Category: zerohedge

Authored by Mark Hemingway via RealClearPolitics.com,

Following accusations of widespread fraud, voter intimidation, and ballot theft in the May 12 municipal elections in Paterson, N.J., state Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced Thursday he is charging four men with voter fraud – including the vice president of the City Council and a candidate for that body.

With races still undecided, control of the council hangs in the balance. Paterson is New Jersey’s third largest city and the election will decide the fate of a municipal budget in excess of $300 million, in addition to hundreds of millions more in education spending and state aid.

In the City Council election, 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but only 13,557 votes were counted. More than 3,190 votes, 19% of the total ballots cast, were disqualified by the board of elections. Due to the pandemic, Paterson’s election was done through vote-by-mail. Community organizations, such as the city’s NAACP chapter, are calling for the entire election to be invalidated.

Mail-in ballots have long been acknowledged by voting experts to be more susceptible to fraud and irregularities than in-person voting. This has raised concerns from President Trump and other Republicans about the integrity of national elections in November, which are expected to include a dramatic increase in mail-in ballots. If Paterson is any guide, it ought to concern Democrats as well.

Over 800 ballots in Paterson were invalidated for appearing in mailboxes improperly bundled together – including a one mailbox where hundreds of ballots were in a single packet. The bundles were turned over to law enforcement to investigate potential criminal activity related to the collection of the ballots.

The board of elections disqualified another 2,300 ballots after concluding that the signatures on them did not match the signatures on voter records.

Reporting by NBC further uncovered citizens of Paterson who are listed as having voted, but who told the news outlet they never received a ballot and did not vote. One woman, Ramona Javier, after being shown the list of people on her block who allegedly voted, told the outlet she knew of eight family members and neighbors who were wrongly listed.

“We did not receive vote-by-mail ballots and thus we did not vote,” she said.

“This is corruption. This is fraud.”

There were multiple reports that large numbers of mail-in ballots were left on the lobby floors of apartment buildings and not delivered to residents’ individual mailboxes, further casting doubt on the integrity of the election.

Two of the election results in Paterson were particularly close. Initially, challenger Shahin Khalique defeated incumbent Mohammed Akhtaruzzaman by 1,729 votes to 1,721. After a second recount on June 19, that race is now tied 1,730-1,730. In that race, a video posted to Snapchat has surfaced that appears to show a man named Abu Razyen unlawfully handling a large stack of ballots he indicates are votes for Khalique. Khalique’s brother, Shelim, and Razyen have been charged by the state attorney general for crimes including fraud in casting mail-in votes, tampering, and unauthorized possession of ballots.

Incumbent council member William McKoy lost by 240 votes to challenger Alex Mendez after a recount on June 1. However, the McKoy-Mendez race is far from over – in the third ward of the city where the race was decided, over 24% of all ballots were disqualified by the Board of Elections. Mendez was also charged Thursday with six different crimes related to voter fraud. (Michael Jackson, Paterson’s incumbent 1st Ward city councilman and council vice president, was the fourth man charged yesterday. Jackson faces four counts related to voter fraud.)

In a legal complaint, the McKoy campaign is alleging outright fraud on behalf of the Mendez campaign. “At least one individual, YaYa Luis Mendez, has confessed to investigators working on behalf of the [New Jersey attorney general’s] office to having stolen ballots out of mailboxes, both completed and uncompleted, on behalf of and at the direction of the [Alex] Mendez campaign,” according to the complaint prepared by McKoy attorney Scott Salmon.

The attorney for Mendez, who leads in the vote count, isn’t disputing that the election results are unreliable. “This election is a sham, regardless of who are the ultimate victors, and this process has to be reviewed by the courts to address the deficiencies in the planning and execution of the election,” Gregg Paster, the attorney, is quoted as saying in Salmon’s complaint. 

For his part, Paster alleges that the botched election has resulted in problems hurting Mendez’s chance of winning. On June 8, Paster sent a letter asking federal authorities to investigate voter intimidation on behalf of the Paterson’s mayor, Andre Sayegh, and local law enforcement.

Mendez is part of a faction opposing the mayor and hoping to gain control of the City Council and push back against the mayor’s agenda. The ensuing investigations into voting irregularities have resulted in Paterson police officers – including those assigned to the mayor’s private detail, according to Paster – knocking on doors and asking citizens about their votes. The local police department says the cops were assisting the state attorney general investigation into the election, serving as translators for differing Spanish dialects.

“Once you start having city police knocking on doors, investigating voting patterns, you’re treading awfully close to the line of banana republic type of tactics,” Paster told RealClearPolitics. “There’s an intimidation factor – you have a lot of immigrants in Paterson, a lot of people that come from places where if the police show up at your door, a lot of times, you know, nobody ever sees you again. And while we’re not alleging local cops are anything like that, this is where a lot of these people have come from and they’re afraid of the police.”

Salmon admits Paterson’s recent election is “crazy,” but points to unique aspects of living in the town that make mail-in ballot fraud more likely – it’s one of the most densely populated cities in America, with lots of residents living in high-rise buildings that have communal mailboxes that are prime targets for ballot theft.

But as noted in Salmon’s legal complaint, Paterson was just one of 31 municipalities in New Jersey that held vote-by-mail elections on May 12. The average disqualification rate for mail-in ballots in all 31 elections across the state was an alarming 9.6%. (The ballot rejection rate drops to 8.1% if Paterson’s results are excluded.)

