Month: March 2018

From former Lehman trader and macro commentator Marc Cudmore, who unlike the algos that have jumped from one side of the ship to the other, refuses to accept that yesterday’s market surge is indicative of a change in market direction, or as he writes in his latest Macro Squawk Wrap…

One Strong Bounce Does Not a Bull Market Make: Macro View

Equities haven’t bottomed just yet.

Some commentators have been swift to say Monday’s U.S. stock bounce shows the bull market is firmly back on track. But, as Aristotle once observed, “one swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day.”

U.S. equity futures haven’t even regained last Thursday’s opening price. The tenuously optimistic spin conveys a sense of desperation from equity longs. Volatility is now much higher than two months ago. This means larger price moves. In both directions.

Risk-averse markets see the most powerful short- term bounces because there’s less liquidity and reduced conviction to stand in the way of momentum.

The fundamental picture hasn’t suddenly brightened from that which formed the backdrop to this column’s bearish call a week ago. If anything, it may have deteriorated:

• Credit spreads have widened further. Volatility moving averages are still trending higher, constantly restricting leverage capabilities and reducing risk appetite
• Financial conditions remain very tight. The rise in Libor slows market makers in closing arbitrage opportunities and further reduces liquidity
• Industrial metals have cleanly broken down, sending a negative signal on the global economy, and China specifically

Trade negotiations might eventually end well, but we won’t know for a few weeks, and it seems ridiculous to say that the situation looks better now than it did before Trump signed off on the latest round of tariffs.

Political risks abound, from the latest escalation in countermeasures against Russia to the fact that it’s increasingly possible we get a ruling coalition of the two populist parties in Italy.

A full trade war may be unlikely, global economic growth may eventually motor on and equity valuations may be long-term attractive. However, it’s impossible right now to have strong conviction in such views.

Equities may make record highs again later this year, but it’s very likely that more pain and panic is seen in the weeks ahead.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2GaMbNc Tyler Durden

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s equivocating response when asked by CNN if he’d acquiesce to lawmakers’ demands that he appear to testify is starting to make a lot more sense.

According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has declined to appear before the UK Parliament to answer questions about allegations of the company’s misuse of customer’s data. Instead, Zuck will send Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer or Chief Product Officer Chris Cox in his stead. They would be “well placed” to answer questions, the company said.

“Facebook fully recognizes the level of public and Parliamentary interest in these issues and support your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative position,” wrote Rebecca Stimson, Facebook’s head of UK public policy, in a statement Tuesday.

“As such Mr Zuckerberg has personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available to give evidence in person to the Committee.”

Stimson added that about 1% of global downloads of the app created by the researcher came from users in the European Union, including the U.K.

Damian Collins, the head of the committee that is also investigating the impact of social media on recent elections, had invited Zuckerberg to answer for a “catastrophic failure of process.”

 

Mark Zuckerberg declines request to appear before U.K. parliamentary committee and @DamianCollins. Recommends his Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer instead. Full letter here: pic.twitter.com/Q6EueSHu8a

— Joe Mayes (@Joe_Mayes) March 27, 2018

 

The committee was not available to comment to Reuters. Meanwhile, Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on the company’s data abuses, is set to testify on Tuesday.

 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2IY6Rpl Tyler Durden

Via GEFIRA,

The speed with which the German population is shrinking seems to be even too much for the statisticians of Destatis, the official German bureau of statistics, who posit that by 2060, with a zero level of net immigration, the German population will have declined to 60,2 million. 

However, our research team has found out that this number is far too optimistic: in 40 years Germany will have a population of 52,6 million people, a considerable 34% drop from the current 81 million inhabitants, and by the end of the century the native German population, the indigenous people without a migration background, will have shrunk even further and be approaching 21,6 million. The explanation that Destatis has mailed us is tantamount to admitting that their projections are unrealistic.

If the German elites succeed in maintaining their population at 80 million, in 2060 the majority of naturalized Germans will have no historical relation to the nation’s ancestors who were once proud subjects of the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, they will stand in the same relation to Albert Schweitzer, Johann Sebastian Bach, Karl Benz and Friedrich Nietzsche as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stands to the Byzantine emperors. The excessive numbers of migrants will have altered the German nation forever.

