Differing View,
Thierry Meyssan has a different take on the shoot down of the Russian surveillance plane in Latakia, 9/17/18. He sees it as part of a French/British/Israeli coordinated push to ramp up their colonialist war against the elected Syrian government. He presents that a British fighter, French missiles and Israeli fighters were all part of a coordinated attack to assassinate Syrian missile scientists. Russia chose to go along with the S-200 having shot down the Il-20, but Meyssan presents evidence against that mechanism, saying the S-200s are heat seeking, not radar guided, and would not prefer the propeller driven Il-20 to the Israeli jets.
In his read, the US military was not informed, just as the Russian military was mis-informed, clearly misled about the location of an attack, already underway. Meyssan likens this to the Suez Crisis, and gives further historical perspective, a century or more. At this point, Israel is scapegoated, while UK/France are secretly sanctioned, and not supported by the US, which is quietly seeing an alignment of interests with Moscow. The US deep-state has been cut-off from Anglo-French connections in this read. (I see the US deep-state as warring factions, now, myself.) Trump deals with mid-term elections and must keep a poker-face, not smiling at Russia, nor frowning at Israel, but militarily sitting-out this hand, which plays to his long term non-colonial-nationalist strategy. Worth considering. Thanks Eleni.
Moon of Alabama looks at how Rod Rosenstein is still Assistant Attorney General, after Trump failed to bite the bait and fire him, which would have opened Trump to more media attack going into November mid-term elections.
WASHINGTON — Senate Judiciary Committee staff interviewed two men who said they believed that they, and not US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, had "the encounter" with the woman who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, according to new information released Wednesday night by committee Republicans.
The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year.
This hedge fund manager says the next crisis will come in 12-24 months, but they are getting out of the bubble now. (Huh? Oh, "buy from us, greater fool!")
With Ray Dalio predicting that the US has about 2 years until the next recession, earlier today the head of hedge fund Citadel, Ken Griffin, echoed the Bridgewater founder and predicted that there are "at least 18-to-24 months left in the market rally", thanks to the "giant adrenaline shot" of the U.S. tax overhaul.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York Wednesday, Griffin said that "we are in this debt-fueled buying binge." He said that the U.S. economy is “running hot now” thanks to President Trump’s actions: "The Trump policies, whether deregulation or tax reform, are certainly pushing corporate America to go, go, go," he said, citing low unemployment and meaningful wage growth.
That's the "good" news. The bad new: the artificial "binge" that will extend what is already the longest bull market of all time is "laying the seeds of the next financial crisis", said Griffin.
And what may come as a surprise to many, Griffin admitted that that he’s already managing his fund for the next economic downturn. "My position today is very much focused on managing the tail risks for that... we are late in the cycle, the animal spirits have been unleashed and when these correction occur they happen with very little notice", he said.
LIVERPOOL, England — Jeremy Corbyn made continued membership of the EU’s customs union his price for backing any final Brexit agreement struck by Theresa May, as he set out an alternative negotiating strategy at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool Wednesday...
“Brexit is about the future of our country and our vital interests,” he told the packed auditorium in Liverpool. “I say this to her in all sincerity and helpfulness. If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental and consumer standards — then we will support that sensible deal. A deal that would be backed by most of businesses in world and trade unions.”
The offer is not new in substance — mirroring five of Labour’s long-trumpeted “six tests” — but is far more conciliatory in tone than the original demand that any Brexit deal must achieve “the exact same benefits” of both single market and customs union membership.
Trump's UN Speech Transcript (Less carrot; more shtick. I can't watch or listen to any of these fellow-humans, myself.)
“America is governed by Americans,” he said to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in one his highest-profile speeches of the year. “We reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism.”
I think Macron is setting France up for a huge fall. This declaration supporting the Paris Accords is meant to discourage the UK from doing a bunch of free-pollution-no-union-worker bilateral trade deals with China, India and the US. It looks to me like another factor presaging the collapse of the Euro in the next crisis.
Emmanuel Macron has announced France will no longer accept “commercial agreements” with countries that do not “respect” the Paris Climate Accord during a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly.The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year.
Just in case of a no-deal Brexit, the UK appoints a former Pepsi executive as Food-Supplies-Minister, a new position. (What could go wrong?)
Several major UK firms have warned of the risks from tougher border controls, including the retail chain Next. The short shelf life of food products, which could be rendered inedible by just a few hours’ delay, makes them particularly vulnerable.
UK farm EXPORTS could not go to the EU for 6 months after a no-deal Brexit, and only after tremendous hassle and expense.
EU "member"-colony, Greece has humans packed into horrific unregulated-prison conditions on Lesvos. 30% have attempted suicide at least once and 60% have considered it. 70-80 humans per latrine or shower, and feces flowing onto sleeping children."Loss of sovereignty" looks like this. Thanks Eleni.
