Banks Tighten Credit Card, Auto Loan Standards As C&I Loan Demand Continues To Shrink
The latest senior loan officer survey, released earlier today by the Fed, showed that the benefits from last year’s rate cuts have mostly faded away even as banks tightened standards for several kinds of loans, while demand for all-important commercial and industrial loans, traditionally a leading indicator for any economic rebound, slumped for the sixth consecutive quarter.
The January SLOOS, which looked at lending standards for commercial and industrial loans in the fourth quarter of 2019, reported that standards for commercial and industrial loans were unchanged and that “demand weakened from firms of all sizes.” And while standards for commercial real estate loans were mostly unchanged, the only source of strength according to loan officers was demand for mortgages, which remained strong following the decline in interest rates in the second half of 2019. However, offsetting this, standards for credit card and auto loans tightened while demand remained unchanged for credit cards and weakened for auto loans.
Some more details starting with the broadest type of loans, Commercial & Industrial, which as the following Y/Y% growth chart shows, have seen their growth rate grind to a crawl in recent months, after rebounding sharply in late 2018 and early 2019 as the Fed hiked rates prompting urgency among corporations to raise new secured debt. Ironically, it is the renewed easing by the Fed that appears to be the culprit for rapid slowdown in C&I loans.
According to the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans were basically unchanged in Q4 2019. A handful of banks eased some terms for C&I loans, as 21% of banks on net narrowed loan spreads over the cost of funds to large and medium-market firms and 10% on net narrowed loan spreads for small firms.
While lending standards were largely flat, demand for C&I loans from large- and medium-sized firms weakened for the sixth consecutive quarter, resulting in a sharp slowdown in the overall rate of growth of C&I loans, which have been virtually unchanged for the past year. The good news: after tumbling 20% in Q3 to the lowest level since the financial crisis, C&I loan demand stage a modest comeback in Q4, even if it still remains deep in negative territory.
In a concerning development, 11% of banks on net reported weaker demand for C&I loans for large and medium-market firms, compared to 22% in the previous survey, which suggests that any tailwinds for loan demand sparked by the Fed’s 2019 rate cuts are now long gone.
Shifting to commercial real estate loans, standards were mostly unchanged in the fourth quarter according to the Fed, except for construction and land development loans which tightened modestly (+7pp). Demand for CRE loans was similarly unchanged for CRE loans except for construction and land development loans, which like C&I loans, weakened (-6pp).
What is curious is that while the Fed’s rate cut appears to have resulted in lower demand for C&I loans, following the drop in interest rates in the second half of 2019, demand for residential mortgage loans remained strong, though a smaller share of banks reported stronger demand for mortgages in Q4 compared to in the previous survey. Banks reportedly left lending standards for most categories basically unchanged, echoing the previous survey.
Banks’ willingness to make consumer installment loans was again little changed in Q4. However, a moderate share of banks again tightened standards for credit card loans by tightening credit limits and increasing minimum credit scores. A modest share of banks also tightened standards for auto loans. Nonetheless, large banks with larger auto loan portfolios reported stronger demand. Demand for consumer loans was little changed since the previous survey.
On net, supply remained same or modestly tighter, even as demand for virtually all loan categories slumped or remained negative in Q4 after surging earlier in the year, when the Fed cut rates for the first time since the financial crisis.
Could General Qassem Soleimani’s dramatic demise provide the shock therapy to persuade those who wield real power in Tehran to admit the failure of a strategy that has led Iran into an impasse? This was the question discussed in a zoom conference with a number of academics from one of Iran’s leading universities.
The fact itself that the issue could be debated must be regarded as significant. It indicates the readiness of more and more Iranians to defy the rules of silence imposed by the regime and raise taboo issues more or less openly.
In the course of the discussion one participant drew a parallel between Soleimani’s death and that of Marshal Lin Biao, the Chinese Communist defense minister whose demise in an air crash in 1971 opened the way for a radical change of course by Maoist China.
Lin’s elimination enabled Chinese reformists, then led by Prime Minister Chou En-lai, to isolate the so-called “Gang of Four” hardliners, led by Mao’s wife Jian Qing, and bring the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to a close as prelude to a historic change of course designed to transform the People’s Republic from a vehicle for a revolutionary cause into a normal nation-state. Within a few years, the People’s Republic under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership was building a capitalist economy with a totalitarian political frame, discarding dreams of “exporting revolution”.
