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George Soros: The Man Behind the Mayhem
via by Knave Dave on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:30:18 GMT
This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog:
![Photo taken by [http://www.lensamalaysia.com/forum/showpost.php?s=ac6be7d441f75c012a1745d701f65d4d&p=47697&postcount=13 Jeff Ooi]. Posted to LensaMalaysia.com, which licenses all images under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence unless otherwise specified](http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/Soros.jpg)
I have struggled to understand George Soros because he is a character riddled with contradiction. His push to break down borders by increasing immigration all over the world is undermining his desire to establish a unified Europe and a unified world. By pushing too hard, too fast, he’s creating obvious pushback. So, I decided to work on an article that would help me get a little better sense of what drives him.
On the one hand, he openly acknowledged at the end of 2016 that an “immigration crisis” is busting Europe apart at the seams. On the other, he states that the EU has always been his cherished project. So, why is he pushing immigration to the EU’s breaking point?
I see the same contradiction in German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Europe is clearly her favorite project, too, and yet she seems hell-bent on stuffing immigrants from outside of Europe down every European nation’s throat, including her own, to a degree that is clearly over stressing indigenous cultures and creating fractures everywhere.
Clearly Europe already has financial fractures that risk busting apart Europe’s always-precarious union of iron bonded together with clay. Do these two leaders thrive on stress so much that they feel compelled to force more discontented and impoverished people into an already fractured vessel? Are they just pathologically inclined toward self-destruction? Are they immigration bulimics who can’t stop stuffing themselves –addicts who have to keep shoving another needle in their arm, no matter the harm?
Another full-on euro crisis in 2017 seems like an obvious prediction to me. Why is it not obvious to those who so want the eurozone to succeed?
Poor Sore Soros
George Soros lost a billion dollars because his bets against a Trump victory crashed on his head. Soros recently fell into a public tirade and wrote that Trump is a Nazi — a would-be dictator who threatens the glorious hope of the new world order. (The very fact that Soros feels compelled to admit that Trump now “threatens the new world order” makes me feel good to know that even the new world order’s strongest backers feel his hot breath on their necks. We can only hope Soros is right.)
Soros is concerned that rejection of Hillary means the dawning of democracy in the world is being extinguished. Those words tell me Soros will do all he can to rile people against the new US leader who extinguished Hillary’s flame, democratically elected as he was. Here again, Soros is a contradiction, for he is always talking about how important democracy is; but I hope to sort that out in this article, too.
Soros is afraid that America will now be ““unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world.” If he thinks Hillary would have done that, he must mean that, under Trump, we will now no longer carry out as many wars and coups as the US staged under Hillary’s state department in order to assure democracy. (Again, I would find that refreshing; but it is apparently alarming to Soros who, himself, was an advocate of the coup in Ukraine and of Hillary’s war in Syria. See my earlier published State Department documents.)
Soros laments that his new world order is disordering itself, “first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters’ rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms;” but everyone knows these movements are primarily being fueled by the EU’s insane immigration policies. Even in the US, immigration was a main issue. Maybe liberals love these immigration policies, but clearly there are too many people who don’t, and when you try to force feed people on each other, they’re going to throw up on you.
With equal blindness, Soros laments all the fake news that has “disoriented electorates” and “destabilized democracies.” I say it is blindness because Soros does everything he can to destabilize any democracy that is nationalistic by bankrolling riots against any government that is not going along with his globalist dogma. He is both pushing unwanted immigration in mass and financing protests and coups, which makes it seem peculiar that he’s surprised by growing disorder in the new world order.
The baldfaced hypocrisy is astounding.
What makes Soros tick, and what makes him talk?
George Soros states that his overriding cause in everything he supports philanthropically is what he calls the creation of “open societies,” and he states that the one principle he believes can save humanity is pluralism. Without that, he believes we will destroy each other. He witnessed such destruction as a boy in Hungary under Hitler’s occupation where clearly pluralistic cultures were not embraced, and he states those years were formative to his character, as I imagine they would be.