There will be no relation between future Germans and the German past

By 2050 many of the German historical figures, like Albert Schweitzer mentioned above, will be unmasked as racists and consequently removed from street names and history books and replaced with new heroes, a process that is already taking place in the US and the Netherlands. In the former, monuments to southern generals are under attack, whereas in the latter, migrant parties are pressing for Dutch historical figures to be eradicated from public spaces, streets to be renamed and their most important traditions, which are allegedly not inclusive, oppressive or insulting to national, racial or religious minorities to be prohibited. A country’s history should be about the past deeds of its people, but when people are replaced there is no connection with the past and it may happen that before this century is out, the majority of German citizens will have their cultural roots and their ancestors outside Germany or even outside Europe.

While one may label these predictions as scaremongering, this does not make them unreliable. Demographic forecasts, granting there are no unpredictable changes like outbreaks of epidemics or famine, are remarkably accurate. Consider the comparison of the results obtained by Destatis and us for the zero-migration model.

In Germany, an average woman gives birth to 1.4 children, this is below the replacement fertility level and it has not changed much since the 1970s. This is why the German population began to shrink. The trend has been reversed due to the 1.3 million non EU-immigrants who have arrived in the country since 2015.

Cerberus 2.0 computes the future of the German population

The Gefira team developed Cerberus 2.0, a software program, to calculate how a population grows or declines in the absence of migration. Using only death and birth rates, Cerberus 2.0 can compute what the size of the German society should be without the influx of foreigners and their offspring. The application begins by doing the calculations on the basis of the 1965 census taken from Destatis. We started with the year 1965 because we wanted to measure the German population growth without immigration, and we assumed that in that year there were not that many immigrants. We did not use the official detailed Destatis data for the subsequent years because these included immigrants i.e. the factor we wanted to exclude. While Destatis gives the total numbers of migrants currently living in Germany, Cerberus 2.0 independently computes the development of each age group of the indigenous German population starting with 1965 and ending in 2100, and for all years in between.

We are aware that there are mixed relations and that there are also Germans who have left the country. Because some mixed parents will Germanize their children, while others will do the opposite, we assume that this will not affect our results. Thus, with the aid of Cerberus 2.0 we calculated that if there had been no migration, the German population of 1965 would have been 64,99 million people strong in 2013. This is confirmed by Destatis, which puts the number of Germans without a migration background for the same year at 64.29 million. It shows that our computations are extremely accurate but also that there are hardly any third generation migrants in Germany who are regarded as native Germans.

The Destatis demographic model is a mere fantasy

We also did the calculation for the years 2013-2060, taking the population of 2013 as a starting point, and compared our results with those forecast by Destatis for the same period. According to Destatis, in 2060 the population will be 60.2, while Cerberus 2.0 predicts only 52,6 million inhabitants in Germany. The enormous difference of nearly 8 million between the two forecasts can only be explained by assuming that Destatis is very creative in their demographic forecasting, as we will explain shortly.

For Germany, Cerberus 2.0 processed the death and birth rates provided by Destatis. The demographic data – the percentage of mothers who gave birth, that is the Age-Specific Fertility Rate, and the percentage of people who died – were broken down into age groups. The Age-Specific Fertility Rate for 1965 allowed Cerberus 2.0 to calculate the number of children born in the next year, which is the number of women in a particular age group multiplied by the said rate for the relevant age group. The death rate for the same year was also taken into account. Having calculated the births and deaths, the application increased the ages of each age group by one year to create the entire population of 1966 without the influence of immigration. Then the program began the whole process again to compute the data for the year 1967, the consecutive year, and so on and so forth. For the calculations beyond 2015, Cerberus 2.0 used the age-specific death and fertility rates for 2015.

We then compared the Cerberus 2.0 projections with those of Destatis. Both Destatis and our research team began with the initial population of 2013, which was 81 million, and we both used the same fertility rate of 1.4. Neither took into account the 1.3 million non-Western immigrants that entered Germany after 2014. The obtained results differed significantly: Cerberus 2.0 forecast 52,6 whereas Destatis – 60,2 million inhabitants in Germany in 2060.

Populations grow and shrink due to only four factors; births, deaths, immigration and emigration. The Cerberus 2.0 zero-migration model only uses the death and birth rates, whereas Destatis adds 600.000 young immigrants and removes 600.000 old emigrants every year from its model. That means that every year 600.000 young men and women arrive in Germany, bear children and when those children come of age the parents leave the country like cuckoos, a rather strange assumption. The consequence is that immigrants themselves do not add to the population, but their children do. In the Destatis model the immigration and emigration balance is kept at zero.

