China Grants New Tariff Waivers For US Soybean Purchases
Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures have been rising for the past 14 days, a total of +6.64%, on reports, China is granting new waivers to several domestic state and private companies to purchase U.S. soybeans without being subject to tariffs, according to Bloomberg. The companies received waivers for between 2 million to 3 million tons, sources told Bloomberg. Collectively, these firms bought 20 cargoes, or about 1.2 million ton of the soybeans from the U.S. Pacific Northwest on Monday.
It depends on the news source to the exact quantity, Reuters is reporting that Chinese importers only bought 10 cargoes, or about 600,000 tons, expected to be shipped from Pacific Northwest export terminals from Oct. to Dec.
Bloomberg said state-owned buyers Cofco and Sinograin, as well as five other crushers, were awarded waivers this month to purchase U.S. soybeans.
Sources said the waivers were granted after a meeting last week with working officials; purchases of agriculture products like soybeans are seen as kind gestures ahead of a trade meeting between U.S. and China next month.
As shown below, soybeans have enjoyed a wave of buying over the past two weeks on expectations of a similar gesture of goodwill by China and positive trade war news flow.
A trade deal appeared distant late last week after Chinese officials canceled a visit to the Central and Midwest states, but confirmed Monday that the cancellation was non-trade related.
Monday’s 10 to 20 cargoes, or 600,000 to 1.2 million tons of soybeans will leave Pacific Northwest terminals in the coming months. These are some of the most significant soybean purchases since Beijing raised import tariffs by 25% on U.S. soybeans last summer in retaliation for duties on other Chinese goods.
Yet while China is repurchasing U.S. soybeans, Argentina’s Agriculture minister confirmed Monday that China has “approved the first seven crushing plants in Argentina to begin exporting soymeal to the world’s biggest consumer of the livestock feed,” reported Reuters.
Last month, we reported how China wants to build a grains ‘superhighway‘ in the South American country by dredging the Parana River, it will allow large bulk vessels to transport soybeans from the Pampas farm belt to the South Atlantic to the Pacific, and ultimately to China.
While the Trump administration celebrates China’s latest agriculture purchases – keep in mind that China wants to become fully independent from the U.S., in terms of agriculture sourcing, which is why it’s hedging itself with Argentina.
UK Supreme Court Rules BoJo’s Suspension Of Parliament Was Unlawful; Pound Climbs
In a landmark ruling that delivers an unprecedented defeat for Boris Johnson and his Brexit strategy, Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled on Tuesday that the prime minister’s decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks was unlawful.
Now, the Speakers of the Commons and Lords simply need to summon ministers and peers to order and Parliament will be back in session as if it had never been suspended. The Speaker of the Commons is still John Bercow, though he recently announced his plans to resign.
“This was not a normal prorogation in the runup to a Queen’s speech,” said Lady Brenda Hale, the president of the Supreme Court of the UK. The decision did prevent Parliament from carrying out its duties, the court decided. Hale also found that Johnson hasn’t furnished “an explanation” for such extreme action.
It’s unclear what Johnson plans to do once Parliament is recalled – proroguing parliament for five weeks was a desperate gambit to try and strongarm the UK into a ‘no deal’ exit on Oct. 31. But with Parliament back in session, it’s looking very likely that opponents of a no-deal exit will succeed in forestalling it.
The ruling has also denied Johnson the option of suspending parliament to try and force through no deal Brexit.
And as the odds of ‘no deal’ are once again dimming, the pound is on an upswing.
Giuliani Hits Bidens With New $3 Million “Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus” Money Laundering Accusation
Rudy Giuliani leveled serious new claims at the Bidens in a series of Monday morning tweets. Chief among them is a claim that $3 million was laundered to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, via a “Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus-US” route – a revelation he claims was “kept from you by Swamp Media.”
Giuliani also says that Obama’s US embassy instructed Cyprus not to reveal the dollar amount.
NEW FACT: One $3million payment to Biden’s son from Ukraine to Latvia to Cyprus to US. When Prosecutor asked Cyprus for amount going to son, he was told US embassy (Obama’s) instructed them not to provide the amount. Prosecutor getting too close to son and Biden had him fired.
