#then i should consider why that is and what role my country plays geopolitically!!

[deardoomedworld]

It's so wild to me when people treat the disco elysium world as any other fantasy world, with seemingly no ties to our real world and its geopolitics, when politics is such a big facet of the game? "Which disco elysium nation would you want to live in?!" My brother in Doloris Dei I already live here.

[arcticdementor]

Imagine that the US was competing in a space race with some third world country, say Zambia, for whatever reason. Americans of course would have orders of magnitude more money to throw at the problem, and the most respected aerospace engineers in the world, with degrees from the best universities and publications in the top journals. Zambia would have none of this. What should our reaction be if, after a decade, Zambia had made more progress?

Obviously, it would call into question the entire field of aerospace engineering. What good were all those Google Scholar pages filled with thousands of citations, all the knowledge gained from our labs and universities, if Western science gets outcompeted by the third world?

For all that has been said about Afghanistan, no one has noticed that this is precisely what just happened to political science. The American-led coalition had countless experts with backgrounds pertaining to every part of the mission on their side: people who had done their dissertations on topics like state building, terrorism, military-civilian relations, and gender in the military. General David Petraeus, who helped sell Obama on the troop surge that made everything in Afghanistan worse, earned a PhD from Princeton and was supposedly an expert in “counterinsurgency theory.” Ashraf Ghani, the just deposed president of the country, has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia and is the co-author of a book literally called Fixing Failed States. This was his territory. It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.

…

Phil Tetlock’s work on experts is one of those things that gets a lot of attention, but still manages to be underrated. In his 2005 Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, he found that the forecasting abilities of subject-matter experts were no better than educated laymen when it came to predicting geopolitical events and economic outcomes. As Bryan Caplan points out, we shouldn’t exaggerate the results here and provide too much fodder for populists; the questions asked were chosen for their difficulty, and the experts were being compared to laymen who nonetheless had met some threshold of education and competence.

At the same time, we shouldn’t put too little emphasis on the results either. They show that “expertise” as we understand it is largely fake. Should you listen to epidemiologists or economists when it comes to COVID-19? Conventional wisdom says “trust the experts.” The lesson of Tetlock (and the Afghanistan War), is that while you certainly shouldn’t be getting all your information from your uncle’s Facebook Wall, there is no reason to start with a strong prior that people with medical degrees know more than any intelligent person who honestly looks at the available data.

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I think one of the most interesting articles of the COVID era was a piece called “Beware of Facts Man” by Annie Lowrey, published in The Atlantic.

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The reaction to this piece was something along the lines of “ha ha, look at this liberal who hates facts.” But there’s a serious argument under the snark, and it’s that you should trust credentials over Facts Man and his amateurish takes. In recent days, a 2019 paper on “Epistemic Trespassing” has been making the rounds on Twitter. The theory that specialization is important is not on its face absurd, and probably strikes most people as natural. In the hard sciences and other places where social desirability bias and partisanship have less of a role to play, it’s probably a safe assumption. In fact, academia is in many ways premised on the idea, as we have experts in “labor economics,” “state capacity,” “epidemiology,” etc. instead of just having a world where we select the smartest people and tell them to work on the most important questions.

But what Tetlock did was test this hypothesis directly in the social sciences, and he found that subject-matter experts and Facts Man basically tied.

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Interestingly, one of the best defenses of “Facts Man” during the COVID era was written by Annie Lowrey’s husband, Ezra Klein. His April 2021 piece in The New York Times showed how economist Alex Tabarrok had consistently disagreed with the medical establishment throughout the pandemic, and was always right. You have the “Credentials vs. Facts Man” debate within one elite media couple. If this was a movie they would’ve switched the genders, but since this is real life, stereotypes are confirmed and the husband and wife take the positions you would expect.

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In the end, I don’t think my dissertation contributed much to human knowledge, making it no different than the vast majority of dissertations that have been written throughout history. The main reason is that most of the time public opinion doesn’t really matter in foreign policy. People generally aren’t paying attention, and the vast majority of decisions are made out of public sight. How many Americans know or care that North Macedonia and Montenegro joined NATO in the last few years? Most of the time, elites do what they want, influenced by their own ideological commitments and powerful lobby groups. In times of crisis, when people do pay attention, they can be manipulated pretty easily by the media or other partisan sources.

If public opinion doesn’t matter in foreign policy, why is there so much study of public opinion and foreign policy? There’s a saying in academia that “instead of measuring what we value, we value what we can measure.” It’s easy to do public opinion polls and survey experiments, as you can derive a hypothesis, get an answer, and make it look sciency in charts and graphs. To show that your results have relevance to the real world, you cite some papers that supposedly find that public opinion matters, maybe including one based on a regression showing that under very specific conditions foreign policy determined the results of an election, and maybe it’s well done and maybe not, but again, as long as you put the words together and the citations in the right format nobody has time to check any of this. The people conducting peer review on your work will be those who have already decided to study the topic, so you couldn’t find a more biased referee if you tried.

Thus, to be an IR scholar, the two main options are you can either use statistical methods that don’t work, or actually find answers to questions, but those questions are so narrow that they have no real world impact or relevance. A smaller portion of academics in the field just produce postmodern-generator style garbage, hence “feminist theories of IR.” You can also build game theoretic models that, like the statistical work in the field, are based on a thousand assumptions that are probably false and no one will ever check. The older tradition of Kennan and Mearsheimer is better and more accessible than what has come lately, but the field is moving away from that and, like a lot of things, towards scientism and identity politics.

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At some point, I decided that if I wanted to study and understand important questions, and do so in a way that was accessible to others, I’d have a better chance outside of the academy. Sometimes people thinking about an academic career reach out to me, and ask for advice. For people who want to go into the social sciences, I always tell them not to do it. If you have something to say, take it to Substack, or CSPI, or whatever. If it’s actually important and interesting enough to get anyone’s attention, you’ll be able to find funding.

