As Congressman John Lewis – a prominent civil rights era figure – continues to shun the president-elect (for his illegitimacy), it appears none other than Martin Luther King Jr.'s son is willing to give him a chance. Trump's incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, announced via Twitter that the two will meet and discuss the civil rights leader's legacy.
John Lewis remains indignant to facts and the US constitution…
But Martin Luther King Jr.'s son appears willing to cross the chasm of propaganda and discuss his father's civil rights' legacy…
As ABC reports, senior transition sources initially said Trump would visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., today. But ABC later learned that the the visit was removed from his calendar due to scheduling issues and was not fully planned out. Spicer said today that the president-elect was never planning to go to the museum today.
He was never going to Washington," Spicer asserted on Fox News. "I think what he was trying to do was find an appropriate way to celebrate and observe Martin Luther King's birthday. He is going to meet with a group of individuals today, including Martin Luther King III to talk about that legacy and celebrate the birthday of Dr. King."
A lone shooter fired on a crowd at a nightclub in Playa del Carmen, site of the BPM electronic music festival in Mexico early Monday, leaving at least five people dead and at least a dozen more injured, according to a statement released by festival organizers. Local news reports suggest that the shooting came after a ‘disagreement’ and is connected to ongoing drug cartel wars in the area.
The rampage occurred inside the Blue Parrot nighclub in Playa del Carmen at about 2:30 a.m. local time, according to a statement by the attorney general of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
Playa del Carmen is a popular tourist destination not far from Cancun. Among the dead are four men and a woman. Two of those who died were part of a security team, the statement said. According to preliminary reports, three of the dead are foreigners.
A Forensic Medical Service van is parked outside the Blue Parrot nightclub
Police guard the entrance of the nightclub later Monday morning
According to the Mail, London-based promoter Elrow was hosting a closing ‘This Is The End’ party at the Blue Parrot when the shooting occurred, and it is believed that many attendees at the event were British and American tourists. Tourists at the scene have revealed the chaos that ensued during the shooting, and how many initially believed that they heard fireworks or music – not gunshots.
The government of the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo, where Playa del Carmen is located, said four men were shot to death and one woman died in a fall during the confusion and stampede that ensued. An additional 15 people were wounded, and one of them was in very serious condition.
People wait outside the club where a shooting took place in Playa del Carmen
“It is with great sadness to share that police have confirmed reports of a lone shooter outside the Blue Parrot nightclub in Playa Del Carmen earlier today, which resulted in four fatalities and twelve injured. The violence began on 12th street in front of the club and three members of the BPM security team were among those whose lives were lost while trying to protect patrons inside the venue.” a statement early Monday by the BPM festival said.
The BPM Festival is an annual 10-day electronic music festival started in 2008. This year, it was scheduled to last from Jan. 6 to Jan. 15. The shooting occurred on the last night of festivities.
The Blue Parrot is one of the venues at the 10-day festival in Playa del Carmen, a tourist destination that has largely been spared the violence that has hit other parts of Mexico. Several festivalgoers took to Twitter to post videos and document the attack as it unfolded.
“The #blueparrot security at #bpmfestival stood up for us when there was gunfire they are the real heroes,” wrote user @DonsLens.
Dubfire wrote that they were in the DJ booth at the time and that it was “total chaos” but that they are “ok.” Adding, “Hope everyone else is…”
DJ Mauro MC posted a video from outside the club after the shooting and said “most of us made it out ok, hurts my heart knowing people didn’t make it safe.”
He added that the shooting occurred inside and not from the beach, which is where the nightclub opens up to.
Rodolfo Del Angel, director of police in the state of Quintana Roo, told the Milenio TV station that he shooting was the result of ‘a disagreement between people inside’ the nightclub and said security guards had come under fire when they tried to contain the dispute.
‘For the moment we have indications that one person opened fire,’ Mayor Torres added. She said the shooting appeared to have taken place inside the club, causing people to flee in panic. Other witnesses said it happened outside the club.
Hector Escardo Steck, from Los Angeles, California, told MailOnline that the club was full when the gunman attacked. He said: ‘It was awful, the club was completely full and at around 2am we heard ten successive gunshots and people immediately hit the floor. Just after that the music stopped and everyone started running in a panic.
‘There is a tall fence between the club and the beach and everyone started trying to climb over that. A lot of people got hurt in the attempt top club over, because people were panicking and trying to get away. It was terrifying.
‘I was at the back of the club, so I didn’t see anyone get shot, but 20 minutes later in the streets I saw a lot of dead bodies being guarded by police officers. People were running everywhere, jumping, punching, running. ‘The party had been going since noon, and everyone in the club was either drunk or on drugs, and there was a lot of confusion. ‘In Playa del Carmen you see drugs in quantities that you have never seen before, and everyone is drugged up so it was a very confusing experience that no one was expecting. People were very angry and confused, but mainly angry.’
Local news reports suggest that the incident is connected to ongoing drug cartel wars in the area, and the gunman is believed to still be at large.
Partier George de Menezes told The Independent that he and his friends were just two meters from the gunman when the shooting occurred. He said: ‘No one took it seriously, but I knew straight away that it was a gun and dropped to the floor, then everyone dropped with me. ‘The music stopped and so did the shots, so we got up and one man was down on the floor and looked dead, and another man had been shot but was trying to stay on his feet.’ De Menezes said that people in the club tried to escape by running to the beach, but shots kept being fired
‘Finally got out from there and got up to the Main Street and there was another man dead on the street, so everyone started running for their lives,’ he said. The reveler said that he and friends heard more shots when they finally got back to their hotel.
Los Angeles resident Jake Lubelski wrote on Facebook that he was 20 feet away from the gunman when the shooting took place. ‘I was standing outside of a club on an insanely crowded street when it happened; I was maybe 20 feet away from the shooter,’ he wrote. ‘As soon as I heard gun shots, everyone started bolting and we nearly got trampled by the frantic herds of people.
‘As soon as I turned around the corner and got a look at the scene, I saw a man lying on the floor in his own blood. it could have been me.’
Scottish DJ Jackmaster issued a warning on Twitter saying, ‘Stay in your f*****g hotels’ following the shooting. The DJ, whose real name is Jack Revill, tweeted about the incident just after 3am local time.
‘Someone has come into the club in Playa Del Carmen and opened fire. 4-5 dead and many wounded. Stay in ur f****n hotel if you’re here at BPM,’ he wrote. ‘Apparently now more shots fired at another club in the area.’
A worker at CostaMed hospital in Playa del Carmen told NBC News that a man and a woman were admitted to the hospital at 3.39am local time.
A second shooting was reported at the club The Jungle, where another BPM closing party featuring John Acquaviva, Stacey Pullen and David Berrie was taking place. Videos on Instagram show people running through the streets of Playa Del Carmen following the shooting.
Images shared on social media showed people cowering or running down the street.
Mexican police have confirmed the mass shooting but have not given motive for the gunfire. They have not reported any arrests.
