Author: admin

Authored by Richard Tafel via Quillette.com,

Understanding American politics has become increasingly confusing as the old party labels have lost much of their meaning. A simplistic Left vs. Right worldview no longer captures the complexity of what’s going on. As the authors of the October 2017 “Pew Survey of American Political Typologies” write, “[I]n a political landscape increasingly fractured by partisanship, the divisions within the Republican and Democratic coalitions may be as important a factor in American politics as the divisions between them.”

To understand our politics, we need to understand the cultural values that drive it. The integral cultural map developed by philosopher Ken Wilber identifies nine global cultural value systems including the archaic (survival), tribal (shaman), warrior (warlords and gangs), traditional (fundamentalist faith in God), modern (democracy and capitalism), and postmodern (world-centric pluralism). When combined with Pew’s voter typologies, Wilber’s cultural levels offer a new map of America’s political landscape.

Of Wilber’s nine global value systems, the Traditional, Modern, and Postmodern categories are most useful to understanding our moment. Traditional culture values disciplined adherence to assigned gender and social roles: men are providers and heads of households, marriage is between one man and one woman, and the institutions of the military, law enforcement, and the clergy are all highly respected. Historically, traditional cultures were monarchies or states ruled by “strongmen.” Modern culture superseded traditional systems in the West during the Enlightenment, and values rationality, democracy, meritocracy, capitalism, and science. Individual rights, free speech, and free markets harness an entrepreneurial spirit to solve problems.

Postmodern culture offers a borderless, geocentric political view that values pluralism. It challenges a pro-American narrative by focusing on the horrors of American history, including the exploitation of Native Americans, slavery, and persistent inequality disproportionately affecting historically disadvantaged groups. Those left behind by modernity and progress now seek recognition, restoration, and retribution via a politics of protest, and show little interest in building political organizations or institutions. We are currently living in a postmodern political moment of disruption, best described by author Helen Pluckrose in her Areo essay “How French Intellectuals Ruined the West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained”:

If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism. Consequently, the roots of postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a destructive or, as they would term it, deconstructive way.

When we overlay Pew’s data with Wilber’s Value levels, six cultural political categories emerge: Traditional Left and Right, Modern Left and Right, and Postmodern Left and Right.

Traditional Left: Devout and Diverse

If you live in an urban bubble, you may not even recognize the Traditional Left. Pew identifies these Democrats as “Devout and Diverse,” mainly comprised of minorities. Pew describes them as “…fac[ing] the most difficult financial challenges among all Democratic categories.” They are “the most religiously observant Democratic-leaning group, and the only one in which a majority (64 percent) says it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values… they have a strong support for the social safety net and further action on racial equality.” These Democrats don’t support gay rights or increasing immigration and, as Pew notes, “40 percent describe their own ideology as conservative.” They are the oldest of the Democratic voter groups and make up around six percent of all engaged voters.

Traditional Right: Country First

While the Devout and Diverse voters have almost no public profile in the media, the Traditional Right is perceived to be much larger than it is. Pew refers to them as “Country First” Republicans, who “fear America risks losing our identity as a nation.” They have largely negative views of scientists and artists, and are the most elderly of all typology groups. Primarily comprised of white men, they hold a generally favorable view of Trump and uniformly oppose same-sex marriage. They make up about six percent of all engaged voters.

While both Republicans and Democrats have socially conservative, anti-gay, anti-immigrant voters in roughly the same numbers, the social conservatives on the Right play a more prominent role in American politics, partly because they play a larger role in the GOP, and partly because the media like to highlight them to fit their own narrative. Based on their aging demographic, the traditional value level is unlikely to be as significant a force in future elections.

Modern Left: Opportunity Democrats

The Modern Left is best represented by Pew’s “Opportunity Democrats,” who are optimistic and pro-business. They believe “most people can get ahead if they are willing to work hard” to achieve the American Dream. Almost half of them say “most corporations make a fair and reasonable amount of profit.” They are primarily white, financially well off, and describe themselves as moderate. They are socially inclusive, liberal on immigration, and supportive of gay rights. They are also less likely to believe that blacks and women face structural barriers to advancement. Until recently, this group defined what it meant to be a Democrat, but they have lost their center of power. Today, they make up around 13 percent of all engaged voters.

