Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has staked his country’s future on selling a 5% stake in Saudi Aramco, the most valuable asset it has.
And it is his hope that this IPO will help finance the country’s turnaround making it less dependent on oil revenue.
It’s been trying to do this for three years and was ready to pull the trigger when the Houthi rebels in North Yemen pulled theirs and damaged major Aramco facilities at Ab Qaiq in August.
The IPO itself was off the table until next year but the Saudis have officially put it back on the table, submitting the necessary paperwork to make the sale.
What’s held up this IPO has been MbS’s insistence on a $2 trillion valuation while playing very coy about the company’s actual assets and reserves. It took a couple of rounds of failed book-runner commitments to finally get the Saudis to offer some glimpse at Aramco’s finances.
Aramco has never published financial reports. Although there were assurances that it will start doing so ahead of the IPO, to date the latest entry on Aramco’s Corporate Reports page is from July 20 last year, and includes production figures for 2016. Last year, sources had told Reuters the company was planning to start publishing financial reports early this year, but this has not happened yet.
By April, Aramco finally produced financial numbers that were reasonably current and even Bloomberg was skeptical of this $2 trillion valuation. It certainly wasn’t true when oil prices were in the gutter below $40 a barrel in 2016.
The Aramco IPO is the lynchpin to MbS’s Vision 2030 plan to remake and upgrade the Kingdom’s economy away from just being a Gas Station in the Desert that buys U.S. weapons and wages regional wars through proxies.
But now that the paperwork has been filed and the IPO likely to happen we now have a bevy of financial research reports coming out with their assessments of it.
And the numbers are all over the place. Here they are via Zerohedge:
The source said BofA’s low valuation of the company is at $1.22 trillion with a high estimate of $2.27 trillion, the gap is enormous and has spooked some investors.
Goldman Sachs values Aramco between $1.6 trillion and $2.3 trillion.
“Note that our suggested valuation framework is based on a long-term analysis, and it is not linked to a near-term assessment of the likely performance of the company’s shares,” Goldman’s pre-IPO report said.
Much of Goldman Sach’s valuation of the oil company is derived from an average oil price of $64.50 for 2019, and $60 per barrel from 2020 through 2023.
EFG Hermes has a valuation of $1.55 trillion to $2.1 trillion, several fund managers told Reuters.
Bernstein’s research deck valued Aramco around $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
HSBC, one of the lead underwriters of the IPO, values the oil company between $1.59 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
BNP Paribas, another bank playing a critical role in the IPO, values Aramco around $1.42 trillion.
“These ranges are always wide as research analysts want to cover both low end and high end, so you want to show the sensitivity of assumptions,” one banker told Reuters.
But let’s back up here for a second and remember what MbS was originally selling, 20% of the company for $400 billion. Now it’s 5% of the company for likely between $65 and $75 billion at a $1.3 to $1.5 trillion valuation.
It’s not the company’s performance MbS is worried about. It is how much this IPO will bring the government in the form of dividends to pay for its operations.
Debt to GDP, which was just 1.4% in 2014 will rise to 28% in 2020.
Aramco needs to either raise production or get higher prices to stem this bleeding. Neither of these things are on the table in the near future.
The reality is that for the past few months the Saudis have bailed themselves out with a war premium on the price of oil through their own machinations, getting the U.S. to apply embargoes and sanctions on all of their competitor and picking fights with Iran and inviting attacks on their tankers and infrastructure to keep prices from collapsing amidst a global economic slowdown and oil glut.
Note in the valuation for Aramco above Goldman Sachs makes the case for $60 oil in 2020, that’s rich from where I’m sitting. Right now we’ve seen a temporary sell off in the U.S. dollar thanks to Brexit which has both the British pound and euro bouncing off recent lows.
That will not last and the U.S. dollar is still in a very bullish medium/long term posture. And a bullish dollar only happens here over Donald Trump’s dead body (and Twitter feed) or a collapse in global liquidity.
But, that’s not on the horizon right? Of course not. It’s not like the ECB and the FED haven’t gone full dove in the past nine months to get ahead of a dollar liquidity crisis that threatens to engulf the entire Western world or anything.
Right?
In the end whatever money Aramco raises from investors will be used to fund the Saudi government’s operational deficit over the next eighteen months to two years, maximum.
That’s not enough to save the country and remake the economy through reinvestment in its people. It doesn’t matter if, officially, the budget deficit is financed through debt and drawing down reserves while Aramco uses the money to invest globally in diversifying its portfolio.
The money pile is the money pile until the Kingdom begins accepting other currencies than the U.S. dollar and breaks the Riyal peg to the dollar.
Because that would free the country from the hamster wheel of overpaying for its domestic projects and transfer payments via social programs.
Against a backdrop of a stronger dollar thanks to illiquidity and a $74 trillion synthetic short against it can you really expect oil prices to maintain near $60, all other things being equal?
Of course not. Oil will get crushed in dollar terms just like nearly everything else as the dollar rises and other major currencies collapse with the merest hint of a crisis.
It’s taken coordinated effort of all the major central banks, unprecedented political pressure by Trump on the Fed and the destruction of the democratic process in the U.K. to arrest the dollar’s rise.
Even if there is short-term weakness in the dollar over the next few weeks/months, while we wait for the catalyst, only real reform by MbS, of the kind that will likely end his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S., will save the Kingdom he’s been positioned to lead for the next two generations.
In Australia, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission has ruled two New South Wales police officers racially abused two Afghan women during a traffic stop. The officers said they pulled over the vehicle because they believed one of the women wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The officers’ body cameras showed one of them greeted the women by saying, “You have to be the most stupidest person I’ve met as the driver of a motor vehicle.” He demanded ID from both, and when he is told one of the women is in the country on a temporary visa he threatens to put her in jail. He ordered both out of the car, and when the driver protested, he threatens to jail them both. “Don’t you get aggro or you’ll be in the back of a divvy going back to the jail, don’t take advantage of our system,” he said. The driver told the commission the officer made even more abusive statements when the cameras were turned off. The commission recommended both officers be disciplined.
