Zero Hedge - Amazon Exposed For Illegally Squeezing Merchants As War With Walmart Heats Up

Monopoly power, where the customer isn't always getting the best deal.

Years ago, US regulators quietly put a stop to Amazon's practice of forcing third-party sellers to offer their best prices on Amazon's platform, arguing that this practice was a blatant violation of anti-trust laws. But back in 2017, Amazon found a way to circumvent these rules by instituting "price alerts" that incentivized sellers to raise prices of their goods on rival platforms like Walmart.com.

On Monday, Bloomberg published an expose revealing how Amazon appears to still be violating federal anti-trust rules by forcing third-party sellers to lower prices of products sold on Amazon. If sellers don't comply by either lowering prices on Amazon or raising prices on rival platforms, Amazon's algorithms will bury their listings, causing a sharp drop in sales. This has prompted some companies to sell their products at a loss just to hold on to market share.

Zero Hedge - Amazon Exposed For Illegally Squeezing Merchants As War With Walmart Heats Up

Links — 5 Aug 2019

Zero Hedge
Signs Go Up In London Telling People Not To Sh*t In The Streets
Tyler Durden

RT
Bellingcat unloads 4,000-word piece on Tulsi Gabbard over her questioning Syria chemical attacks

Craig Murray Blog
In the World of Truth and Fact, Russiagate is Dead. In the World of the Political Establishment, it is Still the New 42
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

Reuters
Putin to Trump: We'll develop new nuclear missiles if you do

The Intercept
We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message. It’s Ominous That We’re Only Getting It From Marianne Williamson.

Jon Schwarz

Reuters
Trump jabs Fed, calls China's currency move 'major violation'

Sputnik International
US Intel Warns of ‘Another 9/11’ After Alleged Death of Osama Bin Laden’s Son – Report

Sputnik International
US Starts Talks With Pacific Islands on Exclusive Military Access to Airspace, Waters Amid China Row

Reuters
China urges U.S. to stop interfering in Hong Kong

Zero Hedge
Violent Chaos Breaks Out In Hong Kong: Police Stations Set On Fire, Triads Beat Protesters, City Paralyzed
Tyler Durden

Checkpoint Asia
Trump Says May Impose a Naval Blockade on Venezuela [blocking Russian and Chinese ships]

Sputnik International
Chinese Tankers’ Brief Detention Prompted by Alleged Violation of US’ Anti-Iran Sanctions – Report

Sputnik International
Germany Refuses to Join US-Led Naval Coalition to Counter Iran: 'We Want European Mission'

Zero Hedge
Snyder: China Is Extremely Angry, And Now Considers The United States To Be Enemy #1
Tyler Durden

Sputnik International
Huawei Could Release Smartphone with Its New Hongmeng OS Instead of Google's Android This Year

Sputnik International
Trump Knows Planned Sanctions Over S-400 Out of Line With US-Turkey Ties - Ankara

Reuters

Iran says it will further breach nuclear deal in one month unless Europeans act

Navarro on Trade

Navarro looking pretty strong here (takes a hack at Powell Fed too...):







China entities obviously realizing lower prices of their goods in USD terms in response to US tariffs and this is then reflected in the weaker exchange rate...  "pumping!" non-risk reserves into the China banking system to "lend out!" not helping either...

Fed last year increasing rates now in the post GFC regulatory environment, where the CCAR compliance requires more Tier1 quality assets at the banks, has an increased negative effect on bank residual and thus a more pronounced negative effect on credit creation.

Fed's rate increases of 100bps last year created over $50b of unrealized losses on these Tier1 quality bank available for sale securities at its nadir.  Shitty 4Q growth dipped back below 3 to 2.6%, equity index prices reduced 20%... probably fair to posit the Fed's rate increases last year took a full point off GDP growth...

Jonathan Ford - Boeing and the siren call of share buybacks

Fair-weather strategy carries risk for investors

Even the Financial Times thinks that stock buy-backs are not always a great idea, and would have preferred Boeing to have invested more in new technology instead, which would have been good for everyone - including the shareholders, the company, the country, the consumer, and the workers.

