The Chief-of-Staff for the Israeli Armed Forces, Aviv Kochavi, said on Wednesday that Israel cannot allow Iran to station militarily in Iraq. According to Ynet News, Kochavi stated on the seventh anniversary of the death of the former Chief-of-Staff, Amnon Lipkin Shahak, that the Israeli army would never allow Iran to be stationed in Iraq.
“The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Iraq… transfer advanced weapons there monthly. We cannot leave this situation without interference,” he said.
File image: Iranian Revolutionary Guard members attend a ceremony in Tehran.
Furthermore Kochavi said that “there is an opportunity in the Gaza Strip, after the results of the ‘Black Belt’ operation, to develop a secure reality and make it more stable.”
“In the coming war, we will have to attack with great force in populated areas and also target the state structure or the entity that allows terrorism to act against us,” Kochavi continued.
The Israeli military official said that “in the coming war with Lebanon or with Hamas, the internal front in Israel will be subject to major rocket attacks, most of which are inaccurate, but will have an impact,” adding that “Israel will target everything that helps in combat operations, such as electricity, fuel, bridges, if the state of Lebanon, Syria or Hamas and others allow terrorism from its lands to be used against us.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi (right), via Ynet News.
Israel has accused Iran of transferring long-range weapons and missiles to Iraq, and from there to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Popular Mobilization Units (Hashd Al-Shaabi) came under attack in July after a suspected Israeli drone carried out a devastating assault on a base in the Salaheddine Governorate.
According to The New York Times, citing data from Yelp, the share of Chinese restaurants has dramatically fallen across major US metropolitan areas in the last five years.
Yelp data shows the share of Chinese restaurants in the top 20 metros has been in free fall since about 2014.
Five years ago, 7.3% of all restaurants in the top 20 metros were Chinese, compared with 6.5% today. The declining trend has resulted in over 1,200 fewer Chinese restaurants while these metros added over 15,000 more restaurants.
The Times notes that the oldest Chinatown in the US is located in San Francisco, and even there, the share of Chinese restaurants shrank to 8.8% from 10% in 2014.
Mass closings of Chinese restaurants show no signs of abating, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants continue to hold a steady market share or increase nationwide.
One big reason for the rash of closings “seems to be the economic mobility of the second generation,” said The Times.
“It’s a success that these restaurants are closing,” said Jennifer 8. Lee, a former New York Times journalist. “These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.”
The children of Chinese immigrants have integrated into the economy and are less likely to take over their parent’s restaurant.
While the wave of closings has been underway for at least a half-decade, some restaurants, instead of closing, are selling operations to incoming first-generation immigrants who want the chance to cook Kung pow chicken to an overweight baby boomer.
Housing shortages caused by harmful government policy are a serious problem in many parts of the United States. The good news on this front is that many jurisdictions are making progress towards easing zoning restrictions that are the principal culprit behind many such shortages. After years of seeming stagnation, zoning reform is hot. The bad news, however, is that rent control is also gaining momentum. Even as zoning reform helps alleviate housing shortages, rent control is likely to make them worse.
At this time last year, I wrote about the growing momentum for cutting back on exclusionary in various parts of the country. That trend has continued in 2019. In July, the Oregon state legislature passed a law banning single-family home zoning requirements throughout most of the state, thereby enabling construction of multifamily housing in many areas where there are severe shortages. The city of Seattle has also made some progress here.
These and other recent zoning reforms have mostly been passed in jurisdictions dominated by liberal Democrats. The political left has begun to take notice of and act on the broad agreement among policy experts that zoning is a major obstacle to affordable housing, and also excludes millions of people from job opportunities. Zoning thereby harm both the excluded workers themselves and the broader economy, which loses the additional productivity they would have provided.
If zoning restrictions make it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand, basic economics 101 indicates that shortages will result. By contrast, the experience of cities like Houston shows that developers are more than capable of keeping up with rapid growth if they are allowed to build.
Part of the reason why recent zoning reform efforts have been led by liberals is that liberal jurisdictions tend to have the most onerous zoning regulations in the first place. Still, credit should be given where credit is due. Many on the left are making a real effort to clean up this awful mess.
While the struggle is far from over, there can be little doubt that we are making progress on the zoning front. That is excellent news.
