Tag: news

Google Responds To Trump, Says “Doesn’t Bias Search Results”

Following an accusation by president Trump that Google was “rigging” search results against him, providing as evidence a “Trump News” search which showed predominantly “left” media publications popping up in the search results…

… Google has responded.

As a reminder, first thing this morning, Trump tweeted that “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD, Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal,” Trump said in his latest claim of bias by the media. 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.”

Following Trump’s tweet, his chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow told reporters outside of the White House this morning that the administration is “taking a look” at whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation.

Google has now responded, claiming that the company doesn’t “bias” its results toward any political ideology and that “search is not used to set a political agenda.” Google also hedged by saying that it periodically issues “hundreds of improvements to our algorithms” to ensure they surface “high-quality content in response to users’ queries.” It was unclear if Google considers only liberal websites as “high quality content.”

Google’s full response is below:

“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology”

“Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment”

However, one can’t help but be skeptical considering that just before the 2016 presidential election, among the many leaks published by Wikileaks as part of its Podesta email campaign was Google’s “strategic plan” to help democrats win the election and track voters.

It is unlikely that Trump will be satisfied with Google’s sincere response.

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The $1.7 Billion Federal Job Training Program Is a Massive Failure

The Department of Labor’s Job Corps program is supposed to teach disadvantaged young people the skills they need to get good jobs. But the program, which costs taxpayers about $1.7 billion per year, is apparently a failure.

About 50,000 students enroll in the program each year, about two-thirds of whom are high school dropouts, according to The New York Times. Results aside, the program’s goals are admirable. As The Wall Street Journal reported in April:

Launched in 1964, Job Corps works with 16- to 24-year-olds who grew up homeless or poor, passed through foster care, or suffered other hardships. The goal is to equip these young adults with skills for careers in advanced manufacturing, the building trades, health care, information technology, business and more.

Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. A March audit from the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General sampled 324 Job Corps participants who were five years removed from graduation. The median annual income of 231 of those participants (wage records weren’t available for the rest), was just $12,486 as of December 2016. The audit acknowledged that “Job Corps could not demonstrate beneficial job training outcomes.”

That’s not all. Job Corps spends about $50 million a year on “transition services” to help graduates find jobs. But in 94 percent of the cases sampled, “Job Corps contractors could not demonstrate they had assisted participants in finding jobs.”

The program’s failure is perhaps best seen at the North Texas Job Corps Center, which is a roughly 40-minute drive from Dallas. While the Dallas economy is booming, this center is one of the poorest-performing Job Corps campuses in the nation. Violence is an issue, particularly gang-related incidents. It doesn’t help that students at this center—and at all Job Corps campuses around the country—have to live together.

One former North Texas teacher, who quit in 2015, says the entire program is failing. “Job Corps doesn’t work,” the teacher, Teresa Sanders, tells the Times. “The adults are making money, the politicians are getting photo ops. But we are all failing the students.”

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta admits the program “requires fundamental reform.”

“It is not enough to make changes at the margins,” he tells the Times. “We need large-scale changes.”

Despite its shortcomings, Jobs Corps is popular among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress (to Democrats, it’s a government program aimed at reducing poverty; to Republicans, it incentivizes hard work), so there’s only so much Acosta can do. “You have a program with a rich and complicated history that’s one of the biggest leftovers from the war on poverty, and it is enormously complicated to make any significant changes,” Eric M. Seleznow, a former deputy assistant secretary for the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration during the Obama administration, tells the Times. He notes that “competing interests from Congress, program operators, advocates, as well as complex legal requirements present a lot of challenges.”

If Job Corps is salvageable, then it can do some real good. But if real reforms aren’t going to happen, Congress should shut it down.

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Rand Spikes As South Africa Withdraws Land Confiscation Bill

One week after Trump warned South Africa about its controversial land confiscation reform in which some white-owned land could be expropriated without compensation, moments ago Bloomberg reported that South Africa has withdrawn its land expropriation bill in what appears to be another victory for Trump’s unorthodox foreign policy.

Last Wednesday, seemingly following a story by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, President Trump tweeted that he has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations” raising concerns that the U.S. might target South Africa with possible sanctions next.