Having lost its revolutionary legitimacy, the Chinese Communist regime started building a new source of legitimacy through economic success and the dramatic rise in living standards for hundreds of millions across the country. The Chinese found out that producing and exporting goods that people wanted across the globe was easier and more profitable than trying to export a revolution that no one, perhaps apart from a few students in London and Paris, thirsted for.
However, the parallel isn’t exact. Lin was accused of having secret ties with “Imperialism” and plotting a coup against Chairman Mao while Soleimani was regarded as “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s most faithful aide. Lin had a glittering biography, having led the People’s Liberation Army in numerous battles to victory with his conquest of Beijing as the final bouquet.
In contrast, even Soleimani’s most ardent admirers are unable to name a single battle which he fought, let alone won. Even now his adulators only claim political successes for him, including his supposed success in preventing the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and seizing control of the Lebanese state apparatus through surrogates.
Nevertheless, Soleimani’s demise does provide an opportunity for a serious review of Khamenei’s policy of “exporting revolution” which has cost Iran astronomical sums and countless lives with not a single country adopting the Khomeinist ideology and system of government.
The idea of imitating the Chinese model isn’t new in Iran. It was first raised in 1990 by then President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who went as far as asserting, only half-jokingly, that he would even be prepared to discard the clerical garb to adapt to the modern world. The Shah had promised that he would turn Iran into “a second Japan”. Rafsanjani promised a “second China.”
The Shah could not fulfill his promise because he was hit by the Islamic Revolution on the road and had to go into exile. Rafsanjani’s “second China” also remained a dead dream with the would-be Iranian version of Deng Xiaoping just managing to stay alive and out of jail, barely tolerated by the real “deciders” as an embarrassing uncle.
Some of Rafsanjani’s close associates now tell me that he was “a bit of a coward” and lost his opportunity to do a Deng Xiaoping by being sucked into corrupt business deals. According to them, Rafsanjani didn’t realize that one starts making money for himself, his family and his entourage after one has done a Deng Xiaoping, and not before. Deng’s family, including his daughter, son-in-law and hangers-on made their millions after China had been de-Maoized. In Rafsanjani’s case, the millions were made without any attempt at de-Khomeinization.
At the time Rafsanjani played his “China” tune. I argued in several articles that the Deng model was not applicable to the Islamic Republic. In China, Maoism, is quirkiness notwithstanding, was a potent ideology, mixing nationalism, xenophobic resentment, and crude egalitarianism symbolized by the imposition of uniforms and collective production units. In contrast, the Khomeinist ideology was never developed into a coherent narrative while its open hostility to Iranian nationalism gave it an alien aura. Moreover, the Chinese revolution had triumphed after decades of struggle including a huge civil war involving tens of millions on opposite sides.
In contrast, the Khomeinist revolution succeeded in around four months because the Shah, unwilling to order mass repression, decided to abandon power and leave.
There are other differences between Iran today and China in the 1980s. The People’s Republic was firmly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party which had at least five million trained and disciplined cadres capable of passing its message to society as a whole and mobilizing support for any change of strategy. The Khomeinist republic has no such structure and its support base, mired in corruption, finds it increasingly hard to communicate with society at large. The mass gatherings that the regime organizes should deceive no one.
Today, the Tehran “deciders” constitute a small, increasingly isolated minority caught in an imagined past and fearful of the future. Worse still, many “deciders” have already put part of their money abroad, having sent their children to Europe and America. Going through a who-is-who of these “deciders” one is amazed by how many are behaving as carpetbaggers, treating Iran as a land to plunder, sending the proceeds to the West. They cannot produce an Iranian “Deng” because they don’t want to create a productive economy; all they are interested in is to get the money and run. Nor are they able to build the state institutions needed for a modern economy capable of seeking a credible place in the global market.
The machinery that Deng and his team inherited was certainly repressive and outmoded by the higher international standards. However, within its own paradigms, it worked. In contrast, the Khomeinist republic, though as outmoded and repressive as the Maoist regime, simply doesn’t work. Lacking any mechanism for self-reform it resembles the blindfolded horse in ancient mills going round and round, grinding the seeds of a bitter harvest.
It won’t get much media attention, but there was a Republican presidential caucus in Iowa tonight, too, and it was as dramatic as it was predictable: President Donald Trump absolutely clobbered primary opponents Bill Weld and Joe Walsh.