Today though it’s the $3 million laundered payment, classical proof of guilty knowledge and intent, that was kept from you by Swamp Media. Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus-US is a usual route for laundering money. Obama’s US embassy told Cyprus bank not to disclose amount to Biden. Stinks!
Trump’s personal attorney then mentioned China – where journalist Peter Schweizer reported Joe and Hunter Biden flew in 2013 on Air Force Two. Two weeks later, Hunter’s firm inked a private equity deal for $1 billion with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China, which expanded to $1.5 billion, according to an article by Schweizer’s in the New York Post.
Biden scandal only beginning. Lots more evidence on Ukraine like today’s money laundering of $3 million. 4 or 5 big disclosures. Also the $1.5 billion China gave to Biden’s fund while Joe was, as usual, failing in his negotiations with China is worse.
Giuliani then went on to tweet that the Bidens lied about not discussing Hunter’s overseas business.
On Saturday, Joe Biden said he “never” spoke with Hunter about the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter sat on the board of while being paid $50,000 per month. As you’re doubtless aware by now, the elder Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees from Ukraine if they didn’t fire the investigator probing the company, Burisma.
Biden says he never talked to his son about his overseas business. Do you think we can prove, with our fact a day disclosures, it’s a lie-a false exculpatory statement. Do we have to prove, or do you already know, it’s a lie, and an incriminating statement.
Hunter, however,admitted in July that the two did speak about his Ukraine business “just once,” telling the New Yorker “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do’“
Rudy Giuliani: “[Biden’s] family has been taking money from his public office for years, $1.5 billion from China, when our VP is supposed to be impartially and independently negotiating for us? He takes [his son] on Air Force Two to China and the kid … is a drug addict” pic.twitter.com/q8W9ZldwGX
Rudy then lashed out at the Democratic party, which he said would “own” Biden’s scandals if hey don’t “call for investigation of Bidens’ millions from Ukraine and billions from China.”
If Dem party doesn’t call for investigation of Bidens’ millions from Ukraine and billions from China, they will own it. Bidens’ made big money selling public office. How could Obama have allowed this to happen? Will Dems continue to condone and enable this kind pay-for-play?
Here’s what we know about Hunter’s dealings in China based on Schweizer’s reporting via our May report:
Hunter Biden and his partners created several LLCs involved in multibillion-dollar private equity deals with Chinese government-owned entities.
The primary operation was Rosemont Seneca Partners – an investment firm founded in 2009 and controlled by Hunter Biden, John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, and Heniz’s longtime associate Devon Archer. The trio began making deals “through a series of overlapping entities” under Rosemont.
In less than a year, Hunter Biden and Archer met with top Chinese officials in China, and partnered with the Thornton Group – a Massachusetts-based consultancy headed by James Bulger – son nephew of famed mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger (h/t @Guerrilla_Magoo for the correction).
According to the Thornton Group’s Chinese-language website, Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden.”
Officially, the China meets were to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity,” however details of the meeting were not published to the English-language version of the website.
“The timing of this meeting was also notable. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit,” according to Schweizer.
Perhaps most damning in terms of timing and optics, just twelve days after Hunter and Joe Biden flew on Air Force Two to Beijing, Hunter’s company signed a “historic deal with the Bank of China,” described by Schweizer as “the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government.” To accommodate the deal, the Bank of China created a unique type of investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, Rosemont Seneca Partners is a founding partner.
It was an unprecedented arrangement: the government of one of America’s fiercest competitors going into business with the son of one of America’s most powerful decisionmakers.
Chris Heinz claims neither he nor Rosemont Seneca Partners, the firm he had part ownership of, had any role in the deal with Bohai Harvest. Nonetheless, Biden, Archer and the Rosemont name became increasingly involved with China. Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest, helping oversee some of the fund’s investments. –New York Post
And while Hunter Biden had “no experience in China, and little in private equity,” the Chinese government for some reason thought it would be a great idea to give his firm business opportunities instead of established global banks such as Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs.
