“Autocracy” Vs. “Democracy”: Stunning Before And After Pictures Of Syria’s Largest City

As we documented last autumn in “Syria Showdown: Russia, Iran Rally Forces, US Rearms Rebels As ‘Promised’ Battle For Aleppo Begins,” Syria’s largest city has been among the hardest hit of the country’s urban centers over the course of the last five years.

Newsweek documented the destruction in a series of stark and profoundly indelible images in 2012, perhaps the most striking of which was this:

Recapturing the city is critical to restoring Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power.

If Aleppo is liberated, the rebellion will be all but crushed. The Alawite government would once again control the country’s urban backbone in the west and, more importantly from a big picture perspective, Iran would have scored a major victory in the effort to preserve the Shiite crescent not to mention its supply lines to Hezbollah.

Likewise, a victory at Aleppo would invalidate US claims that Vladimir Putin was destined to get Moscow into a “quagmire” in Syria and the Russians would score a major geopolitical coup by effectively replacing the US as Mid-East superpower puppet master.

As for the Gulf monarchies, the demise of the Sunni insurgency in Syria would be a bitter blow. The effort to roll back Iranian influence would be forever remembered as an abject failure and Tehran would score sectarian bragging rights over Riyadh just as international sanctions are lifted and Iran ramps up crude production.

So important is the battle for the city that Quds commander Qassem Soleimani himself supervised the initial stages of the push north from Latakia before disappearing into thin air in November only to resurface two days ago at a rally celebrating the Islamic Revolution. 

Now that the eyes of the world are on Aleppo which may well go down in history as the site where World War III began, we thought it an opportune time to bring you the following before and after images which depict what life was like in the city under the “brutal dictatorship” of Bashar al-Assad and what life is like now that the US has exported democracy to Syria.

Autocracy:

Democracy:

Autocracy:

Democracy:

Autocracy:

Democracy:

Autocracy:

Democracy:

Autocracy: 

Democracy:

“Yes we can”… destroy the entire Middle East…

h/t: @BBassem7 and @lika__333


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Finally, You Can Sing “Happy Birthday to You” Without Owing Royalties

After 3 years of battling in court, Warner Music and its affiliates that held the rights to “Happy Birthday to You” agreed to return the song to the public domain. Under the tentative settlement, they will drop their claims to future royalties from the copyright and pay $14 million to those who have had to fork over licensing fees to use the song in the past.

Originally recorded in 1893 by Mildred and Patty Hill as “Good Morning to All,” the birthday-themed lyrics of the modern tune were published in 1911. The central dispute in this case was whether and to whom the Hills had transferred the rights to the original tune.

The judge ruled that, since the original copyright on the song expired in 1949 and the Hills’ publisher had never acquired the rights to the lyrics, Warner’s current copyright is not valid. As such, the agreement adds, “All parties believe the song will be in the public domain on the final settlement date.”

In December, Reason TV took a look at another side of copyright law that is particularly important for journalists, filmmakers, and musicians: fair use. Watch below to see how South Park saved this important protector of free speech.

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What Happens Next?

With so much riding on the American "consumer" – given the collapse of the US manufacturing industry and massive mal-investment over-stocking falsely signalled by The Fed's "help" – one wonders just what happens next as the Services economy begins to roll over and the gap between the consumer and industrial America – which has never, in over 30 years, been wider – converges back to a new normal dystopia.

It's different this time…

 

And while Goldman desperately does not want to admit reality, they are forced to… but manage to find a possible silver lining…

The industrial and non-industrial parts of the economy have recently disconnected for only the third time in the past 40 years.

 

The Current Activity Indicator (CAI) represents a real-time proxy of economic activity. Like GDP, the CAI may be sub-divided into components. Industrial and non-industrial measures of activity are usually highly correlated. The gap reflects the collapse in oil prices and drag on industrial activity.