New Jersey’s municipal elections aren’t broadly comparable to nationwide elections for a variety of reasons, but the 2016 presidential election resulted in a popular vote total with a differential of just over 2%, with fewer than 80,000 votes in a handful of swing states determining the Electoral College victor. Voting irregularities with mail-in ballots could be much less pronounced than what happened in New Jersey last month and still produce a great deal of uncertainty in a national election.

Salmon is hoping vote-by-mail problems will be resolved in the months before the November election. “In New Jersey, people found out that this is going to be an all-mail-in election only a month before, whereas obviously November is still a ways away and there’s a lot more time to educate voters on how to fill out these ballots and how to return them,” he told RCP. But he concedes that it’s “still a fair point” to look at New Jersey’s elections last month and see cause for concern about the national elections.

Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged on the Election Law Blog last month that there’s “genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal going on in Paterson, New Jersey and it is going to get a lot of national attention.” Hasen argues that it’s not cause for concern, however, noting there were only 491 prosecutions related to absentee ballots nationwide between 2000 and 2012.

“The rise in vote by mail should lead to increased vigilance against this sort of activity,” he wrote on May 20. “But the push to expand vote by mail is worth it given the great health benefits of increased voting by mail during a pandemic, the small risk of fraud, and the likelihood that fraud will get caught.”

Despite Hasen’s sanguine attitude, the problems in Paterson have received virtually no national attention so far. Salmon and Paster say they’ve had inquiries from only two national news outlets, and almost all coverage of the problems and fraud allegations in Paterson have been confined to local news outlets.

At the same time, dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the country contesting state requirements used to certify mail-in ballots. “Among the main targets are witness and signature requirements for absentee ballots — such as signing the envelope, or getting a witness or notary to sign it, or making sure the voter’s signature is legible,” notes an NPR report earlier this month.

Those lawsuits seeking to expand vote-by-mail include one brought in Nevada earlier year, which aims to do away with signature verification on mail-in ballots altogether – even though ballot signatures not matching voter records was the reason Paterson disqualified over 2,300 ballots.

Meanwhile, the president continues to be an outspoken opponent of voting by mail. He tweeted on June 22, “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” This and other Trump claims about vote-by-mail problems are frequently contested by the press.

“We’ve literally been expecting Trump to tweet about this for the last two weeks,” says Salmon. “Within the McCoy campaign, there have been ongoing jokes about how long it’s going to take for Trump to find out about Paterson and start tweeting.”

The global coronavirus total topped 10 million late Saturday night in the US as a handful of Asian nations reported their case totals for Sunday morning, finally pushing the total over the top. To be sure, there are likely millions of cases that have gone uncounted. But reaching the eight-figure mark is certainly an important psychological milestone, particularly since daily totals for new cases continue to climb.

Roughly a quarter of these cases have been confirmed in the US, which has seen its case total pass 2.5 million, while US deaths are ~125k. JHU counted 499,342 deaths globally as of 1030ET on Sunday.

As more Republicans turn on President Trump and press him to step up and “lead”, or risk allowing Joe Biden to win the election without leaving the basement, the Atlantic-run (and Laurene Powell Jobs-funded) COVID-19 Tracking Project has made an interesting point.

The number of cases confirmed during the outbreak in the northeast represents only a small portion of the total, while the timing of the outbreak in the south and west means more of the actual case total is being captured.

It’s important to remember that diagnostic testing only captured a small % of the actual infections in the Northeast outbreak.

Though we are setting records for *confirmed cases* — there were almost certainly more total infections at the spring peak than there are right now. pic.twitter.com/fZfu8AqHTf

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 27, 2020

With that in mind, even when it comes to the number of cases being reported daily, the current outbreak probably isn’t as severe as the outbreaks we saw in New York City and the Greater New York area (and surrounding states), even though the daily US national case totals are ~technically~ at fresh all-time highs.

The US saw ~43k new cases reported yesterday, a near-record total and the second straight (some say fourth-straight) day of 40k+ cases.

States reported ~43k new cases today, a near record.
These numbers are a result of increased testing capturing the rapid spread of the virus across a large swath of the country. pic.twitter.com/HeMIiYVMOq

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 27, 2020

Another round of rumors about Dr. Fauci being “muzzled” by the White House (despite the fact that he just made another round of interviews) is hitting on Sunday. At this point, the stories are nothing new.

Testing has remained above 500k tests a day, a sign that testing has continued to improve (perhaps more ‘protesters’ are finally taking Gov Cuomo’s advice and getting tested?) despite President Trump’s remarks about trying to slow testing during the early days of the epidemic (there’s no evidence he did, though the sentiment isn’t exactly encouraging).

Our daily update is published. States reported 591k completed tests today.

The nation hadn’t ever hit 500k tests in a day before June, and has now surpassed that number 9 of the past 10 days.

For details, see: https://t.co/PZrmH4bl5Y pic.twitter.com/riLqzU8WPe

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 27, 2020

Deaths declined for the fourth day in a row, according to the numbers reported yesterday (which – remember – are reported with a 24-hour delay).

Deaths have continued to fall, even as cases and hospitalizations spike across the South and West.

Here’s what we do and don’t know about the death trends: https://t.co/ZXFERIyS6I pic.twitter.com/MiUJmyD4aN

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 27, 2020

Florida reported a record jump in cases yesterday, its second record increase in a row, and at least the third in the past five days.

