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Global growth stalls, Russian economy gathers momentum

Jon Hellevig
Awara
Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Russian money
© RodMartin.org
Russia's New Government Set to Abandon Austerity. GDP Growth Expected to Accelerate. But, Those Global Uncertainties...

There's a lot going for the Russian economy as 2020 kicks into its second month. Russia's government reshuffle is seen as removing austerity constraints and speeding up the financing of Putin's ambitious national development programs. In his speech to the National Assembly, Putin signaled the end of austerity on social spending, Russia being the only country in the developed world, which is now seriously increasing social spending (among other things, increasing pensions double the rate of inflation and initiating massive child support programs) while everyone else is cutting. We expect that the Central Bank will have to follow suit and end its financial austerity in order to finally slash - Russia's globally record high - real interest rates in line with the rapidly sinking inflation. Russia's manufacturing industries will continue to grow above global averages fueled by the national development programs and on the strength of the now maturing import substitution programs. With new gas pipelines opened end of 2019 to China and Turkey, Russia's energy exports will stay strong no matter what happens in the global economy. Because of the overall strong economy and the concurring huge reduction of influx of new young adults to the labor market due to the effects of the demographic crisis in the 1990's, the labor market will be increasingly tight putting upwards pressure on wages, which will increase consumption.

Due to Russia's globally by far lowest debt levels across the economy and strong government finances, the ruble should remain stable. Indeed, the ruble seems to have successfully decoupled from the dollar domination as it has shown remarkable strength through the financial upheavals and global tensions of the past few years. This in turn, in addition to the weakening global economy, should keep inflation pressure in check, notwithstanding all the growth-boosting stuff on the domestic front. It is possible that emerging market currencies, and the ruble with them, would come under attack in connection with a potential global financial market hysteria (including a drop in oil price) connected with the coronavirus outbreak. Even so, the fundamentals for the ruble are so strong, that it should recover soon again.
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Bomb

Pompeo's bombshell: 'Crimea is lost and will remain Russian' quotes Ukrainian news outlet. True?

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 12:55 UTC
Pompeo/Zelenskiy
© NBC NewsUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo • Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo won't be winning Ukraine's 'friend of the year' award. A week after he told an NPR reporter that Americans don't care about the country, he allegedly told a Kiev audience to forget about Crimea.

That's according to Novoye Vremya (NV), an influential Ukrainian news outlet, which quotes Pompeo as saying:
"Crimea is lost [for Ukraine]. World leaders understand this. Ukraine has given up Crimea, and Russia is not [a state] from which something [like this] can be taken away."
NV says the reality check was delivered at a private meeting last Friday, in response to a question from a Tatar activist.

Emine Dzhaparova had apparently asked the secretary of state to keep the peninsula in the US foreign policy spotlight and suggested organizing a Washington conference on the subject. Sources told NV that the expression on his face made it obvious "he had slightly different priorities."

However, in a reminder that what US diplomats say privately often digresses from the official line, his own State Department spokeswoman took a different view. On the same day, Morgan Ortagus announced that the US will continue to impose sanctions against Russia, and insisted Washington still demands that Crimea be returned to Ukraine.

Comment:



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X

Khamenei: 'Deal of the Century' will die before Trump does' accusing it of being an 'American plot'


RT
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 09:42 UTC
Signs in London
© Reuters/Simon DawsonSigns in London
US President Donald Trump's much-touted peace plan for Israel and Palestine will not outlive him, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, after the deal was widely rejected throughout the Muslim world.

"The American plot of the 'Deal of the Century' will die before Trump dies," Khamenei wrote on his official Twitter account on Wednesday.
Khamenei vowed that Iran will continue "standing up and fighting for the Palestinian people and Palestinian groups" in any way it can. Iran's supreme leader earlier blasted Trump's plan as "devilish and vicious," and said that Muslim nations will never allow it to be implemented.

Comment: What was momentarily on the table is now in the trash can. Jared Kushner had one chance to equally honor both sides of the solution with pre-plan input from both Palestinians and Israelis to construct a fair bargain. Negotiations after the fact? Not happening.

