Author: admin

China’s trolling Australia over the murders of civilians in Afghanistan by its special forces isn’t finished. Far from apologizing as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demanded, instead on Tuesday the state-run English language newspaper Global Times described that “China’s goodwill” is “futile with evil Australia” as the headline reads.

And yes the offending and now viral tweet is still live on Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s Twitter account. The GT op-ed had this to say: “Australia’s evil acts toward China have made Chinese society not only surprised, but also disgusted. Many Chinese people feel as if they have swallowed a fly when hearing about Australia… How arrogant and shameless the Morrison government is!…Australia treats China’s goodwill with evil. It is not worthy to argue with it.“

Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call for holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/GYOaucoL5D

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) November 30, 2020

“If it does not want to do business with China, so be it. Its politics, military and culture should stay far away from China – let’s assume the two countries are not on the same planet. As a warhound of the US, Australia should restrain its arrogance. Particularly, its warships must not come to China’s coastal areas to flex muscles, or else it will swallow the bitter pills.)” the op-ed said.

Quickly spotlighting details of the escalating trade spat and Beijing’s version of events which is underlying the latest China trolling (and fueling that is Australia’s criticisms of Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak), GT continued:

China has never associated bilateral trade with politics between the two countries. China imposed tariffs on Australian barley for dumping and government subsidies, and imposed tariffs on Australian wine for the same reason. Moreover, pests have been found in Australian timber that threaten China’s ecology, and Australian lobsters have been found to have high levels of cadmium. China didn’t fabricate them. In terms of trade, China won’t fear it if Australia brings the cases to the WTO.

China firmly maintains and advocates free trade. China and Australia are signatories to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Australia has carried out more than 100 anti-dumping and anti-subsidies investigations on Chinese products, while China only carried out a few against Australian products. Beijing does not fear going to the WTO with Canberra. China will acknowledge it if it loses, but the result will certainly be that all Australia’s accusations will fall flat. 

Beijing knows it holds all the cards, and that Canberra will soon be desperate to normalize trade ties and relations once again, after major Aussie commodities exports to its number one foreign market earlier this month were blocked and/or were hit with huge tariffs by China.

Meanwhile, speaking of Monday’s unified ‘outrage’ among Australia’s political class and media and PM Morrison’s demand of an apology over the offending doctored image tweet showing an Australian soldier poised over an Afghan child with a bloody knife, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra issued an official statement on its website, saying “The rage and uproar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing but misreading of and overreaction” to the tweet.

“Yesterday, Secretary of [Australia’s] DFAT made a complaint to the Chinese Ambassador over a phone call about the twitter post of Mr Zhao Lijian. The Ambassador refuted the unwarranted accusations as absolutely unacceptable,” the statement said.

Trade Minister @birmo says Australia will complain to the @WTO about #China‘s trade coercion, but WTO dispute resolution takes years. For industries like wine, immediate Government assistance is vital to save capacity & diversify exports. #auspol #saparli https://t.co/VhLVBi0zXU

— Rex Patrick (@Senator_Patrick) November 29, 2020

The statement continued:

The accusations made are simply to serve two purposes. One is to deflect public attention from the horrible atrocities by certain Australian soldiers. The other is to blame China for the worsening of bilateral ties. There may be another attempt to stoke domestic nationalism.

All of this is obviously not helpful to the resetting of bilateral relationship. It’s our advice that the Australian side face up to the crimes committed by the Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, hold those perpetrators accountable and bring justice to the victims.

And finally the Chinese embassy urged the Australian side to “take constructive practical steps” to help bring the previously healthy bilateral relationship “back to the right track.”

But it appears each side is locked in a point of no return and there’s only bottom from here, especially given leadership in both countries is now tapping into and stoking popular domestic anger. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We previously discussed the unrelenting drumbeat of censorship on the Internet from Democratic leaders, including President-elect Joe Biden. Those calls are growing as anti-free speech advocates see an opportunity in the Biden Administration to crackdown on opposing views. One vocal advocate of censorship and speech controls has been CNN media analyst Oliver Darcy who just ratcheted up his call for de-platforming opposing views.

Like many anti-free speech advocates, Darcy simply labels those with opposing views as spreading “disinformation” and demands that they be labeled or barred from social media. In a recent newsletter, Darcy calls for every tweet by Trump to be labeled as disinformation while asking “and why stop there?” Precisely. Once you cross the Rubicon of speech regulation, there is little reason or inclination to stop.  Just look at Europe.

