week ending Dec 15

Fed Net Worth Turns Negative Following Record $66BN In Paper Losses -  While the Fed has been engaging in quantitative tightening for over a year now in an attempt to shrink its asset holdings, it still has over $4.1 trillion in bonds on its balance sheet, and as a result of the spike in yields in the last summer, this massive portfolio suffered substantial paper losses which according to the Fed's latest quarterly financial report, hit a record $66.453 billion in the third quarter, raising questions about its strategy at a politically charged moment for the central bank, whose "independence" has been put increasingly into question as a result of relentless badgering by Donald Trump.What immediately caught the attention of financial analysts is that the gaping Q3 loss of over $66 billion, dwarfed the Fed's $39.1 billion in capital, leaving the US central bank with a negative net worth...... which would suggest insolvency for any ordinary company, but since the Fed gets to print its own money, it is of course anything but an ordinary company as Bloomberg quips.It's not just the fact that the US central bank prints the world's reserve currency, but that it also does not mark its holdings to market. As a result, Fed officials usually play down the significance of the theoretical losses and say they won’t affect the ability of what they call “a unique non-profit entity’’ to carry out monetary policy or remit profits to the Treasury Department. Indeed, confirming this the Fed handed over $51.6 billion to the Treasury in the first nine months of the year.The risk, however, is that should the Fed's finances continue to deteriorate if only on paper, it could impair its standing with Congress and the public when it is already under attack from President Donald Trump as being a bigger problem than trade foe China. Commenting on the Fed's paper losses, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh told Bloomberg that "a central bank with a negative net worth matters not in theory. But in practice, it runs the risk of chipping away at Fed credibility, its most powerful asset.’’

Jerome Powell Is Between A Rock And A Hard Place - Nomi Prins -  One of the major drags on the market, besides trade wars, has been uncertainty about whether the Fed will raise rates this month. Despite the verbal bravado of Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, over how strong the U.S. economy is, he doesn’t live in a vacuum.  Powell’s borne the brunt of President Trump’s recent accusations that the Fed’s hikes are what’s hurting the stock market and threatening the economy. That lead to a media debate over whether Powell would “cave” to Trump or demonstrate that the Fed is the independent body that it’s legally designed to be, and continue with planned hikes anyway.Powell’s recently indicated again that he planned to go ahead with another 0.25 rate hike when the Fed meets Dec. 19, which would be the fourth increase this year. But on Nov. 28, he revealed something in his speech at the Economic Club of New York that I’ve been predicting. He dialed back talk about rate hikes. He said that rates were “just below” neutral. That contrasted sharply with his comments from Oct. 3rd when he said “We are a long way from neutral at this point.” In other words, he’s turned dovish. That’s a major shift in less than two months’ time. But why the change? It likely had much less to do with pressure from Trump than deteriorating economic and market conditions. Heavy market volatility was just starting to return when he his Oct. 3 comment. It’s only gotten worse since then. At some point, the wobbling in the financial markets must have gotten to him. As the Daily Reckoning’s Brian Maher said, single-day losses of 300, 500, 700 — 800 points — seem almost commonplace now. “The stock market is a wreck of nerves these days,” he said, “like a man walking point in a dark enemy jungle.” There are just so many points of uncertainty and weakness brewing in the markets, both within the U.S. and the global economy overall. What has emerged is a growing fear that the future could be gloomier than many analysts, governments and central bank leaders anticipated. There are now two major factors that could curtail growth in the U.S. One is the Federal Reserve itself. If the Fed were to continue raising rates too quickly, it would cause government, corporate and consumer debt payments to increase. Such a move would lead to higher deficits and defaults — and lower economic growth. Second, while President Trump’s estimated $1.5 trillion in tax cuts have contributed to boosting U.S. GDP this year, the same impact is unlikely to carry on into next year.

Yellen warns of another potential financial crisis: 'Gigantic holes in the system' -- Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told a New York audience she fears there could be another financial crisis because banking regulators have seen reductions in their authority to address panics and because of the current push to deregulate."I think things have improved, but then I think there are gigantic holes in the system," Yellen said Monday night in a discussion moderated by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman at CUNY. "The tools that are available to deal with emerging problems are not great in the United States."Yellen cited leverage loans as an area of concern, something also mentioned by the current Fed leadership. She said regulators can only address such problems at individual banks not throughout the financial system. The former fed chair, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said there remains an agenda of unfinished regulation. "I'm not sure we're working on those things in the way we should, and then there remain holes, and then there's regulatory pushback. So I do worry that we could have another financial crisis.'' In the wake of the financial crisis, some agency regulatory powers were vastly expanded, but others, for example, the ability of the Fed to lend to an individual company in a crisis, were curtailed. Current Fed officials have pushed back against criticism that their reforms are making the system riskier, saying they are making the system more efficient. Speaking in London in June 2017, shortly after leaving office, Yellen had said she did not believe there would be another financial crisis in our lifetimes because of financial reforms. However, she did warn at the time about the deregulatory efforts just then underway. Yellen did not comment about the current financial or economic situation except to say, "Interest rates are low. I believe they're likely to remain lower than they've been in past decades." She noted that in a typical recession, the Fed cuts rate by 5 percentage points while the "normal level" of short-term interest rate is usually around 3 percent. "That means there's much less scope to cut short-term rates than there's been historically in the United States,'' Yellen said.

 Q4 GDP Forecasts: High 2s --From Merrill Lynch:Core retail sales popped 0.9% mom in Nov with net upward revisions. Industrial production climbed 0.6% driven by utilities. These data boosted 4Q GDP tracking by 0.4pp to 2.9% qoq saar. [Dec 14 estimate].And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNowThe GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2018 is 3.0 percent on December 14, up from 2.4 percent on December 7. The nowcast of fourth-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth increased from 3.3 percent to 4.1 percent after this morning's retail sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau and this morning's industrial production release from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. [Dec 14 estimate]From the NY Fed Nowcasting ReportThe New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 2.4% for both 2018:Q4 and 2019:Q1. [Dec 14 estimate] CR Note: These early estimates suggest GDP in the high 2s for Q4.

In Just 2 Years, US Debt Grew The Size Of The Entire Brazilian Economy - In a mere two years, the United States debt has massively grown.  In fact, the amount of debt the US incurred equaled the size of the entire Brazilian economy. U.S. government debt is on track this year to rise at the fastest pace since 2012,reported the Los Angeles Times.  The strong yet quickly weakening economy is failing to keep pace with the wave of red ink that’s rising under the Trump administration and there appears to be no end to the spending in sight.The total public debt outstanding has jumped by $1.36 trillion, or 6.6%, since the start of 2018, and by $1.9 trillion since President Trump took office, according to the latest Treasury Department figures. The latter figure is about the size of Brazil’s gross domestic product.As of Monday, the nation’s debt stood at a record $21.9 trillion. The borrowing is needed to cover a budget deficit that expanded by an estimated $779 billion in Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the widest fiscal gap in six years, since Barack Obama’s term. By the end of Trump’s first term, the debt is expected to rise by $4.4 trillion despite historically low unemployment, relatively low interest rates and robust growth. Government funding for some agencies runs out after December 21 barring an agreement over the budget, while the statutory debt limit has been temporarily suspended through March 1, though the Treasury can take measures to keep paying the government’s bills for a few more months. Without extreme debt conditions, economic downturns cannot be created (or at least sustained for long periods of time). According to the amount of debt weighing down a system, banking institutions can predict the outcomes of certain actions and also influence certain end results. For example, if the Fed was interested in conjuring a debt based bubble, a classic strategy would be to set interest rates artificially low for far too long. Conversely, raising interest rates into economic weakness is a strategy that can be employed in order to collapse a bubble. This is what launched the Great Depression, it is what ignited the crash of 2008, and it is what’s going on today.

US Reports Biggest Ever Budget Deficit For November -Two months after the US Treasury reported the widest annual deficit in six years for fiscal 2018, moments ago the US posted the biggest November budget deficit on record as total government spending came in twice as much as revenue. November outlays surged 18.4% to $411 billion last month from $347 billion a year ago, while receipts actually declined 1% to $206 billion from $208 billion in 2017, the Treasury Department said in a monthly report on Thursday. The biggest spending categories were Social Security ($84BN), Medicare ($77BN), National Defense ($62BN), Income security ($46BN) and Health ($42BN). Net interest on the US debt of nearly $22 trillion came in at a hefty $33BN. Meanwhile, Individual Income Taxes and Social Security Taxes both generated $93BN in income each. The result was a November deficit of $205 billion, a 48% increase from the $139 billion shortfall a year earlier, and the biggest November deficit on record. For the first two months of the fiscal year which began Oct. 1, the deficit widened to $305.4 billion, up 50% compared with $201.8 billion the same period a year earlier. On a LTM basis, the US deficit has more than doubled from the $405BN it hit in February 2016 to $883BN as of the 12 months ended November. It was the second highest LTM number since early 2013.In Fiscal 2018, the first full year of Donald Trump’s presidency in which he enacted a tax-cut package and enacted a $1+ trillion stimulus, the U.S. ran the largest deficit in six years. The various spending programs and tax cuts have added to the growing federal deficit, which is expected to hit $1 trillion some time in fiscal 2019, one year sooner than disclosed in the CBO's most recent forecast ; in April the agency didn’t expect the deficit to reach $1 trillion until 2020. Then again, over the long run none of this matters...

Bonuses are up $0.02 since the GOP tax cuts passed --Newly available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Costs for Employee Compensation data allows an update of the trends of worker bonuses through September 2018, to gauge the impact of the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The tax cutters claimed that their bill would raise the wages of rank-and-file workers, with congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration promising raises of many thousands of dollars within ten years. The Trump administration’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers argued in April that we were already seeing the positive wage impact of the tax cuts:A flurry of corporate announcements provide further evidence of tax reform’s positive impact on wages. As of April 8, nearly 500 American employers have announced bonuses or pay increases, affecting more than 5.5 million American workers.Following the bill’s passage, a number of corporations made conveniently-timed announcements that their workers would be getting raises or bonuses (some of which were in the works well before the tax cuts passed). But as Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair have shown there are many reasons to be skeptical of the claim that the TCJA, particularly corporate tax cuts, will produce significant wage gains. The new data allows us to examine nonproduction bonuses in the first three quarters of 2018 to assess the trends in bonuses in absolute dollars and as a share of compensation. The bottom line is that there has been very little increase in private sector compensation or W-2 wages since the end of 2017. The $0.02 per hour (inflation-adjusted) bump in bonuses between December 2017 and September 2018 is very small. Nonproduction bonuses as a share of total compensation grew from 2.73 percent in December 2017 to 2.78 percent in September 2018, an imperceptible growth. Moreover, whatever growth in bonuses has taken place is not necessarily attributable to the tax cuts, rather than employer efforts to recruit workers in a continued low unemployment environment.

Trump Says US Military Spending Is ‘Crazy’ High — Then Calls for Billions More -  On Monday, President Trump seemed to be positioning himself against Pentagon calls for spending increases, saying that the spending levels are already “crazy” and that he didn’t envision the 2020 military budget should exceed $700 billion, despite Pentagon presumptions it would be $733 billion. Having met with committee chairs, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, Trump has now completely reversed his position, and is calling on the Pentagon to seek an even bigger spending increase in the next budget.Administration officials are now saying Mattis was assured that Trump will support a budget of $750 billion. This would be a substantial increase over the previous year’s budget, and over the requested budget. On top of that, Congress has almost always scrambled to outdo the president with even bigger increases, meaning that unsustainably high budgets are rapidly going to get even more unsustainable.

Trump threatens to use military to fund border wall - In a series of tweets Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to bypass the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and have the military build a wall along the US-Mexico border. After congratulating the government agencies for “securing” the border, he criticized the Democrats for wanting “Open Borders for anyone to come in. This brings large scale crime and disease.”In a later tweet, Trump stated, “I look forward to my meeting with Chuck Schumer & Nancy Pelosi. In 2006, Democrats voted for a Wall, and they were right to do so. Today, they no longer want Border Security.” He later threatened ominously, “If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!” Trump’s fascistic statements in which he once again slandered immigrants fleeing poverty and violence as criminals and carriers of disease was soon followed by a meeting in the Oval Office with Pelosi, the Democratic House minority leader, and Schumer, the Senate minority leader, over funding for the border among other things. The meeting, which was joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the media, saw Trump argue with his Democratic counterparts as to who would be to blame following a possible government shutdown. It comes in the context of a growing political crisis for the Trump administration in which the president has fired his chief of staff, John Kelly, and calls for the Trump’s impeachment over campaign finance violations have been floated by two top members of the House Democratic leadership. Now that the White House finds itself in isolation and disarray, it has doubled down on efforts to create an extra-parliamentary movement based on the far-right and the military and other state agencies loyal to the Trump family. The anti-immigrant poison spewed by the President and his desperate attempts to build a border wall flow directly from this campaign. The meeting itself between Trump and Pelosi and Schumer revealed that whatever the sometimes heated but superficial differences between the Democrats and Republicans, they are in complete agreement over the main policy objectives of the ruling class. With a potential shutdown looming on December 21 for some government agencies, Trump threatened, “If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government,” adding “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down.”

Russia Deploys Nuclear-Capable Tu-160 Bombers To Venezuela - Previously US defense officials warned that Russia was preparing to deploy nuclear-capable Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to Venezuela this week in continuation of scheduled training, but which Pentagon leaders see as a provocation, given both countries are under sanction and seen as "rogue" states. This comes as President Nicolas Maduro, who is overseeing one of Venezuela's worst political and economic crisis in decades, has been increasingly reliant of Russia for aid, and after he visited Moscow last week and signed an estimated $6 billion deal with Putin, promising investment in the oil and mining sectors, with military modernization aid to boot.  The US defense officials had conveyed details of the planned flight to The Washington Free Beacon, which is the seventh such training flight to take place internationally involving Blackjack bombers in only the past three months. And on Monday Russia's Sputnik News confirmed the training flights have been initiated, noting that two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers, escorted by an An-124 heavy-lift military transport aircraft and an IL-62 plane have landed at the Simon Bolivar International Airport in capital Caracas, according to Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) statements.  During part of the flight, Norway's Air Force scrambled F-16 fighter jets to shadow the Russian long range bombers, according to the MoD: At certain stages of the flight, the Tu-160 bombers were followed by F-16 fighter aircraft of the Norwegian Air Force while the flight was carried out in strict accordance with the international rules on the use of airspace.  The Russian MoD described the flight path of the nuclear-capable bombers as over the Atlantic Ocean, the Barents Sea, the Sea of Norway and the Caribbean Sea, at a total single take-off distance of over 10,000 kilometers (about 6,213 miles). This is the second incident in two months involving Russian bombers being shadowed by foreign jets, as in late October British and Norwegian fighters monitored Tu-160s as they flew over the Barents Sea. Russian military officials have recently noted that "Russia’s long-range aircraft make regular flights over the international waters" and defended the right to continue doing so, according to TASS.

Kremlin Enters War Of Words With Pompeo After Nuke-Capable Bombers Deployed To Venezuela -  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed Russia for sending a pair of long-range nuclear capable Tu-160 bombers "halfway around the world" to Venezuela in comments posted to Twitter late Monday. The Kremlin confirmed the jets touched down at Venezuela's Simon Bolivar International Airport in the capital of Caracas previously that day. “The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer,” Pompeo stated. The Kremlin, which has described the flights as training exercises and part of Russia’s right to make "regular flights over the international waters," responded by describing Pompeo's statement as "an utterly inappropriate comment" and his weighing in as "indeed very undiplomatic," according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Peskov also mocked Pompeo's reference to "squandering public funds" by taking note of the United States maintaining by far the world's largest military budget. “As far as the ‘squandering’ is concerned, we don’t agree with that,” he said, adding that half of the mammoth US military budget “would be enough to support all of Africa.” The Russian MoD described the flight path of the nuclear-capable bombers as over the Atlantic Ocean, the Barents Sea, the Sea of Norway and the Caribbean Sea, at a total single take-off distance of over 10,000 kilometers (about 6,213 miles). For parts of the flight the Tu-160s were reportedly shadowed by Norwegian F-16 fighters.

Russia to Withdraw Nuclear-Capable Bombers From Venezuela After US Pressure — The White House announced late in the day Wednesday that Russia will withdraw its long range nuclear capable bombers parked in Venezuela since Monday which flew to Caracas on a 10,000km mission in a show of support for socialist President Nicolás Maduro. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders stated “the planned departure came after the Trump administration spoke with Russian officials,” according to a breaking WSJ report. The departure is planned for Friday, however, the WSJ also noted a Russian embassy representative in Washington said Moscow has not announced a departure date. Instead the Russian military touted a ten hour flight carried out over the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday while accompanied at times by Venezuelan fighter jets, announcing the provocative lengthy flyover in America’s backyard via official Russian media. Perhaps it was Moscow sending a big middle finger just before departure of the aircraft from Venezuela?

The China Agenda Behind Trump Leaving the INF Treaty -- Trump’s foreign policy coterie, led by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton – a man who was never a fan of arms control agreements – has accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty by continuing to test two types of missiles. The first is the SSC-8 cruise missile, reportedly a ground-launched version of the ship- and submarine-based Kalibr missile system. The INF Treaty does not apply to sea-based or air-launched intermediate-range delivery vehicles. Russia has been testing the SSC-8 for the past decade and it supposedly has a range of 2,500 kilometers, placing it clearly within the banned zone. Second, Moscow is also working on a ballistic missile designated the RS-26. Although technically an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), that is, with a range greater than 5,500 kilometers, the RS-26 has been test-fired at distances of about 2,000 kilometers, potentially making it an INF weapon in disguise. Washington’s threat to leave the agreement has supporters outside the administration. The alleged non-compliance was first noted by the Obama administration and a number of Trump critics, including lapsed neoconservative Max Boot, have voiced their support for pulling out of the INF Treaty. Still, it is a dangerous bluff. If Washington finds itself dissatisfied with Moscow’s responses and withdraws from the agreement, it simply leaves the field clear for Russia to quickly saturate its European territory with already available INF systems. In the meantime, the US has no plans or programs even under consideration for reintroducing such forces to NATO Europe. At the same time, it is highly unlikely Western Europe would ever readily agree to reintroducing such weapons on their territories, especially given the current chill in transatlantic relations – which are mostly of Trump’s own making. The US would be cutting off its nose to spite its face. More to the point, it is likely that the Trump administration is concerned more about the build-up of Chinese nuclear forces than it is about Russia. The INF Treaty applies only to the US and Russia, and China has been steadily expanding its stable of medium- and intermediate-range nuclear forces for decades. More importantly, it has significantly built up its strategic nuclear forces, which now stands at about 50-60 ICBMs, particularly road-mobile, solid-fueled rockets. The US argument inferred here is that Washington lacks the capacity to deploy countering nuclear forces closer to China and that it therefore needs ground-based INF in Asia. 

Senate Set to Vote on Resolution to End US Role in Yemen War -- This week, the Senate will be holding floor debates on a resolution which challenges the legality of the US war in Yemen under the War Powers Act. The bipartisan bill would require the US to withdraw support for the Saudi-led conflict. The vote is expected some time this week.A number of senators have expressed growing support for the bill in recent weeks, seeing it as a rebuke of the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi. This has meant testimony to the Senate so far has centered on the murder, not the war.The State Department has insisted that the administration intends to continue the war, spinning it as part of regional efforts against Iran. This is the Saudi narrative of the war, based on the other side being Shiites.Speaking in the United Arab Emirates, State Dept. official Tim Lenderking pushed for the US to continue supporting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, saying that withdrawing from the war would send “a wrong message.” Those wishing to call their senators should do so in the next few days before the matter comes up for vote. You can do this by calling the Capitol switchboard at (202)224-3121 or by finding individual contact information here.

US-Saudi relationship enters uncharted territory- The divide between Congress and the White House’s perception of Saudi Arabia has widened into a chasm in recent weeks, raising difficult questions about the future of U.S.-Saudi relations. Saudi Arabia’s stature has plummeted in the halls of Capitol Hill, where the Senate is on the verge of sending a major rebuke to both the kingdom and President Trump. But the Trump administration continues to value the relationship as vital to its broader Middle East plans, particularly to constraining Iran. Some senators, too, say Saudi Arabia is too important for countering Iran, even if they support punishing it for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Those competing tensions means a full break in U.S.-Saudi relations is unlikely. But Trump is likely to have more difficulty working with Riyadh in the future, confounding both sides. “I would say that the likelihood is that the Saudis will be frustrated, we’ll be frustrated, but that there will be continued cooperation and coordination on the issues that are mutually beneficial, and there will be a certain coolness in the relationship,” said Gerald Feierstein, senior vice president at the Middle East Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. The Senate is expected to vote next week on a resolution that would withdraw U.S. troops in or “affecting” the civil war in Yemen unless they are fighting al Qaeda. The resolution, which targets U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s civil war, picked up momentum as senators grew aghast at the killing of Khashoggi, a U.S-based Saudi dissident journalist, and the Trump administration’s response to it. Senators emerged from a classified CIA briefing this week convinced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing. Supporters of the resolution are confident they have the 51 votes needed for it to pass, though there are procedural hurdles to overcome first. The resolution is unlikely to become law. The House, which is getting its own Saudi briefing in the coming week, has not committed to move the bill this year, and Trump has threatened to veto it.

U.S. Pullout Of Yemen War Would Send A Wrong Message - State Department - The White House and State Department have reaffirmed the US commitment to its lead military role in executing the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. This despite mounting civilian deaths numbering tens of thousands, devastating famine and food shortage, a cholera epidemic — all factors behind what the U.N. has dubbed "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." In comments on Sunday a top State Department official quoted by Reuters said a US pullout from the Saudi coalition would send "a wrong message". But we would ask: what then is the message here?... The official framed the conflict fundamentally in terms of countering Iran and bolstering the regional standing of key ally Saudi Arabia in a civil war that's been raging in neighboring Yemen since 2015. The official, Timothy Lenderking, deputy assistant secretary for Arabian Gulf affairs, told a security forum in the United Arab Emirates, per Reuters:"There are pressures in our system... to either withdraw from the conflict or discontinue our support of the coalition, which we are strongly opposed to on the administration side.”“We do believe that the support for the coalition is necessary. It sends a wrong message if we discontinue our support,” he added.Like all administrations going back to 2001, the White House has relied on the 9/11-era Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) to give legal justification for its actions in the Arabian peninsula.

Senate Votes to Proceed on Yemen War Resolution— In a long-anticipated vote, the Senate finally had their motion to proceed on the Yemen War resolution, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introducing the motion at 3:00 on Wednesday. The vote passed 60-39.This opens the Senate up to debate and ultimately vote on the resolution calling for an end to US involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. This marks the second vote that the Senate has had this month to advance the resolution.While the vote went largely as expected, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was a surprise defector, voting no on the motion. Corker had opposed previous moves to end the Yemen War, but had backed the idea in recent weeks, citing the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi as his turning point.Proceeding to the resolution is no guarantee that it will pass the Senate. There are any number of additional obstacles that could be thrown up, and those voting to proceed may not, in fact, vote for the resolution itself. Even if it passes in the Senate, there likely won’t be any concurrent resolutions in the House until next year, as the House leadership has once again made a last second rule change in an unrelated bill to block any challenges to the Yemen War.

GOP-controlled Senate breaks with Trump on Saudi vote -  The GOP-controlled Senate on Wednesday dealt a significant blow to President Trump by voting to advance a resolution ending U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen in the aftermath of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi’s slaying.  Senators agreed to begin debate on the measure despite only 11 of the chamber’s 51 Republicans joining with all Democrats to support it. The legislation would require Trump to withdraw any troops in or “affecting” Yemen within 30 days; the president has threatened to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.  Senators were still haggling over amendments on Wednesday evening, but a final vote is expected this week. Both supporters and opponents say the resolution has the support needed to pass. The vote will mark the likely climax for the measure until 2019 since the House voted to block supporters from being able to force a vote this year by slipping the provision into a rule governing debate of the unrelated farm bill.But the Senate’s actions underscore the depth of frustration with Saudi Arabia on Capitol Hill, as well as the escalating gap between the White House and Congress on the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The administration is signaling it plans to stand by the Saudi government, with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbying members against cutting off support. Trump doubled down this week, telling Reuters that Riyadh has been “a very good ally” and “at this moment” sticking with Saudi Arabia means standing by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  But absent major concessions from the Saudi government, senators said there was little that could stop the Yemen resolution, which only needs a simple majority because it was being brought up under the War Powers Act. A growing number of senators are convinced of the Saudi crown prince’s involvement in Khashoggi’s slaying.

Senate Votes to End US Support for Yemen War, but Passage Into Law Seems Unlikely — The US Senate backed a resolution on Thursday to end US military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, defying President Donald Trump with a historic vote that underscored lawmakers’ anger over the murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The 56-41 vote in the Senate marked the first time either chamber of Congress has passed a motion to withdraw US armed forces from a foreign military engagement under the War Powers Act. However, despite the historic result, the Senate resolution must clear additional hurdles before it becomes law. First, the legislation will head to the US House of Representatives, where a Republican-held majority has already promised to hold off on debating the motion until the next session of Congress in the new year. Speaking after the vote, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, said it “may not get a vote [in the House] by the end of the year”. “We’ll take it back up again next year,” Murphy said on Twitter. While the House will be held by Democrats once that new session begins in January, the resolution may see even more changes before passage there. If the bill manages to get through the House, it will then go to the White House for signing. However, Donald Trump has vowed to veto the bill, meaning it would go back to the Senate, where only a two-thirds vote can override a presidential veto. The Senate is unlikely to override a veto, however, since Trump-backed Republicans picked up a handful more Senate seats during the 2018 midterm election. Historic result Still, Thursday’s vote is the first time US lawmakers took advantage of a provision in the 1973 War Powers Act, which allows any senator to introduce a resolution to withdraw US armed forces from a conflict not authorised by Congress. If signed into law, it demands within 30 days an end to all US involvement in the Yemen war, which has not received congressional approval.

The Wooing of Jared Kushner- How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House - Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king. Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders. But even with the restrictions in place, Mr. Kushner, 37, and Prince Mohammed, 33, kept chatting, according to three former White House officials and two others briefed by the Saudi royal court. In fact, they said, the two men were on a first-name basis, calling each other Jared and Mohammed in text messages and phone calls. The exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to two former senior American officials and the two people briefed by the Saudis.  As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed, Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, people familiar with its internal deliberations say.Mr. Kushner’s support for Prince Mohammed in the moment of crisis is a striking demonstration of a singular bond that has helped draw President Trump into an embrace of Saudi Arabia as one of his most important international allies.But the ties between Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed did not happen on their own. The prince and his advisers, eager to enlist American support for his hawkish policies in the region and for his own consolidation of power, cultivated the relationship with Mr. Kushner for more than two years, according to documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The New York Times. A delegation of Saudis close to the prince visited the United States as early as the month Mr. Trump was elected, the documents show, and brought back a report identifying Mr. Kushner as a crucial focal point in the courtship of the new administration. He brought to the job scant knowledge about the region, a transactional mind-set and an intense focus on reaching a deal with the Palestinians that met Israel’s demands, the delegation noted. Even then, before the inauguration, the Saudis were trying to position themselves as essential allies who could help the Trump administration fulfill its campaign pledges. In addition to offering to help resolve the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, the Saudis offered hundreds of billions of dollars in deals to buy American weapons and invest in American infrastructure.

Is Kushner Covering for Bin Salman Murder Charge so Israel can Usurp Palestinian West Bank? - The New York Times (h/t Mother Jones) has reported from one Saudi source and several sources in US intelligence that Jared Kushner has been corresponding over Whatsapp with Saudi crown prince and world-renowned axe murderer, Mohammed Bin Salman. Kushner, the Times reporting concludes has “offered the crown prince advice about how to weather the storm, urging him to resolve his conflicts around the region and avoid further embarrassments.” Weather the storm? Murdering a prominent Washington Post columnist in a Saudi consulate is not a storm.   CNN’s Nic Robertson has been informed of the contents of a transcript of the Turkish intelligence recording of the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He was clearly kidnapped and then strangled. His last words were, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” The transcript shows that the leader of the assassination team made several phone calls, which Turkish intelligence says went to the Saudi royal court. It also recorded the sounds of a bone saw after the murder. Jared Kushner doesn’t care.  Kushner famously made a relationship with Bin Salman when he was still third in line to the throne, in spring of 2017, and may have tried to pull strings for his friend so as to slip him into the position of crown prince in summer of 2017. Kushner has stood with Bin Salman through a whole series of crimes, including extorting $100 bn from some 200 fellow princes and his Yemen war that has resulted in starving 85,000 Yemeni children to death. And now the advice to “weather the storm” of being caught red-handed murdering Khashoggi.   Israeli journalist Michael Bachner at The Times of Israel has proposed a structural explanation for the link: Bin Salman is using his willingness to throw the Palestinians under the bus as a way of bonding with Kushner and getting the latter’s support in the Trump White House.   This full court press to crush the Palestinians and leave them with nothing at all is intended to force their acquiescence in permanent Israeli Apartheid rule over them and gradual expropriation of what is left of their land. Kushner is a big backer of Israeli Apartheid and the Israeli squatter settlements, and for people with his commitments, Muhammed Bin Salman is a godsend. His relationship to Bin Salman is now a threat to US national security.

US House chairman calls for anti-OPEC bill to become law this year — The chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee Wednesday called on the Trump administration to back a bill that would allow the US Department of Justice to sue OPEC for antitrust violations. "The fact that OPEC is not being held accountable for its anti-competitive behavior makes a mockery of US antitrust law," Representative Bob Goodlatte, the committee's chairman and a Virginia Republican, said at a subcommittee hearing. Goodlatte said that passage of the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels or NOPEC Act, would be a "bipartisan victory before this term of Congress ends." Democrats are set to take over the House when the next Congress begins on January 3. At the hearing, Makan Delrahim, an assistant attorney general in DOJ's antitrust division, did not offer outright support for the bill, claiming that the administration was still studying it.  Delrahim, however, criticized OPEC's impact on oil prices and said the bill would remove at least two hurdles to allow the US executive branch to bring an antitrust case against OPEC, including the act-of-state doctrine and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. "Whenever you have a horizontal cartel, ultimately price is not determined by the free markets and consumers are harmed," Delrahim said. In 2008, as an attorney in private practice, Delrahim wrote an op-ed in The Hill newspaper in support of NOPEC legislation. Before he was elected president, Donald Trump frequently spoke in support of NOPEC legislation, but has yet to comment on the legislation since moving into the White House. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the bill Wednesday.

The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department -- Caitlin Johnstone - - The US State Department has issued a statement accusing the Syrian government of having carried out a false flag chemical weapons attack in northwestern Aleppo with the intent to blame it on the jihadist factions in the region, citing “credible info” that the public has not been permitted to see. Never mind the known fact that there are actual, literal Al Qaeda affiliateswho have admitted to using chemical weapons in Aleppo, and who are known to have used chemical weapons throughout Syria even by the State Department’s own admission: the Official Narrative is that only the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, so the chemical weapons usage must necessarily be a false flag staged by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.  Except they didn’t use the words “false flag”. Despite the accusation being the exact definition of the thing that a false flag attack is, you won’t see the US government using that term, nor will you ever see it used in this instance by any of the authorized mainstream narrative-framing institutions like CNN or Fox News. This is because the term “false flag” is reserved solely for mention when referring to crazy, kooky Kremlin propaganda, as in the insane, unhinged, tinfoil hat belief that terrorists in Syria might possibly have some kind of motive to stage a false flag chemical attack in order to get the US, UK and France to act as their air force in a retaliatory strike against the Syrian government. That kind of false flag would be completely inconceivable to any right-minded empire loyalist, and is forbidden to even think about. At the same time we are seeing a push from the mass media to advance a narrative that the Yellow Vests protests in France are due to Russian influence, with Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot publishing a column today in the Washington Post that is based entirely around the talking point that two trending Russian topics on social media have been “giletsjaune” and “France,” and Bloomberg putting out an article blatantly titled “Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow Vests Rage”. Their entire theory is that since there are people in Russia talking about a major event that everyone else in the world is also talking about, the protests against Macron’s unpopular centrist policies are therefore the result of a conspiracy seeded by Russia. 

Venezuela’s Maduro Accuses John Bolton Of Plotting To Assassinate Him Using Mercenaries -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro unleashed a hailstorm of serious accusations against the Trump administration and specifically National Security Advisor John Bolton on Wednesday, telling a press conference that Bolton is currently planning to overthrow and to kill him. Maduro said at the press conference, which was broadcast on his Facebook page, that Bolton is in the midst of "preparing a plan of my assassination" using "mercenary and paramilitary" forces from neighboring countries.  The embattled and globally isolated Venezuelan president went into some degree of detail during the remarks outlining what he says is a conspiracy against him: John Bolton leads the plan to unleash violence and conduct a coup to introduce a transitional government. Bolton is preparing a plan of my assassination. He is training, in various places, mercenary and paramilitary units’ forces jointly with Colombia, whose president Ivan Duque is an accomplice of this plan.Maduro has made the charge that Washington is seeking his assassination a number of times, especially after only months ago in early August he evaded a bizarre assassination attempt involving C4-laden drones at a military ceremony in Caracas. A constant theme of Maduro's has been that the United States would use Columbia to carry out the plot, which he emphasized in allegations made in October.

Bolton Unveils Plan to ‘Counter’ Russia and China in Africa — John Bolton is complaining that the widespread corruption in Africa has put the US at a disadvantage compared to Russia and China, and he says the US is taking a “new approach,” which will focus on trade and less money spent on military efforts.The reflects growing annoyance that the US military campaigns in Africa haven’t led to the massive arms deals and preferential treatment that they have in other parts of the world. Bolton particularly complained that Russia was selling so many arms in Africa, one of the few places their arms exports aren’t dominated by the US.Bolton further complained of China using “bribes. opaque agreements and debt” to force African countries to give in to Chinese demands, saying that Chinese efforts in Djibouti were threatening to shift trade power across the region. While these complaints mostly boil down to the traditional US strategies not working as well in Africa, some analysts are warning that Bolton’s speech is likely to fuel concern among Africans that the US has a “new strategy” aimed at dominating them.

The Phony US-China Truce - On December 1 in Buenos Aires, US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed on a 90-day moratorium on increases in import tariffs to provide a window for negotiations. Unfortunately, this approach to mediation does not always succeed, and investors were not impressed – as was evident in the 800-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on December 4. And if markets were skeptical then, they will be even more skeptical now, with the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou for violating US sanctions on Iran.Whereas the Trump administration expects rapid progress in reducing the bilateral trade deficit, Chinese state media refers to the desirability of a “gradual” reduction. Whereas the White House press release specifies a 90-day window for negotiations, China mentioned no specific time frame.Similarly, whereas the official White House statement asserts that China will purchase “very substantial” farm, energy, and industrial exports from the US, China’s statement says only that it will import more US goods. But that will of course occur in any case, without any policy action, assuming that the Chinese economy continues to expand, as is all but certain, given recent fiscal and monetary support.Most troubling are differences related to intellectual property. According to the US statement, China will immediately negotiate on forced technology transfer and IP protection. By contrast, the Chinese statement says only that the two countries will work together to reach a consensus on trade issues.Reform of the IP regime is a valid US concern. Indeed, it is the most important issue. But strengthening IP protections will require a fundamental change in China’s economic model. There is zero chance of this happening in 90 days. How, then, might the negotiation play out? One scenario is that the Chinese buy some additional American soybeans. Trump characterizes this as a great victory. The US president having waved the white flag, the trade war comes to an end.

China Summons U.S. Envoy Over Huawei CFO - China’s Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng has summoned the U.S. Ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, in a protest over the arrest of Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, and said it will take “further action” if needed.Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1 on the orders of U.S. authorities for allegedly violating American sanctions on selling technology to Iran. Canada’s ambassador to China was summoned to the ministry on Saturday. The minister said U.S. actions have violated the “legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens and are extremely bad in nature,” according to a posting on the ministry website. “China will take further action based on the U.S. actions.”The move comes after a week in which both China and the U.S. seemed to struggle with how to react to an arrest with potentially broad reverberations. The two nations are, at the same time, trying to ratchet back a damaging trade dispute.It’s unclear how much the summons, China’s most public display of anger over the arrest, will mark a heightening of tensions over the arrest and Huawei more generally. China regularly calls in foreign diplomats to register complaints. Calls for comment to the White House and the State Department were not immediately returned.

The Huawei case will finally force the US government to prove some of the claims it's made about Chinese companies - For more than two decades, the U.S. government has been strongly asserting the Chinese military colludes with Chinese corporations to steal intellectual property, spy on U.S. companies, conduct lucrative business with sanctioned entities and actively hack American organizations.Now, the U.S. government has its first tangible crack at one of those corporations, Huawei, after years of making these types of claims. The stakes couldn't be higher for the Justice Department to prove them.On Dec. 1, the U.S. essentially left one of its closest allies — Canada — no choice but to arrest the chief financial officer of one of China's largest hardware companies, an enterprise that ships more mobile phones than Apple. That CFO, Meng Wanzhou, is the daughter of the company's founder, injecting a level of interpersonal drama on top of the geopolitics, trade tensions and long-standing allegations against the firm.As a strictly legal matter, the Huawei case is narrowly focused on payments Iran allegedly made to Huawei in violation of international sanctions, possibly through a third-partyintermediary in Hong Kong.But the case has much broader implications. That's because the U.S. government has rarely had a chance to make any cybertheft or money-laundering allegations in court against a Chinese executive, particularly an official with the stature of Meng. Government officials have complained about unfair practices by Chinese corporations mostly before sympathetic congressional committees, in a friendly conference of like-minded former government officials or as anonymous media sources. The Department of Justice has indicted several Chinese citizens under a range of cyber and IP theft allegations, but very few of those have been extradited.The Huawei case will change that in a huge way. Losing it could mean losing credibility here and abroad on a far wider range of security issues involving China. The stakes are also high for U.S. corporations, including those withnervous executives in China worried about possible legal retaliation in the country, though China has sought to reassure them. U.S. corporate legal issues also hang in the balance: Huawei rival Apple on Monday lost a court ruling against Qualcomm that could keep several of its older phones out of China. (Apple willappeal.) Huawei has strongly denied allegations leveled against the company and Meng, now and throughout the past 10 years.

US Threatens to Punish China as “Hard Deadline” Looms for Trade Deal  — With reports that the US and China are getting close to a deal to settle a protracted trade war, the hopes to get everything finalized in 90 days have suddenly become an ultimatum. Now, US officials are warning that the 90 days is a “hard deadline.”  US trade representative Robert Lighthizer warned on Sunday that the deadline is absolute, and that if China doesn’t comply, the 10% tariffs the US is currently imposing will rise to 25%. And while Larry Kudlow says a “lot of good things” are happening, Lighthizer is demanding a total, absolute, and irreversible deal meeting all US demands.  This is a particularly bad time for that deadline, as Canada’s capture of the Huawei CFO at the behest of the US is fueling a lot of anger, and top Chinese officials are warning President Xi not to make any immediate concessions.  US officials say that trade with China, and the sudden detention of a top official at one of China’s top electronics firms are totally unrelated. China clearly doesn’t see it that way, however, and with many of the same issues intertwined in both, some in China see the sudden detention as a sign that the US isn’t looking to make a negotiated deal, but rather to keep issuing demands while acting unilaterally against Chinese companies seen as a threat to US interests.

Trump is preparing to condemn China for alleged theft of US trade secrets; DOJ expected to announce charges against hackers: Report -- Multiple arms of the Trump administration are preparing to condemn China this week for allegedly stealing U.S. trade secrets and technologies, according to a new report.The Washington Post, citing U.S. officials, reported Tuesday that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is also expected to announce charges against multiple alleged hackers thought to be working for a Chinese intelligence service.Additionally, the administration plans to disclose classified information about breaches of U.S. networks and sanction some of the people deemed responsible.The punitive measures come less than a week after the arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei. China strongly opposed the arrest of Meng, who currently faces extradition to the U.S. Her arrest is reportedly related to violations of U.S. sanctions. Canada's move came after a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Argentina, which the U.S. president called a "great success." China and the U.S. struck a 90-day trade truce at that meeting. In a series of tweets last Tuesday, the president expressed hope about reaching a "fair deal," but stressed that he is "a Tariff Man" if talks fail.Trump maintained that optimism Tuesday, when he tweeted: "Very productive conversations going on with China! Watch for some important announcements!" Before Trump sent that tweet, Bloomberg News reported that China's government would consider slashing tariffs on U.S. car imports to 15 percent from 40 percent. That news in part sent the stock market soaring more than 300 points, though it has since fallen back.

 China Moves on U.S. Car Tariff Cut Trump Tweeted About - Progress toward easing the steep tariffs China imposed on U.S. vehicle imports this year lifted carmaker stocks across the globe, as investors wagered on a thawing of tensions that have damaged the world’s biggest automotive market. Daimler AG, General Motors Co. and Tesla Inc. were among the manufacturers that gained on Tuesday after Bloomberg News reported that a proposal to eliminate the 25 percent surcharge slapped onto U.S.-made cars this year has been submitted to China’s cabinet. The plan will be reviewed in coming days, people familiar with the matter said. The levy forms the backbone of China’s response to a trade war instigated by President Donald Trump as he seeks to reset trade relations and spur manufacturing in the U.S. Car sales in China have fallen for six straight months after decades of almost uninterrupted growth, and while there are other factors, the tit-for-tat jabs between the world’s biggest economies have played a role. The tension had escalated in recent days with the arrest of Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in connection with sanctions violations. Trump claimed he won a concession during trade talks in Argentina; the proposal in the works helped to substantiate his claims. The move by China would reduce tariffs on cars made in the U.S. to 15 percent from the current 40 percent, in line with what other countries pay, the people said. The step hasn’t been finalized and could change. While reversing the retaliatory duty is a major climb-down by Beijing, it could re-focus the two sides toward implementing the trade-war truce agreed to earlier this month.

Chinese High-Tech Researchers Told Not To Travel To US Unless It’s Essential - Just a few days after Cisco "erroneously" advised its employees to avoid non-essential travel to China, Beijing has returned the favor, and according to the SCMP, Chinese researchers working in sensitive hi-tech sectors have been warned not to take any unnecessary trips to the United States "as unease grows in the business community following the arrest of a tech executive in Canada."Workers at a research agency who can't avoid crossing the Pacific were also told in an internal memo that if they did have to travel to the US, they should remove any sensitive information from their mobile phones and laptops, the SCMP reported citing an anonymous source. The soft travel ban is the result of tensions following the arrest of Huawei Technologies CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou in Canada, who despite being released on bail was not allowed to leave the country.The South China Morning Post reported last month that the US embassy in Beijing had revoked 10-year multiple-entry visas issued to some researchers specialising in China-US relations at government-backed institutions without explanation amid tightened visa scrutiny. Some researchers also had their computers and mobile phones subjected to checks by US customs officers.An academic who frequently travels across the Pacific feared changing sentiment in the United States, from engagement to disengagement with Beijing, could lead to a US strategy of full-scale containment of China.

China bought 500000 tons of U.S. soybeans. But that's just a drop in the U.S. export bucket - China is back in the market for U.S. soybeans, but the recent purchases represent just a fraction of sales American farmers have lost since the Trump administration embarked on a trade war with Beijing in July.Chinese state-owned companies bought at least 500,000 tons of U.S. soybeans on Wednesday, two U.S. traders told Reuters, in the first major purchases since U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met in early December. The deals - valued at some $180 million - helped propel U.S. soybean prices to a 4-1/2-month high on the futures market Wednesday. U.S. stock prices were also buoyed by signs that the soybean purchase could represent a thaw in the trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. The two nations are currently negotiating to end the tariff tiff.One trader knew of nine cargoes traded and said there were probably more. A second trader with direct knowledge of the deals said Chinese state-owned firms bought at least 12 cargoes for shipment between January and March. But the purchases will do little to make up for lost sales by American soybean producers, who have been scrambling to find other buyers as this year's harvest has backed up in storage facilities. China is the largest buyer of U.S. soy, but has purchased little since Beijing slapped steep tariffs on U.S. shipments on July 6 in retaliation for duties on Chinese goods.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Ross wants China to do more to ease trade tensions: BBG -(Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Bloomberg TV on Thursday that China will need to do more than what it has promised so far to ease trade tensions, Bloomberg News reported. While the United States does not expect China to deliver on all 142 of the demands put forward by President Donald Trump’s administration, Ross said the success of the current negotiations will depend on how many requests are met and whether China agrees to enforceable actions. Ross also said that China will need to take action beyond restarting purchasing of soybeans and potentially importing more liquefied natural gas to end the current trade impasse.  The United States and China have taken a 90-day hiatus in their ongoing trade battles, agreeing not to impose new tariffs in that period as they hammer out a deal.

This is What The Trade War With China Is Really All About -- Forget soybeans, auto imports, iPhones, crude oil, and cheap Chinese gadgets. Also forget tariffs, duties, and subsidies. Even forget weapons. The real reason behind the US-China "trade" war has little to do with actual trade, and everything to do with what China's president, Xi Jinping, said when he visited a memory chip plant in the city of Wuhan earlier this year. In a white lab coat, he made an unexpectedly sentimental remark, comparing a computer chip to a human heart: “No matter how big a person is, he or she can never be strong without a sound and strong heart”. What is really at the basis of the ongoing civilizational conflict between the US and China, a feud which many say has gradually devolved into a new cold war if few top politicians are willing to call it for what it is, are China’s ambitions to be a leader in next-generation technology, such as artificial intelligence, which rest on whether or not it can design and manufacture cutting-edge chips, and is why Xi has pledged at least $150 billion to build up the sector. But, as the FT notes, China’s plan has alarmed the US, and chips, or semiconductors, have become the central battlefield in the trade war between the two countries. And it is a battle in which China has a very visible Achilles heel.Even with the so-called truce between the two sides signed last weekend, and which promptly unraveled after the Huawei CFO's arrest was unveiled last week, Washington plans to ramp up export controls next year on so-called foundational technologies — those that can enable development in a broad range of sectors — and the equipment for manufacturing chips is one of the key target areas under discussion. "You cannot build a semiconductor facility without using the big major equipment companies, none of which are Chinese,”   "If you fight a war with no guns you’re going to lose. And they don’t have the guns." To observe China's reliance on foreign products, look no further than the over $300 billion in semiconductor equipment China has imported over just the past 12 months.

US Phone Carriers Warn FCC Of Prohibitive Costs To Replace Huawei, ZTE Gear - While some have tied today's China court-ordered ban of some iPhone sales with the arrest, and ongoing hearings, of Huawei's CFO, there is an even more direct consequence for American business from the Trump administration's potential crackdown on various Chinese tech companies. Bloomberg reports that some small U.S. phone companies fear they’ll be forced to rip out network equipment made by Huawei as tensions rise following the arrest of the Chinese gear maker’s chief financial officer.The FCC is considering barring some subsidy funding for carriers that use Huawei gear (which is generally regarded as less expensive than competitors’ equipment) out of security concerns.In April 2018, the Commission released an NPRM in which it proposed and sought comment on a rule to prohibit, going forward, the use of universal service funds to purchase equipment or services “from any communications equipment or service providers identified as posing a national security risk to communications networks or the communications supply chain.”While the proposed rule text did not specifically refer to Huawei or ZTE, the NPRM discussed the two companies in detail and left little doubt that, if adopted, the rule would prohibit Universal Service Fund (“USF”) support recipients from using USF funds to purchase equipment or services from either company.And in a filing response to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, The Rural Wireless Association asked for transitional funding and time to “rip and replace” if U.S. officials order carriers to remove equipment from Huawei, which Congress has identified as a security threat for its ties to the Chinese government.

The trade deficit widens despite Trump’s best, misguided efforts - AEI - Something is going very wrong with the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, which has been a principal objective of its "America First" program.Indeed, instead of declining according to plan, in the first two years of the Trump presidency, the U.S. trade deficit has been steadily increasing. It now stands at its highest level in the past 10 years and shows every sign of further increasing.It has been said of bloodletters of old that when their patients responded poorly to the first round of bloodletting, they simply upped the dosage in the mistaken belief that more bloodletting would do the trick.Hopefully, the Trump administration will do better than that and not intensify its import protection policy now that the first round of tariff increases has miserably failed to deliver the desired result. Instead, one must hope that the administration takes a time out from its march toward increased trade protection and tries to determine the real causes of the United States’ continued poor trade performance.

Navarro Affirms Arrests Of Canadian Citizens In China Was Retaliation For Huawei CFO --With US stocks set to open higher on Thursday, traders' blood pressure probably spiked when they saw headlines from an interview with White House trade advisor Peter Navarro hitting the tape (who can forget his infamous comments two week ago when he chided traders and Wall Street banks for pushing for a trade detente, warning that talks with China hadn't yielded any progress).Fortunately for equity bulls, stock futures remained in the green as Navarro offered a mix of bullish and bearish commentary during a brief chat with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo, where the notorious China hawk discussed the Trump administration's goals in its negotiations with its trade war rival, and advised traders to "focus on March 1" instead of trying to read too deeply into every report "on the front page of the Wall Street Journal" (comments that, on the surface, would seem to undercut the impetus for yesterday's rally)."Investors shouldn't get hung up on the day to day...Just focus on March 1 when we'll have a complete offer from China that will be negotiated behind closed doors not on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal."However, Navarro's comments weren't all bad: He affirmed that China had restarted purchases of US soybeans, and that Beijing is making an effort to ease trade tensions with the US. This shouldn't come as a surprise, Navarro said, because if China doesn't buy our soybeans "they get inflation...they get riots in Tiananmen Square." Instead of focusing on trade policy, Navarro suggested that traders should focus instead on the Federal Reserve and its plans for raising interest rates.In terms of the administration's goals for its trade negotiations, Trump is trying for two objectives: pushing China to improve market access (buy more stuff and let us enter markets without forced IP transfer) and - more importantly - implement 'structural' reforms like ending cyberintrusions, state-directed investment and intellectual property theft that have been the target of the Section 301 trade investigations launched by the White House.Moving on to a discussion of national security issues, Bartiromo moved on to the security topic du jour: China's motives in arresting two Canadian nationals. Asked whether these arrests constituted retaliation for the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, Navarro responded that "it is." That marks the first time a Western official has directly acknowledged what everybody already suspected.

 Trump says he would intercede with Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou case if it’s good for trade, security, according to report -- President Donald Trump would intercede in the case of Huawei executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, if such a step could secure a favourable trade deal with China, Reuters reports.Trump said in an interview with Reuters, “Whatever’s good for this country, I would do.”When asked if he would intervene with the Department of Justice in her case, the president indicated that he would if it led to a favourable outcome for national security interests and the signing of a trade deal with China.“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said.The US is still seeking the extradition of Meng, released today on bail, who has been accused by US prosecutors of fraud regarding deals in Iran in violation of US sanctions. She was arrested in Canada on December 1.Reuters reports that the president acknowledged that the White House has been in contact with the Department of Justice regarding Meng.Trump also said the White House has also spoken with Chinese officials on the matter, but did not elaborate who they are or who they were talking to within his administration.“They have not called me yet. They are talking to my people. But they have not called me yet,” he said when asked by Reuters if he has spoken to President Xi Jinping his Chinese counterpart regarding the case.

The Detention of Huawei’s CFO is Legally Justified. Why Doesn’t the U.S. Say So - The detention of a top executive from Chinese technology giant Huawei shocked financial markets around the world last week as investors worried that the arrest would derail U.S.-China trade talks. But the detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada, pending her extradition to the U.S., has grown from a trade irritant to a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Over the weekend, the Chinese government threatened both Canada and the U.S. with “grave consequences” if Meng was not immediately released from detention. Its threats have been supported and amplified by Chinese state-run media and on Chinese social media. Boycotts of Apple products and Canada Goose down coats are spreading in China. Most dramatically, a Canadian think-tank scholar and diplomat, Michael Kovrig appears to have been detained in Beijing on murky charges of endangering Chinese state security. While it is tempting to ignore histrionic Chinese claims that Meng has been denied due process and basic legal rights, the complexity of the legal process surrounding Meng’s detention has allowed China’s government to sow doubts about the legal legitimacy of the arrest. Indeed, the complete silence by the U.S. Department of Justice on the matter has only made it more difficult for the U.S. government to push back against the Chinese government’s increasingly ridiculous statements and demands. Meanwhile, President Trump’s recent statement that he would consider intervening in the proceeding for trade or national security reasons has only further confused the already muddled U.S. government message about the Meng case. This ambiguity undermines one of the important policy goals behind pursuing this prosecution in the first place: enforcing neutral legal standards to punish and deter both Chinese governmental and individual wrongdoing. This post will clarify the legal basis for Meng’s detention and eventual prosecution as well as rebut the often ridiculous (not to mention hypocritical) attacks by the Chinese government and media. First of all, according to the affidavit described at Meng’s Vancouver bail hearing, Meng is being charged with bank fraud, rather than violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. It is likely that Meng will be charged by the U.S. with violating the bank fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1344, which criminalizes any attempt “to defraud a financial institution,” or obtain funds from a “financial institution, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” According to reports describing the U.S. affidavit, Meng is alleged to have personally made a presentation to HSBC claiming that a company doing business with Iran was not controlled by Huawei in violation of U.S. sanctions. If Meng knowingly misled HSBC in order to get some financial benefit or support, this would likely violate the statute—a breach that carries a possible 30-year jail sentence or $1 million fine.

Aluminum tariffs have led to a strong recovery in employment, production, and investment in primary aluminum and downstream industries- Economic Policy Institute - One and a half years ago, the U.S. primary aluminum industry was hanging on by a thread. Between 2010 and 2017, 18 of 23 domestic aluminum smelters shut down, eliminating roughly 13,000 good domestic jobs. In 2016, there were three alumina refineries supplying U.S. smelters; by 2017, only one remained in operation.1 In 2017 the Commerce Department launched Section 232 investigations to determine whether aluminum (and steel) imports were a threat to national security.2  This report demonstrates that after the Section 232 tariffs were imposed on aluminum (and steel) on March 8, 2018, the domestic producers of both primary aluminum and downstream aluminum products have made commitments to create thousands of jobs, invest billions of dollars in aluminum production, and substantially increase domestic production. Specifically:

• U.S. primary aluminum production is projected to increase by 67 percent (500,000 tons per year) between 2017 and the end of 2018. Three smelters are being restarted, and another has announced a capacity expansion. Seven smelters in total will be in operation by the end of 2018. These restart and expansion projects will create over 1,000 new jobs and generate over $100 million in new investment.
• Since Section 232 tariffs were imposed, 22 new and expansion projects have been announced in downstream aluminum industries producing extruded (rod and bar, pipe and tube, and extruded shapes) and rolled (sheet and plate) products. These new and expanded facilities will employ over 2,000 additional workers, generate $3.3 billion in new investments, and add nearly 1,000,000 tons of annual rolling and extrusion capacity to the downstream, domestic aluminum industry.
• In the year-to-date period of January through October 2018 (compared with the same period in 2017), shipments of all extruded products are up 6.3 percent (279.8 million pounds), and total sheet and plate shipments have increased by 4.6 percent (336.4 million pounds). Those figures are for total North American shipments (including the United States and Canada). Industrial production data show that these trends are even stronger in the United States.
• U.S. output of raw alumina and refined & processed aluminum increased 9.8 percent between February 2018 (before tariffs were imposed) and October 2018 (data are for the four-digit North American Industry Classification—NAICS—code 3313). Output of rolled and extruded aluminum products increased 9.1 percent from February to September 2018. Therefore, domestic (U.S.) producers appeared to outperform continental production for the U.S. and Canada, referred to above.
• To date (February through October 2018), U.S. employment in the aluminum industries (primary and downstream) has increased slightly (by 300 jobs) since the tariffs were imposed. Aluminum production is highly capital-intensive, and restarting closed facilities is a costly and time-consuming process. Planned restarts and capacity expansions in both primary aluminum and downstream rolling and extruding mills will create more than 3,000 jobs, as shown below.

As Battle Over NAFTA 2.0 Heats Up, New Report Documents 25 Years of NAFTA's Disproportionate Damage to U.S. Latino and Mexican Working People - With the signing of the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Nov. 30 as the migrant crisis at the border escalates, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch released a timely analysis of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) disproportionate damage to U.S. Latinos and Mexican workers, and whether the NAFTA 2.0 deal would stop it. “While President Trump’s manipulation of grievances over trade and immigration brought him to power, absent from his worldview is the reality that NAFTA was developed by and for multinational corporations seeking to pay workers less and has hurt both U.S. and Mexican workers,” said Hector Sanchez, executive director of LCLAA at a Press Club event today. “Indeed, NAFTA’s destruction of millions of Mexican small farmers’ livelihoods and the pact’s race-to-the-bottom wage incentives have pushed many in Mexico to search for work outside their home country.”  Among the report’s findings:

• Government-certified NAFTA job loss has been greatest in regions where the U.S. Latino population is concentrated. The 15 states where 85 percent of Latinos reside account for nearly half (46 percent) of total NAFTA job loss certified under just the narrow Trade Adjustment Assistance program.
• Latino workers were disproportionately represented in the light manufacturing industries hit hardest by the outsourcing NAFTA incentivized. Latinos lost 138,000 jobs in the apparel and textile sector and 123,000 jobs in the U.S. electronics industry during the NAFTA era.
• As NAFTA eliminated U.S. manufacturing jobs, the related wage stagnation for workers without college educations across all industries hit Latinos asymmetrically. Rather than the Latino-white pay gap closing, it increased during the NAFTA years.
• For Mexican workers, increased investment and trade with the United States failed to translate into per capita income growth or rising wages in Mexico. Annual per capita income grew less than 2 percent in the first seven years of NAFTA and less than 1 percent thereafter.
• Real average annual wages have declined in Mexico under NAFTA. According to analysis by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, manufacturing wages in Mexico are now 40 percent lower than in China. Prior to NAFTA, Mexican auto wages were five times lower than in the United States. Today, even as U.S. wages have stagnated, Mexican auto wages are nine times lower
• NAFTA devastated Mexico’s rural sector. Amid a NAFTA-spurred influx of subsidized U.S. corn, about 2 million Mexicans engaged in farming and related work lost their livelihoods.
• With millions of Mexicans displaced from rural communities competing for the hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs outsourced from the United States, and a lack of independent unions in Mexico to bargain for better wages, employers could keep wages reprehensibly low. Overall, in real terms average annual Mexican wages are down 2 percent and the minimum wage down 14 percent from pre-NAFTA levels.
• As NAFTA destroyed Mexican livelihoods and displaced millions in rural Mexico, it became a powerful push factor for migration. From 1993, the year before NAFTA, to 2000, annual immigration from Mexico increased from 370,000 to 770,000. With annual immigration on the rise, the total number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico living in the United States increased from about 2.9 million in 1995 to 4.5 million in 2000 to 6.9 million by 2007 when the financial crisis limited job opportunities and slowed migration rates.
• Nearly 28,000 small- and medium-sized Mexican businesses were destroyed in NAFTA’s first four years alone, spurring the El Barzonmovement of formerly middle-class Mexican entrepreneurs protesting NAFTA. Losses included many retail, food processing and light manufacturing firms that were displaced by NAFTA’s new opening for U.S. big-box retailers that sold goods imported from Asia.

This report makes clear that neither status-quo neoliberalism nor Trump’s anti-Mexico nationalism is in the interest of working people in the United States or Mexico.

Mexico’s $20 Billion Solution to Trump’s Border Crisis — With President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatening to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his wall, it’s good that someone in a position of authority actually has a workable solution to the migrant crisis festering on the Mexican border with the U.S. The day after Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as Mexico’s president on Dec. 1, his foreign minister flew to Washington to propose a $20 billion development plan to make Central America a place for people to stay rather than flee. Three-quarters of the money would help create jobs and fight poverty. The rest would pay for border control and law enforcement. The plan would be funded by Mexico, the U.S. and the three Central American that produce the most refugees and migrants, according to the size of their economies. The  U.S. would pay most, which seems just given the decades of support—including millions in military assistance and police training—that Washington offered corrupt, anti-democratic dictators who oversaw the impoverishment of Central America. In addition, the U.S. backed the 2009 coup in Honduras that has directly led to an influx of refugees streaming towards the U.S. border. At last there is a plan that addresses the causes, and not just the symptoms of Central America’s migrant and refugee crisis: poverty, unemployment, drug trafficking, gang violence, police corruption, the world’s highest murder rates.  At last an implicit assertion that the U.S. bears some responsibility—and arguably the largest share—for the unlivable conditions of many Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans appears to be at hand. Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s new foreign minister, met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on Dec. 1 as thousands of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were marooned in Tijuana and other locations on the Mexican side of the border. Ebrard compared Mexico’s proposal with the Marshall Plan, the 1948–51 program to rebuild Europe. In this case, however, the U.S. would spend far less.  The State Department said little in its official response, merely acknowledging the two nations’ “shared commitment to address our common challenges and opportunities.” Ebrard said only, “I thank him [Pompeo] for his attitude and respect toward the new administration of President López Obrador.”

As Schumer and Pelosi Offer Up $1.3 Billion, Progressives Say 'Not One Dime' Should Go to Trump's Anti-Immigrant Agenda --With House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reportedly preparing to offer President Donald Trump $1.3 billion for his brutal anti-immigrant agenda during a scheduled budget meeting Tuesday morning, that was the message from Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who joined other progressives in warning the Democratic leadership against capitulating to the Trump administration's xenophobic border policies—and argued the amount of funding they should offer is zero. "If anything," Ocasio-Cortez added in her tweet, "they need to fund healthcare for the children they have traumatized (with lifelong implications) after months of separation from their parents."Memo to humanity that NOT ONE DIME should go towards funding the human rights abuses of this administration.If anything, they need to fund healthcare for the children they have traumatized (w/ lifelong implications) after months of separation from their parents. https://t.co/vddS7IKUGA— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 10, 2018The ACLU joined the chorus of immigrant rights advocates and progressive lawmakers arguing that any funding for Trump's border policies would be unacceptable and a total political failure for Democrats. "Saying it louder for the people in the back: Start and end with $0 for Donald Trump's border wall," the ACLU tweeted late Monday.  While Schumer has attempted to evade criticism that he is caving to Trump's xenophobic agenda—which just last month resulted in the teargassing of asylum-seeking children—by clarifying that the $1.3 billion in funding will be for border "fencing" and not a wall, progressive commentators have argued that this distinction is completely meaningless in practice. "Schumer has been blustering to anyone that will listen that this money (his original potential offer was $1.6 billion) is for 'border security' and not 'the wall' but everyone knows that the two things have become synonymous," Splinter's Jack Crosbie wrote ahead of the budget meeting. "Fence, wall, whatever. They gave in and now Trump can spin this however he wants."

Trump, Schumer and Pelosi Square Off in Explosive Oval Office Debate on Live TV - — A press availability at the White House with President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Democratic leader in the House Nancy Pelosi broke into bizarre—as well as refreshing—public negotiation on Tuesday as the Democrats and the president sparred over funding for a border wall and the prospect of a government shutdown if a budget deal is not reached before a fast-approaching deadline.“I will shut down the government,” the president declared at one point. “And I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”CLIP: Exchange between President Trump, @NancyPelosi & @SenSchumer on border security and government shutdown.Watch full video here: https://t.co/5Y6NEITjCe pic.twitter.com/kVmcJKkEbx— CSPAN (@cspan) December 11, 2018  “Let’s debate in private,” Schumer said at one point as the argument became heated. “It’s called transparency,” said Trump about the press witnessing the debate. “But,” Pelosi interjected, “it’s not transparency when we’re not stipulating to a set of facts.”Like so much in the age of Trump, you really have to see it for yourself. Watch the full exchange:“If we don’t have border security,” Trump declared at one point, “we’ll shut down the government.”Schumer repeatedly said that the Democrats have no interest in a government shutdown and Pelosi told the president that he doesn’t even have the votes among the Republicans who control the House to get the kind of funding he is demanding.After the conclusion of the exchange, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell asked White House correspondent Peter Alexander if he’d “ever seen anything like in the Oval Office between the Democratic leaders and the president of the United States?” “Ah,” Alexander responded, “that was wild. I’ve never seen anything like that. Certainly not in the Oval Office.”

Nancy Pelosi showed some serious sass after her meeting with Trump - Donald Trump's meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Tuesday couldn't have gone much worse.  The president and his two Democratic opponents butted heads over his controversial plans for his notorious border wall, which he wants $5bn in funds to construct. However, the Democrats aren't too keen on dishing out the finances for such a project, which resulted in Trump throwing a little temper tantrum and threatening to shut down the government. Trump said:  I will be the one to shut [the government] down. I’m proud to shut down the government for border security.  According to Politico, Trump said the word 'wall' about 30 times during the meeting, but Pelosi didn't buckle and remained resolute against the president, while vice-president Mike Pence watched in noticeable discomfort and silence. Speaking afterwards, Pelosi took a shot a Trump and questioned his 'manhood', which we all know is something that is bound to rattle a man with such a fragile ego.  I was trying to be the mom. It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.  It’s like a manhood thing with him — as if manhood can be associated with him. This wall thing. It didn't end there though as upon leaving the White House, Pelosi displayed some incredible' big d*ck energy' and threw all the sass possible after verbally decimating Trump.

Oval Office clash ups chances of shutdown - Washington took a big step closer to a partial government shutdown on Tuesday as President Trump dug in on his demand for a border wall during a fiery Oval Office meeting with Democratic leaders. Trump told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that he would take the “mantle” of a shutdown to win tougher border security, going so far as to say he wouldn’t blame Democrats if funding lapsed for certain federal agencies.  The extraordinary public exchange left congressional Democrats with little incentive to compromise, and Senate Democrats subsequently ratcheted back their latest offer, with Schumer saying he no longer supports $1.6 billion for border fencing. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who met with Trump privately before Thanksgiving, acknowledged on Tuesday that a shutdown now appears more likely. “I think it’s a step in that direction, obviously, at least with the rhetoric,” he said.  Republicans were stunned by Trump’s remarks and scrambled to rein him in. GOP lawmakers have spent months insisting they don’t want a government shutdown, and they’ve tried to steer Trump away from a scenario like the one unfolding in Washington.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned later on Tuesday that a shutdown would be a mistake.  “One thing I think is pretty clear, no matter who precipitates the government shutdown, is the American people don’t like it,” he told reporters. “I hope that will be avoided and both sides understand that’s not a great way to end what has, in my view, been the most successful Congress, right of center, in decades.” A survey from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll published Tuesday found that 57 percent of respondents want Trump to compromise on the wall and avoid a shutdown. But 65 percent of Republicans in the poll said Trump should not strike a deal.

Pinocchio and the two Democrats- how that Trump meeting descended into farce - It only took a few minutes for Donald Trump’s Oval Office meeting with the top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Tuesday to descend into the equivalent of a custard pie fight from a Laurel and Hardy comedy. And silently watching the bizarre, acrimonious scene was Vice-President Mike Pence. Seldom has anyone tried so actively – and successfully – to appear a passive blank space. With TV cameras rolling, Trump began with a monologue that riffed on the importance of border security and building a wall along the border with Mexico. “I think the American people recognise that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything,” said Pelosi, the House minority leader, as Trump nodded. “And that we should not have a Trump shutdown.” The president leaned in. “A what? Did you say a Trump – ?”   He turned and muttered to Schumer. The first pie had been thrown and the formality of a photo op had been dropped. Pelosi and Trump began to spar over who has the votes. Perched on a sofa, Pelosi interjected: “I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press.” She had forgotten that her opponent is running a reality TV presidency that thrives on conflict and drama.As they continued to bicker over whether to put a vote on the wall to the House and Senate, Trump claimed improbably: “We’re doing this in a very friendly manner.” Pelosi managed to grin and grimace simultaneously. Pence maintained his silence. Increasingly irate, Trump insisted: “Nancy, Nancy, we need border security. It’s very simple. We need border security. People are pouring into our country, including terrorists … Chuck, did you want to say something?” Was Schumer going to calm everyone down? He was not. “The Washington Post today was going to give you four Pinocchios because they say you constantly misstate how much of the wall is built.” It was a red rag to a bull. Trump muttered, “Washington Post!” and gave a cynical chuckle. As tempers frayed, Schumer pressed on, saying there was a proposal on the table that Republicans and Democrats would support. It was a rude awakening for Trump, who since the presidential debates of 2016 has been surrounded by loyalists and praise singers who seldom challenge him. Waving his hands, the president said: “We need border security. I think we all agree that we need border security?” Schumer agreed. Trump addressed the cameras: “See, we get along!” Call for Pinocchio.

Frank Rich: Trump’s Incredibly Dumb Shutdown Threat - With funding for some federal agencies set to expire in less than two weeks, President Trump turned his Oval Office meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer into a reality-TV standoff over his border wall. Did their exchange increase or decrease the chance of a shutdown? My profound hope is that Trump makes good on his threat and shuts down the government right before Christmas. He will set his party back even further than he already has, and do so at a time when congressional Republicans are going to be trapped with angry constituents back home during the holiday break. I still can’t get over that Trump actually declared on camera that he was “proud to shut down the government” and then addressed these immortal words to Chuck Schumer: “I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.” Polls consistently show that few events in American politics are more toxic with a broad public than government shutdowns. Voters logically blame Republicans for them because their party is the anti-government party, yet the GOP always tries to wriggle out of culpability, however unsuccessfully. Now Trump has taken away that argument by owning (as he put it) the “mantle” of a government shutdown in a vivid Oval Office performance that will be a staple of Democratic campaign ads for as long as he is in Washington. This is not all Trump accomplished in his 17 minutes of sparring with the Democratic leaders. He revealed that he really has no idea what divided government means and is in denial about just how devastating the blue wave was in the House. He gave Nancy Pelosi an opportunity to show off her toughness and smarts, both during the meeting and after, when she mocked the president for linking his “manhood,” such as it is, to a wall that he keeps claiming is already under construction when in fact the huge erection he describes is wholly imaginary.

There's No Plan - GOP In Shutdown Turmoil As Trump Holds Out For Wall -- GOP lawmakers are fuming over a partial government shutdown set to hit just in time for Christmas, after President Trump put his foot down in a Tuesday meeting with Democratic leaders and demanded $5 billion in funding for a border wall - as opposed to the $1.3 billion which would otherwise be appropriated. During the Tuesday meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Trump said he could easily have a bill passed by the house - to which Pelosi shot back "Then do it!" Chuck Schumer later dug his heels in on the Senate Floor "I want to be crystal clear. There will be no additional appropriations to pay for the border wall. It’s done." Instead, Schumer said Democrats would pass a yearlong stopgap bill which would fund the Department of Homeland Security - or a measure funding all the departments and agencies covered by seven unfinished appropriations bills; both options which would keep the border wall funding a $1.3 billion. With the two sides at an impasse, it appears that the partial shutdown is a foregone conclusion unless someone blinks. "There is no discernable plan. None that’s been disclosed," said #2 Senate Republican John Cornyn of Texas. "Everybody’s looking to [Trump] for a signal about what he wants to do. So far, it’s not clear." In a sign that the GOP is having issues coordinating a plan, majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) announced on Thursday that the House would advance a bill with Trump's $5 billion wall request - however House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) didn't seem to know anything about it. "I didn’t hear him say that. ... Interesting," said McCarthy when asked about it by a reporter. Other Republicans expressed frustration with the impasse, with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) suggesting that the House's failure to pass a bill was a significant problem. "That’s a central question," said Shelby. "We’re at an impasse and at the moment it doesn’t look like things are getting any better." "This is a case where I think people are putting their political interests ahead of the best interests of the American people. The best interest of the American people is for the government to function smoothly," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. "I personally don’t think a government shutdown will work," he added. 

 Donald Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees -  The Trump administration is resuming its efforts to deport certain protected Vietnamese immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades—many of them having fled the country during the Vietnam War. This is the latest move in the president’s long record of prioritizing harsh immigration and asylum restrictions, and one that’s sure to raise eyebrows—the White House had hesitantly backed off the plan in August before reversing course. In essence, the administration has now decided that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the country before the establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam are subject to standard immigration law—meaning they are all eligible for deportation. The new stance mirrors White House efforts to clamp down on immigration writ large, a frequent complaint of the president’s on the campaign trail and one he links to a litany of ills in the United States. The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are “violent criminal aliens.” But Washington and Hanoi have a unique 2008 agreement that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War. The White House unilaterally reinterpreted the agreement in the spring of 2017 to exempt people convicted of crimes from its protections, allowing the administration to send back a small number of pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants, a policy it retreated from this past August. Last week, however, James Thrower, a spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Hanoi, said the American government was again reversing course. Washington now believes that the 2008 agreement fails to protect pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants from deportation, Thrower told The Atlantic. This would apply to such migrants who are either undocumented or have committed crimes, and this interpretation would not apply to those who have become American citizens.

 McConnell to bring up criminal justice bill for a Senate vote - For weeks, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sounded the same warning to people pushing him for a Senate vote on a criminal justice overhaul this year: The clock was running out. “He’d say, ‘Where’s the time, where’s the time?’ ” one White House official said. McConnell (R-Ky.) had a point: The majority leader is facing a daunting end-of-year to-do list that includes passing a farm bill, averting a partial government shutdown, and clearing judicial and executive branch nominations. A bill overhauling sentencing laws and the federal prison system, which McConnell had pegged as “extremely divisive,” didn’t appear to be a top priority on his agenda. But his public pessimism only strengthened the resolve of advocates, Republican senators supportive of the bill and the White House — particularly senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had already marshaled endorsements from a diverse coalition and asked police union officials, evangelical leaders, and prominent GOP donors and activists to call McConnell, another White House official said. And then there was the unequivocal support from President Trump, who never waffled publicly from the legislation despite criticism from some law-and- order conservatives that the First Step Act could let some violent offenders off the hook from serving out their sentences — a claim that the bill’s authors vehemently dispute. “There were conversations on a regular basis where the president said he would like to see this addressed,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who made a pivotal endorsement of the legislation Tuesday. “Based on the movement on the bill and I think the momentum, I think that helped Senator McConnell make the decision.” McConnell announced Tuesday that the Senate will vote on the criminal justice overhaul bill — which would ease some mandatory-minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders — this month and could begin working on it as early as this week. His decision to advance the bill came “at the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation” secured by several senators, McConnell said.

Pres. Trump’s plan to revive the U.S. Postal Service: Sell access to your mailbox -- Looking for ways to boost revenue for the U.S. Postal Service's money-losing operations, the Trump administration is suggesting selling access to mailboxes. "The legal mailbox monopoly remains highly valuable," said a government report issued last week. "As a means of generating more income, the mailbox monopoly could be monetized." The report, representing the efforts of a task force created by President Donald Trump, proposes a number of other changes to the U.S. Postal Service, including cutting costs and boosting prices for "nonessential services," including delivery of commercial mail such as advertising flyers. In November, the USPS reported its 12th straight year of losses, due to slumping mail volume and rising costs of retirement and health care benefits. While the report didn't detail how much the USPS could earn from franchising mailboxes, it suggests the USPS could charge third-party delivery services such as UPS or FedEx to gain access to consumer mailboxes. It's currently illegal for other delivery services to drop packages or letters in a mailbox -- a restriction that even applies to neighbors stuffing flyers for a local event. "As [mail service providers] and package delivery companies continue to expand offerings to multiple parts of the value chain, it is reasonable to expect a willingness to pay for access to USPS mailboxes," the report noted. "By franchising the mailbox, the USPS could expand its revenue and income opportunities without necessitating any change to its current mail products." But the economics might not be as rosy as the Trump administration report suggests, according to Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that focuses on productivity and innovation issues.   Instead, it could actually backfire and end up costing the USPS more money, Atkinson warned: "One of the reasons the USPS is not even more financially troubled is because they have this monopoly for delivery" to your mailbox, he explained. If the USPS sells access to consumers' mailboxes, even more businesses may opt for rival services such as FedEx or UPS. It's not clear whether the franchise fees would offset the loss of that mail revenue, he added.

Farm bill compromise reached with SNAP changes out, industrial hemp in - After being stalled in negotiations for months, mostly around disputes over SNAP, the farm bill the conference report has been released.  Lawmakers unveiled the much-anticipated farm bill compromise Monday night, ending the months-long impasse over whether a critical piece of legislation that provides subsidies to farmers and helps needy Americans buy groceries could pass before the lame duck session concludes at the end of the year. The agreement was reached after a proposal – backed by House Republicans and President Trump — to add stricter work requirements for those who receive food stamps was taken off the table. The behemoth piece of legislation will cost $867 billion over 10 years, according to House committee staffers. Of course it's not law just yet. The bill must still pass both the House and the Senate and be signed into law by the president, which could come as early as this week. While much of the farm bill compromise mirrors current law, there is a major change coming for farmers: industrial hemp will be legalized. It's a boon for the increasingly popular CBD oil industry, which is being used for medicinal purposes. Forestry was another sticking point that emerged in the final weeks of negotiations, due to the White House weighing in after the California wildfires. It didn't get exactly what it wanted, but specific thinning projects ranging from 3,000 acres to 4,500 acres of forest will be exempt from the public comment period. As for conservation, the bill severely cuts funding for one of the three major programs that pays farmers to use environmentally friendly practices like cover crops and field rotation. A different program will see more money, and there will be more land that farmers will be paid to fallow. Changes to food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), emerged as the biggest sticking point between the House and Senate bills and bogged down negotiations since the summer. The Senate's version of the farm bill, which had no controversial changes to SNAP, passed 86-11. The final compromise bill is also expected to enjoy broad bipartisan support.

House Passes $867 Billion Farm Bill Which Rejects Curbs On Food Stamps --On Wednesday, the House passed an $867 billion farm bill to help those workers in the agricultural industry, sending the legislation to President Trump for a signature. The measure easily passed with a 369-47 vote. The legislation, which previously passed the Senate in an 87-13 vote on Tuesday, expands farm subsidies and according to The Hill, includes language legalizing hemp production.The twice-a-decade legislation provides a safety net for farmers hit with unexpected weather or by tariffs, as well as to low-income Americans struggling to feed themselves and their families. According to the NYT, it is one of the most politically sensitive pieces of legislation Congress passes, balancing the demands of urban legislators hoping to maintain or increase funding for nutrition programs and rural lawmakers seeking to protect farmers, a divide brought into sharp relief this year as negotiations continued months after the previous bill’s Sept. 30 expiration date.While the bill also provides funding for farmers markets and programs for organic farmers as well as authorizes funding for nutrition programs over the next five years, it did not include an earlier provision aimed at placing stronger work requirements for food stamps to the dismay of conservatives. Democrats, who will have a majority in the House starting in January, strongly opposed the provision — which received strong support from House Republicans and President Trump — arguing the change would be detrimental to the safety net relied upon by low-income earners.Lawmakers passed the legislation following months of negotiations, with Congress allowing the current farm bill to lapse on Sept. 30 after struggling to come to a consensus over changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).But while stronger work requirements did not make it into the final text, the bill does make some changes to the SNAP program. Under the legislation, an interstate data system would be established to prevent multiple states from issuing SNAP benefits to the same individual simultaneously. The bill only narrowly advanced past a rules vote earlier in the day after language was tucked into a procedural rule preventing for the rest of the year a floor vote on any war powers resolution limiting the U.S. involvement in Yemen. The move sparked backlash from a number of lawmakers. Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern blasted it, urging his colleagues to vote against the rule ahead of it coming to the floor.

Senate Approves Farm Bill - The Farm Bill, which is supposed to be passed about every five years but which has for the past few been substantially delayed, finally saw the Senate floor Thursday, where it passed by a vote of 87 to 13.One of the largest, most complex and most important pieces of legislation of the year, the Farm Bill includes legislation for environmental protections, farm subsidies, food safety, international trade and many other topics, but the majority of the funding is dominated by SNAP, better known as food stamps. The bill that passed the Senate floor on Tuesday clocks in at $867 billion.Easily the most controversial proposal to the Farm Bill was an attempt by many Republican Senators to impose new work requirements as a prerequisite for receiving SNAP benefits. Various estimates exist for exactly how many people would have lost benefits—it's likely between one and two million households—but none of that really matters, because, due to outspoken opposition from Democrats, that proposal did not make it into the final draft. Donald Trump has been vocal in his desire to cut SNAP, and the Farm Bill does not necessarily limit his ability to do so, according to the Washington Post. Farm subsidies were also a contentious point in the Farm Bill discussions, with groups like the Environmental Working Group repeatedly laying out the gaping loopholes that allow people to obtain subsidies despite not actually farming. Those loopholes were not closed; in fact, they were expanded, to relatives including nephews, nieces, and cousins, who can be considered performing "farm work" by doing vague "management" which may not be on the farm at all. Chuck Grassley, one of two farmers in the Senate, actually broke from his Republican party and voted against the Farm Bill because of this.

As Congress Passes a New Farm Bill, Sonny Perdue Grumbles About Poor People Still Getting SNAP Benefits - Congress has finally passed a new farm bill, that twice-a-decade legislation that shapes US agriculture and hunger policy. The bill has lately become a sticking point between Democrats and Republicans, especially in regards to adding work requirements to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But the bill passed Tuesday in the Senate and Wednesday in the House, leaving SNAP intact, throwing out a last-minute push for expanded forest management, and legalizing industrial hemp after close to a century of exile. In a statement, US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue commended the bill’s passage, but couldn’t resist commenting on the Republican-backed policies that were left out of it: “While I feel there were missed opportunities in forest management and in improving work requirements for certain SNAP recipients, this bill does include several helpful provisions and we will continue to build upon these through our authorities. I commend Congress for bringing the Farm Bill across the finish line and am encouraging President Trump to sign it.”