 

The most analogous precedent is 1986 when crude prices dropped by 70% in six months and industrial demand plummeted. However, during that episode the consumer remained healthy and continued to spend, the US avoided a recession, and equities climbed. A similar pattern may occur in 2016.

So now that comparisons with 1998 are thrown out of the window, the last saving grace is whether it is 1986… but we all know what happened after that (as reality once again set in)…


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Sanders To Hillary: “I’m Proud To Say Henry Kissinger Is Not My Friend”

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

He’s a thug, and a crook, and a liar, and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer. Ok? Those things are factually verifiable.

 

Kissinger deserves vigorous prosecution for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.

 

A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

 

– Quotes by Christopher Hitchens

One of the more bizarre memes that continues to be parroted by the establishment media is this idea that Hillary Clinton is so much stronger than Bernie Sanders when it comes to foreign policy. Sure, if your definition of “strength” consists of cheerleading for the cataclysmic Iraq War and propagating a series of war crimes and international fiascos as Secretary of State, then I suppose that’s true.

For some of Henry Kissinger’s greatest genocidal hits, I turn to a fantastic article published in the Nation last week titled, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace:

In the New Hampshire debate, Clinton thought to close her argument that she is the true progressive with this: “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”

 

Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the US’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissinger’s Shadow!

 

A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger.

 

Radicalization of Iran?  “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf?  Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.

 

And yet Clinton continues to call his name, hoping his light bathes her in wisdom.

Seizing upon her willingness to associate and brag about a cordial working relationship with a notorious war criminal, Bernie Sanders had the following to say in this week’s debate.

No surprise there. Sociopathic, violent war criminals tend to stick together.

Of course, let’s never forget what Google search told us about the two candidates…

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 11.53.01 AM


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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Found Dead At West Texas Ranch

Moments ago the judicial world was hit with what is the most significant news since the passage of Obamacare, when the San Antonio Express first reported that one of the more, if not most, conservative Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia, was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said. Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

According to the initial report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body. Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said he was among those notified about Scalia’s death.

“I was told it was this morning,” Biery said of Scalia’s death. “It happened on a ranch out near Marfa. As far as the details, I think it’s pretty vague right now as to how,” he said. “My reaction is it’s very unfortunate. It’s unfortunate with any death, and politically in the presidential cycle we’re in, my educated guess is nothing will happen before the next president is elected.”

A federal official who asked not to be named said there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.

According to CNN, Scalia died in his sleep. A government official said Scalia went to bed Friday night and told friends he wasn’t feeling well. Saturday morning, he didn’t get up for breakfast. And the group he was with for a hunting trip left without him. Someone at the ranch went in to check on him and found him unresponsive.

The U.S. Marshal Service, the Presidio County sheriff and the FBI were involved in the investigation. Officials with the law enforcement agencies declined to comment.

A gray Cadillac hearse pulled into the ranch last Saturday afternoon. The hearse came from Alpine Memorial Funeral Home.

Texas governor Abbott confirmed the news:

Scalia was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, one of two Supreme Court justices appointed the republican president. The image below shows why a supreme court justice may be as important as a standng US president :

With Scalia’s passage, SCOTUS will have 8 justices, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, divided evenly into ideological camps. This is important because when the Court divides 4-4 the lower court opinion is affirmed without creating any Supreme Court precedent.

More importantly, this means that Obama will now attempt to fast-track the appointment of another supreme court justice, although it is unlikely the GOP controlled Senate will approve it. The longest vacancy in Supreme Court history was 29 months when the Senate kept rejecting President Tyler’s choices.

Replacing Scalia with a liberal justice could change the balance of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts.  If a new justice is not confirmed under Obama, this is something both parties are likely to trumpet as the 2016 contest continues.

Initial indications suggest that the GOP will bottleneck any Obama appointment: as Conn Carroll, top staffer for Mike Lee, a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee,just tweeted, Obama’s chances to appoint a third Supreme Court justice are not looking good.