The most persistently unpopular president since the end of World War II was at a Castro-like 97 percent of the vote with 79 percent of precincts reporting, while Weld and Walsh were at 1.3 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. This race has never been close, but man, that’s not close.
Weld, a former Republican National Convention keynoter and twice-elected governor of Massachusetts who ran in 2016 as the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, stressed in his closing argument to Iowa voters his limited-government bonafides.
“I’m running to offer the opportunity to elect a president who actually believes in the principles of limited government, free and fair markets, and economic opportunity for all. Principles that, until recently, were the trademarks of a great political party,” Weld wrote. “I don’t believe trillion-dollar deficits are okay. I believe in markets, not trade wars….We believe in the Rule of Law, and that it applies to everyone, including the President. We believe the Constitution means what it says, rather than scoffing at its limits on the power of presidents and the federal government. And we believe the purpose of foreign policy and our military is to make us safer.”
Walsh, who served one term in the House from nearby Illinois as a Tea Partier and then transitioned to (and then out of) conservative talk radio, has been emphasizing the president’s poor character, though he also foregrounds issues such as free trade, spending cuts, gun rights, and criminal justice reform. “If you want four more years of a president who wakes up every morning and makes every day about himself,” Walsh said in Ankeny, Iowa today, “then vote for Donald Trump.” The crowd booed him out of the room.
There is no demonstrated market for limited-government opposition to Trump within the modern GOP. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans, as measured every couple of weeks by Gallup, has not dipped below 87 percent since December 2018. He’s been up by more than 80 percentage points among GOP primary voters in national polls for most of the race.
The fundraising numbers for the challengers are, if anything, even worse. Fourth quarter campaign finance results were announced at the end of January, and they were brutal: $411,000 for Weld, $245,000 for Walsh, $45.98 million for Trump. Add the $72.3 million raised in the last three months of 2019 by the Republican National Committee—which, remember, effected an unprecedented merger with the Trump campaign in December 2018—plus a couple of other big-money operations, and the incumbent is outraising the competition combined by a ratio of more than 230 to 1.
Weld and Walsh combined failed to raise as much in the 4th quarter as Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Michael Bennet, Marianne Williamson, Deval Patrick, Beto O’Rourke, and several other Democratic presidential candidates, many of whom have dropped out.
Worse even still, the ankle-biters have been spending what funds they raise, which means that the results they produced tonight, and whatever they gin up in New Hampshire next week, represent something close to maximum effort. Weld had just $37,000 in the bank at the end of 2019, Walsh just under $10,000, compared to Trump’s war chest of $195 million. And the Trump-run GOP has been canceling primaries across the country.
Weld is more competitive in New Hampshire, where he owns one home and is close to his base of operations in Boston. He is hoping for a Pat Buchanan-style 1992 surprise, but runs the risk of having a 1972 Pete McCloskey loss as a best-case scenario.
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I’ve been busy sending out my new draft article, “The Modern American Law of Race,” to law reviews. I’ve blogged about some of the interesting cases on racial and ethnic identity I discuss, and I thought I’d do one more, this time summarizing some Small Business Administration cases on Hispanic status. I believe I’m the only one to have ever noticed and written about them.
In DCS Elec., Inc., an administrative law judge upheld a hearing officer’s ruling that a blond-haired light-skinned business owner who had undisputed Hispanic ancestry and spoke Spanish was not Hispanic for the purposes for SBA regulations. The hearing officer had found that she did not identify as Hispanic, nor, given her non-Spanish maiden and married last names, appearance, and accent, did others identify her as such. The ALJ found that the hearing officer’s conclusion that she had not been denied business opportunities as a “Hispanic” and therefore did not qualify for the 8(a) program was not arbitrary and capricious. In a footnote in the decision, the judge noted that, “the [SBA’s] regulations are not clear as to the meaning of the term ‘Hispanic American,’ i.e. whether it includes only Hispanics from this Continent.”
By contrast, in Rothschild-Lynn Legal & Fin. Servs, an administrative law judge overturned an SBA hearing officer’s ruling that a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors had fled Spain centuries earlier was ineligible for certification as a Hispanic. The judge stated that the relevant statute presumes discrimination based on Hispanic status, so once the applicant showed that he was of Spanish ancestry, the hearing officer erred in requiring him to also provide evidence that he had been discriminated against because of that ancestry.