Here are the winners and losers from the new farm bill -- The United States has a new farm bill — the massive bundle of food and agriculture-related legislation that must be renewed every five years. Most of the money goes to keep people from going hungry (think food stamps), another huge chunk of change subsidizes farmers, and then there’s a big grab bag of conservation, research, and environmental improvement programs. Because it takes a lot of land to grow all our food, the farm bill has an outsized environmental impact. It sets the course for a gigantic swath of the country’s habitats and waterways, and provides assistance that can mean the difference between ruin and redemption for many families. One way to gauge the bill’s winners and losers is the ways various organizations responded to the relatively speedy approval. Here’s a rundown of a few of the reactions: The bill had big wins for organic aficionados, outdoorsy types, and fans of sustainable agriculture — but some greens are disappointed that we’re still spending billions to shore up the bottom line for farmers. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, applauded the bill for, “important progress for organic programs, including a long-overdue focus on strengthening enforcement of organic standards for imported products and funding for organic research, as well as important programs for beginning and social disadvantaged farmers.” Hunters make vegan environmentalists cringe, but many hunting organizations are deeply invested in conservation efforts — and the rod and rifle crowd had nothing but praise for the farm bill. “We’d like to thank Congress for their steadfast support of our nation’s wetlands and waterfowl,” said Ducks Unlimited CEO Dale Hall. By adding 3 million acres to the conservation land that the government will pay farmers not to cultivate, and funding other conservation programs, the bill helps with the goal of “filling the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow, and forever.” There were efforts to cut off subsidies to the wealthiest farmers but that language didn’t make it into the final bill, said said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “[By] rejecting sensible reforms designed to ensure that farm subsidies flow to actual farmers in need — not millionaires and city slickers — this farm bill takes a major step backwards,” he said. Farmers are mostly happy to have some certainty about insurance and subsidy rules as they struggle to manage their money during Trump’s trade war. “Farmers, ranchers and the many partner organizations who use USDA programs to fund innovative work around the country can breathe a sigh of relief,”

Senators Press for Expanded Probe of FEMA Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico Relief Efforts -  Jerri-Lynn Scofield - Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders, and Dick Durbin last week sent a letter to John Kelly, acting inspector general (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security, asking him to expand the ongoing investigation into the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) contracting in  Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico. The senators asked the acting IG to probe new reports of waste and abuse associated with the contractors hired to execute and manage the $1.2 billion Tu Hogar Renace (Your Home Reborn) program, created in October 2017 to provide temporary and immediate repairs for hurricane-damaged homes that would “return the home to safe, habitable and functional conditions, “ according to a press release issued by Warren’s office on 6th December:In their letter to the DHS IG, the senators expressed concern about a recent New York Times report that “more than 60 percent of what FEMA is spending in the program” to repair up to 120,000 homes is not paying for these repairs but is instead “going toward overhead, profit and steep markups.” The report also found that that while homeowners were approved for “up to $20,000 each in aid,” a review of hundreds of invoices and contracts indicates that-in nearly every case-they received less than half of that. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Senators Warren and Sanders have previously introduced legislation to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt (as I discussed in the post cited above). Yves succinctly cut to the crux in a previous post, Wall Street Got a Bailout, Why Not Puerto Rico?The Grey Lady’s expose — cited  in the Senators’ letter–  must be read to be believed, $3,700 Generators and $666 Sinks: FEMA Contractors Charged Steep Markups on Puerto Rico Repairs: Homeowners, who were approved for up to $20,000 each in aid, in nearly every case received less than half of what they were approved for, while layers of contractors and middlemen took the rest, a review of hundreds of invoices and contracts associated with the program shows.

John Kelly To Leave White House At End Of Year, Trump Confirms - Chief of Staff John Kelly - who was widely credited for instilling 'order' and 'discipline' during the early days of the Trump Administration before a stream of gaffes and scandals (most notably the domestic abuse scandal that led to the firing of White House Secretary Rob Porter) strained his relationship with the president - will leave the West Wing at the end of the year.President Trump confirmed as much during a brief chat with a group of reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Saturday afternoon, according to a flurry of tweets.Trump said he will announce Kelly's replacement "within a few days."President Trump tells reporters on the south lawn John Kelly will be leaving the White House, per pool.— Sarah Westwood (@sarahcwestwood) December 8, 2018   The president praised John Kelly and thanked him. He said he would announce a successor within in a few days and that person may serve on an interim basis.— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) December 8, 2018In a nod to the rumors that the two h   ave reportedly stopped speaking in recent weeks as their relationship deteriorated, Trump said that, while Kelly will be leaving, "I don't know if I can say 'retiring'."

White House turmoil deepens after Kelly firing -- On Saturday, President Donald Trump removed his White House chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, only to have his top choice to replace Kelly decline the position barely 24 hours later. Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, will himself leave the administration to head up a political action committee that will raise funds to support Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. The firing of Kelly was carried out with all the finesse and subtlety of an episode of Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump has been bad-mouthing his chief of staff for more than a month, hinting repeatedly that he was about to leave the White House and would not be missed.He also targeted Kelly’s protégé and successor as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, for vitriol, particularly on Twitter, over the political debacle of Trump’s own policy on stepped-up persecution of immigrants at the US-Mexico border. Nielsen is expected to follow Kelly when he departs sometime before the end of the year.Kelly was a particular target of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, largely because after he became chief of staff in mid-2017 he sought to limit their access to the Oval Office. He was opposed to the sweeping foreign policy resumé handled by Kushner--including Mexico, Israel, Saudi Arabia and China--dubbing him “the boy secretary of state,” and his sarcastic dismissal of the couple as “playing government” from their positions as White House advisers was widely reported.On Friday, Trump named another favorite of his daughter and son-in-law, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, as US ambassador to the United Nations. Nauert is a longtime Fox News talking head whose most recent foreign policy tour de force was to declare that D-Day symbolized the close foreign policy relationship between the United States and Germany. There were indications that the appointment of Nauert was intended as a slap at the United Nations—her post will reportedly no longer carry cabinet rank—as well as an affirmation of the influence of the ultra-right within the Trump administration, underscored by the selection of a former Fox News personality to represent the United States government to the world.

Kelly exit helps position Trump for 2020 - President Donald Trump’s Saturday confirmation that chief of staff John Kelly will soon leave the White House signaled more than the end of a tortured relationship. It was the latest sign of Trump’s singular focus on his 2020 re-election campaign. Trump is likely to replace Kelly — a former Marine General who brought little political experience to the West Wing — with Nick Ayers, an ambitious young operative who is now Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff. Where Kelly could be politically tone deaf, Ayers ran a presidential campaign before he was 30. Trump has taken other recent steps towards a campaign mode. On Friday two senior White house aides — political director Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, the director of the Office of Public Liaison — announced they would move to his re-election operation. Brian Jack, the deputy White House political director, is expected to replace Stepien as White House political director. White House aides predicted that Ayers, if tapped despite internal opposition to his selection, would focus the West Wing almost entirely on the president’s reelection effort. “You’re going to have a White House that’s all politics all the time,” said a former White House official, who predicted a transformation of the West Wing into a “quasi-campaign operation. The personnel changes come as the Trump political operation organizes for 2020 in other ways. The president’s top advisers have decided to structure his reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee as a single entity — a setup aimed at fostering collaboration to avoid tensions that plagued the 2016 campaign.

Budget head Mulvaney picked as Trump's next chief of staff - AP News - (AP) — President Donald Trump has picked budget director Mick Mulvaney to be his acting chief of staff, ending a chaotic search in which several top contenders took themselves out of the running for the job.“Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration,” Trump tweeted Friday. “I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Trump added that his current chief of staff, John Kelly, will be staying until the end of the year. “He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!” Trump wrote.  Trump’s first pick for the job, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers, took himself out of the running last weekend and decided to leave the White House instead. The decision caught the president and many senior staffers by surprise, and Trump soon found that others he considered front-runners were not interested in the job. It was not immediately clear why the president decided to make Mulvaney’s appointment temporary. One senior White House official said there was no time limit on the appointment and Mulvaney would fill the role of chief of staff indefinitely, regardless of the “acting” title. Key to his selection: Mulvaney and the president get along and the president likes him personally. Additionally, Trump prized the former congressman’s knowledge of Capitol Hill and political instincts as the White House prepares for a Democratic-controlled House and the president’s upcoming re-election campaign.

Mulvaney will stay on as White House budget chief TheHill - The White House confirmed Friday night that Mick Mulvaney will stay on as the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) even after he takes over as President Trump's acting chief of staff.“Mick Mulvaney will not resign from the Office Of Management and Budget, but will spend all of his time devoted to his role as the acting Chief Of Staff for the President. Russ Vought will handle day to day operations and run OMB,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.Trump tapped Mulvaney earlier Friday to replace John Kelly as chief of staff after the retired Marine Corps. general leaves the White House at the end of the month.The announcement capped off a roller-coaster week of searching for a replacement after no frontrunner emerged among the available candidates.Mulvaney called the appointment a “tremendous honor.”While declaring Mulvaney the acting chief of staff, it is unclear if the president will continue his search or simply leave Mulvaney in the role on a permanent basis.“There’s no time limit. He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff. He got picked because the president liked him, they get along,” a senior administration official told reporters.  Asked why Mulvaney was named acting chief of staff instead of simply chief of staff, the official responded “because that’s what the president wants.” This is the second role Mulvaney will take on in an acting capacity while leading the White House budget office. He had led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since November 2017 after its previous director, Obama holdover Richard Cordray, left the post. The new permanent director was sworn in this week.

Trump Nominates Army Chief To Lead Joint Chiefs Of Staff -- After hinting on Friday that he might reveal his nominee to succeed Joseph Dunford as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ahead of Saturday's Army Navy game, the president did exactly that, revealing in a tweet that he intends to nominate four-star General Mark Milley - presently the chief of staff for the US Army - to lead the committee of America's most powerful military commanders who are responsible for advising the president on all military-related matters. The date of Milley's takeover has yet to be determined. Milley's nomination comes months earlier than expected; Dunford still has nearly 10 months left in his term (in the past, JCOS chairmen have typically been nominated in the Spring).  I am pleased to announce my nomination of four-star General Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the United States Army – as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing General Joe Dunford, who will be retiring....I am thankful to both of these incredible men for their service to our Country! Date of transition to be determined. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018   Milley must now be confirmed by the Senate. Assuming he is, he will become the first JCOS chairman to serve a single four-year term instead of a two-year term with the option for a second, a change that was included in the latest National Defense Authorization Act.

Nominating a crony, loyalist or old buddy for attorney general is a US presidential tradition  - With President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate former Attorney General William P. Barr to fill the position again, Trump chose a prominent Republican lawyer with extensive government experience to run the Justice Department.  Barr has publicly supported some of Trump’s criticisms of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s not known how Barr would reflect those positions in his interactions with the investigation.  But when Donald Trump announced Jeff Sessions’s nomination as his attorney general, the position was seen as a reward for Sessions’s early endorsement of the president’s 2016 campaign. And the president wanted loyalty in return. But the president’s wish was not realized. Feeling betrayed when Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump turned Sessions into a regular target for his Twitter assaults. Trump ended their fraught relationship by asking for Sessions to resign after the 2018 midterm election and replacing him with Matthew Whitaker. Whitaker is known as a critic of the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.  The Whitaker appointment provoked questions among Trump critics, including George Conway, husband of the president’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, about its constitutionality and its wisdom.  However, others welcomed the alliance between Trump and Whitaker. Margot Cleveland, an adjunct law professor at the University of Notre Dame, argued that “there is nothing nefarious about the (acting) attorney general loyally serving the president of the United States.”  For me as a legal scholar who has studied controversies surrounding the role of prosecutors and prosecutorial decisions, all of this has a familiar ring.  Indeed, throughout American history, there have been different visions of the role of the attorney general and his or her relationship to the president.

Chief justice of California Supreme Court leaves GOP over Kavanaugh confirmation -- The chief justice of California’s Supreme Court announced on Thursday that she had left the Republican Party following the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye told CALmatters that she had been deliberating her decision for a while but made up her mind after watching the backlash following multiple sexual assault allegations leveled against Kavanaugh.  Cantil-Sakauye joins a number of many prominent Republicans who have disavowed or left the GOP in recent months. Former Rep. David Jolly (Fla.) said in October that he would re-register without a party affiliation with his wife in an attempt to reject partisan politics. "It's also just a personal rejection of partisanship. It's a very comfortable place for us to be," Jolly said of his decision. Lori Stegmann, an elected official in Oregon, left the Republican Party in July because she could not condone “the misogyny, the racism, and the unethical and immoral behavior of the current administration.” Republican strategist Steve Schmidt left the party in June citing the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, which led to the separation of thousands of migrant parents and children.

Kavanaugh Sides With Supreme Court Liberals In Planned Parenthood Funding Fight -- The Supreme Court on Monday rejected appeals by Louisiana and Kansas to block funding for Planned Parenthood, backing two lower court opinions that said that states which cut Medicaid contracts with affiliates of the organization are in violation of federal law. Notably siding with the court's liberals was Justice Brett Kavanaugh - whose nomination to the USSC was vehemently opposed by Planned Parenthood, which claimed he would "automatically" overturn Roe v. Wade - the landmark Supreme Court case which legalized abortion.  Chief Justice John Roberts also sided with Planned Parenthood, while three conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision by the nine-member court, who said that the appeals should have been heard. The case is one of a number of disputes working their way up to the Supreme Court over state-imposed restrictions on abortion. The two states did not challenge the constitutionality of abortion itself.Planned Parenthood’s affiliates in Louisiana do not perform abortions, but some in Kansas do. Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income Americans, pays for abortions only in limited circumstances, such as when a woman’s life is in danger.Louisiana and Kansas announced plans to terminate funding for Planned Parenthood through Medicaid after an anti-abortion group released videos in 2015 purporting to show Planned Parenthood executives negotiating the for-profit sale of fetal tissue and body parts. Planned Parenthood denied the allegations and said the videos were heavily edited and misleading. –Reuters CNN is predictably beside themselves over Kavanaugh's stance - claiming that he simply wanted to "avoid high-profile abortion-related issues for now."

 ‘You don’t just get to say that you’re progressive’- The left moves to defend its brand — Progressive Democrats are beginning to confront an unintended consequence of their own success: dilution of the brand. So many Democratic presidential prospects are now claiming the progressive mantle in advance of the 2020 primaries that liberal leaders are trying to institute a measure of ideological quality control, designed to ensure the party ends up with a nominee who meets their exacting standards. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are discussing policy platforms that could serve as a litmus test for presidential contenders. Progressive donors, meanwhile, are plotting steps — ranging from closer engagement with campaigns to ultimatums tied to fundraising — to ensure that "Medicare for All," debt-free college and a non-militaristic foreign policy, among other causes, remain at the center of the upcoming campaign. In an effort to winnow the burgeoning field, progressive advocacy groups are beginning to poll supporters in the hopes of elevating candidates who gain the imprimatur of the left. “You don’t just get to say that you’re progressive,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told progressive donors at a private conference here last week, a portion of which was opened exclusively to POLITICO. Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, called the 2020 election a chance to “leverage our power.” But she called it critical “that we have some very clear guidelines about what it means to be progressive.” 

'Lobbyists Are Here. Goldman Sachs Is Here. Where's Labor? Activists?' Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez Pull Back Curtain on Corporate-Sponsored Freshman Orientation -- Pulling back the curtain on the ostensibly "bipartisan" orientation for newly elected members of Congress at Harvard's Kennedy School in Boston, Reps.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) informed the public through live social media updates on Thursday that—contrary to the ideologically neutral advertising—the private conference featured a heavy dose of speeches by corporate CEOs and completely shut out organized labor and members of the progressive community.  "Our 'bipartisan' congressional orientation is co-hosted by a corporate lobbyist group," Ocasio-Cortez noted, likely referring to the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute, which is co-sponsoring the event. "Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn't told to us in advance. Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where's labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?" Tlaib, for her part, called attention to a speech by Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president who left his post as President Donald Trump's chief economic adviser earlier this year.  According to Tlaib, Cohn condescendingly told the freshman members, "You guys are way over your head, you don't know how the game is played."  "No, Gary," Tlaib responded, "you don't know what's coming—a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits."

 44 ex-senators warn U.S. is ‘entering a dangerous period’ -A bipartisan group of nearly four dozen former senators warned current and future members of the Senate on Monday that the United States is “entering a dangerous period,” and urged them to defend America’s democracy by serving national interests rather than political ideologies.“We are on the eve of the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation and the House’s commencement of investigations of the president and his administration,” the 44 ex-lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published by The Washington Post. “The likely convergence of these two events will occur at a time when simmering regional conflicts and global power confrontations continue to threaten our security, economy and geopolitical stability.” The senators continued: “It is a time, like other critical junctures in our history, when our nation must engage at every level with strategic precision and the hand of both the president and the Senate. We are at an inflection point in which the foundational principles of our democracy and our national security interests are at stake, and the rule of law and the ability of our institutions to function freely and independently must be upheld.” The senators — 32 Democrats, 10 Republicans and two independents — also stressed the importance of casting aside party differences in confronting impending challenges, noting that during their time in Congress, “we were allies and at other times opponents, but never enemies.”

 Comey: Trump 'certainly close' to being unindicted co-conspirator  -After former FBI Director James Comey testified behind closed doors on Capitol Hill Friday, he tweeted that the interview by members of two House committees “wasn’t a search for truth.” Republicans see it differently.The GOP lawmakers say they’re looking at whether probes into President Donald Trump, which began before he was elected, were tainted by political bias. Comey, whom the president fired in 2017, returns for more questioning on Dec. 17.These are some of the highlights, drawn from the 235-page redacted transcript released on Saturday by Republican lawmakers. The interview lasted from 10:12 a.m. to 4:38 p.m., including a 30-minute lunch break. Comey dismissed suggestions the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination with the Trump campaign was prompted by allegations contained in the so-called “Steele” or “Trump Dossier.” Republicans have insisted that the document, an opposition-research paper paid for by Democrats, prompted the investigation. “It was not,” Comey said, according to the redacted transcript. When asked how he knew, he said: “Because I know what the basis was for starting the investigation. It was the information we’d received about a conversation that a Trump foreign -- campaign foreign policy adviser had with an individual in London about stolen emails that the Russians had that would be harmful to Hillary Clinton. It was weeks or months later that the so-called Steele dossier came to our attention.”

 Despite Comey's Struggle With Amnesia, Ex-FBI Director Confirms Dossier Totally Unverified - Former FBI Director James Comey didn't know a lot during Friday's congressional testimony - claiming hundreds of times (245 according to Trump) that he simply couldn't remember various things. What Comey did remember, however, confirms that the FBI could not verify the dossier submitted by former UK spy Christopher Steele - which the agency used as the foundation of a spy warrant application to surveil the Trump campaign.While Comey said the dossier came from "a reliable source with a track record, and it’s an important thing when you’re seeking a PC warrant," he also admitted that the FBI was unable to corroborate the document's claims. "But what I understand by verified is we then try to replicate the source information so that it becomes FBI investigation and our conclusions rather than a reliable source's," Comey said, adding "That’s what I understand it, the difference to be. And that work wasn’t completed by the time I left in May of 2017, to my knowledge."The FBI is required to fully vet information they submit to FISA courts, which they of course did not do in their haste to deploy a counterintelligence dragnet on the Trump campaign during the final months of the 2016 US election. Steele, meanwhile, was fired by the FBI for leaking information to the press while the agency was using him as a source. To get around this, the FBI went through former #4 DOJ official Bruce Ohr - who was demoted twice for lying about his contacts with Steele. Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for the embattled research firm Fusion GPS on the Trump dossier. Fusion GPS hired Steele as part of their ongoing effort to investigate the Trump campaign and any ties with Russia. It was discovered in 2017 that Fusion GPS was being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the campaign’s law firm Perkins Coie to investigate any alleged ties between Trump and Russia. More importantly, the FBI used information from Steele, a foreign source who was openly antagonistic about Trump. In fact, Ohr told FBI officials that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” as stated in the House Intelligence Committee investigation memo. -Sara Carter

Michael Cohen Sentenced to 3 Years After Implicating Trump in Hush-Money Scandal - Michael D. Cohen, a former lawyer for President Trump, was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday after denouncing Mr. Trump and explaining that “I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.” Mr. Cohen gave an emotional apology to the court for his involvement in a hush-money scandal that could threaten the Trump presidency — a scheme to buy the silence of two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump to protect his chances before the 2016 election. Mr. Cohen said his blind loyalty to Mr. Trump led him to ignore “my own inner voice and my moral compass.” The sentencing in federal court in Manhattan capped a startling fall for Mr. Cohen, 52, who had once hoped to work by Mr. Trump’s side in the White House but ended up a central figure in the inquiry into payments to an adult-film star and a former Playboy model before the 2016 election. Judge William H. Pauley III called Mr. Cohen’s crimes a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct” and added, “Each of the crimes involved deception and each appears to have been motivated by personal greed and ambition.” He added that Mr. Cohen’s particular crimes — breaking campaign finance laws, tax evasion and lying to Congress — “implicate a far more insidious harm to our democratic institutions.” “As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better,” the judge said. Mr. Cohen had pleaded guilty in two separate cases, one brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, the other by the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Before he was sentenced, a solemn Mr. Cohen, standing at a lectern, sounded emotional, but resolved, as he told the judge he had been tormented by the anguish and embarrassment he had caused his family. “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” he said, “and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man” — a reference to Mr. Trump — “that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.” Mr. Cohen then apologized to the public: “You deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust.”

For first time, prosecutors connect Trump to a federal crime (AP) — The Justice Department says that President Donald Trump directed illegal payments to buy the silence of two women whose claims of extramarital affairs threatened his presidential campaign, the first time prosecutors have connected Trump to a federal crime. In a court filing , prosecutors said former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arranged the secret payments at the height of the 2016 campaign "in coordination with and at the direction of" Trump. Cohen has previously said Trump was involved in the hush-money scheme, but court documents filed ahead of Cohen's sentencing made clear prosecutors believe Cohen's claim. The filing stopped short of accusing the president of committing a crime. Whether a president can be prosecuted while in office remains a matter of legal dispute. But there's no ambiguity in Friday's filing that prosecutors believe Cohen's act was criminal and Trump was directly involved, a remarkable disclosure with potential political and legal ramifications for a president dogged by investigations. The payments are likely to become a target for House Democrats gearing up to investigate the president next year. It's unclear whether Trump faces legal jeopardy over his role. Federal law requires that any payments made "for the purposes of influencing" an election must be reported in campaign finance disclosures. The court filing Friday makes clear that the payments were made to benefit Trump politically. In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including campaign finance violations, and detailed an illegal operation to stifle sex stories and distribute hush money to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who had both claimed they had affairs with Trump. Trump has denied having an affair. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement signed days before the 2016 election and is currently suing to dissolve that contract. Trump denied in April that he knew anything about Cohen's payments to Daniels, though the explanations from the president and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have shifted multiple times since then.

The campaign-finance threat to Trump just got more severe - In a pair of statements, one in a courtroom and the other in a news release, attorneys working for the Justice Department made a case for the importance of the campaign finance violations in which President Trump has been implicated — and made the evidence for his culpability stronger. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday, stemming primarily from guilty pleas he offered in August on a spate of fraud and campaign finance violations. The latter charges were related to two payments that Cohen facilitated in August 2016 and October 2016 meant, he said, to prevent two women who alleged extramarital relationships with Trump from telling their stories before Election Day. In one case, Cohen worked with American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, to have former Playboy model Karen McDougal receive $150,000 to lock down the rights to her story of an alleged affair with Trump. In the other, Cohen himself directly paid $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her to similarly remain silent. When he pleaded guilty in August,  Cohen surprised the courtroom by announcing that he’d undertaken the payments at Trump’s direction. Those payments are illegal, campaign finance experts tell The Washington Post, because, among other things, they are unreported campaign expenses paid with unregulated contributions. Trump’s role in the payments was reinforced in a court filing published Friday, in which government attorneys asked that Cohen receive a stiff sentence. "In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments,” that filing read, “he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1" — that is, Trump. With that sentence, the U.S. attorneys implicated Trump in the illegal payments directly. Technically, one of the charges to which Cohen admitted guilt in August was soliciting an illegal corporate contribution: Working with AMI to make that payment to McDougal.  So why didn’t AMI face criminal charges? We knew that the company’s chief executive, David Pecker, was working with investigators in exchange for immunity. We learned Wednesday that the company had received a form of immunity, too, as part of a “non-prosecution agreement” with government lawyers.

Nadler- Trump Ordering Payoffs To Mistresses Would Certainly Be An Impeachable Offense -- Two days after incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told a group of reporters that he intends to put the kibosh on a House probe into allegations of political bias at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI, Nadler told CNN's Jake Tapper during an appearance on the cable channel's "State of the Union" Sunday show that, if President Trump is found to have directed payoffs made to two former mistresses (as Special Counsel Robert Mueller alleged in Cohen's sentencing memo), it would "certainly" be "an impeachable offense."However, in keeping with the Democratic leadership's position not to pursue impeachment proceedings against Trump, Nadler argued that just because somebody committed "an impeachable offense" doesn't mean they should be impeached."They would be impeachable offenses. Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question, but certainly they’d be impeachable offenses because even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office," Nadler said.Cohen, whom recently admitted to lying to Congress, promised to testify that Trump ordered him to facilitate payoffs to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. If true, this would constitute a gross violation of campaign finance laws.But President Trump has insisted that Cohen is lying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence (an eventuality that, as fate would have it, appears to be unavoidable now that prosecutors have recommended that a federal judge impose a term of more than 40 months).

Trump Defends Hush Payment As Private Transaction As Bernstein Says Trump Is Cornered -- After a dramatic Friday, in which US prosecutors sought prison time for Michael Cohen, Trump’s "fixer" for the payments they said were made in "coordination with and at the direction of" Trump, as well as on charges of evading taxes and lying to Congress, president Trump on Monday defended the hush money payments reported by his former lawyer, responding a day after Democratic lawmakers said the U.S. president could face impeachment and jail time if the transactions are proven to violate campaign finance laws.  Trump said on Twitter that Democrats were wrongly targeting “a simple private transaction" after court filings last week drew renewed attention to six-figure payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign by Trump’s personal lawyer to two women so they would not discuss their alleged affairs with the candidate.“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2018 As we reported yesterday, U.S. Rep Jerrold Nadler, who will lead the Judiciary Committee when Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in January, said on Sunday that if the payments were found to violate campaign finance laws it would be an impeachable offense. Upping the ante, his Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff, said Trump could be indicted once he leaves office and could “face the real prospect of jail time.”Under U.S. law, campaign contributions, defined as things of value given to a campaign to influence an election, must be disclosed. Such payments are also limited to $2,700 per person.Earlier this year, Trump admitted repaying his former lawyer Michael Cohen for the $130,000 paid to porn star Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels after previously disputed knowing anything about the payments. On Monday, the president again denied wrongdoing and sought to shift any blame to Cohen.

Democrats begin open discussion of impeachment - Two top leaders of the House Democratic caucus appeared on television interview programs Sunday to promote the notion that President Donald Trump could be impeached now or prosecuted after he leaves office for violations of campaign finance laws.Representative Jerry Nadler of New York will chair the House Judiciary Committee after the new Democratic majority takes control of the House in January. That committee would have jurisdiction over the drafting of articles of impeachment, and Nadler has previously indicated a willingness to consider impeachment based on the findings of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into allegations of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 elections.On Sunday, however, Nadler suggested that Trump could be subject to impeachment for a different issue, his role in authorizing payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who claimed to have had sexual relationships with him, in order to conceal their stories until after Election Day.Trump’s former legal “fixer,” Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in making the payment to one woman, adult film actress Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels), and in organizing the payment to the other woman, Playboy model Karen McDougal, by the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid. In both instances, according to legal documents filed by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York last Friday, Cohen says he acted on the instructions of then-presidential candidate Trump, who is referred to in the court papers as “Individual 1.”On the CNN program “State of the Union” Sunday, host Jake Tapper read from the court filing and then asked, “If it is proven that the president directed or coordinated with Cohen to commit these felonies… are those impeachable offenses?”Nadler responded, “They would be impeachable offenses. Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But, certainly, they would be impeachable offenses, because, even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.” On the CBS Sunday interview program “Face the Nation,” Representative Adam Schiff, who will chair the House Intelligence Committee in January, gave a slightly different response to the same issue. He raised first of all the likelihood that Trump could be indicted after he leaves office, assuming that the Department of Justice declines to bring an indictment against a sitting president.

Fox’s Napolitano: We learned today that prosecutors have evidence Trump committed a felony - Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said the American public "learned" on Wednesday that federal prosecutors have evidence President Trump committed a crime. "Career prosecutors here in New York have evidence that the president of the United States committed a felony by ordering and paying Michael Cohen to break the law,” Napolitano said while speaking on Fox News. “How do we know that? They told that to the federal judge. Under the rules, they can’t tell that to the federal judge unless they actually have that hardcore evidence. Under the rules, they can’t tell that to the federal judge unless they intend to do something with that evidence."His comments came just hours afterCohen was sentenced to three years in prison for a series of crimes he committed while serving as Trump's personal attorney and fixer.The sentence stems from eight federal charges Cohen pleaded guilty to in August. Among them, Cohen admitted to violating campaign finance law by paying off two women who alleged to have had affairs with Trump more than a decade ago.Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have said that Trump directed Cohen to make the payments. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos stated in court Wednesday that Cohen "eroded faith in the electoral process" by committing the crimes. “The felony is paying Michael Cohen to commit a felony. It’s pretty basic," Napolitano said. "You pay someone to commit a crime, they commit the crime. You are liable, criminally liable for the commission of that crime. That’s what the prosecutors told the federal judge.”

The Department of Justice Calls Donald Trump a Felon -  Federal prosecutors released sentencing recommendations for two alleged criminals who worked closely with Donald Trump: his lawyer Michael Cohen, and campaign manager Paul Manafort. They are filled with damning details. But the most important passage by far is this, about Trump’s fixer: “Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” The payments in question, as the document explains, concern a payoff to two women who claimed to have affairs with Trump. The payments, according to prosecutors, were intended to influence the campaign, and thereby constituted violations of campaign finance law. They have not formally charged Trump with this crime — it is a sentencing report for Cohen, not Trump — but this is the U.S. Department of Justice calling Trump a criminal.   There is more. Under normal circumstances, the long list of charges federal prosecutors cited against Michael Cohen would be a political catastrophe for President Trump. One of the president’s closest associates turns out to have allegedly committed a long string of crimes, from tax evasion to making false statements to a financial institution, that would besmirch the good name of the man who worked at his side for years.   Of course Trump has no good name. But the fact that he is being called a felon by the United States government is a historic step. And it is likely the first of more to come. Just as a recent sentencing report indicated that Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn is cooperating substantially, prosecutors wrote today that Cohen is providing helpful information on other crimes. Cohen reportedly gave the special counsel “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during them.” And this contact continued into 2018. Cohen was not locked out and probably has access to some secrets. The sentencing recommendation for Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, contains very little detail that isn’t redacted. It describes Manafort as having lied repeatedly about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, his business partner and Russian intelligence asset, and with the Trump administration. Trump has dismissed Manafort as a distant underling who worked for him only briefly, but the filing states Manafort’s contact with the administration continued into 2018. This does not prove anything, but it suggests Manafort’s guilt implicated people other than Manafort himself.

Trump Slams Cohen- I Never Directed Him To Break The Law - One day after President Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison for a variety crimes, Trump took to Twitter to address alleged campaign finance violations Cohen says he engaged in at Trump's direction. Cohen flipped on Trump after federal agents raided his office and home in April, later making the remarkable claim that Trump directed him to pay off two women who claimed to have had affairs with the president in order to prevent their allegations from influencing the 2016 US election. The payments included $130,000 to porn star Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels), while Cohen also orchestrated a $150,000 payment to a former Playboy playmate through the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc. (AMI). Trump, who initially denied knowing about the payments but later acknowledged that he had known about them, insisted this week that they were "a simple private transaction," and not related to the election - and therefore would not be subject to campaign finance laws. On Thursday, Trump took to Twitter to defend himself and lash out at Cohen in a three-part tweetstorm - claiming Cohen had an obligation to know the law, and that his former personal attorney had pleaded guilty in order to embarrass him and receive a reduced sentence. "I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law," Trump said. "He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called “advice of counsel,” and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance. Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not guilty even on a civil bases [sic]. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!" 

Tillerson: Trump would ask me to do things I couldn't legally do - Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says he often had to push back on President Trump, telling him that some of his requests would violate the law.“So often, the president would say here's what I want to do and here's how I want to do it and I would have to say to him, 'Mr. President, I understand what you want to do but you can't do it that way. It violates the law,' ” Tillerson said in rare public remarks in Thursday night in Houston at a fundraiser for the MD Anderson Cancer Center. “I'd say here's what we can do. We can go back to Congress and get this law changed. And if that's what you want to do, there's nothing wrong with that. I told him I'm ready to go up there and fight the fight, if that's what you want to do,” he added.Tillerson said Trump would show frustration during those conversations.Trump and Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil CEO, were known to have a contentious relationship. Tillerson was dismissed from his post in March and replaced by then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo.The former secretary of State also said he believed Trump was able to win the presidency because the public is disengaged on many important issues. “I will be honest with you, it troubles me that the American people seem to want to know so little about issues that they are satisfied with a 128 characters,” Tillerson said, referring to Trump's use of Twitter.“I don't want that to come across as a criticism of him,” he added. “It's really a concern that I have about us as Americans and us as a society and us as citizens.”

Stormy Daniels Ordered To Pay Trump $293,000 In Legal Fees And Sanctions -  Stephanie Clifford, the porn star better known as Stormy Daniels, was ordered to pay $293,000 in attorney fees and sanctions to Donald Trump, also known as David Dennison, after she unsuccessfully sued the president for defamation. U.S. District Judge James Otero in Los Angeles threw out Clifford’s lawsuit in November, saying Trump’s “defaming” tweet was protected free speech, Bloomberg reports. The hefty $293,053 price tag includes $1,000 in sanctions that U.S. District Judge James Otero slapped Daniels with over her attempt to “chill” Trump’s “free speech rights,” according to Charles Harder, an attorney for the President. “The court’s order, along with the court’s prior order dismissing Stormy Daniels’ defamation case against the President, together constitute a total victory for the President, and a total defeat for Stormy Daniels in this case,” Harder said. Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti did not immediately return a request for comment. Clifford had said in early 2018 that she was threatened by an unknown man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 for agreeing to cooperate with a magazine article about a tryst she says she had with Trump in 2006. After her lawyer released a composite sketch of the man, Trump accused Clifford in an April tweet of “a total con job" concerning a “nonexistent man.” The president sought to force Clifford to pay double his legal costs as a sanction to deter future frivolous litigation.

A ‘loud gong’: National Enquirer’s surprise deal could imperil Trump The National Enquirer’s parent company has agreed to tell prosecutors everything it knows about Donald Trump — and it might know a lot. In a court document released Wednesday, the tabloid publisher, American Media Inc., admitted to coordinating a hush-money payment with Trump’s 2016 campaign, reversing two years of denials. The confession came as part of an immunity agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, made public shortly after Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison over charges of tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. But the disclosure might just be scratching the surface. Based on court documents and a plethora of media reports, Trump and his aides have worked for years with the tabloid to kill incriminating stories. AMI’s CEO David Pecker also had a decades-long copacetic friendship with Trump. Legal experts say that could mean more legal peril for Trump, who has already been implicated in directing Cohen to work with the National Enquirer during the 2016 campaign to pay women in exchange for their silence about alleged affairs. The immunity deal, said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor from Northern Virginia, “is a huge red flag and loud gong against the president.” Under the agreement dated from late September and released Wednesday, AMI accepted immunity from federal prosecutors in exchange for documents and “numerous interviews” with the company’s executives and staff about the Trump hush-money scheme and other arrangements involving politicians running for office. .

Legal noose tightens around Trump - Only hours after a Manhattan federal judge sentenced Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to three years in prison on Wednesday, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York revealed that the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid and its chief executive had corroborated Cohen’s claim that Trump was complicit in violations of campaign finance laws in the 2016 presidential election.The guilty pleas by Cohen and the admission by American Media Inc. (AMI) and its CEO, longtime Trump associate-turned anti-Trump informer David Pecker, appear to place the president in serious legal jeopardy. They coincide with growing talk of impeachment proceedings when the new Democratic-controlled House of Representatives convenes next month, and suggestions that Trump could be criminally indicted.Cohen had pleaded guilty to nine counts of campaign finance violations, tax evasion, lying to Congress and lying to banks. The lying to Congress charge was brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with Cohen’s cover-up of business negotiations between the Trump Organization and Russian officials over a Moscow hotel project, which extended well into the 2016 campaign and involved then-presumptive Republican nominee Trump and Trump family members.The other charges were brought by the US Attorney in Manhattan. The most damaging for Trump was Cohen’s admission that he paid $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and arranged for a $150,000 payoff to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to prevent the two from going public on the eve of the election with their claims of sexual affairs with Trump. In legal filings in connection with Cohen’s plea deal, prosecutors asserted, based on Cohen’s testimony, that Cohen had acted “in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump for the purpose of influencing the election. Since the payoffs exceeded legal campaign limits and had not been reported to federal election authorities, they constituted a breech of campaign finance laws, a felony, they argued. And they directly charged Trump with complicity in the legal violations. AMI and Pecker, in return for an agreement by prosecutors not to criminally prosecute them for any campaign finance violations, admitted to the same crime in relation to the payoff of McDougal. They acknowledged that they bought the rights to her story for $150,000 in order to suppress it, that they did so to influence the outcome of the election, and that they acted under the direction of Trump.

Rudy Giuliani says Trump’s legal team wants Mueller to ‘wrap the damn thing up’ — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump’s attorneys, unloaded on special counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI and Trump’s one-time fixer Michael Cohen in a phone conversation with Yahoo News on Wednesday.Giuliani said the Trump legal team is focused on encouraging Mueller to end his investigation into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russian intervention efforts in the 2016 election. He further suggested that Mueller lacks the authority to prosecute Trump.“Our strategy is … to do everything we can to try to convince Mueller to wrap the damn thing up, and if he’s got anything, show us,” Giuliani said. “If he doesn’t have anything, you know, write your report, tell us what you have, and we’ll deal with it. He can’t prosecute him [Trump]. All he can do is write a report about him, so write the goddamned thing and get it over with now.” Giuliani’s unprompted call to Yahoo News came hours after President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for what a judge described as a “smorgasbord” of federal crimes. Cohen’s offenses included charges related to lying to Congress about a tower Trump sought to build in Moscow, tax evasion, making false statements to a bank and campaign violations stemming from payments to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. Tapes Cohen made of his conversations with Trump and other associates were seized in FBI raids on his home and office in April. Giuliani also blasted Cohen, who spent more than a decade working for Trump as his personal attorney and as an executive at his real estate company. “Cohen is a completely dishonorable person. … I’ve never heard of a lawyer that tape-recorded their client without the client’s permission, and I’ve known some pretty scummy lawyers,” Giuliani said. “You don’t exist very long in the legal profession if you go around taping your client.”

Alleged Russian Honeypot Spy Changes Plea To Guilty - Accused Russian spy Maria Butina wants to change her plea to guilty according to a Monday filing with a DC Court.  Butina, who was arrested in July and remains in custody, is accused of failing to register as a foreign lobbyist undre the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and working with South Dakota Republican Paul Erickson as a Kremlin spy.  Erickson, who has strong ties to both the National Rifle Association and the Russian gun rights community, allegedly attempted to develop a back-channel between the NRA and the Russian government. In May, 2016, Erickson sent an email to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn and Jeff Sessions with the title "Kremlin connection," seeking a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at an annual NRA convention.  Butina, meanwhile, allegedly tried to use Erickson to introduce her to influential political figures in order to arrange a meeting between Trump and her boss, Russian central banker Alexander Torshin. The Trump campaign declined the invitation, however Torshin and Butina did have a brief interaction with Donald Trump Jr. at a dinner.  Butina is accused of trying to cultivate “back-channel” relationships with the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidates and develop close ties to the NRA to provide Russian officials “with the best access to and influence over” the party. Butina allegedly was assisted by Erickson, who helped introduce her to influential political figures and who sought to organize a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Alexander Torshin, Butina’s colleague and a Russian central banker, at a May 2016 NRA convention. -Washington Post

Total Setup- FBI Told Michael Flynn To Ditch Lawyer During Interview With Strzok - Andrew McCabe - the FBI's former Deputy Director, advised then-national security adviser Michael Flynn that he wouldn't need a lawyer present during a January 24, 2017 White House interview with two FBI agents, according to the Washington Examiner, citing a sentencing memo filed Tuesday by Flynn's attorneys. During a phone call with Flynn, McCabe suggested that if anyone else was in the meeting, the FBI would have to escalate things to involve the Justice Department.   McCabe, by his own account, urged Flynn to talk to the agents alone, without a lawyer present. "I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between [Flynn] and the agents only," McCabe wrote. "I further stated that if LTG Flynn wished to include anyone else in the meeting, like the White House counsel for instance, that I would need to involve the Department of Justice. [Flynn] stated that this would not be necessary and agreed to meet with the agents without any additional participants." -Washington ExaminerOne of the agents conducting the interview was disgraced counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, whose text messages to his FBI mistress revealed that he harbored extreme animus towards President Trump - and ostensibly those in his orbit, which would include Flynn.  According to the so-called "302 report" - a document FBI agents use to summarize interviews, the two agents were in Flynn's office within two hours of the phone call with McCabe, and said he was "relaxed and jocular," offering the agents "a little tour" of his section of the White House. "The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview," reads Flynn's memo.  Also contained within the 302 report is an admission that McCabe and other FBI officials "decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport."

Mueller's Investigation Is Missing One Thing- A Crime -  A baby born when Robert Mueller started his investigation would be talking by now. But would she have anything to say? We last looked at what Mueller had publicly—and what he didn’t have—some 10 months ago, and I remained skeptical that the Trump campaign had in any way colluded with Russia. It’s worth another look now, but first let’s give away the ending (spoiler alert!): there is still no real evidence of, well, much of anything significant about Russiagate. One thing that is clear is that the investigation seems to be ending. Mueller’s office has reportedly even told various defense lawyers that it is “tying up loose ends.” The moment to wrap things up is politically right as well: the Democrats will soon take control of the House; time to hand this all off to them. Ten months ago the big news was Paul Manafort flipped; that seems to have turned out to be mostly a bust, as we know now he lied like a rug to the Feds and cooperated with the Trump defense team as some sort of mole inside Mueller’s investigation (a heavily-redacted memo about Manafort’s lies, released by Mueller on Friday, adds no significant new details to the Russiagate narrative.) George Papadopoulos has already been in and out of jail—all of two weeks— for his sideshow role. Michael Avenatti is now a woman beater who is just figuring out he’s washed up. Stormy Daniels owes Trump over $300,000 in fees after losing to him in court. There still is no pee tape. And if you don’t recall how unimportant Carter Page and Richard Gates turned out to be (or even who they are), well, there is your assessment of all the hysterical commentary that accompanied them a few headlines ago. The big reveal of the Michael Flynn sentencing memo on Tuesday was that he will likely do no prison time. Everything of substance in the memo was redacted, so there is little insight available. If you insist on speculation, try this: it’s hard to believe that something really big and bad happened such that Flynn knew about it but still wasn’t worth punishing for it, and now, a year after he started cooperating with the government, still nobody has heard anything about whatever the big deal is. So chances are the redactions focus on foreign lobbying in the U.S.

A look at where the investigations related to Trump stand - Trump is facing criminal investigations in Washington and New York. Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia and whether the president obstructed the investigation. Trump also plays a central role in a separate case in New York, where prosecutors have implicated him in a crime. They say Trump directed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to make illegal hush money payments to two women as a way to quash potential sex scandals during the campaign.Shaken and facing a prison term, Cohen said Friday that Trump directed him to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign because he was concerned their stories of alleged affairs with him “would affect the election.” He says Trump knew the payments were wrong.Cohen — who for more than a decade was a key power player in the Trump Organization and a fixture in Trump’s political life — said he “gave loyalty to someone who, truthfully, does not deserve loyalty.” Cohen spoke in an interview with ABC that aired Friday on “Good Morning America.” There is no smoking gun when it comes to the question of Russia collusion. But the evidence so far shows a broad range of Trump associates had Russia-related contacts during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition period, and that several lied about the communication. There is also evidence that some people in Trump’s orbit were discussing a possible email dump from WikiLeaks before it occurred. American intelligence agencies and Mueller have said Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the campaign that was damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential effort. WHAT ABOUT OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE? That is another unresolved question that Mueller is pursuing. Investigators have examined key episodes such as Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey and his fury over the recusal from the investigation of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump has repeatedly slammed the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” and insisted there was “NO COLLUSION” with Russia. He also says his now-former lawyer, Cohen, lied to get a lighter sentence in New York. In a Fox News interview Thursday, he also denied directing Cohen to break the law.

Ivanka Trump was involved in negotiations between inaugural committee, Trump hotel- report - Ivanka Trump was involved in negotiations between the Trump Organization and President Trump's inaugural committee over the price of venue rentals at the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., according to a new report.Ivanka Trump, the president's eldest daughter and now a senior adviser in the White House, was serving as a senior executive within the Trump Organization when the company negotiated the price of the venue rentals, ProPublica and WNYC reported Friday.Citing emails and receipts they had obtained, the outlets reported that Ivanka Trump was directly involved in negotiating contracts for the accommodations roughly a month before Inauguration Day. The 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals and event space at the hotel, according to the report.Inaugural planners were reportedly concerned that the Trump Organization was overcharging the committee, with one sending an email flagging potential concerns about what would happen “when this is audited.”ProPublica noted that if the Trump Organization through its D.C. hotel charged the inaugural committee more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s ethics lawyer, played down Ivanka Trump's role in the negotiations. “When contacted by someone working on the inauguration, Ms. Trump passed the inquiry on to a hotel official and said only that any resulting discussions should be at a ‘fair market rate,’” Mirijanian told ProPublica. “Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.” ProPublica reported that Ivanka Trump connected Richard Gates, the then-deputy to the chairman of the inaugural committee, with the hotel’s managing director, Mickael Damelincourt. Damelincourt responded by saying the rate for use of the president ballroom and meeting rooms was $175,000 per day and offered to charge the inaugural committee that amount – $700,000 for four days.

Google CEO Exposes Shocking Full Extent Of Russian Meddling In 2016 -- Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the “full extent” of so-called Russian meddling activity that took place on the platform during all of 2016 was $4,700 spent on some digital advertisements.

• "Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian actors in the election two years ago?" Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the search engine's chief executive during Tuesday's hearing.
• ​"We have - we undertook a very thorough investigation, and, in 2016, we now know that there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising," Pichai responded.
• "A total of $4,700?" Nadler asked to confirm.
• "That's right," the Google executive replied.

Whenever Russiagate peddlers are confronted w/ the actual facts, it doesn't go so well. Here's @RepJerryNadler asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai about "the full extent" of Russian meddling activity on its platforms in 2016. The answer: Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on ads. pic.twitter.com/MiZaq8HBvS  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 11, 2018 Google employees and executives contributed $1.6 million to 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Federal judge orders additional discovery plan in Hilary Clinton email lawsuit - US District Judge Royce Lamberth on Thursday ordered a reexamination of the Hilary Clinton private email lawsuit. In his 10-page opinion, he ordered a discovery plan focused on three issues, “whether Clinton used a private email to evade [the Freedom of Information Act], whether [the State Department’s] attempts to settle the case despite knowing the inadequacy of its initial search constituted bad faith, and whether [the State Department’s] subsequent searches for responsive records have been adequate.” He also called the previous Secretary of State’s use of a private email server “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” In 2014, Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group filed a lawsuit related to Clinton’s Benghazi talking points sent to previous UN Ambassador Susan Rice. The belief was that the separate email server was used to thwart requests from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requiring disclosure of certain government information upon request. During the investigation, the State Department attempted to settle the case despite the existence of email traffic that remained unsearched. “At best, State’s attempt to pass-off its deficient search as legally adequate during settlement negotiations was negligence born out of incompetence. At worst, career employees in the State and Justice Departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.” Lamberth ordered the parties to meet to develop a discovery plan and schedule within 10 days to look further into whether the federal government acted in good faith during the Clinton investigation.

Three Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers To Testify About Tax Fraud, Pay-For-Play - Following allegations of sloppy accounting, potential tax fraud and pay-to-play, the Clinton Foundation will be under a Congressional microscope this week after three whistleblowers have come forward and agreed to testify - one of whom secretly submitted 6,000 pages of documents to the IRS and FBI in August of 2017, and all three of whom have submitted various documents to Congressional investigators.  Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told Fox News's Martha MacCallum on Monday night that there are three whistleblowers who have spent the past two years investigating the Clinton Foundation, and have "explosive" allegations which they will share during Thursday testimony on Capitol Hill.

• MACCALLUM: OK. With regard to the investigation, which doesn’t get a lot of attention, into the Clinton foundation, the DOJ designated John Huber to look into this. They have 6,000 pages of evidence that they’ve gone through. The foundation raised $2.5 billion, and they’re looking into potential improprieties.
  What’s next on this investigation?
• MEADOWS: Well, I think for the American people, they want to bring some closure, not just a few sound bites, here or there, so we’re going to be having a hearing this week, not only covering over some of those 6,000 pages that you’re talking about, but hearing directly from three whistleblowers that have actually spent the majority of the last two years investigating this. Some of the allegations they make are quite explosive, Martha. And as – we just look at the contributions. Now everybody’s focused on the contributions for the Clinton Foundation and what has happened just in the last year. But if you look at it, it had a very strong rise, the minute she was selected as secretary of state. It dipped down when she was no longer there. And then rose again, when she decided to run for president. So there’s all kinds of allegations of pay-to-play and that kind of thing.

Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Testify- It Operated As An Unregistered Foreign Agent - The Clinton Foundation operated as a foreign agent ‘early in its life’ and ‘throughout it’s existence’ and did not operate as a 501c3 charitable foundation as required, and is not entitled to its status as a nonprofit, alleged two highly qualified forensic investigators, accompanied by three other investigators, said in explosive testimony Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. John Moynihan and Lawerence W. Doyle, both graduates of the Catholic Jesuit College of the Holy Cross and former expert forensic government investigators, gave their shocking testimony before congress based on a nearly two year investigation into the foundation’s work both nationally and internationally. They were assisted by three other highly trained experts in taxation law and financial forensic investigations. The forensic investigators stressed that they obtained all the documentation on the foundation legally and through Freedom of Information Request Acts from the IRS and other agencies. Former Utah U.S. Attorney General John Huber, who resigned when he was appointed by former Department of Justice Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the Clinton Foundation and the issues surrounding the approval to sell 20 percent of U.S. Uranium assets to Russia, declined to attend the hearing. Chairman Mark Meadows, R-NC, who oversaw the hearing stated that it was disappointment that Huber declined, leaving Congress in the dark regarding the DOJ’s investigation. Investigations into the Clinton Foundation have always been plagued by politics but Moynihan wanted to make clear in his opening statement that this investigation was one of many his firm has conducted on nonprofits and had nothing to do with politics. Doyle and Moynihan have amassed 6,000 documents in their nearly two-year investigation through their private firm MDA Analytics LLC. The documents were turned over more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill.

Jeffrey Epstein case exposes how US justice works for the rich -- The crimes and prosecution of billionaire money manager Jeffrey Epstein have received a great deal of attention in the past weeks from the news media. Most reports have centered upon the role of Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, who, in his previous role as the top federal prosecutor in Miami at the time of Epstein’s sentencing, had to sign off on the sweetheart deal he received. Acosta claims the 13-month sentence Epstein received for two charges of soliciting prostitution was the harshest sentence that could be imposed, but reports from the Miami Herald and other sources have exposed this as a lie. Throughout the early 2000s. and probably earlier, Epstein sexually abused scores, perhaps hundreds of young girls, most of them between the ages of 13 and 16. He is also alleged to have engaged in human trafficking on a massive scale, pimping out his harem of desperate youth to his circle of financiers, politicians, and lawyers.  Throughout the investigation into his crimes, his prosecution, sentencing and jail term, and right up to the present day, Epstein has been aided by a pliant judiciary and multiple prosecutors who, because of his great wealth, treated him as though he were their client, rather than a serial sex offender. They helped Epstein and his legal team minimize public scrutiny of his case, worked diligently to substitute more serious charges with lesser ones, and ultimately violated federal law by failing to notify any of Epstein’s victims of the plea agreement reached.  The investigation and prosecution of Epstein have illustrated a fundamental fact of modern life: there are two justice systems, one for the rich, and one for everybody else.

Report- FBI opens criminal investigation into net neutrality comment fraud - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the use of stolen identities in public comments on the government's repeal of net neutrality rules, BuzzFeed News reported Saturday. The investigation focuses on "whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people's identities were posted to the FCC's website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules," the report said. "Two organizations told BuzzFeed News, each on condition that they not be named, that the FBI delivered subpoenas to them related to the comments," BuzzFeed wrote. The FBI subpoenas came a few days after similar subpoenas sent by NY AG Barbara Underwood in mid-October. Underwood "subpoenaed more than a dozen telecommunications trade groups, lobbying contractors, and Washington advocacy organizations," The New York Times reported in October. The firms subpoenaed by New York also reportedly included contractors and subcontractors who participated in lobbying efforts to sway the net neutrality decision. The New York attorney general's office estimates that up to 9.5 million comments on the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality repeal were submitted using stolen identities. But the NY AG office said in November 2017 that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's office had refused to provide information needed for the investigation. At the time, the FCC told New York state officials, "you cite no authority for your jurisdiction as a state official to investigate a federal agency's rulemaking process or to compel that agency to produce documents." Presumably, the FBI would have an easier time getting documents from the FCC.

Google+ to shut down early after data from 52 million users exposed - Google has pushed forward the shutdown of its failed Google+ social network following the discovery of a major data breach that exposed personal data of 52.2 million users. Details of the latest breach come just two months after Google announced that a bug put the data of 500,000 Google+ users at risk.  The bug prompted Google to announce that Google+ would officially shut down in August 2019, however this has now been expedited to April. The company said there was no evidence of user data being misused in either instance.  Google's vice president of product management David Thacker explained in a blog post how the latest bug was discovered after testing a software update introduced in November.  "[We] fixed it within a week of it being introduced," the post stated. "No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way." Despite this claim, security experts have previously warned that the pervasiveness of Google means users should be weary of what data they share with the technology giant and how.

The CEO of privacy search engine DuckDuckGo says Google uses location data that puts entire ZIP codes in politically biased ‘filter bubbles’ - On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was interrogated by the House Judiciary Committee over a number of topics including the company's data collection and potential bias in the search results it serves up to users.Republican House members — including Rep. Lamar Smith (TX) — didn't hold back on the topic of conservative bias."It will require a herculean effort by the chief executive and senior management to change the political bias now programmed into the company's culture," Smith said, citing "irrefutable" studies on the subject. "Google could well elect the next president with dire implications to our democracy."Pichai responded: "With respect… we don't agree with the methodology [of the studies]." One person watching closely was Gabriel Weinberg, co-founder and CEO DuckDuckGo — a privacy-focused search engine company that competes with Google Search and last week, revealed a study of its own (not referenced by Rep. Smith).The study, among other things, found that participants saw vast differences in search results when searching for the same keywords (like "gun control" or "immigration") from different locations across the country. The study controlled for other potential factors of personalization by having its participants log out of their Google accounts and search from an incognito state."What [our study] does reveal, or at least suggests, is that Google's collection and use of personal data, including location, which is then used to filter specific search results, is having an effect akin to the effects of a political bias," Weinberg told Business Insider on Tuesday. "That is an important nuance often missed in these discussions. " Essentially, Weinberg is saying that even if Google does not create its products with the intent of having a political bias, the fact that location information is used to filter results creates its own form of bias.

'If You Don't Want Negative Search Results, Don't Do Negative Things,' Ted Lieu Tells GOP During Google Hearing -- "If you want positive search results, do positive things. If you don't want negative search results, don't do negative things."   That's what Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) told his Republican colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday during a hearing that featured testimony from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and amid ongoing, yet unfounded, complaints by right-wing lawmakers and commentators that the search giant is biased against them.To make his point, Lieu used the example of Google news searches he did on two House Republicans named Steve: one was Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and the other was Steve King of Iowa.After reading aloud headlines from each set of results—the Scalise articles were generally positive, while the King results noted his record of racists remarks and retweets—and asking Pichai to confirm that the algorithms of the search engine don't order results based on ideological leanings, the congressman offered some advice."To some of my colleagues across the aisle, if you're getting bad press articles and bad search results," Lieu said, "don't blame Google or Facebook or Twitter, consider blaming yourself."  Watch:

Democrats downplay Google censorship at congressional hearing --Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied allegations that the company was engaged in political censorship Monday at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.Throughout the hearing, Republicans repeatedly claimed that the company was censoring search results to the detriment of right-wing viewpoints, while Democrats either denied the company’s censorship or justified it.The fundamental reality—completely ignored at the hearing—is that the real targets of censorship by Silicon Valley, working with the US intelligence agencies and with the consent of both political parties, are left-wing, anti-war and socialist political organizations.In April 2017, Google announced that it would implement changes to its search algorithm to promote “authoritative” news sources to the detriment of what it called “alternative” viewpoints. This action led to a massive decline in search rankings and traffic to left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites.The campaign to implement this censorship regime was spearheaded by the Democratic Party, which, based on claims of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, sought to pressure the technology giants to block and suppress left-wing opposition, which it branded as “extremist viewpoints.” The narrative of both parties is strikingly at odds with reality. Compared to April 2017, the far-right Breitbart.com had its search traffic increase by 25 percent. By contrast, search results for the World Socialist Web Site are down by 76 percent over the same period, and other left-wing sites remain down by 50 percent or more.

Google CEO Had To Explain To Congress Why Googling 'Idiot' Shows Trump - Search for the term “idiot” on Google and several photographs of President Donald Trump will appear high in the image results.On Tuesday, the search engine giant’s CEO Sundar Pichai had the task of explaining to members of Congress why that happens during a hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee.Pichai refuted Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.) tongue-in-cheek suggestion that it was down to “a little man sitting behind the curtain” who was skewing the results against conservatives — saying the company doesn’t “manually intervene” in searches.“We provide search today for any time you type in a keyword. We, as Google, have gone out and crawled and stored copies of billions of their pages in our index, and we take the keyword and match it against the pages and rank them based on over 200 signals,” Pichai explained. “Things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it. And based on that, you know, at any given time, we try to find the best results for that query,” he added, during the hearing that also threw up several other self-owns for lawmakers.

Facebook’s Sexual Solicitation Policy Is a Honeypot for Trolls — Facebook just quietly adopted a policy that could push thousands of innocent people off of the platform. The new “sexual solicitation” rules forbid pornography and other explicit sexual content (which was already functionally banned under a different statute), but they don’t stop there: they also ban “implicit sexual solicitation”, including the use of sexual slang, the solicitation of nude images, discussion of “sexual partner preference,” and even expressing interest in sex. That’s not an exaggeration: the new policy bars “vague suggestive statements, such as ‘looking for a good time tonight.’” It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that asking “Netflix and chill?” could run afoul of this policy.The new rules come with a baffling justification, seemingly blurring the line between sexual exploitation and plain old doing it:[P]eople use Facebook to discuss and draw attention to sexual violence and exploitation. We recognize the importance of and want to allow for this discussion. We draw the line, however, when content facilitates, encourages or coordinates sexual encounters between adults. In other words, discussion of sexual exploitation is allowed, but discussion of consensual, adult sex is taboo. That’s a classic censorship model: speech about sexuality being permitted only when sex is presented as dangerous and shameful. It’s especially concerning since healthy, non-obscene discussion about sex—even about enjoying or wanting to have sex—has been a component of online communities for as long as the Internet has existed, and has for almost as long been the target of governmental censorship efforts.

Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret - NYT - The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night. Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her. An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot. The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office for a minor procedure. It followed her hiking with her dog and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing. “It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Ms. Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data. Like many consumers, Ms. Magrin knew that apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive.

Facial recognition has to be regulated to protect the public, says AI report - Artificial intelligence has made major strides in the past few years, but those rapid advances are now raising some big ethical conundrums. Chief among them is the way machine learning can identify people’s faces in photos and video footage with great accuracy. This might let you unlock your phone with a smile, but it also means that governments and big corporations have been given a powerful new surveillance tool. A new report from the AI Now Institute (large PDF), an influential research institute  based in New York, has just identified facial recognition as a key challenge for society and policymakers. The speed at which facial recognition has grown comes down to the rapid development of a type of machine learning known as deep learning. Deep learning uses large tangles of computations—very roughly analogous to the wiring in a biological brain—to recognize patterns in data. It is now able to carry out pattern recognition with jaw-dropping accuracy.. Companies have rushed to adopt such tools. The report calls for stronger consumer protections against misleading claims regarding AI; urges companies to waive trade-secret claims when the accountability of AI systems is at stake (when algorithms are being used to make critical decisions, for example); and asks that they govern themselves more responsibly when it comes to the use of AI.And the document suggests that the public should be warned when facial-recognition systems are being used to track them, and that they should have the right to reject the use of such technology. Implementing such recommendations could prove challenging, however: the toothpaste is already out of the tube. Facial recognition is being adopted and deployed incredibly quickly. It’s used to unlock Apple’s latest iPhones and enable payments, while Facebook scans millions of photos every day to identify specific users. And just this week, Delta Airlines announced a new face-scanning check-in system at Atlanta’s airport. The US Secret Service is also developing a facial-recognition security system for the White House, according to a document highlighted by UCLA. “The role of AI in widespread surveillance has expanded immensely in the U.S., China, and many other countries worldwide,” the report says.

Trump and Democrats signal support for antitrust action on tech companies -  WaPo - House Democrats and President Trump are signaling that antitrust action is on the table as they seek to limit the expanding influence of large technology companies. The incoming Democratic majority indicated support for strong enforcement of antitrust law in a pair of hearings this week, just weeks after Trump said his administration is “looking at” Facebook, Google and Amazon for antitrust violations. Lawmakers are upping the pressure as the Federal Trade Commission holds a series of hearings to determine whether competition and consumer protection laws need to be modernized to address the unique power now wielded by the tech industry. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Antitrust subcommittee, said during this week’s Google hearing that he’s ready to work with the FTC to develop legislation cracking down on large technology companies that could use their massive platforms to discriminate against their business rivals. At a time when the European Union has been far more aggressive in its antitrust action against American technology companies than U.S. regulators, Cicilline’s line of questioning indicated he wants the United States to take on more of these cases. Lawmakers can’t force the FTC to bring action against companies, but they could also write legislation to help adapt antitrust law to the modern economy, as some say the 104-year-old trade commission isn’t equipped to tackle today's technology competition issues. They might have an unlikely ally in Trump, who has had a contentious relationship with the technology titans since his presidential campaign. On Twitter, the president has said Google is “controlling what we can & cannot see.” He's had very public battles with Amazon and Bezos over the years, and alleged  on Twitter that Bezos bought The Post to protect the company from antitrust cases.

Manafort, Cohen cases highlight banks' vulnerability to fraud - The headline-grabbing prosecutions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen have a link that has drawn little scrutiny: Both men lied repeatedly and brazenly to banks in connection with loan applications. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chair, made misrepresentations to Citizens Financial Group about a Manhattan condo that was being used as an Airbnb rental, according to testimony at his trial in August. He submitted false information about his income to Banc of California, a community bank in Santa Ana. And he lied to the Federal Savings Bank in Chicago about who racked up more than $200,000 in credit card charges for New York Yankees season tickets. Cohen, who was once Trump’s personal lawyer, admitted to making false statements about both his net worth and his monthly expenses in connection with an application for a home equity line of credit. During discussions with a second bank about restructuring millions of dollars of debt, he falsely claimed to have a negative net worth, according to prosecutors. Cohen was not charged criminally in the latter case. In all of these instances, the lies were not initially detected. Only after authorities began looking for evidence of other potential crimes did the two men face the consequences of deceiving financial institutions. The Manafort and Cohen cases raise questions about the effectiveness of the controls that banks use to detect fraudulent loan applications, particularly when the perpetrators are wealthy and well connected. Ellen Podgor, a professor at Stetson University’s law school who studies white-collar crime, said it is unsurprising that various financial misdeeds of Cohen and Manafort took years to uncover. “I mean, look at how long it took with Bernie Madoff,” she said. Manafort and Cohen had a few factors working in their favor. Importantly, both men had enormous wealth, even if they were also hiding large liabilities in some situations. Banks often cater to clients who make large deposits, which can lead to corners being cut on loan approvals. Pat McElroy, a Fort Worth, Texas, consultant to financial institutions, said it is hard for banks to detect prospective borrowers who have submitted false information, particularly if applicants create a phony paper trail. “They can tell you anything they want to tell you on loan applications, and it may or may not be caught,” he said.

Wall Street’s Corruption Runs Deeper Than You Can Fathom - Of the myriad policy decisions that have brought us to our current precipice, from the signing of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the invasion of Iraq and the gerrymandering of House districts across the country, few have proven as consequential as the demise of Glass-Steagall. Signed into law as the U.S.A. Banking Act of 1933, the legislation had been crucial to safeguarding the financial industry in the wake of the Great Depression. But with its repeal in 1999, the barriers separating commercial and investment banking collapsed, creating the preconditions for an economic crisis from whose shadow we have yet to emerge.Carmen Segarra might have predicted as much. As an employee at the Federal Reserve in 2011, three years after the dissolution of Lehman Brothers, she witnessed the results of this deregulation firsthand. In her new book, “Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street,” she chronicles the recklessness of institutions like Goldman Sachs and the stunning lengths the United States government went to to accommodate them, even as they authored one of the worst crashes in our nation’s history.“They didn’t want to hear what I had to say,” she tells Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.” “And so I think what we have in terms of this story is really not just a failure of the banks and the regulators, but also a failure of our prosecutors. I mean, a lot of the statutes that could be used—criminal statutes, even, that could be used to hold these executives accountable are not being used, and they have not expired; we could have prosecutors holding these people accountable.” Segarra also explains why she decided to blow the whistle on the Fed, and what she ultimately hopes to accomplish by telling her story. “I don’t like to let the bad guys win,” she says. “I’d rather go down swinging. So for me, I saw it as an opportunity to do my civic duty and rebuild my life. … I was very lucky to be blessed by so many people who I shared the story to, especially lawyers who were so concerned about what I was reporting, who thought that the Federal Reserve was above this, who thought that the government would not fail us after the financial crisis, and who were livid.”

House panel slams Equifax for breach but offers no legislative fix - Following a long investigation, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee concluded Monday that last year’s massive data breach at Equifax was fully preventable. But they did not recommend the passage of new legislation aimed at averting future cybersecurity fiascoes. The 96-page report drew criticism from both Equifax, which said the congressional panel did not give the company enough time to respond to highly technical findings, and Democrats on the committee, who complained that their recommendations were ignored. Still, the report will likely be studied by cybersecurity professionals at U.S. banks, which, like Equifax, possess mountains of sensitive personal information and often rely on layers of technology built on top of outdated computer systems. A monitor displays Equifax signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Bloomberg News Some 148 million consumers, or 56% of all U.S. adults, were affected by the Equifax breach. The report by Republican congressional staffers blamed Equifax for failing to implement a security program adequate enough to protect the vast amount of personal data the company maintains. It also pointed to the Atlanta firm’s aggressive growth strategy in the years before the breach, which brought increasing complexity to its information technology systems. Moreover, the report found a lack of accountability and no clear lines of authority in Equifax’s IT management structure. Investigators found that the credit reporting firm allowed more than 300 security certificates to expire, including 79 that related to business critical domains. “Equifax failed to fully appreciate and mitigate its cybersecurity risks,” the report stated. “Had the company taken action to address its observable security issues prior to this cyberattack, the data breach could have been prevented.”  In a separate report released Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee called for the passage of new data breach legislation. Their proposals include a law that would set uniform standards regarding the notification of consumers about breaches. The House Democrats also want to strengthen the Federal Trade Commission’s authority in situations where data security requirements are violated.

No One Wants to Serve on House Financial Services? - Adam Levitin, Credit Slips - The Washington Post reports today that many of the incoming Democratic freshman representatives do not want to serve on the House Financial Services Committee, traditionally a plum assignment because it facilitates representatives' ability to fund-raise for their reelection.  I'm proud to say that the member-elect who is proudly bucking the trend is our former co-blogger, Katherine Porter, and I can confidently say that her interest in the committee has nothing to do with fund-raising and everything to do with its jurisdiction.   There are a lot of good reasons an incoming member might not want to serve on HFS--the member might have expertise or interest that more closely tracks the jurisdiction of another committee.  But I worry that the lack of interest also reflects a really problematic trend on the left. While many progressive politicians like to decry abuses in the financial services industry, they often have little to no understanding of the industry and aren't interested in gaining one.  The industry and its regulation are complex.  Its often not as intuitively understandable as, say, issues of criminal justice reform.  But its consequences are at least as far-reaching, both because all Americans depend on financial services and because of the influence of financial services on the whole political process.  Any politician who is concerned about social inequality ought to be deeply engaged with financial regulation.  It's not the low-hanging fruit, perhaps, but it's where the future of the middle class will be decided. 

Fed won't lift Wells' growth cap until deficiencies are fixed: Powell — The Federal Reserve will not lift the asset cap imposed on Wells Fargo until the bank addresses deficiencies in board oversight and its risk management program, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a letter to Congress last month. “What happened at Wells Fargo was outrageous. The underlying problem at the firm was a strategy that prioritized growth without ensuring that risks were managed, and as a result the firm harmed many of its customers,” Powell said in the letter dated Nov. 28 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. In February, the Fed imposed the cap on Wells Fargo’s growth to address risk management deficiencies that came to light as a result of the bank's phony-accounts scandal. The Fed issued the order right before the departure of former Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell “We do not intend to lift the asset cap until remedies to these issues have been adopted and implemented to our satisfaction,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said of growth restrictions imposed on Wells Fargo earlier this year. Bloomberg News “We do not intend to lift the asset cap until remedies to these issues have been adopted and implemented to our satisfaction,” Powell wrote in the letter to Warren. The letter, which was first reported by Reuters on Monday, came after Warren asked the Fed in October not to remove the asset growth restriction until Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan is replaced. Powell, in his letter to Warren, said the decision on whether Wells Fargo's asset growth cap will be lifted will be determined by a Fed board vote. “The Federal Reserve is actively engaged in reviewing Wells Fargo’s progress in meeting the requirements of the Order and in ensuring that the firm comprehensively addresses the deficiencies identified in the Order,” Powell said.

Would raising capital requirements for a rainy day hasten one? — One Federal Reserve governor’s push to have the central bank utilize a capital buffer for large banks to counteract potential losses is sparking doubts about whether the Fed could pull off the maneuver without spooking markets. In a speech last week, Gov. Lael Brainard said there could be “several potential advantages” to having the Fed raise the so-called countercyclical capital buffer, a Basel III-mandated tool to raise capital in boom times to offset losses from a market downturn. Her comments ran counter to more dismissive comments by other Fed officials, who have argued that conditions in the market did not justify raising the buffer. That Brainard is raising the issue at all is giving some stakeholders cause to think that the Fed board could consider using the tool sooner or later. Yet her speech has also shined a light on the potential risks of using such a tool, particularly a concern that the Fed’s deploying the buffer could convey public concerns about risk in the system, which could trigger the type of downturn the central bank is trying to avoid. “Good supervision should not be creating market events,” In her speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Brainard argued that employing the buffer — known as the CCyB — is warranted by the observable risks in the system, citing potential sources of instability in the corporate bond market and in leveraged lending. The agency should compel banks to hold more capital now while the economy is humming, she said, rather than in a less favorable environment. “History suggests that we should not expect the market to provide incentives for banks to build the necessary buffers when times are good,” Brainard said. “One of the roles for independent regulatory bodies such as the Federal Reserve is to serve as a counterweight.” To be sure, Brainard may only be speaking for herself. A governor since 2014, she is the lone member of the board not to get appointed by President Trump, and has been known to offer dissenting views on the board’s regulatory proposals. But some observers said any board member raising the prospect of the Fed imposing the buffer on big banks is noteworthy. “Whether [Brainard] is speaking for herself or not, it’s inevitably going to cause attention around the countercyclical buffer, because when a Fed governor — irrespective of who it is — is talking concretely about triggering a rule that’s on the books, it inevitably causes attention,”

Waters nominated to chair House banking panel — Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has been officially nominated by the House Democratic Steering Committee to be the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Waters, the current ranking Democrat on the committee, said she will push consumer protection initiatives, support affordable housing, encourage financial innovation, promote diversity and hold the Trump administration accountable. “Appropriate oversight of the Trump Administration and the regulatory agencies under the Committee's jurisdiction will also be an important responsibility for the Committee,” Waters said in a press release late Monday. “Of particular importance is ensuring that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not dismantled by Trump’s appointees. This critical agency must be allowed to resume its work of protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive or abusive practices without interference from the Trump Administration.” Her comments came as Kathy Kraninger, who was a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, was confirmed as the permanent director of the CFPB. Waters’ nomination as chair of the House Financial Services Committee still needs to be approved by the full House Democratic caucus.

Two Democrats added to Senate Banking Committee in new term — Senate Democrats will add two new members to the Banking Committee in January as their caucus loses two current members who suffered election defeats. Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., will join the panel just as Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., who both lost re-election bids in November, are departing. Donnelly and Heitkamp were key Democratic negotiators on the regulatory relief bill known as S 2155 that President Trump signed into law in May, but lost their seats in states that Trump won easily in 2016. Sinema was elected in November to the seat now held by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. She has served on the House Financial Services Committee, where she supported S 2155. Sinema has had a history of supporting other industry-friendly bills, including a measure that would have eliminated the threshold for banks to be considered “systemically important financial institutions,” which was viewed as too controversial to pass the Senate. She has also supported structural changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to make it a bipartisan commission, which most Democrats oppose. Sinema’s assignment is likely a sigh of relief for the banking industry looking for Democratic supporters of regulatory relief. But she could find herself at odds with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who criticized Democratic supporters of S 2155. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the committee's ranking member, also opposed the bill. Smith was appointed by Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton to replace former Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat, after he resigned. Smith went on to win a special election in Minnesota to fill the remainder of Franken’s term ending in January 2021. She opposed S 2155. Senate Republicans are still in the process of assigning members to committees. Subscribe Now

Piling on: Democratic lawmakers join chorus of CECL critics -- A controversial accounting standard is facing strong resistance in the House Financial Services Committee that will likely intensify when Democrats gain control of the panel. At a Tuesday hearing of the committee’s Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee, the Current Expected Credit Losses standard, or CECL, was the target of sharp criticism by lawmakers from both parties, including prominent Democrats Brad Sherman and Gregory Meeks. The Financial Accounting Standards Board finalized CECL, which would require financial institutions to record a loan's projected lifetime credit loss on the day it is originated, in June 2016. The standard has faced a steady drumbeat of criticism ever since. Sherman, who has represented a district in Los Angeles County since 1997, claimed CECL would handicap small businesses seeking credit. “Every day there is a struggle for capital between Main Street and Wall Street, between those who get money from banks by issuing a bond and those who have to come beseeching you for a loan,” Sherman said. “We should not allow FASB to adopt a standard that biases ... against Main Street in favor of Wall Street.” Meeks, who represents a district in New York City, expressed concerns that the cost of converting to CECL would accelerate a decline in the number of community banks in communities he serves, leaving constituents with few palatable financial alternatives. “Banks are closing up in my district right now," Meeks said. "I don’t want my folks to have to go to payday lenders.” Since the Financial Accounting Standards Board is a private organization, Congress lacks the leverage it has over the bank regulators — a fact Sherman bemoaned. “We’ve delegated power to the SEC, which then delegates power to FASB,” Sherman said. “By comparison, the Federal Reserve is a populist organization. The Fed comes here to discuss its policies far more often than FASB.”

Bankers cry foul over Robinhood’s checking and savings accounts - Bankers have a message for Robinhood Financial about its new checking and savings account products — not so fast. Robinhood on Thursday announced its new banking products, each of which pay 3% interest. Consumers’ deposits would be invested in “the safest” assets like Treasurys and would have the backing of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., but not the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Menlo Park, Calif., company said. The fintech’s announcement raises numerous concerns that regulators should examine, said Chris Cole, senior regulatory counsel for the Independent Community Bankers of America. It could be seen as deceptive that Robinhood is using the terms banking, checking and savings, he said. “This is supposed to be a brokerage account, but they’re running around making it look like a banking account,” Cole said. It is especially concerning that Robinhood “does not sufficiently explain the difference between SIPC protection and FDIC insurance,” Cole said. The SIPC does not fully guarantee a depositor’s entire original investment plus interest in the event of the failure of a brokerage. Instead, the SIPC reimburses investors the value of their funds on the day of the insolvency. The ICBA has not yet contacted the SEC or other regulatory agencies with its concerns, Cole said. 

An Unwelcome About-Face on Payday Lending - In its seven-year history, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has done a lot of good. Among its most notable achievements: Last year, it issued the first federal rule to curb the predatory aspects of the small-sum, short-term credit known as payday lending and to encourage mainstream banks to offer better alternatives. The bureau, now under new leadership, wants to dismantle the rule before it can fully take effect. Democratic legislators, having gained control of the House of Representatives, should do what they can to resist.  The CFPB struck a reasonable balance between stopping the worst abuses and keeping emergency credit available. It gave lenders two options: Verify customers’ ability to pay, or allow them to return the money more gradually. The rule applied only to the most problematic loans — those with terms of less than 45 days. This was meant to nudge banks to enter the market with less expensive, longer-term loans. The rule began to have the desired effect long before August 2019, the deadline for the industry to comply. Earlier this year, for example, U.S. Bank started offering short-term, small-sum loans to its checking-account customers. The interest on a three-month installment loan of $400 could be as little as $48, compared with about $360 for a succession of payday loans. Payday lenders weren’t happy.  In April, two industry groups filed a lawsuitseeking to invalidate the rule as arbitrary and capricious – despite the fact that the CFPB had sought public comment, revised its initial proposal in light of that, and gave lenders nearly two years to comply. Nonetheless, the industry found an ally in acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney (succeeded this month by Kathy Kraninger, who worked under him at the Office of Management and Budget). Soon after his appointment in November 2017, the bureau announced that it would review the rule. And in October it said it would focus on the ability-to-pay requirements when it proposes changes early next year. This could undermine the whole effort: If the industry can keep making loans that people can’t pay back, then people will keep getting trapped into exorbitant fees that frequently leave them in deep financial distress.

‘I am very excited to be here’- Kraninger signals new tone atop CFPB - — Kathy Kraninger's first public remarks Tuesday as the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau struck a more moderate tone than that of her predecessor, acting Director Mick Mulvaney, who at times questioned the role of the agency he was chosen to lead.Kraninger, who had reported to Mulvaney at the Office of Management and Budget, said she planned to start a three-month listening tour with agency stakeholders, and will make a decision soon regarding attempts to change the agency's name."I am incredibly grateful to Mick Mulvaney, he was a fantastic boss for two years. I loved my time at OMB. But I can tell you that I am here to be the director of this bureau and I will be fully accountable for the decisions that I make going forward and they will be mine,” Kraninger said in a briefing with reporters one day after being sworn in to a five-year term. Kraninger, whose nomination was strongly opposed by congressional Democrats, said she is still in the early stages of meeting with senior staff at the agency, including both the political appointees put in place by Mulvaney and career staff.“Each division of the bureau has a lot of ongoing activities and I’ve told the staff that I will be spending the next three months engaged in a listening tour, getting out to the field. … That is essentially where we are here. I am very excited to be here. The staff is excited to have a full-time director,” Kraninger said. Her comments were more restrained than Mulvaney's first remarks following his November 2017 appointment. In a rebuke of the former director, Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, Mulvaney — a vocal critic of the CFPB — said at the time that the agency would be "dramatically different" with new leadership, and that the White House wanted him to "fix" the agency.

House Dems urge CFPB’s Kraninger to commit to military lending exams — House Democrats are calling on the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to commit to supervising firms for compliance with the Military Lending Act, months after the agency's then-acting leader had claimed the bureau lacked such supervisory authority. The 22 Democrats, led by likely incoming House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., sent a letter to newly sworn-in CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger in which they argued the agency's examination authority is clear. “We write to seek your written commitment that you will promptly ensure that the Consumer Bureau fulfills its explicit statutory purpose and mandates by resuming a consistent supervisory role over consumer protection laws, including the MLA, for the most robust and efficient protection of servicemembers and their families,” they wrote in the letter Friday. The letter was an early signal from Waters that she plans to hold the CFPB accountable for its mission of protecting consumers under Kraninger's leaderhip. “There is no question the Consumer Bureau has the authority and the responsibility to supervise its regulated entities for compliance with the MLA,” the letter adds. The letter comes less than a week into Kraninger’s five-year term as the permanent director of the CFPB. Former acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, who also serves as President Trump’s budget director, had indicated plans to halt supervising financial firms for compliance with the Military Lending Act, claiming that the Dodd-Frank Act did not give the CFPB statutory authority to conduct military lending exams. That decision received major pushback from military and veterans groups, as well as Democrats in the House and Senate. The House Democrats’ letter said a 47% increase in complaints filed by members of the military, veterans and their families necessitated the CFPB’s monitoring of Military Lending Act compliance. The Military Lending Act caps the annual interest rate for an extension of consumer credit to a service member or his or her dependents at 36%.