 

As the Hill adds, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement calling the conservative justice an “unwavering defender” of the Constitution.

“He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution,” Abbot wrote. “His fierce loyalty to the Constitution set an unmatched example, not just for judges and lawyers, but for all Americans.

Scalia, born in Trenton, N.J. and raised in Queens, N.Y., was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 after serving on the D.C. Circuit Court.  

The judge was a proponent of “originalism,” the legal philosophy that held that the meaning of the Constitution should be interpreted as it was first written and not subject to contemporary views.

Scalia was also known for the colorful opinions he issued. In a dissent in King v. Burwell, the landmark healthcare case that upheld the Affordable Care Act, he referred to the majority’s reasoning as “pure applesauce” and “jiggery-pokery.”


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Justice Antonin Scalia Dead at 79

Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was found dead today of apparent natural causes. He was 79 years old.

Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, Scalia was an outspoken and highly respected judicial conservative. To say the very least, Scalia had a massive influence on American law. Among his many contributions, Scalia was an early champion of the legal philosophy known as “originalism,” which says that the Constitution must be interpreted according to its original meaning at the time it was enacted. Today originalism is one of the primary legal philosophies jostling for dominance at the high court, a situation that was practically unimaginable several decades ago. Scalia played an indispensable role in making that possible.

I certainly had my share of disagreements with Justice Scalia over the years. In my recent book Overruled, for example, I extensively criticized Scalia for his refusal to seriously engage with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment in the landmark gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago. But at the same time, I have always had great respect for Scalia’s keen legal mind and acerbic wit. And I’m hardly unusual in that regard. Scalia was overwhelmingly respected by his intellectual opponents. In 2008, for instance, presidential hopeful Barack Obama praised Scalia for his “intellectual brilliance.” Likewise, Scalia’s close friendship with liberal legal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg is well known.

Whether you agreed with him or not, Antonin Scalia was a brilliant legal thinker who always earned your respect.

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 79, Is Dead

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.

More here.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has released a statement confirming the death:

Abbott said Scalia’s “loyalty to the Constitution” set an example for Americans.

“His fierce loyalty to the Constitution set an unmatched example, not just for judges and lawyers, but for all Americans,” Abbott’s statement continued. “We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we will keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”

Reason has written tons about Scalia over the years. Read all that here.

Damon Root, among others, noted that during the course of his tenure on the Supreme Court, Scalia became increasingly results-oriented and on the conservative side of a split between libertarians and conservatives. Indeed, Scalia increasingly accused judges of engaging in “activism” if and when they ruled in ways that narrowed a legislative body’s ability to curtail individual rights. As Root wrote in 2013 while commenting on Scalia’s dissent in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case:

If the overriding theme of Kennedy’s DOMA opinion is the protection of liberty, the theme of Scalia’s dissent is respect for majority rule. “The Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms,” he wrote, citing his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the case where he voted to allow states to criminalize homosexual conduct. As for placing restrictions on the recognition of gay marriage, “We might have let the People decide.”

It’s a familiar conservative legal argument, drawn from the same philosophy of judicial deference to the will of the majority that has motivated many other thinkers on the right, including Robert Bork, who famously ranked majority rule higher than individual rights in his conception of the American system. “In wide areas of life,” Bork wrote in his bestselling book The Tempting of America, “majorities are entitled to rule, if they wish, simply because they are majorities.”

Bork’s majoritarian approach prompted a response back in 1986 by the libertarian political scientist Stephen Macedo that I have long considered to be a definitive nutshell summary of the difference between conservative and libertarian legal thinking. As Macedo put it, “When conservatives like Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers, they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights.”

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Liberal Media Darling John Kasich Is an Interventionist Nightmare

"“We have to go massively, like we did in the first Gulf War" = HANDS OF DEATH. ||| DEADHAND329Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is trying to leverage his second-place finish in the New Hampshire Republican primary to a nationally viable presidential candidacy, has one thing his competitors lack: a fistful of newspaper endorsements.

