“Bonds Ain’t Buying It” – Trader Warns “A Lot Can Still Go Wrong” With China

“Bonds Ain’t Buying It” – Trader Warns “A Lot Can Still Go Wrong” With China

Authored by Richard Breslow via Bloomberg,

It certainly doesn’t make you a cynic to poke holes in the idea that the trade dispute between the U.S. and China is coming to an end, courtesy of the phase-one deal being signed today. There’s an awful lot of questions left unanswered and a lot that can go wrong. Just read the Chinese media and you will get the point. And we all can acknowledge that any phase-two agreement is a long way off. On the other hand, putting this very public dispute in abeyance is a lot better than nothing.

Kicking the can down the road is a time-honored tradition in politics and, in most cases, financial markets are willing to go along with the practice if it lessens headline risk and lets us get on with looking for securities to buy.

Make no mistake, however, the two countries may be doing business with each other, but it doesn’t make their rivalry and level of distrust any less real.

The deal suits the needs of the principals involved on both sides and, at the least, may be a welcome distraction from the tawdry events and sniping back and forth that will be taking place on Capitol Hill.

In any case, we’ll see how this plays out over the coming months. And need to keep in mind the relationship between the two countries remains very much a campaign issue which will likely cause periodic lurches between extolling the virtues of progress made, and to come, with maintaining a hard line. Variations on the removal of the currency manipulation designation versus maintained tariffs through the election theme.

Having said that, one of the defining characteristics of markets has been the rapid appreciation of the yuan. Likely very much a part of the negotiating process. The move through 7 versus the dollar has been seen as an important signal for optimism about the global economy. Just as the reverse was true when it weakened through that level last August. It’s an understatement to say a lot of assets have moved in response. Quantitative, as well as discretionary, traders have taken notice. And as each day has passed featuring continued yuan strength, the forecasts for how far it could go have become more stretched. Why pass on a good opportunity to extrapolate?

Yesterday’s low in USD/CNY at 6.8670, however, brought the currency pair right into a potentially formidable band of support. And this needs to be watched carefully if the continuation of this move is the basis for your investing thesis. Getting through here opens up a look at 6.83, rather than simply clear sailing toward some of the more extreme predictions. The currency is most definitely in play. That doesn’t mean it will continue to be an easy one-way trade. This isn’t your typical free-floating currency and the Chinese will have a lot to say about how far it will be allowed to roam. They practice signaling on a regular basis.

Another development that definitely merits watching is the seeming failure of global bond markets to build on any momentum toward higher yields. It hasn’t been a dramatic turn around, and there are technical levels galore, but it definitely looks deflating when looking at the charts, if that was your view. Trade news is encouraging. Economic numbers less so. Treasury bears are unlikely to get much help from today’s slate of Fed speakers.

Ten-year Treasuries and bunds look like they are moving in lock-step and which direction the spread moves off of the circa 200-basis points wide level will be telling. There has been a lot of interest in trading these two bonds against each other. And it doesn’t look like bunds are going back to a zero yield in a hurry.

It may be grossly premature, but it is January and, therefor, always prudent, if nothing else, to question the moves that look like they will define the trends setting the tone for the year. You might want to start with the dollar. It has been confounding a lot of analysts and stopping out traders along the way.

The simplest way to follow developments may just be to see which end of the Bloomberg Dollar Index’s December 27 range ends up giving way.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 10:45

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Democrats Chased the Peace Vote Last Night, but Can We Trust Them to Follow Through?

Last night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN featured a good deal of foreign policy chatter, for a change—one of the only semi-reassuring parts of the two-hour televised show. Comments from the 2020 candidates about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the possibility of war with Iran highlighted just how far the center of gravity has shifted on American military adventurism and regime-change wars in the Middle East.

“We need to get our combat troops out” and “stop asking our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.).

