Category: zerohedge

Turkey Warns It’s Ready For Military Intervention In Syria, Accuses US Of Creating A “Terrorist Army”

Speaking in an interview with France 24, in which Turkish president Recep Erdogan lashed out at Germany for not allowing him to address the Turkish community there and preventing him from bringing his bodyguards to the upcoming G20 meeting in Hamburg, Erdogan warned that Turkey is ready to intervene militarily in north Syria to repel Syrian Kurdish forces there, forces which recall are armed and supported by the US but are seen as a terrorist organisation by Turkey.

He also said that to avoid military intervention, a de-escalation zone could soon be established by Turkish and Russian troops in the region.

Separately, Turkey’s deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told Reuters on Wednesday that Turkish military preparations in northwest Syria are “legitimate measures against a threat from Kurdish forces in the Afrin region, and Turkey will retaliate against any hostile move.” He added in an interview that “This is not a declaration of war. We are making preparations against potential threats” adding that “It’s … a legitimate measure so that we can protect our independence. We cannot remain silent against those sending missiles from Afrin.”

Kurtulmus was responding to the head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, who told Reuters that Turkish military deployments near Kurdish-held areas of northwestern Syria were a declaration of war which could trigger clashes within days.

“Their (YPG) primary goal is a threat to Turkey, and if Turkey sees a YPG movement in northern Syria that is a threat to it, it will retaliate in kind,” Kurtulmus said.  “This isn’t a fantasy for us…it is an indispensible approach to protect Turkey’s border security.”

The problem stems from Ankara’s consideration of the US-allied YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdish PKK group which has waged an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s. Turkey was angered by a U.S. decision to arm the YPG as it marched with it allies on Raqqa.

Some more details on the latest tactical positioning:

The YPG forms a major part of the U.S.-backed campaign to capture Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa. It also controls a pocket of territory in Afrin, about 200 km (125 miles) west of Raqqa. Tensions between Turkish forces and the YPG have been mounting in the Afrin region in recent weeks.

 

Turkey’s military, which launched an incursion last August into part of northern Syria which lies between Afrin and a larger Kurdish-controlled area further east, has said that it has returned fire against members of YPG militia near Afrin several times in the last few weeks.

Adding to the absurdity of the situation, last month the Turkish defence ministry said that the Pentagon had sought to give assurances that Washington would retrieve weapons provided to the YPG after Islamic State fighters were defeated. Clearly this was a ludicrous assertion and Turkey slammed it as such:

“There has never been an incident where a group in the Middle East has been armed, and they returned the weapons,” Kurtulmus said. The United States “have formed more than a terrorist organisation there, they formed a small-scale army.” 

It will hardly be the first time the US has formed

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Beware The Predictions Of “Experts” Like Janet Yellen

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Speaking in London, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen Tuesday predicted that the “the system is much safer and much sounder” and explained that the Federal Reserve is prepared to deal with numerous enormous shocks to the economy.

In her conversation with Lord Nicholas Stern, Yellen also went on to list the reasons that, thanks to central bank intervention, there is unlikely to be another financial crisis “in our lifetimes.”

For those who have lived through more than one business cycle, however, alarm bells tend to go off every time an economist, central banker or high-ranking government official declares that there’s little to no danger of economic turmoil in the near future.

[ZH: She was not alone…The Bank of England's governor Mark Carney wrote in a letter to The G-20 this week...

“A decade after the start of the global financial crisis, G20 reforms are building a safer, simpler and fairer financial system. The largest banks are considerably stronger, more liquid and more focused.”

“We have fixed the issues that caused the last crisis. They were fundamental and deep-seated, which is why it was such a major job.”

Well, here’s what Carney’s predecessor at the BOE, Mervyn King, said in 2007…

But I think against that it is very important to set a very, very key point here, which is that our banking system is much more resilient than in the past. Precisely because many of these risks are no longer on their balance sheets but have been sold off to people willing and probably more able to bear it.

So much for that.]

*  *  *

There is a long history of spectacularly bad predictions being made shortly before economic crises.

