| German Reader on "Political Correctness"; Denmark Cancels All Trains From Germany; Juncker Pleads for Compulsory Refugee Quotas Posted: 09 Sep 2015 04:17 PM PDT Denmark Cancels Trains For Indefinite PeriodThe BBC reports Denmark-Germany Rail Links SuspendedDenmark's DSB rail operator said trains to and from Germany had been suspended for an indefinite period because of exceptional passport checks.
Police also closed part of the E45 motorway - the main road link between Germany and Denmark - after about 300 migrants left another train and set off on foot towards Sweden near the border town of Padborg.
Sweden has become a top destination for refugees after it promised to issue residency papers to all Syrian asylum seekers. Compulsory Refugee QuotasEuropean Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker has upped the stakes in the refugee crisis with a push for Compulsory Refugee Quotas. Delivering an unusually blunt warning that the EU "is not in a good state", Mr Juncker laid out his plans for asylum reform in an 80-minute speech that featured frequent heckles and an interruption from an Italian MEP wearing an Angela Merkel mask.
The crisis shifted on Wednesday to Denmark, where police ordered the cancellation of all trains to and from Germany in an attempt to thwart migrants. The country's new centre-right government has taken a tough line on immigration, even buying advertising space in Middle Eastern newspapers to dissuade people from travelling to the Nordic country.
Meanwhile, the wealthy south-west German region of Baden-Württemberg temporarily closed its doors to new refugees on Wednesday, saying it could take no more because its reception centres were full.
Proposals to win over reluctant member states include a temporary opt-out clause, in exchange for a fine amounting to 0.002 per cent of gross domestic product. In order to qualify, states must demonstrate that they are presently unable to take extra refugees due to extraordinary circumstances, such as a natural disaster.
The fines, however, are hardly punitive. Poland, which had a GDP of $548bn in 2014 and is a net recipient of EU funds, would pay a bit over $10m back to the EU to opt out of the scheme temporarily.
People from former Yugoslavian states such as Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina are estimated to comprise almost 40 per cent of the 800,000 asylum seekers that Germany is set to receive each year. Nearly all of these asylum applications are rejected, but they can still take months or even years to process. Political CorrectnessPolitically Incorrect writes .... Hi Mish,
I live in Germany and see firsthand how it is politically incorrect to question our current refugee policy. If you do not stand by it 100%, then some consider you a right wing radical or a neo-Nazi.
Nobody bothers to differentiate between persecuted refugees and economic refugees. I suspect most are actually economic refugees, and by the German law would have to be deported after their applications for asylum are denied. However, it can take up to a year for the asylum application to be processed. Until then, refugees can have a nice vacation in Germany at the taxpayers' expense. If it is too easy to get in and get benefits, then even more will come. That's basic human nature.
The average asylum seeker costs the taxpayer 12,500 euro/year. The Government insists that they will still balance the budget despite the huge new costs. Many assert the ridiculous Keynesian dogma that the new economic activity from the refugees will generate enough new tax revenue to pay for itself. What a joke, but you can't even question that without being labeled insensitive and a radical right extremist.
There was a big sob story in the newspaper recently about a gypsy woman from Macedonia and her two kids who are now being deported after three years. In that period, the family collected 700 Euros/month and had a place to stay as well. Yet, she still spoke no German and did not have a job after three years. When she returns to Macedonia she will get 20 Euros/month in welfare. No wonder she is upset about having to leave. The Total cost was something like 36,000 euros, not including the cost of day care and schooling for the kids.
There's a lot of positive feeling and hope for the refugees now, but when they introduce a tax levy to pay for it, hearts will start to change.
