Creating more eerie parallels to the safety crisis that has prompted the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX 8, Japanese officials have confirmed that debris from a missing F-35A fighter jet, the newest generation of the signature jet manufactured by American defense contractor Lockheed Martin, has been found in the Pacific Ocean not far from where it disappeared from Japanese radar on Tuesday.
The pilot remains missing, and the circumstances of the crash remain a mystery. But as a precaution, Japan has grounded 12 other F-35s at its Misawa base.
Japan only deployed its new fleet of F-35s late last year. It bought the jets as tensions flared with North Korea (which had launched several rockets over Japanese territory), according to the AP and Reuters.
This is only the second crash involving an F-35 in its decades-long history; however, the first occurred in September near the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, prompting the US air force to ground its entire fleet.
Orders for dozens of planes are now at stake for Lockheed, as the Japanese government has agreed to buy another 147 jets, including 105 F-35As. Each plane costs about $126 million. Regional neighbor Australia has also ordered 72 of the jets.
Lockheed Martin said it’s monitoring the situation and is ready to help in any way that it can.
There’s no denying that the loss of this jet is a tragedy. But we imagine that Boeing executives are hopeful that Lockheed might take their company’s place in the hot seat, if only for a little while.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Z1ofld Tyler Durden
Boeing shareholders who lost money selling their stock after the Ethiopian Airlines crash are suing the company for concealing unflattering material information from the public, defrauding shareholders in the process, Reuters reports.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in Chicago, is seeking damages after the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 wiped $34 billion off Boeing’s market cap within two weeks. But if true, the crux of the lawsuit might have broader repercussions for the company as it tries to convince regulators to lift a grounding order that has kept the Boeing 737 MAX 8 grounded since mid-March.
In essence, the suit alleges that the company concealed safety concerns about the 737 MAX and its anti-stall software following the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189 people, but did nothing to alert the public or correct the issue.
Boeing “effectively put profitability and growth ahead of airplane safety and honesty” by rushing the 737 MAX to market without “extra” or “optional” safety features – a practice that has outraged the company’s critics – as it feared ceding market share to Airbus SE. Moreover, Boeing failed to disclose a conflict of interest surrounding its ‘regulatory capture’ of the FAA, which was revealed to have outsourced much of the approval process for the 737 MAX to Boeing itself.
Lead plaintiff Richard Seeks bought 300 Boeing shares in early March and sold them at a loss after the shares dumped more than 12% in the weeks after the second crash, which would have left him with a loss between $15,000 and $20,000. The lawsuit seeks damages for Boeing investors who bought the company’s shares from Jan. 8 to March 21. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and CFO Gregory Smith have also been named as defendants.
Of course, this shareholder lawsuit is only the tip of the legal iceberg for Boeing. The company will likely face a blizzard of lawsuits filed by family members of those killed during the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the first of which has already been filed.
Though its shares have recovered from their post-grounding lows, they have hit another bout of turbulence this week after the company announced that it would slash production of the 737 MAX by 20%, before announcing that its aircraft orders in Q1 fell to 95 from 180 a year earlier.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UMxq9M Tyler Durden
Liquidity injections and zero interest rate policies disguise risk and may give a false sense of security…
This risk could not be more evident today. Not only have we seen large downgrades to consensus growth estimates and central banks’ expectations of GDP and inflation, leading indicators also point to a much weaker economy ahead.
There are similarities with 2008 that we should not ignore.
A massive China stimulus inflates risky assets and commodities.
Poor macro and earnings data is ignored by markets assuming that all will improve in the second half of the year.
Yield curves invert. 15 economies now have 30-year yields lower than LIBOR overnight rates.
The figure of negative yield debt rises to $11 trillion.
Financial repression is at all-time highs while leading indicators point to a growing risk of recession.
In the first quarter of 2019, stocks have added $9.3 trillion in market capitalization, bonds have gained almost $2 trillion in value. Meanwhile, the Conference Board Index of leading indicators has plummeted for the major economies. The Citi Economic Surprise Index has also fallen, particularly in March, despite a small bounce in the Eurozone at the beginning of the year. Global trade growth, machine equipment orders and manufacturing indices remain poor… while debt soars to another record-high of $244 trillion according to the Bank of International Settlements and the IIF.
The difference with the Asian or the 2008 crisis is that this time the excess risk is hidden under central banks’ balance sheets and will continue to do so.
So, if risk is hidden under a perennial money supply-growth carpet, why should we worry? Because the endgame is not likely to be a 2008-style bang, but a slow, painful and unstoppable zombification of the global economy. As the evidence of stagnation rises, governments get more nervous. What do they do? Stop the monetary madness? Allow high productivity sectors to thrive? Promote deleveraging and prudent investment? No. More white elephants, massive unproductive spending at the expense of taxpayers and savers in what is likely to be yet another massive transfer of wealth from salaries and savers to governments with fancy names.
Investors are forced into riskier assets for lower returns and the crowding out of productive sectors in favour of government and crony subsidised sectors accelerates, sending money velocity lower, productivity growth collapses and mainstream economists hail the financial repression madness with the excuse that “there is no inflation”, while citizens all over the world complain and demonstrate -rightly- against the rise in cost of living. Intensifying financial repression under the “there is no inflation” excuse is the most ludicrous mantra ever. It is like running a car at full speed down a highway under the premise that “we have not crashed yet”.