‘We are seeking information from emergency services in Mexico, following reports of a shooting in Playa del Carmen,’ a Foreign Office spokesman said. Neither US nor Canadian officials could immediately confirm if any of their citizens were among the victims in the shooting.
Food-stamp recipients can use their taxpayer-funded benefit to order online from retailers like Amazon under a new Obama administration initiative that aims to facilitate the shopping experience for rural and urban residents. It marks the latest of many costly experiments by the administration to expand the fraud-infested program, which has seen a record-high number of beneficiaries under President Obama. To eliminate the welfare stigma, the administration renamed food stamps Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the rolls swelled to an astounding 46.5 million in 2016. This cost American taxpayers and eye-popping $70 billion, according to government figures.
It’s all part of the president’s longtime goal to eradicate what he and the First Lady call an epidemic of “food insecurity” among the nation’s low-income residents. Part of the problem is that this demographic has limited access to healthy food choices, the administration says, and the government must provide them with nutritional options. This is why taxpayers have been forced to dole out tens of millions of dollars to bring fruits and vegetables to the nation’s inner cities, coined “food deserts” by the administration because they lack healthy fare. The new online ordering program will help address this, according to the federal agency that runs the bloated food-stamp program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (USDA).
“Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to healthy food choices can be limited,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement announcing the new program this week.
“We’re looking forward to being able to bring the benefits of the online market to low-income Americans participating in SNAP.” Besides Amazon, a few other online businesses have been approved by the feds to accept food stamps online, including Hy-Vee, Hart’s Local Grocers, Safeway and ShopRite. The USDA acknowledges however, that “online payment presents technical and security challenges that will need to be examined and fully addressed…”
It’s the last thing that an out-of-control government program, long plagued with fraud corruption, needs. Under the Obama expansion SNAP has suffered a multitude of serious problems. Back in 2012 a federal investigation uncovered evidence that food-stamp recipients were using the benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. A year later Judicial Watch broke a story, based on testimony and other evidence provided by a whistleblower, about the U.S. government knowingly giving illegal immigrants food stamps for decades. That was followed by another disturbing scheme in which SNAP benefits were being sold online using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and ecommerce websites like Craigslist and eBay.
Earlier this year federal authorities in south Florida busted the largest food-stamp fraud operation in U.S. history. Twenty-two defendants in the largely black and Hispanic areas of Miami-Dade County known as Opa-Locka and Hialeah swindled the government out of $13 million by fraudulently trading food stamps for cash. The crooked vendors operated food and produce stands at a local flea market as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to eradicate “food deserts,” common in poor, minority communities where fresh, healthy food is tough to find or often unavailable. The feds say the business owners and their employees let food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to get cash in exchange for a cut of the money. They swiped the recipient’s SNAP card for an inflated amount, doled out cash and kept a percentage. In most instances the recipient didn’t actually get food, according to federal authorities.
Not too long ago my step-dad had to spend a few days in intensive care. Pretty scary stuff.
He had just about every nasty symptom imaginable, from constant vomiting to dizziness to ultra-high fever, but the doctors couldn’t figure out why.
Fortunately his condition improved enough that he was released from the hospital, and now he’s on the mend.
Now, my step-dad is a Medicare patient. But he just found out that he’s been unceremoniously dropped by his Primary Care doctor.
Apparently his physician dropped all of her Medicare patients in one giant culling.
It turns out that physicians across the country have been firing Medicare patients; and according to a late 2015 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21% of physicians are not taking new Medicare patients.
Much of this trend is based on stiff penalties and financial disincentives from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and 2015’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization (MACRA) Act.
MACRA in particular is completely mystifying.
The law created a whopping 2,400 pages of regulations that Medicare physicians are expected to know and follow.
Many of the rules are debilitating.
For instance, MACRA changed how physicians can be reimbursed for their Medicare patients by establishing a bizarre set of standards to determine if a physician is providing “value”.
As an example, if a patient ends up in the emergency room, his or her physician can incur a steep penalty.
This explains why my step-dad was dropped by his doctor.
The healthcare system has been broken to the point that physicians now have a greater incentive to fire their Medicare patients than to treat them.
One Florida-based physician summed up the situation like this:
“I have decided to opt-out of Medicare, acknowledging that I can no longer play a game that is rigged against me; one that I can never win because of constantly changing rules, and one where the stakes include fines and even potential jail time.”
The irony is that all these new laws and regulations were designed to “save” Medicare.
As we’ve discussed many times before, both Medicare and Social Security are dramatically underfunded and rapidly running out of cash.
Medicare is the worst off between the two; MACRA and Obamacare were supposed to create hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings.
It’s clear now that this cost savings comes at the expense of physicians… and the result is a rising trend in Medicare patients being dropped.
But even with the cost savings, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare will become completely INSOLVENT by 2026.
As I write this letter, Congress is already taking steps to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
If they finish the job, all the supposed cost savings will be eliminated, and Medicare’s projected insolvency date will be accelerated to 2021.
So the government must either keep legislation that isn’t working and have Medicare run out of money in 2026… or repeal the legislation and have Medicare run out of money in 2021.
Either way, Medicare is toast.
Oh, and bailing out Medicare isn’t an option either.
They would need TRILLIONS of dollars to fully fund Medicare, which is just about impossible for a government that loses hundreds of billions each year and already has a $20 trillion debt.
I’m not suggesting they’ll let Medicare go bust.
More than likely they’ll just come up with some band-aid fix that has terrible consequences.
For example, they could bail out Medicare by stealing from Social Security.
Bear in mind that Social Security is a total mess.
Back in the 1960s there were nearly 6.5 active workers paying into the system for every Social Security recipient.
Today that worker-to-beneficiary ratio has fallen by nearly half.
There simply aren’t enough workers paying into the system to support the swelling number of retirees.
That’s why Social Security is terminally underfunded.
And stealing from its trust funds to support Medicare would merely accelerate the demise of Social Security.
Again, there are no good options to save these programs.
But you can easily take charge of your own health and retirement, and there are plenty of solutions available.
Sure, if Social Security and Medicare are still around when it comes time for you to collect, great.
But you’ll be a LOT more secure, for example, if you set up a robust, flexible retirement structure like a solo 401(k) or self-directed IRA.
These allow you to contribute MUCH more money to your retirement, cut costs, and invest in a variety of asset classes that could produce superior returns.
Even just a 1% improvement in your net returns could boost your retirement savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars when compounded over 20-40 years.
A well-structured retirement plan could even own something like an e-commerce business, where not only the profits, but even the investment returns on those profits, would accumulate tax-free towards your retirement.
There are better options in healthcare as well.
Clearly no insurance plan can substitute for healthy food, good choices, and plenty of exercise.
But it’s amazing how much cheaper high quality care and medication can be if you expand your thinking overseas.
Countries like Canada, Mexico, Thailand, India, etc. are renowned for medical tourism.
Whatever treatment you require, from cancer to fertility, top-tier facilities are available abroad at a fraction of the price, and you can actually be treated like a respected human being.
