’ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before,” said Terry Hughes, convenor of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce. The damage ranges from minor in the southern areas – which are expected to soon recover – to very severe in the northern and most pristine reaches of the site which stretches along 2,300 kilometres of the east coast.

Hughes said of the 911 individual reefs surveyed, only 68 (or 7%) had escaped the massive bleaching event which has also spread south to Sydney and across the country to Western Australia. Researcher Verena Schoepf, from the University of Western Australia, said coral was already dying at a site she had recently visited off the western state’s north coast. “Some of the sites that I work at had really very severe bleaching, up to 80 to 90% of the coral bleached,” she told AFP. “So it’s pretty bad out there.” While Western Australia’s Ningaloo Marine Park appeared to have escaped damage, areas north of Broome were suffering, she said, just one day after scientists revealed coral bleaching had been detected in Sydney Harbour for the first time.

Andrew Baird, from James Cook University’s centre for coral reef studies, said the bleaching was a sign of a global problem. “It’s much bigger than just Australia,” he said, adding that there were reports of bleaching throughout Indonesia and indications it was beginning in the Maldives. But he said he had been surprised by the scale and severity of the event on the Great Barrier Reef, a major tourist drawcard which is teeming with marine life. “We’ve been expecting a really big event for a while I suppose and here it is,” he told AFP. Baird said because the bleaching was far less serious in the southern reaches “lots of the reef will still be in good shape”. “But the reef that’s been badly affected – which is a third to a half of it – is going to take a while to recover”. “And again the big question is how many of these events can it handle? And I think the answer is not many more.”

As Europe looks away…

• Turkish Border Guards Kill 8 Syrians Including Women And Children (DM)

Eight Syrians including women and young children have been shot dead by Turkish border guards while trying to flee their war-torn homeland, it has emerged. The group of refugees were trying to cross into Turkey via a mountain smuggling group when they were gunned down by Turkish forces patrolling the border. As well as those killed, many others are said to have been injured in the firefight including one man who was shot in both of his legs while carrying his young son and another who was shot in the arm. Abdmunem Kashkash, a lawyer from Aleppo who was with the group but managed to cross into Turkey unharmed, said Turkish border guards are ‘killing unarmed people’ every day.

‘There was one little girl who was shot and we could not do more for her for four hours, until nightfall,’ he said. ‘An old man and woman are missing – they have probably been killed too.’ Those who have been injured while desperately trying to flee Syria have been taken to a hospital in Azaz – a rebel-held town next to the Turkish border where 10,000 displaced people are sheltering. The deaths appear to confirm claims made by the Human Rights Watch last week that Turkish guards of opening fire on civilians as they approached the country’s border wall with Syria.

Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: ‘As civilians flee ISIS fighters, Turkey is responding with live ammunition instead of compassion. ‘The whole world is talking about fighting ISIS, and yet those most at risk of becoming victims of its horrific abuses are trapped on the wrong side of a concrete wall.’ The Turkish Government has insisted that it is maintaining the same open-door policy at the frontier that it has since 2011, with free access for all Syrians whose lives are in imminent danger. However, a senior official told The Times that ‘certain restrictions may apply due to special circumstances’.

(Re-)Covering Oil and War

Jan 152016

January 15, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:03 am Finance Tagged with: China, inventory, oil, OPEC, recovery, Saudi, storage, tankers, US, wagers, war 11 Responses »

Russell Lee Tracy, California. Tank truck delivering gasoline to a filling station 1942

The first thing that popped into our minds on Tuesday when WTI oil briefly broached $30 for its first $20 handle in many years, was that this should be triggering a Gawdawful amount of bets, $30 being such an obvious number. Which in turn would of necessity lead to a -brief- rise in prices.

Apparently even that is not so easy to see, since when prices did indeed go up after, some 3% at the ‘top’, ‘analysts’ fell over each other talking up ‘bottom’, ‘rebound’ and even ‘recovery’. We’re really addicted to that recovery idea, aren’t we? Well, sorry, but this is not about recovering, it’s about covering (wagers).

Same thing happened on Thursday after Brent hit that $20 handle, with prices up 2.5% at noon. That too, predictably, shall pass. Covering. On this early Friday morning, both WTI and Brent have resumed their fall, threatening $30 again. And those are just ‘official’ numbers, spot prices.

If as a producer you’re really squeezed by your overproduction and your credit lines and your overflowing storage, you’ll have to settle for less. And you will. Which is going to put downward pressure on oil prices for a while to come. Inventories are more than full all over the world. With oil that was largely purchased, somewhat ironically, because prices were perceived as being low.

Interestingly, people are finally waking up to the reality that this is a development that first started with falling demand. China. Told ya. And only afterwards did it turn into a supply issue as well, when every producer began pumping for their lives because demand was shrinking.

All the talk about Saudi Arabia’s ‘tactics’ being aimed at strangling US frackers never sounded very bright. By November 2014, the notorious OPEC meeting, the Saudi’s, well before most others including ‘analysts’, knew to what extent demand was plunging. They had first-hand knowledge. And they had ideas, too, about where that could lead prices. Alarm bells in the desert.

There are alarm bells ringing in many capitals, there’s not a single oil producer sitting comfy right now. And that’s why ‘official’ prices need to be taken with a bag of salt. Bloomberg puts the real price today at $26:

The Real Price of Oil Is Far Lower Than You Realize

While oil prices flashing across traders’ terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is even deeper. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, sank below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since 2003. Actual barrels of Saudi Arabian crude shipped to Asia are even cheaper, at $26 – the lowest since early 2002 once inflation is factored in and near levels seen before the turn of the millennium. Slumping oil prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is “unwinding,” according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Slowing investment and construction in China, the world’s biggest energy user, is “sending an enormous deflationary impetus through to the world, and that is a significant part of what’s happening in this oil-price collapse,” Turner, former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, said. The nation’s economic expansion faltered last year to the slowest pace in a quarter of a century. “You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers,” Turner said. “That is having a major effect on their expenditure across the world.”