Famously, shortly before the Crash of 1929 — one of the earlier crises that occurred on the Federal Reserve’s watch — Herbert Hoover proclaimed that “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”

But, we certainly don’t have to go back that far.

Indeed, in the late 1990s, it became nearly routine to hear economists announce that “the internet changes everything” and “the business cycle is dead.”

Economist Rudi Dornbusch — a close associate of current Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer — even wrote a July 1998 column in the Wall Street Journal titled “Growth Forever.” Dornbusch concluded that the possibility of an imminent recession “is remote” and the country “will not see a recession for years to come.” So sure of the benefits of the “new economy” was Dornbusch, in fact, that he declared, “This expansion will run forever.”

Then came the dot-com bust of 2001. After that came a short expansion from 2002 to 2007. After that came the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, from 2000 to 2015, according to the federal government’s data, real median household income was flat. Only over the past two years have we seen any of that expansion that many were venturing to say was permanent back in the late 1990s.

Economists and policymakers were no more insightful when examining the possibility of a new crisis post-2007.

In 2005, for example, Milton Friedman could have been paraphrasing Yellen’s Tuesday comments when he concluded that “the stability of the economy is greater than it has ever been in our history. We really are in remarkable shape.” Friedman went on to give Alan Greenspan credit for the expansion.

In early 2007, Ben Bernanke predicted, “We’ll see some strengthening in the economy sometime during the middle of the new year.”

As late of mid-2007, Bernanke was downplaying any problems associated with the sub-prime housing market, allaying any fears of a bubble or bust and claiming, “I don’t know whether prices are exactly where they should be, but I think it’s fair to say that much of what’s happened [i.e, enormous home price growth during the housing bubble] is supported by the strength of the economy.”

If housing bubbles do prove to be a problem, Bernanke concluded, it’s “mostly a localized problem and not something that’s going to affect the national economy.”

The US would officially begin to contract in December 2007, followed by a financial crisis the following autumn.

Even on the eve of the crisis — in September 2008 — John McCain announced that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

A year later, the unemployment rate would reach 10 percent, foreclosure rates were surging and total employment would collapse from 116 million to 107 million. Employment would not return to pre-crisis levels until late 2013.

Millions of workers would need to change careers, be retrained, scratch for other forms of income to avoid foreclosure or eviction and put off retirement indefinitely. The economy was so weak for so long, in fact, that the Fed felt it necessary to keep the key target interest rate near zero for seven years to add “stimulus.”

Of course, just because Janet Yellen says the economy won’t experience a crisis anytime soon doesn’t mean a crisis is imminent. A truly strong economy isn’t going to be “jinxed” by a declaration that things are fine. On the other hand, given the record of eminent economists and Fed board members in the past, Yellen’s predictions are hardly anything that should inspire confidence.

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Qatar Blockade To Continue After Arab States Slam “Negative” Response To Ultimatum

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain released statements following a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, after the latest deadline they had set to Qatar expired on Tuesday night.

The four Arab nations, locked in a diplomatic crisis with Qatar, dismissed Doha’s response to their demands as “not serious” and pledged to continue to keep the Gulf state under political and economic sanctions until it changes its policies. They also “expressed regret with regards to the negative response from Qatar, which showed complacency and non-seriousness to deal with the root of the problem and reconsider their policies and practices.”


Arab Foreign Ministers meet to discuss the diplomatic situation with Qatar, in Cairo, Egypt.

Speaking to reporters, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said that Qatar’s response to the four Arab states’ list of demands, which was passed on via intermediary Kuwait on Monday, was “generally negative” and failed to “lay the foundation for Qatar's reversal of the policies it pursues.”

He added that Qatar’s reply "lacked content", and that it was no "longer possible to tolerate Qatari acts." Shukri also accused Qatar of failing “to realize the gravity of the situation,” according to AP.

Separately, the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al Jubeir says the alliance will weigh more measures against Qatar, and reserves the right to take action when appropriate. He also made it clear that “this is not a response to the Kuwait letter” so something more formal may follow as “consultations are ongoing."  He also said that the Boycott will continue until Qatar changes policy, adding that it was no surprise that Iran is trying to get closer to Qatar, while expressing hopes that Turkey will remain neutral.

