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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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