How does Destatis arrive at these numbers? In 2014 there were 331 thousand women born. After seven years this same group of women is projected by Destatis to grow to 333 thousand, and after 27 years, in 2041, it is projected to reach a peak of 350 thousand, in other words in 2021 there will be fewer women born than in 2041! How is this possible? Only if immigrant women are included in the statistics.

Since in this model there are as many migrants entering the country as leaving it, the first generation migrants do not add to the total population. However, these migrants have on average 170 thousand children annually. These children enlarge the German population, but Destatis does not regard them as foreigners. Hence, the Destatis zero immigration prognosis is false and yields a far too “rosy” projection for the future of Germany. The response from Destatis on the difference between our findings and theirs is that their projection is formally accurate and the difference is a result of the fact that we assumed a zero migration model – no migration at all, whereas they assumed a balance zero migration model.

Germany, like most of the West, is subjected to mass immigration on an unprecedented scale, and according to the new German government the process will continue for the foreseeable future.

Due to the refugee relocation, the number of the non-EU population increased by 1.3 million between January 2015 and June 2017. The new government has decided that the country should grow by 200 thousand asylum seekers annually. To understand the effect of this policy on German society, one has to compare this number with the number of German newborns. According to Cerberus 2.0, the number of native Germans that are born will decrease from about 450 thousand in 2020 to 315 thousand within the following twenty years. The addition of 200 thousand relatively young asylum seekers year after year, plus their offspring, will alter the German society profoundly within 40 to 60 years and Germany will cease to be a German country.

By the end of the century there will be 22 million Germans left

The 1965 German population will shrink to 37.8 million within the coming forty years, and to 21,6 million by the end of the century. In 2060, the number of indigenous Germans will amount to half of that of East and West Germany combined in 1945. Given the below-replacement birth rates among the indigenous people, the German governments can only keep the current number of inhabitants at 80 million by importing immigrants, thus in the long run, for all practical purposes, replacing indigenous Germans.

The idea that the new arrivals will integrate or assimilate is complete nonsense i.e. the new Germans are not going to be German. The main reason people relocate to Germany is for personal welfare rather than German culture. Immigrants maintain their religion and heritage, form political parties, build religious institutions, have their separate shops and even want to have their own legal system. Given the sheer numbers that are flocking into Germany, there is no way that the Germans can uphold their political structure, language and cultural identity.

It takes a long time for a super tanker to change course. Similarly, demographic changes are not visible until after at least 15 to 30 years. Accepting 1.3 million foreigners within two years and adding 200 thousand non-European migrants annually to the rapidly shrinking German population will already have had a devastating effect on the German population by 2030.

The results of Cerberus 2.0 show us that the discussion about migration is not about accepting and protecting the right of minorities; rather, it is about an existential question, it is about the preservation of the Germans. When the German ruling elites begin to understand their failing policies, it will be too late. There are no examples in history when these kinds of massive changes have ended well.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Gcr1hT Tyler Durden

As it tries to strike an agreement with the US to avert a trade war that economists fear could destabilize global markets, China has an ace up its sleeve that it’s just about ready to play: The Communist Party last year implemented a ban on imports of recyclable material that is provoking a mild panic in the US.

The reason? The US relies on China to “import” much of its bulk recyclable waste. But last July, in an effort to battle the “illegal foreign garbage” influx into China, the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection notified the World Trade Organization that it plans to ban imports of 24 types of solid waste materials, including soda bottles, mixed paper, recycled steel and newsprint.

Despite the threat to implement the ban by the end of the year, the document stated that the “proposed date of adoption” is “to be determined.”

But by moving ahead with the decision, China risks creating serious problems for the global recycling industry, something that would probably have the greatest impact on the US by essentially forcing it to make difficult choices about how it process its solid waste, including – most notably – how and where it is stored.

According to Reuters, which was the first western media outlet to report on the decision, the US Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries said at the time that the ban would devastate an industry that supported 155,000 jobs and had exported scrap worth $5.6 billion to China in 2016.

“China’s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials, directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal,” a US representative told the meeting, according to a trade official in Geneva.

The United States recognized China’s environmental concerns but Beijing’s approach seemed to be having the opposite effect to what was intended, and its rules had changed far too quickly for industry to adjust, the U.S. representative told the meeting.

The US also accused China of violating its obligations under the WTO framework.

China seemed to be breaching its WTO obligations by treating domestic and foreign waste differently and employing an overly trade-restrictive policy, the U.S. official said.

“We request that China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials, which provide a global framework for transparent and environmentally sound trade in recycled commodities.”

