Once you’re looking for them, it’s difficult not to notice a slew of food app delivery riders all across New York City.
A New York Times reporter went undercover this past spring to try and learn about the occupation and how technology was transforming food delivery.
The article calls delivery riders a “street-level manifestation of an overturned industry, as restaurants are forced to become e-commerce businesses, outsourcing delivery to the apps who outsource it to a fleet of freelancers.”
And for these riders, it’s often a job that requires significant strategy. Deliverymen try to attend to the needs of several food delivery apps at once while managing the chaos that is Manhattan. They’re forced to think quickly in order to seek out delivery app bonuses.
The job definitely comes with its risks. About 33% of delivery cyclists missed out on work due to on-the-job injuries last year and at least four riders or bike messengers have been killed in crashes with cars this year.
Maria Figueroa, director of labor and policy research for the Cornell University Worker Institute in Manhattan says food delivery couriers are “the most vulnerable workers in digital labor.”
She continued:
“People think digital economy or the future of work, we’re all going to be these hipsters sitting by their computers or driving these luxury cars. That’s not the case with these guys.”
Delivery couriers share a lot in common with Uber and Lyft drivers and, while those drivers have successfully lobbied the city for a $17 minimum wage, delivery app couriers are not guaranteed anything. One app even “subtracts the amount the customer tips from the amount it pays the courier — effectively pocketing the tip.”
Werner Zhanay, 23, who delivers for Postmates and Caviar said:
“The whole thing is like gambling. You have to be at a spot. You have to hope that there are orders there and then — do you stay at that spot?”
Postmates says that its carriers average $18.50 an hour, but it only counts time when they’re out on orders as part of that calculation. It doesn’t account for the long stretches that riders spend waiting for their phone to ring with an order.
The company got rid of its guaranteed minimum of $4 per order in May.
Overall, delivery is becoming a more flexible and better paying gig thanks to the technology. In other ways, it is becoming less stable.
“This is what happens with an already precarious work force — what happens to an already invisibilized work force — when these platforms come to town,” said Niels van Doorn, an assistant professor of new media and digital culture at the University of Amsterdam who spent six months in New York studying app riders last year.
Deliverymen constantly have to be on their guard to accept new deliveries – as the reporter notes, even if it is delivering two bagels 40 blocks uptown – so that they don’t miss their bonuses.
Following the 2008 global financial crisis, central banks bet that greater activism on the part of other policymakers would be their salvation, helping them to normalize their operations. But that activism never came, and central bankers are now facing a lose-lose proposition.
In recent years, central banks have made a large policy wager. They bet that the protracted use of unconventional and experimental measures would provide an effective bridge to more comprehensive measures that would generate high inclusive growth and minimize the risk of financial instability. But central banks have repeatedly had to double down, in the process becoming increasingly aware of the growing risks to their credibility, effectiveness, and political autonomy. Ironically, central bankers may now get a response from other policymaking entities, which, instead of helping to normalize their operations, would make their task a lot tougher.
Let’s start with the US Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, whose actions strongly influence other central banks. Having succeeded after 2008 in stabilizing a dysfunctional financial system that had threatened to tip the world into a multiyear depression, the Fed was hoping to begin normalizing its policy stance as early as the summer of 2010. But an increasingly polarized Congress, exemplified by the rise of the Tea Party, precluded the necessary handoff to fiscal policy and structural reforms.
Instead, the Fed pivoted to using experimental measures to buy time for the US economy until the political environment became more constructive for pro-growth policies. Interest rates were floored at zero, and the Fed expanded its non-commercial involvement in financial markets, buying a record amount of bonds through its quantitative-easing (QE) programs.
This policy pivot was, in the eyes of most central bankers, born of necessity, not choice. And it was far from perfect.
The Fed knew it had no power to promote genuine economic recovery directly via fiscal policy, ease structural impediments to inclusive growth, or directly enhance productivity. This was the preserve of other policy actors, which, lacking the Fed’s political autonomy, were sidelined by the inability of a deeply divided Congress to approve such expansionary measures. (These disagreements subsequently led to three US government shutdowns.)
Faced with this unfortunate reality, the Fed tried to support growth in indirect, experimental ways. By injecting liquidity using multiple means, it raised financial asset prices well above what the economy’s fundamentals warranted. The Fed hoped that this would make certain segments of the population (asset holders) feel richer, enticing them to spend more and encouraging companies to invest more.
But such “wealth effects” and “animal spirits” proved quite feeble. So the Fed felt compelled to do more of the same, which led to a host of unintended consequences and risks of collateral damage that I discussed in some detail in my book The Only Game in Town.
The European Central Bank – second only in systemic importance to the Fed – has followed a similar path, though with even more unconventional monetary policies, including negative interest rates (that is, charging savers rather than borrowers). Again, the impact on growth has been rather subdued, and the costs and risks of such measures are mounting.