Trump wasn’t the only one to voice concern, and recent the South African rand had tumbled amid fears how this policy could affect the economy.

Well, if the following Bloomberg headline is accurate, it will no longer be a concern:

  • *S. AFRICA EXPRORIATION BILL WITHDRAWN AMID CONSTITUTION REVIEW

While the market’s kneejerk response has been positive, with the rand jumping on the news…

… there has been virtually no detail and this could be merely a trial balloon headfake. As some have noted, the withdrawal of the bill now would be not only surprising, but premature, as the parliamentary committee tasked with land reform on Section 25 of the constitution is not expected to decide until September 27.

Furthermore, recall that as we reported yesterday, South Africa’s “Black Hitler”, Julius Malema said that he is prepared to die if it means South Africa will achieve land expropriation without compensation.

Additionally, Malema has accused President Ramaphosa and the Democratic Alliance (DA) of colluding with AfriForum to sabotage plans to expropriate land without compensation. A decade ago few people had heard of Malema. Now he commands millions and grows more powerful each day.

Developing story.

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Consumer Confidence Explodes To 18 Year High

As ‘soft’ survey data continues to catch down to ‘hard’ real economic data’s recent demise, Conference Board Confidence shuns the slump and explodes higher to 133.4 (exp 126.6) – the highest since Oct 2000.

Current Conditions spiked to 172.2 (18 year highs), Expectations rebounded to 107.6 (highest since Feb), driving the headline to Oct 2000 highs….

 

The Labor Differential spiked to the best since March 2001 (Jobs Plentiful – Jobs Hard To Get)

 

Plan to buy homes, cars, and appliances all surged as income expectations spiked.

However, before this huge beat, the surge in soft data is fading fast… as ‘hard’ data is back below Trump election levels…

 

 

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Macron Suffers Major Blow To Presidency As Star Minister Quits On Air

French president Macron, his rating recently tumbling to a new post-election low, went into the summer break rolled by a scandal over a rogue aide and returned to a string of bad news on the economy and his reform agenda. But the biggest blow emerged out of the blue on Tuesday when his star minister for energy and the environment, Nicolas Hulot, the most popular member of Macron’s cabinet, announced he is stepping down during a live interview, citing frustration with a lack of progress on green issues.

Nicolas Hulot and Emanuel Macron

Hulot, 63, a TV celebrity and veteran environmental activist, joined Macron’s government in May last year and has since struggled to fit in with other members of the cabinet and its general policies.

Speaking to France Inter radio on Tuesday morning, he said last night he decided to resign, citing an “accumulation of disappointments” with the government’s failure to stand up to lobbying and give a priority to climate change, threats to biodiversity and other environmental issues that urgently needed to be addressed.

The former minister specifically blamed the lack of action to protect the environment against pesticides or land destruction and in sheltering biodiversity, among other causes he sought to promote. Hulot, a vocal environmentalist for decades who made television programs about nature, was one of Macron’s most prominent ministers. He said he hadn’t notified the president or the prime minister ahead of his radio announcement; he added that Macron had his respect and friendship, but the decision to step down was up to him.

While not the first minister to quit, Hulot’s critique is particularly cutting for Macron, who came to power last year saying that his election was the embodiment of France’s transformation, even revolution. One day after a foreign-policy speech loaded with grand ambitions, the resignation is a reminder that Macron’s presidency hinges on the success or failure of his domestic program.

“It takes time to change things in a country and Macron knows it, but what we see now is a climate, a change of mood in France over his actions,” said Bernard Sananes, who heads Paris- based polling institute Elabe. “He’s facing severe headwinds.”

As Bloomberg notes, the 40-year-old leader, known internationally for his pro-active, reform-focused agenda, is running into obstacles at home as he prepares for a fresh wave of economic overhauls, from taxes to social benefits, that threatens to alienate even more voters. His government has warned that the economy won’t grow as fast as planned this year and next — closer to 1.7 percent than the 2 percent targeted — making any new budget cuts even more difficult for the French to swallow.

Responding to the news, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said the decision was regrettable, but that the government would recover: “I don’t understand why he is stepping down when we had many successes in the first year that are to his credit,” Griveaux told BFM Television. “He didn’t win all his battles but that’s the way it goes for ministers.”

