Saturday, 1 June 2019

Weekend Update 01/06/2019 Secretive Bilderberg Rig. Trade War Insanity.


Baltic Dry Index. 1096 -01    Brent Crude 64.69

Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe.
Trump’s Nuclear Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war postponed to November, maybe.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.

Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Yes it’s that time of the year again, when those Bilderberg secretive plotters and schemers meet in five star opulence to plot and scheme against the rest of us. This year, probably on when the next recession starts and how, plus who gets bailed-out, who gets bailed-in, and who gets slammed into the wall.

But first this on Trump’s Mexican Madness (TMM,) likely to do as much damage to the US economy itself, as to the already struggling Mexican economy. 
China and America both start collecting those new much higher tariffs. If the global economy isn’t already starting its next recession, it soon will be. If President Trump is stupid enough to actually follow through with his attack on Mexico’s economy, my guess is that the US economy will be in full blown recession by Christmas. The two economies are just to deeply entwined.

Mexico, U.S. business groups urge Trump to back down on tariff threat

May 31, 2019 / 1:52 PM
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s president and the top U.S. business lobbying group called on President Donald Trump to back down from a threat to impose punitive tariffs on Mexican imports, in a dispute over migration that could shock Mexico’s economy.

Trump said he will introduce the tariffs on June 10 if Mexico does not halt the flow of illegal immigration, largely from Central America, across the U.S.-Mexican border, battering Mexican financial assets and denting global stocks.

The ultimatum from Trump is the biggest foreign policy test to date for Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and a tall order for Mexican security forces struggling not only to combat migrant flows but also to fight a record level of gang violence and homicide.

Mexico’s economy, which is heavily reliant on exports to the United States, shrank in the first quarter and would reel under U.S. tariffs that could reach as high as 25% this year under Trump’s plan.

Veteran leftist Lopez Obrador, who took office in December, predicted that Trump, who is also engaged in a worsening trade war with China, would ease up on his demand.

---- In April, Trump took a step back from an earlier threat to completely close the U.S. border with Mexico to fight illegal immigration, under pressure from companies worried it would cause chaos for businesses. The tide of migrants crossing from Mexico has swelled, with U.S. officials saying that an average of 4,500 are arriving daily.

Global equities tumbled and safe-haven sovereign bonds surged Friday after Trump’s unexpected threat added to fears that escalating trade wars will push the United States and other major economies into recession.

---- The influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce is looking at ways to challenge Trump’s tariff move against Mexico, including legal options. “We have no choice but to pursue every option available to push back,” Neil Bradley, the business group’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, told reporters.

Other industry groups also criticized Trump’s threat, saying it would hurt American businesses, farmers and consumers who have already borne the brunt of the U.S.-China trade dispute.

The White House called on U.S. companies to persuade their Mexican partners to lobby their government to cooperate.

---- Underscoring the interconnected nature of the U.S. and Mexican economies, the U.S.-based Beer Institute said most Mexican beer sold in the United States is made from U.S.-grown barley and hops.

“Whether it be the truck driver, farmer, distributor, local retailer or favorite tavern, every community in America will be affected by this decision,” Jim McGreevy, the institute’s president and chief executive, said of the proposed tariffs.

Mexico sends 600,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil to the United States every day, mostly to refiners, and buys more than 1 million barrels per day of U.S. crude and fuel, more than any other country. Analysts are concerned that retaliatory tariffs from Mexico could disrupt that trade.
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U.S. begins collecting higher tariffs on Chinese goods arriving by sea

June 1, 2019 / 5:11 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States began collecting higher, 25% tariffs on many Chinese goods arriving in U.S. seaports on Saturday morning in an intensification of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies and drawing retaliation from Beijing.

U.S. President Donald Trump imposed the tariff increase on a $200 billion (£158 billion) list of Chinese goods on May 10, but had allowed a grace period for sea-borne cargoes that departed China before that date, keeping them at the prior, 10% duty rate. 

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office in a May 15 Federal Register notice set a June 1 deadline for those goods to arrive in the United States, after which U.S. Customs and Border protection would begin collecting the 25% duty rate at U.S. ports. The deadline expired at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday

The tariff increase affects a broad range of consumer goods, and intermediate components from China including internet modems and routers, printed circuit boards, furniture, vacuum cleaners and lighting products.