Washington’s demand came a day after President Trump ordered the US trade rep to levy tariffs on at least $50 billion of Chinese imports. Although the USTR was given 15 days by Trump to propose a list of Chinese products that would be targeted, China’s commerce ministry had already threatened to take legal action against the US through the WTO. The country is also contemplating targeting 128 American products through an imposition of harsh import tariffs – though earlier today officials from both countries privately confirmed to the Wall Street Journal and other media organizations that a deal could soon be reached.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also made clear that it has the means to fight a potentially devastating trade war with the US but urged Washington to reconsider its aggressive economic policy. Beijing warned that “the American consumers and enterprises will bear the brunt” of a trade war with China.

According to RT, China is by far the biggest importer of US recyclables. Banning US junk imports will have a catastrophic impact on the US labor market and will drive up waste management costs. The Chinese representative at the meeting in Geneva on Friday agreed to relay the US’s concerns to Beijing, though the envoy still noted that, ultimately, individual countries are responsible for their own waste.

“In any given year, approximately one-third of the scrap recycled in the United States is prepared for shipment to the export market, and China is the recycling industry’s largest customer,” ISRI President Robin Wiener told China Daily earlier. “This includes more than $1.9 billion in scrap paper and $495 million in scrap plastics. A ban on imports of scrap commodities into China would be catastrophic to the recycling industry.”

If the world’s No. 2 economy closes off its waste-management market, recycling centers across the US would be faced with a hard choice. They can either hire a much more expensive workforce which would raise prices for their services, require households to sort their own waste, or be forced to use more landfills across all fifty US states.

Of course, there’s a third option: Find new foreign buyers for its bulk waste. But doing so would be incredibly fraught because there’s no single buyer – or even group of buyers – that could adequately make up for China’s heft.

Regardless of what happens, one thing is for certain: While China likely won’t be able to force concessions on major issues like America’s complaints about China’s methods for siphoning off foreign IP, the garbage issue could loom large in the closed-door discussions currently taking place to strike a more equitable trade deal that would appeal both Trump and his factory-town base.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Ga8ken Tyler Durden

Authored by Michael Kern via SafeHaven.com,

Following a meeting of the African Union in Rwanda where 44 countries gathered to sign the African Continental Free Trade Area treaty, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa made a bold suggestion: a single currency for Africa.

Ramaphosa’s suggestion comes as part of a larger push for open borders and a more united continent.

The idea was first floated in 1991, with the formation of the African Economic Committee (AEC), a full 8 years before the euro was introduced to the European Union. The goals of the AEC were clear; free trade in a single market under a central bank. While the idea of a continent under one currency failed to materialize at the time, the need for such a platform is clear.

Currently, there are over 40 different currencies in Africa, and many are struggling to maintain value. The continent has faced countless economic woes, with Zimbabwe being the most notable. In 2008, , Zimbabwe saw its national currency soar to a staggering inflation rate of 89 sextillion percent, leading to a confusing system utilizing South African rand, U.S. dollars, UK pound sterling, Indian rupees, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, and even Zimbabwe’s own attempt at digital currencies, the zollar.

The idea of digital currencies is beginning to take off in Africa, with South Africa leading the charge.

With the downturn of the Rand last year, the country saw a surge of interest in bitcoin. Werner van Rooyen, an executive at Luno, South Africa’s most popular Bitcoin exchange, noted:

“When there is a nosedive in‚ say the exchange rate for the Rand‚ you’ll often notice a downtrend in other industries like the stock market or the housing market. Bitcoin has been found as one of the assets with the lowest correlation to other asset classes.”

While South Africa may be the continent’s crypto-hub, BitMari and Avesta are two payment solutions companies looking to simplify Africa’s currency conundrum. BitMari’s most innovative product is a Pan-African bitcoin wallet, available in multiple languages, including a number of the continent’s indigenous languages, allowing users to connect, transfer money, and send remittances throughout the world. Avesta, on the other hand, is racing to launch the continent’s first crypto-debit card.

President Ramaphosa’s suggestion, however, could take these startups’ ideas to the next level. Though, instead of bitcoin, these transfers could be made with a single African currency.

Ramaphosa has not yet unveiled a plan for the currency, though there is a high probability that it will be digital.

He explained:

“We will begin to interface with the idea and notion of a single currency, possibly even a digital currency, and it’s possible that a digital currency will precede a real single currency because it is easier than having a proper full currency.”

The implications of a single African digital currency are vast. The idea could drastically simply trade both within Africa and on the international level. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are said to allow nations the opportunity to leapfrog into an even economic playing field, Africa is eager to give it a try.