In Garza Telecomm., Inc., a hearing officer found two siblings whose mother is Hispanic to be white because their birth certificates stated that their color or race is white. On appeal, the administrative law judge reversed, chiding the SBA for erroneously assuming that someone in the white racial category could not belong to the Hispanic ethnic category. The judge concluded that “whether an individual is white, black, or any other race bears no relationship to his or her ethnicity.” The judge also ruled that since the SBA had found that the siblings’ mother was Hispanic, it should have necessarily found that they were also Hispanic.
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US, China Stocks Surge Higher After PBOC Injects Another 400 Billion Yuan
After yesterday’s net CNY150billion liquidity injection didn’t work (in rescuing stocks), PBOC decided to more than double it tonight and the plunge-protectors injected a net CNY400 billion, sending yuan and US and Chinese equity markets soaring…
The PBOC injected CNY500b with reverse repo (380bn in 7-day repo and 120bn in 14-day repo) and accounting for CNY100bn in maturing repo, that nets to CNY400 billion liquidity injected.
Yuan soared…
The Shanghai Compoiste exploded higher after opened down over 2%…
And US equity futures are also soaring… even after GOOGL’s collapse after hours…
In late 2018 I asked the question, “Have we reached peak Soros?” Because back then I realized that Soros was losing.
And every issue I touched on in that article has come to pass. For more than ten years Soros and his cohort Tom Steyer, (who is now somehow presidential material?) have worked diligently to end free speech on the internet, to regain control of The Wire and end our ability to out them in real time to stop their Brave New World.
All around you, if you look closely enough, you will see the spectre of George Soros lurking behind the headlines. The caravan, net neutrality, regulating Facebook, the de-platforming of independent media, color revolutions and election meddling, refugee creation and manipulation, the trolls on Twitter, your blog and YouTube, etc.
All of these things we see in the headlines today are a product of George Soros’ money and his singular obsession with re-creating the world in his image.
In 2018 and 2019 Facebook dealt with massive data scandals which revealed just how deeply the company had breached the public trust. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of Congress in a big Kabuki Theatre show to threaten him with removing the Facebook’s immunity as a platform under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act .
And we all laughed at Data trying to become a real boy, having to dealing with these pesky human emotions.
But the threat to Facebook was real and it wasn’t temporary. It’s costs of compliance are rising. Its bureaucracy growing.
Pressuring Facebook publicly, putting it a no-win situation with the public is just part of Soros’ strategy to regain control over information flow of the internet..
It has been a decade-long, multi-step process.
First, create a solution in search of a problem. Net Neutrality was a means to create bandwidth subsidization with the government enforcing access. This appeals to the leftards in the audience, worried about corporate control when it would never happen.
Second, create another problem by enticing social media platforms to use their power to curtail speech in an unbalanced way, breaching the firewall of Section 230 protection. This fires up the Q-tards, libertarians and conservatives.
All the while they were undermining the public’s trust in how their data is handled, and personifying the corruption — Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg — forcing them to publicly deal with the issues, well beyond their comfort zone.
That turns public frustration and anger over the unfairness into a call to action.
Well, that call to action finally arrived. Soros penned another of his outrageous opinion pieces in the New York Times on Friday (of course, not behind the paywall) to attack Mark Zuckerberg demanding his removal as CEO of Facebook. That’s the headline.
That’s the click bait.
But, here’s the real point of Soros’ attack. He builds a conspiracy between Facebook and Donald Trump to get him re-elected as prima facia evidence Facebook no longer deserves Section 230 immunity.
The responsible approach is self-evident. Facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or “platform.” It should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site.
Speaking at a cocktail party in Davos on Jan. 22, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, repeated the worn Silicon Valley cliché that Facebook is trying to make the world a better place. But Facebook should be judged by what it does, not what it says.
I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. They follow only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences. One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.
This is truly another crazy moment where Soros, in his desperation, thinks he can make the credible case that Facebook, which has been nothing but hostile to conservatives and libertarians since its inception, is now actively working with Trump preferentially to enable his re-election.
This depth of this man’s evil is truly breathtaking. Ingenious, but evil.