Many economists defend the zombification of economies under a false social premise. The argument is the following: What is bad about following the example of Japan? It has low unemployment, its debt is cheap and the economy survives rather well. It is a social contract and debt does not matter.
Everything is wrong with this argument. Japan’s low unemployment has nothing to do with monetary and fiscal policy and everything to do with demographics and lack of immigration. Japan’s low cost of debt is not a blessing. It is the result of using the savings of citizens to perpetuate an almost-Ponzi scheme that does not prevent the country from spending more than 20% of its budget on interest expenses. The idea that it is irrelevant because the Treasury buys more bonds tells us how insane we are defending such policies. It is a massive kick-the-can policy transferring the risk to the next generations. It is no wonder that Japanese citizens don´t spend or invest as much as their central planners would want them too. They are not stupid. They know that the government is going to confiscate wealth via monetary and fiscal means at some point. This endless debt machine makes the economy less dynamic, and stagnation is guaranteed. But the strength of the Yen and the low cost of Japanese debt are only supported by the high level of international reserves and strong financial flows of the country. Japàn keeps its imbalances because it is one of the few that has undertaken this concerted policy of zombification. This cannot be transferred to the rest of the world, because the result would not be Japanese-style stagnation but Argentina-style crisis chain.
The fact that Japan has survived two decades of stagnation with the wrong Keynesian policies should not be an excuse to do the same, but an opportunity to do the opposite.
The idea that Quantitative Easing has failed to spur growth and healthy recovery of the world economy is correct. The thought that the mistakes of quantitative easing are solved by outright currency printing and more government crowding out of the productive economy is simply ludicrous. You do not correct mistakes with a bigger mistake.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2X1ybsT Tyler Durden
Elon Musk is reportedly in talks with the Israeli government to build tunnels across (or is that below) the country, according to statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a campaign event this week. The Boring Company could help “much needed infrastructure development” in Israel, according to Bloomberg, although it was unclear who would have priority if a Tesla tunnel merges with one dug by Hezbollah.
The reason: Israel suffers from poor traffic infrastructure and has the worst traffic in the developed world.
Netanyahu said at a campaign event: “I met a man that they call Elon Musk — have you heard of him? A real genius. Right now we’re in conversation with him to see if we can tunnel the State of Israel.”
Musk and Netanyahu had breakfast at the Prime Minister’s residence, where Musk talked about his tunneling “technology”. Netanyahu is in the midst of a re-election battle that’ll culminate on April 9 against the Blue & White bloc, which has suggested tapping the country’s sovereign wealth fund to upgrade its infrastructure.
Israel’s public transportation system is notoriously inefficient and could cost the economy 25 billion shekels ($6.9 billion) a year by 2030 if changes aren’t made, the state comptroller found. And that’s without letting Musk have a crack at it.
Netanyahu apparently hasn’t been turned off by the fact that Musk’s tunneling idea was recently laughed out of Virginia by bureaucrats as being “a lot of show” and not “substantive”.
“I think there’s a lot of show going on here. I don’t mean to suggest that they don’t have a serious plan in mind, but I don’t consider the steps they’ve taken to date to be substantive,” Virginia bureaucrats recently said of Musk’s tunneling idea.
“There’s no revolution here. Let’s be honest here: he’s driving a car through a sewer pipe,” Ph.D. chemist and video blogger Phil Mason said in a late December he posted to YouTube, destroying Musk’s tunnel idea. We reported on his critique of the idea in a late December post here.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UMvfDg Tyler Durden
Bexar County, Texas, Precinct 2 constable deputies ordered a blood draw on a woman involved in a traffic accident without first obtaining a warrant and tried to have EMTs perform a cavity search of her. All this happened apparently because one deputy mistook the smell of the woman’s airbag deploying for marijuana. Deputies later showed up at a fire station trying to get statements from firefighters who responded to the crash about the presence of marijuana in her car, which the fire chief said appeared to be an effort to influence the how the firefighters would word their statements. The woman was not charged in connection with the crash.
The United States have become the leading world producer of hydrocarbons. As from now, they are using their dominant position exclusively to maximise their profits, and do not hesitate to eliminate their major rivals in oil production, plunging their citizens into misery. Although in the past, access to Middle East oil was a vital necessity for their economy (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr.), then a market over which they presided (Clinton), and then again a failing resource whose supply they wanted to control (Bush Jr., Obama), hydrocarbons have now become black gold (Trump).
Economy depends primarily on the source of energy to which it has access. This need has always been one of the main causes of war. At one time, it was necessary to put slaves to work in the fields then, in the 19th century, to seize coal with which to feed machinery, and today we rely on hydrocarbons (oil and gas).
To avoid looking at this logic too closely, men have always invented good reasons to justify what they are doing.
Thus, today we believe
that Iran is being sanctioned because of its military nuclear programme (which it closed down in 1988);
that the installations and assets of the PDVSA (Venezuelan Oil) have been seized in order to transfer them from the dictator Maduro to Juan Guaido’s team (although it is the former and not the latter who was constitutionally elected President of Venezuela);
or again that the United States maintains its military presence in Syria in order to support their Kurdish allies against the dictator el-Assad (while in fact the Kurds are mercenaries who do not represent their people, and el-Assad was democratically elected).