Ramaphosa is optimistic about the possibilities.

“It may take time, it may take years, but it’s interesting that something that we never spoke about in the past, we are now talking about. Because people always had a sense of sovereignty around their own currency, feeling that their currency is about their sovereignty, their nationhood, but people are now thinking beyond the borders of their own nation.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2GdAMId Tyler Durden

By now it is, or should be, well-understood that the biggest deflationary virus at the heart of the European financial system is the ~€1 trillion mountain of bad loans  (of which which over €230 billion is found in Germany and France) and which casts a giant shadow both over Europe and the ECB whose president is well aware that without the central bank’s bid, the liquidity and confidence vortex that is this massive monetary black hole, will promptly drag Europe’s economy back into depression.

Well, as of today one can make it $1 trillion and €10 billion, because in a report published by the European Central Bank today, it announced its inspectors had found “shortcomings and miscalculations” worth more than €10 billion when going through euro zone banks’ loan books last year.

Not surprisingly – after all the stinking pile of bad debt is arguably the biggest threat facing the European financial system once QE and NIRP is over – the ECB’s annual report showed some banks were found to be deficient in the way they identify problem customers and loans, set aside provisions and choose when to grant credit according to Reuters.

In other words “some banks” lied about pretty much everything.

Tasked with avoiding a new financial crisis, the ECB has been putting pressure on banks to clean up their balance sheets from unpaid loans inherited from the last recession, a problem for most countries in the south of Europe, as well as Slovenia and Ireland. Ironically, the ECB’s own monetary policy has removed all urgency to actually clean up balance sheets at a time when European junk bonds yield less than US government paper.

The bad loans, along with risky derivative instruments, will remain the focus of ECB supervisors this year, President Mario Draghi said in the report.

“In 2018 banks continue to face some key challenges,” Draghi said adding that “These include cleaning up their balance sheets, reducing legacy exposures largely originating from the financial crisis, such as certain non-marketable financial products, and from the ensuing Great Recession, such as non-performing loans.“

In short, nearly a decade after the crisis, Europe still has about €1 trillion in bad loans should not be there.

The report shows the ECB’s focus has been mostly on the latter – a cause of griping among Italian banks, which meanwhile have been complaining that risks associated with derivatives held by their competitors in France and Germany have been overlooked.

Recall that as we first disclosed four years ago, Deutsche Bank has tens of trillions of gross derivative exposure on its books.

Not surprisingly, the ECB focused on the bad loan aspect instead of derivatives (knowing which usual suspects could be implicated): the ECB launched 156 inspections in 2017, around 60 of which concentrated on bank credit – in most cases including soured loans. By comparison, market risk, which includes derivatives, accounted for fewer than 10 inspections. These revealed that some banks were failing to classify their derivatives correctly according to how difficult they are to value, and therefore potentially risky.

In other words, while some banks lied about their bad loans, other banks lied about their derivatives. And with that in mind, we look forward to finding out just how the ECB thinks it can gradually or otherwise withdraw its support of the European financial system.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pJ3Kcc Tyler Durden

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Among Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality. The Western print and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its fantasy of “working with Russia’s Western partners.” The only way Russia can work with crooks is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?

Finian Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly) telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time “a dictator.” Yet a real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the president of the United States.

The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning, unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world’s most powerful military nation—and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries—raise the chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century’s Cold War. The insane fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as “exceptional, indispensable” people.

Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?

The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.

This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no longer useful to Washington’s purposes.

The quality of people in Western governments has collapsed to the very bottom of the barrel. The British actually have a person, Boris Johnson, as Foreign Secretary, who is so low-down that a former British ambassador has no compunction in calling him a categorical liar. The British lab Porton Down, contrary to Johnson’s claim, has not identified the agent associated with the attack on Skirpal as a Russian novichok agent. Note also that if the British lab is able to identify a novichok agent, it also has the capability of producing it, a capability that many countries have as the formulas were published years ago in a book.

That the novichok poisoning of Skirpal is an orchestration is obvious. The minute the event occurred the story was ready. With no evidence in hand, the British government and presstitute media were screaming “the Russians did it.” Not content with that, Boris Johnson screamed “Putin did it.” In order to institutionalize fear and hatred of Russia into British consciousness, British school children are being taught that Putin is like Hitler. 

Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment.

Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resemblance to Francisco Franco than to democracy.  The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.