I remind you that Soros isn’t a person. He’s not an entrepreneur. He’s a vampire, living off the accumulated wealth of a society grown complacent and lazy. He’s only ever made money by manipulating a zero-sum game — currency trading — which he himself has a hand in setting the stage for.
And that lack of true service to humanity is why he’s obsessed with his grand project of the Open Society, as he defines it. This is his where his megalomania stems from, that deep understanding that he’s a leech and a fraud.
It’s why he insists the media calls him a philanthropist and not a devourer of souls and agent of chaos.
But Soros is edging closer everyday to the villain in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Adrian Veidt. A man so obsessed with what he saw as humanity’s failures that he took it upon himself to save us from ourselves.
He just had to kill millions of people in order to do it.
Soros existed for years like Veidt, a man hiding behind proxies and a philanthropist’s image while quietly pulling the strings to change the direction of the world.
For more than two years I’ve been saying that Facebook is in trouble. There comes a point where growth simply isn’t possible if you already have 25% market share of the entire human race.
This quarter’s earnings report saw the stock get crushed into the monthly close as headcount and operations costs are rising quickly while the growth rate cannot sustain a P/E of 40 in a market finally looking to cut out the froth.
It’s not a deal-breaker. The company is wildly profitable but from here it can only slow down and the more Soros et.al. push for higher-level and more pervasive deplatforming the more high-value Facebook users will bolt.
It’s what will kill YouTube in the end.
Soros wants Facebook to be a glorified government Ministry of Information Filtering, because he understands the power of a mass platform. Facebook is The Wire now. He failed to control the ISPs with Net Neutrality.
And it looks like Facebook’s unwillingness to go full Palpatine vexes him further. That’s why he’s pushing a public feud, trying to appeal to conservatives who rightly don’t like Zuckerberg.
But, Zuckerberg is a pawn. He’s neither the problem nor the solution. Soros is the problem and we have to remember this at all times. While being banned from Twitter or Facebook for stupid reasons is unfair, so what.
Life isn’t fair, but it doesn’t mean we hand an already corrupt, incompetent and failing government more power to control the content we have access to.
There are other networks, other platforms. Good information is found. The truth sells itself.
Ultimately, Facebook is an intelligence operation for Wall St. and the government (or do I repeat myself) masquerading a social media platform. And the more it is exposed as such the less profitable it will become. I left the platform last year and haven’t looked back.
So have many others. Soros, in his zeal to control information flow, has weaponized it by pressuring failing governments into into treating criticism against his projects a crime against decency.
He may believe he’s winning the argument, but his op-ed, which by his standards is stunningly incompetent, betrays a hint of desperation there is a split between him and Wall St.
Wall St. is amoral. They aren’t ideologues like Soros. They go where the money is. And the money is still in a version of Facebook that allows the illusion of political debate.
Soros, on the other hand, is openly backing anti-Wall St. candidates like Elizabeth Warren. He’s partnered with Tom Steyer on internet control. Facebook is Wall St.’s darling, feeding them all the data, money and power they could ever want.
They really aren’t ready to slay the golden goose just because George is dead set against Trump. Given the field and the collapse of the impeachment, Trump is the best candidate Wall St. has in this election unless Hillary pantsuits up and pinch hits for the DNC.
Hillary is great at hitting softballs. But, as we all know, to make it in the majors you can’t have trouble with the curve. You need to be adaptive and flexible. Hillary is neither of those.
So, ultimately, Hillary’s quest to win back Wall St. for the globalists will fall short, even if Wall St. hedges their bets with her against Trump one more time.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s oligarchs like Soros have lost the ability to shape the narrative in their favor. It doesn’t work like it used to. People refused to be cowed into silence simply because they may lose their YouTube channel or Facebook page.
There is a profound up welling of change occurring all across the world.
And it comes from the decentralization of information and there’s little people like Soros can do to stop it. They can put up roadblocks. They can slow things down.
But the costs to do this are rising constantly as technology makes communications cheaper. The days of controlling the on-ramps to information through artificial barriers to entry are over.
China will find that out the hard way. Soros will too. He doesn’t understand that populism isn’t popular because dumb people get bad information from dishonest advertising.
Populism is popular because moldy old globalists like him suck the joy out of life and destroy their homes, families and communities. And no one actually wants to live in his brave new world of culture-free, soulless hyper-correctness.
There is no such thing as a happy police state. There’s just anxiety, neurosis and endless porn.