In the Middle East, President Donald Trump “is going from crisis to crisis, from escalation to escalation,” said Tom Steyer. “But if you look further over the last 20 years, including in the war in Afghanistan, we know from The Washington Post that, in fact, there was no strategy. There was just a series of tactical decisions that made no sense.”

And Iraq? That was “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—in many ways the most conservative of the Democratic presidential candidates on last night’s stage—touted her early opposition to the Iraq War. She also pushed the current Senate resolution to tell the Trump administration “you must have an authorization of military force if you’re going to go to war with Iran.”

The debate featured just six Democratic candidates: former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (of South Bend, Indiana), Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer, and Warren. Moderator Wolf Blitzer kicked things off by pointing out that the U.S. and Iran had recently been “on the brink of war” and this had “reignited the debate over America’s role in the world.” He asked the candidates, with that in mind, “why are you…the best prepared person on this stage to be commander in chief?”

Sanders stressed his long-time opposition to the Iraq War and (in contrast to Biden) his ability to see through the Bush administration’s misdirection on that front. “Joe and I listened to what Dick Cheney and George Bush and [Donald] Rumsfeld had to say. I thought they were lying,” said Sanders. “I didn’t believe them for a moment. I took to the floor. I did everything I could to prevent that war. Joe saw it differently.”

Sanders also warned people not to get fooled again, as the Trump administration tries to lie us into a war with Iran.

Biden’s defense of his vote for the Iraq War wasn’t much of one: he had voted for it, it was a mistake, “but the man who also argued against that war, Barack Obama, picked me to be his vice president,” said Biden. OK then.

Ultimately, Biden showed few signs of real change on U.S. policy in the Middle East. He said we should send U.S. troops whenever “the overwhelming vital interests of the United States are at stake,” which is worryingly vague standard. He said he would “leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the [Persian] Gulf” and that it would be “a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now.”

When challenged by others on stage, he caricatured their argument (saying they thought the U.S. could “walk away and not have any troops anywhere” in the world) before appealing to threats of terrorism and then making the perverse argument that we must police the world in order to not police the world.

“You have to be able to form coalitions to be able to defeat [terrorists] or contain them. If you don’t, we end up being the world’s policeman again,” said Biden.

But Biden was arguably the most hawkish person on stage, which is saying something.

Warren especially pushed back on Biden’s foreign policy claims. “We’ve turned the corner so many times, we’re going in circles in these regions. This has got to stop,” she said. “It’s not enough to say someday we’re going to get out. No one on the ground, none of our military can describe what the conditions are for getting out. It’s time to get our combat troops home.”

Buttigieg was on the same page. “We can continue to remain engaged without having an endless commitment of ground troops,” he said. He also pushed for greater congressional oversight of military actions:

When we lost troops in Niger, there were members of Congress who admitted they didn’t even know we had troops there. And it was all pursuant to an authorization that was passed to deal with Al Qaeda and 9/11. And often, Congress has been all too happy to leave aside its role. Now, thanks to Democrats in Congress, that’s changing. But the reality is, year after year, Congress didn’t want to touch this, either, because it was so politically difficult.[…]

Fundamental truth is, if our troops can summon the courage to go overseas into harm’s way, often on deployment after deployment, then we’ve got to make sure that Congress has the courage to take tough up-or-down votes on whether they ought to be there. And when I am president, anytime—which I hope will never happen—but anytime I am compelled to use force and seek that authorization, we will have a three-year sunset…

Klobuchar said she would get most troops out of Afghanistan but would have left them in Syria and would leave them in Iraq, albeit “not in the level that Donald Trump is taking us right now.”

You can find a full transcript of last night’s debate here.

All in all, the efforts to distance themselves from pro-Iraq and Afghanistan War votes, denounce the ongoing presence of U.S. troops there, and push for greater congressional oversight of military action was a very good sign.

