MH17 Investigators Charge Four Over 2014 Downing of Airliner

*Suspects named almost five years after crash killed 298 people

*Putin has rejected claim of Russian role in flight catastrophe

The international team investigating the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine for the first time named three Russians and a Ukrainian that it said were responsible for shooting down the aircraft.

Almost five years after 298 people died when a Russian-made surface-to-air missile detonated just feet from the Boeing 777 at cruising altitude, the Joint Investigation Team said that it will prosecute Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, and Oleg Pulatov as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko.

International arrest warrants will be issued on Wednesday and proceedings are due to commence at a special criminal court in the Netherlands on March 9, the investigation team said in a news conference. The Russians are currently in Russia and the Ukrainian suspect is believed to be in separatist-held territory, the team said.

The identification of the suspects came more than a year after the investigators said they had found proof the BUK missile that downed the plane on July 17, 2014 belonged to a Russia-based military unit, the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade in Kursk. That conclusion led the Netherlands and Australia to say they hold Russia responsible for its role in the crash. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected those accusations.

Click here to read more on the struggle to obtain justice for MH17 victims

Before the report was released, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on whether Russia would hand over any of its citizens if they were named as suspects. “You know our position on this investigation. Russia did not have the opportunity to participate,” he told reporters on a conference call.

The Russian government said last year in response to the allegation that its military wasn’t involved in the crash and that Russia never sent missiles to Ukrainian territory, according to an Interfax report that cited the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union accuse Russia of backing separatists in eastern Ukraine in a war that has killed 13,000 in the past five years. Russia denies involvement.

Most of the victims of the flight en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch citizens, making it a sensitive topic in the Netherlands and prompting King Willem-Alexander to say the MH17 crash remains an “open wound” in Dutch society.

The five countries working together in the investigation – Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine – in July of 2017 picked the Netherlands as the country where suspects will be prosecuted.

https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2019-06-19/mh17-investigators-charge-four-over-2014-downing-of-airliner?srnd=markets-vp

>>6788722

agree on that,people getting charged is what counts. People also forget that VP's plane was traveling just to the north at about the same time frame.

Morning Market Report

All about the FOMC today, essentially world markets on hold until later today. Futures are flat although asia was up nicely. There are many headlines in the business world. The Paris airshow has been kind to Boeing too.

The FOMC is not married to a 25 basis point (.25%) cut, they can do a smaller one(.125% for example) if needed and have in the past.

The FRB's owners, i.e. the banking system, are intent on causing inflation for two reasons 1) it allows them to have the 'event' and maintain control . 2) it increases the spread on all the debt, credit and other financial vehicles they push into the world so that they continue to collect moar money on our backs.

Some Headlines

As Trade War Rages, Apple Plans To Shift Up To 30% Of Production Outside China

Nikkei reports that suppliers for iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and Apple Ear Pods have all drawn up plans to move 15%-30% of production outside of the mainland, with India, Vietnam, Mexico and Malaysia looking like the top alternatives.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-19/trade-war-rages-apple-plans-shift-30-production-outside-china?

BlackRock: ECB turns up the pressure on the Fed to act more aggressively Wednesday

Comments also slightly raise the odds for a Fed cut. The world’s central banks are caught in a global rate cutting cycle,

in response to slower global growth and fear the the trade war will hurt economies.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/ecbs-draghi-turns-up-pressure-for-fed-to-act-more-aggressivelyrieder.html

Harley-Davidson strikes deal to make smaller bikes in China

Harley-Davidson Inc will partner with China’s Qianjiang Motorcycle Co to produce a new smaller model bike, making good on promises to build more motorcycles outside the United States that have angered President Donald Trump.

The company said the new bike would have an engine displacement of 338 cubic centimeters, by far the smallest-powered engine Harley has ever made and would be sold in China starting at the end of 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-harley-davidson-manufacturing/harley-davidson-strikes-deal-to-make-smaller-bikes-in-china-idUSKCN1TK1BP?

China is lowering tariffs on other countries amid trade war with the US

As Beijing has raised duties in response to the Trump administration’s spate of tariff announcements, it also lowered trade barriers for exporters around the world, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Since the start of 2018, Chinese tariffs on U.S. products have jumped to an average of 20.7%.

Over that same time frame, China has reduced tariffs on competing products from other WTO countries to an average of only 6.7%.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/china-lowers-trade-barriers-for-other-countries-amid-us-tensions.html

Global Markets Drift Amid Concerns The Fed May Disappoint

After yesterday's torrid, euphoric surge on the back of Draghi's dovish deluge and Trump's announcement of a G-20 meeting with Xi, world stocks were rather muted, holding near two-week highs on Wednesday, and in the case of the S&P500 just shy of

all time highs as investors bet on a worldwide wave of central bank stimulus.German and U.S. bond yields, which hit record lows and two-year lows respectively after Draghi’s comments, inched higher to trade just off those levels.

