China had previously been part of the so-called waiver program, which had granted eight countries exceptions which allowed temporary imports of Iranian oil, but which expired May 2 of this year.

The US did not renew the waiver program, known as 'Significant Reduction Exceptions,' in what was seen globally as a serious escalation by Washington attempting to bring Europe and other economic partners to heel over continued dealings with Tehran. 

The Chinese company has been identified as Zhuhai Zhengrong Co Ltd, which Pompeo accused of violating US law over its continued Iran crude imports. Notably, its CEO will also be under sanction. 

The WSJ continued:

The company and the executive will be barred from engaging in any foreign exchange, banking or property transactions under U.S. jurisdiction. The company couldn't be immediately located for comment. Chinese officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Pompeo said while addressing reporters in Florida, “We’ve said that we will sanction any sanctionable behavior and we mean it.”

Crucially, CNN noted late last week following Iran's navy capturing a British-flagged tanker that the White House could once again be on a war footing following President Trump backing off the previously planned strike on Iranian positions last month: "President Trump has privately adopted a more hawkish tone on Iran in recent days, according to three people familiar with the developments, as tensions increase in the Gulf," the report said.  

The challenge for Boeing is not just how to get the grounded planes in the air; in the longer term, Fitch said the Max’s grounding presents a significant public-relations challenge that will remain a risk for “Boeing’s reputation and brand” into next year and beyond.

“Fitch also expects there will be a lingering operating-margin impact for several years after the 737 Max returns to service,” the ratings company said.

Boeing is currently rated A2 by Moody and A by S&P, which both have stable outlooks on the company, although we expect these to be cut soon now that Fitch has broken the seal. S&P said last week that Boeing’s announcement that it will be taking a $5.6 billion pretax charge to compensate for the grounding of the 737 Max wouldn’t affect the company’s credit ratings. But S&P warned that more damaging effects to Boeing’s financials or a “substantial loss” in market share to the 737 could warrant a downgrade.

While Boeing’s bonds were unchanged after Fitch’s report, BA stock dropped and since Boeing is the most important Dow member, the industrial average quickly slumped to session lows.

Though Mr. Mueller’s final report asserted that the Russian government interfered in “a sweeping and systemic fashion” to influence the 2016 election, the 450-page great tome contains zero evidence to support that claim, and the discrepancy was actually noticed by federal judge Dabney Friedrich who is presiding over the case against the alleged Russian Facebook trolls that was one of the two tent-poles in the RussiaGate fantasy. The case is now blowing up in Robert Mueller’s face.

In early 2018, Mr. Mueller sold a DC grand jury on producing indictments against a Russian outfit called the Internet Research Agency and its parent company Concord Management, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for the so-called election meddling. The indictment was celebrated as a huge coup at the time by the likes of CNN and The New York Times, styled as a silver bullet in the heart of the Trump presidency. But the indicted parties were all in Russia, and could not be extradited, and there was zero expectation that any actual trial would ever take place — leaving Mueller & Co. off-the-hook for proving their allegations.

To the great surprise of Mr. Mueller and his “team,” Mr. Prigozhin hired some American lawyers to defend his company in court. Smooth move. It automatically triggered the discovery process, by which the accused is entitled to see the evidence that prosecutors hold. It turned out that Mr. Mueller’s team had no evidence that the Russian government was involved with the Facebook pranks. This annoyed Judge Friedrich, who ordered Mr. Mueller and his lawyers to desist making public statements about Concord and IRA’s alleged “sweeping and systemic” collusion with Russia, and threatened legal sanctions if they did.

Judge Friedrich’s rulings were unsealed in early July, after Messers Nadler and Schiff had already scheduled Mr. Mueller’s testimony before their committees. And now they’re stuck with him. The only purpose of his appearance was to repeat and reinforce the narrative that the Russian government interfered in the election, which he is now forbidden to do, at least in connection to the Concord and IRA’s activities. But the other tentpole of the two-year-plus inquisition has also collapsed: the allegation that Russian intel hacked the DNC servers. It’s now a matter of public record that the DNC servers were never examined by federal officials. They were purportedly scrutinized by a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, co-founded by Russian Dimitri Alperovitch, an adversary of Vladimir Putin, active in US-based anti-Putin lobbying and PR. CrowdStrike’s “draft” report on their review of the server was laughably incomplete, and the Mueller team’s lawyers took no steps to validate it.

It would be interesting to hear Robert Mueller’s explanation for how come US computer forensic experts were never dispatched to take possession of the DNC servers. Surely a ranking member on either House committee would have to ask him that, along with many other embarrassing questions about the stupendously sloppy and disingenuous work of the Special Counsel’s team. It was only one glaring omission among many.

The whole affair now takes on tragic contours of Shakespearean dimensions. The Attorney General, Mr. Barr, is said to be an “old friend” of Mr. Mueller. They clashed pretty publicly after the release of Mr. Mueller’s long-awaited final report. Mr. Barr must at least be dismayed by the bad faith and deliberate deceit in his old friend’s final report,  and he really has to do something about it. The entire Mueller episode smacks of prosecutorial misconduct. In retrospect, it can only be explained as a desperate act undertaken by foolishly overconfident political activists.

If Mr. Mueller thought he was being enlisted to play an historically heroic role to help get rid of an elected president detested by the Establishment, then he made the blunder of a lifetime. It was not the first blunder of his long career, but it was the final and fatal one. It is not out of the question that Mr. Mueller himself may eventually be the one indicted and convicted of real crimes against the people of the United States.

Iran Releases Photos of CIA Officers Handling Spieshttps://t.co/xeuAJ5J6wE pic.twitter.com/etLnfiPfOF

— Fars News Agency (@EnglishFars) July 22, 2019

Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili had first announced in June that a number among seventeen total alleged spies rounded up were facing execution because of the "severity of their crimes," as reported by NBC. The unnamed defendants were reportedly associated with the Iranian military and also followed a similar announcement made last August the arrest of "tens of spies" uncovered within the government. 

The agencies "successfully dismantled a (CIA) spy network," an official only identified as head of counter-intelligence at the Iranian intelligence ministry, told reporters in Tehran. Arrests reportedly began in March

"Those who deliberately betrayed the country were handed to the judiciary... some were sentenced to death and some to long-term imprisonment," he said, as cited by the AFP. However, the photos published - which appear to show Americans - only claim these are officers which had been "handling" the spies supposedly caught inside Iran. 

Some of the CIA agents' documents pic.twitter.com/CBYCuLQ8pO

— Reza Khaasteh (@Khaaasteh) July 22, 2019

None of the initial photos released showed those pictured in any kind of detention or interrogation, but instead most appeared to be personal or family photos. As Reuters reports:

Iranian state television published images it said showed the CIA officers who were in touch with the suspected spies.

There was no immediate comment on the Iranian allegations by the CIA or U.S. officials.

Additionally, in another stunning development, an Iranian television documentary aired Monday which claimed to show footage of an alleged CIA officer attempting to recruit an unidentified Iranian man. The footage was presented as taking place inside the United Arab Emirates.

Documents alleging to "prove" the allegations were also posted online by Iranian media channels. 

First video released of one of the CIA spies in Iran pic.twitter.com/T9O2LUrq6x

— Reza Khaasteh (@Khaaasteh) July 22, 2019

“Because there are so many intelligence officers in Dubai. It is very dangerous... Iranian intelligence,” a blond-haired woman was shown telling the man. According to Reuters:

The woman spoke Persian with an accent which appeared to be American.

State media outlets had touted the documentary as dealing a heavy blow "to a CIA spy network in the region and beyond. 

⚡️⚡️⚡️ Coming soon on @PressTV: The Mole Hunt ⚡️⚡️⚡️#Iran has dealt a heavy to a @CIA spy network in the region and beyond. The upcoming documentary will shed more light on Iran’s counter-intelligence operations. pic.twitter.com/mlQ3e8aqft

— Press TV (@PressTV) July 19, 2019

The photos and video purporting to show CIA assets and operatives have yet to be confirmed or denied by US political or intelligence officials and come amid already soaring tensions have put the region on edge, and as Britain has demanded the release of the UK-flagged tanker Stena Impero, captured in the Strait of Hormuz Friday.