* * *

The resignation comes as Macron struggles to push his approval rating up amid slowing economic growth and in the wake of a political scandal over his security aide, who was filmed beating protesters. Meanwhile, the French pains that got Macron elected, remain: stubbornly high unemployment and an economic expansion that lags that of France’s European peers are rubbing away the sheen of Macron’s 2017 victory. Over the past eight months his approval rating fell 18% points to 34%, his lowest according to pollster Ifop. A majority of French believe his policies are disappointing and see his actions as negative for the country, according to Elabe.

Overhauling France is a “systemic” project “and it’s normal that it takes some time,” Labor Minister Muriel Penicaud said Tuesday on Europe 1 radio, shortly before Hulot announced his surprise resignation on another network. Penicaud agreed that unemployment wasn’t falling fast enough despite the labor-law reforms and the company stimulus she and her colleagues launched in the past 15 months. “It’s long-haul work,” she said.

Unemployment still hovers above 9 percent and has dipped by just 0.3 percentage points since Macron took power, despite a series of measures to make the job market more flexible and to tighten control over benefits.

What’s more, negative sentiment is still fresh over a video released by Le Monde newspaper showing his private bodyguard beating demonstrators at a May Day protest. Macron and his staff covered up the incident for weeks and later defended Alexandre Benalla before being forced to fire him in July. For political opponent and France Unbowed party lawmaker Adrien Quatennens, the addition of Hulot’s resignation is a signal that “the whole Macron system is dislocating,” he said on BFM Television.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Spends Thousands on Uber After Criticizing the ‘Unregulated’ Service

||||JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS/NewscomCongressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social media solidarity with taxi drivers appeared to be undermined by a recent revelation about her own campaign’s spending.

In March, a taxi cab driver in New York City unfortunately took his own life after falling on financial hardship. New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber tweeted a statement that blamed the driver’s death on the existence of Uber and Lyft. Referencing the city government’s allowance of the ride-sharing companies, the statement argued that “anti-regulation zealotry came at the expense of professional drivers.” Ocasio-Cortez quoted that tweet and criticized the “unregulated expansion of Uber.”

Despite the Twitter comment, campaign spending reports from the Federal Election Commission indicate that her words only go so far. Fox News found that the Ocasio-Cortez campaign not only spent thousands on Uber rides, but also on a local ride-sharing service called Juno, between the months of April and June. The campaign spent nearly $4,000 on 160 Uber rides and $2,500 on over 90 Juno rides. Spending reports from July and August are not yet available.

Ocasio-Cortez is certainly not the first politician to criticize “unregulated” ride-sharing companies in public while benefiting from their cheaper services. While running in the most recent Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) criticized Uber for being an “”unregulated” company with “serious problems.” He was also one of the handful of presidential candidates whose campaign reported using Uber instead of taxis close to 100 percent of the time. Eventual Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee were the only two presidential candidates whose campaigns could boast spending more on taxis than on Uber.

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Amid Meltup, Trader Warns “Not A Bad Time To Give Your Biases A Stress-Test”

As the month draws to a close in the vinegar strokes of summer ‘holidays’, stocks are currently setting up for the second best August since 2009.

Despite the collapse of US economic data…

All on the back of an excited rebound in the Yuan (and Powell’s J-Hole speech)…

Still, as former fund manager and FX trader Richard Breslow notes, it’s only Tuesday and the month runs to the end of the week, but it’s hard not to start anticipating what asset prices might look like after we all get back from the summer’s last gasp bash.

Especially since people keep telling me to ignore all this price action because the real story will only be reflected in market levels starting in September.

Eugene Fama would get a huge kick out of reading these pieces.

And we might want to be a little more circumspect in so easily dismissing what we are all witnessing in plain view. It’s not the worst time to give your biases a stress test. The beginning of the year is the time for forecasts and fantasies. The fourth quarter is for getting it right because, in fact, your year depends upon it.

Via Bloomberg,

No matter how bullish I want to be with respect to the dollar, it just isn’t trading well. It is serially failing one technical test after another. So much for that break higher two weeks ago.

Failure in price action is worse than never going there to begin with. Aside from the daily charts, weakness is creeping into the monthly charts and is even more pronounced as you widen out the universe you measure the currency against. Say what you will, the next few days will count. We’re that close. Which means the numbers, such as they are, will matter too. And we don’t have much central bank speech after today to muddy the waters.