These narratives have no real basis in truth and are contradicted by the facts. We believe them because we think we can make a profit from them.
The world market
Hydrocarbons represent the major world market, more important than foodstuffs, weapons, medicine and drugs. At first, they were managed by private companies, before becoming, in the 1960’s, the private hunting ground of states. As the economy developed, new actors stepped in, and the market became increasingly unpredictable. Besides this, from the end of the USSR until the return of Russia, the market became highly speculative, undergoing variations of sales prices between 1 and 4.
Apart from this, the world noticed that many oil fields, after having been heavily exploited, were now drying up. At the end of the 1960’s, the Rockfeller family and the Club of Rome popularised the idea that hydrocarbons were fossil energies, and therefore limited. However, contrary to this belief, we do not actually know the origin of hydrocarbons. The hypothesis suggests that they are probably fossils, but perhaps not. Nonetheless, even if hydrocarbons are renewable, that would not prevent them from disappearing if they were over-exploited (the Hubbert peak theory). Above all, the Club of Rome studied the question with a Malthusian a priori – its mission was to demonstrate that it was necessary to reduce the world’s population because the Earth’s resources are limited. Its belief in the end of oil is no more than an argument to justify the desire of the Rockfellers to limit the demographic growth of the poor populations. Within the space of half a century, we believed on five separate occasions that oil was going to become scarce within the next few years. Yet there still exist reserves which have been proven sufficient to supply the needs of Humanity for at least another century.
The highly variable costs of exploitation (from 1 in Saudi Arabia to 15 in the USA), the improvement of technology, the considerable variations of prices and the ideological debate have several times demonstrated the improbability of a return on investments. However, taking into account the operational delays, any interruption of the investment in research, exploitation and transport provokes a rarefaction of the produce available in the next five years. As a result, the market is particularly chaotic.
The world energy policy
The creation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by Venezuelan Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, in 1960, progressively displaced the power to fix prices from the oil companies to the exporting states. This transfer was made apparent during the Egypto-Syrian war against Israël, in October 1973 (known in the West as the « Yom Kippur War »), and world oil crisis it provoked.
The United States, which were at that time the major world power, led different policies in the hydrocarbon sector.
President Jimmy Carter considered that his country needed this source of energy, and that access to Middle East oil was a question of « national security ». The Arabs and the Persians could not refuse to sell them its black gold or to exaggerate its cost.
President Ronald Reagan created CentCom, the US Command for this region (defined according to the knowledge of the oil fields available at that time). In order to apply the policies of his predecessor, he negotiated for permanent military bases and began installing troops.
President George Bush Sr. took the head of a quasi-universal coalition and crushed Iraq, which had imagined that it could find its own outlets, and had dared to try to recuperate the Kuwaiti wells of which the British had deprived it.
President Bill Clinton and his Vice-President Al Gore inherited a unipolar world, without the USSR. They drew up a map of the corridors that had to be opened across the world (pipelines, highways, railways and Internet zones) and the military operations it would be necessary to conduct in order to build them and ensure their security – for example the war against Yugoslavia in order to build the 8th corridor).
President George Bush Jr. and his Vice-President Dick Cheney, convinced that hydrocarbons were soon to become rare, launched a series of wars, no longer for the purpose of grabbing the black gold, but to control its production and market. Returning to the Malthusian theory of the imminent end of these energy sources, they decided to control who would have the right to buy it and therefore be able to keep their population alive.
President Barack Obama seized the opportunity of shale gas and oil in his own country and decided to favour its extraction. He was hoping that in this way he could save his country from the Malthusian curse.
President Donald Trump took power when his country had become the world’s leading producer. He decided to overturn US strategy.
Donald Trump’s policies
When President Trump nominated the representative from Kansas, Mike Pompeo, as Director of the CIA, we interpreted this unexpected nomination in terms of the President’s difficulty to find allies in the Republican Party which he had just over-run. We had forgotten that from 2006 to 2010, Pompeo had been the CEO of the hydrocarbon equipment supplier Sentry International. He knew how the oil market worked, and knew personally the world’s main actors. At the same time, President Trump nominated Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Tillerson had been the CEO of one of the major hydrocarbon companies, Exxon-Mobil. We should therefore have considered the possibility that energy policy would be at the centre of the actions of his administration.
It is obviously impossible today to estimate the extent of Pompeo’s actions as head of the secret service. However, we may entertain the thought that his older objectives may not be too far removed from those he defends today. And in fact, it so happens that he has just revealed them.
Every year, an advisory board created by the uncontested specialist of the hydrocarbon market, Daniel Yergin, organises an international meeting concerning the evolution of the situation. The 2019 Congress (CERAweek, 9 to 13 March, in Houston, Texas) was the largest international meeting in History on this subject. The CEOs of the main companies of 78 countries were present. Top of the bill was the speech by Mike Pompeo. The whole profession had been notified of the importance of his intervention, and this was the only moment at which the huge room was chock-full.
