Category: zerohedge

Another day, another rocket (alleged) rocket attack on a US airbase in Iraq.

 

Sumaria reports that rockets hit the Balad Air Base, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, where US troops are stationed.

Iraqi police officials said that Katyusha rockets were used.

This is the same base as was hit 5 days ago.

Developing…

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

After the Trump Administration’s 75-minute briefing to the US Senate on the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was deeply critical, calling it the worst briefing he’d gotten in his nine years in the Senate.

Saying the administration’s briefers offered little on the legal or practical justification for the attack, Sen. Lee particularly took umbrage at them warning the Senators that they must not debate the War Powers authorization for a war with Iran.

Those giving the briefing objected to the very idea of the Senate discussing the matter publicly, saying it would “embolden Iran.” Sen. Lee noted that this is a power Constitutionally reserved explicitly for the legislature.

“For them to tell us … for us to debate and discuss these things on the Senate floor would somehow weaken the American cause and embolden Iran in any other actions, I find very insulting,” Lee said, who did not specify to reporters on Capitol Hill which briefer made the assertion.

“It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government — I don’t care if they’re with the CIA, the Department of Defense or otherwise — to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran,” Lee added. — ABC

Not only did Lee express annoyance that there was no pushback from any of the briefers on telling the Senate not to debate something legally in their purview, but he said that while he’d had problems with the language of Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) resolution, he has now decided that he will support the resolution, on condition of some amendments.

* * * 

Watch a frustrated Sen. Lee slam the briefing to reporters below:

After two disappointing, tailing auctions, moments ago the US Treasury sold $16 billion in 30 year bonds in an auction that was a blockbuster.

With both the 3Y and 10Y auctions earlier this week, and the first of the year and decade, tailing, traders were quite impressed when the 30Y auction stopped through the When Issued 2.358% by 1.7bps, pricing at a high yield of 2.341%, above December’s 2.307% but below November’s 2.43%. Curiously, this whopper of a result was actually rather tame considering just last month the stop through was 2.1bps (although following 5 tailing auction).

The internals were quite impressive as well, with the Bid to Cover surging to a 2-year high of 2.532, up from 2.455 in December, and the highest since January of 2018. Looking at the takedown, Indirects were allotted 63.0%, just shy of December’s 63.4%,  and the second highest since 2018. And with Directs taking 17.9%, below last month’s 21.1% but just above the six auction average of 17.1%, Dealers were left holding 19.1%, below the recent auction average of 24.1%.

Overall, this was an impressively strong auction, and a polar opposite of yesterday’s dismal 10Y, and which promptly sent the entire yield curve sharply lower.

Amid the multiple provocative statements from President Trump on Thursday, among them his expressing “doubts” that the Ukrainian airline crash over Iran was an accident, comes this likely bombastic and truly new claim. 

The president claimed that slain Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his forces “were looking to blow up our embassy” in Iraq before the US military took him out in the high profile killing a week ago.

“We took him out. We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think it was obvious. And he had more than that particular embassy in mind.” 

In the same statements the Commander-in-Chief further claimed he didn’t need any Congressional approval to make “split-second” decisions to take action against imminent threats from America’s enemies. 

“I don’t have to [get authorization],” he said. “It would all depend on the circumstance. You have to make a split-second decision sometimes. We had a shot at him, and I took it, and that shot was pinpoint accuracy.”

Trump had ordered the Jan. 2 drone strike on Soleimani’s convoy following the major incident at the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone, where pro-Iranian protesters stormed the compound walls, burning them and erecting Iraqi Shiite militia flags. 

While Trump is often prone to hyperbole, especially on statements of intent and US official enemies, the charge that the Iranians were plotting to “blow up” the embassy in Baghdad is the first claim of its kind. 

REPORTER: You said Iran was trying to blow up the embassy in Baghdad. Can you provide more details?

TRUMP: “No, I think it was obvious. If you look at the protests, and this was the anti-Benghazi. Benghazi was a disaster.” pic.twitter.com/oh0n9OfTMc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2020

It’s as yet unclear if the president saw specific intelligence outlining such a threat, which is very possible, or perhaps he was speaking generally of the pro-Iranian mob’s actions, given also the demonstrators were filmed setting the outer walls of the compound on fire during the chaotic events of early last week which saw a contingent of Marines rapidly deploy from Kuwait to bolster embassy security.  

With Iraq’s airspace being frequently violated by American and even Israeli bombing raids against the country’s paramilitary units backed by Iran of late, Iraq has for the last several months considered purchasing Russian air defense and missile systems, including both the S-300 and more advanced S-400, however, it has been met with fierce pressure from the US. 

