Month: February 2017

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Idiotic government decisions are a dime a dozen. Here’s the latest inane proposal: Germany to Electronically Tag All People on Terror Watchlist.

The German government will electronically tag all people on the country’s terror watchlist even if they have committed no crime, reflecting a tougher approach in the wake of December’s terror attack in Berlin.

 

The measure is one of several proposals agreed by the justice and interior ministries in the weeks after the attack, in which a 24-year-old Tunisian man, Anis Amri, drove a truck into crowds at a Christmas market, killing 12 people and wounding about 50.

 

It later emerged that Amri, who was killed in a shootout with Italian police a few days after the incident, had been classified by authorities as a potentially dangerous extremist and marked for deportation to Tunisia. But the attempt to send him back failed after the authorities there refused to recognise him as a citizen.

 

On Wednesday, police in Frankfurt arrested a 36-year-old Tunisian man who was allegedly planning a terror attack in Germany for the militant group Isis.

 

He was also alleged to have taken part in attacks in Tunisia, including on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis in March 2015 that killed 20 people, and a suspected assault by Isis militants on the town of Ben Guerdane close to Tunisia’s border with Libya in March 2016 in which 13 soldiers and seven civilians died.

 

Police said the suspect was a recruiter and trafficker for Isis and had built up a support network for the group inside Germany. He had allegedly come to Germany in August 2015 as an asylum seeker, but had previously lived in the country, between 2003 and April 2013.

 

From September 2016 he had been in custody awaiting extradition, after the Tunisian authorities requested his arrest. But he was released in early November, because the Tunisians had failed to provide the necessary papers to allow him to be sent back. Since then, police said, he had been under round-the-clock observation.

 

The case closely resembles that of Amri, who could also not be sent back to Tunisia because the authorities there refused to provide the necessary ID papers.

 

The tagging proposal had been agreed by justice minister Heiko Maas and interior minister Thomas de Maizière last month as part of a package of measures to beef up security.

Proposal Synopsis

• Let recruiters and traffickers for Isis go because of failed paperwork.
• Instead of placing all suspects under round-the-clock surveillance, we will give potential terrorists a device to wear, and they will gladly wear it.
• Those falsely accused will not become radicalized by the humiliation.
• The public will not start looking for these devices, nor will they panic when they see them.

Questions

1. Even if Anis Amri had been wearing the device, can someone explain how this would have stopped the Christmas massacre?
2. Can we conclude all suspects cannot go shopping at Christmas malls?
3. Does Germany even know where all the suspects are?
4. Does Germany want all the suspects to know they are suspects?
5. Would enactment of the idea inform terrorists not on the list know they are not suspects?
6. Wouldn’t the terrorists like to know whether or not they are suspects?

Amri was eventually killed in a Showdown With Italian Police in Milan.

Amri’s escape to Italy was made easy due to the fact that German Privacy Rules Say “Illegal” to Post Face of Person Being Sought.

By all means, let’s preserve the privacy of terrorists. Instead, let’s tag all the suspects so the real terrorists know whether or not they are suspects.

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As discussed last Friday, Greece is back in the public spotlight and – hardly surprising – it is once again on the verge of collapse. Greek yields surged in the past week as the country didn’t secure a positive review at the Eurogroup on 26 January. Additional noise came from indications that the IMF still views the Greek debt as unsustainable without further measures from the Greek government (the term was “explosive”), as well as  additional debt relief clarifications from European creditors.

So is a rerun of the summer of 2015 inevitable? According to Credit Suisse’s Giovanni Zanni, the most likely outcome – for now-  is an amicable, and quick, resolution. However the longer nothing substantive changes, the more likely it is that the 4, far less pleasant scenarios, kick in.

While it is difficult  to attribute a specific probability to each of those, they are ranked them below by the most to the least likely. These scenarios should also provide a roadmap for investors in the process of assessing when risks could increase and when they could die down: as a rule of thumb, we would expect a sell-off to be ongoing until the next “node”, unless the tension is released by some form of  agreement, which we still believe will come at some point in the coming months. In the absence of any deal, market stress is likely to steadily increase ahead of large Greek bond redemptions, in particular those in late July, with a calendar pretty similar to that of 2015. But while we expected at the time that a solution would have come very late in the game (in July, precisely), this time the base case scenario is for a quicker resolution.