Maybe that is what drives Soros to put enormous amounts of money into squeezing people together through immigration, even though he sees that it is creating stress fractures in his beloved European Union. Given the horrors that he witnessed as a child, his need to force pluralistic societies into being could be pathologically driven.
But there, I think, is the key failure in his belief system. Soros truly believes he can create pluralistic societies by pushing people together so that people of different beliefs and culture learn to get along. If I were asked what is the greatest common trait humanity has that can save us from each other, I wouldn’t answer “pluralism.” I’d answer that it would have to be love of humanity. In the absence of love for all humanity, pushing people together will only create conflict, but I don’t think Soros understands love. Soros is working like a machine to force something to happen because, like a machine, he doesn’t understand the underlying love that is necessary in order for that to actually work.
Given his childhood, as retold in the video below, I believe he truly believes in the value of open societies. I can certainly see where that kind of childhood would make that a belief of fierce importance. By the same token, then, Soros only believes in it so long as those societies are moving democratically toward his unifying principle of pluralism were Jews and Germans, Blacks and Whites, Christians and Muslims can live side by side. If, however, democracies elect autocratic leaders, he prefers to rip them into shreds. Maybe that is how he acts out his pent-up rage against Hitler, and maybe that’s why he has wanted to see so much immigration into Germany.
Even Steve Kroft on Sixty Minutes struggled almost twenty years ago to understand the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of George Soros who openly describes his financial endeavors as being done without any regard to morality or social consequences but who, outside of his business life, “tries to be moral” and is very socially involved. Here is the actual interview, not the popular fake-news one plastered on conservative sites all over the internet (which attempts to make Soros look even worse than he naturally does by editing together statements that didn’t happen in the same context and by removing his qualifying statements):
Even in this unmanipulated version of the interview, Soros makes the peculiar statement that it was “not at all” difficult for him to travel with his Nazi protector and watch the man confiscate the property of his fellow Jews. It didn’t trouble him in the least because he wasn’t the one doing it.
While Soros was not the one actually seizing the property of his fellow people, as the fake news versions make it sound, I have to think most people with a conscience would experience duress just watching what was happening to their own people. That Soros says it wasn’t the least bit difficult indicates some pathology had already set in … as though he was numb to what was happening or was able to completely dissociate himself from what his Nazi protector was doing.
The particularly telling part is when he immediately goes on with a smile to equate that experience of watching the confiscation of Jewish property to being just like his work in financial markets where, if he wasn’t the one causing currencies to break down with his own speculation, someone else would be causing the chaos anyway, so what difference does it make?
That is how he has learned to compartmentalize life. Since someone is going to do it, it might as well be him. He admits that he never gives a thought to the morality of his investing or the pain he creates. After causing financial pain to entire nations, he then gives money to build what he sees as better, more pluralistic nations. Like an android who is compelled to do the right thing for humanity by his programming, he doesn’t understand that you cannot force love, so you cannot force people together. You can nurture love, but you cannot force it.
The sociopathically broken boy is trying to make society work the way he believes it should. He’s trying to push the pieces together in belief that they should meld.
What does George Soros have in store for 2017?
In a publication addressed to his many socio-political charities, Soros wrote at the close of 2016,
Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: “These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world.” Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world….. I find the current moment in history very painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise. How could this happen? The only explanation I can find is that elected leaders failed to meet voters’ legitimate expectations and aspirations and that this failure led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism. Quite simply, many people felt that the elites had stolen their democracy…. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction that democracy’s opponents have exploited…. I was an avid supporter of the European Union from its inception. I regarded it as the embodiment of the idea of an open society: an association of democratic states willing to sacrifice part of their sovereignty for the common good…. But then something went woefully wrong. After the Crash of 2008, a voluntary association of equals was transformed into a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations and the creditors set the conditions the debtors had to obey. That relationship has been neither voluntary nor equal. Germany emerged as the hegemonic power in Europe, but it failed to live up to the obligations that successful hegemons must fulfill, namely looking beyond their narrow self-interest to the interests of the people who depend on them…. Democracy is now in crisis. Even the US, the world’s leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president…. What lies ahead? I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one. But the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. (Zero Hedge)
These words resonate with the boyhood experience Soros had with Germany’s hegemonic power in Europe back in his childhood. I’m sure he can’t help but feel Germany is at it again. And Trump with all of his impassioned speeches sounds a bit like Hitler to him, as do the racial overtones in Trump’s immigration concerns. Soros is confident that the US has institutional structures that will prevent things from going that far, but he’s convinced Trump would go that far if not for those constraints. So, Soros is going to put all of his power into battling Trump in the years ahead as that, for him, is his battle against Hitler.
