Miscellaneous News

[zbb]

One good example, and I still do know if it was good or not, was the government taking action against Jack Ma Ant Financial. I would assume a lot of small timers, who had no access credit, who now had access to credit, no longer had access to credit.

Now we can say something that type of lending could cause externalities, or be a threat to the banking system, or being unregulated could be an unfair playing field, but that sounds more like excuses.

To this day, no one can prove conclusively in any way that the restrictions on Ant Financial were good or not.

Who was the state trying to protect in the case of Ant Financial? I don't know.

Ant Financial packaged up and securitized the consumer loans that it gave out and sold the loan-backed securities to investors while taking a slice of the loan payments. In this way, Ant Financial transferred all loan default risks to investors while keeping a slice of the repayment stream. This meant that the incentive for Ant Financial was to create as much loans (risks) as it can since it did not bear any of the downside risks.

This should be ringing alarm bells for anyone that witnessed the Great Financial Crisis as this was exactly what happened with securitized subprime mortgages in the US that nearly led to the collapse of the entire Western financial system. In the aftermath of the GFC, most nations (including China) issued regulations that required issuers of loan-backed securities to keep some fraction of the loan risks on their books. Ant Financial and Jack Ma knowingly broke these regulations and had no intentions of complying with the regulations until the government finally took action.

 

[AntiDK]

Tony Seba's prediction of battery prices dropping to $50/kWh by 2027 is about to happen 3 years early

One of the big things people don't realize about BEVs vs ICE powered vehicles is the recycle ability. Lithium and sodium are elements. No matter how many times you build/recycle/build/recycle, then will always remain lithium and sodium. Always. Crude oil, once refined and burned, will never be crude oil again. Ever - hillmans69 (YouTube comments)

 

[A potato]

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Looks like the Axis hasn't died afterall, they just become eunuchs of the Anglo Empire.

 

[FriedButter]

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Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan sentenced to 10 years jail in state secrets case​

Islamabad, Pakistan – A Pakistan court has sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his close aide, former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, to 10 years in jail in a case related to the leaking of state secrets.

The special court set up in a prison in Rawalpindi on Tuesday announced the sentence in the so-called cypher case, which pertains to a diplomatic cable that Khan claims proves his allegation that his removal from power in 2022 was a conspiracy.

The court established under the Official Secrets Act found Khan guilty of misusing the confidential cable sent by a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.

Khan has repeatedly denied the charge, saying the document contained evidence that his removal as prime minister was a plot hatched by his political opponents and the powerful military, with help from the US administration. Washington and the Pakistani army reject the accusation.

Khan was Pakistan’s premier from August 2018 to April 2022 when he lost a vote of confidence in the parliament. He has been in jail since August last year, facing trial in multiple cases.

Trial held in ‘unlawful manner’​

The sentencing against the country’s main opposition leader comes about a week before the general elections, scheduled on February 8.

Syed Zulfiqar Bukhari, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told Al Jazeera the PTI will challenge the court’s decision.

“This was pretty much a writing on the wall,” he said, adding that the trial was held in an “unlawful manner”.

“Our lawyers were not allowed to represent Imran Khan. They were not even allowed to cross-examine the witnesses. What was unfolding in the court was merely a charade and a sham,” Bukhari said.

It is Khan’s second conviction in less than a year. In August, he was sentenced to three years in a corruption case, which barred him from contesting the national elections.

The vote follows a massive crackdown against the PTI, which saw dozens of its leaders quitting the party and thousands of its members and supporters jailed.


Recently, the party also lost its election symbol – a cricket bat – and had been forced to field its candidates as independents.

But Bukhari said the verdict against Khan and Qureshi will only work in favour of the beleaguered party.

“With the sentence coming at a time when elections are less than 10 days away, it will only motivate our supporters and help them come out in droves. It looks like the authorities want to suppress the PTI and its voter base, but their acts will only drive us to vote in bigger numbers,” he told Al Jazeera.

Political analyst Benazir Shah said it was “clear from the very onset of the court proceedings [against Khan] that the state had little interest in fairly investigating the case, regardless of its serious nature”.

“The state was instead using it as just another means to block Khan from coming to power post the elections,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that it was “deeply troubling” that the trial was “shrouded in secrecy, preventing journalists from covering the proceedings despite court orders of an open trial”.

Lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii said the sentencing required there should be a “deliberate and wilful” leaking of state secrets in collusion with an enemy, with the understanding that it would be detrimental to the state.

“I can’t wait to see how the trial court squares this circle. And who the enemy is with which Khan and Qureshi wanted to collude with,” he told Al Jazeera.

 

[plawolf]

Thanks for your post, it was well articulated, and that I appreciate.

State invention to me, in the West, has been totally abused, and it is just to rig the game, to put it mildly.


There is one point, in your post, that was not brought up.

And that is the reason why I am still against state intervention for the most part.

No one really knows anything about the future. No one knows what side effects of a policy would do.

We can talk about these externalities, but that has already been done ages ago. That is straight out of the textbook.

In the real world, state intervention seems brutal.

One good example, and I still do know if it was good or not, was the government taking action against Jack Ma Ant Financial. I would assume a lot of small timers, who had no access credit, who now had access to credit, no longer had access to credit.

Now we can say something that type of lending could cause externalities, or be a threat to the banking system, or being unregulated could be an unfair playing field, but that sounds more like excuses.

To this day, no one can prove conclusively in any way that the restrictions on Ant Financial were good or not.

Who was the state trying to protect in the case of Ant Financial? I don't know.

