Author: admin

Just over a couple months out from the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and Joe Biden’s campaign continues to implode at an accelerated rate — and perhaps his mind too — as his officially named ‘No Malarkey!’ Iowa bus tour continues (it’s not The Onion, that’s really the campaign slogan).

And now a ‘rediscovered’ viral video clip of Biden rambling at a previous speaking event is so bizarre and enters a whole new level of creepy that it’s put renewed spotlight on the question of Crazy Uncle Joe’s potential senility. It simply has to be seen to be believed. Surrounded by children, he goes on a free-flowing monologue about his hairy legs and how kids used to rub them to watch the “blond” hair pop up again. What?!?…

“The kids used to come up and rub my legs. And then jump on my lap. I loved the kids jumping on my lap.”

I thought people were joking or it was doctored. But there is video of Joe Biden discussing kids petting his leg hair and sitting on his lap. 😳 “Weird and creepy, 2020.” pic.twitter.com/1UGNZ3u4Yk

— 🌹 Clark Feels The Bern (@Clarknt67) December 1, 2019

He then randomly transitions to learning “all about roaches” but quickly gets the story back on track:

“So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap and I’ve loved kids jumping on my lap.”

“The men, who are now all men… and they’re all guys at the time, they’re all good men,” he nonsensically continues. 

It’s a new to surface segment from the prior epic Corn Pop episode he recounted about his time as a life guard at a public pool in Delaware in the 1960s.

Biden’s story of the unbelievable encounter with a gang leader named ‘Corn Pop’ had previously surfaced and drove headlines back in September, but apparently the even weirder hairy legs and “I loved kids jumping on my lap” segment was little commented on at the time.

Nice to know Biden’s stands on hairy legs, roaches, and kids jumping on his lappic.twitter.com/OIW6RWmB2d

— James Hirsen (@thejimjams) December 1, 2019

Meanwhile, things in Iowa are now getting weird as well, per the NY Post on Saturday:

She must have looked good enough to eat.

A jovial Joe Biden nipped his wife Jill’s finger onstage Saturday at a rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as she introduced him at the first stop of an eight-day, 800-mile road trip through the first-to-caucus state.

“Friendly reminder not to kink shame Joe Biden for suckin on his wife’s fingie :),” one journalist, Nicole Russell observed on Twitter.

Joe Biden munches wife Jill’s finger at Iowa campaign stop https://t.co/5bvb3iXS6t pic.twitter.com/w4waY8GykM

— New York Post (@nypost) December 1, 2019

Well at least it was his own wife’s finger he nibbled on, and not a campaign staffer’s or young supporter’s or a random stranger’s. 

The more local campaign events Biden speaks at, the more likely it is that we’re about to witness weirder and weirder behavior from the Democratic front runner.

pic.twitter.com/GNpbOHY8gu

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) December 1, 2019

* * *

According Bloomberg Biden is in danger of a “humiliating loss” in Iowa due to a “poorly organized operation, but clearly judging by the above off-the-cuff clip that might be the least of his worries: 

Joe Biden risks a humiliating third- or fourth-place finish in Iowa early next year, according to nearly a dozen senior Democrats in the state who attribute the prospect to what they see as a poorly organized operation that has failed to engage with voters and party leaders.

With fewer than 100 days until the Feb. 3 caucuses, Biden is failing to spend the time with small groups of voters and party officials that Iowans expect and his campaign’s outreach has been largely ineffective, according to 11 senior Democrats in the state. That could send Biden to a crippling loss behind Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, who have highly organized campaigns in Iowa, said the Democrats, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the campaign.

And action needs to be taken say Democrat insiders:  

“I think it’s fair to say if action isn’t taken soon, you’re going to find that a person who was 7 or 14 points behind Biden will be breathing down his neck or actually ahead of him,” said Kurt Meyer, chairman of the Mitchell County Democratic Party. “There’s still time because the caucuses are not on Oct. 27, but action needs to be taken.”

trying to mentally move on from this photo. simply cannot pic.twitter.com/5W8h6xR8sX

— Micah Uetricht 🌹 (@micahuetricht) December 1, 2019

Yes we second that, but for entirely different reasons.

While the jury is still out whether the modest economic rebound that took place at the start of September – just in time to crush the value/growth trade – and appeared to fizzle by mid-November, when the “jitters” returned to virtually every asset class except stocks which have continued to ramp to new all time highs …

… is over, and a new wave of economic uncertainty and/or deflation has set in, remains to be seen.