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Shopping Bag

Iranian VP: US lied when it claimed unsanctioned supplies of medicines and food to Iran


Sputnik
Tue, 04 Feb 2020 20:56 UTC
Rouhani/Jhangiri
© AFP 2019/HOIranian President Rouhani and VP Eshaq Jahangiri
The US claims that its sanctions do not restrict supplies of medicine and food to Iran are lies, Iranian First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said on Tuesday.

Last week, US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said that a financial channel for humanitarian goods had been created with the help of Switzerland to benefit patients in Iran. He noted that the deliveries of food, agricultural products and medicines were among the exceptions to Washington's sanctions regime. Several deliveries of medicines were already made to Iran, he added.

Jahangiri, as quoted by the Iranian government information portal, said:
"The US is lying that there are no restrictions on the import of medicines and food into our country. We have billions of dollars in various countries. But when we want to transfer one dollar from these funds for the purchase of medicines or food, the US does not allow it."
He also called the Swiss financial mechanism for purchasing goods a "propaganda" step, indicating that it does not take into account the size of Iran's economy, which has imported more than $3 billion worth of medicines this year, while the channel is designed for a $2-million capacity.

Comment: See also:

Mixed bag: US sanctions AEOI, opens channel for med supplies, renews foreign wavers on reactor sites

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Mr. Potato

Pelosi the paper (ripping) tiger: Pro-wrestling theatrics at SOTU such a dismal fail even the woke progressives didn't buy it

Helen Buyniski
RT
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 20:09 UTC
pelosi rip speech SOTU state union
© Reuters / Joshua RobertsYou mad, sistah?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech-ripping performance at President Donald Trump's SOTU isn't fooling disaffected Democrats, who want a leader who actually stands up to the president, rather than #Resistance theatrics.

Pelosi's if-looks-could-kill glare and paper-tearing finale at the president's yearly address to Congress on Tuesday may have dominated the discussion on social media through the night, but for every blue-check cheering for "Nancy the Ripper," there was a jaded progressive wondering what happened to genuine opposition.
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Magic Hat

The Buttigieg campaign: A tissue of myths

Norman Solomon
Consortium News
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 19:08 UTC
buttigieg
© Gary RiggsPete Buttigieg
This weekend, Pete Buttigieg told supporters that he became a viable candidate for president "on the strength of our vision" and "the urgency of our convictions." Such rhetoric fits snugly into a creation myth about his campaign that Buttigieg has been promoting since early 2019.

Summing up the gist of that myth, Buttigieg began this year by standing at a whiteboard and looking into a camera while he talked about the genesis of his run for the presidency. "We launched as an exploratory committee, not even a full year ago, with a few volunteers, zero dollars in the bank," he said — and "without the personal wealth of a millionaire or a billionaire."

And Buttigieg offered reassurance to those concerned about big money in politics, saying:
"What we built in 2019 we were able to put together without any contributions from federal lobbyists, or from fossil-fuel executives, and not one dollar from corporate PACs." But, as Aldous Huxley wrote in the introduction to his classic novel of dystopian technocracy, Brave New World, "the greatest triumphs of propaganda" are accomplished by maintaining "silence about truth."

Comment: There's other ways to support a compaign besides money.

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Eye 1

Twitter going full Big Brother, again - suspends investigative reporter James O'Keefe

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 18:12 UTC
James O'Keefe
James O'Keefe
Twitter has locked the account of conservative journalist James O'Keefe for publishing publicly available evidence that a pair of radical leftists with violent fantasies work for the Bernie Sanders campaign. While O'Keefe's tweets are still visible, he can't publish anything new on the platform until he deletes a post which violates Twitter's rules against "posting private information."

O'Keefe was responding to a tweet by Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel claiming that the men, Kyle Jurek and Martin Weissgerber, are Sanders volunteers. When O'Keefe demanded a retraction, posting publicly available Federal Election Commission (FEC) records revealing their employment, Weigel deleted his tweet.

Comment: Could there possibly be a pattern here?