If you think your topic of interest is too esoteric to find an audience, know that my friend Razib Khan, who writes about the Mongol empire, Y-chromosomes and haplotypes and such, makes a living doing this. If you want to be an experimental physicist, this advice probably doesn’t apply, and you need lab mates, major funding sources, etc. If you just want to collect and analyze data in a way that can be done without institutional support, run away from the university system.

The main problem with academia is not just the political bias, although that’s another reason to do something else with your life. It’s the entire concept of specialization, which holds that you need some secret tools or methods to understand what we call “political science” or “sociology,” and that these fields have boundaries between them that should be respected in the first place. Quantitative methods are helpful and can be applied widely, but in learning stats there are steep diminishing returns.

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Outside of political science, are there other fields that have their own equivalents of “African witch doctor beats von Braun to the moon” or “the Taliban beats the State Department and the Pentagon” facts to explain? Yes, and here are just a few examples.

Consider criminology. More people are studying how to keep us safe from other humans than at any other point in history. But here’s the US murder rate between 1960 and 2018, not including the large uptick since then.

So basically, after a rough couple of decades, we’re back to where we were in 1960. But we’re actually much worse, because improvements in medical technology are keeping a lot of people that would’ve died 60 years ago alive. One paper from 2002 says that the murder rate would be 5 times higher if not for medical developments since 1960. I don’t know how much to trust this, but it’s surely true that we’ve made some medical progress since that time, and doctors have been getting a lot of experience from all the shooting victims they have treated over the decades. Moreover, we’re much richer than we were in 1960, and I’m sure spending on public safety has increased. With all that, we are now about tied with where we were almost three-quarters of a century ago, a massive failure.

What about psychology? As of 2016, there were 106,000 licensed psychologists in the US. I wish I could find data to compare to previous eras, but I don’t think anyone will argue against the idea that we have more mental health professionals and research psychologists than ever before. Are we getting mentally healthier? Here’s suicides in the US from 1981 to 2016

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What about education? I’ll just defer to Freddie deBoer’s recent post on the topic, and Scott Alexander on how absurd the whole thing is.

Maybe there have been larger cultural and economic forces that it would be unfair to blame criminology, psychology, and education for. Despite no evidence we’re getting better at fighting crime, curing mental problems, or educating children, maybe other things have happened that have outweighed our gains in knowledge. Perhaps the experts are holding up the world on their shoulders, and if we hadn’t produced so many specialists over the years, thrown so much money at them, and gotten them to produce so many peer reviews papers, we’d see Middle Ages-levels of violence all across the country and no longer even be able to teach children to read. Like an Ayn Rand novel, if you just replaced the business tycoons with those whose work has withstood peer review.

Or you can just assume that expertise in these fields is fake. Even if there are some people doing good work, either they are outnumbered by those adding nothing or even subtracting from what we know, or our newly gained understanding is not being translated into better policies. Considering the extent to which government relies on experts, if the experts with power are doing things that are not defensible given the consensus in their fields, the larger community should make this known and shun those who are getting the policy questions so wrong. As in the case of the Afghanistan War, this has not happened, and those who fail in the policy world are still well regarded in their larger intellectual community.

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Those opposed to cancel culture have taken up the mantle of “intellectual diversity” as a heuristic, but there’s nothing valuable about the concept itself. When I look at the people I’ve come to trust, they are diverse on some measures, but extremely homogenous on others. IQ and sensitivity to cost-benefit considerations seem to me to be unambiguous goods in figuring out what is true or what should be done in a policy area. You don’t add much to your understanding of the world by finding those with low IQs who can’t do cost-benefit analysis and adding them to the conversation.

One of the clearest examples of bias in academia and how intellectual diversity can make the conversation better is the work of Lee Jussim on stereotypes. Basically, a bunch of liberal academics went around saying “Conservatives believe in differences between groups, isn’t that terrible!” Lee Jussim, as someone who is relatively moderate, came along and said “Hey, let’s check to see whether they’re true!” This story is now used to make the case for intellectual diversity in the social sciences.

Yet it seems to me that isn’t the real lesson here. Imagine if, instead of Jussim coming forward and asking whether stereotypes are accurate, Osama bin Laden had decided to become a psychologist. He’d say “The problem with your research on stereotypes is that you do not praise Allah the all merciful at the beginning of all your papers.” If you added more feminist voices, they’d say something like “This research is problematic because it’s all done by men.” Neither of these perspectives contributes all that much. You’ve made the conversation more diverse, but dumber. The problem with psychology was a very specific one, in that liberals are particularly bad at recognizing obvious facts about race and sex. So yes, in that case the field could use more conservatives, not “more intellectual diversity,” which could just as easily make the field worse as make it better. And just because political psychology could use more conservative representation when discussing stereotypes doesn’t mean those on the right always add to the discussion rather than subtract from it. As many religious Republicans oppose the idea of evolution, we don’t need the “conservative” position to come and help add a new perspective to biology.

The upshot is intellectual diversity is a red herring, usually a thinly-veiled plea for more conservatives. Nobody is arguing for more Islamists, Nazis, or flat earthers in academia, and for good reason. People should just be honest about the ways in which liberals are wrong and leave it at that.

…

The failure in Afghanistan was mind-boggling. Perhaps never in the history of warfare had there been such a resource disparity between two sides, and the US-backed government couldn’t even last through the end of the American withdrawal. One can choose to understand this failure through a broad or narrow lens. Does it only tell us something about one particular war or is it a larger indictment of American foreign policy?

The main argument of this essay is we’re not thinking big enough. The American loss should be seen as a complete discrediting of the academic understanding of “expertise,” with its reliance on narrowly focused peer reviewed publications and subject matter knowledge as the way to understand the world. Although I don’t develop the argument here, I think I could make the case that expertise isn’t just fake, it actually makes you worse off because it gives you a higher level of certainty in your own wishful thinking. The Taliban probably did better by focusing their intellectual energies on interpreting the Holy Quran and taking a pragmatic approach to how they fought the war rather than proceeding with a prepackaged theory of how to engage in nation building, which for the West conveniently involved importing its own institutions.

