The big target, as the first Democratic debate opened this evening, was not President Donald Trump, but America’s biggest businesses. Candidate after candidate used their first question to blame big business and major corporations like Amazon for any economic problems faced by Americans.
Elizabeth Warren kicked off the debate by claiming that, despite good news about the economy, “it’s doing great for a thinner and thinner number of people at the top.” This is not actually true. The number of people moving up from the middle class into the upper class is actually increasing. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) said he was “concerned about corporate consolidation.”
But it was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to show precisely why he’s the least popular candidate to make it into the debates. He is very clear and succinct that he simply does not believe in concepts like private property or individual rights. He bluntly said, “We are supposed to break up big corporations when they’re not serving our democracy.” He added that they’re supposed to call for massive taxes and that this deliberate redistribution of money and property from the rich to the masses is the “heart and soul” of what the Democratic Party should be standing for.
Candidates like Warren talk about breaking up big corporations and using antitrust actions to target wealthy businesses, but de Blasio’s on a whole different level. This shouldn’t be a surprise. De Blasio has a lengthy history of having absolutely no respect for private property, bluntly saying that he thinks the government should decide what gets built and threatening to seize buildings of landlords in New York if their buildings fall into disrepair (never mind that New York City’s only public housing authority has a terrible reputation).
It’s almost as though de Blasio’s role in this race is to just say the harshest, most unacceptable position against private property ownership to make candidates like Warren seem more reasonable. Later in the debate as attention shifted to immigration, de Blasio said that the American people needed to learn that it wasn’t immigrants who were responsible for their economic woes (true!) but big corporations (not true!).
Make no mistake here: The Democrats decided to open this debate not by casting Trump as the villain, but America’s own businesses.
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Over the past year, Western media organizations have published a non-stop stream of reports about “Operation Cloudhopper”: The Chinese government’s clandestine program to spy on and siphon economic secrets from some of the world’s largest tech companies.
We have shared somedetails of the program before: China’s Ministry of State Security has worked with a shadowy group of hackers called ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ 10 to infiltrate American and European enterprise tech firms using a very consistent MO: Hackers would infiltrate the cloud computing networks of ‘managed service providers’, then ‘hop’ from network to network’, gaining entree to the networks of these firms’ clients. Back in December, the US named some of the hackers suspected of working with APT10, and was backed up by Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Australia and other allies all issued statements.
Notably, the Chinese cyberespionage campaign continued even after Beijing and the Obama Administration agreed to a pact to cease all cyberespionage activities.
But as devastating as these attacks have been, the details have been kept under wraps, as corporate victims have pushed for their privacy to be protected. But for the first time since the US indicted the two suspected APT members, a sweeping Reuters investigation has laid out details of attacks, many of which have been previously reported, but not in quite as much depth.
An investigation by Reuters found that “Cloud Hopper” impacted six additional firms aside from IBM and HPE, which it had previously reported. These included at least five of the world’s 10 largest tech service firms. In addition to HPE and IBM, the hacks emanated out to those firms’ clients, including Swedish telecoms firm Ericsson, and a handful of Japanese fims. Ultimately, industrial and commercial secrets were stolen.
The hacking campaign, known as “Cloud Hopper,” was the subject of a U.S. indictment in December that accused two Chinese nationals of identity theft and fraud.Prosecutors described an elaborate operation that victimized multiple Western companies but stopped short of naming them. A Reuters report at the time identified two: Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM.
Yet the campaign ensnared at least six more major technology firms, touching five of the world’s 10 biggest tech service providers.
Also compromised by Cloud Hopper, Reuters has found: Fujitsu, Tata Consultancy Services, NTT Data, Dimension Data, Computer Sciences Corporation and DXC Technology. HPE spun-off its services arm in a merger with Computer Sciences Corporation in 2017 to create DXC.
Waves of hacking victims emanate from those six plus HPE and IBM: their clients. Ericsson, which competes with Chinese firms in the strategically critical mobile telecoms business, is one. Others include travel reservation system Sabre, the American leader in managing plane bookings, and the largest shipbuilder for the U.S. Navy, Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds America’s nuclear submarines at a Virginia shipyard.
“This was the theft of industrial or commercial secrets for the purpose of advancing an economy,” said former Australian National Cyber Security Adviser Alastair MacGibbon. “The lifeblood of a company.”