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Eye 2

Lie down with dogs: Billionaire Seth Klarman, pro-Israel Buttigieg backer funds group behind Iowa's disastrous voting app

Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 17:35 UTC
Billionaire Buttigieg Seth Klarman
Seth Klarman
Behind the app that delayed Iowa's voting results is a dark money operation funded by anti-Bernie Sanders billionaires. Its top donor Seth Klarman is a Buttigieg backer who has dumped money into pro-settler Israel lobby groups.

At the time of publication, 12 hours after voting in the Democratic Party's Iowa caucuses ended, the results have not been announced. The delay in reporting is the result of a failed app developed by a company appropriately named Shadow Inc.

This firm was staffed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign veterans and created by a Democratic dark money nonprofit backed by hedge-fund billionaires including Seth Klarman. A prolific funder of pro-settler Israel lobby organizations, Klarman has also contributed directly to Pete Buttigieg's campaign.

Comment:

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Colosseum

Defiant Trump doubles down in campaign rally-style State of the Union speech, Pelosi stunt delights, embarrasses Democrats

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 16:45 UTC
Trump state of the union 2020 pelosi
© Doug Mills/Getty ImagesPresident Trump's State of the Union address February 4, 2020
Teased as "low key," US President Donald Trump's annual address to Congress was anything but, with several unprecedented symbolic gestures and a powerful assertion of American triumphalism that put his critics on the back foot.

Trump did not mention impeachment once in the 90-minute speech on Tuesday evening. Instead, he turned his persuasion skills up to eleven, painting a picture of America with a booming economy and infinite opportunities brought about by his administration, and contrasting that with Democrat proposals such as socialized healthcare and sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.

Amid the standard Trump talking points of tax reform, deregulation, border wall and support for police and immigration enforcement, however, were strategically seeded guests whose stories served to show, not tell, what the president stood for. This is where the usually stodgy SOTU turned into something new and different.

Comment: So Nancy Pelosi attempted to upstage Trump's address by dramatically ripping up her copy of the speech on camera as the president was leaving the podium. As to her reasons? From The Hill:
"He shredded the truth so I shredded his speech," Pelosi told House Democrats during a closed-door caucus meeting, according to sources in the room. Like she did the night before, she called his 90-minute address "a manifesto of mistruths."

"You are supposed to talk about the State of the Union," Pelosi continued, "not the State of your alleged mind."

Trump, Pelosi said, "disrespected" the House chamber and used it as a "backdrop for a reality show... to give a speech that had no connection with reality."

Wednesday's private remarks marked the first time Pelosi had addressed the Tuesday night incident to House Democrats. Pelosi said she had not planned to tear up Trump's speech, but she felt "liberated" when she did so.

"I didn't go in there to tear up the speech, and I didn't even care that he didn't shake my hand. In fact, who cares?" Pelosi told her caucus, according to sources in the room. "But I'm a speed reader, so ... I went like this through the speech. So I knew that it was a pack of lies. I knew it was a pack of lies, but I thought, 'Well, let's see how it goes.'

"About a quarter through it I thought, 'You know - he's selling a bill of goods like a snake oil salesman. We cannot let this stand,'"
Mike Pence commented:


Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley said:
"While it has long been a tradition for House speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address, Pelosi seemed intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a copy of his address.

Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. She shredded decades of tradition, decorum, and civility that we need now more than ever. The House speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she transcends her political ambitions and loyalties. "
Some saw it as retaliation for an apparent snub of Pelosi's offer to shake hands at the opening of the SOTU. Others saw it as a calculated act planned long in advance. Social media exploded with both outrage and applause:








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Rocket

US Space Force conducts first ICBM launch after Moscow warned of threat of renewed arms race


RT
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 17:31 UTC
icbm launch
© Airman 1st Class Hanah Abercrombie / US Air Force
The newly-created US Space Force has test-fired a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time as Russia blasted it for "lowering the bar" on using nuclear weapons.

The unarmed land-based missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly after midnight on Wednesday. It was the first such development test since the facility became part of the US Space Force, which was established as an independent military branch in late December. The US previously test-fired a missile of this type in October.

The Minuteman missiles are the key component of the US' land-based nuclear arsenal. The launch was crucial to the work on further "testing and evaluation of the ICBM program, and many space and range programs to come," 30th Operations Group commander Colonel Kris Barcomb said.
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