Category: zerohedge

Authored by Alex Kimani via SafeHaven.com,

First there was Tether; a controversial dollar-backed cryptocurrency by crypto exchange firm, Bitfinex. Then came Petro, the industry’s first oil-backed crypto issued by the Venezuelan government last year. And now we might be about to see the first gold-backed cryptocurrency—by a central bank, no less. According to Russian news agency, TASS, Russia’s central bank, the Bank of Russia will consider issuing gold-backed cryptocurrencies – a rather strange move considering how cryptocurrencies are generally anathema to central banks.

Shot in the arm

But before crypto bugs can start doing a round of high fives, the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, has revealed that the cryptocurrencies are not meant for retail use but rather for conducting big mutual settlements for entities with global jurisdictions.

In other words, only the heavyweights will get to lay their hands on them. Further, she says that she still believes that it’s better for countries to develop international settlement systems such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) framework that use their own national currencies noting the said framework has demonstrated good dynamics.

Finally, she admonishes that the latest twist should not be interpreted to mean that the bank supports a scenario where cryptocurrencies eventually replace fiat in the monetary system.

The Bank of Russia’s latest move is a belated concession that cryptocurrencies do have a place in the modern monetary system, whether banks and financial institutions like it or not. It’s a big shot in the arm for an industry that has endured so much unmerited criticism, animus and outright rejection.

Last month, the Bank of Russia released a policy brief outlining the potential benefits of CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) including being less risky than existing systems and a more liquid asset that can lower transaction costs.

It’s worth noting that the bank cited anonymity as the only major drawback of CBDCs (and possibly cryptos by extension).

Russia’s largest bank is not the only one to endorse cryptos–though it’s the only central bank to-date to expressly say it’s seriously considering launching one.

A couple of days ago, the European Central Bank (ECB) declared thatcryptocurrencies are not a threat to the region’s financial stability. Closer home, JPMorgan launched JPM Coin in February, a stablecoin meant for clients of its wholesale payments business. Each JPM Coin is pegged to a dollar.

Finally last year, a banking consortium launched We.Trade, a challenger to Ripple, the cryptocurrency that facilitates interbank transfers.

Commodity-backed cryptos survive

Recently, CoinTelegraph reported that Bank of Russia was discussing mutual settlements with Venezuela in Petro and the Russian Ruble. That will certainly mark a major milestone for Maduro’s infantile cryptocurrency.

When President Maduro’s beleaguered government launched Petro last year, we dismissed it arguing it was destined to fail due to lack of trust from the community with commodity-backed cryptos having their fair share of scandals. What we failed to anticipate was the brutal determination by the Venezuelan government in making sure it’s brainchild not only survives but thrives.

Since then, Maduro has elevated Petro to an alternate official currency while using underhand tactics such as converting pensioners’ payments to the cryptocurrency without their consent in a bid to make it go mainstream. Popular crypto blog CCN reported in January that Petro seems to be alive and well despite lack of evidence for the oil stockpiles that are supposed to back it up and also being user-unfriendly.

And now Venezuela’s Petro is about to get a new lease on life after teaming up with another renegade. Both countries eschew the dollar viewing it as being too dominant and hope the new cryptocurrency will help them ditch the American currency.

Yet another stablecoin—the dollar-backed Tether—seems to be doing well, too, despite its share of controversies. A month ago, New York AG charged Bitfinex with dipping into its Tether cash reserves to cover up internal losses.

The fact that many commodity-backed cryptos seem to be surviving major trust issues is almost a validation of the whole idea of having a physical commodity back-stopping a digital currency.  

The new ones by Russia’s central bank will have a much lower hurdle to clear.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2YSt92T Tyler Durden

During the lengthened Memorial Day weekend, Chicago police responded to 42 people shot, seven of whom died of their injuries.

The violence was slightly above average for this time of year, according to homicide data indexed by the Chicago Tribune.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters on Monday that the surge in violent crime over the weekend “is just an unacceptable state of affairs.”