Zero Hedge does one better and looks at 1998 dollars:

The ‘Real’ Price Of Oil Is Below $17

“You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers,” exclaims an analyst but, as Bloomberg notes, while oil prices flashing across traders’ terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is considerably deeper. Adjusted for inflation, WTI is its lowest since 2002 and worse still Saudi Light Crude is trading at below $17 (in 1998 dollar terms) – the lowest since the 1980s… Slumping prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is “unwinding,” according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

In fact, while sub-$30 per barrel oil sounds very scary, Saudi prices would be less than $17 a barrel when converted into dollar levels for 1998, the year oil sank to its lowest since the 1980s. Slowing investment and construction in China, the world’s biggest energy user, is “sending an enormous deflationary impetus through to the world, and that is a significant part of what’s happening in this oil-price collapse,” Turner, former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, said.

But this still covers only light sweet crude. Heavier versions are already way below even those levels. Question: what does tar sands oil go for in 1998 dollars? $5 perhaps? A barrel’s worth of it fetched $8.35 in 2016 US dollars on Tuesday. And that does not stop production, because investment (sunk cost) has been spent so there’s no reason to cut, quite the contrary.

Crude At $10 Is Already A Reality For Canadian Oil-Sands Miners

Think oil in the $20s is bad? In Canada they’d be happy to sell it for $10. Canadian oil sands producers are feeling pain as bitumen – the thick, sticky substance at the center of the heated debate over TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline – hit a low of $8.35 on Tuesday, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago. Producers are all losing money at current prices, First Energy Capital’s Martin King said Tuesday at a conference in Calgary. Which doesn’t mean they’ll stop. Since most of the spending for bitumen extraction comes upfront, and thus is a sunk cost, production will continue and grow.

Another interesting question is where the price of oil would be right now if the perception of low prices had not made 2015 such a banner year for filling up storage space across the globe, including huge amounts of tankers that are left floating at sea, awaiting a ‘recovery’. But that is so last year:

Tanker Rates Tumble As Last Pillar Of Strength In Oil Market Crashes

If there was one silver-lining in the oil complex, it was the demand for VLCCs (as huge floating storage facilities or as China scooped up ‘cheap’ oil to refill their reserves) which drove tanker rates to record highs. Now, as Bloomberg notes so eloquently, it appears the party is over! Daily rates for benchmark Saudi Arabia-Japan VLCC cargoes have crashed 53% year-to-date to $50,955 (as it appears China’s record crude imports have ceased). In fact the rate crashed 12% today for the 12th straight daily decline from over $100,000 just a month ago…

China imported a record amount of crude last year as oil’s lowest annual average price in more than a decade spurred stockpiling and boosted demand from independent refiners. China’s crude imports last month was equivalent to 7.85 million barrels a day, 6% higher than the previous record of 7.4 million in April, Bloomberg calculations show.

China has exploited a plunge in crude prices by easing rules to allow private refiners, known as teapots, to import crude and by boosting shipments to fill emergency stockpiles. The nation’s overseas purchases may rise to 370 million metric tons this year, surpassing estimated U.S. imports of about 363 million tons, according to Li Li, a research director with ICIS China, an industry researcher. But given the crash in tanker rates – and implicitly demand – that “boom” appears to be over.

The consequences of all this will be felt all over the world, and for a long time to come. All of our economic systems run on oil, so many jobs are related to it, so many ‘fields’ in the economy, and no, things won’t get easier when oil is at $20 or $10, it’ll be a disaster of biblical proportions, like a swarm of locusts that leaves precious little behind. Squeeze oil and you squeeze the entire economic system. That’s what all the ‘low oil prices are great for the economy’ analysts missed (many still do).

Entire nations will undergo drastic changes in leadership and prosperity. Norway, Canada, North Dakota, Russia. But more than that, Middle East nations that rely entirely on oil, a dependency that won’t allow for many of their rulers to remain in office. Same goes for all OPEC nations, and many non-OPEC producers.

We can argue that a war of some kind or another can be the black swan that sets prices ‘straight’, but black swans are supposed to be the things you can’t see coming, and Middle East warfare for obvious reasons doesn’t even qualify for that definition.

The world is full of nations and rulers that are fighting for bare survival. And things like that don’t play out on a short term basis. For that reason alone, though there are many others as well, oil prices will remain under pressure for now.

Even a war will be hard put to turn that trend around at this point. Unless production facilities are destroyed on a large scale, war may just lead to even more production as demand keeps falling. The fact that Iran is preparing to ‘come back online’, promising an even steeper glut in world markets, is putting the Saudi’s on edge. Rumors of Libya wanting to return for a piece of the pie won’t exactly soothe emotions either.

And when, in a few years’ time, all the production cuts due to shut wells become our new reality, and eventually they must, then no, there will still not be an oil shortage. Because the economy will be doing so much worse by then that demand will have fallen more than supply.

Barring large scale warfare in the Middle East there is nothing that can solve the low oil price conundrum. But think about it, which Gulf nation can even afford such warfare in present times? For that matter, which nation in the world can?

The US may try and ignite a proxy war with Russia, but that would lead to an(other) endless and unwinnable war theater. Which would carry the threat of dragging in China as well. The US and its -soon even officially- shrinking economy can’t afford that. Which of course by no means guarantees it won’t try.

Debt Rattle January 14 2016

Jan 142016

January 14, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: Africa, China, earnings, EM, Monsanto, oil, outflows, refugees, stocks, tankers, Treasuries, yield 3 Responses »

DPC Oyster luggers along Mississippi, New Orleans 1906

• Asia Stocks Extend Losses, Japan’s Nikkei Falls 3.67% (CNBC)

• Oil and US Stocks Tumble Over Fears For Global Economy (Guardian)

• China Bear Market Looms as PBOC Fails to Stop Flight to Safety (BBG)

• Q4 Will Be Worst US Earnings Season Since Third Quarter Of 2009 (ZH)

• The Real Price of Oil Is Far Lower Than You Realize (BBG)

• Crude At $10 Is Already A Reality For Canadian Oil-Sands Miners (BBG)

• Tanker Rates Tumble As Last Pillar Of Strength In Oil Market Crashes (ZH)

• Currency Swings Sap US Corporate Profits by Most in Four Years (BBG)