But as the discussion turned more specifically to Iran, responses from the Democratic candidates weren’t quite as reassuring. While eager to condemn whatever Trump’s strategy with Iran has been, they were less clear on how their own approaches would differ. What we were left with was promises to accomplish Trump (and Obama) administration goals with regard to Iran—such as thwarting the country’s development of nuclear capabilities—while somehow avoiding anything that has already been tried.

Given that it’s unlikely Iran will just do whatever we say without getting anything in return, this probably won’t get us far. And few of the candidates on stage seemed sufficiently committed to keeping us out of war with Iran should even some slight provocation or shift in public opinion occur.

More debate coverage from Reason:

QUICK HITS

  • Meanwhile, in Trump world:

  • And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she’s picked the seven people who will serve as “impeachment managers” in the Senate. Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) will lead things, assisted by fellow Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Jason Crow (Colo.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Val Demings (Fla.), and Sylvia Garcia (Texas).
  • “Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?” asks Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.).
  • How Tom Steyer keeps getting on the Democratic debate stage.
  • The woke primary is over and everyone lost, writes Matt Welch.
  • Positive momentum on occupational licensing reform in Iowa:

  • More from Reason staffers on last night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN:

On the Sanders/Warren woman-president drama:

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A Missed Opportunity

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now announced the slate of House managers who will prosecute the impeachment case before the Senate. Consistent with the Democratic approach to the impeachment process as a whole, there was no real effort to reach across the aisle and try to appeal to and persuade those on the political right who might be skeptical of Trump and sympathetic to his impeachment. The Democratic leadership failed to reach across the aisle in conducting the impeachment hearings, as Volokh co-blogger Jonathan Adler noted. They have now compounded that mistake.

Justin Amash would have made an excellent House manager. Amash has formally left the Republican Party but remains a vocal advocate of the classical liberal principles that once were understood to be at the heart of modern American conservatism. Amash broke from the GOP over the actions of President Trump and the complete inability of the party to tolerate any criticisms of the president. His appointment as a House manager would have been the obvious political play to make to signal that a presidential impeachment was in the nation’s interest and not just the Democratic Party’s interest.

For many months, Amash has been among the most eloquent critics of President Trump in the House of Representatives. He did a far better job than most Democrats in explaining the significance of the findings of the Mueller Report, and he has done a far better job than most Democrats in explaining the impeachment power and the reasons why the House needed to pursue an impeachment of the sitting president. He had served on the House Oversight Committee, one of the main committees investigating the administration, until he left the GOP.

An impeachment should not be a partisan affair. The Republicans in Congress have failed to take their constitutional duties seriously. The Democrats have made a hash of the process as well and made Trump’s job easier as a result.

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Democrats Chased the Peace Vote Last Night, but Can We Trust Them to Follow Through?

Last night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN featured a good deal of foreign policy chatter, for a change—one of the only semi-reassuring parts of the two-hour televised show. Comments from the 2020 candidates about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the possibility of war with Iran highlighted just how far the center of gravity has shifted on American military adventurism and regime-change wars in the Middle East.

“We need to get our combat troops out” and “stop asking our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.).

In the Middle East, President Donald Trump “is going from crisis to crisis, from escalation to escalation,” said Tom Steyer. “But if you look further over the last 20 years, including in the war in Afghanistan, we know from The Washington Post that, in fact, there was no strategy. There was just a series of tactical decisions that made no sense.”

And Iraq? That was “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—in many ways the most conservative of the Democratic presidential candidates on last night’s stage—touted her early opposition to the Iraq War. She also pushed the current Senate resolution to tell the Trump administration “you must have an authorization of military force if you’re going to go to war with Iran.”

The debate featured just six Democratic candidates: former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (of South Bend, Indiana), Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer, and Warren. Moderator Wolf Blitzer kicked things off by pointing out that the U.S. and Iran had recently been “on the brink of war” and this had “reignited the debate over America’s role in the world.” He asked the candidates, with that in mind, “why are you…the best prepared person on this stage to be commander in chief?”