Modern Right: Core Conservatives and New Era Enterprisers

Two different groups in Pew’s study represent Modern values among Republican voters. The larger and older of the two are called “Core Conservatives,” while the younger, smaller group Pew calls “New Era Enterprisers.” Both groups share modern values evidenced by their belief in the power of capitalism and democracy. Both believe in the power of the free market and the importance of America’s global leadership. Both remain optimistic about the possibilities afforded by the American Dream. They make up the 66 percent of Republicans who support the “Dreamers.” Their pro-immigration position is also confirmed in a Gallup report, which states that “… significantly more Republicans favor a path to citizenship than support building a border wall or deporting illegal immigrants.”

Core Conservatives are the largest Republican voter group. Made up of mostly white men, they enjoy the highest rates of home ownership of any voter group, and a majority believe that they’ve achieved the American Dream. They are the best educated of any Republican group, yet have the most negative attitudes toward the impact colleges have on our country. They are most likely to invest in the stock market and their most important issue is the economy. “Sixty-eight percent express a positive view of US involvement in the global economy ‘because it provides the US with new markets and opportunities for growth.’” In addition to their largely pro-free market and pro-immigration views, they have the most favorable view of Donald Trump among all voting groups. They represent 20 percent of all engaged voters.

New Era Enterprisers, meanwhile, are young, urban, and much more ethnically diverse. Pew points out that they are “strongly pro-business and generally think that immigrants strengthen, rather than burden, the country.” Innovation and entrepreneurship are most important to them. They are pro-immigration and pro-gay rights with the highest opinion of a role for government among any Republican group. Only a quarter of them self-identify as strong Republicans. They are the least supportive of Donald Trump among Republican groups, and the least likely to express negative attitudes toward the Democratic Party. They make up nine percent of all engaged voters.

Together these two modern Republican groups total 29 percent of engaged voters, and represent the center of power within the GOP.

Postmodern Left: Solid Liberals and Disaffected Democrats

The two Pew voting groups which make up the Postmodern Left are “Solid Liberals” and “Disaffected Democrats.” Both groups have negative views of capitalism and are concerned about America’s treatment of minority groups.

Solid Liberals is a bit of a misnomer as they tend to reject liberalism in its classical form. They are progressives who hold strongly negative views of businesses, question or reject the concept of the American Dream, and see the world through the lens of identity politics. They are mostly white, well-off, and well-educated, and they are the most secular voters found across voting groups. Ninety-seven percent strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance. They are unlikely to have friends outside their political circle, and over half of this group would say “that a friendship would be strained if someone voted for Trump,” much higher than any other Democratic group. It isn’t just Trump they dislike. They are highly partisan in general and the least tolerant of Republicans among all Democrat groups. They are the largest engaged Democratic voting group and the largest of all voting groups in Pews voter typologies. They make up 25 percent of engaged voters.

Pew characterizes Disaffected Democrats as a “financially stressed, majority-minority group [that] supports activist government and the social safety net…” They are unhappy with America and their “disaffection stems from their cynicism about politics, government and the way things are going in the country. Disaffected Democrats would be the most likely to see the world through the lens of identity politics.”

A large majority of Disaffected Democrats say their side has been losing in politics, while fewer than half believe that voting gives them a say in how the government runs things, highlighting another hallmark of their beliefs: they have very little faith in the system.” They believe government has failed them and that, “poor people have hard lives because government benefits do not go far enough to help them live decently.” Unlike the white elite Postmodern Democrats, they often have lived in the same neighborhood their entire lives. They make up 11 percent of all engaged voters.

Together these two diverse progressive groups make up 36 percent of all engaged Democratic voters, which makes them the largest of any groups on the Left or Right. When pundits refer to the Democratic Party moving “leftwards” there are trying to capture this movement toward the postmodern level—the new center of gravity of cultural power on the American Left.

Postmodern Right: Market Skeptic Republicans

The group that is least understood in American politics is the Postmodern Right. While postmodernism on the Left focuses on the failure of modernity to address social justice in term of identity politics, the Postmodern Right questions the fundamental economic worldview of the Modern Right. In Pew’s survey, they show up as a new category named “Market Skeptic Republicans.”

Like those on the Postmodern Left, they share a strong skepticism of America exceptionalism, an overriding pessimism about the country, and they are critical of both political parties. They are the first ever “Republican-leaning group that is deeply skeptical of business and the fundamental fairness of the nation’s economic system.” They do not believe in lower taxes, which until recently defined the modern GOP, and they have an unfavorable view of banks and other financial institutions. Unlike other Republicans, Market Skeptic Republicans believe American capitalism is unfair, “an overwhelming share (94 percent) say the economic system unfairly favors powerful interests.”