And the cost savings in treatment is often vastly higher than any travel costs in getting there.
(You’d think Medicare would encourage going abroad for treatment…)
Social Security and Medicare are both finished. The numbers don’t lie, and even the annual trustee reports tell us that they’re pitifully underfunded.
But the good news is you don’t need the government to retire and be healthy.
There are plenty of solutions available to take back control for yourself. It just requires a little bit of education and the will to act.
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Turkey’s biggest headache, its crashing currency which the central banks appears unable to contain due to an Erdogan order not to hike rates, could soon translate into another major problem. According to two senior economy officials, Turkish inflation could reach double digits in the first quarter for the first time in almost five years as a result of the lira’s falls, putting more pressure on the central bank to hike interest rates.
The lira has dropped as much as 10 percent since the start of 2017, battered by concern over Turkey’s political and economic outlook and doubts about whether the authorities will take decisive steps to arrest the slide. Earlier in the day, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus in an interview with AHaber TV, reiterated the party line that the lira weakening is the result of political manipulation. He also said that “an intelligence organization” might be behind the new year’s eve attack in a nightclub in Istanbul, the latest terrorist attack on Turkish soil, which has added to concerns about local geopolitical instability, further destabilizing the tourism-heavy economy.
According to Reuters, President Tayyip Erdogan, a vocal opponent of higher interest rates, will meet with economy officials including the central bank governor later on Monday to discuss developments including the lira, government sources said. Earlier on Monday, the central bank effectively shut off two of its lira funding taps, bankers said, in an attempt to push lenders to borrow at a higher rate and defend the currency without an outright rate hike. The lira was trading at 3.80 to the dollar, at the day’s lows, off a recent record low of 3.9417 hit last Wednesday.
On Monday, the bank opted not to hold a repo auction for the third straight day. The daily auctions, at 8 percent, are an important source of funding for banks. Price quotations for the Borsa Istanbul repo market were also withdrawn after some funding was provided at 8.5 percent, bankers said. By closing off these two taps the central bank would effectively force banks to borrow using its “late liquidity window” at around 10%.
“The central bank withdrew the 8.5 percent quotation,” the manager of a liquidity desk at one bank said. “There is always the possibility it could offer a quotation again during the day. But if it does not give a quotation, banks will have to fund around 15 billion lira ($4 billion) above 8.5 percent – at 10 percent or at a rate near that.”
The central bank next meets to set interest rates on Jan. 24, with financial analysts eager to see a sharp rise although they may be disappointed.
The reason why the Turkish central banks finds itself in a bind is that Erdogan, a populist who favors cheap credit to spur lending and bolster the economy, wants borrowing costs to be low, although he said last Thursday that the bank had the ability to take “all necessary steps” to defend the lira. He and the government are keen to prevent the economy losing too much momentum ahead of an expected referendum in the coming months on constitutional changes that would create a full presidential system and hand him greater powers.
Meanwhile, in another indication that the Turkish economy is deteriorating, overnight Turkey announced that its December budget deficit rose to 27.1 billion liras, according to central government budget data published by Ministry of Finance in Ankara. This was the biggest on record, and confirm recent observations of a substantial slowdown in the economy; it also implies that Turkey will need to borrow in the foreign market to fund its deficits going forward.
In an attempt to debunk “fake news’ about the sorry state of the economy, one economy officials told Reuters that growth in 2016 is expected to have been just 2.5%, while inflation is about to soar, unleashing a period of stagflation.
“Inflation will be in double digits in the first quarter,” the economy official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because it is not an official government forecast.
That said, he expected pressure on the lira to ease after the referendum, a major source of uncertainty for investors, and forecast inflation would drop to 8% at most by the end of the year, above the central bank’s 6.5% forecast.
Helping in part will be the central bank’s recently rolled out measures to reduce liquidity and effectively drive up borrowing costs without hiking interest rates outright, in moves that some economists have referred to as “veiled” monetary tightening. The bank halved borrowing limits on Friday on the interbank money market to 11 billion lira ($2.9 billion) in a further bid to support the currency.
In a cryptic threat, an adviser to Erdogan said on Monday that the central bank has “strong weapons” other than interest rates and will continue to take measures in the face of the weaker lira. It has yet to be revealed what those are, especially since several months ago Erdogan appealed to his countrymen to convert their dollars and gold into lira in a failed attempt to boost the currency.
Just two days after both the House and Senate passed a budget resolution clearing the way to repeal and replace Obamacare, the President-elect has told the Washington Post that his replacement bill is nearly complete and envisions “insurance for everybody.” Although no specific timeline was given for the announcement of legislation, the CR passed by Congress last week gives the various committees until January 27th to present a bill. Per Reuters:
“It’s very much formulated down to the final strokes. We haven’t put it in quite yet but we’re going to be doing it soon,” Trump told the Post, adding he was waiting for his nominee for health and human services secretary, Tom Price, to be confirmed.
The plan, he said, would include “lower numbers, much lower deductibles,” without elaborating.
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
“It’ll be another plan. But they’ll be beautifully covered. I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people,” he added.
Meanwhile, taking a similar approach to his efforts with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to lower costs, Trump vowed to bring down drug prices by forcing big Pharma companies to negotiate directly with the government for Medicare and Medicaid pricing.
Moving ahead, Trump said that lowering drug prices is central to reducing health-care costs nationally — and that he will make it a priority as he uses his bully pulpit to shape policy. When asked how exactly he would force drug manufacturers to comply, Trump said that part of his approach would be public pressure “just like on the airplane,” a nod to his tweets about Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which Trump said was too costly.
Trump waved away the suggestion that such activity could lead to market volatility on Wall Street. “Stock drops and America goes up,” he said. “I don’t care. I want to do it right or not at all.” He added that drug companies “should produce” more products in the United States.
The question of whether the government should start negotiating how much it pays drugmakers for older Americans on Medicare has long been a partisan dispute, ever since the 2003 law that created Medicare drug benefits prohibited such negotiations.
“They’re politically protected but not anymore,” he said.
Of course, as we mentioned last week, Kellyanne Conway hinted that the Pharma industry would be in the crosshairs of Trump’s new healthcare law, telling Bloomberg that “to repeal and replace Obamacare without having a conversation about drug pricing seems like not a reasonable prospect.”
Without giving a timeline, Trump said that he expects Republicans in Congress to work quickly to pass his new healthcare legislation and threatened that any splintering of the Republican party would be met with an aggressive appeal directly to the American people to put pressure on their Congressmen.
Trump said he expects Republicans in Congress to move quickly and in unison in the coming weeks on other priorities as well, including enacting sweeping tax cuts and beginning the building of a wall along the Mexican border.
Trump warned Republicans that if the party splinters or slows his agenda, he is ready to use the power of the presidency — and Twitter — to usher his legislation to passage.
“The Congress can’t get cold feet because the people will not let that happen,” Trump said during the interview with The Post.