Both central banks – and especially the ECB under outgoing President Mario Draghi – have stressed the importance of a timely policy handoff to more comprehensive pro-growth measures. Yet their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Today, neither the Fed nor the ECB is anticipating that other policymakers will take over any time soon. Instead, both are busy designing another round of stimulus that will involve even more political and policy risks.
Other risks are already giving central bankers headaches. The protracted Brexit process is hampering the Bank of England’s longer-term policy strategy, while the short-term impact on global growth of governments’ weaponization of trade tariffs is complicating the task of both the Fed and the ECB.
Meanwhile, some pro-growth policies currently being mooted could, if not well designed, increase the risk of disruptive financial instability and thus further complicate central bankers’ task.
The notion of a “people’s QE” – that is, a more direct channeling of central-bank funding to the population – is getting more attention from both sides of the political spectrum.
So is the related Modern Monetary Theory, which would explicitly subjugate central banks to finance ministries at a time when the concept of a universal basic income is also attracting growing interest and there is a need to reassess the wage determination process.
Furthermore, some on the political left are exploring the extent to which returning to greater state ownership of productive assets and control of economic activity could improve prospects for faster and more inclusive growth. And populists in European countries with more fragile debt dynamics, including in the Italian government, seem willing to retest the markets’ vigilance by running larger budget deficits without a concurrent focus on balancing pro-growth initiatives.
Such policy proposals are the tip of a political iceberg that has been enlarged by fears about the impact of technology on the workplace, climate change, and demographic trends, as well as concerns about excessive inequality, marginalization, and alienation. These developments highlight how newly salient political issues are impinging on policymaking, rendering economic prospects even more uncertain. And with central-bank activism intensifying, the gap between asset prices and underlying economic and corporate fundamentals is likely to widen further.
Central banks bet that greater activism on the part of other policymakers would be their salvation. But these days, they are facing an increasing probability of a lose-lose proposition: either a policy response materializes but turns out to be one that risks eroding central banks’ credibility, effectiveness, and political autonomy; or nothing materializes, leaving central banks shouldering a policy burden that is already too heavy and exceeds the remit of their tools. Like seasoned gamblers, central bankers may soon discover that not all bets pay off over the longer term.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2y5cWMD Tyler Durden
The National League of Cities (NLC) published a new affordable housing report titled “Homeward Bound: The Road to Affordable Housing,” last week.
The report cautioned about an affordable housing crisis unfolding across cities, towns, and villages in the US. It says stagnating wages and soaring real estate prices have become the most significant barriers to economic prosperity for American families.
“In fast-growing cities, wages lag behind housing costs, leading to a scarcity of affordable housing,” NLC states.
“In legacy cities with slower growth, a persistent high rate of vacant and blighted housing exists due to the ongoing after-effects of the foreclosure crisis, and general economic disruption.”
Housing specialists, scholars, real estate developers, city staff, and task force members (mayors from around the country) all took part in creating the new report.
The crisis has forced many people to become homeless. Latest government data shows more than half a million Americans are homeless. A lot of the homelessness is based around West Coast cities where home prices have jumped but wages haven’t for the working class. Half of those who rent homes are cost-burdened, and the average minimum-wage worker has to work 99 hours per week to afford just a one-bedroom apartment.
Housing is the most significant factor impacting economic mobility for people. It’s a growing cost for an increasing number of working families, creating cost burdens that affect millions of people.
Nearly 40% of households are renting, and research shows half of these households spend at least 30% of their income on housing, a dangerous level that has depleted the savings of 50% of Americans who have less than $400 in savings.
“All levels of government – local, state, and federal – need to face the nation’s growing affordable housing crisis,” said Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Chair of the NLC Taskforce on Housing.
“The time is now for local leaders and the federal government to make bold investments that will ensure our residents have access to a safe and stable home. Our Taskforce’s report is a roadmap for how we can work together to confront this crisis with innovative strategies before it is too late.”
NLC notes that when affordable living conditions are achieved, communities tend to prosper which strengthens future generations.
But as we’ve noticed, the middle-class bottom 90% of Americans haven’t been given wages that allow them to afford homes in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price NSA Index (which include 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, DC).
President Trump promotes “the greatest economy ever” on Twitter as wages have slightly moved higher in the last several years. But adjusted for inflation, wages are the same as they were in 2000.
In some cities, such as San Francisco and San Diego, most homes have been hyperinflated in the last decade because of the tech bubble, have become areas that are considered the epicenter of the affordability crisis.
The affordable housing crisis has paralyzed tens of millions of Americans. They can no longer afford to buy homes but have to rent apartments with rising costs that deplete a bulk of their wages. Millions will never recover; Millions will never be able to afford a home again: The American dream is dead.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32RsEJa Tyler Durden
Almost a week ago, the World Health Organization declared the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak to be a “global health emergency.” Since then, most have failed to take notice or just plain ignored the ongoing problem.
