Steve Bull's Blog, page 1162
March 16, 2018
Russia Blamed For Attacks On US Power Grid Starting In 2016
The Trump administration has blamed the Russian government for a series of cyber attacks targeting American and European nuclear power plants and other critical utilities dating back at least two years – raising fears that the Kremlin could disrupt the West’s critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict.
The hackers also targeted the overall energy sector, along with commercial facilities, aviation, manufacturing and the water supply, according to a U.S. security alert published Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI said in the alert that a “multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors” had targeted the networks of small commercial facilities “where they staged malware, conducted spear phishing, and gained remote access into energy sector networks.” The alert did not name facilities or companies targeted. –Reuters
The report says that Russians used various hacking techniques, including spear-phishing emails, watering-hole domains, credential gathering and open-source and network reconnaissance.
Russian hackers made their way to machines with access to critical control systems at power plants that were not identified. The hackers never went so far as to sabotage or shut down the computer systems that guide the operations of the plants.
Still, new computer screenshots released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday made clear that Russian state hackers had the foothold they would have needed to manipulate or shut down power plants. –NYT
“We now have evidence they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage,” said Eric Chien, a security technology director at Symantec, who added “From what we can see, they were there. They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation.”
The New York Times notes that “American officials and security firms, including Symantec and CrowdStrike, believe that Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016 that left more than 200,000 citizens there in the dark are an ominous sign of what the Russian cyberstrikes may portend in the United States and Europe in the event of escalating hostilities.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
March 15, 2018
Was Russian Spy Poisoned To Avert Brexit?
In July 2003, Dr. David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who disclosed to the media that Tony Blair’s government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up,” was found dead in a public park a mile away from his home.
The inquiry into his death concluded Kelly had committed suicide by slitting his left wrist but the mystery surrounding his death has remained unresolved to date, though the obvious beneficiary of his propitious “suicide” was the British intelligence itself.
More recently, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4.
Eight days later, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in his London home and the cause of his death has not been ascertained yet.
In the case of Skripal, Theresa May promptly accused Kremlin of attempted assassination.
There are a couple of caveats, however.
Firstly, though Skripal was a double agent working for MI6, he was released in a spy swap deal in 2010. Had he been a person of importance, Kremlin would not have released him and let him settle in the UK in the first place.
Secondly, British government has concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, novichok.
A question naturally arises – why would Kremlin leave a smoking gun evidence behind that would lead prosecutors straight to Moscow when their assassins could have used a gun or a knife to accomplish the task?
Leaving mainstream media’s conspiracy theories aside, these assassination attempts should be viewed in the wider backdrop of the Brexit debate.
Both NATO and European Union were conceived during the Cold War to offset the influence of former Soviet Union in Europe. It is not a coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that consolidated the European Community and laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992.
The basic purpose of the EU has been nothing more than to lure the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of agreements to abolish internal border checks between the EU member states, thus allowing the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s Just Starting: Moody’s Warns A Deluge Of Retail Bankruptcies Is Coming
2017 was a perfect storm for “brick and mortar” retailers who officially lost the war with Amazon, and no less than 30 retail chains filed for bankruptcy in a year in which the CEO of Urban Outfitters said the “retail bubble has now burst“…
Source: Reorg First Day… bringing the total number of Chapter 11 cases since mid-2015 to 50, accounting for over $20 billion in liabilities.
So is the worst over for retail, or is the sector just now approaching the eye of the hurricane?
According to the latest Moody’s research report on the retail sector, the rating agency now forecasts at least six retail & apparel issuers defaulting over the next 12 months, with most of these occurring in the first half of the year.
While the good news is that the industry default rate is expected to peak at 12.43% this March, Moody’s cautions that the still-high default forecast for the remainder of 2018 points to more pain before this lower ratings rung in retail stabilizes. Recent defaulters include Tops Markets, which filed for Chapter 11 on February 21, which followed Bon-Ton’s filing on February 4. Charlotte Russe and Charming Charlie both defaulted in December, and Claire’s has hired restructuring advisors.