Also in December 2014, a Chinese state-backed conglomerate called Gemini Investments Limited was negotiating and sealing deals with Hunter Biden’s Rosemont on several fronts. That month, it made a $34 million investment into a fund managed by Rosemont.
The following August, Rosemont Realty, another sister company of Rosemont Seneca, announced that Gemini Investments was buying a 75 percent stake in the company. The terms of the deal included a $3 billion commitment from the Chinese, who were eager to purchase new US properties. Shortly after the sale, Rosemont Realty was rechristened Gemini Rosemont.
“Rosemont, with its comprehensive real-estate platform and superior performance history, was precisely the investment opportunity Gemini Investments was looking for in order to invest in the US real estate market,” said Li Ming, chairman of Sino-Ocean Land Holdings Limited and Gemini Investments. “We look forward to a strong and successful partnership.“
The morning after the car was dropped off, a phone number belonging to a renowned local “Colon Hydrotherapist” called the Hertz. The caller identified himself as “Joseph McGee,” who told the employees that the keys were located in the gas cap as opposed to the drop box.
Amazing how so many countries would scramble to do business with Hunter – a guy with virtually no experience who was discharged from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine – who just happened to be the Vice President’s son.
Defiant Facebook Buys Startup Focused On ‘Controlling Computers With Your Mind’
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg visited Capitol Hill to try and ‘win friends’ in Congress. It was his first big trip back to Washington since the contentious House and Senate hearings last year, where the Facebook chief was accused of sometimes treating lawmakers with disdain (who can forget ‘senator, we run adds’?).
The timing of his trip is starting to make more sense. Thanks to a flurry of federal and state investigations, for the first time in its existence, Facebook is facing the very real risk of being broken up. Several lawmakers have asked whether breaking Facebook into Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook wouldn’t be better for consumers. Facebook agrees that something should be done to regulate social media and other Internet companies, but it doesn’t think the bipartisan anti-trust movement that formed in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is the right path.
But given all of the scrutiny surrounding the company and its acquisition, Facebook has reportedly agreed to buy CTRL-Labs, a tech startup working on software to let people control a digital avatar using only their thoughts, for somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, Bloomberg reports.
The closely held four-year-old startup has dozens of employees and has raised tens of millions in venture capital. Its only product right now is a bracelet that measures neuron activity to try and determine a movement that a person might be thinking about, even if they aren’t physically moving. The ‘neuron activity’ is then displayed on a screen.
Unleashing the power of the mind has always been of great interest to Zuckerberg, as has virtual reality and augmented reality. The company is developing a hands-free pair of AR glasses, and Zuck once said that Facebook would introduce a “brain-computer interface” allowing people to manipulate text with their thoughts.
Still, making a big, splashy acquisition right now is a bit like tempting fate.
Zuckerberg needs to learn how to read the room. Unless he believes these investigations are simply fleeting annoyances that will soon pass.
A few months ago we commented that there will be no energy transition without competitiveness, and given the proposal of Germany to carry out another huge green plan, the European Union faces the opportunity to correct the mistakes made in the past with the wrong subsidies and policies. An opportunity to strengthen the economic fabric of the eurozone. However, the risks of repeating the same mistakes are not small.
The German Energiewende has been a huge and costly mistake(more than 500 billion euros in cost) due to very specific factors of German policy that are not being repeated in other countries. According to a study by Thomas Unnerstall, Germany’s two big mistakes in its green plan have been stubbornness and excess. Obstinacy in the elimination of a large part of the nuclear park during the transition period and the excess of subsidies at the initial moment of the development of renewable energies. These two errors explain 75% of the excess cost.
The results of that huge plan have been very poor. In 2018, in Germany, coal continues to lead the energy mix (lignite 22.5% and coal 12.9%), and fossil energies almost 50% (49.4%), while renewables add up to 34, 9%.
The most worrying thing is that electricity prices for households have increased by 60% since 2006, and the consumer has not benefited from the drop in wholesale energy prices. While the costs of supply, distribution, and networks in the price of electricity have fallen by 17% since 1998, the percentage of fees, taxes, and subsidies increased by 196% (subsidies soared from 0.08 ct / kWh to 6.4 ct / kWh in 2018).