Over the course of its reporting, Reuters interviewed 30 people involved in the “Cloud Hopper” investigations, including government officials, company insiders and private security contractors. One of the most stunning aspects of the investigation was how persistent the hackers were. Even after their code was purged from the network, APT managed to find its way back in.
Also incredible: How the security breaches went unnoticed, sometimes for years.
For security staff at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the Ericsson situation was just one dark cloud in a gathering storm, according to internal documents and 10 people with knowledge of the matter.
For years, the company’s predecessor, technology giant Hewlett Packard, didn’t even know it had been hacked. It first found malicious code stored on a company server in 2012. The company called in outside experts, who found infections dating to at least January 2010.
Hewlett Packard security staff fought back, tracking the intruders, shoring up defenses and executing a carefully planned expulsion to simultaneously knock out all of the hackers’ known footholds.
But the attackers returned, beginning a cycle that continued for at least five years.
Throughout the investigation, the Chinese hackers showed their American peers how woefully ill-equipped they were. Not only did the hackers stay one step ahead of the investigators tracking them, but they littered their code with expletives and taunts.
The intruders stayed a step ahead. They would grab reams of data before planned eviction efforts by HP engineers. Repeatedly, they took whole directories of credentials, a brazen act netting them the ability to impersonate hundreds of employees.
The hackers knew exactly where to retrieve the most sensitive data and littered their code with expletives and taunts. One hacking tool contained the message “FUCK ANY AV” – referencing their victims’ reliance on anti-virus software. The name of a malicious domain used in the wider campaign appeared to mock U.S. intelligence: “nsa.mefound.com.”
Ultimately, it’s impossible to say how many of HP’s customers were impacted by “Cloud Hopper”. Though investigators were able to envision at least one “nightmare scenario” involving an HP client: Sabre Corp., a travel-reservation company and HP client, might become vulnerable to Chinese infiltration. If APT and the MSS could gain access to Sabre’s systems, they could easily track the travel patterns of American corporate executives and other VIPs, exposing them to in-person surveillance and bugging.
The HPE operation had hundreds of customers. Armed with stolen corporate credentials, the attackers could do almost anything the service providers could. Many of the compromised machines served multiple HPE customers, documents show.
One nightmare situation involved client Sabre Corp, which provides reservation systems for tens of thousands of hotels around the world. It also has a comprehensive system for booking air travel, working with hundreds of airlines and 1,500 airports.
A thorough penetration at Sabre could have exposed a goldmine of information, investigators said, if China was able to track where corporate executives or U.S. government officials were traveling. That would open the door to in-person approaches, physical surveillance or attempts at installing digital tracking tools on their devices.
In 2015, investigators found that at least four HP machines dedicated to Sabre were tunneling large amounts of data to an external server. The Sabre breach was long-running and intractable, said two former HPE employees.
Via the breach at HP, APT and the MSS also gained entree to the American defense industry by accessing the server of Huntington Ingalls, a company that builds nuclear powered submarines.
In early 2017, HPE analysts saw evidence that Huntington Ingalls Industries, a significant client and the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, had been penetrated by the Chinese hackers, two sources said.
Computer systems owned by a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls were connecting to a foreign server controlled by APT10.
In Sweden, Huawei rival Ericcson was a persistent target of MSS, though the company often couldn’t tell what, exactly, the hackers were after.
Like many Cloud Hopper victims, Ericsson could not always tell what data was being targeted. Sometimes, the attackers appeared to seek out project management information, such as schedules and timeframes. Another time they went after product manuals, some of which were already publicly available.
In what has become a pattern for reports about China’s cyberespionage, the Reuters expose was published as President Trump prepares to depart for Osaka for the G-20 summit, where he’s scheduled to meet with President Xi. Under Trump, the DoJ has stepped up its efforts to punish China and individuals spies for their cyberespionage activity. Whether Trump stands his ground on cyberespionage is only one factor here. Even if Beijing grants assurances that it will stop, how can the US be sure that it’s not simply lip service like that paid to the Obama administration?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JmpSTF Tyler Durden
As if censorship isn’t enough, leftists have decided to ramp up their demands that those who have a different political view be financially blacklisted. A coalition of far-left political activist organizations known for peddling smears about conservatives held a protest at Mastercard’s annual general meeting (AGM) today, demanding that the international credit card giant financially blacklist wider sections of the political right.
Fortunately, Mastercard didn’t cave to the tyrannical demands of the George Soros-backed groups. According to Breitbart, at Mastercard’s AGM, the far-left groups SumOfUs and Sleeping Giants circled the venue with a mobile billboard stating: “Putting hate groups out of business? #Priceless.”