“I certainly knew that before, but to see it graphically depicted is quite shocking and says that we’ve got a long way to go as a city,” she said. “This is not a law enforcement-only challenge. It’s a challenge for all of us in city government. It’s a challenge for us in communities to dig down deeper and ask ourselves what we can do to step up to stem the violence.“

Lightfoot stressed that gun violence is not how residents should resolve disputes. “For those who think it is, we can give them no quarter, they can have no sanctuary in our city,” she said. “We’ve got to make sure we flood these areas with a lot more resources.”

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson also told reporters a new program to crack down on illegal guns had been implemented to curb gun violence.

The extended holiday weekend, combined with elevated temperatures, allowed more people to hit the streets, therefore some neighborhoods across Chicago transformed into warzones. Leading up to the weekend, Chicago police raided several trap houses and added addition shifts to patrols.

Since Friday afternoon, the shootings stretched from Roseland to West Rogers Park. The Tribune notes the epicenter of the violence was in the South and West sides of the city that are considered low-income areas.

As shown in the chart below, shootings and homicides ramped up into the holiday weekend and exploded on Sunday. From 5/26 through 5/28, three people were shot and killed, 21 people shot and wounded, and a total of 5 homicides.

However, the violence subsided on Monday due to inclement weather, which deterred people from congregating on city streets.

For the month, 40 people have been shot and killed, 175 people shot and wounded, and a total of 43 homicides.

Year to date, 174 people have been shot and killed, 720 people shot and wounded, and a total of 189 homicides.

Every 3 minutes and 57 seconds, someone in Chicago is shot. A person is murdered about ever 18.5 hours. 

And according to HeyJackass!, an online crime statistic website, the current forecasts show about 200 homicides and an additional 950 shooting from now to Labor Day weekend.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2X9YzBj Tyler Durden

While the dollar is giving back some of the day’s gains as Asia opens, US equities and US Treasury yields are extending the day’s trends  – collapsing further…

S&P Futs broke below 2,800 and kept going…

To lowest since early March…

10Y Yields just touched 2.24%…

But the dollar is reversing its US session trend early on as safe haven flows are surging into yen…

And Yuan is also weaker…

 

And finally, the Aussie yield curve just inverted…

 

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EDVBhA Tyler Durden

Authored by José Niño via The Mises Institute,

On May 9, 2019 Florida Governor Ron Desantis signed SB 7030 into law, which allows school or contract employees to be armed under Florida’s new Guardian Program. Local district superintendents must appoint these individuals, and then they must receive final approval from the school board. On top of that, staff who wants to be armed must also complete rigorous training and possess a valid concealed carry license. The training course mandates 144 hours of training, which emphasizes proper firearms usage.

Like clockwork, anti-gun commentators sounded off against this legislation, expressing their horror at the prospect of armed teachers. Fierce gun control advocate and 2020 presidential hopeful, Eric Swalwell, criticizedthis measure. He declared that “More guns is not the solution. Teachers with guns is not the solution.” Instead he believes that the solution to this dilemma is “getting the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous people. Period.”

Naturally, with Florida as the epicenter of the gun control debate after the 2018 Parkland shooting, the passage of a law to arm teachers will stir up heated debate. Despite the hand-wringing from gun control advocates, states that have armed personnel on campus are not filled with rampant cases of gun violence.

Research Shows that Arming Teachers is Not a Disaster in the Making

New research published by John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center shows that schools that allow teachers to carry have not experienced shootings during school hours. He noted that schools allowing teachers to carry have “been remarkably safe” and there “has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, at a school that lets teachers carry guns.” Lott also found that the “average rate of death or injury from shooting is 0.039 per 100,000 students across all schools,” whereas the rate of death or injury from shooting is 0 per 100,000 in schools with armed teachers.

A Decent Step in the Right Direction

While not an infringement on gun rights, Florida’s newly passed law is a marginal upgrade at best. First of all, it still treats the carry of firearms as a regulated privilege where individuals must jump through plenty of hurdles just to exercise a “right” they supposedly have. However, more fundamental in this discussion is the nature of federal gun-free zones and school autonomy.

Under the bipartisan Gun-Free School Zones Act , which was introduced by 2020 Presidential candidate Joe Biden and then signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990, the possession or carry of firearms within one thousand feet of public, private, and parochial elementary and high schools is prohibited. As a result, schools have turned into potential soft targets for those willing to inflict harm.