Darcy wrote:

“Nearly every tweet from the president at this point is labeled for misinfo. Which had me thinking. Why doesn’t Twitter just take the step of labeling his entire account as a known source of election disinfo? And why stop there? Why not label accounts that repeatedly spread claims the platform has to fact-check?”

There was a time from the very touchstone of American journalism was the rejection of such calls for censorship, including at CNN.

What is chilling about Darcy’s writings is that they reflect the view of many now in Congress and in the Democratic Party.  Indeed, they reflect many in the Biden campaign. Once a party that fought for free speech, it has become the party demanding Internet censorship and hate speech laws. President-Elect Joe Biden has called for speech controls and recently appointed a transition head for agency media issues that is one of the most pronounced anti-free speech figures in the United States. It is a trend that seems now to be find support in the media, which celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.

Darcy is calling for more active and extensive regulation of speech to protect users from thoughts or views that he considers false or dangerous: “Think of it as a version of NewsGuard for Twitter.”

“NewsGuard” has a lovely Orwellian sound to be added to other codes for censorship like Sen. Richard Blumenthal recently calling for “robust content modification” on the internet. Who can object to a NewsGuard, which Darcy describes like some beneficent St. Bernard watching over our news and social postings?  Of course, what Darcy considers “disinformation” or what Blumenthal considers “robust content modification” is left dangerously undefined.

So put me down as preferring free speech without the helpful guards and content modification. Instead, I hold a novel idea that people can reach their own conclusions on such is disinformation just as Darcy does.

Sunday on Thanksgiving weekend was the busiest air travel day since March, marking what finally appears to be the first step back toward normalcy for the travel industry.

On Sunday, 1,176,091 people were screened at U.S. airports, according to the Transportation Security Administration. It is yet another record for travelers at the airport since the pandemic hit, indicating that most people appear to be ready to get back to normal life. 

This number beat out the day before Thanksgiving, where 1,070,967 people crossed TSA checkpoints. It marked the fourth time in the past week and a half where air travel numbers were over 1 million, according to ABC. 

The numbers still paled in comparison to 2019, but it is a step in the right direction for the industry – especially after the CDC had “recommended” that people reconsider their travel plans for the holiday. The numbers give some idea of how seriously the American public is taking the CDC at this point. 

Last year, pre-pandemic, there were 2,882,915 people going through security checkpoints on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. 

Recall, just days ago we also noted that Alitalia and Delta were offering “quarantine-free flights” in an attempt to try and reclaim some normalcy for the industry. They are the first flights between the U.S. and Europe not subject to quarantines in months. 

Passengers on “select flights” from Atlanta to Rome will no longer have to self-isolate if they test negative for Covid 3 times on their flight. They are going to be asked to take a PCR test 72 hours before departure and then rapid tests at both the Atlanta and Italian airports.

This comes as part of a broader push by airlines to allow this type of testing to replace quarantine restrictions. 

Airlines and airports are also pushing for a softening of rules about takeoff and landing slots into next year. The rules, during normal operations, dictate carriers could lose slots if they aren’t used 80% of the time. 

A proposed continued softening of restrictions through March 2021 would give airlines more flexibility with scheduling during a ramp back up in air travel.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

United States jobless claims have picked up since the elections and the second wave of coronavirus have slowed down the economic recovery. Uncertainty about tax increases and changes in labor laws including an increase in minimum wage add to the fear of new lockdowns as employers see the devastating effect of these lockdowns in European employment.

While the United States has been able to recover fast and reduce unemployment to 6.8%, the Eurozone jobless rate rose to 8.3% before we consider the large figure of furloughed jobs that remain idle. The second wave of coronavirus in Europe has seen new government-imposed lockdowns and the impact on the economy is already severe Estimates for the fourth quarter gross domestic product assume a double-dip recession and another increase in unemployment.

Misguided lockdowns have created a deep and long-lasting impact on the economy and a dramatic social crisis, proving again that the response to the pandemic should have been similar to the one of Asian countries, that have successfully preserved health and the economy.

Employers all over the United States fear that a Joe Biden administration will impose lockdowns following the example of some European countries, and thus generating a new decline in the economy and a wave of bankruptcies and job losses. Instead of giving simple and effective protocols for business to endure the crisis, some governments whose members are completely disconnected from the day-by-day problems of small businesses and employers, resort to the drastic and ineffective measure of lockdowns because it gives more power to governments and the large corporations do not feel the impact as much as small enterprises.