Europe buys a lot of Russian gas on long term contracts, and Russian oil on shorter term basis, and the transactions are denominated in $US, which is the globalized, systematized, institutionalized, computerized-platform trade currency. For any two parties wishing to buy and sell oil or gas outside of the $US framework, conversions to dollar value must be done by both parties, and risk-hedging costs related to currency fluctuations, must be calculated and born by both parties. A new or non-standard electronic trading platform must be used, which has costs of availability and of uncertainty of reliability and security. These costs are high enough to prevent parties from creating and using alternative platforms, unless they are having some other high cost, like sanctions, to justify bearing this new cost. Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, North Korea, Venezuela, the EU and anybody trading with them are now bearing costs of the "weaponized dollar", so platforms are being created to trade outside the dollar, which is presented here in it's cost and complexity. Focus on EU/Russia energy trade.
Claudio Borio is a BIS (Bank for International Settlements, "central banker's central bank) economist, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis (gently observed mechanisms leading there) in 2006. He observes very similar financial structure now, and that nothing was fixed last time, and that the room-to-move with loosening up money has long been used. It was used to re-inflate bad debt assets, like the infamous Mortgage Backed Securities. Other zombie-asset classes followed, then the whole "everything bubble". All of this zombie-asset-puffing destroyed price-discovery, which is the vaunted principle of capitalist markets. There is no price discovery. That means nothing to most people, and doom to a few. In the next doomlike crash, price-discovery (bargains) will return. Also, governments will have to spend money into circulation, and that can take several forms. That money will need to provide jobs and wages. Trickle-down economics never worked, because the very rich invest to get richer. They don't buy Chevys and groceries. They do hire asset managers and other assistants. They favor bureaucracy, but that is mostly parasitic on real economy. Great Depression jobs programs, paying people to fix infrastructure, and remake it for future purposes, a government-employment economy, is envisioned. This has a lot of negatives if it is all directed from Washington, not locally. There is still no "value-discovery" in place. How can that be put in place, when everybody feels like it is free-money?
With Ray Dalio predicting that the US has about 2 years until the next recession, earlier today the head of hedge fund Citadel, Ken Griffin, echoed the Bridgewater founder and predicted that there are "at least 18-to-24 months left in the market rally", thanks to the "giant adrenaline shot" of the U.S. tax overhaul.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York Wednesday, Griffin said that "we are in this debt-fueled buying binge." He said that the U.S. economy is “running hot now” thanks to President Trump’s actions: "The Trump policies, whether deregulation or tax reform, are certainly pushing corporate America to go, go, go," he said, citing low unemployment and meaningful wage growth.
That's the "good" news. The bad new: the artificial "binge" that will extend what is already the longest bull market of all time is "laying the seeds of the next financial crisis", said Griffin.
And what may come as a surprise to many, Griffin admitted that that he’s already managing his fund for the next economic downturn. "My position today is very much focused on managing the tail risks for that... we are late in the cycle, the animal spirits have been unleashed and when these correction occur they happen with very little notice", he said.
Watch this space:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) addresses these questions, but reality is what will really address them soon. (We will all need to build a new ecological economy to meet human and environmental needs much more efficiently. The top 10% will need to lose their assets and have "skin in the game". The top 0.01% will need to see pitchforks in their dreams, not billionaire-bunkers.)
“Brexit is about the future of our country and our vital interests,” he told the packed auditorium in Liverpool. “I say this to her in all sincerity and helpfulness. If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental and consumer standards — then we will support that sensible deal. A deal that would be backed by most of businesses in world and trade unions.”
Corbyn said that if May could not negotiate continued customs union membership “you need to make way for a party that can and will.” ...
Corbyn reannounced plans for more child care, new taxes on the wealthy and a complete overhaul of Britain’s foreign policy. “No more reckless wars of intervention like Iraq or Libya,” he declared. The loudest cheers were saved for his announcement that he will recognize a Palestinian state as soon as Labour takes office.
Oh, this scientific paper presents an important paradigm shift in the heredity-vs-environment debate!
The structure of personality refers to the covariation among specific behavioral patterns in a population. Statistically derived models of personality---such as the Big Five or HEXACO models---usually assume that the covariance structure of personality characteristics is a human universal. Cross-cultural studies, however, have challenged this view, finding that less complex societies exhibit stronger covariation among behavioral characteristics, resulting in fewer derived personality factors. To explain these results, we propose the niche diversity hypothesis, which predicts that a greater diversity of social and ecological niches elicits a more diverse set of multivariate behavioral profiles, and hence lower trait covariance, at the population level. We formalize this hypothesis as a computational model in which individuals assort into niches, which influence their behavioral traits. We find that the model provides strong support for the niche diversity hypothesis and reproduces empirical results from recent cross-cultural studies. This work provides a general explanation for differences in personality structure between populations in both humans and other animals, and also produces several new empirical predictions. It also suggests a radical reimagining of personality trait research: instead of reifying statistical descriptions of manifest personality structures, research should focus more attention on modeling their underlying causes.
Fitting In
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