‘They hate Italians and must resign’: Salvini attacks mayors resisting harsh immigration rules

The times when mayors of Palermo, Florence and Naples could cash in on illegal immigrants are over, Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said, vowing that those resisting the new policies will answer before law and history.

“Those who help the illegal immigrants, hate Italians,” Salvini said, blasting his opponents on Facebook and Twitter.

The minister from the conservative Lega Nord Party promised that the rebelling city heads will “answer before law and history.” And it's no idle threat, as the former mayor of the Calabrian town of Riace is currently under house arrest on charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

“Certain mayors look back fondly on the good old times of immigration, but for them the party is over!” Salvini said.

By “certain mayors” he meant the heads of Palermo, Florence and Naples, who he gave the choice of resigning from their posts.

The three mayors insisted that some parts of Salvini's security decree aimed at curbing illegal migration to the country were unconstitutional and that they would refuse to follow them.

According to the new decree, migrants can no longer apply for full residency after a two-year asylum stay – but Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando wants his city to continue this practice. Denying migrants access to health care and other essential municipal services would have an opposite effect and put them on the path of crime instead, he argued in the interview to the newspaper La Repubblica.

His resistance to the decree was “not an act of civil disobedience or conscientious objection, but the simple application of the constitutional rights that are guaranteed to all those, who live in our country,” Orlando said.

He also announced plans to take the anti-migrant rules to the Constitutional Court for the judges to rule on how they comply with Italy's principal law.

The mayor of Palermo was backed by his counterpart from Florence, Dario Nardella, who insisted that his city wouldn't cave in to the law that “expels asylum-seekers and, without repatriating them, throws them out onto the street.”

https://www.rt.com/news/448033-salvini-italy-mayors-migrant/

Leveraged to the hilt: The world has a $264 trillion problem

If a steady tightening of global central bank liquidity created havoc in equity markets in the closing months of 2018 imagine what it might do to global debt markets in 2019.

The response of the major central banks in the US, Europe, China and Japan to the financial crisis in 2008 was to encourage governments, businesses and households to borrow to maintain some level of economic activity in the face of the threat of another Depression.

The US Federal Reserve Board, European Central Bank, People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Japan all lowered their policy rates towards zero and subsequently began injecting massive doses of ultra-cheap liquidity into the global financial system. It was just over a year ago that the Fed became the first of those banks to start withdrawing liquidity from the system, nearly a decade after the crisis.

If their objective was to stimulate borrowing, the central banks were successful. Before the crisis global debt, excluding financial institutions, was about $US113 trillion ($161 trillion). It is now more than $US186 trillion ($264 trillion). The global total debt-to-GDP ratio has blown out from around 270 per cent of global GDP to about 320 per cent of global GDP.

In the US, government debt was about $US9 trillion, or 62 per cent of US GDP in 2007. Today it is approaching $US22 trillion and around 100 per cent of GDP.

Australia had no net government debt in 2007. It now has just under $350 billion, or about 24 per cent of GDP. China’s gross debt before the crisis was about 180 per cent of GDP. It’s now around 300 per cent.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/markets/leveraged-to-the-hilt-the-world-has-a-264-trillion-problem-20181231-p50oyw.html

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>>4585342

Dems move to protect Mueller in new Congress

Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Thursday led a group of Democrats in introducing a bill designed to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.

The legislation reflects growing fears among the president’s critics that he could try to impede Mueller’s investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with Moscow to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Trump has increasingly castigated the investigation as an “illegal” partisan-led witch hunt that he wants ended.

The bill, formally known as the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, would codify existing Justice Department regulations that say a special counsel can only be removed for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or other good cause. The legislation would also give the special counsel written notice of his or her removal and the opportunity to challenge the move in court.

It is unlikely, however, that the GOP-controlled Senate will take up the bill or a similar one. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) repeatedly blocked legislation protecting the special counsel from reaching the Senate floor late last year after Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replaced him with Matthew Whitaker, a Mueller critic, as acting attorney general.

McConnell has argued the bill is unnecessary because he doesn’t believe Trump will look to fire Mueller.

Nadler, along withe Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), introduced the legislation on the first day of the new Congress as Democrats took the helm of the House of Representatives.

In a joint statement, the lawmakers warned of the “questionable” intentions of Whitaker and described the legislation as crucial to ensuring the investigation continues unimpeded.

“As the Special Counsel announces new indictments and guilty pleas from Trump's closest allies and associates, it's clear that the threat to the Mueller investigation will only grow stronger,” the Democratic lawmakers said. “Democrats and Republicans in Congress have mentioned their support for the inquiry to continue unimpeded. Now is the time for Congress to finally act and pass this legislation to protect the integrity of the Special Counsel's investigation and the rule of law."

Nadler and other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee introduced similar legislation back in April, following the federal raid on the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney. The bill had little chance of passing in the previous Congress, when Republicans had control over the House.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/423750-dems-move-to-protect-mueller-in-new-congress

>>4585486

disclosure starting to seep out