Emergency declarations are issued sparingly, reserved for outbreaks that pose a serious threat to public health and could spread to other countries. Only four such declarations have been made in the past: in 2009, for pandemic influenza; in 2014, for a polio resurgence in several countries; in 2014, for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa; and in 2016, for the Zika virus epidemic. –New York Times
The response effort has been hampered by a deadly mix of armed conflict, distrust, and lack of medical resources, according to a report by Tech Crunch. Less than half of the affected population trusts the government and Ebola responders and armed groups have even killed responders. Public health experts expect the outbreak to continue into the foreseeable future. So where’s the notice to the public?
Outside the public health community, there has been relatively little concern in America about the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history. During the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic, which also generated an emergency declaration, the public was alerted to the numerous health concerns that rapidly became global.
When determining the amount of attention an event should receive, public health professionals and news editors face a similar question: is this event significantly different from the baseline, or what’s expected? If so, the event can be considered an outbreak and demands the public’s attention. If not, the event would be considered part of the expected baseline and not enter the public consciousness. –Tech Crunch
If that’s true, does the lack of coverage mean people aren’t going to be susceptible to this particular story and ratings will drop? Most likely. Propaganda has been selling more than real news. Could the very outbreak be nothing more than fear propaganda designed to brainwash people into parting with their own money? Absolutely! In fact,Tech Crunch admits it:
For potential donors, the absence of fear and public attention is causing a shortfall in funding needed for response and preparedness efforts (e.g., surveillance, healthcare infrastructure) that can limit an outbreak’s spread.
If fear can be leveraged to contain the current outbreak and fund preparedness efforts, fear can also eliminate future Ebola headlines for the right reasons; because we eliminated the threat, not because it becomes an endemic problem. –Tech Crunch
But what we do know, is that Ebola is a very real and deadly viral infection. And there are steps that can be taken to prevent it from the preparedness community. We suggest you prepare yourself and don’t count on any government agency to help you. You shouldn’t ignore Ebola, however, you should prepare so that you are not living in fear of it either.
While the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have both expressed serious concerns that we are on the brink of disaster, border enforcement agencies seem blithely unconcerned. It’s really up to you to protect your family. This is a collection of some of the best information in the preparedness community to help keep you and your family safe throughout this potential pandemic. Checklists are provided at the end of the book to help you gather the necessary supplies quickly and efficiently.
First it was the shocking junk bond fiasco at Third Avenue which led to a premature end for the asset manager, then the three largest UK property funds suddenly froze over $12 billion in assets in the aftermath of the Brexit vote; two years later the Swiss multi-billion fund manager GAM blocked redemptions, followed by iconic UK investor Neil Woodford also suddenly gating investors despite representations of solid returns and liquid assets, and most recently the ill-named, Nataxis-owned H20 Asset Management decided to freeze redemptions.
By this point, a pattern had emerged, one which Bank of England Governor Mark Carney described best when he said last month that investment funds that promise to allow customers to withdraw their money on a daily basis are “built on a lie.”
And now, the chief investment officer of Europe’s biggest independent asset manager agrees with him, because while for much of 2019 the biggest risk bogeymen were corporate credit, leveraged loans, and trillions in negative yielding debt, gradually consensus is emerging that investment funds may be the basis for the next liquidity crisis.
“There is no point denying we are faced with a looming liquidity mismatch problem,” said Pascal Blanque, who oversees more than 1.4 trillion euros ($1.6 trillion) as the CIO of Amundi SA, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gilbert who in a Bloomberg View piece writes that Blanque told him that the prospect of melting liquidity is one of “various things keeping me awake at night.”
Continuing the discussion of illiquid institutions, Blanque said that market making, where firms generate prices at which they are willing to either buy or sell financial products, is effectively “a public good” (or “public bad”, if it is being done by HFTs who disappear at the first sign of volatility, and them having to take on real positional risk). Of course, as that activity declines, the drop in turnover reduces the banking industry’s exposure to a collapse in prices or a surge in volatility. But the dangers are simply transferred, rather than diminished.
“Market making is falling off a cliff at the level of individual banks, but creating a systemic problem,” Blanque told Gilbert. “The banks are less risky – but the risks have been shifted to the buy side.”
As we have discussed extensively in the past, and as Gilbert reminds us, following the global financial crisis, as part of their macroprudential duties, regulators forced investment banks to bolster their balance sheets, which in turn reduced the amount of capital those institutions are able to commit to the securities markets, resulting in a creeping shortage of liquidity when it comes to market making, not only at buyside institutions but also market making banks.
“Market making is falling off a cliff at the level of individual banks, but creating a systemic problem,” Blanque says. “The banks are less risky – but the risks have been shifted to the buy side.”
Blanque is probably referring to a recent report from Deutsche Bank (which should know systemic risks better than anyone), which last month published a report titled “Investment Funds – The next liquidity crisis”, in which it wrote that recent events, i.e. the abovementioned collapse of GAM, Woodford and H20, have been “a timely reminder of the potential risks of illiquid securities within open-ended mutual funds offering daily liquidity.” Citing the FSB (Financial Stability Board), Deutsche Bank noted that over half of global intermediation now happens outside the banking system, and that the assets of NBFIs (Non-bank financial Institutions) have grown by over 50% since 2008.