Here are the five possible scenarios from the Swiss bank:

• Scenario 1:Quick resolution (in the coming days)

The Greek government is reportedly trying to find an agreement, providing a series of measures that should be largely compliant with the creditors’ requests and are crafted in a way that should be sufficient to convince the IMF to agree to continued participation in the programme. There is a key IMF meeting on 6 February: if the measures are accepted then it should open the way for a successful completion of the review on 20 February by the Eurogroup. This, in our view, would also set in motion a clarification of the medium-term relief measures (after 2018) to be granted, conditionally, to Greece. And from there the Debt Sustainability Analysis of both the IMF and the ECB should reinforce Greece’s position and allow the European Central Bank to include GGBs in its QE program.

That is clearly the positive scenario – and the most optimistic in the timing (e.g., it might still happen as above, broadly speaking, but delayed by a few days or weeks, clearly) – but we still think it can happen, with a decent probability. This would lead in all likelihood to a prompt reversal of the spread widening seen in recent weeks, and to further convergence ahead – especially if and when the participation of GGBs in ECB’s QE is announced.

The other four (less positive to outright negative) scenarios are discussed overleaf.

• Scenario 2: “We need more time” (March-April)

There is a fundamental “irreconcilable trinity” between the views of the IMF, that of European creditors and those of the Greek government: at the cost of oversimplifying, Greeks want less reform, more debt relief, and would prefer a lower primary surplus target; the IMF would like more structural reforms, more debt relief from European creditors, and lower primary surpluses – expecting Greece to deliver primary surpluses at 3.5% of GDP for the foreseeable future is seen as unrealistic; finally, European creditors are relatively agnostic on reforms, want ideally as little debt relief as possible, and prefer higher primary surpluses to fill the debt sustainability gap. It is not clear that these differences can be resolved, effortlessly, in a short period of time – it might still require a further layer of negotiations and developments. Still, there is some kind of “political imperative”, we believe, with indeed the preference by all to close the negotiations ahead of at least the French elections, in order not to poison further the European political debate. As such, a decision might eventually be pushed through next month or in April, at the latest, if disagreements are not too extreme.

• Scenario 3: brinkmanship (July)

This scenario would mimic the events of 2015, when the confrontation was pushed to the limit of default from the Greek side, in the hope of getting the best possible deal. In our view, that strategy didn’t work for Greece and created uncertainty and another recession in that year. As such, we struggle to see this strategy as intentional this time – but it could end up being the default option in the absence of an agreement under scenarios 1 and 2 and in the context of elections and events in the rest of Europe diverting the focus on Greek matters.

• Scenario 4: Early elections (before the summer)

Early elections cannot be discarded, if a satisfactory agreement is not found in the coming two to three months. It is likely that most MPs dislike this option, as early elections would likely see several in the majority losing their seats: current polls suggest a very strong preference for the center-right opposition (New Democracy), as we show in Figure 6. However, it would be a way to preserve an “anti-system”  role to the ruling party, Syriza, with the aim and hope to return in government at a (not too) later stage, in a new election round. From a market perspective, early elections would clearly be a negative, short term, but we also stress that the likely victory of the centre-right would be probably seen as a positive medium-term outcome.

• Scenario 5: Grexit? Oh pleeease!

SYRIZA parliamentary spokesman Nikos Xydakis said earlier this week that a debate about Greece’s membership of the euro should not be taboo, seemingly reopening the discussion on Greece’s EU membership. We have debated this issue at length in the past, and believe it wouldn’t make sense for Greece to leave – and actually it is already damaging for the country to even discuss it. The opposition was quick in criticising Mr Xydakis and there is clearly no support in the parliament for it and even less so in the country (Figure 7).

* * *

Finally, here is a timeline of next events:

Below, we provide a timeline of key relevant dates and events in the coming months. There is an immediate set of events (in February) that could resolve the issues and make the programme progress swiftly. If not in February, there are several intermediate dates that could still deliver an agreement, although at a later stage, most likely around the scheduled Eurogroup meetings – although an extraordinary gathering to approve the bailout happened in the past and cannot be discarded. July 17 – or 20 – would be the “hard” deadline, as Greece would be, same as in July 2015, unable to repay those amounts without additional support under the EU/IMF programme. There are earlier relatively large redemptions, notably in late February and in April – but we believe there is probably room in Greece’s public finances  to fulfill those commitments.

