Trump’s tariffs hurt more than helped, leading to job losses & higher prices - Fed study

US tariffs meant to boost the US economy by eliminating “unfair” trade practices, primarily by China, actually took a toll on manufacturing sector jobs and hiked prices, a study by the US Federal Reserve Board has concluded.

The Fed has become the latest body to stress the damaging consequences of “unprecedented” punitive tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump on China and other trade partners - including Canada, Mexico and the EU - at the beginning of 2018. In a recently released report, Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce said that the negative effects of the measure outweighed the benefits, at least in the short term.

“We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” the paper says.

According to the Fed report, US industries working with aluminum and steel faced the biggest increase in prices, as new import levies accounted for 17.6 percent of costs for aluminum sheet producers, and 8.4 percent of costs for steel products manufactured from purchased steel.

Some American manufacturers could have benefitted from reduced competition in the domestic market, but tit-for-tat tariffs lowered their competitiveness overseas. This affected a range of industries, the study found, including magnetic and optical media, leather goods, aluminum sheet, iron and steel, motor vehicles, household appliances, audio, video and computer equipment.

While some industries managed to enjoy a degree of import protection thanks to the tariffs, this was offset by “larger drags” from rising input costs and retaliatory measures, according to the paper. The economists state that longer-term effects may be different, as US companies can adjust their supply chains to avoid US import levies, but they could also choose to relocate outside of the US, as claimed by some earlier studies.

“Our results suggest that the traditional use of trade policy as a tool for the protection and promotion of domestic manufacturing is complicated by the presence of globally interconnected supply chains,” the report concludes.

Washington and Beijing are currently trying to finalize phase one of their trade deal, with both sides currently working on the text and other procedures necessary to ink the agreement. The world’s two biggest economies have imposed tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of each other’s goods, with a new round of tariffs averted by the recent breakthrough. 

Meanwhile, another US trade war with the European Union is still raging. After the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the EU paid improper financial subsidies to airplane manufacturer Airbus, thus hindering sales by US rival Boeing, the Trump administration imposed punitive tariffs on EU goods. The US imposed record duties on Airbus planes and agricultural products like French wine, Italian cheese and Scotch whisky, and has recently threatened the EU with new hikes.

https://www.rt.com/business/477035-tariffs-failed-fed-study/

Banks make biggest layoffs since 2015 & may continue to do so next year – report

Bankers around the globe are facing the biggest job cuts in four years, and their troubles could continue in 2020 as lenders are trying to cope with rising competition amid a slowing economy.

Nearly 78,000 people are set to lose their jobs, as more than 50 banks have revealed plans to downsize their workforce this year, according to Bloomberg, citing filings by the companies and labor unions. It is the highest number since 2015, when 91,448 employees in the banking sector were let go.

European banks will see the biggest layoffs, as they plan to cut more than 63,500 jobs or almost 82 percent of the total. North American banks come in second, as they reportedly plan to dismiss nearly 7,700 people.  

Top investment bank Morgan Stanley has recently joined other lenders in the effort to downsize staff, as it is reportedly planning to axe 1,500 (roughly two percent) of its workforce. But it is still far behind Deutsche Bank, which tops the list of planned job cuts with 18,000 employees set to be laid off through 2022 as part of an $8.3 billion overhaul.

This year’s banking staff reductions bring the total for the last six years to more than 425,000. However, the figure might be even higher as many banks could eliminate jobs without disclosing their plans.

“Although it’s been a bull market, there’s not been a lot of primary activity and that’s made it very hard to pay the bills,” an investment director at stockbroker AJ Bell, Russ Mould, told Yahoo Finance UK.

The sweeping cuts might continue in 2020, as some analysts believe that banks continue to face “a number of uncertainties.” For example, Swiss multinational private bank Julius Baer as well as Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA are reportedly looking into reducing their workforce.

https://www.rt.com/business/476997-banks-record-job-cuts/

Robots are coming for Wall Street: AI threatening top finance jobs

The rise of machine learning is set to reshape the workforce in the financial sector and could disrupt not only routine jobs, but also hit some of the highest paying ones.

The warning was voiced by Dr. Marcos Lopez de Prado, professor at Cornell University’s School of Engineering, as he testified before the US House Committee on Financial Services on Friday, at a hearing to determine the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on сapital markets.

The professor said that, while tech firms started distributing data and crowdsourcing the jobs of data analysts through special tournaments, any investment challenge could be solved by an army of data scientists without financial background. Thus “the highest paying jobs in finance” could be put at risk, he noted, adding that asset managers could crowdsource their entire research function, while insurance companies could do the same with their actuarial models.

