Steve Bull's Blog, page 1324
September 5, 2017
Putin Rejects More Korea Sactions, Warns US Risks “Global Catastrophe, Huge Loss Of Human Life”
After UN Ambassador Nikki Haley asked the security council to pass the “strongest possible” sanctions against North Korea following the isolated nation’s sixth nuclear test which took place over the weekend, Russia President Vladimir Putin has hinted that Russia may – and most likely will – use its Security Council veto power to stop any further sanctions from being implemented.
Putin, who is in China for a meeting of leaders from the BRICS countries, said that sanctions at this point would be “counter-productive” and that US threats of military action could trigger “a global catastrophe and a huge loss of human life,” according to Reuters. Some US diplomats have quietly agreed with the Russian leader, noting that if the barrage of already imposed sanctions on Pyongyang hasn’t changed the country’s behavior, then any incremental actions would likely have no impact either.
PUtin added that Pyongyang wouldn’t halt its nuclear tests until it “felt secure.” More details:
“Ramping up military hysteria in such conditions is senseless; it’s a dead end,” he added. “It could lead to a global, planetary catastrophe and a huge loss of human life. There is no other way to solve the North Korean nuclear issue, save that of peaceful dialogue.”
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His remarks followed similar statement from China, which chafed at the notion that the US would seek to punish all countries that trade with the North, and similarly suggested that it too would veto any further sanctions on North Korea.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Strange (and Tortured) Legacy of “Free Speech”
Photo by Charlie Nguyen | CC BY 2.0
It has recently come to my attention that new Chancellor Carol Christ at the University of California, Berkeley, my alma mater, has unveiled ambitious plans for a “Free Speech Year” — a magnanimous gesture toward the Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964-65, an iconic moment in sixties radicalism. Christ’s plans (essentially hopes) come at a time when a new cycle of right-wing speakers is slated for the fall, raising prospects of campus violence surpassing the chaos of February and May when Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter were scheduled to appear, then cancelled. Those plans also come at a time of recurrent left-right street combat in Berkeley.
Christ announced that the university would sponsor “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how strongly opposed political views can be exchanged in a peaceful, respectful setting. Other events include workshops on constitutional issues, a revisiting of FSM history and its aftermath, discussions about how the FSM influenced the larger trajectory of American higher education, and so forth. There is a special “Free Speech Week” set for September 24-27th. A group called “Discover Berkeley”, headed by Boalt Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, will be touring California in October with its “Free Speech Now: the Berkeley Experience” program. Its focus: “how to ensure that disparate voices are heard.”
In something of an understatement, Christ lamented: “Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view.” She neglected to mention those incidents where speech has been shut down entirely. Whether a low-temperature intellectual milieu can be imagined, much less realized, in the age of Donald Trump, a resurgent conservatism, and escalating campus polarization is yet another matter.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How ‘Regime Change’ Wars Led to Korea Crisis
Exclusive: The U.S.-led aggressions against Iraq and Libya are two war crimes that keep on costing, with their grim examples of what happens to leaders who get rid of WMDs driving the scary showdown with North Korea, writes Robert Parry.
It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “crazy” as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government’s aggressive wars and lack of integrity.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Indeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.
In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions.
And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife.
So, the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq invasion supposedly to protect the world from Iraq’s alleged WMDs — and the liberal interventionists who pushed the Libya invasion based on false humanitarian claims — may now share in the horrific possibility that millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and maybe elsewhere could die from real WMDs launched by North Korea and/or by the United States.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 4, 2017
ECB – Draghi & Tapering
The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to begin reducing its bond purchases gradually tampering its stimulation program of Quantitative Easing (QE). Nevertheless, reliable sources tell of the ECB being extremely cautious fearing what will happen if buyers do not appear and rates begin to rise sharply. The difference between the ECB and the Fed is stark. The ECB owns 40% of Eurozone government debt. The Fed does not even come close.
Obviously, the European financial markets have become addicted to the unprecedented inflow of cheap money even though there has been no appreciable rise in economic growth or inflation as was expected. This raises the question only asked behind the curtain: Will the economy spiral downward if QE ends? The Fed never reached the levels of ECB’s QE program so there is no comparison with the States.
The ECB expects to gradually lower the constant QE purchases of government debt in the Eurozone, which has really kept the governments on life-support. In part, this is why Macron is pushing to federalize Europe in its budgetary and financial markets. There is a fear that there will be severe distortions on the exchanges in the months ahead. What is hoped is that the Euro will decline and make the difficult weaning more tolerable by increasing exports and creating inflation. A lower currency will help to stimulate the Eurozone whereas a rising currency will only add to the deflationary pressures.
