>>56570 pb
SAM330 USAF G5 on final approach for Portsmouth Int'l Airport from JBA depart
Biden To Meet With "Killer" Putin During June 15 Summit In Geneva
Just after the Biden Administration invited backlash from Russia hawks by waiving sanctions on a Russian firm involved in the construction of the controversial Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, it looks like President Biden has finally settled on a date for a face-to-face meeting with his "killer" colleague, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Biden initially proposed an in-person meeting between the two leaders during a phone call (his second with Putin since the start of his presidency) back in April. The meeting would cover "the full range of issues" facing the two countries, presumably including the military situation in Ukraine and the SolarWinds hack, to name a few.
After slapping sanctions on Russian sovereign debt while expelling diplomats back in April, Biden said he hoped that the decision to ratchet up sanctions wouldn't spoil the mood for a summit. Apparently, both sides feel comfortable moving ahead. Russia most recently signaled that the summit would likely be held in mid-June.
On Tuesday morning, Bloomberg reported that Biden and Putin will be meeting in Geneva starting June 15, confirming that talks between the two former allies will move ahead. There's plenty for the two sides to talk about: From the SolarWinds hack, to Russia's treatment of dissident Alexei Navalny, to the election interference narrative that Dems won't ever let die.
CNN added that the White House and the Kremlin are finalizing details of the summit this week. As it stands, the meeting will take place at the conclusion of Biden's first trip abroad as president.
The White House dispatched national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Geneva this week to meet with his Russian counterpart, officials said, as details are being hammered out for the meeting between Biden and Putin.
While the summit will mark Biden's first meeting with Putin since the start of his presidency, Biden previously met with Putin during his time as vice president, including a 2011 meeting during which Biden said he looked into Putin's eyes and declared: "I don't think you have a soul." During an interview back in March, Biden called Putin a "killer", saying Putin "will pay a price" for his efforts to undermine the 2020 election.
Above all, the White House will do everything in its power to contrast Biden's meeting with Putin to Trump's infamous 2018 summit in Helsinki with Putin, during which the two world leaders appeared side by side while Trump memorably pushed back against the Russian electoral interference narrative, much to the consternation of American mainstream media pundits and their Democratic allies.
That same trip will include a meeting with the G-7 in England. Of course the G-7 was formerly known as the G-8, but reverted to the G-7 after expelling Russia back in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea. Meanwhile, last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the first high-level encounter between the US and Russia since Biden took office.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-meet-killer-putin-during-june-15-summit-geneva
Erdogan fires deputy governor of Turkey's central bank
Turkey's president has fired one of the deputy governors at the country's central bank, the third senior official to be dismissed in two months in a series of interventions at the nominally independent institution that has unnerved investors.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree in the Official Gazette in the early hours of Tuesday dismissing Oguzhan Ozbas, a member of the monetary policy committee (MPC), and replacing him with Semih Tumen, a presidential adviser and a professor of economics at TED University in Ankara.
In March, Erdogan fired Naci Agbal, the third central bank governor in less than two years. The market-friendly Agbal was replaced by Sahap Kavcioglu, a newspaper columnist who shares Erdogan's unconventional view that high interest rates drive, rather than quell, inflation. A week later, Erdogan replaced deputy governor Murat Cetinkaya. The lira has lost 14 per cent of its value against the dollar since March amid fears the bank under Kavcioglu would not defy Erdogan and keep monetary policy tight to fight inflation, which has been stuck in double digits for much of the past three years. The lira on Tuesday was little changed in a sign that investors have become inured to Erdogan's meddling at the bank. "Independence at the Turkish central bank is already basically nonexistent and the president has taken control of monetary policy, with the help of the new central bank governor," said Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.
Erdogan has said both interest rates and inflation will be below 10 per cent this year. He has long badgered the central bank to suppress borrowing rates to stimulate the economy. The newest MPC member has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. Tumen, 44, worked in various positions at the central bank between 2002 and 2018 before teaching labour economics and advising Erdogan on human resources. "The latest change ... is another step in an expected sequence towards nominating an entire MPC of low-interest rate advocates," Tatha Ghose, an emerging markets analyst at Commerzbank, said in a note to clients.