Of course, as we’ve said before, while Democrats and some Republicans will certainly fight it, whatever bill is introduced by the Trump administration will almost certainly be better than the status quo.
Late in 2016, I predicted the week after the election would be hell week as people revolted against the election results, and it was so. First, the mainstream media stared into living rooms in shock and awe as they reported with tear-brimmed eyes that the nation had not voted for the media’s Anointed One. Then city blocks closed down to allow for proper rioting. By morning, the nation awoke to find that rioters had smashed windows and were lighting fires. Upset liberals announced petitions for their liberal states to secede from the union. Immigration Canada experienced a melt-down of its website due to requests for information on how to become a Canadian citizen. Movie stars dressed in sackcloth with faces smeared in ashes, clawed their skin and declared the end of the nation had come, but they didn’t move out of the country as they had bravely promised us they would. (Sighs.) Liberal school bullies beat up classmates who supported Trump. Colleges closed in mourning and served student activists tea and biscuits and puppies to calm their nerves. The snowflakes melted in the hot glow of Donald Trump’s orange hair, and retired hippies raised their hands to the sun and bowed to mother earth as they declared the end of the world was here.
The queerest thing about all of this to me was that, a week before the election, these people had reviled Donald Trump as being the most unAmerican, unpatriotic human being in the history of United States for refusing to promise he would unequivocally accept the election results no matter how they came about. Now these righteous people all turned and unequivocally rejected the election results:
They rallied and rioted by the thousands in cities all cross America with signs that said “Not MY president.”
They challenged the election returns for recounts in every area where they thought they had a chance to overturn the election.
They complained that the electoral college (which they had no problem with when they were so cocky and certain it would tip Hillary a landslide victory) was unjust to the core, undemocratic and should be abolished.
They did everything they could to persuade the electoral college members to stage an electoral coup by not to voting in the manner the college always has.
And they cried a lot.
Thus closed a year that I had deemed one January ago the “Year of the Epocalypse.” While it had not turned out to be the full-on economic catastrophe I predicted for the US, it certainly turned out to be the most bizarre and chaotic political year I’ve ever witnessed. Probably the worst you’ve ever seen, too. It seems almost everyone agrees the surprising political rollover that started showing up in massive changes around the world last year was largely due to deep economic discord finally rising to the surface and finding its voice in people like Trump and Farage who are bellicose enough not to care about PC rules.
(This, in my view, is the Epocalypse Rising, not coming about in the order I anticipated, but I always said the order of collapse was unpredictable, but the collapse was certain.)
So, yeah, hell week hit and didn’t go away, just as I said it would. It metastasized as the initial despair of forlorn liberals and gloomy globalists moved backwards through the first four stages of grief, which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression. First, they melted in tears and cried over their puppies and poured their glasses of celebratory election champagne onto the dust of the earth (depression). Then they bargained with the vote counters and the electoral college to try to overturn the results. Now they are organizing to gather in angry rallies through which they hope to deny the election results by preventing the inauguration from happening. In the very least, they want to make sure Trump’s inauguration is the darkest day in national history, so help them God, in whom they don’t believe.
It all adds up to the most colorful strutting display of hypocrisy I’ve ever witnessed from people who have claimed it is totally unAmerican to not accept election results, and now …
A new hell week begins as election rejection kicks into overdrive
They’re going to dump the Trump with an inauguration events set to beat the boos and jeers given to George Bush when he won the electoral vote even though he lost the popular vote. Here is a list of events already planned for Hell Week II: The Revenge:
DisruptJ20 calls for “NO PEACEFUL TRANSITION.” Their website states, “On Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States. We call on all people of good conscience to join in disrupting the ceremonies. If Trump is to be inaugurated at all, let it happen behind closed doors, showing the true face of the security state Trump will preside over. It must be made clear to the whole world that the vast majority of people in the United States do not support his presidency or consent to his rule. Trump stands for tyranny, greed, and misogyny. He is the champion of neo-nazis and white Nationalists, of the police who kill the Black, Brown and poor on a daily basis, of racist border agents and sadistic prison guards, of the FBI and NSA who tap your phone and read your email….
“He is the harbinger of even more climate catastrophe, deportation, discrimination, and endless war. He continues to deny the existence of climate change, in spite of all the evidence, putting the future of the whole human race at stake. The KKK, Vladimir Putin, Golden Dawn, and the Islamic State all cheered his victory. If we let his inauguration go unchallenged, we are opening the door to the future they envision. Trump’s success confirms the bankruptcy of representative democracy. Rather than using the democratic process as an alibi for inaction, we must show that no election could legitimize his agenda….If you can’t make it to Washington, DC on January 20, take to the streets wherever you are. We call on our comrades to organize demonstrations and other actions for the night of January 20.”
Legba Carrefour, an anarchist in charge of the group’s press relations, says, “We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that’s the short of it. We’re pretty literal about that,we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don’t think has been seen in D.C. before. We’re trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.”
Carrefour states there are no overt plans to do things like jumping barricades or throwing projectiles, but autonomous actions of that kind are encouraged. “I can’t comment on specific stuff we’re doing like that, mostly because that would be illegal. But, yeah, it will get pretty crazy, I expect. ‘Have fun!’ I say.”
Here is some leaked audio of a DisruptJ20 organizing meeting that says they actively plan to blockade roads and security checkpoints:
So far fifty-seven anarchist groups around the nation have signed on to support DisruptJ20’s call to action in various parts of the US.
Refuse Fascism says, “In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America. Stop the Trump-Pence regime before it begins.Take to the streets every night and every day…. Bring DC to a halt!” They plan events for every day of inauguration week and are surrounding the Trump Hotel in the old Post Office Building. “Among huge numbers of people there is a deep anxiety, alienation, disgust and anger in relation to the recent presidential election and its outcome…. The current angst and outrage could be transformed, in a very short, telescoped period of time, into resistance which reaches such massive proportions, and is characterized by such a depth of determination, that it actually creates a “crisis of rule,” and prevents the Trump/Pence fascist regime from consolidating its hold on the governance of society….As many have noted, Hitler himself came to power through the process of elections and established legal procedures…. This is not an exaggerated comparison….The aim must be nothing less than to create such a profound political crisis before the intended inauguration (January 20, 2017) that the fascist regime is actually not able to take the reins of government.” Events are planned for various cities. Their full-page ad in the New York Times warned that Trump “has assembled a cabinet of Christian fundamentalist fanatics, war mongers, racists, science deniers. NO! His regime must not be allowed to consolidate. We REFUSE to accept a Fascist America!”
Anti-Capitalist & Anti-Fascist Bloc writes, “We are calling for a mobile bloc opposing capitalism and fascism at the inauguration…. This January 20th, thousands of people will mobilize to disrupt Trump’s inauguration, rejecting the tyranny, greed, and bigotry he represents. Many different permitted marches, blockades, and other autonomous direct actions are planned. Those who travel to DC hoping to celebrate Trump’s ascendance to power will find the inaugural ceremonies reduced to a total clusterf…. Towards becoming an ungovernable force this winter.”