In other words, it appears that while nothing firm was decided, “the boycott will continue until Qatar changes policy” according to the Saudi.

The Saudi-led alliances will meet again in Manama, Bahrain to discuss next steps.

Earlier in the day, Qatar's Foreign Minister accused four Arab neighbors of "clear aggression" against his country. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said charges cited by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt in cutting diplomatic and transport links a month ago "were clearly designed to create anti-Qatar sentiment in the west".

"Qatar continues to call for dialogue despite the violation of international laws and regulations, despite the separation of 12,000 families, despite the siege that is a clear aggression and an insult to all international treaties, bodies and jurisdictions," he told a meeting at London's Chatham House think-tank.

Qatar “wasn’t built on oppression, fear, censorship, has an independent view on global and regional events,” the official added. Also, the country successfully “mediated in 10 international portfolios in the course of the last 8 years,” without “interfering in the internal affairs of others.”

Qatar remains “open for dialogue, not an ultimatum,” as the country’s authorities believe that “citizens everywhere should have the right to a government that is responsive to their needs,” and their country, despite not being a democracy, caters to these needs. “That’s why Qatar wasn’t alarmed and threatened by the Arab Spring movement [back in 2011],” the Qatari Foreign Minister said.

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The Two Main Things To Look For In Today’s FOMC Minutes

With less than two hours until the Fed releases the minutes to the June FOMC meeting which may shed some more light on how Fed officials view the simultaneous declines in unemployment and inflation,  there are two key things markets will focus on:

  1. Concern on inflation – As several speakers have sounded less hawkish on prices than Yellen did, a more dovish language on CPI isn’t new news.
  2. Balance sheet timing – Consensus here is for a pause when balance sheet reinvestment policy changes. However, as Citi’s Fraser King writes, there is no specific reason why the Fed would tie themselves to such a schedule, and expects additional clarity from the minutes may clarify.

Indeed, as Stifel’s chief economist LIndsay Piegza writes, “the $4.5 trillion question on everyone’s mind remains when will the Fed start shrinking its balance sheet? Recall, the June rate announcement included details of the expected caps and tiered reduction patterns Fed officials expect to implement, but the timeline for said reduction was not specified.”

As the WSJ adds, launching the balance-sheet plan in September also would afford Chairwoman Janet Yellen an opportunity to initiate it well ahead of any potential leadership transition. Her term as chair expires in February, and President Donald Trump hasn’t indicated whether he would nominate her to a second term or replace her.

While a final decision on the next Fed moves hasn’t been made, officials will have several opportunities in coming weeks to clarify their thinking. The central bank releases minutes of the June meeting on Wednesday, and Ms. Yellen testifies before Congress next week. Officials will also gather in Jackson Hole, Wyo., at the end of August for an annual monetary-policy conference that will provide ample opportunities for them to offer further guidance.

In this context, any dovish aspects that emerge, should be “well understood/priced already” according to Citi which adds that a dip is perhaps possible “if we see concerns on inflation or flat PC – but it should be a dip to fade.” King also likes the Dollar higher against Asia FX and AUD going into the G20 summit this weekend.

Also don’t roget that coming up later in the week we get speeches by Fed Chair Yellen & Fed’s Fischer. On Friday we also get NFPs and AHE. None of these events should be major risk factors but given pricing, a bigger move could result from good data/hawkish language.

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Ex-Goldman HFT Trader Makes Blockchain History Raising $200 Million In Tezos ICO In 4 Days

Who needs IPOs when you have blockchain, and a lot of people willing to throw good money, or rather cryptocurrency, after bad something totally unknown.

Presenting the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for Tezos, a blockchain startup which has tapped a virtually unlimited source of funding, and has raised over $200 million in just four days. Tezos is already the biggest ICO in history and with the sale scheduled to continue for another 8 days, may end up raising over half a billion dollars.