Earlier on Saturday, China began collecting higher retaliatory tariffs on much of a $60 billion target list of U.S. goods. The tariffs, announced on May 13 and taking effect as of midnight in Beijing (1600 GMT), apply additional 20% or 25% tariffs on more than half of the 5,140 U.S. products targeted. Beijing had previously imposed additional rates of 5% or 10% on the targeted goods.

No further trade talks between top Chinese and U.S. negotiators have been scheduled since the last round ended in a stalemate on May 10, the same day when Trump announced higher tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods and then took steps to levy duties on all remaining Chinese imports.

---- Beijing has grown more strident in recent weeks, accusing Washington of lacking sincerity and vowing that it will not cave to the Trump administration’s demands.

Its rhetoric has hardened particularly since Washington put Chinese company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on a blacklist that effectively bans the firm from doing business with U.S. companies.

Now back to those elitist, secretive, scheming Bilderbergers, meeting as always in 5 star opulence, plotting you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. They deny it all of course. “We’re merely planning a better life for the serfs.” And how their next bailout will work, probably, although if Trump goes through with his attack on Mexico’s economy, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an men, gang aft agley.”

But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785. Robert Burns.

Secretive Bilderberg Meeting Draws Pompeo and Kushner

May 31, 2019
BERN, Switzerland — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on a weeklong trip to Europe where he is raising sensitive issues with national leaders — from Iranian missiles to Chinese technology to the economic collapse of Venezuela — but the most colorful conversations could take place this weekend out of public earshot in a secretive conclave at a Swiss lakeside resort.

In Montreux, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva, political and business leaders from Western nations are gathering for the 67th Bilderberg Meeting, an annual forum in which participants agree not to reveal exactly what was said or who said it. It is a shadow version of Davos, the elite annual winter conference in the Swiss Alps that President Trump has attended once but has also criticized.

The State Department has not even put the Bilderberg Meeting on Mr. Pompeo’s public schedule, though a senior official confirmed he was attending.

---- “Big cheese and chocolate fan,” Mr. Pompeo joked to reporters on the airplane Thursday when someone asked about the three-night stop in Switzerland.

No doubt those culinary treats will be on hand at venues in Montreux, to fuel discussion on 11 central topics now hotly debated in countries around the globe: the future of capitalism, the weaponization of social media, artificial intelligence, Brexit, China, Russia and so on.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, is another top administration official planning to attend. The 130 or so participants also include King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands; Stacey Abrams, the American politician; Henry Kissinger, the former senior American foreign policy official; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and David H. Petraeus, the retired general. Some top bank executives are on the list, too.

On at least one subject, climate change, many of the participants are expected to have radically different views than Mr. Pompeo. In early May, the American secretary, speaking at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Finland, praised the changes caused by the melting of ice in the Arctic Circle.
More

Secretive Bilderberg meeting to address Russia, cyber threats and Brexit as 130 of world's elite including Henry Kissinger, Mark Carney and the Dutch King prepare for Swiss summit

·         More than a hundred dignitaries from 23 countries will attend at Montreux
·         Bankers, Prime Ministers and CEOs will discuss topics under strict secrecy
·         Talking points include Russia, Brexit and the weaponisation of social media
·         The meeting of the rich and powerful attracts protest and conspiracy theories  
More than a hundred of the world's elite including Henry Kissinger, Mark Carney and th
e Dutch King will meet at the secretive Bilderberg summit this week.

Bankers, Prime Ministers, CEOs and defence experts will meet in Montreux, Switzerland, to discuss a wide range of topics including Russia, cyber threats and Brexit.

From Thursday to Sunday 130 influential men and women from 23 countries will meet under strict secrecy rules and the precise location of their venue has not been revealed.

Notable attendees include former US Secretary of State Kissinger, Governor of the Bank of England Carney, former CIA director David Petraeus and White House Adviser Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.

---- According to the Bilderberg Group, their discussions will be 'informal' and without specific agenda, besides their publicised list of broad talking points.

They do not vote, they do not set policy and they do not release statements, the group claim.

---- In addition, they hold talks under Chatham House rules - members can use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of a speaker nor any other participant may be revealed.

News outlets are not invited to the event, though there are journalists attending, including Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes and Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait.

---- Ever since its formation in 1954 - at the Hotel Bilderberg in the Netherlands - the talks have been shrouded in mystery because no minutes are kept of what was discussed. 