Which is why in the absence of definitive macro trends, traders will be looking at the next best, and most important thing: what CTAs will do, especially as traditional year-end market patterns begin to take hold next week, now that the majority of hedge funds have been incrementally ramping up their risk-taking in a scramble to catch up to the market, and with optimism toward US-China talks still strong.

So what do positional indicators tell us?

According to Nomura’s Masanari Takada, amid the ongoing market euphoria – a consequence of the Fed’s QE which has pushed the Fed’s balance sheet and stocks higher for 7 of the past 8 weeks…

… it is now high time to look more cautiously at the steady accumulation of long positions on US equity futures (S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, DJIA) by trend-following CTAs that is one of the factors behind the strength of the US equity market (perhaps the explanation is as simple as that CTA buy if the Fed’s balance sheet rises, and vice versa).

Looking at the action in the last days of last week, CTAs were in wait-and-see mode, but Nomura expects them to continue to lean toward buying, especially since their long positions have already reached the levels last seen in mid-October 2018, and they have been steadily hiking their leverage ratios (re-leveraging). Of course, if CTA demand overextends, Nomura warns that the upward momentum in US stocks could lead to an overheating – assuming of course that the last 100 or so S&P points were not just that – “and markets are then likely to start viewing day-trading moves by fleet-footed investors with trepidation.” Meanwhile, a modest cool-off in stocks, one that doesn’t bring the S&P 500 down past around 3,100 (breakeven for CTAs’ most recent positions), could conversely spur dip-buying by investors that have fallen slightly behind this trend.

What about bonds? As we wrote three weeks ago, when bond yields peaked just shy of 2%, that’s the time that CTAs stopped selling Treasurys, and sure enough, 10Y yields promptly dropped by over 20 bps. Fast forward to today, when 10yr TSY yields can be found around 1.76%, a level that Nomura says is “a key strategic line for CTAs”, as it represents the cost of cumulative net buying since June.

As a reminder, CTAs have already unwound nearly 80% of their long UST (TY) positions, and it is more difficult for them to unwind these positions in the interest of avoiding losses with yields at 1.7-1.9%. If anything, if trade war fears re-emerge and deflationary worries bubble up to the surface again, it is more likely that CTAs will start buying here again, potentially sending 10Y yields south of 1.50% in a hurry.

Of course, position adjustments within the range of what can be justified by actual market conditions cannot be ruled out, but as Nomura notes, there now seems to be little risk that CTAs will unilaterally sell off their long positions unless 10yr UST yields were to break above 1.9%.

In short, with just one calendar month left in the year, and the decade, what happens next may depend on the tug of war between equity and bond CTAs, and which group ends up prevailing.

And since the outcome of that particular duel is still unknown, we will instead shift our perspective a bit and look at cross-asset seasonal patterns for the end of this year and the beginning of the New Year.

Here, we highlight Nomura’s calculations for the average performance in December and January since 2009 for investment in equity, FX, and 10yr yields (in all cases assuming that positions are held from the first trading day through the last trading day). For the 10 major asset classes, the Japanese bank compared a total of 55 patterns for building buy & hold or long/short positions.

Among major equity markets, EM equity indices such as MSCI-EM and KOSPI tend to maintain upward momentum in December and January. In contrast, indices such as the Nikkei 225 and CSI 300 tend to rise in December but reverse in January. The S&P is modestly in the positive category, with strong seasonals for both December and January.

In FX, NZD cross pairs tend to move in the same direction in both December and January. In contrast, EUR/JPY and NZD/NOK tend to rise in December and then reverse in January, while NOK/SEK tends to fall in December and then reverse and rise in January.  In either case, many currency pairs maintain momentum from December through January better than equity or rates.

Finally looking at 10yr yields, it appears that 10yr UST yields and yields in the majority of other countries tend to rise in December and then fall in January. Compared with equity and FX, 10yr yields show a clear tendency to revert to the mean from the end of the year through the beginning of the next.

In light of this, and until CTAs show their cards how they plan on trading the balance of the year, Nomura concludes that it seems that an effective strategy for targeting momentum effects from December through January could be to build long/short positions in, for example, HK10yr/AU10yr.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

A UN study shows the “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention”.

That was under the Obama administration.