Unfortunately, the good news on zoning is coupled with bad news on rent control. The same Democratic-controlled Oregon state legislature that recently passed a strong zoning reform bill also enacted a sweeping rent control law earlier this year. California and New York has also enacted major new expansions of rent control this year. After a long period during which rent control seemed largely moribund, it has once again become a major cause of much of the political left. Bernie Sanders, the favorite presidential candidate of the growing “democratic socialist” wing of the left, has even called for the enactment of a national rent control law.
The expert consensus against rent control is at least as broad as that in favor of zoning reform. Economists across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose it. Expert critics of rent control range from the very liberal Paul Krugman on the left to Thomas Sowell on the right. The issue is often used in introductory economics classes as an example of a question on which nearly all economists can agree.
That consensus arises from the simple point that, if landlords cannot raise rent in response to growing demand, they are likely to put fewer rental properties on the market. For similar reasons, rent control is likely to reduce new construction in high-demand areas, and also lead to worse maintenance of existing properties. Real-world evidence backs up these theoretical predictions. Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond summed up the results of recent studies on the subject in an article published by the liberal Brookings Institution last year:
Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases can ultimately be counterproductive.
While current tenants get a windfall (at least in the short run), rent control reduces the availability of housing for everyone else, and also reduces economic growth by excluding people from areas where they could find new job opportunities and become more productive. Its effects are actually similar to those of exclusionary zoning. Thus, regression on the rent control front could well offset some of the progress being made on the zoning front, especially in cases—like Oregon—where the same jurisdiction pursues both agendas, despite the contradiction between them.
In addition to having opposite effects on housing shortages, zoning reform and rent control are also based on opposing assumptions about the way housing markets work. The former relies on the assumption that increasing demand will lead to increasingly supply, so long as the government allows new construction to occur. In short, market incentives work. Increases in demand lead to increases in price, which in turn incentivizes new production, thereby alleviating shortages and—eventually -reducing prices.
By contrast, rent control implicitly assumes that landlords and developers will not cut back on the quantity and quality of housing, even if prices are artificially lowered by government intervention. For this to work, either market participants must be irrationally indifferent to prices and profits, or there must be some sort of unusual market failure that makes supply insensitive to demand. Neither scenario is plausible. The many liberal Democrats who oppose exclusionary zoning while simultaneously favoring rent control are implicitly making self-contradictory economic assumptions. In one area, they accept basic Economics 101; in the other, they utterly reject it.
I am tempted to say that simultaneous revival of zoning reform and rent control is a prototypical example of the left hand undermining what the right hand is doing. But, in this case, it is really the left hand working at cross-purposes with itself, since it is the political left that has been the biggest driving force behind both developments. Hopefully, they will resolve the inconsistency in the direction of embracing good economics across the board. That means opposing both rent control and exclusionary zoning.
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In New York, a wide range of people can perform marriages, including clergy, elected officials, state judges, and federal judges within the Second Circuit–that is, from New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. The New York legislature passed a bill that would allow all federal court of appeals and federal district court judges to perform weddings. However, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the bill, with this message:
“This bill amends the Domestic Relations Law to expand the number of federal court judges who may perform marriage ceremonies in New York. I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration. President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great State are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. [JB: Yes, the same sentence was repeated twice.] The bill is disapproved.”
The approved bill would not have applied only to Trump-appointed judges. It would have allowed all federal judges to officiate at weddings. Yet, Governor Cuomo felt compelled to veto the bill, because the judges appointed by President Trump are not consistent with “diversity tolerance, and inclusion.”
I have doubts about whether the current law is even constitutional. Co-blogger Ilya Somin opined on a similar law from Virginia, in which secular wedding officiants must be state residents. That is, state and federal judges from Virginia could officiate at weddings. But ministers of any faith can officiate, regardless of where they reside. Ilya suggested that this law may run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause:
The law might also be vulnerable to challenge under the Dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids state discrimination against out of state sellers of goods or services. Some wedding officiants charge for their services, and there is something of a competitive market in this industry. By banning nonresident secular officiants, Virginia explicitly protects in-state officiants against out of state competition. Although Dormant Commerce Clause law is in a state of flux, such “facial discrimination” against nonresident competitors is clearly prohibited by Supreme Court precedent.