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Submitted by Soren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

• The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the EU, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
• Regardless of who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years.
• Schulz has already called for tax increases on the wealthy and for fighting the AfD party. He has also threatened financial consequences for European countries that refuse to take in more migrants.
• "The chancellor's office is worried." – Der Spiegel.

Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, has been chosen to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany's general election on September 24.

The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.

Time for a changing of the guard? Pictured: Then European Parliament President Martin Schulz meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels, January 30, 2012. (Image source: European Parliament)

Polls show Merkel, who heads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), slightly ahead of Schulz, the new leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Regardless of who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years.

Schulz, who became a Member of the European Parliament in 1994, and has spent most of his political career in Brussels, unofficially took over the reins of the SPD on January 29, 2017, after the unpopular Sigmar Gabriel said he was stepping down. The move will become official at a party congress on March 19. SPD leaders said that as an "outsider," Schulz has a better chance of unseating Merkel, who has been in office since November 2005, and is running for a fourth term.

The SPD has been the junior partner in a Merkel-run "grand coalition" (Große Koalition) government since December 2013. SPD leaders say that if the party wins at least 30% of the national vote, Schulz will become the next chancellor.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Schulz, 61, said he was the best candidate to replace Merkel, who is 62. "I have worked with Angela Merkel longer than almost anyone outside her party," he said. "I have studied her, gotten to know her." Schulz has eight months to persuade Germans to vote for him.

The latest INSA poll shows the CDU (together with its Bavarian sister party, the CSU) with 32.5% of the vote, the SPD with 26%, and the anti-establishment party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in third place with 13%.

If the CDU/CSU or the SPD fail to win a majority, they may join forces to form another grand coalition. Either party may also seek to form a coalition government with other smaller parties, particularly the Greens, but all have ruled out entering into a coalition with the eurosceptic AfD.

The AfD, which is set to enter the Parliament (Bundestag) for the first time, is uniquely placed to attract voters who are angry about Merkel's decision to allow into Germany more than one million mostly Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The party, which polled as high as 15.5% in December 2016, has struggled to gain more traction due to internal power struggles and accusations of anti-Semitism.

Schulz — a high school dropout whom The Economist magazine described as "pugnacious" and "impulsive" — is campaigning on a platform to unite an increasingly divided German polity. "Germany needs a new start and that cannot happen with the CDU," he said. "We have come to the end of what we can achieve with divided conservatives."

The SPD will not unveil its election platform until a party congress in May. But Schulz has already called for tax increases on the wealthy and for fighting the AfD. He has also threatened financial consequences for European countries that refuse to take in more migrants.

When a television presenter confronted Schulz about his lack of governing experience, he compared himself to Barack Obama: "I share the fate with Barack Obama. He also had no government experience when he became President of the United States."

If elected, Schulz, an ardent Europhile who is committed to European federalism, is sure to work to strengthen the European Union. "I know what's going on in Europe," he said. "I know the strengths and also weaknesses of the European Union." He added:

"European politics is German domestic politics and German domestic politics has a powerful effect in Europe. Whoever wants to play those against each other is committing a sin against the future of our children and generations to come."

Schulz has argued that the EU must be preserved at any cost:

"We are at a historical juncture: A growing number of people are declaring what has been achieved over the past decades in Europe to be wrong. They want to return to the nation-state. Sometimes there is even a blood and soil rhetoric that for me is starkly reminiscent of the interwar years of the past century, whose demons we are still all too familiar with. We brought these demons under control through European structures, but if we destroy those structures, the demons will return. We cannot allow this to happen."

He has opposed the idea of holding national referendums on quitting the EU:

"Referendums have always posed a threat when it comes to EU policy, because EU policy is complicated. They're an opportunity for those from all political camps who like to oversimplify things."

Schulz has also said that the British decision to leave the European Union would facilitate the creation of a European Army:

"In the fields of security and defense policy, although the EU loses a key member state, paradoxically such a separation could give the necessary impulse for a closer integration of the remaining member states."

Playing the anti-Americanism card, Schulz has expressed his disdain for U.S. President Donald J. Trump, calling him "an obviously irresponsible man sitting in a position that requires the utmost sense of responsibility." He added: "Trump is not just a problem for the EU, but for the whole world."