Meanwhile, the Toys “R” Us bankruptcy in September its overnight Chapter 7 liquidation has only added to pressures by accentuating potential pressures between vendors and the more stressed retailers, even as it left some 33,000 employees without a job.
The problem is that it only gets worse from there, and the rating agency expects upcoming maturities for distressed issuers will spike in 2019. Defaults are growing as many struggle with high leverage and challenged operating performance. These challenges are compounded by the biggest risk – mounting maturities – which spike in 2019. Overall, issuers in the Caa1 and lower group face $14.9 billion in public and private maturities due 2018 through 2020 as shown in Exhibit 1. The lion’s share of these maturities (Exhibit 2) is attributable to just five issuers:
Sears Holdings Corp. (Ca negative),
Neiman Marcus Group LTD LLC (Caa2 negative)
Claire’s Stores, Inc. (Ca negative),
BI-LO Holding Finance (Caa1)
Guitar Center Inc. (Caa1 negative).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Neocon Full Court Press For War is Here
The events of the past two weeks have been stunning. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled new ‘doomsday’ weapon systems at his State of the Union address, the West has gone completely bonkers.
In the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, ““I simply don’t have any normal terms left to describe all this,”
With the U.K. expelling Russian diplomats over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last week, the push to isolate Russia and create conditions for a World War is here.
The questions are Who is behind this? And Why?
Theresa May’s response is a joke. This is a woman who can’t stand up to EU shakedown artists over the mildest of disagreements in Brexit talks but can grandstand to high heaven over an incident with no evidence of Russian action.
This situation is straight out of the neoconservative play book, creating a horrific incident and rushing a government into a confrontation and major policy decision.
And these are happening all over the world right now.
Covering Fire
If you look at the circumstances of Skripal’s associations in light of the collapsing Russia-Gate story in the U.S., the Who? becomes obvious. As Moon of Alabama first pointed out, Skripal was an associate of both Pablo Miller and Christopher Steele, both former MI-6 agents working for Orbis Business Intelligence.
What motive would the Russians have for taking out Skripal in such a sloppy manner on the eve of Presidential elections?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Venezuela’s 4,000% Hyperinflation ‘Breaks’ Cash-Weighing Scales
Mired in a brutal economic collapse, Venezuela refuses to publish basic statistics.
So Bloomberg created their own gauge to measure one of the most important of all the missing figures – inflation (or hyperinflation in this case).
Bloomberg explains that, as the name would suggest, it tracks just one item: a cup of coffee served piping hot at a bakery in eastern Caracas. Its price has jumped to 75,000 bolivars from 1,800 bolivars over the past 12 months, an increase of 4,067%.
As we noted previously, the printing press simply cannot save the country from a death spiral, but it doesn’t mean Maduro is prepared to let go of power. He has maintained that Venezuela’s problems are due to economic warfare being waged by the United States to topple the oil-rich socialist regime.
Bremmer Rodrigues, who runs a bakery on the outskirts of Caracas, said his family are at a loss over what to do with their bags of bills. “It’s a mountain of cash, every day more and more.”
…
The shrinking value of the currency has meant that withdrawing the equivalent of $5 from an ATM produces brickloads of bills. Some ATMs now need to be refilled every few hours, because the machines can only hold so much cash. This means there are often a limited number of functioning ATMs in Caracas, and long queues to withdraw money.
But the wheelbarrows-full of bills have meant paying for everyday groceries has changed in the socialist utopia.
Having thrown in the towel on hyperinflation by printing banknotes with 200-times-higher denominations, we noted previously that things in Venezuela have continued to get worse with the currency now so devalued (with even simple purchases requiring so many bills) that instead of counting bills, they are weighing them.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Illusion of Free Trade
The current trading system was never free; Trump’s tariffs merely change who gets what
Container ships are docked in the Port of Oakland in this file photo. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Anything President Donald Trump does usually provokes a backlash from the status quo. In early March, the focus is on trade, as Trump walked the walk and slapped import tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar panels not just from China but also other countries.