The groups’ proposal to form a “human rights committee” did not sway shareholders, who voted the measure down. According to a press release published by the two organizations, this was coupled with a speech from Sleeping Giants co-founder Nandini Jammi, “addressing the need for Mastercard to take swift action by cutting off its services to these hate groups.”
Socialists just can’t stand it when people have access to their own money and can spend it how they want. It’s control these sociopaths seek.
SumOfUs is purportedly a “human rights” activist group that now campaigns to make speech with which it politically disagrees unprofitable. Its website lists a number of powerful left-wing foundations among its partners, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation, the Media Democracy Fund, and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation.
Earlier this year, SumOfUs presented a proposal to Mastercard’s shareholders, calling on the company to establish a “human rights committee” that would monitor payments to the “far right.” The protest aimed to pressure Mastercard to accept the proposal. Shareholders voted down the proposal this morning, despite the protest. –Breitbart
Sleeping Giants was formed with the sole purpose of smearing those who have differing political views. The group’s founders initially refused to take accountability for the organization’s words and actions by remaining anonymous. Sleeping Giants was set up in 2016 by far-left political activists with the sole stated purpose of defunding Breitbart by spreading lies about it. The identity of its other founder, a former advertising professional Matt Rivitz, was revealed last year. Sleeping Giants coupled these smears with targeted social media harassment campaigns against corporations whose ads appeared on Breitbart News.
Although Mastercard’s board says it is committed to the principle of allowing “all lawful purchases,” online payments platform Patreon says that Mastercard asked it to withdraw service from Islam critic Robert Spencer, founder of JihadWatch.org, in August 2018. Mastercard also pressured a payment processor to cut off service to conservative activist, think tank founder and author David Horowitz last year, but later the processor reinstated service following pressure from Breitbart News and other conservative media. –Breitbart
There have been some liberal groups coming to the defense of conservatives and sounding the alarm on the blatant censorship and financial blacklisting being demanded by authoritarian control freaks on the far left. In July of last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned that banks, credit card companies and payment processors are becoming “de facto internet censors.”
The only way to prevent censorship and financial blacklisting is to stand against it, and speak out. Free speech can’t be killed with a law as it’s simply a piece of a human being’s free will. But a move toward a cashless society would put the entire financial system into the hands of a few elitists, allowing them to “cut off” those who they feel are socially or politically unacceptable.
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The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China published new data Monday that shows agricultural imports from the US have fallen, as Chinese buyers shift supply chains out of the US to other countries because of the deepening trade war.
In the first five months of 2019, imports of agricultural products from the US crashed 55.3% YoY. Much of decline was due to a 70.6% YoY decline of soybeans in the same period.
Chinese importers went to Brazil, Argentina, and ASEN countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, and Laos). Data showed imports from the EU, Australia, and Canada also jumped in the first five months as Chinese buyers ditched American products.
A report last week by yicai.com showed cotton imports from the US reached 60% of forecasts because of the tariffs, along with declining spot prices.
With cotton trade between the US and China on the decline, this could spell near term trouble for American producers because 17% of their total cotton exports route to China.
Ma Wenfeng, an agriculture analyst, told the Global Times on Monday, that China has quickly diversified its import sources away from the US to ensure domestic supply continues. “Overall, China mostly relies on domestic cotton for its textile industry,” Wenfeng said, adding that China has undertaken reform to reduce its dependence on American products.
Global Times referenced a report from ncpqh.com that showed total imports of American cotton stood at 505,400 tons, accounting for 4.1% of total cotton supply in China in 2017.
“In comparison, imports of cotton from other countries, including Brazil and India, have been steadily on the rise,” Wenfeng noted.
As Chinese imports of American agricultural products comes to a screeching halt, farm sentiment across the Midwestern US plunges to crisis levels.
“We cannot withstand another year in which our most important foreign market continues to slip away and soybean prices are 20 to 25%, or even more, below pre-tariff levels,” said John Heisdorffer, chairman of the American Soybean Association, in a statement published on May 13.
Jiao Shanwei, editor-in-chief of cngrain.com, a grain industry news website, said an escalating trade war would result in the US agriculture sector losing an even larger market share of China.
For instance, “the biggest sources of soybeans are mainly in South America, such as Brazil. Imports from the US make up only one-third of total imports,” Shanwei told the Global Times on Monday.