After having saluted his ex-colleagues, Mike Pompeo expressed his pride for the incredible performances of his country’s oil industry, which, in six years, had become the world’s major oil producer, thanks to new techniques for the extraction of shale. He announced that he had created a special bureau in the State Department tasked with managing energy resources. From now on, the directors of specialised US companies would have to talk to him. His mission was to help them to win markets overseas. In exchange, they must agree to help their own country to apply his energy policy.
This consisted both of producing as much as possible in the United States, and also drying up a part of the world offer in order to balance the market.This is the only way that the country would be able to sell shale oil and gas, since their extraction is particularly expensive.
According to the Pompeo doctrine, it is not a question of reducing world production to the level of demand per quotas of production, such as the OPEC+ has instituted for the last two years, but by closing the door on certain large-scale exporters – Iran, Venezuela and Syria (whose gigantic reserves were discovered only recently, and are not yet being exploited). The NOPEC project (No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act) should therefore soon emerge from the archives. This proposed law, of which numerous variants were introduced to Congress two decades ago, is aimed at eliminating the sovereign immunity that the OPEP countries invoke in order to form a cartel, despite US anti-trust laws. It would enable the pursuance before US tribunals of all the state-members of OPEC+, despite their having been nationalised, for having profited from their dominant position, and would therefore influence the rise in prices.
It so happens that, since the end of 2016, Russia has associated itself with OPEC in order to raise prices. It has thus agreed to diminish its production. This is all the more indispensable for Russia since its economy suffers from Western sanctions, and that the export of hydrocarbons – and also weapons – is one of its main sources of income. Consequently, in the current situation, the interests of Moscow and Washington do not hamper one another, but coincide to avoid flooding the market. This is why Russia does nothing to help Iran to export its oil, and still does not exploit the areas of Syria of which its nationalised companies have acquired the monopoly. It is also probable that it will not help Venezuela in this sector either. As a result, the transfer of the European headquarters of the PDVSA to Moscow has been postponed.
Russia, which saved Syria from NATO’s mercenary jihadists, has never agreed to go any further. Without reaction, it watches the slow collapse of this once prosperous nation. The situation has not yet degraded into famine, like in Yemen, but is inexorably approaching that condition.
However, the United States intend not only to stabilise the world offer, but also to determine its flow, which is the source of the pressure by Washington both on the European Union and its member-states to avoid terminating their pipeline Nord Stream 2. The point is to free the EU from is dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. In the event that these interventions should be crowned with success, Russia would turn this flow towards China, which would be unable to pay the same price.
Already, in order to respond to the needs of the European Union, the United States are building,as fast as possible, methane ports capable of handling shale gas. Meanwhile, Russia is accelerating the construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline, which would create another route to reach the Union.
Besides this,the US Treasury Department is blocking all means of transport for Iranian and Venezuelan oil, and also deliveries to destinations in Syria. The data to which it has access attest that the CIA had begun to observe this commerce in detail since the election of Donald Trump, including during the period of transition, which confirms the idea of the central position of energy in its policies. The attitude of the White House towards Syria is different, insofar as this country is currently unable to exploit its reserves, and Russia is allowing time to pass. The aim is to prevent reconstruction and therefore make life impossible for its people. The CIA is implementing an intense strategy of sabotage against any form of energy supply. The majority of the population, for example, has no more gas for heating their homes, nor for cooking purposes. Worse, a Turkish petrol tanker which was transporting Iranian product to Syria was sabotaged off the port of Latakia. The ship exploded, causing the deaths of its entire crew and a vast oil slick which the Western Press did not even mention.
Considering that Hezbollah participates in the Lebanese government while serving Iranian interests, the US administration extended its ban on the export of oil to Beirut Mike Pompeo is attempting to impose a new distribution of territorial waters which would re-route Lebanese oil tankers under Israëli sovereignty.
In identical fashion, Venezuela gives oil to Cuba in exchange for its military experts and its doctors. The State Department is trying to sanction any exchange between the two countries, particularly since Cuban military experts are considered to be responsible for the support given to President Maduro by the Venezuelan army.
Coming evolutions
For the moment, Donald Trump’s policies can only succeed by diminishing US demand. Until now, hydrocarbons were mainly used to fill automobile petrol tanks, which explains the development of projects for electric cars. Consuming petrol in order to supply electricity is much less expensive in the United States than using it directly in car motors. Above all, electricity can be supplied from various sources on US territory, inexpensively and at stable prices.
It is important to note that the development of electric vehicles has hardly any connection with the ideology according to which we must decrease the production of CO2 to bring down the temperature of the Earth. On one hand because the making of batteries can itself produce large quantities of CO2, but on the other, because electricity can be much more responsible for the production of CO2 than oil, when it is produced by coal, as is the case in Germany and China.
Moreover, the consumption of oil is evolving. On the world scale, it is no longer in priority destined for transport, but for the fabrication of plastics.