Any idea that cannot stand up to criticism, no matter how crude or ignorant, is worthy of our consideration. And that’s what Soros’ lame attempts at control ultimately are, a pathetic attempt to stifle criticism by creating a worldwide network of tattle-tales and gatekeepers.
In Watchmen, Veidt convinced the State (Dr. Manhattan) to do just that, killing Rorschach who refused to accept the lie and would expose the truth.
And that’s exactly what Soros is doing asking for Facebook’s platform immunity to be revoked. Continuing to use Facebook in ways it doesn’t approve of or leaving the platform is how we fight both Zuckerberg and Soros. Forcing them to adapt to our curve balls, remembering that without us they have no power, that’s how we win.
Not by using the very thing that wants us curtailed, caged, taxed and just mobile enough to think we’re free to protect us from each other, or worse, bad ideas.
* * *
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I’ve been busy sending out my new draft article, “The Modern American Law of Race,” to law reviews. I’ve blogged about some of the interesting cases on racial and ethnic identity I discuss, and I thought I’d do one more, this time summarizing some Small Business Administration cases on Hispanic status. I believe I’m the only one to have ever noticed and written about them.
In DCS Elec., Inc., an administrative law judge upheld a hearing officer’s ruling that a blond-haired light-skinned business owner who had undisputed Hispanic ancestry and spoke Spanish was not Hispanic for the purposes for SBA regulations. The hearing officer had found that she did not identify as Hispanic, nor, given her non-Spanish maiden and married last names, appearance, and accent, did others identify her as such. The ALJ found that the hearing officer’s conclusion that she had not been denied business opportunities as a “Hispanic” and therefore did not qualify for the 8(a) program was not arbitrary and capricious. In a footnote in the decision, the judge noted that, “the [SBA’s] regulations are not clear as to the meaning of the term ‘Hispanic American,’ i.e. whether it includes only Hispanics from this Continent.”
By contrast, in Rothschild-Lynn Legal & Fin. Servs, an administrative law judge overturned an SBA hearing officer’s ruling that a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors had fled Spain centuries earlier was ineligible for certification as a Hispanic. The judge stated that the relevant statute presumes discrimination based on Hispanic status, so once the applicant showed that he was of Spanish ancestry, the hearing officer erred in requiring him to also provide evidence that he had been discriminated against because of that ancestry.
In Garza Telecomm., Inc., a hearing officer found two siblings whose mother is Hispanic to be white because their birth certificates stated that their color or race is white. On appeal, the administrative law judge reversed, chiding the SBA for erroneously assuming that someone in the white racial category could not belong to the Hispanic ethnic category. The judge concluded that “whether an individual is white, black, or any other race bears no relationship to his or her ethnicity.” The judge also ruled that since the SBA had found that the siblings’ mother was Hispanic, it should have necessarily found that they were also Hispanic.
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Head Of Iran’s IRGC Operations In Syria Killed Near Aleppo
Iranian state media sources have reported the death of Asghar Bashpour on the front lines of fighting in Aleppo province, which renewed days ago as Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists poured into the countryside around the major northern city. The Syrian Army has also been on a major offensive against al-Qaeda’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to retake neighboring Idlib province.
Crucially, Bashpour was an elite commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force who is said to have been close to its slain leader Qassem Soleimani. The news was announced by Tehran Radio and then circulated among various Middle East sources, including The Times of Israel on Monday. His death occurred Sunday while reportedly supporting military operations of pro-Assad forces.
Blurry photo circulating of Iran’s Quds Force senior commander Asghar Pashapour, far left., also with slain Gen. Qassem Soliemani (2nd from right), via IRIB/Al Arabiya.
Israel has long claimed that Iranian entrenchment inside Syria is ultimately aimed at harming Israeli security and interests. Over the past years the Israeli Air Force has conducted hundreds of incursions and strikes inside Syria, against what Tel Aviv describes as Iranian proxies and troops.
The Times of Israel describes the newly slain Asghar Bashpour and friend of Soleimani as follows:
He is said to have been at the forefront of the Quds Force’s operations against anti-regime rebels in Syria, where Iran has been a key backer of President Bashar Assad since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Regional sources say he was senior commander in the Quds Force responsible for overseeing all Iran-backed special operations in Syria. State-run IRIB news agency describes that Pashapour was “one of the first to go to Syria with Qassem Soleimani.”