“Financial ML [machine learning] creates a number of challenges for the 6.14 million people employed in the finance and insurance industry, many of whom will lose their jobs - not necessarily because they are replaced by machines, but because they are not trained to work alongside algorithms,”Lopez de Prado told the сommittee.

While some of other witnesses also voiced concerns on how automated markets are reshaping the workforce, other invited specialists in investment and finance believe that AI could unlock many opportunities. One thing is clear, while the sphere is going to change, the question is if people are ready for it. 

Rebecca Fender, Senior Director of the Future of Finance at the CFA Institute, an association of investment professionals, told the members of the task force that 43 percent of CFA members and candidates expect significant change in their roles in the next 5-10 years. The three roles“most likely to disappear” are sales agents, traders and performance analysts, she said, citing the result of a survey of more than 3,800 respondents. 

Meanwhile, Kirsten Wegner, CEO of Modern Markets Initiative, said that policymakers are better to encourage the transformation to automatization, instead of impeding it, as it opens the door to many tech professionals.

“There are countless job opportunities popping up in coding, cybersecurity, data storage and management, quantitative reasoning and other technology verticals that Wall Street plans to prioritize,” she said, adding that employment opportunities could stem from blockchain, e-banking, robo-advising and new cryptocurrencies.

https://www.rt.com/business/475265-robots-disrupt-jobs-finance/

‘The Report’ details the CIA’s deadly torture program. Which part is fiction, Mike?

Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo has added a new string to his bow: film critic. Though Pompeo dismisses ‘The Report’ as fiction, the torture chronicled in the movie was real, and had deadly consequences.

Released last month, ‘The Report’ follows the story of Senate staffer Daniel Jones, working to compile a damning 6,700-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs after 9/11. The movie cuts from political wrangling in Washington to secure the report’s release, to scenes of brutal torture recounted in the report itself - or at least, the unredacted portion we’re allowed to read.

Pompeo wasn’t impressed. Calling the movie “fiction,” he tweeted a scathing review on Friday. “To be clear,” he wrote, “the bad guys are not our intelligence warriors. The bad guys are the terrorists. To my former colleagues and all of the patriots at @CIA who have kept us safe since 9/11: America supports you, defends you and has your back. So do I."

Pompeo’s world, in which “good guys” deliver justice to “bad guys,” and “intelligence warriors” battle “terrorists,” has already been depicted in jingoistic CIA puff pieces like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and Amazon’s ‘Jack Ryan.’ ‘The Report’ clearly troubles Pompeo because it’s based on real, shameful non-fiction.

The movie depicts the graphic torture of detainee Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in 2002 and shuttled to a so-called ‘black site’ in Thailand. There he was waterboarded almost to death, physically assaulted by CIA officers, deprived of food, sleep and clothes, and forced to spend over 11 days in a coffin-sized ‘confinement box.’ Meanwhile, the CIA’s then-Director Michael Hayden lied to Congress in 2007 about the severity of the techniques used on Zubaydah and the effectiveness of torture in obtaining information.

The ‘good guys’ who interrogated Zubaydah later destroyed videotapes of the interrogations in 2005, reportedly under the instruction of current agency Director Gina Haspel. These tapes also showed the interrogation of one Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was threatened with a handgun and an electric drill, and sodomized by interrogators.

An aide to CIA Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo later wrote in an email that “the heat from destroying [the tapes] is nothing compared with what it would be if the tapes ever got into [the] public domain… it would be devastating to us.” 

The Report’ also references the death of Gul Rahman, who faced similar treatment in a secret Afghan prison run by the CIA in 2002. Rahman was shackled and forced to stand in ‘stress positions’ for days on end, blasted with freezing cold water, and found dead of hypothermia on the concrete floor of his cell, three weeks after his arrival at the site.

Though Pompeo asserts that the CIA’s actions “have kept us safe since 9/11,” the Senate torture report shows no evidence that any useable information was extracted through torture. “If it works, why do you need to do it 183 times?” Sen. Dianne Feinstein says in one scene in ‘The Report,’ referring to the repeated waterboarding of 9/11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Even if one sanctions the use of torture on genuinely “bad” guys, many of the suspects rounded up by the CIA have never had their guilt ascertained in a court of law. Zubaydah is currently languishing in US military custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and has never been charged with any crimes. Rahman was not charged with any crimes before his death, and Sheikh Mohammed is awaiting trial on war crimes charges - though his confessions in 2007 to a string of terror offences were obtained under torture, and may prove inadmissible.

Pompeo would clearly prefer endless reruns of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ to anything that might call his former agency’s reputation into question. Though some have argued that the movie’s second half - which sees agency lawyers and bureaucrats attempt to stymie Jones’ investigation - is exaggerated, the fact remains that the CIA needlessly tortured suspects for years with little oversight and attempted to destroy the evidence.