Unacceptable Headline

Of course, such a headline is politically unacceptable.

Thus, the UN Withdrew the Study.

A Nov. 18 story headlined “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention -U.N. study” is withdrawn.

The United Nations issued a statement on Nov. 19 saying the number was not current but was for the year 2015. No replacement story will be issued.

Story Pulled in Multiple Places

Not only did the UN pull the story, Reuters and Agence France-Presse also killed the story.

Oops, can’t scandalize the wrong guy can we?

Border Dilemmas Are the Same for Trump or Obama

The Wall Street Journal reports Border Dilemmas Are the Same for Trump or Obama

Most of those turning up at our border and applying for refuge will surely be deported, insists the president’s hardhearted official spokesman. Oh wait. That was Obama spokesman Josh Earnest, referring in 2014 to unaccompanied minors showing up at the southern border: “It’s unlikely that most of those kids will qualify. . . . They will be sent back.”

Still, the current administration’s fans gallingly argue that failing to deport immigration offenders will only encourage more to come: “There is nothing humanitarian in tacitly encouraging tens of thousands of children to risk their lives, often at the hands of cutthroat smugglers, to enter this country illegally.”

Oh wait, that was the Washington Post editorializing in July 2014. As the paper went on to note approvingly: “During the past 14 years, under presidents Bush and Obama, the United States has sent more than 9,000 additional Border Patrol agents to the Southwest frontier, more than doubling the force there. It has built more than 600 miles of fencing; installed almost 12,000 underground sensors; and deployed scores of aircraft, drones and boats.”

When you put it that way, Mr. Trump’s wall sounds merely incremental. Mr. Trump may not be less cynical than other politicians, but he layers on less hypocrisy. This offends.

Proposed Solutions

1. WSJ author Holman Jenkins, Jr. Solution: Start by welcoming any migrant prepared to post a refundable $5,000 border deposit. Overnight this would drain profits from the people traffickers. The money could be used to sponsor English instruction and other programs to help newcomers. By making the sum refundable, workers would receive an incentive to return home with their skills and capital to help their own countries.

2. Australia’s Solution: According to Emigrate Australia, Australia accepts skilled migrants under the age of 45, with a profession on the Australian skills shortage list. Australia also accepts permanent residency by investment. That means, you need to have enough money.

Australia’s solution is far stricter than the proposal of Jenkins.

One Democrat on Right Track

Steve Bullock, Governor of Montana, and Democrat 2020 candidate has the right idea:

“We’ve got 100,000 people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that.”

Miserable Conditions

The lead image is from Facts Behind the Detention of Immigrants

I have no doubt that conditions are miserable and detentions are up under Trump.

But why?

Assessing the Blame

The current Democrat House will not fund the wall nor fund money for more detention centers. Child misery servers the Democrats well in this election campaign. The more misery the better. And Democrats openly encouraged migrants to come.

Trump is also to hugely to blame. On January 24, 2018, Democrats offered Trump $20 billion for a wall in return for amnesty. That was a fantastic deal in Trump’s lap that the alleged king of the deal turned down. For details, please see TTF: Totally Trump’s Fault.

So, here were are back at square one where the typical policies apply.

Free Stuff = More Votes

Democrats generally operate on the principle that free stuff buys votes, country be damned. Governor Bullock was an exception.

Politics aside, here’s the fundamental economic truth: Open borders and massive amounts of free stuff are completely incompatible.

But free stuff offers buy votes. And demand for free stuff is unlimited. It’s a guaranteed train wreck.

Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio and Tudor Investments’ Paul Tudor Jones joined Yahoo Finance for the 2nd annual Greenwich Investment Forum earlier this month.

Speaking directly after Connecticut Gov. New Lamont, with whom Dalio is working to bolster Connecticut’s schools via a $100 million gift  – the largest charitable gift the state has ever received, PTJ and Dalio largely focused their “Fireside Chat” on the flaws of Fed policy, the dangers of America’s ballooning budget deficit, and the steps that must be take to “stop us from killing each other” in a violent revolution, as Dalio warned. 

PTJ spoke first, starting with a few words about President Trump, praising him as “the greatest salesman” to ever enter the American political arena. After all, didn’t Trump convince the Republican Party – once the party of fiscal piety – that 5% budget deficits 10 years into an economic rebound are necessary to protect the economy. Similarly, didn’t he also convince the Fed – “through great moral suasion” – that returning to real negative rates with unemployment at 50-year lows was a necessity?