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Instead of holding back and focusing on Labour-held seats in districts that favored Brexit during the referendum, Farage announced that his party will field candidates in more than 600 races, threatening to split the pro-Brexit vote and raising the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn could emerge as prime minister.
In the latest ICM poll, Conservatives led with 38%, followed by Labour at 31%, the Lib Dems at 15% and the Brexit Party at 9%.
The latest note from a team of Deutsche Bank analysts focused on Brexit recounted that, over the weekend, a series of polls showed that the two establishment parties appear to be gaining support, suggesting that December’s general election could be more of a two-party race than analysts and investors had initially expected. Still, Farage’s decision threatens to throw a wrench into the works.
We have 600+ candidates who are undaunted, enthusiastic and 100% ready to campaign for a proper Brexit across our nation.
They know @BorisJohnson’s deal is not Brexit and it does not get Brexit done.
Farage’s decision comes after he personally decided to sit out the race (Farage doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to running for the House of Commons: He’s tried and failed eight times already). In an interview with the BBC over the weekend, Farage concluded that he could advance the country’s exit from the European Union better by campaigning on behalf of his populist party’s other candidates than by contesting a seat himself.
Farage added that he would campaign aggressively against Johnson’s withdrawal agreement following the PM’s “broken promise” to leave the EU by Oct. 31. The withdrawal agreement is the crux of Johnson’s election manifesto. Labour also opposes Johnson’s deal, and has said that, if Corbyn ousts Johnson, he will return to Brussels to negotiate a new deal, then put it to the public in a second referendum, which could result in Brexit being cancelled in its entirety.
“There are so many Labour-Leave seats…represented by remain member of Parliament…and we view those constituencies as being absolutely among our top targets,” Farage said late last week during the BP’s campaign launch.
Some pro-Leave pundits will no doubt be alarmed by Farage’s decision.
This illustrates the big problem Brexiteers will be up against at the forthcoming election.
We need Boris and Farage to work together but under Farage’s current terms, this seems impossible. https://t.co/IQEFlMj80h
In Australia, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission has ruled two New South Wales police officers racially abused two Afghan women during a traffic stop. The officers said they pulled over the vehicle because they believed one of the women wasn’t wearing a seat belt. The officers’ body cameras showed one of them greeted the women by saying, “You have to be the most stupidest person I’ve met as the driver of a motor vehicle.” He demanded ID from both, and when he is told one of the women is in the country on a temporary visa he threatens to put her in jail. He ordered both out of the car, and when the driver protested, he threatens to jail them both. “Don’t you get aggro or you’ll be in the back of a divvy going back to the jail, don’t take advantage of our system,” he said. The driver told the commission the officer made even more abusive statements when the cameras were turned off. The commission recommended both officers be disciplined.
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Amidst the excitement over the killing of the ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a development of much impact on international security passed by when Denmark made the innocuous announcement on October 30 that it would permit the proposed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to pass through its exclusive economic zone.
Copenhagen modestly explained that it was “obliged to allow the construction of transit pipelines” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The Nord Stream 2, which will connect Russia’s Leningrad Region to Germany’s Baltic coast, bypassing the traditional route via Ukraine, aims to double the capacity of the already-built Nord Stream 1 to 110 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year that is more than a quarter of the European Union’s gas consumption.
On October 31, Gazprom, Russia’s energy Leviathan, had said 83 percent of the pipeline construction — more than 2100 km of the pipeline — was complete. The permit to construct in the Danish Exclusive Economic Zone south-east of Bornholm covers a 147-km-long route section.
Pipelay has been completed in Russian, Finnish and Swedish waters, and for the most part in German waters. The construction of both landfall facilities in Russia and Germany is nearing completion. Thus, the development last week signifies that Russia is certain to finish the project by the end of this year.
Despite the rising tensions in Russia’s relations with the United States, a massive energy project is all set to slither along the seabed between Russia and the European Union. The US wants to stifle the serpent in its infancy but Germany and Russia navigated it to the home stretch.
The project is expected to ensure safe and stable supplies of gas to Europe. The competitive Russian gas supplies will enable European customers to save anywhere around 8 billion euros on their gas bill in 2020.
More importantly, according to a study conducted by the University of Cologne EWI, “When Nord Stream 2 is available, Russia can supply more gas to the EU decreasing the need to import more expensive LNG. Hence, the import price for the remaining LNG volumes decreases, thereby reducing the overall EU-28 price level.”
Herein lies the rub. Europe has become a natural gas battleground for the US and Russia. Of course, apart from being a prized market, Europe is also a political battleground between the US and Russia.
Russia traditionally dominated the European market while European Union appears to be keen to wean itself off Russian gas, given the geopolitical implications of over-reliance on Moscow for its energy security. On the other hand, the US is looking to step up its exports liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and faces a big resourceful competitor who cannot be dislodged from the market — Russia.
Russia loomed large as the largest supplier of natural gas to the EU in 2018. According to the European Commission’s latest data on EU imports of energy products in October, eleven member states imported in 2018 more than 75 percent of their total national imports of natural gas from Russia.
Russia has multiple pipelines in operation, which gives it a big advantage in cutting down transportation costs for the European consumers, as compared to more expensive LNG imports from the US. Clearly, both geoeconomics and geopolitics are at play here.
The US’ transatlantic leadership is largely conditional on the climate of relations between Europe and Russia in general and between Germany and Russia in particular. Washington is acutely conscious that Nord Stream 2 can provide the underpinning for a stable, predictable relationship between Europe and Russia, which would go against the grain of the Trump administration’s projection of Russia as a revisionist power that the US is determined to counter.
In sum, Washington apprehends that if Nord Stream 2 is completed, it will come as a severe blow to transatlantic relations, although on the face of it, the US has been arguing that the project runs counter to the Western sanctions imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea.
