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Tuesday 21st of November 2017 |
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Macro Thoughts
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Angela Merkel is not going to resign as the Chancellor of Germany. "No, that's not on the table," she said Law & Politics |
Angela Merkel is not going to resign as the Chancellor of Germany. “No, that’s not on the table,” she said, with a small, suppressed smile, when asked, by one of two interviewers for the German television broadcaster ZDF, if that prospect had, “in quiet moments,” occurred to her
On Sunday night came the fall of Jamaika—or, as German press headlines put it, “Jamaica is over!” and “Jamaica—done.” After weeks of talks, and what Merkel, in interviews on Monday, said were dozens of pages of carefully worked-out agreements on everything from energy policy to kindergarten funding, the Free Democrats walked away from the negotiations. This means that Germany, technically, has only a caretaker government at the moment, and Merkel has only some narrow options. She could try to govern with a minority, cobbling together the votes she needs each time a bill comes up. (Under Germany’s rules, this is possible, though it has not been attempted in the postwar era.) She could call new elections, which wouldn’t happen until, perhaps, March. (“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Merkel said, indicating that new elections might be preferable to the first option.) She could try to keep negotiating, perhaps with the S.P.D.; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s President, whose role is usually only a symbolic ratification of what the election winners work out, said on Monday that he would encourage this approach. He belongs to the S.P.D., and so he might have some influence there. Or Merkel could, in fact, resign, and make it all someone else’s problem. But whose? One reason that Germany is in this fix is that, after twelve years with Merkel in charge, there is no other obvious leader with her national, let alone international, standing. It is telling that one of the European concerns about the end of Jamaika is that no one but Merkel has the authority to get the Brexit talks done—until there is a settlement in Germany, those may be paralyzed, too.
Conclusions
Cannot see Angela exiting stage Left at this point.
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Has Kushner given Riyadh carte blanche? via @AlMonitor H/T @lrozen Law & Politics |
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have found themselves at odds of late with US State Department diplomats and Defense Department leadership, taking provocative actions by blockading Qatar; summoning Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Riyadh earlier this month, where he abruptly resigned; and blockading since Nov. 6 major Yemeni ports from desperately needed humanitarian aid shipments in retaliation for a Nov. 4 Houthi missile strike targeting Riyadh's international airport.
The State and Defense departments have urged Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to ease their pressure campaigns on Qatar and Lebanon and improve aid access in Yemen to avert catastrophic famine. But Saudi and Emirati officials have suggested to US diplomatic interlocutors that they feel they have at least tacit approval from the White House for their hard-line actions, in particular from President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who Trump has tasked with leading his Middle East peace efforts.
Kushner has reportedly established a close rapport with UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef al-Otaiba, as well as good relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner met in Riyadh in late October.
When the Saudis and Emiratis were about to launch the blockade of Qatar in June, then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones got a call in the middle of the night from UAE Ambassador Otaiba to inform him of the impending action. Jones’ reaction was “extremely harsh. ‘What are you guys doing? This is crazy,’” a former US ambassador to the region told Al-Monitor. “And … Yusuf [Otaiba]'s response was, ‘Have you spoken to the White House?’”
“The problem is that the Saudis think Trump and Kushner are the only ones whose views matter,” Konyndyk told Al-Monitor. “And they're probably right.”
Conclusions
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13-NOV-2017 :: The capture of a 32-year-old wannabe king and the future price of crude oil. @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
Saudi Arabia and its allies UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait are caught in an ever tightening Shia pincer. The paranoia in the palaces in Saudi Arabia is real and existential. And what is also clear is that Bibi Netanyahu, MBZ [the crown prince of Abu Dhabi], Jared Kushner and a Trump carte blanche have all leveraged this existential paranoia to effect not a state capture but a kingdom capture. The Guptas were a precursor for this particular capture.
The existential paranoia in the head of 32-year-old wannabe King is evidenced in this comment about Iran in May this year, “How can I communicate with them while they prepare for the arrival of al-Mahdi al-Montazar?”