We’re already witnessing reduced crime rates throughout the nation during the past three decades. Even with the increase of per capita gun ownership, crime rates have continued to fall much to the gun control advocates’ dismay. Curiously, mass shootings continue to take place in gun-free zones. Approximately 98 percent of mass shootings take place in these kinds of venues. Hardly anyone brings this point up, nor do they strike at the root of the problem — the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act .

How To Make Schools Safe

In an ideal world, 1990 GFSZA should be repealed. However, the solution to school safety is not so much about legislation that arms teachers. Instead, it should be more centered on giving school’s the freedom to decide how security services are provisioned in their facilities. If that means arming teachers to the teeth, that is the school’s prerogative. However, certain schools would likely prefer to have armed security personnel instead. In a previous article addressing gun-free zones, Jeff Deist notes there is a “market impulse to outsource services to specialists.”

Deist draws on real-world examples to illustrate this point:

“This is why neighborhoods hire private security patrols, and why celebrities hire professional bodyguards. Not everyone wants to carry a gun or train themselves in gun proficiency. And there is the issue of scale, where individuals might find themselves arrayed against organized criminal gangs.”

Free societies do not entail one-size-fits-all solutions. They deal with rigorous experimentation and the freedom to voluntarily associate and transact with others. Certain types of arrangements will look differently from others. The key is that people that mutually cooperate with each other on a voluntary basis.

In discussions concerning guns at schools, teachers, administrators, parents, etc – not politicians or bureaucrats in far-away jurisdictions like Washington D.C. – should be the ones determining security policies on campus. A good place to start is by allowing local jurisdictions to reassert local control over school safety policy. Although Florida’s SB 7030 is not a comprehensive reform, it has started a new conversation on how schools can provide safer environments for students.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Mp2U30 Tyler Durden

Having been practically a recluse since since the ‘fake dossier’ alleging links between Donald Trump and Russia that he produced was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, Christophe Steele has reportedly refused to cooperate with AG Barr’s probes.

Reuters reports that, according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham, named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team.

However, buried deep in Reuters story is the same source claiming that Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department’s Inspector General into how U.S. law enforcement agencies handled pre-election investigations into both Trump and Clinton.

In the past Steele has cooperated, willingly being interviewed twice in the special counsel’s investigation, and submitting answers in writing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but apparently this time he is not willing.

With Steel refusing to cooperate, Joe DiGenova, former U.S. Attorney warned Monday on WMAL radio’s Mornings on the Mall radio show,

“this is full scale war,” adding that “we are heading toward a gigantic, gigantic fight…

The intelligence community, which includes the FBI, is in full resistance to disclosing what they did during the presidential campaign.”

Sara Carter reports that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Trump within weeks.

These investigation will hold those in the intelligence and law enforcement community accountable, depending on what evidence is discovered. This reporter is hearing from sources that it will be scathing. Those who abused their power and weaponized the tools meant to target America’s enemies against a political opponents should be held accountable.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WsnTp7 Tyler Durden

The US Treasury department refrained from labeling China a currency manipulator on Tuesday, avoiding even greater escalation in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, although leaving to door open to stigmatize China at some future date.

Washington hasn’t labeled a major trade partner a currency manipulator since 1994.

In its semi-annual foreign-exchange report to Congress, which was originally due in mid-April but was delayed due to the changes to the criteria used to evaluate countries, the Treasury expanded the number of countries it scrutinizes for currency manipulation to 21 from 12, after Steven Mnuchin lowered the threshold for qualification.

Five countries including Ireland, Italy, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia, joining China, Japan, South Korea and Germany on a watch list for manipulation, while India and Switzerland were removed. It was not immediately clear why Italy – which is part of the common currency – was singled out when together with the rest of the Eurozone its “currency” is subject to the monetary policy of the ECB. Unless of course the US Treasury still thinks Italy uses the lira.

Of course, the report itself is largely useless, and mostly a political weapon as branding any nation a currency manipulator does not actually impose any penalties. Contrary to previous reports, the US avoided accusing Vietnam of manipulating its dong, with Bloomberg reporting that the label was avoided last this week when Vietnamese officials visited Washington last week.