The New York Times called Kasich “the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race.” The Boston Globe contrasted Kasich with “the divisive, demagogic candidates running on nativism and other political simplicities,” and suggested that he might well become the “leader of the party’s reality-based wing.” More in that vein from The Keene Sentinel, Quad-City Times, and Concord Monitor, the latter of which adds—with more hope than evidence—that, “On national security, Kasich is more alliance-builder than hawk.”

So about that. At the Feb. 6 debate in Manchester, NH, moderator Martha Raddatz pointed out that North Korea had reportedly just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, and then she asked a series of candidates whether they would “destroy that missile pre-emptively on the launch pad.” Eventually Raddatz came to the Ohioan: “Governor Kasich, how would you respond to tonight’s launch?”

“Well, we’ve got to step up the pressure,” the governor said. “We have to make sure that we intercept both the ships and their aircraft.” While falling short of pre-emptively bombing a country within its borders, the former House Armed Services Committee member did say he would encourage Japan to do that particular dirty work for us if they so choose. Also, militarily intercepting ships and aircraft against their will is often considered by owners of said vessels as an act of war. But such is the price of the Kasich Doctrine. “We cannot,” he concluded, “continue to be weak in the face of the North Koreans, or, frankly, in the entire rest of the world.”

For instance, Iran. At the Jan. 28 debate in Des Moines, Kasich volunteered the possibility of pre-emptive war against the Mullahs. “If we find out they’re developing a nuclear weapon and we know how to get to it, we’re going to go take it out,” he declared. “That is what we have to do. We cannot let things get farther down the road, like we did with North Korea.”

Kasich has been saying for a year now that the United States needs another major land war in the Middle East, to wipe out ISIS. “We have to go massively, like we did in the first Gulf War where we destroyed Saddam’s ability to take Kuwait,” he said at the Dec. 15 debate in Las Vegas. “We need to have a coalition that will stand for nothing less than the total destruction of ISIS and we have to be the leader. We can’t wait for anybody else.”

As for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, well, he “has to go,” Kasich says. “We need to support the opposition in Syria, remove al-Assad,” he told NPR in November. Obviously, that requires enforcing a no-fly zone in Syrian airspace, which even National Review writers acknowledge may well lead to a mild shooting war with Russia. Though that may be the point: “Frankly, it’s time that we punched the Russians in the nose,” Kasich said in Vegas.

So why are all these newspapers portraying a candidate with such a bellicose foreign policy as a reality-based “moderate”? Most every endorsement cites Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid in Ohio, over the objections of national conservative activists. This has roughly squat to do with what the next president of the United States will face. Meanwhile foreign policy, and particularly the waging of war, will continue to be the area where commanders in chief arguably have the most latitude. As with John McCain in 2008, editorial boards are confusing inconsistently applied moderation (read: sporadic departures from standard-fare Republican positions and anti-Democratic rhetoric) with an actually even-keel approach to the most important part of his prospective job.

John Kasich wants the feds in your cell phone, and without you knowing about it. He thinks one key in winning the long war against Islamic terrorists is propagandizing in favor of “Judeo-Christian Western values.” He wants to ban Syrian refugees from entering the United States, punish countries who “dump product in this country,” and thinks failed banks should be bailed out. He is terrible and incoherent about the failed drug war, has active anger-management issues, and once tried to convert his hatred of the movie Fargo into action against Blockbuster. All of which will be held against him if and when political journalists start looking any deeper than he’s-not-as-crazy-sounding-as-those-other-guys.

But the crazy has been right there all along in this campaign, particularly on foreign policy. After the jump, read one of the single most spectacularly incoherent word-salads in this entire presidential campaign, from the Nov. 10 debate in Milwaukee:

GERARD BAKER: I want to ask you about China. In particular, hundreds of American companies have been subjected to cyberattacks from the Chinese military, yet state-backed Chinese companies, growing their presence in the United States, Chinese investments in U.S., which were nearly nonexistent a few years ago, are now over $50 billion. And as my newspaper recently reported, Chinese companies are planning to bid for one of the largest hotel chains in the United States, what would be the largest ever Chinese takeover of a U.S. company. Would you stop them?