Sanders stressed his long-time opposition to the Iraq War and (in contrast to Biden) his ability to see through the Bush administration’s misdirection on that front. “Joe and I listened to what Dick Cheney and George Bush and [Donald] Rumsfeld had to say. I thought they were lying,” said Sanders. “I didn’t believe them for a moment. I took to the floor. I did everything I could to prevent that war. Joe saw it differently.”

Sanders also warned people not to get fooled again, as the Trump administration tries to lie us into a war with Iran.

Biden’s defense of his vote for the Iraq War wasn’t much of one: he had voted for it, it was a mistake, “but the man who also argued against that war, Barack Obama, picked me to be his vice president,” said Biden. OK then.

Ultimately, Biden showed few signs of real change on U.S. policy in the Middle East. He said we should send U.S. troops whenever “the overwhelming vital interests of the United States are at stake,” which is worryingly vague standard. He said he would “leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the [Persian] Gulf” and that it would be “a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now.”

When challenged by others on stage, he caricatured their argument (saying they thought the U.S. could “walk away and not have any troops anywhere” in the world) before appealing to threats of terrorism and then making the perverse argument that we must police the world in order to not police the world.

“You have to be able to form coalitions to be able to defeat [terrorists] or contain them. If you don’t, we end up being the world’s policeman again,” said Biden.

But Biden was arguably the most hawkish person on stage, which is saying something.

Warren especially pushed back on Biden’s foreign policy claims. “We’ve turned the corner so many times, we’re going in circles in these regions. This has got to stop,” she said. “It’s not enough to say someday we’re going to get out. No one on the ground, none of our military can describe what the conditions are for getting out. It’s time to get our combat troops home.”

Buttigieg was on the same page. “We can continue to remain engaged without having an endless commitment of ground troops,” he said. He also pushed for greater congressional oversight of military actions:

When we lost troops in Niger, there were members of Congress who admitted they didn’t even know we had troops there. And it was all pursuant to an authorization that was passed to deal with Al Qaeda and 9/11. And often, Congress has been all too happy to leave aside its role. Now, thanks to Democrats in Congress, that’s changing. But the reality is, year after year, Congress didn’t want to touch this, either, because it was so politically difficult.[…]

Fundamental truth is, if our troops can summon the courage to go overseas into harm’s way, often on deployment after deployment, then we’ve got to make sure that Congress has the courage to take tough up-or-down votes on whether they ought to be there. And when I am president, anytime—which I hope will never happen—but anytime I am compelled to use force and seek that authorization, we will have a three-year sunset…

Klobuchar said she would get most troops out of Afghanistan but would have left them in Syria and would leave them in Iraq, albeit “not in the level that Donald Trump is taking us right now.”

You can find a full transcript of last night’s debate here.

All in all, the efforts to distance themselves from pro-Iraq and Afghanistan War votes, denounce the ongoing presence of U.S. troops there, and push for greater congressional oversight of military action was a very good sign.

But as the discussion turned more specifically to Iran, responses from the Democratic candidates weren’t quite as reassuring. While eager to condemn whatever Trump’s strategy with Iran has been, they were less clear on how their own approaches would differ. What we were left with was promises to accomplish Trump (and Obama) administration goals with regard to Iran—such as thwarting the country’s development of nuclear capabilities—while somehow avoiding anything that has already been tried.

Given that it’s unlikely Iran will just do whatever we say without getting anything in return, this probably won’t get us far. And few of the candidates on stage seemed sufficiently committed to keeping us out of war with Iran should even some slight provocation or shift in public opinion occur.

