Monday, June 25, 2018

Kushner and Abbas. My Advice To "Despicables"- Cool It.



American Media, Soviet Tactics

The job of a journalist is to report facts, add context where necessary, and leave it to the consumer to decide what to think. When journalists use their position to influence attitudes and shape society toward their own ideal visions, they’re no longer journalists—they’re activists. In this week’s video, James O’Keefe, founder and president of Project Veritas, explains why fewer and fewer people trust this new form of “journalism.”
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But then there is also heartwarming news:
Anthony Borges Used His Body To Hold A Classroom Door Shut During The Florida Shooting, Protecting 20 Other Students Inside As The Gunman Fired Through The Door, Hitting Him Five Times.  May He Have A Speedy Recoveryhis Is
                                                          Anthony
                                                          Borges, 15. He
                                                          Used His Body
                                                          To Hold A
                                                          Classroom Door
                                                          Shut During
                                                          The
 "Life Gave Me The Gift Of You" - Marine's 4 Year Old Son Cries Tears Of Joy After Hearing New Step-Mom's Vows For Him https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/faith-in-humanity-restored-wholesome-happy-random-acts-of-kindness-175-5a8a97bdaf6b6__700.jpg 
This Old Lady Goes To The Supermarket To Read Books All The Time So The Manager Put A Little Bench For Her A Middle School Started his Old
                                                          Lady Goes To
                                                          The
                                                          Supermarket To
                                                          Read Books All
                                                          The Time So
                                                          The Manager
                                                          Put A

 A “Breakfast With Dads” Program But Many Dads Couldn’t Make It And Several Students Didn't Have Father Figures.  The School Posted A Facebook Request For 50 Volunteer Fathers... 600 Fathers From All Backgrounds Show UP  Middle
                                                          School Started
                                                          A “Breakfast
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Kushner sends a message to Abbbas. (See 1 below.)
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If radical Democrats, like Maxine Waters and her ilk, believe incivility is politically acceptable and effective and they want to start another civil war perhaps they should rethink their words, behaviour and actions because conservatives own most of the guns and know how to use them.

The "despicables" have been pushing the envelope and one day there will be a response for which they did not bargain.  You cannot continue to shoot Republicans practicing base ball, you cannot throw Republicans out of public restaurants, you cannot harass Republicans attending a movie, you can not curse the president of the United States in the Halls of Congress, you cannot continue to support the mocking of our flag, you cannot continue to publish lies without impunity without, at some point, receiving/inciting a serious and resounding response.

"Deplorables" are a patient lot. They are willing to let their voices be heard at the polls but not forever. I would advise the "despicables" to cool their fervor, accept their electoral defeat and return to being Americans. (See 2 below.)

Other commentary: https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/25/why-this-immigration-psychodrama-will-also-pass/#.WzECzt0wVSE.aolmail
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There will come a time. (See 3 below.)
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1)

Kushner: U.S. plan will be public if Abbas doesn't ‘Come back to the table'

By HERB KEINON
Washington is willing to engage with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas if he returns to negotiations, but if he is not willing, the United States will likely air its long-awaited blueprint for peace publicly, Jared Kushner said in a rare interview published Sunday in a Palestinian newspaper.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, made his comments to Al-Quds at the end of a five-country regional tour with Mideast negotiator Jason Greenblatt to promote the US plan. The PA has boycotted the duo and rejected the plan even before it has been released.

Kushner said he did “not directly” reach out to Abbas for a meeting, saying the Palestinian leader “knows that we are open to meeting him and continuing the discussion when he is ready. He has said publicly he will not meet us and we have opted not to chase him.”


Kushner said the plan will be ready “soon,” adding, “We are almost done.”

While saying he has no reason not to believe Abbas when the Palestinian leader says he is committed to peace, Kushner did question how much Abbas “has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal.”

Abbas, Kushner said, “has his talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years. There has been no peace deal achieved in that time. To make a deal, both sides will have to take a leap and meet somewhere between their stated positions. I am not sure President Abbas has the ability to do that.”

Kushner, who said the US team “has done a lot of listening,” said the Palestinian people do not feel like their lives are getting better, “and there is only so long you can blame that on everyone other than Palestinian leadership.”

He said that the Palestinians are “less invested in the politicians’ talking points than they are in seeing how a deal will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs and prospects for a better life.”

The international community, he added, “is getting frustrated with Palestinian leadership and not seeing many actions that are constructive toward achieving peace. There are a lot of sharp statements and condemnations, but no ideas or efforts with prospects of success.”

Kushner said there are those who maintained that Abbas is only focused on his political survival “and cementing a legacy of not having compromised than on bettering the lives of the Palestinian people.”

Asked whether he thought that was the case, Kushner replied, “I hope not. My job is to work with the parties in charge, so I am ready to work with President Abbas if he is willing.”