The bank showed this transformation in the pursuit of yield and “shift in the hegemony of Wall Street” in the following chart showing the transition from pension and financial institutions (mediated by investment banks), to pension insurers and individual investors (mediated by at times extremely illiquid asset managers) in the following chart.
Deutsche goes on to show how liquidity risks have shifted, highlighting – like Blanque noted – that while post-crisis banking regulations have materially reduced liquidity (and other) risks within the banking system, some of these risks have been merely transferred to the unregulated NBFI ecosystem, notably mutual funds.
And this is where sudden, unexpected blow ups like Woodford, GAM and H20 are especially jarring as they are an indication of what to expect once the broader market locks up.
And speaking of the above funds, there is a reason why they are went from liquid to illiquid overnight: they have all geared into corporate bonds. As DB notes, US corporate bond outstandings have doubled since 2005 with recent issuance running at $1.5trn each year.
Over the same period, mutual funds’ ownership of corporate bonds has increased from 12% to almost 30%, or $2.6 trillion…
… with the balance is largely held by insurance and pension funds 45%.
But the biggest reason why liquidity has become an illusion (or rather mass delusion), is that while the dealer inventory of corporate bonds has declined by 90%…
… the ratio of corporate bonds held by mutual funds vs dealer inventory has increased from 2x in 2007 to 43x currently.
In short, as DB highlights, the buy-side significantly outweighs the sell-side and the gap has never been bigger. Worse, this comes at a time when BBB represents 60% of the Investment Grade and 250-300% of the High Yield market.
Incidentally, for those wondering if liquidity remains an illusion – a test that can only be confirmed when there is a crash and the market is indefinitely halted, an outcome that is now virtually inevitable – Deutsche has a simple test: it all has to do with the sequence of events unleashed by widening spreads, where redemptions and first movers rush to sell, collapsing the market’s liquidity, freezing refinancings, and resulting in a surge in defaults and firesales, which in turn leads to even wider spreads and so on, until central banks have to step in to short circuit this toxic loop.
This also explains why GAM, Woodford, H20 and many more funds (in the near future), will be similarly gated once their investors discover there is no liquidity to sell into and the only “real time” liquidity is offered to those who have a “first seller mover advantage”, to wit:
If investors anticipate severe losses on the fund’s investments, they could be incentivised to “run for the exit” to be the first to redeem their shares.
The first-mover advantage in open-ended funds arises because losses on asset sales to meet redemptions are incurred by investors which remain in the fund.
As in a ‘bank run’, the asset manager is, in principle, forced to sell assets in a fire sale in order to meet its short-dated liabilities
As an aside, while the above is 100% correct,we find it ironic that it comes from none other than Deutsche Bank, a financial institution which due to a similar considerations among its clients, has itself become the target of a mini “bank run” one targeting the bank’s prime brokerage assets, and which as we explained last week, is reportedly draining roughly $1 billion per day from the German lender.
In any case, this dramatic imbalance of asset holdings at market making banks and buyside “bagholders” of illiquid securities, is now posing a major problem for regulators, something the Bank of England acknowledged in a working paper published earlier this month, and highlighted by Mark Gilber, to wit: “as the funds industry has supplanted banks as a source of credit in the past decade, households and companies have benefited from a useful alternative source of financing. But, the report warned, we don’t know how this market-based system will respond under stress.”
Modelling such a scenario “can generate an adverse feedback loop in which lower asset prices cause solvency/liquidity constraints to bind, pushing asset prices lower still,” the BOE found. In other words, the new market structure may be worse than the old.
The feedback loop discussed by the BOE is the one we showed above. Here it is again:
And, as recent notable fund “gates” and/or collapses have shown, the difficulty for asset managers in such an eventuality is finding sufficient cash to repay exiting investors while preserving the structure of the portfolio without distorting market prices, according to Amundi’s Blanque.
According to Bloomberg, part of Amundi’s response to this seemingly intractable issue is to include liquidity buffers in its portfolios, which may mean holding securities such as German bunds and U.S. Treasuries, which should always trade freely. But the industry needs to come up with a common definition so that liquidity is included along with risk and return when assessing a portfolio’s robustness, Blanque says. Additionally, this band aid only works for modest redemptions. A wholesale liquidation would crush even the most “buffered” up fund.
For now, asset managers have to cope with what Blanque called “the sacred cow” – although a better phrase would be “constant risk” of allowing clients to withdraw funds on a daily basis.
“It is a bomb, given the risks of liquidity mismatch,” he warns. “We don’t know if what is sellable today will be sellable in six months’ time.”
That’s not the only we don’t know. As Blanque concluded, “we don’t know the channels of transmission, we don’t know how the actors will act. It is uncharted territory.”