• African Exports To China Fell By 40% In 2015 (BBC)

• Money Leaving Emerging Markets Faster Than Ever Amid China Slump (BBG)

• China Bond Yield Sinks To Record Low As Central Bank Injects $24 Billion (BBG)

• China’s Better-Than-Expected Trade Numbers Raise Questions (WSJ)

• Surging China-Hong Kong Trade Raises Doubts Over Recovery (BBG)

• The Quiet Side of China’s Market Intervention (WSJ)

• As China Dumps Treasuries, Other Buyers Expected To Step In (BBG)

• Reporting Rule Adds $3 Trillion Of Leases To Balance Sheets Globally (FT)

• EU Scientists In Bitter Row Over Safety Of Monsanto’s Round-Up (Guardian)

• Thousands Of Farmer Suicides Prompt India Crop Insurance Scheme (Guardian)

• Greece Said To Propose Return Trips For Illegal Migrants (AP)

• Tighter Border Checks Leave Migrants Trapped In Greece (AP)

• Refugee Influx To Greece Continues Unabated Through Winter (Reuters)

• Europe Sees No Let Up in Refugee Crisis as January Arrivals Soar (BBG)

“In Japan, core machinery orders in November fell 14.4%..”

• Asia Stocks Extend Losses, Japan’s Nikkei Falls 3.67% (CNBC)

[..] major Asian stock markets continued their downward slide, following a massive sell-off on Wall Street overnight, pressured by concerns over a global economic slowdown and low oil prices. After a late sell-off Wednesday afternoon, the Chinese markets opened in negative territory before trimming losses, with the Shanghai composite down some 1.05%, while the Shenzhen composite was flat. At market open, Shanghai was down 2.73% and Shenzhen saw losses of 3.37%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.51%. Offering some sign of stability in a generally volatile market, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set Thursday’s yuan mid-point rate at 6.5616, compared with Wednesday’s fix of 6.5630. The dollar-yuan pair was nearly flat at 6.5777.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 erased all of Wednesday’s 2.88% gain and plunged 3.95%, weighed by commodities and machinery sectors, which were all down between 3 and 4%. Earlier, it fell as low as 4% before paring back some of the losses. South Korea’s Kospi traded down 1.45%. Down Under, the ASX 200 dropped 1.61%, with energy and financials sectors sharply down. All sectors were in the red except for gold, which saw an uptick of 3.71%. In Japan, core machinery orders in November fell 14.4% from the previous month, according to official data, down for the first time in three months. The data is regarded as an indicator of capital spending and fell more than market expectations for a 7.9% decline.

Or is it just price discovery?

• Oil and US Stocks Tumble Over Fears For Global Economy (Guardian)

US stocks fell heavily on Wednesday, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 falling 2.5% to take the index below 1,900 points for the first time since September, due to growing concerns about the falling oil price, which dipped below $30 a barrel for the first time in nearly 12 years. The S&P 500, which closed at 1,890 points, suffered its worst day since September and has fallen by 10% since its November peak taking it into “correction” territory, something that has not happened since August 2014. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped by 364 points, or 2.2%, to 16,151, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 159 points, or 3.4%, to 4,526. This deepened the New York stock exchange’s already worst start to a year on record.

Wednesday’s stock market declines were triggered by new figures showing US gasoline stockpiles had increased to record high, which caused Brent crude prices to fall as low as $29.96, their lowest level since April 2004, before settling at $30.31, a 1.8% fall. The oil price has fallen by 73% since a peak of $115 reached in the summer of 2014. Industry data showed that US gasoline inventories soared by 8.4m barrels and stocks of diesel and heating oil increased by more than 6m barrels – confirming the forecasts of many analysts that a huge oversupply of oil could keep prices low during most of 2016. Analysts said that growing fears of a weakening outlook for the global economy, made worse by falling oil prices, was behind the steep falls. Some oil analysts this week predicted that the price could fall as low as $10.

In recent days several analysts have warned that the global economy could suffer a repeat of the 2008 crash if the knock-on effects of a contraction in Chinese output pushes down commodity prices further and sparks panic selling on stock and bond markets. [..] Earlier in the day China’s stock market fell more than 2% after officials played down the significance of better-than-expected trade figures for December, saying exports could sink further before they find a floor.

Looms?!

• China Bear Market Looms as PBOC Fails to Stop Flight to Safety (BBG)

Chinese stocks headed for a bear market while government bond yields fell to a record as central bank cash injections and a stable yuan fixing failed to shore up confidence in the world’s second-largest economy. The Shanghai Composite Index sank as much as 2.8%, falling more than 20% from its December high and sinking below its closing low during the depths of a $5 trillion rout in August. Investors poured money into government bonds after the People’s Bank of China added the most cash through open-market operations since February 2015, sending the yield on 10-year notes down to 2.7%. While the central bank kept its yuan reference rate little changed for a fifth day, the currency dropped 0.5% in offshore trading and Hong Kong’s dollar declined to the weakest since March 2015.

The selloff is a setback for Chinese authorities, who have been intervening to support both stocks and the yuan after the worst start to a year for mainland markets in at least two decades. As policy makers in Beijing fight to prevent a vicious cycle of capital outflows and a weakening currency, the resulting financial-market volatility has undermined confidence in their ability to manage the deepest economic slowdown since 1990 “You can’t really find buyers in this environment,” said Ken Peng, a strategist at Citigroup Inc. in Hong Kong. “It’s a very, very fragile status quo China is trying to maintain.” The government faces a dilemma with the yuan, according to Samuel Chan at GF International.

On one hand, a weakening exchange rate would help boost exports and is arguably justified given declines in other emerging-market currencies against the dollar in recent months. The downside is that a depreciating yuan encourages capital outflows and makes it harder to keep domestic interest rates low. The monetary authority “doesn’t want the yuan to depreciate fast because it will push funds to leave China very quickly,” Chan said. The country saw capital outflows for 10 straight months through November, totaling $843 billion, according to an estimate from Bloomberg Intelligence. Foreign-exchange reserves, meanwhile, sank by a record $513 billion last year to $3.33 trillion, according to the central bank.

Still sinking after all these years.