The New York law is even more irrational than the Virginia law. Generally, dormant commerce clause challenges involve laws that limit certain jobs only to in-state residents. The argument goes that the state has some legitimate interest in keeping certain functions local. But under the current regime, federal judges from New York, as well as Connecticut and Vermont can officiate at weddings; they reside in states within the Second Circuit. New York has no control, whatsoever, over Connecticut and Vermont judges. Moreover, federal judges from nearby New Jersey or Pennsylvania, for example, are prohibited. I doubt anyone would challenge this law. It is easy enough to find an officiant in state.
Two related anecdotes.
First, Justice Kennedy refused to officiate at weddings. Why? He offered these remarks in 2013, shortly after Windsor was decided:
However, speaking earlier this month at the University of California Washington Center, Justice Kennedy said the affianced—whether gay or straight –would have to find someone else to do the honors.
“I have a rule: I don’t do weddings,” Justice Kennedy said. The reason has to do more with another doctrine he has championed: federalism.
“I have a theory that federal judges can’t take authority from state laws,” including those that regulate family relations, he said.
Still, on this matter, the Supreme Court’s swing vote emphasized his own judicial modesty. “I can’t figure out whether it’s a valid theory or not,” he said.
Second, Justice Scalia planned to officiate at Bryan Garner’s wedding in Rhode Island. But state law generally prohibited out-of-state judges from officiating. As a result, Garner had to arrange for the enactment of a bill in the state legislature to allow Scalia to preside. Garner discusses this story in Chapter 10 of Nino and Me:
We pressed our Rhode Island contact, who told us that we must have a special bill enacted by the Rhode Island Legislature authorizing Justice Scalia to conduct the ceremony. Only one day was left in which this could be accomplished, but our contact assured us that they would get it done. In the end, we learned that there was actually debate on the floor of the legislature about the matter. A Republican (!) legislator had stood up and said, “We don’t need an out-of-state judge coming in to Rhode Island to perform a wedding! We have plenty of able judges in this State.” Fortunately, his opposition was summarily squelched. Meanwhile, just as the bill was being voted on, I received an e-mail from Justice Scalia: “No reply regarding my authorization under Rhode Island law. Should I start worrying? Nino.” We were all relieved when we got news that the legislative resolution had passed—only five days before the ceremony.
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The holiday season has a way of bringing out both the best and the worst in people. As holiday consumption increases, unfortunately theft does as well from a host of places like porches, donation bins, stores, and even banks.
But it isn’t often that the stolen goods are immediately redistributed in such an extremely noticeable fashion.
Just after noon on Monday, a 65-year-old man walked into a downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado bank and stole thousands of dollars before running outside and tossing the cash up into the air while yelling “Merry Christmas!”
“He robbed the bank, came out, threw the money all over the place,”Dion Pascale, a witness of the strange ordeal, toldKKTV.
“He started throwing money out of the bag and then said, ‘Merry Christmas!’”
According to Pascale, when the robber was done tossing the cash in the air, he walked from outside of the Academy Bank and onto the patio of a nearby Starbucks, sat down, and waited for police to arrive and arrest him. He reportedly did not order a drink.
The man, David Wayne Oliver, was arrested without incident. Police didn’t find a weapon on the man despite his having claimed that he was armed during the robbery.
According to witnesses, bystanders retrieved some of the money and returned it to the bank but The Denver Post quoted police as saying “thousands of dollars” remained unaccounted for.
Housing shortages caused by harmful government policy are a serious problem in many parts of the United States. The good news on this front is that many jurisdictions are making progress towards easing zoning restrictions that are the principal culprit behind many such shortages. After years of seeming stagnation, zoning reform is hot. The bad news, however, is that rent control is also gaining momentum. Even as zoning reform helps alleviate housing shortages, rent control is likely to make them worse.
At this time last year, I wrote about the growing momentum for cutting back on exclusionary in various parts of the country. That trend has continued in 2019. In July, the Oregon state legislature passed a law banning single-family home zoning requirements throughout most of the state, thereby enabling construction of multifamily housing in many areas where there are severe shortages. The city of Seattle has also made some progress here.
These and other recent zoning reforms have mostly been passed in jurisdictions dominated by liberal Democrats. The political left has begun to take notice of and act on the broad agreement among policy experts that zoning is a major obstacle to affordable housing, and also excludes millions of people from job opportunities. Zoning thereby harm both the excluded workers themselves and the broader economy, which loses the additional productivity they would have provided.