And that, precisely, is why central banks can never again allow risk asset prices to drop: the alternative means gating not one, or two, or a hundred funds, but halting the entire market, because once everyone start selling and price discovery finally returns to a market that has been dominated by central banks for the past decade, several generations of traders and investors who have grown up without price discovery will be shocked to discover just where “fair” market prices reside.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2SDcjn2 Tyler Durden
The recent announcement that Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar Group is to set up an office in the U.K. to oversee its multi-billion dollar renewable investments there is interesting not for what it says but for what it implies and what it implies is extremely misleading, to say the least. The implication is that Saudi Arabia is at the leading edge of the global green energy initiative and the apotheosis of this was the earlier statement from Saudi Arabia that its state oil and gas behemoth, Aramco, plans to eliminate all fuel oil production at its refineries within the next five years.
Although this will not be by 2020 – when the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) global sulphur cap for marine fuels drops to 0.5% from 3.5% – it was regarded by those unfamiliar with previous Saudi posturing as a positive move, coming as it does from the world’s largest exporter of oil. As seasoned oil market traders and analysts have long known, though, anything Saudi Arabia says should be taken with a huge degree of scepticism.
“There’s a huge gap between Saudi Arabia’s lofty rhetoric and the reality of its [renewable energy] achievements to date,” Richard Mallinson, senior cross-energy analyst for global energy consultancy, Energy Aspects, in London, told OilPrice.com. The truth of the matter is that the real global impact of Saudi halting production of fuel oil will be non-existent as it is in reality set to become an even bigger importer of fuel oil than it already is, making it one of the world’s central hubs for fuel oil and a catalyst for other countries to keep producing the highly polluting fuel oil, if not actually increase their production.
Despite the recent comment from Saudi Aramco’s senior vice president of downstream operations, Abdulazziz al-Judaimi, that the company’s fully-owned refining assets are already 85% IMO-compliant, “Saudi is already one of the very few places in the world that actually imports fuel oil now [the remaining 15% of Aramco’s assets produced around 200,000 barrels per day on average over the course of last year],” said Mallinson. “And, as it reduces its own production of the dirty product, so it will increase its imports of it so, far from this announcement being a product of transition to a more renewable energy idea, it is a product instead of economics,” he added.
The reason for the increasing substitution of imported fuel oil for domestically produced fuel oil is locational, in that currently the vast bulk of Saudi’s home-produced fuel oil is produced in regions that are a long way from the populous areas where it is needed to burn as fuel oil for power generation.
“It makes sense for the Saudis to import fuel oil to places where it can be easily used for power generation rather than have to build an expensive logistical network to move it from where it is produced in Saudi to where it is needed,” Mallinson told OilPrice.com.
“The Saudis have done this, of course, to move crude oil from East to West, and everywhere else in the country for that matter, but that is because crude oil is important to the Saudis and fuel oil is not,” he underlined.
Economics is also behind the phasing out of its own fuel oil and its substitution with imported fuel oil.
“Saudi is actually looking to increase its burn of fuel oil over time to make up for the burning of crude oil in the domestic power generation energy mix, as crude oil is a valuable and flexible energy export and fuel oil is not, especially when the new IMO rules come in next year,” he said.
A close look at the real figures is instructive in this regard. In 2018, the kingdom exported an average of 340,000 bpd of fuel oil but it also imported just over 300,000 bpd over the same period. The imported fuel oil went to domestic power generation centres and the exported fuel oil went to Saudi’s big markets for the product, mainly India and East Africa. Net/net, then, Saudi’s carbon footprint for fuel oil was around double that of its own production.
Exactly the same pattern has occurred since 2015 which was a peak year for fuel oil production. According to Energy Aspects, from 2015 to 2018, the amount of crude oil that Saudi Arabia used in domestic power generation decreased from 570,000 bpd to 410,000 bpd. However, during the same period, the amount of fuel oil that the Kingdom used in domestic power generation increased from 400,000 bpd to 500,000 bpd. “And this trend is set to continue after the new IMO ruling for 2020,” highlighted Mallinson.
The key point for IMO 2020 compliance, and for all other of Saudi Arabia’s much-vaunted but little realised renewable energy projects for that matter, is that the Saudis have no pressing need to diversify its energy origination from the easiest course – crude oil production, especially with oil prices at a relatively decent level, said Mallinson. This is despite Saudi Arabia having more natural advantages for generating renewable energy than almost any other country in the world. Specifically, it has only 45 cloudy days each year, making it perfect for solar energy projects, and has significant sustained wind patterns in the Red Sea area, making it perfect for wind energy projects as well. “Saudi still has lots of cheap oil [with a lifting cost of around US$2 per barrel, excluding capital expenditure], so there is no push factor compelling it to take action,” he told OilPrice.com.
“The Saudis have barely taken the first step on the renewable energy ladder, which is to switch more to gas, as again this would require a build-out of infrastructure along the lines of that which it has for oil and it has not done it,” he added.