The media often lumps them in as traditional conservatives because of their opposition to immigration. But that’s a mistake. They favor legal abortions in higher numbers than the Traditional Left Democrats, and they are the most secular of all Republican groups. They are also most interested in a white identity politics, mirroring those on the Left.

They are also the least loyal to the GOP. As Pew notes, “They stand out for their criticism of both political parties when it comes to caring about the middle class.” They hold a more favorable view of Donald Trump than most other Republican groups. Though not well known and ignored by the media, they are a larger voting group than the religious Right in the Republican Party, making up 10 percent of all engaged GOP voters.

Using Pew’s voter groups on an integral value map illuminates how polarization is causing divisions within, and well as between, America’s Left and Right. It also shows that the center of American politics has moved from a modern base which held the center of gravity for over a century to a new postmodern base. Today, the Democratic Party energy’s is centered at that postmodern level, while the center of the GOP remains modern.

What this Map Tells Us about the 2016 Election

In 2016, instead of hiring DC-based consultants, Donald Trump listened to conservative talk radio to plot his strategy. Just as a bat uses sonar, Trump bounces ideas off audiences and recalculates his path accordingly. He intuitively understood that the element unifying the different aspects of the Traditional and Modern Rights was their united opposition to the growing dominance of the urban elite, and the identity politics favored by the Postmodern Left. He exploited those tensions by aggravating them and antagonizing the mainstream media as a means of uniting the Right.

In addition, his post-truth worldview and ability to criticize establishment Republicans provided him with access to a new, postmodern Republican voting group—Market Skeptics. Writer David Ernst has argued in the Federalist that Trump is the first President to “turn postmodernism against itself,” because he grasped the postmodern idea of the anti-hero. 

If politics flows downwards from culture, then it was only a matter of time before a politician mastered the role. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump cracked that code. Tony Soprano, Walter White, and Frank Underwood are just a few recent examples of the enormously popular characters who have, each in their own way, stood in for the role of the complicated bad guy who fascinates millions of Americans.

Clinton’s Loss

No one told Hillary Clinton that the political landscape in which she and her husband had learned politics had changed. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton successfully navigated the values divide between moderns and traditionalists by polling and then speaking successfully to both traditional and modern voters on the Left and center-Right. That’s not the political world Hillary inherited.

Neither she nor Bill are at home with the postmodern voters that are now the largest voting group in the Democrat coalition. Bill Clinton repeatedly proved to be a liability in the 2008 and 2016 races because he failed to understand the demands of the newly “woke” Democrat coalition. Hillary was a modern candidate in a postmodern party without the cultural translation skills she needed to communicate with progressives. Many of those progressives voted in unusually high numbers for Green party candidate Jill Stein or simply stayed home.

What to Expect in 2020

Trump will again seek to unite his coalition by goading the Postmodern Left. Though incumbents are usually judged by how they performed in office, Trump will try to make these opponents the focus of his 2020 campaign, just as he did in 2016. The more he’s scolded by the media, the better his chances will be of reuniting his coalition. However, this strategy risks losing New Era Entrepreneurs, and losing any voting group on the Right makes Trump’s re-election difficult.

Democratic primary voters, meanwhile, are becoming more postmodern. The pressure to move from the modern liberal to progressive postmodern worldview in the crowded primary field risks alienating modern Democrats. Worse, whoever wins the progressive primary will need to work hard to attract any modern voters in the center and on the Right. Though two aging straight white men lead the polls in the primary as of this writing, the reality of a postmodern base in the Democratic coalition doesn’t bode well for straight white male candidates, and offers new opportunities to candidates who are female, black, Latino, or gay.

The challenge for Republicans is that the Traditional Right voting block is aging out. The divisions around business and the role of government between Market Skeptic Republicans and Core Conservatives are as profound as—if not greater than—the divisions on the Left. Worse, their larger voting coalitions are demographically much older. Trump risks pushing the remaining younger entrepreneurial, ethnically diverse voters into the Democrat coalition.

There is, however, one bright spot in this chaos. According to Wilbur’s theory, a new “integral” value system is emerging that “transcends and includes” the best aspects of earlier value systems. Jordan Peterson’s popularity may be an early sign of this—while embracing aspects of tradition, science, and therapeutic culture, his message and best-selling book appear to be resonating.

If this marks an early shift towards integral values, such a move could put an end to our vicious culture wars as new leaders emerge with the ability to see multiple viewpoints and accommodate their contradictions. Understanding American politics will continue to be hard work. But only when we understand culture will we understand politics so that we can transform it for the better.