Jonathan Ford says how in the end not even the shareholders gain, only the management, who can make huge bonuses from the buy-backs.

CEO's make big money on the upturn, but if this upturn eventually causes a down turn, there is no penalty - pay isn't docked, or bonuses confiscated. The incentives are wrong.

In Britain, pension funds invested in house price bubbles, greatly inflating house prices, making huge profits on the upturn, and then payed big bonuses to the pension fund's management. But when house prices collapsed, there was no penalty and pension fund managers kept their bonuses.

Some people in the government (including Conservatives) tried to change the law and tax system to make pension fund managers invest in new industry, start-ups, and new technology instead. This would have created more employment, with more jobs for young people, who would have had exciting careers earning good money, while creating the profits for the pensioners. It would have been good for everyone, the country, the pensioners, the workers, and young people, while the consumer would have got better products. And with more people in work paying taxes, our taxes would have been lower. But the pension industry squashed the bill.

Conservative voters have no idea how much they have been done over by the system they claim to adore. Their children much poorer now, and laden with debt, with huge rents and mortgages, along with a shortage of good jobs, while having to do excessive hours at work.

The problem with buyback gains is that they are based on nothing more than making equity prices more volatile. So while profits and share prices are rising, the lucky executive cashes in on the favourable optics, pocketing bonuses that won’t be subject to subsequent disgorgement.

FT

Jonathan Ford - Boeing and the siren call of share buybacks

SCMP — Is China about to let the yuan weaken below seven to the dollar?

The CNY has already breached 7. The question now is whether China is ready to let drop stand, or even allow the currency float. This article provides background that most Western articles announcing the move don't. China has apparently decided to pursue its national interest rather than let the exchange rate dominate policy.

SCMP
Is China about to let the yuan weaken below seven to the dollar?

Also relevant

Sputnik International
'Chinese Will No Longer Give Priority to Controlling Trade War Scale' - China State Media

Zero Hedge
Currency War Begins: Chinese Yuan Crashes Past 7 To New Record Low As Global Markets Tumble
Tyler Durden

The US is also putting the push on to destabilize China politically as well as economically.

NEO
Washington’s Major Push for Xinjiang

Jean Perier

Reuters
Hong Kong leader says protests are challenging China's sovereignty

The Strait Times
China trying to reshape Indo-Pacific, says US

Attack on Iran would be an attack on Russia — Pepe Escobar

Russia is meticulously advancing Eurasian chessboard moves that should be observed in conjunction, as Moscow proposes to the Global South an approach diametrically opposed to Western sanctions, threats and economic war. Here are three recent examples....

Asia Times
Attack on Iran would be an attack on Russia

Pepe Escobar

The Citadels of America’s Elites: Fractured and At Odds with Each Other — Alastair Crooke

Summary: We are ruled by morons and nut jobs.

Strategic Culture Foundation
The Citadels of America’s Elites: Fractured and At Odds with Each Other
Alastair Crooke | founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and former British diplomat and senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy

Michael Hudson — Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy

Control of oil has long been a key aim of U.S. foreign policy. The Paris climate agreements and any other Green programs to reduce the pace of global warming are viewed as threatening the aim of dominating world energy markets by keeping economies dependent on oil under U.S. control. Also blocking U.S. willingness to help stem global warming is the oil industry’s economic and hence political power. Its product is not only energy but also global warming, along with plastic pollution....

Naked Capitalism
Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Flat Earth

Here some nut jobs out there still think the earth is flat:




Always good to look at different points-of-view even if the other person is insane... dialectic/platonist Liberal Art method in action....

TGA bottoms at $117B

Capture from Thursday's DTS showing TGA down to $117b that first day of the month of August... net $60B draw down of the account that day ... set a "debt ceiling!" low here previous low during the recent "debt ceiling!" interval was $139B set in late May which preceded the big June >6% rally in equity prices...