“It has only recently begun to even develop its gas fields,” he underlined.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32NU8j4 Tyler Durden
Following Russia signalling last week, its willingness to join the controversial payments channel Instex – designed to circumvent both SWIFT as well as US sanctions banning trade with Iran – new statements from Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called on the international community to free itself from a purely US-controlled international financial system and US dollar dominance.
“We must protect ourselves from political abuses made with the help of the US dollar and the American banking system,” he said while addressing a ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Venezuela, according to TASS. “We must turn our dependence in this sphere into independence,”he added.
“Let us be multipolar in the spheres of finance and currency,” he said.
Image via Newsmax
The senior diplomat was specifically addressing US-led sanctions and the tightening economic noose, including a near total oil export blockade, on the Maduro government in Caracas.
The comments also come after early this year the Maduro regime wasstymied in its bid to pull $1.2 billion worth of gold out of the Bank of England, according to a January Bloomberg report. The Bank of England’s (BoE) decision to deny Maduro officials’ withdrawal request was a the height of US coup efforts targeting Maduro.
Specifically top US officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, had lobbied their UK counterparts to help cut off the regime from its overseas assets, as we reported at the time. Washington has further lobbied other international institutions, and especially its Latin American allies, to seize Venezuelan assets and essentially hold them for control of Juan Guaido’s opposition government in exile.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Image source: TASS
Deputy FM Ryabkov held up the Venezuela situation as an example of “barefaced misappropriation of assets kept at Western banks.”
“This is just one of the examples of a wider policy of deliberate instigation of crises to change government, to replace legitimately elected politician with American stooges.”
Despite western capitals virtue-signaling their “rules-based order” approach, Ryabkov said instead, “We think that it is not a rule-based world order, it is rather a foisted and imposed world order.”
Meanwhile, the establishment of the ‘SWIFT-alternative’ Instex – now online as of three weeks ago – constitutes the biggest threat the dollar as a reserve currency to date, especially if Russia follows through on its signalling it could join.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OiY6gj Tyler Durden
The following is adapted from “Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump,” a recently published book by former College Fix editor Robby Soave. Soave is currently an associate editor at Reason.
Today there are tensions between a second-wave feminism that is worried about people who were born men co-opting their movement and a younger feminism that embraces all people who self-identify as women. The new view has largely won that fight, and this victory has influenced how the broader public discusses trans issues.
Consider what happened to filmmaker Kimberly Peirce at Reed College in 2016. She had been invited to Reed College in the fall of 2016 for a screening of her landmark 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry. The movie tells the true story of a transgender man who was murdered. Peirce herself has identified as a lesbian and genderqueer, and her movie contains a message of acceptance.
To say that Peirce was not well received at Reed would be a considerable understatement. Students hung profane posters near the podium; one read “You don’t fucking get it.” Waiting at the podium itself was a “Fuck you” poster, and students screamed other expletives at Peirce, bringing the event to an early close.
One would be forgiven for presuming that Reed must be some kind of Christian fundamentalist college brimming with intolerant, homophobic students, but alas, no: Reed is among the most liberal campuses in the country, according to Princeton Review. The students who jeered at Peirce were leftists.
In the eyes of these students, Peirce was a traitor. For one thing, she cast the cisgender Hilary Swank in the role of the trans character, a choice that marginalizes trans identities and contributes to trans erasure.
For another thing, Peirce profited from the exploitation of a trans person. Her film depicted violence against a trans person. This was unforgivable, in the students’ view, even though it actually happened and Peirce’s goal was to shed light on a tragic, socially significant event.
Lucía Martínez, an assistant professor of English at Reed College, posted a comment on an article about the Peirce shutdown in which she confessed that these students terrify her.
“I am intimidated by these students,” she wrote.
“I am scared to teach courses on race, gender, or sexuality, or even texts that bring these issues up in any way—and I am a gay mixed-race woman. There is a serious problem here and at other [selective liberal arts colleges], and I’m at a loss as to how to begin to address it, especially since many of these students don’t believe in either historicity or objective facts.”
Nationwide, the movement for LGBT equality has come a long way. Gay marriage is legal across the nation, and LGBTQ people enjoy unprecedented social acceptance. Kids find it strange that it was ever acceptable to mock people for their sexuality; it’s more okay to be gay – or bisexual, or asexual, or even unsure— than ever before.
Liberals, libertarians, and even many socially tolerant Republicans and conservatives agree that members of the LGBT community deserve the same rights and dignity as everyone else. I, too, celebrate these strides. And I join other libertarians and social liberals in wanting transgender people to achieve acceptance and equality as well.
In many cases, trans goals are perfectly reasonable and will likely come to pass as the country becomes more sympathetic toward them. But, as the incident at Reed shows, there’s an illiberal streak within trans activism that might make the movement’s goals seem less reasonable to the average person. The tendency of some trans activist leaders to make hyperbolic statements could be undermining a worthy cause—and putting them at odds with potential allies.