And now Russian media is reporting authorities in Baghdad have formally resumed talks to possibly acquire the S-300 systems. Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, Mohammad Reza, has indicated negotiations were renewed following the latest attacks initiated nearly two weeks ago on Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces. 

“The issue was supposed to be solved several months ago after attacks on Shiite militia al-Ḥashd ash-Sha’bi [Popular Mobilization Forces, PMF] bases in Baghdad and other provinces created the need for such air defenses”, the lawmaker was quoted in Russia’s Sputnik as saying. 

It was first revealed in September that Baghdad was mulling the purchase of the S-300. This after a summer in which Israel brazenly launched multiple drone and aerial attacks on PMF bases which at first had ‘mysterious’ origins, but was later confirmed to have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) behind them. 

According to Iraqi official sources, those initial purchase talks were quashed when Washington vehemently objected, also at a moment parliament officials and the public were increasingly angered over unilateral US bombing raids against PMF sites conducted without the knowledge or approval of Iraq’s government and military. 

At the point when talks were initiated with Russia in September, international reports counted nine strikes in total on Iraq’s paramilitary forces — in some cases while they were allegedly operating just across the country’s western border with Syria. 

This had also fueled speculation that the Trump administration had greenlighted stepped up Israeli attacks on Iranian proxies in the region as an alternative to direct war with Iran.

However, this simultaneously bolstered the ongoing political movement in Iraqi parliament to have US troops expelled once in for all, especially over charges they had invited in and cooperated with a foreign power to attack sovereign Iraqi soil. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Time Magazine offered a handy guide on how parents can brainwash their kids on Iran by disputing the fact that Qasem Soleimani was a terrorist.

The guide, entitled ‘How to Talk to Your Kids About the Situation With Iran’, promises to “arm you with the information you need if you choose to bring up the topic or if kids ask questions about it.”

That “information” consists of watering down the fact that Soleimani had overseen atrocities that led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian citizens as well as the slaughter of over 600 U.S. troops.

Trump has called Soleimani a terrorist…

Trump says Soleimani ordered [recent] attacks…

U.S. military leaders gave Trump several choices for how to respond to Iran’s actions. Killing Soleimani was considered the most extreme. Some top U.S. military and government officials have expressed surprise and concern about Trump’s decision.

Note how Time says, “Trump has called Soleimani a terrorist,” to subtly dispute the fact he was a terrorist, despite Soleimani being sanctioned and designated as a terrorist supporter by the U.S. back in 2007, more than nine years before Trump took office.

Also note how the article reads not so much as a guide on how parents can talk to their kids, but as a propaganda piece directed at adult readers who Time thinks have the mental capacity of children.

“Here’s my own handy guide on how to talk to your kids about Time Magazine…,” comments the Moonbattery blog.

“Tell them it is run by moonbats, who will side with any enemy against their own country, including terrorist maniacs who want to kill them. Tell them that like the rest of the liberal media, it consists of pernicious spin and vicious lies.”

*  *  *

My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

“This is a market looking through fundamental data, looking through corporate guidance and data points, looking through Fed guidance itself,” Lisa Shalett, the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, told Bloomberg Television.

“It is a market that wants to go up in the short term. That is what makes it so profoundly dangerous.”

Blasphemy to most on Business TV, but it’s time someone from the ‘industry’ came clean as to the farce that is occurring in the US (and global) stock markets.

For a sense of the decoupling – bottom-up – here are three major holdings compared to their 2020 Consensus EPS forecasts…

Source: Bloomberg

And top-down, stock prices are as decoupled from fundamentals as they have ever been…

Source: Bloomberg

And, by now, everyone knows why…

Source: Bloomberg

However, as Shallett warns above, the situation is getting a bit out of hand, where even The Fed may not be able to rescue any downturn.

No one is hedging…

The cost of a bearish put option versus that of a call continued to slide, recently touching levels that have been rare throughout the bull market.

Source: Bloomberg

Everything is rising together…

The latest surge has taken 82% of S&P 500 firms above their average price for the past 200 days, the highest percentage in two years.  Frank Cappelleri, a senior equity trader and market technician at Instinet in New York, says the current reading is a “frothy indicator we need to watch.” According to Cappelleri, the last time so many firms topped the key level, the benchmark fell into a correction not long after. “Eventually, many stocks will slip back below their long-term moving averages — like they always do,” Cappelleri wrote to clients Wednesday.