Doesn't look like Treasury could have made it through September 1st or at least not safely unless govt didn't raise the debt ceiling Friday... hence Mnuchin/Trump sense of urgency on getting the budget deal done before summer recess....

Treasury has said they want the TGA back up to $350B by end of September about 8 weeks from now...  so thats $230B of depository reserve asset reduction in the banking system by then.. about $30B of reserve reduction per week for 8 weeks...

This rate and monthly magnitude of reserve reduction is probably unprecedented... previous "QT" maximum rate of reserve reduction was about $50b per month...

Perhaps that is why the Fed stopped the QT the same 2 months earlier than planned ... lets hope so.  ... as that would have reduced total system reserves over the same period by another $70B...  might have created a situation where they reduced  depository reserve assets by $300b over 8 weeks...   again probably unprecedented and perhaps chaos inducing in bank regulatory processes and market for US Treasury securities...






It looks like we now get to see what happens to risk asset prices as depositories experience a perhaps unprecedented reduction in non-risk reserve assets of about $230B in 8 weeks...

Nightmare on (moron side of) K Street

Trump signs budget bill on Friday, suspends debt ceiling for  2 years and adds over $300b more spending than previous planned and drives a stake through the heart of 'sequestration'... not a bad day!

Gotta be a nightmare for these morons..  gotta be... like a bad dream... hope they had a really shitty weekend over this couldn't happen to a better bunch of morons:

POTUS has now signed $4 trillion of additional national debt into law since he took office https://t.co/9o9WcgJO0F

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) August 2, 2019

Nice figurative language from these Art Degree second rate intellects: "self-inflicted wound!"... nice metaphor dummies but what is it really? Too dumb and incompetent to describe it in either real or proper terms of abstraction... oh well nothing has changed...

Comments On The Inventory Cycle — Brian Romanchuk

Inventories are one driver of the business cycle. A common argument is that the movement towards just-in-time inventories has reduced the inventory cycle, and hence reduced the amplitude of the business cycle. Although plausible, it is very difficult to distinguish this from a lessened amplitude of the business cycle causing less swings in inventories. Since inventory growth is part of investment, one could view it as a subset of the argument that investment trends drive the business cycle (in most cases; sufficiently stupid policy can always cause a recession).

(Note: this article is based on some charts and thinking on inventories that is a section in my manuscript on recessions. I am not posting the full text, as I think it has too much background information, and probably needs some serious editing.)

Bond Economics
Comments On The Inventory Cycle
Brian Romanchuk

Even He Can’t Get Away With It — Greg Wilpert interviews Michael Hudson

Basically, what he’s trying to do is blame China and blame foreigners for the fact that a lot of Americans are really hurting. They’re not doing better. They’re not earning enough to break even. They’re going further into debt. But Trump is really saying that it’s not our fault. It’s China’s fault. Don’t blame the financial mismanagement. Don’t blame the corporations. Blame China.

He pretends that they’ll pay instead of Americans. But when you levy a tariff, import prices are going to go up. Americans will pay more. The demands he’s making on China are nonsensical. No country is going to give away their autonomy and abolish their socialist economy and say, all right, we’re going to become an American satellite. We’re going to follow Thatcher and Reagan policies and let America buy our companies out and push us back into the 19th century Opium Wars.

The Opium Wars are over and so it’s now Trump’s trade war. So this is nonsense.

What's going on now is that each side is playing a charade to convince that it is not to blame for the fallout from the faux trade war that is really a piece in the hybrid war that the US has directed at China, ultimately in the interest of regime change there.

Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
Even He Can’t Get Away With It
Greg Wilpert interviews Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

See also

On the weekend of July 19-21st, 2019, the University of Manitoba became the venue for the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE). This annual event represents a gathering of Marxist economists from around the globe, and aims to utilize current understandings on the subject to analyze and study the world economy, reveal its laws of development, and offer policies to promote economic and social progress on national and global levels.