As the report further notes, Vietnam avoided the designation after its officials “credibly conveyed” that the nation’s net purchases of foreign exchange were below 2% of its GDP in 2018, putting it below the key intervention threshold, although that number appears suspiciously low in light of the recent collapse in the dong. The Treasury, however, said that Vietnam “tightly manages the value of the dong against the dollar.”

While no major changes were expected to the status quo, strategists were unsure until the last moment if the US Treasury wouldn’t pull out a surprise at a time when currency policy has emerged as President Trump’s latest tool “to rewrite global trade rules that he says have hurt American businesses and consumers” in the process making FX policy a key piece of trade deals with Mexico, Canada and South Korea, and should a deal with China ever be reached, the Yuan would be a core part of it.

Today’s lack of surprises was notable because Bloomberg reported last week that the administration ramped up its focus on foreign exchange, proposing tariffs on goods from countries found to have undervalued currencies.

The Commerce Department’s move would let U.S.-based companies seek anti-subsidy tariffs on products from countries found by Treasury to be engaging in competitive devaluation of their currencies. Currently no country meets that criteria.

“Treasury takes seriously any potentially unfair currency practices, and Treasury is expanding the number of U.S. trading partners it reviews to make currency practices fairer and more transparent,” Mnuchin said in a statement.

As part of the loosened criteria for watch list inclusion, countries with a current-account surplus equivalent to 2% of gross-domestic product are now eligible for the list, down from 3%. Other thresholds include persistent intervention in markets for a nation’s currency, and a trade surplus with the U.S. of at least $20 billion.

All eyes were on China again, because ever since he was a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump often said that he would label China a currency manipulator on “day one” of his administration. So far, the Treasury’s criteria does not allow such a designation.

Countries that meet two of the three criteria are placed on the watch list. While China only met one of the criteria, the Treasury said it’s on the list because of its large trade surplus with the U.S.

The other problem is that while the implicit understanding is that countries manipulate their currencies lower, China has been doing the opposite in recent years, doing everything in its power to prevent the Yuan from dropping below 7.00 against the dollar as any continued devaluation carries the risk of significant capital flight (hence China’s constant crackdown against bitcoin).

Ironically, this is what the Treasury said about China’s FX policy:

Treasury continues to urge China to take the necessary steps to avoid a persistently weak currency. China needs to aggressively address market-distorting forces, including subsidies and state-owned enterprises, enhance social safety nets to support greater household consumption growth, and rebalance the economy away from investment. Improved economic fundamentals and structural policy settings would underpin a stronger RMB over time and help to reduce China’s trade surplus with the United States.

The report also said that “Treasury continues to have significant concerns about China’s currency practices, particularly in light of the misalignment and undervaluation of the RMB relative to the dollar. China should make a concerted effort to enhance transparency of its exchange rate and reserve management.”

Despite not accusing China of manipulting the yuan, the report warned that “notwithstanding that China does not trigger all three criteria under the 2015 legislation, Treasury will continue its enhanced bilateral engagement with China regarding exchange rate issues, given that the RMB has fallen against the dollar by 8 percent over the last year in the context of an extremely large and widening bilateral trade surplus. Treasury continues to urge China to take the necessary steps to avoid a persistently weak currency.” 

The punchline – the US was quite clear in its demands to Beijing:

China needs to aggressively address market-distorting forces, including subsidies and state-owned enterprises, enhance social safety nets to support greater household consumption growth, and rebalance the economy away from investment. Improved economic fundamentals and structural policy settings would underpin a stronger RMB over time and help to reduce China’s trade surplus with the United States.

Of course, none of this means that Trump won’t accuse China of manipulating its currency on the “semi-official” channel that is his twitter account. In fact, we expect him to do just that in very short notice.

The full Treasury report can be found here.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Xb5Cdl Tyler Durden

Here we go again in what now seems a yearly exercise: the United States has put Russia and the Syrian government on notice as both ramp up airstrikes on Idlib province in Syria’s northwest. The last time Russian jets and the Syrian Army prepared for a major assault on the al-Qaeda held province was in September of last year — an offensive that had been ultimately called off at the time when the Trump administration threatened another military strike against Damascus. 