بسم رب الشهداء و الصدیقین
استشهاد القائد اصغر پاشاپور من قوات الحرس الثوري الایراني فی ریف حلب
Beirut-based Syrian war monitor al-Masdar News, among few outlets to have sources within the Syrian Army, described that the IRGC elite commander likely died fighting the terrorist group Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP):
The location of Bashpour’s death in Aleppo was not reported; however, it is likely that he was either killed at the IRGC base in Nayrab (southern Aleppo), which has been targeted by militant missiles, or the Khan Touman front, where the jihadist rebels of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) launched a counter-offensive against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Local Defense Forces (LDF).
As we detailed earlier, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have in recent days and weeks mounted new insurgent attacks on the outskirts of the provincial capital city of Aleppo at a moment the Syrian Army has made huge gains into neighboring Idlib.
A key reason Damascus has vowed to retake every inch of Idlib is that for years al-Qaeda has launched terrorist attacks on suburbs of Aleppo from there as civilians and the government attempt to rebuild the largely destroyed urban center.
Asghar Pashapour, left, a top commander in Iran’s Quds Force.
This latest renewed fighting in Aleppo appears a concerted effort by Turkey to use its proxy forces to repel and distract the brunt of the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib, considering on Friday President Erdogan warned he’s ready to use military force if Assad doesn’t halt Idlib operations.
On Monday rare direct clashes broke out between the Syrian and Turkish armies which killed an estimated 50 people, including Turkish troops, though the numbers on each side are currently in dispute.
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the continued effort to ignore the obvious and catastrophic decision of the House leadership to rush the impeachment vote by Christmas rather than complete the record against President Donald Trump. This denial continues despite the fact that, after saying that they had no time to seek witnesses or favorable court orders, the House leadership then waited a month before released the articles of impeachment. Clearly, the record would have been stronger if the House waited and sought to compel witnesses. It also would have kept control of the record and the case. I encouraged them to vote in March or April, which would have given them plenty of time to secure additional testimony and certainly a number of favorable court orders. However, recognizing this obvious blunder would take away from the narrative that the case failed only because the Republicans were protecting Trump in the Senate.
Here is the column:
NBC host Chuck Todd recently asked guests on his show if supporters of President Trump just want to be lied to. It is a question that many in the media would never ask about Democrats, even in the face of overtly false claims. This week is an example. After the Senate rejected witnesses and effectively ended the impeachment trial on Friday, the media ignored the primary reason for the defeat, which is the insistence of House leaders to impeach Trump by Christmas. Critics of the president simply do not want to hear that the blind rush to impeach guaranteed not only an acquittal but an easy case for acquittal. It is after all important for some members of the media to maintain that fools dwell only in Republican red states.
When I appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in November, I opposed four proposed articles of impeachment as legally flawed and explained that two would be legitimate if they were proven. The House Judiciary Committee rejected the challenged articles and accepted the two articles on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. That left one fundamental area of disagreement. I warned the panel that it was rushing to a failed impeachment by insisting on a vote by Christmas. This was the shortest impeachment investigation in American history. It was also the narrowest grounds and thinnest record for trial. I have previously noted that witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton indicated that they were willing to testify if subpoenaed, and that a couple months would have likely secured more testimony and supportive court orders.
Indeed, in the impeachment case of President Nixon, it took only a few months to go all the way to the Supreme Court for the final decision. So absent such a delay, the impeachment of Trump was guaranteed to fail, due to an incomplete and insufficient record. Yet the House insisted this was a “crime in progress” and there was no time to delay a submission to the Senate. It then immediately contradicted its rationale by waiting more than a month to submit articles of impeachment to the Senate. The House simply could not have made it easier on the president and his legal team.
The media ignored the obvious catastrophic blunder by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership. The media instead suggested that it was all some grand and brilliant scheme. They even credited the strategy with Bolton eventually coming forward to say he would testify with a subpoena, even though the same offer was made during the House investigation. The media also ignored the unexplained decision by the House to withdraw a subpoena for top Bolton aide Charles Kupperman, who went to court as a prerequisite for testimony, the same position taken by Bolton. Before the courts could even rule, the House mooted the case by withdrawing the subpoena. That made no sense, and the court dismissed the case after concluding that the House appeared to have no interest in the witness.