KASICH: Let me tell you this, Mr. Baker, in terms of the cyberattacks, we have the capability to not only have a defensive posture, but it also to make it clear to people that if you attack us with cyberattacks, we will destroy the mechanisms that you are using to attack us.

I want to give you a little trip around the world. I served on the Defense Committee for 18 years. In the Ukraine, arm the people there so they can fight for themselves. In the eastern part of Europe, make sure that Finland and the Baltics know that if the Russians move, we move. In Syria, yes, a no-fly zone in the north on the Turkish border, a no-fly zone on the south on the Jordanian border. Anybody flies in the first time, maybe they can fly out. They fly in there a second time, they will not fly out. And it also becomes a sanctuary for the people to be. And it also sends many messages in the Middle East that we’re still involved.

Saudi Arabia, cut off the funding for the radical clerics, the ones that preach against us. But they’re fundamentally our friends. Jordan, we want the king to reign for 1,000 years. Egypt, they have been our ally and a moderating force in the Middle East throughout their history. In the groups—in the countries of the Gulf states of Bahrain, the Cleveland Clinic is opening an operation. Clearly we see the same with them. And in Israel, we have no better ally in the world, and no more criticizing them in public, we should support them.

And finally China. China doesn’t own the South China Sea, and I give the president some credit for being able to move a naval force in there to let the Chinese know that we’re not going to put up with it any more. And in the trade agreement, the TPP, it’s critical to us, not only for economic reasons and for jobs, because there are so many people who are connected to getting jobs because of trade, but it allows us to create not only economy alliances, but also potentially strategic alliances against the Chinese. They are not our enemy, but they are certainly not our friend.

And finally, I will say to everyone in this room, we have been talking about taxes and economics. When the fall comes, and we run against Hillary, which will be a disaster if she got elected. I have two 16-year-old girls, and I want this country to be strong. We make promises we can’t keep under the bright light of the fall, we will have trouble. We must make sure that economic programs and our military programs are solid.

I served in Washington as the chairman of the Budget Committee, and we got the budget balanced. And in Ohio, as the CEO, and guess what, we have got to have a CEO mentality and a way to beat Hillary Clinton and the Democracies in the fall. And our ideas have to add up. They have to be solid. And people have to know we have the confidence to lead America.

And as president, I will lead this country, as I have before in Washington and in Ohio, and will return both on domestic and international affairs.

Enjoy your rational moderate, editorial boards!

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This Is Wall Street At Its Most Fatalistic: “Markets Are Now Coupled In A “Destructive” Way”

The text that follows may be the best summary of what has happened on Wall Street – both forensically and philosophical – over the past 7 years, explaining how central banks broke the “market”, and why traders, investors, regulators, policy makers, and everyone else suddenly has no idea either what is going on or what to do next. Not surprisingly, it comes from Deutsche Bank, which this week has been staring at the corpe of Lehman Brothers and wondering if it is next…

From DB’s Aleksandar Kocic

Asphyxiation — code orange?

We believe for the past few weeks we’ve been experiencing an accelerated reaction to a policy mix that caused a general shift in perception of risk from isolated idiosyncratic flare-ups to pseudo systemic. The mix is defined by seven years of unprecedented liquidity injection with low rates and record low volatility on one side, and bank regulation with diminished capacity of the market to extend liquidity on the other.