The backlash from popular media and the affected countries’ politicians blames Trump for ruining the beautiful “free trade” system built up around the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
As with anything Trump says or does, it’s important to step back and look at the bigger context he’s acting within.
Not Free
The first big-picture news flash is that neither the WTO nor the GATT was “free.” Free trade is trade without government intervention.
One country or industry may produce and export a lot of steel, but if it doesn’t get any subsidies and doesn’t have protective import tariffs, then it deserves to capture global market share because it’s the most competitive. It uses the locally given resources of labor and capital in the most productive way.
Another country may be the best in producing solar panels, making it the world leader in solar panels. The two countries can swap steel and solar panels and balance their trade, with each country doing what it does best.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
9/11: Israel Didn’t Do It; The Plan Was Co-Led by U.S. & Saud Governments
To judge by articles and reader-comments about 9/11, many Americans who think that the 9/11 attacks weren’t done by the Sauds working in conjunction with the U.S. Government, think that those attacks were done by Israel’s Government working in conjunction with America’s Government. I wrote the only critical analysis of the main ‘evidence’ that is cited for the Israel-did-it argument, and found the argument to be based on false timelines and misrepresentations of what was in the FBI files.
The U.S. Government blames Iran for 9/11. But that hypothesis is even more ridiculous than is the Israel-did-it hypothesis. Clearly, the Saud family (otherwise known as the Saudi Government) were the U.S. Government’s partners in this operation. (However, on the day before President-Elect Donald Trump nominated Congressman Mike Pompeo to be the new CIA Director, Pompeo tweeted — 17 November 2016 — “I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.” The U.S. regime don’t call the Sauds that, but they are, and the only terrorism that Iran has been associated with at all, has been some of the terrorism against Israel.)
The Wikipedia article, “Responsibility for the September 11 attacks”, mentions only “Saudi Arabia” in its section “Financing the attacks.” None of the proponents of the Israel-did-it hypothesis includes any coherent documented evidence that Israel financed the operation. And even the U.S. court that (based upon pressures from Israel and from the Sauds) ruled Iran to have caused 9/11, offered no evidence, that Iran, instead of Iran’s enemy the Saud family, was the main funder of the 9/11 attacks. None of the 19 alleged 9/11 terrorists was Iranian; none was even a Shiite, at all; 15 of them were Saudis, and all 19 were fundamentalist Sunnis; Al Qaeda is (so far as is known) a 100% fundamentalist-Sunni organization. (Furthermore, a google-search for “shiite member of al qaeda” produces: “No results found for ‘shiite member of al qaeda’.” Not even one such person has been publicly cited.) No real evidence exists that any of the money for the 9/11 attacks came either from Shias, or from Jews (nor from Israel’s Government).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
March 14, 2018
Venezuela’s Inflation Surges to A New High: 7459%
After backing off over the past month and a half, Venezuela’s hyperinflation is surging again, making a new high of 7459% yr/yr.
The Grim Reaper has taken his scythe to the Venezuelan bolivar. The death of the bolivar is depicted in the following chart. On the black market (read: free market), a bolivar is worthless, and with its collapse, Venezuela is witnessing today the world’s worst inflation.
On January 29th, Venezuela announced that one of its two official exchange rates was being eliminated. So, now the bolivar “trades” at one rate, under new auction rules. The official rate is now B/USD = 24,968, for those lucky enough to obtain it. But, following the elimination of Venezuela’s official multiple exchange-rate system on January 29th and Maduro’s announcement that the Petro raised $735 million on its ICO in late February (02/20/2018), the hapless bolivar staged something of a rally. In consequence, the currency has come off its lows and Venezuela’s hyperinflation has come off its highs.