If zoning restrictions make it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand, basic economics 101 indicates that shortages will result. By contrast, the experience of cities like Houston shows that developers are more than capable of keeping up with rapid growth if they are allowed to build.
Part of the reason why recent zoning reform efforts have been led by liberals is that liberal jurisdictions tend to have the most onerous zoning regulations in the first place. Still, credit should be given where credit is due. Many on the left are making a real effort to clean up this awful mess.
While the struggle is far from over, there can be little doubt that we are making progress on the zoning front. That is excellent news.
Unfortunately, the good news on zoning is coupled with bad news on rent control. The same Democratic-controlled Oregon state legislature that recently passed a strong zoning reform bill also enacted a sweeping rent control law earlier this year. California and New York has also enacted major new expansions of rent control this year. After a long period during which rent control seemed largely moribund, it has once again become a major cause of much of the political left. Bernie Sanders, the favorite presidential candidate of the growing “democratic socialist” wing of the left, has even called for the enactment of a national rent control law.
The expert consensus against rent control is at least as broad as that in favor of zoning reform. Economists across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose it. Expert critics of rent control range from the very liberal Paul Krugman on the left to Thomas Sowell on the right. The issue is often used in introductory economics classes as an example of a question on which nearly all economists can agree.
That consensus arises from the simple point that, if landlords cannot raise rent in response to growing demand, they are likely to put fewer rental properties on the market. For similar reasons, rent control is likely to reduce new construction in high-demand areas, and also lead to worse maintenance of existing properties. Real-world evidence backs up these theoretical predictions. Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond summed up the results of recent studies on the subject in an article published by the liberal Brookings Institution last year:
Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases can ultimately be counterproductive.
While current tenants get a windfall (at least in the short run), rent control reduces the availability of housing for everyone else, and also reduces economic growth by excluding people from areas where they could find new job opportunities and become more productive. Its effects are actually similar to those of exclusionary zoning. Thus, regression on the rent control front could well offset some of the progress being made on the zoning front, especially in cases—like Oregon—where the same jurisdiction pursues both agendas, despite the contradiction between them.
In addition to having opposite effects on housing shortages, zoning reform and rent control are also based on opposing assumptions about the way housing markets work. The former relies on the assumption that increasing demand will lead to increasingly supply, so long as the government allows new construction to occur. In short, market incentives work. Increases in demand lead to increases in price, which in turn incentivizes new production, thereby alleviating shortages and—eventually -reducing prices.
By contrast, rent control implicitly assumes that landlords and developers will not cut back on the quantity and quality of housing, even if prices are artificially lowered by government intervention. For this to work, either market participants must be irrationally indifferent to prices and profits, or there must be some sort of unusual market failure that makes supply insensitive to demand. Neither scenario is plausible. The many liberal Democrats who oppose exclusionary zoning while simultaneously favoring rent control are implicitly making self-contradictory economic assumptions. In one area, they accept basic Economics 101; in the other, they utterly reject it.
I am tempted to say that simultaneous revival of zoning reform and rent control is a prototypical example of the left hand undermining what the right hand is doing. But, in this case, it is really the left hand working at cross-purposes with itself, since it is the political left that has been the biggest driving force behind both developments. Hopefully, they will resolve the inconsistency in the direction of embracing good economics across the board. That means opposing both rent control and exclusionary zoning.
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In New York, a wide range of people can perform marriages, including clergy, elected officials, state judges, and federal judges within the Second Circuit–that is, from New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. The New York legislature passed a bill that would allow all federal court of appeals and federal district court judges to perform weddings. However, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the bill, with this message:
“This bill amends the Domestic Relations Law to expand the number of federal court judges who may perform marriage ceremonies in New York. I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration. President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great State are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. [JB: Yes, the same sentence was repeated twice.] The bill is disapproved.”
The approved bill would not have applied only to Trump-appointed judges. It would have allowed all federal judges to officiate at weddings. Yet, Governor Cuomo felt compelled to veto the bill, because the judges appointed by President Trump are not consistent with “diversity tolerance, and inclusion.”
I have doubts about whether the current law is even constitutional. Co-blogger Ilya Somin opined on a similar law from Virginia, in which secular wedding officiants must be state residents. That is, state and federal judges from Virginia could officiate at weddings. But ministers of any faith can officiate, regardless of where they reside. Ilya suggested that this law may run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause:
The law might also be vulnerable to challenge under the Dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids state discrimination against out of state sellers of goods or services. Some wedding officiants charge for their services, and there is something of a competitive market in this industry. By banning nonresident secular officiants, Virginia explicitly protects in-state officiants against out of state competition. Although Dormant Commerce Clause law is in a state of flux, such “facial discrimination” against nonresident competitors is clearly prohibited by Supreme Court precedent.