The first effect alone has three major consequences. Low rates had been making UST investments unattractive (expensive). So, investors sought yield elsewhere. This is where low volatility played the role. Portfolio managers adjust their position on the mean-variance frontier by matching their risk limits to a particular return. Extinguishing volatility pushes them towards riskier assets without a need to change their risk limits. This was ok as long as volatility remained low. Instead of investing in UST, duration players moved across the credit line into IG, HY, etc., which offered higher yield and superior carry. In these markets carry becomes the main theme and everyone who refuses to play that game is punished by high negative carry. This was stimulating for risk, and risk assets outperformed in low rates and low volatility environment. Correlations between risk assets and yields changed sign, but nobody complained because both stocks and bonds rallied.

Negative carry of any contrarian position was punitive which resulted in massive one-sided positioning. The problems began with the start of stimulus unwind as all of its underlying aspects began to reinforce each other and regulatory environment amplifies their effect.

There is a huge overweight in relatively illiquid assets. While positioning grew, regulation has significantly diminished dealers’ capacity to absorb those unwinds, which would have been difficult even without the regulatory restrictions. Volatility is on the rise and even those positions that used to look a safe are appearing increasingly risky forcing additional need for their unwind. So, with reduced of liquidity, investors have to get out of healthy, well-performing/non-problematic assets in order to cover MTM losses and possible costs of redemptions. The legacy of 2015 which was a difficult year with massive wave of redemptions only exacerbated the situations resulting in low tolerance for risk, while failure of large class of standard economic models and loss of forecasting power resulted in low confidence across the board.

The effects of policy unwind and liquidity dislocations are accelerated by the currency play in Asia. While alone this creates a problem, rate hikes and a strong USD makes it more difficult for the EM measures to be effective and creates another reinforcing loop. Problems in any market sector have a potential to create contagion.

The markets are not insulated from each other but are coupled in a “destructive” way, a mirror image of QE dynamics. Risks are becoming unpinpointable. Problems are global while politics remains inherently local allowing the existing trends to remain unchecked and self-reinforce. Any action causes further problems, which creates a quicksand effect — everyone is both a victim and an accomplice.


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Socialism & The Battle Of Ideas

Authored by Ludwig von Mises via The Mises Institute,

[This article is excerpted from Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis]

It is a mistake to think that the lack of success of experiments in Socialism that have been made can help to overcome Socialism. Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

The man who clings to Socialism will continue to ascribe all the world's evil to private property and to expect salvation from Socialism. Socialists ascribe the failures of Russian Bolshevism to every circumstance except the inadequacy of the system. From the socialist point of view, Capitalism alone is responsible for all the misery the world has had to endure in recent years. Socialists see only what they want to see and are blind to anything that might contradict their theory.

Only ideas can overcome ideas and it is only the ideas of Capitalism and of [Classical] Liberalism that can overcome Socialism. Only by a battle of ideas can a decision be reached.

Liberalism and Capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.

Even with those of intellectually higher standing, with the few capable of independent reflection, this seems to give Socialism an advantage. With the others, the great masses who are unable to think, the Socialist position is considered unshakable. A speaker who inflames the passions of the masses is supposed to have a better chance of success than one who appeals to their reason. Thus the prospects of Liberalism in the fight with Socialism are accounted very poor.

This pessimistic point of view is completely mistaken in its estimate of the influence which rational and quiet reflection can exercise on the masses. It also exaggerates enormously the importance of the part played by the masses, and consequently mass-psychological elements, in creating and forming the predominant ideas of an epoch.

It is true that the masses do not think. But just for this reason they follow those who do think. The intellectual guidance of humanity belongs to the very few who think for themselves. At first they influence the circle of those capable of grasping and understanding what others have thought; through these intermediaries their ideas reach the masses and there condense themselves into the public opinion of the time. Socialism has not become the ruling idea of our period because the masses first thought out the idea of the socialization of the means of production and then transmitted it to the intellectually higher classes. Even the materialistic conception of history, haunted as it is by "the psyche of the people" as conceived by Romanticism and the historical school of jurisprudence does not risk such an assertion. Of itself the mass psyche has never produced anything but mass crime, devastation, and destruction. Admittedly the idea of Socialism is also in its effects nothing more than destruction, but it is nevertheless an idea. It had to be thought out, and this could only be the work of individual thinkers. Like every other great thought, it has penetrated to the masses only through the intellectual middle class. Neither the people nor the masses were the first socialists. Even today they are agrarian socialist and syndicalist rather than socialist.