Florida also reported a record number of cases today—close to 10k.

Florida remains one of the few states that does not report how many people are currently hospitalized. pic.twitter.com/1k6DhZBtew

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 27, 2020

Outside of the US, perhaps the biggest news overnight arrives from China, where the Xiongan New Area south of Beijing has been locked down on Saturday, with measures including closing villages, communities and buildings to anyone who doesn’t legally reside in the area, . Hebei province surrounds the federally administered capital city of Beijing. More than half a million people have been placed on a strict lockdown due to this latest outbreak.

Beijing has ramped up coronavirus testing efforts and has tested about one-third of the capital city’s population. It’s believe this outbreak is an extension of the cases stemming from the Xinfadi food market in southwestern Beijing, detected earlier this month.

As of midnight in the US on Sunday, Beijing had run nearly 8 million tests according to, Zhang Qiang, an official from the Beijing municipal committee.

The governor Australia’s second-most-populous state said Sunday that his government is considering targeted stay-at-home orders and locking down suburbs to contain coronavirus clusters in Melbourne. Australia reported 53 new cases on Sunday, 49 of them in Victoria, which raised the country’s total to 7,686 cases and 104 deaths. The latest cluster comes as Australia and neighboring New Zealand had mostly eradicated the virus. Victoria, the state which Melbourne serves as the capital, has reported new cases during 5 of the last 6 days, and was regularly reporting 0 cases a day as recently as June 9. About 40k residents of the state have been tested since Friday.

Iran is also struggling through a rebound in cases, and the hard-hit country is making masks mandatory in public. But the WHO on Sunday declared that the Philippines has seen the fastest increase in COVID-19 cases in the Western Pacific region. According to GMA News Online, between June 16 and 28, the total number of new cases in the Philippines was 9,655; that’s nearly 4x Singapore, which came in second with 2,610 new cases.

Americans hit the streets in huge numbers over the past couple of weeks, calling for an end to systematic racism and radical police reform.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center outlines just who the protestors were. Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that Pew polled 9,654 U.S. adults, of which 6 percent said they attended a protest or rally related to race/racial equality over the past month, a sizeable share given that the U.S. is experiencing a deadly pandemic.

You will find more infographics at Statista

615 of Pew’s respondents attended a such protest or rally and 46 percent of that total were White, 22 percent were Hispanic, 17 percent were Black and 8 percent were Asian.

Pew states that protestors tended to be nonwhite given the total number of adults polled, 64 percent of whom were White, 15 percent of whom were Hispanic, 11 percent who were Black and 5 percent who were Asian. Around 4-in-10 of people who demonstrated were under 30 years of age while older Americans were underrepresented at the protests.

Most participants, 79 percent, leaned towards or identified with the Democratic party.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

An interesting couple of posts from Southfront.org this week gives us some insight as to what’s happening in international oil markets.

Demand for Russian Urals grade oil is so strong that is has been trading at a pretty steep premium to Brent Crude this month. Southfront references this report from Argus research.

This means that the Russian Urals crude is trading at a premium to the European benchmark Brent. The premium is $1.55 per barrel in North-Western Europe and $2.55 – in the Mediterranean.

Argus names competition as the reason of Urals reaching such a high price. After the United States imposed sanctions against Venezuelan oil, American refineries began to willingly buy Russian heavy oil, very similar to the one exported by the Venezuelan PDVSA. In addition, demand for Russian oil in Asia is growing.

Traditionally, Urals trades at a discount to Brent because of a lack of a unified benchmark price for it. The July Shanghai Crude Oil futures contract closed at ¥299 (or $42.30) per barrel this week, putting it at a ~$1.70 premium to Brent Crude.

Russian Urals is far closer to the Medium Sour oil the Shanghai contract represents than the Light Sweet Brent.

At the same time the Saudi Arabian plan to flood the market with oil to gain market share has failed entirely.

Despite record oil exports in April as Saudi Arabia flooded the market with oil, the value of the Kingdom’s crude exports plunged by US$12 billion from April 2019 levels as the lowest oil prices in years hit revenues.

In April, the value of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports plummeted by 65.4%, or US$12 billion (45.3 billion Saudi riyals), severely affecting the value of the total exports of the world’s top oil exporter, data from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Statistics showed on Thursday.

China was Saudi Arabia’s main trading partner for merchandise trade in April 2020, with Saudi exports to China valued at US$1.9 billion (7.16 billion riyals).

The Saudis flooded the market with oil after the collapse of the previous OPEC+ deal in early March, exporting a record 10.237 million barrels per day (bpd) in April 2020, up from 7.391 million bpd in March, according to data from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI).

They shipped out 50% more oil and revenues plunged by 65%. They practically gave the stuff away in April. They had to. With the Riyal tied to the dollar they had to undercut Russian oil which trades in freely-floated rubles.

In March and April the ruble spiked to a high of RUB81.66 per dollar and has steadily fallen since then. Today it is still trading around 5% weaker against the U.S. dollar than it was pre-crisis.

That then becomes an even bigger source of profit given that now Urals grade is trading at a premium to Brent Crude while U.S. exports continue to lag behind.

And the Saudis are now still price takers rather than price makers since they immediately had to go back and adhere to production cuts in like with the rest of OPEC+’s agreement.