A discussion of the practical implications of all this, or how we move from a world of specialization to one with better elites, is also for another day. For now, I’ll just emphasize that for those thinking of choosing an academic career to make universities or the peer review system function better, my advice is don’t. The conversation is much more interesting, meaningful, and oriented towards finding truth here on the outside.

[echoesoftheeast]

Why I No Longer Support the Russian Annexation of Crimea

A few years ago, when I first began learning the Russian language and the histories of Eastern Europe, I was unabashedly pro-Russian in my geopolitical convictions. I still remember watching a documentary about the Maiden Revolution in Kyiv and how it was presented as being orchestrated by the West, how it resulted in the safety of Russian speakers in Ukraine being compromised, and how it ushered in the rise of a fascist government with Nazi sympathies that espoused a type of ultra-Ukrainian nationalism that left no place for anything Russian in Ukraine anymore. Due to this analysis of the Maidan and post-Maidan currents in Ukraine, I came to the conclusion that the annexation of the Crimea was a truly democratic action and that the war in Donetsk and Luhansk represented almost a motherly care from Moscow for the Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine. For years this served as the basis of my understanding of the post-Maidan conflicts, particularly the annexation of the Crimea. I continued to read a multitude of pro-Russian articles that justified the annexation. According to the standard positions given, the initial transfer of the Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev was nothing more than a whimsical decision from the former party head of the Ukrainian SSR. Since the Crimea had been thoroughly under Russian administration prior, this means that the actual transfer was an historical injustice in the first place; Crimea is thoroughly Russian land and is deeply connected with Russian history. Secondly, the annexation can be justified since NATO had allegedly promised the newly formed Russian Federation following the collapse of the USSR that they would not expand into either former Eastern Block or Soviet territory. Since a multitude of former Eastern Bloc and Soviet countries have in fact been integrated into NATO, the West broke their promise so then what sort of moral high ground do they have to declare the annexation of the Crimea as illegal? Thirdly, considering that the majority of the population considered themselves ethnically Russian, since there was a referendum that resulted in an overwhelming majority of voters supporting being received into the Russian Federation, how should this act of democracy be considered any differently than say the will of the Albanian Kosovars to cede from Serbia. If an autonomous province of one country can have the legal right to cede, why can’t another? Finally (not to say that there are only four justifications for the annexation of Crimea, rather these were the biggest reasons for my previous support behind it), there was the strategic considerations of the naval base at Sevastopol. Considering that following the collapse of the Soviet Union that more and more former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc countries have been joining the European Union and NATO (or lining up to do so), this presents a threat to Russia. Considering that the geopolitical relations between Russia and the West are at an all time low since the Cold War, it would be a strategic blunder for Russia if Ukraine was allowed to achieve its goals of EU and NATO integration. Considering the close proximity of Sevastopol to Russian territory, if Ukraine would become a part of NATO and allow for NATO to establish itself in Sevastopol, this would poise a huge military threat to Russia. Therefore, in a sort of pre-emptive move, the annexation of the Crimea was necessary to prevent any further potential NATO bases being so close to Russian territory. However, over the years as I have opened myself to more and more information from across the geopolitical spectrums, the justifications for the annexation began to slowly dismantle themselves until I came to the conclusion that the annexation of the Crimea was not only an illegal action taken by Russia but a geopolitical blunder of the highest level. I will leave why I think this was the biggest mistake they could make until the end and I will address why I no longer consider the justifications that I mentioned as valid. Before we proceed, I would like to just mention an event that was fundamental in helping me reconsider my convictions and to abandon what I can only call the Russian-Chauvinistic mentality that I previously held. A few years ago when I was on one of my trips to Chisinau, my wife and I decided to visit the Museum of Soviet Occupation (also known as the Museum of Victims of Communism). Now, I was definitely not pro-Soviet (being an Orthodox Christian, I know enough history about the persecutions against the religious in the Soviet Union and the overall atheistic ideology to keep me at arms length from having any real sense of Soviet sympathy) so I was very eager to check this museum out. Having read various books and articles that talk about some of the horrors that happened (especially during the Stalinist era), I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the tragedies that befell different people within the Soviet Union. However, it was a completely different experience to walk through the museum and see real letters from prisoners, confiscated passports, and photos of the real people who experienced the repressions; simply because they were land owners, priests, or suspected of being pro-Romanians. What struck me most was the collection of propaganda posters in one of the exhibits. Whether they were attacking religion or bolstering the benefits of the Soviet system, the propaganda seemed to address everything. It was this moment of looking at the seemingly endless collection of Soviet propaganda posters where something struck me, “If there was this much propaganda going on back then, who’s to say that there’s not just as much now but through contemporary mediums?” So, what got me to reconsider my positions wasn’t an article, or a book, or a conversation; it was the feeling of being overwhelmed by an endless supply of propaganda. After this moment, I began to be more critical of what I would read and try to expand my reading to include sources that present both sides of a situation, as well as material from non-partisan sources. One of the most important examples was with the annexation of Crimea. I began to look a little deeper at the arguments put forward to justify the annexation. Over time, as I read more sources or would occasionally stumble upon some information, each point began to have less weight to me that they used to have, until the point where I came to the conclusion that I no longer can buy into the arguments: Crimea is Ukraine.