There are many important factors to remember. Citizens must be aware that demagogy cannot dictate energy policy. The European Union cannot ignore security of supply risks and loss of competitiveness if it promotes a volatile, intermittent and costly energy mix . Environmental strategies have to be aligned with innovation and competition so that policies do not destroy consumption, investment, growth, and citizens’ disposable income.
Politicians ignore the reality: Energy transition is unstoppable and does not need interventionist policies. The US has proven that technology and competition have done more to reduce CO2 emissions and improve efficiency than the constant increase in indirect taxes seen in the EU. Energy transition will only happen if competitiveness and economic logic support environmental objectives. Taxpayers cannot be, again, those who pay for political planning errors. If Europe makes the mistakes of the past, there will be no energy transition but there will be more unemployment and recession.
Germany must learn from its policy mistakes and, with it, the rest of the Europeans. The slowdown of the eurozone is not a coincidence and is not detached from the mistakes in energy policy. The Eurozone weakness can be explained in an important part by a wrong policy of taxes and interventionism that has prevented citizens and businesses from benefiting from energy technological development. By denying the undoubted benefits of competition, which allowed the United States to reduce emissions and lower prices to consumers while strengthening investment and employment, Europe has lost a great opportunity that it can now solve.
If this plan is channeled towards improved competition and not unnecessary increases in taxes and management, Europe can substantially improve its energy mix by taking advantage of what we have learned from past mistakes and experiences. What would be suicidal is to redouble the wrong bet .
Unfortunately, when they talk about a ” New Green Deal“, what it is about is to delve into familiar mistakes: Massive tax increases and more unnecessary subsidies when technology, innovation, and competition are already working. Raising taxes on airline tickets is not a stimulus plan, it means harming the most disadvantaged so that the rich travel more comfortably by plane.
A much more ambitious and effective plan can be carried out learning from what has worked. In the United States, tax credits and power purchase agreements between parties have been more effective in strengthening new energy technologies than the European tax and intervention directives. The winning combination of natural gas and renewables competing has done more to improve the environment and consumers’ lives than large government-spending plans. A true energy transition plan would have a much greater multiplier effect if no obvious disincentives are generated, because the European Union cannot be approximately 10% of the world’s emissions but 100% of the cost, with a CO2 pricing mechanism that works as a subsidy to keep obsolescence, leading to an unplanned resurgence in the use of hard coal and lignite. Why? Because the CO2 price mechanism has made power prices more expensive and technologies that would not be viable in a competitive environment have been revived by the same scheme that tries to make them less competitive. Prices rise, margins are low but acceptable.
Europe can benefit from what has been learned from the mistakes of Energiewende to reorient its incentives by eliminating subsidies and exchanging those for tax cuts and facilitating competition. When, for example, barriers to interconnections continue to be in place to support obsolete semi-state owned national champions, the cost of interventionism is passed to the taxpayer and energy transition is actually delayed.
Europe has enormous advantages: leading global companies, the experience of previous mistakes and some successes, a spectacular potential through investment in interconnection, and a potential market that can increase by 30% if investment in isolation, energy efficiency, and savings are combined with the attraction of technological investment and innovative capital. More government-spending plans disguise a desire to keep the directed-economy model at all costs with huge subsidies to the unproductive areas and more taxes to the high productivity sectors. It generates a double negative economic impact.
We must be aware of the opportunity and not fall into the complacency of denying past mistakes.
Will the 100 billion euro plan be the solution for Europe? Let us give it the benefit of the doubt before it is fully announced, but headlines so far show it is very likely that it will be similar to the ones of the past. Let us not forget that the German government is talking about a figure that is one-third of what has been mobilized in the Juncker plan with indiscernible effects on growth, and much lower than the 650 billion euro of the InvestEU Program 2021-2027. despite -or because of- those enormous plans the European Union is on the way to recession.
If Europe wants to relaunch its economy, it will not be by repeating exactly what has led it to stagnation. It’s time to bet on competition and innovation.