Actually, this argument is sheer sophistry, since Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies is a legacy inherited from the days of the Soviet Union. Moscow is a stakeholder in preserving its reputation as a stable, reliable supplier of energy to Europe at competitive prices. The crux of the matter is that the European consumer prefers the cheaper Russian gas to the expensive LNG exports from the US.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine crisis alerted Russia to the geopolitical reality that it could be vulnerable to US pressure politically, which in turn prompted its energy pivot to China. Gazprom aims to become China’s top gas exporter by 2035. When the Power of Siberia pipeline (under construction in Eastern Siberia to transport gas to Far East countries) becomes active later this year, it will deliver 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually to China, which will make China Russia’s second-largest gas customer after Germany.
However, paradoxically, Russia’s gas exports to Europe are only increasing in recent years. In 2018, Gazprom’s gas sales to Europe and its share of Europe’s gas market reached record highs. This trend can only continue as the Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream pipelines, which will become active shortly this year, will deliver an additional 86.5 billion cubic meters annually to Europe.
The vessel “Audacia” laying pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea off the island of Rügen
Simply put, Europe’s addiction to Russian gas remains a fact of life and with the continent’s own gas production on the decline, Europe needs to import much bigger volumes of gas and lots of it is going to come from Russia.
The amazing part has been the dogged resistance by Germany to the US pressure tactic to abandon Nord Stream 2. The US even threatened to sanction German companies; US Congress passed resolutions calling for an end to construction of the pipeline. Germany’s manufacturing economy is dependent on imports for 98% of its oil and 92% of its gas supply, and cheap gas is the lifeblood of its export-based economy.
But then, there could be more to it politically than meets the eye. Can it be a coincidence that Germany is also resisting US pressure to shut out Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G networks? Like with Nord Stream 2, Washington advanced the same argument apropos Huawei — national security concerns. But Germany snubbed the calls from the US.
The Economist magazine wrote some months ago that the “The Atlantic Ocean is starting to look awfully wide. To Europeans the United States appears ever more remote.” To be sure, the coming into fruition of Nord Stream 2 is yet another sign that the transatlantic relationship currently faces significant challenges.
The US-European policy divisions have emerged on a wide range of regional and global issues. Although US and European policies toward Russia remain broadly aligned, Nord Stream 2 turned out to be a key US-European friction point.
Inconvenient Truth: Best Way To Help The Environment Is To Avoid Green “Eco-Friendly” Products
Make no doubt about it: it’s now trendy to be the most planet-loving, alternative energy supporting, climate changing fighting Captain Planet that you can be. And what would being a friend to environment be without sanctimoniously ridiculing those who disagree with you or aren’t on your level of sustainability? Just ask Greta Thunberg.
But, as often happens with virtue signaling, the reality of the matter is far askew from how pretentious environmentalists present it. In fact, RT reports that avoiding all of the “green” eco-friendly products available on the market could be the best way to help the environment.
Often lost in the fray is the fact that the fight against climate change is going to make some people very wealthy. The world will invest $90 trillion in new infrastructure in order to fight climate change over the next 10 to 15 years, as reports show that consumers will pay more to buy “sustainable” earth-friendly products. Unilever says that a third of consumers buy based on a brand’s environmental impact. A fifth of consumers favor “green messaging”, the same data shows.
But not all products billed to be friendly to the environment actually are. For instance, organic farming “isn’t the planet-saver it’s promoted as, according to a study published last month in Nature Communications.”
The study shows that farming crops like beans, potatoes and oats organically creates more emissions over the entire course of the farm-to-table cycle than farming conventionally. “Trying to get all of Britain eating organic would create an environmental catastrophe,” said researchers at Cranfield University.
Organic farming actually requires more land than conventional farming because it yields a smaller harvest per crop. The Cranfield University report show that if England and Wales switched to organic farming, they would need five times as much land for agriculture. Shipping would drive carbon costs sky high, despite the benefits of soil and water health improving dramatically without the conventional runoff from regular farming. Lowering emissions, however, would be “impossible without a major shift in diet”.
This puts farmers into a precarious position, RT notes:
This places farmers in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between protecting biodiversity – popular neonicotinoid pesticides have been implicated in the mass death of bees, which are critical to maintaining adequate food supply via pollination – and lowering emissions. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to work. While organic farming represents just 1.4 percent of total world farmland, the industry has mushroomed over the past decade, worth $97 billion annually as of 2017.
Other renewable energy, like solar, is also not as “green” as it sounds. Solar panel manufacturing is a “toxic mess”, as panels are produced using “carcinogenic, mutagenic heavy metal cadmium and requiring billions of liters of water to manufacture and cool”.
Electric vehicles also have a dark side: more energy is consumed in the production of electric cars than of gas cars. Meanwhile, a 2011 study showed that the carbon footprints of both vehicles are “about thee same”. EVs may not produce emissions while driving, but the piece notes what we all know: they are only as green as the electricity that’s used to charge them.
Additionally, batteries in EVs are loaded with toxic chemicals, like lithium, copper and cobalt. The mining of these substances is devastating to the environment and batteries need to be disposed of in a way that does not allow them back into the environment.
Meanwhile, biomass and biofuels also generate more carbon emissions than fossil fuels to create the same amount of energy. Substances that burn under the guise of “biomass” often can include anything from timber waste to garbage, and can often times litter the atmosphere with pollutants. Even burning clean wood often means cutting down trees.
Even the old adage of paper over plastic has its downside.Paper bags generate more air and water pollution than plastic and actually require more energy to recycle. They take up more space in landfills and require more fuel to ship. “Consumers who believe they’re saving the earth by requesting paper bags at the supermarket (and municipalities who think banning plastic is the answer) are sadly misguided,” the piece notes.
Meanwhile, plastic is in everything.
Philipp Sapozhnikov of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology said: “Plastic is cheap to manufacture. Its microparticles are in cosmetics, in detergent, in exfoliant scrub, even in the ‘environmentally friendly’ one, too. A proposed EU ban on microplastics in cosmetics earlier this year sent cosmetic brands scurrying to oppose it, hinting that the billions it would cost the industry would be passed on to consumers.”
But companies are still scrambling to look as green as possible – eager to give the consumer the idea that they’re making a difference when they’re really not.