No harm would have come from pursuing testimony by Kupperman. Yet lead House manager Adam Schiff offered a facially dubious explanation that Kupperman had said he would litigate the issue. If Kupperman truly wanted to drag out litigation, he could have refused to appear before the House and waited for it to seek to compel his testimony. Instead, he said he just wanted a court order in favor of testifying for his own protection. Moreover, House Democrats continued to seek to compel the testimony of former White House counsel Donald McGahn, despite his continued litigation. It won that case as the House was voting on impeachment.
As these blunders by the House became more and more obvious, all the efforts to excuse them became more and more absurd. One main defense heard in the media was that it did not matter, given the Senate Republican majority. Yet if the House was certain to lose on that record, why end the investigation prematurely with a case that would be so easy to defeat? By waiting only a few months, the record would have been stronger. Instead, House Democrats surrendered control of the record to the opposing party and adopted a ridiculous strategy of demanding concessions to end with this trial that Senate Republicans loathed. That strategy failed miserably.
This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. This very series of events was expressly laid out before the vote, and House Democrats made a decision to choose certain failure over completing their impeachment case. There was no reason to expect Senate Republicans to assist House managers in making their case, particularly in calling witnesses not subpoenaed by the House. Democrats had opposed any witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Clinton and voted as a bloc for a summary acquittal. There was no reason to expect Republicans to adopt an entirely different approach.
We will never know how this impeachment trial would have unfolded if the House had waited to secure additional testimony and court orders. One thing, however, is certain. The case against the president could only have become stronger. The vote for witnesses failed by one for a tie and by two for a majority. A more complete record could well have tipped the balance and certainly would have made the vote against witnesses more difficult for some senators. Instead, the House submitted an incomplete record and failed to subpoena important witnesses like Bolton, making it quite easy for the Senate to refuse to do what the House had never even tried.
None of the explanations offered by House Democrats make any logical sense. That, however, does not matter. As Todd said of supporters of the president, people “want to be lied to sometimes” and “do not always love being told hard truths.” The hard truth is that House Democrats lost this case the minute they rushed an impeachment vote, and they knew it. With the approaching Iowa caucuses, they chose a failed impeachment rather than taking a few more months to work on a more complete case against Trump, a case more difficult to summarily dismiss. That is the hard truth.
“That’s The Light Of A Missile!” Leaked Audio Proves Iran Knew Immediately Missile Hit Jetliner
A new leaked recording of an audio log between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot who witnessed the nearby downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 proves that authorities in Tehran knew immediately after the Jan.8 disaster what had actually happened, despite initially announcing it was an accident based on a likely mechanical failure. It further took days of denials before the Islamic Republic finally admitted the IRGC mistakenly launched missiles which destroyed the civilian aircraft, killing all 176 people aboard.
“A series of lights like… yes, it is missile, is there something?” the pilot is heard calling out in Farsi to the controller after witnessing bright flashes in the distance. “No, how many miles? Where?” the controller asks, according to the stunning audio transcript.
Image source: AFP/Getty
Ukraine’s 1+1 TV channel published the leaked audio and transcript Monday, which President Volodymyr Zelenskiy subsequently acknowledged as authentic, according to the AP. The head of the Iranian investigation team into the tragedy also said the recording is authentic.
Publicly available radar tracking data shows that the pilot of a nearby medium-sized Iranian Aseman Airlines jet was close enough to see the downing unfold.
According to the transcript, the pilot insists to a confused controller: “It is the light of a missile.”
“Don’t you see anything anymore?” the controller asks.
“Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there, I don’t really know what it was,” the pilot responds.
The controller then tries to no avail to establish contact with the Ukrainian Boeing 737.
Civilian officials within the Iranian government claimed they were initially unaware that an IRGC surface-to-air missile had shot the plane down, given the IRGC is only answerable to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The doomed aircraft had crashed a mere eight minutes after takeoff from Tehran en route to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
Zelensky said of the new audio that it“proves that the Iranian side knew from the start that our plane was hit by a missile.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, file image, via AFP/Getty
He added: “He says that ‘it seems to me that a missile is flying’, he says it in both Persian and English, everything is fixed there.”
The Iranian investigative team which had handed the recording over the Ukrainians condemned it’s being published to the world as “unprofessional” — given it was handed over as part of a confidential report, but then was quickly leaked to Ukrainian media.