One of the keynote speakers at this event was Michael Hudson. He had presented on his most recent paper, detailing how the world could defend itself from U.S. economic warfare.

The Instrument of Empire

Aaron Maté - Mueller time is over, Russia-hate is here to stay

Stephen A Cohen says that over his entire lifetime he has never seen anything as crazy as RussiaGate.

To see all those people on TV lying was very disturbing, especially when it could have started WW3. Politicians on both sides as well as people in the media were all parroting the same nonsense. Even the Guardian, a paper I used to love, was pushing the RussiaGate myth.

I used to think that politicians and journalists were rather bright, especially as most had good degrees, but then I saw how stupid they really were, which is worrying because they run the country.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton and NYU, says that while Robert Mueller has closed up shop, dangerous U.S. fear-mongering about Russia remains. Guest: Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University. His latest book is "War with Russia: From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Russiagate."

Jonathan Ford - Elizabeth Warren is right to worry about private equity looting

Sensible society would not allow these groups to rig odds as they gamble with economy

Even the Financial Times agrees with me. The FT doesn't like you to copy too much, so there is a link is below. They usually let you read one article a day without a subscription. 

 I remember reading how private equity groups not only hire new management to run the companies they have taken over, but they also get financial advice from other people. So what do they do?

https://www.ft.com/content/f2bc6d4e-afbd-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2

Keiser Report: Pirate Equity & Rate Cuts (E1418)

Max Keiser is not always MMT kosher as he wants to tie currency to gold, but this is an excellent video just the same.

Steve Bannon accusese China of unfair trading practices, but Western companies have been dumbing themselves down for decades. Twice as many private equity companies go bankrupt compared to share listed companies.

In the U.K Sainsburys owned all their own property, and an equity group starting buying up lots their shared, but they couldn't get enough to influence the Sainsburys board's decisions. This group realised that the company was worth far more than the asking price as it owned its own property, so their plan was to force the management to sell off the property and then lease it back, making one off massive profits even though in the future Sainsburys would be less competitive.

The equity group tried to influence the other shareholders to go along with their plan, but the Sainsburys board managed to fight them off, although it cost them a lot. Eventually, I guess, that feeds back through to higher prices and lower wages, so the public pays for it in the end

So, a private equity group was able to borrow money really cheap due to ultra low interest rates, then buy into a company and try to get it to sell off its assets to make a one off massive profit, after which it would sell the shares, pay back the banks, and then walk off with a bundle. No work, no effort, no designing things, no investment - just Robber Barrons. Therfore China leaves us behind, but they get the blame for it.

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss how private equity – aka ‘pirate equity’ – has hollowed out the retail sector. Despite their assertions to the contrary, Wall Street firms have destroyed eight times as many retail jobs as they have created in the past decade. And Elizabeth Warren has a plan. In the second half, Max talks to Mitch Feierstein of PlanetPonzi.com about how many rate cuts we can expect before the end of the year, and whether or not the US will go negative just like Europe. They also discuss central banks buying up stocks.

Chris Hedges - On Contact: British government psyops with Mohamed Elmazzi

Britain spends two thirds of its budget on public programmes, like healthcare, education, and welfare, and one third on defence. The British military industrial complex thinks that only one third should be spent on public programmes and the rest on them, so they have put out a massive amount of anti-Russian propaganda, like the Skripal poisoning, Russia-gate, to get the public scared.

These people might well view Russia and China as enemies, but because they are crazy, nearing the paranoid schizo end of the spectrum.

China and Russia are economic competitors, who sometimes win out in the market place, but rather than outbid them in a competitive market, they prefer the military option instead, which happens to also make them very rich.

Steve Bannon says China carries out unfair practices, like its dictatorship, and its slave labour, to undermine Western companies, but we don't have democracy in the West either, and as for slave labour, many of the elite would love to get Western wages down even further.