The Most (And Least) Trusted Professions In Britain
Trust me, I’m a doctor. So goes the well-worn phrase, and as Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, a survey by Ipsos MORI reveals, medical practitioners are indeed the most trusted group of professionals in Britain.
67 percent said they think doctors are trustworthy, followed by scientists with 62 percent and teachers with 58 percent.
At the bottom of the pile are advertising executives who enjoy the trust of only 9 percent of the population outdoing even politicians in terms of distrust.
Here are some excerpts via Google translate with many of my own modifications. For example, the title itself is my translation, not Google’s.
Google has the title as “Business Model With the Interest is Dead“.
I made an educated guess that Google’s title isn’t quite right.
I picked up the article from this Tweet.
#ECB has ruined business model of German banks, which borrow money short term & lend long term. Banks can no longer earn money w/flat yield curve: maturity transformation business is dead. Commerzbank shares dive in tandem w/2s10s yield spread. https://t.co/xpMlVIc3uj via @weltpic.twitter.com/NXVzWXlDE3
Translation errors below may be Google’s or mine. I took a fair amount of liberty, adding some words, deleting others, or changing the word order so the result makes sense to me.
Apologies to the authors for any of my errors.
Interest Rate Business Model is Dead
The cash cow bank lending model is dead, buried by the European Central Bank (ECB).
The coup de grace came at the recent meeting. As ECB President Mario Draghi squeezed the negative interest rate for banks even deeper.
The ECB will restart its bond purchase program in November. This time, without a time limit. Thus, the monetary authorities have permanently chained the long-term interest rate at a low level and cut the profit opportunities of the financial sector to a level that isn’t sustainable. For a long time, institutions have made good money from the difference between long-term and short-term interest rates.That time is now over.
In 2016, Commerzbank employed more than 50,000 people. CEO Martin Zielke wants to close one-fifth of the 1,000 branches and even wants to part with an important source of income including his Polish subsidiary MBank. The workforce should be reduced to around 38,000 by the end of 2020.
The sale of Mbank is a desperate attempt at salvation.
In terms of stock market value, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are now loosely hanged even by more regionally active institutions from Norway and Sweden. [That is a direct translation that reads wrong but I do not know how to fix it].
Even the once proud Landesbanken is a restructuring case. This is a dangerous development.
“With the allowance, the ECB has relieved the German banks in the short term by around 500 million euros. At the same time, banks will be burdened considerably by the continuation of the low interest rates for an indefinite period, “says Peter Barkow, financial expert at Barkow Consulting. “Especially the German banks are very much dependent on income from the long-term investment of customer deposits at higher interest rates, called maturity transformation. This strategy only works very limited, “warns the expert. [The allowance refers to the ECB not charging banks a portion of the negative interest on excess reserves]
However, the corresponding earnings impact on the banks will only be delayed. “Many German banks have to find new sources of income in the medium term. In the short term, a further reduction in costs will probably be necessary, “says Barkow.
For more than a hundred years, banks lived on long-term lending or investing in securities their clients entrusted to them in the short term .
Historically, banks made money out of time. If time no longer has a price, because there is no more interest, nothing can be earned. Ten-year Bunds yielded around 1.5 percentage points more than two-year issues in historical terms. Currently, the difference is just under 0.2 percentage points.
In the multi-billion loan portfolios, the institutions are losing a lot of money due to ECB policy. Accordingly, the shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have fallen in sync with the interest rate differential. How dramatic the situation is for the banks, the analysts of JP Morgan have written down.
In a 120-page analysis, JP Morgan analysts calculated what effects the ECB policy will have on the banks. They used Japan as an example. Japan has had negative interest rates for some time now and there institutions have been unable to earn anything for two decades with time. The JP Morgan analysts’ conclusion: Interest margins could continue to shrink and continue to weigh on the earnings side.
“The negative interest rate policy of the ECB is ruining the financial system and is a socio-political poison,” says Frank Kohler, CEO of Sparda-Bank Berlin. The financial system is absurd if we have to explain to the children that money has a negative value – and thus debt is good, because you may not have to repay everything.