In other words, I think Soros isn’t just name calling. I think that is how he sees it, and it plays on very deep childhood trauma in his life.
Soros, crying over the disruption of his new world disorder and having lost a billion because of Trump, is going to fight back with more force than ever, and in the letter above he hints at his planned attack: “The US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer.” The irony here is that Soros will be the one targeting those minorities in order to get them as inflamed as he can, empowering protestors who convince minorities that Trump actually hates them. (Just as mainstream media constantly retold the fake-news story that Trump said Mexicans are rapists.)
Soros is making this prediction in the same manner as when he has predicted crashing currencies. He predicted their fall because his own investments were betting against those currencies. He new he had enough money involved to tip the balance in currencies that already wanted to fall and that his words had enough clout to create further push in that direction.
Soros is going to stir the pot for all he’s worth this year and make sure the rage explodes into flames, and he’s got enough money to do a lot of stirring, and the rage already wants to happen anyway. So, that should tell you what you need to know about where the year is going.
Soros sees the European Union falling apart, and he sees Putin pushing it in that direction as more elections come along where anti-establishment candidates like Trump are rising in prominence in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy and France. He knows that Trump will encourage those movements, too. So, Trump and Putin are a combined threat to the European union, which Soros avidly supported from inception.
Soros put his money behind the Ukrainian coup because he saw Putin as an autocrat with whom the democratically elected government of Ukraine was aligning itself. If Trump is Hitler to him, Putin is Stalin, who overran eastern European nations like Hungary after Hitler left. Soros likes democracies that decide things his way, but Ukraine chose a leader that was reaching for closer ties with Stalinist Putin. Democracy is great so long as it leads to the kind of government Soros believes is best, but must be fought if it leads to nationalism or leans toward autocratic leaders (at least, those that Soros sees as autocratic).
Soros says he is concerned that Russia will interfere in this year’s upcoming European elections with with more “fake news.” Ironically, Soros writes, “The trouble is that the method Putin has used to destabilize democracy cannot be used to restore respect for facts and a balanced view of reality.” Yet, Soros seeks to destabilize democracies, himself, with protests and riots that certainly don’t restore any respect for facts or any balanced view of reality either because who is listening for facts or trying to be balanced in the middle of a riot?
Soros spends billions of dollars through “charitable” organizations to sow discord all over the world, particularly over issues like immigration, then writes,
With economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome.
He can see the refugee crisis is out of control, and yet he fuels it. He can see it is breaking up his beloved EU, but he keeps pushing in that direction, just as Merkel does. I can only understand this Jekyll-and-Hyde nature as a pathological belief in the virtue of pluralism that developed during the Nazi occupation years that he says formed his character. Others might see it as though he just pretends to care about a refugee crisis, but that he is pushing that crisis because of some other hidden agenda.
He seems completely earnest to me when he says these things, and my lie detector is usually razor sharp; so I am inclined to believe he’s not conspiring for world control but really believes in what he’s doing. It is, however, a pathological belief that has raised pluralism as the supreme virtue, which comes from his Jewish experience under the Nazis. When you put the wrong virtue on top of all your values, it usually ceases to be a virtue and becomes a tyrant. If, for example, loyalty is your highest virtue, you will be loyal to the evil leader you serve, no matter what wrongs he does; and that’s how Hitler reigned.