More debate coverage from Reason:

QUICK HITS

  • Meanwhile, in Trump world:

  • “Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?” asks Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.).
  • How Tom Steyer keeps getting on the Democratic debate stage.
  • The woke primary is over and everyone lost, writes Matt Welch.
  • Positive momentum on occupational licensing reform in Iowa:

  • More from Reason staffers on last night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN:

On the Sanders/Warren woman-president drama:

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3afwdfU
via IFTTT

A Missed Opportunity

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now announced the slate of House managers who will prosecute the impeachment case before the Senate. Consistent with the Democratic approach to the impeachment process as a whole, there was no real effort to reach across the aisle and try to appeal to and persuade those on the political right who might be skeptical of Trump and sympathetic to his impeachment. The Democratic leadership failed to reach across the aisle in conducting the impeachment hearings, as Volokh co-blogger Jonathan Adler noted. They have now compounded that mistake.

Justin Amash would have made an excellent House manager. Amash has formally left the Republican Party but remains a vocal advocate of the classical liberal principles that once were understood to be at the heart of modern American conservatism. Amash broke from the GOP over the actions of President Trump and the complete inability of the party to tolerate any criticisms of the president. His appointment as a House manager would have been the obvious political play to make to signal that a presidential impeachment was in the nation’s interest and not just the Democratic Party’s interest.

For many months, Amash has been among the most eloquent critics of President Trump in the House of Representatives. He did a far better job than most Democrats in explaining the significance of the findings of the Mueller Report, and he has done a far better job than most Democrats in explaining the impeachment power and the reasons why the House needed to pursue an impeachment of the sitting president. He had served on the House Oversight Committee, one of the main committees investigating the administration, until he left the GOP.

An impeachment should not be a partisan affair. The Republicans in Congress have failed to take their constitutional duties seriously. The Democrats have made a hash of the process as well and made Trump’s job easier as a result.

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WTI Extends Losses After Massive Product Inventory Build, New Record Production

WTI Extends Losses After Massive Product Inventory Build, New Record Production

Oil prices are extending losses after last night’s surprise crude build reported by API, with WTI trading below $58 following OPEC’s latest forecasts suggesting a weaker outlook for global oil markets this year as surging supplies from competitors from Norway to Guyana threaten the group’s efforts to defend crude prices.

API

  • Crude +1.1mm (-1.1mm exp)

  • Cushing -69k (-1.0mm exp)

  • Gasoline +3.2mm  (+3.4mm exp)

  • Distillates +6.78mm (+1.1mm exp)

DOE

  • Crude -2.55mm (-1.1mm exp)

  • Cushing +342k (-1.0mm exp)

  • Gasoline +6.678mm (+3.4mm exp)

  • Distillates +8.171mm (+1.1mm exp)

The prior week was dominated by a surprise crude build and huge product inventory builds. This week saw crude inventories drop modestly (-2.55mm) but gasoline and distillates inventories soar (and the first Cushing build in 9 weeks)

Source: Bloomberg

US Crude production pushed higher, hitting 13mm b/d for the first time…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI traded sub-$58 ahead of the API print, and dropped notably after the huge buiulds in products

WTI trading $57.50 is the lowest in 5 weeks…

 


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 10:35

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Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2u0n0aY Tyler Durden

Pelosi Announces House Managers For Trump Impeachment Trial

Pelosi Announces House Managers For Trump Impeachment Trial

After waiting four weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will finally transmit the two articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate, and that they have chosen seven impeachment managers to prosecute the case during the upcoming trial.

Of note, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) told reporters on Monday that there aren’t enough GOP Senators to dismiss the articles of impeachment without a trial. “I think our members generally are not interested in a motion to dismiss. … Certainly there aren’t 51 votes for a motion to dismiss,” said Blunt.

The full list of impeachment managers are; Reps. Schiff (CA), Nadler (NY), Demings (FL), Jeffries (NY), Lofgren (CA), Crow (CO) and Garcia (TX).

The announcement comes one day before the House votes on a resolution to send the impeachment articles to the Senate accusing Trump of abusing his office and obstruction of Congress.

