Opinion – Has Kerry gone mad? – Al Arabiya News – John Gelmini

John Kerry has not gone mad but in this article from Al Arabiya News brought to us courtesy of Dr Alf, Kerry is contradicting himself.

To begin with, we were told that Assad would have to go and to that end American, British and French special forces have been training various Syrian rebel factions for more than 3 years.

Then as Assad, with help from Russia managed to stay in power, Kerry and Obama became ambivalent even though the PNAC plan all along (as stated on their website) was to: “take down ” Syria, then Iran and then destabilize and break up Russia and eventually China.

ISIS arose because Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar gave it funding and planned to use it to further their own agenda of a global caliphate.

Turkey under Erdogan also wanted to topple Assad and rebuild the Ottoman Empire, using ISIS as a pawn and ISIS themselves wanted the bigger prize of a global caliphate to include the large area of China where the Uighurs live.

The UK and America both subscribe to the PNAC plan and make a great deal of money from the financial backers of ISIS, so they cannot speak publicly against ISIS’s backers, as General Dannat and several American Generals have done but at the same time they seem happy to let ISIS rampage about as long as the Kurds do the fighting helped by Iran.

Taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz as Netanyahu wants would be treated as an act of war by Russia, so Kerry and Obama are in a cleft stick and reason that they can do a deal with Iran who in turn will provide the “boots on the ground ” to fight ISIS, rather than committing American troops.

Congress is more hawkish and wants Natanz taken out, and can invoke the “War Powers Act” to block the Obama/Kerry deal, which probably won’t happen anyway because the Ayatollah’s in Iran know that Obama and Kerry are out of their depth, lame-ducks, trying to achieve irreconcilable policy objectives.

John Gelmini

Global finance faces $9 trillion stress test as dollar soars – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard – Telegraph

 

This is a deeply worrying, must-read article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor, the Telegraph.

via Global finance faces $9 trillion stress test as dollar soars – Telegraph.

The article seems seriously alarmist. Disappointingly, there’s no advice for governments, businesses or individuals to mitigate the risk of the next financial crisis.

Simply, on the back of the US Fed‘s quantitative easing program (QE), many governments and businesses around the world borrowed US Dollar funds at record low-interest rates. Because of the strength of the US economy, the Dollar has been rising strongly against other currencies. But now the Fed is expected to raise interest rates which will cause the Dollar to rise further. Foreign investors who borrowed Dollar must of course repay Dollars – however, they’ll need far more of their own currency because of the appreciation of the Dollar.

Borrowing Dollars and staying un-hedged is simply speculating. The bankers and treasurers who have failed to apply proper care, discretion, foresight, prudence and vigilance should be fired without pay-off and minimum pension.

Worst case, we are looking at another 2008 financial crisis as US Dollar borrowings are exposed around the world.

At the personal level, this is similar to the home buyers who were unwisely advised to take out Swiss Franc loans because of their low-interest rates – borrowers and their advisors seemed to forget that they had to repay Swiss Francs. With the massive appreciation of the  Swiss Franc, borrowers must repay much more than their original loans.

It remains to be seen if US Dollar borrowers will be given preferential bailout terms by government, unlike private borrowers of Swiss Francs.

Watch out for increased market volatility, as speculators target non-US businesses and governments with large un-hedged US Dollar positions.

Most worrying of all watch out for increased political risk triggered by the next financial crisis – after all, even without sanctions many of Russia’s largest businesses have massive US Dollar borrowings.

Thoughts?