The State Department on Tuesday slammed the renewed assault as “indiscriminate” and a “reckless escalation” of violence, according to Reuters. “Indiscriminate attacks on civilians and public infrastructure such as schools, markets and hospitals is a reckless escalation of the conflict and is unacceptable,” a spokesperson said. “The violence must end.”

International reports have cited over 200 civilian deaths since government operations gained in intensity this month, following a series anti-Assad insurgent attacks against government areas outside nearby Hama as well as Latakia province. 

Damascus says it’s retaliating for stepped up HTS terror operations (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Syrian AQ/formerly Nusra) in a pattern of escalation that looks to continue. Russia’s Khmeimim airbase has also faced more severe attacks in the past weeks via HTS rockets, mortars, and terror drones. 

Early this week an anti-Assad opposition official urged immediate military intervention by Turkey, a call which in the past also been requested of the United States and western allies. 

Meanwhile, international media reports have again begun spotlighting the potential for mass humanitarian disaster and refugee displacement. But the mainstay of al-Qaeda’s dominant force in Syria is now lodged among some three million civilians in the area — a fact which even the US government has previously recognized. 

The Washington Post noted earlier this month that “a final showdown” is looming over Idlib, which could bring Syria straight back into the international spotlight once again, also as both the US and Israel ramp up efforts against “Iranian expansion” in the region, and a US carrier strike group and bomber task force is still in the Persian Gulf region. 

And last week a large bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to President Trump urging him to take more muscular approach in Syria, saying they were “deeply concerned” about Iranian influence, Russian intervention, and the presence of extremist groups. 

Though Syria has long been out of the headlines since Assad solidified hold over most of the country, driving the final insurgent pockets from Damascus suburbs of east Ghouta last year, it looks like the proxy war nature of the theater is fast heating up once again. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Ez9A8f Tyler Durden

While Trump’s Attorney General William Barr oversees a probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, in which the Obama-era intelligence community has been accused of gross violations of the law – including spying and possible entrapment, fired FBI Director James Comey has been on the defensive, claiming to have “no idea what the heck” people like Barr are talking about in regards to allegations of malfeasance. 

Comey’s latest attempt to untarnish his image comes in the form of a Tuesday afternoon op-ed in the Washington Post, responding to Thursday allegations by the President that Comey, former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and former FBI agent Peter Strock had “unsuccessfully tried to take down the wrong person.” 

“That’s treason, Trump said at a White House event. “They couldn’t win the election, and that’s what happened.”

Trump accuses Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and Page of “treason” pic.twitter.com/G83hiPsUKY

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 23, 2019

Trump’s comments were backed by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who said on Sunday that statements by FBI agents investigating Trump sounded “an awful lot like a coup, and it could well be treason.” 

Nonsense, insists Comey – who writes of Trump in his op-ed: “We must call out his lies that the FBI was corrupt and committed treason, that we spied on the Trump campaign, and tried to defeat Donald Trump. We must constantly return to the stubborn facts.” 

Comey continues: “We investigated. We didn’t gather information about the campaign’s strategy. We didn’t “spy” on anyone’s campaign. We investigated to see whether it was true that Americans associated with the campaign had taken the Russians up on any offer of help.” 

The ‘investigating’ – as we now know, included the FBI sending in longtime spook Stefan Halper and an FBI agent posing as Halper’s assistant, who gained the trust of Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos under false pretenses. Months earlier, Papadopoulos had been seeded with the rumor that Russia had negative information on Hillary Clinton by a self-described member of the Clinton Foundation.

In the words of the CIA’s former counterintelligence chief James Olson “I’d call that spying.” 

In the words of former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, “It was entrapment.“

Comey continues in his op-ed: 

By late October, the investigators thought they had probable cause to get a federal court order to conduct electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page. Page was no longer with the campaign, but there was reason to believe he was acting as an agent of the Russian government. We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil him and then we did it, all without revealing our work, despite the fact that it was late October and a leak would have been very harmful to candidate Trump. Worst deep-state conspiracy ever.

But wait, the conspiracy idea gets dumber. On Oct. 28, after agonizing deliberation over two terrible options, I concluded I had no choice but to inform Congress that we had reopened the Clinton email investigation. I judged that hiding that fact — after having told Congress repeatedly and under oath that the case was finished — would be worse than telling Congress the truth. It was a decision William Barr praised and Hillary Clinton blamed for her loss 11 days later. Strzok, alleged architect of the treasonous plot to stop Trump, drafted the letter I sent Congress.

