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China Central Bank Warns Downward Pressure On Economy Increasing
Several weeks ago, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it would "increase counter-cyclical adjustments" to prevent downward pressure on the economy. Now the PBOC is warning that it might not be able to ward off these downward pressures in the short term, reported Reuters.
The PBOC's annual financial stability report said China would continue to deploy fiscal and monetary policies to support the economy but warned economic deceleration would continue through year-end.
Policy maneuvering by the PBOC will be limited as it will likely need to cut rates and the amount of money banks put down as reserves to promote credit growth.
The PBOC recognizes the rapid deterioration in the economy, along with the limitations of monetary policy to revive growth.
Likely, credit creation via the PBOC won't be in magnitude seen in the last ten years used to save the world from escaping several deflationary crashes.
The government will likely stabilize its economy or at least create a softer landing through tax cuts and infrastructure spending, the annual report said.
What this all means is that China's economy isn't going to save the world as it has done since 2008. China's credit impulse has rolled over, the probabilities of a massive global economic rebound in the coming quarters are unlikely as China continues slow.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/china-central-bank-warns-downward-pressure-economy-increasing
Trump in Wonderland: Off With His Head?
Donald Trump’s millions of detractors without doubt see him as The Mad Hatter: But, no: He’s Alice. The President of the United States has disappeared down the rabbit hole and he’s in Wonderland – Complete with a Red Queen (Nancy Pelosi) shouting “Off with his head!”
The great mistake foreign observers make observing the latest farce in Washington is assuming that there must be some order, rationality and linear logic behind it. There is none. It is Politics According to the Marx Brothers
This is a show trial – incompetently planned and directed with hundreds of crazed scriptwriters: The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, their staffs and the salivating Mainstream US Media are writing and rewriting the script as they go along.
If one is to believe the Mainstream Media, who avidly take this bizarre cartoon seriously, enough evidence has already been established to clearly convict Trump of seeking to push an inquiry into the prima facie evidence of corruption on the part of the son of a former vice president and the leading Democratic presidential candidate.
Is this supposed to be criminal or shocking? What is Trump even accused of doing? He is accused of cautiously investigating the possibility of corruption in a sensitive and clearly unstable US ally whose government openly tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election (as Russia did NOT!)
Indeed, top Ukrainian government officials before the 2016 vote openly published opinion articles in the most prestigious US outlets viciously attacking candidate Donald Trump and calling for the election of his opponent Hillary Clinton.
Far from endangering the security of Ukraine and withholding US aid, Trump has unwisely approved a flood of lethal US weapons, most especially Javelin missiles for Kiev.
This massive arms transfer gravely increases the potential threat to the breakaway provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk. It therefore also automatically ratchets up the threat of direct war between the United States and Russia – a danger of inconceivable horror that the “Hate Trump!” and “Hate Russia!” fanatics in Washington are insanely blind to.
The metaphor of the Gadarene Swine is repeatedly overused: But only because it works. It is true. The Hate Trump fanatics in the US Congress and in the US Media are stampeding the human race towards an annihilating nuclear war that nobody else remotely wants.
Trump in a very basic way has no one to blame but himself for this horrendous state of affairs in Wonderland. He surrounded himself with Russia-hating Armchair Warriors from Fiona Hill to John Bolton and Kurt Volker. So he should not be surprised that to a man – and woman – they have betrayed him.
Trump did not try to roll back the dark influence of the Deep State, the Jabberwock monster of his Wonderland. So he should not be surprised that now the Deep State Jabberwock is once again trying to eat him.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/11/25/trump-in-wonderland-off-with-his-head/
Is Trump a ‘Covert Ally’ to the Multipolar Order?
We are led to understand that the unipolar ‘moment’ of US ascendency is giving way – grudgingly – to a multipolar world: a reversion perhaps to a more nineteenth century ‘concert’ of powers (or, of significant ‘poles’ – since size is not always the prime determinant). And that Trump is trying simply to prolong that hegemonic, US moment – albeit through different means, which is to say, adopting seemingly bizarre, and sometimes counterproductive, acts and language, that infuriate the American foreign policy establishment.
But is this view right? Maybe – Trump is more of a crab. Maybe he needs to proceed towards his ends, crab-like, rather than full-steam straight-ahead, precisely because he is subject to such concerted political attack.
Some in Russia think the very notion of America ‘First’ carries ‘in its belly’ the implication of a letting-go of the globalist ‘Empire’ project, and a return to focus on the internal American situation, and the challenges which the US faces internally (i.e. a return to the type of non-interventionist conservatism which Pat Buchanan represented, but which the US neo-cons loathed, and set out utterly to destroy precisely – because it foreclosed on ‘empire’).
In practical terms, Obama can be viewed, as some in Moscow suggest, as the Gorbachev of the American regime, (i.e. the man who began the retrenchment out from certain of the Empire’s more extended nodes); and Trump then, in this analogy, is the Yeltsin of this regime: (i.e. the president who has re-focused on the internal arena, and on reducing the burdens of the republics that used to constitute parts of the Soviet Union).
The retrenchment-and-rebuild-at-home shift is hard. And it did not turn out well for Russia.
The motives for Trump’s focus on China as a hostile challenger is clear: It serves the need of having a simple popular narrative to account for America’s relative decline (it is all China’s fault – stealing ‘our’ jobs and our intellectual property). It provides too, an unequivocal enemy that culturally threatens ‘our’ way of life – and it offers a solution: ‘We shall take back our economy’.
But what may not be so clear is whether Trump is actually so opposed to the notion (in principle) of a concert of powers. Though bearing in mind the neo-con and liberal interventionist rage at Pat Buchanan’s earlier policy inwardness (and scepticism of intervention), it might be unwise of Trump to admit to such inclinations – even were he to have them. Hence, the crab-like sideways motion towards its destination.
Is then Trump’s outreach toward Russia (whilst China is demonised), simply a Mackinder-ish attempt to divide Russia and China from each other, in order for Trump to be able to triangulate his interests between a (separated) China and Russia – and which therefore is integral to a continuing US hegemonic project – or is it not? Or, does it have another purpose? It is, after all, pretty obvious that such a divide-and-rule ruse will never work, so long as the close personal relationship between Presidents Xi and Putin, holds good. Both leaders understand triangulation, and both view the ‘concert’ of poles initiative – as an existential requirement for their states.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/11/25/is-trump-a-covert-ally-to-the-multipolar-order/