We heard theoretical answers in the past, but the world is real, a textbook answer does not cut it IMHO.

So, state intervention too many times just seems like heavy handiness of the state for no reason at all, other than being a nanny. To protect ourselves, from ourselves.



That is what I really do not like.

This idea of externalities, and Liberal ideology, has turbo charged the nanny state.

That is a real danger to China I feel.

You just do not want to go down that road. You just don't.

I’m sorry, but that’s just regurgitating the loaded propaganda of the rich and powerful designed to fool the poor to act against their own best interests to take power from a benevolent state trying to protect them and give that power to the capitalists desperate to exploit them. Donald Trump is the poster child of the free market approach. He will send his lawyers in to bankrupt you in court and win by default even when everyone involved knows full well he is wrong. That is exactly the world the rich and powerful capitalists in the west wants, where their (usually inherited) wealth can buy them anything and everything they can dream of, and where they can use their wealth to destroy anyone who stands in their way.

If someone had a Time Machine and went back to introduce regulato prevent the Subprime financial crash, you can make the same airy arrangements about no one knowing the future so no one should do anything to stop the rich from doing plainly wrong and stupid shit.

All this hand wringing about state intervention being ‘brutal’ just sound naive and ignorant, as if free market collapses are a piece of cake. And you only need to look back at recent history to see how the capitalists are magically all for state intervention to bail them out of messes they themselves created from their own greed and hubris.

It’s funny you use the term ‘nanny state’, which was coined to attack the NHS. Look to America’s free market solutions before complaining about how bad the NHS is.

However, you do make some good points that state intervention should be minimised, and that is exactly what China does. It only acts to pre-empt major issues. The key impact of the Chinese system is less that the state jumps in and corrects everything, but rather its moderating impact in getting business and the rich and powerful to check their own worst impulses in the first place.

If you look at things purely logically, China is actually less interventionist than most western capitalist countries. For all their PR BS sound bites, western governments actually directly intervene in global markets far more than China’s government. The big difference is that when the Chinese government intervenes, it does so to benefit society at large. But when western governments intervene, it’s usually to protect the interests of rich capitalists who legally bribed the politicians.

Rather than being ideologically committed to ‘intervention’ or ‘free market’, it’s far more reasonable to look at why governments are intervening in the first place.

 

[Randomuser]

I

Evergrande issued massive amounts of cash dividends to its shareholders when it was already heavily indebted but still had access to credit. The vast majority of Evergrande shares are owned by the founder and his relatives. Since shareholders are not liable when a company goes bankrupt, Evergrande basically scammed creditors by borrowing money and giving it to the founder and his relatives while leaving the liability for the debt with the company.

I always felt that the Evergrande guy was a slimey ass guy who's trying to weasel his way out of this mess he caused.

No. It's time to take away all and his family assets and use it to pay off all this debt.

 

[supersnoop]

"Chyna bad and Chyna evil becuz Chyna imprisoned me for spying on Chyna on Chynise soil!!!"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1752246142392238426

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Hilarious that the local media has basically abandoned their cause now that more details have come about

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Just because you aren't James Bond and you don't call it spying, doesn't mean other countries don't feel you're spying, even if they're you're friends.

edit:

"All of my duties were conducted in full compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the directives covering Canadian foreign service officers and embassy staff," Kovrig wrote.

The adult version of "Derek's mom lets him eat dinner in front of the TV! Why can't I?!"

 

[FriedButter]

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Biden says he has decided how to respond to Jordan attack​

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he has decided how to respond to a deadly drone attack on US forces in Jordan. Biden said that he would not seek a “wider war in the Middle East.”

Asked by a reporter whether he had settled on a response to the attack, Biden replied “yes,” without revealing any further details. His answer adds little to an official White House statement put out immediately after the attack, which said that the US “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing.”

Three US Army soldiers were killed and dozens more injured when an unmanned drone struck an

American outpost in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border in the early hours of Sunday morning.

After more than 150 such strikes on US forces across Iraq and Syria in recent months, the attack marked the first time that American troops in the Middle East were confirmed killed by enemy fire since the Israel Hamas war began in October.

IMO probably gonna happen during the weekend or after 4 PM EDT Friday when the stock market closes.

 

[jwnz]

China living rent free in her head.

Yup, ever since she went to China many years ago...

 

[pmc]

Tony Seba's prediction of battery prices dropping to $50/kWh by 2027 is about to happen 3 years early​

​

One of the big things people don't realize about BEVs vs ICE powered vehicles is the recycle ability. Lithium and sodium are elements. No matter how many times you build/recycle/build/recycle, then will always remain lithium and sodium. Always. Crude oil, once refined and burned, will never be crude oil again. Ever - hillmans69 (YouTube comments)

There is no overall comparison done for particle pollution as EVs are not used on same scale on long distance as others but we are transitioning towards heavier vehicles whose torque management reduce lifespan of even premium tires. long term impact on transport infrastructure will be substantial. Toyota reduced weight of LC300 by 200kg, made the tire size narrower.. The vehicle that matter in Mideast.

see the push towards higher size and premium tires. revenues going up despite demand going down.

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With regard to replacement tires, the economic slowdown, mainly in the US and Europe, gradually materialized, and tire demand slowed significantly in the fourth quarter. On the other hand, demand for passenger car and light truck tires remained relatively strong in areas such as high-rim diameter tires (18 inches or more) and premium brands for truck and bus tires in North America.

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Demand for 18-inch and larger tires is steadily expanding. Inventory levels are back to normal in most regions except for winter tires in Europe.