Schulz described Trump's order to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico as "a taboo breach that is intolerable." He also criticized Trump's temporary travel ban for citizens of seven countries deemed to be terrorist safe havens:

"I'm sure when European politicians travel to Washington they will explain to the U.S. government that international law and human rights also apply for Donald Trump."

Schulz has reserved his worst vitriol for the anti-immigration AfD, whose leaders he has described as "rat catchers" (Rattenfänger) who are "trying to profit from the plight of refugees." He has also called them "shameful and repulsive."

Merkel, who up until recently vowed to continue her open-door migration policy, has now promised to consider an annual cap on the number of migrants allowed into Germany. In a rare moment of contrition, she said: "If I could, I would turn back the time by many, many years. If I knew what change in policy people wanted, I would be ready to consider it and to talk about it."

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble admitted that the Merkel government made mistakes with its open-door migration policy. "We have tried to improve what got away from us in 2015," he said. "We politicians are human; we also make mistakes. But one can at least learn from them."

Some in the German media are skeptical about Schulz. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote:

"As a chancellor candidate, Schulz has announced an election campaign for social justice and the EU. He will not allow 'bashing' of the EU. Can Schulz score points? Like any other German politician, he stands for 'Brussels' as a cipher for a detached and bureaucratic European elite. The alienation between elites and large parts of the population is not only in America. In Germany as well, voters increasingly are turning away from established politics."

By contrast, Der Spiegel published a sensational cover story entitled, "Saint Martin" which portrayed Schulz as a supernatural figure — similar to its adulation of Barack Obama eight years ago. The magazine added: "The chancellor's office is worried."

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As the world roils amid Middle East maelstroms, Donald Trump dysphoria, and terrorist tantrums, there is a silver-lining for some. As MSN reports, the maker of the AK-47 semi-automatic machine gun says it is to increase staff by 30% because of a surge in export orders.

As a reminder this surge in demand follows US sanctions banning the import of Kalashnikov firearms from Russia in 2014.

The Kalashnikov Group put out a press release from its Moscow office Monday stating that it will create a further 1,700 jobs this year.

“Following the growth of production volume, which was driven by the rise in the number of export orders, it was decided to increase the number of the Group’s employees,” said Alexey Krivoruchko, chief executive of the Kalashnikov Group.

 

“The challenge we face is managing the growing number of orders. To fulfil them, as of April 2017, production will run in three shifts,” he added.

The Kalashnikov Group said it employed around 5,500 people at the end of 2016. The new staff will be recruited to work as service technicians, grinders, toolmakers and machine operators.

Kalashnikovs remain the most popular rifle in history…

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Submitted by Michael Krepon via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Nuclear dangers are growing in five different regions. The least noticed is South Asia. New Delhi has not been able to figure out how to deal with militant groups that enjoy safe havens in Pakistan. So far, India’s options have been to do nothing after attacks or execute war plans that invite mushroom clouds. A third option, which involves commando raids, may now be coming into view.

During seven decades of strained relations, Indian war planning has been downsized from fighting major conflicts to fighting limited conventional wars. Comparatively speaking, moving from limited conventional war to commando raids is a step in the right direction. But this progression offers little consolation when the potential for escalation is ever present, and when nuclear weapons serve as a backdrop to every military encounter.

War plans don’t go away; they evolve. India’s army then pivoted to plans for quick strikes and shallow advances along many possible avenues of attack. Rawalpindi countered by embracing nuclear weapons tailored for various kinds of battlefield use. The Indian Army’s so-called “Cold Start” doctrine remains on the books, even though implementation is problematic due to long-standing disconnects in civil-military relations, joint-military operations and military procurement. More importantly, a limited conventional war, no matter how carefully planned, may not stay limited. India’s civilian leaders have yet to endorse the army’s plans, and didn’t employ them after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Since then, Pakistan has been more victimized by acts of terror than India. But because the perpetrators are overwhelmingly homegrown—and since they have refrained from attacking Indian targets—their carnage does not prompt war scares on the subcontinent.

Attacks on Indian military camps or consulates in Afghanistan followed after each of these overtures. After the attack on the Indian military outpost at Uri last September, Modi dispensed with diplomacy and adopted a very hard line. The announcement of “surgical strikes” across the Kashmir divide followed, and were reinforced by pointed references to Pakistan’s jugular—stirring up greater disaffection in Baluchistan and revisiting the Indus Waters Treaty.