I haven’t seen much to indicate that Soros knows love from personal experience. If his character were built on love, he would not have been so indifferent toward seeing property confiscated from his fellow Jews as something that was going to happen whether he was there observing it or not. He also would care about how many people get hurt in the violent protests he finances. Because he doesn’t really get what it takes to make people function together, he keeps trying to push them together to make it work, and he tries to create conflict where he perceives the threat of dictatorship in order to destabilize those dictatorships.
So, his is a two-pronged approach: shove people together to create pluralism; bust up dictatorships that don’t tolerate pluralism. He is deeply pained at this point that his new world order is falling apart everywhere, so he’ll push it harder, apply more money, to try to make it work.
In my next article, I’ll summarize the movements that are already forming to make that happen.
Why Millennials Are Behind: They Earn 20% Less Than Boomers Did At The Same Age
via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:14:57 GMT
Over the past few years, as the Millennial generation has grown into its own, in 2016 surpassing Baby Boomers as the nation's largest living generation according to the Census (Americans aged 18-34 in 2015 now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers aged 51-69), in the process becoming the fulcrum support of the US economy, it has also prompted many questions: why aren't Millennials investing in the stock market? Why aren't they starting families and buying houses? Why are they living in their parents' basements well into their thirties? Why don't they just... spend?
The latest quite simple answer to all these questions came yesterday following a new analysis of Fed data by the Young Invincibles group, according to which with a median household income of $40,581, despite being better educated, millennials now earn 20% less than boomers did at the same stage of life in 1989, who earned $50,910 some 25 years ago.
The analysis released on Friday shows other disturbing trends, which confirm that America's troubling generational divide is all too real and helps explain much of the anxiety that defined the 2016 election. Some examples: millennials have half the net worth of boomers; their home ownership rate is lower, while their student debt is drastically higher.
The generational gap is a central dilemma for the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, who pledged a return to the prosperity of post-World War II America. The analysis also hints at the issues of culture and identity that divided many voters, showing that white millennials — who still earn much more than their blacks and Latino peers — have seen their incomes plummet the most relative to boomers.
Andrea Ledesma, 28, says her parents owned a house and were raising kids by her age. Not so for her.
Ledesma graduated from college four years ago. After moving through a series of jobs, she now earns $18,000 making pizza at Classic Slice in Milwaukee, shares a two-bedroom apartment with her boyfriend and has $33,000 in student debt.
"That's not at all how life is now, that's not something that people strive for and it's not something that is even attainable, and I thought it would be at this point," Ledesma said.
Her mother Cheryl Romanowski, 55, was making about $10,000 a year at her age working at a bank without a college education. In today's dollars, that income would be equal to roughly $19,500. Romanowski said she envies the choices that her daughter has in life, but she acknowledged that her daughter has it harder than her. "I think the opportunities have just been fading away," she said.
The Fed data shows the extent of the decline. It compared 25 to 34 year-olds in 2013, the most recent year available, to the same age group in 1989 after adjusting for inflation. Education does help boost incomes. But the median college-educated millennial with student debt is only earning slightly more than a baby boomer without a degree did in 1989.
The home ownership rate for this age group dipped to 43 percent from 46 percent in 1989, although the rate has improved for millennials with a college degree relative to boomers. The median net worth of millennials is $10,090, 56 percent less than it was for boomers.
While whites still earn dramatically more than Blacks and Latinos, reflecting the legacy of discrimination for jobs, education and housing. Yet compared to white baby boomers, some white millennials appear stuck in a pattern of downward mobility. This group has seen their median income tumble more than 21% to $47,688. Median income for black millennials has fallen just 1.4 percent to $27,892. Latino millennials earn nearly 29 percent more than their boomer predecessors to $30,436.
The analysis fits into a broader pattern of diminished opportunity. Research last year by economists led by Stanford University's Raj Chetty found that people born in 1950 had a 79 percent chance of making more money than their parents. That figure steadily slipped over the past several decades, such that those born in 1980 had just a 50 percent chance of out-earning their parents.