Why this trip down memory lane? (Other than the fact the commercials are hilarious to watch.)

Because this is typical of the mindset seen at the end of extremely long “cyclical” bull market cycles. 

Investing is simple. Just throw you money in the market and it goes up. Its so easy a “baby can do it.”

Here is something else you see at the end of bull market cycles:

 “This couple retired at 31 with $1 Million: Want to retire early? How “going against the grain” allowed this FIRE couple to ditch their jobs and travel the world.

How did they make this happen? Shen and Leung, who was also a computer engineer, are part of the FIRE movement — which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early — where the goal is to save a lot so you can retire early. The couple retired at 31 with roughly $1 million in the bank. They’re currently withdrawing 3.5% a year from that nest egg, and say they can easily travel the world on that money — as they’ve got lots of practice being frugal.”

First, I want to give the couple a “fanatical thumbs up” for saving $1 million by their 30’s. That is an amazing feat which deserves respect and acknowledgment. 

Secondly, they are very budget conscious and willing to sacrifice the luxuries most people long for to live their dream.

Another “thumbs up.”

However, the rise of the “F.I.R.E.” movement is symptomatic of a late stage bull market advance. More importantly, we can also predict how things will turn out for Shen and Leung.

For this discussion I want to use the data provided by Shen and Leung to build our examples.

• 
  

  Invested asset value:  $1 million

  
  


• 
  

  Annualized withdrawal rate: 3.5%

  
  


• 
  

  Annualized return rate: 6% (Not specified but a reasonable estimate)

  
  


• 
  

  Living needs: $35,000 annually.

  
  


• 
  

  Life expectency: 85-years of age.

  
  

With these assumptions in place we can begin to do some forecasting about how things eventually turn out. However, we also have to assume:

• 
  

  The couple never has children

  
  


• 
  

  Never requires serious medical care (hopefully)

  
  


• 
  

  Never considers buying a house

  
  


• 
  

  Has no major life events, etc.

  
  

First, we need to start with the cost of living. As I showed recently in Part 1 of “Everything You’ve Been Told About Savings & Investing Is Wrong” is that the cost of living rises over time due to inflation. However, for most the increase in living costs rises dramatically more as needs for housing, children, education, travel, insurance, and health care occur through stages of life.

For this exercise, we will assume our example couple never changes their lifestyle so only inflation is a factor. We will use the historical average of 2.1% and project it out for 50-years.

Understanding this, we can now take their $1 million, compound it at 6% annually (the preferred mainstream method), and deduct 3.5% annually adjusted for inflation over their 50-year time horizon.

We need to assume that since our couple is in their 30’s, the investable assets are in taxable accounts. Also, if this is the case, and they are not touching the principal, then we need to adjust the annual withdrawals for capital gains tax. The bottom two area charts adjust for 2.1% annual inflation and inflation plus a 15% tax on withdrawals. (Tax is paid on the gains taken to fund the withdrawal and the dividends paid in on an annual basis)

Not surprisingly, if our couple can indeed live on $35,000 a year, even when adjusting for inflation and taxation, a $1 million portfolio growing at 6% annually can indeed support them for their entire lifespan.

In Part 3 of our recent series on “saving and investing,” we laid out the issue, and importance, of variable rates of return. To wit:

“When imputing volatility into returns, the differential between what investors were promised (and this is a huge flaw in financial planning) and what happened to their money is substantial over long-term time frames.”

The chart below is exactly the same as above, however, this time we have used the average annual 50-year returns from previous periods in history where starting valuations were greater than 20x earnings as they are today. (High starting valuations beget lower future returns historically speaking.) 

Over a 50-years, our couple will get the benefit of complete valuation and market cycles. In this case, since they are starting with high valuations at the outset, the first 30-years contains a long-period of lower returns, but that last 20-years receives the benefit of higher returns due to valuation reversion.

Due to market volatility and periods of negative growth, the original $1 million portfolio only grows to $3 million when including nominal spending. However, when accounting for volatility, inflation, and taxes, the survival rate of the portfolio diminishes sharply due to two reasons:

1. 
   

   Down years reduce the growth rate of the portfolio over the given time frame.

   
   


2. 
   

   Withdrawals in down years exacerbate the decline in the portfolio. (i.e. Portfolio declines by $65,000 plus the $35,000 annual withdrawal increases the 6.5% decline to 10%.)

   
   

Obviously, not accounting for volatility when planning to retire early can have severe future consequences. In this case they will run out of money in year 47.

As I said at the beginning of this missive, the “F.I.R.E.” movement is the result of a decade-long bull market cycle.

Most likely, our young couple will be met with a “bear market” sooner, rather than later, in their early retirement. If we use the return model from our recent article on “investors and pension funds,” we see a rather dramatic shift in life-expectancy of the portfolio.

“The chart below is the S&P 500 TOTAL REAL return from 1995 to present. I have projected an average return of every period in history where the market peaked following P/E’s exceeding 20x earnings. This provides for variable rates of market returns with cycling bull and bear markets out to 2060. I have also projected ‘average’ returns from 3% to 8% from 1995 to 2060. (The average real total return for the entire period is 6.56% which is likely higher than what current valuation and demographic trends suggest it should be.)”

The benefit of this model is that it shows the impact to portfolio returns when bear markets are “front-loaded,” as will likely be the case for most the “F.I.R.E.” followers. (Note, in the return model above the “bear market” is 5-years into the future)

The reason for the dramatic short-fall is that a major, “rip your face off,” bear market will cut asset values by 50% very early on. All of a sudden, the annual withdrawal rate of 3.5% becomes 7%, which outpaces the ability of the portfolio to grow fast enough to catch up with the withdrawal rate and the loss of principal. In this more realistic example, our couple will run out of money in 30 years.

This is the exact problem “pension funds” face currently.

While we have mainly addressed the issues surrounding assumptions being used by the ‘F.I.R.E.”movement in having enough assets to retire, there are some other important issues which should be considered.

1. 
   

   Loss of your skill set. In retirement it is probable your skill set erodes and becomes outdated over time. New technologies, trends, innovations, etc. are running at a faster pace than ever.

   
   


2. 
   

   Becoming unemployable. One of the things seen following the financial crisis was employers preferring to hire individuals who were already employed rather than hiring those out of work. The reasoning was that if you were good enough to keep your job during the recession, you obviously have a valuable skill set. Once you are out of the “labor force” for a while, it becomes more difficult to regain employment as employers tend to prefer those with a very steady work history, a growing career, and relevant skill sets.

   
   


3. 
   

   Life. Besides simply running out of money sooner than you planned because of a bear market, a rising cost of living more than you counted on, or higher taxes (all of which are very likely in the near future) there is also just “life.”  It doesn’t matter how carefully you plan; “S*** Happens!” More importantly, it always happens when you least expect it and at the worst possible time. These things cost money and impact our best laid spending and saving plans. The problem with “retiring early,” is that it leaves plenty of time for things to go wrong. 

   
   


4. 
   

   Unplanned Accident/Medical Problem. Young people suffer from an “invincibility syndrome.” They tend to not carry insurance, due to the cost, because they “never get sick.” While we certainly hope it never happens, a major accident or health issue can extract tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital critically impairing retirement plans.

   
   


5. 
   

   Too Old To Do Anything About It. The biggest problem for “F.I.R.E.” practitioners is that running out of money late in life leaves VERY few options for the rest of your retirement years. If our math above is even close to correct, which history suggests it is, then our young couple will be faced with going back to work in the 70’s. That is not exactly the retirement most are hoping for. 

   
   

As I stated in our previous series, retiring early is far more expensive than most realize. Furthermore, not accounting for variable rates of returns, lower forward returns due to high valuations, and not adjusting for inflation and taxes will leave most far short of their goals. 

While it sounds like I am bashing the “F.I.R.E. Movement,” I am not. I am for ANY program or system that gets young people to save more, stay out of debt, and invest cautiously. The movement is a good thing and it should be embraced.

But, it is also a symptom of a decade-long period of making “easy money” in the financial markets.

These periods ALWAYS end badly and the next “bear market” will quickly “extinguish the F.I.R.E.” as losses mount and dreams have to be put on hold.