Relations between India and Pakistan are now stuck in a bad place and have poor prospects of improvement in the near term. Bilateral diplomacy is limping along, the Kashmir Valley is seething due to ham-fisted governance and a lockdown by Indian security forces, and artillery fire can again be heard across the Kashmir divide.

Rawalpindi’s military’s campaign against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan will probably never end. But now that it is winding down, Pakistan is being asked what the next step in counterterrorism operations might be. So far, there has been no answer. Taking aim at the Afghan Taliban leadership and the Haqqani network seems unlikely, because ceding influence in Kabul to India is not in the cards. Tackling anti-India and violence-prone sectarian groups also seems problematic because doing so would result in a more intrusive military presence and significant spikes of violence—especially in the Punjab. To turn against anti-India groups when Modi has adopted a hard line and when Kashmiris are deeply disaffected doesn’t seem likely. Consequently, much is now left to chance—particularly additional attacks on Indian military and diplomatic outposts.

Domestic politics and shrill social and television media militate against hesitant Indian reactions, even to low-level attacks by groups enjoying safe havens in Pakistan. Hotheads don’t care that attacks against Indian targets have hurt Pakistan’s regional and international standing; nor do they care whether or not India retaliates. New Delhi expects support—or at least silence—if it decides to strike back.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s diplomacy is hamstrung. The talking point that Pakistan does not distinguish between “good” and “bad” terrorists is belied by facts on the ground. Calls for a resumption of dialogue and a focus on conflict resolution do not resonate because “bad” terrorists that enjoy safe havens stymie both. Until it takes very hard, demonstrable steps against these groups, Pakistan cannot expect a fair hearing about its legitimate grievances.

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

President Trump says he wants the US to have better relations with Russia and to halt military operations against Muslim countries. But he is being undermined by the Pentagon.

The commander of US forces in Europe, General Ben Hodges, has lined up tanks on Poland’s border with Russia and fired salvos that the general says are a message to Russia, not a training exercise.

How is Trump going to normalize relations with Russia when the commander of US forces in Europe is threatening Russia with words and deeds?

The Pentagon has also sent armored vehicles to “moderate rebels” in Syria, according to Penagon spokesman Col. John Dorrian. Unable to prevent Russia and Syria from winning the war against ISIS, the Pentagon is busy at work derailing the peace negotiations.

The military/security complex is using its puppets-on-a-string in the House and Senate to generate renewed conflict with Iran and to continue threats against China.

Clearly, Trump is not in control of the most important part of his agenda—peace with the thermo-nuclear powers and cessation of interference in the affairs of other countries.

Trump cannot simultaneously make peace with Russia and make war on Iran and China. The Russian government is not stupid. It will not sell out China and Iran for a deal with the West. Iran is a buffer against jihadism spilling into Muslim populations in the Russian Federation. China is Russia’s most important military and economic strategic ally against a renewal of US hostility toward Russia by Trump’s successor, assuming Trump succeeds in reducing US/Russian tensions. The neoconservatives with their agenda of US world hegemony and their alliance with the military-security complex will outlast the Trump administration.

Moreover, China is rising, while the corrupt and dehumanized West is failing. A deal with the West is worth nothing. Countries that make deals with the West are exposed to financial and political exploitation. They become vassals. There are no exceptions.

Russia’s desire to be part of the West is perplexing. Russia should build its security on relations with China and Asia, and let the West, desirous of participating in this success, come to Russia to ask for a deal.

Why be a supplicant when you can be the decider?

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The United States is a demographic time bomb, plain and simple.  Over the next 30 years, the U.S. economy will face an unrelenting demographic transition as ~75 million baby boomers exit the highest wage earning years of their life and start to draw down what little retirement savings they’ve managed to tuck away while wreaking havoc on the public “safety net” ponzi schemes, like Social Security, that will almost certainly be insolvent in a decade.

Per the U.S. Census Bureau, over the next 30 years, the number of people in the U.S. over the age of 65 is expected to double while those 85 and up will triple.  Needless to say, the overall population growth of the United States is a fraction of that which means that millennials are about to get crushed by their parents….so it’s probably a good thing they already live in mom and dad’s basement.