While China sources agricultural products from other countries, the US agriculture sector will likely become the biggest loser of the trade war this year, expected to entire a crisis in the coming quarters.
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Iran’s downing of a US military surveillance drone last week predictably led to another flare-up in tense relations between Tehran and Washington. What could be the implications of a potential conflict between the two nations?
Right after the Global Hawk UAV was shot down, the New York Times reported that US President Donald Trump approved military strikes against Iran, but then changed his mind.
Let’s start by saying that the decision to launch a military operation against Iran (which is what this is really about), including the specific time and place, would have to be taken by a very small group of top US political and military officials. At such meetings, no leaks could possibly occur by definition.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the details. The difference between a ‘strike’ and an ‘operation’ is quite significant, at the very least in terms of duration, and forces and equipment involved. It would be nice to know if the NYT actually meant a single airstrike or an entire air operation.
Amusingly enough, the publication reported that the strikes were scheduled for early morning to minimize the potential death toll among the Iranian military and civilians. It’s worth pointing out that the US has never cared about the number of victims either among the military personnel or the civilian population of its adversaries.
Moreover, the purpose of any military conflict is to do as much damage to your enemy as possible in terms of personnel, military hardware and other equipment. This is how the goals of any armed conflict are achieved. Of course, it would be best if civilian losses are kept to a minimum, but for the US it’s more of a secondary rather than a primary objective.
The US Navy and Air Force traditionally strike before dawn with one purpose alone – to avoid the antiaircraft artillery (both small and medium-caliber), as well as a number of air defense systems with optical tracking, firing at them. Besides, a strike in the dark hours of the day affects the morale of the enemy personnel.
Here we need to understand that Iran would instantly retaliate, and Tehran has no small capabilities for that. In other words, it would be a full-scale war. For the US, it wouldn’t end with one surgical airstrike without consequences, like in Syria. And the US seems to have a very vague idea on what a military victory over Iran would look like.
There is no doubt that a prolonged air campaign by the US will greatly undermine Iran’s military and economic potential and reduce the country to the likes of Afghanistan, completely destroying its hydrocarbon production and exports industries.
To say how long such a campaign could last would be too much of a wild guess, but we have the examples of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 when airstrikes lasted for 38 days, and Yugoslavia in 1991 when the bombing continued for 78 days. So, theoretically, the US could bomb Iran for, say, 100 days, wrecking the country’s economy and infrastructure step by step.
However, the price the US would have to pay for starting such a military conflict may turn out to be too high.
For instance, Iran can respond to US aggression by launching intermediate and shorter-range ballistic missiles to target oil and gas fields and terminals in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Should such a war really happen, the stakes would be very high, so there is every reason to assume that Iran’s missiles would not only be equipped with conventional high explosive fragmentation warheads, but would also carry toxic agents and dirty bombs.
Firstly, it should be pointed out that even though the capabilities of US intelligence agencies are almost limitless, quite a few Iranian missile launching sites remain undiscovered. Secondly, US air defense systems in the Persian Gulf, no matter how effective, would not shoot down every last Iranian missile. And even a handful of Tehran’s missiles reaching critical infrastructure in the Persian Gulf region would be enough to cause devastation.
On top of that, there are more questions than answers regarding the reliability of the antimissile and air defense systems that the Persian Gulf monarchies deployed to defend their hydrocarbon terminals and other oil and gas infrastructure.
If such a scenario came true, that would bring inconceivable chaos to the global economy and would immediately drive up oil prices to $200-250 per barrel – and that’s the lowest estimate. It is these implications that are most likely keeping the US from attacking Iran.
To solve the problem of Iran once and for all, the US would need to mount a large-scale ground operation, with the US Army invading the country. America would have to wipe out both regular Iranian forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, unseat the current leadership of Iran, and have a military presence in every major city for the next 10 to 15 years, keeping tight control over the entire country at the same time.
For the record, the US failed to do that even in Afghanistan, which is several times smaller than Iran in terms of both territory and population. And almost 18 years of fighting later, the US has achieved next to nothing.
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On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is scheduled to hear oral argument in the appeal of Texas v. U.S., the ambitious lawsuit seeking to use Congress’s decision to zero-out the individual mandate penalty as a basis for invalidating the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA). As regular readers know, I’m not much a fan of this suit, and think the district court’s decision should eventually be overturned. (Additional prior posts on this litigation and other ACA issues may be found here.)