Andrew Revkin, founder of Columbia University’s Initiative on Communication and Sustainability said: “We all have this tendency, if you’re facing a big complicated issue like climate change or saving the rainforest, if you do one thing, like turn out the lights when you leave a room or recycle, it makes you feel like you’re off the hook. I think there’s a big tendency in human nature just to pull back from really big issues, because…they require systems change. We’re not going to solve the climate crisis by turning out the lights.”
Will Fowler, creative director for Headspace concluded: “Brands are allowing people to pat themselves on the back without them personally having to sacrifice anything.”
And they’re happy to take your money while they’re doing it.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the election results last weekend in Thuringia. The complete collapse of the two centrist parties there, Angela Merkel’s CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD), is looking like a harbinger of what comes next in German politics.
A majority in Thuringia, ruled by the CDU since the early 1990’s until 2014 when Die Linke took over with the Social Democrats and the Greens, just voted against the centrist, Merkelist, grand coalition of standing for nothing but globalism and tighter EU integration.
Die Linke and Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured more than 54% of the total vote. Die Linke, the remnant of the East German Communist Party, and AfD, the new face of anti-immigration and fiscally responsible Germans, took first and second place ahead of Merkel’s CDU.
Whereas in 2014, Die Linke could form a government with the SPD and the Greens, today they cannot, falling 4 seats short of a majority, and the Greens barely beat the 5% threshold for representation. Had they not the coalition calculus would be unsolvable.
It is just as bad for Merkel and the CDU as they categorically refuse to ally with AfD in any capacity. So, there is no easy path to a government in Thuringia. The path is just as bad in Brandenburg which voted in September.
In both cases massive cartel-style coalitions will be needed, four parties, to cobble together a majority because all have refused to entreat with AfD. Lower Saxony will likely retain its current coalition between Merkel’s CDU, the SPD and the Greens after their election last month.
These results all highlight where things are headed in Germany, namely against making promises to everyone and eventually reneging on them, which is Merkel’s legacy. As Alexander Mercouris at The Duran pointed out the other day, Merkel’s operating principle is one of holding the line on the status quo regardless of the real changes happening around her.
That has created a meta-stable environment which looks like it never loses on the surface but is teetering on collapse with every new development.
She’s done this with every major policy decision of the past five years, trying desperately to keep the European project on the narrow path forward. But in trying to keep things as they are, she’s let things go to hell back home.
And it may finally be time for Angela Merkel to leave the political stage.
The state elections this fall in Germany have been nothing short of a disaster for Merkel. Think back to the fall of 2017 and how hard it was for her to put a coalition together. I prematurely called for the end of Merkelism. The problems she’s facing now were just as acute then. but she chose to paper them over with yet another disastrous coalition with the Social Democrats.
The one thing I got right back then was their collapse. They were in free fall then and this has continued to today where they took just 8% of the vote in Thuringia. They lost their majority in the stronghold of Rhineland-Westphalia in 2017 and that was your harbinger of bad news at the national level later that year.
What’s clear is that political opinions about the future of Germany are hardening away from what Merkel has been selling and it will come to a head in the near future.
The SPD has a party congress in December and with these election results along with the national level polling seeing the Greens rise dramatically, Merkel presides over a zombie Bundestag that no more accurately represents the popular opinion in Germany than the parliaments in Italy and the United Kingdom do.
And in the U.K. it took herculean efforts by Boris Johnson to finally get a general election through the miasma of suck that is the British and European political classes, which no more want to see a real Brexit than decent people want to see Hillary Clinton as U.S. President.
The SPD didn’t want to join another coalition with Merkel in 2017 and after Thuringia there is every expectation that they will finally end the association with her once and for all. And a general election can’t be far behind. The problem with this line of thinking, unfortunately, is that there is no appetite for new elections in Germany.
They are simply not used to this kind of political turmoil.
Moreover, no one in the Eurocratic class wants to see Merkel exit the stage in abject defeat. So, immense pressure will be placed on SPD leadership to hang with Merkel, just like it was applied to them in late 2017 to form the coalition.
But with Germany entering recession Merkel has already signaled that if she has to go back to the polls she’s ready to make a deal with the Greens with her recent concessions on renewable energy projects and more sops to them.
Current polling has the Greens, however, on the downside of their popularity, having peaked during the European elections at 25% and are now polling down at 22%. And, again, they, like AfD, are more regionally powerful than they are at the national level.
Meanwhile the SPD, nationally, is in a horse race with AfD at around 14%. The longer the SPD stays below the magic 16% level the more likely they are to sink into complete irrelevance as they have in Thuringia.
So, if the SPD pulls the plug on the coalition the results of any election in early 2020 won’t likely be any more conclusive than the last one. More likely than an election, Merkel will simply step down as leader of the CDU and the coalition will try to limp along until 2021.
But the reality is that the global financial system is teetering on the edge of an abyss. Central Banks like the Fed and the ECB are panicking into major liquidity moves before any real threats have made it into the headlines.
And why is that, unless things are truly far worse than anyone is willing to admit. How long are we until a Deutsche Bank collapse?
All we’re waiting for right now is a catalyst. The EU needs to manage their change in power smoothly to keep markets reassured. But the signs of a major problem are everywhere. All it takes is a spark.
Because all three of these state elections highlight the huge split between what were West and East Germanies during the Cold War. And that functional split in political thinking is only going to get worse until it is expressed by the ruling government.
And if Merkel continues to stand in the way of that at some point she’s going to get run over by the force of history.
Both Die Linke and AfD share important fundamental criticisms of the EU as well as with Merkel’s foreign policy. Both are backed by voters who heavily support withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. And both are opposed broadly to Merkel’s disenfranchising voters via her mass immigration policy.
To save herself in the near term look for her to promise lifting the sanctions to stave off her final demise. The stage is now set for this sometime in 2020.
And while we’ll never see the kind of Euroskeptic alliance between AfD and Die Linke like we saw in Italy last year, as economic conditions in Germany deteriorate and Merkel is blamed for it, rightfully so, these areas of policy agreement set the stage for a ripping apart at the seams of the German political fabric.
