Showing posts with label Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Today. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

The global economy faces a multitude of risks in 2017, ranging from rising protectionism spearheaded by Donald Trump to a severe slowdown in China, the International Monetary Fund has warned. The Washington-based fund used an update to its economic forecasts to highlight popular antipathy towards international trade and a widening in the gap between rich and poor. It called on governments to tackle inequality by helping people find work in fast-changing jobs markets shaken up by technology and globalization.  The IMF made no changes to its October forecast for global economic growth to edge up this year after a sluggish 2016. But it upgraded its outlook for the UK economy, bringing the IMF more in line with other forecasters following signs that the British economy grew at a solid pace in the second half of 2016, despite the Brexit vote. The UK outlook for 2018 was cut, however.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Turkey tried to assure its citizens and the outside world on Thursday that there will be no return to the deep repression of the past, even though President Tayyip Erdogan has imposed the first nationwide state of emergency since the 1980s.  With Erdogan cracking down on thousands of people in the judiciary, education, military and civil service after last weekend's failed coup, a lawmaker from the main opposition party warned that the state of emergency created "a way of ruling that paves the way for abuse". Announcing the state of emergency late on Wednesday, Erdogan said it would last at least three months and allow his government to take swift measures against supporters of the coup that attempted to topple him over the weekend.  It will permit the president and cabinet to bypass parliament in passing new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary. For some Turks, the move raised fears of a return to the days of martial law after a 1980 military coup, or the height of a Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s when much of the largely Kurdish southeast was under a state of emergency declared by the previous government.   Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek - who previously worked on Wall Street and is seen as one of the most investor-friendly politicians in the ruling AK Party - took to television and Twitter in an attempt to calm nervous financial markets and dispel comparisons with the past. "The state of emergency in Turkey won't include restrictions on movement, gatherings and free press etc. It isn't martial law of 1990s," he wrote on Twitter. "I'm confident Turkey will come out of this with much stronger democracy, better functioning market economy & enhanced investment climate." But markets were less than confident. The lira currency was near a new record low, while the main stock index was down 3.6 percent. The cost of insuring Turkish debt against default also surged.  Erdogan blames a network of followers of an exiled U.S.-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, for the attempted coup in which 246 people were killed and hundreds more wounded as soldiers commandeered fighter jets, military helicopters and tanks in a failed effort to overthrow the government.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The IMF said the UK's looming exit from the EU would hurt eurozone trade as the referendum result was "likely to lead to persistent uncertainty" regarding its future relationship with the bloc.  "A slowdown in global growth could also undermine the recovery and raise the likelihood of stagnation," the IMF said in its latest evaluation of the eurozone. Financial markets and business confidence would also be hit, while slower growth would also mean inflation was likely to be weaker in the short to medium term.  The IMF said rising euro scepticism had created "stark political divisions" in the bloc, hindering any "collective will to take crucial decisions for a stronger union", such as dealing with the refugee crisis.

It came as ratings agency Moody's warned that the rise of populism could "threaten the existence" of the eurozone and the wider EU, if anti-establishment movements gained traction ahead of elections in Germany and France next year. "In the long run, the potential strengthening of these movements could have detrimental implications for the continued cohesiveness of the EU and the euro area," it said. "The fragmentation of the EU could also encourage protectionist tendencies in a number of countries, and therefore seriously challenge, and ultimately reverse, the past few decades of increased globalisation... thwart the long-term growth prospects of individual economies and slow the catch-up of less developed countries." Moody's downgraded its UK growth forecast to 1.5pc this year and 1.2pc in 2017, from previous forecasts of 1.8pc and 2.1pc.
Growth across the eurozone would also be weaker, it said, though the impact of the Brexit vote on the US economy was expected to be limited.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

The bankruptcy of the EU was triggered by the bankruptcy of Deutschebank, the largest bank in Europe, according to members of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Deutschebank is now under Chinese control, they say. If the Chinese had not stepped in to save Deutschebank, its collapse would have triggered a domino effect that would have taken down the entire European and then Western banking systems, multiple sources agree.  There was also a secret dimension to this bankruptcy that can be traced to military activity in the Pacific Ocean. A massive joint Chinese and American fleet was engaged in “maneuvers” last week off the shores of the Philippines.  You can also confirm on the Pentagon official homepage that massive joint exercises involving naval forces from 27 nations, including China and the US, start near Hawaii on June 30th.
http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/799099/rim-of-the-pacific-exercise-2016-begins-june-30.  The real aim of last week’s maneuvers, according to WDS sources, was to cut off gold smuggling by submarines out of the Khazarian mafia submarine base in Nabire, Indonesia....
The result of this maneuver is that the Freeport McMoRan gold mine located near the submarine base has suddenly been put up for sale for the price of $20 billion, according to CIA sources based in Indonesia. Members of the board of directors of Freeport McMorRan have included such characters as Henry Kissinger and Godfrey Stillman Rockefeller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeport-McMoRan . The CIA sources say the Freeport McMoRan mine is being offered to the Chinese via a front company out of Australia. This is how Indonesia hopes to pay off $20-30 billion that was advanced to it by the Chinese last year, they say. However, they add, “The US side knows that they are selling a virtually empty hole.”  Meanwhile the previous owners of Freeport “will move to another mountain which is within 5-7 miles from the Grasberg mine, which is Freeport’s current mining area. Someone is getting the shaft in this deal… No pun intended.” The source said he thought the massive joint naval exercise was “just a cover.”
 The Chinese need to remember that “Kissinger has been a 50% owner of Freeport since the reign of Suharto, when he was given the shares in exchange for other services and profitable joint ventures between Suharto and the Kissinger Boys…..ie; the Cabal [Khazarian mafia].”