Recently, blockchain startup Block.One hit a record funding, raising around $185 million in the first five days of the crowdsale. Prior to that, another startup, called Bancor, netted nearly $150 million in contributions during the first three hours of its ICO.

What makes Tezos different from a recent surge in similar such offerings, is that this ICO is not based on Ethereum and instead operates on an entirely new blockchain, a “self-amending cryptoledger” that rewards developers who upgrade the network’s protocols and allows for “seamless,” consensual upgrades of those protocols (read the white paper here for more detail). Which, as Mashable points out, makes it a competitor to Ethereum.

Established by a husband and wife team, Tezos is an independent smart contract system built as an alternative to Ethereum. The platform has been under development over the last three years. Arthur Breitman and Kathleen Breitman used their extensive experience to develop the new blockchain solution.  

And here is another striking fact: Arthur Breitman previously worked at the high frequency trading desk at Goldman Sachs and served as an options market maker at Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, Kathleen Breitman is a former management associate at Bridgewater. The startup is focused on “transparency, security and governance by consensus as fundamental design goals.”

The Tezos tokens, Tezzies or XTZs, can be purchased with both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and as of this morning, there is no scarcity of demand: Tezos has already raised 53,575 BTC and 273,838 ETH, for a total of approximately $210 million at current prices. This already makes the Tezos ICO the largest in history (overshadowing the recent Bancor ICO, which raised $153 million). It may also explain the ongoing drop in ETH prices observed in recent days.

Another important point: unlike many recent ICOs, the Tezos ICO is uncapped, meaning there’s no upper limit of funds the company can raise, what is likely to drive a widespread distribution of tokens. Initially the token sale was planned to start in the middle of May, but at the last minute was postponed to June.

The only limit is time, and with approximately 8 days and 14 hours to go, the ultimate amount Tezos will raise will likely be a lot bigger than it is now. 

As Reuters reported in May, Tezos received investment from venture capitalist Tim Draper, which attracted additional interest to the startup. Draper is also going to invest in the US-based Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc, the developer of Tezos. The details of the investment were not disclosed. According to Coinspeaker, Draper first unveiled his desire to take part in Tezos’ token offering in May, thus becoming the first prominent VC investor to participate in an ICO. Some industry players are still concerned about the possible risks of token sales and the lack of regulatory control.

Draper believes that by investing in the startup he will set an example for other investors to embrace this new type of funding. Another well-known American entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, unveiled that he is going to participate in his first ICO.

Of course, the interest may wane in the coming days, and the ultimate amount Tezos will raise depends on the highly volatile Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies. As Stan Schroeder points out, the price of both BTC and ETH has fallen considerably in the last several weeks; if they were anywhere near their all-time highs (which they were around the time of the Bancor ICO), Tezos would already be sitting on more than $250 million. It is unclear if the recent drop in cryptos is linked to the giant ICO.

Another notable similarity between Tezos and Bancor is that both startups are “incredibly ambitious, with intent to change the cryptocurrency landscape forever. Some hot names are on both companies’ teams; for example, venture capitalist Tim Draper has invested in both companies. And both companies have been criticized in the cryptocurrency community for letting their fundraisers collect insane amounts of money.”

Many have already warned about the easy and facility with which ICO can raise funds, and Tezos is no different: it is worrisome to see startups that have barely launched their first finished product raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Tezos (…) do have a solution that could mitigate some of the issues seen with other blockchain tokens through their governance model,” Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare, told Mashable in an emailed statement. But he, like many others, warned that uncapped ICOs are problematic. 

 

“ICO’s which are uncapped are dangerous as they imply and show a complete disregard for corporate discipline – and to an extent an element of disrespect for the investor. The question that needs to be asked is can the job be done with less money (…) and that throws a spotlight on the fairness & truthfulness of the proposition being offered,” he said.