The White House has implicitly moved to force Speaker Pelosi’s hand by confirming in a letter that President Donald Trump and his administration won’t participate in the House impeachment inquiry, calling it unconstitutional and invalid, and framing it as an effort to “overturn the results of the 2016 election.”

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in the letter (full letter below) that:

“You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.”

While Pelosi claims that House committees have full authority to investigate, The White House disagrees, refusing to participate in any hearings or respond to subpoenas:

“President Trump and his Administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.”

Because, simply put, no vote has been taken:

“Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process.

In the history of our Nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the President without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step.”

Thus forcing Pelosi and Schiff to put names to the impeachment farce (most notably those Democrats in swing districts) or the probe dies here – and the media-sponsored narrative with it.

We look forward to the response from the Democrats as yet another deep state coup fantasy crashes on the shores of constitutional reality (no matter what Chuck Todd says), even as top Democrats, as The Hill notes, have warned that the administration’s failure to comply with their requests could be cited as obstruction in future articles of impeachment.

Full Letter Below:

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Since September 17, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has pumped billions of dollars into the repurchasing (repo) market, the first such intervention since 2009. The Fed has announced that it will continue to inject as much as 75 billion dollars a day into the repo market until November 4 [ZH – and today, Fed Chair Powell confirmed the ongoing buying of T-Bills in what he demanded the American public not call QE].

Source: Bloomberg

The repo market provides a means for banks that are temporarily short of cash to obtain short-term (usually one day) loans from other banks. The Fed’s interventions were a response to a sudden cash shortage that caused interest rates for these short-term loans to climb to 10 percent, far above the Fed’s target rate.

One of the factors blamed for the repo market’s cash shortage is the Federal Reserve’s sale of assets it acquired via the Quantitative Easing programs. Since launching its effort to “unwind” its balance sheet, the Fed had reduced its holdings by over 700 billion dollars. This seems like a large amount, but, given the Fed’s balance sheet was over four trillion dollars, the Fed only reduced its holdings by approximately 18 percent! If such a relatively small reduction in the Fed’s assets contributed to the cash shortage in the repo market, causing a panicked Fed to pump billions into the market, it is unlikely the Fed will be continuing selling assets and “normalizing” its balance sheet.

Another factor contributing to the repo market’s cash shortage was a major sale of US Treasury securities. Sales of government securities leave less capital available for private sector investments, increasing interest rates. This “crowding out” effect provides one more justification for the Federal Reserve to pump more money into the markets.

The crowding out effect is just one way federal debt increases pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates low. Increasing federal debt increases pressure on the Fed to maintain low interest rates to keep the federal government’s interest payments from reaching unsustainable levels. The over one trillion dollars (and rising) federal deficit is the major reason the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates low or even adopt the insane policy of negative interest rates.

The American people are not even allowed to know what banks benefited from the Fed’s intervention in the repo market, or what plans the Fed is making for future bailouts — even though the people will pay for those bailouts either through increased taxes, debt, or the Federal Reserve’s hidden inflation tax when the next crash occurs. Of course, the average people who will lose their savings and their jobs in the next crash will not be bailed out. This is one more reason why it is so important Congress takes the first steps toward changing monetary policy by passing Audit the Fed.

The need for the Fed to shove billions into the repo market to keep that market’s interest rate near the Fed’s target shows the Fed is losing its power to control the price of money. The next crash will likely lead to the end of the fiat money system, along with the entire welfare-warfare state.

Those of us who understand the Fed is the cause of, not the solution to, our problems must redouble our efforts to educate our fellow citizens on sound economics and the ideas of liberty. This way, we can create the critical mass necessary to force Congress to cut spending, repeal the legal tender laws to restore a free market in money, and audit, then end, the Fed.

SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son has ruined his name in the investment community. His botched investments in WeWork, Uber, and Slack, just to name a few, could result in billions of dollars in losses for SoftBank Group Corp., according to Bloomberg, who compiled several notes from Wall Street analysts detailing the turmoil. 

Profit estimates for SoftBank’s Vision Fund were slashed by $5.4 billion to an operating loss of $3.5 billion for 3Q19, wrote Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co, in a recent note. Most of the losses were due to drastic valuation declines of Uber and Slack, and a massive writedown of WeWork after the shelved IPO collapsed valuations last month. 

Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. believes SoftBank’s Vision Fund could writedown as much as $5.93 billion of WeWork, and SoftBank Group could writedown another $1.24 billion. 