Source: Bloomberg

And Shorts have disappeared…

Short sales in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, known by its ticker SPY, as a percentage of shares outstanding fell to 1.1% Tuesday, according to data from IHS Markit Ltd. That’s the lowest level since January 2018, before the event known as “Volmageddon” sent stocks swooning.

Source: Bloomberg

And Greed is at record highs…

Despite recent wobbles on geopolitical chaos, complacency is back at record highs…

Source: CNN

The red flags continue to pile up.

Update: During what appears to be an informal press gaggle at the White House late Thursday morning, President Trump went off on the Iranians, claiming that the US attacked Suleimani to stop him from bombing an embassy, before adding that he has “doubts” that the Ukrainian jet crash was caused by mechanical error. 

He also reportedly said that new sanctions on Iran had already been approved. 

• TRUMP SAYS IRANIANS SOUGHT TO ‘BLOW UP’ U.S. EMBASSY
• NEW SANCTIONS ON IRAN ALREADY APPROVED BY TREASURY, TRUMP SAYS
• TRUMP SAYS HAS DOUBTS UKRANIAN JET CRASH CAUSE WAS MECHANICAL
• U.S. OFFICIALS ARE NOW CONFIDENT UKRAINE AIRLINER WAS SHOT DOWN BY IRANIAN MISSILE, CITING SATELLITE DATA -GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
• TRUMP: MAY WAIT FOR PHASE TWO CHINA DEAL UNTIL AFTER ELECTION

* * * 

Things just got even more complicated for Tehran as the deadly crash of UIA Flight 752 looks set to become the center of a new international diplomatic crisis.

That’s because, just as we suspected, the deadly crash of UIA Flight 752 over Tehran Tuesday night, which occurred just hours after the regime launched a barrage of missiles at American installations in Iraq, was apparently the result of a misfiring of Iran’s missile defense system. 

Or at least that’s what Newsweek is reporting, citing senior US intelligence officials.

The Ukrainian flight that crashed just outside the Iranian capital of Tehran was struck by an anti-aircraft missile system, a Pentagon official, a senior U.S. intelligence official and an Iraqi intelligence official told Newsweek.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737–800 en route from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airpot to Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport, stopped transmitting data Tuesday just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq. The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built Tor M-1 surface-to-air missile system, known to NATO as Gauntlet, the three officials told Newsweek.

As of now, the base assumption is that the shooting was accidental…

Two Pentagon officials assess that the incident was accidental. Iran’s anti-aircraft were likely active following the country’s missile attack, which came in response to the U.S. killing last week of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, sources said.

Earlier today, Tehran vehemently denied the “rumors” that the plane was shot down, claiming that the plane took a suspicious turn shortly after takeoff that Iranian officials seemed to suggest indicated some kind of mechanical error. Outcry over the attack has been muted, probably because, as we’ve pointed out before, Iran’s commercial airline industry has had several high-profile safety slip-ups over the years, as its aging planes sometimes struggle to stay airborne. 

But the attack on Tuesday was different. The plane seemed to plunge from the sky just 2 minutes after taking off from the international airport in Tehran. Video of the accident released late Thursday appears to show it being struck by a projectile of some kind.

Iran’s behavior in the wake of the crash has been suspicious. It is reportedly planning to keep some of the data from the plane’s ‘black box’ from officials at the Ukrainian airline that was operating the plane when it crashed. 

Just as we anticipated, the markets are treating this news as vindication for Boeing, which sunk in the aftermath of reports that another Boeing 737 had crashed. 

Boeing shares rebounded on reports that the crash was apparently out of their control:

The question now is how does the world handle this information. Though the shooting was probably a mistake, 176 people, mostly non-Iranians, are dead. Canada and the US are already demanding more transparency from Tehran. Where do we go from here?

Source: The BBC

What’s the West’s next move? And will this escalate odds of another violent confrontation?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

At least 15 million acres of Australia have been devastated by wildfires. Climate change activists are up in arms.

Please consider Why Down Under Is Burning Up

The current round of blazes started late last year. It has charred at least 15 million acres and killed more than two dozen Australians, including brave volunteer firefighters who rush into the inferno to save homes and lives.

The climate-change narrative grossly oversimplifies bush fires, whose causes are as complex as their recurrence is predictable: Australia is in the midst of one of its regular droughts.

Byzantine environmental restrictions prevent landholders from clearing scrub, brush and trees. State governments don’t do their part to reduce the fuel load in parks. Last November a former fire chief in Victoria slammed that state’s “minimalist approach” to hazard-reduction burning in the off-season. That complaint is heard across the country.