Kushner, in a direct message to Palestinians, urged them “not to reject a plan they haven’t even seen.”

“A lot has happened in the world since this conflict began decades ago,” he said. “The world has moved forward while you have been left behind. Don’t allow your grandfather’s conflict to determine your children’s future.”

Kushner, who along with Greenblatt, met Saturday evening with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – their second meeting in two days – provided no specifics on the contours of the plan, but touted the significant economic benefits that could be derived from a deal.

“Think about the prospects for the Palestinian people over a five to 20-year horizon if they get massive investments in modern infrastructure, job training and economic stimulus” he said.

“The Palestinian people are industrious, well-educated and adjacent to the Silicon Valley of the Middle East – Israel,” Kushner added. “Israel’s prosperity would spill over very quickly to the Palestinians if there is peace.”

Kushner, in his only nod during the interview to the idea of a two-state solution, said while he believes strongly that “to make a peace deal you need to define and have secure borders, economically you want to eliminate boundaries and allow the economies to become more integrated to increase the opportunity and prosperity for all of the people – including the Jordanians and Egyptians and beyond.”

Asked by the interviewer, Al Quds editor-in-chief Walid Abu-Zalaf, if this means that what is being worked on is a regional plan, Kushner replied: “The actual deal points are between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the economic plan we are working on can show what comes as part of a deal when it is achieved with some massive investments that will extend to the Jordanian and Egyptian people as well.”

Before coming to Jerusalem on the current trip, Kushner and Greenblatt visited Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Asked what the most important points in the plan were for the Arab leaders, he replied a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.

He said Arab leaders also want to see the Palestinians enjoying economic opportunity and dignity, and a deal that “brings about a realistic solution to the issues that have been debated for decades.”

They all insisted, Kushner said, “that al-Aqsa Mosque remain open to all Muslims who wish to worship.”

Regarding the situation in the Gaza Strip, Kushner said the people there are “hostages to bad leadership,” and as long at rockets are being fired and terror tunnels are being dug, “there will be a choke hold on resources allowed to enter. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Kushner said the only way to solve the problem is for the people of Gaza to “encourage the leadership to aim for a true cease-fire that gives Israel and Egypt the confidence to start allowing more commerce and goods” into the coastal strip.

Kushner took sharp issue with veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat’s charge that the US is trying to divide Gaza from the West Bank.

“The last I checked they are divided, they are not connected by government or land and it’s needlessly become a dire humanitarian situation because the Palestinian leadership has made it a political situation,” he said.

Kushner said Gaza’s “downward spiral” over the last decade has been “greatly exacerbated by the PA’s salary cuts.”

“It’s time for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to stop using the people of Gaza as pawns,” he said. “The narrative of victimhood may feel good for the moment and help you grab headlines, but it doesn’t do anything to improve lives.”

Netanyahu, at the weekly cabinet meeting, said there was a “special focus” in his talks with Kushner and Greenblatt on the situation in Gaza.

“I must say that there was absolute support for our positions and our actions to ensure the security of the State of Israel and its citizens in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, which was expressed publicly by the American administration’s envoys” he said. “The issue also came up of how it might be possible to resolve the humanitarian problem in Gaza without strengthening Hamas.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, let it be known that Israel will not automatically sign on to what the US might put in the plan.

“In the past few days, we have been hearing about a proposal that might come from the United States to the region. We will study in depth any proposal out of respect and friendship to the United States, which has proven that it views Israel as a national strategic asset and sees importance in Israel’s security,” he said. “With that, we will definitely insist on the national security interests of the State of Israel.”
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2)

Maxine Waters, in spittle-flecked rant, urges intimidation and violence against Trump officials


In her dotage, Rep. Maxine Waters makes great copy for bloggers and pundits. Sometimes confused, sometimes incoherent, sometimes simply bizarre, Waters has come to define the unbalanced left.
Yesterday, she went too far.
In her zeal to ramp up a partisan crowd, Waters spoke approvingly of the recent angry and threatening confrontations by the left against Trump officials in public places. Then, she took it a step farther.
After claiming Trump is”sacrificing our children,” referring to the illegal immigrant kids separated from their “parents” near the border, Waters again called for the president’s impeachment, triggering loud applause from the baying mob.
“History will record while he tried to step on all of us, we kicked him in his rear and step on him,” she yelled, whipping up the crowd.
“If you think we’re rallying now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she warned.
“Already, you have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants,” she continued as the crowd erupted, “who have protesters taking up at their house, who say, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep,'” she continued.
And guess what,” she predicted, “we’re going to win this battle because while you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don’t know the Bible.
“God is on OUR side!” she declared, as the crowd went wild. “On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable.”
“And so, let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she yelled.
Waters remarks were then marred by a screeching microphone.
“Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this!” she yelled.
The drumbeat continues. Her defenders will point out she never actually advocated violence against her political opponents. Pure sophistry. Her meaning was crystal clear, even if her conscious intent to urge people to commit a violent act wasn't. 
With most of the left cheering Waters and the mobs accosting Trump officials on, the barely concealed threats of violence against their political opponents is not going to stop. In fact, threatening and violent incidents against conservatives and Republicans is rising at an alarming rate.
Even if those threats become reality and someone is hurt or killed, the intimidation won't stop. If anything, physically harming a Trump official will almost certainly increase the hysteria and frenzy against them. This has been the pattern throughout history in other countries Once the mob's bloodlust is up, they thirst for more. 
Of course, any effort by the administration to protect their people will elicit calls of "fascism!" or "oppression!" from the left. As long as Maxine Waters and other supposedly prominent Democrats either stay silent or actually encourage the violence, there's no telling where it will end.
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3)