Mitsubishi UFJ analyst Hideaki Tanaka said, “Profits in the [SoftBank Vision Fund] segment may still see considerable volatility ahead.” 

Tanaka said Uber’s 35% drop in 15 weeks was a massive reason for Vision Fund’s awful 2Q19 performance. He also reduced SoftBank Group’s fiscal year operating profit to $9.446 billion, from $14.861 billion. 

Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said SoftBank might record a $3.54 billion drop in the value of its Uber stake and $350 loss in Slack. Lane believes the combined writedown for WeWork could be $2.82 billion, but that is based on WeWork’s valuation sliding to $15 billion from $24 billion. And as we’ve reported, WeWork could be worth $10 billion to $12 billion, a dramatic discount from the $47 billion valuation seen earlier this year. 

It was only yesterday when Son spoke with Nikkei Business magazine, and said he is “embarrassed and flustered” by his recent track record. 

“The results still have a long way to go and that makes me embarrassed and impatient,” said Son. “I used to envy the scale of the markets in the U.S. and China, but now you see red-hot growth companies coming out of small markets like in Southeast Asia. There is just no excuse for entrepreneurs in Japan, myself included.”

It’s apparent that Son’s aggressive risk-taking in technology companies left him overlooking valuation metrics in the last several years. 

If macroeconomic headwinds continue to mount in the global economy, technology unicorn valuations will reset further, meaning that SoftBank’s Vision Fund will continue to incur steep losses and massive writedowns through 2020. 

As we’ve highlighted in the last several weeks, the global IPO and M&A markets are starting to falter — this will further stress Vision Fund as their ability to cash out of technology unicorns are coming to an end for the year. 

We even reported last week that veteran venture capitalists called an emergency meeting of the technology unicorns in Silicon Valley to advise them on the turbulent times ahead.  

And of course, Son is “embarrassed,” who wouldn’t be, when you’re caught swimming naked as the proverbial tide goes out. 

Authored by Patrick Cockburn via The Unz Review,

Iraqi paramilitary groups close to Iran are suspected of joining attacks on protesters in Baghdad and other cities, leading to heavy loss of life among demonstrators. Some 107 people have been killed and over 6,000 wounded in the last six days, though hospital doctors say the government is understating the true number of fatalities.

“The pro-Iranian militia have each taken a sector of Baghdad and are responsible for its security,” a source, who does not want his name published, told The Independent.

He said that snipers belonging to these groups had fired live rounds at protesters, often aiming for the head or heart. Eyewitnesses say that Iraqi soldiers are also firing directly into crowds of the protesters, who are demanding the fall of the government, jobs and an end to corruption.

The gunmen shooting protesters come from pro-Iranian factions of the Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilization Units, an 85,000-strong strong body that came into being to stop the Isis advance on Baghdad after the fall of Mosul in 2014. It is a coalition of about 30 groups, many of them predating Isis, which is paid for by the Iraqi government and nominally under its control, but with widely varying political loyalties. They includes powerful units, such as Ketaeb Hezbollah, which say opening that their first loyalty is to the Iranian leadership.

The demonstrations in Baghdad and in much of Shia southern Iraq are largely spontaneous, but where there are local leaders they have sometimes been singled out for killing.

Haider Karim Al-Saidi, a leading organiser of the protests, was shot dead by a sniper near Al-Mudhafar Square late on Sunday night. Earlier, witnesses had reported that they had seen snipers taking up positions on roof tops overlooking the square.

Footage shows how snipers, allegedly belonging to Iran-backed militias, were targeting peaceful protesters in Baghdad in cold blood.
Who holds these militias accountable for this heinous crime? #Iraq pic.twitter.com/nNobrvXoz7

— Baxtiyar Goran (@BaxtiyarGoran) October 8, 2019

The paramilitaries have assaulted injured protesters in hospital: a doctor working in the Medical City complex in central Baghdad said that members of a paramilitary group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq, known for its pro-Iranian sympathies, had broken into a hospital ward filled with wounded demonstrators and started hitting them. When he protested, he was told “to mind his own business” and was beaten with a baton.

An Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan said that 6,107 people had been injured in the unrest, including 1,200 members of the security forces. Public buildings and political party headquarters have also been destroyed.

A paramilitary group called Kataib Hezbollah, which has no connection with the Lebanese group with a similar name but is strongly supportive of Iran, is alleged to have ransacked at least ten television stations that had been giving full or sympathetic coverage to the demonstrations. In one case gunmen in balaclavas arrived in twelve white cars without license plates and wrecked studios, seizing computers, beating up staff and taking their wallets and mobile phones.