The first point that is often brought up is that Khrushchev simply gave Crimea to Ukraine either because he had a soft spot for the country, or that it was a gift to celebrate the 1654 Pereyaslav Treaty, or because he wanted to reward Ukraine for their loyalty to the whole Soviet system (among other reasons that are given). Now, it is definitely true that the Crimea was previously an autonomous oblast within the Russian SFSR and that Nikita Khrushchev played a major role it the transfer of the Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. However, no matter what the reason (or most likely, reasons) behind the transfer, ultimately it was transferred and became an administrative unit of the Ukrainian SSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declaration of the new entities of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the Crimea was legally recognized as part of Ukraine. Most importantly, in 1994 both the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine (along with the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) signed the Budapest Memorandums on Security Assurances. Along with this document came the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In return for Ukraine agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons from their territory within a specified period of time, they were given certain national security assurances. Some of the assurances are worth quoting in full, “1. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine;

2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nation.” The first two points that were noted on the memorandum, signed by the Russian President, concerned respecting the territorial integrity of the existing borders of Ukraine at the time, which included Crimea, and the affirmation that they would not use force against Ukraine and threaten their sovereignty. I came across this memorandum while reading an excellent book written by the Ukrainian-Canadian historian Serhy Yekelchyk, “The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know”. This information completing undermines any king of argument that posits the initial transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR as being some sort of geopolitical injustice, and thereby justifying the annexation of it to the Russian Federation. Russia signed a memorandum to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, to abstain from using force against Ukraine, and to refrain from threatening the current borders of Ukraine. This leads nicely into the next point that the Western powers allegedly promised Russia that they had no intentions of expanding NATO into former Eastern Bloc and Soviet territories. As time went by, history has shown us that a number of former Eastern Bloc and Soviet republics have in fact been accepted in NATO. From the standard Russian narrative, since the West went back on their promise, then how can they oppose the annexation of Crimea? The logic seems to go that since the West reneged on their side of the deal, Russia is therefore free to disregard whatever security guarantees they provided to ensure the territorial integrity of Ukraine. However, we need to ask the question: did the Western powers ever promise this? This answer was given by Mikhail Gorbachev himself: no. The agreement that did happen was in regards to non-German NATO forces being employed in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic). When Gorbachev was interviewed and asked about the supposed promises made to Russia that NATO wouldn’t expand eastwards, he had this to say,

“The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”

It becomes evidently clear that no such promise regarding the refraining of NATO from expanding eastwards was every actually given, so Russia has no ground to try to justify their breaking of an international memorandum on the alleged failure of the West from refraining to expand NATO. Another point is that Crimea is historically Russian land with great historical significance for Russia. While its true that some very significant historical events in Russian history have taken place in the Crimea (including the baptism of St. Volodymyr in Kherson, the Crimean War, and the siege of Sevastopol) and that from 1783-1917 it was part of the Russian Empire and then from 1921-1954 it was part of the Russian SFSR, if we want to talk about the earlier inhabitants of the Crimea, it’s impossible to overlook the Crimean Tatars. Turkic peoples had been inhabiting the Crimean Peninsula since the 6th century and the Crimean Khanate was established in the 15th century. The Tatars were there prior to the movement of Slavs into the peninsula and were the majority until a number of historical factors began to decrease the Tatar population in the Crimea (such as Tatars fleeing or being deported to the Ottoman Empire after the initial conquest by the Russian Empire, more Tatars fleeing or being deported after the Russian loss of the Crimean War, and when practically the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported to Central Asia following World War 2 by Joseph Stalin). Only since 1989 has the Tatar population been growing again when the Supreme Soviet condemned the removal of the Tatars from their lands as unlawful, and thereby allowing larger numbers of them to return. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimean Tatars have largely been in favor of the Ukrainian government and have a more complicated relationship with Russian rule. When the annexation was in process, the Tatar population in Crimea boycotted the referendum and have been vocal in their desire to remain within Ukraine. While the history of Crimea is a part of Slavic history (not simply Russian), the Crimea has more historical rights with the Crimean Tatars, and the voice of the Crimean Tatars has spoken and sides with Ukraine. Now, to address the so-called democratic process of the referendum held in the Crimea that led to the request to be accepted into the Russian Federation. This was probably the strongest argument in favor of the annexation since it appeared the represent the concept of democracy and self-determination. It seemed to me that when the Soviet Union was collapsing and the various republics were declaring their own independence, then why should Ukraine’s desire to cede from the Soviet Union be respected while the Crimea’s desire should be treated as separatism? Is not Kyiv becoming to Crimea what Moscow was to Ukraine? On top of that, why is it that the referendum in the Crimea is treated as illegal while the referendum in Kosovo was accepted by the West? Let’s first look at the legitimacy of the referendum first. The whole tension between the political concepts of territorial integrity and self-determination is difficult to say the least. However, in the situation following the Maidan Revolution, it’s abundantly clear that the situation in Crimea was escalated following the arrival of the little green men. Even in my most pro-Russian days I had no doubts that these were “unofficial” Russian soldiers coming to the Crimea. What this presents itself as is nothing other than a military invasion and occupation. Since the referendum took place within a context of military occupation, it fundamentally cannot be accepted as valid on an international level. While it may be true that a large percentage of the population living in Crimea may in fact have supported a move towards Russia (I have friends and acquaintances with family members in Crimea and I have been told from them that the general opinion was indeed to become a part of Russia), the context and procedures were far from happening within what is accepted on a legal basis and can be legitimized on an international level. In regard to the comparison with Kosovo, we have to recognize that their situations are completely different. While both Kosovo and the Crimea were autonomous regions within their respective countries, the Russian population in the Crimea never underwent the same atrocities that the Kosovar Albanians underwent during the Kosovo War. The context for the independence of Kosovo was largely based on the genocidal afflictions they experienced during the war from Serbia, thus giving a moral precedence to pursue a path of independence. The only population within Crimea that can claim to have any kind of similar experience are the Crimean Tatars, who have been the victims of repression and deportation numerous times throughout history. So, we can see that neither the fact that a referendum was held or the comparison with Kosovo can have any legitimacy in regards to the annexation of Crimea. Now I’d like to look at the claim that it was necessary to annex the Crimea as a pre-emptive strike to protect Russian borders from the expansion of NATO. Since there’s a significant naval port in Sevastopol, it would be a geopolitical disaster for Russia if the ports of Sevastopol became NATO bases. This argument is completely dismantled once one considers the point that Sevastopol isn’t the only port in Ukraine. This point was driven home to me during a discussion with a Ukrainian acquaintance of mine about the whole situation in Crimea. We were discussing the various justifications given by Russia and I brought up this point about self-defence against NATO. My acquaintance simply replied, “So what if Sevastopol doesn’t become a NATO base? If Ukraine would be accepted into NATO, there are ports in Odessa which could easily be used as well. Is the distance from Sevastopol to Odessa really going to be that big of a difference?” The weakness of this argument became immediately apparent to me. If we even put aside the question of naval bases, there’s still the reality of regular military bases that could be set up in Ukraine. NATO could simply set up bases in cities like Kharkiv, Chernihiv, or even Kyiv and these would all be very close to the Russian border. To pursue this line of argument would necessitate that Russia simply annex all of Ukraine to prevent NATO from establishing any closer bases to their borders. As each argument began to collapse for me, I came to the ultimate conclusion that the annexation of Crimea was nothing more than an illegal military occupation, taking advantage of the unfavorable situation that arose for Russia in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution. In an attempt to keep Ukraine divided to at least prevent her from moving closer to the West, the annexation and the war in Donbass is nothing more than a destabilizing effort by Moscow to try and force Ukraine to stay within their sphere of influence and to prevent the West from getting to close to Ukraine. However, the actions taken by Moscow were the biggest geopolitical blunder that they could have made. If Moscow genuinely wants to keep Ukraine within their sphere of influence, the worst thing that they could have done was to annex territory and become involved in a separatist war. By trying to force Ukraine to stay, they have only pushed her farther away. While it’s unlikely that Russia will ever accept that the annexation of the Crimea was unlawful and actually return it to the control of the Ukrainian government, it’s also just as unlikely the Ukraine will return to a place where closer ties with Russia is a popular opinion. While there are small measures of truth in the propaganda employed by Moscow in regards to the situation in Ukraine (there are definitely ultra-Ukrainian nationalists as well as those who have sympathies for the Galician division of the SS who fought against the Soviets with the Germans in World War 2), it is grossly inaccurate to portray the situation as if every Ukrainian is a fascist, ultra-nationalist, who’s looking to persecute Russian speakers. While the Russian language may have less acceptance in certain parts of Ukraine, it’s still spoken across the country. At the end of the day, I realized that my thoughts in the museum in Chisinau were right: Moscow is simply continuing the propaganda tradition through new mediums. To sum everything up simply, we can say this much: not all Ukrainians are fascists, not all Ukrainian are Nazi sympathizers, not all Ukrainians are out for Russian blood. Russia signed a memorandum to respective the territorial integrity of Ukraine and to abstain from threatening it with force. There was never any promise from NATO that they wouldn’t expand eastwards. While Crimea plays a role in Slavic history, the Crimean Tatars have a greater claim through history than the Russians do. The referendum took place in an atmosphere of military occupation and therefore has no chance of legitimacy. The situations of Kosovo and Crimea are completely different and therefore are not a viable comparison. And finally, if Ukraine was to join NATO, bases could still be set up close to the Russian border even without the naval bases in Sevastopol. Crimea is Ukraine.