US Challenges China’s Belt And Road With New Global Infrastructure Scheme
The Trump administration has spent the last several years, bashing China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and calling it a ‘debt trap’ and urging countries around the world to resist allowing China to build infrastructure projects in their respected countries. The motive behind US officials attempting to discredit the BRI is because of Washington’s new plan to launch a similar infrastructure scheme.
The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) have unveiled on Monday the American-led Blue Dot Network, a global “sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world,” read an OPIC press release.
“The development of critical infrastructure—when it is led by the private sector and supported on terms that are transparent, sustainable, and socially and environmentally responsible—is foundational to widespread economic empowerment,” said OPIC’s David Bohigian. “Through Blue Dot Network, the United States is proud to join key partners to fully unlock the power of quality infrastructure to foster unprecedented opportunity, progress, and stability.”
“This endorsement of Blue Dot Network not only creates a solid foundation for infrastructure global trust standards but reinforces the need for the establishment of umbrella global trust standards in other sectors, including digital, mining, financial services, and research,” said US Department of State Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach. “Such global trust standards, which are based on respect for transparency and accountability, sovereignty of property and resources, local labor and human rights, rule of law, the environment, and sound governance practices in procurement and financing, have been driven not just by private sector companies and civil society but also by governments around the world.”
“Australia is committed to promoting high-quality infrastructure, inclusive approaches, and facilitating private sector investment in the Indo-Pacific region,” said DFAT Deputy Secretary Richard Maude. “I’m pleased that this commitment is shared by East Asia Summit Leaders, and we look forward to working closely with our regional partners to develop Blue Dot Network to take action on this commitment.”
“Blue Dot Network is an initiative that leads to the promotion of quality infrastructure investment committed by G20 countries,” said Maeda. “As JBIC has a long history of infrastructure finance all over the world, JBIC is pleased to share such experience and contribute to further development of Blue Dot Network.”
Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary, told the Financial Times ahead of the launch: “Each blue dot is meant to be a dot on the map that will be a safe place for companies to operate if they are interested in sustainable infrastructure projects…The point is to show seriousness about the sustainability of projects.”
The Blue Dot Network is being developed by the Trump administration to be a direct competitor to China’s BRI.
The Lowry Institute’s Asia Power Index shows the US remains the top power in Asia. Still, there are troubling signs that China is quickly gaining ground, likely to displace the US in the coming decade.
“The US remains an important, but not the primary economic player in Asia,” said Hervé Lemahieu, head of Lowy’s Asian Power and Diplomacy Programme. “They’ve got to get used to that.”
Washington’s role in the world has diminished in the last decade since China launched BRI in more than 152 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas.
The next big fight across the world is BRI versus The Blue Dot Network. The world economy is being fractured — this will only create heightened volatility in the years ahead.
In today’s world, the phrase “conspiracy theory” is pejorative and has a negative connotation. To many people, a conspiracy theory is an irrational, over-imaginative idea endorsed by people looking for attention and not supported by the mainstream media or government.
History shows, though, that there have been many times when governments or individuals have participated in conspiracies. It would be naïve to think that intelligence agencies, militaries, government officials, and politicians don’t sometimes cooperate in covert, secretive ways.
Following are five instances when it’s been proven that the government engaged in a conspiracy.
THE GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION
On August 4, 1964, Captain John J. Herrick, the commander of the USS Maddox, a US Navy vessel that was on an intelligence-gathering mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, reported to the White House and Pentagon that North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired torpedoes at his ship, and, so, the Maddox had fired back.
Two days later, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara testified to the Congress that he was certain that the Maddox had been attacked. On August 7, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, the Congressional act that allowed President Johnson free reign to commence war; Johnson immediately ordered air strikes on North Vietnam and the Vietnam War—which would eventually kill fifty-eight thousand Americans and two million Asians—was underway.
Since then, it has been shown and proven that no North Vietnamese boats ever fired on the Maddox, and that McNamara had been untruthful when he testified before Congress. According to the official publication of the Naval Institute,
…once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full US involvement in the Vietnam War.”
In the weeks prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, South Vietnamese ships had been attacking posts in North Vietnam in conjunction with the CIA’s Operation 34A. According to many inside sources, the Johnson administration wanted a full-scale war in Vietnam and through Operation 34A was trying to provoke North Vietnam into an attack that would give Johnson an excuse to go to war. But when McNamara was asked by the Congress on August 7 if these South Vietnam attacks had anything to do with the US military and CIA, McNamara lied and said no.
Within hours after reporting that the Maddox had been attacked, Captain Herrick was retracting his statements and reporting to the White House and Pentagon that “in all likelihood” an over-eager sonar man had been mistaken and that the sonar sounds and images that he originally thought were enemy torpedoes were actually just the beat of the Maddox’s own propellers.
Herrick reported that there was a good probability that there had been no attack on the Maddox, and suggested “complete reevaluation before any action is taken.”
McNamara saw these new, updated reports and discussed them with President Johnson early in the afternoon of August 4. Even though this was so, on the evening of August 4, President Johnson went on national television and announced to the American public that North Vietnam had engaged in “unprovoked aggression” and, so, the US military was retaliating.
A few days after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson remarked, “Hell, those damn stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”
Recently, new documents related to the Gulf of Tonkin incident have been declassified and according to Robert Hanyok, a historian for the National Security Agency, these documents show that the NSA deliberately “distorted intelligence” andand “altered documents” to make it appear that an attack had occurred on August 4.
When President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented to the American public and said he knew that North Vietnam had attacked a US ship, and when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lied to the Congress and said he was sure that the Maddox had been attacked and that the CIA had nothing to do with South Vietnam aggression, and when NSA officials falsified information to make it appear that there had been an attack on the Maddox, that was a government conspiracy.
OPERATION NORTHWOODS
In 1962, the most powerful and highest ranking military officials of the US government, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt strongly that the communist leader Fidel Castro had to be removed from power and, so, came up with a plan to justify an American invasion of Cuba.
The plan, entitled Operations Northwoods, was presented to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, and was signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer.
Operations Northwoods was a proposal for a false flag operation, a plan in which a military organizes an attack against its own country and then frames and blames the attack on another country for the purpose of the purpose of initiating hostilities and declaring war on that country.