Occupy Wall Street now partners to create Occupy Inauguration: “The Equality Coalition and Occupy Inauguration are working together to bring you a mass event taking place in Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day, January 20th-21st, 2017. Numerous alternative political parties, communists parties, socialists parties, green movements, Native American groups, and progressive/liberal organizations have endorsed their effort.
The ANSWER Coalition, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, says they plan to stage a large demonstration near the White House if they can get permission for a spot that often makes it on national TV. New York organizer Ben Becker says, “We think the most important thing is having the largest possible turnout. We have a peaceful plan, it’s loud and it will be visible…. We think it’s the beginning of a potentially massive new movement in the United States and it’s important that on that first day we send a message about our numbers, a message about our politics, a message about what it is in the Trump agenda that we reject. We’re not encouraging any tactics that are going to detract from that.”
DC Anti-Fascist Coalition claims, “Members of the Alt Reich are having a fancy ball [the DeploraBall], taking a smarmy victory lap through our DC streets to celebrate their sexual assaulter in chief, Donald Trump…. We must stand for a world based on love and justice, not fear…. We must stand against racism, Islamophobia, sexism, and all forms of oppression. We call on people of conscience to protest and help send a message to the Trump Administration and his followers: We are better than this, and we will never accept this hate in our nation’s capital…. We ask that protestors, do not under any circumstances initiate any violence, but protect one another and practice self-defense.”
Qockblockade Brigade is a group of self-described queers that plans to “hold a queer anti-Inauguration party at a security checkpoint! Even though we’re taking over a security checkpoint, we’re there to have a good time – have fun, dance, celebrate our queer identities – no matter how anyone else reacts. This is NOT a space to instigate, and we will not be trying to provoke arrest…. Make sure you can make it out to celebrate the queendom.”
Climate Convergence plans “a number of marches, rallies and actions all weekend.”
The “Women’s March on Washington” is planned for the day after the inauguration and is more of an old-fashion mainstream event, starring Gloria Steinem and Harry Belafonte. Planned Parenthood is one sponsor and says, ” “We will send a strong message to the incoming administration that millions of people across this country are prepared to fight attacks on reproductive health care, abortion services, and access to Planned Parenthood.” Organizers say the event is not planned to target Trump specifically. Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said the march will be a “stand on social justice and human rights issues ranging from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, immigration, and healthcare.” Nearly 200,000 people have pledged to attend so far, and sister events are scheduled for various cities around the nation on the same day. Their website says, “We are working with local and federal law enforcement and do not intend to engage in any civil disobedience. We expect all marchers to abide by all laws and any instruction of law enforcement…. Finally, we are planning a peaceful demonstration and are training marshals in de-escalation tactics and ask that all marchers remain peaceful.”
Not all events are planned to be violent or crazy, but many are. And, so the anarchy that I said last year would typify the Epocalypse begins.
The year ahead
I suspect the protests are just gearing up this week, and 2017 will look a lot like the sixties where everything the president does results in another march in another city, and where we’ll see increasing violence on the part of self-righteous protestors who feel their own righteousness merits violent action. You can be sure many of these groups have billionaire George Soro’s money backing them.
In my last article, I wrote,
You can be sure that Soros, crying over the disruption of his new world disorder and having lost a billion because of Trump, is going to fight back with more malice than ever, and here he hints at his planned attack: “The US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer.” … He’s making this prediction … because he knows he’s going to be investing his money in making sure those struggles happen. He’s going to stir the pot for all he’s worth and make sure the rage explodes into flames, and he’s got enough money to do a lot of stirring, and rage already wants to happen anyway. (“George Soros: The Man Behind the Mayhem“)
The more Trump does to restore law and order, the more he will be seen as running the police state these groups warn is coming. Their actions will assure the fulfillment of their own prophecies.
All of this means the economy will continue on its inexorable slide to the bottom because a nation in unstoppable chaos is not likely to accomplish anything successful economically.
While 2016 didn’t turn out to be the Year of the Epocalypse in which all these things became visible, it certainly was entirely about the election that has set these things all in play in the US now. So, it was the beginning, but not the manifestation. Trump won because of all the economic corruption that had been left in place through the Obama administration, causing long-silent masses of people to want a change from the establishment.
I did say repeatedly that the economic aspects I predicted for 2016 could likely be delayed because all stops would be pulled out by the Obama administration to keep the economy’s head above water until the election was over or, more likely, until Obama is out of office so that Trump can be the one to take the fall when the Fed’s fake recovery all collapses. We are now almost there, and all this political chaos will give the Federal Reserve even more cover for the failure of its recovery. They can not only blame it on Trump’s policies but on all the political turmoil he has excited.
Ironically, the biggest capitalists, like Despicable Soros will use the little anti-capitalists as their minions to stir up trouble all over the nation in order to make it nearly impossible for Trump to keep the economy running. They will say the chaos is all Trump’s fault because his rhetoric constantly inflames people. While there is some truth to that, they are doing everything they can to enflame people, too, and to use them like mercenaries to make sure the recovery’s failure happens on Trump’s watch. (I’m not saying they planned for Trump to win, but that they will make the most of the opportunity to turn it in their favor.)
So, welcome to the Epocalypse, which I always said would be particularly notable for the spreading of anarchy. It’s all part of the deepening Great Recession because, had the enormous economic flaws that caused the Great Recession been thoroughly and properly corrected over the past eight years, Trump would never have been seen as necessary. There wouldn’t have been a hidden groundswell of voter rage that revolted against all establishment candidates to put Trump into office. But nothing was corrected.
So, now, we have revolution and counter-revolution. We have a nation flying apart because of all the deep-seated corruption, the ever-widening disparity in who shares the rewards of capitalism (which Trump’s tax plan will make worse as all supply-side plans have), the bailing out of banksters, the refusal to bring the corrupt to justice … and we have Trump filling all of his offices with Goldman Sachs executives and other establishment corporate CEOs.
No wonder the anarchists are crawling out of the woodwork to try to defeat the “anti-establishment” president. It’s an absolutely bizarre and chaotic mess in which the anarchists you would normally think are most anti-establishment are being funded by the establishment billionaire George Soros and are supporting the globalist movement that Soros is a part of. That’s how bizarre the world has become.
An angry Berlin has responded with a staunch defense of its policies after President-elect Donald Trump criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel in two separate Sunday interviews, one with Germany’s Bild and one with the Sunday Times, for her stance during the refugee crisis while threatening a 35% tariff on BMW cars imported into the US.
Germany’s deputy chancellor and minister for the economy, Sigmar Gabriel, said on Monday morning that a tax on German imports would lead to a “bad awakening” among US carmakers since they were reliant on transatlantic supply chains. “I believe BMW’s biggest factory is already in the US, in Spartanburg [South Carolina],” Gabriel, leader of the centre-left Social Democratic party, told the Bild newspaper in a video interview.