Global sovereign yields are also an issue. Who’s doesn’t think yields should go higher and isn’t also a crank? But they have been right. Doesn’t matter if there’s structural issues involved or not. Being short bonds has stunk. And if you are long equities and continuing to enjoy the ride, you almost have no choice but to keep your bonds. I adore the notion of selling 10-year Treasuries near 2.8% . But I have to wonder why I keep being given the opportunity to do so.

And as much as I believe bunds are a screaming sale at the lower half of a 30-40 basis point range, it’s hard to ignore just why BTPs are back above 3% and the Turkish lira continuing to look ill.

Which brings us to everyone’s favorite whipping boy, emerging markets. What do they like? Low bond yields, a dollar under control and solid global growth. Without trade wars destroying the supply chain. If you look at the MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index you see a really beat up measure that exudes cautious optimism. And a lot of uncertainty. If this was all baked in the cake, the index wouldn’t have spent this month making Fibonacci the proudest man on the planet. Check out the range versus the 21- and 55-month moving averages. Low and behold, we walk in today seeing it exactly in the middle of the month’s range.

The EM crisis is far from over…

Gold, by the way, is getting very interesting. It certainly came back very smartly from where it had to hold, but is now right in the sell-zone. Well worth seeing how this plays out. Perhaps wishful thinking, but this isn’t a stable level it is likely to hang out at for long.

Financial markets don’t always reflect what we think the real world would suggest. For the purposes of this exercise, just worry about what your screens are showing.

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Trump Says His Crummy Google Results May Be a Crime: Reason Roundup

President says poor search results might be illegal. On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump was apparently up early and searching for himself on Google—and he did not like what he saw. Too much “Fake News Media” and CNN, not enough pro-Trump news from “Republican/Conservative & Fair Media.”

Trump’s tweets come close to the now common genre of self-own in which someone can’t believe the odd or lurid search results/Facebook ads/etc. that they’re being served and announce it publicly, ostensibly without realizing that these results are generally tailored to individuals based on their web history. I won’t go so far as to say that Google algorithms aren’t political (they even agree to cooperate with government and advocacy groups to feature public-service announcements when people search for certain topics; and yesterday’s image honored John McCain); but they’re not political in a partisan or traditional way.

Their biggest determinate, broadly speaking, is based on how popular a given page or website is and how relevantly packaged to a particular search term. If pro-Trump “Fair Media” isn’t getting prominent play in Google, it’s a matter of quality and demand, not conspiracy.

Trump’s Twitter tantrum over Google has the quaint ring of someone’s muttering granddad…until you get to the last bit: “Illegal?”

And it gets worse:

So now, in addition to data-grubbing and ad-micromanaging senators, social-media monitoring cops, Russia-bot hysteria in Congress, politicians playing to the worst tendencies of online outrage mobs, “net neutrality,” the rising popularity of digital deplatforming, and generally mounting online censorship, we have a president who thinks his poor Google results are a crime. This doesn’t seem particularly likely to end well.

Even if Trump’s comments are off-the-cuff and absurdly petty—another one of the president’s impotent (and often self-defeating) public cursings of his perceived enemies—they coincide with a growing popularity among Democrats and Republicans in D.C. for demanding more “accountability” from online platforms. Pretty much all ruling power in Washington right now would like to have more control over what appears in Google results, on YouTube, on Twitter, and all over the web. Until recently, that would have proved too politically unpopular to gain much traction.

But the European Union has gotten away with increasing clampdowns. Once radical tech companies have grown big enough that their bottom lines require increasing fealty to the state. The Russia situation has melted at least a third of Americans’ brains (approximately) to the point where they’re ready to hand over post-9/11-get-the-Muslims levels of control for alleged protection.

And rank-and-file liberals and conservatives, with their demands to do something about offensive speech and about supposed partisan bias being so much as allowed by private companies, have played right into the hands of Trump, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Missouri), and all the other authoritarian dopes in D.C. clamoring to control what we read, watch, and say online.