[blackhavilliard]

Modern Manorian AU - Royals Magazine - Feature: Dorian Havilliard

And Dorian’s feaure is finally here! Hope you all enjoy it. Manon’s feature is coming afterwards and I’m soooo excited for that ;D

Includes full interview under the cut. Read on AO3 here.

Tagging: @rufousnmacska​, @heir2chaos​ and @gimmedafood​ (to say thank you for your comment!) Let me know if you want to be included or you can also subscribe on AO3 too :)

In the midst of a geopolitical crisis that had threatened the existence of the realm of Erilea stood a young king bent, broken but unbowed as he raced against time to thwart the enemy that has long kept his father's kingdom and now his own in its shadows. Now, years after the passing of the storm, King Dorian Havilliard II finds himself in reflection of the years lost and the years found as he governs Adarlan in stride.

Since the first appearance of the then heir apparent on the tabloids of the Rifthold Journal in a splendid attire fit for the handsome royal, it was a lascivious rumour of the young prince’s escapades inside the glass palace that permanently marked Dorian as that of an aristocratic hedonist whose existence lived off the extravagance and luxuries of the wealthy, knowing that he could absolutely get away with it.

While Dorian played the game of pomp and distraction amongst celebrity A-listers, prime ministers, and the one percent, a sinister plot by political conspirators had slowly been brewing – the overthrow of the Havilliard bloodline that has governed Adarlan for a thousand generations.

In the highest tower of Rifthold Palace is where Dorian prefers to spend his time perched on a deep-red velvet armchair sipping on a cold glass of what looked to be a fruity beverage as he pores over the latest fiction novel – a pleasure he shares with his dear friend, Queen Aelin of Terrasen. Their shared bookshelf, The Royal Fleetfoot Bookclub (named after Aelin’s beloved golden retriever, a present from the king one Yulemas) is Erilea’s most popular Book Club. And decidedly so.

Dorian’s misplaced faith on his father, then King Dorian Havilliard I, had been his constant companion after his untimely death that led to Dorian’s premature appointment as sovereign. But as the war raged on between the countries of Erilea, the formalities accustomed to a monarch were lost, which ultimately led to Dorian’s displacement from Adarlan. The young king was lost, angry, and untethered as he navigated the political landscape alongside his powerful friends: Queen Aelin of Terrasen, Lord Rowan of Doranelle, Queen Manon of the Wastes, and his closest friend and confidante, Lord Westfall, whom he sent as an envoy to the Khaganate in the Southern Continent. Dorian became known as The King Without a Crown.

Dorian ushers me to a leathered couch next to an occasional table where he pours a cup of brewed tea. He asks if I’d be interested in something stronger and I decline. He winks, a promise of our eventual liquored celebration after the successful sit-down.

King Dorian is charming, refined and a proud intellectual with a taste of an epicurean. Delegates from all over Erilea would comment on the king’s graceful charisma as he fulfilled his role of a sovereign in all its stringent social specifications. It’s as if the dark years of his early adulthood never existed when you’re in his presence. Dorian is adored by the masses and the politicians alike, and it isn’t hard to see why.