Last week after being coached into the early hours by Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, MBS launched his night of the long knives, which, according to the veteran Journalist Robert Fisk, and I quote:
‘’When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime minister silenced’’
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05-DEC-2016:: "We have a deviate, Tomahawk." Law & Politics |
Don DeLillo, who is a prophetic 21st writer, writes as follows in one of his short stories: The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “ There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.” I have no doubt that Putin ran a seriously 21st predominantly digital programme of interference which amplified the Trump candidacy. POTUS Trump was an ideal candidate for this kind of support.
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A Peronist on the Potomac @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
A PRESIDENT is swept into office after whipping up a wave of grievance and resentment. He claims to represent “the people” against internal exploiters and external threats. He purports to “refound” the nation, and damns those who preceded him. He governs though confrontation and polarisation. His language is aggressive—opponents are branded as enemies or traitors. He uses the media to cement his connection with the masses, while bridling at critical journalism and at rebuffs to executive power. His policies focus on bringing short-term benefits to his political base—hang the long-term cost to the country’s economic stability.
Donald Trump? Yes, but these traits come straight from the manual of Latin American populist nationalism, a tradition that stretches from Argentina’s Juan Perón to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and beyond. Yes, Mr Trump is a billionaire capitalist whereas Chávez was an anti-capitalist army officer. But populism is not synonymous with the left: conservatives such as Peru’s Alberto Fujimori used its techniques, too. “Post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” have long been deployed in Latin America, from Mr Fujimori’s use of tabloid newspapers to smear opponents, to Chávez’s imaginary coups and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s fake inflation statistics in Argentina.
Latin American experience teaches that populists are easily underestimated and can stay in power for a long time. But not forever. Populist regimes are often corrupt and spendthrift, and usually fail to make people better off. Whatever the example from the White House, Latin American history shows that populist nationalism is a recipe for national decline. That is the message liberals need to hammer home.
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Bitcoin's White-Knuckle Ride Continues as It Hurtles Past $8,000 International Trade |
Bitcoin rose 4.5 percent to $8,045.45 as of 11:34 a.m. in London after climbing as much as 5.2 percent during Asian hours. It’s been a tumultuous year for the virtual currency, with three separate slumps of more than 25 percent all giving way to subsequent rallies.
“The inflation in this thing is massive,” Luke Hickmore, a senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments in London, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “When will it collapse? Who knows. It will cause a lot of pain.”
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ World Currencies |
Euro 1.1738 “It was primarily a euro weakness story, based on the failure to form a coalition government in Germany,” said Bill Northey Dollar Index 94.03 The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rival currencies, dipped 0.1 percent to 94.029, but was still within sight of its overnight peak of 94.104, its highest since Nov. 14. Japan Yen 112.585 Against the yen, the dollar was slightly lower on the day at 112.59 , holding above its overnight low of 111.89 yen, which was its lowest since mid-October. Swiss Franc 0.9930 Pound 1.3246 Aussie 0.7539 The Australian dollar was down 0.2 percent at $0.7536, after falling as low as $0.7529 earlier, its deepest nadir since mid-June. India Rupee 65.035 South Korea Won 1096.75 Brazil Real 3.2574 Egypt Pound 17.6505 South Africa Rand 14.0473
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20-NOV-2017 :: The genie is out of the bottle @TheStarKenya Africa |
It is authority that provokes revolution....This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent...They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history. Ryszard Kapuściński Shah of Shahs, P. 106
The pictures from Harare on Saturday spoke to a ‘’People Power’’ which is a genie which will be difficult if not impossible to put back in its bottle.
“It’s like Christmas,” said one marcher, Fred Mubay to Reuters.
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Africans are getting healthier and wealthier Africa |
IN MANY ways the story of Africa in the 21st century is one of success. Great strides have been made tackling diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. A baby born in Africa today is less likely to die young, and more likely to go to school than one born in 2000. Life expectancy at birth increased by nearly ten years, to 60, between 2000 and 2015. But many Africans also feel less secure than they did a decade ago. Civil wars and social unrest have proliferated, according to an index of how Africa’s leaders are performing.
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