Mortgage lenders must step up to the plate when it comes to wire fraud - There's a lot to talk about these days when it comes to the world of mortgage origination: rate hikes, purchase market, consolidation, e-mortgage, margin compression. All of these are critical topics that affect us day in and day out. But, when it comes to the issues of the day, we seem to consistently forget to mention one: wire fraud.With millions (if not billions) in fraud losses reported, and more on the way, it's time for the entire industry to understand that this is not just a title agent's or closer's problem. It threatens all of us.Just a few statistics are all it should take to demonstrate that fraud is a universal threat. Plus, it's growing. In 2017 alone, the FBI received over 300,000 complaints (this is only what was actually reported) of fraud. Losses in the real estate sector alone totaled $56 million, with almost 10,000 victims, according to the FBI, and wire fraud is responsible for at least for $5 billion in losses to consumers since 2013. In 2017, $969 million was 'diverted or attempted to be diverted' from real estate purchase transactions and wired to 'criminally controlled' accounts. In fiscal year 2016, the FBI recorded $19 million in real estate transaction wire fraud. It's not that many are denying the threat that wire fraud presents. Rather, it seems to be seen as someone else's problem. Not enough mortgage-related businesses are taking real steps to protect themselves (and clients); be it in the form of protective technology or additional training. Unfortunately, we're still hearing things like "I'm sure banks and lenders have adequate safeguards" or "the title agents can handle it." None of this is true. And it's not only title companies — or consumers — who face this growing and evolving risk.  Wire fraud is evolving and growing more complex by the day. But most borrowers expect their investments to be safe once a bank or lending company gets involved. The assumption is that it's not all that easy to criminally divert a lender's money. And yet, it happens every day. How do you suppose the fraud victim views his or her lender once the money is gone without hope of recovery? Do you think he or she will share the story — and who the mortgage originator was? Do you think he or she will be back the next time a loan is needed?

OCC sees sharp drop in mortgages serviced by large banks — The amount of mortgages held by national banks has diminished by nearly half since the financial crisis, to $3.26 trillion in the third quarter, according to a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC’s quarterly metrics report, released Tuesday, showed continued improvements in credit quality of mortgage loans at banks. But it also noted that the report is based on $3.26 trillion in principal balances, representing 32% of all mortgages in the U.S. Ten years ago, that figure was $6.1 trillion in mortgage balances, representing 60% of all outstanding mortgages. The staggering decline of mortgages at traditional banks shows just how much the mortgage market has moved to nonbanks. Regulators have previously taken note of this shift amid concerns that banks could take greater risks to stay competitive. “The highly competitive environment with nonbanks, particularly in the residential mortgage market, results in banks seeking to improve operating efficiency and considering introducing new consumer products,” the OCC said in its semiannual risk report released earlier this month. Overall, however, national banks continue to underwrite healthy mortgages. The OCC’s third-quarter mortgage metrics report showed that 95.4% of mortgages at banks were current and performing, up from 94.8% a year earlier. New foreclosures fell 3.7% to 28,508 in the third quarter from the previous quarter and fell 16.8% from a year earlier. Mortgage modifications also declined quarter over quarter, by 21.3% to 25,701. About 69.2% of those mortgage modifications were to reduce the loan’s monthly payments.

FHFA would ban VantageScore from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac credit scores - Risk management VantageScore Solutions Transunion Equifax FICO Experian Print Reprint WASHINGTON—The Federal Housing Finance Agency has proposed barring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from using credit scores developed by VantageScore over concern about conflicts of interest with the joint venture of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. The proposal is a blow to nonbank lenders that argue greater competition with FICO scores would safely open up the mortgage market to borrowers with limited credit histories. In proposing a process to approve providers of alternative credit scores for use by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the FHFA would also prohibit credit score models from any company that is connected with a consumer data provider, according to the agency's notice of proposed rulemaking. The three major credit bureaus co-own VantageScore. In a request for input the agency put out last year, commenters expressed concern that the company's joint ownership by three nationwide credit reporting agencies would give them a competitive edge, the FHFA said. "Although the proposed prohibition could limit the number of possible credit score model developers that would be able to submit an application, it would ensure that any approved credit score model would not unfairly benefit the institution that developed the credit score model," the agency said in its proposal. The FHFA also emphasized that under this rule, even a company with a minority ownership interest would be banned from use by the government-sponsored enterprises. This would also bar the use of credit score models developed by both FICO and a credit reporting agency, such as the Beacon Score created by FICO and Equifax. The agency's argument lines up with that of banks, which generally are in favor of the agency continuing to use the FICO model, claiming that allowing the GSEs to use alternative credit score providers would open them up to riskier borrowers.

Black Knight Mortgage Monitor for October - Black Knight released their Mortgage Monitor report for October today. According to Black Knight, 3.64% of mortgages were delinquent in October, down from 4.44% in October 2017. Black Knight also reported that 0.52% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from 0.68% a year ago.  This gives a total of 4.16% delinquent or in foreclosure. Press Release: Black Knight: Total Tappable Equity Falls for First Time Since Housing Recovery Began; Softening Home Prices in the Most Equity-Rich Markets Driving Decline: This month, Black Knight looked at full Q3 2018 data to revisit the U.S. home equity landscape, finding that quarterly declines were seen in both total equity and tappable equity, the amount available for homeowners with mortgages to borrow against before hitting a maximum 80 percent combined loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. Ben Graboske, executive vice president of Black Knight’s Data & Analytics division, explained that the decline is being driven by home prices pulling back on a quarterly basis in some of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.  “tappable equity fell in 60 of the 100 largest markets, including 12 of the top 15. Three markets in California alone – San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles – accounted for 55 percent of the total net decline. Add Seattle into the mix, and you see that just four markets were behind two-thirds of the net reduction in tappable equity. All were areas where home price growth has far outpaced the national average in recent years, but in which prices fell in Q3 2018 – from as little as one percent in Los Angeles, to a 4.6 percent drop in San Jose. “Of course, there is still $9.8 trillion in total home equity in the market, some $5.9 trillion of which is tappable. That’s $571 billion more than in Q3 2017, and tappable equity remains near an all-time high.  Interestingly enough – although for-sale inventory is up on an annual basis for the first time in four years – an analysis of listings on mortgaged properties suggests that homeowners reluctant to put their current homes on the market due to ‘rate lock’ or ‘affordability lock’ may still be holding down available inventory by about six percent. By constraining the supply of available homes, this in turn may be countering what might otherwise be greater downward pressure on home prices.” Here is a graph from the Mortgage Monitor showing Black Knight's estimate of active listings (using Realtor.com).

Delinquencies are down, but riskier mortgage lending may mean trouble -  --Other than in areas hit by natural disasters, delinquency rates are falling with help from a healthier labor market, but a rise in riskier lending habits could signal trouble for borrowers should housing conditions change, according to CoreLogic. About 4.4% of mortgages were in some stage of delinquency in September, down from 5% a year ago. The foreclosure inventory rate, measuring loans in some stage of foreclosure, held steady since April at 0.5% and declined by 0.1 percentage point from a year ago to the lowest reading for any month in 12 years. The serious delinquency rate fell to 1.5% from 1.9% in September to the lowest level for any September since 2006."Outside of areas affected by natural disasters, serious delinquency and foreclosure rates have declined steadily across the nation as the labor market has improved and home prices have risen," Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic, said in a press release."However, we have also seen a rise in high loan-to-value and high debt-to-income lending in our CoreLogic TrueStandings data, heightening the risk of a significant upturn in loan default if the economy slips into recession or home prices decline," he said.The share of mortgages that transitioned from current to 30 days past due ticked down to 1.2% in September from 1.3% for the same period a year ago. For reference, the transition rate was 1.2% in January 2007 just before the start of the crisis, and peaked at 2% in November 2008.Despite delinquencies being down overall, local housing markets affected by natural disasters are seeing opposite results.Of the top eight metropolitan areas experiencing the highest annual delinquency rate growth in September, seven were in North Carolina and South Carolina, which were hit hard by Hurricane Florence.

Why Californians Were Drawn Toward the Fire Zones --Building codes, state grants and low insurance rates have encouraged people to flee expensive cities for their dangerously fire-prone fringes.  The historically deadly wildfires that have roared through California this fall, and a string of similarly destructive ones over the past two years, are boosting calls to do more to slow climate change. But another underlying problem has contributed to the fires’ tragic damage: For decades, California, supposedly the greenest of states, has artificially lowered the cost of encroaching on nature by living in the woods. Permissive building codes, low insurance rates and soaring taxpayer spending on firefighting and other services have provided an economic framework that has encouraged people to flee the state’s increasingly expensive cities for their leafy fringes. The forested exurbs, including places once thought too hilly or too dry to develop safely, have offered comparatively affordable living with jaw-dropping views. The upshot: More houses have been packed into the fire-prone border between civilization and forest—known among planners as the “wildland-urban interface,” or WUI—in California than in any other state. This problem isn’t restricted to California’s woodland. Along the coasts, loose building standards and easy federal flood insurance have socialized the costs of building in the path of worsening storms and rising sea levels. It is time, in the parlance of classical economics, to internalize the long-externalized costs of building in the trees or by the beach. California, both a bellwether of aggressive environmental policy and a pioneer of suburban sprawl, typifies the problem. For years, Cal Fire, the state wildfire-fighting agency, has been spending increasing sums to put out wildfires, as has the U.S. Forest Service. Already by 2006, according to an audit, most of the money the forest service was spending to put out large fires was “directly linked to protecting private property” in the wildland-urban interface. Meanwhile, at public cost, government has been encouraging more development by pushing infrastructure—roads, utilities, rescue services—ever farther into the forest. Lax building codes are at the base of the problem. Even in California, which has some of the toughest such rules in the country, they often aren’t adequate or adequately enforced. The codes often dictate the use of fire-retardant materials in house construction but typically say nothing about how a development must be situated on the landscape—and that can help determine whether that development will burn in a fire, says Max Moritz, a cooperative-extension wildfire specialist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “So the developers are able to come in, propose something, and often, without too much oversight, walk away after having built something in a dangerous place,” he says. “And we pick up the tab.”

Mortgage Equity Withdrawal slightly positive in Q3 - The following data is calculated from the Fed's Flow of Funds data (released yesterday) and the BEA supplement data on single family structure investment. This is an aggregate number, and is a combination of homeowners extracting equity - hence the name "MEW" - and normal principal payments and debt cancellation (modifications, short sales, and foreclosures). For Q3 2018, the Net Equity Extraction was a positive $33 billion, or a 0.9% of Disposable Personal Income (DPI) .This graph shows the net equity extraction, or mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW), results, using the Flow of Funds (and BEA data) compared to the Kennedy-Greenspan method. Note: This data is impacted by debt cancellation and foreclosures, but much less than a few years ago.MEW has been positive for 8 of the last 10 quarters. With a slower rate of debt cancellation, MEW will likely be mostly positive going forward - but nothing like during the housing bubble.The Fed's Flow of Funds report showed that the amount of mortgage debt outstanding increased by $91 billion in Q3. The Flow of Funds report also showed that Mortgage debt has declined by $0.43 trillion since the peak. For reference:Dr. James Kennedy also has a simple method for calculating equity extraction: "A Simple Method for Estimating Gross Equity Extracted from Housing Wealth". Here is a companion spread sheet (the above uses my simple method). For those interested in the last Kennedy data included in the graph, the spreadsheet from the Fed is available here.

Housing: Part 337 - Shelter inflation  Kevin Erdmann -This isn't anything earth shattering, but as I was updating this month's CPI numbers, I realized that I had never attempted to quantify the portion of shelter inflation that has been directly attributable to the five "official" Closed Access cities. The first graph here is just a comparison of various annual inflation rates:  The main point to gather here is that, except for the foreclosure crisis, for the past 20 years or so, Closed Access rent inflation is pretty consistently in the 4% to 5% range.  During the housing boom, homes needed to be built in other locations, and the pressure pushing households into those homes from the Closed Access cities was continued demand for Closed Access homes.  That kept Closed Access rent inflation high, and the housing boom was facilitating the movement out of the Closed Access cities to further accommodate that demand.As I have pointed out before, the top of the "bubble", in 2005, was the only point in the past 20 years where both shelter inflation and non-shelter inflation were both at approximately the 2% inflation target.  That was actually the closest we have been to a neutral monetary policy and residential investment level both at the same time.  As shown here, the decline in rent inflation at that point was entirely from non-Closed Access areas.  Then, the Fed raised rates to cut down residential investment, and non-Closed Access rent inflation moved back up. During the recovery, the limit to building has been due to mortgage suppression, so it is nationwide, so rent inflation has been high everywhere - nearly as high in non-Closed Access areas as in Closed Access. The next graph is a stacked graph.  Looking at the first graph, the gray and black lines are the same - core CPI without shelter and with shelter.  This shows how much of the gap is caused by non-Closed Access rent (gray to green) and how much is due to Closed Access rent (green to black).  The last graph is the three measures stacked again, but in reverse order.  First, the portion of US core CPI inflation that is due to Closed Access rent (red), then the portion due to non-Closed Access rent (red to green), then the portion caused by all other core inflation (green to black).

If you ask consumers, the nation is in a housing affordability crisis--- The nation is suffering from a housing affordability crisis and lower construction costs and increased government subsidies can ease the pain, consumers state in a National Association of Homebuilders survey. Nearly three out of four households across the country believe a housing affordability crisis is at play, with a majority citing this as an issue at local and state levels, according to a NAHB survey of over 2,200 consumers between Nov. 27 and Nov. 30. "These poll results confirm what builders from across the nation have been warning about — that housing affordability is an increasingly serious problem in communities across America," said NAHB Chairman Randy Noel in a press release. About 55% of respondents think lowered builder construction costs from their local city or county will support developers in creating more affordable homes. The majority of consumers also feel increased government subsidies will be an effective strategy. "A mix of regulatory barriers, ill-considered public policy and challenging market conditions is driving up costs and making it increasingly difficult for builders to produce homes that are affordable to low- and moderate-income families," said Noel. Regulatory costs represent 25% of expenses to construct a single-family home, and 30% of costs to develop a multifamily unit. Policies are also prohibiting certain types of houses from being built and rule out the opportunity for new construction in some large areas. Nearly 60% of consumers believe that if they were to buy a house within the near future, they would face financial challenges finding something they can afford in their city or county. Subs

MBA: Mortgage Applications Increased in Latest Weekly Survey -- From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage applications rose 1.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending December 7, 2018.
... The Refinance Index increased 2 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 3 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent compared with the previous week and was 4 percent higher than the same week one year ago... “Mortgage rates fell across the board last week, driven by a similar slide in Treasuries. Trade fears dominated investors’ concerns for another week, and this was amplified by data released by the U.S. Commerce Department showing a widening trade deficit,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “The 30-year fixed mortgage rate decreased 12 basis points over the week back below 5 percent, representing the largest single week drop since 2017.” Added Kan, “As a result of these recent rate declines, we saw another weekly increase in refinance applications, along with a rise in the average refinance loan size. Larger loans tend to react more readily for a given change in mortgage rates. Meanwhile, purchase application activity also increased over the week and was up more than three percent compared to a year ago.” .. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($453,100 or less) decreased to 4.96 percent, the lowest level since September 2018, from 5.08 percent, with points increasing to 0.48 from 0.44 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.

 New-home mortgage applications decline on affordability worries- MBA - Mortgage applications to purchase newly constructed homes continues to decline, driven by affordability concerns among potential buyers, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.The MBA's Builder Application Survey for November was down 14% from October and 11% from November 2017. The data is not seasonally adjusted."By our estimates, new-home sales fell almost 7% in November, and were about 5% lower than a year ago," Joel Kan, the MBA's associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting, said in a press release. "Despite a still-strong job market and recent declines in mortgage rates, affordability challenges continue to hold back sales activity, as wage growth still lags behind home-price growth. Additionally, recent stock market volatility and some economic uncertainty likely also contributed to the pullback in home sales in November."However, the average loan size for a new-home purchase continued to shrink, to $326,037 in November, from $331,732 the previous month and $337,427 one year prior.New single-family home sales were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 627,000 units in November, which the MBA calculated based on data from the BAS. This was down from 673,000 units in October and 663,000 units in November 2017.On an unadjusted basis, the MBA estimated there were 45,000 new-home sales in November, a decrease of 15.1% from 53,000 in October and 47,000 in November 2017. By product type, conventional loans composed 69.7% of new-home loan applications, Federal Housing Administration-insured loans composed 17.3%, Veterans Affairs-guaranteed loans composed 12.3% and Rural Housing Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture loans composed 0.7%.

"Mortgage rates at their lowest levels in several months" - From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rate Rally May Be PausingFirst things first: the average mortgage lender improved modestly today, compared to last Friday's levels. This leaves mortgage rates at their lowest levels in several months. That's great news and indeed, the last few weeks have been the best few weeks we've seen in more than a year. That having been said, we're now reaching the stage where the strong move in underlying financial markets may be running out of steam. [30YR FIXED - 4.75%]This is a graph from Mortgage News Daily (MND) showing 30 year fixed rates from three sources (MND, MBA, Freddie Mac). The MND 30 year fixed rate is at the same level as back in May 2018 (4.75%).

Average mortgage rates drop to lowest level in three months - Mortgage rates dropped significantly due to economic fears driving the markets following several weeks of little or no movement, according to Freddie Mac. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.63% for the week ending Dec. 13, down from last week when it averaged 4.75%. A year ago at this time, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.93%. "Mortgage rates have either fallen or remained flat for five consecutive weeks and purchase applicants are responding with an uptick in demand given these lower rates," said Freddie Mac Chief Economist Sam Khater in a press release. "While the housing market softened in response to higher rates through most of this year, the combination of a low unemployment and recent downdraft in rates should support home sales heading into the early winter months." The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage this week averaged 4.07%, down from last week when it averaged 4.21%. A year ago at this time, the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.36%. The five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 4.04% with an average 0.3 point, down from last week when it averaged 4.07%. A year ago at this time, the five-year adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 3.36%. Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels since September, added Aaron Terrazas, Zillow's senior economist when that company released its own rate tracker on Dec. 12. "U.S.-China trade tensions eased after China announced new foreign investment policies that are perceived to be more welcoming to U.S. businesses — a move that boosted stock markets and stemmed the downward trend in rates. However, political uncertainty in Europe escalated with governments in the U.K., France and Spain facing new doubts about their durability, preventing rates from moving definitively upward," Terrazas said. "Wednesday's inflation data also buoyed rates, showing stable prices over the past month despite weakness in energy prices." Next week, however, the markets will be watching the Federal Open Market Committee meeting for indicators regarding possible rate hikes in 2019. Most observers expect the Fed to raise rates at its December meeting, "but the committee's forward guidance will be more important for long-term rates," Terrazas said. "Before that, however, eyes will be on the release of November retail data — key metrics that reflect holiday spending and consumer sentiment."

 Homebuilders are not getting a bump from lower mortgage rates - Mortgage applications to purchase a newly built home dropped 11 percent in November, compared with a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Given the drop, MBA economists predict that sales of newly built homes in November fell 5 percent annually. Those numbers will be reported at the end of December by the U.S. Census. This drop is surprising, given the sharp decline in mortgage rates in November, and therefore underscores the fundamental weakness in the housing market today. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage started at 5.05 percent in the first week of November and fell throughout the month, ending at 4.86 percent by Nov. 30, according to Mortgage News Daily. "Despite a still-strong job market and recent declines in mortgage rates, affordability challenges continue to hold back sales activity, as wage growth still lags behind home-price growth," said Joel Kan, associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting at the MBA. "Additionally, recent stock market volatility and some economic uncertainty likely also contributed to the pullback in home sales in November." Stocks of the nation's homebuilders have been the positive outlier in a weaker market lately. That is because of the drop in mortgage interest rates. They are, however, still down sharply year to date. The nation's largest homebuilders have been reporting weakness in buyer demand, and most are pointing squarely at affordability issues. While mortgage rates did drop back slightly in November, they are still higher than they were one year ago, and the expectation is that they will rise again going into 2019. Homebuilder sentiment fell dramatically in November to the lowest level in more than two years, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Single women outpace single men as homeowners despite earning less -- Independent females are winning the housing game. In most of the country, single women are outpacing men when it comes to homeownership, despite females only making 80% of what the average male does, according to a LendingTree report. About 22% of homes across the country are owned by single women, compared to less than 13% for single men. On average, independent women own over 70,000 more homes than independent men. In all of the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas, single women own more houses than single men do, with New Orleans leading cities with the largest share of single women who own and occupy households. Following New Orleans, where over 27% of homes are owned by single females, Miami and Birmingham, Ala., also have high percentages of independent women owning and occupying homes, with shares of 26.8% and 25.4%, respectively. Single males owned the greatest share of properties in Oklahoma City, though their cut was still fewer than single female homeowners in the area. In Oklahoma City, single men owned 16% of homes, compared to single women's share of 24%. Of the nation's top cities, Miami saw the largest gender gap between single female and single male homeowners, which was a 12.59 percentage point difference. Of the 1.25 million owner-occupied households in the 305, single men own 14.22%. Single males own the fewest shares of homes in Dallas. The LendingTree report was based on an analysis of the Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey, with single homeowners being defined as single females or males living in owner-occupied houses. Subscribe Now

The Camp fire took my home. Now I understand that no one ends up sleeping under an overpass by choice -  -- Since the fire that wiped out Paradise and Magalia, Calif., — and my house — on Nov. 8, I've thought about the homeless every single day. Until I joined their ranks, I had forged a tenuous truce with my conscience where the less fortunate were concerned, handing out spare change or writing a charity check with a mix of queasy self-pride and guilt. Then I became “less fortunate.” I wasn't reduced to sleeping in a tent on skid row, nor did I have to ask strangers for a handout, but I was humbled nonetheless, humiliated, daily, at being displaced, literally a refugee. Though I carried a credit card that wasn't maxed out, and though I still had a car, my status in the world had been redefined, and I felt the change. I didn’t like being an object of pity. And though the sympathy nearly everyone expressed was kind and well-intended, as I bought new underwear or my wife explained why she was purchasing toothpaste and a new hair brush, the expressions on the faces of people at the store checkout betrayed a detectable condescension, an unmistakable "oh-you-poor-people" subtext that is bound up in the concern people show the needy. That we were in no way responsible for our misfortune didn't do much to help my diminished sense of self. I'd been through a few rough patches over the course of my life, times of uncertainty or joblessness, but I'd never been among the "less fortunate" as an adult. Days after the fire, I caught a cold, a bad one. We had taken refuge in Sacramento, where there are more people, more traffic, more affronts to sensibilities long adjusted to the quieter world of piney woods that are no longer there. Stress, worry and lack of sleep were doing nothing for the cold. I also kept forgetting to buy a razor and I was waking up to the face of a guy who was considerably the worse for wear. You know, like a homeless guy. One day on line at Target, I heard two women exchanging views ahead of me. "I'd like to donate money to the fire victims," said one, "but I hear some of the regular homeless are taking advantage of the situation." Her companion shook her head, adding, "Yeah, how do we know our money won't go to people who just chose homelessness as a lifestyle?" I didn't say anything to those women, so I'll say it here. If everything you own is in a shopping cart, if you don't have assured access to privacy, to shelter, to warmth, to a toilet, or a bed, you didn't choose that as a “lifestyle.” Misfortune made the choice for you. No one ends up sleeping under an overpass on purpose.

 US Households Now Own More Treasuries Than The Fed -- One of the key concerns voiced by finance professionals, politicians and rates traders over the past year, has been the gradual drop in foreigners as a percentage of the total universe of US Treasury buyers, which peaked earlier this decade and has since declined to just below 40% of the total public US debt outstanding as shown in the chart below. And with the Fed's treasury purchases out of the picture for the past three years, there was growing concern whether domestic buyers, and specifically US householders, would step up - whether directly or indirectly - and purchase US Treasurys. It appears the answer is yes, because as the latest Fed Flows of Funds report revealed "mom and pop" have been aggressively bought Uncle Sam’s debt; and with yields rising and offering a viable alternative to the S&P's dividend yield, look for this trend to continue, even if higher yields will ultimately result in even greater paper losses and negative equity for the Federal Reserve. But in an even more memorable development, as of last week, total Household investment in US Treasury bonds jumped to a record $2.28 trillion in the third quarter, for the first time since 2010 surpassing the Fed's own Treasury holdings of $2.24 trillion. On the surface this is good news as it means that thanks to higher rates, ordinary individuals are attracted by yields that climbed as much as 83bps this year, and serve - for now - as a viable alternative to either foreign buyers or the Fed's QE at a time when US deficits are only expected to keep growing for the near and not so near future. The bad news? The accelerating purchases of US debt may also be the latest signal that investors are concerned U.S. economic growth is going to slow, and are betting on a return of lower yields and therefore, higher bond prices. 

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Increased Year-over-year, On Pace for Record Year  --From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 1 December: The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 25 November through 1 December 2018, according to data from STR.In comparison with the week of 26 November through 2 December 2017, the industry recorded the following:
• Occupancy: +1.0% to 57.3%
• Average daily rate (ADR): +2.2% to US$120.23
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +3.3% to US$68.93
…Houston, Texas, reported the steepest declines in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (-17.4% to 56.9%), ADR (-6.8% to US$99.64) and RevPAR (-23.1% to US$56.70). The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.

Retail Sales increased 0.2% in November -On a monthly basis, retail sales increased 0.2 percent from October to November (seasonally adjusted), and sales were up 4.2 percent from November 2017. From the Census Bureau report:Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November 2018, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $513.5 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent from the previous month, and 4.2 percent above November 2017. This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales and food service, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline).Retail sales ex-gasoline were up 0.5% in November.The second graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993.  Retail and Food service sales, ex-gasoline, increased by 3.6% on a YoY basis. The increase in November was slightly above expectations; sales in September were revised down, revised up in October.

November Retail Sales: Up 0.2% MoM -  The Census Bureau's Advance Retail Sales Report for November was released this morning. Headline sales came in at 0.2% month-over-month to one decimal and was slightly better than the Investing.com forecast of 0.1%. Core sales (ex Autos) came in at 0.23% MoM (to two decimals). Revisions were made to the last two months. Here is the introduction from today's report: Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November 2018, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $513.5 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent (±0.5 percent)* from the previous month, and 4.2 percent (±0.5 percent) above November 2017. Total sales for the September 2018 through November 2018 period were up 4.3 percent (±0.5 percent) from the same period a year ago. The September 2018 to October 2018 percent change was revised from up 0.8 percent (±0.5 percent) to up 1.1 percent (±0.2 percent). Retail trade sales were up 0.3 percent (±0.5 percent)* from October 2018, and 4.0 percent (±0.5 percent) above last year. Nonstore Retailers were up 10.8 percent (±1.4 percent) from November 2017, while Gasoline Stations were up 8.2 percent (±1.6 percent) from last year. [view full report] The chart below is a log-scale snapshot of retail sales since the early 1990s. The two exponential regressions through the data help us to evaluate the long-term trend of this key economic indicator. The year-over-year percent change provides another perspective on the historical trend. Here is the headline series:

13% Of Americans Will Boycott Christmas Spending - Online spending on Thanksgiving day reached $3.7 billion, topped by Black Friday sales of $6.2 billion, and Cyber Monday sales of $7.9 billion - it’s a staggering amount of spending, but there’s another data set casting a cloud over the enthusiasm: Growing numbers of Americans plan to boycott holiday spending, entirely.  While shopping madness has many Americans feverishly trying to find the best gifts for everyone on their list, others are protesting the commercialization of Christmas. In fact, the 2018 Bankrate Holiday Gifting Survey showing that 13 percent of American shoppers are planning to completely boycott holiday spending.That means they’ll be resisting all the sales gimmicks designed to pressure consumers into spending—and overspending, in the end. And if they’re going to drop all that cash on Christmas, some say they’d rather take a family vacation.It’s a small percentage—for now. But it’s a piece of data that still should make retailers nervous.“It's interesting to see that so many people aren’t participating in gift-buying,” noted Bankrate data analyst Adrian Garcia.“I see it as a realization that people need fewer things, especially as they get older, and that it’s more important to spend time together, or donate to a charity.” Despite growing consumer resistance, 45 percent of shoppers will still spend beyond their comfort zone, says Bankrate's survey. And in this race to show their love by gifts—where larger gifts apparently mean more love--Americans are prepared to plunge themselves into heavy debt.

 These 11 Companies Control Everything You Buy -  Is freedom of choice an illusion?  The rapid rise of variation in everyday goods and services, from which cereal we eat in the morning to which toothpaste we brush our teeth with at night, gives the perception of unlimited choice. For example, if you’re deciding which bottled water to buy, the possibilities range from budget brands, like Deer Park or Ozarka, to higher-end options, like Perrier or S. Pellegrino. But this appearance of choice is actually manufactured. All of the aforementioned brands are owned by one company: Nestle. Despite the amount of choices in the consumer market, several big companies own a large majority of major brands, effectively controlling everything you buy.So, how much of “choice” is really controlled by big business, and how well do Americans understand which corporations have a stake in the goods and services they rely on every day? To find out, we took an in-depth look at the major companies that own a majority of America’s food and consumer goods. Then, we surveyed 3,000 Americans about their understanding of which big businesses own which major brands. Check out our full visual below, or skip ahead to see our survey findings. These 11 Consumer Goods and Food Companies Control What You Buy.  Ceiling-high grocery store shelves may give the perception of endless options, but a closer look at the brands and the companies that own them reveal a complex interconnection. Check out our full visual above to get a better sense of just how intertwined some brands are, and read on to learn more about how well Americans understand this relationship.

Your shuttered Sears store could soon be demolished. Here's why - If a Sears store near you has already closed or is in the process of closing, it's likely the owner of that property will opt to demolish it rather than find someone to fill the space.The bankrupt department store chain has already said it will shut 142 stores by year's end. And its future while it's in bankruptcy court proceedings is still uncertain, with a total liquidation being one potential outcome. That would mean more than 500 additional Sears and Kmart stores going dark.As mall owners look to find new tenants to replace Sears, the process likely won't be so easy. Sears stores are typically more than 100,000 square feet and can occupy multiple levels. There are few department store chains — or any retailers — still growing today that would fit directly into that space. Some, if not lots, of construction is going to be required. To be sure, a handful of companies have already expressed interest in taking over Sears' real estate that's currently being bid on, and moving right in. The short list includes furniture retailer At Home, self-storage company U-Haul and off-price chain Burlington. At the largest retail real estate conference on the East Coast, put on by ICSC, a handful of landlords spoke to CNBC last week about demolishing a Sears store being a cheaper and faster option than filling the existing structure. Some mall owners have been finding success in dividing a vacant Sears store for numerous tenants.PREIT, for example, took an old Sears store at Viewmont Mall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to bring in Dick's Sporting Goods, Field & Stream and HomeGoods.By and large, demolition can prove to be the better option."I would tell you in so many instances, I've seen developers [doing remodels] tell me, 'Gosh I should have just torn down the building. You don't know what will be behind this wall or that," said Nick Hernandez, head of retail services for commercial real estate company Transwestern. "Most of those [Sears] boxes are going to be harder to reuse as they are. I bet you most of them are going to be torn down."

How Alaska fixed its earthquake-shattered roads in just days - Shaking from the large earthquake that shuddered through Anchorage, Alaska last week was strong enough to turn smooth asphalt roads into broken, jagged depressions of rubble. But within just a few days, crews managed to repair the worst of the damage, unsnarling traffic in Alaska’s largest city.Anchorage has a population of nearly 300,000 people spread across more than 1,900 square miles — an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. That space is threaded by roads, asphalt lifelines of the population. When the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck last week, some of the most visceral images showed roads that had broken apart. But within days, many of these same cracked highways had been smoothed back into ribbons of pavement by crews working around the clock. The rapid response to damage in Anchorage shows how investing time and money into preparations for these kinds of large, infrastructure-hobbling events can pay off in the long-run, even when there’s no way to tell when or where disaster may strike.  “We have more quakes than any other state in the Union,” says Shannon McCarthy, a spokesperson with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. As a result, Alaska takes its earthquake preparation very seriously. The largest earthquake ever recorded in the country shook Anchorage to its core in 1964, causing a deadly tsunami and leaving in its wake damaged buildings, buckled roads, and a legacy that inspired years of earthquake preparation and policies. Strong building codes put in place post-1964 helped make the area more secure than other earthquake-prone areas, like Seattle.

BLS: CPI unchanged in November, Core CPI increased 0.2% - From the BLS: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged in November on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.3 percent in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.The gasoline index declined 4.2 percent in November, offsetting increases in an array of indexes including shelter and used cars and trucks. Other major energy component indexes were mixed, with the index for fuel oil falling but the indexes for electricity and natural gas rising. The food index rose in November, with the indexes for food at home and food away from home both increasing.The all items less food and energy index increased 0.2 percent in November. Along with the indexes for shelter and used cars and trucks, the indexes for medical care, recreation, and water and sewer and trash collection also increased. The indexes for wireless telephone services, airline fares, and motor vehicle insurance declined in November.The all items index increased 2.2 percent for the 12 months ending November, compared to a 2.5-percent increase for the period ending October. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.2 percent in November. I'll post a graph later today after the Cleveland Fed releases the median and trimmed-mean CPI. This was at the consensus forecast.

Key Measures Show Inflation Picked Up Slightly on YoY Basis in November - The Cleveland Fed released the median CPI and the trimmed-mean CPI this morning:According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the median Consumer Price Index rose 0.3% (4.1% annualized rate) in November. The 16% trimmed-mean Consumer Price Index rose 0.2% (2.3% annualized rate) during the month. The median CPI and 16% trimmed-mean CPI are measures of core inflation calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland based on data released in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) monthly CPI report.Earlier today, the BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted CPI for all urban consumers was unchanged (0.2% annualized rate) in November. The CPI less food and energy rose 0.2% (2.5% annualized rate) on a seasonally adjusted basis. Note: The Cleveland Fed released the median CPI details for November here. Motor fuel was down 40% annualized in November.This graph shows the year-over-year change for these four key measures of inflation. On a year-over-year basis, the median CPI rose 2.8%, the trimmed-mean CPI rose 2.2%, and the CPI less food and energy rose 2.2%. Core PCE is for October and increased 1.8% year-over-year.On a monthly basis, median CPI was at 4.1% annualized, trimmed-mean CPI was at 2.3% annualized, and core CPI was at 2.5% annualized. Using these measures, inflation picked up slightly on a year-over-year basis in November. Overall, these measures are at or above the Fed's 2% target (Core PCE is below 2%).

Consumer Price Index: November Headline at 2.18% - The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the November Consumer Price Index data this morning. The year-over-year non-seasonally adjusted Headline CPI came in at 2.18%, down from 2.52% the previous month. Year-over-year Core CPI (ex Food and Energy) came in at 2.21%, up from the previous month's 2.14% and above the Fed's 2% PCE target. Here is the introduction from the BLS summary, which leads with the seasonally adjusted monthly data: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged in November on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.3 percent in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.  The gasoline index declined 4.2 percent in November, offsetting increases in an array of indexes including shelter and used cars and trucks. Other major energy component indexes were mixed, with the index for fuel oil falling but the indexes for electricity and natural gas rising. The food index rose in November, with the indexes for food at home and food away from home both increasing. The all items less food and energy index increased 0.2 percent in November. Along with the indexes for shelter and used cars and trucks, the indexes for medical care, recreation, and water and sewer and trash collection also increased. The indexes for wireless telephone services, airline fares, and motor vehicle insurance declined in November. The all items index increased 2.2 percent for the 12 months ending November, compared to a 2.5-percent increase for the period ending October. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.2 percent in November. The energy index increased 3.1 percent for the 12 months ending November; this was its smallest 12-month increase since the period ending June 2017. The food index rose 1.4 percent over the last 12 months. [More…] Investing.com was looking for no MoM change in seasonally adjusted Headline CPI and 0.2% in Core CPI. Year-over-year forecasts were 2.2% for Headline and 2.2% for Core. The first chart is an overlay of Headline CPI and Core CPI (the latter excludes Food and Energy) since the turn of the century. The highlighted two percent level is the Federal Reserve's Core inflation target for the CPI's cousin index, the BEA's Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index.

Heating costs could spike this winter as natural gas prices increase - Natural gas has reached its highest price in more than four years, a spike expected to hit consumers in their wallets just as winter weather begins.  The price of natural gas — which is used to heat nearly half of all U.S. households — has surged beyond market forecasts for the year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  A Nov. 23 spot check on the price of natural gas showed it to be at $4.70 per million British thermal units. The last time the price of natural gas reached that level was June 2014, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  The higher prices were spurred by lower temperatures that boosted the use of natural gas while there was little already in storage, according to the EIA. If colder temperatures keep up, households could end up paying around 5 percent more in heating costs this winter, said Bob Wilkens, University of Dayton associate dean of research who spent two decades working at Shell Oil Company. “If we have an extended really cold period then it’s going to take stockpiles a while to replenish themselves,” Wilkens said. “It all depends on what mother nature throws at us.” November was a colder month for the Midwest in 2018 than it typically has been the last 10 years, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Despite the colder fall, the EIA is projecting the price of natural gas to drop in the coming months.

We Don't Think It's Time To Panic Yet As Heavy-Duty Truck Orders Plummet - One of the charts that has kept deflationists asleep at night for the past two years and provided cover to the Fed it its tightening strategy was the one below showing the exponential surge in transportation prices as a result of an acute scarcity of truck drivers which has sent trucking prices soaring, and led to a historic spike in Class 8 truck orders as supply scrambles to keep up with demand (much of which is the result of businesses rushing to front-load trade ahead of even higher tariffs with China). And yet, all good - or bad, depending on your perception - things come to an end, and last week ACT Research reported November preliminary North American Class 8 orders of 27.9K units (26.8K, seasonally adjusted), which was well below most forecasts heading into the release. The total number of orders was down 14.5% from the same month a year ago and off 35.9% from October, when orders reached 43,600. It was the first drop in Class 8 orders this year, falling to the lowest level in 14 months and providing a fresh sign the North American trucking market is cooling down. As a result, after 13 consecutive months of 30K-plus orders, the streak finally came to an end in November whose decline capped a more than a year-long run of historic growth in manufacturers’ orders that came as U.S. companies scrambled to find the freight capacity to meet surging economic demand and trucking companies raced to get new trucks on the road. “Truck demand has peaked and will start to wane,” "there is no doubt that freight and freight-rate growth have slowed we do not think that it is time to panic just yet." To be sure, with Class 8 backlog still above 300K units, approximately 10 months of production is already spoken for. Furthermore, the recent buying spree produced 468,600 new truck orders in the first 11 months of this year, 81% more than the same period in 2017, translating to a 511.2K annual rate. The frenzied production has pushed backlogs at truck-equipment makers like Paccar, Navistar and engine maker Cummins deep into next year.

General Motors could shut more plants in US, threatening more than 6,000 jobs - Two weeks after the announcement by General Motors that it plans to close five factories in the US and Canada and wipe out nearly 15,000 hourly and white-collar jobs by early next year, industry analysts are warning that GM could shut several more assembly plants. According to a Detroit Free Press article Monday, two assembly plants in Michigan—Lake Orion, north of Detroit, and Lansing Grand River, along with the Bowling Green, Kentucky, Assembly Plant and the Fairfax Assembly in Kansas City, Kansas—could be targeted for closure because they are running well under full capacity. The factories currently employ 6,238 production workers. “Hourly workers at four more General Motors factories have reason to worry,” the Free Press wrote. “Industry experts and some in the UAW warn that the factories need more vehicles to build or they could face a similar fate as the three assembly plants GM has said it will idle next year: Detroit-Hamtramck, Lordstown in Ohio and Oshawa in Ontario, plus two U.S. transmission plants.” On November 26, GM announced the closure of the five plants. CEO Mary Barra said the $6.5 billion in cost savings “will increase the long-term profit and cash generation potential of the company.” The company’s stocks shot up as high as 7.8 percent after the announcement. GM officials not only defended the previous job cutting announcement but made clear they were prepared to make even more savage moves. “We believe the recent actions move us in the right direction, and we will continue to monitor the market/consumer trends and adjust accordingly,” Kimberly Carpenter, GM spokeswoman, told the Free Press. “As always, our intent is to work with the UAW constructively to address our business challenges in a way that keeps the company competitive in these changing market conditions.” As of December 2018, the Free Press reported, GM has four of 12 plants, Ford has three of nine plants, and Fiat Chrysler has two of six plants operating below recommended capacity.

Industrial Production Increased 0.6% in November - From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization -- Industrial production rose 0.6 percent in November after moving down 0.2 percent in October; the index for October was previously reported to have edged up 0.1 percent. In November, manufacturing production was unchanged, the output of mining increased 1.7 percent, and the index for utilities gained 3.3 percent. At 109.4 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production was 3.9 percent higher in November than it was a year earlier. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector rose 0.4 percentage point in November to 78.5 percent, a rate that is 1.3 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2017) average. This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up 11.8 percentage points from the record low set in June 2009 (the series starts in 1967). Capacity utilization at 78.5% is 1.3% below the average from 1972 to 2017 and below the pre-recession level of 80.8% in December 2007.  The second graph shows industrial production since 1967. Industrial production increased in November to 109.4. This is 26% above the recession low, and 4% above the pre-recession peak.  The increase in industrial production was above the consensus forecast, however the previous months were revised down.  Capacity utilization was at consensus.

Real retail sales very positive; industrial production decent - Real retail sales for November, together with the revisions for October, were very positive.While November sales, both nominally and adjusted for inflation, increased +0.2%, October sales were revised upward to a nominal +1.1%. On an inflation adjusted basis, that translates to +0.8%. As a result, as of November both real retail sales and real retail sales per capita set new records: The latter has turned negative more than one year before both of the last two recessions, and so supports the case for no recession in 2019.  The former, on a YoY% basis, tends to be a decent if noisy short leading indicator for employment. Here what YoY growth in real retail sales looks like:About the least positive thing you can say about this morning's report is that, even with the upward revision to October, real retail sales appear to have downshifted from their earlier strength, as the strong +1.7% real gain from September 2017 drops out of the comparison. This suggests continued positive employment reports in the next few months, but maybe not at the 200,000+ levels of a few months ago. Meanwhile, November industrial production increased +0.6%, but October was revised downward by -0.3%, so the net result was a +0.3% gain. On a YoY basis, industrial production has also decelerated from a "boom" readings to decently positive ones: Together, these two reports this morning say that the nowcast remains very good.

US Manufacturing Output Disappoints, Stagnates For 2nd Month In A Row - On the heels of the dramatic slowdown in Chinese output, and after slowing in September and October, US Industrial Production was expected to rebound modestly in November and it did (but don't get to excited yet). The headline industrial production print rose 0.6% MoM (well above the 0.3% rise expected and a notable bounce back from the downwardly revised 0.2% drop in October)... However, the gains were dominated by a surge in Utilities... (Utility output jumped 3.3 percent after rising 0.2 percent the prior month) As Manufacturing growth stalled for the second month in a row... Bloomberg notes that excluding autos, manufacturing output stagnated for the second time in three months. The industry may be settling into a somewhat cooler pace, consistent with projections that economic growth will moderate this quarter and into next year, as the boost from lower corporate and consumer taxes wanes. The slowdown in factory output included a 0.2 percent decline in business equipment and a third-straight drop in construction supplies. Notably, this 'hard' data is weaker than the signal from a separate report that showed the ISM's factory index rebounded in November from a six-month low. And finally, while INDUSTRIAL production has topped its previous peak, the gap between the INDUSTRIAL Average and production remains vast (but narrowing)...

November Producer Price Index: Core Final Demand Up 0.3% MoM - Today's release of the November Producer Price Index (PPI) for Final Demand came in at 0.1% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, down from last month's 0.6%. It is at 2.5% year-over-year, down from 2.9% last month, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Core Final Demand (less food and energy) came in at 0.3% MoM, down from 0.5% the previous month and is up 2.7% YoY NSA. Investing.com MoM consensus forecasts were for 0.1% headline and 0.1% core. Here is the summary of the news release on Final Demand:The Producer Price Index for final demand edged up 0.1 percent in November, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices advanced 0.6 percent in October and 0.2 percent in September. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, the final demand index moved up 2.5 percent for the 12 months ended in November.In November, the rise in the final demand index can be traced to a 0.3-percent increase in prices for final demand services. In contrast, the index for final demand goods decreased 0.4 percent. The index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services moved up 0.3 percent in November, the third consecutive increase. For the 12 months ended in November, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services advanced 2.8 percent. More… The BLS shifted its focus to its new "Final Demand" series in 2014, a shift we support. However, the data for these series are only constructed back to November 2009 for Headline and April 2010 for Core. Since our focus is on longer-term trends, we continue to track the legacy Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, which the BLS also includes in their monthly updates. As this (older) overlay illustrates, the Final Demand and Finished Goods indexes are highly correlated.

US Import, Export Prices Plunge In November As Fuel Prices Plummet - After re-accelerating in October, US Import and Export price growth slowed dramatically in November to the lowest since Nov 2016 and July 2017 respectively...Import prices fell 1.6% MoM (well below expectations of a 1.0% decline) slamming the YoY growth to just +0.7%.Export prices also fell, down 0.9% MoM (well below the -0.3% expectation) pushing the YoY gains to just +1.8%. Under the hood:

• Import prices ex-petroleum fell 0.3% after rising 0.2% in Oct.
• Import prices ex-food and fuel rose 0.4% y/y in Nov.
• Import fuel prices fell 11%, most since Jan. 2016, after a 3.2% increase in Oct.
• Industrial supplies prices fell 5.3% after rising 1.4% in Oct.
• Auto prices unchanged after no change in Oct.
• Consumer goods prices unchanged after falling 0.3% in Oct.

As China's import price index slumps, exporting the most deflation since 2007...

AAR: November Rail Carloads Down 0.2% YoY, Intermodal Up 2.5% YoY --From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators. Graphs and excerpts reprinted with permission. It’s not like the sky is falling or anything, but while U.S. rail traffic numbers were very solid a few months ago, they were less solid in November. Total carloads fell 0.2% (2,418 carloads) in November 2018 from November 2017, their first decline in nine months. Major blame goes to crushed stone, sand, and gravel, carloads of which fell 12.8% (12,090 carloads) thanks to a decline in carloads of frac sand. … Intermodal rose 2.5% in November. That sounds pretty good, but it’s the smallest increase in 19 months. ... In terms of rail traffic, November might just be the “back” in a case of two steps forward, one step back. But it could be the start of something more. This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows U.S. average weekly rail carloads (NSA).  Light blue is 2018. Rail carloads have been weak over the last decade due to the decline in coal shipments.. U.S. railroads originated 1.032 million carloads in November 2018, down 0.2%, or 2,418 carloads, from November 2017. It was the first year-over-year decline for total carloads in nine months (see the bottom left chart below). Weekly average total carloads in November 2018 were 258,017, the lowest for November since sometime before 1988, which is when our data begin.The second graph is for intermodal traffic (using intermodal or shipping containers):   U.S. railroads originated 1.10 million containers and trailers in November 2018, up from 1.07 million in November 2017. The 2.5% gain this year over last is the smallest monthly percentage gain in 19 months. Year-to-date intermodal volume through November was up 5.5%, or 699,102 units, over last year. If that percentage holds for one more month, 2018 will have the largest annual percentage gain for intermodal since 2010.  2018 will be another record year for intermodal traffic.

Small Business Optimism Index decreased in November -- CR Note: Most of this survey is noise, but there is some information, especially on the labor market and the "Single Most Important Problem".  From the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB): November 2018 Report: Small Business Optimism Index  Small business optimism slightly dipped in November. The Index declined 2.6 points to 104.8with more than half the decline attributable to Expected Business Conditions and Expected Real Sales. .. Job creation was solid in November at a net addition of 0.19 workers per firm (including those making no change in employment), up slightly from September and October readings at 0.15. ...Twenty-five percent of owners cited the difficulty of finding qualified workers as their Single Most Important Business Problem (up 2 points), matching the record high reached in August. Thirty-four percent of all owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period, down 4 points from last month’s record high.  This graph shows the small business optimism index since 1986.  The index decreased to 104.8 in November.  Note: Usually small business owners complain about taxes and regulations (currently 2nd and 3rd on the "Single Most Important Problem" list).  However, during the recession, "poor sales" was the top problem. Now the difficulty of finding qualified workers is the top problem.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decreased to 206,000 - The DOL reported: In the week ending December 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 206,000, a decrease of 27,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 231,000 to 233,000. The 4-week moving average was 224,750, a decrease of 3,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 500 from 228,000 to 228,500. The previous week was revised up. The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.

BLS: Job Openings increase to 7.1 Million in October  Notes: In October there were 7.0709 million job openings, and, according to the October Employment report, there were 6.075 million unemployed. So, for the seventh consecutive month, there were more job openings than people unemployed. Also note that the number of job openings has exceeded the number of hires since January 2015 (almost 4 years). From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary The number of job openings was little changed at 7.1 million on the last business day of October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, hires edged up to 5.9 million, and separations were little changed at 5.6 million. Within separations, the quits rate was little changed at 2.3 percent and the layoffs and discharges rate was unchanged at 1.1 percent. ...The number of quits was little changed in October at 3.5 million. The quits rate was 2.3 percent. The number of quits was little changed for total private and unchanged for government. The following graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.This series started in December 2000.Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for October, the most recent employment report was for November. Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover.  When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs - when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs.Jobs openings increased in October to 7.079 million from 6.960 million in September.The number of job openings (yellow) are up 17% year-over-year.Quits are up 9% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (see light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for "quits").Job openings are at a high level, and quits are increasing year-over-year. This was a strong report.

Job Openings Surge To 7.1 Million; 1.1 Million More Than Unemployed Workers -- After the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reported record prints for virtually every notable labor market series for August, followed by a modest slowdown in September, there was another push higher across most labor market indicators in October. According to the BLS, after a downward revision in the September job openings from 7.009MM to 6.960MM, in October this number surged by 119K to 7.079 million, the second highest number of job openings on record. With prior revision, this will be not only the 4th consecutive month of job openings printing above 7 million, but more importantly, the 8th consecutive month in which there were more job openings then unemployed workers: considering that according to the payrolls report there were 5.975MM unemployed workers in October, there is now just over 1.1 million more job openings than unemployed workers currently, (how accurate, or politically-biased the BLS data is, is another matter entirely).In other words, in an economy in which there was a perfect match between worker skills and employer needs, there would be zero unemployed people at this moment (of course, that is not the case.) According to the BLS, rhe number of job openings increased in information (+45,000), real estate and rental and leasing (+38,000), educational services (+20,000), and state and local government education (+17,000). The number of job openings decreased in state and local government, excluding education (-38,000) and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-33,000). Job openings were little changed in all four regions. Adding to the exuberant labor picture, while job openings remained above total unemployment, the number of total hires also remained surprisingly high, surging by 196K in October, and printing at 5.892 million, just shy of the all time high of 5.906 million reached in August.  Hires increased in transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+90,000) and durable goods manufacturing (+43,000), but decreased in mining and logging (-11,000). According to the historical correlation between the number of hires and the 12 month cumulative job change (per the Establishment Survey), either the pace of hiring needs to drop, or else the number of new jobs will rise significantly in the coming months.Yet while both job openings and hires showed continued strength in the labor market, by one metric the job market may have peaked: the so-called "take this jobs and shove it" indicator - which shows worker confidence that they can leave their current job and find a better paying job elsewhere - dipped for a second consecutive month, declining by 50K in October, after dropping 84K in September from an all time high of 3.648 million, suggesting the workers on the margin are somewhat less reluctant to quit their jobs and look elsewhere. Quits increased in health care and social assistance (+33,000), transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+30,000), and educational services (+12,000). The number of quits decreased in other services (-39,000). Quits decreased in the Northeast region.

The October JOLTS report: very good employment market continues, just below best levels -- Monday's JOLTS report for October was, surprisingly, a little weaker than the employment report from one month ago, that I described at the time as perhaps the best in the entire expansion. But this is a relative statement; basically, most of the series were only a little off their recent best readings:

• Quits were just below their all-time high in August, and July as well.
• Hires were just below their August best.
• Total separations made another new expansion high
• Layoffs and discharges declined a little from August and September levels (a positive), although they are slightly elevated compared to last spring.
• Job openings were also just below their all time high in August, as well as September.

Let's update where the report might tell us we are in the cycle, remaining mindful of the fact that we only have 18 years of data. Below is a graph, averaged quarterly through the third quarter, of the *rates* of hiring, quits, layoffs, and openings as a percentage of the labor force since the inception of the series (layoffs and discharges are inverted at the 3% level, so that higher readings show fewer layoffs than normal, and lower readings show more: Now here's what the four metrics look like on a monthly basis for the last five years:  Through August, job openings, quits, and hires have all surged higher this year, with openings virtually "on fire." In the last two months of data there's been a pause, but nothing that suggests a downtrend. Next, here's an update to the simple metric of "hiring leads firing," (actually, "total separations"). Here's the long term relationship since 2000 through Q3 of this year:

 Blue Collar Worker Shortage Turns U.S. Labor Market on Its Head - A surprise shortage of blue collar workers is changing the contours of the U.S. labor market, boosting their pay, narrowing wage inequality and drawing more women into those jobs. The shortfall is being driven by a shrinking supply of manual and low-pay service workers as the labor force becomes more educated and less willing to take on such jobs, according to a new Conference Board study. “The divergence between blue collar and white collar supply is going to persist and even become bigger through 2030,” Gad Levanon, chief economist for North America at the New York-based research group and one of the authors of the report, said in an interview. That is likely to keep upward pressure on labor costs in such industries as construction, transportation and accommodation and food services. It also has implications for inflation and for the Federal Reserve as Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues try to sustain the 9-1/2-year-old expansion without overheating the economy. Unemployment at 3.7 percent is the lowest since 1969 and running well below Fed estimates for its long-run sustainable rate. “The acute shortage of talent in the blue collar space is very, very pronounced,” said Peter Quigley, executive vice president at Kelly Services Inc., a staffing company with branches in all 50 U.S. states. Manufacturers and other companies with physically demanding jobs are finding it tough to fill those positions when baby boomers retire. “It’s harder and harder to attract younger people into those jobs, either because they’re pursuing education alternatives or the stigma associated with light industrial work,” Quigley said. The supply of lower-skilled workers is also being squeezed by growth in the number of Americans who’ve claimed disability benefits and dropped out of the labor force. Exacerbated by the opioid epidemic, that’s much more concentrated in the population without a bachelor’s degree, the Conference Board report says. Tighter restrictions on immigration are also playing a role and will continue to do so in the future, said Moody’s Analytics Inc.’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi. Many of those foreign workers are lower-skilled and in industries such as construction and farming. Automation and off-shoring were widely expected to devastate demand for industrial workers and depress their pay, especially when compared with their more educated counterparts. But that hasn’t happened, at least so far, according to the Conference Board: Blue collar and low-pay services jobs have grown as rapidly as total employment since the economy began recovering in June 2009.

Real wage growth: November 2018 update --Now that November inflation has been reported (as unchanged), let's update what that means for real wages.Nominally, wages for nonsupervisory workers grew +0.3% in November. With inflation flat, that means real wages also grew +0.3%: Even so, although they are at a new 40 year high, real hourly wages are nevertheless below their peak level set in the early1970s!On a YoY basis, real wages have risen 1%: Since 1999, the change in real wages has almost explusively been determined by the price of gas.Finally, real aggregate wages have now risen 26.8% from their bottom in October 2009: The total advance during this expansion is only exceeded by the 1960s and 1990s at this point. On the other hand, growth in real aggregate wages has averaged 2.5% in this expansion, varying from 1% to 8% depending on what has happened with gas prices: This is a very weak rate of growth, ahead of only the 2000s expansion and on par with the 1980s expansion. All in all, the growth in real wages is good news. It's just nearly good enough compared with the growth in business profits generated by the expansion.

At NPR, an army of temps faces a workplace of anxiety and insecurity - After completing an internship at the public broadcasting organization in Washington in 2013, Julia Botero began a year-long stint as a temporary employee, moving between producing jobs at NPR’s signature news programs, “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” As a “temp,” she floated among unfamiliar co-workers and faced an ever-changing set of responsibilities, some of which she’d never been trained for. Her work contracts were sometimes as brief as two weeks, at the end of which she’d have to persuade a manager to extend her. Worse was the sense of constant competition among her fellow temps, many of whom were angling to be hired for a limited number of permanent positions.   After a year of such uncertainty, she left, taking a job as a reporter for a group of public radio stations in New York state. What’s surprising about Botero’s experience is how unsurprising it is at NPR. For decades, the public broadcaster has relied on a cadre of temporary journalists to produce its hourly newscasts and popular news programs. Without temporary workers — who are subject to termination without cause — NPR would probably be unable to be NPR. Temps do almost every important job in NPR’s newsroom: They pitch ideas, assign stories, edit them, report and produce them. Temps not only book the guests heard in interviews, they often write the questions the hosts ask the guests. And there are a lot of them. According to union representatives, between 20 and 22 percent of NPR’s 483 union-covered newsroom workforce — or 1 in 5 people — are temp workers. The number varies week to week as temps come and go. NPR’s management cites a somewhat lower figure, 16 percent, although its count reflects managers and interns and other employees in departments that aren’t represented by the union. NPR says the overall ratio of temporary workers to permanent employees has remained more or less stable for several years. Temps were often left in the dark about how long their assignments would last, how much they’d be paid, who they were reporting to, or what their title was. They also said they received little feedback from supervisors after completing an assignment, and were “routinely” overlooked in NPR’s recruiting efforts.

“You’re Worth $1 Trillion. Why Do You Need Our $3 Billion?” Angry New Yorkers Confront Amazon Execs at City Council Meeting --After being kept in the dark about New York’s $3 billion deal with Amazon, allowing the trillion-dollar corporation to build its new headquarters—complete with helicopter landing pad for CEO Jeff Bezos—in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, concerned New York City Council members and scores of angry New Yorkers on Wednesday angrily confronted company representatives over the plan.At the first City Council meeting on Amazon’s so-called “HQ2,” about 150 protesters joined the mostly-Democratic lawmakers in slamming the closed-door process through which the city and state finalized the deal and the effect the corporation’s arrival will likely have on affordable housing and community development in Queens and the entire city, as New York pours much-needed funds into the new one million square foot campus.“You’re worth a trillion dollars,” New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said bluntly to Amazon officials Brian Huseman and Holly Sullivan. “Why do you need our $3 billion when we have crumbling subways, crumbling public housing, people without health care, public schools that are overcrowded?” Amazon has said its arrival in New York will create 25,000 jobs for residents—a claim one protester derided as “smoke and mirrors” during the hearing—and has promised to fund a new school that would serve just 600 of the city’s school children. “It’s all smoke and mirrors,” says one protester who shouts from about 20 feet from the Amazon executives. “These guys are lying criminals and they’re trying to take over everything.” — J. David Goodman (@jdavidgoodman) December 12, 2018 Huseman, Amazon’s vice president for public policy, noted that 5,000 New York workers are already employed by the company at a fulfillment center on Staten Island—but as the hearing was underway those same employees were publicizing their effort to unionize, citing long hours, insufficient breaks, and safety concerns on the job.

Jeff Bezos Earns More In 30 Seconds Than The Average Worker Makes In A Year -  Have you ever wondered how long it takes for the world's wealthiest captains of industry to earn what you make in a year? For many, the reality is too depressing to fathom.But for any curious parties eager to learn the painful truth, ABC Finance has created a series of infographics that break down how much the world's wealthiest people earn - and how it compares to the average salary for regular non-billionaire workers.While millions of Americans no doubt enjoyed some degree of schadenfreude watching the correction in FAANG stocks wipe out nearly $1 trillion of value from the largest US tech firms: Mark Zuckerberg alone has lost nearly $100 billion of his personal wealth since the beginning of 2018, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has lost as much as $13 billion or more in a single day. But that doesn't change the fact that the world's billionaires enjoyed their highest-earning year on record in 2017 as their wealth increased by a combined $9 trillion.  Helped by the asset-friendly policies of the world's largest central banks, the wealthiest 1% of the world now owns nearly half the wealth. The 54 billionaires living in the 54 UK alone have an aggregate $160 billion in wealth, equivalent to over 6% of Britain’s GDP. Meanwhile, the average worker earns about $37,000 a year. Virgin CEO Richard Branson earns that amount in roughly 25 minutes.  Even more galling, Facebook CEO earns the same sum every 60 seconds. Bezos earns the same sum every 28 seconds.  Here's how the distribution of billionaires breaks down for every continent:

New Jersey Declares War On Its Residents: Plans Door-To-Door Gun Confiscation Campaign -- A New Jersey law that makes it a felony to possess a gun magazine capable of holding over 10 rounds of ammunition is now active. This wildly unconstitutional law instantly criminalizes hundreds of thousands of New Jersey citizens who legally acquired normal capacity firearms magazines - which include 17-round pistol magazines and 30-round rifle magazines - as tools of self-defense against the very same violent criminals that are protected by the Democrats who passed the gun magazine ban. Now, the New Jersey State Police have told Breitbart News they won’t rule out “house-to-house enforcement” of the new magazine ban, meaning they plan to conduct house-to-house arrests and gun magazine confiscations. These Nazi-style anti-gun operations will, of course, be carried out at gunpoint, further underscoring the entire purpose of the Second Amendment and the need for citizens to arm themselves with 30-round magazines to defend against government tyranny. Breitbart News contacted New Jersey State Police on Monday to ask how they planned to enforce the newly enacted ban, reports Breitbart.com. “The NJ State Police refused to rule out house-to-house checks. Rather, they responded: ‘We do not discuss enforcement strategies.'”

Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S - Joy Evans Ryder was 15 years old when she says her church youth director pinned her to his office floor and raped her. The youth director, Dave Hyles, was the son of the charismatic pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, considered at the time the flagship for thousands of loosely affiliated independent fundamental Baptist churches and universities. At least three other teen girls would accuse Hyles of sexual misconduct, but he never faced charges or even sat for a police interview related to the accusations. When he got in trouble, Hyles was able to simply move on, from one church assignment to the next. Hyles’ flight to safety has become a well-worn path for ministers in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshiping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around the country. The network of churches and schools has often covered up the crimes and helped relocate the offenders, an eight-month Star-Telegram investigation has found. More than 200 people — current or former church members, across generations — shared their stories of rape, assault, humiliation and fear in churches where male leadership cannot be questioned.  “The philosophy is you don’t air your dirty laundry in front of everyone. Pastors think if they keep it on the down-low, it won’t impact anyone. And then the other philosophy is it’s wrong to say anything bad about another preacher.” The Star-Telegram discovered at least 412 allegations of sexual misconduct in 187 independent fundamental Baptist churches and their affiliated institutions, spanning 40 states and Canada.

Incarceration Crisis- 50% Of Americans Have Had A Family Member Jailed - The impact of the incarceration crisis on America’s families and communities has been staggering, according to a new survey by criminal justice non-profit FWD.us and Cornell University. The survey found that today's incarceration rate stands at 710 inmates per 100,000 people compared to 147 in the United Kingdom, 118 in Canada and 98 in France. FWD.us and Cornell University point out that more than 1.5 million people are currently behind bars in state or federal prisons in the US. Admissions to jails have been higher than 10 million per year for at least two decades. These figures explain how over 50% of adults (about 113 million people) has had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night in jail. One in seven adults has had an immediate family member locked up for more than one year, and one in 34 adults has had a family member spend at least ten years in prison. The survey said an estimated 6.5 million people have an immediate family member currently incarcerated in jail or prison (1 in 38). The adverse effects that individuals experience after being incarcerated have been well documented, but more research still needs to be done on the direct and indirect harms and challenges that families and communities suffer. The study shows that incarceration impacts all types of Americans, "rates of family incarceration are similar for Republicans and Democrats — but the impact is unevenly borne by communities of color and families who are low-income. Black people are 50% more likely than white people to have had a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely to have had a family member incarcerated for one year or longer. People earning less than $25,000 per year are 61% more likely than people earning more than $100,000 to have had a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely to have had a family member incarcerated for one year or longer," the survey said. The following infographics visualize the figures from the survey and highlight the shocking realities behind the crisis:

Millions of working women of childbearing age are not included in protections for nursing mothers -- The federal Break Time for Nursing Mothers provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to provide reasonable unpaid break time, as needed, for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for one year after the child’s birth.  Further, employers are required to provide a place for the employee to express milk—other than a bathroom—that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public. These requirements were signed into law in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act and were a landmark step toward securing pumping accommodations for countless nursing mothers in the workplace. These provisions were designed to prevent harmful outcomes that can occur without basic workplace accommodations for expressing breast milk, such as negative health consequences, the inability to breastfeed, and economic harm including job loss (documented in the upcoming report Exposed: Discrimination against Breastfeeding Workers from the Center for WorkLife Law). However, the law has several significant problems that leave nursing mothers at risk. One key issue is that due to where these provisions are placed in the FLSA—in the section that requires employers to pay overtime compensation if an employee works more than 40 hours in a week—all those workers who are exempt (i.e. excluded) from the overtime protections of the FLSA are also exempt from the break time protections for nursing mothers.  These exemptions affect roughly one out of every four working women of childbearing age (between the ages of 16 and 44).  There are a total of 37.8 million working women of childbearing age in the United States, and more than 9 million of them are excluded from the Break Time for Nursing Mothers protections.   In addition to the more than 9 million working women of childbearing age who are legally exempt (i.e. excluded) from these protections, additional millions are at risk of being misclassified as exempt—particularly the 3.7 million salaried working women of childbearing age who earn above the salary threshold for exemption but whose job duties mean they should be eligible for the protections. The Supporting Working Moms Act, currently under consideration in both houses of Congress, would bring 7.5 million white collar workers under the law’s protection for the first time. This would go a long way toward closing the coverage gap, providing protections to 83 percent of currently-exempt working women of childbearing age. It would also strengthen protections for 3.7 million workers who are vulnerable to misclassification as exempt. It is an important step in providing millions of working women of childbearing age the legal protections that they need.

Nearly 15,000 children held in detention camps across the US - Nearly 15,000 immigrant children are being held in a network of detention centers across the United States. Changes implemented by the Trump administration have filled the child jails to near capacity, and the government is considering adding more employees and more beds to make it possible to hold even more adolescents. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the incarceration of immigrant children at more than 100 locations, reported Thursday that the system was 92 percent full. Among the most notorious detention centers is the tent camp on the US-Mexico border in Tornillo, Texas, where approximately 2,800 children are being held in the desert.Children are being held at Tornillo for an average of 50 days before being released into the custody of sponsors, typically family members already living in the US who will take care of the minor until their status is determined by an immigration judge. New detainees are being brought into the camp faster than they are being released to sponsors.Conditions that prevail in the detention centers can be traumatic, with reports by children of rapes, sexual abuse and assaults. A significant portion of those being detained are teenage boys from Central America who have crossed into the US without a parent, seeking asylum from poverty and gang violence in their home countries.The population in the system began to swell after the Trump administration implemented a policy requiring anyone living with potential sponsors for a child to provide their fingerprints and go through a criminal background check.This has raised fears among potential sponsors that they would be opening up other family members to potential arrest or deportation. At least 41 family or household members were detained for deportation in 2018 after attempting to sponsor a detained child. The Trump administration has also dramatically escalated its attack on immigrants through mass workplace arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Such arrests have soared by more than 640 percent, from 311 in 2017 to 2,304 in 2018. Homeland Security agents opened 300 percent more workplace investigation in 2018, rising from 1,681 in 2017 to 6,848.

Youngest Children In A Class Are Most Likely To Get ADHD Diagnosis --  The youngest children in a school class are most likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, when in fact their comparatively fidgety behavior may be due to their relative immaturity, according to a study published online Wednesday.Scientists from Harvard University probed the way ADHD is assessed by taking advantage of a quirk found in many U.S. school systems: There's a Sept. 1 cutoff for enrolling in kindergarten. That means children born in August get in just under the wire, while children with September birthdays have had to wait until the following school year to enroll."You could certainly imagine a scenario in which two kids who are in a class who are different in age by almost a year could be viewed very differently by a teacher, or school personnel who's evaluating them," says Dr. Anupam Jena, a physician and economist at Harvard Medical School. "A year of age difference in a 5-year-old or a 6-year-old is huge." Scouring a database of insurance claims encompassing more than 400,000 children, the researchers categorized children by their month of birth. And the report in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that the youngest children in the classroom — those born in August — were about 35 percent more likely to get a diagnosis of ADHD and to be treated for the condition.

Trump administration loosens nutritional guidelines for school lunches - The Trump administration has announced that it will permanently loosen the nutritional guidelines for school lunches. The controversial final rule set to be published this Wednesday comprises three main changes. First, students will be offered the option of flavored, low-fat milk instead of the white milk only rule instituted by the Obama administration. Second, only half of grains served will need to be whole-grain, allowing schools to serve more white bread, pasta, and biscuits. Third, the three-part sodium reduction plan that Obama implemented is being changed. The second phase is delayed and the final target is being eliminated.  The Trump administration justifies the changes by arguing that kids aren't eating the healthier lunch choices, and that loosening the nutritional standards will encourage kids to partake. Participation in school lunch programs has declined, dropping from 5.2 million students in 2010 to 4.8 million in 2017. Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement, "If kids are not eating what is being served, they are not benefiting, and food is being wasted."  The School Nutrition Association sides with Perdue. Its president Gay Anderson said, "We appreciate Secretary Perdue for finding solutions to address the concerns of schools and students. This rule will entice more students to eat healthy school meals, which meet calorie limits and offer fruits, vegetables and milk." The changes are referred to as 'meal flexibilities' by the administration, but this angers the American Heart Association. The AHA stated, "When it comes to our children’s health, there should be no 'flexibility'... If the concern truly was to provide those few schools experiencing challenges with more ‘flexibility’, the more responsible approach would have been for USDA to provide more technical assistance to these institutions so they could offer healthier food choices."  

Groundbreaking study examines effects of screen time on kids - CBS - If you have kids and wonder if all that time they spend on their smartphones endlessly scrolling, snapping and texting is affecting their brains, you might want to put down your own phone and pay attention. The federal government, through the National Institutes of Health, has launched the most ambitious study of adolescent brain development ever attempted. In part, scientists are trying to understand what no one currently does: how all that screen time impacts the physical structure of your kids' brains, as well as their emotional development and mental health. At 21 sites across the country scientists have begun interviewing nine and ten-year-olds and scanning their brains. They'll follow more than 11,000 kids for a decade, and spend $300 million doing it.   The MRI's found significant differences in the brains of some kids who use smartphones, tablets, and video games more than seven hours a day.  Dr. Gaya Dowling of the National Institutes of Health gave us a glimpse of what they've learned so far: What we can say is that this is what the brains look like of kids who spend a lot of time on screens. And it's not just one pattern.  The colors show differences in the nine and ten-year-olds' brains. The red color represents premature thinning of the cortex. That's the wrinkly outermost layer of the brain that processes information from the five senses.  That's typically thought to be a maturational process. So what we would expect to see later is happening a little bit earlier.  We don't know if it's being caused by the screen time. We don't know yet if it's a bad thing. It won't be until we follow them over time that we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we're seeing in this single snapshot. The interviews and data from the NIH study have already revealed something else: kids who spend more than two hours a day on screens got lower scores on thinking and language tests.

Baltimore County Spends $147 Million On School Laptops; Four Years Later Test Scores Still Terrible - Four years ago Baltimore County began a $147 million program to put laptops in the hands of students from first through 12th grade in the hopes that access to technology would transform the way kids learn and boost the lowest standardized test scores in the state, according to a new report cited by the Baltimore Sun's Liz Bowie Alas, the ambitious plan has failed to translate to an increase in achievement - as test scores are generally flat for students in grades three through eight, according to the Sun, which notes that many of those students have had the computers for at least three years. An evaluation of the program by Johns Hopkins researchers found that third-grade results at 10 schools that have had laptops longest have shown some increase over four years, but it’s too soon to say if that will continue. “The impacts of the [laptop program] on student achievement remain encouraging, but still indeterminate given the still relatively short duration of the initiative,” the report said. Absent across-the-board increases in student achievement, some parents and teachers are questioning whether the computers are worth the investment. -Baltimore Sun "These devices do not seem to be improving my kids’ school experience," said parent Suzanne Persaud - whose three middle and high school boys have had access to the laptops. The school system is "giving them the hardware," said Persaud, "but not the courses to advance beyond the devices."

Fight for Federal Right to Education Takes a New Turn -- A new fight to secure a federal constitutional right to education is spreading across the country. This fight has been a long time coming and is now suddenly at full steam.In 1973, plaintiffs in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez argued that school funding inequities violated the right to education. The Supreme Court rejected education as a fundamental right under the federal Constitution, leaving funding inequalities in Texas and elsewhere completely untouched. For more than 40 years, no one even dared to directly challenge Rodriguez’s conclusion in court. Now, in just two years, four different legal teams and plaintiff groups have done just that. But this time, they are shifting their arguments away from just claims about money. They are focusing on educational quality, literacy and learning outcomes.The boldest claim was filed on Nov. 29 in Rhode Island, arguing for an education that prepares students for citizenship – an argument that draws directly on my own legal research and expertise as a scholar of education law. When plaintiffs filed the first two cases in Detroit and Connecticut in 2016, the Supreme Court was set to shift significantly to the left. Hillary Clinton was a strong favorite to win the presidency and fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. What looked like perfect timing for plaintiffs in mid-2016 turned awful a few months later when Clinton lost. The questions now are why plaintiffs, including new ones, continue to press forward and whether they have any chance of winning. The answers lie in a strange and tangled confluence of events that include school funding shifts, new legal theories and evolving cultural challenges.

Oklahoma Republicans demand the abolition of public schools - As teachers’ strikes continue to develop across the United States demanding full funding for public schools, an Oklahoma Republican Party official has issued a public call for the abolition of public education on behalf of the state’s fourth largest county. The statement, brought to national attention on November 29 in the Washington Post, is breathtaking in its bald assault on the notion of American democracy and historic rights. The fight for public education goes back to the ideals popularized by the American and French Revolutions.In his letter drafted in advance of the state legislative session, Canadian County GOP chairman Andrew Lopez stated, “A better pathway would be to abolish public education, which is not a proper role of government, and allow the free market to determine pay and funding, eliminating the annual heartache we experience over this subject.”In the immediate sense, Lopez is reacting to last April’s powerful ten-day strike by nearly 40,000 Oklahoma educators that followed West Virginia’s teacher walkout. Both statewide walkouts defied union leaders and anti-strike laws and led to further strikes in Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, Colorado and Washington state. Above all, Lopez is voicing the growing fears of ruling elites over escalating class struggles throughout the US and internationally—from the “Yellow Vests” in France to the mass teachers’ strikes in Great Britain, Tunisia, Mexico, Iran and Argentina, to the American autoworkers.Lopez admonished, “…don’t take from others’ wealth. Don’t eliminate somebody’s property rights to fund your child’s education,” in words which drip with contempt for the rights of the “lower classes” to education. He called all property taxes an encroachment on the “right to property,” instead proposing the population engage in “self-education.” That a section of a major US political party can pledge to roll back the struggles of 200 years and strip the working classes of the right to schooling is an indication of how oligarchic, if not aristocratic, America’s threadbare “democracy” has become. It is, however, of a piece with the ongoing bipartisan social counterrevolution which seeks the elimination of all social reforms, business regulations, tax increases or anything else that impinges on the self-enrichment of the wealthy.

How School Districts Weaponize Child Protection Services Against Parents  — Schooling is adept at rooting out individuality and enforcing compliance. In his book, Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky writes: “In fact, the whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on—because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.”  This filtering process begins very early in a child’s schooling as conformity is rewarded and divergence is punished.  We know the rules. The kids who raise their hands, color in the lines, and obey succeed; the kids who challenge the rules struggle. The problem now is that the rules are extending beyond the classroom. Parents are increasingly required to obey, to conform to a school’s demands even if they believe such orders may not be appropriate for their child. In my advocacy work with homeschooling families across the country, I frequently hear stories from parents who decided to homeschool their kids because schools were pressuring them to comply with various special education plans, push medications onto their children, or submit to other restrictive procedures they felt were not in their child’s best interest. Even more heartbreaking is the growing trend of school officials to unleash child protective services (CPS) on parents, homeschooling or not, who refuse to give in to a district’s demands. An investigative report by The Hechinger Report and HuffPost released last month revealed that schools are increasingly using child protective services as a “weapon” against parents. It said:Fed up with what they see as obstinate parents who don’t agree to special education services for their child, or disruptive kids who make learning difficult, schools sometimes use the threat of a child-protection investigation to strong-arm parents into complying with the school’s wishes or transferring their children to a new school. That approach is not only improper, but it can be devastating for families, even if the allegations are ultimately determined to be unfounded. More troubling, these threats disproportionately target low-income and minority parents. According to the report: Such families also have fewer resources to fight back. When a family in a wealthy Brooklyn neighborhood learned roughly two years ago that their child’s school had initiated an ACS [New York’s Administration for Children’s Services] investigation against them, they sued the city education department. Parents from lower-income, majority-black and Latino neighborhoods, few of whom can afford that option, say such investigations can be a regular, even expected, part of parenting..

Oakland, California teachers hold wildcat “sickout”  - Teachers from at least five Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) high schools are conducting a wildcat “sickout” strike today to protest threatened budget cuts, school closures and deteriorating conditions. They are also angered over the working a year and a half without a contract due to the long-stalled negotiations between the district and the Oakland Education Association (OEA), the local affiliate of the California Teachers Association (CTA) and National Education Association (NEA).The OEA and district are currently in the final, state-mediated “fact-finding” phase of contract negotiations. After this anti-democratic process in which three individuals will determine a “fair” contract for teachers, the union legally has the right to strike.Thirty thousand teachers in Los Angeles, who have been working without a contract for a year, have also been dragged through this state-regulated “fact-finding” process with a report due this week. If no agreement is reached, teachers in the nation’s second largest school district could strike next month.The conditions faced by educators and students in Oakland are dire, but the state’s Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) and the Alameda County Superintendent of Public Schools, Karen Monroe, are demanding up to $60 million in budget cuts over the next two years. If these demands are not met, they are threatening a renewed state takeover, as occurred in 2003.These savage cuts follow decades of austerity that have produced overcrowded classes, under-staffing, a high turnover rate among teachers and routine violations of special education service requirements. Further, the rising cost of living in Oakland—which now ranks as the fourth most expensive city in the US—has forced thousands of students and their families into homelessness or abject poverty.

Los Angeles teachers and the fight for social equality --  As Los Angeles teachers, students and parents converge this Saturday in a mass rally in downtown Los Angeles, they are part a growing movement worldwide of teachers, students and workers against social inequality and austerity. This week, hundreds of thousands of “yellow vest” protesters in France were joined by teachers and high school students denouncing education “reforms” and the reintroduction of the draft. Giving voice to this struggle, one student said, “I want a merging of the movement of students, railway workers, yellow vests, of the entire world to put an end to this world of inequality and injustice.” This is exactly right. This is one fight, the world over. On one side are hundreds of millions of workers and young people. On the other side is a tiny oligarchy of billionaires who are demanding the destruction of public education, healthcare, and pensions. In the US, Los Angeles educators take their place alongside Oakland teachers who engaged in wildcat “sickouts” this week demanding wage increases, smaller class sizes and better conditions; Fremont teachers who are pressing for strike action after receiving an insulting one percent pay raise offer; and Chicago charter school teachers who struck for similar demands. Teachers in Virginia, Indiana and South Carolina are now threatening to strike after walkouts in the state of Washington and the wave of strikes earlier this year in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, Colorado and other states.   Allied with the Democratic Party, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and the California Teachers Association have kept Los Angeles teachers on the job for more than a year without a new contract, despite a 98 percent strike mandate from educators. The unions and the Democrats have kept teachers tied up in endless mediation and fact-finding schemes even though the school district continues to offer insulting pay increases and demands for more takeaways. It does not take a rocket scientist to know what the facts are: educators need good wages and benefits in order to cope with rising housing, health care and other living expenses. They need a substantial increase in school funding to make class sizes smaller, hire more nurses, counselors and special education teachers and adequately supply their classrooms. Educators need increased social services to address chronic poverty, homelessness and other social ills that afflict their students.

Educators converging on Lansing to protest Lame Duck bills this week - Michigan’s two largest education unions are planning to push back against GOP legislation during Lame Duck session. AFT Michigan and the Michigan Education Association (MEA) AFT Michigan and MEA are protesting:

• Senate Bill 1260, sponsored by Sen. Arlan Meekhof (R-West Olive), would require public workers to vote every other year on a union to represent them.
• House Bill 6474, sponsored by Rep. Steve Johnson (R-Wayland), would prohibit local school districts and unions from jointly negotiating to include paid union release time in collective bargaining agreements.
• HB 5368, sponsored by Rep. Pamela Hornberger (R-Chesterfield Twp.), would prevent public school employees from having union work count toward their retirement pensions.
• HB 4163, sponsored by Rep. Daniela Garcia (R-Holland), would ban collective bargaining over school calendar and schedule.
• HB 5526, sponsored by Rep. Tim Kelly (R-Saginaw Twp.), would require A-F letter grades for schools based heavily on standardized test scores among other factors. As the Advance reported, the bill would create a commission to oversee the process. A majority of members to the commission would be appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder. The commission, unions argue, would undercut the elected State Board of Education.