Both Dalio and PTJ agree that, while clearly stimulative in the short-term (obviously just take a look at the S&P 500), these decisions will set up the US economy for one of the most punishing downturns in history, which is why PTJ always laughs when Jerome Powell is quizzed about financial conditions and whether he sees bubbles anywhere. Because at this point, the whole market is a bubble.

“Clearly, the low interest rate policy we’re pursuing is creating an excess and that excess is in our public deficits. Which, at the current pace, in less than ten years we will have exceeded the threshold where Greece had its issues,” PTJ said.

And when we look abroad, the full scope of this heady “fiscal-monetary mix” becomes even more obvious.

“I look at our fiscal-monetary mix, it’s the most stimulative that I’ve ever seen – again, economically adjusted – no wonder the stock market is at new highs. It’s literally the most conducive environment – certainly in the short run – for economic growth and strength that I’ve ever seen. You add on that an 11% budget deficit in China, the second largest economy, and 3%.”

Dalio jumps in: Today, the number of companies producing earnings is the lowest since the dot-com bubble because “companies can sell dreams rather than earnings.” That’s thanks to the $15 trillion sloshing around the financial system that has been injected by central banks

“Because the world is looking for yield, companies can sell dreams rather than earnings. The number of companies that produce earnings is the lowest since the dot-com bubble in terms of their need because you can sell a dream.”

“As a result of the accumulation of the money at the top and technology we have a situation where, naturally, those who have a lot of money also have a lot of money in credit…but it doesn’t trickle down. And as a result, we have a situation with a large wealth gap.”

Dalio then moved on to highlighting his “1930s” hypothesis. There are three things that exist today that haven’t existed since the 1930s: A wealth gap that’s driving populism on the left and right, the absence of effective monetary policy, and an emerging world power (China) challenging an existing world power (the US).

All of this is happening at a time when, according to Dalio, the current dollar-centric global reserve system is nearing its end.

“In my opinion, we’re near the end, in the late stages, of our reserve currency system – it’s a fiat monetary system. Not only do we have negative rates, but we’re going to have much bigger deficits…and that’s not half the story. Because the larger story is the unfunded liabilities…those are pension liabilities and debt liabilities.”

War can take several different forms, as most Americans are no doubt aware at this point: As Dalio explained, there’s a trade war, a technology war, a geopolitical war and there could be a capital war.

And the US isn’t in a great place to carry on this fight. The situation will be even worse when the cycle turns and we’re plunged into a punishing economic downturn.

It’s not just the budget hole, there are also pension shortfalls and other obligations that the federal government must backstop: “We have a lot of IOUs that are either going to be funded by tax increases or spending cuts.”

If we don’t find a way to fix the system and fix wealth inequality, bad things are going to happen. But Dalio insists that increasing the size and distribution of the pie is still possible.

“The system doesn’t work, it’s gone mad, then the reason the system is broken is because it’s not an equal opportunity system. There are justifiable complaints about education…it needs to be reformed in a way that works better – we can increase the size of the pie in the same way that you can divide it better.”

PTJ grabbed the microphone next to share a few thoughts on MMT and some of the Dems who are running in the primary. Jones said MMT reminds him of the fight to legalize marijuana because 30 years, it would have been dismissed as a crackpot theory…but now it’s being taken seriously.

“Twenty years ago, Japan medicinalized it by implementing a form of it with the BoJ…now we’re at the point where it’s so wildly accepted that we sugar-coat it and put it in gummy-bear form. And it’s this wildly accepted next stage that there’s a problem. The typical recession means the budget deficit should increase by 10% to 30%.”

According to an internal poll at Jones’s firm, if Trump wins reelection, the S&P 500 could hit 3,500. But if Warren is elected, we could go as low as 2,400 to 2,500.

Biden and Buttigieg represent a middle ground: with the S&P 500 likely reversing some of its recent gains, but only enough to bring us back down to like 2,700, around where we started 2019.

Still, when we look at the biggest factor influencing markets, PTJ insists it’s not markets, but the 5% budget deficit in the US, that has caused US stocks to outperform.

“Clearly, asset prices today whether it’s US stocks or its interest rates or its the dollar it’s all priced off of, in my opinion, a 5% budget deficit with this incredibly overly stimulative fiscal policy combined with overly stimulating monetary policy is creating this US exceptionalism that, one day, like if we normalized our deficit to levels more popular in Europe, we’d see completely different valuations for the sock market…the dollar…etc.”