Regards,
Politically Incorrect Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
| Tracking "Emailgate" and "Apologygate"; Clinton's Half-Baked Apology; Lightning Strikes Twice Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:16 PM PDT In the wake of a major flip-flop by Hillary Clinton as to whether she would or would not issue an apology over "Emailgate", I thought it might be interesting to review the details and denials from the beginning. Emailgate BackgroundFrom 2009 to 2013, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she sent and received emails using a home-brew email server setup in her house. This was a violation of protocol as she was supposed to use secure government channels. Her use of a private server and email account prompted congressional and FBI investigations. She denied any classified documents were on her server, but a quick check proved otherwise. Despite all of her efforts, the server story will not go away, it has been in the news for months, and Hillary's popularity has plunged. Clinton's Favorable Rating  Gallup reports ... Dogged by continued scrutiny of her email practices as secretary of state, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's favorability with the American public has sunk to one of its lowest levels in Gallup's 23-year trend. Currently, 41% of U.S. adults say they have a favorable opinion of the Democratic front-runner, while 51% hold an unfavorable view.
Clinton's sub-40% favorable ratings in 1992 were mostly a product of the public's lack of familiarity with her, rather than any kind of broad unpopularity. By contrast, her current 41% favorable rating is arguably her worst, given her nearly universal name recognition. Her present rating is about as low as it was in March 2001, during her first few months in office as a U.S. senator from New York.
Perhaps more importantly, it was also after controversial pardons that her husband, President Bill Clinton, granted at the end of his presidency, and after the Clintons took furnishings and other gifts that were White House property when they left. Clinton's Defense" I did not send or receive any information marked classified. I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and did so," said Hillary. Flashback March 10: Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email. Hillary Rodham Clinton revealed on Tuesday that she had deleted about half her emails from her years as secretary of state, saying she had turned over to the Obama administration all correspondence about government business but had erased records of communications about private matters, like yoga routines, her daughter's wedding and her mother's funeral.
"I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two," she explained.
Mrs. Clinton's explanation that it was more convenient to carry only one device seemed at odds with her remark last month, at a technology conference in Silicon Valley, that she uses multiple devices, including two kinds of iPads, an iPhone and a BlackBerry. She said then: "I don't throw anything away. I'm like two steps short of a hoarder."
At one point on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton said the emails she had deleted contained "personal communications from my husband and me." But on Sunday, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton told reporters that the former president had "sent two emails in his life." Refusal to Apologize Flash Forward September 4, 2015: The Hill reports Hillary Clinton refuses to apologize for email choices. Hillary Clinton on Friday declined on two occasions to apologize for using a personal email account and server while serving as secretary of State.
In a rare national interview, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell asked Clinton if she was sorry that she had bucked traditional protocol and routed her work email through a private email account and server.
Clinton responded by acknowledging that "it wasn't the best choice," and said that she "should have had two accounts." But she also continued to defend the decision as "above board" and something that was "allowed by the State Department."
Half Baked ApologyIn an interview last Friday, Clinton offered a quasi-apology. It was an apology that made many of Hillary Clinton's closest supporters bristle.
"At the end of the day, I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions," Hillary Clinton told NBC's Andrea Mitchell in an interview last Friday, when asked whether she should apologize for the email controversy dogging her campaign.
The classic "I'm sorry your feelings are hurt" response left many Clinton insiders troubled that the statement felt more like an insult than an apology -- and over the weekend, a growing chorus of advisors and donors ratcheted up the pressure on Clinton and her campaign to take the apology a step further in order to put it to bed, multiple sources close to the campaign said. Real Apology?On September 8, Bloomberg reported Hillary Clinton Offers Apology for E-Mail Practices. "That was a mistake. I'm sorry about that. I take responsibility," she said in an interview with ABC's David Muir [on Tuesday].
On Monday, Clinton again refused an all-encompassing apology, telling the Associated Press that she didn't need to apologize for relying on her personal account because it was allowed by the State Department. "It was fully above board. Everybody in the government with whom I e-mailed knew that I was using a personal e-mail, and I have said it would have been a better choice to have had two separate e-mail accounts," she said. "And I've also tried to not only take responsibility, because it was my decision, but to be as transparent as possible."
Clinton said she regrets how she's handled the e-mail issue since her use of a private account first came to light six months ago. "I do think I could have and should have done a better job answering questions earlier. I really didn't perhaps appreciate the need to do that," she said. Got that?Lets' go over that last paragraph above one more time. Hillary did not " appreciate the need to do a better job answering questions" about why she used a private email server when she should not have, about denials of classified documents on the server, and about all kinds of inconsistencies in her make-up-answers-as-you-go-along story. Emailgate TimelineLesson on Mistakes and LiesHillary Clinton's approval rating was over 60% in 2013. It's near a record low 41% now. Lies are the reason. Please consider Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and authorizing the war in IraqMay 12th, 2015 Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's comments on Fox News about the Iraq War brought up more questions than answers.