Many of the loudest trans voices, particularly on social media, routinely decry all criticism of their activism as not just wrong but a form of assault. Nowhere else has the distinction between words and actions been so thoroughly eroded; people who criticize the trans community are accused of literal violence.
This strain of illiberalism occasionally puts radical trans activists in tension with other members of the LGBT acceptance movement.
In 2015, Colorado College’s Film and Media Studies Department attempted to screen the movie Stonewall, and invited a producer to participate in a discussion with students. The film, a coming-of-age story about a gay teenager set during the Stonewall riots in 1969, had been critically panned and accused of whitewashing the actual history of late-1960s gay liberation. If students had merely complained about the film, they would have been in good company.
But Colorado College activists claimed that the film was not merely awful. To the extent that it had failed to properly credit trans people for the role they played in gay liberation, they said, Stonewall had either committed or encouraged violence against them.
“The film is discursively violent,” a group of student activists affiliated with the campus’s LGBTQIA+ chapter wrote in an open letter. The students formed a new group, RAID (Radicals Against Institutional Damage), for the explicit purpose of boycotting the film and preventing it from being shown on campus.
A professor who supported screening the film told the student newspaper, the Catalyst, that even if the film was bad or if it was unfair to trans people, it was still worthwhile to have a discussion about it. The activists did not agree.
“Critical discussion is simply a way of engaging in respectability politics,” Amelia Eskani, a first-year student, countered.
“I think Colorado College should cancel the screening because the safety and well-being of queer and trans students surpasses the importance of a critical discussion.”
Clashes between certain radical feminists and radical trans activists have occasionally produced violence. Tara Wolf, a 26-year-old trans woman, hit a 61-year-old feminist, Maria Maclachlan, during a rally in London’s Hyde Park in 2017. Prior to the event, Wolf had written on Facebook that she planned to “fuck up some terfs,” an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminists.” She compared them to fascists.
Parker Molloy, a trans woman and well-known writer on trans issues, told me trans activists “understand that there are nuances to these issues.”
“It’s just a lot of people, unfortunately, they’re screaming so loudly that I think it distorts the perception of trans people entirely. They seem completely unwilling to listen to reason, which is not true of the trans population as a whole.”
A few days after another round of violent protests rocked Hong Kong, Beijing on Wednesday issued its harshest warning yet to the citizens of Hong Kong: It sought to remind them that Beijing has the authority to mobilize the People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong if it felt that the central government’s authority was threatened.
The New York Times reports that the warning was part of the unveiling of the Communist Party’s new “defense strategy” which relied heavily on demonizing the western powers – an oblique reference to the US and the UK – for encouraging the protests.
Col. Wu Qian
Citing the Sunday protests, Senior Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for China’s defense ministry, implied that the destructive behavior – protesters painted the central government’s liaison office with graffiti, the latest example of the extradition bill protests leading to the vandalism of government buildings – was swiftly straining the patience of Beijing.
“The behavior of some radical protesters challenges the central government’s authority, touching on the bottom line principle of ‘one country, two systems,'” Colonel Wu said during a news conference in Beijing where he laid out the government’s new strategy. “That absolutely cannot be tolerated.”
When pressed, Wu said that “Article 14 of the Garrison Law has clear stipulations,” and refused to elaborate, the SCMP reports.
Hong Kong’s government would need to request the garrison’s assistance, like it does during a natural disaster.
In response, a spokesman for the Hong Kong government said on Wednesday that the city was “fully capable” of dealing with its own affairs.
“There is no need to ask for assistance from the garrison,” he said.
Eric Chan Kwok-ki, director of the Chief Executive’s Office, dismissed Wu’s reference to the Garrison law, suggesting that it wasn’t a threat.
“This is nothing new,” he said. “The Hong Kong government has no plan to seek help from the [PLA Hong Kong] garrison in accordance with that provision.”
The press conference coincided with the release of a new defense report – the first to be published since the beginning of Xi Jinping’s second term – that identified these same ‘western powers’ as a threat to global stability. It’s one of the clearest signs yet that Beijing views the US as its key geopolitical adversary, and is ready to strike back should Washington continue to ‘support’ Taiwan by supplying it with advanced arms. The paper restated Beijing’s goal of eventually presiding over the ‘reunification’ of Taiwan with mainland China – and notably didn’t rule out the use of force.
Notably, the paper accused the US of jeopardizing international stability by expanding its nuclear arsenal, boost its missile defenses and cyberwarfare capabilities and weaponize outer space (remember the Space Force?).
The defense plan also criticized Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party for “stepping up efforts to sever the connection with the mainland.” Hong Kong, of course, is governed by officials selected by Beijing, but the protests have posed their own unique problems for the Communist Party.