• Q4 Will Be Worst US Earnings Season Since Third Quarter Of 2009 (ZH)

Couple of things: first of all, any discussion whether the US market is in a profit (or revenue) recession must stop: the US entered a profit recession in Q3 when it posted two consecutive quarters of earnings declines. This was one quarter after the top-line of the S&P dropped for two consecutive quarters, and as of this moment the US is poised to have 4 consecutive quarters with declining revenues as of the end of 2015. Furthermore, as we showed on September 21, when Q4 was still expected to be a far stronger quarter than it ended up being, in the very best case, the US would go for 7 whole quarters without absolute earnings growth (and even longer without top-line growth).

Then, as always happens, optimism about the current quarter was crushed as we entered the current quarter, and whereas on September 30, 2015, Q4 earnings growth was supposed to be just a fraction negative, or -0.6%, as we have crossed the quarter, the full abyss has revealed itself and according to the latest Factset consensus data as of January 8, the current Q4 EPS drop is now expected to be a whopping -5%. And just to shut up the “it’s all energy” crowd, of the 10 industries in the S&P, only 4 are now expected to post earnings growth and even their growth is rapidly sliding and could well go negative over the next few weeks. It gets even worse. According to Bloomberg, on a share-weighted basis, S&P 500 profits are expected to have dropped by 7.2% in 4Q, while revenues are expected to fall by 3.1%.

This would represent the worst U.S. earnings season since 3Q 2009, and a third straight quarter of negative profit growth. It’s no longer simply a recession: as noted above, the Q4 EPS drop follows declines of 3.1% in Q3 and 1.7% in Q2. it is… whatever comes next. As Bloomberg adds, the main driving forces behind drop in U.S. earnings are the rise in the dollar index (thanks Fed) and the drop in average WTI oil prices. However, since more than half of all industries are about to see an EPS decline, one can’t blame either one or the other. So while we know what to expect from Q4, a better question may be what is coming next, and according to the penguin brigade, this time will be different, and the hockey stick which was expected originally to take place in Q4 2015 and then Q1 2016 has been pushed back to Q4 2016, when by some miracle, EPS is now expected to grow by just about 15%.

WTI/Brent prices are just a story.

• The Real Price of Oil Is Far Lower Than You Realize (BBG)

While oil prices flashing across traders’ terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is even deeper. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, sank below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since 2003. Actual barrels of Saudi Arabian crude shipped to Asia are even cheaper, at $26 – the lowest since early 2002 once inflation is factored in and near levels seen before the turn of the millennium. Slumping oil prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is “unwinding,” according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Slowing investment and construction in China, the world’s biggest energy user, is “sending an enormous deflationary impetus through to the world, and that is a significant part of what’s happening in this oil-price collapse,” Turner, former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, said. The nation’s economic expansion faltered last year to the slowest pace in a quarter of a century. “You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers,” Turner said. “That is having a major effect on their expenditure across the world.” The benefit for consumers from historically low oil prices is being blunted by changes in fuel taxation and a reduction in subsidies, according to Paul Horsnell at Standard Chartered in London. “But it certainly shows that current prices are very low by any description,” he said.

“..$8.35 on Tuesday, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago.”

• Crude At $10 Is Already A Reality For Canadian Oil-Sands Miners (BBG)

Think oil in the $20s is bad? In Canada they’d be happy to sell it for $10. Canadian oil sands producers are feeling pain as bitumen – the thick, sticky substance at the center of the heated debate over TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline – hit a low of $8.35 on Tuesday, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago. Producers are all losing money at current prices, First Energy Capital’s Martin King said Tuesday at a conference in Calgary. Which doesn’t mean they’ll stop. Since most of the spending for bitumen extraction comes upfront, and thus is a sunk cost, production will continue and grow. Canada will need more pipeline capacity to transport bitumen out of Alberta by 2019, King said.

Bitumen is another victim of a global glut of petroleum, which has sunk U.S. benchmark prices into the $20s from more than $100 only 18 months ago. It’s cheaper than most other types of crude, because it has to be diluted with more-expensive lighter petroleum, and then transported thousands of miles from Alberta to refineries in the U.S. For much of the past decade, oil companies fought environmentalists to get the pipeline approved so they could blend more of the tar-like petroleum and feed it to an oil-starved world. TransCanada is mounting a $15 billion appeal against President Barack Obama’s rejection of Keystone XL crossing into the U.S. – while simultaneously planning natural gas pipelines from Alberta to Canada’s east coast to carry diluted bitumen. Environmentalists are hoping oil economics finish off what their pipeline protests started.

Inventories are overflowing. How predictable.

• Tanker Rates Tumble As Last Pillar Of Strength In Oil Market Crashes (ZH)

If there was one silver-lining in the oil complex, it was the demand for VLCCs (as huge floating storage facilities or as China scooped up ‘cheap’ oil to refill their reserves) which drove tanker rates to record highs. Now, as Bloomberg notes so eloquently, it appears the party is over! Daily rates for benchmark Saudi Arabia-Japan VLCC cargoes have crashed 53% year-to-date to $50,955 (as it appears China’s record crude imports have ceased). In fact the rate crashed 12% today for the 12th straight daily decline from over $100,000 just a month ago…

China imported a record amount of crude last year as oil’s lowest annual average price in more than a decade spurred stockpiling and boosted demand from independent refiners. China’s crude imports last month was equivalent to 7.85 million barrels a day, 6% higher than the previous record of 7.4 million in April, Bloomberg calculations show.

China has exploited a plunge in crude prices by easing rules to allow private refiners, known as teapots, to import crude and by boosting shipments to fill emergency stockpiles. The nation’s overseas purchases may rise to 370 million metric tons this year, surpassing estimated U.S. imports of about 363 million tons, according to Li Li, a research director with ICIS China, an industry researcher. But given the crash in tanker rates – and implicitly demand – that “boom” appears to be over.

What neighbors can the US beggar?