After a brief discussion of his charity efforts in the state, Dalio said that much of the source of inequality lies in the public education system. We need to re-engineered public education in a way that promotes more wide-spread economic performance, and that might involve letting the academics and policy wonks who are at the forefront take the reins.

But the stakes are so high, that whatever the cost of reform, the US will likely want to pay, because if we don’t, soon we’re “going to kill each other.”

“If you don’t fix it, you’re going to have a revolution…and you’re going to chase all the capitalists away.”

Watch the full interview here.

Authored by Robert Jay Watson via The Epoch Times,

The search for one of the most legendary boats of human history has made a potential breakthrough as multiple teams of scientists have zeroed in on a curious ship-shaped rise on Mt. Ararat in Turkey. The story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood that covered the earth, echoed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, has long fascinated archaeologists who have wondered if remnants of the boat are still to be found.

Satellite images, radiocarbon dating, and most recently, 3D scans of the site known as Durupınar have all given hope to researchers that solid evidence of the Ark may soon be found. “It’s a man-made object and it’s a ship form,” computer engineer and biblical researcher Andrew Jones told WZTV,

As per the description of Genesis 8:4, “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat,” researchers have investigated the site, which lies around 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above sea level and was first identified by a Turkish cartographer in 1959.

The location of the real Noah’s Ark may have been confirmed by relic-hunters in a remote mountain range in eastern Turkey, with experts claiming images “show the entire ship buried underground.”

Posted by Fox News on Thursday, November 21, 2019

The Durupınar formation is about 18 miles (29 kilometers) south of the summit of Mt. Ararat, which reaches up to 16,854 feet. After its discovery was announced in 1959, it generated enthusiasm among ark seekers around the world, including Tennessee biblical researcher Ron Wyatt. Today, the site is labeled Nuhun Gemisi (Noah’s Ship) by mapmakers and continues to generate interest.

“We’re not going to find a sign that says, ‘made by Noah and sons,’ but what other ship would it be on the side of a hill at 6,500-foot elevation in the mountains of Ararat?” Andrew Jones told WZTV. In the Bible, God tells Noah very specifically how to build the Ark and these details have aided researchers in their quest.

This could be huge!

Posted by Daily Mail on Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Genesis 6:15 states, “This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.” These dimensions, as per the best guesses archaeologists have made about the length of a “cubit,” would yield a ship that was 540 feet long, 37.5 feet high, and 75 feet wide.

This size corresponds to the strange, seemingly buried object found in the rise at Durupınar, according to ark hunters. While in previous attempts to find evidence they produced wooden samples from the site that were dated to 4,800 years old with radiocarbon dating, they are now trying to produce an image of what’s buried inside the mound.

Mount Ararat on the border of modern-day Turkey and Armenia (©Getty Images | AFP)

Using a technique called “electrical resistivity,” Jones and others on his team have been trying to produce a quality 3-D image to counter skeptics. 

“If you shoot an electrical current below the ground and it hits a pocket of air, that has a different type of conductivity versus something like water or rock,” Jones explains. “So, the software can interpret the signals coming back and create a 3-D image.”

Besides the dimensions, which appear to correspond to the ark specifications, Jones claims to have seen other details that match the design. As Genesis 6:16 says, “Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

Jones claims that images have shown just this. They have seen “[a] perfectly preserved hull below the ground. Petrified, solid, hull of a ship and three different layers, just like The Bible says.” The next step would be to get authorization from Turkish authorities to start excavations.

Besides the evidence of the Ark itself, researchers seeking to prove that Noah’s story has basis in archaeological evidence have also looked at the flood itself. A group of researchers led by British archaeologist Chris Turney found solid evidence for a flood that covered the land between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean over 8,300 years ago.

“We looked at all the earliest data on farming in Europe and we found a little bit of farming in Greece and the Balkans just before the flood,” Turney explained to Reuters.

 “When the flood happened, farming seemed to stop but it was re-established a generation later across Europe.”

The findings seem to indicate a large number of people displaced from their homes by the waters.

For those that lived in this part of the Fertile Crescent, “it would have seemed like the whole world had flooded,” Turney said.