The ECB will most likely allow bonds to simply mature rather than sell them back to the marketplace. Any news of the ECB actually selling bonds would send a wave of panic through the European markets. Thus, the only practical way to approach this is to (1) reduce purchases and (2) allow current holding to mature and hopefully they money will be reinvested by the private sector.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Norway’s Big Fish Story
Decision Season
With Parliamentary elections looming, more Norwegians than usual are asking themselves the tough questions. It is now apparent that the slump in oil is not a temporary one. What will the country do now? Time for the lottery winner, after receiving the last annuity, to get a job before burning out the savings. Many are looking towards the sea, fishing and exploiting underwater natural resources. Others are looking to blast open the mountains to do the same.
However, commodity based economies, third-world in nature, are subject to mother nature’s whims, innovation, and ruthless competition. Moreover, it creates complacency, catching the nation off guard when there is a shift in the supply curve (instead of hitting peak oil, the opposite happened). Hence, the decisions or lack thereof, made during the next four years will impact future generations. Two generations of Norwegians grew up on the delusion that their society, built on pre-socialist values and high oil prices, can endure any challenge.
The
Fund’s withdraws could accelerate
amid a global financial crisis: politicians burning cash to shore up the economy and secure votes.
Burn Rate
Taking the sovereign wealth fund (The Fund) for granted, many fail to realize that the underlying investments are all pinned to the prevailing low-interest rate climate. If inflation gets out of control and rates must be pushed up to cut it off, the effect on stock and bond values could be substantial.
Norwegian GDP growth correlates to oil prices.
Currently, assuming constant tax revenues, budget and oil fund value, Norway is in great shape: able to fill the budget gap for the next 30 years. But then what?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 3, 2017
China Battles “Impossible Trinity”
China Battles “Impossible Trinity”
Just because something is inevitable does not mean it cannot be postponed.
The popular name for this is “kicking the can down the road,” which is a perfectly good description.
I prefer more technical terms such as dynamic systems in “subcritical” and “supercritical” state space, but it amounts to the same thing.
A financial crisis can be a long time in the making, but it will definitely erupt. When it does, there will be huge losses for those who ignored the warning signs.
China is in a pre-crisis situation today.
It is confronting the harsh logic of the “Impossible Trinity.”
The Impossible Trinity theory was advanced in the early 1960s by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell. It says that no country can have an open capital account, a fixed exchange rate and an independent monetary policy at the same time.
You can have one or two out of three, but not all three. If you try, you will fail — markets will make sure of that.
Those failures (which do happen) represent some of the best profit-making opportunities of all. Understanding the Impossible Trinity is how George Soros broke the Bank of England on Sept. 16, 1992 (still referred to as “Black Wednesday” in British banking circles. Soros also made over $1 billion that day).
The reason is that if more attractive total returns are available abroad, money will flee a home country at a fixed exchange rate to seek the higher return. This will cause a foreign exchange crisis and a policy response that abandons one of the three policies.
But just because the trinity is impossible in the long run does not mean it cannot be pursued in the short run. China is trying to peg the yuan to the U.S. dollar while maintaining a partially open capital account and semi-independent monetary policy. It’s a nice finesse, but isn’t sustainable.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In media res: Houston, Harvey and the catastrophe of climate change
“In media res” is Latin for “in the middle of things.” Frequently, it refers to the literary device of plunging readers into some central action of a story (often an epic) and then filling in the details and background later.
The residents of Houston must have felt that they were plunged into the middle of some epic story as Hurricane Harvey dumped up to 50 inches of rain on them and flooded much of the city. Early estimatessuggest that this hurricane could end up being the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
Hurricane Harvey is almost certainly an epic story unfolding before our eyes. That means the significance of events and outcomes surrounding the hurricane will only be filled in later–creating analysis, folklore and perhaps even a cultural output on par with that which followed Hurricane Katrina (think: the television series “Tremé”).
There will be stories about the failure or success of the emergency response effort. There will be denunciations of those officials who recommended staying put and recriminations of those doing the denouncing. There will be riveting accounts of suffering and also of heroic rescues and exceptional kindness. And, there will be stories of lawlessness and cruelty.