Prince Bernhard, of the Netherlands, who co-founded the group said it was so 'that severe economic dips like the Great Depressions could be avoided if responsible and influential leaders could manage world events behind their necessary public posturing'.

Video: Journalists Detained During First Day of Bilderberg

Globalist gathering “unbelievably” secretive this year

Infowars.com - May 30, 2019

Multiple journalists were detained in a Swiss airport after filming Bilderberg participants arriving on the first day of the elite gathering.

Journalist Dan Dicks and his crew were attempting to interview the new arrivals before authorities held them in a detention room in the Geneva airport for 20 minutes on Thursday, according to a video published on the Press For Truth YouTube channel.

“Looks like our friend is being detained by the police,” said Dicks. “That is not good.”

After being released, several Bilderberg members had already left and Dicks’ team was told they couldn’t film inside the building, on the sidewalk or the parking lot.

“We have to stand in the middle of the road to do any filming, it’s unbelievably secretive this year,” said Dicks. “They’ve reduced us to being stuck on the road.”

“That’s Bilderberg 2019 for ya.”

The 67th Bilderberg Meeting will take place from 30 May – 2 June 2019 in Montreux, Switzerland. About 130 participants from 23 countries have confirmed their attendance. As ever, a diverse group of political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia, labor and the media has been invited. Owen Shroyer breaks down their full agenda.

Finally, tired of being bullied by Trump and his US Ambassador to Germany over everything from NATO, to Iran, to Nord Stream2, and much more, Chancellor Merkel used a speech in Trump’s backyard to take a pop or two back.  Will Trump’s trade war against the EU really still  be delayed until November?

China tells Trump two can play at Huawei.

"Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better"

President Trump, with apologies to Emile Coue.

Merkel Attacks Trump's Unilateral World View in Harvard Speech

May 30 2019
(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel took aim at Donald Trump’s world view in a speech on U.S. soil, saying unilateralism risks bringing down post-World War II alliances and trade wars threaten the “foundations of our prosperity.”

“More than ever, our way of thinking and actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral,” Merkel said in a commencement speech to Harvard University’s class of 2019 that combined tough criticism of nationalist policies with philosophical vistas of a change for the better.

Merkel, 64, was addressing a receptive audience on Thursday as she seeks halt a deterioration in the trans-Atlantic alliance under Trump’s presidency. In her 14th year in office, officials in Merkel’s government are beginning to speak of a point of no return in U.S.-German relations.

At times, Merkel drew applause from the crowd by seeming to address the U.S. leader directly, urging graduates not to act “first impulses” or to brandish “lies as truth and truth as lies.”

Some 2,000 miles to the west, Trump reprised his America First doctrine in a speech to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, saying the U.S. won’t sacrifice its interests for those of foreign powers.

“We don’t do that anymore,” Trump told graduates. “In all things and ways we are putting America first. and it’s about time.”

East German Past

Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, drew from her own biography as the daughter of a pastor who grew up in East Germany and rose from political obscurity after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and German reunification in 1990 to the country’s highest elected office.

Merkel joins a list of prominent commencement speakers in recent years, from Facebook Inc. co-founder and Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg to “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling and television host Oprah Winfrey. Last year’s address was given by U.S. civil rights pioneer and U.S. representative John Lewis.

Merkel is the first German leader to give an address at Harvard since 1990, when former Chancellor Helmut Kohl delivered it the year of German reunification.

China Threatens Sweeping Blacklist of Firms After Huawei Ban

Bloomberg News
31 May 2019, 10:37 BST Updated on 31 May 2019, 12:57 BST 

·         Beijing says it will create list of ‘unreliable entities’
·         Targets companies that violate market rules, cut off supply

China said it will establish a list of so-called “unreliable" entities it says damage the interests of domestic companies, a sweeping order that could potentially affect thousands of foreign firms as tensions escalate after the U.S. blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co.
More

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May

DJIA: 24,815 +49 Down. NASDAQ: 7,453 +71 Down. SP500: 2,752 +46 Down. 

The S&P has reversed again to down after only one month. What happens next to stocks largely depends on whether President Trump goes through with his insane attack on Mexico’s economy. The US and Mexican economies are so inter-dependent, President Trump is proposing to attack a sizable section of the US economy itself.

Not just economic madness, MADNESS!

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