Why did you rush to have a vote, then wait for two weeks – Pelosi said “we had a strong case for impeachment of the president and removal of the president,” adding “Time has been our friend in all of this,” noting that Democrats have “uncovered” new evidence during the delay – likely referring to a trove of communications given to the House by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 10:33

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Debt Eruption Coming: Kudlow Says “Tax Cut 2.0” Will Be Unveiled Later This Year

Debt Eruption Coming: Kudlow Says “Tax Cut 2.0” Will Be Unveiled Later This Year

Shortly after Charlie Gasparino tweeted that the Trump admin is “mulling an election-year fiscal stimulus as part of budget proposal” and which may “include a payroll tax reduction, and increase in earned income tax credit”…

… Larry Kudlow spoke on CNBC confirming that the White House indeed plans to unveil a plan for additional tax cuts later in 2020.

“I am still running a process of Tax Cuts 2.0. We’re many months away – it’ll come out something later during the campaign,” Kudlow told CNBC. “Tax Cuts 2.0 to help middle-class economic growth: That’s still our goal.”

“I had a tremendous meeting with my friend Kevin Brady, who will undoubtedly be the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,” he added. “But we will unveil this perhaps sometimes later in the summer.”

What this means is that after the $1.1-$1.2 trillion budget deficit in 2020, the US is staring at an even wider deficit next year, which of course will be funded by debt, and since foreign buyers have been increasingly less excited to buy US debt, will force the Fed to expand its QE4 to buy coupon bonds across the entire curve. It also means that the following chart projecting the trajectory of US debt is now the optimistic case.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 10:20

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CNN Under Fire For Overtly Hostile Treatment Of Sanders In Iowa Debate

CNN Under Fire For Overtly Hostile Treatment Of Sanders In Iowa Debate

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

CNN has long been criticized for what many view as overtly hostile coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders that goes back to the 2016 election where the CNN openly seemed to favor Hillary Clinton in her bid for the nomination.

Yet, even for the most hardened critics of the network, yesterday’s debate in Des Moines was breathtaking in its unrelentingly negative questions of Sanders followed up relative softballs to others like Sen. Amy Klobuchar. However the lowest moment of this or any debate this year occurred when CNN reporter Abby Phillips made Sanders repeat his outright denial of the allegation by Elizabeth Warren that he told her that no woman could be president and then immediately stated that Sanders did make the comment in her next question to Warren. In watching with a room filled with people who are not affiliated with Sanders, Phillips’ statement led to loud gasps and Sanders himself seemed dumbfounded on stage by the bias shown by the CNN reporter. Later, Warren pointedly refused to shake the hand of Sanders.

In the debate, Sanders repeatedly and unequivocally stated that he never made the statement. While some have built up the allegations as a type of political MeToo moment, many remain skeptical for the very reasons that Sanders stated. It seems entirely at odds with Sanders’ numerous statements and actions over the years, including his standing aside for Warren herself when she indicated that she wanted to run in 2016. Moreover, it would have been perfectly insane to go to a meeting where Warren just discussing her next run for president and make such a clearly untrue and self-destructive statement. Even if Sanders believed such sexist tripe, why would he make the comment to a possible opponent who was clearly going to run? It would also been moronic since, when he made the statement, Clinton had already beaten Trump in the popular votes by millions. Why would Sanders say something that was proven to be demonstrably untrue in the last election? The point is not that Sanders is telling the truth and Warren is lying. Rather the point is that there is no reason to just reject the position of Sanders as clearly false as Phillips appeared to do last night.

Even in her set up, Phillips seemed to reject Sanders’ earlier denials of the story:

“Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”

While Sanders made these points and repeatedly denied the allegation, Phillips left many of us confused when, literally just after he again denied the story, she asked him again if he denied the story. Some in the audience laughed at the weird follow up but that was followed by gasps when Phillips then turned to Warren and said “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

Phillips then turned to Klobuchar and asked her how she felt about people making such comments to female candidates.

I am not personal friends with Sanders but I have had dealings with him for many years both in hearings and on the Hill. I have always admired him as a person and I have never had reason to question his veracity or integrity. I have also never heard anyone suggest that he was not entirely supportive of women’s rights.