The proposal was originally labeled Top Secret but was made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The complete Operation Northwoods paper was published online by the National Security Archive on April 30, 2001, and this once-secret government document can now be read by anyone.
The actions that General Lemnitzer and the other chiefs wanted to d to take under Operations Northwoods are shocking. According to the plan, CIA and military personnel and hired provocateurs would commit various violent acts and these acts would be blamed on Castro to “create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility” and “put the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances.”
One of the most ambitious plans of Operation Northwoods was to blow up a plane in midflight. The strategy was to fill a civilian airplane with CIA and military personnel who were registered under fake ID’s; an exact duplicate plane—an empty military drone aircraft—would take off at the same exact time.
The plane of fake passengers would land at a military base but the empty drone plane would fly over Cuba and crash in the ocean, supposedly a victim of Cuban missiles. “Casualty lists in US newspapers” and conducting “fake funerals for mock-victims” would cause “a helpful wave of national indignation” in America.
The Operation Northwoods proposal also states: “We could blow up a US ship and blame Cuba.” Whether the ship was to be empty or full of US soldiers is unclear. The document also says: “Hijacking attempts against US civil air and surface craft should be encouraged.”
Some of the recommendations of Operation Northwoods would have surely led to serious injuries and even deaths of Cuban and American civilians. The plan suggests:
We could sink a boatload of Cubans on route to Florida (real or simulated).”
And:
We could foster attempts on lives of anti-Castro Cubans in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized…We could explode a few bombs in carefully chosen spots.”
Lemnitzer and the chiefs wanted many of these staged terrorist attacks to be directed at the Guantanamo Bay United States Naval Base in Cuba. The plans were:
“Start riots near the entrance to the base”
“lob mortar shells from outside the base to inside the base”
“blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires”
“burn aircraft on airbase (sabotage)”
“sabotage ship in harbor; large fires—napalm.”
When Secretary of Defense McNamara was presented with the Operation Northwoods plan, he either stopped and rejected the plan himself or passed it on to President Kennedy and JFK then rejected it. But if Kennedy and McNamara had agreed with the plan, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to begin enacting Operation Northwoods “right away, within a few months.”
Even though Operation Northwoods was never initiated, when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the other highest-ranking military officials of the United States Government planned to organize violent attacks on Americans and anti-Castro Cuban citizens, knowing those attacks could severely injure and kill those citizens, and when they planned to blame those attacks on Cuba and then use that as an excuse to invade Cuba, that was a government conspiracy.
FBI AND THE MAFIA
In March 1965, the FBI had the house of New England organized crime boss Raymond Patriarca wiretapped and overheard two mobsters, Joseph Barboza and Vincent Flemmi, asking Patriarca for permission to kill another gangster, Edward Deegan. Two days later, Deegan’s blood-soaked body was found dead in a Boston alley.
Within days, an official FBI report confirmed that Joseph Barboza and three other mobsters were the murderers. Instead of those men going to prison for murder, though, three years later a man named Joseph Salvati was brought to trial for the murder of Edward Deegan. At that trial Joseph Barboza testified and lied that Salvati was one of the murderers. On the basis of Barboza’s testimony, Joseph Salvati was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
At that time, in the mid 1960s, the FBI was being pressured more and more to do something to stop organized crime. The bureau began using members of the mafia—criminals and murderers—to inform against fellow mafia members. Joseph Barboza was one of these FBI-protected, paid informants. The FBI didn’t want Barboza to go to prison for the murder of Deegan because they wanted him to continue infiltrating the mafia and testifying against other mafia members.
The bureau, apparently, did want a conviction in the Deegan murder case, though, and, so, let Barboza lie under oath and let a man they knew to be innocent, Joseph Salvati, go to prison.
The Witness Protection Program was first created for Joseph Barboza, and Barboza was the first mafia informant to be protected under the program. After helping to convict a number of mobsters, Barboza was sent off to live in California. While under the Witness Protection Program, Barboza committed at least one more murder, and probably more.
On trial for a murder in California, FBI officials showed up for Joseph Barboza’s trial and testified on his behalf, helping Barboza to get a light sentence.
Joseph Salvati ended up serving thirty years in prison for a murder that he was innocent of. During that thirty-year period, lawyers for Salvati requested documents from the FBI that would have proved Salvati’s innocence, but the bureau refused to release them.
Finally, in 1997, other evidence came forth suggesting Salvati’s innocence and the governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, granted Salvati’s release. A few years later, the FBI was ordered to release all its reports on the case; hundreds of documents showed the FBI knew that Barboza was a murderer, that he had murdered Edward Deegan, and that Joseph Salvati had had nothing to do with the crime.
Salvati was exonerated in a court of law, and was eventually awarded millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit against the government. (Three other defendants were also exonerated. At the 1968 trial, Joseph Barboza had testified that three other men—men who were also not guilty—had participated in Deegan’s murder. These three innocent men were, with Salvati, also sent to prison.)
Perhaps the most shocking thing that the FBI documents showed, though, was that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself knew Salvati was innocent and that Barboza had killed Deegan.
Hoover was working closely, almost daily, with the agents handling Joseph Barboza, and it was probably Hoover directing the operation. The congressional committee that investigated the case was the House Committee on Government Reform and Congressman Dan Burton was the chairman.
When asked by CBS’s 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace “Did J. Edgar Hoover know all this?” Burton replied:
“Yes . . . It’s one of the greatest failures in the history of American justice…J. Edgar Hoover knew Salvati was innocent. He knew it and his name should not be emblazoned on the FBI headquarters. We should change the name of that building.”
Congressman Burton claimed there was evidence that there were more cases when the FBI did the same sorts of things they did in the Joseph Salvati case; when Burton and his committee requested the files on these cases, the Attorney General and the White House refused to release them.
When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and top FBI officials let a known murderer lie and perjure himself in a courtroom, when they let four men they knew to be innocent suffer in the hell of a prison cell for thirty years, and when they deliberately covered that up for decades, that was a government conspiracy.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
In 1939, Albert Einstein and two other European physicists sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt informing Roosevelt that the German government was working on developing the science that could lead to the creation of a nuclear bomb. FDR immediately formed a committee to look into the idea of the US government making an atomic bomb.