“The US car industry would have a bad awakening if all the supply parts that aren’t being built in the US were to suddenly come with a 35% tariff. I believe it would make the US car industry weaker, worse and above all more expensive.” Playing Trump’s threat off Congress, Gabriel added that he “would wait and see what the Congress has to say about that, which is mostly full of people who want the opposite of Trump” as quoted by The Guardian.
In an interview with Bild and the Times, the US president-elect had indicated that he would aim to realign the “out of balance” car trade between Germany and the US. “If you go down Fifth Avenue everyone has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house, isn’t that the case?” he said. “How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not very many, maybe none at all … it’s a one-way street.”
Asked what Trump could do to make sure German customers bought more American cars, Gabriel said: “Build better cars.”
Asked what Trump could do to make sure German customers bought more American cars, Sigmar Gabriel said: ‘Build better cars.
Trump’s interview had an adverse impact shares in carmakers BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen, which fell on Monday morning following the President-elect’s comments. BMW shares were down 0.85%, shares in Daimler were 1.54% lower and Volkswagen shares were trading 1.07% down in early trading in Frankfurt. All three carmakers have invested heavily in factories in Mexico, where production costs are lower than the US, with an eye to exporting smaller vehicles to the American market.
Meanwhile, a BMW spokeswoman said a BMW Group plant in the central Mexican city of San Luis Potosi would build the BMW 3 Series starting from 2019, with the output intended for the world market. The plant in Mexico would be an addition to existing 3 Series production facilities in Germany and China.
* * *
Responding to Trump’s comments that Merkel had made an “utterly catastrophic mistake by letting all these illegals into the country”, Gabriel said the increase in the number of people fleeing the Middle East to seek asylum in Europe had partially been a result of US-led wars destabilising the region.
Slamming US foreign policy – and thus the Obama regime, not to mention Angela Merkel’s close friend Hillary Clinton – as a culprit for the European refugee crisis, Gabriel said that “there is a link between America’s flawed interventionist policy, especially the Iraq war, and the refugee crisis, that’s why my advice would be that we shouldn’t tell each other what we have done right or wrong, but that we look into establishing peace in that region and do everything to make sure people can find a home there again,” Gabriel said.
“In that area Germany and Europe are already making enormous achievements – and that’s why I also thought it wasn’t right to talk about defence spending, where Mr Trump says we are spending too little to finance Nato. We are making gigantic financial contributions to refugee shelters in the region, and these are also the results of US interventionist policy.”
Gabriel, who will likely run as the centre-left candidate against Merkel in Germany’s federal elections in September, said Trump’s election should encourage Europeans to stand up for themselves.
“On the one hand, Trump is an elected president. When he is in office, we will have to work with him and his government – respect for a democratic election alone demands that,” Gabriel said. “On the other hand, you need to have enough self-confidence. This isn’t about making ourselves submissive. What he says about trade issues, how he might treat German carmakers, the question about Nato, his view on the European Union – all these require a self-confident position, not just on behalf of us Germans but all Europeans. We are not inferior to him, we have something to bring to the table too.
“Especially in this phase in which Europe is rather weak, we will have to pull ourselves together and act with self-confidence and stand up for our own interests.”
While Merkel has yet to provide a direct response to Trump’s statements and refused to comment on the interview during a news conference with New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English, saying she would wait until after Trump’s inauguration and then planned to work with him at all levels of government, her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the chancellor had read the Trump interview “with interest”, but declined to comment in more detail until the president-elect had been sworn in.
“We are now waiting for President Trump to start his term and will then work closely with the new government,” he said, adding that “It’s a clear statement of the positions of the new American president, but the positions of the chancellor on many of these issues are equally clear.”
Martin Schäfer, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, rejected Trump’s labelling of the EU as a “vehicle for Germany”. He said: “For the German government, Europe has never been a means to an end, but a community of fate which, in times of collapsing old orders, is more important than ever.”
The foreign ministry also rejected Trump’s criticism that creating “security zones” in Syria would have been considerably cheaper than accepting refugees fleeing the war-torn country. “What exactly such a security zone is meant to be is beyond my comprehension and would have to be explained,” said Schäfer, adding that there had not been enough willingness among the international community to lend military support to create a no-fly zone in Syria.
* * *
Germany was not the only nation unhappy with Trump’s statement: Pierre Moscovici, European economic affairs commissioner, also found fault with Trump’s assertion that other European countries would follow in Britain’s footsteps and leave the EU.
“I’m not worried, I think this idea that Brexit is going to be contagious is a fantasy, a bad fantasy,” Moscovici told reporters in Paris. “Brexit is not a great thing,” he said, warning Trump that comments advocating a break-up of the EU would not get the trans-Atlantic relationship off to the best start.
* * *
Yet while Germany and Brussels were unhappy with Trump’s criticism, Moscow was delighted, and sure enough Trump’s remarks on Nato were met more favourably in Moscow, where Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, agreed with the US president-elect that the alliance was “obsolete”.
“Since Nato is tailored toward confrontation, all its structures are dedicated to the ideals of confrontation, you can’t really call it a modern organisation meeting the ideas of stability, steady growth and security,” he said.
But Trump’s suggestion that the US could lift its sanctions on Russia in exchange for an agreement to reduce the countries’ nuclear arsenals elicited a cooler response. Peskov said Russia had not been conducting talks with the US about nuclear arsenal reduction and said cancelling sanctions was not a political goal in Russia. “Russia wasn’t the initiator in introducing these restrictions, and Russia, as the president of Russia has underlined, doesn’t intend to raise the issue of these sanctions in its foreign contacts,” he said.
Last month, echoing similar comments by Trump, Putin said Russia needed to strengthen its strategic nuclear forces. Leonid Slutsky, a Russian MP, said he “wouldn’t connect these two issues and make the cancellation of sanctions a negotiating point in such a delicate area as nuclear security”. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian senate, said the cancellation of sanctions was “definitely not an end in and of itself for Russia”.
“It’s not even a strategic goal for which something needs to be sacrificed, especially in the security sphere,” he told state news agency RIA Novosti. “We think [sanctions] are a bad legacy of the departing White House team that need to be sent after it into history.”
* * *
And yet, perhaps Trump’s bluster was merely the latest ruse to get everyone on the negotiating table. It may be working already: as Reuters reports, Chancellor Merkel is working to set a date this spring for a meeting with Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as U.S. president on Friday, German government sources said on Monday. Merkel had offered to meet Trump in the United States in her capacity as chairman of the Group of 20 leading economies, the sources said.
The chancellor has spoken with Trump only once, shortly after his election to succeed U.S. President Barack Obama.
In a joint interview published by the Times of London and Germany’s Bild newspaper on Monday, Trump said he had always had “great respect” for Merkel, but described her 2015 decision to allow in a wave of a million migrants as a “catastrophic mistake” that opened the door to terrorist attacks.
When just about every other magazine in the free world fails to uphold the values of free speech and the right to caricature and offend, who could expect a group of cartoonists and writers who have already paid such a high price to keep holding the line of such freedoms single-handed?