And there’s still more to the dumbness of the conspiracy allegation. At the center of the alleged FBI “corruption” we hear so much about was the conclusion that Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lied to internal investigators about a disclosure to the press in late October 2016. McCabe was fired over it. And what was that disclosure? Some stop-Trump election-eve screed? No. McCabe authorized a disclosure that revealed the FBI was actively investigating the Clinton Foundation, a disclosure that was harmful to Clinton. -James Comey

Of course, McCabe reportedly authorized the self-serving leak in response to media pressure that he had gone easy on Clinton – not to harm her campaign. Meanwhile according to McCabe, a senior Obama DOJ official called him and was “very pissed off” that the FBI was still pursuing the Clinton Foundation when the DOJ had considered the case dormant. 

In closing, Comey writes: “But go ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations. There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.“

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JFDtYw Tyler Durden

Donald Trump took Joe Biden behind the proverbial bleachers this weekend and gave him a twitter beating the likes of which shant be soon forgotten. 

In case you missed it, Trump tweeted on Sunday that “African Americans” would not be able to vote for “anyone associated with the 1994 crime bill” which Biden authored (and bragged about as recently as 2007) – largely blamed for contributing to the mass incarceration of black Americans for low-level drug crimes during the USA’s infamously failed war on drugs. 

Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you. I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, & helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2019

….Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2019

Biden furiously shook his cane, as his campaign copped some serious holier-than-thou faux shock that Trump would talk shit “on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President,” referring to Trump’s downplay of North Korea’s short-range rocket test, and subsequent tweet calling Biden “a low IQ individual” and “swampman.” 

North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2019

The Trump campaign had none of Biden’s jibber-jabber, as 2020 campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh shot back in a statement “That’s rich coming from Joe Biden, who bashed President Trump while standing on foreign soil earlier this year in Germany.” 

That’s rich coming from Joe Biden, who bashed President Trump while standing on foreign soil earlier this year in Germany.

Full statement: https://t.co/55nc7QyV4S pic.twitter.com/Ylm4V3D4r3

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) May 28, 2019

In February, Biden slammed the Trump administration’s foreign policy and immigration stance while speaking during the Munich Security Conference.  

“From the Iraq war to the Russia reset, Joe Biden has been wrong on virtually every foreign policy call in the last four decades,” said Murtaugh. “Just ask former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KiJPwL Tyler Durden

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

All across America, U.S. farmland is being gobbled up by foreign interests.  So when we refer to “the heartland of America”, the truth is that vast stretches of that “heartland” is now owned by foreigners, and most Americans have no idea that this is happening.  These days, a lot of people are warning about the “globalization” of the world economy, but in reality our own soil is rapidly being “globalized”.  When farms are locally owned, the revenue that those farms take in tends to stay in local communities.  But with foreign-owned farms there is no guarantee that will happen.  And while there is plenty of food to go around this is not a major concern, but what happens when a food crisis erupts and these foreign-owned farms just keep sending their produce out of the country?  There are some very serious national security concerns here, and they really aren’t being addressed.  Instead, the amount of farmland owned by foreigners just continues to increase with each passing year.

Prior to seeing the headline to this article, how much U.S. farmland would you have guessed that foreigners now own?

Personally, I had no idea that foreigners now own nearly 30 million acres.  The following comes from NPR…

American soil.

Those are two words that are commonly used to stir up patriotic feelings. They are also words that can’t be be taken for granted, because today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities.

How did we allow this to happen?

And actually laws regarding land ownership vary greatly from state to state.  Some states have placed strict restrictions on foreign land ownership, while in other states it is “a free-for-all”…

“Texas is kind of a free-for-all, so they don’t have a limit on how much land can be owned,” say’s Ohio Farm Bureau’s Ty Higgins, “You look at Iowa and they restrict it — no land in Iowa is owned by a foreign entity.”

Ohio, like Texas, also has no restrictions, and nearly half a million acres of prime farmland are held by foreign-owned entities. In the northwestern corner of the state, below Toledo, companies from the Netherlands alone have purchased 64,000 acres for wind farms.