• Currency Swings Sap US Corporate Profits by Most in Four Years (BBG)

Volatility in the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market is dragging down U.S. corporate earnings by the most since 2011, according to a report from FiREapps. Currency fluctuations eroded earnings for the average North American company by 12 cents per share in the third quarter, according to the Scottsdale, Arizona-based firm, which advises businesses and makes software to help reduce the effect of foreign-exchange swings. That’s the most in data going back at least four years, and is up from an average 3 cents per share in the second quarter. “This is the worst I’ve seen it,” FiREapps chief executive officer Wolfgang Koestersaid in a telephone interview. “Investors and analysts are taking a very close look at corporate results impacted by foreign exchange and recognize how material they are.”

A JPMorgan measure of currency volatility averaged 10.1 % during the third quarter, up from 6.3 % 12 months earlier. Last year, some of the biggest price swings came from unscheduled events, such as China’s August devaluation of the yuan, Switzerland’s decision to scrap its currency cap and plummeting commodity prices. Companies in North America lost at least $19.3 billion to foreign-exchange headwinds in the third quarter of 2015, FiREapps data showed. The losses grew by about 14 % from the second quarter. Of the 850 North American corporations that Fireapps analyzed, 353 cited the negative impact of currencies in their earnings, more than double the previous quarter. “That is the largest number of companies talking about currency impact that we’ve ever seen,” Koester said.

China’s yuan is garnering more attention from corporations amid concern that growth in the world’s second-largest economy is slowing, according to FiREapps. Yet North American firms remain most concerned about the effects of the euro, Brazilian real and Canadian dollar on their results. The currencies have fallen 8.3 %, 34 % and 16 % against the greenback over the past 12 months. The stronger U.S. dollar means higher, less-competitive prices for U.S. businesses seeking to sell their products overseas. Companies also take a hit when they account for revenue denominated in weaker overseas currencies, unless they hedged their exposure.

That is a very big number.

• African Exports To China Fell By 40% In 2015 (BBC)

African exports to China fell by almost 40% in 2015, China’s customs office says. China is Africa’s biggest single trading partner and its demand for African commodities has fuelled the continent’s recent economic growth. The decline in exports reflects the recent slowdown in China’s economy. This has, in turn, put African economies under pressure and in part accounts for the falling value of many African currencies. Presenting China’s trade figures for last year, customs spokesman Huang Songping told journalists that African exports to China totalled $67bn (£46.3bn), which was 38% down on the figure for 2014.

BBC Africa Business Report editor Matthew Davies says that as China’s economy heads for what many analysts say will be a hard landing, its need for African oil, metals and minerals has fallen rapidly, taking commodity prices lower. There is also less money coming from China to Africa, with direct investment from China into the continent falling by 40% in the first six months of 2015, he says. Meanwhile, Africa’s demand for Chinese goods is rising. In 2015 China sent $102bn worth of goods to the continent, an increase of 3.6%. Last year, South Africa hosted a China-Africa summit during which President Xi Jinping announced $60bn of aid and loans, symbolising the country’s growing role on the continent.

And for now that’s still largely due to China.

• Money Leaving Emerging Markets Faster Than Ever Amid China Slump (BBG)

Investors pulled more money from emerging markets in the three months through December than ever before as investors dumped riskier assets in China amid concern the country’s currency will weaken further, according to Capital Economics. Capital outflows from developing nations reached $270 billion last quarter, exceeding withdrawals during the financial crisis of 2008, led by an exodus from China as investors pulled a record $159 billion from the country just in December, Capital Economics’ economist William Jackson said in a report. Excluding outflows from the world’s second-largest economy, emerging markets would have seen inflows in the quarter, he said.

“This appears to reflect a growing skepticism in the markets that the People’s Bank can keep the renminbi steady,” Jackson said in the note, which was published Wednesday. “Given the fresh sell-off in EM financial markets and growing concerns about the level of the renminbi, it seems highly likely that total capital outflows will have increased” in January, he said. Investor skepticism increased last year as a surprise devaluation of China’s yuan roiled global markets and triggered a $5 trillion rout in the nation’s equity markets, casting doubt on the government’s ability to contain the selloff and support growth.

Chinese leaders have since then stepped up efforts to restrict capital outflows and prop up share prices despite pledges to give markets greater sway and allow money to flow freely across the nation’s borders within five years. The yuan traded in the mainland market declined 4.4% in 2015, the most since 1994. Outflows from emerging markets rose to a record $113 billion in December, Capital Economics said. Over 2015, investors pulled $770 billion from developing nations, compared with $230 billion a year earlier.

“For local investors, there’s nothing to buy..”

• China Bond Yield Sinks To Record Low As Central Bank Injects $24 Billion (BBG)

China’s government bonds advanced, pushing the 10-year yield to a record low, as the central bank stepped up cash injections and volatile stock and currency markets drove demand for safety. The offshore yuan traded in Hong Kong declined for the first time in six days on speculation a narrowing gap with the Shanghai rate will dissuade the People’s Bank of China from stepping into the market, while Chinese equities slid below the lowest levels of last year’s market selloff. “For local investors, there’s nothing to buy,” said Li Liuyang at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. “Equities are not performing well, so bonds become the natural investment target. The PBOC increased reverse repo offerings partly because it may be taking some preemptive measures before next month’s Lunar New Year holidays.”

The yield on debt due October 2025 fell as much as three basis points to 2.70%, the least for a benchmark 10-year note in ChinaBond data going back to September 2007. The previous low was 2.72% in January 2009, during the global financial crisis. The PBOC conducted 160 billion yuan ($24 billion) of seven-day reverse-repo agreements in its open-market operations on Thursday, up from 70 billion yuan a week ago. That’s the biggest one-day reverse repo offerings since February 2015, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The PBOC injected a net 40 billion yuan this week, taking its total additions to 230 billion yuan so far this month. “The PBOC wants to keep liquidity abundant onshore to bolster the economy,” said Nathan Chow at DBS Group. “It’s also trying to calm the currency market as the yuan declined significantly last week and caused high volatility. But in the long run, the yuan will depreciate as the fundamentals are still weak.”

Fake invoices. It’s as simple as that.