The New York law is even more irrational than the Virginia law. Generally, dormant commerce clause challenges involve laws that limit certain jobs only to in-state residents. The argument goes that the state has some legitimate interest in keeping certain functions local. But under the current regime, federal judges from New York, as well as Connecticut and Vermont can officiate at weddings; they reside in states within the Second Circuit. New York has no control, whatsoever, over Connecticut and Vermont judges. Moreover, federal judges from nearby New Jersey or Pennsylvania, for example, are prohibited. I doubt anyone would challenge this law. It is easy enough to find an officiant in state.
Two related anecdotes.
First, Justice Kennedy refused to officiate at weddings. Why? He offered these remarks in 2013, shortly after Windsor was decided:
However, speaking earlier this month at the University of California Washington Center, Justice Kennedy said the affianced—whether gay or straight –would have to find someone else to do the honors.
“I have a rule: I don’t do weddings,” Justice Kennedy said. The reason has to do more with another doctrine he has championed: federalism.
“I have a theory that federal judges can’t take authority from state laws,” including those that regulate family relations, he said.
Still, on this matter, the Supreme Court’s swing vote emphasized his own judicial modesty. “I can’t figure out whether it’s a valid theory or not,” he said.
Second, Justice Scalia planned to officiate at Bryan Garner’s wedding in Rhode Island. But state law generally prohibited out-of-state judges from officiating. As a result, Garner had to arrange for the enactment of a bill in the state legislature to allow Scalia to preside. Garner discusses this story in Chapter 10 of Nino and Me:
We pressed our Rhode Island contact, who told us that we must have a special bill enacted by the Rhode Island Legislature authorizing Justice Scalia to conduct the ceremony. Only one day was left in which this could be accomplished, but our contact assured us that they would get it done. In the end, we learned that there was actually debate on the floor of the legislature about the matter. A Republican (!) legislator had stood up and said, “We don’t need an out-of-state judge coming in to Rhode Island to perform a wedding! We have plenty of able judges in this State.” Fortunately, his opposition was summarily squelched. Meanwhile, just as the bill was being voted on, I received an e-mail from Justice Scalia: “No reply regarding my authorization under Rhode Island law. Should I start worrying? Nino.” We were all relieved when we got news that the legislative resolution had passed—only five days before the ceremony.
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“Like Watching A Car Crash In Slow Motion”: Turkey Balks At US Sanction Threat, Warns It May Evict US Forces From Military Bases
Despite mounting political and diplomatic pressure by the US and its NATO allies, Turkey has again balked at US attempts of intimidation and dug into its refusal to abandon a new Russian missile defense, saying it won’t bow to the threat of crippling US sanctions or trade the S-400s for an American system.
“They said they would not sell Patriots unless we get rid of the S-400s. It is out of question for us to accept such a precondition,” said Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, late on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting, quoted by Bloomberg.
Parts of Russian S-400 defense system unloaded from a Russian plane at Murted Airport near Ankara in August; Photo: Turkish Defense Ministry
“An irrational anti-Turkish sentiment has prevailed in the Congress and it is not good for Turkish-American relations,” Kalin added, noting that Congress “should know that such language of threat would push Turkey exactly toward places that they don’t want it turn to.” Namely, right into the hands of Vladimir Putin, who is on even better terms with Erdogan than Trump, despite Turkey taking down a Russian fighter jet over its territory several years back.
Separately, as the WSJ reported this morning, Erdogan once again warned that he would evict U.S. forces from two military bases in his country if Washington imposes new sanctions on his government, creating a bitter quandary for NATO as it seeks to cope with Ankara’s deepening ties to Russia.
In a television interview this month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said if the U.S. punishes Turkey for its purchase of a Russian air-defense system, then, “if necessary, we may close Incirlik and Kureci,” installations where the U.S. keeps approximately 50 B61 nuclear weapons, and operates critical radar.
Erdogan’s declaration elicited an anxious reaction from U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who said it raised questions about Turkey’s dedication to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: “They have that inherent right to house or to not house NATO bases or foreign troops,” Esper said. “But again, I think this becomes an alliance matter, your commitment to the alliance, if indeed they are serious about what they are saying.”