The decision of Warren not to shake Sanders’ hand does not bode well for the next few weeks. The sudden raising of this allegation when Warren is struggling to break out of pack in Iowa was obviously a concern by neutral observers. While Warren says that she is shocked by the story, she did not previously raise it and still last night would shake the hand of Sanders.

Whatever the outcome of this conflict between Sanders and Warren, CNN may have the most to answer for after the debate. CNN has often voiced the view of the DNC and Democratic establishment, particularly in seemingly repeating talk points against Trump. Indeed, in 2016, a CNN figure, Donna Brazile, was found to have leaked questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and then denied the story by falsely alleging that her emails were hacked. In the last couple weeks, there have been stories of DNC figures and establishment figures moving (again) against Sanders to prevent him from securing the nomination. The only people who have raised bias as often as Trump supporters are Sanders supporters. Just this week, this bias was raised before the debate by Sanders people on the air. CNN responded with clearly biased questions and one moderator all but calling Sanders a liar.

If the other questions were equally heavy handed to the other candidates, this would just be a case of hard hitting questioning. However there was a notably slanted quality to the questions. Thus, Biden was asked about this vote on Iraq in a good question but was not confronted on his false statements that he opposed the war in Iraq. Likewise, CNN hit repeatedly at Sanders not giving hard figures for his health plan but did not press people like Warren on her clearly unsupported projections of revenue to support her plan.

While Warren refused to shake the hand of Sanders, she had every reason to shake the hand of CNN and Phillips. The debate left many of us with the feeling of another setup in the Democratic primary debates.

The problem is that the bias was so open and frankly gross that it could have the opposite effect in pushing people toward (not away) from Sanders.

And we note that Andrew Yang wasn’t even in the debate.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 10:10

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Politics

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Germany Records Slowest Economic Growth In Six Years 

Germany Records Slowest Economic Growth In Six Years 

Germany’s economic growth rebounded slightly in the fourth quarter but slowed last year to its weakest level in nearly six years as trade tensions escalated, exports plunged, and a steep downturn in the automotive industry led Europe’s largest economy onto the brink of a recession, reported Bloomberg.

Official government statics show Wednesday morning that GDP growth rate in the last three months of 2019 was 0.6%, the lowest since 2013’s 0.4% expansion

Despite the economy continuing to decelerate, there was a small notable increase in GDP growth at the tail end of the year – with some optimism that the worst of the slump could be over.

A synchronized global downturn had plunged Germany into an economic decline since late 2017 when growth printed a high of 2.5% on the year. Then by 2018, growth plunged to 1.5%, and a year later, to 0.6% in 2019.

Germany narrowly avoided a recession late last year as GDP contracted in the second quarter and expanded by 0.1% in the third.

The economy is powered by industrials and exports, and with a global manufacturing recession still underway with a decelerating China – the hopes of a massive rebound in the European country are limited in 2020.

At the center of the global industrial slowdown is the auto manufacturing industry. Germany has yet to diversify from building cars and is still heavily exposed to global crosscurrents that persist.

As a countercyclical buffer, the German government deployed increased government spending to counter declines in equipment investment and exports.

“After a dynamic start to the year, and a decline in the second quarter, there were signs of a slight recovery in the second half,” said Albert Braakmann, head of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.

Bloomberg economist Jamie Rush says the 2020 outlook for Germany is comparable to last year: sluggish. 2019 forecasts are 0.70%, which is barely any growth:

“Germany’s economy saw a slight recovery in growth in 4Q, according to the statistics office — that’s consistent with our slightly above-consensus expectation for an expansion of 0.2% to be recorded. Leading indicators have turned up into 2020, and we see the worst as being over for the German economy. Renewed trade tensions are the biggest risk to that view,” Rush said.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 01/15/2020 – 09:56

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Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2tbuJD7 Tyler Durden