This decline has occurred even though younger Americans are increasingly college-educated. The proportion of 25 to 29 year-olds with a college degree has risen to 35.6 percent in 2015 from 23.2 percent in 1990, a report this month by the Brookings Institution noted.
The declining fortunes of millennials could impact boomers who are retired or on the cusp of retirement. Payroll taxes from millennials helps to finance the Social Security and Medicare benefits that many boomers receive, programs that Trump has said won't be subject to spending cuts. And those same boomers will need younger generations to buy their homes and invest in the financial markets to protect their own savings.
"The challenges that young adults face today could forecast the challenges that we see down the road," said Tom Allison, deputy policy and research director at Young Invincibles.
For now, despite Obama's recurring narrative of an economic "recovery" which unfortunately skipped some 75.4 million Americans, and despite Trump's promises that he will somehow make it batter, it remains unclear just how this most important US generation will emerge from its demographic and economic doldrums.
Source: Financial Health of Young America: Measuring Generational Declines between Baby Boomers & Millennials
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The Copper Market Relative to Gold, Equities, Dollar (Video)
via by EconMatters on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 15:36:32 GMT
By EconMatters
We discuss the Copper Market in this video, checking out its trading partners in the other Futures Markets, as well as the recent Technical and Fundamental drivers for this economic sensitive commodity. Copper is used as Collateral in China for borrowing purposes and serves a leveraging function at times.
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What's Hot and What's Not From CES 2017
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China's Bitcoin Exchanges Suspend Margin Trading
via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 15:16:29 GMT
China's bitcoin traders who use the most popular bitcoin exchange not only in China, but also the entire world, BTCChina, were met with an unexpected warning on Friday:
Starting from January 12th, 2017, BTCChina has suspended margin loan service. If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service: support@btcc.com.
BTCChina, which commands over 37% of global bitcoin trading...
... wasn't alone.
Following last week's central bank crackdown on bitcoin, China's major bitcoin exchanges have all halted, or otherwise updated, their lending-based bitcoin trading services, according to CoinDesk.
First reported by China-based bitcoin traders and market observers, BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin appear to have quietly adjusted their terms. Just around the time of the BTCChina notice, Huobi issued a similar announcement on its WeChat page, advising clients that "in order to maintain market stability, we may pause the new leverage services at any time according to market fluctuations and our risk control systems."
Huobi customer service comment at WeChat @huobicom pic.twitter.com/YqP7XM1aVO
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) January 13, 2017
Meanwhile, OKCoin's international and China-facing websites OKCoin.com and OKCoin.cn were said to be offering limited or augmented versions of the services, though traders were reporting different experiences.
While some users told CoinDesk they were able to borrow 2x leverage at press time (even when executing CNY-denominated trades on OKCoin.cn), others indicated that their accounts were prohibiting this action.
One trader said he was able to see higher margin options, but only able to borrow lower amounts. (OKCoin representatives did not respond to requests for further clarity).
Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC, told CoinDesk that changes to the exchange's service were being made in response to interactions with the People's Bank of China, the country’s central bank, though he stopped short of saying that the service had been terminated or disabled. Lee told CoinDesk: "There's going to be some give and take. We'll likely make adjustments as time goes on."
Lee indicated that the move came after the exchange received "informal guidance" from the PBoC, which as reproted last week, has been engaged with domestic bitcoin exchanges amid the run-up in bitcoin prices seen at the start of the year. The developments followed news that central bank officials had met with representatives from the exchanges and, warning them it would "rectify misbehavior" by exchnages.
Last week news spread quickly about the central bank intervention in bitcoin on Chinese social media, with seven local industry representatives acknowledging they were aware of the supposed changes (some noted that they had yet to actively test their perceptions via exchange accounts). Some local traders indicated that they were not surprised by the news that margin trading services had been updated, given the longstanding lack of legal clarity under which the exchanges had operated.
One former representative of a China-based exchange, who declined to be quoted on the record, indicated that he is unsure of whether the issue would have been with the service itself or the way it was marketed to consumers. "I don't know if it's [paused] while they implement a system that's agreeable to the government, or if it's gone for good," he said.