ELECTION 2018

“Sherriff Joe” Arpaio faces voters today, as Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma hold primary elections. Arpaio—who lost his longtime seat as Maricopa County sheriff in 2016 and was pardoned by President Trump of federal criminal charges last year—is now running in the Arizona Republican primary for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Arpaio faces sitting U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, the establishment conservative candidate, and Kelli Ward, a former state senator who is currently on a bus tour around Arizona with the likes of former alt-right figurehead Mike Cernovich and Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren.

Democrats in Arizona today will choose a challenger for the state’s gubernatorial race, in which Republican Gov. Doug Ducey faces reelection. “Democratic state Sen. Steve Farley, Arizona State University education professor David Garcia and Kelly Fryer, the CEO of the YWCA Southern Arizona, face off to challenge Ducey in a traditionally red state that has shifted to the left in recent years,” reports CNN.

The primary comes days before Ducey faces a major decision: Who to appoint to fill McCain’s seat. He’ll have to choose between a Trump-like Republican and someone in the McCain mold—or could try to bridge the gap, potentially with a placeholder pick.

Florida voters today choose Republican and Democratic candidates for governor, as current Gov. Rick Scott is barred by term limits from running again. Scott is now running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Florida Democrat Bill Nelson. “Arizona and Florida also each have several primaries for House seats that are expected to be competitive in November’s midterm elections,” notes CNN.

In Oklahoma, time is also up for the current governor, Republican Mary Fallin. Democrats are running current attorney general Drew Edmondson to take her place. GOP voters today will choose between businessman Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett as a challenger.

FREE MINDS

States reconsider sexual harassment policies for public and private entities. In the wake of the #MeToo movement’s turning its gaze on political leaders, the force to Do Something was strong. “About half of all state legislative chambers have followed through with at least some sort of change to their sexual harassment policies, most often by boosting their own training,” the Associated Press reports.

Others have been taking aim at the way private companies can arbitrate sexual harassment claims. Lawmakers “introduced bills in at least 16 states this year to restrict the use by private employers of non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.” In Arizona, Maryland, New York, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington, these measures passed. “Lawmakers in California also took action this past week, sending two bills to the governor,” notes AP:

One, championed by actress Jane Fonda and former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, would prohibit employers from requiring nondisclosure agreements related to sexual misconduct as a condition of getting or keeping a job.

The other would ban settlements in sexual harassment or discrimination cases that seek to keep the circumstances secret. It would apply to the private sector, government agencies and the Legislature.

Legal experts say it’s not clear yet what effect such legislation will have on sexual harassment in the workplace. Some warned that the new laws could have unintended consequences.

FREE MARKETS

Fighting back against Big Florist in the deep south. Louisiana is “the only state in the union that requires florists to pass a licensing exam before they can make and sell flower arrangements,” notes Danny Heitman at The Wall Street Journal. After failed attempts at legislative reform, it’s become clear that “the path to fixing Louisiana’s burdensome licensing requirements” runs “through the courts, not the GOP Legislature,” Heitman suggests.

Critics of licensing have scored a victory on another front, however. Confronted by a lawsuit, Louisiana’s Board of Cosmetology dropped many of its requirements this spring for practitioners of a hair-removal technique known as eyebrow threading. The state had required eyebrow threaders to take 750 hours of beauty-school courses and three exams, at a cost of $6,000 to $13,000. The Institute for Justice, the libertarian nonprofit behind the lawsuit, agreed to drop the case after regulators backed off. Now eyebrow threaders need to pass one test and obtain a permit. Total cost: $50.

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De-Dollarization Diplomacy: Putin’s Wedding Trip Seals Marriage Of Convenience With Merkel

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

…the meeting in Berlin could signal a switch in strategy for Germany when it comes to the US dollar and energy security…

It was supposed to be a low-key, traditional Austrian wedding until Vladimir Putin pulled up in a black limo. The bride was Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, a top energy analyst and former professor at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna and the European Business School in Frankfurt.

She knows all there is to know about multiple aspects of Eurasia integration, which is close to the Russian President’s heart. So close, in fact, that he stole the show by arriving in a convoy, bearing lavish flowers and the Kuban Cossack Choir.

After a swirl on the dance floor with the blond-haired, but not blushing, bride, he dashed off to Germany for the real business.

This was a three-hour, multi-themed, face-to-face meeting north of Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel. There were no translators as both are fluent in Russian and German as I pointed out in Asia Times.