Most of the people who said they cared about the right to say what they wanted when they wanted, were willing to walk the walk — to walk through Paris with a pencil in the air. Or they were willing to talk the talk, proclaiming "Je Suis Charlie." But almost no one really meant it.
If President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel had really believed in standing up for freedom of expression, then instead of walking arm-in-arm through Paris together with such an inappropriate figure as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, they would have held up covers of Charlie Hebdo and said: "This is what a free society looks like and this is what we back: everyone, political leaders, gods, prophets, the lot can be satirised, and if you do not like it then you should hop off to whatever unenlightened hell-hole you dream of."
The entire world press has internalised what happened at Charlie Hebdo and instead of standing united, has decided never to risk something like that ever happening to them again.
For the last two years, we have learned for certain that any such tolerance is a one-way street. This new submission to Islamist terrorism is possibly why, in 2016, when an athlete with no involvement in politics, religion or satire was caught doing something that might have been seen as less than fully respectful of Islam, there was no one around to defend him.
The 7th of this month marked two years to the day since two gunmen walked into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered twelve people. This period also therefore marks the second anniversary of the period of about an hour during which much of the free world proclaimed itself to be "Charlie" and attempted, by walking through the street, standing for moments of silence or re-tweeting the hashtag "Je Suis Charlie" to show the whole world that freedom cannot be suppressed and that the pen is mightier than the Kalashnikov.
So two years on is a good time to take stock of the situation. How did that go? Did all those "Je Suis" statements amount to anything more than a blip on the Twitter-sphere? Anyone trying to answer such a question might start by looking at the condition of the journal everyone was so concerned about. How has it fared in the two years since most of its senior editorial staff were gunned down by the blasphemy police?
A Paris rally on January 11, 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo attack, featuring "Je Suis Charlie" signs. (Image source: Olivier Ortelpa/Wikimedia Commons)
Not well, if a test of the magazine's wellbeing is whether it would be willing to repeat the "crime" for which it was attacked. Six months after the slaughter, in July 2015, the new editor of the publication, Laurent Sourisseau, announced that Charlie Hebdo would no longer publish depictions of the Prophet of Islam. Charlie Hebdo had, he said, "done its job" and "defended the right to caricature." It had published more Muhammad cartoons in the issue immediately after the mass murder at their offices and since. But, he said, they did not need to keep on doing so. Few people could have berated him and his colleagues for such a decision. When just about every other magazine in the free world fails to uphold the values of free speech and the right to caricature and offend, who could expect a group of cartoonists and writers who have already paid such a high price to keep holding the line of such freedoms single-handed?
Now, at the second anniversary of the atrocity, one of the magazine's most prominent figures, Zineb El Rhazoui, has announced that she is leaving the magazine. El Rhazoui, who has been described as "the most protected woman in France" because of the security detail she receives from the French state, has announced that Charlie Hebdo has gone "soft" on Islamic radicalism. She told Agence France-Presse that "Charlie Hebdo died on [7 January 2015]." The magazine had previously had a "capacity to carry the torch of irreverence and absolute liberty" she said. "Freedom at any cost is what I loved about Charlie Hebdo, where I worked through great adversity.'
Of course, El Rhazoui is an unusual person. And a scarce one in twenty-first century Europe. Which is why she needs the security detail. Most of the people who said they cared about the right to say what they wanted when they wanted, about everything and anything — including one particularly stern and unamused religion — were willing to walk the walk: that is, they were willing to walk through Paris with a pencil in the air. Or they were willing to talk the talk, proclaiming "Je Suis Charlie." But almost no one really meant it. If they had, then — as Mark Steyn pointed out — those crowds in Paris would not have been parading through the streets holding pencils, but holding cartoons of Mohammed. "You're going to have to get us all" would have been the message.
And ditto the leaders. If President François Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel had really believed in standing up for freedom of expression, then instead of walking arm-in-arm through Paris together with such an inappropriate figure as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, they would have held up covers of Charlie Hebdo and said: "This is what a free society looks like and this is what we back: everyone, political leaders, gods, prophets, the lot can be satirised, and if you do not like it then you should hop off to whatever unenlightened hell-hole you dream of. But Europe is not the continent for you."
Instead, in the two years since those gestures, European society went quiet. Of course, there have been regular opportunities to display the modern idea of virtue, often using Charlie Hebdo as the punching bag. Since being alerted to the existence of the magazine by the gunmen, the censorious types who now fill our societies (and who probably do not even buy or read magazines) nevertheless regularly send out social media messages objecting to things to which they have been alerted within the magazine.
So it is that a rude and satirical magazine has found itself repeatedly judged by the humourless morality police of our day and often deemed to be insufficiently reverential about various world events. A Charlie Hebdo cartoon about the Cologne New Year's Eve sexual assaults was deemed in poor taste. Elsewhere, the publication's response to an earthquake in Italy failed to hit the single acceptable note in the eyes of some non-readers. Likewise the crash of a Russian jet and other stories that were considered to lack appropriate piety.
Meantime, we are in a situation, as the British author Kenan Malik said of the period after the Satanic Verses affair, of having "internalised" the atrocity. The entire world press — perhaps especially, in free countries — has internalised what happened at Charlie Hebdo, and instead of standing united has decided, quietly and in the privacy of their own offices, never to risk something like that ever happening to them again. This new submission to Islamist terrorist demands is possibly why, in 2016, when an athlete with no involvement in politics, religion or satire was caught doing something that might have been seen as less than fully respectful of Islam, there was no one around to defend him. Even the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, asked in the House of Commons to stand up for the right of an athlete not to have his career destroyed because of one fleeting, drunken joke, equivocated:
"This is a balance that we need to find. We value freedom of expression and freedom of speech in this country — that is absolutely essential in underpinning our democracy.
"But we also value tolerance to others. We also value tolerance in relation to religions. This is one of the issues that we have looked at in the counter-extremism strategy that the Government has produced.
"I think we need to ensure that yes it is right that people can have that freedom of expression, but in doing so that right has a responsibility too — and that is a responsibility to recognise the importance of tolerance to others."
For the last two years, we have learned for certain that any such tolerance is a one-way street. Our societies had been walking up it. But from the other direction came the Kalashnikov brigade who only had to fire once; in the face of it, the whole civilised world chose to U-turn and run back the other way. Allah's blasphemy police would be foolish not to push the advantage that such capitulation gives their cause over the months and years ahead.
As the world's elite gather in Davos to decide for the minions what the world should look like, The IMF has taken a far dimmer view of global (and by that we mean Trumpian) economic growth than markets appear to be. In addition to slashing Brazilian, Mexican, and Saudi Arabian economic growth forecasts, Lagarde's lackeys are taking a cautious stance toward the policies of U.S. President-electDonald Trump, who takes office this week, assuming only a modest boost to the U.S. economy from his promise of fiscal stimulus.
As Bloomberg reports,The IMF maintained its forecast for global growth in 2017 of 3.4 percent, the Washington-based organization said Monday in a quarterly update to its World Economic Outlook. Expansion for 2018 is forecast at 3.6 percent, also unchanged from the fund’s previous forecast in October.