This dynamic highlights a couple of interesting points:

1. Russia has emerged as a more trusted partner overall than Saudi Arabia in the Eurasian oil market. Europe is willing to pay a premium for Urals because of both reliability and pricing advantages when currency fluctuations are considered.

2. China is willing to be a big buyer of Saudi oil while it eschews U.S. imports in order to gain leverage over Saudi policy. As their biggest customer China will at some point dictate terms rather than be dictated to.

3. Subtle shifts in the supply chain by major importers could also be a leading indicator of political unrest in the Arabian peninsula. The Saudi economy is in shambles and the Southfront report notes significant layoffs at Saudi Aramco.

I’ve been steadfast in my assessment that Russia holds all the cards in the global oil market at this point. This position will only strengthen as long as oil prices stay in this price range.

And don’t think Iran isn’t okay with this pricing regime since it thoroughly undermines the Saudis, which, in turn, exposes Israel’s soft underbelly. Iran is using the turmoil in the U.S. to, effectively, smuggle oil around the world, including to China.

*  *  *

Join My Patreon if you want help navigating the untold stories in the markets. Install the Brave Browser to loosen Google’s grip on the flow of information.

Believe it or not, people are actually drinking less now that they are quarantined.

What many thought would be an inevitability – people who are forced to stay home would start hitting the bottle more than usual – has actually turned out to be just the opposite. People are certainly buying more booze to stock themselves up at home, but this doesn’t offset the “gaping hole” from restaurants and bars, according to Bloomberg. 

In fact, global alcohol consumption isn’t expected to hit pre-Covid levels until 2024. 

Recall, we wrote in April 2019 that Gen Z would likely ditch alcohol and become the “ultimate” marijuana consuming generation. The business of booze was already dealing with these types of headwinds heading into the pandemic. There is concern in the industry that even post-pandemic, Americans will continue to cut back on their alcohol consumption.

Mark Meek, Chief Executive Officer of IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, said: “The pandemic is set to cause a deeper and more long-lasting after-effect to the global drinks industry than anything we’ve experienced before. In many ways, 2019 was perhaps the last ‘normal’ year for the drinks industry.”

The U.S. craft beer boom that has driven the industry for the last decade has given way to hard seltzers like White Claw. And non-alcoholic beer continues to sell well. Non-alcoholic beer is forecasted to grow by 33% this year despite an overall 3.7% drop in the beer category. This is due to brewers putting more time and focus into N/A drinks that retain the qualities of regular beers. 

Jonathan Bennett, executive vice president for merchandising and supply chain for Total Wine, said: “You can have the amazing taste experience of an IPA, but it just doesn’t have the alcohol in it.”

“If this is going to be the end of alcohol, we’re going to be great at it,” Bennett said about non-alcoholic options and low calorie drinks like hard seltzers. 

Non-alcoholic brewer Athletic Brewing Co. says its sales this year have already passed 2019. CEO Bill Shufelt said: “It’s an acceleration of a movement that was already in place toward healthier lifestyle. Sure, many Americans might have drank heavily early on during shelter-in-place orders, but being hungover at home probably got old pretty fast.”

Many athletes still drink Michelob Ultra, which started the low-carb beer trend back in the early 2000’s. But other entrants into the niche, like WellBeing Brewing, are starting to pitch their drinks as perfect after sports. WellBeing even makes a beer with electrolytes, like those found in Gatorade. 

Jeff Stevens, founder of WellBeing and a recovering alcoholic, said: “I was just out all the time, and there was never anything to drink. None of the choices, even then, were good. And it was like: Why isn’t anyone doing craft beer in this space?”

Authored by Guillaume Durocher via The Unz Review,

Bad news for southern Europe. It looks like coronavirus will further entrench the European Union’s long-standing disparities between north and south.

According to the European Commission’s estimates, the economies of Italy, Spain, and Greece will all shrink over 9%. By comparison, the EU average is 7.4%. France will shrink 8.2%, while most Nordic/Germanic countries will shrink less than 6.5% (that’s Germany, the Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Finland).

EU unemployment expected to rise from 6.7% to to 9% this year. Unemployment will rise to 9.7% in Portugal, 10.1% in France, 11.8% in Italy, 18.9% in Spain, and 19.9% in Greece. Germany will have 4%.

Deficits are going through the roof, from 0.6% of GDP in 2019 to 8.3% this year. Debt will rise to over102% of GDP, with huge disparities: over 115% for Spain and France, and almost 160% for Italy and 200% for Greece. By contrast, Germany’s debt will rise to 75% of GDP and Great Britain’s to 102%.

In terms of jobs and debt reduction, all of the hard-won gains of the past five years or so have been annihilated.

Nominal GDP per capita (in euros) in selected European countries (source: Eurostat). Italy and Greece never recovered the standards of living of the early 2000s. Note France and Germany decoupling since 2010.

Unemployment (%) in selected European countries (source: Eurostat). Southern European countries never recovered from the 2010 eurozone crisis. Notice that France’s performance has been noticeably worse than Germany’s and Britain’s since then as well.

Macroeconomically, France is now effectively part of southern Europe. From around 1965 to 2000, France was, uncharacteristically, significantly richer than Britain. In the 90s, France was about as rich as Germany, which was then hobbled by the annexation of formerly communist eastern Germany. Today, not having its own currency (unlike Britain) and having an enormous welfare and overregulated labor market (relative to Germany), there is no denying that France is falling behind.

Even before the COVID recession, southern Europe was barely on track for slowly growing out of debt. Now these hopes are completely dashed.

