Author: ColinTwiggs

Andrew Starke quotes Guy Bruten, AllianceBernstein’s Senior Economist for Asia:

“In its latest statement on monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of Australia highlighted that we’re only about halfway through the adjustment in capital spending in mining,” said Bruten. “It’s gone from 8 per cent of GDP to around 5 per cent, and the central bank thinks it could fall to below 3 per cent.”

This suggests that more job losses will flow from the sector. There are concerns, too, about the tax revenue benefits of some resource projects as they move from the investment and construction phases to become fully operational……

“Against this background, we need to ask ourselves whether housing in 2016 will come to the economy’s rescue in the way it did in 2015,” said Bruten. “I am not among those who see a possible housing crash, but I don’t think we can afford to be complacent. “The last time it looked as though we might be heading for a housing crash was in 2003, when the background was very different – there was a very strong boost to the economy coming from commodities and from tax cuts, too.”

“…..The only certain thing about 2016 at this point is that it’s going to be another year of uncertainty.”

Read more at Four key areas where Aussie investors must tread carefully

From Halya Coynash:

The court hearing on Nov 23 in the trial of two Russians captured in May 2015 in eastern Ukraine demonstrated yet again what an uphill battle the men’s defence lawyers will have to convince anybody that their clients, Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Aleksandr Aleksandrov, were not active Russian military intelligence officers [GRU]. Efforts at previous hearings to claim that the men had been pressured or even tortured into presenting themselves as GRU officers fail to explain why they told this to everybody, including their compatriots during one to one conversations.

….The men were visited in hospital on May 20 by representatives of the OSCE Monitoring Mission who pointed out that they spoke to them “without the presence of Ukrainian authorities” and that both had said that they were Russian military servicemen on a reconnaissance mission. They were also seen by the International Red Cross who did not express any concern.

Read more at More evidence that captured Russians were military intelligence officers :: khpg.org

Maxim Eristavi, co-founder Hromadske International, tells what he has learned from being in the epicenter of the intense media warfare between Russia and the West:

First, word fights matter more than actual battlefields.

Propaganda is far worse than any usual media polarization. It ruins families, endangers lives, and starts and ends wars. I remember one Hromadske story from the epicenter of one of the biggest battles in the Eastern Ukrainian war. Our reporter went to the city of Debaltseve hours before it was captured by Russian and rebel forces. The town was shelled heavily back then. But, all interviewed locals were sure that the Ukrainian army was responsible, despite acknowledging that to do this they would have to shell their own positions in the downtown as well. The Ukrainian TV and radio was cut off here months ago.

Secondly, Russian propaganda isn’t designed to convince people.

What it does instead is radicalizing the society, pushing it to extremes and destroying the middle ground for any debates. And then you have a perfectly fertile soil for political manipulations on a grand scale. Let’s be clear: neither Russia, nor Eastern Ukraine are internet black holes like North Korea or Iran. People have access to almost all internet resources possible. In Russia an impressive 77% of the population have a stable internet access, and before the war Eastern Ukraine also had the biggest and most dynamic rate of new internet users after Kyiv. People are able to hear the other side’s point, they just don’t want to.

…..Fifth, the truth is never in between what Russian media and Western media report.

….Any educated person in the West knows that truth is always somewhere in the middle between two biases. So you would usually consume something from Russian media and then Western media and settle for the middle. This is well-understood by the Kremlin and they manage to use it perfectly by positioning their media as ‘an alternative voice’. So, by creating ridiculous parallel reality of lies and theatrics, they don’t expect you to believe in it. They instead create so much confusion that it shifts the middle further towards them.

The truth is always in between two biases, but never in between bias and pure lies.

Read more at Die Zeit: It’s propaganda, stupid! — Medium

From Josh Rogin:

The clash between Russia and Turkey is destabilizing, but the real destabilizing move was Putin’s decision to place a new power-projection and access-denial base just miles from a NATO country without any consultation. NATO chose not to deal with that dangerous situation for months. Now the alliance has no choice.

Read more at NATO Confronts Russian Base on Turkey’s Border – Bloomberg View

From Bloomberg:

Richard Russell, who shared his technical analysis with subscribers through the influential Dow Theory Letters since 1958, has died. He was 91.

Richard published many interesting insights over the last half-century and contributed greatly to the field of investing.

Read more at Richard Russell, Publisher of Dow Theory Letters, Dies at 91 – Bloomberg Business

From Carmen Reinhart, Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

…..At this stage of the commodity cycle, price declines typically retain downward momentum. By the end of the boom, many commodity exporters had already initiated investment projects to expand production. As these investments bear fruit, the increased supply will sustain downward pressure on prices. And many emerging-economy governments’ understandable aversion to running substantial and persistent current-account deficits will lead them to counter weaker export prices by increasing export volume, even if that drives down prices further.

This commodity-price roller-coaster ride is probably not over yet. While we cannot know for sure what will happen, it would be prudent to brace ourselves for another drop – and do what we can to avoid a crash.

Read more at The Commodity Roller Coaster by Carmen Reinhart – Project Syndicate

Cool. Always wanted one.

Read more at How Close Are We to Seeing People Ride Real Hoverboards? – Industry Tap