The first socialists were the intellectuals; they and not the masses are the backbone of Socialism. The power of Socialism too, is like any other power ultimately spiritual; and it finds its support in ideas proceeding from the intellectual leaders, who give them to the people. If the intelligentsia abandoned Socialism its power would end. In the long run the masses cannot withstand the ideas of the leaders. True, individual demagogues may be ready, for the sake of a career and against their better knowledge, to instil into the people ideas which flatter their baser instincts and which are therefore sure to be well received. But in the end, prophets who in their heart know themselves to be false cannot prevail against those filled with the power of sincere conviction. Nothing can corrupt ideas. Neither by money nor by other rewards can one hire men for the fight against ideas.

Human society is an issue of the mind. Social co-operation must first be conceived, then willed, then realized in action. It is ideas that make history, not the "material productive forces," those nebulous and mystical schemata of the materialist conception of history. If we could overcome the idea of Socialism, if humanity could be brought to recognize the social necessity of private ownership in the means of production, then Socialism would have to leave the stage. That is the only thing that counts.

The victory of the socialist idea over the Liberal idea has only come about through the displacement of the social attitude, which has regard to the social function of the single institution and the total effect of the whole social apparatus, by an anti-social attitude, which considers the individual parts of the social mechanism as detached units. Socialism sees the individuals–the hungry, the unemployed, and the rich—and finds fault on that account; Liberalism never forgets the whole and the interdependence of every phenomenon. It knows well enough that private ownership in the means of production is not able to transform the world into a paradise; it has never tried to establish anything beyond the simple fact that the socialist order of society is unrealizable, and therefore less able than Capitalism to promote the well-being of all.

No one has understood Liberalism less than those who have joined its ranks during the recent decades. They have felt themselves obliged to fight excrescences of Capitalism, thereby taking over without a qualm the characteristic anti-social attitude of the socialists. A social order has no excrescences which can be cut off at will. If a phenomenon results inevitably from a social system based on private ownership in the means of production, no ethical or aesthetic caprice can condemn it. Speculation, for example, which is inherent in all economic action, in a socialistic society as well as any other, cannot be condemned for the form it takes under Capitalism merely because the censor of morals mistakes its social function. Nor have these disciples of Liberalism been any more fortunate in their criticisms of Socialism. They have constantly declared that Socialism is a beautiful and noble ideal towards which one ought to strive were it realizable, but that, alas, it could not be so, because it presupposed human beings more perfect morally than those with whom we have to deal. It is difficult to see how people can decide that Socialism is in any way better than Capitalism unless they can maintain that it functions better as a social system. With the same justification it might be said that a machine constructed on the basis of perpetual motion would be better than one worked according to the given laws of mechanics—if only it could be made to function reliably. If the concept of Socialism contains an error which prevents that system from doing what it is supposed to do, then Socialism cannot be compared with the Capitalist system, for this has proved itself workable. Neither can it be called nobler, more beautiful or more just.

It is true, Socialism cannot be realized, but it is not because it calls for sublime and altruistic beings. One of the things this book set out to prove was that the socialist commonwealth lacks above all one quality which is indispensable for every economic system which does not live from hand to mouth but works with indirect and roundabout methods of production: that is the ability to calculate, and therefore to proceed rationally. Once this has been generally recognized, all socialist ideas must vanish from the minds of reasonable human beings.

How untenable is the opinion that Socialism must come because social evolution necessarily leads to it, has been shown in earlier sections of this book. The world inclines to Socialism because the great majority of people want it. They want it because they believe that Socialism will guarantee a higher standard of welfare. The loss of this conviction would signify the end of Socialism.


via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1QekA6j Tyler Durden