Socio-Political Poison
Bingo.
Thanks to Anne Kunz and Holger Zschäpitz for an excellent article and apologies again for any translation errors I may have made.
‘Work Less, Make More’: Labour Party Introduces Plan For 4-Day Work Week
As Labour’s 2019 party conference started yesterday, the party’s leadership was busy selling their slate of far-left policies.
In addition to support for a ‘Green New Deal’ (not dissimilar to the one from the US) and the abolition of private schools, the Labour Party is pushing a plan for a four day work week.But don’t worry: workers will still earn the same amount of money, they’ll just need to work less for the money.
By Labour’s reasoning, since the link between increasing productivity and expanding free time has been broken, it’s time for the government to step in and set the trend right. After all, increasing automation was supposed to allow Britons to work less, not more.
But with the next general election expected in the coming months, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell pledged during a speech on Monday that Labour would implement the 32-hour-work-week within 10 years if votes deliver a majority.
McDonnell’s pledge stopped short of making a 32 hour week compulsory, saying that only “average” hours worked would be cut. But he insisted that lower in the number of hours worked by most Britons is the right course of policy: “millions are exhausted from overwork,” McDonnell said to the audience at Labour’s Party conference in Brighton. And that must end.
“As society got richer, we could spend fewer hours at work.But in recent decades progress has stalled,” McDonnell added. “People in our country today work some of the longest hours in Europe.”
That’s actually not true, according to official EU data, which found that Greeks put in the longest work weeks (at an average 42.3 hours per week), followed by Bulgaria and Poland. The only western European nation that made the top ten was Portugal.
Before the conference, a report commissioned by crossbench peer Robert Skidelsky found that working fewer hours would be good for Briton’s wellbeing but that “a rigid four-day week was not realistic or desirable.”
But Labour clearly can’t resist the headline: A 32 hour work week! With no loss in pay!
Unsurprisingly, McDonnell received a standing ovation when he finished his speech. But just wait until this crosses the pond.
Biden: I promise a 4 day work week
Harris: I promise a 3 day work week
Warren: I promise a 2 day work week
Bernie: I promise a 1 day work week
Yang: I will pay you to never work again https://t.co/dnx73yM9Tj
Back in April I told you that Germany was a “Dead Economy Walking.” Today, I get to tell you that it’s legs are gone.
Yesterday morning’s manufacturing PMI print was the worst news Angela Merkel could have imagined, 41.4. A figure so awful dogs will want to roll on it.
Overall, Germany’s economy at the purchasing manager’s level is contracting. And with Merkel masking a massive tax increase as a political cave to the rising Greens the future for Germany’s economic growth looks as bad as the following chart.
Aside from the obvious, the big takeaway from this chart is the consistency with which analysts who are paid a lot more than me over-estimate this number. It’s a brilliant depiction of confirmation bias.
And you can see why this happens. Conventional wisdom tells us that an accommodative central bank, and the ECB’s negative interest rates are the height of accommodation, should support continued manufacturing growth because credit is cheap.
But, it doesn’t if there’s no capacity for the buyers of German goods to take on more debt. Negative interest rates are supposed to increase currency flow because who wants to lose money on their savings, right?
Paging Larry Summers (you incompetent halfwit!) that’s not what they actually signal to the markets. They signal that things suck and the central bank has no confidence in the economy.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the ECB became dovish the minute they got the data that Germany’s economy was shrinking. Because without Germany expanding exports there can be no support for a stable euro, regardless of Brexit.
And as the Remainiacs continue to play games to scuttle Brexit their arguments look weak as it is obvious to all that Europe needs the U.K. more than the other way around.
But, hey, don’t let facts get in the way of some people’s religion.
In fact, every time they try to create a headline to blame things on Brexit uncertainty, it further highlights just how much it is they who are creating it by dragging out the process.
Though Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zavir ruled out a meeting with Trump, the Iranians prepped the stage with Johnson by releasing the U.K. tanker Stena Impero.
Though I suspect nothing will come of that while Johnson is embroiled in Brexit.