In 1942, the Manhattan Project, the United States program to build a nuclear bomb, headed by General Leslie R. Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers, was formed.
The program existed from 1942–1946, spent two billion dollars, had plants and factories in thirty cities, and employed 130,000 workers. But virtually no one knew about it. The Manhattan Project is considered the “Greatest Secret Ever Kept.”
The US government wanted to keep the Project a secret lest Germany or one of America’s other enemies found out about it and built—more quickly—a larger, better bomb. In the early 1940s, when American scientists began working on splitting atoms and nuclear fission, US government officials asked the scientists to not publish any reports on the work in scientific journals. The work was kept quiet.
In 1943, when newspapers began reporting on the large Manhattan Project construction going on in a few states, the newly formed United States Government Office of Censorship asked newspapers and broadcasters to avoid discussing “atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic fission . . . the use for military purposes of radium or radioactive materials” or anything else that could expose the project. The press kept mum. The government didn’t talk about the Manhattan Project, the press didn’t report on it, and the public knew nothing about it.
Not even the 130,000 Manhattan Project laborers knew they were building an atom bomb.
In 1945, a Life magazine article wrote that before Japan was attacked with a-bombs, “probably no more than a few dozen men in the entire country knew the full meaning of the Manhattan Project, and perhaps only a thousand others even were aware that work on atoms was involved.”
The workers were told they were doing an important job for the government, but weren’t told what the job was, and didn’t understand the full import of the mysterious, daily tasks they were doing. The laborers were warned that disclosing the Project’s secrets was punishable by ten years in prison, and a hefty financial fine.
Whole towns and cities were built where thousands of Manhattan Project workers lived and worked but these thousands didn’t know they were helping to build nuclear bombs.
The Manhattan Project finally became known to the public on August 6, 1945, when President Harry Truman announced that America had dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Truman, himself, had not been informed of the Manhattan Project until late April 1945.
When the government kept the purpose of the Manhattan Project a secret from the press, from the public, from America’s enemies, from Harry Truman, and even from the 130,000 laborers who worked for the Manhattan Project, that was a government conspiracy.
THE CHURCH COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION
In the early 1970s, after the Watergate affair and investigative reports by the New York Times, it became apparent that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies might be engaging in inappropriate and illegal activities. In 1975, the Church Committee, named after the Committee’s chairman Senator Frank Church, was formed to investigate abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS.
The Church Committee reports are said to constitute the most extensive investigations of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Many disturbing facts were revealed. According to the final report of the Committee, US intelligence agencies had been engaging in “unlawful or improper conduct” and “intelligence excesses, at home and abroad” since the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.
The report added that “intelligence agencies have undermined the Constitutional rights of citizens” and “checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied.”
One of the most well-known revelations of the Committee was the CIA’s so-called “Family Jewels,” a report that detailed the CIA’s misdeeds dating back to Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. The committee also reported on the NSA’s SHAMROCK and MINARET programs; under these programs the NSA had been intercepting, opening, and reading the telegrams and mail of thousands of private citizens.
The Church Committee also discovered and exposed the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, the bureau’s program to covertly destroy and disrupt any groups or individuals that J. Edgar Hoover felt were bad for America. Some of the movements and groups that the FBI tried to discredit and destroy were the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The most alarming thing that the Church Committee found, though, was that the CIA had an assassination program. It was revealed that the CIA assassinated or had tried to assassinate Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, General Rene Schneider of Chile, Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, and other political leaders throughout the world.
The Committee learned about the different ways the CIA had developed to kill and assassinate people: inflicting cancer, inflicting heart attacks, making murders look like suicides, car accidents, boating accidents, and shootings. At one point, CIA Director William Colby presented to the Committee a special “heart attack gun” that the CIA had created. The gun was able to shoot a small poison-laden dart into its victim. The dart was so small as to be undetectable; the victim’s death from the poison would appear to be a heart attack, so no foul play would be suspected.
In response to the Church Committee report, in 1976 President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11,905, which forbade employees of the US government from engaging in or conspiring to engage in political assassinations.
In that same year, the Senate approved Senate Resolution 400, which established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee responsible for providing vigilant oversight over the intelligence agencies.
Many former CIA employee-whistleblowers and other people, though, claim that US intelligence agencies are still acting in improper ways. In 2008, it was revealed that the CIA had hired Blackwater, a private company made up of ex-Navy Seals, to track down and assassinate suspected terrorists.
Later in the 2000s, when the Congress formed a committee to investigate if CIA waterboarding and other methods of interrogation constituted torture, congressmen complained that they couldn’t get to the bottom of the matter because CIA officials and the CIA director were lying to the congressional committee.
Forty-five years after the revelations of the Church Committee, it seems US intelligence agencies are still engaging in covert and improper conduct.
When US intelligence agencies and the CIA plot to influence the affairs of foreign nations, when the CIA plots assassinations and assassinates foreign leaders and political dissidents, when the CIA develops new ways to kill and assassinate and interrogate and torture, and when the CIA keeps all that from Congress, the press, and the public, that’s a government conspiracy.
* * *
If these five instances of government engaging in conspiracies have been proven to be true—and they have been—isn’t it logical to assume that government agencies may have engaged in other conspiracies? It is the very nature of intelligence agencies and militaries to act in secretive, conspiratorial ways.
The phrase “conspiracy theory” shouldn’t have a negative connotation. Politics always plays out with backroom handshakes. It is the suggestion of American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups that government agencies and officials and the special interests that influence them are often engaging in conspiratorial actions, and that conspiracies have been behind some of the most iconic and important events of American history.
A conspiracy theorist was regaling a friend with one conspiracy theory after another. Finally, the friend interrupted and said, “I bet I know what would happen if God Himself appeared out of the sky right now, looked down at us, and said, ‘There is no conspiracy.’ I bet you would look up and say, ‘So the conspiracy goes higher than we thought.’”
Perhaps if the Almighty appeared to inform us that politicians and governments and government officials don’t act in secretive, covert, conspiratorial ways, then we could accept that.