She had been mysteriously assassinated on Oct. 16, 2017 via car bomb in Malta’s most high profile crime in recent history. The 53-year old mother of three who led the Panama papers revelations and whose blog posts regularly had more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, Daphne Caruana Galizia, had been commonly described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” for being “a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures” in the EU’s smallest member state.

And now her case and prior prolific reporting has brought down Malta’s prime minister and top officials within his cabinet, as the AFP reports “Joseph Muscat will step down on January 18, party sources told AFP Saturday, following mounting criticism of his response to the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.”

The slain journalist’s family had accused Muscat of playing “judge, jury, and executioner in an assassination investigation that so far implicates three of his closest colleagues.” Recent protests have rocked the small island Mediterranean nation and kept the case in international headlines as authorities have made progress in unraveling the murder, in a shocking Hollywood-scenario crime that increasingly points straight to the prime minister’s inner circle and business connections. 

She made many powerful enemies and was subject of death threats over the years, also after she directly accused Prime Minister Muscat himself of corruption, when she revealed a string of secret Panama-based companies tied to Maltese politicians that served as fronts for various illegal schemes on her blog, Running Commentary, which had been frequently featured and amplified by WikiLeaks.

The circumstances of her death immediately invoked popular anger at top Maltese officials accused of being complicit given that personal police protection had been suspiciously pulled just before her death. As CNN describes:

Caruana Galizia died on October 16, 2017, when her rented Peugeot 108 was detonated by a remote control device on a country lane near her home in Bidnija, Malta. Her son Matthew Caruana Galizia, told CNN that she was driving a rental car at the time, out of fear that someone might target her car in an attempt to kill her.

Saturday’s announcement that Muscat will step down follows his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, along with two top ministers resigning their posts amid accusations they were involved in the killing.

Schembri was arrested Tuesday but subsequently released Thursday after another alleged conspirator in Caruana Galizia’s assassination, energy and tourism tycoon Yorgen Fenech, identified the chief of staff as the mastermind behind the killing, per the AFP:

Fenech has identified Schembri as the mastermind behind Caruana Galizia’s 2017 car bomb killing, according to sources.

Schembri was arrested on Tuesday, but his release on Thursday sparked accusations of a cover-up.

Muscat, who has vowed to resign if links were found between himself and the murder, said Friday he would remain in power, telling reporters he wanted “this case to be closed under my watch”.

Part of the ‘cover-up’ accusations center on the prime minister’s refusal to give Fenech immunity in return for his testimony, who’s thought to have crucial information that would expose all involved. 

The victim’s family believes Muscat’s long-time chief of staff is being protected from such potentially damning testimony, also in a bid to save Muscat himself from incrimination. 

Muscat came to power in 2013 after securing the biggest majority in 60 years and pressure for him to step down has been intense over the past week, but even with the latest announcement of his planned departure, whether it will ultimately happen is anything but certain. 

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Last week I went through just some of the highlights as to why Russia is becoming a destination for global capital.

For years it’s been a little lonely out here banging on about how well the Russian state headed by Vladimir Putin has navigated an immense campaign by the West to marginalize and/or isolate Russia from the world economy.

But that is changing rapidly. And 2020 will likely be the year the New Cold War begins to end. And it starts with Europe. In recent weeks there have been a number of moves made on both sides to end the economic isolation of Russia by Europe.

As always, however, it begins politically. French President Emmanuel Macron speaking at a press conference before 70th Anniversary NATO Summit in London no less, made it clear that he no longer wants the EU positioning itself as an adversary of Russia or China.

Standing next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Macron put a further down payment that he is looking to replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the person setting the tone for European Foreign Policy.

“NATO is a collective defense organization, but against what or against who? Who is our common enemy? We need to clarify that. And it is a very strategic question,” he told reporters at a press conference in Paris on Nov. 28.

“Sometimes I hear some saying that it is Russia or China, our enemy. Is it the purpose of the Atlantic Alliance to identify one or the other as our enemies? I don’t think so. Our joint enemy, clearly within the Alliance, is terrorism that’s struck our countries.”

Macron said that NATO needs “a common definition of terrorism, of who the terrorist groups are and how to act in coordination against them.” He said that “the absence of dialogue with Russia” did not make the European continent safer and that he wants to “clarify our relationship with Russia.”

“We want a lucid, robust, and demanding dialogue with Russia, with neither naivety nor complacency,” he said.