See cap #3 for our notes, 10 year.

European shares slipped off six-week highs in early trading (although they have since rebounded) and Wall Street futures indicated a slightly weaker opening on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, futures are almost fully priced for a quarter-point easing in July and imply more than 60 basis points of cuts by Christmas. As for Europe, markets have almost fully priced a cut in September, though some analysts,

such as those at Germany’s Commerzbank, now say rates will be cut in July, rather than in the last quarter of the year as they had predicted earlier.

See cap#4 for CME Fed watch a rate cut in July, if not today is all but guaranteed-roughly a 64% chance of a.25% cut and a 19% chance of a .50% cut-remember this data is an indication of bets being placed and not a predictive tool from the FOMC-it's just the idiots on wall street making bets.

They were a few weeks behind pepe at least in regards to overtly placing bets-still would fire all of them.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-19/global-markets-drift-amid-concerns-fed-may-disappoint?

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/tmubmusd10y?

https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html/

could get a bit bumpy after the FOMC release so take the advice from yesterday and don't rely on the systems ability to allow you access to your money-you will not lose it but you may have issues accessing it-going forward have some cash on hand.

>>6788804

>>6788943

>>6788861

Meanwhile In China, Echoes Of Lehman As Interbank Market Freezes

One month ago we wrote that in the aftermath of the shocking government May 24 seizure of Baoshang Bank - not shocking because the bank failed as most Chinese banks are insolvent if left to their own devices due to the real, and far higher levels of non-performing loans, but because the government allowed it to happen in the open, sparking fears of who comes next (and when) - the PBOC "finally panicked and injected a whopping net 250 billion yuan ($36 billion) into the financial system via open-market operations, as it fills what traders have dubbed a growing funding gap following the Baoshang failure."

In retrospect, the PBOC failed to restore confidence in the stability of the Chinese banking system, and since then things have taken a turn for the far worse.

Yet with the world fixated on the U.S.-China (Mexico, Europe, etc) trade conflict, it is easy to understand why many have brushed aside the Baoshang harbinger and its consequences which have exposed giant fissures under China's calm financial facade and are gradually freezing up the Chinese banking system.

As the WSJ writes, on Sunday, China's securities regulator convened a meeting asking big brokerages and funds to support their smaller peers, according to a meeting summary circulated among industry participants Monday. The briefing cited rising risk aversion in money markets after defaults in the bond repurchase market.

The immediate reaction, which we pointed out back in May, is that some of the key interbank lending rates - those which banks rely on to obtain critical short-term funds - have moved sharply higher in recent weeks, with the 1 month repo soaring, and almost doubling over the past month.

For those who are only now catching up with this extremely important story, here is the background context: as we explained last month, and as the WSJ recaps, China’s short-term lending market for banks and other financial institutions has for years operated under the assumption that Beijing wouldn’t allow big losses in the event of defaults or insolvencies (hence the reason why Baoshang's failure was a shock).

Meanwhile, non-bank financiers like brokerages and funds are key supporters of embattled private businesses, since they buy a significant percentage of corporate bonds. They are also far-and-away the biggest net inter-bank borrowers, following a 2016 crackdown on short-term borrowing by banks to fund leveraged wealth-management products.

Furthermore, non-bank borrowing through bond repos and inter-bank loans skyrocketed since China’s central bank began easing monetary policy in early 2018, hitting a net 74 trillion yuan ($10.7 trillion) in the first quarter of 2019, according to Enodo Economics, and up nearly 50% from a year earlier. As the WSJ redundantly warns, "funding troubles for brokerages and other asset managers therefore pose big problems for both financial stability and the real economy."

Meanwhile, as we warned as far back as March 2017, problems appear to be migrating from the smallish market for negotiable certificates of deposit (NCDs), used mostly by small banks, into the vastly greater bond repo market. Here, while key one-day and seven-day weighted average borrowing rates remain low thanks to huge central bank cash injections - such as the 250BN yuan we described back in May - longer tenors such as the 1 month repo have marched sharply higher

So is this China's (long overdue) Lehman moment?

yes

It's not all good news: unlike now, in late 2016 China’s economy was improving and so was corporate creditworthiness. That is no longer the case, and as such, investors should keep a very close eye on China’s money markets in the days ahead to make sure a seasonal cash crunch and problems at a few banks and brokerages don’t result in broad contagion and "contaminate a fragile financial ecosystem", one which as the Baoshang shock of May 24 shows, is no longer unreservedly backstopped by Beijing.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-19/meanwhile-china-echoes-lehman-interbank-market-freezes?

>>6789042

>>6789012