Steve Bannon rightly accuses wealthy elites for off-shoring American jobs to get rich, but in Europe socialism and the unions did more to stop this than the right, which seemed to embrace it.

On Contact host Chris Hedges and investigative journalist Mohamed Elmazzi discuss documents showing an alleged British government-financed propaganda mill, equivalent in scale to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird psychological operations. Elmazzi’s work can be found at Theinterregnum.net.

Links — 3 Aug 2019

Bracing Views
Torture USA
W. J. Astore

Fort Russ News
MAJOR: Russia delivers electronic warfare systems to Iran (VIDEO)
Drago Bosnic

Moon of Alabama
Why The End Of The INF Treaty Will Not Start A New Arms Race

NEO
Joining Forces: Russia and China are Fostering Military Cooperation

Dimitry Bokarev

OilPrice.com
A Turning Point For U.S. Power Generation

Global Risk Insights

The Unz Review
Reality Check

Anatoly Karlin

Asset Bubbles to Zombie Companies: The Dark Side of Rate Cuts

By Sarah Ponczek, Anchalee Worrachate, and Laura Benitez

Ann Pettifor Tweet:

 The leveraged debt... usually ends up in ..(our) mutual & pension funds & insurers attracted by  high yields.

Asset Bubbles to Zombie Companies: The Dark Side of Rate Cuts

Godfrey Roberts - Hong Kong, Trial Spot

Is Western Democracy Flunking Out?

If Hong Kong is a success and becomes the most prosperous city in China, then the Chinese government might ditch socialism for capitalism and the poor would be dammed, but it doesn't look like it's going to go that way.

Progressives wanted to build everyone in Hong Kong a home, but democracy stopped it. Those opposing the bill were concerned that the new houses might bring property prices down, and the 49% of the population who own homes didn't want that. Sounds like Britain!

Approaching the Trial Spot’s halfway point, Hong Kong’s stats resembles America’s and Britain’s: her GINI is 0.539 (zero indicates equality), the US is 0.415, and Singapore 0.4579. Hong Kong’s top ten percent have median incomes forty-four times the bottom ten percent and her lowest earners work three years and eight months to earn what the richest make in a month. Child poverty is twenty-three percent[1] and home ownership is forty-nine percent while, on the mainland, everyone will have a home, a job, plenty of food, education, safe streets, free health- and old age care by 2021[2].

If it weren’t for multiparty democracy, Hongkongers would all have homes. In 1997, Former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa wanted to build 85,000 flats per year but popular opinion–especially in the Legislative Council–made it impossible. “It was the same over the past few years: we tried to increase the land supply, but we could not get it passed because the opposition parties control whether the budget gets approved,” says Author Chris Wat Wing-yin. “Society generally believed the policy of supplying 85,000 flats per year made the property market plummet, and therefore the government cancelled the target under the pressure of public opinion, especially the opposition bloc in the Legislative Council, we couldn’t continue our push.”

Beijing’s completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the high-speed rail link (delayed by Hong Kong’s corruption and incompetence) are major setbacks for Washington and London in this ongoing battle for influence and explain the current political and media backlash from the US and the UK.

Unz Review

Godfrey Roberts - Hong Kong, Trial Spot

Eric London - US federal court exposes Democratic Party conspiracy against Assange and WikiLeaks

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public.

Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as “an important win for free speech.”

The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street. Judge Koeltl stated:

WSWS

Eric London - US federal court exposes Democratic Party conspiracy against Assange and WikiLeaks

Links — 2 Aug 2019

The Hill
GOP Florida Governor enlists new officer to prepare state for rising sea level

Rachel Frazin

Reminiscence of the Future
Of Course, How Could Russians Miss...

William Perry Is Wrong.