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order adding an interesting wrinkle to the case. Specifically, the Fifth Circuit asked the parties to address reasons why the court might not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal of the district court’s ruling that the entire Affordable Care Act is unlawful.
Here, in relevant part, is the text of the order:
Dear Counsel:
Please file simultaneous supplemental letter briefs (limited to 15 pages) within seven days addressing:
(1) Whether or not the state intervenors and the U.S. House of Representatives have standing to intervene in this appeal, see, e.g., Va. House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, No. 18-281 (U.S. June 17, 2019), and whether the interventions were timely as to all issues, including whether the U.S. House of Representatives’ intervention was timely as to both orders of the district court;
(2) Whether or not, if none of the intervenors have standing, there is a live case or controversy between the plaintiffs and the federal defendants given their positions on appeal, see United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013); and
(3) What the appropriate conclusion is if the federal defendants’ change in position has mooted the controversy and no other defendant has standing to appeal. See, e.g. U.S. Bancorp Mort. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18 (1994); United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950).
The attorneys should also be prepared to address these questions at oral argument.
Here are some preliminary thoughts about this order and what could happen next. First and foremost, it’s totally normal for courts to be concerned about whether they have jurisdiction to hear a case. (Indeed, courts may be more inclined to focus on such questions when the stakes of the underlying case are high.) This case has an unusual history, so it’s understandable that it could raise interesting jurisdictional issues (such as the one Sam Bray flagged).
The reason for the Fifth Circuit’s inquiry is that the Justice Department is no longer defending the ACA. After mounting a partial defense of the law and then losing in the district court, the Department of Justice decided to change its position and is no longer challenging the district court decision. That means there is no Defendant-Appellant in the case. Instead, defense of the law (and the primary challenge to the district court’s decision) is coming from a group of states that sought to intervene and, as of January, the U.S. House of Representatives. If neither has standing, there may be no basis for an appeal.
There are plenty of reasons to question the House of Representatives’ standing, not the least of which are their late entry into the litigation and the Supreme Court’s recent Bethune-Hill decision mentioned in the order — but one would think the Intervenor states’ standing is solid. After all, states that support the ACA have much more to lose from invalidation of the entire ACA than Texas had to lose from Congress’s decision to zero out the mandate penalty. However weak one thinks the standing claim of intervenor states might be, that of the plaintiff states was weaker—at least as an initial matter. One wrinkle here is that the district court decision only granted declaratory relief, raising the possibility that the intervening states will not have standing unless and until the district court grants the plaintiff states a remedy.
All that said, what happens if the Fifth Circuit decides neither the House nor the Intervenor States have standing? In that case, there would be a strong argument that there is no longer a case or controversy—i.e. that the case has become moot—and therefore the court would lack jurisdiction over the appeal. Were the Fifth Circuit to reach this conclusion, it would then have another decision to make.
If the Fifth Circuit concludes it lacks jurisdiction to hear the appeal, it would basically have two choices: 1) Leave the district court decision in place, or 2) Vacate the district court decision. Under the Munsingwear doctrine, the standard practice is to vacate the judgment, so as not to leave in place a decision that was rendered moot before the losing party had sufficient opportunity to appeal. Under later cases, however (such as Bancorp, cited in the Fifth Circuit order), this general rule does not apply when mootness is the result of the voluntary actions of the parties. The primary reason for this is that courts are reluctant to let parties seek to vacate an adverse lower court judgment by seeking to moot the case.
How does Munsingwear apply here? That’s a good question. On the one hand, the mootness would be the result of the Justice Department’s voluntary decision to embrace the district court’s decision. On the other hand, one could argue that the Justice Department’s decision not to defend the ACA—and post-decision change of policy—is precisely the sort of strategic behavior that the Munsingwear doctrine and its exceptions are designed to prevent.
One last point. Should the Fifth Circuit decide the case is moot and that it should leave the district court decision in place, it would not be the end of the matter. The district court only provided declaratory relief to the plaintiff states, so the question of whether they are entitled to any form of injunctive relief, such as an order barring enforcement or implementation of the ACA, has yet to be decided. Presumably, if the intervenors lack standing to challenge the existing order, one would expect that intervenor states would have little difficulty establishing standing to challenge an order enjoining operation of the ACA.
At least, this is how I see the issues at the moment (though if there are appellate procedure mavens who think I’m missing something I would like to hear it).
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Chatom Ford, a car dealership in Chatom, Alabama, has gone viral on Facebook for offering customers “a Bible, 12 gauge, and flag” with any purchase between now and July 31.