The economic disparities between northern and southern Europe – which have been manifest at least since the late nineteenth century and particularly since the Second World War – are going to become deeply entrenched.

This is part of the reason that I am skeptical of short or even medium term race war scenarios in Western Europe. The fact is that the most diverse and, most often, zealously diversitarian parts of the Western world – Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Great Britain, the United States, and the former White Dominions, mostly of north-west European and Germanic background – continue to be more economically dynamic.

Northern Europe and its colonial offshoots continue to be better at creating economic wealth – despite being hobbled by African, Islamic, and Hispanic minority populations which represent an economic drag relative to the natives – than comparatively homogeneous southern European nations and their colonial offshoots (namely the Whitish nations of Argentina and Chile, which have a fair amount of Amerindian blood).

In the 90s and early 2000s, the European Union could still confidently hope that, despite considerable inequalities, its nations would gradually converge to the same standard of living and level of development.

These hopes were encouraged by peculiarly Boomer assumptions: that wealth grows on trees and everyone is equal. When the euro common currency was created in 1999-2002, the European Central Bank declared that the public debt of southern European countries was just as credit-worthy as that of Germany and investments in them were effectively be subsidized. German and, especially, French banks jumped at the opportunity make massive investments in southern Europe, leading in particular to a hypertrophied public sector in Greece and a huge property bubble in Spain. The bubble burst circa 2010.

All this has great political ramifications. The scale of the economic disaster in southern Europe is presumably why German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to a remarkable doubling of the EU budget by €500 billion over the next three years, raising EU loans to fund transfers to countries hit by coronavirus, particularly southern Europe.

This improvized quasi-federal scheme is quite unprecedented, in terms of speed and scale, in EU history. As Jean Quatremer observes, given that the new budget would be financed by relatively painless loans, European leaders may have strong incentives to resort again to such plans in order to find the concluding fudge during their interminable summit negotiations.

Significantly, it appears that the German establishment – not counting the German Constitutional Court – has basically accepted the ECB’s adoption of Anglo-style mass lending to shore up the economy. If continued indefinitely, this will presumably prevent a 2010-11-style financial panic in southern Europe, but this has controversial redistributionary and inflationary implications in the medium term.

Today, even not accounting for highly-fertile immigrants, northern Europe’s fertility seems to be somewhat higher than that of southern and eastern Europe, I suspect because (potential) parents enjoy superior childcare/welfare services and higher/more secure incomes in northern Europe.

If southern Europe does not recover economically, we can expect continued depopulation as their fertility rates remain depressed and their more enterprising youth, particularly the educated, head north. These nations’ financial and political dependence on the north will grow. North-European economies will of course benefit from the inflow of southern European immigrants, partly counteracting the effects of Afro-Islamic immigration.

Politically, we have fertile ground for instability. The Macron régime is already barely able to keep the more uppity elements of the (neo-)French population – whether white gilets-jaunes or Afro-Islamic BLM marchers – at bay.

Italy looks to be on the verge of explosion. Both the political establishment and the people at large are becoming anti-EU. The inchoate populist-leftoid Five-Sar Movement has collapsed. Matteo Salvini’s nationalist Lega is being outflanked . . . by the even more nationalist Brothers of Italy.

Imagine that the euro-globalist establishment in these countries will now have to manage these pressures with additional grinding years of mass unemployment and belt-tightening. Italy has strong prospects for decisively flipping to a national-populist regime in the coming years and joining the ranks of Visegrád. (I am less optimistic for France.)

In the long run, I am talking 30-40 years, we can expect that northern Europe will become so dysfunctional that people prefer living in southern or eastern Europe. Non-Whites currently make up around 20% of the north-west European population. When this rises to 40 or 50%, we can expect the situation to get very unstable indeed.

Hopefully, by then , the southern and eastern Europeans will have taken note of their brethren’s mistakes and start taking the necessary measures. I mean the adoption of enlightened biopolitics: the preservation their ethno-national identities (accepting only assimilable immigrants, including fellow Europeans) and systematic policies to ensure their nations reproduce and, more than that, do so with a view to improving genetic and phenotypic quality. European nations will be so marginal in the world by then that we will really have no room for yet more excuses, delusions, and half-measures.

Coffee fundamentals indicate deteriorating demand and oversupplied conditions could soon pressure prices to 15-year lows. 

A global surplus of 3.5 million bags is expected in 2020-21 as Brazil expects a record crop after a lower yield in 2019. To some degree, this had been anticipated by the market.

Adding to concerns about a bulging supply imbalance, the Brazilian real has dropped 5% in the last few weeks versus the U.S. dollar. Coffee farmers in Brazil who fear continued real weakness are incented to deliver more and more coffee for export, even at the current low prices.

Expectations for demand growth, the one positive variable that had supported price increases, have been dialed back in light of the global pandemic. Recent data from the International Coffee Organization revealed global arabica coffee exports of 82.75 million bags in 2019, a six percent increase over 2018, and growth had been expected to continue in 2020 until lockdowns tempered the optimism. – a Charles Schwab commodity report said, seen by FXStreet. 

Now knowing the bearish fundamental backdrop, Reuters Commodity Desk forecasts a significant “downward wave (c) ” that could result in coffee prices reaching $0.6380 per lb in the first half of 2021. 

New York coffee may seek a support zone of $0.8760-$0.9110 per lb next quarter, to stay around this range or bounce moderately towards $1.08 before dropping again.