OTC trader Zhao Dong, likewise, hinted at how this development could come to shape the bitcoin markets, portraying it as a double-edged sword for the industry.
"The good side of margin trading is it provided additional liquidity to the market, the bad side is it is easy for investors to lose money," he said.
Ultimately, the crackdown on margin lending may end up being a long-term positive, as it will prevent the tremendous momentum shifts that have sent volatility in the digital currency soaring. While it would mean slower gains, it would also result in far more gradual selloffs, and a strong investor base.
Yet from some quarters of the Chinese bitcoin space, there was a broad feeling that further engagement with regulators will be forthcoming. Cited by Coindesk, Ricardo Zhang, CEO for BTC123, a local bitcoin lending and news site that yesterday paused its services: "I think this time, there will be some corresponding laws and regulations promulgated, and a more standardized industry."
* * *
For some Chinese traders the crackdown on margin lending comes just a few days too late. On Friday night we observed the plight of of Ding Wen, who by the age of 34 had built up a personal fortune of more than two million yuan after years of hard work at an internet company in Nanjing, in east China’s Jiangsu province. But, Wen saw most of that wealth go up in smoke on January 5, when China’s bitcoin market crashed, sending the price of the virtual currency plunging 40 per cent in just a few hours after lunch. The reason? Trading on margin:
Ahead of the market crash, Ding had borrowed 995 million yuan from Huobi by pledging a principal consisting of the 409 bitcoins he already owned. He then bought a further 1,228 bitcoins with the loan. Most of his holdings were compulsorily sold out by Huobi during the price collapse while he was unable to access his account.
Meanwhile, Wu Xing, head of marketing at Huobi, said the log-in delay was caused by a torrent of visits and selling orders, which exceeded the capacity of the website. “[The loss] was due to irresistible factors and not included in the compensation scope. We are sorry and understand the feelings of the investors,” she said.
While China's infatuation with the rapidly moving bitcoin will come and go, then come and go again, this incident merely reinforces a long-running observation of ours: for those traders seeking a way to get rich quick and retire, forget fundamentals, forget technical analysis, forget even reading between the lines of central bankers or frontrunning Donald Trump's tweet: all you have to do is figure out which asset China's army of deranged bubble chasers will flock to next, buy it just ahead of time, wait a few days, then sell it all just before the bubble bursts.
For the really brave ones, rinse and repeat.
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Trump Says He Is Open To Lifting Russia Sanctions, Won't Label China Currency Manipulator "On Day One"
via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 14:33:53 GMT
In his first full interview of the new year, President-elect Donald Trump explains his approach to foreign policy from a "realpolitik" lens, when he told the WSJ overnight that relations with China and Russia will depend on the degree to which the two countries cooperate with U.S. economic, diplomatic and military priorities.
The interview comes one day after China's incensed press rebuked a statement by Rex Tillerson during his confirmation hearing, when he said that China will not be granted access to the disputed South China Sea islands, responding that "such remarks are not worth taking seriously because they are a mish-mash of naivety, shortsightedness, worn-out prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies" and "would set a course for devastating confrontation between China and the US."
Trump says he would keep intact sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration “at least for a period of time”; says he is prepared to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin after he is sworn in
Assuing further media vitriol, Trump told the WSJ he wouldn’t commit to America’s "One China" agreement with Beijing, i.e., he would continue to use Taiwan's independence as a bargaining chip, until he saw what he considered progress from Beijing in its
currency and trade practices. Asked if he supported the One China policy on Taiwan, Mr. Trump said: “Everything is under negotiation including One China.”
Mr. Trump seemed impatient with diplomatic protocols involving China and Taiwan. After his victory he took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s leader, triggering objections from Beijing and stoking concerns among some U.S. foreign policy experts who questioned whether he understood the implications of such a conversation.
Speaking of Taiwan, he said: “We sold them $2 billion of military equipment last year. We can sell them $2 billion of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call.”
On the other hand, Trump also made a point of showing a holiday greeting card he received from China’s leader, Xi Jinping. “I have a beautiful card from the chairman,” he said.