“It feels like watching a car crash in slow motion,” a Western diplomat in Turkey told the WSJ.
The main bone of contention is Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 system, which the Pentagon views as a security threat to NATO. The U.S. has suspended deliveries of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Turkey and excluded Turkish aerospace companies from a contract to supply fuselage and other parts, saying Russia could use the system’s radar to spy on and assess the stealthy aircraft’s capabilities.
As has been duly covered here for the past two years, US Congress has been pushing for sanctions against Turkey, which has NATO’s second biggest standing army after the US, over the country’s purchase of the Russian S-400 despite the objection of President Donald Trump, who has developed a particularly close relationship with Turkey’s Erdogan in the past year, and who says such a move could drive Turkey closer to Moscow.
And just to make sure Congress is really furious, Turkey intends to purchase a second Russian S-400 battery and pursue a joint-development agreement with Moscow in order to be able to produce its own sophisticated ballistic missiles, a move that will spark chaos among NATO member nations; as a reminder, NATO only exists to feed the US military-industrial complex with organic customers for advanced weapon systems. By using Russia for its most advanced military needs, Turkey has taken that old maxim and flipped it on its head.
The Trump administration has sought to cajole Erdogan in a bid to prevent Ankara from knitting closer ties with Moscow amid concerns that treating him like a pariah would push Turkey further into Russia’s orbit, U.S. officials said. But Trump has had to contend with angry U.S. lawmakers, who have voted through a string of bills aimed at punishing Turkey.
The US president has so far refrained from using a piece of legislation that allows the U.S. president to slap sanctions on any country that makes a sizable arms purchase from Russia. But a Senate committee recently approved a bill that would enforce the legislation, which could freeze Turkish assets in the U.S., restrict visas and limit access to credit.
In response to growing Western anger, Turkish officials proposed setting up an expert committee with the U.S., or under NATO supervision, to look into the S-400 issue and propose remedies. But US officials told the WSJ, Washington would rather pay substantial compensation than deliver a single F-35 to Turkey and jeopardize the integrity of the multibillion-dollar program.
Highlighting the impasse, Turkey carried out a test of the S-400 system, deployed at an airbase near Ankara, against U.S.-made F-16 jets in late November, and it said it might order Russian combat aircraft if the F-35 delivery ban wasn’t lifted.
“Turkish national-security interests must be regarded as one of the primary issues for the U.S. and NATO,” said Ahmet Berat Conkar, a Turkish lawmaker affiliated with Mr. Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, and the deputy head of Turkey’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. “If this cannot be openly guaranteed and maintained by concrete action for Turkey, new cracks may open inside the NATO alliance.”
The biggest irony is that in effecting its de facto breach from NATO, Turkey is also exposing the hypocrisy that runs through the heart of the military alliance. As the Journal notes, “some European allies bristle that NATO uses language similar to Turkey’s, which says that its invasion of northern Syria is for national security interests, and voice concerns that the West’s alliance gave Turkey too much leeway to expand its military partnership with Russia.”
Turkey, which is already coordinating with Russia in northern Syria, is now also seeking to cooperate with Russia in war-torn Libya.
“Turkey is playing a showdown and it is winning,” a senior European diplomat at NATO said.
It is indeed, and the only recourse the West has is to slap crippling sanctions on its economy in hopes of forcing Erdogan to realign his attitude. As Bloomberg reminds us, the last time the U.S. sanctioned Turkey last summery, to pressure it to release a detained U.S. pastor, the lira crashed and sent the Turkish economy into a recession from which it is still recovering.
The irony, of course, is that only those punters who sold on the way up will escape the devastation of the collapse into a bidless “market.”
All I want for Christmas is an unmanipulated market, because manipulated markets always crash big and crash hard. Virtually every market in America is heavily manipulated by the Federal Reserve, which creates currency out of thin air to either buy assets (outright market manipulation) or distribute to financiers, banks and corporations, which then manipulate the markets with their own profiteering (stock buybacks, leveraged buyouts, derivatives, etc.).
The Fed decided long ago that the housing and stock markets were too critical as signals that all is well to remain real markets, because real markets fluctuate and on occasion crash, especially if participants are playing fast and loose with debt, leverage and speculative bets placed with zero collateral (or fake collateral, which is the same thing).