Some have applauded Maduro’s recent moves, claiming that they will stabilize the bolivar and eliminate inflation. This, of course, is nothing more than a pipe dream. While the bolivar has strengthened a bit and inflation has temporarily abated and stabilized, the bolivar bounce is nothing more than a classic dead cat bounce.
As the bolivar collapsed and inflation accelerated, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) became an unreliable source of inflation data. However, from December 2014 until January 2016, the BCV did not report inflation statistics. Then, the BCV pulled a rabbit out of its hat in January 2016 and reported a phony annual inflation rate for the third quarter of 2015. Nonetheless, the last official inflation data reported by the BCV is still almost two years old. To remedy this problem, the Johns Hopkins – Cato Institute Troubled Currencies Project, which I direct, began to measure Venezuela’s inflation in 2013. We measure the monthly and annual inflation rates on a daily basis. We measure. We do not forecast.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Will the societal collapse cross the border to the USA?
“Complicated days are coming, I won’t lie to you. The wave of violence isn’t going to end.”
-Jalisco Governor Aristóteles Sandoval
I just read three current articles about our Mexican neighbors to the South. I highly recommend that you take the time to do so as well.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/15-dead-in-guerrero-in-weekend-violence/
“Three of the bodies were found on the road that to Larga beach and the airport, their feet and hands tied and bearing clear signs of torture. The three also presented bullet wounds.”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/authorities-disband-police-in-tlaquepaque/
“…the operation was connected to the discovery last week of eight bodies in an abandoned pickup truck in the Guadalajara neighborhood of Morelos.”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/self-defense-forces-forming-in-jalisco/
“We already have 30 members in the self-defense group. It’s time for the criminals to clear off and steal from somewhere else.”
This last article reminded me of a fantastic video from Vice News. I watched it a few years back. It is about a few Mormon farmers in Mexico standing up to the Mexican drug cartels.
I have many associates and friends that will no longer travel to Mexico, because it is too dangerous. These are people that know how to look after themselves. I also know several Mexicans that have moved their families to the USA to escape the violence and kidnappings. We hear Trump promoting the construction of a wall, but having spent a little time on the border, and over it, I don’t think that it will be any more effective than The Maginot Line.
Will the societal collapse cross the border to the USA? I don’t know. My crystal ball is only a novelty item. What I do know is that my entire life has occurred during a time of historically low violence in the world. Just a few generations ago, in most places, a father would be remiss if he didn’t teach his sons how to fight for their lives…and win. The chances of them needing to do so, at least once, were quite high.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trump’s Tariffs Could Start a Real War
Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs may set his epitaph in stone… “Herbert Hoover II.”
History remembers Hoover as one of the worst American presidents.
Like Trump, he was a rich international businessman. He was also a political outsider. Hoover hadn’t held public office before his 1929 inauguration. And, like Trump, Hoover faced intense pressure from struggling American workers.
In 1930, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law, raising tariffs on thousands of imported goods to record levels. This kicked off a tariff war, reducing American exports by half. It was a crushing blow to the American economy.
Nearly a century later, Trump seems determined to make the same mistakes…
Trump Started This Trade War Last Summer
Trump placed tariffs on steel and aluminum last week. China, of course, is the world’s largest producer of both.
The mainstream press called the tariffs “unexpected.” But they didn’t come out of nowhere.
Last month, I told readers of my advisory, Crisis Investing, that steel and aluminum tariffs were likely. (Paid-up readers can access the issue here.)
In fact, I’ve been pounding the table about a trade war—specifically a trade war with China—since September.
Frankly, I think Trump fired the first shot in this trade war last summer, when his administration launched an investigation against China using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
This rarely used provision allows Trump to “take all appropriate action… to obtain removal of any [trade] practice that is unjustified, unreasonable, or discriminatory, and that burdens or restricts U.S. commerce.”
Traditionally, World Trade Organization (WTO) members, including China and the US, have settled trade disputes through it. But Trump, using Section 301, has taken a unilateral approach.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