The dealership published a Facebook video last Wednseday that had Koby Palmer, a general sales manager, talking about the promotion in a 30-second video. As of Wednesday morning, the video has more than 19k views.
“I guess it went viral, as the kids say,” Palmer, 29, told USA TODAY.
He added, “We live in a small town of 1,200 people. It’s a very small, rural area. They lean on their religious beliefs, their pride in America and they love to hunt.”
When a customer purchases a vehicle from Chatom, they will get the Bible and the flag. However, the dealership isn’t directly handing out shotgun; they provide customers over the age of 18 a certificate that can be taken to a certified local firearms dealer that is redeemable for the 12 guage.
Palmer said the dealership had sold five cars since the promotion launched last Friday.
“It’s been running for three business days, and we sold five cars. In a small town, business is booming,” Palmer said
He said the promotion had exceeded his wildest expectations because of how viral it went on social media.
Palmer added that not every customer had to leave Chatom Ford with a flag, a Bible, and a gun after purchasing a car.
“This is just showing support for our local community,” he said. “Anyone that doesn’t 100% agree with what we’re portraying, we’re not trying to force our beliefs on anybody. We respect anybody that disagrees, no matter how vehemently they do.
Who would have ever of thought that it only took a Bible, 12 gauge, and flag to entice a customer in rural America to buy a truck that they don’t need nor can afford as the overall economy starts cycling down.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YchV9A Tyler Durden
On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is scheduled to hear oral argument in the appeal of Texas v. U.S., the ambitious lawsuit seeking to use Congress’s decision to zero-out the individual mandate penalty as a basis for invalidating the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA). As regular readers know, I’m not much a fan of this suit, and think the district court’s decision should eventually be overturned. (Additional prior posts on this litigation and other ACA issues may be found here.)
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order adding an interesting wrinkle to the case. Specifically, the Fifth Circuit asked the parties to address reasons why the court might not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal of the district court’s ruling that the entire Affordable Care Act is unlawful.
Here, in relevant part, is the text of the order:
Dear Counsel:
Please file simultaneous supplemental letter briefs (limited to 15 pages) within seven days addressing:
(1) Whether or not the state intervenors and the U.S. House of Representatives have standing to intervene in this appeal, see, e.g., Va. House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, No. 18-281 (U.S. June 17, 2019), and whether the interventions were timely as to all issues, including whether the U.S. House of Representatives’ intervention was timely as to both orders of the district court;
(2) Whether or not, if none of the intervenors have standing, there is a live case or controversy between the plaintiffs and the federal defendants given their positions on appeal, see United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013); and
(3) What the appropriate conclusion is if the federal defendants’ change in position has mooted the controversy and no other defendant has standing to appeal. See, e.g. U.S. Bancorp Mort. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18 (1994); United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950).
The attorneys should also be prepared to address these questions at oral argument.
Here are some preliminary thoughts about this order and what could happen next. First and foremost, it’s totally normal for courts to be concerned about whether they have jurisdiction to hear a case. (Indeed, courts may be more inclined to focus on such questions when the stakes of the underlying case are high.) This case has an unusual history, so it’s understandable that it could raise interesting jurisdictional issues (such as the one Sam Bray flagged).
The reason for the Fifth Circuit’s inquiry is that the Justice Department is no longer defending the ACA. After mounting a partial defense of the law and then losing in the district court, the Department of Justice decided to change its position and is no longer challenging the district court decision. That means there is no Defendant-Appellant in the case. Instead, defense of the law (and the primary challenge to the district court’s decision) is coming from a group of states that sought to intervene and, as of January, the U.S. House of Representatives. If neither has standing, there may be no basis for an appeal.
There are plenty of reasons to question the House of Representatives’ standing, not the least of which are their late entry into the litigation and the Supreme Court’s recent Bethune-Hill decision mentioned in the order — but one would think the Intervenor states’ standing is solid. After all, states that support the ACA have much more to lose from invalidation of the entire ACA than Texas had to lose from Congress’s decision to zero out the mandate penalty. However weak one thinks the standing claim of intervenor states might be, that of the plaintiff states was weaker—at least as an initial matter. One wrinkle here is that the district court decision only granted declaratory relief, raising the possibility that the intervening states will not have standing unless and until the district court grants the plaintiff states a remedy.