Can the Nation’s First Charter School Strike Transform the Industry- -- For the first time, charter school teachers are striking. Over the past week, a strike at Chicago’s largest unionized charter network gained steam, with 15 schools serving Acero’s 7,500 predominantly Latino students remaining closed since Tuesday.This week’s strike is the first in the nation against a charter operator, and comes only days after Acero released a financial audit showing that the nonprofit currently has at least $24 million in cash and brought in $89 million in revenue this year.Despite having $10 million more than it had at the end of 2017, Acero managed to spend $1 million less on salaries this year, only giving their teachers a “paltry” wage increase, according to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and no raise at all to the schools’ support staff.While charter teachers are typically paid $13,000 less than those in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), charter schools bring in 8 percent more per student in funding than CPS under Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s so-called “student-based budgeting” scheme, which gives each school a fixed amount of money per student enrolled.After months of failed contract negotiations, 98 percent of Acero teachers authorized a strike in October and joined picket lines this week, demanding salary increases, smaller class sizes, additional special education staff and guaranteed sanctuary protections for undocumented students and families. “Charter operators are creating a second tier in the teaching profession. Your job at a charter school, your pay, benefits, your rights, your ability to speak up for students, all these things are way below [public school district] standards,” Another charter network, Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) has also authorized a strike, but has not yet set a date. Teachers at nine other Chicago charter networks are likewise negotiating contracts, and could similarly authorize strikes in the coming weeks.

Chicago teacher union shuts down charter school strike, holds rally for Democratic candidates - Classes resumed Monday morning at Acero Charter Schools in Chicago, the largest of more than 34 charter school operators in the city. The Chicago Teachers Union shut down the strike over the weekend but has not released any details of its agreement nor told teachers when they would have the right to vote on the deal. Teachers and staff walked out at 15 Acero facilities last Tuesday morning in the first strike against a US charter school operator. Their demands included a reduction in class sizes, increased classroom resources and pay increases to bring their compensation and conditions closer to what teachers and paraprofessionals (called “apprentices”) have in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Clerks and support staff demanded a pay schedule. Teachers also asked for assurance that Acero students and families will not be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents without a court order. As it is in other charter schools, Acero teachers regularly work 10–12 hour days and some weekends. Staff make as little as $30,000 per year or less, and work two or more jobs to make ends meet. Since 2002, more than 200 district schools have been shuttered, and 190 schools have been opened, more than half of which are charter schools. Chicago was selected by Democratic Party and business leaders to be the center of a radical privatization of the school system that took place under the last two city mayors, Richard M. Daley and former Obama administration official and investment banker Rahm Emanuel. One of the architects of corporate “school reform” was Arne Duncan, the CEO of the Chicago schools under Daley and Obama’s Secretary of Education. Bargaining between the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Acero had entered its seventh month when an agreement was reached early Sunday morning. With the new agreement, Acero has reportedly dropped a complaint filed against the CTU with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, a body appointed by Republican governor Bruce Rauner, for unfair labor practices. Neither CTU nor Acero have offered concrete details of the contract. The media has claimed it includes pay raises for paraprofessionals based on seniority and education level; a reduction in the class size cap from 32 to 30 and a school year closer to the length of Chicago Public Schools’ academic year. It also includes some type of “sanctuary school” status for immigrant students.

This Year Had More School Shootings Than Ever - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released new data regarding gun deaths in the United States. It’s not good. According to the CDC’s WONDER database, 39,773 people died from gun violence in the United States in 2017. Adjusted for age, that comes out to 12.2 out of every 100,000 people. This is up from 10.3 out of every 100,000 people in 1999, the earliest year for which data was made available. According to the the CDC’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), the 12.2 number is the highest since 1996. “In 2017, nearly 109 people died every single day from gun violence,” Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence Director of Public Health Research Adelyn Allchin said in a statement. “Gun violence is a public health epidemic that requires a public health solution, which is why we must immediately enact and implement evidence-based interventions – like permit-to-purchase policies and extreme risk laws.” Allchin added that “it is way past time that elected leaders at every level of government work together to make gun violence rare and abnormal.”While firearms deaths in America have been increasingly steadily for the past 20 years, the rate of gun violence in schools exploded in 2018.According to data from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, 2018 featured 93 school shooting incidents, 34 more than the previous high of 59 in 2006, and over double any other total recorded since 1970. “More than 3,200 kids and teens have been killed or injured by guns and there have been over 300 mass shootings in just this one year,” Sandy Hook Promise Co-Founder Nicole Hockley said in a statement released this week. “This is beyond unacceptable. It is inexcusable. Everyone has the power to stop violence before it starts, and we want to arm as many people as possible with the knowledge of how to keep their schools and communities safe.”In August, the JAMA Network published a study comparing gun violence in the United States to other countries. While 12 out of 100,000 people in America died from firearms in 2017, the number in Canada was 2.1. In Germany it was 0.9. In the United Kingdom it was 0.3. In Japan, it was 0.2. This is America.

Panel investigating Parkland shooting recommends arming teachers - A Florida state commission investigating the February shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 people dead recommended on Wednesday that teachers who undergo proper training be allowed to carry firearms at schools.The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission voted 13-1 to recommend the state legislature pass the proposal. The recommendation calls for teachers who would be armed to undergo a background check and proper training. The controversial idea was floated by some Republicans and advocates of "hardening" schools in the wake of the Parkland shooting, but was criticized by teachers and Democrats.The Sun-Sentinel reported that Florida schools are allowed under current law to arm certain employees, such as resource officers or administrators.“In the ideal world, we shouldn’t need anyone on campus with a gun, but that’s not the world we live in today,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the commission. "One’s not enough. Two’s not enough. We need multiple people in order to protect the children."Max Schachter, a commission member whose son was killed in the February shooting, cast the lone vote against the proposal. He said the panel should look at alternative options, The Sun-Sentinel reported. In addition, the panel assessed the law enforcement response to the shooting. The commission called for the Broward Sheriff's Office to conduct an internal review of how seven deputies handled the incident, and urged law enforcement agencies to write policies that make clear officers should confront shooters.

High school graduation requirements, violent offender registry among bills approved - The Columbus Dispatch -- Ohio's legislature has made sure that high school seniors for the next two years don’t fail to graduate because of low standardized test scores, but the focus will soon turn toward finding a long-term solution.The Senate and House gave final votes Thursday to legislation creating alternative graduation requirements for the classes of 2019 and 2020, sending it to Gov. John Kasich for his signature. Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington, cast the lone vote against it.The move addresses a concern that too many seniors are failing to meet the enhanced graduation requirements that were supposed to take effect with the class of 2018: scoring at least 18 out of 36 points on end-of-course exams, earning a remediation-free score on a college entrance exam, or earning an industry-recognized credential or a minimum score on a workforce-readiness test.Concerned that too many students might not meet those standards, lawmakers agreed last year to add, for one year, softer paths for graduation, including good attendance, a 2.5 GPA for senior-year grades, a capstone project or holding a job.Lawmakers will extend those extra options to the class of 2019, and then to the class of 2020 with tweaks, such as calculating the GPA for the student’s junior as well as senior year, requiring a more rigorous capstone project, and dropping the attendance option.The Ohio Department of Education is required to recommend new, long-term graduation standards by April 1.

NY Students Aren't Buying Amazon's Sweetheart Deal -- Students at a New York public university are baffled and outraged by an endorsement from their school’s board of directors of a controversial city giveaway to the company owned by the world’s richest man. Their endorsement follows a tuition hike adding to the students’ outrage.The board members of the City University of New York (CUNY) provided valuable public- relations credibility for a multibillion-dollar subsidy to Amazon for establishing a second headquarters in the New York area. The board’s statement claimed that the move would somehow benefit the school’s largely low-income students — not typically prime candidates for Amazon’s high-paying jobs.“They’re using CUNY for political gain when CUNY itself, the members that make up CUNY, are adamantly against it,” Carlos Jesus Calzadilla, a Brooklyn College student and founder of the YPA, told WhoWhatWhy. “Thompson is irresponsible. We’ve been calling on CUNY to get more funding and instead they’re doing tuition hikes again, adjunct professors have poverty wages, infrastructure is crumbling, hiring freezes everywhere.”Students were left to question how the city could afford to give Amazon huge tax breaks while their campuses were not receiving the attention or funding they required. In a Facebook event created by the Brooklyn College chapter of the Young Progressives of America (YPA), a nonprofit that encourages young people to “implement America’s progressive agenda and facilitate positive change,” the organization says that CUNY should be focusing on its current problems, such as decrepit learning environments andinadequate pay for adjunct professors, rather than currying favor with one of the world’s richest men.CUNY, New York City’s public university system, has an enrollment of more than 270,000 students spread across 25 campuses in the city’s five boroughs. With 11 senior colleges, seven community colleges, and seven graduate and honors colleges, CUNY is the largest urban university system in the United States. And the fact that New York could offer nearly $3 billion worth of incentives to Amazon caused uproar from CUNY students and faculty who have been pleading for the city to improve the school’s system. Students question why the Board of Trustees would support an outside company when the students feel the board has neglected its duty to the school.

 Students pay price in banks' marketing pacts with colleges: CFPB -- Students pay higher overdraft and other fees if they attend universities that have struck marketing agreements with financial institutions, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in an internal report released late last week by a consumer advocacy group. The report raises concerns about whether bank and credit union contracts with colleges are in the best financial interest of students. It also sheds light on particular institutions that charged high fees. For example, Wells Fargo charged students the most of all those with college campus marketing agreements — an average of $46.99 per account per year, while banks without such deals charged students an average of $11.93 in fees, according to the report. Other institutions also charged much higher fees, including University of Kentucky Federal Credit Union, which charged $37 per account annually and TCF Financial, which charted an average of $27.27, the report said. The CFPB suggested the marketing deals were allowing financial institutions to drive up fees. “The bureau and other government entities have expressed concern over the relationship between revenue sharing provisions in contracts and fees charged to student accountholders,” the report said. “These provisions raise questions about potential conflicts of interest, including whether revenue sharing encourages higher-fee financial products that crowd out competition from providers of accounts for which student accountholders would avoid high fees ... [or] would pay less in fees.” Jim Seitz, a Wells spokesman, denied any linkage between the marketing agreements and higher fees, saying students do not pay higher fees for services offered through a campus card program. “We feel strongly that our products and services are designed to serve the students' best interest,” Seitz said.

Shocking Data Show 40% Of American College Students Never Graduate - As we've pointed out time and time again, the notion that going to college guarantees a higher paying job and a better standard of living is a myth ('millennial Congresswoman' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez effectively embodies this myth; she worked as a bartender before launching her upset primary campaign, despite graduating with a degree in economics from Boston University, and has spoken about feeling directionless after graduating with a mountain of student debt).Generally speaking, data suggests that college graduates earn higher incomes, face lower unemployment and happier and healthier than their peers who don't have a degree. But these general figures mask the fact that millions of degree holders are defaulting on their student loans (one study published in August said 30% of student loans are in their default, or in arrears) and also struggling with underemployment or being stuck working jobs that don't require a college degree. One million Americans default on their student loans every year. And if defaults continue at their current pace, roughly 40% of borrowers will have defaulted by 2023.With so many flashing red warning signs, the fact that the risks posed by this teetering pile of $1.4 trillion in debt have received only glancing coverage in the financial press is astounding. Coverage of the rising cost of higher education always carefully asserts the old conventional wisdom - that, even with the debt, the underemployment and their resulting stressors (reams of data suggest that American millennials are delaying marriage, family formation and buying a home, largely because of their student loan debt), young Americans are still better off with a degree than without one.

Betsy DeVos cancels $150 million of student loan debt after losing court battle  - The Department of Education said it will cancel $150 million of student loan debt, impacting about 15,000 people whose schools closed. The Obama-era borrower defense relief program – which essentially ground to a halt under Education Secretary Betsy Devos – provided a path for people to seek forgiveness for federal student loans if a shuttered school violated specific laws or misled students.DeVos was highly critical of the program, reportedly calling it a “free money” giveaway, and sought to change and delay the program. However, she was sued, and a federal judge ruled in September the program needed to “go into effect.” Those eligible for loan forgiveness must have been enrolled at the school when it closed and not enrolled at another Title-IV school within three years of the previous school’s closing, according to the Education Department. PLUS loans – which parents took out on behalf of children – could also be eligible for discharge.

 Writers Silenced by Surveillance: Self-Censorship in the Age of Big Data - - We know what censorship looks like: writers being murdered, attacked or imprisoned; TV and radio stations being shut down; the only newspapers parrot the state; journalists lost in the bureaucratic labyrinth to secure a license or permit; government agencies approving which novels, plays and poetry collections can be published; books being banned or burned or the extreme regulation of access to printing materials or presses. All of these damage free expression, but they leave a fingerprint, something visible that can be measured, but what about self-censorship? This leaves no such mark. When writers self-censor, there is no record, they just stop writing or avoid certain topics and these decisions are lost to time. Without being able to record and document isolated cases the way we can with explicit government censorship, the only thing we can do is identify potential drivers to self-censorship. As big data and digital surveillance is interwoven into the fabric of modern society there is growing evidence that the perception of surveillance affects how different communities engage with the internet. Following the Snowden revelations, John Penny at the Oxford Internet Institute analysed traffic to Wikipedia pages on topics designated by the Department of Homeland Security as sensitive and identified “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al Qaeda,’ ‘car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.’” This report was in line with a study by Alex Marthews and Catherine Tucker who found a similar trend in the avoidance of sensitive topics in Google search behaviour in 41 countries. This has significant impact on both free expression and democracy, as outlined by Penney: “If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.” But it doesn’t end with sourcing information. In a study of Facebook, Elizabeth Stoycheff discovered that when faced with holders of majority opinions and the knowledge of government surveillance, holders of minority viewpoints are more likely to “self-censor their dissenting opinions online”. If holders of minority opinions step away from online platforms like Facebook, these platforms will only reflect the majority opinion, homogenising discourse and giving a false idea of consensus. Read together, these studies document a slow erosion of the eco-system within which free expression flourishes.

The Middle Class Retirement Nightmare -- Once again we bear grim news... Millions of Americans may have to delay retirement for years - if not permanently. Like a squirrel that hasn’t saved against approaching winter... 80% of American workers have under one year’s salary salted away for retirement. This we learn from a recent report issuing from the National Institute on Retirement Security. We are further informed that over 100 million working-age Americans own no retirement accounts whatsoever — including 401(k)s, individual accounts or pensions. Meantime, 77% of Americans fall woefully behind “even the most conservative retirement savings targets for their age.” Summarizing the dismal business is Diane Oakley, the report’s author and Cassandra: The facts and data are clear. Retirement is in peril for most working-class Americans. When all working individuals are considered — not just the minority with retirement accounts — the typical working American has zero, zilch, nothing saved for retirement. Thus for millions a “middle-class nightmare” is fast displacing the American dream: The American dream of a modest retirement after a lifetime of work now is a middle-class nightmare. Even among workers who have accumulated savings in retirement accounts, the typical worker had a low account balance of $40,000. This is far off track from the savings levels Americans need if they hope to sustain their standard of living in retirement. 

Obamacare Gutted- Core Provisions Ruled Unconstitutional By Texas Judge - Core provisions of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, were ruled unconstitutional by a Texas judge on Friday following a lawsuit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general from 20 states against Democratic attorneys general from 14 states led by California's Xavier Becerra. According to court documents (below) US District Judge Reed O'Connor of Fort Worth agreed with the GOP coalition that he had to gut key provisions of the Affordable Care Act after Congress last year eliminated the individual mandate - a tax penalty for not buying insurance. Friday's decision which will undoubtedly be fought all the way to the Supreme Court, as California has already announced that they will appeal. The Texas-led Republicans argued that they've been harmed by an explosion of people on state-supported insurance rolls - claiming that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year it nullified the US Supreme Court's rationale for deeming the ACA constitutional in 2012. The Democratic attorneys general argued that overturning Obamacare would toss millions of people from health insurance rolls by reversing Medicaid expansion - which would end tax credits and allow insurers to start denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. DOJ attorneys urged Judge O'Connor to strike down the individual mandate and pre-existing condition mandate, however they asked the judge to spare the rest of the law - including Medicaid expansion, health exchanges, the employer mandate, federal healthcare reimbursement rates for hospitals and premium subsidies.

Prominent Doctors Aren’t Disclosing Their Industry Ties in Medical Journal Studies. And Journals Are Doing Little to Enforce Their Rules ProPublica - One is dean of Yale’s medical school. Another is the director of a cancer center in Texas. A third is the next president of the most prominent society of cancer doctors.  These leading medical figures are among dozens of doctors who have failed in recent years to report their financial relationships with pharmaceutical and health care companies when their studies are published in medical journals, according to a review by ProPublica and The New York Times and data from other recent research.  Dr. Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, the president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, for instance, declared that he had no conflicts of interest in more than 50 journal articles in recent years, including in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. However, drug companies have paid his employer nearly $114,000 for consulting and speaking, and nearly $8 million for his research during the period for which disclosure was required. His omissions extended to the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is published by the group he will lead. In addition to the widespread lapses by doctors, the review by ProPublica and The Times found that journals themselves often gave confusing advice and did not routinely vet disclosures by researchers, although many relationships could have been easily detected on a federal database. Medical journals, which are the main conduit for communicating the latest scientific discoveries to the public, often have an interdependent relationship with the researchers who publish in their pages. Reporting a study in a leading journal can heighten their profile — not to mention that of the drug or other product being tested. And journals enhance their cachet by publishing exclusive, breakthrough studies by acclaimed researchers.

Investigation of generic ‘cartel’ expands to 300 drugs - Executives at more than a dozen generic-drug companies had a form of shorthand to describe how they conducted business, insider lingo worked out over steak dinners, cocktail receptions and rounds of golf. The “sandbox,” according to investigators, was the market for generic prescription drugs, where everyone was expected to play nice. “Fair share” described dividing up the sales pie to ensure that each company reaped continued profits. “Trashing the market” was used when a competitor ignored these unwritten rules and sold drugs for less than agreed-upon prices. The terminology reflected more than just the clubbiness of a powerful industry, according to authorities and several lawsuits. Officials from multiple states say these practices were central to illegal price-fixing schemes of massive proportion. The lawsuit and related cases picked up steam last month when a federal judge ruled that more than 1 million emails, cellphone texts and other documents cited as evidence could be shared among all plaintiffs. What started as an antitrust lawsuit brought by states over just two drugs in 2016 has exploded into an investigation of alleged price-fixing involving at least 16 companies and 300 drugs, Joseph Nielsen, an assistant attorney general and antitrust investigator in Connecticut who has been a leading force in the probe, said in an interview. His comments in an interview with The Washington Post represent the first public disclosure of the dramatically expanded scale of the investigation. The unfolding case is rattling an industry that is portrayed in Washington as the white knight of American health care. “This is most likely the largest cartel in the history of the United States,” Nielsen said. He cited the volume of drugs in the schemes, that they took place on American soil and the “total number of companies involved, and individuals.” The alleged victims were American health-care consumers and taxpayers, who foot the bills for overcharges on common antibiotics, blood-pressure medications, arthritis treatments, anxiety pills and more, authorities say.

Single With Cancer- You May Receive Less Aggressive Treatment -- After a cancer diagnosis, people who are single, divorced or widowed may receive less aggressive therapy, which could mean a greater risk of death, according to an article in The Washington Post.To understand how experts might explain this phenomenon, the author of the article, cancer survivor Joan DelFattore, reviewed 59 studies from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), a database run by the National Cancer Institute, showing that married adults are more likely to survive cancer than single people. DelFattore found that study after study showed significant differences in treatment rates between married and unmarried patients. For example, single patients are far less likely to receive surgery or radiotherapy than married ones, even when it’s the treatment of choice. One proposed explanation for these findings is that single patients, who may have less support than married ones, are more likely to refuse aggressive treatments. Other study authors wagered that unmarried patients may lack “the fighting spirit” of married patients. However, DelFattore writes: “But that explanation doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.” In fact, researchers from Harvard, MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Mayo Clinic and others found that physician bias against single patients may have more do to with the differences in treatment and, consequently, outcomes than many providers are willing to admit. For one thing, just 0.4 percent of single patients these researchers studied in the 925,127 patient database declined surgery when their physicians recommended it. Just 0.9 percent declined radiation therapy. Absent from the studies was any mention of the role physicians might have played in treatment decisions. An alternative hypothesis for why single people receive less aggressive treatment is that they are simply not being offered it.

 ‘Transmissible’ Alzheimer’s theory gains traction - Neuroscientists have amassed more evidence for the hypothesis that sticky proteins that are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases can be transferred between people under particular conditions — and cause new damage in a recipient’s brain. They stress that their research does not suggest that disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease are contagious, but it does raise concern that certain medical and surgical procedures pose a risk of transmitting such proteins between humans, which might lead to brain disease decades later.  “The risk may turn out to be minor — but it needs to be investigated urgently,” says John Collinge, a neurologist at University College London who led the research, which is published in Nature¹ on 13 December. The work follows up on a provocative study published by Collinge’s team in 2015². The researchers discovered extensive deposits of a protein called amyloid-beta during post-mortem studies of the brains of four people in the United Kingdom. They had been treated for short stature during childhood with growth-hormone preparations derived from the pituitary glands of thousands of donors after death. The recipients had died in middle-age of a rare but deadly neurodegenerative condition called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), caused by the presence in some of the growth-hormone preparations of an infectious, misfolded protein — or prion — that causes CJD. But pathologists hadn’t expected to see the amyloid build up at such an early age. Collinge and his colleagues suggested that small amounts of amyloid-beta had also been transferred from the growth-hormone samples, and had caused, or ‘seeded’, the characteristic amyloid plaques.

Can We Really Inherit Trauma? - In mid-October, researchers in California published a study of Civil War prisoners that came to a remarkable conclusion. Male children of abused war prisoners were about 10 percent more likely to die than their peers were in any given year after middle age, the study reported. The findings, the authors concluded, supported an “epigenetic explanation.” The idea is that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes, which then is passed down to subsequent generations. The mark doesn’t directly damage the gene; there’s no mutation. Instead it alters the mechanism by which the gene is converted into functioning proteins, or expressed. The alteration isn’t genetic. It’s epigenetic. The field of epigenetics gained momentum about a decade ago, when scientists reported that children who were exposed in the womb to the Dutch Hunger Winter, a period of famine toward the end of World War II, carried a particular chemical mark, or epigenetic signature, on one of their genes. The researchers later linked that finding to differences in the children’s health later in life, including higher-than-average body mass. The excitement since then has only intensified, generating more studies — of the descendants of Holocaust survivors, of victims of poverty — that hint at the heritability of trauma. If these studies hold up, they would suggest that we inherit some trace of our parents’ and even grandparents’ experience, particularly their suffering, which in turn modifies our own day-to-day health — and perhaps our children’s, too.

How the CIA Used Brain Surgery to Make Six Remote-Controlled Dogs -- Newly released files from “behavior modification,” or mind control, projects conducted as part of the infamous Project MKUltra reveal the CIA experimented in more than controlling humans with psychotropic drugs, electrical shocks and radio waves—they also created field operational, remote-controlled dogs. The documents were provided under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by John Greenewald, founder of The Black Vault, a site specializing in declassified government records. In one declassified letter (released as file C00021825) a redacted individual writes to a doctor (whose name has also been redacted) with advice about launching a laboratory for experiments in animal mind control. The writer of the letter is already an expert in the field, whose earlier work had culminated with the creation of six remote control dogs, which could be made to run, turn and stop. “As you know, I spent about three years working in the research area of rewarding electrical stimulation of the brain,” the individual writes. “In the laboratory, we performed a number of experiments with rats; in the open field, we employed dogs of several breeds.” The letter writer characterizes the work with remote-controlling dogs as a success, describing “a demonstrated procedure for controlling the free-field behaviors of an unrestrained dog.” Attached to the letter is the writer’s final report from his earlier research, published in 1965, titled “Remote Control Behavior with Rewarding Electrical Stimulation of the Brain,” with the principle investigator’s name redacted.

Newly-Released MKUltra Docs- The CIA Made Remote-Controlled Dogs With Brain Surgery -  The Central Intelligence Agency made six remote-controlled dogs as a part of their MKULTRA “behavior modification” or mind control program.  Using brain surgery, newly requested documents show that the dogs were “field operational” and controlled by human beings. The CIA marked the 65th anniversary of the launch of Project MKULTRA. And the public is finally getting a more broad and detailed look at just how far those attempting these gruesome experiments were willing to go in order to gain control of our thoughts. The documents were provided under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by  The Black Vault founder, John Greenewald. According to a report by Newsweek, The Black Vault specializes in declassified government records. In one declassified letter (released as file C00021825) a redacted individual writes to a doctor (whose name has also been redacted) with advice about launching a laboratory for experiments in animal mind control. The writer of the letter is already an expert in the field, whose earlier work had culminated with the creation of six remote control dogs, which could be made to run, turn, and stop.  As if their mind control experiments on humans were not disturbing enough, the CIA also admits that the goal was to control the behavior of a dog.“The specific aim of the research program was to examine the possibility of controlling the behavior of a dog, in an open field, by means of remotely triggering electrical stimulation of the brain,” the report states. …. After the surgery to control the mind of a dog, the CIA states that the gruesome side effects could be “infection at the electrode site due to a failure of the surgical wound to heal.” Newsweek reported that after trying out a plastic helmet, government scientists instead settled on the new surgical technique that involved, “embedding the electrode entirely within a mound of dental cement on the skull and running the leads subcutaneously to a point between the shoulder blades, where the leads are brought to the surface and affixed to a standard dog harness.”

 “Tool of Terror”: Fentanyl Could Be Used as “Weapon of Mass Destruction” — Fentanyl is so powerful that a few milligrams can be fatal. It would take about 40 pounds of fentanyl to kill everyone in New York City and 1,515 pounds to kill almost all Americans. This killer opioid is so potent, according to Bloomberg it could be used as a “weapon of mass destruction,” adding that national security experts are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospect of it being used in the next terror attack.  A silent weapon of mass destruction: Fentanyl has already appeared on American streets, becoming the most dangerous drug blamed for sparking a public health crisis that has crushed the productivity of the workforce. American deaths linked to fentanyl increased more than 50% to 29,406 last year, from 19,413 in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).  Relatively easy to make, the drug is mass produced in China and Mexico, then pumped into American communities. Additionally, Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin. In its most active form, called carfentanil, a small dose can tranquilize an elephant.  Law enforcement agencies have been warned across the country to handle fentanyl with extreme caution; some officers have almost overdosed after getting the substance on their skin.  “If ground-up fentanyl is placed on everyday objects, people could easily put their fingers in their mouths or rub their eyes and have a deadly reaction,” said Josh Bloom, the American Council on Science and Health official.” Law enforcement officers and emergency medical officials have not been trained for a biochemical weapons attack involving Fentanyl. Nevertheless, these same agencies can barely keep up with thousands of opioid overdoses across the country on a daily basis.

A Murder Over a Monsanto Chemical  - Mike Wallace sat in his pickup truck on a dusty back road near his farm outside Leachville, Arkansas, typing impatiently into his cell phone. “I’m waiting on you,” he wrote. “You coming?”   Wallace, 55, was a prominent figure in the Arkansas Delta farming community. His 5,000-acre farm was large, although the yield on that year’s soybean crop hadn’t been as successful as he had expected. Wallace believed he knew why his crops had failed, and it had nothing to do with the sun or the rain or the decisions he had made about when to put his seeds in the ground. Instead, he blamed a 26-year-old farmhand named Curtis Jones for illegally spraying dicamba, a controversial weed killer, on a neighboring farm. Wallace believed the dicamba had drifted onto his fields and damaged almost half of his soybean crop, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars.It wasn’t the first time this had occurred. The previous year, dicamba from another farm had also drifted onto Wallace’s fields, causing the leaves of his soybeans to pucker into ugly cups fringed with white fuzz. He complained to the Arkansas State Plant Board, which oversees such disputes. The agency fined Wallace’s neighbor, but Wallace was never compensated for the lost revenue. So when Wallace was hit again the next season, he decided he’d had enough. He called Jones and proposed that they meet to settle things in person. Wallace threatened to “whip [my] ass,” Jones later said. Moments after Wallace sent his last text message, Jones arrived in his own pickup. As soon as he stepped out of the truck, Jones later told police, Wallace charged at him, arms flailing. He was on Jones within seconds, pinning him against the rear driver’s side door. As they scuffled, Jones pulled a .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol from his back pocket and began to fire. The bullets hit Wallace in his right shoulder and arm, his chest, and abdomen. Jones continued firing until the clip was empty—seven shots in all. One bullet entered Wallace’s back, above his left buttocks. Just 91 seconds after Wallace’s last text message, Jones was on the phone with police to report that he’d shot a man. Wallace lay in the dirt, bleeding to death.

Polio-Like Disease Spreads; Record Number Of Cases Reported As Children Suffer Paralysis - 2018 has seen a record number of cases of a polio-like illness which paralyzes children, according to US health officials.   Experts still have no idea what's causing children across the country to lose the ability to move their arms, legs, face, heck, or back - around a week after patients are diagnosed with a fever and respiratory illness. The rare disease which starts off like the common cold affects the nervous system, "specifically the area of the spinal cord called gray matter, which causes the muscles and reflexes in the body to become weak," according to the CDC.   Around half of the children diagnosed were admitted to hospital intensive care units - with many requiring breathing machines. Officials also have no idea why some children recover from the illness, while others are left paralyzed.  Traced back to 2012, the mystery illness known as Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) has struck 158 people across 36 states this year, while 311 reports are still being evaluated. Texas has had the most cases at 21, while Colorado came in second at 15.   What's also strange is the two year cycle observed in the illness which begins in September and subsides at the end of November.  Investigators have suspected it is caused by a virus called EV-D68. The 2014 wave coincided with a lot of EV-D68 infections and the virus “remains the leading hypothesis,” said Dr. Ruth Lynfield, a member of a 16-person AFM Task Force that the CDC established last month to offer advice to disease detectives. But there is disagreement about how strong a suspect EV-D68 is. Waves of AFM and that virus haven’t coincided in other years, and testing is not finding the virus in every case. CDC officials have been increasingly cautious about saying the virus triggered the illnesses in this outbreak. –AP  Also a mystery - while over 17 countries have reported scattered cases of AFM, none of them have seen cyclical surges like in the United States.

 J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder -- Darlene Coker knew she was dying. She just wanted to know why. She knew that her cancer, mesothelioma, was as rare as it was deadly, a signature of exposure to asbestos.  Fighting for every breath and in crippling pain, Coker hired Herschel Hobson, a personal-injury lawyer. He homed in on a suspect: the Johnson’s Baby Powder that Coker had used on her infant children and sprinkled on herself all her life. Hobson knew that talc and asbestos often occurred together in the earth, and that mined talc could be contaminated with the carcinogen. Coker sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging that “poisonous talc” in the company’s beloved product was her killer. J&J denied the claim. Baby Powder was asbestos-free, it said. As the case proceeded, J&J was able to avoid handing over talc test results and other internal company records Hobson had requested to make the case against Baby Powder.Coker had no choice but to drop her lawsuit, Hobson said. “When you are the plaintiff, you have the burden of proof,” he said. “We didn’t have it.”That was in 1999. Two decades later, the material Coker and her lawyer sought is emerging as J&J has been compelled to share thousands of pages of company memos, internal reports and other confidential documents with lawyers for some of the 11,700 plaintiffs now claiming that the company’s talc caused their cancers — including thousands of women with ovarian cancer.A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators’ plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.A small portion of the documents have been produced at trial and cited in media reports. Many were shielded from public view by court orders that allowed J&J to turn over thousands of documents it designated as confidential. Much of their contents is reported here for the first time.

Workplace exposure to pesticides and metals linked to heightened heart disease risk - Workplace exposure to metals and pesticides is linked to a heightened risk of heart disease in Hispanic and Latino workers, reveals research published online in the journal Heart. Language barriers and low levels of education, coupled with fears about job security and immigration status, may make this rapidly growing ethnic group especially vulnerable, say the researchers. They base their findings on survey responses and medical test results for 7404 Hispanic/Latino workers aged 18 to 74 from Miami, Chicago, San Diego, and New York City. The workers were enrolled in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, which has been looking at potential risk factors for developing long term conditions in this ethnic group in the US. Participants were asked to report how often they had been/were exposed to organic solvents, metals, and pesticides each week. And they were quizzed about lifestyle factors, including smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, and physical activity levels. Medical tests included a heart trace (ECG), weight (BMI), and measurement of blood fats and glucose levels. Cardiovascular disease was defined as the presence of at least one of the following: coronary heart disease; atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm); heart failure; and cerebrovascular disease (stroke, TIA also known as a mini-stroke). After taking account of potentially influential factors, including lifestyle and workplace factors, exposure to pesticides was associated with nearly six-fold higher odds of atrial fibrillation, while exposure to metals was associated with nearly four-fold higher odds.

Dying in Mine Dust: In Rajasthan, Miners Battle TB and Silicosis -Chotu Lal Bhil sat on his haunches, trying to break a sandstone slab with a hammer.  Because of low farming yields, he has worked at quarries in Bhilwara for 16 years.  Bhil contracted tuberculosis last year, and took medicine for it, but he was still losing weight. That day, he was working despite a low-grade fever and cough. “Khakhaar bukhar – cough and fever – the symptoms have returned,” he said. “Do you think it is possible that I have TB again? Or is it that the TB has become silicosis?”  India has an enormous tuberculosis problem. According to the World Health Organisation, 2.79 million Indians contracted TB in 2017, nearly a quarter of all the cases in the world. Only 1.8 million cases were notified. Nearly a million cases are not notified, and inadequately diagnosed and treated.  Rajasthan has the highest number of the poorest mine workers – more than 1.65 families who work in its stone quarries and mines for casual wages. They are in the grip of a silicosis epidemic.  In an effort to reduce the transmission of TB, last year, the Ministry of Health identified priority groups, such as miners, who are at greater risk because of work conditions and reduced access to medical services. Workers in mines and stone-crushing units inhale hazardous levels of silica, which corrodes lung tissue and reduces their immunity to bacterial infections like TB. Those infections can then spread to co-workers and family. Yet their employers deny any responsibility, and refuse to adopt even the simplest preventive measures. Sandstone from Rajasthan is in great demand internationally, for cobbles and tiles. Bijolia, in Bhilwara, is one of the top sites of production. Despite the international markets, the work here is done with primitive technology. Stone is carved and processed manually, with hammers and chisels, and there is little safety oversight.

Dirty air- how India became the most polluted country on earth - Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon at New Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, has a ringside view of the toll that northern India’s deteriorating air quality is taking on its residents. When he started practising 30 years ago, some 80 to 90 per cent of his lung cancer patients were smokers, mostly men, aged typically in their 50s or 60s.But in the past six years, half of Dr Kumar’s lung cancer patients have been non-smokers, about 40 per cent of them women. Patients are younger too, with 8 per cent in their 30s and 40s.To Dr Kumar, the dramatic shift in the profiles of lung cancer patients has a clear cause: air fouled by dirty diesel exhaust fumes, construction dust, rising industrial emissions and crop burning, which has created heavy loads of harmful pollutants in the air.Even in teenage lungs, Dr Kumar sees black deposits that would have been almost unthinkable 30 years ago. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — in short, severe lung conditions — is now India’s largest cause of death after heart disease.“If these guys are having black deposits on their lungs as teens, what’s going to happen to them 20 years later?” asks Dr Kumar, who last week launched Doctors for Clean Air to raise awareness about the impact of air pollution. “It’s a silent crisis. It’s an emergency.” The problem is most acute in India but it is not alone. The Financial Times collated Nasa satellite data of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — a measure of air quality — and mapped it against population density data from the European Commission to develop a global overview of the number of people affected by this type of dangerous pollution.The results are alarming: not just the number of people breathing in polluted air, but those breathing air contaminated with particulates that are multiple times over the level deemed safe — 10 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre — by the World Health Organisation.

Ohio legislature's bid to bar plastic shopping bag fees is shortsighted and wrong: editorial - With their 59-30 mostly party-line vote Nov. 28 to pass House Bill 625 out of the Ohio House, the General Assembly's Republicans are seeking yet again to undermine the home-rule powers that the Ohio Constitution gives cities and villages. They're also embarrassing the state with legislation that shows Ohio lawmakers are in denial about a significant environmental and clean-water issue.HB 625 would forbid local governments from imposing any "tax, fee, assessment or other charge" on plastic shopping bags or other "auxiliary containers" for merchandise, food or beverages. Only the state could tax retailers' plastic bags and similar packaging. But this legislature never will.No local government in Ohio has imposed such a tax. Cuyahoga County and some other localities discussed it. That was enough to mobilize the Statehouse's powerful retailing and plastic lobbies behind HB 625, which is now pending in the state Senate.The bill disregards significant evidence about the extent to which plastic pollution now fouls our waterways and oceans, while aiming another slap at the ability of localities to craft solutions to such problems.

More bioplastics do not necessarily contribute to climate change mitigation - Bioplastics are often promoted as an environmentally and climate-friendly alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics. However, a recent study from the University of Bonn suggests that shifting to plant-based plastics could be less positive than expected. Specifically, increased consumption of bioplastics is likely to generate increased greenhouse gas emissions from cropland expansion on a global scale.  Plastics are usually made from petroleum, with the associated impacts of climate change: The carbon embodied in fossil resources is released to the atmosphere by degradation or burning, hence contributing to global warming. Bioplastics, on the other hand, are in principle climate-neutral since they are based on renewable raw materials such as maize, wheat or sugar cane. These plants get the CO2 that they need from the air through their leaves. Producing bioplastics therefore consumes CO2, which compensates for the amount that is later released at end-of-life. Overall, their net greenhouse gas balance is assumed to be zero. But this issue is probably not as clear as often assumed, at least with the current level of technology. "The production of bioplastics in large amounts would change land use globally," explains Dr. Neus Escobar from the Institute of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Bonn. "This could potentially lead to an increase in the conversion of forest areas to arable land. However, forests absorb considerably more CO2 than maize or sugar cane annually, if only because of their larger biomass." Experience with biofuels has shown that this effect is not a theoretical speculation. The increasing demand for green energy sources has resulted in massive deforestation to some countries across the tropics.

40 Acres of Farm Land in America Is Lost to Development Every Hour --Picture bulldozers plowing up pastures and cornfields to put in subdivisions and strip malls. Add to this picture the fact that the average age of the American farmer is nearly 60—it's often retiring farmers that sell to real estate developers. They can afford to pay much more for property than aspiring young farmers.Alarmed by this trend, environmentalists back in the 1970s developed the idea to pay retiring farmers to preserve their land in a natural state rather than sell out to real estate developers. Since then, thousands of nonprofit "land trusts" have sprung up to support the cause, 29 states now have funding programs to support them, and the federal government has offered a hefty tax break to landowners who sign a "conservation easement," which is legalese for a document that prevents a parcel from being paved over, in perpetuity, no matter who buys it.For the most part, the movement has been a success. So far, it's kept more than 56 million acres out of developers' hands over the past four decades. But some in agricultural circles are concerned that conservation land is also being kept out of the hands of future farmers since traditional conservation easements don't require the land to be productively farmed, only preserved. Land trust properties may be off-limits to developers. However, they are becoming increasingly desirable among deep-pocketed individuals who are looking to establish hobby farms and equestrian estates, which are fair game under most conservation easements. "City folks who want to buy farmland for its idyllic qualities but not necessarily food production for market are a worrisome new piece of the larger land access issue," she said.

Reindeer Numbers Have Fallen by More than Half in 2 Decades -- It's a sad Christmas for the world's reindeer—the antlered Arctic grazers associated with all things Santa Claus. Their numbers have fallen by more than half in the past 20 years, and climate change is likely to blame. The latest numbers come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2018 Arctic Report Card, which listed the increasing impacts of global warming on the earth's northernmost region, as EcoWatch has already reported. But the loss of Rangifer tarandus—called caribou in North America and Greenland and reindeer in Siberia and Europe—is of note because it threatens to further throw Arctic ecosystems and cultures out of whack. Reindeer are important prey for wolves and biting flies, and a key source of food and clothing for indigenous groups. "If you look at the [top] Northern resources, that shape the culture of northern communities and aboriginal people, what they have in common is caribou and or wild reindeer, no matter where they are in the circumpolar North," Don Russell, lead author of the Report Card's essay on reindeer, told Vox.  The report found that reindeer and caribou herds have declined by 56 percent in the past two decades—that's a decrease of 2.6 million reindeer from a population of 4.7 million to a population of 2.1 million. Five herds in Alaska and Canada were particularly at risk: their populations have declined by more than 90 percent and showed no signs of rebounding. While it is normal for caribou and reindeer herds to swell and shrink, some herds are at all-time lows since record-keeping began. "The fact that these herds are declining shouldn't be a shock—they do it all the time," Russell told Vox. "But they're at such low levels, you start to be concerned ... If we return in 10 years and [their numbers] have gone down further, that would be unprecedented." .

 As Winters Warm, Blood-Sucking Ticks Drain Moose Dry - Lee Kantar crouches over a dead moose calf. Its head rests on the ground and its legs are tucked beneath its frail torso. A GPS collar Kantar had strapped around its neck in January pinged his phone the night before, signaling the calf had not moved in more than six hours and was likely dead. “Nose is normal. Eyes are normal. Ears are normal—quite a bit of ticks on her ears,” Kantar calls off to his field assistant, Carl Tuggand, who records the data on a clipboard. “There are a lot of ticks on her.” Responding to tick-covered dead moose has become a regular springtime routine for Kantar; as Maine’s official state moose biologist at its Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, he has strapped necropsy equipment to his snowmobile and bushwhacked through dense forests dozens of times over the past five years. He is studying how growing infestations of winter ticks have seized entire populations of this iconic animal. As climate change shortens winters and improves living conditions for these ticks—which do not carry Lyme or other human-harming diseases—their population size and range have begun to expand.  Kantar and his colleagues in New England attribute this largely to a climate change–linked explosion in winter tick populations. In a recent Canadian Journal of Zoology study they report three consecutive years of tick epizootics (epidemics among animals of the same species) from 2014 through 2016—a run they say is unprecedented in this region. The ticks have become so voracious in some places a single moose can carry an appalling 90,000 at once, they report. In such numbers the ticks drain so much blood that the host moose can become anemic and malnourished and “can’t replace the blood fast enough,” Kantar says. In the case of many first-year calves like the one Kantar responded to in April, they die.

 Interior Dept. officials downplayed federal wildlife experts' concerns about Trump’s border wall, documents show - Federal government scientists raised red flags last year about President Trump’s proposed wall for the U.S.-Mexico border, suggesting that it could harm the habitats of imperiled species living in the ecologically diverse region. Constructing a physical barrier in southern Texas, some said, should be avoided if possible. But a number of those concerns did not make it to border officials considering the wall’s construction. Interior Department officials stripped from a key letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection a number of warnings by career biologists and wildlife managers about the potential impacts of the border wall on the area’s rare cats and other animals, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The deletions from a letter that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately sent in 2017, shown in documents provided to the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, are the latest example of the Trump administration brushing aside career wildlife officials' recommendations when their conclusions clash with political priorities. In emails months before the letter was crafted, a key Interior Department official made it clear to Fish and Wildlife Service officials that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “has indicated we are to support the border security mission.” The construction of a wall along the entire southern border ranks among Trump’s highest priorities, dating to his 2016 campaign. The president is threatening to partially shut down the federal government before Christmas in a bid to extract more funding from Democrats for the wall. House and Senate Democratic leaders are set to sit down with Trump on Tuesday to discuss border wall funding and the federal budget. 

Most Diverse Butterfly Center in the U.S. to be Bulldozed for Trump’s Border Wall -- The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas is the most diverse butterfly sanctuary in the U.S. Some 200 species of butterflies find a home there each year, including the Mexican bluewing, the black swallowtail and the increasingly imperiled monarch. And, as soon as February, almost 70 percent of it could be lost to President Donald Trump's border wall, The Guardian reported Thursday."It's going to cut right through here," Center Director Marianna Wright told The Guardian as she indicated where the wall's construction would cut off the center's access to its own land in the Rio Grande Valley at a point 1.2 miles from the border. Wright said the wall threatened to end the center entirely and harm the butterflies and other species like the Texas tortoise, Texas indigo snake and Texas horned lizard that also find refuge on its land.The center's fate was sealed Dec. 3, when, Reuters reported, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Defenders of Wildlifeappealing a federal court decision that the Trump administration can waive 28 environmental laws including the Endangered Species Act in order to build 33 more miles of wall.The wall will be as many as three stories tall and construction in the butterfly refuge could begin as soon as February, The San Antonio Express-News reported. "Just like farmers get crop yield in acres and inches, we get butterflies based on what we have planted in acres and inches," Wright told The San Antonio Express-News. "So having a wide swath of our property bulldozed is going to negatively impact the volume of the species and diversity of the species." The animals that pass through the butterfly center won't be the only living beings impacted by the wall. The Center for Biological Diversity found that the wall threatened a total of 93 already endangered or threatened species, including ocelots and cactus ferruginous pygmy owls. The wall also makes the border crossing more dangerous for immigrants who will have to travel farther into the desert to bypass it.

‘It’s a sad reality’- a troubling trend sees a 97% decline in monarch butterflies - In the 1980s, roughly 4.5 million monarchs wintered in California, but at last count, there may be as few as 30,000 A monarch butterfly clings to a plant. Over the last two decades, monarch numbers in the West have declined. Photograph: Michael Fiala/Reuters The hillside groves of eucalyptus trees that tower over the Santa Cruz shoreline would, not so long ago, be teeming with monarch butterflies at this time of year.  Boughs would be bent under the weight of black and orange clusters, as hundreds of thousands of the magical invertebrates nestled into the leaves, waiting out the frost on the California coast before returning north.  Now, on a sunny December afternoon the boardwalk that weaves through the monarch preserve, at Natural Bridges State Beach, is filled with school children craning necks and straining eyes to catch a glimpse.The monarchs are there – but they are harder to spot. Just two years ago, 8,000 overwintered here, but these days, just more than a thousand are fluttering amidst the Santa Cruz trees. It’s part of a troubling trend: over the last two decades monarch numbers in the West have declined by roughly 97%.According to the Xerces Society, a conservation organization, in the 1980s between 10 million and 4.5 million monarchs spent the winter in California. The last count, conducted annually by volunteers each November, showed that in 2018 there may be as few as 30,000 across the state – a number that’s 87% lower than just the year before.“We had a lot of reason to suspect that it was going to be a bad year, but we were shocked at just how bad,”

Washington Gov. Proposes 'Herculean Effort' to Save 74 Remaining Southern Resident Orcas -- With only 74 left in the wild, the Southern Resident orca population in Puget Sound needs help now more than ever. That's why on Thursday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's office announced "an unprecedented investment" to help boost the population as well as the Chinook salmon they eat. "We are undertaking a herculean effort to save these iconic creatures. It will take action at every level of the environment across our entire state," Inslee said in a news release. "We need to restore the ecosystem to one that sustains orcas, salmon and the quality of life for all Washingtonians." The population of the beloved killer whales is at a 30-year low. Their plight was underscored this summer when a mother whale Tahlequah, or J35, carried her dead calf for at least seventeen days and 1,000 miles in her heartbreaking "tour of grief" this August. Then in September, the ailing J50, another member of Tahlequah's pod, was declared missing and presumed dead after a three-day search in the waters between Washington state and Canada. Inslee's orca recovery plan is part of his 2019–21 state budget, which proposes about $1.1 billion in combined investments to address the main problems faced by the critically endangered killer whales: a lack of salmon;toxic contaminants; and vessel traffic and noise. Much of the investment will go towards improving the diets of Southern Resident orcas, which mostly eat Chinook salmon. But the salmon's numbers are down 60 percent and if they continue to decline, the orca population will too. For that reason, Inslee's proposed budget will provide $363 million in the capital budget for salmon recovery, culvert removal, water quality and water supply projects that will expand and improve salmon survival across the state.

Arabian Sea Sharks May be the Most Threatened in the World  - Sharks, rays and chimaeras are some of the most threatened fish in the world. More than 50 percent of species in the Arabian Sea are at elevated risk of extinction due to coastal development, overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction. According to an expansive new study, spanning more than a dozen countries, species like sawfish are particularly hard hit with extinction or local extirpation. "Populations have significantly declined," said Julia Spaet, a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University and a coauthor of the new study, published recently in Fish and Fisheries. Unregulated fishing and habitat degradation are largely to blame, she said, exacerbated by limited political will and regional capacity to address the problem. The new study's conclusions are based on data from fishing markets in countries around the Arabian Sea, including India, Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Yemen, Somalia and Sri Lanka. They found that more than 50 percent of sharks (78 of 153 species in the region) face an elevated risk of extinction, a significantly higher proportion than in other areas of the world with regional assessments. Only the Mediterranean has numbers approaching the Arabian Sea's.  Sawfish, which are actually rays, giant guitarfish and hammerheads are some of the species in the worst trouble.  Ebert said sawfish are threatened by a combination of incidental fishing and development in the coastal mangrove areas where they live. Development destroys their habitat and degrades it through pollution and increased noise. The rays are also particularly susceptible to tangling in nets intended for other species, because their snouts are prickly, long rostrums, which can easily snag. Once caught, Ebert said, sawfish are prized for their fins, which fishermen cut off and sell to the shark fin market.

New EPA Rule Would Sabotage Clean Water Act - In a move environmentalists are warning will seriously endanger drinking water and wildlife nationwide, President Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly gearing up to hand yet another gift to big polluters by drastically curtailing the number of waterways and wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act."As a result of the change, an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways could lose federal protections that currently shield them from pollution and development," The Intercept's Sharon Lerner reported on Friday, citing an analysis by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "The new Trump administration rule imposes the most substantial restrictions on the Clean Water Act since its passage in 1972."Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said if the new rule—which is expected to be unveiled on Tuesday—takes effect, corporations will be free to "dump as much crap into"rivers and streams as they want."For some parts of the country, it's a complete wiping away of the Clean Water Act," Hartl concluded.The Obama-era Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule, which the Trump administration has long been aiming to roll back, was designed to limit pollution in most of the nation's large bodies of water in an effort to protect drinking water from contamination.The  Trump EPA is attempting to reinterpret the WOTUS rule in a way that allows oil giants, real estate developers and golf course owners to freely pollute rivers and streams. Critics have pointed out that Trump's businesses may stand to profit from any weakening of the WOTUS rule.

'Complete Wiping Away of Clean Water Act': Trump EPA Rule Would Free Corporations to Pollute Nation's Water as Much as They Please --In a move environmentalists are warning will seriously endanger drinking water and wildlife nationwide, President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly gearing up to hand yet another gift to big polluters by drastically curtailing the number of waterways and wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act. "As a result of the change, an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways could lose federal protections that currently shield them from pollution and development," The Intercept's Sharon Lerner reported on Friday, citing an analysis by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "The new Trump administration rule imposes the most substantial restrictions on the Clean Water Act since its passage in 1972." Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said if the new rule—which is expected to be unveiled on Tuesday—takes effect, corporations will be free to "dump as much crap into" rivers and streams as they want.  "For some parts of the country, it's a complete wiping away of the Clean Water Act," Hartl concluded.  According to E&E News, which obtained a copy of EPA talking points, the Trump administration's rule "will erase federal protections from streams that flow only following rainfall, as well as wetlands not physically connected to larger waterways." "The exact number of wetlands and waterways losing federal protections won't be known until the full, detailed proposal is released," E&E News reported on Thursday.

In Early Holiday 'Gift to Polluters,' Trump Guts Protections for 60 Percent of Nation's Streams, Wetlands, and Waterways - Sixty percent of U.S. waterways will be at risk for pollution from corporate giants, critics say, following the Trump administration's announcement Tuesday that it will roll back an Obama-era water rule meant to protect Americans' drinking water and all the waterways that flow into it.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the Obama administration's 2015 Waters of the U.S. rule (WOTUS) rule would be redefined and no longer protect many of the nation's streams and wetlands."This is an early Christmas gift to polluters and a lump of coal for everyone else," said Bob Irvin, president of the national advocacy group American Rivers. "Too many people are living with unsafe drinking water. Low-income communities, indigenous peoples, and communities of color are hit hardest by pollution and river degradation." Under the Trump administration's proposal, which Common Dreams reported as imminent last week, streams that flow only after rainfall or snowfall will no longer be protected from pollution by developers, agricultural companies, and the fossil fuel industry. Wetlands that are not connected to larger waterways will also not be protected, with developers potentially able to pave over those water bodies."The Trump administration will stop at nothing to reward polluting industries and endanger our most treasured resources." —Jon Devine, NRDCEPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested that WOTUS had created unfair roadblocks for industries, farmers, and ranchers who wanted to build and work near the nation's waterways and were kept from doing so because of the potential for water pollution. But green groups slammed the EPA for once again putting the interests of businesses ahead of the families which rely on the rule that keeps at least 60 percent of the nation's drinking water sources safe from pollution while also protecting wildlife and ecosystems which thrive in wetlands across the country.

 US states to meet at deadline on Colorado River drought plan (AP) — With drought entering a second decade and reservoirs continuing to shrink, seven Southwestern U.S. states that depend on the overtaxed Colorado River for crop irrigation and drinking water had been expected to ink a crucial share-the-pain contingency plan by the end of 2018. They’re not going to make it — at least not in time for upcoming meetings in Las Vegas involving representatives from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and the U.S. government, officials say. Arizona has been the holdout, with farmers, cities, Indian tribes and lawmakers in the state set to be first to feel the pinch still negotiating how to deal with water cutbacks when a shortage is declared, probably in 2020. “There will be cuts. We all know the clock is ticking. That’s what a lot of the difficult negotiations have been around,” In Arizona, unlike other states, a final drought contingency plan must pass the state Legislature when it convenes in January. Federal water managers wanted a deal to sign at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference beginning Wednesday in Las Vegas, and threatened earlier this year to impose unspecified measures from Washington if a voluntary drought contingency plan wasn’t reached. However, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman is signaling that the agency that controls the levers on the river is willing to wait. She is scheduled to talk to the conference on Thursday. Colorado River water supports about 40 million people and millions of acres of farmland in the U.S. and Mexico. After 19 years of drought and increasing demand, federal water managers project a 52 percent chance that the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam, will fall low enough to trigger cutbacks under agreements governing the system.

 Harvard's $39B Endowment Is Secretly Acquiring California's Water Supply - Harvard University's endowment (valued at $39 billion as of 2018) is the largest academic endowment in the world. The private investment company has been quietly snapping up farmland and related water rights to properties located in the California region. Instead of purchasing the land in Harvard Management Company, Inc.'s own name, asset managers secretly formed a wholly owned subsidiary - called Brodiaea, which was the vehicle to purchase more than a dozen investments in California vineyards over the last six years. Harvard formed Brodiaea in 2012, and by 2015 the company had already acquired 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties for roughly $60 million, according to Reuters. In April, the Harvard Crimson said that Brodiaea had continued to acquire California vineyards, especially ones sitting on massive aquifers. There are no tourist nor visitors allowed on many of the vineyards owned by Harvard, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, adding that the endowment is acquiring rights to large water sources in the arid Central Coast region, all under the name of Brodiaea, which is masked as a grape-growing business. Drought has The Central Coast experienced drought conditions for 30% of the past two decades, compared with 14% of the prior 100 years, a 2015 study found. Droughts have led to spikes in withdrawals from aquifers, many of which aren’t recharging as much during rainy season," said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University professor. The Journal said the endowment now values its vineyards at $305 million, up 300% from 2013, while most of its other natural-resources investments have performed poorly.

The 3 Highest-Volume U.S. Rainfall Events on Record Have Happened in the Past 3 Years -Preliminary research by precipitation expert Dr. Kenneth Kunkel of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, announced in September, found that the three highest-volume rainfall events in the U.S. in the last 70 years have occurred since 2016: Hurricane Harvey in Texas/Louisiana in 2017, Hurricane Florence in North Carolina in 2018, and a March 2016 storm in Louisiana. It is highly unusual to get three such extreme events in one three-year period, and the odds of this occuring were increased by global warming, which boosts the amount of water vapor in the air and increases the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events.Dr. Kunkel’s ratings were based on four-day rainfall totals over an area of 14,000 square miles (an area 40% larger than the state of Maryland). Harvey delivered an average of 25.6 inches of rain over an area of 14,000 square miles, while Florence was a somewhat distant second place, with an average of 17.5 inches of rain over a like-sized area. The analysis only used stations that have been reporting reliably throughout the 70-year period, so only a small fraction of current reporting stations were used. However, the use of a consistent network of stations across the entire period increases the reliability of the resulting rankings. When looking at a bigger area--20,000 square mile--Harvey remained in first place, 1998′s Hurricane Georges was second, and Hurricane Florence fell to seventh place. The analysis has not been published or peer reviewed yet, but will be presented at the January 2019 meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Kunkel said. Below is a short description of the top-ten list of highest-volume U.S. rainfall events over a 14,000 square mile area over the past 70 years.

2019 may be the hottest year yet—here's why -- An El Niño event is very likely under way, amping up extreme weather already made worse by climate change and increasing the odds that 2019 will be the hottest year in recorded human history, scientists warn.  There is an 80 percent chance a full-fledged El Niño has already begun and will last until at least the end of February 2019, according to the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  The impacts of El Niño have been more severe in recent years because of global warming, and these impacts will be worse as temperatures continue to rise, according to a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “With an El Niño, it’s entirely possible 2019 will be the hottest year ever,” said co-author Samantha Stevenson, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The top four hottest years have been among the last four, 2015-2018, driven by increased emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2)—which have also reached record levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The Earth’s climate has been warmer than the 20th Century average over the last 406 consecutive months. That means no one under the age of 32 has ever experienced a cooler-than-average month.

California’s deadliest wildfire blamed on faulty utility transmission tower - The Camp Fire, which killed at least 88 people in Northern California, was started by faulty steel rings high atop an electric company's transmission tower which brought dangerous live wires crashing down, a lawsuit claimed on Thursday.A civil complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court accused Pacific Gas and Electric Co. of failing to properly maintain a tower near the town of Pulga in Butte County, which allowed a live wire to come loose on the morning of Nov. 8 and touch off the most deadly wildfire in California history.Rings that link power lines either fell or broke off on the 75-foot-tall tower, plaintiffs claim. Some utility towers in this area are nearly a century old, according to the lawsuit by about three dozen plaintiffs and which was first reported by NBC Bay Area."PG&E's failure to properly inspect and maintain the tower led to damage to the tower jumper extension which in turn brought the uninsulated jumper into contact with the steel tower," according to the lawsuit. "Blazing hot molten materials dropped into the fine dead fuels below the conductor igniting the devastating Camp Fire." In addition killing at least 88 people, the Camp Fire burned 153,336 acres and torched 13,972 homes, Cal Fire has said. Nearly all of the town of Paradise was destroyed.

Move Over California- The Next Giant Quake May Hit The Midwest - The 4.4 and 3.3 magnitude quakes with an epicenter near Decatur, Tennessee in Meigs County did no significant damage, but the fear is when will the next massive quake strike."A 4.4 magnitude earthquake is a reminder for people to be prepared," said John Bobel, a public information officer for the division of emergency management in Kentucky's Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.Middle Tennessee sits between two different seismic zones, the New Madrid Seismic Zone and the East Tennessee Seismic Zone. The New Madrid Seismic Zone extends from Northeastern Arkansas into West Tennessee, Southeastern Missouri, Western Kentucky, and Southern Illinois. The East Tennessee Seismic Zone extends from Northeastern Alabama into Southwestern Virginia. Scientists have said that the New Madrid Seismic Zone and the East Tennessee Seismic Zone have unleashed major earthquakes for thousands of years:   "On Dec. 16, 1811, the first of three major earthquakes and numerous aftershocks struck what is now known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a series of faults that stretch 150 miles from Cairo, Illinois, to Marked Tree, Arkansas. Back in 1811, New Madrid, Missouri, itself had only 400 people, St. Louis to the north had about 1,500 residents and Memphis to the south wasn't even a twinkle in its founders' eyes, according to the Central United States Earthquake Consortium. Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia; and the quakes, estimated at 7.5 to 7.7 magnitude, were felt more than 1,000 miles away in Connecticut." Meanwhile, as in California, scientists believe that it is not a matter of if, but when the big quake strikes. The damage in the fault zone area could be devastating: "Anything west of I-65, infrastructure would be severely damaged," Bobel said of the interstate that bisects Kentucky and Tennessee. "The ground could even liquify and turn to mud," which happened in 1811 and 1812.

Life in deep Earth totals 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon—hundreds of times more than humans - Barely living "zombie" bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth's subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth's innermost secrets. On the eve of the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting, scientists with the Deep Carbon Observatory today reported several transformational discoveries, including how much and what kinds of life exist in the deep subsurface under the greatest extremes of pressure, temperature, and low nutrient availability. Drilling 2.5 kilometers into the seafloor, and sampling microbes from continental mines and boreholes more than 5 km deep, scientists have used the results to construct models of the ecosystem deep within the planet. With insights from now hundreds of sites under the continents and seas, they have approximated the size of the deep biosphere—2 to 2.3 billion cubic km (almost twice the volume of all oceans) - as well as the carbon mass of deep life: 15 to 23 billion tonnes (an average of at least 7.5 tonnes of carbon per cu km subsurface). The work also helps determine types of extraterrestrial environments that could support life.

 Analysis- Fossil-fuel emissions in 2018 increasing at fastest rate for seven years - Hopes that global CO2 emissions might be nearing a peak have been dashed by preliminary data showing that output from fossil fuels and industry will grow by around 2.7% in 2018, the largest increase in seven years.The new data, from researchers at the Global Carbon Project (GCP), is being published in Earth System Science Data Discussions and Environmental Research Letters to coincide with the UN’s COP24 climate summit in Poland. The rapid increase in 2018 CO2 output from fossil fuel use and industry follows a smaller 1.6% rise in 2017. Before that, three years of flat emissions output to 2016 had raised hopes that emissions had peaked.This year, the largest increases have occurred in China, driven by government stimulus of the construction industry. US emissions have also increased markedly in 2018, after an unusually cold winter and hot summer helped to drive up energy demand.Continued emissions growth in 2019 “appear[s] likely”, the researchers say, driven byrising oil and gas use and rapid economic growth. While some progress has been made, they add that the world has not yet reached the point where the energy system is being decarbonised fast enough to offset economic growth.The increase in overall human-caused CO2 emissions may be smaller than the increase from fossil fuels and industry, the GCP says, up an estimated 0.7% in 2018. This is due to a reduction in land-use emissions offsetting some of the increase from fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the 2018 increase in emissions puts the world even further away from meeting its climate change goals under the Paris Agreement. The figure below shows global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, divided into emissions from China (red shading), India (yellow), the US (bright blue), EU (dark blue) and the remainder of the world (grey). Emissions are expected to rise to a new high of 37.15bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) in 2018, with China and the US as the two largest emitters.

Arctic posts second warmest year on record in 2018: U.S. NOAA (Reuters) - The Arctic had its second-hottest year on record in 2018, part of a warming trend that may be dramatically changing earth’s weather patterns, according to a report released on Tuesday by the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “Arctic air temperatures for the past five years have exceeded all previous records since 1900,” according to the annual NOAA study, the 2018 Arctic Report Card, which said the year was second only to 2016 in overall warmth in the region. It marks the latest in a series of warnings about climate change from U.S. government bodies, even as President Donald Trump has voiced skepticism about the phenomenon and has pushed a pro-fossil fuels agenda. The study said the Arctic warming continues at about double the rate of the rest of the planet, and that the trend appears to be altering the shape and strength of the jet stream air current that influences weather in the Northern Hemisphere. “Growing atmospheric warmth in the Arctic results in a sluggish and unusually wavy jet-stream that coincided with abnormal weather events,” it said, noting that the changing patterns have often brought unusually frigid temperatures to areas south of the Arctic Circle. Some examples are “a swarm of severe winter storms in the eastern United States in 2018, and the extreme cold outbreak in Europe in March 2018 known as ‘the Beast from the East.’” Environmentalists have long warned of rapid warming in the Arctic, saying it threatens imperiled species like polar bears, and is a harbinger of the broader impacts of climate change on the planet. Scientists have warned that the region could suffer trillions of dollars worth of climate change-related damage to infrastructure in the coming decades. But the melting of Arctic ice has piqued the interests of polar nations like the United States, Canada and Russia by opening new shipping routes and expanding access to a region believed to be rich in petroleum and minerals. The United States and Russia have both expressed an interest in boosting Arctic drilling, and Russia has bolstered its military presence in the north.

The Arctic Ocean has lost 95 percent of its oldest ice — a startling sign of what’s to come - Over the past three decades of global warming, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95 percent, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card.The finding suggests that the sea at the top of the world has already morphed into a new and very different state, with major implications not only for creatures such as walruses and polar bears but, in the long term, perhaps for the pace of global warming itself. The oldest ice can be thought of as a kind of glue that holds the Arctic together and, through its relative permanence, helps keep the Arctic cold even in long summers. “The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away,” said Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth who coordinated the sea ice section of the yearly report.If the Arctic begins to experience entirely ice-free summers, scientists say, the planet will warm even more, as the dark ocean water absorbs large amounts of solar heating that used to be deflected by the cover of ice. The new findings were published as climate negotiators in Poland are trying to reach a global consensus on how to address climate change. In March, NASA scientists with the Operation IceBridge mission, which surveys the polar regions using research aircraft, witnessed a dramatic instance of the ongoing changes. Flying over the seas north of Greenland, in a region that usually features some of the oldest, thickest ice in the Arctic, they instead saw smooth, thin strips binding together the thicker, ridged pieces.“I was just shocked by how different it was,” said NASA’s Nathan Kurtz, who has flown over the area multiple times. The floating sea ice had broken up entirely the previous month — very unusual for this location — and now was feebly freezing back together again. Scientists think a strange wind event caused the breakup in this region just a few hundred miles south of the North Pole — so it’s unclear whether it is directly linked to climate change. Still, the breakup could be just one more sign of the growing fragility of the oldest ice.

How a shorter sea ice season is changing life in the Arctic -  People who live in the town of Utqiaġvik have seen dramatic effects of climate change during their lifetimes. Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, sits right on the edge of the Arctic Ocean at the very top of Alaska. It's the northernmost town in the United States, and home to about 4,400. The coastline here used to be edged with sea ice for nearly the whole year. But that period is getting shorter and shorter, and as a result Utqiaġvik locals are dealing with coastal erosion and are changing how they hunt in the fall. Billy Adams is an Iñupiaq hunter in his 50s who grew up hunting ringed seals in the fall by going out onto ice attached to the coastline. "We would have [ice formed] by...October, mid-October. Somewhere around there," says Adams. Iñupiat hunters eat ringed seal meat, use the skin for clothing and the oil to build hand-made boats. They can only hunt on the ice when it's thick and stable enough to support their weight. But this year in October, instead of ice there were waves crashing on shore. Now in December, ice has been forming in fits and starts for about a month. Rick Thoman is a climatologist for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He says Utqiaġvik is warming, along with the rest of the Arctic, about twice as fast as the rest of the globe. If you want to see some of the most dramatic change on the ground, the Utqiaġvik coastline in the fall is a good place to look. "If you get in your time machine and go back to 1965, or 1940, or 1900, and you're on the beach at Utqiaġvik, in the autumn you're looking out at a white sea," says Thoman. "That's all changed now," says Thoman. That mass of ice has shrunk so that it's now hundreds of miles offshore in the fall — too far to be blown in.  One big problem that Utqiaġvik is facing as a result is increased coastal erosion. Declining sea ice allows for higher waves during storms and leaves the shoreline unprotected for more of the year. Local officials are concerned about future storm damage to roads, the town's drinking water, and a decommissioned military landfill site near the beach.

Melting Discovered in East Antarctic Region Holding Ice 'Equivalent to Four Greenlands' - Ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica have been melting at alarming rates in recent years, but at least the glaciers of East Antarctica were believed to be relatively stable. Until now. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists have discovered that glaciers covering one-eighth of Antarctica's eastern coast have lost ice in the past 10 years. If the region keeps melting, it has enough ice in its drainage basins to add 28 meters (approximately 92 feet) to global sea level rise, BBC News reported. "That's the water equivalent to four Greenlands of ice," Catherine Walker from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who presented the new findings at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Monday, told BBC News. The observations were enabled by maps of the height and velocity of East Antarctic glaciers made possible by a new NASA project called Inter-mission Time Series of Land Ice Velocity and Elevation (ITS_LIVE). Using these maps, Walker discovered that the surface height of four glaciers in Vincennes Bay—Vanderford Glacier, Adams Glacier, Bond Glacier and Underwood Glacier—had decreased by around nine feet since 2008. Before that, there was no noticeable change, NASA explained in a press release. The four glaciers are all west of Totten Glacier, the one East Antarctic glacier that scientists had studied in depth. It has also been retreating in recent years and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 11 feet. "Totten is the biggest glacier in East Antarctica, so it attracts most of the research focus," Walker said in the NASA release. "But once you start asking what else is happening in this region, it turns out that other nearby glaciers are responding in a similar way to Totten."

Addressing the Inevitable: How To Prepare for the Climate Change Flood - Three years ago, the international community agreed in Paris to limit the average global temperature increase to significantly below 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. But the deluge has already begun. And it won't go away after 150 days like the one in the Bible. This one is here to stay. It will take millennia for the polar ice caps to completely disappear, and perhaps they never will. But the fact that the sheet of ice covering Greenland is melting and the ice sheets of Antarctica are shifting, their edges breaking off more quickly: All of that can already be measured today. There is a point of no return for the climate, and that point already lies behind us. The carbon dioxide is already in the atmosphere and it will remain there for longer than human civilization exists. And it will continue to warm the Earth's climate. It is all really quite simple and follows the laws of physics: Water expands when it warms. Since industrialization, the Earth has warmed by about 1 degree Celsius, with the pace of warming having increased over the last several decades. Without an immediate and significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, NASA calculations indicate that an average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius will have been reached by the middle of this century. A further increase to 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, according to a report compiled by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, would result in sea levels rising by 5 meters (16.5 feet), though it might take hundreds of years for that level to be reached. The uncertainties inherent in such calculations are, of course, significant. But determined action taken by the international community would render such uncertainties superfluous. Every coastline is in danger of flooding, whether in Kiribati, Manhattan, Dhaka or Rotterdam. We are all, if you will, in the same boat. 

Jane Sanders: Climate Crisis Critical Issue in 2020 Elections --Jerri-Lynn here:  In this Real News Network interview, Jane Sanders discusses the climate crisis and tells Paul Jay that voters shouldn’t support candidates who claim to be progressive, but don’t prioritize the fight against fossil fuel interests. The Sanders Institute recently convened The Gathering – a meeting of about 200 progressives – in Burlington, Vermont, to discuss the policy framework to push for in the 2020 elections. (video & transcript)

FBI Files Show Agents Tracked Non-Violent 350.org Climate Activists as Part of ‘Domestic Terrorism Case - When the U.S.-based 350.org launched its 'Break Free From Fossil Fuels' campaign in May of 2106, the global climate justice group called the multi-week set of coordinated actions "largest civil disobedience in the history of the environmental movement."  With hundreds of actions taking place on six continents, the whole world was watching—and, according to newly-released documents, was the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Guardian published previously unseen FBI files on Thursday showing the agency tracking peaceful protesters in the U.S. who participated in some of the 'Break Free' demonstrations.The newspaper reports that while there is no evidence the FBI opened an investigation into 350.org itself, one of the documents obtained by the FOIA request showed the surveillance of non-violent activists in Iowa was "catalogued as part of a related domestic terrorism case" and 350's well-known co-founder Bill McKibben was also mentioned in the documents. From the reporting:McKibben, who has been the subject of both rightwing surveillance and disturbing online death threats, said the FBI’s apparent failure to distinguish between non-violent civil disobedience and domestic terrorism was contemptible."Trying to deal with the greatest crisis humans have stumbled into shouldn't require being subjected to government surveillance," McKibben said. "But when much of our government acts as a subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry, it may be par for the course."The FBI is prohibited from investigating groups or individuals solely for their political beliefs but has been criticized in the past for treating non-violent civil disobedience as a form of terrorism. In 2010 the Office of the Inspector General released a report detailing how the FBI, particularly in the post-9/11 era, had inappropriately tracked activist groups such as Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker for engaging in non-violent protest. Read the FBI's investigative documents obtained by the Guardian here and here.

The Truth About These Climate Change Numbers -- It’s often argued that climate change is not a technological or engineering problem, it is a political problem. And it’s true. We have all the technology we need to power the world with renewables and stave off the worst of climate chaos. What we lack is the political will to take the kind of moonshot-scale action necessary to accomplish it. But climate change is also a numbers problem. Every ton of carbon that we dump into the atmosphere stays there for hundreds of years, warming the atmosphere and reshaping the future climate. As the recent IPCC report pointed out, to avoid the worst of climate chaos, the world needs to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Accomplishing that would require not just a remaking of our energy system, but profound changes in agriculture, the design of cities and transportation systems. A new report issued this week by the Global Carbon Project shows that, far from making progress, we’re going in exactly the opposite direction. After several years when global carbon emissions flatlined, giving hope to some that the turning point had come, the new report shows that carbon emissions are projected to increase by 2.7 percent in 2018. That may not sound like a lot, but given what’s at stake with our rapidly changing climate, it’s the equivalent of an alcoholic who had sworn to go cold turkey taking a couple of shots of Jack Daniels at lunch. Take a look at this graphic included in the report that shows the increase in fossil fuel emissions since 1900. Notice the big wedge of the grey line, which are fossil fuel emissions, which just goes up and up and up:

Climate change- COP24 fails to adopt key scientific report - Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed. The IPCC report on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C, had a significant impact when it was launched last October. Scientists and many delegates in Poland were shocked as the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to this meeting "welcoming" the report. It was the 2015 climate conference that had commissioned the landmark study. The report said that the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century rather than 1.5C. Keeping to the preferred target would need "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society". If warming was to be kept to 1.5C this century, then emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be reduced by 45% by 2030. The report, launched in Incheon in South Korea, had an immediate impact winning praise from politicians all over the world. But negotiators here ran into serious trouble when Saudi Arabia, the US, Russia and Kuwait objected to the conference "welcoming" the document. Instead they wanted to support a much more lukewarm phrase, that the conference would "take note" of the report. Saudi Arabia had fought until the last minute in Korea to limit the conclusions of the document. Eventually they gave in. But it now seems that they have brought their objections to Poland. The dispute dragged on as huddles of negotiators met in corners of the plenary session here, trying to agree a compromise wording. None was forthcoming. 

COP24: U.S. Joins Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait in Blocking Crucial Climate Report -- The U.S. has thrown its hat in the ring with three other fossil-fuel friendly nations to block the COP24 talks from "welcoming" the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that warned that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 45 percent of 2010 levels by 2030 in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, BBC News reported.  The report, released in October, was commissioned by a 2015 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but now the roughly 200 countries gathered for the 24th conference in Katowice, Poland have failed to formally acknowledge it.  The failure hinged on language. The majority of delegates wanted to "welcome" the report, but the U.S. joined with other oil-producing countries—Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—Saturday night to insist the report be only "noted," The Guardian reported. Because UN rules insist on consensus, delegates were therefore not able to publish any text relating to the report."It's not about one word or another, it is us being in a position to welcome a report we commissioned in the first place,” Ruenna Haynes from St. Kitts and Nevis said, "If there is anything ludicrous about the discussion it's that we can't welcome the report."

That was awkward — at world’s biggest climate conference, US promotes fossil fuels — President Trump’s top White House adviser on energy and climate stood before the crowd of some 200 people on Monday and tried to burnish the image of coal, the fossil fuel that powered the industrial revolution — and is now a major culprit behind the climate crisis world leaders are meeting here to address. “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability,” said Wells Griffith, Trump’s adviser. Mocking laughter echoed through the conference room. A woman yelled, “These false solutions are a joke!” And dozens of people erupted into chants of protest. The protest was a piece of theater, and so too was the United States’ public embrace of coal and other dirty fuels at an event otherwise dedicated to saving the world from the catastrophic effects of climate change. The standoff punctuated the awkward position the American delegation finds itself in as career bureaucrats seek to advance the Trump administration’s agenda in an international arena aimed at cutting back on fossil fuels.  Monday’s presentation came after a weekend in which the U.S. delegation undercut the talks by joining with major oil producers Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in blocking full endorsement of a critical U.N. climate report. The report, by some of the world’s leading scientists, found that the world has barely a decade to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid catastrophic warming.

Climate change skeptics follow Trump's lead - In the United States, President Trump has turned climate skepticism into U.S. policy. Now that skepticism appears to be setting the tone for other world leaders to deny climate science or resist taking action to cut carbon emissions.At the global climate summit taking place in Poland, the Trump administration has touted coal power and helped block language that “welcomes” a dire U.N. report on climate change published last month.Activists say Trump’s influence on the summit has been clear — and negative. “He’s opened the door to people who were on the fringe to be in the room and spread their fact-free message,” Keith Gaby, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, told The Washington Post’s Darryl Fears. “The president doesn’t believe his own government when it comes to climate change, and he’s emboldened others to come forward.”In many places, those skeptics are gaining government power and political influence.Saudi Arabia has taken particularly harsh criticism for its climate change stances in recent days. The oil-producing kingdom was one of the countries that blocked the welcoming of the U.N. climate report Saturday. On Monday, it issued a statement saying that “further research and analysis” is needed to fill “gaps” in climate science.On Twitter on Monday, Saudi Arabia’s former lead negotiator for the Paris agreement mocked the pact, calling it a “big conspiracy” cooked up by a “climate mafia.” “The Saudis have historically been the worst actors at major U.N. climate negotiations, attempting to slow down agreement on more routine matters to run out the clock on more important issues,” Paul Bledsoe, a climate-change adviser during the Clinton administration, told The Post.

Shell Oil Executive Boasts That His Company Influenced the Paris Agreement - Shell oil helped write the Paris climate agreement, according to a top Royal Dutch Shell executive. They’re also the world’s ninth-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. The executive, Shell’s Chief Climate Change Adviser David Hone, made his comments at the international climate change conference COP 24 on Friday. Hone was candid about just how much of a hand his company — through their involvement with the International Emissions Trading Association — had in writing the Paris agreement. The agreement is the centerpiece of the conference in Poland, where delegates are trying to draft a rulebook for how to implement it. IETA is a business lobby comprised of corporations including fossil fuel producers that pushes for “market-based climate solutions,” including at United Nations climate talks. To hear him tell it, their involvement has been wildly successful. “We have had a process running for four years for the need of carbon unit trading to be part of the Paris agreement. We can take some credit for the fact that Article 6 [of the Paris agreement] is even there at all,” Hone said at an IETA side event within the Katowice, Poland, conference center. “We put together a straw proposal. Many of the elements of that straw proposal appear in the Paris agreement. We put together another straw proposal for the rulebook, and we saw some of that appear in the text.”

Money talks: Investors with $32 trillion at stake sound the alarm on climate change - Investors managing assets worth $32 trillion have called on governments and businesses to step up efforts to tackle climate change. A group of 415 investors warned Monday of an "ambition gap" between steps governments have promised to take, and the actions needed to meet goals set out in the Paris climate agreement. The statement from the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change has been endorsed by financial heavyweights including HSBC (HSBC), Nomura Asset Management and UBS Asset Management. The group, which controls assets worth more than twice the value of the Chinese economy, claims that its push is the single largest policy intervention from investors on climate change. "Much more needs to be done by governments to accelerate the low carbon transition and to improve the resilience of our economy, society and the financial system to climate risks," the group said in a statement. The plea comes as world leaders gather in Katowice, Poland, for an annual summit on climate change. The investor group urged governments to phase out thermal coal power and fossil fuel subsidies, and set a price for carbon emissions. They called on companies to provide more information on climate risks. Leading on climate change can produce big gains including new jobs and investment, the group argued. "The countries and companies that lead in implementing the Paris Agreement and enacting strong climate and low carbon energy policies will see significant economic benefits," it said. Global investors are becoming more active in pushing companies to take meaningful actions to combat climate change. Follow This, a Dutch activist shareholder group that helped pushed Shell (RDSA) on climate change, has started a similar campaign targeting BP.

Report: Current Climate Policies Will Warm the World by 3.3˚C -- This past October, a widely disseminated United Nations report warned that far-reaching and significantclimate impacts will already occur at 1.5˚C of warming by 2100. But in a study released Tuesday, researchers determined that the current climate polices of governments around the world will push Earth towards 3.3˚C of warming. That's more than two times the aspirational 1.5˚C target adopted by nearly 200 nations under the 2015 Paris agreement.The report is an annual update of the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific analysis produced by three European research organizations. The CAT is based on policy movements made by governments since the Paris accord.The report found that even if all governments achieved their Paris agreement commitments, the world will still likely warm 3.0°C.Even an increase of 2°C—the upper warming limit adopted in Paris—would cause approximately 4 inches ofsea level rise, increase the chance of ice-free Arctic summers from once-per-decade to once-per-century, devastate tropical coral reefs and push hundreds of millions of people from climate risk and poverty by 2050, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.Alarmingly, the majority of countries that were tracked in the CAT report have not yet fully aligned their policies to actually achieve their Paris commitments.However, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, the European Union, India and Morocco have taken "significant steps in the right direction," the report says.Meanwhile, the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates were singled out for making insufficient progress or even moving in the wrong direction in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The report notes that China's coal consumption has risen for a second year in a row, and Brazil "appears to have turned away from its forest protection policies even before its recent change of government."