Yet despite growing criticisms, Tezos’ ICO is proof that token crowdsales are still incredibly hot, both for traders looking to earn a quick buck by flipping new tokens and for crypto-related startups looking to get funded. Over-the-roof valuations will make it increasingly hard for these crowdfunded startups to prove their worth, and as Schroeder warns, “it feels like some sort of crash is inevitable, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

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Defining Trump’s 4 Bad Options For Dealing With North Korea

Yesterday, as most Americans were busy celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, North Korea conducted yet another missile test and announced that it was officially “a full-fledged nuclear power that has been possessed of the most powerful inter-continental ballistic rocket capable of hitting any part of the world”. The ICBM  would enable the country to “put an end to the US nuclear war threat and blackmail” and defend the Korean peninsula, it added.

In a statement the North’s Academy of Defense Science, which developed the missile, said it reached an altitude of 2,802 kilometres and flew 933 kilometres, calling it the “final gate to rounding off the state nuclear force”.  In practical terms, unlike previous missile launches, yesterday’s test carried particular significance becuse it was the first time the rogue nation had demonstrated missile technology capable of hitting the continental United States.

North Korea

 

But despite all the tough talk from Trump, as Reuters points out today, his administration has four basic options for dealing with North Korea: diplomacy, sanctions, covert action and military force…unfortunately, they’re all bad options.

Diplomacy:

As Reuters notes, the Obama administration tried to pursue a diplomatic solution in February 2012 but it only took about 2 months for North Korea to violate the terms of the agreement. 

There have been no official negotiations for seven years. In February 2012, the United States and North Korea announced an agreement in which the North would suspend operations of its Yongbyon uranium enrichment plant, allow international inspectors to verify the suspension, and implement moratoriums on nuclear and long-range missile tests.

 

In return, North Korea would get badly needed food aid.

 

In April of that year, the North attempted to launch a satellite on a three-stage rocket, in what Washington said was a violation of the agreement because of the rocket’s potential military uses. While Pyongyang denied it had breached the agreement, the deal was suspended.

Something tells us that Kim Jong Un would only be interested in “negotiating” after he’s developed his ‘big stick,’ which would render those negotiations pointless.

Sanctions:

North Korea is already among the most heavily sanctioned nations, facing numerous strictures to limit its ability to conduct commerce, participate in international finance and trade in weapons and other contraband.  That said, so long as China is unwilling to fully participate in those sanctions they will continue to be ineffective.

 

Covert Action:

Here again, efforts to covertly disable the regime’s nuclear program have failed as a result of North Korea’s “utter secrecy and extreme isolation.”

The United States, with help from Israel, temporarily set back Iran’s nuclear program via a computer virus called Stuxnet, which destroyed thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

 

The United States tried, but failed, to deploy a version of the Stuxnet virus to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in 2009 and 2010, Reuters reported in 2015.

 

One former high-ranking intelligence official briefed on the program said the effort was stymied by North Korea’s utter secrecy and extreme isolation of its communications systems.

 

That same secrecy is responsible for what U.S. officials have consistently described as limited U.S. intelligence about the North Korean government’s inner workings.

Military Force:

Military options available to the Trump administration range from a sea blockade aimed at enforcing sanctions to cruise missile strikes on nuclear and missile facilities to a broader campaign aimed at overthrowing leader Kim Jong Un.

But, as U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently warned, the consequences of any military action would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale” and would likely result in heavy casualties in South Korea and potentially even Japan…risks which Trump himself acknowledged over Twitter yesterday:

The only question now is whether the time for talk and half measures has come to an end?

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” – Winton Churchill

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The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia and The Death of Nazi Germany

 

Every time, I look around this place
I see them screams but I hear no sound
And the terrible things happen down the road
To somebody else that I don’t even know

Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me

-Oingo Boingo

Ain’t normalcy bias swell?

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects, because it causes people to have a bias to believe that things will always function the way things normally function. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare and, on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

 

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since one has never personally experienced a disaster, one never will. It can result in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. They also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation. Normalcy bias is essentially a “desire for the status quo.”

 

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Are you having a hard time waking up some family or friends, or even yourself, to the possibility that you may someday want to get the fuck out of Dodge City?  Are you for some reason unable to travel to the formerly beautiful Damascus, Syria, or Caracas, Venezuela, to see first-hand what it looks like when SHTF?

I might be able to help.    