The government has expressed suspicion that a third party is playing a role in provoking greater violence, through using snipers who shoot to kill. Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan said at a press conference that “malicious hands” were targeting protesters and security forces alike. This may be true in part but is also a bid by the security forces to evade responsibility for firing directly into crowds, though there is every sign that they have been doing just that. Repressive measures have included a two-day curfew, a continuing ban on the internet, and pre-emptive arrests.

In #Iraq unseen snipers are firing at both protesters and police. The last time this happened was in 2005 and the 2 British SAS were caught being behind it. https://t.co/SaX7Fl6R7F

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) October 6, 2019

The demands of the protesters have become more radical since last Tuesday, as the casualty toll has mounted, with growing calls for the fall of the government of Adel Abdul Mahdi. He has shown himself to be ineffective, making a speech at the weekend in which he outlined a 17-point plan including unemployment benefit and subsidised housing but he made little impression. In his year in office, Mr Mahdi has failed to introduce any important reforms, so his sudden zeal for change carries little credibility.

The signs are, for the moment that repression will continue but also that it will not succeed. “The protesters are very young and feel they have little to lose,” says one observer. “They will go on protesting whatever happens.”

Despite Iraq enjoying monthly oil revenues of over $6 billion, pervasive government corruption since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 has meant that there has been little new building of roads, schools and hospitals and there is a chronic shortage of electricity and, in some cities, water.

Above all there is a lack of jobs with a population at 38 million, growing by one million year and 70 percent below the age of 30. Many of these are jobless and include 307,000 graduates. Some of the have been camped outside ministries in Baghdad for the last three months asking for jobs appropriate to their qualifications, but not getting them.

Popular anger over long-standing socioeconomic grievances has been increasing year by year and the defeat of Isis in the siege of Mosul in 2017 means that the government no longer has the excuse that all its energies and resources are absorbed by the war against al-Qaeda type groups.

But this does not quite explain why the Iraqi government – along with pro-Iranian paramilitary groups – should have reacted so violently and counter-productively against a relatively small protest march on the Jumhuriya Bridge in Baghdad last Tuesday.

AFP Report: Security forces said “unidentified snipers” had killed four people including two police in Baghdad…

#UPDATE Security forces said “unidentified snipers” had killed four people including two police in Baghdad, and AFP journalists reported hearing rapid automatic rifle fire across the capital in what appeared to be the most chaotic day of protests yet https://t.co/dfPQgOynVo

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 4, 2019

There have been much bigger protests without provoking such violence in previous years, including one last year in Basra that was close to a general uprising, but without live rounds being fired at demonstrators. In 2016, demonstrators stormed the Green Zone in Baghdad and ransacked the parliament building and the prime minister’s office while the security forces stood by.

Explanations for the self-destructive reaction of the government this time round include Prime Minister Adel Andul Mahdi’s advisers being dominated by military hawks prone to rely on force and with little political understanding. The aggressive role of the pro-Iranian paramilitaries is evidence that Tehran fears peaceful anti-government mass protests, along the lines of the Green Movement in Iran in 2009 and in Syria in 2011, both of which, at their peak, threatened regime change.

“The Iranians want to militarize the situation so it cease to be a mass movement,” says one Iraqi commentator. This would explain the shooting of so many demonstrators. But by over reacting the government and the Iranians may have provoked the very situation that they want to avoid.

An extremely noisy headline day saw oil prices end lower as the US-China trade war showed no signs of letting up.

“Oil prices are getting whipsawed by the stock market, day-to-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute,” said Walter Zimmerman, chief technical analyst at ICAP Technical Analysis.

“We tend to forget how much economic expectations are in the price of crude oil and refined products.”

But for now, all eyes (and algos) will be on inventory data.

API

• Crude +4.13mm (+1.7mm exp)

• Cushing +1.24mm

• Gasoline -5.94mm

• Distillates -3.98mm

API reports a fourth weekly crude inventory build (bigger than expected 4.13mm vs 1.7mm exp) but the major product draws prompted buying in WTI futures…

 

WTI fell back below $53 after the Powell/China Visa headlines (with an extreme flash-crash briefly tagging a $51 handle) and the algos went crazy initially on the API print before pushing higher…

“The market has kind of taken a bearish tone on fears that the economy will weaken,” said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management LLC in St. Louis. “That has become the dominant narrative.”