It will happen. It always appears easiest at the top.

And, given one of E*Trade’s latest commercials, the next bear market may be coming sooner than we expect.

Con Edison said its crews are responding to power outages and will continue working throughout the day to restore power to as many customers as possible.

Cuomo also declared the heatwave "a natural disaster" and insisted that ConEd should have been better prepared.

"We have been through this situation with ConEd time and again, and they should have been better prepared," Cuomo said in a statement. "This was not a natural disaster; there is no excuse for what has happened in Brooklyn."

While it didn't respond to Cuomo, the company has said that it took some customers in southeast Brooklyn out of service to protect sensitive equipment, and said it would restore power as quickly as possible. Brooklyn neighborhoods impacted include Canarsie, Flatlands, Mill Basin, Old Mill Basin, Bergen Beach and Georgetown. Another 27,000 lost power on Long Island.

The exact number of people impacted was difficult to tally, since an individual ConEd customer could be a single-family home or a large apartment building, according to Bloomberg.

As usual, Mayor de Blasio was no help, though at least this time he was present at his office, and not out campaigning in Iowa, during the outage. He provided regular updates on his twitter feed.

I just spoke to Con Ed's president about tonight's outages. Their system in parts of Brooklyn is under severe strain and some equipment has failed.

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2019

Several NYC public schools will be closed on Monday due to the outages.

The outages created dangerous conditions on the road, leading to many near-accidents like this one at certain particularly dangerous intersections.

Near accident at dangerous intersection of Mill Ave & Ave U in #MillBasin #Brooklyn where traffic lights out due to power outage plaguing S Brooklyn @CBSNewYork pic.twitter.com/g921wTxMN5

— Lisa Rozner (@LisaRoznerTV) July 22, 2019

ConEd has asked customers to try and conserve power while it works to repair equipment.

But whether ConEd turns the AC back on or not, everybody will feel some relief on Monday as the heat wave is expected to pass and heat advisories are expected to be lifted for a large swath of the US. The heatwave initially stretched from Oklahoma to Ohio toward the middle of the country, and along the East Coast from Maine to South Carolina.

So far, Washington hasn't commented on how it views this stash of oil looming over global markets. If Chinese companies were to ever tap this store of oil, it could dampen demand in the world's second-largest economy, which could rattle global markets.

The arrangement clearly benefits Iran, which has retained at least one major buyer of its crude.

"Iranian oil shipments have been flowing into Chinese bonded storage for some months now, and continue to do so despite increased scrutiny," said Rachel Yew, an analyst at industry consultant FGE in Singapore. "We can see why the producer would want to do so, as a build-up of supplies near key buyers is clearly beneficial for a seller, especially if sanctions are eased at some point."

Bloomberg ship-tracking data show there could be more Iranian oil headed for these massive tanks. At least ten very-large crude carriers and two smaller tankers owned by the state-run National Iranian Oil Company and its shipping arm are currently sailing toward China or idling off its coast. Combine, the vessels can carry some 20 million barrels. Most of this oil is still owned by Tehran, which creates a grey area in terms of whether China is violating US sanctions. It's widely believed that most of the oil is payment in an oil-for-investment deal, which are fairly common in China.

The bulk of Iranian oil in China’s bonded tanks is still owned by Tehran and therefore not in breach of sanctions, according to the people. The oil hasn’t crossed Chinese customs so it is theoretically in transit. Some of the crude, though, is owned by Chinese entities that may have received it as part of oil-for-investment schemes. For example, a Chinese oil company could have helped fund a production project in Iran under an agreement to be repaid in kind. Whether this sort of transaction is in breach of sanctions isn’t clear, and so the Chinese companies are keeping it in bonded storage to avoid the official scrutiny it would get once it is registered with customs, according to the people.

Bloomberg has been tracking the discrepancy between the volume of Iranian crude shipped to China and the volume cleared by Chinese customs for months. China received about 12 million tons of Iranian crude from January through May, according to ship-tracking data, versus about 10 million that cleared customs over the period.

And the White House's refusal to address the flow of Iranian crude has created confusion, Bloomberg said.

The White House cancelled all waivers allowing certain countries to keep importing Iranian crude on May 2. Any nation "caught" importing Iranian crude would, presumably, be in violation of Iranian sanctions.

More oil arrives almost every day.

Several other Iranian-owned tankers offloaded in China or were heading there, according to ship tracking data. VLCC Stream discharged at Tianjin on June 19, while Amber, Salina and C. Infinity offloaded crude at the ports of Huangdao, Jinzhou and Ningbo. Tankers Snow, Sevin and Maria III were last seen sailing in the direction of China.

At some point, Washington will need to clarify whether this constitutes a violation of US sanctions.

"The US will now need to define how it quantifies the infringement of sanctions," said Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. There’s a lack of clarity on whether it would look at "financial transactions or the loading and discharge of cargoes by company or entity," she said.

Aside from providing a steady income, the arrangement will free up Iranian tankers, instead of pressing them into service as storage hubs. Then again, addressing this now might seem like Washington is deliberately picking a fight to sabotage trade talks.

Or maybe the Iranian oil will factor into a final agreement?

Additionally, US military officials at Central Command (CentCom) are currently investigating claims that Iran was behind the mysterious disappearance of the oil tanker Riah while sailing in Iranian waters at the weekend.

Also, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been blamed for carrying out a number of attacks against targets in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, including a missile attack on a Saudi civilian airport and a drone attack on a key Saudi pipeline.

Iran's most audacious act so far has been to shoot down an American naval drone conducting a reconnaissance mission in the Strait of Hormuz last month. The strike came within hours of provoking a military response from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, as all this has been going on, the ayatollahs have announced that they have resumed work on enriching uranium, a blatant breach of the controversial nuclear accord Tehran signed with the world's leading powers in 2015.

Yet, while Iran shows no sign of scaling down its aggressive stance towards the US and its allies in the region, Europe continues to cling to the wreckage of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to give the nuclear deal its proper name, in the misguided belief that the deal remains the best means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Europe's insistence on adopting a different approach to the White House in its dealings with Iran dates back to US President Donald Trump's original decision last year to withdraw from the JCPOA, after arguing it was the "worst deal ever."

That, however, is not a viewpoint supported by the European signatories to the deal -- Britain, France and Germany. They still wrongly cling to the illusion that the agreement is a triumph of diplomacy, and has severely limited Iran's ability to pursue its ambition of becoming a nuclear-armed power. Under the JCPOA deal, upon its sunset, a mere ten years away, in 2030, "Iran will be permitted to build an industrial-size nuclear industry" with the ability to build and potentially deliver as many nuclear weapons as it liked.

To this end the Europeans have actively sought to undermine the Trump administration's new sanctions regime against Tehran by trying to find ways to continue trading with Iran. The Europeans have even come up with their own trading framework -- the so-called Special Purpose Vehicle -- which is supposed to enable European companies to continue trading with Iran without attracting punitive measures from the US.

In fact the measure has become an exercise in futility, as major European business conglomerates such as Airbus have shown that they are far more interested in protecting their lucrative business ties with the US than dealing with an economic basket case like Iran.

But not even this setback has deterred the Europeans from pursuing their policy of appeasement towards the ayatollahs. The determination of the Europeans to stick with the nuclear deal at all costs was very much in evidence earlier this week during a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels at which they came up with the decidedly bogus notion that Iran's breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal were not significant and therefore did not require the Europeans to withdraw from the JCPOA.

"Technically all the steps that have been taken, and that we regret have been taken, are reversible," Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief, told EU foreign ministers.

As none of the signatories to the deal considered the breaches to be significant, they were not prepared to trigger the dispute mechanism which could lead to further sanctions.

"We invite Iran to reverse the steps and go back to full compliance," were her final words on the matter.

Pictured: Mogherini (left) stands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, during her August 2017 visit to Iran. (Image source: European External Action Service/Flickr)

Europe's insistence on sticking with the nuclear deal, and its refusal to support Washington's attempts to provide naval protection for international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, could ultimately prove self-defeating.

Europe is far more dependent on energy supplies from the Gulf than the US, and any further attempts by Iran to disrupt oil and gas supplies from the Gulf would have catastrophic consequences for Europe's economy.