• China’s Better-Than-Expected Trade Numbers Raise Questions (WSJ)

China’s better-than-expected trade figures in December have sparked questions over whether trade flows have been inflated by investors evading capital controls and the extent of incentives being offered by government agencies to prop up exports. China reported Wednesday that exports in December declined 1.4% year on year. This was much better than the 8% drop expected by economists in a WSJ survey and compared with a 6.8% decline in November, allowing Beijing to end the trading year on a stronger note. Imports fell by 7.6% last month, better than the expected 11% decline, compared with an 8.7% drop in November. The December trade figures also were helped by favorable comparisons with year-earlier figures, economists said.

Of particular note was a 64.5% jump in China’s imports from Hong Kong, the strongest pace in three years, analysts said. This compared with a 6.2% decline for the January-November period. ”It really looks like capital flight,” said Oliver Barron with investment bank North Square Blue Oak. “This has artificially inflated the total import data.” China in recent months has struggled to adjust to massive capital outflows as Chinese investors seek better returns overseas. China saw its foreign exchange hoard drop 13.3% in 2015, or by $500 billion, to $3.3 trillion by the end of December. Under Beijing’s strict capital controls, consumers are only allowed to purchase $50,000 worth of U.S. dollars each calendar year. But manipulated foreign trade deals offer a way around tightening restrictions, say economists.

In an effort to stem the outflow, Beijing’s foreign exchange regulator announced stricter supervision starting January 1 to screen suspicious individual accounts and crack down on organized capital flight, according to an online statement. Bank customers also have reported more difficulty recently exchanging yuan into dollars, with some forced to wait four days to complete a transaction that normally takes one. And China has cracked down on illegal foreign-exchange networks, including a bust announced in November in Jinhua, a city of five million people in eastern Zhejiang province, allegedly involving eight gangs operating from over two dozen “criminal dens” that reportedly handled up to $64 billion in unauthorized transactions, according to state media and a detailed police report.

The official People’s Daily newspaper said 69 people had been criminally charged and another 203 people had been given administrative sanctions. ”Regulators have been trying really hard to close the loopholes,” said Steve Wang with Reorient Financial, adding that the market seems skeptical of Wednesday’s trade figures. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 2.4%. “I don’t think Hong Kong has been buying or selling any more from China. The December data is a huge question mark,” he added. An example of how a Chinese company might move capital abroad using trade deals would be to import 1 million widgets at $2 apiece from a Hong Kong partner or subsidiary company, paying the $2 million, analysts said. It then exports the same widgets at $1 apiece, receiving $1 million from the Hong Kong entity. The goods are back where they started, but $1 million has now moved offshore.

“..the surprise gains may harken back to past instances of phony invoicing and other rules skirted to escape currency restrictions.”

• Surging China-Hong Kong Trade Raises Doubts Over Recovery (BBG)

China exports to Hong Kong rose 10.8% from a year earlier for the biggest gain in more than a year, making the city the biggest destination for shipments last month and spurring renewed skepticism over data reliability and the broader recovery in the nation’s outbound trade. Exports to Hong Kong rose to $46 billion last month, according to General Administration of Customs data released Wednesday. That was the highest value in almost three years and the biggest amount for any December period in the last 10 years, customs data show. Imports from Hong Kong surged 65%, the most in three years, to $2.16 billion. Economists said the surprise gains may harken back to past instances of phony invoicing and other rules skirted to escape currency restrictions.

China’s government said in 2013 some data on trade with Hong Kong were inflated by arbitrage transactions intended to avoid rules, an acknowledgment that export and import figures were overstated. The increase in exports to Hong Kong and China’s imports from the city probably indicate “fake invoicing,” said Iris Pang at Natixis in Hong Kong. Invoicing of China trade should be larger in December because of the wider gap between the onshore yuan and the offshore yuan traded in Hong Kong, she said. China’s exports to the Special Administrative Region of more than 7 million people eclipsed the $35 billion tallies last month for both the U.S. and the EU, the data show. Exports to Brazil, Canada, Malaysia, Russia all dropped more than 10%.

The imports gain “points to potential renewed fake trade activities,” said Larry Hu at Macquarie. When the yuan rose in 2013, exports to Hong Kong were inflated artificially, he said, and “now it’s just the opposite.” China’s total exports rose 2.3% in yuan terms from a year earlier, the customs said, after a 3.7% drop in November. Imports extended declines to 14 months. The recovery in exports in December may prove to be a temporary one due to a seasonal increase at the end of the year, and it doesn’t represent a trend, a spokesman for customs said after the Wednesday briefing. A weak yuan will help exports, but that effect will gradually fade, the spokesman told reporters in Beijing. Morgan Stanley economists led by Zhang Yin in Hong Kong also said in a note Wednesday that the higher-than-expected trade growth may have been affected by currency arbitrage. Overall external demand remained weak, as shown by anemic export data reported by South Korea and Taiwan, he said.

State firms buying/holding lousy paper.

• The Quiet Side of China’s Market Intervention (WSJ)

As Chinese markets tanked last week, China Inc. appeared to be rallying to their support. At least 75 Chinese companies issued statements during the past week and a half, saying their biggest shareholders would be holding on to their stakes in order to protect investor interests. Officially, the companies were acting spontaneously. But privately, people close to Chinese regulators as well as some of the companies themselves said they were prompted to release the statements by exchange officials, who had called and asked them to issue expressions of support. In many cases, the statements contained similar or nearly identical language. The behind-the-scenes activity reflects the secretive, unofficial side to Chinese regulators’ attempts to bolster the country’s sagging stock markets.

The regulators’ varied arsenal includes tactics such as phone calls from exchange officials to big holders of shares, urging them not to sell, as well as pumping hundreds of billions of yuan into the markets through government-affiliated funds. The hand of the regulators was most apparent over the summer, when a 43% plunge in the Shanghai Composite Index over slightly more than two months was accompanied by dozens of declarations by brokerages and fund managers abjuring stock sales, as well as huge purchases of shares in bellwether Chinese stocks by a shadowy group of firms known as the “national team.” Brokers, company executives and people close to Chinese regulators say tactics have become more subtle during the current market downturn: The national team hasn’t been making the high-profile buys of half a year ago, and regulators have been less overt in their requests for cooperation.