Fossil fuel tax proposed to cover rising costs of wild weather - Taxing the extraction of fossil fuels could help pay for the growing costs of damage from harsher storms, wildfires, floods and rising seas, while providing a stronger incentive to wean the world off carbon-heavy energy, green groups said on Monday. A "climate damages tax" levied on oil, gas and coal companies could raise $300 billion a year by 2030 to bail out communities bearing the brunt of global warming, said a proposal supported by WWF, Practical Action and others. The tax would lay the cost of rising disaster losses directly on the industries most responsible for them, they said in a report released at U.N. climate negotiations in Poland. Besides assisting those in need overseas, at least half of the funds raised from the government-levied tax would help poorer groups at home switch to green jobs, energy and transport, its backers said. Spending on social justice measures is seen as crucial to avoiding the kind of protests France has seen in recent weeks over rising living costs, sparked partly by hikes in fuel taxes. "The injustice of climate change is that the impacts are felt first and hardest by those with the least responsibility for its causes," said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's foreign affairs minister. His Pacific island nation lost 64 percent of its GDP - about $450 million - during Cyclone Pam in 2015, and has struggled to recover financially, he noted. "We cannot sustain the level of public expenditure we need to keep recovering," he said. As the pace of disasters picks up, "we're now on a permanent state-of-emergency footing" and new sources of finance are needed to help meet costs, he said. Saleemul Huq, head of the Bangladesh-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said that with cash to help poorer countries in short supply, fossil fuel companies that profit from driving climate change are an obvious source of additional money. Right now, "the fossil fuel industry is causing this problem and getting out of paying for it", he added. 

The Lesson From a Burning Paris: We Can’t Tax Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis - The images from the streets of Paris over the past weeks are stark and poignant: thousands of angry protesters, largely representing the struggling French working class, resorting to mass civil unrest to express fear and frustration over a proposed new gas tax. For the moment, the protests have been successful. French President Emmanuel Macron backed off the new tax proposal, at least for six months. The popular uprising won, seemingly at the expense of the global fight against climate change and the future wellbeing of our planet.Yet this simple analysis is grossly incomplete and fatally flawed. A more thorough and accurate analysis of the latest failure to implement a new carbon emissions tax would be this: Real solutions to our dire climate crisis can't come in the form of regressive taxes that pit working families against the cause of climate stability. We won't avoid deepening climate chaos by pursuing strategies that unduly target the working class.  From here in the States to Europe and elsewhere, various carbon tax plans have been proposed or enacted in recent years as a "viable" solution to climate change.  Yet little evidence exists of the virtues of taxing carbon from a climate standpoint. Many carbon tax advocates point to a recent plan enacted by British Columbia as evidence of the approach's worth. Yet an analysis of the plan conducted by Food & Water Watch found that greenhouse gas emissions from taxed sources actually increased by more than 4 percent, while non-taxed emissions fell during the same period. Meanwhile, the inherently regressive nature of consumer-based carbon tax schemes places an undue financial burden on those working families least able to afford it. "Progressive" carbon pricing advocates often point to fine-print details in some models that would apparently mitigate the burden on lower- and working class families by returning revenues to consumers in rebate structures meant to favor those in lower income brackets. Additionally, so-called "revenue neutral" plans claim to put no new financial burden anywhere in the economy—which would call into question what their point is in the first place.

3 Key Dangers of Solar Geoengineering and Why Some Critics Urge a Global Ban -- A Harvard research team recently announced plans to perform early tests to shoot sunlight-reflecting particles into the high atmosphere to slow or reverse global warming.These research efforts, which could take shape as soon as the first half of 2019, fall under the banner of a geoengineering technology known as solar radiation management, which is sometimes called "sun dimming." However, less than two weeks after the announcement, the climate science and policy institute Climate Analytics took aim at these ambitions in a new briefing titled "Why geoengineering is not a solution to the climate problem," which goes as far as recommending a global ban on solar geoengineering.The group's briefing warns about the dangers of proceeding with solar radiation management (SRM) in particular.The basic idea behind SRM is to release particles into the earth's stratosphere, the atmospheric layer approximately 6–30 miles above the surface, where they would then reflect some of the sun's light (and heat) away from Earth, resulting in atmospheric cooling.Harvard's scientists working on this concept point to the particles released by volcanic eruptions as real-world examples of how it might work. One such example is the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, an event which released large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. According to NASA, after Mount Pinatubo's eruption, "Over the course of the next two years strong stratospheric winds spread these aerosol particles around the globe," which led to a temporary global cooling of about 1° Fahrenheit over the following 15 months. The Harvard team plans to investigate calcium carbonate, a common calcium supplement and antacid, as a potential particle to use instead of sulfur dioxide. Despite this parallel, why is Climate Analytics warning against solar radiation management? For a long list of reasons, including the potential for some pretty disastrous consequences.

• 1. Solar Radiation Management Doesn't Address the Real Issue. Earth's climate is warming because humans are pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with carbon dioxide from fossil fuel-burning topping that list. As Climate Analytics notes, solar radiation management "does not address the drivers of human-induced climate change." Instead, the briefing says, this geoengineering approach "would mask warming temporarily" in a best-case scenario, while representing a fundamental and "potentially dangerous" threat to the earth's basic climate operations.
• 2. Risks Far Outweigh Potential Reward. In a world where even predicting the weather is more difficult due to climate change, it isn't hard to fathom that changing the global climate quickly could have many unknown consequences. But as Climate Analytics points out, there are plenty of known risks and concerns surrounding solar radiation management, including the following:
• 3. Geopolitical and Catastrophic Risks. While purposefully altering the global atmosphere would be an unprecedented project in both scale and impact, the endeavor actually would not cost very much and could be done unilaterally by one country. Solar radiation management would likely affect different parts of the world in different ways, some positively and some negatively.

The most important country for the global climate no one is talking about - World leaders are gathered this month in Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the most important global meeting on climate change since the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris. At the top of agenda: getting countries to agree on rules to implement the Paris climate accords for 2020, when the pact goes into effect.  The meeting serves as a reminder of troubling facts — President Donald Trump still intends to withdraw the United States from the accord, and the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s warns that we have just 12 years to limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But flying well below the radar in all of this is Indonesia, currently the world’s fifth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, which come mainly from land use, land use change, and forestry. Today Indonesia stands out for how little it has done to implement policies that would enable it to meet its commitment under the Paris agreement: cutting emissions from deforestation by 29 percent below business-as-usual projections by 2030. “To really achieve the climate targets ... there is a need to come up with new policies that are more ambitious,” Hanny Chrysolite, the forest and climate program officer with the World Resources Institute Indonesia, said. In fact, Indonesia is moving in the opposite direction. The government plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, and expand the production of palm oil for local biofuel consumption, which will involve further deforestation of carbon-rich tropical forests. Add the expansion of a car-centric transportation infrastructure, a growing middle class and very little investment in renewables, and you have the recipe for a climate disaster.

A Climate of Violence: Refugees and Global Warming  - I recently received an appeal from one of my favorite progressive organizations – with the subject line, "What do climate change and immigration have to do with each other?" The appeal went on to connect the wild fires in California and the refugee crisis in Central America. "Two of the largest humanitarian and environmental challenges facing our nation are inextricably linked. We cannot continue to ignore the devastating effects of climate change, which is causing thousands of people in Central America to flee their homes. Climate change will soon drive human migration more than any other event."Wait, wait, wait, WAIT!!  How did the people in Central America  "seeking asylum from violence and poverty" become climate refugees?  I don’t have to be convinced about the causes and perils of  global warming but I do fear the danger of misleading ourselves into believing that everything rotten in the world today is a result of climate change.Calling asylum seekers "climate refugees" feeds into Trump’s fear-based narrative, while reinforcing ignorance about what has been going in Central America. We must distinguish between the fears faced by refugees fleeing violence and poverty versus the xenophobia stoked by politicians.These refugees are attempting to protect their children and themselves from murderous gangs. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico – all countries that have been flooded with weapons coming from the United States. These are countries where mass shooting are occurring on a daily basis. If I were to claim that climate change was the cause of gun violence in this country and that therefore the best way to fight the epidemic of mass shootings in schools and churches in America is to focus on global warming, I would hope that most readers would reject my analysis and instead focus on the proliferation of assaults weapons and the need for gun control. So why would it be any different with respect to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico – all countries that have been flooded with weapons coming from the United States. These are countries where mass shooting are occurring on a daily basis.   I have not heard an interview with a single refugee from Central America attributing the murder of their relatives or the threats from gangs and security forces to global warming. They have more immediate concerns and it is unconscionable to move the spot light away from the real issues impacting their lives in order to convince us about the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to address global warming.

How Government Bureaucrats & The NYTimes Are Misleading The Public About Climate Change - The Executive Branch’s recently released Volume II of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a massive document that is being cited as yet further evidence that the U.S. government should act quickly and boldly in the fight against climate change. The coverage in the New York Times was typical: “All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.”Yet this claim is extremely misleading, as I’ll demonstrate in this post. The projection of a 10-percent hit to GDP is an extremely unlikely (less than a 5-percent chance) event even if we assume we are in the most pessimistic of emission scenarios, while the scenario itself rests upon an assumption that progress on renewables and other technologies occurs much more slowly over the next century than it has already occurred historically. This means that anybody citing the NCA projections isn’t allowed to also tout imminent breakthroughs in wind and solar, because such optimism renders the NCA projections invalid. Even more astonishing, the NCA gives projections of the “cost of inaction” on climate change, but does not give any estimate of the costs of action on climate change. (It’s a bit like a mechanic warning that you need a new part to avoid engine failure down the road, but refusing to tell you how much the part will cost.) Yet if we follow the citations to other work (such as from the United Nations) that the NCA cites, we see that even using the NCA’s own diagram, it is not clear that aggressive steps to fight climate change would be worth the cost. The NCA is massive. In the interest of giving the reader a digestible chunk of analysis, in this post I am restricting myself to the material in Chapter 29, which covers the topic of “mitigation” and considers the economic impacts of climate change on the U.S.   On the right panel of our Figure 1, we see where the NYT writers got their statistic. The far right bar shows that the midpoint of the gray “uncertainty range” is above a 10-percent level of damage to the U.S. economy.  However, how likely is this outcome? As the NCA chart itself shows, this enormous damage estimate is an outlier. In particular it is colored red, which the legend in the top left of the diagram shows is an “RCP8.5” scenario. The other RCP scenarios (blue and green bars) are nowhere near this level of warming or damage. The number 8.5 refers to the amount of “radiative forcing” in effect in the year 2100, namely 8.5 watts per square meter. (The other scenarios, such as RPC4.5, of course have a similar meaning.) The RCP8.5 scenario is the most pessimistic in the literature. It assumes rapid population growth coupled with a lack of progress in developing alternative technologies.

Is the Opinion Page of the New York Times just for stupid people? a rhetorical question - Roger Gathman - The NYT opinion page never fails to come up with the stupidest headlines that one can imagine - headlines that put National Enquirer to shame. The headline today is: Is Environmentalism Just for Rich People? A WTF juxtaposition of words if there ever was one. I propose an elementary exercise in logic, here, substituting for the class "rich people" tokens of rich people (you know, the demographic that voted most strongly for Donald Trump): For instance: Is Environmentalism just for the Koch Brothers. Or: Is Environmentalism just for Exxon executives? Or: Is Environmnetalism just for bitcoin billionaires? Or: Is environmentalism just for bankers who lend to Freeport Macmoran? Is environmentalism just for corporations that demand taking law be inserted into Trade Treaties? Is environmentalism just for Monsanto Investors? Is environmentalism just for Agribusinesses? On and on. the beat don't stop until the break of dawn - and your brains are mush. This is such obvious nonsense that there must be a powerful override behind it, one that ignores the massive, falsifying counter-evidence. And there is such an override: it is called neo-liberalism. It is a handy portmanteau term, to encompass everything from the Romney wing of the R party to the Clintonite wing of the D party.Such is the power of illusion in the rentier class, however, to which the NYT directs its rays of enlightenment, that this class thinks of Macron as a radical environmentalist. You know, the president who raised the carbon tax, but not on corporation using a lot of carbon.The problem here is that the walls are thick and will not hear anything to upset the "narrative".Neo-liberal deafness and Trumpian deafness dominate the "discourse", to the detriment of 99 percent of the world's population. And this is the nuclear weapon that is heading for the planet's climate.

Eleven researchers publish sharp critique of EPA fuel economy logic The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Trump has moved to rescind a number of environmentally-minded regulations instituted under the Obama Administration. One of the first in its crosshairs was the EPA's Greenhouse Gas (GHG) standards for light trucks and passenger vehicles, which paralleled the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). These two regulations (the GHG and CAFE rules) both aimed to force automakers to adhere to gradually-tightening fuel efficiency standards, which were detailed out to 2025. The EPA's lengthy technical analysis stated that better fuel economy rules would be costly for companies. Those costs would be passed on to consumers, and those consumers would put off buying new cars with better safety features, causing accidents that would cost more than 12,000 lives. The EPA also argued that if fuel economy standards are left in place, people will be able to spend less on gas, which means they would drive more, meaning greenhouse gas emissions and driving in general might not reduce as much as expected. Thursday's letter said both the Obama Administration's 2016 justification for its fuel economy standards and the Trump Administration's 2018 report are both flawed, but the latter is more deeply flawed than the former. "Although we do not endorse the 2016 TAR [Technical Assessment Report], the 2018 analysis failed to advance our understanding of the true costs and benefits of fuel economy standards," the researchers wrote. The EPA's same emissions standards offered a net benefit of $97.2 billion in 2016, as opposed to a net loss of $200.6 billion in 2018. The authors of the 2018 report estimated benefits almost twice as large as in the 2016 analysis, but those benefits were outweighed by costs that were five times as great. One of the most egregious differences centered on how the EPA estimated the projected fleet size of cars and trucks out to 2025. In their Thursday letter, the researchers explained that one of the primary and most egregious differences between the reports centered on how the EPA estimated the projected fleet size of cars and trucks out to 2025. Tighter fuel economy standards lead to more expensive cars as well as more expensive used cars, the letter says. That would mean that the total US vehicle fleet would shrink if fuel economy standards are kept in place.

The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules  - When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry.In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.The campaign’s main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards — that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation — clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.  “With oil scarcity no longer a concern,” Americans should be given a “choice in vehicles that best fit their needs,” read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration’s proposed rules incorporate similar logic. The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world’s oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales. In recent months, Marathon Petroleum also teamed up with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive policy group financed by corporations as well as the Koch network, to draft legislation for states supporting the industry’s position. Its proposed resolution, dated Sept. 18, describes current fuel-efficiency rules as “a relic of a disproven narrative of resource scarcity” and says “unelected bureaucrats” shouldn’t dictate the cars Americans drive. A separate industry campaign on Facebook, covertly run by an oil-industry lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and other oil giants, urged people to write to regulators to support the rollback. The Facebook ads linked to a website with a picture of a grinning Mr. Obama. It asked, “Would YOU buy a used car from this man?” The site appears to have been so effective that a quarter of the 12,000 public comments received by the Department of Transportation can be traced to the petition, according to a Times analysis.

Consumer advocate asks regulators to find biomass subsidy violates federal law — Calling a recent law to subsidize wood-burning, electric generating plants “an unabashed frontal assault on consumer protection,” the state’s consumer advocate asks federal regulators to find it violates federal utility law.Last session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 365, which requires the state’s electric utilities to buy 100 percent of the output of seven wood-burning power plants.Under the bill, which is now state law, the utilities would purchase the power at 80 percent of the retail price.But New Hamphire’s Consumer Advocate D. Maurice Kreis argues the Federal Power Act forbids such agreements that would require all of the utilities’ ratepayers to subsidize the generators.Through attorney Susan Geiger, Kreis supports a motion filed by the New England Ratepayers Association asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to declare that federal law preempts the New Hampshire statute, which also violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. There are currently seven wood-fired generating facilities in New Hampshire. The larger Berlin bio-mass plant and one trash-burning generating plant in Concord have separate power purchase agreements with utilities. The bill was intended to protect the wood burning plants by requiring utilities to purchase all the power they produce at prices greater than it would cost the utilities to generate the electricity themselves.

Tidal power fails in Nova Scotia - The tides in Nova Scotia’s Minas Basin at the top of the Bay of Fundy, are among the most powerful in the world. In the end they proved too powerful for state of the art technology. A multi-year pilot project to harness that power using giant 5-storey turbines to convert the energy to electricity has come to an end. Over several years, the giant turbine had been damaged and repaired until late this year the various companies involved said it had been damaged irreparably. Earlier this year the parent company in Ireland filed for bankruptcy. Now comes word that as winter is upon us, the 1,300 tonne turbine will have to remain on the seabed until at least March of next year.As the various companies involved are under bankruptcy protection, who will remove the turbine, pay for it, and the eventual cost of doing so, all seem to be unknown at this point.

We Don’t Mine Enough Rare Earth Metals to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy -- A new scientific study supported by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure warns that the renewable energy industry could be about to face a fundamental obstacle: shortages in the supply of rare metals.To meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, renewable energy production has to scale up fast. This means that global production of several rare earth minerals used in solar panels and wind turbines—especially neodymium, terbium, indium, dysprosium, and praseodymium—must grow twelvefold by 2050.But according to the new study by Dutch energy systems company Metabolic, the “current global supply of several critical metals is insufficient to transition to a renewable energy system.”The study focuses on demand for rare metals in the Netherlands and extrapolates this to develop a picture of how global trends are likely to develop. “If the rest of the world would develop renewable electricity capacity at a comparable pace with the Netherlands, a considerable shortage would arise,” the study finds. This doesn’t include other applications of rare earth metals in other electronics industries (rare earth metals are widely used in smartphones, for example). “When other applications (such as electric vehicles) are also taken into consideration, the required amount of certain metals would further increase.”Demand for rare metals is pitched to rise exponentially across the world, and not just due to renewables. Demand is most evident in “consumer electronics, military applications, and other technical equipment in industrial applications. The growth of the global middle class from 1 billion to 3 billion people will only further accelerate this growth.” But the study did not account for those other industries. This means the actual problem could be far more intractable.

The stinkiest, dirtiest, nastiest renewable energy you never heard of - Drive down Interstate 95 through Baltimore and you can’t miss the Wheelabrator trash incinerator, its smokestack emblazoned with the city’s name. The Charm City’s single largest source of industrial air pollution churns out well over 600,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.  In 2017, those emissions were equivalent to what’s given off by more than 130,000 cars driven for a year. It is also one of Maryland’s major sources of nitrogen oxides — a principal component of smog. One analysis estimates the facility’s air pollution kills an estimated 5.5 people per year. James Alston resides roughly five blocks from the incinerator in a home where his family has lived since 1967.  On bad days, he says, a rancid overpowering odor wafts over from the facility to his community. When he learned how much pollution comes from the Wheelabrator site — and its potential health impacts — he thought of neighbors who had died. Could they have lived longer lives if it weren’t for the facility?   In the eyes of the state though, the energy Wheelabrator creates from burning as much as 2,250 tons of trash each day is considered renewable. Thus, the company gets subsidies — an estimated $3.4 million in 2015 — from utility companies and ratepayers as a result of the state’s renewable energy policy. In a statement to Grist, Wheelabrator says the facility “adheres and exceeds strict federal and state air regulations established by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of the Environment.” Trash incineration isn’t the only polluting industry that Maryland considers a renewable energy source. Poultry litter incineration and paper mill-waste burning are also lumped in alongside wind and solar energy, according to the state’s plan. Maryland’s not alone in ranking some surprising sources of energy as renewable. The state of Oregon set a goal that by 2040, 50 percent of the energy generated by large investor-owned utilities should be renewable — and that includes incentivizing energy from manure digesters and burning wood.  When most people think of “renewables,” they picture sources like solar and wind. But the nonprofit Food and Water Watch analyzed the 30 policies across the country and found that every one also included “dirty” sources such as mill residue, wood, waste incineration, and waste-methane burning. Some of these generation processes emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and many release other pollutants.

Trump's pursuit of 'American energy dominance' threatens the entire planet -- resident Trump upended decades of U.S. policy that started with Richard Nixon when he declared that the goal of the United States was no longer “energy independence” but rather “American energy dominance.” This wasn’t Trumpian hyperbole. Few policies have been pursued by the administration with more cohesiveness, zeal, and success — or with more potential to yield great and lasting harm.Trump has unleashed a massive, untethered expansion of oil, natural gas and coal production, designed to make this country the world’s foremost dirty energy powerhouse. The policy not only worsens catastrophic climate change, it pushes the U.S. into a small and increasingly isolated club of autocratic regimes intent on maintaining a global commitment to fossil fuels.  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke laid out Trump’s energy policy in Secretarial Order 3351: “Achieving American energy dominance begins with recognizing that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves. For too long America has been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. The Department is committed to an America-first energy strategy.” In Trump’s first six months in office, expansive orders and rule changes across federal agencies resulted in a virtually frozen regulatory process, with nearly 300 federal regulations specifically related to energy production and environmental protection affecting public health, worker safety, tribal sovereignty and the climate rescinded, withdrawn, or otherwise stalled by mid 2017. Nor did the administration stop there.The Environmental Protection Agency undid the Clean Power Plan and eliminated rules that regulated coal ash waste, required oil and gas companies to report and repair methane emissions, and limited toxic emissions from major industrial polluters. The EPA also took its climate change website offline, and Trump revoked several Obama-era executive orders on climate change. Congress opened up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Interior Department issued the first-ever oil production permits for federal waters in the Arctic. Ultimately, the plan is to open virtually all federal waters to oil and natural gas production. The department also rescinded rules that made offshore operations safer, put in place after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Coal-Friendly Manchin Named Top Dem on Senate Energy Panel - After weeks of discord over the potential appointment, Sen. Joe Manchin, the pro-coal Democrat of West Virginia, was named the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Sen. Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday.Many Democrats and environmental groups were adamantly opposed to Manchin serving as the top Democrat on the committee that oversees policies on climate change, public lands and fossil fuel production.Following the nod, Manchin said in an online statement he will work with "both sides of the aisle to find common sense solutions for long-term comprehensive energy policy that incorporates an all-of-the-above strategy and ensures our state and our nation are leaders in the energy future."Manchin is a rare Democratic lawmaker in deep-red West Virginia, but he has consistently supported the state's coal miners. West Virginia is the nation's second-leading producer of coal. He slammed President Obama's "war on coal" and supported President Trump's controversial decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement. The League of Conservation Voters gave him a paltry lifetime score of 45 percent for his environmental voting record."Appointing Senator Manchin as ranking member of the Energy Committee is completely at odds with any plan for real climate action," 350.org executive director May Boeve said in a provided statement. "Manchin has taken every opportunity to put Big Oil before the health and safety of communities and our climate." Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is a champion of strong climate action and is a potential 2020 presidential candidate, tweeted last week: "Our party must be wholly committed to ending America's dependence on fossil fuels. Manchin literally shot climate legislation in one of his campaign ads."  In a 2010 television commercial, Manchin bragged about suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and shot a copy of the Democrats' cap-and-trade bill.

Sen. Joe Manchin to take top Democratic slot on Energy committee amid uproar on left - Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) has won the top Democratic spot on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee amid fierce opposition from activists and some potential 2020 presidential contenders who have voiced criticism of his record on environmental issues. The move was ratified Tuesday by members of the Senate Democratic caucus, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced. In a statement, Manchin said he was “excited for the opportunity to continue to serve West Virginians in this new role.” “The problems facing our country are serious, and I am committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to find common-sense solutions for long-term comprehensive energy policy that incorporates an all-of-the-above strategy and ensures our state and our nation are leaders in the energy future,” he said. Intraparty battles over congressional committee assignments are usually closed-door affairs that attract little attention beyond Washington. But as the 2020 presidential field begins to take shape, Manchin’s prospective appointment had prompted opposition from figures including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and billionaire activist Tom Steyer, two Democrats who are openly considering White House bids. “Democrats must offer a bold, positive path forward — but Senator Manchin does not offer that vision,” Steyer, a longtime proponent of efforts to combat climate change, said in a statement last week. Manchin, who last month won reelection in coal-reliant West Virginia, has embraced some of Trump’s environmental initiatives. In 2010, he drew national attention with a campaign ad in which he literally shot the “cap-and-trade” climate bill.

Testing reveals groundwater contamination threat from TVA's Kingston coal ash landfill -- More than 50 coal ash spill cleanup workers and workers' survivors are suiing Jacobs Engineering for unsafe working conditions that they allege lead to sickness and death at the cleanup site. The same toxins disaster relief workers at the site of the nation’s largest coal ash spill say poisoned them are showing up in groundwater test wells at the edge of Roane County’s waterways, a report shows. Just two years after groundwater sampling began at a coal ash landfill established at the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in the wake of that historic spill of 7.3 million tons of the toxic stuff, test results are showing signs of contamination. TVA reported in January 2018 to the EPA that testing at the Peninsula Disposal Area coal ash landfill showed a spike in coal ash constituents in groundwater test wells positioned below the landfill at the edge of the intersection of the Clinch and Emory Rivers in Roane County. That same testing showed the presence of arsenic and radium above baseline levels at three of five of the groundwater test wells. The levels of arsenic were below water safety standards but rose over time in at least three wells, suggesting continued and cumulative contamination. All of that testing has triggered more, but TVA isn’t talking about those results yet.

Federal judge dismisses more Millennium claims against state - In a potentially fatal blow to the Longview coal project, a federal judge Tuesday upheld the state of Washington’s denial of a key water quality permit for the $680 million export dock. Judge Robert Bryan of U.S. District Court in Tacoma dismissed claims by Lighthouse Resources and BNSF Railway that the permit denial preempted the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act and the Ports and Waterways Safety Act. Bryan found the companies failed to prove that the federal acts should have barred the state Department of Ecology from denying the water permit. Millennium began the permitting process for the coal terminal in 2012. The state denied its application for a water quality certificate in September 2017, pointing to “significant unavoidable adverse impacts” outlined in the Final Environmental Impact Assessment for the project. The state also said it didn’t have reasonable assurance that the terminal would meet applicable water quality standards. Lighthouse Resources sued Gov. Jay Inslee’s administration over the decision in January. Six coal-producing states — Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, Kansas and Nebraska — intervened in the suit on behalf of Lighthouse and the railroad, alleging that Washington was blocking interstate commerce by blocking the project. Bryan’s decision is another in a string of setbacks for Millennium, which is in other legal tangles with the state over the project. In addition, last month the company cut 15 percent of its Longview staff and announced the retirement of its CEO, Bill Chapman. 

Several factors could affect power this winter -- The New England region should have the electricity supply necessary to support demand during the coming winter months, but a number of factors, including unforeseen cold snaps, could stretch resources thin, transmission operator ISO New England says in its annual season forecast. Based on existing models, the area power grid appears capable of accommodating wintertime consumer demand, which is projected to peak at 20,357 megawatts under normal conditions and 21,057 megawatts at extreme temperatures, the report found. But that picture becomes more complicated if demand is higher than projected, the region loses a large generator, electricity imports fluctuate, or fuel delivery to generators is somehow disrupted. In those conditions, ISO — which oversees the electric power lines and infrastructure serving member utilities in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, in addition to the New York Power Authority and the Canadian distributors Hydro-Quebec and NB Power — would have to implement emergency procedures to maintain reliability, according to the forecast. Peter Brandien, ISO New England’s vice president for system operations, said the nonprofit has evaluated contingency plans and already enacted certain policy changes following a particularly frigid two-week stretch beginning in the final days of 2017. Between Dec. 26 and Jan. 8, the brutal cold snap upped demand for the natural gas increasingly used to fuel electric power plants, prompting many operators to switch over to oil. A series of winter storms, however, complicated delivery of oil in New England, straining available inventories and forcing ISO to stagger and postpone operating schedules to ensure that supplies could last through the weeks. By the end of the cold spell, ISO officials said, the region had burned more than 2 million barrels of oil for electricity generation, had only 19 percent of its maximum fuel oil capacity available, and was pushing federal and state emissions limitations.

Catastrophic Power Outage Poses Profound Threat To US, New Government Report Finds - The United States is not prepared for a catastrophic power outage, according to an alarming new report from the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC).  The report, titled Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage, explains the findings of the council, which is tasked with examining the nation’s “ability to respond to and recover from a catastrophic power outage of a magnitude beyond modern experience, exceeding prior events in severity, scale, duration, and consequence. Simply put, how can the nation best prepare for and recover from a catastrophic power outage, regardless of the cause?” It begins with a grim statement in the Executive Summary: After interviews with dozens of senior leaders and experts and an extensive review of studies and statutes, we found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage. This profound risk requires a new national focus. The NIAC defines a catastrophic power outage as:

• Events beyond modern experience that exhaust or exceed mutual aid capabilities
• Likely to be no-notice or limited-notice events that could be complicated by a cyber-physical attack
• Long duration, lasting several weeks to months due to physical infrastructure damage
• Affects a broad geographic area, covering multiple states or regions and affecting tens of millions of people
• Causes severe cascading impacts that force critical sectors—drinking water and wastewater systems, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—to operate in a degraded state

Actions that all levels of government need to take to prepare are discussed in the report, as summarized in this chart:

Power-for-All Target Shrinks in India as Modi's Deadline Nears -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi is nearing his deadline to electrify every Indian home.  That job has become a little easier after 10 million homes, or about one-quarter of the goal, were chopped off the list of those in need of power. The target has been narrowed after on-the-ground surveys revealed large numbers of families that had left their villages and migrated to urban areas. As well, multiple families living under the same roof have been grouped into one household after they agreed to have a common power connection, Ramesh said. Modi set out to electrify nearly 40 million homes last year to fulfill his campaign promise of reliable electricity for every citizen. That has been now pruned to 30 million. Nearly 72 percent of the revised number of homes have already received a connection, latest government data shows. The country is on pace to electrify all households by Dec. 31, Power Minister R.K. Singh said last month. The next deadline is for 24x7 access to power by March 31. Modi has repeatedly cited energy reforms, such as providing wider access to electricity and cleaner cooking fuel, as signs of the country’s progress under his Bharatiya Janata Party-led government. Completion of the household electrification program would feature prominently on Modi’s report card ahead of federal elections next year. “The success of this program is important for BJP, because it concerns the poor whose vote can swing the 2019 elections one way or the other,”  Modi announced in April that all villages in the country had access to electricity, putting himself a step closer to fulfilling his commitment of providing round-the-clock power to all Indians.   Even so, Modi’s administration has avoided closer scrutiny of the electrification work. Around the time he tweeted a claim that the last village had been connected, access to an online database providing village-level details of the progress stopped showing names of the targeted villages.

China, Japan, & South Korea Lead Global Push To Expand Coal Plants - Despite countless warnings and mounting economic evidence to the contrary, countries continue to expand the number of new coal-fired power plants, a push which is currently being led by China, Japan, and South Korea, according to the latest figures from CoalSwarm released last week. Dangerously, even as these three countries seek to transition their own economies away from coal-fired power and towards large-scale renewable energy sources — sources such as solar and offshore and onshore wind — they are also providing significant funding for overseas coal plants in developing nations. Specifically, China’s public financial institutions have financed at least 26 gigawatts (GW) worth of coal plants overseas and may finance at least 42 GW in the future; Japan’s public financial institutions have financed at least 19 GW and might finance at least 11 GW more; while South Korea has financed at least 8 GW and might finance 9 GW more. These are the findings from CoalSwarm’s new Global Coal Finance Tracker, an interactive online database which can be used to track international flows of financial support for coal projects by public institutions. “Climate change cannot be addressed as long as coal plants continue to be built,” said Ted Nace, Executive Director of CoalSwarm. “The database exposes a dangerous double standard, which is that China, Japan, and South Korea continue to be the largest sources of public funding for overseas coal plants, even as they transition their own economies away from coal.”  In terms of the world’s leading financier of new coal-fired power plants, the China Development Bank leads the way, having financed 14 GW, while the Export-Import Bank of China has financed 13.4 GW.

Unprecedented New Map Unveils Illegal Mining Destroying Amazon - A first-of-its-kind map has unveiled widespread environmental damage and contamination of the Amazon rainforest caused by the rise illegal mining. The survey, released Monday by the Amazon Socio-Environmental Geo-Referenced Information Project (RAISG), identifies at least 2,312 sites and 245 areas of prospecting or extraction of minerals such as gold, diamonds and coltan in six Amazonian countries—Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. It also identified 30 rivers affected by mining and related activities."The scope of illegal mining in the Amazon, especially in indigenous territories and protected natural areas, has grown exponentially in recent years, with the rise in the price of gold," said Beto Ricardo, head of the RAISG, in an accompanying report about the map.The map is a compilation of primary information from RAISG partners, analysis of satellite images and news stories published in the six countries up to 2017."The problem is worse than at any other time in history," Alicia Rolla, one of the coordinators at RAISG, told the New York Times. "We wanted to give visibility to the enormity of an issue that doesn't respect borders."Of the 245 identified extraction areas, 110 sites were in Peru's Madre de Dios region—ground zero of the country's gold rush, and home of the massive and rapidly expanding "La Pampa" illegal gold mine. This formerly lush Amazonian department contained the "most pronounced degradation caused by gold prospecting," the report said. Small-scale gold mining operations involves the use of mercury to separate gold from grit. When the toxic metal is released into the soil or bodies of water, it can enter the food chain and lead to health problems for local and indigenous communities, as Reuters noted.

Canada as Ugly Neighbor: Mines in BC Would Devastate Alaskan Tribes - Mining operations in Canada are threatening to destroy the way of life of Southeast Alaskan Tribes who were never consulted about the mines by the governments of Canada or British Columbia.The Tribes have depended for millennia upon the pristine watersheds of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk rivers. These waters flow through varied and wild landscapes from British Columbia through Alaska and are teeming with salmon and eulachon.The mines–two of which are operating and four that are proposed–endanger downstream fish populations through the release of toxic mine waste and acidic waters. Fish are fundamental to the Tribes' cultural practices and livelihoods, making the pollution a violation of the Tribes' human rights to culture and an adequate means of subsistence.Earthjustice submitted a petition this week on behalf of the Tribes against Canada. The petition asks the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to step in to protect and uphold the Tribes' human rights."Salmon is the staple harvest in our traditional culture. You could say it is the heartbeat of our culture. If the salmon heartbeat is gone then ours will be gone too," said Tammi Meissner of the Wrangell Cooperative Association, one of the 15 sovereign Tribal nations involved in the petition. Collectively, the Tribes make up the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission or SEITC.

Trump Wants to Reclassify Radioactive Waste from Nuclear Weapons to 'Low Level' so Disposal Is Cheaper -  President Donald Trump’s administration reportedly plans to reclassify high-level radioactive waste scattered around the U.S. in order to make it easier and cheaper to dispose of.  The Department of Energy intends to relabel high-level radioactive waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons as low-level, the Associated Press reported. Currently, high-level radioactive waste is defined as that which is a byproduct of fuel reprocessing (where leftover fissionable material is separated from the waste) or from nuclear reactors.Low-level waste, on the other hand, represents around 90 percent of all such waste, according to the American Nuclear Society, and generally comes from facilities where radioisotopes are used, such as nuclear power stations, and local hospitals. Items often include wipes, clothes and plastic. In the U.S., 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is being temporarily stored as successive administrations have grappled to find a long-term solution. Storing nuclear waste safely presents a number of challenges: it needs to be protected from natural disasters, and stopped from seeping into the surrounding water and soil, while its radiation blocked. Thieves must be kept from accessing it, and so too future generations who may not understand how toxic such materials are.  The Associated Press reported the agency said the reclassification would shave $40 billion off the cost of cleaning up after the production of nuclear weapons.

Judge approves Murray Energy contract settlement with FirstEnergy Solutions, FirstEnergy Generation — A federal bankruptcy judge this week approved, "in its entirety," an agreement between Ohio-based Murray Energy and bankrupt FirstEnergy Solutions/FirstEnergy Generation to settle the privately owned coal company's $3.1 billion damage claim against the FirstEnergy subsidiaries. The Wednesday ruling by Judge Alan Koschik of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio formalizes the deal entered into about a month ago by the companies. After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on March 31, FES/FG asked the court to reject a longstanding coal contract under which Murray was to deliver 6.5 million st/year of Northern Appalachian coal to them through 2028. The coal was committed to the 2,490-MW Bruce Mansfield power plant near Shippingport, Pennsylvania, and the 1,490-MW Sammis generating station in southern Ohio. Koschik denied the FES/FG request in October, even though the companies argued they needed far less coal to supply the power plants going forward. In late August, FES notified regional grid operator PJM Interconnection that it intends to deactivate Mansfield by June 1, 2021, and the Sammis coal units by June 1, 2022. The denial set the stage for a negotiated settlement between Murray and FES/FG. Under the settlement, Murray will continue to supply an undisclosed amount of coal to FES/FG through 2019. Murray also will continue to dispose of coal combustion waste created by the burning of coal at Mansfield essentially at cost.

Meadville-to-Ohio pipeline project receives FERC approval -- An $86 million natural gas pipeline has received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to move forward. RH energytrans is making arrangements for pre-construction activity for the Risberg Line project, which was granted a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity from the FERC on Friday deeming it a public convenience and necessity — a mandatory step before the project could move forward. The permit approval from FERC was a huge step in the timeline of this project because the FERC, "under the federal Natural Gas Act, has responsibility for evaluating environmental and landowner impacts associated with project construction and must determine whether the project is required by the public convenience and necessity," according to RH energytrans. After receiving notice for construction approval, RH energytrans said it will review the 72-page FERC Certificate Order and submit the required additional information. RH energytrans expects to begin construction before the end of this year and looks forward to "continuing to work closely with regulators, landowners and all of our stakeholders,” said Dennis Holbrook, RH energytrans spokesperson. The Risberg Line Project is a 28-mile natural gas pipeline addition to the 32-mile pipeline already existing in Pennsylvania. The additional pipeline will go from Meadville up through northwest Ashtabula County. About 16 miles of pipeline will be added in Pennsylvania and 12 miles will be added in Ohio. The pipeline will reach a point in Conneaut, Ohio, and end in North Kingsville, Ohio.

13 Well Permits Approved in Ohio's Utica – The Ohio Department of Natural Resources last week approved 13 new permits for horizontal wells targeting the Utica shale, according to the most recent data. Eclipse Resources secured seven new permits for wells in Belmont and Monroe counties, while Ascent Resources obtained permits for six wells in Guernsey County for the week ended Dec. 8, ODNR said. As of Dec. 8, ODNR has issued 2,948 permits in the Utica, and energy companies have drilled a total of 2,467 wells. There were 2,088 wells in production as of that date, the agency reported. The rig count across Ohio’s Utica stood at 17 during the week, according to ODNR. There were no new permits issued for wells in Mahoning, Columbiana or Trumbull counties in the northern section of the Utica, according to ODNR. Most of the drilling activity has concentrated in the southern tier of the oil and gas play, where wells are the most productive. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which monitors oil and gas activity in Pennsylvania, reported no new Utica permits issued in neighboring Lawrence or Mercer counties.

New Plastics Factory Means More Health Problems for Ohioans - A giant multinational company wants to build a dirty facility known as an ethane cracker in eastern Ohio's Belmont County, and we need your help to stop it. "Cracker" is industry lingo for a plant that takes fracked gas and breaks it into smaller molecules to create ethylene. This is turned into plastic pellets used to make throwaway products like bags and straws. If this project is approved by the Ohio EPA, it will turn fracked gas into 1.5 million tons of plastic per year. It would discharge pollutants directly into the Ohio River, a drinking source for 5 million people. And it would emit toxic chemicals, like benzene, that cause cancer and breathing problems. The world's largest petrochemical companies have their sights set on the Ohio River Valley to build billion-dollar complexes for making plastics. These plants are an important part of the industry's horrifying goal to increase global plastic production by 40 percent by 2030. On a planet drowning in plastic pollution, more plastic is the last thing we need.

Marcellus shale transload facility receives federal grant - The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded Hannibal, Ohio, a $20 million grant to improve a rail and pipeline energy transload facility. The money will be used to construct a pipeline-to-rail transloading facility that will include truck racks and ladder racks connected to a recently constructed loop track. The Long Ridge Energy Terminal where the funds will be used is located in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica shale gas plays. The facility generates power, stores natural gas liquids and brings in frack sand. In addition to the rail infrastructure, the facility is located on the Ohio River and has two barge docks. The funding for the project was made available through the DOT’s program called the Better Utilizing Investment to Leverage Development Transportation Discretionary Grants program (BUILD). The program is designed to support roads, bridges, transit, rail, ports or intermodal transportation. Senator Rob Portman, R-OH, said the project will increase energy exports from the Marcellus and Utica. Long Ridge is a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors LLC, the owner of the facility. Fortress trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FTAI. In addition to the Long Ridge assets, Fortress also owns a multi-modal crude oil and refined products terminal in Beaumont, Texas. 

Snyder to sign Enbridge Line 5 tunnel bill after lawmakers give final OK – The Legislature sent Gov. Rick Snyder a bill on Tuesday to allow construction of a $350-million tunnel across the Straits of Mackinac, despite concerns the plan leaves the Great Lakes at risk for a catastrophic spill and still could pose legal and other troubles for the Mackinac Bridge Authority.Snyder, a Republican, said Tuesday he will sign the bill as he continues to negotiate tunnel details with Canadian energy giant Enbridge, the owner of the 65-year-old oil pipeline that the tunnel is intended to replace and encase.Snyder said he'll make appointments to a new three-member tunnel authority "fairly soon."Snyder wants to complete the deals before the end of the year, when two Democrats assume statewide office — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel — who oppose the tunnel plan and say they want to shut down Line 5 as quickly as possible.Strong public opposition continues to Senate Bill 1197, despite a retreat by Snyder and the Republican-controlled Legislature that is supposed to remove the proposed tunnel from oversight by the Mackinac Bridge Authority. Concerns remain that the bridge authority remains tangled with the new tunnel authority and could get caught up in costly litigation, lawmakers were told Tuesday.The House passed the tunnel legislation in a 74-34 vote and the Senate went along with a minor House amendment a short time later. Last week, the Senate passed the bill, 25-13. Enbridge is picking up the cost of the tunnel. But after first saying the tunnel would come at no cost to taxpayers, the Legislature appropriated $4.5 million to pay for project oversight. There are also concerns about potential state legal costs down the road.

Michigan Gov. Signs Bill to Keep Line 5 Pipeline Flowing - Michigan's outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation on Wednesday that creates a new government authority to oversee a proposed oil tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac to effectively allow Canadian oil to keep flowing through the Great Lakes.The controversial tunnel will encase a replacement segment for Enbridge Energy's aging Line 5 pipelines that run along the bottom of the Straits, a narrow waterway that connects Lakes Huron and Michigan.The new law creates a three-member Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority that is required to enter an agreement with the Canadian oil company on the construction and operation of the tunnel before the end of the month.Snyder signed Senate Bill 1197 just a day after the GOP-controlled Michigan Legislature approved the bill—a move seen as a lame-duck rush before Democrats Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel take over as governor and attorney general respectively, as the Detroit Free Press noted. Both Whitmer and Nessel made campaign promises to shut down Line 5 over fears that the 65-year-old twin pipelines could spill and contaminate the Great Lakes, a source of drinking water for tens of millions of people. Line 5 has spilled 1.1 million gallons of oil into the lakes since 1968. Environmentalists say Snyder's move has effectively allowed Line 5, which pumps up to 23 million gallons of oil and liquefied natural gas a day, to run for another decade while the tunnel is being built. Under the new plan, the existing pipelines will be replaced with a new tunneled pipeline under the bedrock of the Straits of Mackinac. The project will take seven to 10 years to complete and cost as much as $500 million. Enbridge will foot the bill.

Snyder creates Line 5 tunnel authority; appoints 3 members — Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wasted no time Wednesday signing into law legislation creating an authority to oversee the construction of a tunnel to house Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac. Snyder signed the legislation a day after both the Republican-controlled Senate and House approved it over the objections of environmentalists, who argue Line 5 should be immediately decommissioned to prevent a potential major oil spill. Snyder also announced his appointees to the Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority, which included two Democrats and one Republican. The term-limited Republican governor seemed to be extending an olive branch to critics, and perhaps Democratic Gov.-elect Gretchen Whitmer, by appointing two Democrats who support the tunnel project. The legislation requires that at most two authority members can be from the same political party. The appointees include Democrat Geno Alessandrini of the Michigan Laborers District Council; Democrat Tony England, an engineering and computer science dean at the University of Michigan-Dearborn; and Republican Michael Zimmer, Snyder’s cabinet director. The three members will serve six-year terms while overseeing the tunnel construction, which is expected to cost up to $500 million and take more than 10 years to complete.

Michigan, Great Lakes at risk for oil spills beyond Line 5, report says - As Michigan lawmakers jockey over the fate of the Line 5 oil pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, a new report says more than a dozen other spots in the Great Lakes are also vulnerable to oil spills. Crude oil production has surged across parts of the northern United States and western Canada since 2010, expanding oil transportation networks of pipelines and rail. That has brought new risks to the Great Lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater.In a report released Monday, the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission, an American-Canadian advisory body, identified 15 areas of “higher ecological vulnerability” to oil spills. That includes the Straits, where Enbridge Energy’s 65-year-old Line 5 has attracted the lion’s share of attention from those who fear a catastrophic rupture, however unlikely.Those vulnerable areas range from wetlands and marshlands to fish spawning grounds, and the threatened species run the gamut, depending on the location. Lake sturgeon, walleye, suckers, northern pike, lake whitefish would be of concern in Lake Michigan, for instance, along with migratory and nesting birds, amphibians, reptiles and other animals.  “All levels of the aquatic food chain would be impacted by a spill, from plankton to fish to fish-eating birds and mammals,” the commission said in a news release Monday. “Because the lakes provide the largest source of fresh surface water for almost 40 million people and drinking water for many of these residents, the risk of a spill affecting drinking water may be significant, particularly when currents transport crude oil to the vicinity of drinking water intakes.”  Most of the vulnerable areas are near rail corridors or pipelines, and five are near refineries, according to the commission, which was established under a 1909 treaty to investigate cross-border water issues and approve certain water projects.

Michigan governor reaches final deal on Great Lakes pipeline (AP) — Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration said Thursday it had wrapped up negotiations with Enbridge Inc. on building a tunnel to contain an oil pipeline beneath a Great Lakes waterway. Snyder’s office released a series of agreements with the Canadian pipeline company, including details and timelines for the plan to drill the tunnel through bedrock under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lakes Huron and Michigan. The project would lead to decommissioning of dual pipelines that run more than four miles (6.4 kilometers) across the bottom of the straits and have been in place since 1953. The Michigan Legislature voted this week to establish a panel that will oversee construction and operation of the tunnel. The Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority could approve the Enbridge deals during its first meeting next Wednesday, fulfilling Snyder’s wish to have the plan etched in stone before he leaves office this month. The two-term Republican’s successor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, has spoken against the plan and called for shutting down Enbridge’s Line 5. “There’s going to be a lot more that needs to be done, but this starts the process of building the tunnel,” said Ed Golder, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources. The document that will be submitted to the straits corridor authority says Enbridge will be “solely responsible for all costs of designing, constructing, operating, maintaining and decommissioning the tunnel,” which the company has estimated at up to $500 million. It sets deadlines for steps such as selecting a team to develop project specifications, applying for construction permits and requesting proposals from contractors. After the tunnel is built, the straits corridor authority would assume ownership and grant Enbridge a 99-year lease. Other utility infrastructure, such as electric cables, could be placed in the tunnel. “The Snyder-Enbridge backroom deal may be good for Enbridge but it’s certainly not what’s best for Michigan and the Great Lakes,” said Mike Shriberg, director of the National Wildlife Federation’s regional office and a member of Snyder’s Pipeline Safety Advisory Board. 

Judge grants first eminent domain case to PennEast in Pennsylvania  - A federal judge granted PennEast Pipeline Co. the right of eminent domain to build its pipeline on a property in Carbon County, in the first ruling of its kind over the controversial project in a Pennsylvania court.U.S. Judge Malachy Mannion of the Middle District of Pennsylvania last week rejected an argument by Susana Bullrich, a landowner in Towamencin Township, that PennEast could not build the pipeline on her property because it has yet to receive approval from some authorities, including the State of New Jersey, to go ahead with the project. Bullrich argued that the missing permits mean that a certificate of approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, issued in January this year, was only conditional, and so PennEast had no legal right to file eminent domain suits while some of FERC's conditions remain unmet.But Mannion, in a 13-page opinion, said there's no requirement in either the FERC certificate or the federal Natural Gas Act that a holder of the certificate must meet all of its conditions before taking possession of a property."If the FERC certificate was to be interpreted as requested by Bullrich, no entry on a private property could take place before all pre-conditions were met, and yet many of the pre-conditions cannot be met without access to the property," the judge wrote. "This contorted reasoning would make the FERC certificate nothing more than a meaningless piece of paper." The judge ruled that PennEast has met all the conditions that allow a party to exercise eminent domain under federal law, and said it has the "substantive right" to condemn the stated portions of Bullrich's eight-acre property.

Court rejects another plea from pipeline foes — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to consider a challenge from the Clean Air Council and local landowners concerning Sunoco’s use of eminent domain to acquire land for their controversial Mariner East 2 pipeline.  The Dec. 5 decision involved an April Commonwealth Court opinion, with all but one claim thrown out. Arguments may still be heard by the Commonwealth Court on Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment.“The Supreme Court doesn’t take many cases,” explained Alex Bomstein, senior litigator attorney for the Clean Air council, on Monday. “There’s not enough room on the docket. Always when a decision is appealed you don’t anticipate the Supreme Court is going to take the case and usually doesn’t.”The trial court ruled in Clean Air Council’s favor. That decision was overturned by Commonwealth Court. Bomstein argued against allowing the company to use eminent domain, saying the project does not serve a public purpose, it is not paramount to the benefit of the public and is an export project for European plastic manufacturers.

Pennsylvania judge rejects shutting Energy Transfer's Mariner East pipelines (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania administrative law judge on Tuesday denied a petition by state residents asking utility regulators to prohibit the operation of Energy Transfer LP and its Sunoco subsidiary’s Mariner East pipelines. The petition filed in November sought interim emergency relief, citing risks from the pipelines in the area and urging the state’s Public Utility Commission to direct Sunoco to stop operation of its Mariner East 1 pipeline and prohibit operation of its Mariner East 2 pipeline. The residents alleged that the company did “not provide adequate notice of procedures sufficient to ensure the safety of the public in the event of a leak or rupture,” according to the petition. Judge Elizabeth Barnes ruled that the petitioners presented no evidence of the risk of death from an accidental pipeline leak, and failed to demonstrate a need for immediate relief. “We are pleased with the judge’s ruling,” Energy Transfer spokeswoman Lisa Dillinger said in an emailed statement, adding that the company expects Mariner East 2 to be put into service by the end of the year. Mariner East transports liquids from the Marcellus and Utica shale fields in western Pennsylvania to customers in the state and elsewhere, including international exports from Energy Transfer’s Marcus Hook complex near Philadelphia. Mariner East 2 and another Energy Transfer project, the Rover natural gas pipe from Ohio to Michigan, were delayed over the past year in part because the projects together racked up more than 800 state and federal permit violations while the company raced to build them. 

We must protect Pa. children from leaking natural gas infrastructure - Pennsylvania has a natural gas problem.  While no one would argue the economic benefits of natural gas, there are nevertheless hidden costs that must be paid.  All too often, those paying the biggest price are our children, both pre-born and born.Children are not simply little adults.  Their brains, hearts, lungs, and entire bodies are still developing.  The fugitive methane and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) leaking from our natural gas industry is stunting these developments.  According to a peer-reviewed study commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund, Pennsylvania spews out over 520,000 t ons of fugitive methane each year, five times what industry reports to DEP. What’s more, we are also leaking VOCs at a rate of 54,000 tons per year – almost nine times what is reported.Numerous medical studies demonstrate convincingly that babies born to Pennsylvania mothers who live within a half mile of a fracking site are 25 percent more likely to have low birth weight compared to babies born to mothers living two miles away or farther. Over 311,000 Pennsylvania kids go to school within that same half mile radius of either a fracking site or other natural gas facility. Other studies have confirmed early term births, developmental disabilities, brain damage, increased cancer rates, and other significant life-altering, and even life-threatening, impacts.The children who are lucky enough to live and go to school away from production sites are still not safe. Smog caused from fracking will result in over 30,000 additional asthma attacks across our Commonwealth each year, with over 3,000 in the York area alone. Our kids are at risk. This is not theoretical. It’s past time to act, and the good news is, we know what we need to do. It’s as simple as reducing fugitive methane and VOCs, a choice that should be easy if we believe our children are important. The leaks can be minimized with zero net cost to the natural gas industry.  Technologies exist today that allow for fugitive emission decreases by 40-50 percent with the saved natural gas paying the costs.

Explosion at natural gas facility injures four - AN explosion at MarkWest natural gas processing facility in Pennsylvania, US, has injured four people. The explosion occurred just after 18:00 local time on 13 December, followed by a fire. The incident happened close to two temporary tanks that were on site for routine maintenance. The fire started in a tank which holds 200 bbl of liquid ethylene glycol and hydrocarbons. Four workers sustained burns and were airlifted to hospital. The cause of the explosion is currently unknown. The processing plant was not involved in the incident, but has been shut down as a precaution. MarkWest Energy Partners, owned by Marathon Petroleum, is one of the largest processors of natural gas in the US. It is involved in gathering, processing and transporting natural gas, transporting, fractionating and storing natural gas liquids, and gathering and transporting crude oil.  

Over 90,000 Petitions Demanding Fracking Ban Delivered - Representatives of Pennsylvania organizations submitted 90,039 signed petitions to Governor Wolf at his Capitol office today. The petitions, collected by groups representing members in all four states that are part of the Delaware River Watershed, asks the Governors to vote at the Delaware River Basin Commission for a complete and permanent ban on fracking and its activities. The petitions call for a ban on fracking throughout the Delaware River Basin, a ban on frack wastewater processing and discharges in the Basin, and a ban on water exports from the Delaware River Watershed to fuel fracking elsewhere.The Delaware River Basin Commission, made up of the governors of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware, and the Army Corps of Engineers representing the federal government, are expected to vote in the coming months on the proposed fracking ban.  "It is clear from Pennsylvania's experience with the shale gas industry that fracking is harmful to our communities, our natural resources, and the climate," said Joanne Kilgour, Director of the Sierra Club PA Chapter. Kilgour continued, "Governor Wolf and the Delaware River Basin Commission are in a unique position to prevent this harm in the Delaware River Watershed by enacting a complete ban on fracking and related activities - such as waste water disposal - which is exactly what the public and the residents of the watershed are calling on them to do today.”

Report highlights need for ethane hub - — A federal report issued this week cites the economic potential from additional ethane hubs in the United States.Natural gas processing capacity has expanded more than 10-fold from 2010 to 2016 in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia where the boom in crude oil and natural gas production from shale formations across the U.S. and in the Marcellus and Utica shales “has transformed global energy markets and may present opportunities for industry to establish additional hubs,” according to Ethane Storage and Distribution Hub in the United States, a report to Congress by the U.S. Department of Energy. Natural gas plant liquids, especially ethane, are used in the production of plastics and other compounds. “The large increase in (natural gas liquids) will come from the Marcellus and Utica plays production in the East and from the Permian basin in the Southwest over the next 10 years,” the report said. “This growth is explained mainly by the close association between the production of (natural gas production liquids) and the development of natural gas and crude oil resources in those regions.”The report, released on Tuesday, details the potential for a petrochemical hub located in the Appalachian region and emphasizes benefits for the economy in America that an ethane hub would have.“This report affirms what we have been talking about for years,” U.S. Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., said. “Natural gas production in the region has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. The next logical step is to take full advantage of this resource and develop a petrochemical industry in the region.” The report points out 95 percent of the country’s petrochemical industries are located on the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana where production could be disrupted by hurricanes. “This concentration of assets and operations may pose a strategic risk to the U.S. economy moving forward as extreme weather events impacting petrochemical and plastics production on the Gulf Coast can limit the availability of feedstocks to manufacturers across the United States,” the report said. Disruptions from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused price spikes of 20 to 30 percent in the resins used to make plastics. “It is in the national interest to diversify and build a secondary hub in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky,” he said.

Petrochemical Booster Rick Perry Rides to the Rescue of the Fracking Industry - Food and Water Watch --When he took the job, Energy Secretary Rick Perry didn’t seem to know what the Department of Energy actually did. But since then, he has committed himself to one mission: promoting fossil fuels and petrochemicals.Specifically, Perry is pushing a massive petrochemical buildout in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, which would turn the Tri-State area into a new epicenter of highly polluting petrochemical manufacturing to rival the Gulf Coast. Last week, the Energy Department released a Report to Congress boasting the erroneous benefits of a key piece of infrastructure called the Appalachian Storage Hub. Secretary Perry also gushed about the storage hub on the op-ed page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.The Trump administration’s push for petrochemicals is perfectly in sync with what major corporate powers are proposing. Right now, investors are pouring billions of dollars into Appalachia to create a cluster of gas infrastructure and plastics and petrochemical factories. An alliance of industry players, government officials and regional universities have also been promoting this substantial investment.Two of the facilities are petrochemical crackers that turn the natural gas liquid ethane into a chemical used to make plastic (one in Pennsylvania is under construction, while the other is proposed in Ohio). The third piece is the Appalachian Storage Hub in Ohio, which received partial approval early this year for a $1.9 billion Department of Energy loan. The Storage Hub would hold natural gas liquids like ethane underground and connect with a web of pipeline infrastructure to supply regional petrochemical and plastics facilities. The whole reason the industry and its lackeys are pushing this petrochemical proliferation is to ride to the rescue of the struggling fracking industry. Surging fracked gas production has collapsed natural gas prices, spawning a crisis for the frackers. From 2008 to 2017, the real wholesale price for natural gas fell by 60 percent as total gas production rose. The Energy Department report even admits that the fracking boom in the Tri-State area is producing way more natural gas (and ethane) than can be used, outpacing the growth in associated infrastructure.

Gov. Cuomo Vetoes Gas Leak Bill, Citing 'Fatal Flaws' -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have forced utility companies to reveal locations of their underground gas leaks, citing "fatal flaws."  However, Cuomo said he supported the intent of the bill to require gas companies to report leaks to public safety officials. He directed the Public Utility Commission to review the idea and recommend rules to improve communication.  Cuomo said he vetoed the bill Friday because it also required a change in state law any time a federal standard changes, which would make it cumbersome to keep consistent with federal changes and potentially jeopardize federal funding.  The bill, which passed unanimously in the state Senate and 93-33 in the State Assembly, was first introduced in 2014 after an I-Team investigation revealed how natural gas companies routinely kept the locations of their known leaks secret from the public – even as they encouraged the public to be alert and report unusual gas odors.  Lawmakers have voted to require that utilities publicly disclose the locations of known gas leaks after an I-Team investigation found gas companies keeping leak locations secret. Chris Glorioso reports. Utility companies expressed concern about the legislation, but over time the natural gas industry has withdrawn objections, said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D – Scarsdale), who sponsored the bill. According to an I-Team analysis of lobbying records, utilities have spent more than a million dollars on lobbyists seeking to influence the governor’s thinking on natural gas issues since 2016. Some of those lobbyists have close ties to Cuomo. Cordo and Company, a firm that listed the gas leaks bill on its lobbying disclosure, used to employ Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa.

Anti-fracking advocates push for action on Delaware River Basin - — A coalition of environmental groups presented over 100,000 signatures to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday, urging him to support a full ban on hydraulic fracking and its related activities in the Delaware River Basin. The activists gathered at the state Capitol's historic Million Dollar Staircase and called on the governor to expand the state's 2014 ban on hydraulic fracking by prohibiting use of the basin for treatment and processing of fracking waste, or for water withdrawals for fracking. Cuomo is among four state governors and a regional U.S. Army Corps engineer — the federal representative — who make up the Delaware River Basin Commission that was created in 1961. The commission is expected to vote on proposed regulations to permanently ban fracking in the basin, which stretches more than 300 miles from the Catskill mountains to the Delaware Bay south of New Jersey. Four years ago, Cuomo announced the statewide ban on fracking. Advocates say expanding the ban is a crucial step in shifting New York off fossil fuels to renewable energy. "The underlying principle of New York's fracking ban is that it is too dangerous to be done safely anywhere," said Roger Downs, conservation director for the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter. "To still have the Delaware River Basin, a drinking water source for 17 million people, remain potentially open to drilling represents a disproportionate risk that defies common sense and the science that supports effective public health policy. The petition effort was led by groups including Food & Water Watch, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Riverkeeper, Environmental Advocates of New York, Earthworks, Delaware Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Lawmakers, including state senators Liz Krueger and Brad Hoylman, joined the advocates at their news conference calling for an expansion of the state's fracking ban. "The dangers of fracking have been well established, to the point that New York state has banned the practice outright," Krueger said. "So it makes no sense to allow fracking or fracking waste anywhere near the Delaware watershed, or to let this pristine public water resource be used to support fracking operations elsewhere."

PRESS RELEASE: Virginia Attorney General Brings Suit Against the MVP Pipeline - —Attorney General Mark R. Herring and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality today announced the filing of a lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC for repeated environmental violations in Craig, Franklin, Giles, Montgomery, and Roanoke Counties, particularly violations that occurred during significant rain events over the last year. The suit alleges that MVP violated the Commonwealth’s environmental laws and regulations as well as MVP’s Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification by failing to control sediment and stormwater runoff resulting in impacts to waterways and roads. The suit seeks the maximum allowable civil penalties and a court order to force MVP to comply with environmental laws and regulations. The matter was referred to the Office of Attorney General by the Director of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after numerous inspections identified violations at multiple construction sites.“This suit alleges serious and numerous violations of environmental laws that caused unpermitted impacts to waterways and roads in multiple counties in Southwest Virginia,” said Attorney General Herring. “We’re asking the court for an enforceable order that will help us ensure compliance going forward, and for penalties for MVP’s violations.”  “The Northam administration has empowered DEQ to pursue the full course of action necessary to enforce Virginia’s environmental standards and to protect our natural resources,” said DEQ Director David Paylor. “In this case, we determined referral to the Office of the Attorney General was prudent in order to seek faster resolution to these violations. We appreciate the Attorney General’s coordination to ensure necessary compliance.”The complaint against MVP alleges that DEQ inspectors identified violations of environmental laws, regulations, and permits in May, June, July, August, September, and October 2018 while investigating complaints it had received. In addition, an inspection company contracted by DEQ to monitor MVP’s compliance identified more than 300 violations between June and mid-November 2018, mostly related to improper erosion control and stormwater management.  Among the laws that MVP is alleged to have violated are:

Virginia files lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline - The company building a natural gas pipeline through Southwest Virginia violated environmental regulations more than 300 times, a lawsuit filed Friday by Virginia’s top lawyer alleges. Mountain Valley Pipeline is facing “the maximum allowable civil penalties and a court order to force MVP to comply with environmental laws and regulations,” according to a statement from Attorney General Mark Herring. Since work began earlier this year, inspections have found that crews failed to prevent muddy water from flowing off pipeline construction easements, often leaving harmful sediment in nearby streams and properties. Covering a span of seven months and nearly 100 miles of the pipeline’s route through five counties, the lawsuit is one of the most comprehensive summaries to date of the environmental toll taken by running a 42-inch diameter pipeline across rugged slopes and through pure mountain streams. Herring’s office filed the case on behalf of Department of Environmental Quality Director David Paylor and the State Water Control Board. “The Northam administration has empowered DEQ to pursue the full course of action necessary to enforce Virginia’s environmental standards and to protect our natural resources,” Paylor said in a written statement. “In this case, we determined referral to the Office of the Attorney General was prudent in order to seek faster resolution to these violations.” A Mountain Valley spokeswoman said Friday that “unusually wet conditions and periods of record rainfall” since construction began have posed unexpected challenges along the pipeline’s 303-mile path from northern West Virginia to Pittsylvania County. “The MVP project team has worked diligently to ensure appropriate soil erosion and sediment controls were implemented and restored where necessary along the route,” Natalie Cox wrote in an email. Mountain Valley “takes its environmental stewardship responsibilities very seriously and appreciates the guidance and oversight by the VDEQ,” she wrote. “MVP will continue to comply with the relevant laws and regulations related to the safe and responsible construction of this important infrastructure project in order to meet public demand for natural gas.” The lawsuit, filed in Henrico County Circuit Court, does not state an exact monetary amount being sought by the state. In July, DEQ issued a notice of violation to Mountain Valley, informing the company that its measures to control erosion and sediment had failed at multiple locations in the counties of Giles, Craig, Montgomery, Roanoke and Franklin. The matter was later referred to the attorney general’s office, which spent several months preparing a 27-page lawsuit that makes more sweeping allegations. It’s rare for such a case to end up in court, said David Sligh, a former environmental engineer for DEQ who is now fighting the pipeline as conservation director of Wild Virginia. Most notices of violations are handled administratively, with the most severe action a fine that is generally less than what a judge might impose, he said. 

Eco-groups file motion with Ferc on MVP Southgate project - Six environmental groups are seeking to intervene in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s proceedings on whether to approve an extension to the under-construction Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate project, Kallanish Energy reports. The motion was filed Monday by the Center for Biological Diversity and allies Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Appalachian Voices, the Sierra Club, Haw River Assembly and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. The Mvp Southgate extension by Mountain Valley Pipeline would move Appalachian Basin natural gas from the southern terminus of the 303-mile Mvp in Virginia’s Pittsylvania County, south roughly 72 miles to Alamance County, North Carolina. Construction would begin in the first quarter of 2020, and the pipeline would likely be in service by the fourth quarter of 2020. The eco-groups say the pipeline extension would harm plants and animals and threaten water supplies and local air quality along the Virginia-North Carolina border. It would also harm air and water quality in the Appalachian Basin by encouraging more drilling, they said. Work on the $4.6 billion Mvp has been halted at least temporarily by federal authorities over permits to cross streams in West Virginia.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline: construction halts for endangered species - Construction on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline could be delayed for months after a federal court in Richmond ordered the 600-mile interstate natural gas project to stop all work on Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the federal permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which in September had cleared the way for pipeline construction in sensitive habitats. The habitats are home to four endangered species: a bee, a bat, a mussel and a crustacean. Lawyers for the pipeline, which would run through eight counties in North Carolina, asked the court late Friday to reconsider the ban, saying it was too far-reaching. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s lawyers said, for example, that none of the four endangered species have sensitive habitats in North Carolina, suggesting that pipeline construction work could continue in the state. “Due to the scope of the court’s order, Atlantic will be unable to proceed with any construction in the ‘action areas’ despite the lack of potential harm,” the pipeline’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.  A court hearing on the validity of the federal permit is not scheduled until March. The permit allows pipeline construction to accidentally harm wildlife protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. But in the meantime the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and environmental groups who oppose the project are locked in a legal battle on whether the temporary construction ban should apply to the entire pipeline or just the areas with the endangered species. DJ Gerken, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Saturday in a phone interview that the sensitive habitat of the Indiana bat, one of the endangered species, covers most of the pipeline’s projected path in West Virginia and Virginia. Gerken said his clients, which include the Sierra Club and the Virginia Wilderness Committee, oppose any construction work under an invalid federal permit.

Dominion suspends work on full route of Atlantic Coast Pipeline natural gas project after court stay — Dominion Energy has suspended construction on the full 600-mile route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, except for some 'stand-down' activities, after an appeals court stay last week, the company told the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Friday. Dominion said its action to halt work on the natural gas project was in response to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals' stay of implementation of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's biological opinion and incidental take statement. Both documents relate to the project's impact on vulnerable species. The court stay is in effect pending review of environmentalists' challenge to the documents, and oral argument in the case is scheduled in March (Defenders of Wildlife, et al., v. US Fish and Wildlife Service, 18-2090). Dominion, however, has called the stay "overly broad" and filed an emergency request that the court clarify the geographic scope of the stay or reconsider its pause. Only four species and about 100 miles of the project in West Virginia and Virginia are involved, it said, suggesting, for instance, that those species are not present in North Carolina. The 1.5 Bcf/d pipeline project is designed to move Appalachian shale gas to downstream Mid-Atlantic markets. The same court earlier this year struck the previous incidental take statement -- which allows for certain actions that unintentionally harm species -- for failing to set clear, enforceable limits on such actions. But the agency issued a new opinion and statement September 11, maintaining its view that the project is unlikely to jeopardize the continued existence of a handful of vulnerable species. It also issued a fresh incidental take statement setting revised numerical limits, among other things. Environmentalists then went back to court to challenging recently reissued federal permits they contend were rushed through the door. Southern Environmental Law Center has contended that more surveying was needed and that route alternatives should be considered in light of new information on the presence of the rusty patched bumble bee and a species of mussel known as the clubshell. It also contended that FWS reauthorized the pipeline despite additional data confirming that it would put critically endangered species in jeopardy of extinction. It also argued FWS omitted important habitat for the Indiana bat in its considerations. Login/Register

Quoting ‘The Lorax,’ federal judges reject pipeline’s effort to cross Appalachian Trail   - A federal appeals has thrown out another key permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, increasing the likelihood that work on the 604-mile multi-state project could be held up until this summer if not longer. The appeals court in Richmond on Thursday invalidated a federal permit for the planned pipeline to cross 21 miles of national forest in Virginia, including a section of the Appalachian Trail. The court said that the U.S. Forest Service ignored federal law and its own agency rules in granting the permit, which will clear a 125-swath of habitat during construction and leave a 50-foot wide lane in perpetuity for maintenance.The same court last week rejected a permit by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cut trees and grade land in sensitive habitats that are home to four endangered wildlife species. The consortium building the $7 billion pipeline, led by Charlotte-based Duke Energy and Richmond-based Dominion Energy, vowed to appeal the ruling and fight to get it reversed. The companies are planning to bring natural gas from fracking fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia into North Carolina.They contend the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is “the most thoroughly reviewed infrastructure project in the history of our region,” and noted that 56 oil and gas pipelines have operated across the Appalachian Trail. They contend that cheap and abundant natural gas will keep down energy costs for decades and will provide a cleaner-burning alternative to coal-burning power plants, which are being phased out.“If allowed to stand, this decision will severely harm consumers and do great damage to our economy and energy security,” pipeline spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an emailed statement. “Public utilities are depending on this infrastructure to meet the basic energy needs of millions of people and businesses in our region.” In its ruling Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit quoted the Dr. Seuss classic, “The Lorax,” to summarize its decision. The court noted that the U.S. Forest Service outlined a litany of environmental concerns with the pipeline’s crossing of national forests, then abruptly did an about-face, dropped its objections, and approved the energy project.“We trust the United States Forest Service to ‘speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues,’ ” the court wrote. “A thorough review of the record leads to the necessary conclusion that the Forest Service abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources. This conclusion is particularly informed by the Forest Service’s serious environmental concerns that were suddenly, and mysteriously, assuaged in time to meet a private pipeline company’s deadlines.”

Court Tosses Controversial Pipeline Permits, Rules Forest Service Failed to ‘Speak for the Trees’ -  The Lorax would not approve of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—the controversial pipeline intended to carry fracked natural gas through 600 miles in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. That's the sentiment behind a ruling by a Virginia appeals court Thursday tossing out a U.S. Forest Service permit for the pipeline to cross 21 miles of national forest in Virginia, including a part of the Appalachian Trail, The News & Observer reported."We trust the United States Forest Service to 'speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues,'" the Richmond, Virginia U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit wrote in its ruling, quoting the Dr. Seuss classic. "A thorough review of the record leads to the necessary conclusion that the Forest Service abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources. This conclusion is particularly informed by the Forest Service's serious environmental concerns that were suddenly, and mysteriously, assuaged in time to meet a private pipeline company's deadlines." Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and the Southern Company, the companies behind the pipeline, had sought permission to cross the George Washington National Forest and the Monongahela National Forest. Work would have required clearing a 125-foot path for construction through the forests and leaving a 50 foot path around the pipeline for maintenance. Sierra Club lawyer Nathan Matthews told The News & Observer that the companies would have to build 50 to 100 more miles to navigate around the forests. "This is a really consequential decision for this project," Greg Buppert, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which brought the lawsuit against the permit on behalf of several environmental groups including the Sierra Club, told The Virginia Mercury. "If I were Dominion I would be panicked." The court's decision comes nearly a week after the same court halted construction on the pipeline until it can rule on permits granted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowing the pipeline to build in the habitat of four endangered species.  "This decision reinforces that the tide has turned against fracked gas pipelines," Matthews said in a Sierra Club statement. These dirty and destructive projects are no longer a done deal. It's simple, there is no right way to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—or any fracked gas pipeline. For the sake of our health, climate, communities, and its own ratepayers, Dominion should abandon this dirty, dangerous project once and for all.”

Virginia regulators just rejected Dominion’s long-range resource plan - Virginia utility regulators took the unprecedented action Friday of ordering Dominion Energy to totally redo a long-term energy plan it submitted for approval in May. The 231-page forecast covered details such as customer base and power-supply build-out from 2019 to 2033.“The commission finds, based on the record of this proceeding and applicable statutes, that the Company has failed to establish its 2018 IRP, as currently filed, is reasonable and in the public interest,” commissioners said. Dominion has 90 days to refile a corrected version of its 2018 Integrated Resource Plan, the State Corporation Commission (SCC) wrote in a 10-page decision. The changes have potential ripple effects on the region’s clean energy transition. Here are a few takeaways based on reactions from critics of the utility reached late Friday afternoon:  The commission has never before rejected a Dominion plan as insufficient, according to Will Cleveland, an attorney with a Charlottesville advocacy group that has consistently challenged Dominion’s plans. “This is a big deal, especially if you’re super-duper wonky about utility planning.”Utility regulators nationwide rarely reject such plans, noted Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs for Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit that works with investors and companies on sustainability issues. “I take a national view of these things for my job, and from my standpoint it is very unusual to have an IRP rejected outright like this.” Bakal Friday’s decision is also a good sign that Virginia regulators are not OK with being a rubber stamp for the state’s largest utility. “This ruling means that the State Corporation Commission is doing its job by adequately scrutinizing Dominion’s plans and raising concerns about its assumptions and estimates,” Bakal said. Critics said the decision validates something they have been saying for years: that Dominion’s energy forecasts are not credible.

NAACP duped into backing pipeline in Virginia, foe says — A massive winter storm delayed a closely watched vote in Virginia on a natural gas pipeline compressor station that has been the frequent target of protests, including an accusation that the NAACP was duped into supporting the project. A citizen panel that votes on air pollution permits was set to decide Monday whether Virginia’s most powerful corporation can build a natural gas compressor station in a historical African-American community. But the state on Sunday announced the meeting was being pushed back to Dec. 19 because of a winter storm that has made roads dangerous. Dominion Energy needs the State Air Pollution Control Board to sign off on a permit to build a station in Buckingham County to pump gas through the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The upcoming vote has become a flashpoint in the yearslong fight over the pipeline and a political imbroglio for Gov. Ralph Northam, who has come under intense criticism for his recent removal of two board members ahead of the vote. The proposed site is about an hour west of Richmond in Union Hill, a community founded by freed slaves. Dominion, the lead developer of the pipeline and dominant force in Virginia politics, said it chose the location because it had sufficient acreage for sale and intersects with an existing pipeline. The proposed 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina. But opposition has been fierce, both from groups that don’t want the pipeline built at all and by others who worry exhaust from the compressor station will hurt the low-income and elderly residents who live nearby. Some opponents have accused Dominion of trying to take advantage of Union Hill’s Black residents.Richard Walker, who says his great-grandfather bought a 25-acre homestead in Union Hill for $15 in 1885 as a freed slave, said the company is engaged in “environmental racism.” He said Dominion recently duped the state NAACP into sending a letter to public officials saying it was satisfied with the progress Dominion was making with Union Hill residents. The NAACP quickly reversed course and reaffirmed its opposition to the compressor station after the letter was made public.

Winter storm outages weaken gas-demand response in Carolinas— Widespread power outages from a winter storm that pummeled the Carolinas on Saturday and Sunday weakened the gas-demand response from power generators, but otherwise had minimal market impact. Duke Energy said Monday that power had already been restored to 500,000 customers across North and South Carolina. Heavy snow and ice, which downed power lines over the weekend, continued to leave another 156,000 customers across the two states without service as of Monday. In North Carolina, where the storm had its largest impact, gas delivered to local distribution companies (LDCs) was up sharply over the weekend. The uptick in demand from power plants was notably muted, though, underperforming levels seen during a similar cold front which swept across the state over the recent Thanksgiving holiday. On Monday, temperatures across the Carolinas warmed only into the upper 30s to low 40s Fahrenheit. High temperatures are forecast to remain in that range through Thursday, according to data from the National Weather Service and S&P Global Platts Analytics. At Transco Zone 5 in North Carolina, gas prices were down Monday about 14-15 cents/MMBtu as the storm's demand impact continued to wane. All three Transco zone 5 hubs were poised to settle near $5.20/MMBtu on Monday, according to preliminary settlement data from S&P Global Platts. Beginning Saturday, sample gas demand from LDCs and power generators in North Carolina edged up in response to the colder weather. Power plant demand, though, was notably weaker than might be anticipated, averaging about 12.8 Bcf/d over the past three days, Platts Analytics data showed. In late November, a cold front that dropped temperatures in North Carolina to similar levels, pushed power burn demand to an average 14.6 Bcf/d over the three-day period. The weaker demand response suggests power outages across the state were likely responsible for lost burn demand in total at least 1.5 Bcf/d and possibly more, Platts Analytics data shows. In the residential-commercial sector, gas demand has averaged 15.7 Bcf/d since Saturday, up about 5 Bcf/d from the prior seven-day average. With temperatures expected to remain in the mid-30s to low 40s through Thursday, demand levels in North Carolina and beyond are expected to remain elevated over the next several days.

Natural gas price bump could cause higher heating bill - Natural gas has reached its highest price in more than four years, a spike expected to hit consumers in their wallets just as winter weather begins.The price of natural gas — which is used to heat nearly half of all U.S. households — has surged beyond market forecasts for the year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.A Nov. 23 spot check on the price of natural gas showed it to be at $4.70 per million British thermal units. The last time the price of natural gas reached that level was June 2014, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  The higher prices were spurred by lower temperatures that boosted the use of natural gas while there was little already in storage, according to the EIA. If colder temperatures keep up, households could end up paying around 5 percent more in heating costs this winter, said Bob Wilkens, University of Dayton associate dean of research who spent two decades working at Shell Oil Company.“If we have an extended really cold period then it’s going to take stockpiles a while to replenish themselves,” Wilkens said. “It all depends on what mother nature throws at us.” November was a colder month for the Midwest in 2018 than it typically has been the last 10 years, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Despite the colder fall, the EIA is projecting the price of natural gas to drop in the coming months.

Listen: Rally in natural gas prices, lower storage throws uncertainty into US winter power outlook (podcast) The recent rise in natural gas prices, combined with lower gas storage and a late November cold snap, has added some uncertainty to the US winter power outlook. S&P Global Platts editors Eric Janssen, Kassia Micek and Tyler Godwin discuss the major issues in a roundtable discussion led by Andrew Moore. The group looks at everything from power prices and coal retirements to reliability concerns and the overall power mix.

Natural Gas Volatility Isn't Going Anywhere - It was another very volatile day in the natural gas space, as prices gapped up decently last evening, sold off through the morning, spiked on cold risks in American model guidance mid-day and then sold off hard into the settle. After all this the January contract settled up 1.3% on the day.   The January contract was the only one to log a gain on the day; the rest of the strip logged a small loss.  The result was a decent tick back up in the F/H January/March spread following major declines last week.   These changes came as traders struggled to determine how best to react to weekend weather trends. In our Morning Update we highlighted that 15-day Gas Weighted Degree Day forecasts were quite similar to what we forecast on Friday.  In fact, we noted that 6-10 and 8-14 Day forecasts were almost exactly what we had predicted on Friday.  Yet though the weather analysis was right and prices did initially sell off this morning on "Slightly Bearish" weather trends, that did not last long.  Cold risks remained on long-range GEFS American weather model guidance, which helped spike gas prices mid-day (images courtesy of Tropical Tidbits).  Medium-range warm risks continued to intensify too, though, which tempered gains and was reflected again on afternoon Climate Prediction Center forecasts.  The mixed strip action and shifting forecasts shows that traders are struggling to determine exactly which way to push natural gas prices in this narrowing wedge.

Natural Gas Finally Collapses Lower -The January natural gas contract got hit hard today, shooting over 6% lower as balances loosened on warmer weather and long-range forecasts showed only limited colder risks.  The January contract again logged the largest loss on the day, a testament to the role weather had in pushing prices lower.  This has already fit very well with our weekly natural gas sentiment sent to subscribers on Monday which was "Slightly Bearish."   As expected, weather model guidance was rushing long-range cold risks, with further warm trends in overnight weather model guidance seen in our Morning Update.  We also saw power burns and other demand loosen today, as yesterday in our Note of the Day for clients we warned that loosening was likely through the week.  When combined with consistent warm risks through Week 2, this was all the natural gas market needed to sell off significantly.  Meanwhile, traders will be paying close attention to tomorrow's EIA print to see how much gas we drew last week, when cold came on late in the week.  Our early estimate is that this print will be similar in balance to the one saw last week, as we expect a solidly larger draw thanks to decently more GWDDs on the week.  Yet despite storage levels being so low and this draw being rather large, the March/April H/J spread fell off today on those warmer weather trends we had been calling for.  It will certainly be another busy day with gas prices breaking down below the forming pennant, and we expect volatility to again be elevated with another EIA print. In our Afternoon Update we outlined how we saw risk skewed and prices likely to trend from here.