All that said, what happens if the Fifth Circuit decides neither the House nor the Intervenor States have standing? In that case, there would be a strong argument that there is no longer a case or controversy—i.e. that the case has become moot—and therefore the court would lack jurisdiction over the appeal. Were the Fifth Circuit to reach this conclusion, it would then have another decision to make.
If the Fifth Circuit concludes it lacks jurisdiction to hear the appeal, it would basically have two choices: 1) Leave the district court decision in place, or 2) Vacate the district court decision. Under the Munsingwear doctrine, the standard practice is to vacate the judgment, so as not to leave in place a decision that was rendered moot before the losing party had sufficient opportunity to appeal. Under later cases, however (such as Bancorp, cited in the Fifth Circuit order), this general rule does not apply when mootness is the result of the voluntary actions of the parties. The primary reason for this is that courts are reluctant to let parties seek to vacate an adverse lower court judgment by seeking to moot the case.
How does Munsingwear apply here? That’s a good question. On the one hand, the mootness would be the result of the Justice Department’s voluntary decision to embrace the district court’s decision. On the other hand, one could argue that the Justice Department’s decision not to defend the ACA—and post-decision change of policy—is precisely the sort of strategic behavior that the Munsingwear doctrine and its exceptions are designed to prevent.
One last point. Should the Fifth Circuit decide the case is moot and that it should leave the district court decision in place, it would not be the end of the matter. The district court only provided declaratory relief to the plaintiff states, so the question of whether they are entitled to any form of injunctive relief, such as an order barring enforcement or implementation of the ACA, has yet to be decided. Presumably, if the intervenors lack standing to challenge the existing order, one would expect that intervenor states would have little difficulty establishing standing to challenge an order enjoining operation of the ACA.
At least, this is how I see the issues at the moment (though if there are appellate procedure mavens who think I’m missing something I would like to hear it).
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What can we learn from the three big collapses in the gold price since 1934?
The causes have always included some combination of economic miracle, respite from grave fiat money disorder most of all in the US hegemon, anti-gold regulations, and global detente.
Prudent analysts should never ignore these potential factors, even when the gold price seems to have embarked on a new journey to the summits as has most likely been the case since winter 2015 and 2016.
The gold price had sunk at that time to almost $1,000 per ounce from its multiple peaks in 2011–12 ($1,900 in summer 2011). That collapse reflected primarily the non-emergence of high inflation in the US despite the vast “money printing” and long-term rate manipulation under the first Obama administration.
Scared investors who had feared runaway inflation had not reckoned with the strong downward influence on prices (of goods and services) from globalization and digitalization. Nor had they fully digested the extent to which monetary radicalism had held back business spending in the US and other advanced economies given widespread concerns that another bubble-bust cycle was under way.
Fanning the gold price collapse of 2013–15 was continuous chatter from the Fed about normalization ahead. The oil and wider commodity market slump from late 2014 slotted into the growing narrative of no imminent goods and inflation danger.
Normalization never came. The Yellen Fed aborted all rate rises planned for 2016 in response to the growth cycle downturn and passing global asset market setback. The ECB and BoJ embarked on monetary radicalism even starker than in the US. Briefly in 2018, excitement in the media that Fed Chief Powell, convinced big business tax cuts meant boom ahead, was at last bringing monetary “accommodation” to an end, triggered a faltering of the incipient gold price recovery. Events this year have re-fuelled gold’s rising trend from its end-2015 trough.
Meanwhile news of continued “low inflation” does not impress many gold holders who worry about colossal budget deficits in the US and likely waning downward influences on prices from globalization and digitalization. Vast accumulated mal-investment and the weakness of the invisible hand in the context of unsound money — and strengthened monopoly capitalism — does not encourage optimism for economic miracles. This optimism was a key element in the epic gold price collapse from January 1980 to end 2002.
In terms of 2018 dollars, the gold price fell from $2,010 to $480 over those twenty-two years.
In fact, there were two sub-collapses.
The first was the plunge to $750 (2018 dollars) in 1984.This reflected Paul Volcker’s monetarist assault on “the greatest peacetime inflation” coupled with an extraordinarily high level of real US interest rates. The height was in line with widespread speculation on the miracle of “Reaganomics.” The devaluation of the dollar at Plaza (autumn 1985) and beyond accompanied by the Volcker/Greenspan monetary inflation of 1985–88 as directed by top White House official James Baker led to a brief spring for gold.