Friday, September 25, 2015

There was nothing “spontaneous” about the “Arab Spring.” It was organized years in advance by a corporate-government collaboration involving the US State Department, IT giants, a myriad of corporate-financier funded NGOs, and mainstream media players. 
Through the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US State Department’s Movements.org, agitators were literally flown on several occasions to both New York and Washington D.C. as well as other locations around the globe to receive training, equipment and funding before returning to their home countries and attempting to overthrow their respective governments....It is clear that the political cover – the Arab Spring – and the premeditated support of terrorist groups including Al Qaeda brought in afterward, were planned years before the Arab Spring actually unfolded in 2011. The goal was admittedly the overthrow of governments obstructing Washington and Wall Street’s hegemonic ambitions and part of a much wider agenda of isolating, encircling, and containing Russia and China...NATO is directly responsible for the refugee crisis. In fact, in Turkey, NATO is directly engineering it, while in Libya NATO is responsible for destroying any semblance of stable governance since 2011.   In reality, they did not appear out of a puff of smoke. They appeared in Turkey, a NATO member since the 1950’s and one of America’s closest regional allies. Turkey is currently hosting the US military, including special forces and the CIA who have, together with Turkish military and intelligence agencies, been conducting a proxy war on neighboring Syria since 2011.  Turkey has suspiciously maintained a very enthusiastic “open door” policy for refugees, spending inexplicable sums of money and political capital in accommodating them. The Brookings Institution – one of the chief policy think tanks helping engineer the proxy war with Syria – reported in its July 2015 “Order out of Chaos” article, “What Turkey’s open-door policy means for Syrian refugees,” that:  Turkey is now the world’s largest recipient of refugees. Since October 2013, the number of Syrian refugees has increased more than threefold and now numbers almost two million registered refugees.

Friday, September 11, 2015

For investors looking to get the most upside out of a strong dollar trade, Credit Suisse suggests that emerging market currencies are likely to see some of the most dramatic shifts against the greenback in the coming months. Rising rates—or even the threat of them—tend to make life difficult for emerging market economies, particularly those with high current account deficits. Those countries depend on capital inflows to fund their operations, and when rates are low in the United States, as they have been for the past six years, investors are usually happy to oblige. But when rates are rising, investors start shifting their money back to the relative safety of the United States. The South African rand, Brazilian real, Mexican peso, and Turkish lira look particularly vulnerable to capital outflows this time around, the strategists say...Falling prices are a touchier subject for Europe, where the economic recovery is still nascent and fears of sustained deflation prompted the European Central Bank to introduce a bond-buying program earlier this year. If a believable specter of deflation reappears, the central bank would almost certainly extend its commitment to quantitative easing, while economies outside the Eurozone, such as Sweden, would also likely opt for easy policy. The ECB might even add to its stimulus, depending how much further the yuan weakens. At a time when the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are ready to tighten, relatively loose policy would make European stocks attractive. So did you follow that? This is how the butterfly effect of the global economy works these days: China devalues, European stocks look more attractive. They’ve even got a few arguments in their favor that have nothing to do with monetary policy. Fifty-eight percent of European companies that have announced second-quarter earnings have beaten expectations, and investors have also poured $1.3 billion into exchange-traded funds that track the EuroStoxx 600 index over the past month. Small-cap European stocks, which are less exposed to China than large-caps, merit particular attention.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

I can't help thinking that the whole sell off (in China) was sparked by the authorities' currency devaluation. Although outside share ownership is limited it is still significant enough if they all act in concert and sell up fearing that the values of their holdings is going to drop in (say) USD terms. A bunch of them headed for €, $ or £ climes and started the snowball rolling.  Long-term low interest rates and QE (because interest rates couldn't be lowered further) has left the West's economies so weak that even a slight breeze from the East is enough to shake them. A wind from the East would blow them away.  Let it only be pointed out that the 173,000 new jobs just reported in the US was totally eclipsed by the whopping 293,000 workers who "dropped out" of the labor force. 94 million people are now "out of the workforce" in the US, signalling record low participation rates. Almost 15 million joined that category since peak employment in 2007, while 4 million jobs were created.  That's why unemployment is "so low"... fewer workers, lower unemployment creates... that's the stuff liberals like Krugman celebrate...most key indicators follow these dismal results that are swept under the rug.  US output is only slightly better than it was almost eight years ago and is now faltering as inventories are piling up and Liar's loans in the automotive industry have peaked.  As for China, Roubini seems to ignore the other Chinese bubble in housing. And the fact that the Chinese equities markets are not in free fall because the authorities in Beijing is willing to suppress any selling trends.  There is a way out for China, but in part, it means the political class has to take a long haircut. The Party bosses won't do this, so slow downward drift can be expected, especially as global customer demand tanks as well.