Nigeria's potential labor force should spike by almost 350%, or 375 million people, by the end of the century to more than 485 million. The IMF, however, recently noted substantial inequality in access to education by gender in between the rich and poor in Nigeria. A recent study found that a girl born into a family in the poorest 20% of society spends only about one year in school.

William Lee, chief economist at the Milken Institute said:

“As global supply chains reduce labor inputs with better technology and machines for even lower value-added production, it will be difficult for young workers in Africa to find unskilled manufacturing jobs in the future similar to those now employing Asian youth.”

The number of available employees worldwide will rise 29% to 6.5 billion from 5 billion by the end of the century. Of this, Africa's share will rise to more than 33% around 2100 from almost 15%. The working age population of the continent will grow by 2 billion to 2.75 billion over the next 80 years and Asias is set to decline by 415 million, or 13%.

“Most people overlook the fact that the Chinese dependency ratio -- the working-age to over-65 population -- is deteriorating rapidly and is already showing signs of straining,” Lee continued.

The total number of people aged 15 to 64 globally will peak at 6.5 billion around 2090. This marks an increase of 1.5 billion from today. About 80% of this gain is expected to come from low income countries and the remainder from middle income nations. High income countries will see their potential labor force shrink as birth rates remain low.

These large shifts will take place in a very short period of time. For instance, in 2020, everyone over 65 will be supported by an estimated seven workers. By 2050, this ratio will drop to about four workers per person.

These shifts will create challenges for governments in a number of countries, according to Bloomberg:

• 
  

  Taxation, assets prices and the use of resources will come under pressure while innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, engineering and computing power may cause trepidation about employment within many industries.

  
  


• 
  

  A recent Oxford Economics report estimates that 20 million manufacturing positions will be lost by 2030 with lower-skilled regions hit the hardest. Oxford’s econometric model found that, on average, each newly installed robot displaces 1.6 manufacturing workers. About 1.7 million factory jobs already have gone to robots since 2000, including 400,000 in Europe, 260,000 in the U.S. and 550,000 in China, the report found.

  
  


• 
  

  The labor force in North America and Oceana will increase by close to 38 million and 17 million, respectively, while Europe will experience a decline of 137 million or 28%. The working-age population in Latin America and the Caribbean will shrink by 15% or 66 million.

  
  


• 
  

  While birth rates have fallen sharply in much of the developed world, migration has enabled the population in North America to continue growing. The number of working-age men and women in the U.S. will rise 1.2% to 243 million by 2030 and then climb 14% to 278 million by 2100. The number of people in North America living longer 100 years will soar to almost 1.9 million from about 1 million today.

  
  

The two most populous nations in the world are also aging quickly.

China and India will account for 31% of total population and 39% of the world's seniors by the year 2050. Both are also slated to see their share of the global labor force shrink.

The working age population in India is projected to peak around 2050, but 40 years later there will be fewer 15 to 64 year olds than there are today. In China, the shift will happen even quicker. The working age population of the country is already shrinking and will contract by 27.5 million by 2030. India's working age population is expected to overtake China’s in 2027 and potential labor forces in Russia, Japan, Germany and South Korea will also be reduced due to slow birth rates and migration.

After mass protests, the Japanese government under then Prime Minister Yoshihiko announced plans to make Japan nuclear free by 2030 and not to rebuild any of the damaged reactors. New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has since tried to change the nation’s mind about nuclear energy by highlighting that the technology is indeed carbon neutral and well suited to reach emission goals.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz notes, despite one reactor restart at Sendai power plant in Southern Japan in 2015, nuclear energy has almost vanished from Japanese electricity generation. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

In 2016 (latest available), only 2 percent of energy generated in Japan came from nuclear power plants.

Coal and natural gas picked up most of the slack, but renewable sources, mainly solar energy, also grew after 2011.

The Colonial Office document, at the National Archives in London, was uncovered by journalist Tom Suarez and concerns the “activities of the Grand Mufti [Haj Amin al-Husseini] of Jerusalem” in 1940-41.

After the assassination of Lewis Andrews, British district commissioner for Galilee, in September 1937, the British Government dismissed al-Husseini from his post as president of the Supreme Muslim Council and decided to arrest all members of the Arab Higher Committee, including Husseini.

He took refuge in the Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), fled to Jaffa and then Lebanon, and ended up in Iraq, where he played a role in the Iraqi national anti-British movement.

He spent the Second World War moving between Berlin and Rome and took part in the propaganda war against Britain and France through Arabic radio broadcasts.

In April 1941, nationalist army officers known as the Golden Square staged a coup in Iraq, overthrowing the pro-British regime, and signalled they were prepared to work with German and Italian intelligence. In response, the British embarked on a military campaign and eventually crushed the coup leaders two months later.

But Suarez discovered in the files that the British were already wanting such a “military occupation of Iraq” by November 1940 – well before the Golden Square coup gave them a pretext for doing so.

The reason was that Britain wanted to end “the mufti’s intrigues with the Italians”. One file notes: “We may be able to clip the mufti’s wings when we can get a new government in Iraq. FO [Foreign Office] are working on this.” Suarez notes that a prominent thread in the British archive is: “How to effect a British coup without further alienating ‘the Arab world’ in the midst of the war, beyond what the empowering of Zionism had already done.”

As British troops closed in on Baghdad, a violent anti-Jewish pogrom rocked the city, killing more than 180 Jewish Iraqis and destroying the homes of hundreds of members of the Jewish community who had lived in Iraq for centuries. The Farhud (violent dispossession) has been described as the Iraqi Jews’ Kristallnacht, the brutal pogrom against Jews carried out in Nazi Germany three years earlier.

There have long been claims that these riots were condoned or even orchestrated by the British to blacken the nationalist regime and justify Britain’s return to power in Baghdad and ongoing military occupation of Iraq.

Historian Tony Rocca noted:

“To Britain’s shame, the army was stood down. Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Britain’s ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay in direct insubordination to express orders from Winston Churchill that they should take the city and secure its safety. Instead, Sir Kinahan went back to his residence, had a candlelight dinner and played a game of bridge.”

Could this be the reason that UK government censors want the file to remain secret after all these years? It would neither be the first, nor the last time that British planners used or created pretexts to justify their military interventions.

In 1953, the covert British and US campaign to overthrow the elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran included a “false flag” element. Agents working for the British posed as supporters of the communist Tudeh party, engaging in activities such as throwing rocks at mosques and priests, in order to portray the demonstrating mobs as communists. The aim was to provide a pretext for the coup and the Shah of Iran’s taking control in the name of anti-communism.

Three years later, in 1956, Britain also secretly connived to create a pretext for its military intervention in Egypt. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal and Britain sought to overthrow him, the British and French governments secretly agreedwith Israel that the latter would first attack Egypt. Then, London and Paris would despatch military forces on the pretext of separating the warring parties, and seize the canal. The plan went ahead but failed, largely owing to US opposition.

Five years later, in 1961, it was a similar story in Kuwait. This little-known British intervention was publicly justified on the basis of an alleged threat from Iraq, but the declassified files that I have examined suggest that this “threat” was concocted by British planners. When Kuwait secured independence in June 1961, Britain was desperate to protect its oil interests and to solidify its commercial and military relations with the Kuwaiti regime. The files suggest that the British therefore needed to get the Kuwaitis to “ask” Britain for “protection”.

On 25 June 1961, Iraqi ruler Abdul Karim Qasim publicly claimed Kuwait as part of Iraq. Five days later, Kuwait’s emir formally requested British military intervention, and on 1 July, British forces landed, eventually numbering around 7,000.

But the alleged Iraqi threat to Kuwait never materialised. David Lee, who commanded the British air force in the Middle East in 1961, later wrote that the British government “did not contemplate aggression by Iraq very seriously”.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that the emir was duped into “requesting” intervention by the British, and his information on a possible Iraq move on Kuwait came almost exclusively from British sources. The files show that the “threat” to Kuwait was being pushed by the British embassy in Baghdad but contradicted by Britain’s consulate in Basra, near the Kuwaiti border, which reported no unusual troop movements.