The United States will not allow the export of hydrocarbons from Iran, Venezuela and Syria until 2023 or 2024, the date at which their shale production will begin to decrease rapidly, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Once again, the entire geopolitical structure will be overturned.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2I9Vs8Q Tyler Durden
“The challenges for Chinese enterprises to succeed in managing BRI projects is not showering the dollars and yuans, but winning hearts and minds,” a China research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House told the South China Morning Post in a bombshell full report detailing how Beijing has entered an “unprecedented limbo” on a stalled expansion project on the famous and ancient Port of Piraeus in Greece. It illustrates an emerging trend in other Belt and Road Initiative countries: all the money in the world can’t overcome local and cultural realities, and if Beijing plans to ride roughshod over these in hunger of its broader ambitions, President Xi’s grand initiative is sure to die on the vine.
Cosco Shipping — the China state-owned Shanghai based shipping and logistics services conglomerate — has been operating Piraeus port for the past decade, but local authorities have now banned the company from pursuing a planned expansion of port facilities due to archaeological concerns, halting a €1.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) long term expansion deal with the Greek government which included construction of a sprawling mall next to a new cruise ship terminal, as well as a five-star hotel in port’s southern section. The broader makeover was a planned first step in creating a so-called Athens Riviera— but which now faces endless bureaucratic obstacles amid local fears China is playing an outsized role in Greece.
Last week the Greek Central Archaeological Council unanimously turned down major key aspects to the project, citing potential damage to local heritage and archaeological preservation projects, as well as environmental concerns and “aesthetic” reasons. Crucially, the council effectively declared half the town as an archaeological site, bringing to a halt Cosco’s further plans to construct a new cruise passenger station, a logistics center in nearby Keratsini, four new cruise berths at Pireaus, along with a new berth allocation system, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) report.
Ironically, the SCMP observes, “while Greece’s heritage was once an attraction for the Chinese leadership, it may now prove to be a stumbling block for their ambitions.” Though Cosco’s management of Pireaus predates Xi’s BRI plans (Cosco has a 51% stake in the port), China’s success in Greece could convince skeptics concerning Beijing’s role on the European continent.
But it now appears the skeptics are winning, given Cosco will now face much stricter regulations for any expansion due to the extension of the archaeological zone, even as Greece’s leaders lobby for more foreign investors aimed at recovery from a nearly nine-year economic and austerity crisis. It’s further believed that opposition elements within PM Tsipras’ own Syriza party are working against him to block major foreign companies from gaining too much of a stake in Greece.
Citing Cosco company insiders, the SCMP report lends credence to these fears in the following:
Insiders at the company, however, say they are now playing a greater role in Greece than initially expected.
The Chinese brand is seen as a representative of modernity, a provider of jobs in an economically struggling country, a redeveloper of cities – and a constant target for sceptics in the Greek parliament.
Cosco is responsible for the long-term sustainability of the port, given its outsize role in the Piraeus Port Authority, which it took over from the Greek government in 2016 following Tsipras’s privatisation deal.
But now, after last week’s Central Archaeological Council decision, which made Cosco executives “furious” according to some reports, obstacles and red tape are mounting given that “Even projects that had already been approved had to be referred to the Ministry of Culture, the Central Archaeological Council and the Central Council of Modern Monuments for reauthorization,” according to the SCMP.
Moreover, the whole episode underscores Beijing’s overly optimistic approach to BRI-related expansion generally, given the tendency to operate on the assumption that a population’s deep cultural roots combined with local politics can ultimately be overcome with the lure of multi-billion dollar investment.
On the intricacies of the internal long running Greek fight over privatization and the sale of state assets to speed economic recovery, the SCMP reports further:
Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Greece’s Deputy Prime Minister Yanis Dragasakis rejected Greek media reports that the Tsipras administration was employing delaying tactics because it was falling in the polls ahead of elections this year.
“I don’t know there’s a delay here. This is not related to the election. It is related to the complexity of the decision to be made,” Dragasakis said.
“This area is full of antiquities, [a] fact that requires all procedures to be followed properly. In any event, the investment for the port of Piraeus is a very, very important investment.”
The Greek government, he added, “will do our utmost to facilitate [Cosco’s] presence in Greece.”
Sources say the stymied expansion plan will result in at least an eight month delay for implementation of already approved investments, on top of the ongoing two-and-a-half years of delays since the Piraeus Port Authority’s privatization under Cosco.
Initially, Cosco faced very few permits, according to Greece’s Ekathimerini newspaper, and was on its way to surpass Valencia in Spain for becoming the Mediterranean’s busiest container terminal.
Cosco considers the expansion projects and interventions as necessary for Piraeus’ continued operation at such levels, as well as a crucial future link in the so-called new Silk Road linking Europe and Eurasia.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2YYFaEW Tyler Durden
Real revolutions are taking place not on squares, but in the quiet of offices, and that’s why nobody noticed the world revolution that took place on March 29th 2019. Only a small wave passed across the periphery of the information field, and the momentum faded away because the situation was described in terms unclear to the masses.
No “Freedom, equality, brotherhood”, “Motherland or death”, or “Power to Councils, peace to the people, bread to the hungry, factories to the worker, and land to the farmers” – none of these masterpieces of world populism were used. And that’s why what happened was understood in Russia by only a few people. And they made such comments that the masses either did not fully listen to them or did not read up to the end. Or they did listen to the end, but didn’t understand anything.