Governments like the idea of lockdowns because it gives the impression of taking drastic measures to control the pandemic when, in reality, lockdowns simply destroy the business fabric and have proven to be extremely ineffective at reducing the mortality or hospitalization rate.

The concerns about a Biden-enforced nationwide lockdown are not exaggerated. Dr. Michael Osterholm, a coronavirus advisor to Joe Biden, said a nationwide lockdown of 4 to 6 weeks would help bring the virus under control in the U.S. and revive the economy. I am sorry to say that experience has shown us that none of those two things happen. Massive lockdowns did not help European countries control the virus, rather the opposite, and have destroyed the economy with long-lasting implications on jobs, bankruptcies, and wages. Meanwhile, countries that have not implemented lockdowns and have provided simple and effective protocols have achieved better results in health and the economy.

Many citizens in the United States ask themselves if the country will recover its record level of employment and low unemployment rate of 3.5% seen in March 2020 before the pandemic.  Even if the United States avoids government-imposed lockdowns, which would delay the jobs recovery for at least another 18 months, there is a grave concern about the likelihood of implementing more regulation, union control and higher taxes that will make it more expensive to hire personnel and more burdensome both in terms of hiring as well as reducing payroll.

The United States has been an example of job creation during the growth period but, more importantly, rapid job recovery in a complex crisis like the Covid-19 one. Adding rigidity to the labor market and increasing taxes will prove disastrous for small and newly created business, which are the largest job creators in the United States.

It is as simple as this.

The United States cannot have the wage growth and low unemployment it deserves by copying the labor market legislation of Greece, Spain or France, countries with extremely rigid job markets and high union intervention… and historically high unemployment.

The European Union used to have the same unemployment rate as the United States. Massive disincentives, a misguided excess of regulation and heavy taxes have created a divergence by which unemployment in Europe stands at almost twice the rate as in the United States.

The fallacy of “protecting workers” with high taxes to employers and heavy intervention in the labor market only protects governments. Unemployment is higher, wage growth is weaker, and the flexibility loss means lower opportunities for youth employment. Youth unemployment in the Eurozone and European Union is simply unacceptably high even in growth periods, and it is due to the barriers to employment created through aggressive intervention in the job market and government control. Incentives to hire are poor while disincentives to work are high.

If anything has been proven by the past two decades it is that more government, higher taxes and union intervention do not protect workers, they perpetuate unemployment, reduce wage growth and opportunities.

Lockdowns added to higher taxes and labor rigidity would likely prove very negative for the United States recovery. You cannot recover if you impose the burdens that some European countries have imposed. Labor market interventionism does not protect workers, it empowers politicians.

One of the biggest lies that has bizarrely persisted over the past century is that central banks are somehow working on behalf of “the people.” Nothing could be further from the truth, unless of course one’s definition of “people” are those high net worth individuals with a net worth in the millions.

And while we have repeatedly documented the often illegal sharing of inside information between the Fed and a handful of ultra-wealthy asset managers, today we get another confirmation that the ECB is no different.

According to the WSJ, the European Central Bank’s chief economist made “dozens of private calls” to banks and investors after policy meetings this year in what the ECB called “an unusual attempt to buttress the central bank’s sometimes-puzzling public communications.”

According to the report, the calls began in March, after the ECB’s commpletely clueless and communications-challenged President Christine Lagarde, whose most recent “success” was crushing the reputation of the IMF which lost tens of billions in its latest “bailout” of Argentina, stunned traders by suggesting at a news conference that the central bank wouldn’t prop up Italy’s bond market. And since it is borderline illegal for a central banker to spark any selling, and since Italian stocks and bonds slumped after her comments, this sparked a panic at the ECB where hours later the chief economist, Philip Lane placed separate calls to 11 banks and investors in which he sought to “clarify” Lagarde’s message.

Translation: he “explained” to a highly privileged group of ultra-wealthy investors not to sell their bonds because Lagarde had no idea what she was saying, and that he would make it clear to her what she “meant to say.”

Of course, this is hardly the first time the ECB has gotten in trouble for sharing market-moving confidential information with a group of “close friends.” It’s merely the last time… and the optics are as horrible as ever.  Indeed as the WSJ writes, citing former central bank officials – odd how it’s always former central bank officials who tell the truth, never current ones – said “the calls risked privileging big investors with sensitive information.”