The Euro lost $1.10 and gold resumed its rise in all currencies, including the U.S. dollar.
With the rising pressure outside the USA to eliminate cash in order to confiscate money from their citizens to support the broadening collapse of socialism, there has been a MAJOR panic pushing into the dollar.
Despite the fact that early in 2019 the headlines were that foreign governments were dumping US debt spinning this into stories that the dollar would crash. In reality, selling of US debt at that point in time was an effort to stop the dollar’s rise.
Martin has always been right that falling confidence in Europe and the Euro are what’s driving the current dynamic of strong U.S. asset prices.
The primary dealer banks have to be flush enough with cash to ensure they could take down their part of the issuance because any tailing in the yield will be bad.
The dollar funding crisis is real and accelerating as is the implosion of the German economy. And it’s not just Germany anymore. The French PMI print was terrible and the whole of the composite PMI for the Eurozone teeters on contraction.
What everyone needs to worry about now is the reversal against the huge move into European sovereign debt. These bond yields have defied gravity all year and cannot be sustained against a falling euro.
The German yield curve is beginning to rise at the short end. The inversion is worsening. U.S. Treasury demand is still rising.
Is it any wonder that the European Council is finally beginning to change its tune about a potential deal with Boris Johnson on Brexit?
Germany is in trouble and with it the entire European Project. Good.
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The IAEA first ignored the reports about Iran’s undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.
New evidence shows that Iran’s theocratic establishment was most likely violating the nuclear agreement since the day that Obama’s administration and Tehran struck the deal in 2015.
The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran’s ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
The Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program at a faster pace. Recently, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) declared that Tehran took the third step in increasing its nuclear activities by activating advanced centrifuges: 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges.
The previous two steps that Tehran took included: increasing the enriched uranium stockpile beyond the 300kg cap, which was set by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and enriching uranium to levels beyond the limit of 3.67 percent.
As part of its rush to a nuclear breakout capability, the Islamic Republic of Iran is also expanding its research and development work beyond the limitations set by the JCPOA. Iranian nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told a televised news conference, “We have started lifting limitations on our Research and Development imposed by the deal … It will include development of more rapid and advanced centrifuges.”
The ruling mullahs are claiming that Iran’s recent moves and violations of the nuclear deal are the fault of the US government, because the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA, but the claim is a lie. New evidence shows that Iran’s theocratic establishment was most likely violating the nuclear agreement since the day the Obama administration and Tehran struck the deal in 2015.
To clarify: Do you remember when the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano immediately to inspect an “atomic warehouse” in Iran last year?
Netanyahu stated in his speech to the UN General Assembly that Iran had a “secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and material from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.” Tehran claimed that the warehouse, which is located in a village (Turquz Abad) in the suburbs of Tehran, was a place where carpets were cleaned.
At the same time, two non-partisan organizations based in Washington, DC — the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) — released detailed reports about Iran’s undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities as well.
The IAEA first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities. Iran’s clandestine nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak were revealed by the opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
In any event, after a significant amount of pressure was imposed on the IAEA, and after the IAEA’s chief passed away and Iran was reportedly able to moving the suspected materials out of the secret nuclear facility, inspection of the site was recently implemented.
What was the outcome? Even though the Iranian leaders had cleaned up the facility, the IAEA’s inspectors were able to detect traces of radioactive uranium at the site. Israel’s warning and other reports had proved accurate.
Now, Tehran is declining to answer the IAEA’s questions about the secret facility. More importantly, one of the most basic requirements of the nuclear deal (while it lasted) was that Iran had to reveal its nuclear activities to the IAEA — a condition with it even overtly failed to comply.
In other words, the detection of radioactive particles in Turquz Abad, Iran’s reluctance to answer simple questions about the secret facility and non-partisan evidence about Iran’s nuclear activities at the location, all point to the fact that Tehran was most likely violating the nuclear deal since it was reached.
Where, you may ask, are the strong advocates of the nuclear deal after the new evidence revealed that Iran has long been violating the nuclear deal and pursuing its nuclear ambitions? They are silent.
The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran’s ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