Kelly: "On the subject of Iraq, very controversial, knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?"
Bush: "I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."
In her 2014 book Hard Choices, Clinton said this about her vote:
"While many were never going to look past my 2002 vote no matter what I did or said, I should have stated my regret sooner and in the plainest, most direct language possible. I'd gone most of the way there by saying I regretted the way President Bush used his authority and by saying that if we knew then what we later learned, there wouldn't have been a vote. But I held out against using the word mistake." Lightning Strikes TwiceHillary " regrets the way Bush used his authority". What kind of apology is that? Heck it's not even an admission of a mistake. I have always maintained that Hillary would have won the Democratic nomination in 2008 over Obama had she only had the common sense to admit she made a mistake in siding with President Bush on the War in Iraq. I made that claim in 2008, well before Hillary realized it. Moreover, I highly doubt she believed the ridiculous evidence Bush presented in the first place. Rather, I strongly suspect she believed in war-mongering and nation-building. There was never any evidence, just easy-to-see lies. Most of our allies laughed at us. It did Hillary no good to issue a half-baked apology in her self-serving book on " Hard Choices". By once again refusing to apologize or admit a mistake in a timely fashion, she may have done it to herself once again. Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
| Plotting the Number of Banks: Is the Goal One "TBTF" Bank? Posted: 09 Sep 2015 10:11 AM PDT Reader Tim Wallace sent in a spreadsheet on the total number of banks.  click on chart for sharper imageWhatever happened to the idea that something needs to be done about "Too Big to Fail Banks"? Consolidation numbers do not tell the full story, but the largest banks do keep getting bigger in the slow but steady march towards one bank. Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
| Dollar Based Loans Jump 600% in Saudi Arabia as Companies Raise Cash; What’s the Risk? Posted: 09 Sep 2015 03:01 AM PDT In yet another oil price crash side effect, Dollar Denominated Loans in Saudi Arabia Jump 600%. Dollar borrowing in Saudi Arabia has surged seven-fold this year as the kingdom's companies switch out of increasingly expensive local currency-denominated loans.
About 65 percent of all loans taken out in Saudi Arabia through Tuesday were in dollars, compared with 13 percent for all of 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Borrowers raised more than $11 billion in U.S. currency, compared to $1.7 billion for all of last year. Riyal borrowing fell 45 percent.
The shift underscores the knock-on effects of oil's 50 percent plunge in the past 12 months. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest crude exporter, is tapping local debt capital markets with long-term bonds for the first time in eight years to plug a growing budget deficit. That reduced bank liquidity and helped send the three-month Saudi Interbank Offered Rate, a benchmark used to price many Islamic and conventional loans, to its highest since November.
"Local liquidity is weakening, so they have to go and borrow in other currencies," said Apostolos Bantis, a Dubai-based credit analyst at Commerzbank AG. "If Saibor is rising faster than the U.S. rates, then it makes more sense for Saudi borrowers to go externally and borrow at a cheaper rate." There aren't many risks as long as Saudi Arabia maintains its peg to the dollar, he said.
While bets for a devaluation of the riyal reached the highest in more than a decade last month after China weakened the yuan, the governor of the kingdom's central bank Governor Fahad Al-Mubarak said last week the peg at 3.75 per dollar will remain as long as oil underpins the Saudi economy.
Saibor was at 0.8775 percent on Tuesday, compared with 0.332 percent for the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is used as a benchmark for many dollar loans. While comparatively high, the Saudi rate remains at a historically low level. It rose as high as 5.3 percent in 2006. No Risk Unless" There aren't many risks as long as Saudi Arabia maintains its peg to the dollar," said a Dubai-based credit analyst. And what if they don't? Didn't we see a nice blow-up in Swiss Franc bets earlier this year? And what about all the countries that were forced to drop a dollar peg for one reason or another? Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
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