EIA Reports Slightly Bearish 77 Bcf Draw as Salts Inject 8 Bcf; January NatGas Trims Gains - The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a 77 Bcf withdrawal from natural gas storage inventories for the week ending Dec. 7, slightly below market consensus. The gas market responded immediately to the bearish print as it trimmed gains from earlier in the morning. The Nymex January futures contract was trading about 14 cents higher at around $4.270 just prior to the EIA’s 10:30 a.m. ET release, but then gave back about 4 cents shortly after the print hit the screen. Just before 11 a.m., the prompt month was back up to around $4.258, up about 12 cents on the day. The 77 Bcf withdrawal was larger than last year’s 59 Bcf pull for the week, but just below the five-year average pull of 79 Bcf. The draw was also 5 Bcf below Bespoke Weather Service’s 82 Bcf estimate. After the firm missed 7 Bcf too low last week, “this again appears to be standard EIA noise as we saw a hefty 8 Bcf build across salts that was a bit larger than expected,” Bespoke chief meteorologist Jacob Meisel said. The 8 Bcf injection into salt dome storage facilities took other market observers by surprise as well, but some suggested more injections could come given the holidays are soon approaching, and weather is expected to be rather mild. Most, however, agreed, that salt injections were not likely in next week’s report given cold weather earlier this week.  The salt build, and overall smaller drawdown even with some impressive cold to end the week, was seen as slightly bearish for the natural gas market overall, helping ease storage concerns (with the March contract hit hard post-number), according to Bespoke. The Nymex March contract, which had traded as high as $3.976 before the storage report, was down to $3.929 just before 11 a.m. Broken down by region, the EIA reported a 29 Bcf withdrawal in the Midwest, a 20 Bcf draw in the East, a 15 Bcf pull in the Pacific and a 7 Bcf draw in the South Central. Total working gas in storage fell to 2,914 Bcf, 722 Bcf below last year and 723 Bcf below the five-year average.

Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report - Bulls Losing Patience - EIA reported a storage draw of 77 Bcf for the week ending Dec 7. This compares to the -80 Bcf we projected and consensus average of -83 Bcf. The -77 Bcf was smaller than the five-year average of -79 Bcf but larger than last year's -69 Bcf. For the week ending 12/14, we currently have a forecast of -135 Bcf. We have April 2019 storage at 1.15 Bcf. Last night's ECMWF-EPS long-range outlook was not a favorable one for the bulls. As we wrote in our Tuesday NGD, we said the following: “CWG is using the analog of 2014 and 2002. In both years, November was colder than normal followed up with a warmer than normal December. Both years had weak to moderate El Nino conditions, and both years showed much more bullish January and February weather set-ups. If such a scenario plays out (above forecast), we think there could be a reasonable downside to our EOS forecast of 1.05 Tcf. We think storage could finish around ~800 Bcf. But the issue is that if the market is already somewhat expecting a bullish set-up, does it make sense to bet on it today? This is where we differ strongly from the market. We don't see how the market can currently ignore the increasingly bearish trend toward the end of December while focusing intently on the set up in January. As you can probably guess by looking at the price action today, the natural gas bulls will have to wait an additional week or more for the bullish set-up in Jan.  As you can see, the models progressively got worse. The ECMWF-EPS 00z also did not help the bulls' cause as HDDs were revised lower and the warmer than normal weather is persisting. Combine all of these weather forecasts with the technical signal that natural gas prices broke down two days ago, and bulls are losing patience and getting out of their long positions before the weekend:

 December Warmth Crushes Gas All Week - The January natural gas contract got crushed this week, settling down almost 15% for the week as the market finally reacted to significantly warmer weather trends. It took awhile for the market to begin reacting to this warmth in December, but this is not particularly a surprise as all the way back in September and October we were warning clients that December had some of the most pronounced warm risks of the winter. Even when November surprised cold we remained consistent in our calls for December warmth. Then last week we warned subscribers that over last weekend and into this week we would struggle to see long-range cold risks on weather model guidance move forward, as the warm pattern had some durability and models were likely too quick in showing cold return.  . All week we warned of short-term downside for natural gas prices from this warmth, something that played out best today with a significant collapse lower at the front of strip as the January contract plummeted 30 cents. Many lingering natural gas bulls finally threw in the towel as long-range forecasts trended back warmer again today, which Climate Prediction Center Week 2 forecasts showed well today too. This comes as Gas Weighted Degree Days are expected to remain below seasonal averages through at least the next two weeks, and potentially longer. Tropical forcing appears at least partially to blame, as all week we were warning clients to favor European modeling guidance that showed more warm risks and other models have now trended towards. It has handled this recent tropical forcing event well, and shows tropical forcing lingering over the Maritime Continent through Week 2, sustaining bearish US weather risks. Additionally, we have seen natural gas balances loosen recently with warm weather moving on out of the region. Prices have stayed a bit more firm with LNG exports staying at record highs, though the amount of demand that provides is only very incremental compared to the amount of weather-driven demand eliminated from forecasts this week. Traders are now looking to January to see when cold may be able to return to the forecast. .

Rising Forecasts For 2019 US Natural Gas Production Keep Prices Low - It has become a monthly occurrence now: the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook increasing its projection for 2019 U.S. natural gas production.In fact, since September alone, EIA's National Energy Modeling System has upped its forecast for 2019 output by over 5.3 Bcf/d, or 6.3%. For perspective, this means that the U.S. is now expected to have an additional Niobrara shale's worth of extra gas supply in 2019 than was expected just a few months ago. That is how fast the shale industry is soaring. The gas rig count last week was at 198, the highest since early-June. Per EIA, current U.S. gas production stands at around 87 Bcf/d, well above the 78 Bcf/d that we saw this time last year. Holding the mighty Marcellus and Utica shale plays, Appalachia this month is producing an astounding 30.4 Bcf/d, more than a 15% increase since last December. And the region will supply the largest incremental growth of all fields in the country, surging to a total output of 45 Bcf/d within five years.  In fact, great expectations and rising EIA forecasts for domestic production explain why the U.S. gas futures market has held backwardation even though near-term pricing has spiked.

Environmental groups will join 16 SC cities to sue over offshore drilling tests -- Nine conservation groups and 16 South Carolina coastal communities are expected to sue the Trump administration Tuesday to stop leases to explore for natural gas and oil offshore. Tracts off South Carolina are among the waters up for grabs. The groups said they will file two separate lawsuits, both in U.S. District Court in Charleston. The lawsuits will claim the leases violate the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits harassing or killing animals such as whales or dolphins. The exploration would include seismic blast testing that involves loud airguns considered harmful to marine mammals and other sea life. “Ignoring the mounting opposition to offshore drilling, the decision to push forward with unnecessary seismic testing violates the law, let alone common sense,” said Charleston-based attorney Catherine Wannamaker, with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “An overwhelming number of communities, businesses and elected officials have made it clear that seismic blasting — a precursor to drilling that nobody wants — has no place off our coasts,” she said. The 16 municipalities are Charleston, Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms, Folly Beach, Edisto Island, Seabrook Island, Kiawah Island, James Island, Beaufort, Hilton Head Island, Bluffton, Port Royal, Awendaw, Pawleys Island, Briarcliffe Acres and North Myrtle Beach. Also part of the litigation is the S.C. Small Business Chamber of Commerce. The South Carolina Environmental Law Project sued on their behalf.

Administration’s permits to harm marine animals during oil and gas exploration face a court fight - A coalition of environmental groups is suing the Trump administration for granting permits to seismic-mapping companies that allow them to harass and harm marine animals while blasting deafening sounds under the Atlantic Ocean in search of oil and gas deposits.The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a federal court in Charleston, S.C., claims that the National Marine Fisheries Services, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration known as NOAA Fisheries, violated several federal laws that protect animals when it issued “incidental take” permits to five companies that submitted applications to carry out the seismic surveys.“This action is unlawful, and we’re going to stop it,” said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, a nonprofit group. “Seismic air gun blasting can harm everything from tiny zooplankton and fish to dolphins and whales. More than 90 percent of the coastal municipalities in the blast zone have publicly opposed seismic … blasting off their coast.”The groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Surfrider Foundation, Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center, among others — disagreed with an assessment by NOAA Fisheries that no animals would die as a result of the ear-piercing surveys. Dolphins and whales use echolocation to communicate and hunt, and some scientists say the blasts can damage their hearing.“The Trump administration is letting the oil industry launch a brutal sonic assault on North Atlantic right whales and other marine life,” Kristen Monsell, ocean program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Right whales will keep spiraling toward extinction if we don’t stop these deafening blasts and the drilling and spilling that could come next.” Tuesday’s lawsuit is the latest volley in a war being waged across the Eastern Seaboard against the Trump administration’s ambition to offer federal offshore leases to the oil and gas industry and possibly drill in the Atlantic for the first time in about 50 years. Every governor south of Maine has raised opposition to the proposal, part of a five-year federal offshore energy resource management plan. Nearly a dozen South Carolina lawmakers and mayors prepared to speak out against the seismic permits and reaffirm their opposition to oil exploration for a second time this year. On the West Coast, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington are aligned in opposition to a similar plan there.

Scientists: Offshore testing puts whales at risk — The iconic North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species teetering at the brink of extinction, possibly faces a new threat, marine scientists say. President Donald Trump wants to open the Atlantic coast to oil and gas exploration as part of a strategy to help the U.S. achieve "energy dominance" in the global market. His administration recently gave fossil-fuel exploration companies a green light to conduct seismic surveys across a stretch of ocean floor between Delaware and Florida. While the testing won't be conducted off the New England coast, scientists say air guns used in the testing can harm or kill marine animals far away. "The sound from seismic testing is so loud that it can literally travel for hundreds of miles," said Scott Kraus, vice president and chief scientist for marine mammals at the New England Aquarium. "It can disturb and kill mammals like whales, fish and even invertebrates like scallops, while displacing animals from areas of critical marine habitat." Air guns are towed behind ships and send loud blasts of compressed air through the water, which then create seismic waves through the seabed. The reflected waves are measured to reveal information about buried oil and gas deposits. Blasts are repeated every 10 to 12 seconds during testing, which in some cases can continue around the clock for days, according to industry groups. Right whales, which number only about 411 worldwide, migrate each winter from feeding grounds off New England to calving grounds in the warmer waters off the southeast coast. Seismic testing could create more stress on the whales, scientists say, resulting in fewer births for a species that is already suffering from a lack of reproduction. "There's a real possibility that the chronic noise from seismic activity could interfere with reproduction in right whales," Kraus said. What's more, right whales and their offspring communicate using sound, and disruptions from acoustic testing could cause babies to get separated from mothers, he added.

‘Beyond foolish’ not to study possible oil spills in Gulf Stream, drilling opponents say -The federal government’s failure to study risks of oil spills in the powerful Gulf Stream is “stunning” and “beyond foolish” given the stakes and current’s force, drilling opponents said this week.Packing more power than all of the world’s freshwater rivers combined, the Gulf Stream flows about 55 miles off the South Carolina coast.Yet federal regulators haven’t done computer simulations of how oil spills would interact with this mighty river in the sea, The Post and Courier reported earlier this year in its investigative project “Into the Gulf Stream.”Critics said this omission is particularly glaring in the wake of the Trump administration’s recent approval of seismic testing off the East Coast, a major step toward drilling. But the federal Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) hasn’t done simulations for potential spills in the Gulf Stream and elsewhere on the East Coast. The Post and Courier filled this risk analysis gap earlier this summer by doing its own spill simulations.  Using a federal computer program, the newspaper simulated what would happen if spills occurred off the Southeast coast.  Using a computer program built by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the newspaper generated more than 1,000 spill scenarios. These scenarios showed that the Gulf Stream is like a high-velocity pump. Some simulations showed that within just 24 hours, a spill off Charleston would travel more than 90 miles.Other simulations showed that in just two weeks, slicks off Georgia could shoot toward the Outer Banks and then move into deeper waters off Virginia and pivot toward Europe. The current’s force would pose immense if not impossible challenges for cleanup crews.The newspaper’s work “is stunning and creates a stark visual for people trying to imagine a new reality of drilling off their coast,” said Alexandra Adams, legislative director for nature programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council.Two years ago, the group commissioned its own study to model potential spills in the Arctic, another area with swift currents that oil interests want to tap. The study found spills could quickly spread 700 miles, oiling the Alaskan, Canadian and Russian coasts.“Oil exploration is a deeply dangerous and risky business, and the unwillingness to acknowledge this is distressing,” Adams said.

Oil Spills from Well in Rattle Snake Bayou -- The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to an oil discharge near Port Sulphur, Louisiana. On Sunday, Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector New Orleans received a report from the National Response Center that a crude oil well in Rattle Snake Bayou, southwest of Port Sulphur, was leaking. The amount discharged has not been determined; the well is rated to produce 5,476 gallons of oil per day, but it is not known when the discharge began.The source of the discharge has not been secured. Hilcorp, the owner of the well, has contracted ES&H as an oil spill response organization. ES&H currently has four response boats and 13 personnel conducting containment and cleanup operations. Wild Well Control has been contracted to work on securing the source.  Also involved in the response are Plaquemines Parish Sherriff’s Department, the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The cause of the incident is under investigation. In March last year, the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a natural gas and crude oil discharge from an abandoned wellhead owned by Hilcorp near mile marker 10 on the Lower Mississippi River, southwest of Venice, Louisiana. In 2016, a Hilcorp Energy pipeline was determined to be the source of a spill of 4,200 gallons of crude oil near Lake Grande Ecaille.

Coast Guard- Crude oil well leaking in Rattlesnake Bayou - The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to a crude oil spill near Port Sulphur, La. in the Rattlesnake Bayou, according to a Coast Guard news release. The source of the leak was not secured as of Sunday evening (Dec. 9), the Coast Guard said. It was not known when the leak began or how much oil has been spilled. The well produces an estimated 5,476 gallons of oil per day, according to the Coast Guard. Oil spill response teams were working on containing and cleaning the spill Sunday, and the Wild Well Control has been hired to secure the source of the leak. The well is owned by Hilcorp, the Coast Guard said. Coast Guard officials issued a warning to boaters in the area. The Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Department, the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration are also assisting with the response.

 Containment, clean-up continues in Port Sulphur oil spill- Dozens of boats and more than 100 workers are trying to clean up and contain an oil spill in Plaquemines Parish. We know nearly 5,000 gallons of oil and water has been collected, but there’s still plenty more work to be done. “It’s a big spill,” said Plaquemines Parish Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Patrick Harvey. “Luckily, they were able to get on top of it rather quickly.” Already, personnel recovered more than 4,800 gallons of oil and water. "Hopefully, the impact is not as bad as it was originally thought to be and, hopefully, they can get it cleaned up in a short period of time," said Harvey. The Coast Guard is still trying to figure out what caused the spill, first spotted Sunday. Petty officers say an oil well head was leaking a mix of crude oil, gas and water. It’s not leaking anymore, but it’s not fixed. A Coast Guard spokesperson says they’re pumping a salt water solution into the well to keep it from leaking until repairs are made. “It had quite a bit of oil out there, more sheen than anything else,” said environmental consultant P.J. Hahn. Hahn says he saw the leak in Rattlesnake Bayou on Wednesday and snapped photos. He applauds the efforts of those who responded and says Mother Nature is helping, too, taking out the tide and oil along with it. “It’s so much harder to clean the marsh than if it just went out into the open. It’s easier to clean up out in the open,” Hahn said. “Once it gets in the marsh, it destroys it quickly. It’s almost impossible to get it out of the marsh without causing more damage.” Hahn says, it's unfortunate, but on a working coast like the Gulf of Mexico, spills are inevitable.

In the LOOP: Three VLCCs depart LOOP for India, South Korea -- Three VLCCs departed the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port over the week ended December 8, with the crude cargoes on board bound for India and South Korea.LOOP did not release the names of the vessels that were loaded and it was unclear exactly which VLCCs departed the port for export. However, cFlow, Platts’ trade flow software, reported that three laden or partially laden VLCCs exited LOOP last week.The Khurais set sail from LOOP on December 5 and is bound for Kochi, India, according to cFlow. It is expected to arrive at the west coast of India on January 12. Another vessel, Lulu, left LOOP on December 7 and is expected to arrive at India’s east coast port of Paradip on January 19. The third VLCC, Maharah, was loaded at LOOP and set sail December 2. It is expected in Daesan, South Korea, on January 23.The three VLCCs were loaded with crude sourced from LOOP’s Clovelly Hub, including a light sweet crude grade, most likely either LLS or WTI MEH, according to industry sources. The remaining two cargoes could contain Mars, Poseidon or LOOP Sour crude. The three VLCCs were loaded one after the other, representing a reduced overall load time at the port, according to LOOP.Both sweet and sour grades have made their way to India and South Korea in recent months, including WTI MEH, Mars and Poseidon grades. The month two Dubai and month one WTI swap spread, has widened 41 cents/b to $6.75/b since the start of the fourth quarter. As Dubai’s premium over WTI increases, WTI-based grades become more competitive with comparable Dubai-based grades in export markets.On Monday, S&P Global Platts assessed LOOP Sour CFR North Asia at $60.76/b, falling below the comparable values for competing grades Dubai, assessed at $62.33/b, and Basrah Light, at $61.88/b. The assessed WTI MEH CFR North Asia value of $63.93/b, while higher than competing grade Murban at $63.35/b, was still slightly lower than the CFR value of Forties at $64.01/b. US crude oil exports surged to reach a new all-time high of 3.2 million b/d for the week ending November 30, according to data released last Thursday by the Energy Information Administration. The total surpassed the previous record of 3 million b/d, which occurred the week of June 22. The record exports helped create a draw on crude oil inventories, which came after 10 weeks of builds.

Reverse-lightering crude oil supertankers along the Gulf Coast. There’s a reason why more than half a dozen midstream companies and joint ventures are clamoring to build deepwater loading terminals on the Gulf of Mexico: because it’s a major pain to load Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) any other way. These days, the standard operating procedure for loading the vast majority of VLCCs along the Gulf Coast involves a complex, time-consuming and costly process of ship-to-ship transfers called reverse-lightering, in which smaller tankers ferry out and transfer crude to VLCCs in specified lightering areas off the coast. Today, we ponder the current dynamics for U.S. crude exports via VLCC.  In the past three years, the growth in export volumes has been stunning — from 590 Mb/d in 2016, on average, to 1.1 MMb/d last year and 1.9 MMb/d through October in 2018. As the market looks to the immediate future, projections for rising crude production from the prolific Permian, Eagle Ford and SCOOP/STACK shale plays suggest that the export wave could soon look more like a tsunami, especially after a few new crude pipelines come online.

Maiden LNG Cargo Leaves Corpus Christi - Cheniere Energy, Inc. reported Tuesday that the first commissioning cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has loaded and departed from its Corpus Christi liquefaction terminal in Ingleside, Texas. The loading and departure of LNG carrier Maria Energy, chartered by Cheniere Marketing, LLP, marks the first export of LNG from Texas and from a greenfield liquefaction facility in the Lower 48 states, Cheniere added. “This milestone further reinforces Cheniere’s position as the leader in U.S. LNG, with a world-scale liquefaction platform that provides significant competitive advantages as we continue to execute on our growth strategy,” Jack Fusco, Cheniere’s president and CEO, said in a written statement. Cheniere noted that its Corpus Christi liquefaction project comprises three large-scale trains and supporting infrastructure. The first train produced first LNG in November and should reach substantial completion in First Quarter 2019, the company stated. Furthermore, Cheniere reported that its second and third trains should reach substantial completion during the second half of 2019 and second half of 2021, respectively. Along with seven smaller trains under development, Cheniere stated that it expects the Corpus Christ facility’s total nominal LNG production capacity to reach 23 million tonnes per annum. According to port calls listed on the Marine Traffic website, Liberia-flagged Maria Energy arrived at the Cheniere facility in Ingleside on Dec. 1 and departed Tuesday morning.

Permian Oil Reserves May Be Twice As Big As We Thought --The U.S. Geological Survey has revised the technically recoverable reserves in the Wolfcamp Basin, in the Permian shale play, to 46.3 billion barrels of crude and 281 trillion cu ft of natural gas. That’s up from 20 billion barrels of crude and 16 trillion cu ft of gas in recoverable reserves in late 2016.It’s worth noting, however, the new estimate also includes the Bone Spring formation that makes up part of the Delaware Basin in the Permian. This is the first time this formation is included in the USGS oil and gas reserves assessment. Recoverable reserves are calculated based not just on exploration results and geology but also on the price level that makes the oil and gas commercially viable for extraction. The USGS carried out its revision earlier this year, so it must have reflected the improvement in oil prices, notably West Texas Intermediate that has now largely disappeared, sparking worry about the sustainability of production growth, which has been steady throughout the year. The national total hit 11.7 million bpd last month, an all-time high and also the highest in the world and the Permian was the major driver behind this growth. It is the shale play that produces the most oil and also boasts the fastest rate of production growth: in November the Permian yielded 3.63 million bpd of crude and the Energy Information Administration expects this to rise further to 3.695 million bpd this month. So, the Permian is already a star, but now it will shine more brightly. The USGS numbers mean it is the largest single reservoir of oil and gas in the United States and one of the largest on a global scale.

The Real Implications Of The New Permian Estimates -This week the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced a groundbreaking oil and gas discovery in West Texas’ Permian Basin. According to the organization’s recent press release, a whopping 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are now believed to lie untapped in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation area of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin.  Major players in the energy industry already have a significant presence in Wolfcamp and Bone Spring, including Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. It was already well known and well documented that these fields were remarkably fertile grounds for oil extraction, but the jaw-dropping extent of the new figures released this week by the USGS has made the massive crude and shale reserves of the Permian Basin freshly headline-worthy. The figures in this week’s press release are in fact, in the case of Wolfcamp Shale, more than double the previous resource assessment. The USGS assessed the area more than two years ago in 2016, and has officially determined that it contained the largest estimated quantity of continuous oil in the entire United States. "Christmas came a few weeks early this year," said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in response to these momentous figures. "American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy. Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation."  The USGS qualifies the figures of their massive discovery as consisting of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources, which they define as, "those [resources] that are estimated to exist based on geologic knowledge and already established production, while technically recoverable resources are those that can be produced using currently available technology and industry practices. Whether or not it is profitable to produce these resources has not been evaluated."

Rystad Energy- Permian gas flaring hits all-time highs - Gas flaring in the Permian basin reached an all-time high in this year’s third quarter as the persistent rise in production collided with severe takeaway capacity challenges, according to Rystad Energy. Rystad estimates that gas flaring in the Permian averaged 407 MMcfd in the third quarter, and this number is likely to climb even higher once final disposition figures are registered, given the substantial level of underreporting that still exists for September. Rystad also expects flaring to rise well into 2019, reaching a level of at least 600 MMcfd by mid-2019 assuming West Texas Intermediate oil prices recover to $60/bbl to support existing activity levels. The energy research company also noted that, in Texas, there is an increased tendency whereby gas is flared on new wells for extended periods—often between 4-6 months—far beyond the 45-day period covered by the initial flaring permit.

With special gear and righteous anger, activists document emissions in the Permian oil fields - — Environmental activist Sharon Wilson knows what she’s likely to get from her regular trips to the Permian Basin: a headache and sore throat from the fumes and a dark mood from the bleak industrial landscape. Still, she returns, armed with more than $100,000 worth of camera equipment and righteous anger over what few people see in the heart of the U.S. oil industry. Wilson, a senior organizer for the environmental group Earthworks and a longtime critic of fracking, is working to prove that those invisible emissions are worse than originally thought. The impact of those gases ranges from exacerbating global climate change to polluting the air. "Right now, the Permian Basin is the most important place on earth to show what's happening, and what we have to stop," Wilson said, referring to oil and gas drilling. Month after month, Wilson, 66, records infrared video of oil and gas facilities that she says are spewing methane and other hydrocarbons into the air. Some of the emissions are permitted by state law, some are forgiven as accidents and some are noted as violations. It’s a job, Wilson says, that regulators have all but abdicated. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has just four air monitors in the Permian Basin, which includes all or parts of 61 counties. Most emissions data is industry-reported. Alan Septoff, an Earthworks spokesman, described the Texas approach as “drill and then regulate when possible.” “There’s no one out there trying to quantify this,” he said.

US rig count drops by seven to 1,172- S&P Global Platts Analytics -- — US rig counts declined for a third straight week as sustained lower oil prices continued to weigh on drilling activity, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics data released Thursday.The number of total active oil and natural gas rigs fell by seven to 1,172 during the reporting week ended Wednesday, Platts Analytics data showed.Despite three weeks of declines taking rig counts to a seven-week low, US drilling activity remains strong with 112 more active combined oil and gas rigs than during the same week a year ago.An eight-rig dip in oil rig counts to 933 led the nationwide decline. The number of rigs chasing primarily gas and those chasing both oil and gas were unchanged at 218 and 16, respectively. An addition of a single cyclic steam rig pared the nationwide decline to seven. Click here for full-size graphicWhile nationwide rig counts continued to fall last week, the number of drilling permits rose for a third week to 1,528, up 88 from the week prior.The number of active permits came in just shy of a nine-year high seen in early November. While permit numbers are volatile week to week, last week's uptick appears to be running against a historic trend of permitting activity waning during the final weeks of the year. Rig counts in the Permian Basin were stable at 480 last week, following two weeks of declines. Notably, the number of permits filed for potential drilling in the basin jumped 26 to 216, the highest since June.The Permian is the largest producing basin in the US, with an estimated average production of 3.9 million b/d of oil and 8.1 Bcf/d of dry gas, according to Platts Analytics, but pipeline and other takeaway capacity are limited and virtually match production.The uptick in permit activity suggests rig counts may resume their climb in the near term. Widening price differentials for Permian crude in recent weeks have increased production incentives for operators that can overcome takeaway constraints.Last week, prompt-month Platts WTI Midland was assessed at an average of minus $8.59/b compared with WTI at Cushing, Oklahoma. The assessment was minus $7.73/b during the week prior and minus $5.87/d in November. Rig counts in several other major oil-focused plays were also static. The number of rigs in the SCOOP-STACK and Eagle Ford basins were flat at 108 and 93, respectively, while the Denver-Julesburg play added one rig for a total of 33. In contrast, the Bakken rig count fell by one to 61.

 US Oil Rig Count Drops for Second Week in a Row - For the second week in a row, the U.S. dropped oil rigs, according to weekly data compiled by Baker Hughes, a GE Company.  After declining by 10 oil rigs last week, the U.S. dropped another four rigs this week, bringing the total oil rig count to 873. Gas rigs remained flat this week, with no rigs added or cut.The Eagle Ford and Utica both added a rig apiece this week while several other basins cut rigs.The Permian, which accounts for more than half of the nation’s oil rigs, cut three rigs this week, as did the Williston. The Arkoma Woodford, Granite Wash, Haynesville, Marcellus and Mississippian all dropped an oil rig apiece this week. The overall rig count total for this week is 1,071, higher than one year ago when the count was 930.Earlier this week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasted that U.S. oil producers would pump an average of 12.06 million barrels of oil per day in 2019.

Hundreds of Texas Oil and Gas Workers to Lose Jobs in New Year - A few hundred oil and gas workers will find themselves without jobs near the start of the New Year. In recent months, Pioneer Natural Resources, Covia, Petrobras and Siemens have all announced staff reductions at Texas facilities. Details surrounding the job cuts, sent to the Texas Workforce Commission, are below.

• Pioneer Sands LLC, acquired by Pioneer Natural Resources in 2012, will shut down operations at its plant in Brady, Texas, which currently employs 219 employees. Employment separations will occur in phases beginning Jan. 14, 2019 through the end of 2019.
• Covia Holdings Corp. is ceasing operations at its Voca, Texas, facility Jan. 31, 2019. A total of 93 employees will be affected. The company said a small number of employees may be retained beyond Jan. 31 to wind down operations, though all employees are expected to be terminated within 90 days following the closure date, except for one employee who has been reassigned.
• Petrobras America Inc. is downsizing its facility in Houston, Texas, beginning Feb. 28, 2019 as a direct result of the company selling all of its assets in the Gulf of Mexico. Layoffs of more than 50 employees (more than 33 percent of the company’s workforce) will occur from Feb. 28 through Oct. 31, 2019.
• Siemens is closing its Houston Service Center and will transfer all manufacturing activities to other Siemens facilities due to market conditions and network overcapacity. This will result in the elimination of 17 positions Jan. 13, 2019.  

 Good vibrations- Neutrons lend insight into acoustic fracking -  A team of researchers at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are using a combination of neutron and X-ray scattering to make the process safer and more efficient. They want to improve hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, by blasting well surfaces, or bores, with acoustic energy, which would enhance the ability of fracking to penetrate fractures in wells and drastically reduce the amounts of water and chemicals needed."There's tremendous benefit for fracking oil and gas wells with less chemicals and water," said Richard Hale, a researcher in ORNL's Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate investigating whether acoustic energy can be used for that purpose.Hale says the idea is to alter the essential structure of a well with ultrasonic vibrations to allow oil and gas to flow more effectively. Primarily, acoustic energy hasbeen used to clear away debris in and around the surface of the well, but Hale and the team want to take that concept to the next level to see if acoustic energy can alter the porosity and permeability of formations far below the surface to reach more isolated pockets of oil and natural gas. "It's all about supplying energy into the formation to release hydrocarbons,"

Whatever happened to enhanced oil recovery? - Throughout the history of the oil industry, technological progress has found a way to bring new resources into play. The shale revolution and the expansion of deepwater output are prime examples. But there’s another longstanding technological effort that rarely generates headlines, but plays an important role in oil supply: the effort to improve recovery from a wide variety of fields via enhanced oil recovery (EOR).  Even with modern production techniques, a large share of the oil in a reservoir is not produced during primary and secondary recovery (read a description of EOR on our new CCUS page or in the explainer below). Some of this oil can, however, be accessed through the use of more complex and energy intensive extraction techniques such as the injection of heat, chemicals, CO₂ or other gases. These techniques have been successfully and commercially deployed in multiple countries over many decades.  With this commentary, we are also releasing an up-to-date list of EOR projects around the world, filling in an important data gap. We also explore the outlook for EOR in different scenarios from the new World Energy Outlook.

Fatal Oklahoma rig explosion due to unsafe equipment, lawsuit says  — Drilling company officials ignored multiple warnings that safety equipment at an Oklahoma gas well was malfunctioning before an explosion that killed five workers, including a man from Colorado, and badly injured another, the family of one of the dead workers contends in a recent court filing. Parker Waldridge’s family alleges in a Dec. 4 amendment to their wrongful death lawsuit that a “cascade of errors and multiple departures from safe drilling practices” by drilling company Patterson-UTI Drilling led to the Jan. 22 blowout near Quinton, which is about 125 miles east of Oklahoma City. The lawsuit alleges that at least two days before the explosion, the rig superintendent, manager and several other Patterson employees received email results of a laboratory test warning of problems with the rig’s accumulator, a piece of safety equipment that closes part of the well to prevent an uncontrolled release of fluids. The warnings even came with a “skull and crossbones graphic (literally),” the lawsuit said. The accumulator wasn’t able to fully close the well on the day of the blast, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found. “Patterson Drilling had the most direct control over the drilling operations and emergency response to changing conditions and failed to use ordinary care with respect to its conduct,” the lawsuit alleges. Red Mountain Energy, which owns the well and hired Patterson to work it, issued a statement saying that Patterson’s “gross negligence led to a terrible tragedy.” “The facts cited in the amended petition demonstrate exactly which parties failed to perform basic safety procedures prior to this accident,” said Red Mountain, which is also a defendant in the lawsuit. Patterson, meanwhile, issued its own statement, calling Red Mountain Energy’s allegations “inflammatory” and blaming the company for the well’s design and drilling program.

Ignored and Infuriated, Pawnee Stop Illegal Fracking Plans on Tribal Lands -- After stumbling upon a work crew surveying for a proposed pipeline in 2015, Walter Echo-Hawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, called the oil company responsible to find out more information. The company stonewalled him. Eventually, Echo-Hawk learned the truth: Two years prior, regulators had approved 17 oil and gas leases on Pawnee lands. They didn’t bother to notify the tribe. Echo-Hawk immediately began mobilizing fellow tribal members to fight the leases. But regulators at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management said it was too late. The leases had already been approved. The agencies also claimed the Pawnee couldn’t take them to court because the tribe had failed to ask for reconsideration of those decisions when they were made.  The Pawnee, however, hadn’t been aware of the decisions because the agencies — in violation of their own rules — neglected to notify the tribe in any way.  Echo-Hawk was furious that federal agencies were treating Pawnee lands like “an oil and gas fiefdom.” After all, it was hardly the first time the U.S. government had run roughshod over tribal rights. In addition, the Pawnee were already gravely familiar with the threats posed by oil and gas drilling. Over the years, previous operations had left a legacy of contaminated groundwater and illegal wastewater dumping on tribal land. In addition to water contamination, geologists have linked fracking to a surge in earthquakes, both in Oklahoma and across the country.  Despite this threat, government regulators didn’t bother to address the earthquake risk when approving the leases. Nor did they address the impacts of drilling near the Cimarron River, a 698-mile cinnamon- and paprika-colored ribbon of water that supports a native fishery protected under Pawnee tribal law.    In early September 2016, the tribe’s fears about fracking were realized after the most powerful earthquake recorded in Oklahoma history struck the Pawnee area. The jolt was also felt by six neighboring states. Shortly after, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management on behalf of the Pawnee Nation, as well as Echo-Hawk and other individual Pawnee members. Earthjustice attorney Mike Freeman says the Pawnee situation illustrates a larger pattern where the federal government violates the law by approving oil and gas projects on tribal lands without telling the affected tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example, has used a similar maneuver in recent years in New Mexico, Maine, and on tribal lands in Oklahoma.

Trump’s Attack on the Clean Water Act Will Fuel Destructive Pipeline Boom - A new water rule that will strip federal protections from an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways will dramatically ease restrictions on how polluting industries do business.  According to the rule, which is due out next week, streams that don’t run year-round and many wetlands will no longer be subject to the Clean Water Act. As a result, a wide range of industries — including agriculture, mining, waste management, chemical companies, real estate development, and road construction — will be free to pollute, reroute, and pave over these waterways as they see fit. But oil and gas transport companies may benefit most from the imminent shift. When the rule takes effect, pipeline construction projects that are currently required to undergo months, or even years, of scrutiny from water experts in order to minimize their environmental impact will be allowed to speed forward. For energy companies that have been pushing for exactly these changes for years, the new rule may be well worth the wait. The energy company ONEOK should have applied for permits to work on its Arbuckle II pipeline by now. The $1.3 billion project, which will transport natural gas liquids 530 miles from the company’s supply basins in Velma, Oklahoma, to its storage facilities on the Gulf Coast of Texas, will cross dozens of waterways in both states. As of Friday, however, the company hadn’t submitted any applications for the permits required to build its pipeline across waterways, according to the Army Corps of Engineers offices in Tulsa, Fort Worth, and Galveston, which are responsible for permitting pipelines under the Clean Water Act. The Trump administration rollback of water regulations will allow ONEOK and other companies involved in the energy pipeline boom now underway to simply bulldoze through waterways that are currently protected without any environmental scrutiny at all.

Superior residents ask feds to end use of toxic chemical at refinery -- Federal officials heard an earful Wednesday at a public meeting in Superior, Wis., about the explosion and fire at the nearby Husky Energy refinery that injured 36 people and forced the evacuation of much of the city last spring. About two dozen residents from Duluth, Superior and surrounding areas addressed the three sitting members of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, who had come to town at the request of several Minnesota and Wisconsin congresspeople. Most speakers were emphatic in their insistence that Husky energy stop using hydrogen fluoride at the refinery. The toxic chemical is used to make high-octane gasoline, but can cause lung disease and skin damage in people who are exposed to it. The April explosion occurred about 150 feet from a spot on the refinery grounds where 15,000 pounds of the chemical was stored. Shrapnel from the blast punctured a nearby tank of asphalt, which gushed out and caused a massive fire to burn for about four hours, creating an enormous black smoke plume. But debris from the explosion did not damage the tank containing the hydrogen fluoride, and a fire suppression system kept the tank protected. Still, Norm Herron of Duluth told board members that Husky should replace the chemical with something less hazardous. "The cost to manufacture a product must never take precedence over the safety and health of the people who reside and work in the Twin Ports," he said. 

State regulators deny opponents' petition to reconsider Line 3 pipeline route - State utility regulators denied requests Thursday morning to reconsider a route permit they granted earlier this year to Enbridge Energy to replace its Line 3 oil pipeline. With little discussion, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission unanimously rejected the request, which had come from landowners, environmental groups and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. The five-member commission voted unanimously in June to allow Enbridge to replace its aging Line 3 pipeline, which has been in operation since the 1960s. Enbridge says the replacement is necessary because the current Line 3 is corroded and cracked, which means it is more prone to leaking and can't transport as much oil as it has in the past. At its June vote, the commission also took up the question of the pipeline's route, and in a 3-2 vote decided to allow Enbridge to build the new line along its preferred route, far south of the current line, with a few modifications. Enbridge preferred that new route in part because the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe did not want a new pipeline to cross its reservation. About 20 percent of the current route across the state crosses the tribe's reservation. But many pipeline critics have argued that the new route opens up a second pipeline corridor across northern Minnesota to the risk of an oil spill and potential damage to wild rice and other resources. So in September, environmental and tribal groups petitioned the PUC, asking it to reconsider its decision. When regulators denied their request Thursday morning, commissioner Katie Sieben said the replacement was for the good of the state. 

Where the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline project stands, and where it goes from here - Calgary-based Enbridge is close to building a crude oil pipeline through northern Minnesota’s lake country after its plans received key approval from state energy regulators this year.But despite the green light from the Public Utilities Commission, Enbridge has yet to break ground for its $2.6 billion, 337-mile Minnesota portion of the Line 3 project. That’s because the company still faces several government hurdles and legal challenges to moving the pipeline ahead. At the same time, Enbridge will also be navigating a new political environment in the state, now that the DFL gained a majority in the state House and DFLer Tim Walz was chosen to succeed Gov. Mark Dayton. Here’s where the project stands, and where things go from here:Enbridge is currently subject to a consent decree with the federal government t hat was issued following 2010 oil spills in Michigan and Illinois. The Michigan leak spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River and Talmadge Creek, and as part of the decree, the government ordered the company to replace the U.S. portion of the existing Line 3 as long as it could get approval to do so.The new Line 3 is set to be a 36-inch pipeline that follows the current pipeline’s route from the Minnesota border to Enbridge’s Clearbrook terminal, southeast of Lower Red Lake. The new line would then jog south before turning east near Park Rapids, passing through north-central Minnesota’s lake country before ending in Superior. It’s expected to carry roughly 760,000 barrels of oil per day. The state’s Public Utilities Commission has already granted the Line 3 project a Certificate of Need and OK’d the route, probably the two most important and difficult permissions needed for Enbridge to start construction.The PUC, a panel of five commissioners appointed by the governor, will decide Thursday whether to reconsider that route decision. While it voted unanimously to give Enbridge its Certificate of Need, the vote to approve the pipeline course was 3-2.

Trump Auctions Off 150,00 Acres of Public Lands for Fracking Near Utah National Parks - On Tuesday the Trump administration offered more than 150,000 acres of public lands for fossil-fuel extraction near some of Utah's most iconic landscapes, including Arches and Canyonlands national parks.Dozens of Utahns gathered at the state Capitol to protest the lease sale, which included lands within 10 miles of internationally known protected areas. In addition to Arches and Canyonlands, the Bureau of Land Management leased public lands for fracking near Bears Ears, Canyons of the Ancients and Hovenweep national monuments and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area."Utahns have demonstrated their commitment to transition away from dirty fossil fuels through clean energy resolutions passed in municipalities across our state. Yet, these commitments continue to be undermined by rampant oil and gas lease sales, which threaten our public health, public lands, and economy. While Utah's recreational and tourism economies continue to flourish, these attempts to develop sacred cultural, environmental, and recreational spaces for dirty fuels remain a grave and growing threat." said Ashley Soltysiak, director of the Utah Sierra Club. "Utah is our home and the reckless sale of our public lands with limited public engagement is simply unacceptable and short-sighted."Fracking in these areas threatens sensitive plants and animals, including the black-footed ferret, Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker and Graham's beardtongue. It also will worsen air pollution problems in the Uinta Basin and use tremendous amounts of groundwater. Utah just experienced its driest year in recorded history. "This is a reckless fire sale of spectacular public lands for dirty drilling and fracking," said Ryan Beam, a public lands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. "These red-rock wonderlands are some of the West's most iconic landscapes, and we can't afford to lose a single acre. Fracking here will waste precious water, foul the air and destroy beautiful wild places that should be held in trust for generations to come."

North Dakota oil production, natural gas flaring reach new highs - — North Dakota oil production hit a record 1.39 million barrels per day in October, a 2.4 percent increase as operators accelerated production ahead of winter, the state’s top regulator said Friday, Dec. 14. Natural gas production also hit another record, but so did the volume of gas that was flared. The percentage of gas flared in October grew to 20 percent, the highest the state has seen since August 2015. Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources, said he expects oil production to slow due to lower oil prices and winter weather setting in, which makes oil activity more difficult. Challenges with capturing natural gas also will continue to affect production until construction of gas plants, pipelines and other infrastructure catches up. The industry produced 2.56 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas in October, a 1.4 percent increase since September, according to the preliminary figures. Operators captured nearly 2.04 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, but flared about 527 million cubic feet per day, an all-time high. Sixteen percent of natural gas produced was accounted for as flaring from wells that are connected to a pipeline with inadequate infrastructure to capture all of the gas, Kringstad said. The remaining 4 percent of natural gas produced was flared from wells that are not connected to a pipeline. Several natural gas processing plants are under construction or in development to catch up to the production. The flaring figures mean the industry fell short of the North Dakota Industrial Commission goal of capturing 85 percent of Bakken gas for the sixth month in a row. Regulators are evaluating the figures to determine if any companies will be ordered to restrict oil production for excessive flaring, though those production limits are rare.

Tribes seek to challenge Corps’ Dakota Access pipeline study (AP) — Four Native American tribes that are fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline in court are seeking to challenge the recent conclusion of federal officials that a spill would not greatly impact tribal populations. The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Yankton and Oglala Sioux tribes have all sought permission from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to contest recent findings that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided the judge. Boasberg is working with the North Dakota and South Dakota tribes, along with the Corps and Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners, to determine the best way to proceed. A status conference is scheduled Wednesday in his courtroom in Washington. Here’s a look at where the lengthy legal battle stands. WHAT’S NEW? The 140-page report from the Corps details more than a year of what the agency says is “additional analysis” of the $3.8 billion pipeline, which began moving North Dakota oil to a shipping point in Illinois in June 2017. But even the nature of the work is in dispute. The tribes contend the Corps has simply rubber-stamped earlier conclusions that were blessed by pro-energy President Donald Trump days after he took office . The tribes call the work a sham and argue that the Corps either didn’t allow them adequate input or give enough weight to the information they provided. The Corps has said the tribes have been difficult to work with. 

Well pad oil spill contaminates rangeland in Dunn County-- BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Some rangeland was contaminated when nearly 6,900 gallons of oil spilled at a well pad in Dunn County. The state Health Department says a valve failure caused the spill on Dec. 8 at a Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Co. site about 11 miles north of Killdeer. About 6,300 gallons of the spilled oil were recovered. The other 600 gallons went through a storm water gate in the containment berm and impacted rangeland. Health Department officials are inspecting the site..

Judge denies TransCanada request for pre-construction work on Keystone XL pipeline - The company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline can't begin digging, building camps or any other pre-construction field work until the government's environmental review is completed, a federal judge in Montana ruled Friday.U.S. District Judge Brian Morris’ ruling was a clarification of his Nov. 8 decision, which halted construction by TransCanada but allowed certain pre-construction activities. In that ruling, Morris said President Donald Trump's administration violated U.S. environmental laws when approving a federal permit for the pipeline.Friday's clarification permits TransCanada to continue surveying, maintaining security and planning, but it blocks all physical construction.  Jane Kleeb, founder and president of Bold Alliance and chairwoman for the Nebraska Democratic Party, said rural Nebraskans are thankful for the decision. "Farmers and ranchers thank the judge for seeing through TransCanada's transparent power grab," Kleeb said. "The Trump administration keeps thumbing their noses at the concerns of rural communities. We want our property rights and water protected, yet all the Trump administration cares about is aiding a foreign oil corporation."

Fracking on CA public lands draws environment, water concern - Thousands of people have voiced concerns over the prospect of fracking on public lands that are open to oil and gas exploration across Central California.Around 400,000 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management are available for new oil and gas leases, including on the coast, and that could mean more fracking.The Bureau of Land Management’s Bakersfield Field Office was flooded with 8,399 faxes, letters and emails about the issue during a 30-day public comment period, according to a scoping report released by the office Thursday.“The BLM report proves what we already know – that residents and businesses throughout the central coast are overwhelmingly opposed to drilling and fracking our region’s iconic landscapes,” said Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, said in a statement to The Tribune. “Some of the issues brought up were air quality, water quality, water quantity, siesmicity and a host of other things such as wildlife resources, oil and gas resources,” Gabe Garcia, the BLM Bakersfield field manager, told The Tribune Thursday morning.View a map of open leases here. Most comments were submitted as form letters, but many people and organizations across the state weighed in after significant media about the potential for more fracking. Garcia said about 200 oil and gas wells are permitted in the Bakersfield district that stretches from Fresno to Ventura counties, and fracking is already used on about 20 percent of the wells.“We need to protect our groundwater from contaminants,  especially in America’s most populous state. ... And please know that a large percentage of the residents here on the Central Coast do not want ANY expansion of fracking,”

EIA Says US Domestic Oil Production Rising Despite Lower Prices -- The U.S. government left its forecast for domestic crude production unchanged for 2019 even with prices averaging almost $11 a barrel lower than its previous estimate. Oil producers will pump an average 12.06 million barrels a day next year, up from 10.88 million in 2018, the Energy Information Administration said in a monthly outlook. The agency saw output dropping during October, when some offshore production was shut in due to Hurricane Michael, before recovering in November. The swift growth of American shale production has complicated efforts by OPEC and its allies to trim supply and support prices. While bottlenecks in areas such as the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico pose a risk to future growth, new pipelines coming online in late 2019 and 2020 should ease that congestion. The U.S. will account for almost one-fifth of global petroleum liquids output next year. The agency also raised its global demand forecast for next year to 101.61 million barrels a day from 101.51 million. In the U.S., almost half of the growth next year will come from gas liquids, with gasoline demand rebounding from a decline this year. Producers aren’t shying away from spending money in U.S. fields, despite prices dropping more than 30 percent from the October highs. ConocoPhillips said Monday it’s spending half its 2019 budget in the continental U.S., while Chevron Corp. is investing $3.6 billion in the Permian Basin alone.

Oil Price Plunge Clouds Some E&Ps' Fourth-Quarter Outlook -- The third quarter of 2018 was a moment in the sun for U.S. exploration and production companies. The 44 major companies we track reported a 35% increase in pre-tax operating income over the previous quarter and seven-fold increase from the year-ago period on rising commodity prices and narrowing differentials in some key regions. Oil-Weighted producers outside the infrastructure-constricted Permian posted generally higher realizations, and a number of Permian-focused E&Ps minimized the impact of takeaway constraints by employing basis hedges, utilizing firm transportation contracts and reducing their operating costs. Diversified producers saw higher quarterly per-unit profits thanks to the tilt of their portfolios toward oil. And as lower Appalachian differentials lifted the realizations of Gas-Weighted producers, portfolio readjustments and the liquids content of production also positively impacted their profitability and cash flow. Today, we analyze third-quarter results by peer group, and discuss the potential impacts of the sudden plunge in oil prices this fall.

Chevron Boosts Spending on Shale Projects -- Chevron Corp. raised its spending budget for the first time since 2014 even as crude prices plummet, doubling down on U.S. shale. The world’s third-largest oil producer by market value will increase investments by 9.3 percent to $20 billion next year, according to a statement Thursday. The U.S. will account for 38 percent of the spend, the highest portion in at least a decade, as Chevron seeks to expand its foothold in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. The Tengiz megaproject in Kazakhstan is also a key growth area for the company. Chevron is the first of the supermajors to detail its 2019 spending plans, which are being set during a period of considerable price volatility: Crude has lost about a third of its value in New York since early October. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Russia are struggling to orchestrate production cuts as OPEC and its allies meet in Vienna this week. Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth’s decision to raise spending while oil is in free fall shows how the industry has become more comfortable operating at lower prices after cutting costs and shunning complex projects in recent years. But in March he pledged to keep annual budgets at no more than $20 billion for the next three years, about half the amount earmarked for 2014 when the company was overspending on gas projects in Australia. “Our investments are anchored in high-return, short-cycle projects, with more than two-thirds of spend projected to realize cash flow within two years,” Wirth said in the statement. Chevron’s U.S. spend will focus on the Permian, which will receive $3.6 billion, a 9 percent increase on this year. Growth has been rapid in the region which now accounts for about one in every 10 barrels the company pumps worldwide. The region is currently producing at levels about a year ahead of its long-term plan, CFO Pat Yarrington said last month. 

ConocoPhillips Plans for $6.1B Capital Spend in 2019 - ConocoPhillips plans to keep its capital expenditures flat at $6.1 billion in 2019, the Houston-based E&P company announced Monday.The Lower 48 is expected to account for about half of the CAPEX budget at $3.1 billion, with a focus on 10-11 rigs in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Delaware unconventional plays. Additionally, ConocoPhillips plans to use a portion of the Lower 48 budget on exploration and appraisal activity in the Louisiana Austin Chalk play and conventional drilling in the region.“As we head into 2019, we plan to keep capital flat, increase our payout target and deliver high-margin production per-share growth,” Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips CEO said in a release.The company also plans to up production to between 1.3 and 1.35 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Other region’s budget allocations are as follows:

• Alaska - $1.2 billion, or about 20 percent
• Canada - $500 million, or about 8 percent
• Europe and North Africa - $700 million, or about 11 percent
• Asia Pacific and Middle East - $500 million, or about 8 percent
• Other - $1 million, or about 2 percent

Gasoline keeps flowing from US refineries despite a huge cut to profits – Platts podcast - Why would a refiner keep making gasoline at a loss? That's the situation facing US companies with gasoline cracks dipping into negative numbers against major US and European crude grades. Jeff Bair and Seth Clare of the US gasoline team break down the numbers and take look at what analysts are saying lies ahead for crack spreads.

US dominance in oil markets is only going to get bigger, the IEA says - The U.S. might have been left out from the big summit between OPEC and non-OPEC producers in Vienna last week but the country's influence over global oil markets is only going to get stronger, the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated in its latest report."While the U.S. was not present in Vienna, nobody could ignore its growing influence," the IEA said in its December report, published Thursday. "Last week's meeting reminded us that the Big Three of oil – Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States – whose total liquids production now comprises about 40 percent of the global total, are the dominant players," the IEA said.When OPEC and non-OPEC producers met last week in Vienna to hammer out a deal to cut their oil production there was an uninvited, but unavoidable, presence at the summit: The U.S.President Trump has repeatedly criticized OPEC for its dominance over oil prices, at times asking (usually via Twitter) it to produce more oil and then telling the cartel to leave its production well alone. Iran joked last week that the U.S. wanted to join OPEC as it appeared keen to influence the meeting's outcome.The U.S. has become a dominant competitor in oil markets in its own right, however, and has taken a place among the world's largest oil producers, thanks to its shale oil revolution.On the day OPEC ministers sat down to talk in Vienna last Thursday, the IEA noted that an important piece of data was published, noting that "according to the (U.S.) Energy Information Administration, in the week to 30 November the U.S. was a net exporter of crude and products for the first time since at least 1991."In 2018 to date, U.S. net imports have averaged 3.1 million barrels a day (mb/d). Ten years ago, just ahead of the shale revolution, the figure was 11.1 mb/d., the IEA said. "As production grows inexorably, so will net imports decline and rising U.S. exports will provide competition in many markets, including to some of the countries meeting in Vienna last week."

No, The US Is Not A Net Exporter Of Crude Oil -  Last week Bloomberg created quite a stir with this story: The U.S. Just Became a Net Oil Exporter for the First Time in 75 Years. I have seen a number of follow-up stories that praised the significance of this development, but others laughed it off as misleading or incorrect. There is some truth to both viewpoints. Yes, the headline is somewhat misleading and requires some context. But there continues to be a trend in the direction of energy independence for the U.S. So, today I want to break down the numbers so readers can understand the truth about U.S. petroleum production, consumption, and exports. The Bloomberg story is based on data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Each week the EIA publishes detailed statistics on U.S. oil production, consumption, exports, and inventories in a report called the Weekly Petroleum Status Report. So, let’s go straight to the source.  For the week ending 11/30/18, the EIA reported that the U.S. produced 11.7 million barrels per day (BPD) of crude oil. That represents a 2 million BPD increase from the year-ago number. This number is generally accepted even by those who believe the Bloomberg headline was misleading. Further down in the report, the category of Products Supplied is listed at 20.5 million BPD. This is approximate U.S. crude oil consumption for the week. Thus, as some skeptics of the story suggested, the bottom line is that the U.S. is burning more than 20 million BPD while producing less than 12 million BPD. Thus, the conclusion for some was that the U.S. isn’t close to being energy independent.  But there is a large U.S. production number that isn’t included in the crude oil production numbers. There is a line item called Other Supply, which consists primarily of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and fuel ethanol. This category represents a significant input to refiners in addition to the 11.7 million BPD of production (and the 4.0 million BPD of net crude oil imports). Other Supply represented 6.9 million BPD of production, and it mostly ends up as feedstock for refiners or petrochemical production. (Note that this category also includes “Refinery Processing Gain” of 1.2 million BPD, which results from refiners making products that are of a lower density than crude oil). So, Domestic Production of crude oil plus Other Supply is equal to (11.7 + 6.9) = 18.6 million BPD — which is still about 2 million BPD less than the U.S. consumes.

After Quakes, Frackers Ordered to Halt Operations near Fort St. John - B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission says earthquakes that rattled residents of Fort St. John and shook the Site C dam construction site last week were likely caused by fracking or salt water disposal wells operated by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL).*The commission has ordered a 30-day halt to all hydraulic fracturing in a densely drilled region 20 kilometres south of Fort St John.“This will provide the Commission with sufficient time to conduct a thorough investigation,” said an OGCbulletin. “CNRL’s operations may not continue without the written consent of the Commission,” it added.On Nov. 30 the industry, which has already changed seismic patterns in the region, triggered three quakes ranging from 3.4 to 4.5 magnitude at three different sites south of Fort St. John.CNRL, Canada’s largest methane producer, leases more than a million hectares in northeastern B.C. It operates 10 large pads from which it drills and fracks multiple horizontal wells. The company’s website has released no information on the events. Local residents described the tremor as a major event felt more than 30 kilometres from Fort St. John. “All of a sudden we heard a bang and the house shook violently for five to six seconds,” said Strasky. “We could tell it was a seismic event.” Twenty to 40 minutes later there was an aftershock, he said. “There were no vertical movements. It just shook the house back and forth a few times.” Strasky said tremors triggered by the fracking industry also shook the farm house last April and left a crack in the basement.

Regulator halts fracking operations in northeastern BC while it investigates earthquakes -  The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission has shut down oilfield fracking operations for at least 30 days in northeastern British Columbia while it investigates earthquakes that occurred there on Nov. 29. The regulator says the seismic events, which measured between 3.4 and 4.5 magnitude, took place near hydraulic fracturing operations being conducted about 20 kilometres southeast of Fort St. John by Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. The practice is also known as fracking. It says the company immediately suspended work on Nov. 29 and it won't be allowed to resume without the written consent of the commission. Six companies in or close to the area have also suspended fracking operations.  The area closed off is 11.6 kilometres by 6.4 kilometres in size, says the regulator.  According to Natural Resources Canada, the 4.5 magnitude earthquake was felt in Fort St. John, Taylor, Chetwynd and Dawson Creek but did no damage. It was followed by two smaller aftershocks. Fracking, along with injecting oilfield liquids into disposal wells, have been linked by the B.C. commission to previous incidents of "induced seismicity," although it notes on its website none of the events in B.C. have resulted in hazards to safety or the environment or property damage.  Honn Kao, a seismologist with Natural Resources Canada, told CBC's Daybreak North that most fracking operations don't produce induced earthquakes, and when they do, they're relatively small and shallow. The earthquake last week came close to matching the world's largest fracking-induced earthquake which occurred a little further north in 2015 and registered magnitude 4.6. The Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce says the shutdown is an attack on the already suffering oil and gas industry. "We do not need to go through another three years or another month even of shutdowns, because people are finally just starting to get back to work."

 First Nation next to planned fracking sand mine says environmental concerns 'have already been dealt with' - Hollow Water First Nation Chief Larry Barker says his community is in support of the mine.  "We did our homework, we had numerous meetings with the company and any environmental concerns have already been dealt with," Barker said in a news release. "The plant is going to have the best ventilation available."Barker responded Tuesday to reporting last month where critics alleged a proposed frack sand mine along the east shore of Lake Winnipeg would create health and water quality problems, such as exposure to tiny sand particles described as a cancer risk. The development will dig for high-purity quartz sand needed by drillers fracking for oil and gas. The company behind the mine hopes to start building next year.It has rights to more than 2,700 acres of land with an estimated resource of 600 million tonnes. NDP environment critic Rob Altemeyer argued in the legislature last month that the mine's neighbours weren't properly consulted. He said members of the Hollow Water community were in the legislature gallery that day, joining his call for more input. Three days later, Canadian Premium Sand, which owns the proposed development, about 200 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, announced it had reached an economic agreement with Hollow Water First Nation. The media release said employment, contracting and training initiatives would be provided to community members.

Enbridge to swap 50,000 b/d of Bakken for WCS to ease Alberta's oil woes — Enbridge's plan to swap 50,000 of North Dakota's Bakken barrels with Western Canadian barrels on its Mainline by mid-2019, after coming to an agreement with one of the shippers on the line, furthered strengthened Western Canadian crude prices. "Discussions are underway with our [Bakken] shippers to consider a temporary suspension of deliveries to Cromer [Manitoba] that would allow the Mainline capacity to be served from Edmonton," said Enbridge CEO Al Monaco at the company's analyst day in New York Tuesday. Western Canadian Select crude prices strengthened further after the announcement. WCS ex-Hardisty for January delivery was heard traded at a $12.75/b discount to the NYMEX calendar-month average, Platts assessments showed, while December-delivery barrels were heard trading at a $20/b discount to the NYMEX calendar-month average. This is sharply higher than the quarter-to-date average discount of $38.90/b discount, Platts assessments showed. WCS prices have moved up recently, following the announcement of 325,000 b/d production cuts mandated by the Alberta government to begin in January. Replacing Bakken with WCS would provide some incremental relief ahead of the start-up of Enbridge's Line 3 Replacement Project. Line fill on the Canadian part of the line, which runs from Edmonton, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, will begin in July 2019, with US operations starting up in November 2019. When fully operational, Line 3 will add 370,000 b/d of pipeline takeaway capacity for Western Canada's oil producers, buckling under oversupply and weak prices. "Following completion of the Line 3 replacement, Mainline capacity will be restored to approximately 3.225 million b/d, 3 million of which can serve our extensive refining markets in the US, Monaco said. 

From 'Too Cheap' To 'Too Expensive' - Canadian Crude Soars Over 80% After Output Cuts - Since Alberta Premier Rachel Notley announced an oil production cut of 325,000 bpd beginning next month, the spot price for Western Canadian Select has gained over 85%... Additionally, OilPrice.com's Irina Slav writes that the deep discount, at certain times more than US$40 a barrel, had closed by more than half over the last eight days since the cut was announced. The discount could narrow even further as the cut enters into effect in January and producers and refiners negotiate future deliveries. This will in turn benefit Canadian producers who have already begun revising capital expenditure plans for 2019 pressured by the low price of their oil.Last week, Premier Rachel Notley announced that the government of the province will enact an 8.7-percent crude oil production cut to clear excess stockpiles as pipeline bottlenecks and growing volumes of oil being transported by the costlier railway pressured Western Canadian Select to historic lows against the U.S. benchmark, WTI. Premier Notley last week described the situation as “fiscal and economic insanity.” Alberta now has to buy more oil trains—a more dangerous way to transport oil than pipelines—because production is rising inexorably while pipeline capacity remains the same in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalist groups and First Nations against new pipeline projects. The National Energy Board recently said crude oil production in Canada this year will average 4.59 million bpd, up by 22,000 bpd from earlier forecasts. However, plans for 2019 are for reduced spending, Bloomberg notes, as producers feel the bite of low oil prices deeper. The decision to start cutting production would save not just spending, but also jobs because many companies had planned substantial layoffs and reduced spending to a minimum to stay afloat. The lower spending could mean lower production growth, too, which would serve to keep prices higher.

 This Bird Breeding Haven Could Be Next in Line for Arctic Oil Drilling -  Each spring, hundreds of thousands of birds from five continents follow an ancestral tug toward Teshekpuk Lake, a 320-square-mile marvel surrounded by ponds, wetlands, and soggy tundra in far northern Alaska, where shorebirds raise chicks and geese hunker down to molt their feathers. They’re not the only ones lured to the remote spot. For decades, energy companies have eyed the same swath of coastal plain, an area as rich in oil as it is in bird life—and recent fossil-fuel discoveries have intensified their interest. This tension between wildlife and energy is inherent to the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the nation’s biggest chunk of federal land. Although the reserve was created in 1923 as an oil resource for the U.S. Navy, Congress later broadened its purpose to provide “maximum protection” for wildlife and subsistence hunting. That includes the birds and herds around Teshekpuk Lake, in the NPR-A's northeastern corner. Unlike other parts of Alaska's oil-rich North Slope, development in the reserve is still in its infancy. The first NPR-A oil production began on Alaska Native land in 2015, and oil started flowing from a federal NPR-A lease this past October. But it’s likely to accelerate soon as the Trump administration prepares to write a new management plan for the NPR-A. On November 20, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announceda 45-day public scoping period to shape what should be considered in a new plan, one that will promote “clean and safe development in the NPR-A while avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production” and could open new, sensitive areas to development. It’s part of Zinke’s broader push, outlined last year, to boost oil and gas production across the far north, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “These are the two places we should be conserving, yet there’s a headlong rush to open them up and put infrastructure in there and start drilling,” says Susan Culliney, policy director for Audubon Alaska. “Given the Trump administration’s ‘energy dominance’ rhetoric, we’re concerned, especially with Teshekpuk Lake in the bullseye.”

Trump Administration's Alaska Oil and Gas Lease Sale a 'Major Flop' - Despite the Trump administration's unrelenting quest to drill the Arctic, Wednesday's oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) yielded a "disappointing" return of $1.5 million, E&E News reported. Oil and gas giants ConocoPhillips, Emerald House and Nordaq Energy were the three companies that made uncontested bids on 16 tracts of land out of 254 tracts made available by the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) annual sale in the western Arctic.In all, the companies swooped up roughly 174,000 acres of the 2.85 million acres offered, working out to an average of just $6.50 an acre."Federal officials [cited] a lack of access to the most promising areas as a reason for the modest bidding," theAnchorage Daily News reported.But the Center for American Progress said the result was a "major flop that shortchanged taxpayers" and also puts the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) environment at risk."These results show that the fiscal arguments—including promises of more than $1 billion, or bids of $1,000 per acre—made for drilling in the neighboring Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were a complete scam," the organization tweeted. "Taxpayers are being sold a false bill of goods in the Arctic Refuge, and stand to lose America's last best wilderness in the process." The Trump administration is moving forward on its controversial oil and gas drilling plans in the pristine Arctic reserve, a habitat for polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other species.

Cuadrilla pauses gas fracking at English site after more tremors (Reuters) - British shale gas company Cuadrilla has again paused fracking at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire, northwest England, after tremors were detected, the company said. This marks the third time operations have been halted at the site following seismic activity under Britain’s so-called traffic light regulation system, since they began in October. “A series of micro seismic events in Blackpool have been recorded on the British Geological Survey website this morning following hydraulic fracturing at our shale gas exploration site in Preston New Road, Lancashire,” Cuadrilla said in a statement. The largest tremor, of 1.5 magnitude, took place after fracking activities had already stopped, it said. “According to recent research by the University of Liverpool the impact would be like dropping a melon,” Cuadrilla said. Fracking, or hydraulically fracturing, involves extracting gas from rocks by breaking them up with water and chemicals at high pressure. It is opposed by environmentalists who say extracting more fossil fuel is at odds with Britain’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the government is keen to reduce the country’s reliance on imports of natural gas, which is used to heat around 80 percent of Britain’s homes. The company, which is 47.4 percent owned by Australia’s AJ Lucas and 45.2 percent owned by a fund managed by Riverstone, first attempted to frack gas near the coastal town of Blackpool in northwestern England in 2011, but the practice led to a 2.3 magnitude earth tremor. It said then that the quakes at that site were caused by an unusual combination of geological features, but they led to an 18-month nationwide ban on fracking while further research was carried out. The government has since introduced a traffic-light system that immediately suspends work if seismic activity of magnitude 0.5 or above is detected.

Biggest tremor on record forces immediate halt to fracking in Lancashire - A tremor measuring 1.5 magnitude has forced Cuadrilla to halt fracking at the Lancashire site. The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded a series of tremors this morning at the controversial fracking site at Preston New Road, Little Plumpton. Nine tremors were detected at the site within 90 minutes this morning, with the latest tremor measuring a magnitude of 1.5ML. Regulations state that fracking must be halted if tremors exceed 0.5ML. According to the BGS database, the 1.5 magnitude tremor is the largest detected at the site since monitoring began. It has been claimed the tremor was felt in the Blackpool area. The nine tremors recorded today are also the most recorded at the site in a single day. The earlier eight tremors measured magnitudes between - 0.4 and 0.0, between 9.35am and 10.18am this morning. But the latest 1.5ML tremor,which occurred at 11.21am, exceeds the maximum magnitude allowed for fracking. Caudrilla has now been forced to take immediate action and halt fracking at the site for 18 hours. A quake measuring a magnitude of - 0.3 was also recorded at the site yesterday. They are the latest in a series of minor tremors since Cuadrilla began fracking at the site in October, after spending two years exploring the site. “Cuadrilla will pause and continue to monitor micro seismicity for at least the next 18 hours, in line with the traffic light system regulations. Well integrity has been checked and verified.”

Activist on Fracking: They Could Damage Infrastructure, Damage Well  - Caudrilla has had to halt its fracking operation in Lancashire in Britain after the largest tremors registered to date. Earlier Sputnik spoke to Activist Tina Rothery who is at the site about the latest tremors and what it will mean for the future of fracking in the UK.

• Sputnik: What do you make of the latest tremors from fracking by Caudrilla?
• Tina Rothery: We are unsurprised, but deeply concerned. They are residents that went to bed worried last night, totally terrified. I'm standing outside the frack site, and the neighbours are talking that it might be well and good Caudrilla saying it's about as much energy as dropping a watermelon on the floor, they didn't hear the bang or feel the shaking that our neighbours felt. The protests have been going on here at the side of this road for 712 days now continuously and non-stop and the only time we get earthquakes is when they frack. Now we've had a total of 48 earthquakes, this area has not seen this level seismic activity ever.
• Sputnik: How damaging is fracking having on the environment in the area?
• Tina Rothery: What concerns us most is deep underground where they are fracking and where the fracking are occurring is around the pipe, so they could damage the infrastructure down there and they could damage the well. Then all of the substances they are using down there could leak into our water supply. We haven't got to that stage yet but these are the things we see that are evident in Canada, Australia and America

North Sea oil field reawakened seven years after leak - An oil field in the central North Sea has resumed production seven years after a leak forced its shutdown.Current operator Tailwind Energy said late Sunday evening that the redevelopment of Gannet E had been a success.Shell initially developed the field via three wells connected to the Gannet Alpha platform, about 110 miles east of Aberdeen.First oil was achieved in 1998, some 16 years after the field’s discovery.  But production was halted in 2011 in the wake of a pipeline leak, which led to 200 tonnes of oil escaping into the sea.The incident cost Shell about £45 million.Aberdeen Sheriff Court fined the Anglo-Dutch major £22,500 in 2015. But Gannet E came back online after a new pipeline was installed connecting the field to the nearby Triton floating production, storage and offloading vessel, which is operated by Dana Petroleum. Tailwind chief executive Stephen Edwards said the project was completed in September with first oil delivered “on budget and on schedule”.That same month, Tailwind completed the acquisition of Shell and ExxonMobil’s stakes in the Triton cluster.London-headquartered Tailwind became operator of Gannet E, with a 100% interest. Mr Edwards said Gannet E is currently producing about 10,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

Inside the Dutch province where gas extraction tremors left houses crumbling - The village of Doodstil - which translates as 'dead quiet' in Dutch - feels like it could have been named as part of an elaborate joke.Despite its name and appearance, this cluster of homes surrounded by flat, green fields and picturesque dykes actually sits in an unlikely earthquake zone.Fifty-five years of conventional gas extraction from Europe’s largest field h ave made The Netherlands’ province of Groningen anything but calm. Now, warned of the risk of a catastrophic earthquake that could cost lives and homes, the Dutch government is gradually turning off the tap to a gas field that has delivered it more than €265 billion (£237 billion) since 1963.

EU lawmakers repeat call to stop Russia's Nord Stream 2 natural gas link — The European Parliament has called for Russia's planned 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream 2 natural gas link to Germany to be cancelled in a non-binding resolution adopted late Wednesday. The resolution has no legal force but reinforces the parliament's long-standing opposition to what it sees as a "political project" intended to undermine Ukraine's position as a key Russian gas transit partner for the EU. Russia plans to bring both Nord Stream 2 and its 31.5 Bcm/year TurkStream pipeline to Turkey online by the end of 2019, after which it will be able to cut flows to the EU via Ukraine from some 94 Bcm in 2017 to just 10-15 Bcm/year from 2020. The European Commission, which is also a vocal critic of Nord Stream 2's expected impact on Ukraine, has proposed changing the EU's gas directive to apply internal energy market rules to offshore gas links with non-EU countries. If approved into law -- which is not guaranteed -- these proposals could see Nord Stream 2 having to submit to transparent, non-discriminatory tariff regulation for the EU section of the pipeline, for example. That could make it easier for Ukraine to know what transit tariffs to offer in order to compete more successfully with Nord Stream 2 from 2020. Both the parliament and the EU Council, representing the 28 national governments, have to agree a common text before the EC's proposals can become law. The parliament adopted its negotiating position in March, in which it backed the EC's proposals and called for any agreed waivers from the rules to be limited to five years. The parliament is now waiting for the council to agree a negotiating position so that informal talks can start between them on a final text.

US State Department sees increased interest from Congress in targeting Russian energy exports - — The US Congress appears increasingly interested in legislation targeting Russian energy exports to counter Moscow's aggression against Ukraine since the Sea of Azov incident, a top State Department official said Monday. The House of Representatives is set to vote Tuesday on a non-binding resolution expressing opposition to the completion of the 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. "We certainly are monitoring the level of interest that Congress has," Assistant Secretary for Energy Resources Francis Fannon told reporters during a briefing. "We've been monitoring the bills -- something like 10 bills out there -- all of which include Russian energy as a key component." Fannon said he cannot comment on any particular legislation. Last month, Moscow seized three Ukrainian navy ships and their crews in the Kerch Strait offshore Crimea. Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom plans to build Nord Stream 2 across the Baltic Sea along a similar route to the original 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream pipeline, which came online in 2011. The US has long opposed the Nord Stream expansion, arguing that Europe should not be so dependent on Moscow for energy. The government has recently been touting US LNG exports as an alternative to Russian gas, in addition to supporting the Southern Gas Corridor from the Caspian region to the EU. The House resolution up for vote on Tuesday, if passed, would offer support for imposing sanctions on Nord Stream 2 under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Actions Act. The resolution would also call on European governments to reject Nord Stream 2 and urge President Donald Trump to "use all available means to support European energy security through a policy of diversification to lessen reliance" on Russia. The House bill says Nord Stream 2 would increase Russian control over the European energy market. It says Russia already controls 40% of Europe's gas supply, and 11 European countries rely on Russian gas for at least 75% of their needs. "Russia's geopolitical interest in Nord Stream II is not to increase European energy security, but rather to drive a wedge between countries in Europe and drastically diminish the existing Ukrainian gas transit system," the bill says. Representative Michael Conaway, Republican-Texas, introduced the bill in July.

China increases natural gas imports to avoid winter shortage - China National Petroleum, the country’s biggest gas producer supplying more than half of winter demand, is running its fields at full tilt and has made more storage available after promising to increase supply to customers. CNPC has also hooked up its pipelines with domestic rivals to help better distribute gas from the south and east to the chillier north. And, the nation is buying more from abroad, helping to soak up a global glut of the fuel, with imports surging 34% in the first 11 months of the year. China’s gas use has jumped more than a fifth this year to 226 Bcm through October. Better-organized supply and warmer weather have so far helped avoid last year’s failures.

China becomes world’s largest natural gas importer, overtaking Japan - China’s combined imports of natural gas by pipeline and in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have become the world’s largest consistently for the past six months, overtaking Japan, and exceeding 12 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in August and September, according to data from China’s Administration of Customs. In the first nine months of this year, China’s total natural gas imports averaged 11.4 Bcf/d, a 2.9 Bcf/d (34%) increase over the same period last year, and more than doubled since 2014, when imports averaged 5.6 Bcf/d. Strong growth in China’s natural gas imports was led by the increase in domestic consumption, stimulated by government policies promoting coal-to-natural gas switching in an effort to reduce air pollution and meet emissions targets. While China’s domestic natural gas production, which provides more than one half of its total supply, has also grown, it was outpaced by the growth in imports. Between 2014 and 2017, domestic production in China increased by a net of 1.4 Bcf/d, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, while combined pipeline and LNG imports have increased by 3.4 Bcf/d during the same period.  The growth in China’s natural gas imports was led primarily by the growth in LNG imports. In 2017, China became the world’s second largest LNG importer, with LNG imports growing steadily every year since 2006—when China began importing LNG—except 2015. In the first nine months of 2018, LNG imports averaged 6.5 Bcf/d, 1.5 Bcf/d (30%) higher than in 2017, and are poised for further growth as China continues to expand its LNG import capacity. China’s current LNG import capacity stands at 8.6 Bcf/d, and two more terminals (totaling 0.4 Bcf/d) are expected to come online by the end of the year. Once all the terminals currently under construction are completed, China’s LNG import capacity is expected to reach 11.2 Bcf/d by 2021.

LNG Project Sanctions Set to Surge in 2019 - Uncontracted demand by the world’s seven largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers could increase four-fold to 80 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by 2030, according to Wood Mackenzie. “As China pushes on towards a lower-emission economy, its demand for gas and LNG has grown significantly and we expect the trend to continue in the longer term,” Nicholas Browne, research director with Wood Mackenzie, said in a written statement emailed to Rigzone. “Other traditional major buyers, on the other hand, are facing legacy contract expiries and will be on the hunt for a mix of contracts to lower average costs and security in supply sources.” According to Wood Mackenzie, the top seven LNG buyers - accounting for more than one-half of the global LNG market - have become increasingly active in global LNG contracting activity. The consultancy added that thsee Northeast Asian buyers have announced more than 16 mtpa of contracts in 2018. In addition, it noted that the growth in contracting is happening at a time when supply growth is poised to surge. Wood Mackenzie stated that it predicts 2019 could be a record year for LNG project sanctions, with more than 220 mtpa of gas targeting final investment decision (FID). A “bumper year beckons,” the firm stated. LNG projects that Wood Mackenzie considers “frontrunners” to reach FID include:

• The $27 billion Arctic LNG-2 project in Russia
• One or more projects in Mozambique
• Three U.S. projects
• “Expansion and backfill projects” in Australia and Papua New Guinea

As LNG buyers seek a variety of contracts to meet their different needs, LNG suppliers will need to ensure that they can address these changing needs, Wood Mackenzie cautioned. The firm noted that, in addition to price, LNG buyers will be sensitive to considerations such as contract flexibility, index, source diversification, upstream participation and seasonality. Browne emphasized that 2019 should be unprecedented in terms of LNG liquefaction capacity sanctioned. “Asia’s major buyers will be at the forefront in ensuring this next generation of LNG supply is brought to market,” Browne concluded. 

Mexico Cancels Two Oil and Gas Auctions Mexico’s administration, led by new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has canceled two February bidding rounds, including one auction that would have been the first in Mexico’s history offering blocks targeting shale resources. In a release published Dec. 11 on the website of Mexico's independent oil regulator the National Hydrocarbon Commission (CNH), the CNH announced it had canceled bid rounds 3.2 and 3.3, the latter which include nine unconventional onshore blocks with wet and dry gas. Round 3.2 include 37 conventional onshore blocks with light crude oil and wet and dry gas. The release also stated that the CNH would be postponing seven farmouts with PEMEX. Mexico’s president Lopez Obrador, who took office Dec. 1, stated in July that he wanted to boost Mexico’s crude output to 2.5 million barrels per day. The veteran leftist also previously said that Mexican oil auctions would be suspended until contracts already awarded had been reviewed. Lopez Obrador has been critical of former president Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration of opening the oil industry to private capital and plans to strengthen PEMEX during his time as president of Mexico. 

Italy's state-backed oil giant makes a major discovery off the shores of Angola -- Eni, the state-backed Italian oil giant and 10th largest producer in the world by revenue, said it has made a new oil discovery in offshore Angola. The Afoxé exploration prospect is located offshore in a deepwater region West of Soyo and is estimated to hold between 170 million and 200 million barrels of light oil in place, according to company. "Eni is committed to developing this discovery leveraging its best-in-class time-to-market, whilst at the same time launching an intense exploration campaign that will fully support the Company’s mid-term organic growth in the Country," chief executive Claudio Descalzi said in a statement Monday.Eni’s production has been on the rise, boosted by its presence in offshore Angola. In October, the company said its Ochigufu start-up helped production rise by 3.9% in the nine months through September to more than 1.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. The discovery comes at an uncertain time for the energy market. Oil prices have lost nearly a quarter in value over the past three months, with the global benchmark currently trading around $60 per barrel. In attempt to support prices, OPEC and other major producers agreed this month to cut coordinated production levels. As a net importer of crude oil and natural gas, Italy depends on foreign countries for about 93% of its energy needs to maintain exports of refined petroleum products, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Chevron Bets Big On Supergiant Oil Field -Chevron announced last week its capital and exploratory budget for 2019, which sees the first annual increase in spending since the 2014 oil price crash.While most of the investment is geared toward short-cycle projects that could start bringing in cash flows within two years, the U.S. supermajor continues to channel a significant portion of its upstream investment into a major capital-intensive project to boost the production of a supergiant oil field in western Kazakhstan. Chevron will invest US$4.3 billion in 2019 in the Future Growth Project at the Tengiz field which lies deep beneath the western Kazakhstan steppe—the deepest producing supergiant oil field and the largest single-trap producing reservoir in existence. The investment in boosting production at the giant oil field will take most of Chevron’s US$5.1 billion upstream program for major capital projects in 2019. For this year, Chevron had allocated US$3.7 billion to the Tengiz field expansion project. The Kazakhstan field expansion and the U.S. shale patch are the two pillars of Chevron’s capital spending for next year—growing shorter-cycle shale production and continuing investments in a supergiant oil field that is expected to pump oil for decades. For 2019, Chevron has earmarked US$3.6 billion for expanding its production in the Permian and another US$1.6 billion will be invested in other shale plays in the United States. That makes a total of US$5.2 billion for U.S. shale, which is substantially higher than this year’s shale budget of US$4.3 billion.   The so-called Future Growth and Wellhead Pressure Management Project (FGP-WPMP) is planned to increase crude oil production at Tengiz by about 260,000 bpd, and was estimated to cost US$36.8 billion when Chevron approved the expansion project back in 2016. Tengiz and Kazakhstan operations continue to be a priority for Chevron, while the U.S. major is considering selling its interests in the oil industry of another former Soviet republic—Azerbaijan, as it is re-aligning its global operations to its new priorities after the downturn. Chevron is looking to sell its 9.6-percent stake in the giant Azeri oil field Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) in the Caspian Sea and its 8.9-percent interest in the BTC pipeline, which carries oil from the ACG field and condensate from Shah Deniz across Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey.