But, since misery loves company, we figured we would take this opportunity to highlight Bloomberg’s “Sunset Index” which tracks the number of working age people per retiree, by country and confirms that the United States is far from alone in their pending demographic crisis. 

While France and Singapore are currently the worst off with only 2.2 workers per retiree, the map below highlights just how pervasive the aging population crisis is around the globe. 

The world’s working-age population is shrinking faster than expected, leaving fewer people to support a growing number of seniors, according to the Bloomberg Sunset Index.

 

As seniors increasingly outnumber people still in the workforce, pressures rise on investment pools, medical systems and funds to build economies for future generations.

 

“The demographics cannot be ignored, but there are solutions,” said Suzanne Kunkel, director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “Those solutions need to be cultural, political, economic. There is no magic answer. The reality is China will deal with it differently than Italy.”

 

Asia could be facing the toughest choices in allocating resources. The Asia Pacific Risk Center estimates the region’s elderly population will rise 71 percent by 2030, compared with 55 percent in North America and 31 percent in Europe.

Of course, the financial burdens placed on young people around the world as a result of aging populations is highly dependent upon the extent of social services that have been promised and just how poorly funded those ponzi schemes are..which doesn’t bode well for the United States.

“There are other-than-alarmist views about population aging,” said David Ekerdt, director of the Gerontology Center at the University of Kansas. “Advanced economies face rather different challenges depending on the social provisions they have promised and the declines in fertility that have occurred in these nations.”

 

The U.S., for example, has “very high health-care costs for all citizens,” he said. “I would also say, politically, that it’s a large leap to assume that social spending, if reduced for one group, would be applied to another group.”

But, not to worry, we’re sure that markets are adequately discounting these long-term demographic risks that are almost certain to lay waste to the global economy over the next two decades.

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Submitted by Joseph Jankowski via Planet Free Will

Chicago is starting the year 2017 much like it did 2016: plagued with violence.

The number of shootings in the month of January nearly duplicated the tally from the start of last year, which was the bloodiest year in Chicago in more than two decades.

According to Chicago police, January ended with 51 murders, one more than last year.  Per HeyJackAss!, here is how the daily murder totals trended over the past month:

From ABC 7 Chicago:

Police recorded 51 murders across the city last month, one more than January 2016, the department said. Although, the department said in a release last year that 51 people were murdered in Chicago in January 2016

 

Three police districts on the city’s South and West sides – the Englewood, Harrison and Austin districts – accounted for about half of the city’s murders last month.

 

Police counted 234 shooting incidents – eight fewer than in January 2016 – with 299 victims, an increase of eight compared to the same period last year.

 

The Deering District, which was one of the city’s top three districts for murders in 2016, saw a 50 percent reduction in murders last month compared to January 2016, police said. The department said 59 of the city’s 77 neighborhoods either remained flat or saw a reduction in murders last month compared to last January.

 

Officers recovered more than 600 guns last month, an increase of more than 60 percent over January 2016, police said. The department also noted that gun arrests overall have more than doubled compared to January 2016.

 

At a meeting with members of the African American community on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said that if Chicago officials don’t take steps to curb the violence, “we’re going to solve the problem for them.”

“Because we’re going to have to do something… What’s happening in Chicago should not be happening in this country,” Trump said.

Trump called the violence in Chicago “totally out of control.”

Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who campaigned for Trump and who was present at the Wednesday meeting, said that he was talking to members of “top gangs” in Chicago who wanted to sit down and discuss how to lower the body count inside the city.  Per CBS Chicago 2:

“They reached out to me, because they’re associating me with you. They respect you. They believe in what you’re doing, and they want to have a sit-down about lowering that body count. So in a couple weeks, I’m going into Chicago,” Scott said. “I said we’ve got to lower that body count. We don’t want to talk about anything else; get that body count down, and they agreed that the principals that can do it – these are guys straight from the streets, no politicians, straight street guys – but they’re going to commit that if they lower that body count, we’ll come in and we’ll do some social programs.”

“It’s a great idea,” Trump said about a possible meeting involving gang leaders and social programs.

On January 24, President Trump tweeted that if Chicago is unable to stop the “horrible carnage” going on, he would be willing to “send in the feds.”

If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible “carnage” going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

Chicago saw a huge surge in violence in 2016: 762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents, and 4,331 shooting victims, according to police.

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