On Monday a parliamentarian from the Australian Greens tweeted about one day holding “climate trials” to deal with conservative politicians.

Main Causes

1. Arson: More than 180 people have been arrested for allegedly starting blazes since the start of the current bush-fire season.

2. Secondary Cause: Environmental Restrictions and misguided Green ideology.

Perhaps I have those backwards.

Not Climate Change

Please consider Australian Wildfires Were Caused by Humans, Not Climate Change

The similarities between Australian and Californian politics, vegetation, and climate have always been striking. Both places are drop-dead beautiful, far-left, and politically green. In both places, people like living around vegetation that every year dries out enough to burn sky high — with or without climate change.

This is thanks to relatively short rainy seasons surrounded by perfect beach weather. It is spectacularly green when it rains and tinder-dry brown when it stops. When rainfall is high, as it was for recent years in Australia, vegetation grows even thicker, only to provide even more fuel for wildfires.

At the same time, our culture of vegetation worship militates against purposefully burning things down. In California, these “prescribed” fires are now largely prohibited (because burning releases dreaded carbon dioxide), ensuring that disaster is always just around the corner. Ditto for Australia, where some burning is allowed but nowhere near enough.

Australia has been ready to explode for years. David Packham, former head of Australia’s National Rural Fire Research Centre, warned in a 2015 article in the Age that fire fuel levels had climbed to their most dangerous levels in thousands of years. He noted this was the result of “misguided green ideology.”

It’s very convenient for alarmist greens to blame the fires of Australia and California on global warming. In reality, the policies they themselves advocate are the culprits.

67 Years of Brushfire Data

Arson Crisis

Please consider We don’t just have a bushfire crisis. We have an arson crisis, too.

The number of individuals around Australia whose arson has contributed to the current bushfire crisis has now passed 200.

Here is my favorite: “A volunteer firefighter in Australia has been charged with deliberately lighting blazes during the nation’s bushfire crisis. Police arrested the man, 19, for seven counts of alleged arson in an area south of Sydney, New South Wales.”

There are no conspiracies here. Though arson has been tried and called for before as a tool of terror, the Australian fires seem to result from the actions of unconnected individuals who are either disturbed or reckless. This is nothing new; as ecological criminologist Paul Read wrote back in November:

A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time – 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.

Scourge of Eucalyptus

Here’s an interesting article from 2013: Australia’s Wildfires: Are Eucalyptus Trees to Blame?

“Looking at the eucalyptus forest outside my window in Tasmania, I see a gigantic fire hazard,” David Bowman, a forest ecologist at the University of Tasmania in Australia, told KQED. “On a really hot day, those things are going to burn like torches and shower our suburbs with sparks.”

Like many plants native to fire-prone regions, eucalyptus trees (aka gum trees in Australia) are adapted to survive — or even thrive — in a wildfire. Fallen eucalyptus leaves create dense carpets of flammable material, and the trees’ bark peels off in long streamers that drop to the ground, providing additional fuel that draws ground fires up into the leaves, creating massive, fast-spreading “crown fires” in the upper story of eucalyptus forests.

Additionally, the eucalyptus oil that gives the trees their characteristic spicy fragrance is a flammable oil: This oil, combined with leaf litter and peeling bark during periods of dry, windy weather, can turn a small ground fire into a terrifying, explosive firestorm in a matter of minutes. That’s why eucalyptus trees — especially the blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus) that are common throughout New South Wales — are sometimes referred to wryly as “gasoline trees.”

The threat posed by eucalyptus groves spreading beyond Australia was highlighted in 1991, when a wildfire torched the hills surrounding Oakland, Calif. That conflagration killed 25 people and obliterated more than 3,000 homes, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and was blamed primarily on the thousands of eucalyptus trees found throughout the Oakland Hills.

Despite their well-earned reputation as a firefighter’s worst nightmare, eucalyptus trees remain a favorite landscape specimen, renowned for fast-growing stands of tall shade trees that, according to some research, help repel insects through the same fragrant eucalyptus oil that’s blamed for fueling wildfires.

“Eucalyptus groves on steep hillsides — like those in the East Bay hills — are extremely flammable when hot … winds of late summer and fall start blowing and make control of a moving flame front impossible until the winds stop,” Tom Klatt, UC Berkeley campus environmental manager, said in a report from the university’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources NewsCenter.