Then the disintegration of the Soviet Empire followed by the emergence of US economic miracle (the IT boom of 1995–99) helped bring a second collapse,with 10-year real interest rates (as quoted in the 10-year US TIPS market) rising above 4 percent.
Aggressive monetary ease from 2003–04 (the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed breathing in inflation because it had fallen “too low”) as an accompaniment to the Bush administration’s dollar devaluation policy ahead of the November 2004 election set gold on its second journey to the summits (from 2003 to 2011–12). The first such journey had been from 1968 when the US ceased intervening in the free market to hold down the price of gold at $35 per ounce.
The free market was then (mid-1960s) just returning to life, having long been choked by regulation — starting with Roosevelt’s criminalization of private gold holdings within the US (1934) and then widespread exchange controls throughout the globe. The dismantling of these accelerated from the late 1960s (US gold ban lifted in December 1974, European and Japanese exchange controls abolished through 1970s).
These restrictions had doubtless played a role in the long collapse of the gold price from 1934 to 1968 (during which time the gold price in 2018 US purchasing power had fallen from $650 to $250 per ounce). Economic miracles also played an important role.
The mid-1950s to the mid-1960s were years of great economic miracles, not just the famed ones in Japan and Germany, but also in the US. Accordingly, rates of return to capital were extraordinarily high, dampening the appeal of gold. Even real interest rates were substantially positive, albeit held well below the level which would have been in line with the miracles.
Central bankers led by the Martin Fed sought to hold nominal rates down employing Depression Era-regulations on credit and deposit interest rates for that purpose. Rapid productivity growth camouflaged underlying conditions of monetary inflation from showing up in goods and services markets.
The widely told story about how the gold link of the dollar under Bretton Woods acted as bulwark against monetary inflation is myth. As soon as private gold markets came back to life, the anchor role snapped (March 1968). The remaining three years during which the official gold window remained open prolonged the opportunity for European governments to obtain the yellow metal from the US Treasury at the bargain prices still available.
In looking at the gold price beyond the next summit we should be concerned about restrictions which could imperil the free market in gold.
The lone serious non-fiat money is still in fragile condition due to government restraints. There is virtually no scope for banks or other financial institutions to develop “bullion banking” in which gold deposits could be used as a medium of payment (where clearing between the institutions would take place at a central gold “depot”) whether nationally or internationally. Regulators defend their veto here in terms of the wider war against cash — highlighting concerns that gold hoards include a criminal element whose money-laundering operations could flourish in bullion banks.
The Bundesbanker’s advice that outlawing large denomination notes due to their use by criminals is akin to banning Mercedes-Benz autos because the mafia like driving them does not go down well with the regulators. The gold bulls might be right that gold is safe against new regulation so long as the Republicans hold the White House.
The likelihood is not trivial, however, that Washington will eventually join in imposing new regulations on gold trading and international shipments, perhaps in time for the next price collapse, albeit from a new record high summit.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NePVBe Tyler Durden
India has begun offering financial incentives to entice businesses that could move from China as a result of its trade war with the United States, RT reports. Preferential tax rates and tax holidays appear to be two of the financial incentives that are being considered in India. According to an Indian Trade Ministry document, the industries it is seeking out include electronics, consumer appliances, electric vehicles, footwear and toys.
It is all part of a larger plan by the Indian Trade Ministry to cut the country’s reliance on imports, while at the same time boosting exports. The goal is to grow India’s manufacturing base and facilitate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship ‘Make in India’ initiative, especially after the country’s top economic advisor admitted that a change in the method used to calculate India’s GDP led to “a significant overestimation of growth,” and estimating that India’s economy grew at an average of 4.5% a year between March 2011 and March 2017 — far weaker than the 7% average rate reported by the government over that period.
The goal of the program is to boost the country’s manufacturing to 25% of the economy by 2020.
Due to their geographical adjacency, China is India’s largest commercial partner, although that could soon transform to competitor. The plan could help India narrow its massive trade deficit with the world’s second largest economy.
Investments by Chinese companies could be diversified across various sectors of the Indian market, including smartphones and components manufacturing, consumer appliances and day-to-day use items, 95% of which are already imported from China.
There have also already been 150 items identified by the Indian government where exporters could increase business with China. They include “prepared or preserved potatoes, synthetic staple fibers of polyesters and t-shirts, hydraulic power engines, and superchargers for motors.”
A plan similar to India’s – to attract foreign countries by providing financial incentives – has already been successfully implemented by countries like Vietnam and Malaysia.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xfpyAd Tyler Durden