But it was Russian analyst Rostislav Ishchenko in a text featuring a Pushkin analogy – and beautifully translated into English – who unlocked these chain of events.

And that brings us to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who wrote in the business paper Handelsblatt about the idea of a European Union payment system bypassing the US dollar, and ultimately, the Iran sanctions.

An alternative system is exactly what the BRICS, namely Brazil, Russia, of course, India, China and South Africa, as well as the China-Russia-Iran triumvirate, have been discussing, and slowly implementing for years.

Now, let us see if we can decode this brand new EU-wide controversy from three different angles. First up, is an aristocratic German financier now based in Switzerland, who insisted on anonymity.

He stressed:

“Too many European [and Swiss] financial institutions [and regulators] are run by Americans. And they are extremely afraid of the American rhetoric of locking them out of Wall Street if they misbehave.”

But wait, there is a snag. Since the days of the Treaty of Rome, the EU has struggled to agree on “even a single important decision related to money, banking, taxes, subsidies … you name it,” he continued. “[Moreover,] the trust by other nations in an ‘EU-leadership’ is even lower than the feared, yet customarily obeyed, US global-leadership.”

“[And] even if they could have a vague attempt at such a large-scale revolution before the croissants are eaten, New York currency traders would have nuked the euro before Brussels had finished its after-lunch siesta,” he added.

Not exactly an EU independence manifesto. As for future prospects for the union, the financier warned:

“In the economy of the future, Europe will be an also-ran. On a five-to-10-year horizon, I see Chinese monetary dominance as inevitable. Forget Europe.”

What the German elite really thinks

Now, compare it with a sharp, shorter-term view by German politico-economic analyst Peter Spengler. He correctly argues that SWIFT, the global banking payments system, is not the problem.

“SWIFT, the world’s largest cooperative payment network, operates under Belgian – that is EU law – which the US Treasury warriors, plus the British GCHQ and the NSA, have been breaking for more than 10 years now, despite protests from the European Parliament,” he said.

“Europe and associated countries and currencies do not need another system, but international law enforcement, and the elimination of the US dollar and hence the New York Fed from payment transactions for real neutral and multilateral clearing.”

It is no secret in Brussels that the EU has been excruciatingly slow in admitting its dependence on Washington. It will be a long and winding road towards “liberation,” even though it has already started.

Still, according to a newsletter circulating among select EU financial circles, German Foreign Minister Maas “did not launch this trial balloon without permission from Merkel.”

“Germany is in deep fear of the Strait of Hormuz being shut, stranding a major supply of her natural gas and oil, and placing her totally dependent on oil and natural gas from Russia,” the newsletter states. “That is why Germany has to hold up the Iranian nuclear deal against all costs.

“Hence, the meeting of Merkel and Putin and the floating of a new currency plan to break the control over Germany and the world of the SWIFT-CHIPS dollar system.”

In practice, “what is prompting Merkel to threaten to move away from the US dollar” is fear, according to the newsletter. There are serious concerns about losing energy shipments from Russia, some of the Central Asian ‘Stans’ and especially Strait of Hormuz-transited oil and natural gas.

Those nightmares could turn into reality if President Donald Trump’s administration succeeded in totally blocking Iran’s energy exports and Iran responded by blocking the Strait.

Bend-not-break

So, Berlin is now engaged in a wobbly “bend-not-break” strategy. Merkel has acknowledged that relations with Washington are fractious while emphasizing the importance of both trade with Iran and US security cooperation.

Nord Stream 2, which was extensively discussed with Putin in Berlin, is a done deal, no matter what Washington says. But that is still not enough for Germany’s domestic needs.

On Saturday, Merkel goes to Azerbaijan to check whether the Caspian-to-Europe Southern Gas Corridor requires further investment and whether it will start delivering energy before 2020.

Many in Germany believe that if ‘push comes to shove,’ the US would not have the military capability to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. And in this case, the EU’s biggest economy could face an energy crisis.

As the newsletter argues, that is why the dismantling of US dollar control of world finance is now being floated by Germany as a matter of safeguarding future growth.

Now, imagine all this being discussed in the open at the planned, one-off, Russia-Germany-France-Turkey summit. And all this because Putin went to a wedding.

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