While we share a few niceties – he’s become quite a dear friend over the years – you can’t miss the way his sapphire eyes would steal longing glances out the open balcony. One can observe that it overlooks Rifthold Palace’s private airstrip, and soon everything makes more sense.

King Dorian’s wife Queen Manon Blackbeak rules from her kingdom in the Western Wastes, a two-hour plane ride from the Adarlan capital. After settling into their roles as respective monarchs of their kingdoms, the pair continued their relationship, much to delight of the common people, who were far too enamoured by their relationship for it to be considered healthy. No surprises there though. They’re really that pairing that’s pretty much straight out of a YA fantasy novel with their unbelievable good looks, seemingly opposite yet highly complementary personalities and the kind of sexual tension you could only dream of.

Nonetheless, despite the distance and their responsibilities, no one can deny just how smitten the king is of his wife. He assures me, in his usual playful charm, that she’s most likely missing him more than he is. I laugh. Even he doesn’t believe his own lie.

He makes himself comfortable, draping his suit jacket on the back of his armchair as he settles down and shows off his polished Derbys almost as if he’d like to take them off.

LYSANDRA: Should we both take our shoes off? I think we should both take our shoes off.

DORIAN: I thought you’d never ask!

LYSANDRA: I may not be born royal, Your Majesty, but I do know when someone just wants to let loose.

DORIAN: Gods, I want to let loose all the time. Do you think they’ll conspire against me if I do?

LYSANDRA: Judging from your friends in all the high and right places, I’d say there’s a higher chance of Aelin breathing ice than that happening. And even if they tried, I’m sure no one would get past Manon Blackbeak’s wrath.

DORIAN: She’s terrifying, isn’t she?

LYSANDRA: You don’t sound scared of the fact.

DORIAN: Are you scared of your husband, Lady Lysandra?

LYSANDRA: He’s a soft little mushy bear.

DORIAN: Exactly my description of Manon.

LYSANDRA: I really have to ask – for me, for Rowan and for your rabid fans. How did you convince the High Queen of the Witches to get married? Was it ever in the books for you two?

DORIAN: It wasn’t so much as my convincing her as her convincing me.

LYSANDRA: Oh, please.

DORIAN: You’d be surprised to know that she asked me to marry her first. Of course, it was all political expedience at that time coupled with a reasonable amount of care and affection.

LYSANDRA: And you said no?

DORIAN: Not technically.

LYSANDRA: So… technically yes?

DORIAN: I was drunk on self-loathing. I didn’t think I deserved her.

LYSANDRA: Doesn’t love usually overcome these sorts of things?

DORIAN: To some extent. We were at the climax of the war and we both needed to make important decisions for ourselves, for both our kingdoms and for the future we desperately wanted to have. It wasn’t the right time.

LYSANDRA: But you wanted to say yes to her, didn’t you?

DORIAN: Desperately.

LYSANDRA: If it helps, I was really rooting for you both.

DORIAN: So was I.

LYSANDRA: You know, I admit this is quite a treat being your very own interrogator.

DORIAN: Our plans to make Aelin jealous are succeeding.

LYSANDRA: Oh, she'll definitely be furious.

DORIAN: I've always admired her fiery rage. Despite it being extremely dangerous to those unfortunate enough to be close in range.

LYSANDRA: I've had my share of that.

DORIAN: I think we all have.

LYSANDRA: Tell us about Adarlan's relations with Terrasen. Even better, tell us about yours and Queen Aelin's.

DORIAN: It's tabloid worthy.

LYSANDRA: I'm not saying I've read all about it...

DORIAN: I met Celaena first before I met Aelin. And in some ways Aelin also met some counterpart of myself all those years ago. We were young and generally when you’re that young, you’re also that stupid.

LYSANDRA: But isn't it just a perfect time to make mistakes?

DORIAN: Not for a prince. Though, I did not care at that time. Sometimes I still think I don’t. But you want to know about Aelin. One thing, you see her more than I do, and I admit, it does break my heart.

LYSANDRA: Technology helps though, doesn’t it? I can’t remember how many times I’ve interrupted one of your virtual repartees.

DORIAN: She can get quite heated in our discussions. Especially if she has to wait a year or more for the next instalment of a book series.

LYSANDRA: What makes the great King Dorian Havilliard furiously out of element?

DORIAN: The monarchy.

LYSANDRA: Do you ever think back on the good old days?

DORIAN: Mm.

LYSANDRA: What did that consist of for you?

DORIAN: Well, I don’t know if I could really call it the good old days. As heir, I wasted away on frivolity and debauchery. Chaol once remarked on my depravity, and I could have resented him if it hadn’t opened my eyes to the truth.

LYSANDRA: Well, that’s an insight. I noticed the construction of the new palace has been coming along nicely.

DORIAN: It is.

LYSANDRA: The Glass Palace once stood as a symbol of Adarlan’s wealth and power. Now, you’ve opted to modernise the construction except for the addition of the thirteen towers.

DORIAN: The Rifthold Journal has been nagging me about their meaning since the blueprints were made public. They’re relentless.

LYSANDRA: I don’t want to be that friend but I’m dying to know…thirteen? Really?

DORIAN: You caught me.

LYSANDRA: Gods, I knew it. Rowan will have a fit.

DORIAN: As much as I’d like to take credit for being a Royal Romeo (but feel free to use that from now on), they each symbolise an iteration of hope, love and life. Every single one of them deserves their own monument.

LYSANDRA: What a beautiful gesture, Your Majesty. And it’s true. I will never forget them.

DORIAN: Sobering thought for a Yulemas special, isn’t it?

LYSANDRA: More like a winter exclusive, so we’re good there. But speaking of, I do have a serious bone to pick with you, Your Majesty.

DORIAN: Don’t tell me it’s the time I coerced you and Aedion to go on that Giant Swing when we were in Terrasen, is it? If I remembered correctly, you really enjoyed that.