The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the greatest public relations success in history.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pJLsrn Tyler Durden

Last week, China announced that it would retaliate against U.S. tariffs by imposing its own duties on a range of American products including apples, port and steel pipes. Last Thursday, President Trump signed an executive memorandum that could lead to tariffs being imposed on up to $60 billion of Chinese products, a move which is designed to penalize China for alleged intellectual property theft. Beijing responded that it while it does not want a trade war, it is “absolutely not afraid of one”. Late last week, stock markets dropped sharply.

The Trump Administrations’s move to impose tariffs on Chinese imports as well as steel and aluminum imports in general, is a break with long-standing U.S. trade policy. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, hHistorically, previous presidents have been in favor of lower tariffs and the removal of barriers to facilitate trade.

Today, the U.S. applies a weighted average tariff of 1.6 percent on its imports according to the World Bank and this is one of the lowest rates worldwide, equivalent to the EU and similar to Japan.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The World Bank’s tariff rates refer to 2016 and are weighted by product import shares without taking specific trade deals like NAFTA into account.

Although most developed countries have been pushing for lower trade tariffs, they are still very high in some parts of the world.

For example, India imposes weighted average tariffs of 6.3 percent while in China, the rate is 3.5 percent.

African countries have some of the highest rates with Gabon standing out at 16.93 percent.

The Bahamas is the country with the highest weighted-average tariff worldwide at 18.6 percent.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pHYl50 Tyler Durden

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

Enough is enough.

That was the refrain chanted over and over by the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest gun violence in America.

On March 24, 2018, more than 200,000 young people took the time to march on Washington DC and other cities across the country to demand that their concerns about gun violence be heard.

More power to them.

I’m all for activism, especially if it motivates people who have been sitting silently on the sidelines for too long to get up and try to reclaim control over a runaway government.

Curiously, however, although these young activists were vocal in calling for gun control legislation that requires stricter background checks and limits the kinds of weapons being bought and sold by members of the public, they were remarkably silent about the gun violence perpetrated by their own government.

Why is no one taking aim at the U.S. government as the greatest purveyor of violence in American society and around the world?

As journalist Celisa Calacal recognizes, “It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”

Enough is enough.

The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

Violence has become our government’s calling card, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans to the military’s endless wars abroad.

Indeed, the day before thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington DC to protest mass shootings such as the one that took place at Stoneman Douglas High School, President Trump signed into law a colossal $1.3 trillion spending bill that gives the military the biggest boost in spending in more than a decade.

With more than $700 billion earmarked for the military, including $144.3 billion for new military equipment, you can be sure this financial windfall for America’s military empire will be used to expand the police state here at home.

This will put more militarized guns and weapons in the hands of local police and government bureaucrats who have been trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

Enough is enough.

Remember, it was just a few months ago that President Trump, aided and abetted by his trusty Department of Justice henchman Jeff Sessions, rolled back restrictions on the government’s military recycling program to the delight of the nation’s powerful police unions.

Under the auspices of this military “recycling” program, which was instituted decades ago, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies.

There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America’s day-to-day life. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Thanks to Trump, this transformation of America into a battlefield is only going to get worse.

Get ready for more militarized police.

More police shootings. More SWAT team raids.

More violence in a culture already drenched with violence.

Enough is enough.

You want to talk about gun violence?

According to the Washington Post, “1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police.”

Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed by police for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

Enough is enough.

With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

Americans are being shot and killed by police…

For standing in a “shooting stance.”

For holding a cell phone.

For carrying a baseball bat.

For opening the front door.

For running towards police with a metal spoon.

For running while holding a tree branch.

For crawling around naked.

For wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey.

For driving while deaf.

For being homeless.

For brandishing a shoehorn.

For having your car break down on the road.

For holding a garden hose.

For calling 911.

For looking for a parking spot.

This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it’s only getting worse.

That police chose to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”

Enough is enough.

You want to save lives?

Start by doing something to save the lives of your fellow citizens who are being gunned down every day by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

You want to cry about the lives lost during mass shootings?

Cry about the lives lost as a result of the violence being perpetrated by the U.S. government here at home and abroad.

If gun control activists really want the country to reconsider its relationship with guns and violence, then it needs to start with a serious discussion about the role our government has played and continues to play in contributing to the culture of violence.

If the American people are being called on to scale back on their weapons, then as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government and its cohorts – the police, the various government agencies that are now armed to the hilt, the military, the defense contractors, etc. – need to do the same.

It’s time to put an end to the government’s reign of terror.

Enough is enough.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pHoS3k Tyler Durden