An executive at one environmental technology firm listed on the Shenzhen exchange said that in July, the bourse sent a letter demanding the company release a statement saying its controlling shareholders wouldn’t unload stock. Last week, the exchange was more low key, he said, phoning up and urging the company to release another statement to set an example for other firms. But the flurry of companies declaring their support for the market in recent days shows that Chinese regulators still haven’t given up on behind-the-scenes efforts to guide the direction of stocks. “We issued the statement because the [Shenzhen] exchange encouraged listed firms to maintain shareholdings,” said an executive at LED device-maker Shenzhen Jufei who requested anonymity. “You can think of this as a concerted effort by listed firms to voluntarily stabilize the market.”

The popularity of T-Bills is guaranteed.

• As China Dumps Treasuries, Other Buyers Expected To Step In (BBG)

It might be easy to conclude China’s unprecedented retreat from Treasuries is bad news for America. After all, as the biggest overseas creditor to the U.S., China has bankrolled hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending, particularly since the financial crisis. And that voracious appetite for Treasuries in recent years has been key in keeping America’s funding costs in check, even as the market for U.S. government debt ballooned to a record $13.2 trillion. Yet for many debt investors, there’s little reason for alarm. While there’s no denying that China’s selling may dent demand for Treasuries in the near term, the fact the nation is raising hundreds of billions of dollars to support its flagging economy and stem capital flight is raising deeper questions about whether global growth itself is at risk.

That’s likely to bolster the haven appeal of U.S. debt over the long haul, State Street Corp. and BlackRock Inc. say. Any let up in Chinese demand is being met with record buying by domestic mutual funds, which has helped to contain U.S. borrowing costs. “You have China running down reserves and Treasuries are a big portion of reserves, but even with that we still think the weight of support” will boost demand for U.S. debt, said Lee Ferridge, the head of macro strategy for North America at State Street, which oversees $2.4 trillion. The question is “if China slows, where does growth come from. That’s what’s been worrying a lot of people coming into 2016.”

And then the TBTFs will need rescue again?!

• Reporting Rule Adds $3 Trillion Of Leases To Balance Sheets Globally (FT)

Companies around the world will be forced to add close to $3tn of leasing commitments to their balance sheets under new rules from US and international regulators — significantly increasing the debt that must be reported by airlines and retailers. A new financial reporting standard — the culmination of decades of debate over “off-balance sheet” financing — will affect more than one in two public companies globally. Worst hit will be retail, hotel and airline companies that lease property and planes over long periods but, under current accounting standards, do not have to include them in yearly reports of assets and liabilities. In these sectors, future payments of off-balance sheet leases equate to almost 30% of total assets on average, according to the International Accounting Standards Board, which collaborated with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board on the new rule.

Hans Hoogervorst, IASB chairman, said: “The new Standard will provide much-needed transparency on companies’ lease assets and liabilities, meaning that off-balance-sheet lease financing is no longer lurking in the shadows”. As a result of the accounting change, net debt reported by UK supermarket chain Tesco would increase from £8.6bn at the end of August to £17.6bn, estimated Richard Clarke, an analyst from Bernstein. However, while the new standard would make Tesco look more indebted, Mr Clarke added that the assets associated with the leases would also come on to the company’s balance sheet, so “the net effect would be neutral.” Investors warned that the new standards could affect some groups’ banking covenants and debt-based agreements with lenders, but said they would make it easier to compare companies that uses leases with those that prefer to borrow and buy.

Vincent Papa, director financial reporting policy at the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute, which has been pushing for these changes since the 1970s, said: “Putting obligations on balance sheets enables better risk assessment. It is a big improvement to financial reporting.” For some airlines, the value of off-balance- sheet leases can be more than the value of assets on the balance sheets, the IASB noted. It also pointed out that a number of retailers that had gone into liquidation had lease commitments that were many times their reported balance sheet debt. [..] In 2005, the SEC calculated that US companies had about $1.25 trillion of leasing commitments that were not included in assets or liabilities on balance sheets. Six years later, the Equipment Leasing and Finance Foundation in the US said that “Capitalising operating leases will add an estimated $2 trillion and 11% more reported debt to the balance sheets of US-based corporations…and could result in a permanent reduction of $96bn in equity of US companies. ”

“..used so widely that its residues are commonly found in British bread.”

• EU Scientists In Bitter Row Over Safety Of Monsanto’s Round-Up (Guardian)

A bitter row has broken out over the allegedly carcinogenic qualities of a widely-used weedkiller, ahead of an EU decision on whether to continue to allow its use. At issue is a call by the European Food and Safety Authority (Efsa) to disregard an opinion by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on the health effects of Glyphosate. Glyphosate was developed by Monsanto for use with its GM crops. The herbicide makes the company $5bn (£3.5bn) a year, and is used so widely that its residues are commonly found in British bread. But while an analysis by the IARC last year found it is probably carcinogenic to humans, Efsa decided last month that it probably was not. That paves the way for the herbicide to be relicensed by an EU working group later this year, potentially in the next few weeks.

Within days of Efsa’s announcement, 96 prominent scientists – including most of the IARC team – had fired off a letter to the EU health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, warning that the basis of Efsa’s research was “not credible because it is not supported by the evidence”. “Accordingly, we urge you and the European commission to disregard the flawed Efsa finding,” the scientists said. In a reply last month, which the Guardian has seen, Andriukaitis told the scientists that he found their diverging opinions on glyphosate “disconcerting”. But the European Parliament and EU ministers had agreed to give Efsa a pivotal role in assessing pesticide substances, he noted. “These are legal obligations,” the commissioner said. “I am not able to accommodate your request to simply disregard the Efsa conclusion.”

What’s Monsanto’s role in this?

• Thousands Of Farmer Suicides Prompt India Crop Insurance Scheme (Guardian)

India’s government has approved a $1.3bn insurance scheme for farmers to protect against crop failures, saying it was intended to put a halt to a spate of suicides. Two successive years of drought have battered the country’s already struggling rural heartland, with farmer suicides in rural areas regularly hitting the headlines. More than 300,000 farmers have killed themselves in India since 1995. Under the new scheme, farmers will pay premiums of as little as 1.5% of the value of their crops, allowing them to reclaim their full value in case of natural damage, the government said. “The scheme will be a protection shield against instances of farmer suicides because of crop failures or damage because of nature,” home minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday after the cabinet approved the scheme.