British intervention was intended to reassure Kuwait and other friendly Middle Eastern regimes that were key to maintaining the British position in the world’s most important region. The prime minister’s foreign policy adviser said that letting go of Kuwait would have meant that “the other oil sheikhdoms (which are getting richer) will not rely on us any longer”.

By the time we reached the invasion of Iraq in 2003, creating false pretexts for interventions had become a familiar theme in British foreign policy.

To return to the 1941 document, British authorities have had a policy of either censoring, “losing” or destroying historical files that could undermine relations with current governments.

In 2012, an official review concluded that “thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments”, according to a report in The Guardian.

The files covered policies such as the abuse and torture of insurgents in Kenya in the 1950s, the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaya in 1948, and the army’s secret torture centre in Aden in the 1960s.

Other papers have been hidden for decades in secret foreign office archives, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.

Whatever is in the 1941 document, if the British government is withholding its release for fear of upsetting relations with key allies, this would be less than surprising and more a matter of routine.

In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending.

Let’s see what the US military-industrial complex looks like through a Russian lens.

It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.

What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors - Transdigm, for example - managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.)

It would be one thing if each defense contractor simply took its cut off the top, but instead there is an entire food chain of defense contractors, all of which are legally required, no less, to maximize profits for their shareholders. More than 28,000 companies are involved, but the actual first-tier defense contractors with which the Pentagon places 2/3 of all defense contracts are just the Big Six: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynmics, BAE Systems and Boeing. All the other companies are organized into a pyramid of subcontractors with five levels of hierarchy, and at each level they do their best to milk the tier above them.

The insistence on market-based methods and the requirement of maximizing profitability turns out to be incompatible with defense spending on a very basic level: defense spending is intermittent and cyclical, with long fallow intervals between major orders. This has forced even the Big Six to make cuts to their defense-directed departments in favor of expanding civilian production. Also, in spite of the huge size of the US defense budget, it is of finite size (there being just one planet to blow up), as is the global weapons market. Since, in a market economy, every company faces the choice of grow or get bought out, this has precipitated scores of mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a highly consolidated marketplace with a few major players in each space.

As a result, in most spaces, of which the report’s authors discuss 17, including the Navy, land forces, air force, electronics, nuclear weapons, space technology and so on, at least a third of the time the Pentagon has a choice of exactly one contractor for any given contract, causing quality and timeliness to suffer and driving up prices.

In a number of cases, in spite of its industrial and financial might, the Pentagon has encountered insoluble problems. Specifically, it turns out that the US has only one shipyard left that is capable of building nuclear aircraft carriers (at all, that is; the USS Gerald Ford is not exactly a success). That is Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport, Virginia. In theory, it could work on three ships in parallel, but two of the slips are permanently occupied by existing aircraft carriers that require maintenance. This is not a unique case: the number of shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines, destroyers and other types of vessels is also exactly one. Thus, in case of a protracted conflict with a serious adversary in which a significant portion of the US Navy has been sunk, ships will be impossible to replace within any reasonable amount of time.

The situation is somewhat better with regard to aircraft manufacturing. The plants that exist can produce 40 planes a month and could produce 130 a month if pressed. On the other hand, the situation with tanks and artillery is absolutely dismal. According to this report, the US has completely lost the competency for building the new generation of tanks. It is no longer even a question of missing plant and equipment; in the US, a second generation of engineers who have never designed a tank is currently going into retirement. Their replacements have no one to learn from and only know about modern tanks from movies and video games. As far as artillery, there is just one remaining production line in the US that can produce barrels larger than 40mm; it is fully booked up and would be unable to ramp up production in case of war. The contractor is unwilling to expand production without the Pentagon guaranteeing at least 45% utilization, since that would be unprofitable.

The situation is similar for the entire list of areas; it is better for dual-use technologies that can be sourced from civilian companies and significantly worse for highly specialized ones. Unit cost for every type of military equipment goes up year after year while the volumes being acquired continuously trend lower—sometimes all the way to zero. Over the past 15 years the US hasn’t acquired a single new tank. They keep modernizing the old ones, but at a rate that’s no higher than 100 a year.

Because of all these tendencies and trends, the defense industry continues to lose not only qualified personnel but also the very ability to perform the work. INDPOL experts estimate that the deficit in machine tools has reached 27%. Over the past quarter-century the US has stopped manufacturing a wide variety of manufacturing equipment. Only half of these tools can be imported from allies or friendly nations; for the rest, there is just one source: China. They analyzed the supply chains for 600 of the most important types of weapons and found that a third of them have breaks in them while another third have completely broken down. In the Pentagon’s five-tier subcontractor pyramid, component manufacturers are almost always relegated to the bottommost tier, and the notices they issue when they terminate production or shut down completely tend to drown in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic swamp.

The end result of all this is that theoretically the Pentagon is still capable of doing small production runs of weapons to compensate for ongoing losses in localized, low-intensity conflicts during a general time of peace, but even today this is at the extreme end of its capabilities. In case of a serious conflict with any well-armed nation, all it will be able to rely on is the existing stockpile of ordnance and spare parts, which will be quickly depleted.

A similar situation prevails in the area of rare earth elements and other materials for producing electronics. At the moment, the accumulated stockpile of these supplies needed for producing missiles and space technology—most importantly, satellites—is sufficient for five years at the current rate of use.

The report specifically calls out the dire situation in the area of strategic nuclear weapons. Almost all the technology for communications, targeting, trajectory calculations and arming of the ICBM warheads was developed in the 1960s and 70s. To this day, data is loaded from 5-inch floppy diskettes, which were last mass-produced 15 years ago. There are no replacements for them and the people who designed them are busy pushing up daisies. The choice is between buying tiny production runs of all the consumables at an extravagant expense and developing from scratch the entire land-based strategic triad component at the cost of three annual Pentagon budgets.

There are lots of specific problems in each area described in the report, but the main one is loss of competence among technical and engineering staff caused by a low level of orders for replacements or for new product development. The situation is such that promising new theoretical developments coming out of research centers such as DARPA cannot be realized given the present set of technical competencies. For a number of key specializations there are fewer than three dozen trained, experienced specialists.

This situation is expected to continue to deteriorate, with the number of personnel employed in the defense sector declining 11-16% over the next decade, mainly due to a shortage of young candidates qualified to replace those who are retiring. A specific example: development work on the F-35 is nearing completion and there won’t be a need to develop a new jet fighter until 2035-2040; in the meantime, the personnel who were involved in its development will be idled and their level of competence will deteriorate.

Although at the moment the US still leads the world in defense spending ($610 billion of $1.7 trillion in 2017, which is roughly 36% of all the military spending on the planet) the US economy is no longer able to support the entire technology pyramid even in a time of relative peace and prosperity. On paper the US still looks like a leader in military technology, but the foundations of its military supremacy have eroded. Results of this are plainly visible:

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  The US threatened North Korea with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.

  
  


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  The US threatened Iran with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.

  
  


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  The US lost the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, and once the longest military conflict in US history is finally over the political situation there will return to status quo ante with the Taliban in charge and Islamic terrorist training camps back in operation.

  
  


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  US proxies (Saudi Arabia, mostly) fighting in Yemen have produced a humanitarian disaster but have been unable to prevail militarily.

  
  


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  US actions in Syria have led to a consolidation of power and territory by the Syrian government and newly dominant regional position for Russia, Iran and Turkey.

  
  


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  The second-largest NATO power Turkey has purchased Russian S-400 air defense systems. The US alternative is the Patriot system, which is twice as expensive and doesn’t really work.

  
  

All of this points to the fact that the US is no longer much a military power at all. This is good news for at least the following four reasons.

First, the US is by far the most belligerent country on Earth, having invaded scores of nations and continuing to occupy many of them. The fact that it can’t fight any more means that opportunities for peace are bound to increase.

Second, once the news sinks in that the Pentagon is nothing more than a flush toilet for public funds its funding will be cut off and the population of the US might see the money that is currently fattening up war profiteers being spent on some roads and bridges, although it’s looking far more likely that it will all go into paying interest expense on federal debt (while supplies last).