60,000 Liters of Oil Spills From Pipeline Into Brazilian Bay --About 60,000 liters (15,850 gallons) of oil spilled from a pipeline into the Estrela River and spread to Rio de Janeiro's famed Guanabara Bay over the weekend, according to Reuters and local reports.The pipeline is owned by Transpetro, the largest oil and gas transportation company in Brazil, and a subsidiary of Petroleo Brasileiro (commonly known as Petrobras). Transpetro claims the leak resulted from an attempted robbery. "It was a leak of significant proportions, with an impact on the mangroves," said Maurício Muniz, an analyst at the Instituto Chico Mendes, which is associated with the Brazilian environment ministry, according to Reuters.Aerial footage of the accident shows large slicks of oil contaminating the waters.Guanabara Bay was also the site of a major spill in January 2000, when a pipeline released 1,300,000 liters (340,000 gallons) of oil into the waters. The leak stemmed from an oil refinery operated by Petrobras.Muniz said Saturday's spill was the worst he has seen in the decade at his job, as quoted by the news website Project Colabora. He added that the bay has not fully recovered since the 2000 spill. "The scene I witnessed was devastating: oil concentrated with garbage mainly at the mouth of the Rio Estrela," he explained (via Google translate). "The oil stain is almost reaching Paquetá [an island in Guanabara Bay].

Libya's NOC demands immediate withdrawal of PFG forces at Sharara oil field — Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) has declared force majeure on crude oil loadings from the country's biggest oil field due to a forced shutdown caused by the presence of militia, it said Monday. NOC demanded that the armed militia claiming attachment to the local Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) immediately withdraw from the Sharara field without "pre-condition." "The shutdown of Sharara will result in a daily site production loss of 315,000 b/d, with an additional loss of 73,000 b/d at El Feel due to its dependence on Sharara for electricity supply," NOC said in a statement. Operations at the Zawiya refinery are also at risk due to their dependence on Sharara and the refinery "will cease producing essential fuels for local consumption unless alternative supply is identified," it said. The "unnecessary shutdown" at Sharara will cost the Libyan economy $32.5 million/day, NOC said. The PFG occupied the field on Saturday with the help of locals. The country's southern region is suffering from severe economic conditions and frequent power outages. Earlier this week, NOC also warned that the forced closure would have "devastating" effects on the country's economy, other nearby upstream and downstream projects and would exacerbate a local fuel supply crisis. "The presence of this group is a real threat to the field and to the future of our country" said NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla. "I want to be clear, this militia has to leave the field immediately. We stand wholeheartedly with the people of the south and understand their concerns. At NOC we are doing all we can to improve the living conditions of the residents. Their legitimate demands and grievances however have been used by criminals who are only in pursuit of self-interest."

Struggling OPEC Agrees on Cuts, Crisis Not Over -- OPEC officials have stated that the oil cartel has agreed on an 800,000-barrel per day (bpd) production cut, while non-OPEC is being asked to commit to around 400,000 bpd to be cut at the same time. Optimism surfaced straight away within the oil markets as crude oil prices jumped immediately after the news. However, the optimism should still be taken with a pinch of salt, as discrepancies in views inside of OPEC will continue, and a large part of the success depends on the willingness of non-OPEC members, especially Russia, to cut their production by 400,000 bpd. Optimism could also falter if OPEC and non-OPEC will decide that the cuts being made are related to current production levels, and not to former production agreements. In recent months Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have substantially increased their overall production, while others have shown a tendency to grow production too. Normally, OPEC meetings in Vienna are mainly for visibility while trying to get a country’s message into the media. The last couple of meetings however have shown a much more politicized approach, as regional power politics have taken over the normal focus on oil prices and market fundamentals. The last OPEC meeting already showed that there was a major conflict brewing between the Saudi-Russia led production cut approach and the Iran-Venezuela anti-cut movement. The latter, especially Iran, has been vehemently against any production cuts or market regulating arrangements, as Tehran is currently in a conflict with Saudi Arabia regionally, while at the same time its hands are bound behind its back due to US sanctions. Tehran, partly right, perceived any Saudi movement as a potential threat to its own market share. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, partly supported by Moscow, were expected to fill in the gaps caused by the U.S. sanctions on Iran. Tehran, supported by hardliners such as Venezuela and hit by U.S. sanctions, put all its might behind a blockade of the Saudi-Russian approach. The latter failed. The current OPEC meeting reflected the same scenario again. Iran bluntly said not to accept any production cuts, especially if this would include Iranian production. At the same time, Qatar announced it would leave the cartel, supposedly due to a lack of influence and reorientation on LNG. The Qatari move has clearly put additional pressure on the cartel, and we now see the result. The position of the total OPEC group is now being questioned, as major partners such as Venezuela, Algeria or Nigeria feel sidelined. The role of Iran is that of an outsider, as it can’t influence the market at present anymore. At the same time, several small producers are asking themselves if they need to follow Qatar’s steps, as the cartel now seems to be the one-man show of Saudi Arabia, based on support of the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain.

OPEC Is Alive and Highly Relevant - OPEC is alive and well and highly relevant. That’s according to a new report from Fitch Solutions Macro Research, which was sent to Rigzone following OPEC+’s decision to cut 1.2 million barrels per day from the market. “Despite Qatar’s departure from OPEC, the group was able to build consensus internally and effect substantial cuts,” the report stated. “This action has reassured markets of OPEC’s commitment to act as a moderator of the oil markets, providing stability and long-term oversight of prices,” the report added. “In addition, this re-establishes the availability of spare capacity among OPEC members, which would help buffer prices against unexpected supply shocks,” the report continued. Fitch Solutions Macro Research believes cuts made at the level announced will not hike up oil prices to threatening levels for the United States or emerging market economic growth. The company is forecasting Brent to average $75 per barrel next year. “President Trump’s reaction to the efforts to reduce production will be closely watched, in particular his support of embattled Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman,” the report stated. “Rhetoric from Trump is to be expected, but we believe U.S. and Saudi Arabian relations will not be diminished through this level of OPEC action,” the report added. “The Trump administration could even put a positive spin on the cuts, given that price stability will be supportive of growth in the U.S. shale patch,” the report continued. ‘We Expected a Deal’Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac) expected an output cut deal at the latest OPEC+ meeting, according to Ann Louise Hittle, vice president of macro oils at WoodMac, who stated that “the stakes were high given the excess supply the market faces in 2019.” “The complicated issues facing OPEC delayed the agreement, in what seemed like a replay of the delicate talks that led to the first OPEC/non-OPEC production cut agreement in December 2016,” Hittle said in a statement sent to Rigzone. “This time, however, rather than the talks leading up to the deal being held over months, they were largely held [over a] week,” Hittle added. The WoodMac representative said a production cut of 1.2 million barrels per day would tighten the oil market by the third quarter of 2019 and cause prices to rise back above $70 per barrel for Brent. 

OPEC Cut Was Not Easy - The move to cut 1.2 million barrels per day from the market was not easy, Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei, UAE minister of energy and industry and president of the OPEC conference, has revealed in a television interview with Bloomberg. “I think this is first of all a very responsive move from both OPEC and non-OPEC. It was not easy because of the dynamics since the summer,” Mazrouei said in the interview. “The market have asked us to take action and increase production a few months ago and we did. So to come and convince all of those countries that you need to reverse that and go and remove production again was not easy but I think the trust on the organization, the trust of the technical team, on their analysis, have led us to become responsive,” he added. The production cuts are effective as of January 2019 for an initial period of six months. The contributions from OPEC and non-OPEC will correspond to 800,000 barrels per day and 400,000 barrels per day, respectively. The next OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial meeting is scheduled to convene in Vienna, Austria, in April next year. 

Defying Trump, Saudi Arabia chooses 'Saudi first' oil policy at OPEC meeting -- President Donald Trump has told foreign leaders that "America First" means he will always put the needs of America ahead of the needs of other nations — and that they should do the same for their own country.Saudi Arabia's leadership appears to be on board with that message.Last week, Saudi Arabia disregarded Trump's public pressure campaign to keep pumping at full throttle and cut fuel costs. The kingdom instead persuaded two dozen oil producers to cut output and announced a steep drop in Saudi production over the next two months."Saudi Arabia today had a 'Saudi first' policy," Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said on Friday. Hours earlier, OPEC, Russia and several other producers agreed to take 1.2 million barrels per day off the market beginning in January.The decision marks a reversal in Saudi energy policy. Over the last six months, the Saudis ramped up production by more than 1 million bpd — a move cheered by Trump. Now, the kingdom will endeavor to cut about 900,000 bpd in just two months.On the surface, the decision looks like a stinging and risky insult to a critical ally. It comes as U.S. lawmakers are threatening to punish the kingdom after Saudi agents killed U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October. But with oil prices mired in a bear market, few commodity analysts doubted Saudi Arabia would cut production. The kingdom needs Brent crude to rise about $25 a barrel just to balance its budget, according to the International Monetary Fund.

US' Perry pushes for stable oil supply in talks with Saudi minister, Aramco CEO — US Energy Secretary Rick Perry stressed the importance of "stable supply and market values" during a meeting last week with Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih and the CEO of Saudi Aramco, the Department of Energy said Monday. The Trump administration has not yet reacted to OPEC and its non-OPEC partners' decision Friday with to cut oil production by 1.2 million b/d starting January in an effort to stabilize prices. DOE's statement about Perry's visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar did not comment on the OPEC outcome.DOE said Perry and Falih discussed this year's sharp increase in Saudi oil production and the impact it had on world markets in the wake of the US re-imposing sanctions on Iran.In Qatar, Perry met with Qatar's new energy minister Saad al-Kaabi, urging him to expand joint partnerships with the US as Qatar seeks to grow its LNG operations around the world. They also talked about Qatar Petroleum potentially increasing investment in the US energy sector.

US pushes Iraq to boost crude exports to Turkey ahead of sanctions deadline - — US Energy Secretary Rick Perry pressed Iraq's new government Tuesday to boost crude production and exports north to Turkey, as the US considers extending Baghdad's sanctions waiver, allowing it to import Iranian natural gas. In a readout of the Baghdad meeting, the Department of Energy suggested that an extension of the waiver may be tied to Iraq's ability to increase crude exports "to levels not seen since 2017." DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Perry told the Iraqi leaders that the US is "serious about its desire to help make Iraq energy independent; however, further steps are needed to improve the business climate and reduce the malign influence of Iran," DOE said. The US pushed Iraq to significantly increase crude exports, increase domestic electricity generation and decrease natural gas flaring.DOE said Perry "reiterated that it is a priority of the US government to make this happen and we stand ready to offer our assistance in achieving this goal."The US granted Baghdad a waiver last month allowing it to import natural gas and electricity from Iran in the face of chronic power shortages, especially in the oil-rich province of Basra in the south. The waiver expires December 18.US sanctions against Iran's oil customers went back into force November 5, with Iraq receiving relief for electricity imports, while eight other countries including China and India secured permission to keep importing Iranian crude at reduced levels. While rolling out the sanctions and waivers last month, the State Department touted Iraq as one of four countries -- along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia -- that were pumping oil at record levels. It was the first visit to Iraq by a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, and only the second such visit since Trump took office.

Saudi oil exports seen down 1 mln bpd in Jan from Nov levels - sources (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports are expected to drop next month by some 1 million barrels per day (bpd) from November levels, two sources familiar with the matter said on Saturday. The world’s top oil exporter is expected to ship about 7.3 million bpd in January, one of the sources said, due to softening seasonal demand and as Riyadh follows through on a global deal to cut output to prevent a build up in oil supplies. The sources did not give a figure for December oil exports. OPEC and its Russia-led allies agreed on Friday in Vienna to slash oil production by more than the market expected in a bid to shore up prices despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to reduce the price of crude. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said in Vienna this week that the kingdom’s oil exports would be less than 8 million bpd in December, down from around 8.3 million bpd in November. He also said Saudi Arabia would pump about 10.2 million bpd in January, down from about 10.7 million bpd in December. His ministry tweeted on Saturday that the decision taken by the oil exporters who met in Vienna would be “reflected in the stability and the equilibrium of the oil market.” 

Venezuela’s Oil Cuts Beat Saudi Arabia in the Worst Way - Almost a week on from OPEC’s theatrical deal with Russia and others to cut oil supply, the market just isn’t feeling it. Brent crude traded below $60 a barrel on Thursday morning, having closed last Friday at almost $62. Skepticism about the group’s ability to deliver persists, and such hopes as there are on the part of bulls rest largely on involuntary cuts from the likes of sanctioned Iran and collapsing Venezuela.The latter, in particular, hit a grim milestone last month.Since the first round of supply targets kicked in at the start of 2017, I’ve been tracking cumulative adherence by the original 11 OPEC members subject to them. In broad terms, that group held a theoretical 948 million barrels of crude oil off the market through the end of November, which is actually more than the 814 million the targets implied, for compliance of 116 percent (all data are taken from OPEC’s monthly reports, using secondary sources). Beneath this, however, the real story was that, for much of the period, Saudi Arabia, Angola and Venezuela went above and beyond to curb supply.That changed this summer, when Saudi Arabia began to raise production aggressively. In November, its output breached 11 million barrels a day, versus a target of 10.1 million, and its cumulative contribution dipped sharply to 292 million barrels withheld. Venezuela’s collapse, on the other hand, kept right on going, and its cumulative cuts jumped to 296 million barrels — surpassing those of Saudi Arabia for the first time.It is shocking that Venezuela has surpassed Saudi Arabia in absolute terms; its production was less than one-fifth that of OPEC’s de facto leader when the cuts were agreed. In terms of compliance, the picture is even starker:Venezuela stands out in the worst possible way when it comes to compliance with OPEC targets, even as Saudi Arabia has slipped below 90 percent Little wonder Venezuela was made exempt from targets in last week’s updated agreement. Not that it matters for practical purposes. There is little to stop Venezuela’s downward spiral from continuing. On Thursday, the International Energy Agency took an ax to demand forecasts for the country as its economy looks set to end 2019 at half the size it was in 2013 in real terms. If your first thought is that this frees up more supply for export, bear in mind that domestic demand fell by perhaps 80,000 to 90,000 barrels a day this year, but production is down nearly 600,000 barrels a day for the year through November. And potential U.S. sanctions over President Nicolas Maduro’s efforts to change Venezuela’s constitution could add further pressure in 2019.

Uncertainty Lingers In Oil Markets Despite OPEC Cuts -  Saudi Arabia will lower oil exports by 1 mb/d beginning in January. Sources told Reuters exports will drop to 7.3 mb/d, down from 8.3 mb/d in November.    Despite the hyped Trump-Xi truce, the trade war may only be on hold. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Sunday that tariffs would rise on March 1 if a significant deal cannot be reached. Meanwhile, the political turmoil in the UK following the cancelled parliamentary vote on the Brexit package also fed uncertainty. Financial markets started the week in the red.  Russia and other non-OPEC producers agreed to cut a combined 400,000 bpd at the OPEC+ meeting, but the reality is beginning to sink in. The cuts may only be phased in over time. Russia may only cut output by 50,000 to 60,000 bpd in January, according to Russian energy minister Alexander Novak. That could mean that actual reductions from the entire group may trail the headline figure of 1.2 mb/d in cuts. The U.S. shale industry is likely rejoicing after the successful OPEC+ meeting, which should tighten the market and push up prices. But some analysts believe the deal won’t significantly alter the shale supply picture. “I just think there's a lot of uncertainty and this is a pretty small cut,” Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' energy security and climate program, told S&P Global Platts. The duration of the deal is an open question, as is compliance. The outlook for the global economy could loom much larger for shale operators. “I don't think OPEC has the will to make the kind of cuts we'd need to make if we saw a real recession,”

Shale growth may force OPEC into another production cut in April, Citi says - OPEC may not have gone far enough to hoist oil prices through 2019 — and a weak demand outlook could prompt the need for another production cut by the cartel and its allies by spring next year, Citi's top commodities analyst said Wednesday."I think they went far enough for the time being," Ed Morse, Citi's global head of commodities research, told CNBC, describing last weekend's OPEC and non-OPEC agreement led by Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut crude output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by January."They're going to have to re-address this issue sometime next year, but I'm glad they're meeting for their sake in April, and it may be by April they're going to have to confront another cut," Morse said of the organization's next summit in Vienna.When asked about the size of this potential cut, Morse stopped short of making a call, instead pointing to the bigger picture: booming production volumes from the U.S. threatening OPEC's power to shape the oil market."I like to call it the struggle of the bear, the camel and the eagle," Morse said, referring to Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., the world's top three oil producers. "Saudi Arabia discovered that OPEC doesn't have the clout it used to have."The 15-member cartel has a current output of roughly 35 million bpd. That's just over its late 1970s level of around 30 million bpd, when global oil demand was in the 60 million bpd range, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Global demand is now in the 100 million bpd range."So by definition, they lost market clout," Morse said. The recent departure announcement by Qatar, scheduled for January 1, has added further questions as to the future of the group. "[OPEC is] now confronting the result of the higher prices that they've orchestrated, namely this incredible rebound in U.S. production which is overwhelming their efforts to deprive the world of inventory." -Ed Morse, Global head of commodities research, Citi

Analysis- Oil and gas traders fret over elevated risks in US-China trade— An unrealistic window for Chinese importers to ramp up purchases of US oil and gas, and unstable relations between the US and China have elevated the risks of US-China trades, according to market participants in China and Singapore. Commodity traders said boosting purchases of US crude oil for a 90-day period is inconsistent with the normal trading cycle for physical barrels, and for natural gas the prevailing conditions in the Asian LNG market make an immediate increase in spot procurement very difficult. In most cases, Chinese oil and gas companies will struggle with reconciling commercial interests with Beijing's diktats, and are likely to take market positions that involve significantly higher risk. Market uncertainties surged with the mid-week arrest of the chief financial officer of China's Huawei Technologies in Canada after an extradition request by the US, the latest jolt to the trade war ceasefire. Several Singapore- and Shanghai-based commodity traders said the incident forced them to reconsider any opportunities that had emerged after the trade talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last weekend. The lack of details around the agreement has not helped market confidence. Chinese oil and gas companies had to wind down exposure to US energy supplies when the trade war escalated earlier this year, resulting in disruptions to trade flows, losses and general market uncertainty. They could now be forced to ramp up trades in a short 90-day span ending March 1. This is problematic for several reasons. A Sinopec refinery typically submits its crude purchasing plan to the trading arm Unipec at least three months ahead of actual procurement, an executive with a Sinopec refinery, said. Additionally, it takes around 50-60 days for a crude cargo to be shipped from the US to China. That is at least a five-month trading cycle for importing a US oil barrel into China, not counting the amount of time taken by Unipec to conduct spot trades. A key sticking point is the 90-day window. A vessel that departs the US by end-December will barely make it to Chinese ports by the end of February when the deadline ends. But the Lunar New Year in February will mean that ports are congested and risks of delays are high.

Oil traders focus on deteriorating economic outlook rather than OPEC: Kemp (Reuters) - The weakening outlook for oil consumption coupled with rising output from U.S. shale and softer than expected U.S. sanctions on Iran have convinced most traders the market is moving into a period of oversupply. In the run up to last week's OPEC meeting in Vienna, hedge fund managers had little confidence in the organisation's ability to cut production by enough to avoid an oversupplied market next year. Fund managers sold another 32 million barrels of Brent futures and options in the week to Dec. 4, bringing total sales over the last 10 weeks to a record 360 million barrels. Funds now hold just over two long positions for every short one, down from a ratio of more than 19:1 at the end of September, and the least-bullish position for 17 months. Bearish short positions have risen to 117 million barrels, up from just 27 million at the end of September, and the largest number since June 2017. Pessimism about the outlook for crude prices was reflected by a similar collapse in sentiment towards middle distillates such as gasoil (https://tmsnrt.rs/2PtIemz ). Fund managers sold another 20 million barrels of European gasoil, bringing total sales in the last eight weeks to 82 million barrels. Funds are the least-bullish towards middle distillates since July 2017, according to an analysis of position data from ICE Futures Europe. Middle distillates are heavily geared towards the economic cycle because most distillate fuel oil is used in freight transportation (shipping, railroads, aviation, trucks), manufacturing, mining and farming. So the collapse in sentiment towards distillates is consistent with growing concerns about the outlook for the global economy in 2019. Investors' fears about the impact of trade tensions and heightened uncertainty on business investment and growth next year is darkening the outlook for distillates just as it is hitting equity markets. 

Oil extends gains after OPEC-led group seals deal to cut supply - Oil prices rose on Monday, extending gains from Friday when producer club OPEC and some non-affiliated producers agreed a supply cut of 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from January. Despite this, the outlook for next year remains muted on the back of an economic slowdown. International Brent crude oil futures were at $62.21 per barrel at 0218 GMT, up 54 cents, or 0.9 percent, from their last close. Prices surged on Friday after the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some non-OPEC producers including heavyweight Russia announced they would cut oil supply by 1.2 million bpd, with an 800,000 bpd reduction planned by OPEC-members and 400,000 bpd by countries not affiliated with the group.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.63 per barrel, up 2 cents, held back as the booming U.S. oil industry is not taking part in the announced cuts.The OPEC-led supply curbs will be made from January, measured against October 2018 output levels."Our key conclusion is that oil prices will be well supported around the $70 per barrel level for 2019," analysts at Bernstein Energy said on Monday.Despite the cuts, that was still a price forecast reduction of $6 per barrel as Bernstein reduced its crude oil demand forecast from 1.5 million bpd previously to 1.3 million bpd for 2019.U.S. bank Morgan Stanley said the cut was "likely sufficient to balance the market in 1H19 and prevent inventories from building".It added that it expected "Brent to reach $67.5 per barrel by 2Q19, down from $77.5 before."Oil prices have been pulled down sharply since October by signs of an economic slowdown, with Brent losing almost 30 percent in value.Japan, the world's third biggest economy and No.4 oil consumer, on Monday revised its third quarter GDP growth down to an annualized rate of -2.5 percent, down from the initial estimate of -1.2 percent. Meanwhile the two world's biggest economies, the United States and China, are locked in a trade war which is threatening to slow global growth and battering investor sentiment.

Oil Prices Slump on Profit-Taking After OPEC Production Curb -- Oil prices slumped on Monday, erasing some of last week’s strong gains from an agreement among major producers to curb output in the coming year, while analysts debated whether the deal is enough to rebalance the market. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 96 cents, or 1.82%, at $51.65 a barrel by 9:02 AM ET (14:02GMT). Meanwhile, Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., traded down 78 cents, or 1.26%, to $60.89. OPEC announced Friday that it will reduce overall production among its members by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) during the first six months of 2019 in an effort to stave off a global glut in supplies and prop up prices. The cartel will curb output by 0.8 million bpd from October levels, while non-OPEC allies contribute an additional 0.4 million bpd of cuts, in a move to be reviewed at a meeting in April. The agreement initially sent oil prices sharply higher. West Texas Intermediate and Brent ended the week with gains of around 3.3% and 5% respectively. U.S. bank Morgan Stanley said the cut was "likely sufficient to balance the market in 1H19 and prevent inventories from building". It added that it expected "Brent to reach $67.5 per barrel by 2Q19, down from $77.5 before." Merrill Lynch said the reduction "should lead to a relatively balanced global oil market and will likely push Brent and WTI prices back to our respective expected averages of $70 per barrel and $59 per barrel in 2019." But the bank still warned on Monday that “the surge in U.S. supply in recent months should be a reason for caution”. Along similar lines, Edward Bell of Emirates NBD bank said “the scale of the cuts ... isn't enough to push the market back into deficit” and that he expected “a market surplus of around 1.2 million bpd in Q1 with the new production levels”.

Oil Prices Settle Lower - West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for January delivery declined by $1.61 Monday to settle at an even $51 a barrel. During the early-week session, the WTI traded between a low of $50.68 and a high of $52.81. The February Brent crude oil price also ended the day $1.70 lower, settling just shy of the $60 mark at $59.97 a barrel. Barani Krishnan, senior analyst with Investing.com, told Rigzone that Monday’s drop in oil prices stems in part from a slump in the equities markets and concerns about the world economy. “Today’s play in oil is more about equities than crude, with the combination of the rout in tech and pharma stocks along with global growth, trade war and Brexit worries leading to risk aversion across the board,” Krishnan said. Additionally, Krishnan pointed out that the recent decision by OPEC members and Russia to curb output raises an important question for traders. “There’s another question which will be asked with greater resonance in the coming days and weeks and that is: are the cuts pledged by OPEC+ enough?” said Krishnan. “On the surface, 1.2 million barrels (per day) is pretty close to what the market was promised. But what the Vienna meeting also appears to have completely ignored is the sheer tsunami of U.S. supply that could come on board if you add another $5 or $10 to crude prices.” Like the WTI and Brent, reformulated gasoline (RBOB) also declined Monday. The January RBOB contract price shed nearly 7 cents to settle at $1.42 a gallon. “RBOB is taking its hit from crude as well with the crack, or margin, versus WTI down to just over $15 a barrel now, from highs above $18 when U.S. crude stood at four-year highs in early October,” Krishnan explained. “To the regular guy, the most visible clue of what’s going on would be the pump price of gasoline, which is averaging at just around $2.50 a gallon in the East Coast. That’s down 40 cents a gallon over the past three months and 22 cents in the last three weeks alone.”

Citi forecasts oil goes nowhere in 2019 as OPEC cuts and US pumps more -Citi believes international oil prices will average $60 a barrel in 2019, remaining near current levels as OPEC-led production cuts encourage U.S. drillers to put more crude on the market.  OPEC, Russia and other producers agreed on Friday to remove 1.2 million barrels per day from the market beginning in January. The move follows a more than 30 percent collapse in oil prices that saw international benchmark Brent crude fall from more than $86 a barrel to a 13-month low of $57.50 last month.Some analysts forecast the production cuts will cause Brent to rebound back toward $70 or $80 a barrel.However, Citi says an earlier round of production cuts from the so-called OPEC+ alliance has only delayed the inevitable. Rather than putting oil on a steady upward trajectory, the new supply cuts "almost certainly" set up another sell-off."OPEC+ did the work of drawing down inventories that otherwise would have to be done through a painful period for shale producers," Citi said in a research note written by a team led by Ed Morse, the firm's global head of commodities.According to the bank, "the more OPEC+ tries to support prices by withholding oil from the market, the more they give the US shale sector an out from rationing supply growth themselves." Citi says U.S. crude prices would need to hold steady around $45 a barrel in order keep American production flat. U.S. output has recently risen to an estimated 11.7 million barrels per day, making the United States the world's biggest crude oil producer. In its primary forecast, Citi sees Brent crude trading at $55 to $65 a barrel in 2019, as global oil stockpiles continue to rise through the middle of the year. If the OPEC+ production cuts fall apart, Brent could fall back into the $40s, Citi says. On the other hand, if OPEC and its partners decide to take more oil off the market, or if supply disruptions develop, Brent could rise back to $70 or $80.

Bank of America is more bullish than most on its oil price forecast for 2019 --Despite dramatic slides in the oil market, some forecasters remain positive on prices and demand going into 2019. A year ahead outlook report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch expects Brent crude to regain its recent losses in 2019 and settle at $70 a barrel. But amid mounting global uncertainty on everything from trade and monetary policy to politics, that forecast is far from consensus.  "Volatility will be high in the near future, but going into 2019, we are constructive on oil prices," Hootan Yazhari, head of global frontier markets equity research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told CNBC's Dan Murphy on Tuesday.  "We believe oil prices will resume their path back up to $70 average next year, potentially higher in the second quarter for a brief spell of time. We believe the (OPEC) cuts were sufficient," Yazhari said, predicting a "relatively balanced oil market" and stable inventories next year. But worries over the strength of crude remain rife, with other market analysts pointing to $60 barrels or lower in the coming year. Brent crude is down nearly 30 percent from its October highs of more than $86. After a dramatic summit of OPEC and non-OPEC members over the weekend that triggered an immediate boost in oil prices, the commodity has already dropped back to pre-meeting levels, falling 3.1 percent by the end of Monday. The 15-member cartel, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed with Russia to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by January to support prices amid a global supply glut and fears of waning demand.

STEO highlights: EIA cuts Brent, WTI 2019 forecasts nearly $11/b amid supply glut — The US Energy Information Administration on Tuesday reduced its forecasts for WTI and Brent spot prices in 2019 by nearly $11/b, largely due to record global output, particularly in the US, and lower-than-expected demand. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecast WTI to average $54.19/b in 2019, down $10.66/b from the agency's forecast last month, and Brent to average $61/b in 2019, down $10.92/b from last month's forecast.The dramatically reduced price forecast comes after Brent traded within a range around $17.49/b in November, its most volatile month since 2012, and WTI traded in a range around $15.98/b, its most volatile month since 2014."The implied volatility of Brent and WTI, calculated from options prices, more than doubled during the month, reflecting the market's heightened uncertainty regarding future oil supply and demand," EIA said. EIA expects that the magnitude of the recent price declines combined with the OPEC production cuts will bring 2019 supply and demand numbers largely into balance, which EIA forecasts will keep prices near current levels in the coming months."EIA's December short-term outlook largely attributes the recent decline in Brent crude oil spot prices, which averaged $65 per barrel in November, to record production among the world's largest crude oil producers and concerns about weaker global oil demand," EIA Administrator Linda Capuano said in a statement.Other highlights from the report include:

• **EIA forecasts WTI to average $65.18/b this year, down $1.61/b from last month's forecast, and Brent to average $71.40/b, down $1.72/b from last month.
• **EIA attributed recent a decline in prices to: output at or near record levels from the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia; the US issuing waivers to some of the largest purchasers of Iranian crude, including China and India, as it reimposed sanctions on November 5; and stagnant economic growth.
• **EIA forecasts US oil production to average 10.88 million b/d in 2018, up from 9.35 million b/d in 2017, and then climb to 12.06 million b/d in 2019.
• **Capuano said that the US will end 2018 as the world's largest crude oil producer.
• **EIA forecasts oil production in the Lower 48 states, which averaged 7.18 million b/d in 2017, to climb to 8.68 million b/d in 2018 and then to 9.63 million b/d in 2019. US Gulf of Mexico production, which averaged 1.68 million b/d in 2017, will climb to 1.73 million b/d in 2018 and 1.95 million b/d in 2019, EIA said Tuesday.
• **EIA called last week's agreement by OPEC, Russia and other producing countries to reduce production by 1.2 million b/d a "response to increasing evidence that oil markets could become oversupplied in 2019."
• **OPEC members produced 32.98 million b/d in November. EIA expects OPEC production to average 32.57 million b/d in 2018, down 70,000 b/d from last month's outlook, and average 31.79 million b/d in 2019, down 410,000 b/d from last month's outlook.
• **EIA expects OPEC production to average 32.06 million b/d in first-quarter 2019 and 31.8 million b/d in Q2 2019, down 300,000 b/d and 400,000 b/d, respectively, from last month's forecast.

Oil logs a modest gain as traders weigh output-cut pact, demand prospects -- Oil futures edged higher Tuesday, in the wake of a short-term disruption in Libyan output, but settled off the session's high on the back of uncertainty surrounding compliance with an oil-producer agreement to cut output, as well as concerns over a potential slowdown in energy demand. Meanwhile, in a report issued Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration reduced its oil-price forecasts for this year and next, following the recent price declines that came ahead of Friday's decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and some nonmember allies to cut production starting in January. West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery tacked on 65 cents, or 1.3%, to settle at $51.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after trading as high as $52.43. It lost 3.1% Monday to settle at $51, the lowest since Nov. 30. Global benchmark February Brent crude edged up by 23 cents, or 0.4%, at $60.20 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe after finishing Monday at $59.97, also the lowest in just over a week. Libya's national oil company has declared force majeure on exports from its El Sharara field after a weekend militia attack on the facility, The Wall Street Journal reported. Commerzbank analysts said in a note Tuesday that "just short of 400,000 barrels per day of Libyan oil are currently missing because production has been interrupted at Libya's largest oil field." On Friday, OPEC agreed to reduce its overall member production by 800,000 barrels a day from October's levels for six months, beginning in the new year. The cartel didn't specify the output cut by nonmember allies, which include Russia, but news reports pegged the nonmember cuts at 400,000 barrels a day, to bring the total reduction to 1.2 million barrels a day. "While the general OPEC+ agreement on additional supply cuts could still support the market in the months ahead, the lack of country-specific targets has the market hesitant to aggressively price in those actions,"

Oil rises more than 1 percent on OPEC-led supply cuts, trade talk hopes - Oil prices climbed by more than 1 percent on Wednesday, lifted by expectations that an OPEC-led supply cut announced last week for 2019 would stabilise markets as well as hopes that long-running Sino-American trade tensions could ease.Disruptions to Libyan oil exports after local militia seized the country's biggest oil field, El Sharara, were also buoying prices, traders said. International Brent crude oil futures were at $60.89 per barrel at 0212 GMT, up 69 cents, or 1.15 percent from their last close.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.25 per barrel, up 60 cents, or 1.2 percent.The higher prices came amid a broader increase in Asian stock markets after U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters in an interview that trade talks with China were taking place to defuse the trade disputes between the world's two biggest economies.Core to oil markets was a decision by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some non-OPEC producers including Russia last week to cut supply by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd)."OPEC production curbs will stabilise the market," ANZ bank said on Wednesday.Crude prices had lost a third of their value between early October and the announcement of the cuts. Some analysts warn, however, that the agreement may not have the effect OPEC is hoping for.

OPEC's oil production dips in November as Iranian output plunge offsets Saudi surge -- Oil production from OPEC nations dipped in November, as a sharp drop in Iranian supplies offset a surge in Saudi output to all-time highs. The group's latest monthly report comes just days after the 15-member organization reached a deal with 10 exporter nations, including Russia, to remove 1.2 million barrels per day from the market. OPEC alone will slash output by 800,000 bpd. The decision follows a plunge in oil prices since the start of October, in part due to projections that the oil market will be oversupplied next year. Slowing economic growth and financial strain in key oil-consuming nations are also raising concerns about energy demand in 2019. "After a healthy start to the year, the world economy in 2018 was marked by a rising divergence in growth trends," OPEC warned in a statement. "Rising trade tensions, monetary tightening and geopolitical challenges are among the issues that skew economic risks even further to the downside in 2019." In November, OPEC's output slipped by about 11,000 bpd to 32.965 million bpd, according to independent sources that OPEC cites in its monthly report. Saudi Arabia pumped just over 11 million bpd, with monthly production jumping by 377,000 bpd. Figures provided directly by the Saudis indicate the kingdom pumped at nearly 11.1 million bpd. That is set to plunge over the next two months. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said he expects output to drop to about 10.2 million bpd in January. The November increase from Saudi Arabia was wiped out by a 380,000 bpd plunge in Iran's output, as the nation grapples with U.S. sanctions that snapped back into place on Nov. 5. Last month, Iranian production dipped below 3 million bpd for the first time since January 2016, when international sanctions on the country over its nuclear program were lifted during the Obama administration. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait also raised output last month, but those increases were offset by declines in Iraq, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria and Venezuela. The remaining OPEC members held production roughly steady.

WTI Tumbles After Surprisingly Small Crude Draw -- Having surged overnight on the heels of a huge API-reported crude draw (don't forget the seasonal incentive to lower taxable inventories), WTI Crude has quickly faded back this morning (despite dollar weakness) as OPEC dats this morning suggests a deeper supply cut may be needed in late 2019 to balance world markets.As Bloomberg notes, even if OPEC cuts as planned, a surplus will re-emerge in late 2019... Traders remain concerned that record American oil production and shaky fuel consumption could foment a new glut.“The agreed production cuts will not be enough to ensure sustained and immediate recovery in oil prices,” consultants at Oslo-based Rystad Energy ASsaid. “However, the decision does stand as a Christmas gift to budget-setters in the U.S. shale industry, where the relentless growth in production is set to continue also for the second half of 2019 and beyond.” DOE:

• Crude -1.21mm (-3.5mm exp)
• Cushing +1.148mm (+1.1mm exp)
• Gasoline +2.09mm (+2mm exp)
• Distillates -1.475mm (+1.6mm exp)

After last week's huge draw, DOE reports a considerably smaller than expected 1.21mm barrel crude draw and a surprise distillates draw. Production has been flat at record highs for the last few weeks (remember only moves in 100k increments now), but slipped lower last week...

Oil Stays Below $52 -- Oil traded below $52 a barrel after U.S. crude inventories slid less than expected and added to concerns that the OPEC+ coalition’s output cuts won’t be enough to avert a supply glut. Futures in New York were little changed, after sliding 1 percent in the previous session. U.S. Energy Information Administration data showed inventories fell by 1.21 million barrels last week, well below the 10.2 million cited in an industry report Tuesday. Meanwhile, an OPEC report showed deeper supply cuts may be needed in late 2019 to counter a looming surplus of oil. Crude’s still in a bear market after reaching a four-year high in October as investors remain worried over supply and demand. Record American output, which is expected to boom to more than 12 million barrels a day in 2019, is threatening to overwhelm the market. The U.S. has also allowed some nations to temporarily buy Iranian oil despite the implementation of sanctions, while the unity of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is at risk. West Texas Intermediate for January delivery traded 4 cents lower at $51.11 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 8:35 a.m. in London. Prices decreased 50 cents to $51.15 on Wednesday after the stockpiles data, erasing earlier gains of as much as $1.23. Total volume traded was 44 percent above the 100-day average. Brent for February settlement lost 5 cents to $60.10 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. Futures settled 0.1 percent lower at $60.15 on Wednesday. The global benchmark crude traded at an $8.75 a barrel premium to WTI for the same month. While U.S. crude inventories declined for a second week to about 442 million barrels, they are still above the five-year average of 410 million barrels, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Stockpiles at the nation’s storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, increased for a third week to the highest since January, the EIA data showed. While production curbs agreed by OPEC and its allies are on track to balance global oil markets in the first half of next year, rising U.S. shale supplies mean they would need to almost double the cutback to prevent a new surplus in the fourth quarter, according to a report from the group. Supplies from outside OPEC, boosted by U.S. shale drillers, are poised to expand by more than global oil demand next year, at 2.16 million a day versus 1.29 million a day, the report showed. Even if the cartel restricts output to the level agreed last week, the market could tip into oversupply again during the second half of next year. 

Oil ends lower as U.S. crude supplies post smaller-than-expected decline -  Oil prices gave up earlier gains Wednesday to finish a bit lower, after U.S. government data showed domestic crude supplies declined for a second week in a row, but by much less than the market expected. The Energy Information Administration reported early Wednesday that U.S. crude supplies fell by 1.2 million barrels for the week ended Dec. 7. Supplies had also declined the week before, marking the first weekly decline in 11 weeks. However, analysts and traders, on average, expected to see a larger decline of 2.8 million barrels in crude supplies, according to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal, while the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday reported a drop of 10.2 million barrels. West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery CLF9, +0.49% fell 50 cents, or 1%, to settle at $51.15 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices, which touched an intraday high of $52.88, had pared earlier gains shortly after the release of the supply data. Global benchmark February Brent crude LCOG9, +0.23% shed 5 cents, or less than 0.1%, to $60.15 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. After Tuesday’s “mammoth drop from the API, this morning’s EIA report has yielded a much more modest draw,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData. “Refinery runs ticked a little lower, but still remain nearly half a million barrels per day above year-ago levels.” “Crude exports continue to be robust, also helping to keep inventories in check,” he told MarketWatch. “Implied demand for last week ticked higher, keeping a gasoline build in check, while encouraging a distillate draw.” The EIA reported that gasoline stockpiles climbed by 2.1 million barrels last week, while distillate stockpiles, which include heating oil, declined by 1.5 million barrels. The Wall Street Journal survey had shown expectations for supply increases of 1.8 million barrels in gasoline and 1.3 million barrels in distillate inventories.

Oil prices inch up amid US stockpile drop, signs of easing trade tensions - Oil prices rebounded in choppy trading on Thursday, with traders pointing to a report indicating that crude stockpiles are falling at a closely-watched delivery hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. Benchmark North Sea Brent crude oil was up 30 cents at $60.45 per barrel by 10:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).U.S. West Texas Intermediate light crude was 29 cents higher at $51.44.Crude futures gave up overnight gains earlier in the session, under pressure from high global inventories and a smaller-than-expected drawdown in U.S. crude stockpiles last week.U.S. crude inventories fell by 1.2 million barrels in the week to Dec. 7, disappointing some investors who had expected a decrease of 3 million barrels. The data showed stockpiles jumping by 1.1 million barrels in Cushing, the deliver point for the benchmark WTI contract.But data cited by traders indicates that stocks are now falling at Cushing.Global oil supply has outstripped demand over the last six months, inflating inventories and pushing crude oil to its lowest in more than a year at the end of November.OPEC and other big producers, including Russia, said last week they would try to trim surplus supply, agreeing to cut production by a total of 1.2 million barrels per day.That should be enough to give the market a supply deficit by the second quarter of next year, if OPEC and the other large producers stick to their deal, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report on Thursday. "The Brent crude oil price seems to have found a floor, remaining close to $60 a barrel," IEA said.

Saudis Reportedly Target US Inventories By Slashing Oil Exports - WTI prices briefly popped above $52 before fading quickly after Bloomberg reported that after flooding the US market in recent months, Saudi Arabia plans to slash exports starting in January in an effort to dampen visible build-ups in crude inventories. Bloomberg reports that, according to people briefed on the plans of state oil company Saudi Aramco, American-based oil refiners have been told to expect much lower shipments from the kingdom in January than in recent months following the OPEC agreement to reduce production Oil traders were not that impressed... And while the plan to slash Saudi exports to America may ultimately convince a skeptical oil market about the kingdom’s resolution to bring supply and demand incline, it may anger President Trump, who has used social media to ask the Saudis and OPEC to keep the taps open. Hopefully OPEC will be keeping oil flows as is, not restricted. The World does not want to see, or need, higher oil prices! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2018 We wonder how quick the response will be from POTUS - will he suddenly be convinced that MbS is guilty?

Oil prices rise as Sino-U.S. trade tensions show signs of easing (Reuters) - Oil prices climbed more than 2 percent on Thursday, after data showed inventory declines in the United States and as investors began to expect that the global oil market could have a deficit sooner than they had previously thought. OPEC’s output agreement with Russia and Canada’s decision to mandate production cuts could create an oil market supply deficit by the second quarter of next year, if top producers stick to the deal, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report. [IEA/M] U.S. crude inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for U.S. crude futures, fell by nearly 822,000 barrels in the week through Dec. 11, traders said, citing data from market intelligence firm Genscape. Brent crude LCOc1 settled $1.30, or 2.16 percent, higher at $61.45 per barrel while U.S. light crude CLc1 rose $1.43, or 2.8 percent, to end the session at $52.58 a barrel. “Other than some additional bullish statement out of the Saudis or Russians regarding strict adherence to last week’s agreement or a supply disruption somewhere around the globe, we don’t expect any headlines capable of pushing oil values much above this month’s highs even when stretching a view through year’s end,” Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note. Global oil supply has outstripped demand over the last six months, inflating inventories and pushing crude oil’s price at the end of November to its lowest in more than a year. But the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other big producers including Russia said last week they agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd). Still, oil demand growth is slowing, OPEC said. OPEC said on Wednesday that demand for its crude in 2019 would fall to 31.44 million bpd, 100,000 bpd less than predicted last month and 1.53 million bpd below what it currently produces.

Oil prices fall as investors take profits amid China economy worries --Oil prices fell on Friday after China reported slower economic growth, pointing to lower fuel demand in the world's biggest oil importer, although market sentiment was supported by supply cuts agreed last week by major crude producers.Brent crude was down 41 cents at $61.04 per barrel, on course for a decline this week of around 1 percent.U.S. light crude was 32 cents lower at $52.26."The energy complex is on the back foot this morning as a batch of soft Chinese economic data triggers a flurry of pre-weekend profit-taking," PVM Oil analyst Stephen Brennock said."This pullback provides a timely reminder that current levels of upside potential are meek at best."China, the world's No.2 economy, on Friday reported some of its slowest growth in retail sales and industrial output in years, highlighting the risks of its trade dispute with the United States.Chinese oil refinery throughput in November fell from October, suggesting an easing in oil demand, though runs were 2.9 percent above year-ago levels. Concerned by mounting oversupply, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil producers including Russia agreed last week to reduce output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), or more than 1 percent of global demand.

Oil ends lower for the week; natural gas sees biggest weekly plunge since 2016 - Oil prices fell on Friday, settling lower for the week, as a stronger dollar cut global demand for U.S.-priced commodities and a slide for the stock market sullied the risk-taking mood.Meanwhile, natural-gas futures took a plunge that left them down nearly 15% for the week — the largest such loss in nearly three years, as weather forecasts dulled prospects for demand.Oil prices had climbed Thursday as traders contemplated data showing a blip higher in monthly OPEC output even as future cuts loom, as well as a recent report of a weekly decline in U.S. crude supplies and production. Gains picked up late Thursday after a news report said Saudi Arabia plans to cut shipments to U.S. refiners to avoid an expansion of U.S. stockpiles.On Friday, West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery fell $1.38, or 2.6%, to settle at $51.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract was down 2.7% for the week. Global benchmark February Brent crude  fell $1.17, or 1.9%, to $60.28 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, down about 2.3% for the week.  U.S. stocks traded lower as signs of China’s economic slowing hit equities and raised fresh concerns about the economic giant’s thirst for oil moving forward. The U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.34% meanwhile, rose 0.6%, as growth worries and geopolitical jitters sparked haven-related flows.In its closely watched monthly oil market report, the International Energy Agency said Thursday that crude output by OPEC rose by 100,000 barrels a day on month to reach 33.03 million barrels a day in November. Saudi Arabia — the de facto head of OPEC — churned out 410,000 barrels a day to a historic high of 11.06 million barrels a day.But the agency’s report stands in contrast to OPEC’s own monthly oil market data, which was released Wednesday and showed a slight decline in the cartel’s November output despite ballooning Saudi production. Both reports come less than a week after OPEC agreed with its nonmember partner producers — led by Russia — to collectively cut crude output by 1.2 million barrels a day starting in January. OPEC is slated to curb production by 800,000 barrels a day, while Russia and nine allied producers will shoulder the remainder of the cuts.

Has OPEC+ Stabilized Oil Markets? - The OPEC+ deal put “a floor” beneath oil prices, according to the IEA’s latest Oil Market Report. The agency said that non-OPEC supply could still outgrow demand next year, expanding by 1.5 mb/d while demand may only soak up 1.4 mb/d of that additional supply. As such, OPEC+ might be forced to maintain the cuts through the end of the year. However, there are plenty of uncertainties, including the extent of losses from Iran and Venezuela, while additional outages could come from Libya or elsewhere. For now, the IEA says the production cut deal will keep prices from falling further, but it is still too early to tell if the agreement will significantly boost prices.  EIA said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook that the U.S. should average 12.1 mb/d in 2019, up sharply from a 10.9 mb/d average this year. Notably, the production estimate is mostly unchanged from previous months, even though oil prices have crashed. The EIA even lowered its expected price for Brent and WTI in 2019 by roughly $10 per barrel, but the agency clearly thinks that the production gains are mostly baked in already.   Refining figures in Asia suggest demand could be slowing down in the region, Bloomberg reports. Asian refining margins are at an eight-month low, which could be a leading indicator of slowing consumption. OECD stocks rose above the five-year average in October (the latest month for which data is available) for the first time since March.   Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are nearing a deal to restart idled oil fields in disputed territory along their shared border. The so-called Neutral Zone oil fields have the capacity to produce 500,000 bpd, but have been offline for several years. The U.S. government has leaned on both countries to resolve their differences, with an eye on shrinking supply from Iran. Chevron, which jointly operates one of the fields in Kuwait, said it maintains “readiness for a production restart when that time comes,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

OPEC's Unplanned Supply Losses Could Double Its Cut -- OPEC may be about to succeed by accident, again. Unplanned supply losses from members Iran and Venezuela could effectively double the intended cutback of 800,000 barrels a day the cartel pledged last week, according to the International Energy Agency. There’s a precedent for this: It was the Latin American country’s collapsing oil industry that accelerated OPEC’s effort to clear a supply glut in 2017. This time, U.S. sanctions on the Persian Gulf nation could amplify that effect. OPEC production may decline by 1.4 million barrels a day from October levels to 31.5 million a day during the first quarter and then slip further to 31.2 million in the second, according to the IEA’s monthly oil market report. The reduction, which the agency says is an assumption rather than a forecast, includes both the planned OPEC cutback of 800,000 barrels a day, plus involuntary losses of 600,000 barrels day in the first quarter from Iran and Venezuela -- both of whom are exempt from making voluntary cuts. In the second quarter, the pair’s reduction will rise to 900,000 barrels a day, the IEA said. If the agency’s assumptions are correct, global oil inventories could shrink substantially in the second quarter, a phenomenon that’s often accompanied by rising prices.

Market Could be Oversupplied by 2020 - The market could be quite tight in the first half of 2019 but oversupplied again by 2020, according to a new industry note from Jefferies, which was sent to Rigzone on Thursday. “The combination of OPEC+ cuts, curtailments in Canadian production and further sanctions-related declines in Iranian exports should be sufficient to drive OECD inventories back below their trailing five-year average during 1H19,” the note stated. “The market could be quite tight and the forward curve could very well shift into backwardation. We estimate the market will be undersupplied by 800,000 barrels per day in 1H if OPEC adheres to its production targets,” the note added. Jefferies warns in its note however that U.S. growth looms. “U.S. growth will almost inevitably re-accelerate in 2H19 as incremental pipeline capacity is installed in the Permian Basin. This means that by early 2020 the market could move back into oversupply,” the note stated. “By 2020 the Saudis would need to reduce their production to 9.2 million barrels per day to keep the market in balance. We are thus lowering our Brent price forecast to $65.75 per barrel from $75.00 per barrel in 2019 and to $62.75 per barrel from $70.00 per barrel in 2020,” the note added. OPEC+ production cuts are effective as of January 2019 for an initial period of six months. The contributions from OPEC and non-OPEC will correspond to 800,000 barrels per day and 400,000 barrels per day, respectively. The next OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial meeting is scheduled to convene in Vienna, Austria, in April next year. OPEC was described as “alive and well and highly relevant” following the announcement of its latest output cut deal in a Fitch Solutions Macro Research (FSMR) report. FSMR is forecasting Brent to average $75 per barrel next year. Wood Mackenzie’s Vice President of Macro Oils, Ann Louise Hittle, believes a production cut of 1.2 million barrels per day would tighten the oil market by the third quarter of 2019 and cause prices to rise back above $70 per barrel for Brent. 

Why The OPEC+ Deal Won't Cut It  - Now nearly a week removed from the OPEC+ agreement, confidence in the efficacy of the deal is becoming shaky.Immediately after OPEC+ announced cuts of 1.2 million barrels per day (mb/d), a flurry of reports from oil analysts and investment banks congratulated the group on a job well done. After all, the 1.2 mb/d figure was larger than the market had anticipated.However, reality is beginning to set in. First, the cuts might not be realized in January, despite the promise. Russia indicated that it was going to slow walk the cuts, phasing in an initial 50,000 to 60,000 bpd in reductions in January. This is significant because Russia is the main actor in the non-OPEC cohort. The non-OPEC group is expected to slash output by 400,000 bpd, but if Russia is only going to do its part gradually over the next few months, the non-OPEC cuts might not reach the promised levels anytime soon. Moreover, because there are no country-specific allotments, it will be hard to hold any producer accountable.That undermines confidence in the deal.“Compared to early last week, the outcome was rather disappointing, the whole process wasn’t convincing, and it’s still uncertain whether they will actually cut,” ABN Amro senior energy economist Hans van Cleef told Bloomberg.While oil traders are suddenly doubting the integrity of the deal, even if OPEC+ were to adhere to its promised cuts, it still might not be enough. That’s because there are other factors that could leave the market oversupplied. Cracks in the global economy are growing, demand is showing signs of strain, and supply continues to rise.The EIA just issued its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, and the agency still expects significant production growth from U.S. shale despite the downturn in prices. The EIA lowered its forecasted 2019 WTI prices by $10 per barrel from its previous report, yet it kept its supply forecast unchanged – it still thinks that U.S. oil production will rise from 10.9 mb/d in 2018 to 12.1 mb/d in 2019, despite the significant downward revision in prices.  In other words, U.S. shale production may not be slowed by the recent downturn in prices in any dramatic way, and at the same time, with its production cut agreement, OPEC+ reassured shale executives that it wouldn’t let prices fall any lower. “The US is not only the world’s largest oil producer at present, but will also remain the leading marginal producer in future,” Commerzbank said in a note.

Saudi Arabia Sets Up a Scrappy New Year With Trump -- If Friday’s last-minute deal by the OPEC-plus group sparks a big rally in oil prices, then it and Saudi Arabia, especially, can probably expect a few holiday tweets from a certain president. Judging from comments made by Khalid Al-Falih, the country’s energy minister, they seem to expect as much.OPEC says it will cut 800,000 barrels a day of production starting in January, while its 10 partner countries have pledged to take out 400,000 a day. Oil prices jumped, erasing the plunge that followed Thursday’s inconclusive meeting. Even so, Brent crude oil is still only at $63 a barrel. That could change, however, if Saudi Arabia follows through on comments made by Al-Falih at Friday’s press conference.While the group didn’t give specific quotas for each member, the overall figure implies a cut of 3 percent versus October production except for the three countries exempted (Iran, Libya and Venezuela). That would mean Saudi Arabia going from about 10.6 million barrels a day to 10.3 million. However, Al-Falih said the country produced 11.1 million barrels in November and guided for 10.2 million barrels a day in January, when the cuts are due to begin. So rather than cutting 300,000 barrels a day, Saudi Arabia may be taking out three times that amount in the near term, more than OPEC’s entire pledge.That sharp cutback looks designed to mitigate the seasonal slowdown in oil demand. While OPEC’s forecasts imply a pre-cut surplus next year of almost 1.5 million barrels a day, the figure for the first quarter is almost 1.8 million barrels a day. If Saudi Arabia held that January level for the whole quarter, and the rest of the OPEC-plus group fulfilled their obligations, then the overall cuts would almost exactly match that projected surplus, wiping it out.  Saudi Arabia’s move could push oil prices back toward the $70 or $80 level where Trump’s twitter fingers get itchy.

Free Gas Over Yemen's Skies- Saudi Jets Refueled By American Taxpayers Due To Accounting Errors - The White House wants to stay the course in Yemen even as the Senate is set to push back against US military support to the Saudi-led bombing campaign. But now a bombshell report reveals the Pentagon has been fueling Saudi and UAE jets free of charge due to "errors in accounting where DoD failed to charge" according to US defense officials. The huge significance is summarized in the opening lines of The Atlantic report which broke the story over the weekend: President Donald Trump, who repeatedly complains that the United States is paying too much for the defense of its allies, has praised Saudi Arabia for ostensibly taking on Iran in the Yemen war. It turns out, however, that U.S. taxpayers have been footing the bill for a major part of the Saudi-led campaign, possibly to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.For the entire three-and-a-half years of the program, the Pentagon never had an official servicing agreement in place with the Saudis and further never informed Congress.The vital refueling role that the US military has played in the war goes back to March 2015 and is reported to be "enormously expensive". The recipient country, in this case the Saudis, is required by law to pay the costs but the Pentagon now admits "they in fact had not been charged adequately" in an official DoD letter obtained by The Atlantic.The Pentagon is now “currently calculating the correct charges” but it's unclear if the missing funds going back years — footed by the American taxpayer — will ever be obtained especially as the DoD doesn't even know what it's owed. Information on the "accounting errors" began to emerge after Senators asked defense officials last March to account for Saudi coalition refueling costs. After eight months, just a day ahead of the Nov. 28 Senate vote to debate ending the war in Yemen, the Pentagon admitted it could answer this question.  Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Atlantic that likely "tens of millions of dollars" worth of fuel was supplied to the Saudi coalition for free. However, this figure (again which the Pentagon says it can't account for) is possibly in the hundreds of millions, considering the following: Records provided by the Defense Logistics Agency this March indicated that since the start of fiscal year 2015 (October 2014), more than 7.5 million gallons of aerial refueling had been provided to the UAE, and more than 1 million gallons to the Saudis. Those figures were for all aerial refueling, not necessarily only related to operations in Yemen.

Warring Sides in Yemen Agree to Truce in Key Port City - NYT— Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to a cease-fire in the crucial port city of Hudaydah, the United Nations chief said on Thursday, announcing the biggest step toward peace in years for a war that has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.The Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels have agreed to withdraw their forces from Hudaydah, the main conduit for humanitarian aid entering Yemen, and to implement a cease-fire in the surrounding province, Secretary General António Guterres told reporters.He made the announcement in Rimbo, Sweden, at the end of a week of negotiations intended to pave the way for full peace talks. Amid smiles and handshakes, representatives from the two sides also agreed to a prisoner exchange involving as many as 15,000 people, and to allow a humanitarian corridor into the city of Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city. They agreed to meet again in January.The terms of the deal announced by Mr. Guterres were vague in places, with talk of a “mutual redeployment” to stop the fighting in Hudaydah, and a “leading role” for the United Nations in the city. The United Nations is due to oversee the withdrawal of all combatants from the city within 21 days, but there was little detail about how that will happen.Although the agreement offered a glimmer of hope for a conflict whose dire toll has drawn global outrage, numerous earlier peace efforts in Yemen have quickly crumbled, and analysts warned that this one required urgent, concerted international support to save it from a similar fate.

Mohammed bin Salman, Regional Menace - Hisham Melhem has written a searing denunciation of Mohammed bin Salman’s disastrous foreign policy record and his destabilizing domestic power grabs. Here he calls out the crown prince’s responsibility for the destruction and starvation of Yemen: But the culprit responsible in the main for condemning the country once known as Arabia Felix for an agonizing slow death is Saudi Arabia. For this reason alone, Mohammed Bin Salman should be boycotted by the democracies of the world. The war on Yemen has been the crown prince’s signature policy, and it was the very first thing that he did after he was made defense minister by his father. The reckless decision to intervene and the stupid determination to persist in an unwinnable war told us everything we needed to know about Mohammed bin Salman’s judgment and competence a long time ago, but unfortunately it took several more years and many more outrages and crimes for a lot of people to catch on that he was a menace and a war criminal rather than a reform-minded visionary. It isn’t surprising that someone as ignorant and hapless as Jared Kushner has been taken in by Mohammed bin Salman, but what is everyone else’s excuse? Many American policymakers and politicians have downplayed and whitewashed Saudi coalition crimes in Yemen because of our government’s involvement in the disaster, and some of them are so obsessed with Iran that they have been prepared to ignore or explain away any number of atrocities as long as they can claim that opposing Iran is the goal. Mohammed bin Salman hasn’t had many successes in the last few years, but he did know which buttons to push to get credulous Western pundits, businessmen, and politicians to fawn over him as if he were Ataturk reborn. To their lasting discredit, the crown prince’s fan club were more concerned with “rooting” for his success than they were about the lives of Yemeni civilians and the rights of his many jailed, tortured, and murdered critics. Every puff piece profile of Mohammed bin Salman has been sure to mention that he permitted women to drive, but there have not been nearly as many articles talking about the torture of women’s rights activists detained by the Saudi government: Following the interrogations, sources said, the women showed physical signs of torture, including difficulty walking, uncontrolled shaking of the hands, and red marks and scratches on their faces and necks. At least one of the women attempted to commit suicide multiple times, the sources said.

MbS Tries to Restart the Lebanese War - The record of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) as de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia has included a trail of regional destabilization. Foremost on this record has been an air war in Yemen that has turned that nation into a humanitarian disaster. Other entries on MbS’s foreign affairs resumé have included extraterritorial reprisals against domestic critics (most notably the murder in a consulate in Turkey of Jamal Khashoggi) and an attempt to foment a governmental crisis in Lebanon by detaining its prime minister and coercing him into a short-lived resignation. Now the Lebanese-American journalist Hisham Melhem reports another attempt by MbS to destabilize Lebanon—one that, if successful, would involve nothing less than restarting the Lebanese civil war that raged from 1975 until the end of the 1980s. MbS reportedly tried to drum up interest in both Washington and Beirut in a scheme to arm the Lebanese Forces, the Christian-dominated Lebanese political party that, despite its name and its history during the civil war as a militia, has renounced violence and no longer has a military wing. The purpose of such arming would be to turn the party into a lethal opponent of Hezbollah. MbS failed to get support for his project, but that did not stop him from a parallel effort to interest Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in arming Palestinians in Lebanon to make them combatants in a fight against Hezbollah. Abbas politely rejected the proposal. The Lebanese civil war had significant negative repercussions beyond Lebanon’s boundaries, including on U.S. interests. The world, the region, and the United States do not need that war to resume. External actors had major effects on the war, some positive. Saudi Arabia, then ruled by King Fahd, played a key role in brokering the power-sharing agreement, signed in the Saudi city of Taif, that brought most of the fighting in Lebanon to an end.

How a chilling Saudi cyberwar ensnared Jamal Khashoggi - When Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, he didn’t know he was walking into a killing zone. He had become the prime target in a 21st-century information war — one that involved hacking, kidnapping and ultimately murder — waged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his courtiers against dissenters. How did a battle of ideas, triggered by Khashoggi’s outspoken journalism for The Post, become so deadly? That’s the riddle at the center of the columnist’s death. The answer in part is that the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other countries that supported Saudi counter-extremism policies helped sharpen the double-edged tools of cyberespionage that drove the conflict toward its catastrophic conclusion in Istanbul.  Ground zero in this conflict was the Center for Studies and Media Affairs in Riyadh, run by Saud al-Qahtani, a smart, ambitious official in the royal court who played Iago to his headstrong, sometimes paranoid boss. Qahtani and his cyber colleagues worked at first with an Italian company called Hacking Team, and then shopped for products produced by two Israeli companies — NSO Group and its affiliate, Q Cyber Technologies — and by an Emirati firm called DarkMatter, according to many knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. Gradually, Qahtani built a network of surveillance and social-media manipulation to advance MBS’s agenda and suppress his enemies. For the Saudis, as for Russian hackers in their assault on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the information space became a zone of warfare. The weapons of defense and offense became interchangeable. As one European intelligence official told me ruefully: “The tools you need to combat terrorism are the same ones you need to suppress dissent.” The Saudis pushed hard on this double throttle. “Every new surveillance tool has a potential for abuse. That’s why in this country, we have a robust system of law and even a special court to oversee how they are used. In places with fewer legal protections for individuals and no real oversight from other parts of government, these tools are easily abused, and that should concern us all.”

Iran Confirms Pompeo's Charge Of Testing New Ballistic Missile "Capable Of Hitting Europe" - Iranian media has quoted a senior Revolutionary Guards commander on Tuesday as confirming Iran had recently carried out a ballistic missile test, which is the first time the country has owned up to allegations made by US officials previously this month. The confirmation appeared in the semi-official Fars News Agency and is the first time Iran affirmed charges made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who earlier this month said Iran had test-fired “a medium range ballistic missile that is capable of carrying multiple warheads.” Pompeo made the charge on December 1st while calling on Iran "to cease immediately all activities relating to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons." The "senior IRGC commander" did not specify precisely what type of missile had been tested, nor the range or capabilities. Though Pompeo's identifying it as a "medium-range" missile means it would be capable of hitting southeastern EU states, according to recent reports. Despite US condemnation, Iranian leaders have remained defiant after the US pullout of the 2015 JCPOA last May. Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ airspace division, told Iranian media, “We will continue our missile tests and this recent action was particularly significant.” And he added: “The reaction of the Americans shows that this test was very important for them and that’s why they were shouting.”The IRGC airspace division commander further said Iran carries out out up to 50 missile tests a year, and that it would continue to doing so; however, he denied pursuing nuclear-capable missiles and described the program as "defensive" in nature.

Lira Tumbles After Erdogan Says Turkey Will Launch New Military Operation In Syria "In Days" - The Turkish Lira tumbled to session lows after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey will start a new military operation in Syria east of the Euphrates river in northern Syria in a "few days". "It is time to realize our decision to wipe out terror groups east of the Euphrates," Erdogan said in a speech at the Turkish Defense Industry Summit held at the presidential complex in Ankara on Dec. 12."We will start the operation in east of the Euphrates in a few days to save it from the separatist terrorist organization," Erdoğan added, referring to the YPG. "Turkey's target is never the U.S. soldiers, but rather the members of the terror group."Turkey has repeatedly threatened to attack Kurdish militants in the region, who are backed by the U.S. but viewed by Turkey as an extension of a terrorist organization, the PKK.The Pentagon had announced on Dec. 11 that American observation posts in northern Syria, meant to prevent altercations between the Turkish army and US-supported YPG, have been erected, despite Ankara’s request to scrap the move. The Turkish army since 2016 has already launched two military operations in Syria, the last of which saw Ankara-backed Syrian rebels take the border city of Afrin from the YPG in March.the United States has long been complained that tensions between Turkey and the SDF, of which the YPG is the backbone, have at times slowed down progress on fighting the ISIL.In the same speech, Erdoğan also slammed the new US plan for 'protecting terrorists, not Turkey.'"There is no Daesh threat in Syria any longer," Erdoğan said  accusing the U.S. of "delaying tactics" regarding its promise to clear the northeastern Syrian town of Manbij from YPG members.  "It is clear that the purpose of U.S. observation points in Syria is not to protect our country from terrorists but protect terrorists from Turkey," he noted.

“Unacceptable”: Pentagon Warns Against Turkish Invasion of Syria  — The latest in months of such threats, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday that Turkish forces will invade northeastern Syria “within a few days,” aiming to clear all territory held by the Kurdish YPG east of the Euphrates River. This is virtually all of the territory east of the Euphrates within Syria. The Pentagon responded to Erdogan’s threat by saying any Turkish invasion would be “unacceptable” and a grave concern to the US military forces present in Syria. Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson warned that the war against ISIS is not over and the Kurds are a “committed partner” against them.  Kurdish officials have warned that a Turkish invasion would derail their fight against ISIS further to the south. Early in the Kurdish offensive against ISIS, they’d also had to withdraw for a time because of Turkish threats.  Turkey has repeatedly attacked Kurdish territory in Syria throughout the Syrian War, and Erdogan had previously insisted that the Kurds could hold no land west of the Euphrates. Now, he is vowing to clear out all land east of the Euphrates as well. But Erdogan has threatened to attack this area a lot of times, without having done so before. US officials have made efforts to placate him with promises of observation posts on the border, though Erdogan is now accusing the US of building such posts to protect the “terrorists” and not Turkey.

15,000 Syrian Rebels Ready to Back Turkish Military Against US-Backed Forces — Up to 15,000 Syrian rebels are ready to join a Turkish military offensive against US-backed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, but no date has been set for the operation, a spokesman for the main Turkish-backed Syrian rebel group said on Thursday, reported Reuters. #Infographic: More than 1.5 million #Syrians are now living with permanent, war-related impairments. READ: http://ow.ly/8l7f30l7Z47 Israeli Soldiers Raid Palestinian News Agency  — Israeli troops have raided the offices of the Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) in the occupied West Bank, injuring several journalists.The soldiers fired tear gas into WAFA’s building in Ramallah on Monday, preventing the staff from leaving or returning to their offices, the news agency reported.It said a number of journalists sustained injuries, including teargas inhalation, during the raid, while Israeli troops also pushed and shoved two photographers and hurled profanities at them.WAFA said the Israeli army confiscated security camera footage from the building during the incident.  The army has not yet commented on the purpose of the raid.

China's Mass Detentions And Indoctrination Of Muslims Will Backfire Spectacularly -  In shocking testimony the State Department informed senators earlier this week that China has detained at least 800,000 Muslim minorities in internment camps, especially located in the north-western province of Xinjiang, which we've documented multiple times before.  "The U.S. government assesses that since April 2017, Chinese authorities have indefinitely detained at least 800,000 and possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Khazakhs, and other members of Muslim minorities in internment camps," Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Tuesday. Based on the sheer magnitude of the allegation — that China has "disappeared" people in numbers in the millions — one would think the headline would elicit wall-to-wall media coverage, but it hasn't. "Reports suggest that most of those detained are not being charged with crimes and their families have little to no information about their whereabouts," Busby testified."Former detainees who have reached safety have spoken of relentless indoctrination and harsh conditions," Busby told the committee. "For example, praying and other religious practices are forbidden." He noted: "The apparent goal is to force detainees to renounce Islam and embrace the Chinese communist party."But here's the essential question no one is asking... could this backfire in spectacular fashion? Could China one day face — even if years or decades from now — an uncontrollable and swelling militant Islamic insurgency seeking revenge on Communist Beijing? Could China's brutal and unprecedented crackdown fuel the future rise of an Islamic State of Xinjiang?

Human Rights Groups Slam Google for “Aiding China’s Censorship and Surveillance”  — In an open letter addressed to Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, a coalition of human rights groups and advocates are raising alarm about the company “actively aiding China’s censorship and surveillance regime” with its work on a search engine project called Dragonfly. The letter (pdf) came ahead of Pichai’s Tuesday morning testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Google’s data collection, use, and filtering practices. His prepared remarks (pdf) read, “I’m incredibly proud of what Google does to empower people around the world, especially here in the U.S.” Digital rights defenders, meanwhile, are concerned about the company’s plans to launch a censored search engine in China, warning that it “is likely to set a terrible precedent for human rights and press freedoms worldwide.”Signed by 61 groups—including Amnesty International, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), and Human Rights Watch—as well as 11 individuals that include NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the letter points to a series of reports from The Intercept that detail how the project “would facilitate repressive state censorship, surveillance, and other violations affecting nearly a billion people in China.”As Ryan Gallagher’s latest report for the outlet, published Monday night, outlined: “A prototype for the censored search engine was designed to blacklist broad categories of information about human rights, democracy, and peaceful protest. It would link Chinese users’ searches to their personal cellphone number and store people’s search records inside the data centers of a Chinese company in Beijing or Shanghai, which would be accessible to China’s authoritarian Communist Party government.” Acknowledging the Chinese government’s internment camps for Muslim ethnic groups in the autonomous northwest territory of Xinjiang, Amnesty International business and human rights adviser William Nee noted in an op-ed published Tuesday that “Dragonfly search will almost certainly reinforce and exacerbate the persecution and discrimination against ethnic minorities and Muslims in China.”

Chinese Imports From The US Plummet 25% As Trade War Takes Toll- In the latest confirmation that global trade war and shifting supply chains are taking their toll on China, resulting in growing economic turmoil, overnight Beijing reported that growth in China’s exports decelerated meaningfully to 5.4% yoy in November, the lowest print since April 2018, half the consensus estimate of 9.9% and far below October's 15.6% print; at the same time import growth tumbled to just 3.0% yoy, a huge miss to the 14% Wall Street estimate and an even bigger drop from October's 20.8% print. In sequential terms, exports contracted 2.8% M/M and imports declined 6.1% M/M, reversing October's strong 2.9% gain; as a result of the disproportional drop in imports, China’s trade surplus widened to $44.7 billion from $34 billion. That was the highest this year. The notable deceleration in headline trade growth was primarily due to a very high base (i.e. exports up 6% M/M and imports up 7% in November last year). Notwithstanding, sequential momentum was pretty weak. In terms of exports to major destinations, growth decelerated broadly, with exports to the EU slowing the most to +6.0% yoy in November (from +14.6% yoy in October), while exports to the US slowed to +9.8% yoy in November (from +13.2% yoy in October), supported by continued front-loading ahead of potential tariff increases. Exports to Japan increased +4.8% yoy in November, down from +7.9% yoy in October. For major EMs, exports to ASEAN slowed meaningfully to +5.1% yoy in November following several months of double-digit growth. Commenting on the geographic breakdown, Goldman analyst Zhennan Li said that "the notable contraction in imports was broadly consistent with weakening exports in November from Korea and Taiwan to China. Weaker-than-expected exports in November could reflect the faster than expected fading impact from front-loading ahead of tariffs levied on $200bn Chinese goods starting in late September (likely to be increased to 25% next year). With the waning of this tailwind, we expect exports to resume modest momentum in the coming months, which would weigh on overall growth." But the most notable, and politically-relevant observation by far, was the sharp plunge in Chinese imports from the US, which tumbled 25% in November from a year earlier: this was the single biggest monthly decline since January 2016 when China's economy and capital markets were reelilng in the aftermath of the Yuan devaluation and Shanghai Composite bubble bursting.

Chinese Auto Sales Accelerate Historic Collapse, Set For First Annual Decline In 30 Years - Progress in the United States/China trade war seems to be happening at just the right time. The automobile industry in China has been crippled, partly as a result of this trade war, partly due to the ongoing domestic economic slowdown in the mainland, and absent major subsidies - which don't appear to be coming - the outlook for the rest of 2018 and 2019 is not promising. The collapse has been historic and according to new data, continued through November. November data confirmed a continuation of the ugly trends that we discussed last month. For instance, passenger vehicle wholesales were down 16.1% on the year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. This data includes sedans, SUVs and crossover utility vehicles. November vehicle wholesales were also down well into the double digits, dropping 13.9% to 2.55 million units year-over-year. Total retail passenger vehicles fell 18% on the year and SUV sales fell 20.6% year-over-year to 854,289 units, according to the Passenger Car Association. As a result, CICC now expects China's full year production and sales to drop more than 5% year-over-year for 2018. This would be the first annual decline in Chinese car sales in nearly three decades.

China’s trade data wasn’t pretty — and analysts say the worst is yet to come - China's trade growth slowed sharply in November. And it may be just the beginning of troubles for the world's second largest economy. Total exports grew 5.4% from a year earlier last month, the General Administration of Customs said Saturday, marking the slowest pace in eight months and less than half of the 15.6% increase in October. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast a 10% increase. Import growth, meanwhile, dropped to 3% during the same period from 21.4% in the previous month. The slump was marked by decreased shipments of oil, as well as major raw materials like iron ore and coal. "Trade growth slumped in November, pointing to a worsening economy in coming months," analysts at Nomura wrote in a recent research note, adding they expect growth the slow "significantly" by the second half of next year. The trade numbers are just the latest in a string of recent data pointing to a slowing economy. As manufacturing growth slowed to a near standstill in the three months that ended in September, gross domestic product grew at its slowest pace in nearly a decade. And the Shanghai Composite has shed nearly a quarter of its value this year. But aside from an apparent downswing in front-loading, or companies rushing orders to avoid further duties, there are few signs that ongoing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing were the culprit. In fact, Chinese shipments to the US rose at a slower pace but still grew 9.8% on the year in November and brought its monthly trade surplus to a record-high $35.55 billion. The trade data instead appears to reflect a separate list of risks the Chinese economy faces, including mounting concern in the credit and property sectors and signs that economic growth is decelerating globally. "It is worth noting, though, that while growth in exports also slowed, this reflected unflattering base effects and softer global growth rather than US tariffs," said Chang Liu, an economist at Capital Economics. Still, a prolonged trade conflict could exacerbate the slowdown, noted HSBC economist Julia Wang. "Ordinary exports outside of supply chains also held up strongly," she said. "But in the event that the tariff war drags on, there could be further impact on global growth, which could weigh on ordinary export growth in 2019."

Xi walks a trade war tightrope - President Xi Jinping faces a strategic dilemma amid mounting domestic concerns that his state-centric agenda is setting China on a collision course with the United States. Concerns are surfacing that this will ultimately hurt the world second-largest economy’s already fledging growth. In an unusual move, vocal pro-market voices are challenging Xi’s strategy as the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the opening up of the country. This faction is calling for renewed reform impetus, which was inspired by Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. Yet in a rare admission, Xi acknowledged divisions within his own staff during “small talk” with Trump over dinner at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires on December 1, when the two leaders agreed on a fragile trade truce. When Trump joked about the fact that his team was made of “different people with different views,” Xi smiled and replied “Yeah, I have the same thing across my table,” according to Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, who attended the meeting. This anecdote shows that differences have erupted even at the helm of the regime over how to manage ongoing trade talks and the economy. “The trade war instills anxiety. Since summer, there is a realization that China faces a major risk,” Yuan Ding, the dean of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), in Shanghai said. Washington’s decision to slap tariffs on Chinese exports worth more than US$200 billion in September sent a shockwave through Beijing. It also reignited an old divide within the CCP, pitting pro-market reformers and supporters against those favoring a more socialist approach in line with Xi’s agenda. 

Boeing to Open Its First 737 Plant in China Under Shadow of a Trade War - Boeing Co. is poised to open its first 737 finishing plant in China, underscoring the company’s commitment to the world’s largest aircraft market amid simmering trade tension. The Chicago-based planemaker will inaugurate its completion and delivery center in Zhoushan, 90 miles southeast of Shanghai, on Saturday, after more than a year of construction. The facility marks a rare industrial foray outside of the U.S. for Boeing and a joint venture with state-owned planemaker Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd.While the plant was sent in motion before U.S. President Donald Trump was elected, the ribbon-cutting risks being overshadowed by his tit-for-tat on duties with China on products ranging from cars, machinery to pork and soybeans.About one of every four jets that Boeing builds is bound for China, while the country’s airlines are the biggest buyers of the 737, the manufacturer’s largest source of profit. China is expected to need about 7,700 commercial planes over the next two decades to connect an increasingly mobile middle class. That represents a $1 trillion market opportunity for Boeing, Airbus SE and homegrown rivals like Comac. Boeing, the largest U.S. exporter, has urged both governments to resolve their trade differences and protect aerospace, which generates about an $80 billion annual trade surplus for the U.S.

Why Trump's trade war is pushing China to become smarter and stronger, faster --It was hilarious to watch world leaders jockey for position for the “family photo” at the G20 summit in Argentina last week. Wielding huge power and bulging with oversized egos, these normally self-assured individuals behaved like primary school kids on their first day, scrambling to stand next to someone they like.  So, the big meeting between President Xi Jinping and Trump was always going to produce a result. About the only thing we are sure of now is that there will be a tariff truce until March – but that is just what Trump wants; it gives the other side enough pressurised breathing space to move its position without losing face. And move China must. The nation has been caught short with Trump’s attack on its terms of trade, if only because it found an echo around the world. The problem with moving is that capitalism with Chinese characteristics is very different from, well, capitalism. It demands state control over economic activity. Even in some private and foreign companies in China, party organisations have demanded to have their say on business operations and investment decisions.China’s iron-handed non-tariff barriers to foreign companies have resulted in the development of domestic digital giants, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent among them. They easily rival their Western counterparts – but at a cost. Brands like Huawei are losing ground because of their perceived links to the state.New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and the United States have blocked Chinese investment on national security grounds. Anything remotely Chinese is suspect. CK Group, controlled by Li Ka-shing’s family and now incorporated in the Cayman Islands, was refused an acquisition in Australia last month. It is increasingly obvious that the two economic systems are like oil and water – they don’t mix. So, what does a solution look like? It was no coincidence that the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (the son of Nafta) was signed as soon as Trump arrived in Argentina. Could it be a blueprint for a China deal? If only it was that easy, as May is finding out with Brexit.

Operation Z machine- China’s next weapon in the nuclear ‘arms race’ - Deep in the heart of southwest China’s mountainous Sichuan province, the military is building a machine to simulate thermonuclear explosions on an unprecedented scale. It’s been described as a Chinese version of America’s “Z machine” – formally known as the Z Pulsed Power Facility – a giant wheel-like device developed by the United States to see how particles react under extreme radiation and magnetic pressure. Z machines have been used in the development of nuclear weapons, from conventional warheads to the pure fusion bomb – a hydrogen bomb that can in theory be made in any size, cost a fraction of today’s nuclear stockpile and burn “cleanly” without producing radioactive fallout. And for decades, the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has led the way in the field. But now Chinese researchers are trying to build a machine that will produce much more electricity to create much more extreme environments for testing weapons, allowing scientists to delve deeper into the nuclear unknown. The machine is being built for the military by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics at China’s nuclear weapons development base in the city of Mianyang and is expected to be up and running in a few years, according to a Beijing-based nuclear physicist. It is designed to produce about 60 million joules of energy in an instant – roughly 22 times the 2.7 million joules generated at the Sandia facility.

China CPI Misses; PPI Inflation Is Lowest In Two Years - One day after China reported the worst trade data in over half a year, with the trade war with Washington finally hitting exports hard, which rose only 5% in November or half the Wall Street forecast of 9.9%...... while import growth tumbled to just 3%, far below the 14% Wall Street estimate even as Chinese imports from the US plunged  25% in November from a year earlier, the single biggest monthly decline since January 2017 when China's economy and capital markets were reeling in the aftermath of the Yuan devaluation and Shanghai Composite bubble bursting...... on Sunday the bad news continued, when Beijing reporting that CPI inflation slowed to just 2.2% yoy in November, below the 2.4% estimate and down from 2.5% in October, while PPI inflation decelerated further to 2.7% yoy in November, from 3.3% in October.  In sequential terms, headline CPI prices declined 1.5% in November, down notably from an increase of 3.5% in October.Among major subcategories, inflation in fresh vegetables dropped to 1.5% yoy in November from 10.1% yoy in October, with a meaningful sequential contraction. The decline in pork prices slowed slightly further to -1.1% yoy in November from -2.3% yoy. Sequentially pork prices increased for the sixth consecutive month, although the pace of increase moderated slightly in November.At the same time, non-food CPI inflation also slowed to 2.1% yoy in November from 2.4% yoy, primarily on what Goldman described as a high base effect (non-food prices up 3.4% mom s.a. ann. in November 2017), with prices down very slightly by 0.3% mom s.a. ann. Inflation in fuel costs went down markedly to 12.6% yoy in November from 22.0% yoy in October, while core inflation (headline CPI excluding food and energy) was unchanged at 1.8% yoy November. Inflation in medicine and medical care, which has been a major driver of the trend in core inflation in recent months, stabilized at 2.6% yoy in November, with a halt to its downward trend since September 2017. Meanwhile, wholesale price PPI inflation moderated for the fifth consecutive month to 2.7% yoy in November, the lowest since November 2016 (headline PPI inflation turned positive in September 2016). This implies an annual rate of -1.8% (s.a.) in November, the first sequential decline since June 2017. Inflation in the petroleum industry decelerated the most, and inflation in ferrous/nonferrous metals and chemicals also moderated notably, though somewhat offset by a pickup of inflation in coal mining industry.