BIS fears 'snapback' crunch as rising rates meet record global debt.


BISThe venerable Bank for International Settlements in Basel thinks central banks lost the plot a long time ago CREDIT: BIS
·          Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

World debt ratios have spiralled to record levels during the era of super-easy money and markets are showing tell-tale signs of late-cycle excess, leaving the international financial system acutely vulnerable to a jump in borrowing costs. 
Any reversal in our fortunes could be “quick and sharp”, says the Bank for International Settlements, the venerable global watchdog based in Switzerland and the scourge of dissolute practice.
The warnings cascade from the BIS’s annual report released over the weekend, always a sobering read for investors and central bankers alike.

Governments are running low on monetary and fiscal ammunition needed to fight fresh shocks or to cope with recession. An inflation surprise may lurk, risking a “snapback” in global bond yields and a horrid denouement for an investment universe built on assumptions of ‘lowflation’ forever.  
The rising US dollar threatens to set off a sudden liquidity squeeze and a rash of capital flight from emerging markets, now 60pc of the global economy and big enough to engulf the old world if unfolding events are mishandled.
Banks have higher capital ratios and are safer than in 2007 but the risk has rotated to pension funds, insurers, and asset managers overseeing $160 trillion of global wealth - including $45 trillion of shadow banking - now clustered in “crowded trades” with narrow exits.  Any one of these scenarios could trigger a crisis. They might well combine.
Global debt has risen from 179pc of GDP on the eve of the Lehman crisis to 217pc as emerging markets are sucked into the leverage sump. The emerging market debt ratio as a whole has jumped by 63 percentage points in a decade. There are already signs that financial cycle is turning in several of these countries, including China. A long hangover awaits. 
“The higher the debt, the more sensitive the economy and financial valuations are to higher interest rates,” said the report.
BIS
Emerging market debt has soared since the Lehman crisis, led by China CREDIT: BIS ANNUAL REPORT 2018
Public debt has reached post-War highs in both rich and emerging economies.  Fiscal profiles have been “flattered” by financial expansions and the windfall of fair weather tax revenues. It is a Faustian Pact. Promiscuous recourse to debt brings forward prosperity from the future, but eventually the future arrives - with a sting in the tail: the extra debt leads to “deeper and prolonged recessions".  
"There is a limit to stimulating activity with debt," said Hyun-Song Shin, the bank’s head of research.
The BIS says governments have to walk a treacherous and narrow path in these circumstance, careful not to kill the recovery by over-tightening or to let the inflation genie out of the bottle by running economies too hot. An error either way will be severely punished. 
The imperative is to build up “fiscal space” while the going is good. The Trump Administration is doing the exact opposite with a fiscal spree that pushes the budget deficit towards 5pc of GDP at the top of the economic cycle when the output is already closed. The deficit should be nearer zero.
While the report is careful not to single out the US, the central bank fraternity views Mr Trump’s unfunded tax cuts and higher spending as reckless. The stimulus will force the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates faster, and out of step with Europe and Asia. This risks a spike in the dollar, which in turn threatens to topple the vast edifice of dollar-denominated debt outside US jurisdiction.  
BIS said global dollar lending has exploded to around $25 trillion when “equivalent” swaps and derivatives are included. It is a form of leveraged leakage from quantitative easing and zero rates. The intermediaries are often European and Asian banks. It fueled a global asset and credit boom when the going was good.
The process is now going to reverse. The stronger dollar and rising US rates together act a tightening tourniquet on world liquidity. “This could expose financial vulnerabilities in some countries, especially if it plays out in an abrupt and disorderly fashion. This could lead to powerful contractionary pressures alongside currency depreciation.”
Mr Shin said the dollar exchange rate is what drives the world’s animal spirits, in both directions. When it strengthens, banks with unhedged exposure are forced to retrench. “The tail risk in the portfolio goes up and they might have to cut back positions, not just for dollar bonds but for other assets as well. The mechanism acts as a broad tightening of credit conditions,” he said.
Emerging markets are on the front line. Dollar debt in these countries has doubled to $7.2 trillion since 2007, much of it owed by companies. Dollar bond issuance soared by 17pc last year alone.  
BIS
US dollar debt in emerging markets has doubled in a decade to $3.6 trillion, or over $7 trillion when swap contracts are included. This spells trouble as the dollar rises CREDIT: BIS ANNUAL REPORT 2018