LYSANDRA: We almost died!

DORIAN: And that makes it more exciting, doesn’t it?

LYSANDRA: You’d be surprised at how many people who don’t think of near-death experiences as something exciting.

DORIAN: [laughs] Am I that cruel?

LYSANDRA: Remember that snow leopard bobble head I once gifted you for Yulemas? Remind me again what you did to it, Your Majesty?

DORIAN: It was godsdamned terrifying, Lysandra. Why are the eyes glowing? Why are they glowing green!

LYSANDRA: That was the whole point of Bad Yulemas!

DORIAN: Manon fished it out of the trash anyway. She has it on my side of the bed at the Wastes. Should I be concerned with this friendship?

LYSANDRA: You and Aedion are lucky bastards, Your Majesty.

DORIAN: Touché

Lysandra Ennar is the Lady of Caraverre and the editor for ROYALS magazine.

~

MANON: I don't think this will go well.

DORIAN: You think? I really had to charm my way to do this, you know.

MANON: You charm your way out of everything.

DORIAN: And into things too.

MANON: Your favourite past time.

DORIAN: Are you angry? Here, let me compliment you.

MANON: Dorian...

DORIAN: Witchling.

A sneak peek of the Royals Spring Issue featuring Queen Manon Blackbeak and interviewd by King Dorian Havilliard.

[realyoungdarius]

3.5 Assignment: Negotiation Ethics Shadows...

Getting Started

The ability to craft a coherent argument and to express those arguments with others in a discussion are essential skills to encourage productive, active engagement. Discussing an ethical issue with peers or even a supervisor can bring much-needed insight into how the situation should be dealt with. Drawing from other experiences can provide an idea of what is right or wrong or, at the very least, how to address the issue further.

Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to:

Examine the key skills involved in ethical negotiating.

Develop an ethical culture for team performance.

Evaluate methods for encouraging ethical behavior.

Appraise situations containing ethical and legal compliance issues.

Resources

Textbook: Meeting the Ethical Challenge of Leadership textbook.

Website: 7 Quick Tips for Writing a Great Persuasive Essay

Video: Ted Talk: How to disagree productively and find common ground

Background Information

Many leaders and employees are not comfortable discussing ethical issues. Ethics topics can feel threatening and an invasion of privacy. Some people may unintentionally offend others or not be aware that their attitudes are unethical.

Arguments move ideas forward, improve concepts, and can even improve relationships.

As a leader, determine what rules or guidelines need to be in place to engage in an ethical debate or negotiation that will help encourage a positive outcome.

You will work to develop a set of rules governing how you feel others should treat one another during ethical discussions.

Instructions

Note: cover pages, academic sources, reference pages, etc. do not count towards the word length requirement in your paper. Remember the work you do here will benefit you in completing your final paper in Workshop Six.

1. The shadow of power

2.The shadow of privilege

3. The shadow of mismanaged information

4. The shadow of inconsistency

5. The shadow of misplaced and broken loyalties

6. The shadow of irresponsibility

Develop at least five guidelines for negotiating or debating an issue to reach an ethical outcome. Each guideline should be clearly explained and well thought out.

Each guideline should discuss what shadow it will help to prevent from being exhibited in a debate or negotiation.

Ethics and Negotiation: 5 Principles of Negotiation to Boost Your Bargaining Skills in Business Situations

How to use the principles behind negotiation ethics to create win-win agreements for you and your bargaining counterpart

BY PON STAFF — ON JUNE 11TH, 2020 / NEGOTIATION TRAINING

Ethics and Negotiation: 5 Principles of Negotiation to Boost Your Bargaining Skills in Business Situations

How to use the principles behind negotiation ethics to create win-win agreements for you and your bargaining counterpart

BY PON STAFF — ON JUNE 11TH, 2020 / NEGOTIATION TRAINING

Principle 1. Reciprocity:

Would I want others to treat me or someone close to me this way?

I believe it would be irresponsible to treat people, in any other way, in a way that I didn’t want to be treated.For example, a lot of people feel like society treats them a certain way, and so that act on those thoughts and feelings. What I try to do is treat them in a way that gives them dignity; which happens to be the same I want to be treated.

I also believe that people tend to garner more power when they can engage in reciprocity. When typing personalities, for instance, it is importnt to understand whether a person prefers to be liked or respected, or somewhere in between those two concepts. This personality typing involves geopolitics; especially when it comes to femininist geopolitical theory. It involves feminist geopolitical theory, because in that school of thought, everyone is an individual and we must learn to respect one another, if we can’ create synergy!

Another shadow I see as involving reciprocity is the shadow of inconsistencies. Why? It is because inconsistencies involve” in-groups and out-groups. Question is, from the way I see it, is “how can you be fair and prudent?” and/or even “how can we be equitable, efficient, effective, brings about compliance, etc?”

The last shadow that involves reciprocity, in my mind, is the shadow of misplaced and broken loyalies. It kind of reminds me of the issues with the shadow of inconsistencies. This is because of how in-groups and out-groups are affected by misplaced and broken loyalties. It can even happen, that people become estranged from the groups they were affiliated with, because they decided to sell out their group!

Principle 2. Publicity:

Would I be comfortable if my actions were fully and fairly described in the newspaper?

The next principle to discuss is publicity; especially when involving the shadow of irresponsibility, when involving the shadow of mismanaged information, and when involving the shadow of inconsistency.

When it comes to the shadow of irresponsibility, whether you are in a leadership role or not, you must understand the gravity that there is when involving actions. Any mistakes you make could become public. And then, the story could easily end up in a newspaper or another medium.