The support at $0.9110 is provided by the 76.4% projection level of a downward wave (c) from $1.7955. This wave is capable of traveling to $0.6380.

However, the support triggered a decent bounce in May 2019, which lasted until December 2019. This barrier is likely to cause another weaker bounce.

It must be noted that the calculated projection levels are not perfect. There might be a brief piercing below $0.9110. The expected bounce may not occur until coffee finds a lower support at $0.8760, the May 2019 low.

Probably, the second bounce will be limited to $1.08. Based on this outlook, coffee may be mostly rangebound between $0.8760 and $1.08 in the third quarter. A fall below $0.8760 could be extended into the range of $0.6380-$0.7955.

A detailed study on the daily chart reveals the progress of a downward wave C from $1.2905, which may eventually travel to $0.8615, its 100% projection level, very close to $0.8760.

Resistance is at $1.0255, a break above which could suggest an earlier-than-expected development of the bounce towards $1.08.

– Reuters Commodity Desk 

Virus pandemic crushing demand, oversupplied conditions, and no V-shaped global economic rebound has likely resulted in the great coffee bust of the early 2020s

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

President Trump laid out his rationale while hosting his Polish counterpart at the White House. President Andrzej Duda who is allied with the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) was on his third visit to the White House this week since Donald Trump took office. He is the first foreign leader to be received in Pennsylvania Avenue since the pandemic lockdown.

For such an honor, Trump readily explained that the purpose of his Polish embrace was to spite both Germany and Russia. He confirmed the planned removal of U.S. troops from German soil, which he announced last week, and said some of those units would be going to Poland.

“We’re going to be reducing our forces in Germany. Some will be coming home and some will be going to other places, but Poland would be one of those other places,” said Trump at a press briefing at the White House with Duda.

He said that would send “a very strong signal to Russia”.

The Kremlin responded that such a move would violate the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act. Moscow has previously protested deployment of U.S. troops in Poland on a rotational basis. Now the American forces seem to be setting up permanent bases.

Trump repeated his accusation that Germany was “delinquent” in its military spending on the NATO alliance.

“Poland is one of the few countries that are fulfilling their obligations under NATO, in particular their monetary obligations,” said Trump.

“And they asked us if we would send some additional troops. They’re going to pay for that. They’ll be paying for the sending of additional troops, and we’’ll probably be moving them from Germany to Poland. We’re going to be reducing Germany very substantially.”

The American president was referring to an arbitrary spending target of 2 per cent of national economy for NATO members. Germany allocates about 1.3 per cent, although it has dramatically increased its military spending over the past two years. However, that is still not enough for Trump who has repeatedly chided Berlin for seeking protection from the U.S. while allegedly not paying its dues.

Poland is one of eight NATO members in the 30-nation military alliance that does meet the 2 per cent spending target, although in absolute monetary terms its annual military budget is only about a quarter of Germany’s ($50 billion).

Trump is also known to have a sour relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her refusal in May to attend a proposed G7 summit in Washington was seen as a snub to Trump. Tellingly, his surprise move to pull U.S. troops out of Germany then followed that spat.

The initial White House report to withdraw some 9,5000 American soldiers stationed in Germany out of a total of 35,000 blindsided politicians in Berlin. The Pentagon also seemed to not have been consulted by Trump. The hasty move smacked of vindictiveness by Trump, intent on insulting the Germans. Certainly, the horrified reaction from the Berlin establishment showed that Trump had hit where it hurts.

Hosting the Polish president at the White House this week and moving ahead with the proposed U.S. troop relocation is further rubbing Germany’s nose by Trump. The two leaders signed a “defense cooperation agreement”.

“Today we are entering another stage, namely there is a possibility of further increase in American troops in our country,” Duda said.

It’s not clear exactly how many U.S. forces are heading to Poland. Reports indicate it could be about 2,000 troops as well as up to 30 F-16 fighter jets. That’s still a lot less than the number Trump is planning to pull out of Germany. Nevertheless, it is hugely symbolic.

Germany was traditionally the European base for U.S. forces since the end of World War Two. Poland, a former Warsaw Pact member, then joined the U.S.-led alliance in 1999 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, it is set to host U.S. troops in permanent bases. Trump’s cozying up to Warsaw is therefore grooming Poland as the new European base for American forces. (Whether the Pentagon buys into that in the long-term is another question.)

The Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland together with President Duda have long appealed to Washington to station U.S. troops in their country. That appeal fits their intensely Russophobic narrative accusing Russia of “aggression”. Duda and PiS have set about rewriting the history of World War Two in which Nazi Germany is equated with the Soviet Union. The defeat of the Nazi Reich by the Red Army and liberation of Poland and other nations is furiously denied by the Warsaw government.

Trump has very much played into that discreditable narrative. In a speech delivered in Warsaw in July, 2017, Trump conflated Nazi occupation with claims of the Soviet Union’s “brutal campaign to demolish freedom”.

By sending U.S. troops and warplanes to bases in Poland which borders Russia’s territory of Kaliningrad, Trump is indulging Warsaw’s persecution complex about alleged Russian aggression. Last month, Poland officially declared Russia as its “biggest security threat”.

The added rationale for Trump’s troop maneuver appears to be his umbrage over Germany buying much of its energy supply from Russia instead of from the U.S. He pointedly linked the relocation of American troops from Germany to Poland with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

Trump said:

“It sends a very strong signal to Russia, but I think a stronger signal sent to Russia is the fact that Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars to purchase energy from Russia through the pipeline.”