But they should’ve, because the world changed so cardinally that it is indeed time for Nathan Rothschild, having crumpled a hat in his hand, to climb onto an armoured Rolls-Royce [a joke referencing what Lenin did – ed], and to shout from on top of it to all the Universe: “Comrades! The world revolution, the need for which revolutionaries spoke about for a long time, came true!” [paraphrasing what Lenin said – ed] And he would be completely right. It’s just that the results of the revolution will be implemented slowly, and that’s why they are imperceptible for the population. But the effects, nevertheless, will be soon seen by absolutely everyone, up to the last cook who even doesn’t seek to learn to govern the state soon.
This revolution is called “Basel III”, and it was made by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Its essence is in the following: BIS runs the IMF, and this, in turn, runs the central banks of all countries. The body of such control is called BCBS – the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It isn’t just some worthless US State Department or Congress of American senators. It’s not a stupid Pentagon, a little Department of the Treasury, which runs around like the CIA’s servant on standby, or a house of collective farmers with the name “White House”.
This isn’t even the banks of the US Federal Reserve, which govern all of this “wealth”. This is a Government of all of them combined. That real world Government that people in the world try not to speak about aloud.
BCBS is the Politburo of the world, whose Secretary General, according to rumours, is comrade Baruch, and the underground structure of the Central Committee is even more secret. It has many euphemisms, the most adequate of which is “Zurich gnomes”. This is what Swiss bankers are called. Not even owners of commercial banks, but namely those ordinary-looking men sitting in the Swiss city of Basel who Hitler – who tried to attach the whole world to the Third Reich, and who preserved neutrality with Switzerland during all the war – didn’t dare to attack. And, as is known, in Switzerland, besides Swiss rifleman, in reality there isn’t even an army. So who was the frenzied Fuhrer afraid of?
Nevertheless, the “recommendations” that were made by BCBS on March 29th 2019 were immediately, at the snap of the fingers, accepted for execution by all the central banks of the world. And our Russian Central Bank is not an exception. There is even the statement of the press service of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation posted on the official website of the Central Bank. It is called “Concerning the terms of implementation of Basel III”. The planned world revolution was in 2017 (magic of dates and digits or just a coincidence [a reference to 1917 – ed]?), but it has started only now.
Its essence is simple.
In the world the system of exclusive dollar domination established in 1944 in Bretton Woods and reformed in 1976 in Jamaica, where gold’s equivalency to money was cancelled. The dollar became world money and gold became an ordinary exchange good, like metal or sugar traded in London on commodity exchanges. However, this was determined there by only three firms of the “Pool of London” that belong to an even smaller number of owners, but, nevertheless, it’s not gold, but oil that became the dollar filler.
We have lived in such a world ever since.Gold was considered as a reserve of the third category for all banks, from central to commercial ones, where the reserves were, first of all, in dollars and bonds of the US. The norms of Basel III demand an increase, first of all, in monetary reserves. This impeded the volumes of monetary resources of banks that could be used to carry out expansion, but it was a compulsory measure for saving the stability of a world banking system that showed to be insufficient in a crisis.
In Russia pseudo-patriots were very much indignant at this, demanding to reject Basel III, which they called a sign of “a lack of sovereignty”. In reality, this is a quite normal demand to observe international standards of bank security, which were becoming more rigid, but since we [Russians – ed] were not printing dollars, so of course it had an impact on us. And since the alternative is an exit from world financial communications into full isolation, so our authorities, of course, did not want to accept such nonsense that was even designated by pseudo-patriots as a “lack of sovereignty”. To call sovereignty – freedom, to put your head in the noose is, let’s agree, a strange interpretation of the term.
The Basel III decision meant that gold as a reserve of the third category was earlier estimated at 50% of its value on the balance sheets of world banks. At the same time, all owners of world money traded in gold not physically, but on paper, without the movement of real metal, the volume of which in the world wasn’t enough for real transactions. This was done in order to push down the price of gold, to keep it as low as possible. First of all, for the benefit of the dollar. After all, the dollar is tied to oil, which had to cost no less than the price of one gram of gold per barrel.
And now it was decided to place gold not in the third, but “just” in the first category. And it means that now it is possible to evaluate it not at 50, but at 100% of its value. This leads to the revaluation of the balance sheet total. And concerning Russia, it means that now we can quietly, on all legal grounds, pour nearly 3 trillion rubles into the economy. If to be precise, it is 2.95 trillion rubles or $45 billion at the exchange rate in addition to the current balance sheet total. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation can pour this money into our economy on all legal grounds. How it will happen in reality isn’t yet known. Haste here without calculating all the consequences is very dangerous. Although this emission is considered as noninflationary, actually everything is much more complicated.
During the next few months nothing will change in the world. The U-turn will be very slow. In the US the gold reserves officially total 8133.5 tons, but there is such a thing as a financial multiplier: for every gold dollar, the banks print 20-30 digital paper ones. I.e., the US can only officially receive $170 billion in addition, but taking into account the multiplier – $4.5 trillion. This explains why the Federal Reserve System holds back on increasing interests rates and so far maintains the course towards lowering the balance sheet total – they are cautious of a surge in hyperinflation.