Andrei Martyanov

Dancing with Bears

BLITZ WOLF CAUGHT IN PERSIAN GULF – IRAN AND RUSSIA STRONGER IN DEFENCE THAN THE US AND UK IN OFFENSE

John Helmer

New Yorker
The Invention of Money
John Lanchester

VOX.EU
Who are you going to believe, me or the evidence of your own eyes?
Joseph Stiglitz, Martine Durand, Jean-Paul Fitouss

Russia Observer
BYE BYE INF, HELLO MAD
Patrick Armstrong

Sic Semper Tyrannis
ENOUGH AND NOT TOO MUCH

Patrick Armstrong

Zero Hedge
UK "Up To Its Neck" In RussiaGate Affair, Secret Texts Reveal British Role In Trump Coup Effort
Tyler Durden

SouthFront
Chinese Military Garrison In Hong Kong Sends Warning To Rioters

TASS
Poll reveals 70% of Russians believe authorities should quell unauthorized street protests

Zero Hedge
China's UN Envoy Says "If US Wants To Fight, We Will Fight" [on trade]
Tyler Durden

Zero Hedge
"Sea Of Red": Global Markets Tumble In Post Trump Tariff Carnage
Tyler Durden

Fed Nudge Not Telling Us Much (Yet) — Brian Romanchuk

Meh?

Bond Economics
Fed Nudge Not Telling Us Much (Yet)
Brian Romanchuk

Links — 1 Aug 2019

Zero Hedge
10Y Treasury Yield Plunges Below 2.00% As Curve Collapses
Tyler Durden

Grasping Reality
At a conference I am at, my fellow berkeley professor and former President's Council of Economic Advisor's Chair Laura ...
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Grasping Reality
The interesting fact here is that the U.S.-owned contribution to global value chains is increasingly becoming "stateles...
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

RT
#KamalaHarrisDestroyed trends on Twitter after annihilation by Tulsi Gabbard, ‘Russian bots’ blamed

The Conversation
The Difference Between 'left' And 'liberal' - And Why Voters Need To Know

John Broich | Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University

Valdai Club
NATO´s “Co-Ordinated Response“ – the Road to a New INF Treaty?

Gunter Hauser

India Punchline
Iran’s Zarif drives Trump to insanity
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service

Sputnik International
EU and China Oppose US Decision to Impose Sanctions Against Iranian Foreign Minister

RT
US appears to be seeking a pretext to start Persian Gulf war, Moscow warns, expressing 'concern'

RT
US envoy fumes at Germany’s reluctance to take part in Hormuz naval mission

SouthFront
Israel Strikes Syrian Army Position In Al-Quneitra

The Unz Review
The Last Western Empire?

The Saker

Sputnik International
'War of Tweets?': UK Army to Engage in Cyberwarfare, Operations on Social Media to Counter Russia

Sputnik International
Chinese Commander Says Army Ready to Ensure Stability in Hong Kong Amid Protests

Sputnik International
US Stratcom 'Concerned' Over China's 'Rapid' Nuclear Build-Up

Zero Hedge
"Tourism Shouldn't Be Politicized": Taiwan's President Slams Beijing's New Travel Ban
Tyler Durden

Sputnik InternationalTrump Claims US Economy Would be in ‘Great Depression’ Without His Presidency

Zero Hedge
"The Situation Is Crazy" - US Manufacturing PMI Plunges To 10-Year Lows
Tyler Durden

US-Russia.org
Is it about Western values or geopolitics?

Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow, Professor of Moscow State and National Research Nuclear Universities

Originally published at The Washington Times

RT
Scientists grow first ever HUMAN-MONKEY embryo in ‘promising’ step for organ harvesting

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Gabbard was right about the USG and al-qa'ida
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.) | Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service; member of the Defense Senior Executive Service

Fort Russ News
Maduro reveals right-wing opposition and US are wanting to steal Venezuela’s wealth
Paul Antonopoulos

Climate Equity: What Is It? — Peter Dorman

The limitations of AOC-Harris become clearer when you consider what the centerpiece of any meaningful climate policy has to be: suppressing the use of fossil fuels, which will entail putting a steep price on them. (This can be done either with a permit system or taxes, quantity controls or price controls; permits are by far the better option.) We are talking hundreds of dollars per metric ton of carbon, which translates to several dollars per gallon of gas at the pump and similar added costs for heating, electricity and other energy uses and sources. Will this have a devastating effect on low income communities? Absolutely, and it will be nearly as unbearable for everyone below the top fifth or so. Fortunately, we also know the solution: rebate the carbon money back to the public, using the progressive formula of equal rebates to all households. This approach does the best possible job of protecting the living standards of the majority of the population, at the same time assuaging, as much as any program can, the fears that might make a stringent carbon policy politically unattainable.