Japan GDP Tumbles After Biggest CapEx Collapse Since Financial Crisis - In a world where economic growth is rapidly slowing down, and in many case contracting outright, the latest news out of Japan will hardly boost confidence that an economic recovery is just around the corner. Moments ago Japan's Cabinet Office reported that the already contracting Q3 GDP was far worse than initially estimated, printing at -2.5% Q/Q annualized, below the -2.0% expected, and more than twice as bad as the original estimate of -1.2%. On a sequential basis, nominal GDP declined 0.7%, below the 0.5% consensus estimate.While private consumption declined -0.2% Q/Q, slightly worse than the -0.1% expected.....it was business spending that tumbled, plunging -2.8%, far worse than the -0.2% initial estimate, and worse than the -1.8% consensus estimate.  It was also the biggest QoQ drop in business spending since the financial crisis.  The capex slump was triggered by a series of typhoons that disrupted supply chains and a quake that knocked out power in northern Japan. Still, economists expect the impact of those one-time factors will fade, and growth should rebound in 4Q, with October industrial output data suggesting the economy rode out the 3Q bumps. Then again, it is also possible that Japan's economy has been gripped by the broader contraction resulting from the trade war between the US and China.Whether Q4 GDP prints green, or Japan enters a technical recession, Bloomberg economists admit that further out a mild slowdown in Japan's growth is expected next year, just as the BOJ is forced to taper its QE even more. And with Japan's GDP declining even more, this means that under the "independent" eye of Kuroda, and the watchful eye (and lower colon) of Abe, The Bank of Japan's balance sheet (553.6 trillion yen as on November 10th ) is now even larger than Japan’s annualized nominal seasonally-adjusted GDP.

Japanese government rams through new immigration law - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has pushed through legislation that will ease Japan’s highly restrictive immigration policies. The law passed the lower house last week and the upper house on Saturday, despite stalling tactics by the opposition parties. It will come into effect next April.While portrayed as a “liberalisation” of existing policy, the law reflects concerns within ruling circles over the economic impact of Japan’s declining workforce. The opposition parties have criticised the legislation’s vague wording and alleged lack of safeguards, saying it will lead to an influx of cheap labour.The law is aimed at attracting semi-skilled workers to Japan. From next year to 2025, half a million overseas workers will be permitted to work in areas of labour shortage and stay as long as five years, with the possibility of qualifying for an additional five-year period.Changes implemented in April mean that skilled workers and professionals can reduce the time needed to acquire permanent residency from 5 years to either 3 or 1, based on income, experience and job description.Japan has historically and consistently maintained strict policies against immigration, making the acquisition of citizenship, and even permanent residency, difficult for low-skilled workers who cannot prove ethnic Japanese descent. The policy of Jus sanguinis (“right of blood”) in granting citizenship means that even a child born in Japan will not become a citizen unless at least one parent is ethnically Japanese and a citizen. In addition, foreign-born residents of Japan often have been subject to persistent xenophobia and discrimination in job hiring, wages and political rights, with little effort made by the government to assist with language training and other support.

Where India quietly watches China at sea - India’s Andaman Islands are where stone-age warfare meets 21st century weapons technology. On November 16, John Allen Chau, an American Christian missionary, was killed in a hail of arrows fired by aboriginal Sentinelese tribesmen as he tried to land on North Sentinel island to spread his faith. The island, one of the remotest and most isolated islands in the Andaman archipelago, is a no-go territory even for Indian administrators, but was suddenly – if not fleetingly – in the global media spotlight due to the US proselytizer’s demise. But there is a bigger hidden story in the Andamans, one with a modern geo-strategic twist. On that same chain of remote islands, situated between Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, India quietly maintains one of its newest and best-equipped military bases. From there, it monitors among other things the movements of Chinese submarines patrolling the entrance to the Malacca Strait shipping chokepoint while also eavesdropping on their radio traffic, according to sources familiar with the situation. The Andamans, along with the nearby Nicobar Islands, form an Indian union territory run from New Delhi. It is home to what is appropriately called the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the Indian military’s first and only tri-service command. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands in regional relief. Map: FacebookHeadquartered at Port Blair, the main town on the islands, the command was established in 2001 to safeguard India’s strategic interests in the waters east of the Subcontinent and coordinates the activities of the navy, army and air force as well as the coast guards in the eastern Indian Ocean. The main bases are on the larger Andamans, while there is a naval air station on the Nicobars not far from the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Now, as China expands its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, the Andamans have become a new maritime frontline in the increasingly pitched geopolitical rivalry between the two Asian giants.

India Stock Futures Tumble After Central Bank Head Unexpectedly Resigns In Government Spat -  India’s central bank governor Urjit Patel unexpectedly announced his resignation on Monday following a tense stand-off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over the bank’s independence.In a statement on the Reserve Bank of India’s website, Patel said that "on account of personal reasons, I have decided to step down from my current position effective immediately." He stepped down from a position he held since September 2016, when he was selected to replace Raghuram Rajan.  The Oxford-trained Patel, who had tried to stay away from the spotlight, was initially seen playing along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he backed a ban on high-value currency notes in November 2016. Since then, he has waged a war to get India’s struggling banking system in order and punish errant borrowers who have stopped servicing their debt even though they have the ability to pay.His exit comes at a time when India, which is closing in on Italy to become home to banks with the worst bad-loan ratio among major economies, is delivering a bitter pill to resuscitate its banking sector. Earlier this year, the RBI introduced new rules forcing lenders to declare a delinquent borrower even if payments were overdue by a day. That was aimed at easing mounting bad loans, particularly from the power sector. Patel also moved in to ring-fence weak state-run banks. Currently, a total of 12 banks -- 11 in the public sector and one in the private sector-- are under the so-called prompt corrective action framework that places curbs on lending, expanding branch network and dividend distribution. The government wanted the RBI to relax the rules so banks can lend more easily and keep the economic engines firing ahead of a general election next year. But the RBI wants these banks to be slowly nursed back to health.  India's government wanted the RBI to relax the rules so banks can lend more easily and keep the economic engines firing ahead of a general election next year. But the RBI wants these banks to be slowly nursed back to health. According to the central bank, it needs to be independent so that loan losses of banks aren’t swept under the rug by compromising supervisory and regulatory standards.

South African Group Calls on Blacks to Kill White Women, Children, Their Pets - South Africa has been roiled in a political crisis for months amid Pretoria's plans to force white farmers to give up their homes and farms as soon as next year, in accordance with government efforts to amend the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation. Black First Land First leader Andile Mngxitama has been accused of hate speech following the emergence of a clip showing him openly threatening to kill South African whites and their pets during a rally over a row with a business magnate, the country's national media have reported.  In a speech over the weekend, the BLF leader threatened that he and his "army" would kill white people. "We'll kill their children, we'll kill their women, we'll kill their dogs, we'll kill their cats, we'll kill anything that comes before us," he said. Mngxitama had his Twitter account suspended while attempting to backtrack on his comments, tweeting that "If you Kill black people. Will kill you too!!!" [sic], invoking white South African billionaire and Johann Rupert, whom he had accused of paying "taxi bosses" to spark black on black violence during his speech. The Democratic Alliance and the Congress of the People parties have reported the fringe politician to the South African Human Rights Commission and the Equality Court for what DA said were his "vile and distasteful remarks." This is not the first time that BLF has been in trouble for extremist rhetoric. Earlier this year, a party spokesman told The Citizen newspaper that they considered white existence itself "a crime" while repeating the party's slogan "land or death."

Wolf Richter: “Severe Collapse” of Home Prices Might Trigger a “Financial-Institution Crisis” in Australia: OECD Frets about the Banks - “The authorities should prepare contingency plans.” The big four banks are too exposed to mortgages. Even if the banks don’t topple, the economy will get hit hard.In its latest report on Australia, the OECD focuses to a disturbing extend on housing, household debt, what the current housing downturn might do to the otherwise healthy economy, and what the risks are that this housing downturn will lead to a financial crisis for the big four Australian banks, an eventuality that it says “authorities” should make “contingency plans” for.The big four banks are huge in relation to the Australian stock market and the overall economy: Their combined market capitalization, at A$341 billion, even after today’s sell-off following the OECD report – accounts for 26% of Australia’s total stock market capitalization. How they dominate the stock market showed up on Monday after the release of the report: The overall ASX stock index on Monday dropped 2.27%.These big four are heavily owned by Australian pension funds, retail investors, and the like and form a big part of the retirement nest egg of the nation. So a banking crisis that involves the Big Four matters on all fronts – and the OECD report even pointed out that a collapse in the share prices of the Big Four would itself impact the overall economy negatively.The report (PDF) starts by explaining just how strong the economy is in Australia:With 27 years of positive economic growth, Australia has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to sustain steady increases in material living standards and absorb economic shocks.The labor market has been equally resilient, with rising employment and labor-force participation. Life is good, with high levels of well-being, including health, and education.It expects “continued robust growth of around 3%” in the near future. And the OECD’s “resilience indicators” suggest “that there is no emerging downturn at present.” But then there’s the housing bubble, household debt, and the banks that have funded this bubble and that households owe this debt to. The charts below are from the report. The first chart compares inflation-adjusted house prices of the two most magnificent housing bubbles, Australia (red) and Canada (green),  Spain (ESP), and the US. The index measures changes in price levels, adjusted for inflation. Clearly, Australia and Canada are in a world of their own, but Spain, whose bubble collapsed disastrously and led to numerous bank resolutions and bailouts, got close:

Nigerian President Denies Report He Died And Was Replaced By A Clone - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told a group of Nigerians living abroad in Poland last week that he rumors that he had died and been replaced by a "clone" were not true, after a 'fake news' report claiming that he had been replaced by a Sudanese imposter went viral, prompting the AFP to perform a "fact check."  As the rumor goes, Buhari died while on a "medical vacation" in London last year, where he receive treatment for an undisclosed illness. In his place, senior officials in his administration hired an imposture - Jubril, from the Sudan - to run the continent's largest economy.  One of the questions that came up today in my meeting with Nigerians in Poland was on the issue of whether I‘ve been cloned or not. The ignorant rumours are not surprising — when I was away on medical vacation last year a lot of people hoped I was dead. pic.twitter.com/SHTngq6LJU — Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) December 2, 2018  The rumors are spreading at an inopportune time: Buhari, who is seeking a second term, is facing an election in February 2019. Which is probably why he felt the need to step up and address the rumors. "It’s the real me, I assure you," Buhari said in a town hall on Sunday in Poland, where he was attending a United Nations climate conference. "I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong."  Because his political opponents seized on the rumor to try and discredit Buhari.

Child Sex Slavery Ring Run by Former Israeli Soldier Dismantled by Police  — A large child sex slavery ring overseen by Israelis was dismantled by Colombian police earlier this week, in a story that has shocked Colombia and much of Latin America but received minimal coverage from mainstream Western media outlets. The network had been active since 2011 and expressly “recruited” young, underage females in situations of economic hardship or domestic abuse to work as “sex slaves” catering to Israeli tourists visiting Colombia.Colombian authorities first began to investigate the sex slavery network in June 2016 following the murder of Israeli citizen Shay Azran in the Colombian city of Medellín. Soon after, Azran’s murderer was found to be another Israeli, Assi Ben Mush, an ex-IDF soldier who was known for his past involvement in both drug and human trafficking in the early 2000s. However, Mush was never arrested for Azran’s murder.As authorities delved deeper into Mush’s current activities while investigating the homicide, they determined that he was the owner of a hostel in Cartagena, Colombia and that he was also one of the coordinators of “tourism” packages sold exclusively to Israeli men visiting Colombia.According to judicial sources cited by El Colombiano, the tourism packages sold by Mush and his cohorts involved taking Israeli men – most of them businessmen or men who recently ended their compulsory military service in the IDF – to parties at a variety of locales such as hostels, hotels, farms and yachts, where the main attraction was the sexual exploitation of underage women and the mass consumption of narcotics and alcohol. The sites where the exploitation occurred offered lodging or services exclusively to Israeli tourists, a practice that is surprisingly common in frequented tourist destinations throughout South America.

Goodyear Shutters Venezuela Plant, Gives Out Tires As Severance - Venezuela's economic depression has claimed yet another victim, as Goodyear Tire announced it would shutter its Venezuela operations and lay off its entire local workforce, the latest foreign corporation to close shop in the crisis-torn county. On Monday, employees arrived at the company’s lone plant in the industrial city of Valencia to find it closed with a letter posted on the door. “Goodyear Venezuela has been forced to cease operations,” according to a copy seen by Bloomberg. The departure of foreign companies from Venezuela is hardly surprising: in fact, it is remarkable that Goodyear manages to last as long as it did. What was more notable was how the company said goodbye to its employees one last time. According to Eduar Bremo, a member of Goodyear’s factory-workers union, the company is not only paying (token) severance packages to its more than 1,200 employees but is also giving each 10 tires, which have become hugely valuable in the shortage-wracked socialist paradise. According to Bremo, the plant produced some 1,000 tires a day, but a lack of materials and soaring costs forced it to shut its doors. Years of economic depression and a hostile government have forced companies such as Kellogg and Kimberly-Clark to abandon Venezuela as hyperinflation rendered most of their business conducted in local currency unsustainable. Other companies have slashed their work forces and limited their product offerings as they hold out for better days. Last week, Ford Motor began offering its employees buyouts as it further scaled back its remaining Venezuela operations.

Only one valid passport allowed, Hong Kong confirms, after it was revealed that detained Huawei executive Sabrina Meng was in possession of three from city SCMP - Holders of Hong Kong passports can only have one valid version at any one time, immigration authorities confirmed on Sunday night, after it was revealed that a Huawei Technologies executive recently detained in Canada was in possession of three travel documents from the city.The drama involving Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, detained in Vancouver at the behest of the US, spread to the city over the weekend after court documents showed she had at least seven passports – four from mainland China and three from Hong Kong.A spokesman for the Immigration Department said it did not comment on individual cases but confirmed that holders of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passports could only possess one valid one at a time. There were circumstances where the holder could apply to have an old invalid – expired, damaged or out-of-date – passport combined with a new one, such as if there was still a valid visa in it, the department said. But the old passport itself would still be invalid.“Cross-linking of HKSAR passports means making an endorsement on both the previous and new passports to the effect that the previous passport bears a visa, which is still in force, but the previous passport shall be cancelled,” the spokesman said.“Any holder, therefore, shall not be in possession of more than one valid HKSAR passport at any time.” Legal experts and politicians in the city had questioned why Meng was able to possess multiple Hong Kong passports, with lawmakers calling on the department to investigate.

Status of Huawei CFO’s husband questioned as he tries to post bail for wealthy wife - What does $15 million mean to the daughter of a Chinese telecom billionaire? And what kind of hold will two Vancouver properties — no matter how pricey — exert on her husband? After two days of argument in B.C. Supreme Court, the answers to those questions are likely to prove crucial Tuesday as a judge decides whether or not to grant bail to Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. Justice William Ehrcke reserved judgment on a proposal for the 46-year-old's release Monday after a day of arguments stressing the unique nature of a situation resulting in the spectacle of one of China's most powerful women bargaining for her freedom as she awaits possible extradition to the United States for allegedly violating trade sanctions against Iran. "They could lose 15 million and go on with their life, and their lifestyle wouldn't be appreciably different." Ehrcke noted as he asked questions of Crown and defence lawyers at the end of the day. "I want all the help that counsel can give me." According to a summary of facts filed with the court, Meng is accused of repeatedly lying to financial institutions about the relationship between Huawei and a company called Skycom that did business in Iran in violation of international sanctions. U.S. prosecutors claim "Huawei operated Skycom as an unofficial subsidiary to conduct business in Iran while concealing Skycom's link to Huawei."

Beijing blames Canada for Huawei arrest and threatens ‘grave consequences for hurting feelings of Chinese - China has ratcheted up the pressure on Canada to release the detained executive of Huawei Technologies over the weekend by threatening “grave consequences” and accusing Canada of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”, escalating the case into one of the worst diplomatic rows between Beijing and Ottawa. Chinese foreign vice-minister Le Yucheng on Saturday summoned Canadian ambassador John McCallum on Saturday night to lodge a “strong protest” against the arrest of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver and urged Ottawa to release Meng immediately, according to a brief foreign ministry statement. China also summoned Terry Branstad, the US ambassador in China, on Sunday and “lodged solemn representations and strong protests” against Meng’s case. Le told Branstad that the US must immediately correct its wrong action and vacate an order for her arrest. China told the US side that it would take further steps based on Washington’s response but fell short of warning “grave consequences” as it did to Canada. Meng, the chief financial officer at Huawei and a daughter of the Chinese telecom giant’s founder, was arrested in Vancouver on December 1 and faces extradition to the United States, which alleges that she covered up her company’s links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran in defiance of sanctions. The arrest of Meng in Canada, which took place on the same night that Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump dined together in Buenos Aires, has infuriated Beijing. The official Xinhua news agency published an editorial on Sunday morning condemning the arrest as an “extremely nasty” act that had caused “serious damage to Sino-Canada relations”. “According to the words of the Canadian leader, he had known of the action in advance,” Xinhua said, referring to the fact that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – whom it did not did name directly – had a few days’ notice of the arrest. “But he didn’t notify the Chinese side. Instead, he let this kind of nasty thing to happen and assisted the US side’s unilateral hegemonic behaviour – this has hurt the feeling of Chinese people,” Xinhua added.

Canadian ambassador summoned over Huawei CFO’s detention - China on Saturday summoned the Canadian ambassador over the “unconscionable and vile” detention of telecom giant Huawei’s chief financial officer in Vancouver, state media reported, in Beijing’s latest angry response to the hot-button case. Meng Wanzhou has been held since December 1 in Canada on an American extradition request and faces US fraud charges related to sanctions-breaking business dealings with Iran. The 46-year-old executive was arrested in Vancouver while changing planes, ratcheting up tensions between the US and China just as the countries’ leaders agreed to a truce in their trade war. In a statement cited by official news agency Xinhua, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said Meng’s detention was a “severe violation” of her rights and interests as a Chinese citizen. “Such a move ignores the law and is unreasonable, unconscionable, and vile in nature,” the news agency quoted Le as saying in the statement. Le summoned Canadian ambassador John McCallum in protest and urged Ottawa to release Meng immediately or face “grave consequences that the Canadian side should be held accountable for,” Xinhua said. Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in China’s People’s Liberation Army, is set to remain in custody until at least Monday, when a Canadian court is expected to decide on bail.

Collateral Damage - Canada Goose Shares Fall 20% As Chinese Consumer Boycott Threatens Sales - The trials and travails facing Western purveyors of luxury goods as they seek to break into the Chinese market have been well documented in the press (see Dolce & Gabbana and Victoria's Secret for two examples of what can happen when retailers hoping to gain entree to the world's largest consumer market cross the Communist Party). And in the demonstration of the leverage that China's government exercises over Western retailers, shares of Canada Goose are tumbling as Chinese citizens have started a boycott of its goods in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou (the daughter of one of China's most revered corporate titans). Formerly the second-best performer on Canada's benchmark stock index, CG has seen its shares tumble some 20% over the past four days, as investors worry about a lasting impact on sales at two planned stores in Hong Kong and Beijing. This suggests that China's retaliation for Meng's imprisonment won't be limited to the arrest of a former Canadian diplomat.

China confirms second Canadian Michael Spavor under investigation for allegedly endangering national security - China has confirmed that a second Canadian citizen is being investigated for activities that allegedly endangered its national security, following the detention of a former diplomat, amid rising tensions between the two nations over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive. A report by the Liaoning government’s official online news outlet on Thursday said Michael Spavor – a businessman based in the Chinese city of Dandong with connections to North Korea – was detained on Monday in an investigation by the provincial state security bureau. The investigation was related to “activities that endanger China’s national security”, the report said. On Monday, former diplomat Michael Kovrig was also detained, by the Beijing state security bureau, and faces the same accusation. Kovrig is a senior adviser for Northeast Asia with the International Crisis Group. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the Canadian embassy in China had been notified of both cases, and the legitimate rights of Kovrig and Spavor had been protected. “China is taking action in accordance with the law,” Lu said in a daily press briefing on Thursday. But he declined to say whether the investigations were retaliation for the arrest of Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, or if they were related to North Korea. The confirmation came after Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said a second Canadian citizen could be in trouble in China. Canadian foreign ministry spokesman Guillaume Berube said Canada was working hard to ascertain Spavor’s whereabouts and would continue to raise the issue with the Chinese government. Kovrig and Spavor know each other because of mutual interest in Northeast Asia. 

Canada Releases Huawei CFO on $10 Million Bail as She Awaits Extradition to the US — Human Rights Groups Slam Google for “Aiding China’s Censorship and Surveillance” — In an open letter addressed to Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, a coalition of human rights groups and advocates are raising alarm about the company “actively aiding China’s censorship and surveillance regime” with its work on a search engine project called Dragonfly.A Canadian court has granted bail to a top executive of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd while she awaits an extradition hearing to the United States. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s global chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada on 1 December at the request of the US. On Tuesday in Vancouver, Justice William Ehrcke granted bail to Meng, subject to a guarantee of $7.5 million ($10 million Canadian) and other conditions, such as a nightly curfew and surrendering all her passports and travel documents. The US wants its northern neighbour to extradite Meng, who has been accused of covering up her company’s links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran in breach of US sanctions on that country, Reuters has reported. US President Donald Trump told Reuters on Tuesday he would intervene in the US Department of Justice’s case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China. Meng is specifically accused of lying to a US bank, identified by her lawyer as “Hong Kong Bank”, about the use of a covert subsidiary. The US alleges that she set up a subsidiary called Skycom to evade its economic sanctions on Iran, CBC News reported. The US government says that Skycom is a part of Huawei, not a separate partner. From 2009 to 2014, a Canadian court heard last week, Huawei used Skycom to transact business in Iran despite US and European Union bans. According to a Wall Street Journal report in April, the Department of Justice had launched a criminal probe into Huawei for its alleged trade with Iran, and both the US Commerce and Treasury departments had issued subpoenas for a potential violation of US sanctions. Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of cellular-tower electronics and the third-biggest smartphone producer.

China’s real endgame in the trade war runs through Europe --– Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently shared some history with a friend, explaining why he reached out to China's then-Premier Wen Jiabao in 2011, seeking urgent financial support and providing Beijing one of several European inroads in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.Orban's reason was a simple one: survival. Facing a potential debt crisis and unwilling to accept austere loan conditions from Western institutions, Beijing offered a lifeline. For his part, Orban convened some Central European leaders with Beijing, and they laid the groundwork for the "16-plus-one" initiative based in Budapest that since then has provided China unprecedented regional influence. It didn't take long for China's investment to bear fruit. In March 2017, Hungary took the rare step to break European Union consensus on human rights violations, refusing to sign a joint letter denouncing the alleged torture of detailed lawyers. In July of the same year, Hungary joined Greece – another distressed European target of Chinese largesse – in blocking reference to Beijing in a Brussels statement on the illegality of Chinese claims in the South China Sea.  Transatlantic strategy experts were left to reflect on Europe's unique vulnerability to this major power conflict in a world where they are absorbing the unanticipated shocks of greater US unpredictability, greater Chinese assertiveness and deeper European divisions about how to navigate it all."China already has shown it can have a veto power over European Union policy," said Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, on the margins of the off-record gathering he convened. He notes that while West European companies are driven by profit, their Chinese counterparts invariably also represent Chinese state interests. "That doesn't have to be malign, but it can also be malign."European Union officials concede that China already has exercised veto power it has over policies that require unanimity, and because some officials are pushing privately for a change to majority voting. Concerns are growing as Beijing's influence has grown more rapidly than anyone anticipated. Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU has risen to $30 billion in 2017 from 700 million before 2008. That influence has grown more rapidly than anyone anticipated. Since the 2008 financial crisis, Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU has risen from 700 million Euro to 30 billion Euro in 2017. A report by two German think tanks, the GPPI and Mercator Institute for China Studies, found that Beijing has taken full advantage of Europe's openness and has been "rapidly increasing political influencing efforts in Europe."

Governments can't prevent the next global economic slowdown - In the decade since the financial crisis, central bankers around the world have taken on the mantle of reinvigorating the global economy. By keeping interest rates low and buying up trillions of dollars' worth of government bonds and other assets, these institutions helped to prop up growth at a time when the world desperately needed it. Of course, that era of easy monetary policy is coming to a close. On Thursday, the European Central Bank said would end its crisis-era stimulus progamme this month, although it will still reinvest in the region's bond markets. Ahead of next week's meeting on monetary policy, the Federal Reserve is gearing up for its ninth interest rate increase since it began normalising rates in December 2015. And Japan's BOJ is considering the same, although in fits and starts. As central banks turn off their spigots of easy money, governments around the world are stepping in to fill the void. But even with these measures, the global economy is set to slow in the coming years. A synchronised, global fiscal expansion may be able to moderate the pace of an eventual slowdown by some degree, or put it off longer than otherwise would have been the case.But with a trade war between the US and China unresolved (and starting to bite), Brexit chaos, riots in France and an Italian debt crisis, there's certainly no shortage of strife weighing on global sentiment. In the words of top IMF official David Lipton, "storm clouds" are gathering. Time to grab that umbrella.

Europe Loses if the Iran Deal Collapses - Iran is not the only loser if the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) collapses. A collapse may be near given the U.S. exit from the deal, and U.S. sanctions not only affect American banks and companies but also prevent Europeans from trading with Iran. The U.S. policy is to cripple Iran´s economy and to force Iran to accept U.S. conditions for a new deal. The Iranians, in turn, need to see the economic benefits of the JCPOA in order to stay in. The EU is between a rock and a hard place. “We stand committed to the JCPOA and its full implementation by all sides. Preserving the JCPOA is in our shared national security interest” stated the European leaders of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3) as the United States exited the deal. The EU wants to maintain its credibility as a global actor but also preserve transatlantic relations, the backbone of its foreign policy.  The most important legacy of the 12 years of EU coordinated negotiations is to have taken the military option in Iran off the table. Military interventions do not take place when most of the superpowers—the EU, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States—sit at the negotiation table. In 2003, to avoid the military option, three EU foreign ministers decided to “talk to Iran” and start negotiations, providing both carrots and sticks to persuade Iran to abolish its nuclear program. The EU was very close to an EU-Iran agreement in 2005 when the United States decided to enter the negotiations and Iran was reported to the Security Council. Nevertheless, the E3 initiative and the later EU framing of the 12 years of negotiations did prevent the implementation of the military option. With the U.S. exit from the JCPOA, the military option is again possible. The United States promotes regime change in Tehran—more or less indirectly—and may attempt to repeat the Iraq experience in Iran although with new allies. Alternatively, change may be initiated by internal turbulence. Aggravated economic problems may lead to further protests against the government and increase support for the hardliners in Iranian politics. A nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East is not in Europe’s security interest nor is the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. So far, the Iran agreement has worked on both accounts. The European focus on the JCPOA does not mean that the Europeans are not concerned about the regional military conflicts in the Middle East or the missile question. The Europeans have clearly expressed their willingness to negotiate regional stability and peace but outside the agreement.

Les Déplorables Demand The Fall Of The Regime - Today we will again (read the comments) see large, and mostly peaceful gilets jaunes gatherings all over France to protest the neo-liberal policies of the Macron regime. The biggest ones will naturally occur in the capital Paris. They are likely to later develop into riots. The regime ordered 89,000 policemen onto the streets to counter any potential violence. 8,000 of them will be in Paris alone.A problem is that police are often the cause of riots. Dressed like storm troopers and angry after way too many hours on the street they tend to attack with much brutality even when calm defense would be more appropriate.After last week protest the Macron regime first delayed and then abolished the planned fuel tax hike that was the immediate cause of the yellow vest protests. That was too little too late and made his regime look weak. The people are now demanding more measures like a reintroduction of the wealth tax which Macron had abolished in one of his first acts in power.Over the last week fireman, ambulance drivers, students and the administrative police union have joined the protests.Luxury shops have been boarded up, museums and landmarks were closed. (An English language livestream can be watched here. Please point to others in the comments.) The police are an running early interdiction tactic, closing off roads and applying tear gas to kettle the people and to prevent larger gatherings at the Champs-Élysées. Hundreds have already been arrested. Meanwhile the protesters sing la Marseillaise. It is way too early for the police to use such force and it is not going to work. This only increases the anger of the protestors and will cause more conflagrations. In a France24 report from a small town in the country side shows extraordinary solidarity between the people. Police passing through an occupied toll road entry sign the protesters petition, other pass by and gift food to the middle-aged protestors.

‘Yellow Vest’ protests: Nearly 1,400 detained in new day of unrest in France - Paris was again the epicentre of clashes as fresh anti-government Yellow Vest protests swept France for a fourth consecutive weekend.

• Businesses, museums and other attractions in the French capital had shuttered on Saturday in anticipation of the violent new clashes during the critical Christmas shopping season.
• French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said 125,000 demonstrators had taken to the streets across the country, including 10,000 in Paris.
• Paris and other French cities including Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse saw significant clashes between protesters and police.
• About 120 protesters and 20 law enforcement officials were injured nationwide, the interior minister said. Nearly 1,400 people were arrested.
• French PM Edouard Philippe called for dialogue and said President Emmanuel Macron would soon be proposing measures to “nourish” that dialogue and rebuild national unity.

Can the Yellow Vests Speak? Jacobin

Clashes as yellow vest protests grow in Belgium and the Netherlands -- Belgian police fired tear gas and water cannons at yellow-vested protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Charles Michel after they tried to breach a riot barricade, as the movement that started in France made its mark Saturday in Belgium and the Netherlands. Protesters in Brussels threw paving stones, road signs, fireworks, flares and other objects at police blocking their entry to an area where Michel's offices, other government buildings and the parliament are located. Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere said that around 400 protesters were gathered in the area. About 100 were detained, many for carrying dangerous objects like fireworks or clothing that could be used as protection in clashes with police. The reasons for the protests are not entirely clear. Neither Belgium nor the Netherlands has proposed a hike in fuel tax -- the catalyst for the massive and destructive demonstrations in France in recent weeks. Instead, protesters appeared to hail at least in part from a populist movement that is angry at government policy in general and what it sees as the widening gulf between mainstream politicians and the voters who put them in power. Some in Belgium appeared intent only on confronting police. Earlier in Brussels, police used pepper spray and scuffled with a small group of protesters who tried to break through a barricade blocking access to the European Parliament and the European Union's other main institutions. 

More Than a Thousand Arrested as Yellow Vests Protests Over Economic Frustration Rage on Across France -- Some 1,220 people were arrested in France on Saturday as more than a hundred thousand took to the streets—leading to a lockdown and armored vehicles pouring into Paris—as part of the “Yellow Vests” or “Gilets Jaunes” movement that initially came as a response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise taxes on gasoline and diesel, which critics warn would primarily impact the working- and middle-class.  Although Macron’s centrist administration announced last week that it was suspending fuel and electricity hikes for six months, outrage over growing inequality across the country has continued to produce massive protests. Since the demonstrations kicked off four weeks ago, BBC News noted, “protests have also erupted over other issues, including calls for higher wages, lower taxes, better pensions, and easier university entry requirements.” While it began as backlash to Macron’s climate policy, “the movement’s core aim, to highlight the economic frustration and political distrust of poorer working families, still has widespread support.”Outlining the movement, its supporters, and their demands, the Guardian reported Friday:“Protesters have largely come from peripheral towns, cities, and rural areas across France and include many women and single mothers. Most of the protesters have jobs, including as secretaries, IT workers, factory workers, delivery workers, and care workers. All say their low incomes mean they cannot make ends meet at the end of the month.“The movement is predominantly against a tax system perceived as unfair and unjust, but there are numerous grievances and differences of opinion. Most want to scrap the fuel taxes, hold a review of the tax system, raise the minimum wage, and roll back Macron’s tax cuts for the wealthy and his pro-business economic program. But some also want parliament dissolved and Macron to resign.”

Macron offers sweeteners to calm Yellow Jackets protests — French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a number of sweeteners as he attempted to take the sting out of the Yellow Jackets protests that have hit the country for four weekends.In a televised address on Monday evening that lasted just under 15 minutes, Macron apologized for not having "reacted quickly enough" to what he called a "malaise" in French society and said that "sometimes I may have given you the impression that I had other priorities."He then said his government would not subject overtime hours to tax from 2019, cancel his proposed tax hike on pensions under €2,000 a month, and grant a pay hike to workers earning minimum wage. The French presidency later told French media this pay hike would be achieved through an increase of a specific public allowance, which Macron had vowed to boost during his presidential campaign.Macron’s first speech since the crisis started marks a retreat for the young French president. His proposals would push the budget deficit up beyond the 3 percent limit mandated by the euro zone, and signals the likely end of his ambitions for a Franco-German pact to reform the single currency area. By conceding to the power of the street, as his three predecessors were forced to do as well, Macron has made it much harder for him to push through any significant changes at home in the next three years in office."Undoubtedly, we were not able to deliver a response that was sufficiently quick and strong" to the French working class' woes, Macron said. "I'll take my share of responsibility," he said, adding that he apologized for "upsetting people with my words."Macron ended the address by saying: "My only concern is you. Our only battle is for France."The government estimated the measures would cost between €8 billion and €10 billion.

France’s Macron Makes Concessions While ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Continue -- (video & transcript) Yves here. This Real News Network segment gives some broader context for the gilets jaunes movement. Note that in an address on Monday, Macron apologized and gave some economic concessions, like raising the minimum wage by 100 euros a month and ending taxes on overtime work, but did not reinstate the wealth tax, which he eliminated shortly after taking office.And at the risk of getting out over my skis, this post lets Macron off too lightly. Macron is a died-in-the-wool neoliberal. He imposed labor “reforms” in 2017 and withstood wide-spread protests then.  Note that the left vote in the last election was split between Jean- Luc Melenchon and Benoit Hamon. Had Hamon dropped out, Melenchon would have won. One of my colleagues spoke Hamon after the election about why he didn’t withdraw, since it was clear he would not win. Hamon said he didn’t support Melenchons’s policies.

Macron Caves to Yellow Vest Rebellion, Announces Wage Increase and Tax Relief — In his first public comments in more than a week, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that his administration will show “no mercy” towards “Yellow Vest” protesters who have committed violence over the last four weeks of demonstrations across the country, while also announcing a series of economic measures in an attempt to restore calm.“When violence is unleashed, freedom ends,” said Macron – while acknowledging that there is a “deep anger” at the French government that is justified – yet which should not devolve into violence. Macron added that he shares some responsibility for the situation – which began as a climate change-linked fuel tax and quickly transformed into a general anti-government protest.To combat future violence, Macron will use “all means’ to restore calm, and has called for an “economic and social state of emergency,” according to AP.Macron – whose approval rating is at an all time low, says he has asked his government to increase wages by 100 euros per month beginning in January as part of a series of new measures to be released in detail on Tuesday. He also announced that overtime hours won’t be subject to payroll tax, and that his administration will scrap a tax hike on poor and low-income retirees. Furthermore, Macron asked companies to pay end-of-year bonuses which won’t be taxed, and will suspend a CSG levy on pensions below 2,000 euros per month.He also added that immigration “must be debated” as well, as anti-immigrant sentiment has spread throughout Europe. This weekend marked “Act IV” of the Yellow Vest protests, during which a staggering 1,939 people were arrested on Saturday across France – 1082 of them in Paris alone, including 52 women and 95 minors, while 264 people were injured in the anti-government protests which have seen widespread looting and violence. Most of the suspects were arrested for “acts of violence against a person in the custody of the public authority,” “possession of explosive products,” or “carrying weapons,” according to BFMTV.

 Macron's Concessions Set to Blow Out French Deficit— France will overshoot the European Union's budget deficit ceiling next year without deeper spending cuts after President Emmanuel Macron caved in to anti-government protests. Macron announced wage increases for the poorest workers and a tax cut for most pensioners on Monday in an effort to quell a near month-long public revolt. But the measures will leave a 10 billion euro ($11 billion) hole in the Treasury's finances, pushing France back over the EU deficit limit of 3 percent of national output and dealing a blow to Macron's reformist credentials. "We are preparing a fiscal boost for workers by accelerating tax cuts so that work pays," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told parliament. "That inevitably has consequences on the deficit." Philippe did not give details on the impact of the concessions on public finances or possible spending cuts, saying only that the government aimed to keep spending from increasing. "Under all likelihood, the 2019 public deficit will print above the 3.0 percent benchmark," Societe Generale economist Michel Martinez wrote in a research note. Any failure to respect the EU deficit ceiling could shatter France's fiscal credibility with its European partners after Paris flouted it for a decade before Macron took office. And any sign of leniency from Brussels could complicate the European Commission's tense discussions with Italy about keeping its deficit down.

High school students protest in Paris against French government’s education reforms - As “yellow vest” protests against social inequality and calling for the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron continue across France, hundreds of high schools remain shut down by demonstrations, with high school students protesting yesterday in central Paris. They denounced the government’s education reforms and Macron’s re-imposition of compulsory military service and expressed their solidarity with the “yellow vests.”  “We’re students in the 93rd district and from the working-class areas,” Gabriel Lacalmette of the Olympe de Gouges high school. said. “We came to protest the high school and university entrance reforms and the raising of tuition fees, which are increasing inequality and the discrimination that already takes place.”  Gabriel explained the impact of the government’s reforms by citing the example of Macron’s raising of tuition fees for foreign students in France. “Today we are at least fortunate to have an education system for everyone that is financially accessible. This raise will mean that actually only the rich foreign students can come to university. But we support education for everyone. The more educated people are in the country, the better.” He also highlighted the inequality produced by Macron’s school reforms. “With the new entrance requirements, if we apply to a Paris university, we have a smaller chance of admission than Parisians. The system of waiting lists disadvantages us compared to Parisian students. There was a baby boom in 2000, so there are now more people going to university. But instead of creating new places, they make more stringent selections. They create prestigious universities like the Sorbonne, and next to it the garbage schools for all students from the suburbs.” Gabriel expressed his hostility to the reestablishment of military service: “Millions will be engulfed in this, but what we actually need is to create more places at university and to hire people. On one side they are slashing 2,600 positions, and on the other they’re indoctrinating the youth and marching them into military service.”

Yellow Vest protesters erect a GUILLOTINE in Paris bearing French President’s political party name amid revolt that has forced Macron to address the furious nation Monday evening - Yellow Vest protesters in Paris erected a guillotine bearing the name of Emmanuel Macron's political party in a direct threat to the under-fire French President.The move came as the country's finance minister warned the violent protests sweeping the country are a 'catastrophe' for the nation's economy.The demonstrators torched cars, vandalised and looted shops and restaurants, and hurled stones in a fourth weekend of protests in Paris.Riot police fought back with tear gas, water cannon and baton charges, leaving 71 people injured in the French capital.The shocking guillotine footage, which was filmed in an unknown location in France, emerged as Macron prepared to meet trade unionists and rival politicians before addressing the country at 8pm tonight.And his finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, yesterday warned that the Yellow Vest protests will have 'a severe impact' on the economy.'It's a catastrophe for commerce, it's a catastrophe for our economy,' the finance minister said. 'We must expect a new slowdown of economic growth at year-end due to the protests.'The protesters, who take their name from the fluorescent safety vests that French drivers are legally obliged to carry, have wreaked havoc on retailers and the tourism industry.Department stores, museums and monuments including the Eiffel Tower had to close. The interior ministry said 136,000 people took part in Saturday's anti-government protests, and more than 1,700 were arrested, with Paris seeing more damage than last week. Protests also took place in Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux.Emmanuel Macron is set to make a grovelling speech today and announce further tax concessions in a bid to calm the anger that has gripped the country. The 40-year-old French president, elected in May last year, has faced mounting criticism for remaining holed up in his presidential palace, protected by armoured cars. He has also been criticised for not speaking in public for almost two weeks.

The French Protests Do Not Fit a Tidy Narrative - Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone --American media seems to be confused by the protests. Few seem to understand what protesters want, or even who they are. Some outlets describe protesters as Trump-like nationalists aligned with Marine Le Pen, others as antifa-style leftists aligned with Jean-Luc Melenchon. The marchers actually cut across all political lines, and if anything, both Le Pen and Melenchon are trying to attach themselves to something independent of them. Unifying factors seem to be hatred of Macron and a desire to express this in profane fashion (theNew Yorker noted that many of the protest slogans are colorful variations on the theme of people being literally screwed by Macron).The vest movement, a.k.a. gillets jaunes, began as a localized French grievance about a fuel tax and has spiraled into an international phenomenon.In Europe, there have been yellow vests in Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. There are vesters marching in Alberta, Canada (these seem more right-wing and anti-immigration), but also in Basra and Baghdad, where protests are directed at poor living conditions. Egypt banned the sale of yellow vests to stem protests against the al-Sisi dictatorship. The common thread seems mostly to do with class. However, since we’re more comfortable covering left-versus-right than rich-versus-poor in America, the journalistic response here has been a jumble.The New York Times editorial “Macron Blinks” recognized the battle lines were between the “marginalized” and the “pro-business program” of “the rich and powerful.” But, the paper said, the “far greater catastrophe for France” would be “if Mr. Macron were unable to stay the course on his structural reforms.”The former investment banker’s program was aimed at stimulating growth through corporate investment — he kicked off his regime by slashing a wealth tax and pledging to cut 120,000 public sector jobs — which the paper insisted was the right course, even though “the benefits of Mr. Macron’s policies might not be evident for some time.”

For Emmanuel Macron, How Did Things Get So Bad, So Fast- - It is painful to recall the hosannas that commentators across the world were singing following Emmanuel Macron’s rise to the French presidency. After Brexit and the Donald Trump election, here was a dynamic, youthful leader who seemed capable of driving back the swelling tides of reactionary populism. Yet, after a fourth consecutive weekend of escalating protests by the Yellow Vest movement, Macron now seems to be hanging on by a few frail threads. These protests have seen thousands of people arrested, three people killed, and massive street violence. Last weekend, armored vehicles rolled down Parisian boulevards, while major tourist sites and businesses shut their doors. Macron has attempted to calm the situation. Last week he repealed the gasoline-tax increase that sparked the protest movement. Monday, in a short and somewhat wooden televised speech, he promised an increase in the minimum wage, tax cuts for workers and pensioners, and other benefits for low-income employees.  But even if the protests do begin to diminish, Macron’s popularity is unlikely to recover for a long time. He has been gravely, perhaps fatally wounded.  How did things get so bad, so fast? After all, France is not in the grips of a depression, or even a recession. While unemployment is high and economic growth anemic, the figures have not changed dramatically since Macron’s inauguration. His party, La République en Marche, which he created over two years ago, controls an absolute majority of the National Assembly, and the opposition remains fragmented. The conservative party Les Républicains and the Socialists are both in disarray.  In the end, the tragic fault lies both with Macron himself and with a political and cultural elite of which he is, in many ways, the pure product. To be sure, the protests did arise in large part in response to economic precariousness and pain. For French people who live outside of major cities, dependent on their cars and surviving on low incomes (average gross household income is about $30,000 per year), an increased tax on gasoline that already costs more than twice what it does in the United States is no small matter. But what clearly counted just as heavily for the Yellow Vests was the contempt they perceived as coming from Macron and his government. The president who imposed the new tax in the name of combating climate change was the same one who last year abolished the “solidarity tax” on the wealthy. It was the same one who overhauled the French labor code, making it easier for employers to fire workers. And it was the same one who summoned the two chambers of parliament to hear him speak in the splendor of the royal palace of Versailles.

 German daily accuses Macron of surrender to “yellow mob” --The German business press reacts indignantly to French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to appease the “Yellow Vest” protest movement with social concessions. Although the measures announced by Macron in a television speech on Monday evening are negligible and do nothing to eliminate the social inequality against which the protests are directed, the media accuse him of surrendering to the “mob” and thus jeopardising the stability of the Euro and the European Union.“The reaction of the French president to the yellow mob must sound the alarm bells in Berlin: Emmanuel Macron is not a partner in rescuing the Euro and Europe, but a risk factor,” comments Olaf Gersemann in the daily Die Welt.The editor for Economy, Finance and Real Estate can hardly control his anger. Instead of “ensuring that the minimum wage increases only moderately or preferably not at all”, Emmanuel Macron lays down his arms, he fumes. For weeks “the yellow jackets raged in France”. But instead of “opposing the excesses” and “going on the offensive”, Macron has missed the opportunity and legitimized the riots ex post facto by “crawling in front of the mob that is burning small cars”.The hope has always been, Gersemann continues, “that Macron will become France’s Gerhard Schröder: a man who, if need be, would also put his office at risk in order to do the right thing in terms of economic policy”. (German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, lost his office prematurely in 2005 after pushing through his anti-social Agenda 2010 against bitter resistance.) But now France is threatening to “stumble behind Italy on its way to third class”. For Germany this is “bad news”, both economically and politically, Die Welt complains. As long as Paris is on Berlin’s side, the transformation of the monetary union into a transfer union can be prevented. If, on the other hand, Paris takes the side of Italy and Spain, then the construct tips over. That’s why Berlin must now address the question of what to do “if Germany does not have to deal with one Italy only in the monetary union and the EU, but with two.”

German Christian Democrats select Merkel’s favoured candidate as party leader --The former secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is the new leader of the party. At the CDU party congress in Hamburg on Friday, 517 of the 999 delegates voted in her favour. She received only 35 votes more than her main rival, Friedrich Merz. A third candidate, the country’s current health minister, Jens Spahn, was eliminated in a first round of voting, having received 157 votes. Kramp-Karrenbauer was the favoured candidate of the party’s outgoing chairperson, Angela Merkel, who announced her resignation after more than 18 years as party leader. Merkel has declared that she intends to remain chancellor until the next scheduled federal election in 2021. Kramp-Karrenbauer gave up her post as premier of the state of Saarland last spring to take over as head of the party apparatus in Berlin following a request from Merkel.  Merkel has been under pressure in the CDU following a succession of electoral defeats. At the start of the congress, she defended her term in office in a half-hour speech and was given a long standing ovation by the delegates. Her “system,” Merkel explained, consisted of “concentrating on the subject matter… often in a rather dry manner and without using big words.” In fact, what characterised Merkel's term in office was her ability to implement a reactionary, anti-working class and militarist policy without provoking major class battles or protests. Unlike many veteran CDU members, who grew up in the philistine fog of the Adenauer era or fought in the student revolt of the late 1960s, Merkel, the daughter of a protestant pastor who grew up in the former East Germany, had no ideological blinkers. She was able to straddle very diverse positions with equal conviction and cooperate with the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the trade unions and even the Left Party. She had an innate sense that the wealthy middle classes on which these parties are based were moving to the right.

The World's Biggest Hedge Fund Is Getting Whacked, And Why Moneyness Matters - A few years ago the Swiss National Bank (SNB) - which traditionally held “monetary assets” like government bonds, cash and gold to back up the Swiss franc - decided to branch out into common stocks. This was a departure, but for a while a brilliant one. The SNB loaded up on Big Tech like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, and rode them to massive profits, which enriched both the Swiss people and the SNB’s stockholders (in another departure, it’s a publicly traded company as well as a central bank). But live by the sword, die by the sword. Turning your central bank into the world’s biggest hedge fund means outsized profits in good times, but potentially serious losses if those aggressive bets go wrong. The following table shows the SNB’s seven biggest stock positions. Note that 1) they’re all US based multinationals – not a single Swiss stock – and 2) they’re all way up over the past few years but way down over the past two months. Total loss from these positions since September 30: nearly $2 billion.

  Police Arrest 34 In Budapest As Violent Anti-Orban Protesters Storm Parliament  -- Violence exploded outside the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest on Wednesday, prompting police to make 34 arrests as five officers were injured, as demonstrators stormed the building to protest a series of laws passed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz Party - one of which put the country's Minister of Justice in charge of picking judges for newly created federal courts, per Bloomberg.Hungarian police arrested 34 people when protesters tried to storm the parliament building late on Tuesday after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s lawmakers passed a series of bills that strengthen his grip on power.Five law enforcement officials were injured during scuffles as police used tear gas to repel demonstrators, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the prime minister’s office, told a briefing on Wednesday. According to Local News 8, hundreds of protesters marched through Budapest and gathered at the parliament building Wednesday night after Orban's party passed a law allowing employers to ask their workers to take on up to 400 hours' overtime per year - something its critics have dubbed "the slave law." But the final straw for demonstrators was the passage of another law allowing the Justice Minister to appoint judges to new courts designed to handle cases concerning "government business" like tax and elections.

As Winter Arrives, Thousands of Migrants Are Trapped in Bosnia -- His right arm was swollen and badly bruised. He didn’t so much walk as shuffle because of injuries to his legs that, like those elsewhere on his body, he said were inflicted by Croatian police batons. Grimacing from pain and exhaustion as he staggered back into Bosnia last month after yet another fruitless effort to sneak across the border into Croatia and enter the European Union, Aman Mutani, a 23-year-old from India, muttered the words that European leaders these days long to hear. “There is no hope,” he said, tears of despair and shame welling in his eyes. “I am going home.” With anti-immigrant populists on the rise across Europe, and even the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in retreat from her open-door refugee policy, Europe’s long struggle to reconcile political reality with human sympathy for desperate people has come to an end in the forested hills along northwestern Bosnia’s border with Croatia.  Croatia denied reports by rights groups and aid workers of brutality.  Mr. Mutani and thousands of others mostly came to Bosnia from Serbia, which offers visa-free entry to Indians and, until recently, Iranians. Serbia had been the main jumping-off point to the European Union for migrants and refugees traveling the so-called Balkan Route through Greece and the former Yugoslavia.  But Serbia’s northern border with Hungary has been sealed by a fence since 2015, and its northwestern frontier with Croatia is also now closed. So the flow has moved into Bosnia.  The country is poor and dysfunctional but, unlike its neighbors, was initially relatively welcoming because so many of its own people were themselves refugees during the Balkan wars in the early 1990s.  So far this year, Bosnia, which, like Serbia, is outside the European Union, has recorded the entry of more than 23,000 refugees and migrants, many of them single men from Pakistan and Afghanistan, compared with 758 last year. Many have spent months, sometimes years, to get there, and now must either risk crossing into Croatia, camp out in the town of Bihac and another border town, or give up and go home.

Can a two-day conference solve the world’s migration issues- - There were 258 million international migrants in the world last year, increasing almost 50 percent since 2000, according to the United Nations. If all of the world's international migrants lived in a single country, it would be the world's fifth largest population, according to a Pew Research Center report. The number of migrants, representing 3.4 percent of the world's population, is increasing faster than the global population, driven by economic prosperity, inequality, violence, conflict and climate change. But the migration isn't always safe, either during transit or once the country of destination is reached. According to Missing Migrants, an International Organization for Migration (IOM) project tracking major migration routes around the world, more than 3,300 people have "died or gone missing in the process of migrations towards an international destination" in 2018. Even in transit countries, or country of destination, racism, discrimination and human rights violations are continuously reported. To ease problems and issues related to migration, an intergovernmental conference, with the aim of formally adopting the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), is taking place in Marrakech, Morocco, on December 10 and 11. The GCM is a global agreement drafted after an 18-month-long consultation period between the UN and various stakeholders, including government officials from member states, migrants, human rights organisations and NGOs. According to the UN, the GCM "compiles principles, rights and obligations from existing international law instruments regarding migration, and identifies best practices in all areas of migration". A non-binding agreement, it aims to better manage migration at local, national, regional and global levels, including reducing the risks and vulnerabilities the migrants face at different stages of their journey.

 Italy's New Budget Promise Is Just Cosmetic - Italy’s populist government has pledged to the European Commission that it will lower its deficit target to 2 percent of national income next year. For a cabinet that vowed to defy the “bureaucrats” in Brussels, this is a stunning climb-down. But unless Rome is ready to row back on some of the key pledges included in its 2019 budget, it will amount to little more than cosmetic change. At the end of September, Rome shocked investors and its euro-zone partners by announcing that its budget deficit in 2019 would reach 2.4 percent. Italy’s bond yields rose and the Commission rejected the budget, a first in the history of the currency union. Italy now risks an “excessive deficit procedure,” which might involve intrusive monitoring and a fine of up to 0.5 percent of gross domestic product. Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, leaders of the ruling League and Five Star Movement, were unmoved at first. They said they’d push ahead with a higher deficit because they had a clear mandate from voters. A lower budget would force them to rein in their favorite giveaways: a lowering of the retirement age and an income support scheme. They also said the financial markets would settle down once the details became clear. So when Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, told reporters on Monday that Italy would now target a 2.04 percent deficit, this was indeed a remarkable U-turn. It wouldn’t be the first. Di Maio and Salvini had originally drafted a huge list of expensive promises, including a steep cut in income taxes, only to drop them in their original budget. They’d also floated the idea of leaving the euro during the electoral campaign. Now they are in power, they say they’re committed to the single currency. The two leaders like attacking Brussels as undemocratic, but have a strange and malleable idea of what it means to fulfill their mandate. The markets shouldn’t celebrate too soon, though. For a start, Di Maio and Salvini have yet to utter a word about what Conte has said. In most other countries, a prime minister doesn’t have to wait for his two deputies to confirm that his words have value. But in the strange coalition arrangement that rules Rome, this is certainly the case. Moreover, details matter. In a sense, the 2.4 percent deficit target for next year wasn’t the main problem with Italy’s budget. Worse is the wildly optimistic growth target, which means that borrowing will probably be much higher than predicted. Then you have the non-credible budget deficit targets for the following two years, which rely on VAT increases that no one believes in. Finally, there’s the decision to keep the structural deficit unchanged between 2019 and 2021, instead of aiming to reach a balanced budget over the medium run. For a country whose public debt stands at more than 130 percent of GDP, these are hardly details.

Theresa May to ‘handbag’ Brussels in frantic bid to save Brexit deal --Theresa May will seek to emulate Margaret Thatcher by travelling to Brussels to demand a better Brexit deal in a last-ditch attempt to save her government from collapse. Ministers and aides have convinced the prime minister that she needs “a handbag moment” with EU bosses if she is to have any chance of persuading her own MPs to support her. They expect May to announce tomorrow that she will launch a final throw of the diplomatic dice with a dash to Brussels, a move that could result in Tuesday’s vote being postponed. Senior ministers bombarded the prime minister with warnings yesterday that she has to look like she is fighting for a deal that Brexiteers can support — or face a catastrophic defeat that could lead to Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister by Christmas. One senior cabinet minister said: “People in No 10 think she needs to have a ‘handbag moment’ where she says: ‘Up with this I will not put.’” But The Sunday Times can reveal that even as she makes a final appeal to the EU, some of her most trusted ministers are already planning for a new referendum. May’s deputy, David Lidington, and the justice secretary, David Gauke, have been in talks with Labour MPs to gauge whether there is a Commons majority for a second referendum or a Norway-style deal inside the single market if May’s mission fails. Allies say they have concluded that MPs are now most likely to back a “people’s vote”, piling pressure on the prime minister to achieve concessions that would get rebel MPs behind her plan. Civil servants have war-gamed two versions of a new vote. The first would feature a choice between May’s deal and remain. The second would see voters asked to choose between leave and remain with a second question asking them, in the event of a leave win, whether they prefer the existing deal or a no-deal departure on World Trade Organisation terms. Details of the prime minister’s “Maggie May” mission come as Tory whips learnt that a “swarm” of ministers is set to resign over Brexit. Last night, Will Quince, the Brexiteer and parliamentary aide to the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, said he was quitting. He said the deal contained a “fatal element” that would lock Britain in the backstop for years. “I do not want to be explaining to my constituents why Brexit is still not over and we are still obeying EU rules in the early 2020s or beyond.”

Theresa May warns her warring MPs ‘back me or get Corbyn and no Brexit’ as she considers delaying crunch vote to return to Brussels for a ‘handbag moment’ to demand more concessions --Theresa May today held a call with Donald Tusk as she considers delaying the crunch Brexit vote to squeeze more concessions out of the EU. The PM spoke with the EU Council President just 48 hours before the Commons is due to decide the fate of her Brexit deal - and with it her probably her premiership too. Number Ten remained tight-lipped about the deal, but Mr Tusk revealed it as he tweeted that it 'will be an important week for the fate of Brexit'. Amid growing signs she is set to suffer a massive and humiliating defeat in the Commons, Mrs May could kick the vote back and return to Brussels insetad. She is is being urged to emulate Margaret Thatcher and have a 'handbag moment' to force the EU to ditch the hated backstop plan. It comes as she warned her warring party to back her Brexit deal or risk handing the keys to No10 to Jeremy Corbyn and leaving the UK in the EU permanently. The Prime Minister mounted the last-ditch bid to win over her mutinous backbenchers after over 100 Tories threatened to rebel in the crunch vote. Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay today insisted the vote will go ahead on Tuesday, but Mrs May is expected to make a final decision tomorrow on whether she will push it back. But Boris Johnson today predicted that Mrs May will lose her crunch vote on the deal by a huge margin this week, as he told of the deep 'personal responsibility' he feels towards Brexit.Looking visibly emotional as he appeared on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, he said the UK can do 'much much better' than the PM's deal. Mrs faced a fresh blow last night when Tory MP Will Quince quit as a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, slamming the Brexit deal. Staring down the barrel of defeat, Mrs May is under mounting pressure to delay the vote and use an EU summit in Brussels next Thursday to hammer the bloc for more concessions.  

Brexit: May’s Handbag --Yves Smith -  The new hope for the UK being rescued from Brexit (as if there were any solution that not leave large swathes of the citizenry feeling bruised) is May’s handbag. I am not making that up. From The Times: Theresa May will seek to emulate Margaret Thatcher by travelling to Brussels to demand a better Brexit deal in a last-ditch attempt to save her government from collapse.Ministers and aides have convinced the prime minister that she needs “a handbag moment” with EU bosses if she is to have any chance of persuading her own MPs to support her.They expect May to announce tomorrow that she will launch a final throw of the diplomatic dice with a dash to Brussels, a move that could result in Tuesday’s vote being postponed. The odds are decent that May will put off the vote. The Conservatives were demanding answers on what their MPs would do on Tuesday, amid rumors of a catastrophic defeat. And the sharks are circling. Javid has put himself forward as a PM candidate, and Boris is again making the rounds. Here is how Conservative Home assesses the likely outcomes:If the Government motion fails, and all amendments fail, then there are several things that might happen:

• May could face a vote of no confidence in the Commons. Kier Starmer has said that Labour would table a vote, but with the DUP stating that they would support the Conservatives in such a vote, this is unlikely to succeed. If the Government did fall, there would be 14 days for another Government to win a vote of confidence in the Commons, or the country will have a General Election.
• Conservative MPs put in 48 letters, and the party has to have a confidence vote in the Prime Minister. If 48 letters go in, this would require a swift vote of confidence, where May must win more than 50 per cemt of the 315 eligible MPs. If she lost, the party then has to elect a new leader. Given the incredibly short timescale before 29th March, the Conservative Party would be signing its own death warrant to do this.
• Labour tries to table a censure motion about May – this is effectively a personal vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, which is what happened recently to Chris Grayling. This would potentially allow Tory MPs to vote against the May without bringing down the Government. However the Government is under no obligation to provide time for an Opposition Day before Christmas, so this is unlikely to happen.
• The Prime Minister goes to negotiate with Brussels and brings back an amended deal. This would then require the Government to win a vote on its renegotiated deal, using the procedure outlined above. If no negotiated deal can pass through the Commons the UK will leave the EU without a deal.

As we’ve indicated, the Tory loathing of Corbyn is so great that the odds are high that May would survive a vote of no confidence, and that would keep her safe from another challenge for a year. They’d need to be confident they could settle on a new leader in the 14 day window before a General Election process would kick in. The DUP would be certain to join, since as the linchpin to a coalition, they’d continue to enjoy their veto power.

May delays Brexit vote while Corbyn refuses to move no confidence motion --On the day UK Prime Minister Theresa May called off the vote on her proposed Brexit deal with the European Union (EU), Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to move a motion of no-confidence until she completed a fresh round of negotiations with Brussels.Amid the threatened collapse of the Conservative government, with 100 Tory MPs opposing May, mainly on its hard-Brexit wing, Corbyn is obsessed with proving his statesmanlike qualities and Labour’s bona fides as a government that can be trusted to safeguard the interests of big business. Once again, he has thrown a lifeline to May, while handing the political initiative to the Brexit wing of the Tories and the pro-EU membership Remainers within the Blairite wing of the Labour Party.May called off today’s scheduled vote because she knew her proposed agreement would be heavily defeated. All the main opposition parties were opposed, based on either supporting remaining in the EU or renegotiating permanent access to the Single European market and Customs Union that would, in the end, mean remaining in the EU. To these critics, May stressed that her deal was the only alternative to a hard-Brexit with tariff-free access to Europe’s markets closed to the UK immediately. But her fate was more directly threatened by the Tory hard-Brexiteers and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose 10 MPs she depends on for a majority.Both have denounced the “backstop” arrangement designed to avoid the return of a hard-border between Northern Ireland and EU member state, the Republic of Ireland, in the event that the UK leaves the EU without an all-encompassing trade deal. With the EU stipulating that this means Northern Ireland staying in the EU customs union, large parts of the single market and the EU value added tax system, and with no clear procedure on how to end the arrangement, the DUP and the Tory right warn this could potentially split the Northern six counties from the UK. For three humiliating hours in parliament, May repeatedly made clear that her ambitions were limited to seeking reassurances from the EU that would placate the concerns of the Brexiteers and the DUP—especially “to ensure that the backstop cannot be in place indefinitely”. Hers was still the only deal that honoured the Brexit referendum vote to leave, she insisted, while still preventing a hard-Brexit.

Donald Tusk says the EU will not renegotiate the legal text of the Brexit deal after a humiliated May pulls crunch vote so she can return to Europe to try to get new concessions to buy off her Tory rebels Daily Mail - Donald Tusk tonight warned the EU will not renegotiate the Brexit deal just hours after a humiliated Theresa May said she was pulling the crunch vote on her plan so she could hold a fresh round of talks. The EU council president said 'time is running out' and made it clear the bloc is not willing to change the legal text of the agreement, including the controversial Irish border backstop. And he delivered a thinly veiled threat by declaring that the EU will be stepping up its preparations for the UK crashing out of the bloc in March. The intervention came after the PM humiliatingly delayed the Commons vote on her Brexit deal to avoid a catastrophic defeat. She has pledged to return to Brussels to push for concessions after swathes of Tories signalled they will not support the current package. And she will kick off her European tour tomorrow morning by holding a meeting with the Dutch PM Mark Rutte in The Hague. Mrs May faced an historic defeat by up to 200 votes in tomorrow's vote and must now come up with something to change the tide. Taking to her feet in the packed Commons Chamber tonight to confirm the U-turn, she hinted that her Brexit deal could be delayed for six weeks. She faced taunts and barracking from MPs, and Tory MP and Brexiteer in chief Jacob Rees-Mogg branded her decision to scrap the vote a 'humiliation' and admission of 'defeat'.

Brexit: All About May - Yves Smith -  Theresa May just had the worst day of any British Prime minister in arguably 70 years, the last time a treaty was voted down. As you no doubt know, she pulled the vote on her Withdrawal Agreement, an admission that it would have been defeated by a catastrophically large margin. Yet Labour did not introduce a motion of no confidence, presumably because it knew it did not have the votes. And May has departed for the Continent to have a round of meetings with EU leaders, even though they have already announced that they are not going to entertain changes to the pact. I have decided to call #EUCO on #Brexit (Art. 50) on Thursday. We will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop, but we are ready to discuss how to facilitate UK ratification. As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario. — Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) December 10, 2018  How long May lasts will determine how Brexit plays out. If she is not dispatched quickly after Monday’s epic defeat, it’s a strong indicator she will continue on into and probably though January, and conceivably even longer, despite being reduced to zombie-level effectiveness.  As we indicated, despite the widespread loss of faith in May, and even with May’s razor thin coalition majority, no or not enough Tory MPs are willing to break ranks to vote with Labour, which unless the Tories and DUP could coalesce around a new prime minister, would result in a General Election that could put Labour in power. That is anathema. And the 1922 process means if the Tories can rally round a replacement for May, they can do so without risking a General Election.But May has been lurching from disaster to disaster, yet she is still in charge. The impediment to her ouster has been the lack of an alternative that the MPs could stomach. Boris Johnson has been eagerly presenting himself a a contender since Cameron’s resignation, but he remains too toxic for too many. Rees-Mogg is dim and even more of an Ultra’s Ultra, so that rules him out. Gove has been lurking in the wings since doing less well than Boris in the post-Cameron contest. Javid has made his interest clear, but my impression (and reader input is very much appreciated) his limited ministerial experience and his lean and hungry look make him a long shot.  The thin leadership pickings reflect the diminished state of the political classes in the UK, compounded by the fact that only an egotist desperate to become Prime Minister, someone deeply in denial about the poor options available, or a martyr would seek to run the country now.

Brexit: Tories Launch No Confidence Vote Against May -- Yves Smith - We said if May was to go, the Tories would do it quickly, since it’s hard to imagine a worse outcome for a Prime Minister in a very long time to admit to expecting such a huge defeat on far and away the most important initiative of his Government as to scuttle a vote.From the BBC:UK Prime Minister Theresa May will face a vote of no confidence in her leadership later on Wednesday.Conservative MPs will vote between 18:00 GMT and 20:00 GMT.The challenge to Mrs May’s position comes after the required 48 letters calling for a contest were delivered.One wonders if the timing was because some MPs wanted to sleep on their decision before submitting their letters, or they wanted to see if May got some receptivity from the EU for her pressing to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, particularly on the Irish backstop. Yet even May’s own statement to Parliament before her quick trip to the Continent acknowledged that she wasn’t expecting any changes, and Donald Tusk quickly said the same thing on Twitter. ConservativeHome debunks some earlier misreporting about the process. For May to win just over half of the 315 votes of MPs won’t be enough to save her:It is being claimed that “158 is the magic number” – since 157.7 is what one is left with if one divides the 315 MPs in receipt of the Conservative whip in half.  But imagine for a moment that 159 MPs express confidence in her leadership, if a ballot takes place, and 156 do not. Could she then carry on as Party leader? We don’t think so. The ballot would not have found sufficient consensus for her leadership. We cite a precedent. 204 votes were cast for Margaret Thatcher during the 1990 Conservative leadership contest, and 168 were not – 152 Tory MPs opted for Michael Heseltine and 16 abstained. She won a clear majority of those voting. But she was forced out none the less.

Pound Falls To 18-Month Low On Reports Conservatives Have Enough 'No Confidence' Votes - What looked like the first stirrings of a recovery in the pound Tuesday morning has given way to more selling, as the British currency tumbled to $1.2502 - just above a key psychological threshold - following reports that the conservatives' 1922 committee had finally received the 48 letters of no confidence necessary to trigger a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Theresa May.The no confidence letter count stood at 46 as recently as Tuesday morning. However, a few frustrated remainers joined with their Brexiteer peers to push the total over the top. What's worse, the gesture of contempt comes as May is out of the country on a "whistlestop" our of European capitals in a desperate bid to achieve "assurances" o n the Irish backstop that multiple EU leaders have said they wouldn't be willing to give. In what has become a regular feature of the Brexit chaos, reports that the threshold had been reached were almost immediately contradicted...https://t.co/SHA1iSw5Wg — Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) December 11, 2018 ...Which was followed by a wave of reports insisting that yes, the threshold has been reached.Here we go again. An ERG source writes: "They've reached 48 letters. Whitehall confirmed and someone in the chairman's office."— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) December 11, 2018

UK: May staggers on as more than a third of Tory MPs oppose her -Prime Minister Theresa May survived a vote of no confidence by her own Conservative Party Wednesday evening. In a vote of the 317 MPs, May won with the support of 200, with 117 voting against.The large vote against her by her hard-Brexit wing, combined with the loss of support from the 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs, confirms that May is numbered among the walking dead. Arch critic of her proposed Brexit deal with the European Union, Jacob Rees-Mogg, told the press, “163 Conservative MPs are on the payroll—ministers, PPSs, vice chairmen of the party, trade envoys, and therefore of the non-payroll of the back benchers, the prime minister lost really very heavily.”May was told that 48 MPs had written letters demanding a no confidence vote after returning from a lightening round of diplomacy Tuesday night, desperately trying to obtain further concessions from European leaders following her decision not to hold a vote in parliament—that she would have lost—on her proposed deal over the terms for exiting the EU.Winning the no confidence vote means she cannot face another for a year, but does not resolve the crisis of rule in Britain. Seeking to exert maximum pressure, May said Wednesday morning outside 10 Downing Street that if she were to be defeated any new Tory leader would not realistically be in place until late January at the earliest, and that they would be forced to extend Article 50—the legislation authorising withdrawal—and delay Brexit until after the scheduled exit date of March 29, 2019. Even so, she was forced to promise a meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs, just before they cast their votes, that she would stand down as Tory leader before the next general election, set for 2022.One Tory MP, George Freeman, tweeted that May “has listened, heard & respects the will of the Party that once she has delivered an orderly Brexit, she will step aside for the election of a new Leader...” EU leaders meeting May on Tuesday offered her very little, but made clear that they saw no advantage in her downfall. They calculate that without May, any chance of the UK exiting in a soft-Brexit and maintaining some access to Europe’s markets would be threatened. If a Brexiteer took over Tory party leadership, there would be a high likelihood of the UK crashing out with no deal, and a heightened threat of economic turmoil and social unrest.

Brexit: Endgame - Yves Smith - Brexit has arrived at that point. However it winds up will be the end of the UK that we know now, even with a revocation of Article 50. May isn’t much of a winner despite having stared down a leadership challenge. She still had over a third of her own party vote against her despite have a collection of horror show figures as her challengers and making a commitment to leave No. 10 at the end of the current Parliamentary term.. So this was at best an implicit beauty contest among Cinderella’s ugly sisters. And there may have been some fence-sitters who voted for May out of the recognition that a leadership contest this close to the Brexit drop dead date would further confirm, as if the intra-party power party play that produced Brexit already demonstrated, that the Tories are not fit to rule. Despite all the fireworks in London, the bigger news comes from the Continent. The EU really is done with Brexit and will not negotiate further. And it may have finally found a way to say “no” that will register even with the Brits. From Politico’s morning newsletter:  EU27 leaders will affirm after dinner at their meeting in Brussels today that the EU stands by the Withdrawal Agreement “and intends to proceed with its ratification,” according to draft summit conclusions obtained by Playbook. That means, as the text discussed by EU ambassadors says, the Brexit deal “is not open for renegotiation.” Leaders are also expected to offer yet another/the same interpretation of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration, and are expected to say that “the backstop is not a desirable outcome” and is “only intended as an insurance policy” to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland. They may even go as far as to say that the backstop intends to be a temporary solution — “unless and until” there’s a trade agreement, which they pledge to work on speedily so it will be in place by the end of transition period, meaning the backstop will not need to be triggered. Is that all May can hope to get today? Yes. Full stop. Much of the text obtained by Playbook is in brackets, meaning that the draft is the maximum outcome possible. One more thing: The EU27 may declare they stand ready to investigate whether any further assurances can be provided to the U.K., as long as it doesn’t contradict the Withdrawal Agreement. “Proceeding to ratification” may finally penetrate the fog of delusion across the Channel. It also means that Labour can play its game of constructive ambiguity much longer and must take a stand on the only three options: May’s deal, no deal, or no Brexit. The only remaining unicorn left is the idea of a second referendum, and it may take until the end of January to scotch it.

How Theresa May won the confidence vote but lost the country - So British Prime Minister Theresa May survives to fight another day. The no-confidence vote by her own Conservative Party, called at the instigation of backbench Brexiteers, failed: She received the votes of 200 out of 317 Tory members of Parliament, enough to eke it out as the head of government.The vote is being touted as a victory by May's ministers — she prevailed, after all, winning one vote more than she did when she contested for the leadership in 2016 in the wake of the Brexit referendum. But it is hard to give much credit to that spin. Members of May's government are obliged to support her or resign, after all.But more importantly, the reason her leadership was being contested at all was down to her decision not to bring her negotiated Brexit deal to a vote in Parliament this week, a move she made because she knew she didn't have the votes for it to pass. It seems many members in Parliament — even those who aren't entirely against the Brexit deal she's negotiated with the EU — do not believe she's capable of getting that deal, or any deal, across the finish line.But while it's hard to call the vote a victory for May, it's not clear that it's a victory for anybody else, either. Consider the Conservative members of Parliament who led the campaign against her: From their perspective, the deal she negotiated with the EU is a parody of their ideal Brexit, giving Britain far too little of its sovereignty back. And they have a point: The most disputed provision is the "backstop," which would ensure there would never be a hard border between Ireland (which is part of the EU) and Northern Ireland (which remains part of the U.K.). The backstop would mean that all of Britain would remain subject to EU regulations — and therefore be unable to make new trade agreements on a bilateral basis — until an arrangement is worked out that permits an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Britain exits the common market. As Brexiteers see it, remaining subject to those regulations without having any say in their drafting is not a restoration of sovereignty but its further surrender.

Theresa May’s pyrrhic victory puts Britain on the course for political catastrophe - So what now? Far from resolving Britain’s political crisis, the madness of the past 24 hours has further upped the stakes. Not only does the failed Tory leadership challenge settle nothing of real significance, it makes it even harder to envisage a way through the current turmoil that doesn’t lead to a calamitous shattering of trust in British politics and, in time, to a Jeremy Corbyn government. Theresa May will stagger on, badly damaged by a massive rebellion that reveals the fragility of her grip on power. Despite that, she now has a year before the Conservative Party can try to throw her out again. This means that she could, if so inclined, seek to reach out to Remainers in other parties to push through an ultra-soft Brexit, safe in the knowledge that her MPs would be powerless to unseat her.This is a major change, but it is also the only real difference to where we were 24 hours ago. The narrowness of her victory means that she has hardly been imbued with super-powers. If she continues to try to thwart a meaningful Brexit, her pro-Brexit MPs will make life almost impossible for her. She will still not be able to govern in any meaningful way. Her administration will effectively disintegrate and she won’t be able to pass any legislation at all. Party members, donors and the Leave-voting public will be in uproar, and one or more new political parties will undoubtedly be launched. The only difference is that she will be able to cling on amid the madness, powerless within her own party but capable of negotiating with the Opposition, with a guaranteed job, unless and until her Government actually collapses.Her promise to quit before the next election is vague and unenforceable. Remember the Granita Pact, when Tony Blair promised Gordon Brown that he would only serve two terms in office, before handing over to him? Time and again, Mrs May has promised something but not delivered.In fact, her pledge may even turn out to be meaningless: what will happen if the Government suffers a vote of no confidence over the next few weeks? What if the DUP – who hate her Brexit deal – gang up against her, remove their support and vote with the Opposition, defeating the Government and most probably triggering an election? Would Mrs May really resign under such circumstances, forcing an emergencyConservative leadership race at the same time as a general election campaign? Voters wouldn’t even know who they would be voting for. Either way, it would be a disaster, and the chances are that she would still end up leading the Tories into an election, losing heavily and allowing Mr Corbyn into No 10. The stark reality is that, for Mrs May, the vote on Wednesday was not so much a very partial personal vindication as a re‑run of the 2016 leadership race: she remains the accidental prime minister, in power because there is no obvious alternative, in this case because none of her MPs can be bothered to decide who should replace her and are terrified of having to deal with Brexit themselves.

British Politics in Chaos: Brexit and the Crisis of Representative Democracy -  On 12 December, Tory backbenchers launched a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Theresa May. They are angry at the Brexit deal put before parliament, especially the Irish backstop. But how a leadership challenge could possibly resolve the crisis is entirely unclear. It is not even clear who would stand against May, and all of her potential rivals are even less popular than she is. Under the terms of the EU Withdrawal Act, a final Brexit deal must be put before Parliament by 21 January. Even the most optimistic timetable would see a new Tory leader, and ergo prime minister, installed no earlier than 14 January. So a new leader would have no more than a week to renegotiate a deal that has taken two years to reach. More pertinently, it is patently obvious that no one can renegotiate the deal. Despite May’s excursion to the continent, the EU has repeated that the deal will not be changed and the best that can be offered are some non-binding “clarifications”, restating what we already know. These cannot win over the deal’s critics in parliament. The truth is that the choice is between May’s deal, and no deal. Tory “Brexiteers” refuse to accept this reality, banging on about technological solutions to the Irish border issue. But the EU has consistently rejected these ideas and will not accept any deal without a backstop. This has been clear for well over a year, and if anyone was in any doubt of the sort of deal May was pursuing, her Chequers proposals and White Paper clarified it entirely. Brexiteers muttered and plotted but allowed May to continue on this course. It is sheer fantasy to suggest that a new Tory leader can magically reverse the EU’s position, even if we were not at this eleventh hour. Nor would it change the parliamentary arithmetic, which makes May’s deal impossible to pass. Yet even supposedly die-hard Eurosceptics recoil from the natural conclusion that leaving the EU now means either accepting the backstop or preparing for a no-deal exit.

Brexit: Unicorns Rampant- Yves Smith -  May and her pleas for relief got an even rougher smack-down at the EU Council meeting than even pessimists expected. Yours truly thought the forecast in Politico that we quoted yesterday, that the EU Council had draft language saying that they intended to start having EU members ratify the deal, was already plenty dire for May. May managed the difficult feat of making her perilous situation worse. From the Financial Times:Theresa May’s attempt to rescue her Brexit deal ran into serious trouble in Brussels last night… during an hour-long presentation, Mrs May succeeded in alienating many fellow leaders after making a series of ambitious proposals to appease her domestic critics, including a one-year time limit on the Irish backstop.After Mrs May left the room, many leaders were despondent. During more than two hours of talks over dinner, EU leaders agreed to scrap plans for a formal process to provide reassurances to Britain until Mrs May decided what she wants…Michel Barnier, EU chief Brexit negotiator, claimed that Mrs May was not seeking reassurances but was reviving old ideas rejected during Brexit negotiations. One EU diplomat briefed on the talks said Mrs May was “unprofessional”.Another EU diplomat claimed that there was even a suggestion that it might have been better if Mrs May had been ejected from Downing Street in this week’s abortive coup by Tory Eurosceptics….But her presentation, which also included a suggestion that the non-binding political declaration on future UK/EU relations should be given a legal footing as an annexe to the legal withdrawal treaty, went down badly.“It was Salzburg all over again,” said another EU diplomat, referring to the acrimonious summit in September…In a sign of the concern among the EU27, draft summit conclusions were rewritten to remove the observations that the backstop did not represent a desirable outcome for the EU and would be in place only for a short period…Another paragraph, saying the union stood “ready to examine whether any further assurance can be provided” on the backstop, was cut entirely. One diplomat said that despite general goodwill towards Mrs May, she “didn’t get anything, basically”. Donald Tusk’s short statement contains the formula that Politico wrote about yesterday (see at around 1:30), that the EU intends to proceed with ratification of the agreement.

British yellow vest protests spread as pro-Brexit campaigners block traffic by occupying Tower, Westminster and Waterloo bridges in central London - Pro-Leave demonstrators donning yellow vests took over three bridges in central London today as they demanded Britain's exit from the EU. Campaigners chanting 'Brexit now' stopped cars from crossing Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and then Waterloo Bridge as Theresa May held crunch talks with EU leaders in Brussels. About 60 people wearing yellow vests similar to those worn during protests in France gathered by the Houses of Parliament at noon to first occupy Westminster Bridge. The protestors were eventually moved on by police after about 15 minutes before heading to Downing Street, where they chanted pro-Brexit songs before moving on to Tower Bridge. While blocking the iconic bridge for about 20 minutes, campaigners were seen angrily remonstrating with motorists and bystanders. Shortly after being moved on by police, the group made its way onto the Southbank before heading to the Royal Courts of Justice and then Waterloo Bridge. The identified themselves as the 'Fighting for Justice' Group, which was set up following the deaths of George Wilkinson, Josh McGuinness, both 16, and 17 year-old Harry Rice.

The financial plumbing of university education - In 1997, the Dearing Report recommended the widespread use of government loans to pay for university degrees in the UK. This, as we all now know, came to pass.  The government-commissioned report also briefly touched on ways of securing private capital for higher education, one method of which would involve selling the government’s rights to the debt repayments.  The authors were dismissive of this idea. Student loan debt, they wrote, “is a novel financial asset, which potential purchasers would be likely to discount heavily until a clear record is available”. The government itself, they added, can always borrow more cheaply than commercial institutions, and purchasers would be looking to make a profit.  Fast-forward 21 years, and the UK government has just sold off 370,000 loans for £1.9bn. Last week's sale, which transferred the “right to the repayments” of students graduating between 2006 and 2008, followed on from a similar, first-of-its-kind deal in late 2017 which raised £1.7bn. Both these transactions were completed through securitisation, a process where assets are grouped together and placed in a special vehicle, which then issues new debt to investors. In this way, the investors have a claim on the cash flowing in to the assets, from their debtors. The technique allows risk to be shifted around the economy. The US already has a huge securitisation market backed by student loans. UK student loans, though, are unique (though there are some similarities with American income-driven repayment plans). This is because the loans are claims on a graduate's future earnings above a certain threshold. There are various types of UK student loan. The most important distinction is between loans issued before 2012, and those issued after, which are much larger (because tuition fees, the price of a degree, were trebled in 2012), have different thresholds, and charge different rates of interest. The current plan only includes sales of the former, on which borrowers pay 9 per cent of all earnings above £18,330.