Whereas central bankers carefully control their utterances and try to make sure all market participants get information at the same time – at least in public – diaries show that neither Lagarde’s predecessor, Mario Draghi, nor his chief economist, Peter Praet, made similar calls during their last two years in office. That’s because back then they were smarter: they would only share confidential, inside information face to face. Even so they still got caught, and in 2015, the ECB tightened its communication rules after a board member gave a closed-door speech to investors at a dinner that revealed changes to its bond-buying program.

Since then, the ECB was especially careful not to get caught leaking central bank flow information… until the inexperienced Lagarde took over and immediately found herself in a historic crisis, where every word mattered. The problem is that she had no idea how to calm markets and that’s why her chief economist had to follow through with just a handful of key accounts and explain that everything is ok and the ECB would stabilize the selloff “whatever it takes.”

“You don’t just pick up the phone and talk to the select few,” said the always aptly named Panicos Demetriades, a former member of the ECB’s rate-setting committee as head of Cyprus’s central bank. “Talking only to the big players is what you’re not supposed to be doing as the central bank. It’s not helpful for relations with the public.”

Alas the point where the plutocratic ECB cared about relations with the public is long past, and an ECB spokesman confirmed the calls. He said the bank decided in September 2019 to start the briefings after policy meetings—when Mr. Draghi was preparing to hand over the reins to Ms. Lagarde—but only began them in March. The briefings were set up shortly before Ms. Lagarde’s news conference on March 12, the spokesman said.

“In line with our transparency policies, we publish the names of the institutions where they work and ensure there is a rotation between institutions,” the spokesman said. “The purpose is to hear the views of economists who are ECB watchers and address any technical questions. The calls only touch on public information and their only focus is on the policy decision published beforehand.”

In short, the ECB admits that there is a select group of ultra VIPs who are privy to information that the rest of the world has to only guess at. A closer look at these VIPs:

On each occasion, Mr. Lane discussed the ECB’s recent decision with officials—often the chief economist—at a subgroup of 18 institutions, according to his public diary. They included investors such as AXA SA, BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co., and banks such as Citigroup Inc. Deutsche Bank AG , Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS Group AG .

The calls lasted 10 or 15 minutes, according to people who received them. Mr. Lane took questions on the ECB’s policy decisions and economic forecasts, but spent most of the time listening, they said. He clarified and fine-tuned the ECB’s message, and answered technical questions. Some of the people said they don’t recall that Mr. Lane divulged much new information. At least one other ECB staff member was on the calls too.

…

An AXA spokesman said Mr. Lane had spoken to the company’s chief economist following the ECB’s press conferences earlier this year, saying the conversations gave the group a chance to “digest the ECB’s announcements and ask any of the more technical questions we may have.”

“It would be desirable for all players to have access to relevant information at the same time. Otherwise, it’s not a level playing field,” said Stefan Gerlach, former deputy governor of Ireland’s central bank, pointing out the blatantly obvious.

So what does one have to do to get on that list? Well, according to the ECB “to get on Mr. Lane’s call list, the institution had to be a close follower of ECB policy.”

Being a close follower of the ECB, we have asked the ECB to put us on said list.

Hey @ecb we are close followers of your policy. Can we get on your private inside information distribution list?

“To get on Mr. Lane’s call list, the institution had to be a close follower of ECB policy, the spokesman said.”https://t.co/N9DEGsFeTZ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 1, 2020

We will keep you updated on how “successful” we are. Sarcasm aside, what is disgusting about all this is that Lagarde has recently positioned herself as a huge backer of erasing the wealth divide (which central banks are responsible for) and just yesterday congratulated the new Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen whose motto is to restore the American Dream.

Congratulations to my friend Janet Yellen on her nomination as US Treasury Secretary. Her intelligence, tenacity and calm approach make Janet a trailblazer for women everywhere. I look forward to tackling yet again the global economic challenges we are facing, together. pic.twitter.com/p6M1neCeoK

— Christine Lagarde (@Lagarde) November 30, 2020

One wonders just how bringing power to the people works by only making a handful of “close ECB followers” richer with material, non-public information.

We are confident the “uncorrupted, independent” media will promptly ask Lagarde all these questions during the next ECB press conference (spoiler alert: they won’t).