Macron’s full remarks can be found here.

The big shift here is Macron signaling out that NATO needs to shift its focus away from Russia and China and focus on threat of terrorism. There are at least two reasons for him doing this.

First, this aligns Macron with Putin on where the focus of security concerns should be. Putin has been banging this drum for years, certainly since his game-changing speech at the 2015 U.N. General Assembly two days before he sent Russian troops into Syria.

These words more than the others are music to Putin’s ears and a complete needle-scratch for the foreign policy orthodoxy on K Street and in Vauxhall. As they have been the architects of this new Cold War with Russia which has altered the landscape of EU economic progress for the past five years.

At some point the ‘frozen conflicts’ that Macron mentions in his remarks have to thaw because, as he rightly points out, it has been Europe that has been made less safe by U.S. foreign policy imperatives — ending the INF Treaty, freezing all diplomacy with Russia, etc.

So, Macron is prepping the table for his upcoming Normandy format talks with Germany, Russia and Ukraine on how to end the conflict in Ukraine.

Reality has seen in that Crimea is now off the table for NATO and so are the eastern breakaway provinces of the Donbass. I’ve maintained for years that Russia was always playing the game of attrition in Ukraine, winning by waiting for the EU and Ukrainians to tire of the war and eventually sue for peace.

Moreover, the economic defense of Russia that Putin mounted supported this policy. By doing the unthinkable in 2014, floating the ruble and allowing it to fall, he laid the foundation for today’s victory.

Make no mistake, this speech by Macron is a victory for Russia and, by extension, the world. Because Macron, Merkel and Putin have all the tools in their grasp to now push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to fully implement Ukraine’s responsibilities under the Minsk agreements.

This would never happen under former President Petro Poroshenko, who is a long-standing U.S. asset and who openly bankrupted Ukraine during his tenure even more than his predecessor Viktor Yanukovich, no mean feat that.

Secondly, Macron’s comments underscore his desire to raise a transnational EU army and his comments are a direct statement that he wants the two security infrastructures to have separate mandates. It’s clear Macron doesn’t want Europe’s security to depend on the U.S. any longer.

And I’m sure that this idea gets a sympathetic ear from President Trump. The problem, of course, is that that idea isn’t popular with anyone else in the U.S. Deep State. Hence the push to create a chimeric impeachment process to remove him from power, or, at least, neuter him completely.

On the latter point they’ve nearly succeeded.

To Macron, NATO should deal with terrorism, downgrading its importance and paving the way for ending it in the future, while the EU army is under the control of the European Commission, which to a globalist like Macron is the epitome of ‘sovereignty.’

Macron, with these remarks as a prologue of what he will argue for at the NATO Summit, is telling the world Europe is done paying the price for the U.S.’s Cold War with Russia.

He’s also letting everyone know that 2020 will see the end of the sanctions in exchange for ending the conflict in Ukraine and re-opening the floodgates of European investment into Russia.

This puts paid everything I talked about in last week’s blog and which was also picked up by Alexander Mercouris at The Duran who is one of the very few analysts who understood Russia’s strategy and what the end-game would look like.

This is welcome news in Germany who absolutely want the sanctions lifted which will put Merkel under even more pressure to lift them. Putin has already made the moves necessary for Merkel to save face here — offering a new gas transit contract for Ukraine, handing back the ships seized in the Kerch Strait incident, prisoner exchange, etc.

A lot will ride on Putin’s upcoming meeting with Zelensky. There is so much coming together for the first half of December that by year-end we could be staring a very different geopolitical landscape in Europe.

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Sunday marks World AIDS Day, which aims to promote awareness of the disease and mourn those who have died from it. The event came into existence in 1988 and it has been widely observed by health officials, governments and non-governmental organizations since then.

The good news is that the number of deaths from the HIV/AIDS pandemic has fallen. In 2018, there were 770,000 AIDS-related deaths, down from 1.7 million in 2005.

You will find more infographics at Statista

But, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, there is some bad news which needs to be highlighted more frequently: the growing infection rate across Eastern Europe and Russia in particular.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to new data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and World Health Organization, there were 71 new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 people in Russia last year. Ukraine came a distant second with 37 while third-placed Belarus had 26. The lowest rates of new diagnoses per 100,000 people were recorded in Bosnia and Herzegovina (0.3), Slovakia (1.3) and Slovenia (1.9).