Trump also made news when he said that he would not label China a currency manipulator on his first day in the White House. Previously Trump has said in the past he would label China a currency manipulator after he takes office. In the interview, he said he wouldn’t take that step on his first day in the White House. “I would talk to them first,” he said.
He added: “Certainly they are manipulators. But I’m not looking to do that.” But he made plain his displeasure with China’s currency practices. “Instead of saying, ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, ‘Oh, our currency is dropping.’ It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose.
“Our companies can’t compete with them now because our currency is strong and it’s killing us.”
As explained previously China is indeed manipulating its currency, although over the past 18 months it has been doing so in the other direction, intervening to support it from weakening further as a result of hundreds of billions in capital outflows, which have resulted in unprecedented capital controls.
Naturally, Trump also discussed the ever present topic of Russia and his relationship with Putin. Trump told the WSJ that while he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russian, “at least for a period of time,” he would keep intact sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration in late December in response to Moscow’s alleged cyberattacks to influence November’s election. "But he suggested he might do away with those penalties if Russia proved helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to the U.S."
“If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?” he said.
* * *
On Saturday morning, Trump was once again active on Twitter, first slamming Congressman John Lewis, who made news on Friday saying that Trump is "not a legitimate president", saying "John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!"...
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017
... and then reverted back to the key political topic of last week, namely the US intel report on Trump, tweeting that "INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" "
INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017
D.C. National Guard Chief Fired Days Before Trump Inauguration: "The Timing Is Extremely Unusual"
via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 04:58:00 GMT
"It doesn’t make sense to can the general in the middle of an active deployment," rages D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) after Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz, who heads the D.C. National Guard and is an integral part of overseeing the inauguration, has been ordered removed from command effective Jan. 20, 12:01 p.m., just as Donald Trump is sworn in as president.
As The Washington Post reports, Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz’s departure will come in the midst of the presidential ceremony, classified as a national special security event — and while thousands of his troops are deployed to help protect the nation’s capital during an inauguration he has spent months helping to plan.
“The timing is extremely unusual,” Schwartz said in an interview Friday morning, confirming a memo announcing his ouster that was obtained by The Washington Post.
During the inauguration, Schwartz would command not only the members of the D.C. guard but also an additional 5,000 unarmed troops sent in from across the country to help. He also would oversee military air support protecting the nation’s capital during the inauguration.
“My troops will be on the street,” Schwartz, who turned 65 in October, said, “I’ll see them off but I won’t be able to welcome them back to the armory.” He said that he would “never plan to leave a mission in the middle of a battle.”
Schwartz, who was appointed to head the guard by President George W. Bush in 2008, maintained the position through President Obama’s two terms. He said his orders came from the Pentagon but that he doesn’t know who made the decision.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) blasted the decision to remove Schwartz, especially on Inauguration Day.
“It doesn’t make sense to can the general in the middle of an active deployment,” Mendelson said. He added that Schwartz’s sudden departure would be a long-term loss for the District. “He’s been really very good at working with the community and my impression was that he was good for the Guard.”
Unlike in states, where the governor appoints the National Guard commander, in the District that duty falls to the president.
Schwartz said that he has not been told why he was asked to step down. “I’m a soldier,” he said, noting that he was following orders and has no regrets. “I’m a presidential appointee, therefore the president has the power to remove me.”
Is this just another part of Obama's "smooth" transition? Or is something even more sinister at work here, since we already know that anti-Trump activists are planning "the biggest protest in US history" on the day of the inauguration?
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As we noted previously, radical leftists are planning to make January 20th the most chaotic Inauguration Day in American history. Their stated goal is to “disrupt” the Inauguration festivities as much as possible, and they are planning a wide range of “actions” to achieve that stated goal. Some of the more moderate groups are using terms such as “civil resistance” and “civil disobedience”, but others are openly talking about “blockades”, jumping barricades, throwing projectiles and “citywide paralysis”. My hope is that all of their efforts will turn out to be a big flop, but it is important to understand that these groups are well funded, highly organized and extremely motivated. The election of Donald Trump has been perhaps the single most galvanizing moment for the radical left in modern American history, and they are working very hard to turn January 20th into a major political statement.