Most of these countries have built up defences after learning the harsh lesson of the Asia/Russia crisis of the late 1990s. “Emerging markets are starting with hefty foreign exchange reserves and are in a very different position from 1997. The buffers are much larger," said Mr Shin.
Nevertheless, many risk having to raise rates ‘pro-cyclically’ into a downturn to defend their currencies.  “Scope for easing monetary conditions would be severely constrained. While foreign exchange reserves can be drawn down, experience indicates that their deployability may be smaller than their size may suggest, as markets can become nervous once the buffer shrinks.”
The squeeze has already exposed the rot in Argentina and Turkey. Signs of stress are spreading to Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil, among others. The danger is accelerating capital flight as fickle foreigners rush for the door. “All this amplifies changes in financial conditions globally,” said the report. 
The ‘blowback’ into the US, Europe, and rich economies could be hard to contain. Emerging markets have accounted for two-thirds of global growth over the last seven years.
World asset markets are already stretched. The BIS said credit spreads are “at or below” levels last seen just before the global financial crisis. A string of countries that avoided the worst last time are now grappling with property booms and excess credit - Canada, Australia, and implicitly China. The imbalances are “qualitatively similar to those observed pre-crisis in the economies that subsequently ran into trouble".
“In the US, in particular, corporate leverage today is at its highest level since the beginning of the millennium and similar to that prevailing after the leveraged buyout boom of the late 1980s. This is so even after accounting for large corporate cash balances,” it said.   
The Shiller cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio of US equities (32.74 for the S&P 500) is twice its long-term average since 1881. It is also higher than the 1929 spike.
BIS
The Shiller cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio of the S&P 500 index is higher than in 1929, and much higher than the pre-Lehman peak
While the $138 trillion global banking sector is healthier, it is overshadowed by a $160 trillion asset industry that has crowded into riskier assets in a hunt for yield. It is vulnerable to “redemption risk” and a vicious circle of forced selling into a falling market. 
The number of funds in the US allowing investors to withdraw money immediately has risen from 16pc of corporate debt from 7pc before the Lehman crisis.  “Portfolio investors with limited tolerance for losses may amplify price fluctuations should they attempt to reduce exposures simultaneously.”
So-called ‘dynamic hedging strategies’ could make matters worse by inducing investors to sell long-term bonds as rates rise, accelerating the effects.  Exchange traded funds are “particularly exposed” to rising rates. There is a clear risk of a downward spiral if confidence breaks. “Funds may amplify market adjustments by shedding assets in excess of redemptions to increase cash buffers,” it said.
Any number of shocks could bring matters to a head. A trade war that seriously threatened the world’s “open multilateral trading system” is one.
But the rupture might well come in time-honoured style as late-cycle inflation suddenly bursts forth and the Phillips Curve comes back from the dead. This is the dreaded “snapback” scenario for bond yields.
“So far inflation has been rather unresponsive to the continuing tightening in product and labour markets, but at some point pressures could mount and inflation could surprise on the upside. The longer the expansion continues, the more likely it is that capacity constraints will bite,” it said.
The BIS says US shale oil dampens inflation spikes since frackers can crank up output quicky - up to a point, given the pipeline crunch in the Texas Permian Basin - but it cannot hold back deeper forces. “Even small changes in the inflation outlook (or monetary policy response) could elicit an outsize market response,” it said.
The unpleasant reality is that governments have little left in the arsenal if a recession were hit to soon. The BIS has long argued that central banks boxed themselves into a corner during the era of inflation targeting, letting asset booms run unchecked but then intervening massively to prevent the bust. This asymmetric reflex has led to ‘zombie’ companies instead of clearing dead wood. It explains poor productivity growth and a loss of dynamism. 
It inevitably leads to credit-driven asset bubbles. It becomes ever harder for central banks to confront these excesses. Policy-makers are caught in a “debt-trap” of their own making. Ultra-low rates in turn beget further low rates. Eventually it becomes impossible to cut rates far enough in a downturn. It is the end of the road. 
Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned last week that the central banks need 500 basis points of rate cuts to fight recessions. They do not have such a margin. 
“The room for policy manoeuvre is much narrower than it was before the crisis: policy rates are substantially lower and balance sheets much larger. While central banks have field-tested unconventional tools in the wake of the crisis, their side effects set limits on how far they can be used.
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