This is not everything a carbon policy has to do, but it is the one part that is non-optional....

Econospeak

Climate Equity: What Is It?
Peter Dorman | Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

Fed ends the "QT" without notice

Remember: these moron unqualified libertarian people are capable of anything.

Like yesterday's abrupt change in reserve asset policy ending the planned $35b per month reduction in system reserve assets 2 months earlier than previously indicated.

Bank system now has to adjust (bearish) to arrange for inclusion of the additional $70b of these non-risk assets they will now have to possess.

Bank system currently only adding about $70b per month of total bank credit so this now additional $70b of non-risk assets the Fed is going to add to the system to probably (to these unqualified morons) to "lend out!" is going to displace about 1 month's total credit production for the system...

Accordingly the result of this surprise increase in non-risk reserve asset policy was immediately bearish for risk asset prices... we'll see how much over the next week...

Not good surprise policy change from Powell Fed; really screwed the banks (again)... we may start to see some criticism of Powell from more than just Trump.

The Fed also gave #Trump something else he has demanded in his unrelenting attacks: an early end to a policy known as "quantitative tightening" or QT.
https://t.co/DdDRPgMUzD

— Qatar Tribune (@Qatar_Tribune) July 31, 2019

TRNN - Brazilians Fight Far-Right Campaign to Silence Greenwald & Intercept Leaks

There is an enormous amount of propaganda in the Western media right now. The Uyghurs keep turning up, and Russia is in the headlights again, but the Brazil / Glenn Greenwald story is just being covered as straight news with no outrage, unlike Venezuela.

Joseph P. Joyce — The Change in the U.S. Direct Investment Position

The U.S. has long held an external balance sheet that is comprised of foreign equity assets, mainly in the form of direct investment (DI), and liabilities held abroad primarily in the form of debt, including U.S. Treasury securities. This composition is known “long equity, short debt.” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of UC-Berkeley and Hélène Rey of the London Business School claim that this allocation has allowed the U.S. to serve as the “world’s venture capitalist,” issuing short-term debt in order to invest in high-yield assets. But the U.S. direct investment position has changed from a surplus to a deficit, with uncertain consequences for the international monetary system.

There is more than one reason for the change....

Angry Bear
The Change in the U.S. Direct Investment Position

Joseph P. Joyce | Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, where he holds the M. Margaret Ball Chair of International Relations. He served as the first Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs.

Bill Mitchell — The adult unemployment benefit in Australia should be immediately increased by $A200 per week

At present, the Australian Parliament is debating whether the unemployment benefit (called Newstart) should be increased. The conservative government is refusing to budge claiming it prefers to create jobs and get people of benefits – arguing that it will generate 1.25 million jobs over the next 5 years. The Opposition Labor Party are attacking them for being mean but are just rehearsing the massive hypocrisy that has defined that party since it became a voice for the ‘neoliberal lite’ path. Every time the Labor Party spokespersons criticise the Government for not bringing unemployment benefits above the poverty line, Australians should remember that when they were in office the Labor Ministers ran the same line – they wanted to move people into jobs and would not compromise their obsessive pursuit of a fiscal surplus. Same logic. Disgusting and dishonest then. As it is now.…

Same old trickle down. Neoliberals will be neoliberals, regardless of party.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The adult unemployment benefit in Australia should be immediately increased by $A200 per weekBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Venezuela-The FAILED Coup | DW Documentary

An excellent documentary!