But even in states where there are restrictions, foreign entities can get around that by simply buying large corporations that own land.

For example, when the Chinese purchased Smithfield Foods in 2013 they instantly gained control over 146,000 acres of prime farmland.  The following comes from Wikipedia…

Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a meat-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and a wholly owned subsidiary of WH Group of China. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world.[4] In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to grow Smithfield’s pigs.[5] Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, and the United Kingdom.[6]Globally the company employed 50,200 in 2016 and reported an annual revenue of $14 billion.[2] Its 973,000-square-foot meat-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was said in 2000 to be the world’s largest, processing 32,000 pigs a day.[7]

Then known as Shuanghui Group, WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods in 2013 for $4.72 billion, more than its market value.[8][9] It was the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date.[10] The acquisition of Smithfield’s 146,000 acres of land made WH Group, headquartered in Luohe, Henanprovince, one of the largest overseas owners of American farmland.[a]

Of course this hasn’t happened by accident.

The communist Chinese government has actually made the purchase of foreign agricultural assets a top national priority in recent years, and this has been reflected in a series of key documents…

The strategy is reflected in encouragements to invest abroad by various documents and articles issued by Chinese leaders. For example, a series of annual “Number one documents” from China’s communist party authorities stating rural policy have contained increasingly specific strategies for investment. A general exhortation to invest in agriculture overseas, issued in 2007, was followed by an initial surge in overseas farming ventures. In 2010, authorities called for supportive policies to encourage investment abroad.

The 2014 document included a more specific mandate to create large grain-trading conglomerates, designed to give Chinese companies greater control over oilseed and grain imports. That was the same year COFCO acquired Nidera and Noble Agri, making COFCO one of the largest trading companies in the world based on value of assets. The 2015 document specifically called for policies to support facilities, equipment, and inputs for agricultural production in foreign countries. The 2017 document broadened the encouragement to include all types of agricultural conglomerates. The 2018 document repeated the general endorsement of overseas investment and instructions to create multinational grain-trading and agricultural conglomerates.

In the end, how much Chinese ownership of our farmland would we be comfortable with?

If they owned 20 percent of our farmland, would we be okay with that?

Well, what if that figure surged to 30 or 40 percent?

Would that still be okay?

We need to start asking these sorts of questions, because foreigners are buying up more of our farmland with each passing day, and this is a very real national security threat.

And after this absolutely disastrous year, thousands more U.S. farmers will be forced out of business and it is anticipated that more U.S. farmland will be up for sale than ever before.

I extensively discussed the problems that farmers in the middle of the country are currently having yesterday, and today I would like to share with you a portion of an email that a friend in Missouri just sent me…

I work for a farmer in West-Central Missouri who raises corn, soybeans, and cattle and to say it’s been a challenging Spring would be the understatement of the year!!! We managed to get some corn planted in April but it started to rain and rain and rain and we still have more corn to plant. My boss doesn’t like to plant corn after May 15 and here it is May 27 and we still are not done planting corn. With each late day that passes by the yield goes down so what do you do??? Do we start planting soybeans if or when it dries up even though the price of soybeans is at a record low or do we plant corn that has risen in price but will have a reduced yield??? From April 28 through today (May 27) we have had 10 inches of rain. One day we had 4.5 inches with roads and basements flooded. Last week we had rain 4 out of those 7 days!!! It’s raining again today as I write this!!! We need warm, sunshine, dry, windy days and we get mostly cool, cloudy, rainy days. Next Thursdays low is supposed to be 57!!! If the weather pattern doesn’t change I don’t see how we can ever get the soybeans planted and we have 1,300 acres to plant. There are large farmers in my area that don’t have anything planted.

This truly is a “perfect storm” for U.S. farmers, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

Farm bankruptcies are already at the highest level that we have seen since the last recession, and do we really want foreigners gobbling up even more of our farmland from farmers that are incredibly desperate to sell?

Our founders never intended for America to be for sale to the highest bidder, and hopefully more states will start passing laws that will make sure that U.S. farms stay in the hands of U.S. farmers.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XcGNNS Tyler Durden