Pompeo is not alone in giving torture the thumbs-up. President Trump emerged as a torture advocate on the campaign trail in 2016, with his statements garnering significant criticism. Still, a 2017 survey revealed that Americans were almost evenly divided on the use of torture.

Public opinion may be split, but one thing nobody believes is that the harrowing stories depicted in both the movie and the Senate’s report are “fiction.” 

https://www.rt.com/usa/477070-pompeo-torture-report-movie-fiction/

>>7660210

Putin saved the Russian economy by building national reserve funds – former finance minister

The decision by President Vladimir Putin to set up reserve funds ten years ago has saved the Russian economy, says the country’s former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, who now heads the Accounts Chamber.

According to Kudrin, in 2008 when Putin served as Prime Minister, he “supported the creation of the Stabilization Fund, the Reserve Fund, and later the National Wealth Fund, which played a crucial role during 2008-2009 financial crisis.”

The establishment of the funds was of “fundamental importance for saving the economy and social spending."

Kudrin explained: “The salaries did not go down, while pensions even doubled during that crisis period. This is very important.”

The Russian government has accumulated significant reserves in the Stabilization Fund at the beginning of the financial crisis. In 2008, it was decided to divide the fund into the Reserve and National Wealth funds. It was at the expense of the Reserve Fund that the authorities managed to support the economy and fulfill all the budget obligations. By 2018, the Reserve Fund was completely exhausted.

Currently, the National Wealth Fund is serving as a ‘safety cushion,’ while all the additional oil and gas revenues are accumulated there. According to the Ministry of Finance, the volume of the fund reached 7.9 trillion rubles ($124 billion) as of December 1.

https://www.rt.com/business/476795-putin-reserve-funds-economy/

>>7660210

>>7660210

Today THEY are trying to catch up’: Putin says Russia surpasses all competitors in advanced weapons for the first time

Russia is spending far less on defense and more efficiently, developing a series of advanced weapons that its rivals are struggling to copy, President Vladimir Putin said, teasing a ground-launched hypersonic missile.

The Soviet Union was always trying to catch up to the US, whether it was the atomic bomb, strategic aviation, or the first intercontinental missiles, Putin said on Tuesday, during a meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board.

Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history – they are trying to catch up with us.

The president noted that “not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons,” but the Russian military is already equipped with Kinzhal air-launched missiles, while Avangard hypersonic gliders are currently being introduced in service.

Kalibr cruise missiles and Peresvet combat lasers also recently boosted the capabilities of the military, while the development of other state-of-the-art weapon systems such as the Sarmat ICBM, Poseidon long-range underwater drone, and the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile is “going according to plan.”

Putin also slipped in a revelation that work is underway on the ground-launched version of the Zircon hypersonic missile, previously only intended to be placed on surface ships.

The Zircon is said to be virtually invisible to radar, due to the plasma cloud that appears around the projectile as it reaches the whopping speed of Mach 9, or around 10,000 kilometers per hour. The missile is capable of hitting targets at a range of over 1,000km.

Russia ranks sixth in the world in terms of gross military spending – behind the US, China, Saudi Arabia, UK, France, and Japan – but it “must and will remain ahead of the others” in terms of advanced technology, the president said. This will be achieved through “brains, intellect, better organization of work [and] minimization of theft and sloppiness.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/476780-russia-putin-weapons-hypersonic/

>>7660210

>>7660210

>>7660210

Invincible weapon? Russia’s advanced HYPERSONIC GLIDER Avangard now in military service

The advanced Russian nuclear hypersonic glider entered combat service on Friday with the first regiment of Avangard-armed missiles now operational, the defense minister reported.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, who reported the development to President Putin on Friday, said Avangard deployment was “a signatory event for the country and the armed forces.”

The Russian military armed legacy silo-based UR-100N ICBMs, also known as the Stiletto, with the cutting-edge warheads meant to penetrate heavy anti-ballistic missile defenses.

The glider is one of several weapons systems meant to boost Russian nuclear deterrence, which were announced by President Vladimir Putin last year. The build-up is meant to counter Washington’s development of ABM technologies, which Russia sees as a national threat.

The Russian president believes Russia’s nuclear forces need to be strong enough to dissuade any temptation that US military strategists may have to deliver a pre-emptive strike against Russia during a possible crisis. The missile regiment is reportedly deployed in the Orenburg region.

Avangard has reportedly been in development since at least the mid-1980s, with first tests coming sometime around 2004. The specifications and even the appearance of the top-secret weapon remain classified. Russian officials said it can maintain controlled flight through the atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 20.

Unconfirmed reports claim that the nuclear device it can deliver may be as powerful as 2 megatons, which would be considered overkill for traditional modern nuclear warheads.

https://www.rt.com/news/476943-avangard-glider-us-inspectors/