However, he added:

“With all that being said, we expect to get along with Russia. We expect to get along with everybody.”

The Kremlin warned earlier this month against additional U.S. forces going to Poland. “Whatever military potentially ends up threatening us from Polish territory, the relevant Russian government structures will take comprehensive measures in response,” said deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov.

Trump is foolishly toying with strategic interests for short-term tactical gains and petty vanity. He is pandering to Polish reactionary politics to offend both Germany and Russia. But this president doesn’t have a clue about the monster of reactionary forces in Poland that he is fomenting. His instinctive money-grubbing rush for profit and petty score-settling is massively destabilizing European security. Yet, as he idiotically says, “we expect to get along with everybody”.

Now, that is really taking the…

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

So what’s goin’ on in Iran? How did the Islamic Republic really respond to Covid-19? How is it coping with Washington’s relentless “maximum pressure”?

These questions were the subject of a long phone call I placed to Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran – one of Iran’s premier, globally recognized analysts.

As Marandi explains:

“Iran after the revolution was all about social justice. It set up a very elaborate health care network, similar to Cuba’s, but with more funding. A large hospital network. When the coronavirus hit, the US was even preventing Iran to get test kits. Yet the system – not the private sector – managed. There was no full shutdown. Everything was under control. The numbers – even contested by the West – they do hold. Iran is now producing everything it needs, tests, face masks. None of the hospitals are full.”

Expanding Marandi’s observations, Tehran-based journalist Alireza Hashemi notes, “Iran’s wide primary healthcare system, comprising public clinics, health houses and health centers is available in thousands of cities and villages”, and that enabled the government to “easily offer basic services”.

As Hashemi details, “the Health Ministry established a Covid-19 call center and also distributed protective equipment supplied by relief providers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei ordered the armed forces to help – with the government deploying 300,000 soldiers and volunteers to disinfect streets and public places, distribute sanitizers and masks and conduct tests.”

It was the Iranian military that established production lines for producing face masks and other equipment. According to Hashemi, “some NGOs partnered with Tehran’s chamber of commerce to create a campaign called Nafas (“breath”) to supply medical goods and provide clinical services. Iran’s Farabourse, an over-the-counter stock market in Tehran, established a crowd funding campaign to purchase medical devices and products to help health workers. Hundreds of volunteer groups – called “jihadi” – started producing personal protective equipment that had been in short supply in seminaries, mosques and hussainiyas and even natural fruit juices for health workers.”

This sense of social solidarity is extremely powerful in Shi’ite culture. Hashemi notes that “the government loosened health-related restrictions over a month ago and we have been experiencing a small slice of normality in recent weeks.” Yet the fight is not over. As in the West, there are fears of a covid-19 second wave.

Marandi stresses the economy, predictably, was hurt:

“But because of the sanctions, most of the hurt had already happened. The economy is now running without oil revenue. In Tehran, you don’t even notice it. It’s nothing compared to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey or the UAE. Workers from Pakistan and India are leaving the Persian Gulf in droves. Dubai is dead. So, in comparison, Iran did better in dealing with the virus. Moreover, harvests last year and this year have been positive. We are more self-reliant.”

Hashemi adds a very important factor:

“The Covid-19 crisis was so massive that people themselves have pitched in with effort, revealing new levels of solidarity. Individuals, civil society groups and others have set up a range of initiatives seeking to help the government and health workers on the front line of countering the pandemic.”

What a relentless Western disinformation campaign always ignores is how Iran after the revolution is used to extremely critical situations, starting with the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Marandi and Hashemi are adamant: for older Iranians, the current economic crisis pales in comparison with what they had to put up with throughout the 1980s.

Made in Iran soars

Marandi’s analysis ties up the economic data. In early June, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht – responsible for planning Iran’s state budgets – told the Majlis (Parliament) that the new normal was “to sideline oil in the economy and run the country’s programs without oil.”

Nobakht stuck to the numbers. Iran had earned just $8.9 billion from the sale of oil and related products in 2019-20, down from a peak of $119 billion less than a decade ago.

The whole Iranian economy is in transition. What’s particularly interesting is the boom in manufacturing – with companies focusing way beyond Iran’s large domestic market towards exports. They are turning the massive devaluation of the rial to their advantage.

In 2019-20, Iran’s non-oil exports reached $41.3 billion. That exceeded oil exports for the first time in Iran’s post-revolutionary history. And roughly half of these non-oil exports were manufactured goods. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” via sanctions may have led to total non-oil exports going down – but only by 7%. The total remains near historic highs.

According to Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data published by the Iran Chamber of Commerce, private sector manufacturers were seriously back in business already in the first month following the relaxation of the partial lockdown.

The fact is Iranian consumer goods and industrial products – everything from cookies to stainless steel – are exported by small and medium enterprises to the wider Middle East and also to Central Asia, China and Russia. The myth of Iranian “isolation” is, well, a myth.

Some new manufacturing clusters bode well for the future. Take titanium – essential for myriad applications in military, aerospace, marine industries and industrial processes. The Qara-Aghaj mine in Urmia, the provincial capital of West Azarbaijan, which is part of Iran’s mineral belt, including the country’s largest gold reserves, has tremendous potential.