Circling back to the press conference, Col. Wu cited the specific laws detailing relations between Hong Kong and Beijing that would allow the PLA to intervene. Notably, Hong Kong wasn’t specifically mentioned in China’s new defense paper, but Wu relayed the above-mentioned warning and the Communist Party’s view on the situation in response to a question asked by the ‘press’. Not long before Wu spoke, Hong Kong police arrested six men for partaking in Sunday’s protests and a similarly violent episode that took place on July 1. Some of these men reportedly had links to ‘triad’ criminal gangs.
Protests have been ongoing in Hong Kong since mid-June, in response to the HK government’s fast-tracking of a controversial extradition bill that would have empowered Beijing to extradite people from Hong Kong (both citizens and people just passing through) something that would give it unprecedented powers to crack down on dissidents.
If the PLA were to ‘intervene’ in the protests, local financial markets would probably melt down (HK’s stock market has performed remarkably well despite the protests). Western powers would also condemn China’s actions, and it might impact the prospects for a permanent trade truce to the US. But would the West actually do anything to stop them? That’s extremely unlikely.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2SBmvw4 Tyler Durden
We have raised an entire generation of Americans that have no respect for the law, and now we are reaping what we have sown.
I cannot even begin to tell you how alarmed I am by some of the videos that I have been watching lately. As you will see below, all over the nation young people are brazenly flouting the law, obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers, and committing criminal acts in large groups. I think that “lawlessness” is perhaps the best word to describe what is happening, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning. I have so much respect for the good law enforcement officers across the country that put their lives on the line day after day to protect all of us, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes at this point. If you wonder why I would say such a thing, just consider what just happened in New York City…
In a series of shocking videos, NYPD officers can be seen being doused with buckets of water and pelted with projectiles as they tried to do their jobs (in one video, the officers were in the middle of making an arrest).
The stunning footage, which was first spotted online on Monday, shows the brazen young men in Harlem and Brooklyn dousing cops with water and, in one frame, an officer gets beaned in the back of the head with an empty red plastic bucket. The attacks on the officers started as they were arresting another young man, and in the video, they can be seen handcuffing the man while he was splayed out on the hood of a car.
How would you respond if you were attacked like this?
If I was a police officer in that situation, I would not have been able to let that kind of abuse go, and those young attackers would have learned the hard way that there are very serious consequences for assaulting a police officer.
But this is what happens when we raise an entire generation without any values whatsoever.
These young people are just doing whatever seems right in their own eyes, and similar things are happening all over the nation.
For example, a “flash mob” recently stormed into a North Face store in Wisconsin and stole $30,000 worth of merchandise…
A band of shoplifters who formed a ‘flash mob’ and rushed into a North Face store are accused of stealing $30,000 worth of merchandise, according to a report in the Kenosha News.
Dramatic video obtained from the Pleasant Prairie Police Department shows the group of ten shoplifters walk into the store, before quickly grabbing as many items as they can carry and rushing out.
How cold-hearted do you have to be to do something like this?
An even larger flash mob stormed a Walgreens in Philadelphia on the 4th of July…
As you can see from video footage of the incident, the young people seemed to take great joy in the crimes that they were committing.
If things are this crazy now, what will things look like when economic conditions get really bad and those young people get really desperate?
Elsewhere in Philadelphia, a pack of teen girls was viciously attacking random female victims that they came across in the street, and video of the attacks caused quite a bit of outrage…
A gang of teenage girls filmed themselves targeting female strangers in random attacks on the streets of Philadelphia.
The disturbing video shows the girls approaching their unsuspecting victims on the street before proceeding to slap them and wrestle them to the ground.
The violent video sparked outrage when it was shared online.
Of course many of these young criminals will end up in prison, but in many cases that will just mean that they will learn how to be even better criminals from those they are incarcerated with.
And the truth is that in many instances our prisons are completely and utterly out of control. For example, it is being reported that one prison down in Mississippi allegedly put the gangs in charge at one point.
Everywhere you look there is lawlessness. This week when ICE officials showed up to arrest an illegal immigrant in Nashville, the man’s neighbors formed a human chain around him in order to keep that from happening…
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at a Nashville home Monday in an attempt to detain a man there, neighbors and activists gathered to support the man, who remained shuttered in a van with a child for hours before the agents left.
And once the agents and police officers they had called to the scene finally drove away, neighbors who had kept the man and the boy fed, hydrated and cool, formed a human chain from the van to the house as the man and the boy shuffled inside.
In the end, the ICE officials left and the illegal immigrant got away.
When there is a complete and utter lack of respect for law enforcement on a widespread basis, that is a recipe for chaos.
And without a doubt, our nation is on the brink of great chaos. Just consider these numbers…
After a week that saw President Trump and his foes toss toxic words at each other, there is now a warning that the next phase could be “violence.”
Nearly 8 of 10 Americans told the Pew Research Center that supporters for both sides could “act” on the politically charged rhetoric with violence. It was higher for Democrats, 91%, than Republicans, 61%.
Day after day, the mainstream media is stirring up more anger, frustration, strife, discord and division. I have never seen more hatred in America than I see right now, and it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how all of this could possibly end well.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32NNsBw Tyler Durden