Three Eucalyptus Ideas

1. Hey, let’s plant eucalyptus. It grows fast.

2. When it dries out, let’s not do prescribed burns because that would release CO2.

3. Blame global warming if anything goes wrong with points 1 and 2.

“What the hell have humans done?” Bowman said. “We’ve spread a dangerous plant all over the world.“

But that story doesn’t sell. Hype that sells. Like this:

Climate Deniers Cooking Themselves

Climate deniers are cooking themselves — and everyone else.

Australia, like many countries (very much including the United States) is pathologically addicted to fossil fuels, and is roasting itself and the world in the process. Without strong international climate policy, there will be future droughts, fires, and other disasters that make the current crisis seem like a friendly daydream.

On the whole, that only rates a B- or a C+ because it does not end with a projection like AOC’s that the World Will End in 12 Years if We Do Nothing

Everyone in Miami Will Drown in 6 Years

“Cooking yourself” is OK but the article itself fell flat.

To gain real traction one needs a headline like this: “Everyone in Miami Will Drown in 6 Years“

Now, that’s an A++ story headline guaranteed to garner attention.

Lies and manipulations

@DavidBCollum @MishGEA Australia scrubbing and changing climate records from the past to make the present appear warmer. https://t.co/6frT8EMTcE

— Stunned Mullet (@StunnedMulletNZ) December 21, 2019

Amazing stuff.

The Green police discarded temperatures all over the board and manipulated early temperatures lower.

In my favorite example, the climate police discarded a record high temperature because the person who measured temperatures did so on a Sunday. They claim the recorder was not supposed to be working on Sunday, thus the record high should not have been recorded.

Of course they moved thermometers to airports with increasing numbers of planes and hot asphalt, etc. And finally, they switched to electronic measurement recently which tends to be hotter than mercury-based thermometers.

All About Climate Change Except

Other than lies, temperature manipulations, piss poor burn management, arson, environmental restrictions, and other misguided Green ideology, this story is all about climate change.

Unfortunately, a politically incorrect story like this is going nowhere. But “Everyone in Miami Will Drown in 6 Years” just might.

By the way, I propose the most likely reason for arson is global warming activists wanting to blame climate change.

A top House Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith (WA) said on Thursday that “it is time” for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to deliver supposedly urgent impeachment articles to the Senate so they can get on with the business of acquitting President Trump.

Pelosi’s refusal to transmit the articles until GOP leaders in the Senate agree to her terms for a trial has created an impasse – a strategy which an increasing number of Congressional Democrats have asked her to abandon.

“I understand what the speaker is trying to do, basically trying to use the leverage of that to work with Democratic and Republican senators to try to get a reasonable trial, a trial that would actually show evidence, bring out witnesses,” Smith told CNN. “But at the end of the day, just like we control it in the House, Mitch McConnell controls it in the Senate.“

Now it’s happening in the House. Chairman breaks with Speaker over withholding articles. https://t.co/5vng4defLA

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 9, 2020

As we noted on Wednesday, Senate Democrats, including Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have made similar comments in recent days.

“If we’re going to do it, she should send them over. I don’t see what good delay does,” said Feinstein, who also told Politico “The longer it goes on the less urgent it becomes.”

“So if it’s serious and urgent, send them over. If it isn’t, don’t send it over.“

Senate Majority Leader McConnell – who has promised a speedy acquittal of Trump – said during a Wednesday speech on the Senate floor: “There will no haggling with the House over Senate procedure,” adding “We will not cede our authority to try this impeachment.”

President Trump, meanwhile, has taken to Twitter to berate Pelosi for failing to move forward with the articles, writing on Thursday “Pelosi doesn’t want to hand over The Articles of Impeachment, which were fraudulently produced by corrupt politicians like Shifty Schiff in the first place, because after all of these years of investigations and persecution, they show no crimes and are a joke and a scam!”

Pelosi doesn’t want to hand over The Articles of Impeachment, which were fraudulently produced by corrupt politicians like Shifty Schiff in the first place, because after all of these years of investigations and persecution, they show no crimes and are a joke and a scam!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020

Trump later added: “remember her “speed & rush” in getting the Impeachment Hoax voted on & done. Well, she never sent the Articles to the Senate. Just another Democrat fraud.”

Hope that all House Republicans will vote against Crazy Nancy Pelosi’s War Powers Resolution. Also, remember her “speed & rush” in getting the Impeachment Hoax voted on & done. Well, she never sent the Articles to the Senate. Just another Democrat fraud. Presidential Harassment!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020