In fact, just recently one activist group took out a full page ad in the New York Times…
Thousands of activists, journalists, scientists, entertainers, and other prominent voices took out a full-page call to action in the New York Times on Wednesday making clear their rejection of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with the simple message: “No!”
“Stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America!” the ad states, followed by a list of signatories that includes scholar Cornel West; author Alice Walker; Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux; educator Bill Ayers; poet Saul Williams; CNN‘s Marc Lamont Hill; Carl Dix of the Communist Party USA; and numerous others.
The ad pointed people to refusefascism.org, and it asserted that Trump must be stopped whether he was legitimately elected or not…
Trump promises to inflict repression and suffering on people in this country, to deport millions, to increase violence up to the use of nuclear weapons on people across the globe, and to inflict catastrophes upon the planet itself. He has assembled a cabinet of Christian fundamentalist fanatics, war mongers, racists, science deniers. NO! His regime must not be allowed to consolidate. We REFUSE to accept a Fascist America!
If you go to refusefascism.org, you will discover that the protests that they are organizing in Washington D.C. will begin on January 14th. They say that they want to “stop the Trump-Pence regime before it starts”, and they hope to have protests going “every day and every night” without interruption through at least January 20th.
Another group that plans to kick things off on January 14th is DisruptJ20. Of course that is short for “Disrupt January 20th”. If you go to their official website, you will find a long slate of events that have already been scheduled.
According to Legba Carrefour, a spokesperson for DisruptJ20, one of the goals of the group is to block major transportation routes into and throughout our nation’s capital. And he is not shy about the fact that they literally want to “shut down the Inauguration”…
“We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that’s the short of it,” he says. “We’re pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don’t think has been seen in D.C. before. We’re trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.”
If Carrefour and his fellow conspirators are able to actually accomplish that, it truly would be unprecedented.
And while DisruptJ20 is not publicly advocating violence, they are not exactly discouraging it either…
Carrefour says DisruptJ20 has no publicly announced plans to jump barricades along the inauguration parade route or throw projectiles at the new president, but that autonomous direct actions are encouraged.
“I can’t comment on specific stuff we’re doing like that, mostly because that would be illegal. But, yeah, it will get pretty crazy, I expect,” he says. “‘Have fun!’ I say.”
After the rioting that we have seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and many other communities around the nation in recent years, I hope that authorities are taking these threats quite seriously.
Once Donald Trump won the election, many conservatives seemed to think that the war was won. But the truth of the matter is that many on the left were completely blindsided by Trump’s surprise victory, and now that they are fully awake they are gearing up for battle like never before.
And these protests are not going to end on January 20th. In fact, abortion advocates are hoping to get close to a million women into Washington D.C. on the day following the Inauguration to protest for abortion rights. Filmmaker Michael Moore is hoping that this march will be the beginning of “100 days of resistance” against Trump’s presidency…
Filmmaker and liberal icon Michael Moore has announced his plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month and has called for sore loser liberals to go further — by staging protests acts of resistance through the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.
In an appearance, this weekend on MSNBC’s The Last Word, the 62-year-old Trumpland and Fahrenheit 9/11 director made a “call to arms” to those opposed to Trump’s presidency to join the Women’s March on Washington scheduled for January 21, the day after the presidential inauguration.
“It’s important that everybody go there,” Moore told MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
Of course it is easy to imagine how all of this could spiral wildly out of control. If Trump cracks down on these protests really hard in an attempt to restore law and order, that could end up sparking a dramatic backlash against his “police state tactics”. And if the protests become even bigger and more violent, Trump could respond by cracking down even more harshly.
Let us hope for some really cold weather in D.C. at the end of January so that as many troublemakers as possible get discouraged and stay home. Violent protests, blockades and riots aren’t going to solve anything, and they could easily open fresh wounds in a nation that is becoming more divided with each passing day.