After a lackluster outturn in 2016, economic activity is projected to pick up pace in 2017 and 2018, especially in emerging market and developing economies. However, there is a wide dispersion of possible outcomes around the projections, given uncertainty surrounding the policy stance of the incoming U.S. administration and its global ramifications. The assumptions underpinning the forecast should be more specific by the time of the April 2017 World Economic Outlook, as more clarity emerges on U.S. policies and their implications for the global economy.
With these caveats, aggregate growth estimates and projections for 2016–18 remain unchanged relative to the October 2016 World Economic Outlook. The outlook for advanced economies has improved for 2017–18, reflecting somewhat stronger activity in the second half of 2016 as well as a projected fiscal stimulus in the United States. Growth prospects have marginally worsened for emerging market and developing economies, where financial conditions have generally tightened. Near-term growth prospects were revised up for China, due to expected policy stimulus, but were revised down for a number of other large economies—most notably India, Brazil, and Mexico.
While the balance of risks is viewed as being to the downside, there are also upside risks to near-term growth. Specifically, global activity could accelerate more strongly if policy stimulus turns out to be larger than currently projected in the United States or China. Notable negative risks to activity include a possible shift toward inward-looking policy platforms and protectionism, a sharper than expected tightening in global financial conditions that could interact with balance sheet weaknesses in parts of the euro area and in some emerging market economies, increased geopolitical tensions, and a more severe slowdown in China.
In a welcome move to Brexiters the IMF hiked its outlook on UK growth, saying "domestic demand held up better than expected in the aftermath of the Brexit vote", but warned that while it was upgrading its outlook on China GDP, it warned that China's "sugar-rush" growth presents risks to future stability.
The growth forecast for 2017 was revised up for China (to 6.5 percent, 0.3 percentage point above the October forecast) on expectations of continued policy support. However, continued reliance on policy stimulus measures, with rapid expansion of credit and slow progress in addressing corporate debt, especially in hardening the budget constraints of state-owned enterprises, raises the risk of a sharper slowdown or a disruptive adjustment. These risks can be exacerbated by capital outflow pressures, especially in a more unsettled external environment.
The full breakdown:
The IMF further notes that the impact of a Trump administration is one of the biggest unknowns facing the global economy.
While Trump has promised tocut taxesand boost infrastructure spending, he’s also threatened to impose tariffs on trade partners such as China and Mexico. Such punitive measures may sap growth if they provoke retaliation. Trump’s policy priorities will become clearer after his inauguration on Jan. 20 in Washington.
The high degree of uncertainty about what’s in store for U.S. economic policy presents a “wider than usual range of upside and down risk factors,” IMF Chief EconomistMaurice Obstfeldsaid in remarks prepared for delivery Monday.
“In light of the U.S. economy’s momentum coming into 2017 and the likely shift in policy mix, we have moderately raised our two-year projections for U.S. growth,” he said. “However, the specifics of future fiscal legislation remain unclear, as do the degree of net increase in government spending and the resulting impacts on aggregate demand, potential output, the Federal deficit, and the dollar.”
The IMF bumped up its forecast for U.S. growth by only 0.1 percentage point this year and 0.4 points for 2018. The U.S. economy will expand by 2.3 percent in 2017 before firming to a 2.5 percent rate in 2018, according to the update.
TheFederal Reserveis now expected to raise rates at a less gradual pace than IMF staff projected in October, the fund said, without specifying the number of rate hikes it anticipates this year.
It remains less optimistic on EM nations such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico, however:
*IMF CUTS BRAZIL 2017 GROWTH OUTLOOK TO 0.2% FROM 0.5%
TheInternational Monetary Fundmore than halved its 2017 growth outlook for Brazil, citing weaker-than-expected activity in Latin America’s largest economy.
Brazil will grow 0.2 percent this year, compared with a prior forecast of 0.5 percent, the IMF said in an update of its World Economic Outlook. The fund is now more pessimistic than all but three of the 39 analysts Bloomberg surveyed, whose median forecast is 0.8 percent.
Like most economists, the IMF is tempering its optimism about the government of President Michel Temer. The fund had forecaststagnationfor Brazil early last year, butboostedthat outlook to a half-point expansion soon after Temer assumed Brazil’s presidency in May.
*IMF CUTS SAUDI ARABIA 2017 GDP GROWTH FORECAST TO 0.4% FROM 2%
The International Monetary Fund cut its growth outlook for Saudi Arabia on lower oil production, underscoring the challenges facing the kingdom as it seeks to overhaul its economy.
Gross domestic product will expand 0.4 percent in 2017, the lender said in its World Economic Outlook report update on Monday, citing the impact of the recent deal by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce output. It compares with the fund’s October prediction of 2 percent, and a median estimate of 0.9 percent in a Bloombergsurvey.
The sharply lower forecast comes as Saudi Arabia seeks to build investor confidence in its long-term strategy to reduce dependence on crude and boost non-oil sectors of its economy, while trying to plug one of the Middle East’s biggest budget deficits. The kingdom is planning toborrowas much as $15 billion this year on international debt markets to help fund its spending plans, following last year’s $17.5 billion sovereign bond sale.
*IMF CUTS MEXICO 2017 GROWTH OUTLOOK TO 1.7% FROM 2.3%
Citing “U.S.-related uncertainty,” the IMF slashed its projection for Mexico’s growth to 1.7 percent this year, down 0.6 percentage point from the October forecast.
Trump has promised to end or renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico that’s been key to Mexico becoming a manufacturing powerhouse over the past two decades.
Ironically, given the establishment's devastating forecast pre-Brexit, The IMF has increased its growth outlook for UK… (via The FT)
The International Monetary Fund has upgraded its UK growth forecast for the second time after the Brexit vote as it predicted global economic growth will pick up from its slowest pace since the aftermath of the financial crisis.
In its latest set of economic forecasts, the Washington-based IMF said it now expects the British economy to expand by 1.5 per cent this year from an earlier projection of 1.1 per cent – the biggest single upgrade of any major economy in its January update for 2017.
Growth in 2016 was also nudged up to 2 per cent from an October projection of 1.8 per cent but expansion in 2018 would come in lower at 1.4 per cent from an earlier forecast of 1.8 per cent, said the fund.
It is the latest immediate growth upgrade for the UK since the IMF warned a decision to leave the EU would wreak “severe” damage to Britain’s growth prospects before the June referendum.
The pre-referendum warnings came in for severe criticism from pro-Brexit campaigners, with the fund defending itself by saying it would have been “malpractice” not to have considered worst-case scenarios from a “leave” vote.
The UK economy has broadly defied warnings to continue growing at a healthy clip since the June vote, accelerating to a 0.6 per cent pace in the third quarter. The latest raft of business surveys also point to robust growth at the end of the year, helped along by buoyant consumer spending.
“Domestic demand [has] held up better than expected in the aftermath of the Brexit vote”, said the IMF.