The Prime Minister Crop Insurance Scheme is also an attempt by Narendra Modi’s government to woo the country’s powerful farming community after being beaten in two recent state elections. “This scheme not just retains the best features of past policies but also rectifies all previous shortcomings… This is a historic day,” Modi said in a tweet. Previous crop insurance schemes have been criticised by the agricultural community as being too complex or for having caps that prevented them from recouping the full commercial value in the case of damage. Take-up of existing schemes by farmers is as low as 23%, the agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said, adding that he hoped to increase coverage to 50%. The heavily subsidised scheme will come into effect in April, a major crop-sowing season.

Priorities.

• Greece Said To Propose Return Trips For Illegal Migrants (AP)

A senior Greek official has said the government will ask Europe’s border protection agency Frontex to help set up a sea deportation route to send migrants who reach the country illegally back to Turkey. The official told AP the plan would involve chartering boats on Lesvos and other Greek islands to send back migrants who were not considered eligible for asylum in the EU. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Athens hasn’t yet formally raised the issue with other European governments. More than 850,000 migrants and refugees reached Greece in 2015 on their route through the Balkans to central Europe. But the EU is seeking to toughen and better organize procedures for asylum placements, while Balkan countries outside the EU have also imposed stricter transit policies.

NIMBY.

• Tighter Border Checks Leave Migrants Trapped In Greece (AP)

As twilight falls outside the Hellenikon shelter – a former Olympic field hockey venue currently housing about 280 people – Iranian men play volleyball, a red line on the ground serving as a notional net. Inside, migrants are coming to terms with their bleak future. “I can’t go back to Somalia,” said English teacher Ali Heydar Aki, who hoped to settle in Europe and then bring his family. “I have sold half my house” to fund the trip. While it’s unclear exactly how many are stuck in Greece, a comparison of arrivals there and in FYROM since late November leaves about 38,000 people unaccounted for. Greek immigration minister Ioannis Mouzalas’ best guess is “a few thousand.” “But (that’s) a calculation based on experience, not something else,” he said.

Syed Mohammad Jamil, head of the Pakistani-Hellenic Cultural Society, says about 4,000 Pakistanis could be stuck in Greece, mostly still on the islands, and about as many Bangladeshis. “Every day we get … phone calls from people in tears asking for help,” he said. “We can’t help – send them where? Germany, Spain, Italy, England? We can’t.” All now face two legal options: To seek asylum in Greece – which has 25% unemployment and a crumbling welfare system – or volunteer for repatriation. Greek authorities have recorded an increase in both since FYROM tightened controls. Karim Benazza, a Moroccan hotel worker in his 20s, has signed up to go home on Jan. 18.

“This is all I do now, smoke and smoke, but no money, no food,” he said, lighting a cigarette outside the International Organization for Migration building. “There is nothing for us in Greece, and the Macedonian border is closed.” Daniel Esdras, IOM office head in Greece, sees a steep increase in voluntary repatriations, which the IOM organizes. About 800 people registered in December and 260 have been sent home. “It’s one thing to return in handcuffs … and quite another to go as a normal passenger with some money in your pocket, because we give them each €400,” Esdras said.

5,700 children in 12 days.

• Refugee Influx To Greece Continues Unabated Through Winter (Reuters)

More than 1,000 migrants and refugees arrived at Greece’s biggest port of Piraeus near Athens on Wednesday as the influx of people fleeing conflict zones for Europe continued unabated into the winter months. More than 1 million refugees and migrants braved the seas in 2015 seeking sanctuary in Europe, nearly five times more than in the previous year, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. Most entered through Greece’s outlying islands. So far this year, 31% of arrivals to Europe have been children, said medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has been treating arrivals to the Greek islands. About 5,700 children crossed the narrow but dangerous sea passage between Greece and Turkey in just 12 days aboard rickety, overcrowded boats, it said.

“I leave my home, my country [because] there was violence, it was not safe,” said 18-year-old Idris, who left his home and family behind in Afghanistan three months ago, traveling alone through Turkey and hoping to reach Germany to study. As others disembarked from the ferry on Wednesday, volunteers passed out hot tea and fruit to help them get through the next leg of their journey, an eight-hour bus ride from Athens to Greece’s northern border with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [FYROM]. The ferry picked up a total of 1,238 migrants and refugees from the Eastern Aegean islands of Lesvos and Chios. Among those was 25-year-old Salam, from the Syrian city of Homs, who said he had lived in a number of different cities before the fighting led him and his friends to flee. “[They killed] women and children and men,” said Salam, who also hopes to reach Germany. [It was] very very very bad in Syria.”

How blind is this? “Work must also step up on “returning those who have no right to international protection.” There are people who have no right to protection? Who gets to decide?

• Europe Sees No Let Up in Refugee Crisis as January Arrivals Soar (BBG)

The number of refugees entering Europe in the first 10 days of 2016 is already three times the level in all of January 2015, signaling no let up in the pressure facing the region’s leaders amid the biggest wave of migration since World War II. The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to the European Union from Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa reached 18,384 through Jan. 10, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. That compares with 5,550 in January last year. “This year, these weeks, the coming months must be dedicated to delivering clear results in terms of regaining controls of flows and of our borders,” EC Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday after discussing the latest situation with EU commissioners.

Turmoil in Syria and across the Arab world triggered an influx of more than 1 million people arriving in the EU last year. Faced with migration in such unprecedented numbers, governments have reintroduced internal border checks, tried – and failed – to share refugees between one another and have been forced to defend their policies amid anger at violence allegedly perpetrated by the recent arrivals.

The number of refugees entering the EU increased month-on-month from January 2015 until hitting a peak of 221,374 in October, according to the agency. The level fell back to 118,445 last month as bad weather deterred people from making the journey. Almost a third of those arriving are children. So far this year 49 people have either died or are missing having attempted to cross into Europe. EU countries need to work together to tackle the “root causes” of the refugee influx, Timmermans said. Work must also step up on “returning those who have no right to international protection.”