Iran features in the Top 15 of mineral-rich countries. In January, after getting the technology for deep-level mining, Tehran launched a pilot project for extraction of rare earth minerals.

Still, Washington pressure remains as relentless as the Terminator.

In January, the White House issued yet another executive order targeting the “construction, mining, manufacturing, or textiles sectors of the Iranian economy.” So Team Trump is targeting exactly the booming private sector – which means, in practice, countless Iranian blue-collar workers and their families. This has nothing to do with forcing the Rouhani administration to say, “I can’t breathe”.

The Venezuelan front

Apart from a few scuffles between the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Health Ministry about China’s response to Covid-19, the Iran-China “comprehensive strategic partnership” (CSP) remains on track.

The next big test is actually in September. That’s when Team Trump wants to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran. Add to it the threat to trigger the snapback mechanism inbuilt in UNSC resolution 2231 – if other Security Council members refuse to support Washington and let the embargo expire for good in October.

China’s mission at the UN has stressed the obvious. The Trump administration unilaterally abandoned the JCPOA. Then it reimposed unilateral sanctions. Thus it has no right to extend the arms embargo or go for the snapback mechanism against Iran.

China, Russia and Iran are the three key nodes of Eurasia integration. Politically and diplomatically, their key decisions tend to be taken in concert. So it’s no wonder that was reiterated last week in Moscow at the meeting of Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Javad Zarif – who get along famously.

Lavrov said, “We will be doing everything so that no one can destroy these agreements. Washington has no right to punish Iran.”

Zarif for his part described the whole juncture as “very dangerous”.

Additional conversations with Iranian analysts reveal how they interpret the regional geopolitical chessboard, calibrating the importance of the axis of resistance (Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Hezbollah) in comparison with two other fronts: the US and its “stooges” (the House of Saud, UAE, Egypt), the master – Israel – and also Turkey and Qatar, which, like Iran, but unlike the “stooges”, favor political Islam (but of the Sunni variety, that is, the Moslem Brotherhood).

One of these analysts, pen name Blake Archer Williams, significantly remarks, “the main reason Russia holds back from helping Iran (mutual trade is almost at zero) is that it fears Iran. If Trump does not have a Reagan moment and does not prevail on Iran, and the US is in any event driven out of the Middle East by the continuing process of Iran’s weapons parity and its ability to project power in its own pond, then all of the oil of the Middle East, from the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, to Iraq, of course, and not least to the oilfields in Saudi Arabia’s Qatif region (where all the oil is and is 100% Shi’ite), will come under the umbrella of the axis of resistance.”

Still, Russia-China continue to back Iran on all fronts, for instance rebuking the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for giving in to US “bullying” – as the IAEA’s board last week passed a resolution submitted by France, Britain and Germany criticizing Iran for the first time since 2012.

Another key foreign policy front is Venezuela. Tehran’s soft power, in quite a spectacular manner keenly observed all across the Global South, de facto ridiculed Washington’s sanctions/blockade in its own Monroe Doctrine “backyard”, when five Iranian tankers loaded with gasoline successfully crossed the Atlantic and were received by a Venezuelan military escort of jets, helicopters, and naval patrols.

That was in fact a test run. The Oil Ministry in Tehran is already planning a round two of deliveries to Caracas, sending two or three cargos full of gasoline a month. That will also help Iran to offload its huge domestically produced fuel.

The historic initial shipment was characterized by both sides as part of a scientific and industrial cooperation, side by side with a “solidarity action”.

And then, this past week, I finally confirmed it. The order came directly from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. In his own words: “The blockade must be broken”. The rest is – Global South – history in the making.

We could be looking at one of the world’s first-ever robotic restaurants, located in Guangdong, China. The timely opening of the contactless restaurant comes as the industry is hell-bent on reducing human-to-human contact due to virus transmission risks. 

The Qianxi Robot Catering Group, a subsidiary of Country Garden, recently announced in a press release that is has opened up a robot-powered restaurant in the city of Shunde in China’s Guangdong province.

“Powered by the latest in advanced technologies, the restaurant has separate sections for Chinese food, hot pot, and fast food and features a wide selection of dishes, each one of which is delivered to the waiting diner within seconds,” the release states. 

The restaurant has more than 20 robots capable of preparing up to 200 menu items that can be served in as little as 20 seconds. Many of the dishes are Chinese cuisine, clay pot rice, and noodles.

Though the release wasn’t specific on robot tasks in the kitchen, there is a fleet of pink server robots on the front-end of the restaurant that delivers dishes to patrons. 

As the virus pandemic continues to rage, robot-run restaurants are taking off across the world. We noted Friday, fast-food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) debuted the “restaurant of the future,” where automation and food lockers dominate the storefront. 

Zhao Chunsheng, a robot specialist and professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: “The Qianxi robot restaurant has innovatively achieved both software-hardware integration and man-machine cooperation. It helps to better run a smooth operation through the practical application of robots.” 

“Qianxi has the most advanced technology with a vast product lineup. It fills the market gap and will have a significant impact on benchmarking in adding value to industry development as well,” Chunsheng said. 

Country Garden’s robo-restaurant could be one of the world’s first automated eateries. We’ve noted kitchens have partially delegated some tasks to robots, such as flippy, the robot hamburger chef, blended with some human interaction. 

The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the automation phase of restaurants worldwide – recent studies we’ve cited indicate that robots and artificial intelligence will displace tens of millions of jobs by 2030.