To make sure no decline could ever collapse the happy-happy euphoria of ever-rising markets, the Fed turned markets into simulations of real markets, controlled “markets” masquerading as real markets in which price and value are set by participants, not central banks and proxies of central banks.
The key characteristics of markets are price discovery and the free flow of information about prices, supply, demand, quality, cost of credit, creditworthiness of buyers, etc.
Without a free flow of information and transparent-to-all-participants bids and asks (the price being offered by buyers and sellers), the market can’t discover the price (value) of credit, goods, services, collateral, assets, etc.
Once markets have been stripped of the ability to discover price, nobody can trust the values being presented as “real” are actually based on reality. In the current simulacrum of a real market, the “price” is set by the Fed or its proxies, and there is a purposeful / profitable information asymmetry between high frequency traders and other insiders and everyone outside the inner circles who are kept in the dark while insiders skim billions in no-risk profits from the victims of this information asymmetry.
Right now market participants are euphorically confident that value no longer matters; the only thing that matters is the Fed wants stocks and housing to move higher, and they can move markets at will with their firehouse of trillions of dollars.
In other words, participants are confident the Fed is the market, but it’s no longer a market at all. This mirage market has worked splendidly for the Fed, since it continues to signal all is well by rising year after year.
But manipulated markets are a mile wide and an inch deep. Everyone thinks selling won’t happen or can’t happen because the Fed is essentially guaranteeing that “buy the dips” will reward buyers. This was precisely what happened in 2008: The Fed reckoned the system had plenty enough liquidity to absorb any selling, but the liquidity was only an inch deep; once real selling hit the “market,” it collapsed, as buyers dried up and blew away.
Manipulating markets into “signaling” mechanisms insures the eventual crash will not be stopped by applying the same manipulations that destroyed price discovery and trust. Everyone knows the price has lost connection with reality, and so every punter and algo is one second away from hitting “sell” and locking in the gains from a manipulated bubble.
The irony, of course, is that only those punters who sold on the way up will escape the devastation of the collapse into a bidless “market.”
As the Fed will discover, providing “liquidity” isn’t the same as conning buyers to get wiped out when the selling tsunami hits.
Iran Again Blocks Internet & Mobile Service Ahead Of Protesters’ Funerals
Fearing the potential for renewed protests and violent clashes with police, Iran has again blocked internet and mobile access to broad section of the country on Wednesday.
This as several funerals will be held over the coming days for protesters killed last month amid a severe government crackdown, which also witness an unprecedented nationwide internet blockage which lasted for a week or more in some provinces.
Citing Iranian state media, Bloomberg reports, “The mourning services are scheduled to begin on Thursday. The independent Shargh newspaper said five unidentified provinces will be subject to the blackout, while ILNA said internet users in those areas will have access to a limited number of state-approved Iran websites and applications.”
Protesters last month torched gas stations and banks, angry at a sudden massive gas price hike, which turned anti-government, via The Guardian.
Government authorities are reportedly acting in response to relatives of some among the killed who have posted to social media calling for renewed protests to be held on Thursday in conjunction with ceremonies commemorating the victims (various estimates put those killed from the November protests ranging from 200 to over 300, with the US State Dept. claiming multiple times that number).
The US as well as various human rights organizations have accused Tehran authorities of quelling protests — initially sparked by a huge gas price hike when subsidies were slashed — with live ammunition and other brutal tactics.
Thus it appears the government is making a move to prevent large-scale protests before they gain momentum. State-run ILNA said of the mobile and internet blockage: “According to this source, it is possible that more provinces will be affected by the shutdown of mobile international connectivity,” after it appeared to spread on Wednesday.
Confirmed: Evidence of mobile internet disruption in parts of #Iran beginning ~6:30 a.m. (03:00 UTC); real-time network data show two distinct drops in connectivity this morning amid reports of regional outages; incident ongoing 📉 #Internet4Iran
And internet blockage observatory NetBlocks said, according to Reuters: “Confirmed: Evidence of mobile internet disruption in parts of #Iran …real-time network data show two distinct drops in connectivity this morning amid reports of regional outages; incident ongoing.”
Washington has condemned such attempts to dramatically restrict communications; however, Iran’s leadership has said it is taking efforts to thwart external US-Saudi-Israeli regime change efforts to hijack and guide the protests.