But when the evidence indicates otherwise….
Theories questioning if multiple people might have shot at JFK, or if interior bombs brought down the World Trade Center, or if somebody was able to rig the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections can make for dramatic, sensational storytelling.
But it is not the purpose of American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups to be sensational; the purpose of this book is to talk about “conspiracy realities” that can hopefully give us a deeper and more meaningful understanding of politics.
If elements in the intelligence agencies participated in assassinating President Kennedy, then how can the intelligence agencies be better controlled? If elements in the government allowed or caused 9/11 to happen to give us an excuse to go to war in the Middle East, then how much of the War on Terror is disinformation and propaganda?
If presidential elections can be rigged, then how can we have fairer, uncorrupted elections? If secretive influences behind the scenes, a Deep State, are controlling our social, political, and financial systems for their own selfish purposes, then it would benefit us to expose who and what these secretive influences are.
American Conspiracies and Cover-Ups may give us a glimpse into the way that government and politics work.
Turning Japanese? Growth In $9BN US Adult Diaper Market Explodes, Topping Baby Diapers
Looking for a way to hedge against the economic damage likely to be wrought by the looming ‘demographic timebomb’ (note: that’s what economists and journalists call it)?
Here’s one idea.
According to one recent study, fully one-fifth of the world’s population will be of retirement age by 2070. This phenomenon is largely due to trends in the developed world: as the costs of education, housing and survival skyrocket, many are choosing to have fewer babies, delay family formation, or simply skip that whole mess altogether.
We’ve been over the repercussions of an aging society particularly as it relates to the economy (more job openings, slower economic growth). For better or worse, the world already has a model for how these trends might impact us, at least in the early stages. And that model is Japan, a country that already has more citizen over the age of 80 than under the age of 10.
As demographic issues create new and unforeseen challenges, Reuters reported on an easily-overlooked issue: the revolution in the consumer-products space that will need to take place in the coming years. As the population of the elderly explodes, the need for hygiene products like adults diapers will likely see a commensurate surge (and many of the companies that make these products are publicly-traded consumer staples).
The market is already growing, and last year, it expanded by 9%, to hit $9 billion.
The time may not be far off when more adults need diapers than babies as the population grows older, potentially a huge opportunity for manufacturers of incontinence products – if they can lift the stigma that has long constrained sales.
The market for adult diapers, disposable underwear and absorbent pads is growing fast, up 9% last year to $9 billion, having doubled in the last decade, according to Euromonitor.
As more senior citizens grapple with their weak bladders, Reuters’ sources said the battle for market share will likely be won and lost by the marketing department, as products that emphasize discretion and independence, as well as successfully rebranding them as essential “personal care” products, instead of “baby products.”
Advertising campaigns will also need to be launched to help “normalize” the use of “diapers” by adults.
But manufacturers like market leaders Essity and Kimberly-Clark Corp reckon only half of the more than 400 million adults likely to be affected by weak bladders, are buying the right products, because they are too embarrassed.
Companies are trying various methods to change attitudes, including making products more discreet, avoiding terms like diapers or nappies, and placing items in the personal care aisle, next to deodorants and menstrual pads, rather than in the baby products section.
Resigning adult diapers so that they can be worn more discreetly will be critical (something that some US companies are already working on), as all of those hipster grandpas try to maneuver around in their tight pants and diapers.
In the U.S., market leader Kimberly-Clark has this year given its 35-year-old Depend brand a makeover, introducing thinner, softer and more fitted products that can be worn discreetly, in an effort to make them more acceptable.
The changes are just the latest in a decade-long attempt to win over consumers, which started with manufacturers dropping the ‘diaper’ label, to loosen the association older customers might have with a loss of control in their life.
Yet it is still difficult for companies to persuade people they should buy specially made incontinence products.
“People keep the fact that they have incontinence secret from their loved ones, from their husbands, brothers and sisters – this is a deep secret for many consumers and yet it’s just a fact of life, it’s a physiological reality,” said Fiona Tomlin, who leads Kimberly-Clark’s adult and feminine care division.
Consumer products companies are also trying to “normalize” discussions on the subject via advertising. The market leader in Japan has resorted to clever catch-phrases to try and make problems like incontinence seem trivial.
In Japan, where adult incontinence products have outsold baby diaper sales since around 2013 due to a rapidly ageing population, market leader Unicharm Corp has adopted the phrase “choi more” in its advertising, which translates as “lil’ dribble,” to make light of the problem.
“What we are doing is trying to let people know that incontinence, even among young people, is normal,” said Unicharm spokesman Hitoshi Watanabe.
Incontinence is one of those problems that people keep secret from their friends and loved ones out of shame. But it’s also surprisingly common, even in relatively young adults. Many women who have more than one child struggle with it, creating another branding opportunity.
That is, so long as packaging designers follow a golden rule: Nothing should be associated with aging.
Sweden’s Essity, the global industry leader, is also trying to reach a younger audience with its TENA brand and a new line of black, low-rise disposable underwear called Silhouette Noir.
The advert’s tagline reads: ‘secret’s out: 1 in 3 women have incontinence’.
Around 12% of all women and 5% of men experience some form of urinary incontinence, although conditions vary from mild and temporary to serious and chronic, according to the Global Forum on Incontinence, which is backed by Essity.
Essity said it tries to package and market its products in a way that avoids associations with ageing.
“Designing products and packaging it as feminine and discreet as possible for females and as masculine and discreet as possible for men helps,” said Ulrika Kolsrud, president of Essity’s health and medical solutions.
Getting the message across to potential customers can sometimes be a tricky path to tread. A few years ago, SCA – from which Essity was spun off in 2017 – mailed samples of its products to Swedish men above 55, only to receive a barrage of complaints.
As the countdown continues, the demographic timebomb looks set to hit the West and Japan especially hard. But in the PROC, where a one-child policy kept births down for multiple consecutive generations, the numbers are simply staggering. It’s a problem that’s already starting to hit, as China’s working age population shrinks for the first time – and one that could have serious repercussions for the global economy.