Third, US politicians will lose the ability to keep the populace in a state of permanent anxiety about “national security.” In fact, the US has “natural security”—two oceans—and doesn’t need much national defense at all (provided it keeps to itself and doesn’t try to make trouble for others). The Canadians aren’t going to invade, and while the southern border does need some guarding, that can be taken care of at the state/county level by some good ol’ boys using weapons and ammo they already happen to have on hand. Once this $1.7 trillion “national defense” monkey is off their backs, ordinary American citizens will be able to work less, play more and feel less aggressive, anxious, depressed and paranoid.

Last but not least, it will be wonderful to see the war profiteers reduced to scraping under sofa cushions for loose change. All that the US military has been able to produce for a long time now is misery, the technical term for which is “humanitarian disaster.” Look at the aftermath of US military involvement in Serbia/Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, and what do you see? You see misery—both for the locals and for US citizens who lost their family members, had their limbs blown off, or are now suffering from PTSD or brain injury. It would be only fair if that misery were to circle back to those who had profited from it.

Who are these partner entities, you ask?

The “partner entities” include (but are not limited to) “state entities responsible for elementary and secondary education data, entities responsible for early learning data, segments of public higher education, private colleges and universities, state entities responsible for student financial aid, childcare providers, state labor and workforce development agencies, and state departments administering health and human services programs.” (source)

So, your kid’s teachers, principles, professors, babysitters, and the purveyors of any state services you happen to use will all cough up every detail of your child’s life.

This to me has hints of communist countries who pluck the brightest students from their home and educate them to work for the state. However, the admitted goal is data collection for the folks who make the rules.

Easily the creepiest thing to come out of California since “The Silence of the Lambs” was released into theaters, the “Cradle to Career Data System” aims to collect the ethnic, economic and educational records of every child in the state, track their grades and their progress into early adulthood, and make some form of the data available to policy makers, analysts and activists. (source)

This isn’t a maybe. It’s already passed as a trailer bill (so it didn’t go through the usual legislative process) and has been funded with a budget of $10 million.

The governor’s Office of Planning and Research is now authorized to enter into contracts with “planning facilitators” who will convene advisory groups “comprised of representatives of students, parents, labor, business and industry, equity and social justice organizations, researchers, privacy experts, early education experts, school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education.” (source)

Californians, your children’s privacy is at stake here. They are going to become part of a pile of data that will be used to enact future laws to assure “equity.” But at any time, these records will be there, the life of your child, every time they got sent to the principal’s office, who stands up to authority, who has special skills or talents, what the child’s parents are like. That person’s entire life in one handy file. And pardon me if I don’t believe the data collection will stop once they get a job. Data is king right now, so why give up on a good thing?

We’re already tracked everywhere we go once we’re old enough to have a cellphone or use the internet. But this starts right, as the title of the program points out, at the cradle.

It’s all about “social justice.” Think quotas on steroids.

“Advocates have been demanding data for the people in the Golden State for years,” the Equity Alert explains, to “answer key questions about whether and how our state schools, colleges, universities, and workforce systems are closing racial equity gaps and serving Californians.”

It sounds as if the goal is to go beyond laws that ban discrimination and beyond affirmative action into a brave new world, one in which government bureaucrats tally the economic success of each racial and ethnic group and sub-group and award government funding in an effort to reach “equity.” (source)

Of course, we all know that things like this are actually not equitable, at least not to kids from groups who are not considered to be “at risk.”

There’s no word yet on whether or not parents will be able to opt out on behalf of their offspring.

We’ve written a great deal on this site about the social credit system and the surveillance state in which we live. To me, a program like this seems like just another nail in the coffin of privacy. Don’t think that this will stop at the border of California.

These kids will, from their first moment of awareness, be concerned about their permanent record. That’s an awfully big burden to put on someone who still eats with his fingers and wears pull-ups to bed. These children will spend their entire lives under a microscope, for better or for worse, while some data entry person types their every action of note into their record.

If you want to have a social credit system like the one in China, I guess you’ve got to start early.

About 300 of these robots will be produced by March 2020, will allow the company to be the first in the world to offer cleaning robots on a subscription model to clients.

Prospective and current clients can rent the robots at a rate of $1,350 to $2,150 per month.

As of last week, two of the robots have been deployed at National Gallery Singapore and Jewel Changi Airport in April, with more expected at other commercial facilities in the coming months.

LionsBot said at least six of its clients would deploy the robots early next year.

According to LionsBot, the cleaning robot is more efficient than a human and can work longer hours.

"Multiple cleaning robots are able to coordinate and clean a given area simultaneously, without the need for human programming," the company said in a statement.

Besides regional demand, LionsBot has also received orders from companies based in Australia and Japan, said a company spokesperson, with the possible introduction to the US by 2021 to 2022.

LionsBot's clients will be able to choose from 13 different types of robots including ones that scrub, mop, vacuum, and sweep across various terrains, effectively eliminating low wage cleaning jobs. Another version of the robot can also transport up to 1,000 pounds of equipment.

At the launch event at Gardens by the Bay, Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon said cleaning robots could raise productivity, adding that the government will continue to promote the proliferation of automation.

However, the trade minister made zero mention of the upcoming labor force shift due to automation, how hundreds of thousands of people across the region will be displaced because of robots in the years ahead.

More importantly, once these robots wash ashore in the US (maybe in the next few years), and most likely on the West Coast first, a tidal wave of job losses due to automation will be seen as corporate America continues to streamline their operations with technology to curb margin compression.

The embarrassing story, Sanders' campaign field organizers, who occupy the lowest rung on the campaign staff ladder, complain that they're being forced to depend on payday loans to survive and that, in one state, four people have quit in the past month because of their financial struggles (though, if one is struggling financially, giving up one's only source of income would seem to make little sense).

One field organizer complained in the Sanders' campaign internal Slack that he needed more money "because I need to be able to feed myself."

Another utilized the rhetorical concept of irony by quoting a Sanders speech: "As you know, real change never takes place from the top on down, it always takes place from the bottom on up."

Furthermore, the demands for higher salaries come just months after the Sanders campaign workers union and the campaign leadership reached a collective bargaining agreement that was effective as of May 2.

The agreement established wage classifications for national and state staff, ranging from $15 an hour for interns and canvassers to $100,000 annual salaries for bargaining unit deputies.

Field organizers, who are on the front lines of the campaign’s crucial voter contact efforts, were to be paid not by hours worked but via an annual salary set at $36,000. Regional field directors were to be paid $48,000 annually, and statewide department directors were allocated $90,000 per year.

But shortly after the agreement was reached, the complaints started pouring in. Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir swiftly called an all-staff meeting where he proposed a modified agreement with modestly higher pay. But in a vote, Shakir's deal was rejected.

The messages caught Shakir’s attention, and later that day he sent an email to the staff thanking them for their comments. "I do believe you are owed an explanation for the situation we find ourselves in," he wrote in an email obtained by The Post.

In his email, Shakir recapped his thinking from May 17 and expressed regret with the outcome.

"I have no idea what debates and conversations were had, but candidly, it was a disappointing vote from my perspective," he wrote of the union’s decision to reject his proposal. “But the campaign leadership respected the union process and the will of the membership.”

Shakir said that it would be damaging to the campaign’s budget to implement a pay hike after expanding field staff based on previously planned salary figures. In conclusion, he said, he would negotiate the matter only through the channels established by the union arrangement.

Now, the union is preparing to send Shakir and the rest of the campaign leadership a new (presumably budget busting) proposal.

Here are some of their demands:

• That field organizers receive a salary of $46,800, while regional field directors be paid $62,400.


• That the campaign cover 100% of the health-care costs for employees making $60,000 or less a year (currently, the campaign pays all premiums for salaried employees making $36,000 or less, while those making more are covered at a rate of 85%).


• That campaign staff be reimbursed for automobile transportation at $0.58 per mile while they're traveling around canvassing for Sanders.

In a draft letter to Sanders' campaign manager obtained by the Washington Post, the campaign workers said they "cannot be expected to build the largest grassroots organizing program in American history while making poverty wages Given our campaign's commitment to fighting for a living wage of at least $15 an hour, we believe it is only fair that the campaign would carry through this commitment to its own field team."

Their union issued a nebulous statement about the workers' demands on Thursday night.