But all the largest states and holders of gold will now revalue their gold and foreign exchange reserves: Germany, Italy, France, Russia, China, and Switzerland – countries where the gold reserves exceed 1,000 tons. Notice that there is no mumpish Britain in this list. Its reserves are less than 1000 tons. Experts suspect that it is perhaps not a coincidence that the dates of Brexit and the date of Basel III coincide. The increased financial power of the leaders of Europe – Germany and France – is capable of completely concluding the dismantlement of Britain on the European continent. It was necessary to get out as soon as possible.
Thus, it seems that it is possible to congratulate us – the dollar era lasting from 1944 to 2019 has ended. Now gold is restored in its rights and is not an exchange metal, but world money on an equal basis with the dollar, euro, and British pound. Now gold will start to rise in price, and its price will rise from $1200-1400 per troy ounce up to $1800-2000 by this autumn. Now it is clear why Russia and China during all these years so persistently decanted its export income into the growth of gold reserves. There is now such a situation where nobody in the world will sell gold.
Injections of extra money will suffice for the world economy for 5-6 months. In the US this money can be used to pay off the astronomical debt. Perhaps this wasn’t Zurich’s last motive for making such a decision. But after all, the most important thing is an attempt to slip out from under the Tower of Pisa that is the falling dollar.
Since the dollar and oil are connected, the growth of the price of gold will directly affect the growth of the price of oil. Now a barrel costs as much as 1.627 grams of gold. A price growth will cause the world economy – where 85% of the money dollar supply turns into stock surrogates like shares, bonds, and treasuries – to cave in. The stock exchange will not be able to bundle together such an additional mass of money any more.
It will be good for oil industry workers – even, perhaps, best of all, but not for long. The economical crash because of expensive oil will become a crash for all oil industry workers too. It is precisely this that is the main reason why our rights for additional emissions can remain unused in full volume, although a gift in such a form will not be completely ignored. The May ‘Decrees of Putin’ in the current context are being understood completely differently. Russia runs away from the oil-based economic model in all ways. Including by political reforms and changing the elites.
However, why is the decision of Basel a revolution?
Because from the autumn the financial flood in the world economy will begin. It will entail the acceleration of Russia and China’s isolation from the dollar system and the crash of the economies that completely depend on the dollar – the vassal countries of the US. It will be worst of all for them. And this means that the reasons for increased distancing between the EU and the US will increase in number manyfold.
A redrawing of the map of global unions awaits the world.
And the redrawing of these unions will be carried out not least by military methods. Or with their partial use, but in one way or another, reasoning involving force in the world will increase almost to the level of guaranteed war. “Almost” is our hope for rescue, because the US loses all main instruments of influence on this world. Except force.
But it’s not for this purpose that the “Zurich gnomes” created this world, so that the US is so simply turned into radioactive ashes. The US will be drenched with cold water like a broken down nuclear reactor, while the world has entered the zone of the most global transformations over the past few centuries. The revolution that so many waited for, were afraid of, and spoke so much about has started. Buckle up and don’t smoke, the captain and crew wish you a pleasant flight.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Z3T1Km Tyler Durden
Russian president Vladimir Putin said he’s ready to turn the leaf on the first two years of diplomatic scandals between the US and Russia, and is seeking areas of cooperation with his US counterprart (and according to various now debunked lunatics, spy) Donald Trump, calling the furor over election-meddling allegations part of the deep political crisis in Washington.
In his first public comments on the outcome of Robert Mueller’s investigation which found no collusion or conspiracy between Trump and Russia, Putin welcomed the controversial findings.
“We said from the very start that this notorious commission of Mr. Mueller wouldn’t find anything because we know this better than anyone,” Putin told the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, adding that it was “utter nonsense aimed solely at a domestic audience and used for internal political struggle in the U.S.”
In retrospect, he was right.
As a reminder, Trump scored the biggest political victory of his presidency – even as the credibility of the US liberal medial plumbed new lows – last month after AG William Barr published a summary of Mueller’s finding that there was no collusion during the campaign. Trump, who repeatedly – and correctly – condemned the 22-month inquiry as a “witch hunt” said he’d been completely exonerated.
Agreeing with his US colleague, Putin said that witch hunts are “a black page” in U.S. history and “I would not like it ever to happen again” (here the conspiracy nuts should be ready to chime in with a witty rejoinder). The outcome of the Mueller investigation showed that “a mountain gave birth to a mouse,” the Russian president said.
While Putin said when the two leaders met in Helsinki last year that he’d wanted Trump to win the 2016 election because of his pledge to improve relations – and because Hillary Clinton’s State Department did everything in its power to set the stage for a war between Russia and Ukraine – he avoided generating more controversy, and said he supports Trump’s re-election in 2020.
“We respect the wishes of the American people,” he said. “Whoever is president, we’re ready to work with them.”
To be sure, much bad blood remains between the US “deep state” and Moscow: recall that US intelligence agencies “concluded” that Russia was behind hacking aimed at damaging Democratic Party contender Hillary Clinton (which unveiled that the DNC had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton was a professional in saying one thing to the public and something else to Wall Street). Russia, naturally, rejects the allegations. Trump pledged during his campaign to improve ties with Russia and has repeatedly said he wants good relations with Putin.