Just three of the seven committee members have served as policymakers for three or more years, with the rest appointed since 2020.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Erdogan-fires-deputy-governor-of-Turkey-s-central-bank
they (and others) actually believe they can.
@USNationalGuard
The @AirNatlGuard’s newest fighter aircraft, the Eagle II F-15EX, made its exercise debut at Northern Edge 21 in Alaska.
Eagle II Soars at Northern Edge 21
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – The F-15EX made its exercise debut at Northern Edge 21, flying 33 sorties and 89.8 hours with a team of six total force Air Force pilots at the controls.The nationalguard.mil
10:30 AM · May 25, 2021
https://twitter.com/USNationalGuard/status/1397198304409174025
from April 7th 2021
F-15EX Eagle II unveiled as newest fighter
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2564394/f-15ex-eagle-ii-unveiled-as-newest-fighter/
>>56078 pb
XXXXXX USAF G5 KAF AC of interdast (formerly SAM549) departed Panama Pacifico Airport south after arrival on 0523 with a short ground stop at Quito, Ecuador prior
PRECIOUS-Gold hits 4-1/2 month peak as dollar, yields drop after U.S. data
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Dollar slides to 4-1/2 month low
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Benchmark U.S. yields hit two-week low
Gold prices scaled a more than four-month peak on Tuesday, as the dollar and U.S. Treasury yields slumped after data showed consumer confidence dropped slightly in the United States.
Spot gold rose 0.5% to $1,890.45 per ounce by 10:35 a.m. EDT (1435 GMT), having earlier hit its highest since Jan. 8 at $1,895.56. U.S. gold futures gained 0.5% to $1,893.
Data showed U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for May eased to 117.2, while U.S. one-year consumer inflation rate expectations rose to 6.5%. Making bullion more affordable, the dollar index hit 4-1/2 month lows, while benchmark U.S. yields touched an over two-week low, reducing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest paying gold.
Fed policy makers in separate remarks have played down inflation concerns and reiterated that the current easy monetary policy will remain in place. Elsewhere, palladium rose 1.3% to $2,763.61, platinum was up 0.8% at $1,183.76, and silver was 0.3% higher at $27.89.
https://www.reuters.com/article/global-precious/precious-gold-hits-4-1-2-month-peak-as-dollar-yields-drop-after-u-s-data-idUSL3N2NC3NE
https://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy
https://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html
Chinese Banks Buy Dollars To Weaken Yuan In Latest Intervention
Just days after senior PBOC officials spoke up about moving to stabilize the yuan as it continued to strengthen against the dollar, Chinese banks have reportedly stepped in to buy dollars and sell the yuan in the open market, the latest in a series of interventions that are seemingly stretching the limits of Beijing's authoritarian capability to control markets
Over the past month, reports about another crackdown on crypto trading and mining by Beijing sent prices of digital currencies reeling, while senior CCP officials have stepped in to forcibly cool speculation driving up commodity prices.
On top of all this, the weakening greenback has driven the yuan to its strongest level in nearly three years, hurting China's competitiveness at a time when an ongoing state-ordered deleveraging has sent China's all-important credit impulse into negative territory, limiting the outlook for growth just as the outlook for China's economy is becoming increasingly important to the global narrative. As for the interventions, a handful of traders told Bloomberg that large Chinese state-owned banks were selling yuan in the open market Tuesday. Despite this, and a weaker-than-expected yuan fixing, USD/CNY fell 0.3% to 6.4030, the yuan's strongest level since June 2018.
Reports noted possible intervention in both USD/CNY and USD/CNH pairs at around the 6.4000 level in order to stem the yuan's appreciation. With month-end pressures building, driving the yuan higher, the intervention comes as the Chinese currency arrives at an important technical level that highlights just how much the yuan has strengthened during the dollar's recent bear run.