In a statement issued earlier Thursday night, the union representing the campaign workers, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400, said it could not comment "on specific, ongoing internal processes between our members and their employer."

"As union members, the Bernie 2020 campaign staff have access to myriad protections and benefits secured by their one-of-a-kind union contract, including many internal avenues to democratically address any number of ongoing workplace issues, including changes to pay, benefits, and other working conditions," the statement said.

"We look forward to continuing to work closely with our members and the management of the Bernie 2020 campaign to ensure all workers have dignity and respect in the workplace."

While some of Sanders' campaign workers insist they won't be able to build a primary-winning machine without being paid "a living wage" the sad reality - for Bernie - is that raising the pay of the campaign's lowest-paid workers by 50% will force the campaign to shed personnel and ultimately have fewer people in the field out there canvassing.

We wonder: What kind of impact do they think that will have on Bernie's chances?

The $150 billion Bridgewater saw its Pure Alpha fund, which is the discretionary fund whose returns are linked to macroeconomic forecasts and trades, lost a whopping 4.9% in the six months to June even as global equity and bond markets soared on hopes of looser monetary policy, with the S&P posting one of its best first half returns in history; Bridgewater not only underperformed the FTSE All-World index, which up 15% by the end of June, but also its peer group, as the average macro hedge fund returned 5.2% over the same period according to HFR.

The startling underperformance followed a strong year for Pure Alpha in 2018, when the clearly bearish biased fund delivered a net 14.6% return, even as most other hedge funds lost money.

Still, as the FT notes citing a source, Bridgewater has reportedly pared some of its earlier losses, and was down 1.45% cent in the year to mid-July, implying a solid rebound in the first two weeks of the month.

While it is unclear which trades hit Bridgewater, the FT notes the fund's particularly poor performance in January when Pure Alpha declined by 4.5%, suggesting it went into the new year expecting further turbulence and instead suffered as the market recovered on the back of a shocking reversal by central banks.

Some have also suggested that Bridgewater was one of the whales hit by the stunning reversal in the Eurodollar market in recent months, as rate cut odds soared in the past two months.

Meanwhile, offsetting much of the Pure Alpha losses, Bridgewater’s passively managed All-Weather fund, which unlike Pure Alpha is immune from macro-economic shifts and is instead a risk-parity, "balanced" fund, returned 13% through June, which was to be expected in a year where both stocks and bonds have soared, resulting in the best returns for risk parity funds in over two decades.

As the FT reminds us, Pure Alpha also had a difficult start to the year in 2009 and in 2016, according to data seen by the FT, but managed to claw back its losses in the second halves of those years. It was unclear if the Pure Alpha fund was still positioned bearishly as of this moment.

In May, Vietnam was added to the US Treasury Department’s list of possible currency manipulators, a designation that could result in punitive measures if proved. That threat presaged this month’s imposition of a whopping new 400% US duty on Vietnamese steel imports that originate from South Korea and Taiwan.

The US could next slap punitive tariffs on certain Vietnamese imports based on allegations Hanoi is allowing Chinese-made products to be rebranded as Vietnamese goods before export to the US to circumvent tariffs on China, a process officials refer to as “transshipment.”

Some economists predict that, for instance, if the US moves to impose a 25% tariff on Vietnam’s exports, as it has done with China for reasons of national security, the move would cause Hanoi’s exports to fall by a quarter and shave off more than 1% from GDP.

That could be in the offing, analysts reckon, in light of Trump’s scathing comment last month that Hanoi was “almost the single worst abuser of everybody” in regard to trade and that “Vietnam takes advantage of us even worse than China.”

That critique was aimed at Vietnam’s high and rising trade surplus with the US, which hit a record US$40 billion last year, up slightly from 2017 and in spite of a concerted Vietnamese effort to buy more from the US.

In the first five months of this year, Vietnam’s trade surplus with the US hit $21.6 billion, double the amount compared with the same period in 2018.

Beyond the rhetoric, America’s new tariffs on Vietnam represent a drastic course shift, one that has caught Vietnamese officials off guard amid what was a strong bilateral warming trend under the Trump administration.

In February, when Hanoi staged a second historic round of US-North Korea peace talks, Trump lavished praise on his Vietnamese hosts.

“You’ve made tremendous progress and it’s a great thing for the world to see,” he told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc while referring to the one-time battlefield adversaries as “friends.”

Soon after Trump took office in January 2016, Vietnam was one of the first targets of his complaints that certain nations maintained big, unequal trade surpluses with the US.

Those complaints were mollified somewhat after Phuc visited Trump at the White House later that year with a multi-billion dollar purchase order for several Boeing-made commercial aircraft.

Communist Party sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say they are perplexed by Trump’s volte face. For the last two years, Trump has acted as though Vietnam and the US were “best friends”, one Vietnamese official told Asia Times.

The officials say it is unclear whether the Trump administration is genuine about its threat of possible future sanctions on Vietnamese imports, or whether it is a dramatic negotiating tactic to extract more concessions.

Sources say that Vietnam has made the kind of trade-related commitments that they think Washington supports, and that Trump’s latest comments could merely aim to accelerate their implementation.

For instance, a planned law to create three new special economic zones, which sparked rare nationwide protests last year as many thought they would allow Chinese firms to purchase large swathes of Vietnamese land, has now been indefinitely postponed.

Meanwhile, National Assembly delegates recently called on Communist Party functionaries to curb Chinese investment in Vietnam, with lawmakers arguing that Hanoi should be more particular about which foreign-invested projects it accepts.

Vietnamese authorities have also stiffened a crackdown on Chinese products being re-routed through Vietnam on their way to the US, a circumvention of tariffs that has greatly peeved the Trump administration.

To some extent, Vietnam has mitigated the costs of possible US sanctions by signing trade deals with other partners. Earlier this year, it formally became part of the reformed Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade pact which Trump took the US out of in one of his first acts as president.

Moreover, on June 30, Vietnam finally signed a free-trade agreement with the European Union after several years of protracted negotiations.

The deal, which will remove import duties from 99% of Vietnam’s exports within seven years, up from 71% when the deal was signed, could boost Vietnam’s exports to the EU by 20% in 2020, according to official estimates.

Last year, the EU purchased $42.5 billion worth of Vietnam’s exports.

Still, the US is Vietnam’s most important trading partner, a fact that is not likely to change any time soon. Last year, the US imported $49 billion worth of Vietnamese goods, while exporting just $9.6 billion to Vietnam.

In the first five months of this year, US imports of Vietnamese goods have jumped to $25.8 billion, compared to $18.9 billion over the same period last year, evidence that Vietnam is benefitting immensely from the trade war.

In June, Japanese investment bank Nomura estimated that Vietnam had gained the equivalent of 7.9% of its GDP from trade diversion and supply chain shifts caused by the US-China spat. (The second largest beneficiary was Taiwan, which has gained about 2.1% of its GDP, the research shows.)

Some analysts believe Washington’s reaction to Vietnam’s trade practices is perfectly normal, particularly in light of allowing Chinese companies to use it as a base to disguise their exports to the US.

Vietnam, now one of the world’s 50 largest economies, is simply being asked to abide by the same rules the US expects from other trading partners – the same rationale that led to the US-China trade spat.

“Every fast-industrializing Asian nation has been at first indulged by the US and other major Western trading partners and then, as its market power became formidable, pressed to play by the rules of international trade,” wrote David Brown, an expert on Vietnam, in World Politics Review this month.

“Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan all cleared that hurdle years ago, none without considerable turmoil. Vietnam is still on probation, and must find the self-discipline to prioritize its larger interests,” the ex-US diplomat added.

Geopolitics, however, are confusing matters. Hanoi has enjoyed US preferential treatment for years because of its strategic importance to American interests, including vis-à-vis China in the South China Sea.

When former US president Barack Obama launched his “pivot to Asia” policy earlier this decade, Vietnam was considered an important new ally because it was one of the few claimants that strongly opposed Chinese expansionism in the maritime area.

Overlooking Vietnam’s many faults – namely it’s abysmal human rights record – has been the price Western nations paid to secure cordial relations with a government that agrees on the need to contain China’s regional rise.

Vietnam has willingly flaunted this position to extract concessions from the West while often playing the US and China off one another to maximize diplomatic benefits from both.