The next time you have an hour to kill, I highly recommend you use the time to watch the 2009 Vice documentary, The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia.  

You will meet the amazing local priest, General Butt Naked…

You will learn what to expect from the local youth group in a societal collapse…

You will see the how government authority reacts to collapse…

 

Then, follow it up by the reading the excellent book, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, by Thomas Goodrich.  Although I highly recommend reading the book, there is also apparently a related 90 minute documentary video available online, Hellstorm : The Genocide of Germany by the Common Enemy.

 

You will learn of the massive amount of state-sponsored rape and murder of German women in the final days of World War 2.  

 

You will learn what amount of mercy to expect from governments in such situations…

 

If you decide that you want to put together a plan and some resources to bravely run away if the SHTF, then please consider starting with these three ZeroHedge articles.

Peace, liberty, prosperity,

h_h

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Dismal Data Sends Stocks Back To Highs But Bonds Ain’t Buying It

Stocks “v-shaped” recovery off the lows, thanks to a good squeeze in FANG stocks, is blindly ignoring the tuymble in WTI crude, the drop in Treasury yields, and the weakness in USDJPY…

And the bottom hit when the dismal factory orders data hit…

So what happens next?

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Riot Police Use Water Cannons, Tear Gas To Disperse G-20 Protesters

Riot police in Hamburg used water cannons to disperse a large crowd of protesters who had gathered in the city’s parks in anticipation of the G-20 Summit, which will see world leaders – including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – converge on the city for a two-day summit beginning Friday.

Police are cracking down on protesters, many of whom arrived in the city last week and set up camp, Occupy Wall Street-style, in the city’s parks. While pushing protesters out of the camps, police discovered a cache of weapons carried by the far-left and anarchist demonstrators, including throwing knives, telescopic batons, precision catapults and other items that could be used to cause very serious injury to law enforcement or others.

Clashes occurred Tuesday night in the Neuer Pferdemarkt area, where thousands of activists have been rallying throughout the day, according to Russia Today. At least 15,000 police officers from all of Germany’s federal states are being deployed to ensure public security at the G20 summit.

“We have every German special unit available to the summit,” Hamburg’s police president Ralf Meyer said Tuesday.

 

 

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office is responsible for protecting the visiting leaders. Demonstrators who arrived early had been given until the start of this week to dismantle their protest camps around the city. Most refused, prompting police to forcefully disperse them.

Police clarified that protest camps are permitted, but protesters cannot stay in them overnight.

Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to march in the city this week against globalization and what they say is corporate greed and a failure to tackle climate change, according to Reuters. German authorities believe around 8,000 demonstrators were prepared to use violence, the interior minister said on Tuesday. Some 20,000 police officers will be deployed.

 

 

According to Reuters, the Germany army fears protesters will use unarmed drones and that it has deployed a radar to locate any possible aerial intrusions. Earlier Tuesday, protesters dressed as zombies for the "1,000 Figure" march. Video is available below.

 

 

 

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All You Ever Wanted To Know About Brexit In One Giant Chart

As Barclays writes in its fourth update to the Brexit process, the separation of the UK from Europe lies at the center of a maelstrom of risks affecting the United Kingdom. There are now less than two years left to negotiate an agreement with the EU and to prepare for life outside the union. According to the British bank, 65% of its clients think that a disorderly Brexit is more likely than an orderly one. And, as Barclays points out, recently heighted domestic political and economic uncertainty does not help.

The conservative government’s poor performance in the election has cracked open the range of perceived outcomes for the negotiations. And while the economy has defied gravity thus far, this will probably not last according to the UK bank: as wages are not growing as fast as inflation, consumption is expected to slow to a crawl over the coming quarters, pressuring the pound.

But it’s not just economics: “politics, economics, and technical/regulatory challenges all intersect here.” And instead of drowning its readers in pages of narrative, following on Barclays recently published poster guide to the EU-UK negotiations from mid June, the bank presents an even more humongous chartbook poster to help its clients visualize key facts and data in each of these areas.

Enjoy.

h/t Yogi Chan

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