As for how the former KGB spy and Trump are getting along currently, Putin said he has “plenty of disagreements” with Trump, whose administration has imposed a series of new sanctions on his country, but is ready to work with the U.S. on issues of joint interest including terrorism and arms control.
“We hope that when this situation normalizes, opportunities will emerge for bilateral cooperation on all issues,” Putin said.
* * *
Separately, Putin also said that Russia will dramatically increase its presence in the Arctic region by building new ports and other facilities and expanding its fleet of icebreaker vessels, as the competition for the area’s natural resources intensifies.
Putin told the leaders of Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden at the Forum that Russia’s efforts will help quadruple the level of cargo shipments across the Arctic sea route.
“This is a realistic, well-calculated, and concrete task. We need to make the Northern sea route safe and commercially feasible,” he said.
And here is another irony: climate change is directly benefiting Russia – the shrinking polar ice in the Arctic region is expected to offer new opportunities for resource exploration and the development of new shipping lanes, leading Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Norway into a competition for jurisdiction in the region.
Putin set a goal for the amount of cargo carried across the shipping lane to rise to 80 million metric tons by 2025 from the 20 million tons transported in 2018, the majority under Russian-flagged vessels. Russia, the only country with a fleet of nuclear icebreakers, is moving to expand its current inventory of four nuclear-powered vessels to a total of nine by 2035, he said. It also has four nonnuclear icebreakers in its fleet, according to RFE.
In 2017, Jim Mattis, the former U.S. defense secretary noted the Russian buildup and said that “America has got to up its game in the Arctic.”
“The Arctic is key strategic terrain. Russia is taking aggressive steps to increase its presence there. I will prioritize the development of an integrated strategy for the Arctic,” said Mattis, who left his position at the end of 2018.
At the Arctic forum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended the military buildup, saying, “We don’t threaten anyone.”
“We ensure sufficient defense capabilities given the political and military situation around our borders,” He added.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2G1nlwr Tyler Durden
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman…
And you’re working for no one but me.
— George Harrison, “Taxman”
We’re not living the American Dream. We’re in the grip of a financial nightmare.
“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.
We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die, and yet we have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used.
Make no mistake: this is fascism disguised as legislative expediency.
As a recent investigative report by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity points out, these copycat bills have been used to “override the will of local voters” and advance the agendas of the corporate state. “Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called ‘model’ bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.”
For example, “The Asbestos Transparency Act didn’t help people exposed to asbestos. It was written by corporations who wanted to make it harder for victims to recoup money. The ‘HOPE Act,’ introduced in nine states, was written by a conservative advocacy group to make it more difficult for people to get food stamps.”
Talk about Orwellian.
So we have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn.
We’re being forced to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, for misguided pork barrel projects that do little to enhance our lives, and for the trappings of a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.
All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.
We’re being played as easy marks by hustlers bearing the imprimatur of the government.
Truly, if there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the taxpayers—who fuel the nation’s economy and fund the government’s programs—always get ripped off.
If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.
Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its money grabs.
Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, tickets and penalties.
With every new tax, fine, fee and law adopted by our so-called representatives, the yoke around the neck of the average American seems to tighten just a little bit more.
Everywhere you go, everything you do, and every which way you look, we’re getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.
The overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private phone and email conversations by the NSA; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies such as the IRS, Dept. of Education, the Smithsonian and others with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Meanwhile, the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) and the agencies under their command—Defense, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, etc.—have switched their allegiance to the Corporate State with its unassailable pursuit of profit at all costs and by any means possible.
We are now ruled by a government consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.
While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the police state is spending our hard-earned tax dollars to further entrench its powers and entrap its citizens.
If you want to know the real motives behind the government’s agenda, follow the money trail.
When you dig down far enough, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being surveilled, fined, scanned, searched, probed, tasered, arrested and imprisoned are none other than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons, equipment and prisons used by the American police state.
It gets worse.
Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.
You’re not free if the government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes.
You’re not free if government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing.
And you’re certainly not free if the IRS gets the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.
If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.
As former Congressman Ron Paul observed, “The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.”
Unfortunately, somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), and representative government has been rejected in favor of a kakistocracy (a government run by the most unprincipled citizens that panders to the worst vices in our nature: greed, violence, hatred, prejudice and war) ruled by career politicians, corporations and thieves—individuals and entities with little regard for the rights of American citizens.
The American kleptocracy continues to suck the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight.
It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president.
It has been a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”
By playing on our prejudices about those who differ from us, capitalizing on our fears for our safety, and deepening our distrust of those fellow citizens whose opinions run counter to our own, the powers-that-be have effectively divided us into polarized, warring camps incapable of finding consensus on the one true menace that is an immediate threat to all of our freedoms: the U.S. government.
We are now the subjects of a militarized, corporate empire in which the vast majority of the citizenry work their hands to the bone for the benefit of a privileged few.
Adding injury to the ongoing insult of having our tax dollars misused and our so-called representatives bought and paid for by the moneyed elite, the government then turns around and uses the money we earn with our blood, sweat and tears to target, imprison and entrap us.
All of those nefarious government deeds that you read about in the paper every day: those are your tax dollars at work.
So what are you going to do about it?
There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.
Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.
Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.
Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.
And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.
But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?
What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?
What if, instead of quietly sending in our tax checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?