The dollar is also at a critical level.......and looking ahead, a renewed currency war pitting China against the US and the dollar against the yuan could represent a fresh threat to market stability, as any reversal of the greenback's recent weakness (which has, much to Beijing's delight, sparked renewed talk of the greenback shedding its global reserve status) could upset several consensus trades (sell-side analysts have been writing about how "short dollar" is perhaps the biggest global 'consensus trade' for almost a year). All this is happening as the impact of the credit tsunami unleashed in 2020 by Beijing to combat the COVID pandemic is fading fast as China's credit impulse officially turned negative, threatening to send a deflationary shockwave across the globe.
The direct intervention comes just days after the PBOC signaled that it wouldn't allow the yuan to strengthen too much, too quickly.
In a statement released Sunday, the deputy governor of the PBOC said the yuan would remain “basically stable,” while another central bank official wrote that the yuan should appreciate to offset the higher costs of commodity imports. However, that second essay, published in a state-backed magazine on Friday, has since been deleted, according to Bloomberg.
That Beijing is having trouble reconciling this is hardly a surprise. China's economic nabobs now once again find themselves in the unenviable task of trying to control everything - fighting commodity speculation, a currency at a nearly three-year high, a crypto market that serves as a backdoor for wealth fleeing the country - and even the dominance of Chinese tech firms that have become so economically powerful, they have made President Xi and the rest of the senior leadership uncomfortable. And ultimately, Beijing is doing all this as it tries to pull a literal rabbit out of a hat: trying to spur economic growth while continuing to deleverage, while hampering the international competitiveness of its biggest tech companies.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinese-banks-buy-dollars-weaken-yuan-latest-intervention
Volkswagen Receives €7.5 Billion Bid For Supercar Brand Lamborghini, Autocar Says
A consortium connected to the family of the late Volkswagen Group strongman Ferdinand Piech has made a stunning €7.5 billion unsolicited bid to buy Automobili Lamborghini.
The deal would come with five-year parts supply contracts with Lamborghini’s nominal parent, Audi, and with five-year job security for middle-to-senior managers. The Volkswagen Group’s official position on Lamborghini has long been that the Italian supercar maker is not for sale, though it is not averse to offloading brands, with Bugatti set to change hands, and Ducati known to be for sale.
The non-binding purchase offer, revealed in British magazine Autocar, was sent by the Quantum Group AG to Volkswagen Group CEO Dr Herbert Diess and his management team two weeks ago.
With no history of automotive manufacturing, Quantum Group is headed by Rea Stark, a co-founder of Piech Automotive, which debuted its Piech Mark Zero GT at the Geneva auto show in 2019. The other co-founder was Anton Piech, the son of the late Dr Ferdinand Piech, who sold his Volkswagen Group holdings to the rest of the Porsche family before his death last year.
Piech Automotive looks like a holding station for former Volkswagen Group executives, with former CEO Matthias Mueller on board as well as others, though it’s not known if the Piech family is involved in the bid. Quantum Group has put together a consortium with London’s Centricus Asset Management.
It has come as news to Lamborghini CEO Stefan Winkelmann, who returned to the post last year after reviving the brand from obscurity from 2005 to 2016 before moving to Audi Sport and Bugatti. Winkelmann even received the Italian title of Grand Officer in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his services to Lamborghini.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/25/volkswagen-recieves-75-bid-for-supercar-brand-lamborghini/?sh=7c3a2c6d56d9
XXXXXX USAF G5 KAF AC of interdast on descent for Quito, Ecuador
Second trip here in 2 days
Lasso Sworn In as New Ecuador President
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who was inaugurated as the country’s new leader on Monday, promised in his inaugural address to build a country “of reunion,” far removed from the political hatred of the past, open to the world and enjoying national unity among all sectors of society. The president said that with the start of his administration, a new century for the democratic republic is also beginning which guarantees prosperity for all Ecuadorians, and he asked why “such a rich” country has “such poor people.”
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2502139&CategoryId=10718
82-8000 USAF 747 departed JBA south..some go arounds prior to southern vector
Still no 92-9000
chek't