Trump’s recent moves have certainly and unexpectedly put Hanoi on the back foot. Sources say its bureaucracy is working overtime to reform its system on export permits, while also mulling new ways of to reduce its trade surplus.

It is no secret that the US wants Vietnam to purchase more American-made military equipment, and move away from its traditional arms supplier, Russia.

Buying a big-ticket cache of new US military hardware would certainly be looked upon kindly in Washington, a move that would help to narrow Hanoi’s trade surplus while further cementing US-Vietnam defense ties.

Today’s infographic comes to us from Domo, and it shows the amount of new data generated each minute through several different platforms and technologies.

Let’s start by looking at what happens every minute from a broad perspective:

• 
  

  Americans use 4,416,720 GB of internet data

  
  


• 
  

  There are 188,000,000 emails sent

  
  


• 
  

  There are 18,100,000 texts sent

  
  


• 
  

  There are 390,030 apps downloaded

  
  

Now lets look at platform-specific data on a per minute basis:

• 
  

  Giphy serves up 4,800,000 gifs

  
  


• 
  

  Netflix users stream 694,444 hours of video

  
  


• 
  

  Instagram users post 277,777 stories

  
  


• 
  

  Youtube users watch 4,500,000 videos

  
  


• 
  

  Twitter users send 511,200 tweets

  
  


• 
  

  Skype users make 231,840 calls

  
  


• 
  

  Airbnb books 1,389 reservations

  
  


• 
  

  Uber users take 9,772 rides

  
  


• 
  

  Tinder users swipe 1,400,000 times

  
  


• 
  

  Google conducts 4,497,420 searches

  
  


• 
  

  Twitch users view 1,000,000 videos

  
  

Imagine being given the task to build a server infrastructure capable of handling any of the above items. It’s a level of scale that’s hard to comprehend.

Also, imagine how difficult it is to make sense of this swath of data. How does one even process insights from the many billions of Youtube videos watched per day?

The above statistics are already mind-bending, but consider that the global total of internet users is still growing at roughly a 9% clip. This means the current rate of data creation is still just scratching the surface of its ultimate potential.

In fact, as We Are Social’s recent report on internet usage reveals, a staggering 367 million new internet users were added in between January 2018 and January 2019:

Global internet penetration sits at 57% in 2019, meaning that billions of more people are going to be using the above same services—including many others that don’t even exist yet.

Combine this with more time spent on the internet per user and technologies like 5G, and we are only at the beginning of the big data era.

The new figures are slated to be released as part of Federal data on and will certainly raise questions about the trustworthiness of crime statistics in Mexico. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won his election on promises of curbing crime, corruption and violence. Mexico City's mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, is a close ally of his. 

Godoy said: “The registry was distorted. In cases of rape they were classified as sexual harassment or abuse, or just injuries.”

More than 24,000 of 214,000 reviewed files on criminal cases were said to be doctored. Rapes in the prior year were actually double the number reported by former mayor Miguel Angel Mancera's administration. Mancera had no comment. 

Data shows that murders in Mexico's capital city were up 36% from January to May versus the year prior. Godoy says homicides will formally now show a rise of about 12%. 

Godoy concluded: "That’s still far too many. This is not being done to justify our government. We won’t deny the situation we are in."

The PM's statement appears to undercut President Trump's account of the call. The president said the PM had assured him that Rocky would be "treated fairly," though Trump said he had personally offered to guarantee Rocky's bail, and that the two leaders had agreed to speak about the issue again on Monday.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven

The Swedish government, according to NYT, has faced accusations of human rights abuses and racism as rumors about the rapper's treatment spread. Some said he was sleeping on a yoga mat spread over a concrete floor, and that he was eating one apple a day.

Whether those rumors are exaggerated or accurate, a groundswell of celebrity support for Rocky has brought the issue to the White House's attention. First, senior aide and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to intercede on Rocky's behalf (he reportedly helped secure better accommodations for Rocky), then, after conversations with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Trump tweeted that he would call the Swedish PM.

On Saturday morning, Trump said the Swedish PM had assured him that Rocky would be treated fairly, and that Trump had offered to personally guarantee Rocky's bail. Trump said the two had planned to discuss the issue again on Monday.

Video footage of the incident appears to show Rocky acting in self-defense:

 


 

 



 




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A post shared by PRETTY FLACKO (@asaprocky) on Jul 2, 2019 at 8:06am PDT

"But that’s not the end of the story,” I said, describing the emerging consensus.

"The starting point in terms of positioning is a massive investor underweight in risk assets. Despite the S&P being at all time highs, there have been investor outflows. Active managers are all underperforming and are scrambling to chase performance. Corporate buybacks continue at a $1trln/year pace. There is $13trln in negatively yielding debt globally. And now that we’re in an earnings recession, people say things are probably going to get better anyway."

 

"The continued shift toward passive investing is pushing more cash into the market,” I continued.

“Pensions are taking more risk in order to hit their magic +7.5% return targets. The capitulation to this collective view has grown over the past month. Before that there were plenty of bears. And now everyone agrees this will be the last leg of history’s longest bull market."

"Guys managing other people’s money seem more bullish than those who trade their own capital. Naturally, everyone plans to sell to someone else before this market rolls over."

​​

Soon after I walked into the entrance of Epstein’s mansion on E 71st Street, said to be the city’s largest private home, a butler asked me, “would you like an intimate massage, sir, by a pretty young girl?” This offer seemed so out of place and weird to me that I swiftly declined.

More important than indelicacy, as an old observer of intelligence affairs, to me this offer reeked of ye old honey trap, a tactic to ensnare and blackmail people that was old when Babylon was young. A discreet room with massage table, lubricants and, no doubt, cameras stood ready off the main lobby.

I had arrived with Canada’s leading lady journalist who was then close to Epstein’s sometime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell and, it was said, procuress – something Maxwell denies. Bizarrely, Maxwell believed that I could get KGB Moscow Center to release satellite photos that showed the murder on his yacht of her father, the press baron Robert Maxwell, who was a well-known double agent for Israel and KGB, and a major criminal.

Also present was the self-promoting lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who had saved the accused murderer Claus von Bulow, as well as a titan of the New York real estate industry (not Trump) and assorted bigwigs of the city’s elite Jewish society. All sang the praises of Israel.

Epstein reportedly had ties to Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and repeatedly flew them about in his private jet, aka “the Lolita Express.” All guests deny any sexual activity. I turned down dinner with Prince Andrew.

Epstein’s residence in Manhattan and Palm Beach, both of which I visited, were stocked with young female “masseuses.” All were working class girls making big money in their spare time. I did not see any interactions between these girls and the guests.

Epstein and Maxwell became too big for their britches. They flaunted their sexual adventures and laughed at New York society. Everyone wondered about the source of Epstein’s lavish income but no one knew its origins. He claimed to be an exclusive money manager for a group of secretive millionaires. But the only one identified was billionaire Leslie Wexner, the owner of L Brands and Victoria’s Secret. Wexner denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

Besides sexual frolics, Epstein and Maxwell were up to many odd things. The FBI found diamonds, cash and a fake passport when raiding his mansion and documents showing his net worth at $559,120,954.00. The IRS tax people will be eager to review the sources of this income.

It seems likely that political influence was brought to bear on then US attorney Alexander Acosta (he just resigned under fire last week) to make a sweetheart deal with Epstein, who had been charged by Florida with child molestation. Epstein got off with a token, 13-month jail sentence that allowed him to work from his office much of the day.

Were Trump or Clinton involved? How much did they “party” with Epstein and revel in his fleshmart? There was talk of some sort of “intelligence” angle to the affaire Epstein that spared him a harsh sentence.

A respected former CIA official, Phil Giraldi has come right out and accused Epstein of being an Israeli agent of influence. Epstein was let off with a slap on the wrist on his first child abuse charge, says Giraldi, because of his powerful Israel connections.

To Giraldi and this writer, the Epstein “massage” operation was a classic intelligence operation designed to blackmail men of influence into doing Israel’s bidding. Clinton had reportedly already fallen into this trap years earlier while still president.

Now watch this stinking pile of corruption be hurriedly covered up. Talk about draining the swamp.