Harvey will almost certainly be styled as a tragedy. The storm is undoubtedly a colossal misfortune, and we should have compassion for those affected. But from a literary standpoint, it is not a tragedy at all. A genuine tragedy requires that the main players be unaware of how their own flawed character is leading them to self-destruction. A genuine tragedy depicts an ineluctable course of events. Nothing and no one could have prevented them. Greek tragedians relied on Ananke, the goddess of fate, to drive the action of their plays.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Deep State: How They Got Their Power To Manipulate For Ultimate Control
While many in the United States firmly believe that the government just isn’t working, it is. But it’s only working for the powerful and rich elites in the government and the media who have a desire to cling to their oppressive control of others and the money many are willing to allow them to steal.
The fight has never been between the republicans and the democrats. As Americans choose sides, their rights and freedoms are sold to the highest bidder. According toIntellectual Takeout, the fight is between “us” and the deep state; not those on the right and those on the left. More and more often we are seeing bureaucrats, lobbyists, and elected officials of both parties circle the wagons in an effort to prevent any true reforms of the government. They constantly write laws they exclude themselves from, come up with inventive ways to tax us to our breaking point anddestroy the healthcare system. And this is all by design.
According to Joost Meerloo in his seminal book The Rape of the Mind, the author discusses the psychology of brainwashing that’s allowing every American to succumb to tyranny right before their eyes and not only not realize it, but beg for more oppression. “The burning psychological question is whether man will eventually master his institutions so that these will serve him and not rule him,” said Meerloo in his discussion of the Deep State or the “administrative machine” published in 1956.
Meerlo describes the rise of the deep state as:
“… The development of a kind of bureaucratic absolutism is not limited, however, to totalitarian countries. A mild form of professional absolutism is evident in every country in the mediating class of civil servants who bridge the gap between man and his rulers. Such a bureaucracy may be used to help or to harm the citizens it should serve.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trump Commits To Using “Nuclear Capabilities” To Defend US Terroritory, Allies
In what we believe is a significant escalation and potentially a hint as to the president’s thinking, President Trump said during a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the US remains committed to defending its territories and allies using all “diplomatic, conventional and – here’s the big one – nuclear – capabilities at our disposal.” This is the first time Trump has explicitly referenced possible involvement of nuclear weapons in a US response to its isolated antagonist, and also means that the two world leaders discussed the possibility of a nuclear response.
TRUMP REAFFIRMS U.S. COMMITMENT TO DEFEND THE U.S. & ALLIES USING FULL RANGE OF DIPLOMATIC, CONVENTIONAL AND NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES: STATEMENT
The White House released a statement about what the two leaders discussed on the call. It’s available in full below:
JUST IN: White House issues statement on call between President Trump and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pic.twitter.com/pc7w3v42y4
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 3, 2017
The call was held to discuss how the two countries should respond to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test – and possibly its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb. The test came after multiple provocations from the North over the past week, including two missile tests. Earlier, Defense Secretary James Mattis, using the couched language of international diplomacy, said any threat to the US or its territories would be met with a “massive military response.”
The full White House statement on the 6th North Korean nuclear test, as delivered by Mattis shortly after 3pm ET, is below:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Category 6? If Hurricane Irma Becomes The Strongest Hurricane In History, It Could Wipe Entire Cities Off The Map
Meteorologists have been shocked at how rapidly Hurricane Irma has been strengthening, and they are already warning that if it hits the United States as a high level category 5 storm the devastation would be absolutely unprecedented. Of course we are already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and many experts are already telling us that the economic damage done by that storm will easily surpass any other disaster in all of U.S. history. But there is a very real possibility that Hurricane Irma could be even worse. According to the National Hurricane Center, at 5 PM on Friday Irma already had sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. But it is still very early, and as you will see below, next week it is expected to potentially develop into a category 5 storm with winds of 180 miles per hour or more.
I suppose that it is appropriate that such a powerful storm has a very powerful name. In old German, the name “Irma” actually means …
The name Irma is a . In German the meaning of the name Irma is: Universal, from the Old German ‘irmin’. War goddess.
Irma began forming on Wednesday, and it intensified at a faster rate than any storm that we have seen in nearly 20 years…
Hurricane Irma formed early Wednesday in the warm waters off the coast of West Africa — and took just 30 hours to strengthen to a Category 3. That’s the fastest intensification rate in almost two decades. By Friday afternoon, the storm had also grown noticeably larger in size with a well-defined eye, a classic sign of a strong hurricane.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