Here is a quote from the book, called “Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow”, which involves the shadow of mismanaged information:

“Knowledge is a mixed blessing. Leaders must be in the information loop in order to carry out their tasks, but possessing knowledge makes life more complicated. Do they reveal that they are in the know? When should they release information and to whom? How much do they tell? Is it ever right for them to lie?” p.14

The shadow of mismanaged information, especially when involving a lack of moral imagination, can be detrimental to the survival of a business. This is especially true of those who are in middle and upper-level management. People in higher positions of power are expected to be responsible. This is why most businesses have public relations employees on staff. They help companies to not make mistakes about how their business is to be characterized.

The shadow of inconsistency can also play a role when it comes to the principle: publicity. It can be beneficial to keep certain types of intelligence communications under wraps. If you don’t, you will lose trusting cohorts. Although, let’s say you wanted to run for office: if you want to win, in my view, you better spell out the science behind all of your policy initiatives you hope to undertake. If you carry it out that way, while being discreet with your discretion about insider knowledge, than you may be able to maintain better hygiene in your work environment. And, these days, hygiene can get involved with it comes to any politics and politicking, your business pursuits, and even your leisure time.

Principle 3. Trusted friend:

Would I be comfortable telling my best friend, spouse, or children what I am doing?

It is clear that there is the shadow of misplaced and broken loyalties when it comes to dealing with trusted friends! Imagine if your boss and/or leader decided to play a favoritism gam; especially during hard times in a municipality, in a state, in a region, in a country, and even globally. Isn’t that right that employees should do what they can before without 

I also believe that another type to consider is the realm of being a trusted friend , with the shadow of irresponsibility. The shadow of irresponsibility involves “in”-groups and “out”-grounds. This is relevant because in-groups are more likely to be productive and happier. (p.18) And, this issue can put more of a burden on the leaders of their business, because the employees always to maintain their ethical standpoints, and avoid becoming a traitor. 

The shadow of inconsistency is another shadow that can be involved with trusted friends. It can be that leaders go beyond their call of duty to help keep their comrades safe. This is one positive thing that can come from issues with the shadow of inconsistency. There is also such as leader-member exchange. This occurs when you are putting the ‘in’” closer to you than you  do “out”-groups. 

Principle 4. Universality:

Would I advise anyone else in my situation to act this way?

The shadow of irresponsibility

The shadow of privilege -- Leaders are almost always granted more privileges than followers are. p. 13

The shadow of inconsistency

Principle 5. Legacy: 

Does this action reflect how I want to be known and remembered? Doing the right thing sometimes means that we must accept a known cost. But in the long run, doing the wrong thing may be even more costly.

Shadow of power isn’t one of them for this principle, because power can switch hands with the development of technology and groups throughout history!

The shadow of misplaced and broken loyalties

The shadow of irresponsibility 

The shadow of inconsistency

Top Ten Effective Negotiation Skills

Small Business

Human Resources

Employment Contracts

By Luanne Kelchner Updated March 12, 2019

Job descriptions often list negotiation skills as a desirable asset for job candidates, but the ability to negotiate requires a collection of interpersonal and communication skills used together to bring a desired result. The circumstances of negotiation occur when two parties or groups of individuals disagree on the solution for a problem or the goal for a project or contract. A successful negotiation requires the two parties to come together and hammer out an agreement that is acceptable to both.

Problem Analysis to Identify Interests and Goals

Effective negotiators must have the skills to analyze a problem to determine the interests of each party in the negotiation. A detailed problem analysis identifies the issue, the interested parties and the outcome goals. For example, in an employer and employee contract negotiation, the problem or area where the parties disagree may be in salary or benefits. Identifying the issues for both sides can help to find a compromise for all parties.

Preparation Before a Meeting

Before entering a bargaining meeting, the skilled negotiator prepares for the meeting. Preparation includes determining goals, areas for trade and alternatives to the stated goals. In addition, negotiators study the history of the relationship between the two parties and past negotiations to find areas of agreement and common goals. Past precedents and outcomes can set the tone for current negotiations.

Active Listening Skills

Negotiators have the skills to listen actively to the other party during the debate. Active listening involves the ability to read body language as well as verbal communication. It is important to listen to the other party to find areas for compromise during the meeting. Instead of spending the bulk of the time in negotiation expounding the virtues of his viewpoint, the skilled negotiator will spend more time listening to the other party.

Keep Emotions in Check

It is vital that a negotiator have the ability to keep his emotions in check during the negotiation. While a negotiation on contentious issues can be frustrating, allowing emotions to take control during the meeting can lead to unfavorable results. For example, a manager frustrated with the lack of progress during a salary negotiation may concede more than is acceptable to the organization in an attempt to end the frustration.

On the other hand, employees negotiating a pay raise may become too emotionally involved to accept a compromise with management and take an all or nothing approach, which breaks down the communication between the two parties.

Clear and Effective Communication

Negotiators must have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively to the other side during the negotiation. Misunderstandings can occur if the negotiator does not state his case clearly. During a bargaining meeting, an effective negotiator must have the skills to state his desired outcome as well as his reasoning.

Collaboration and Teamwork

Negotiation is not necessarily a one side against another arrangement. Effective negotiators must have the skills to work together as a team and foster a collaborative atmosphere during negotiations. Those involved in a negotiation on both sides of the issue must work together to reach an agreeable solution.

Problem Solving Skills

Individuals with negotiation skills have the ability to seek a variety of solutions to problems. Instead of focusing on his ultimate goal for the negotiation, the individual with skills can focus on solving the problem, which may be a breakdown in communication, to benefit both sides of the issue.

Decision Making Ability

Leaders with negotiation skills have the ability to act decisively during a negotiation. It may be necessary during a bargaining arrangement to agree to a compromise quickly to end a stalemate.

Maintaining Good Relationships

Effective negotiators have the interpersonal skills to maintain a good working relationship with those involved in the negotiation. Negotiators with patience and the ability to persuade others without using manipulation can maintain a positive atmosphere during a difficult negotiation.

Ethics and Reliability

Ethical standards and reliability in an effective negotiator promote a trusting environment for negotiations. Both sides in a negotiation must trust that the other party will follow through on promises and agreements. A negotiator must have the skills to execute on his promises after bargaining ends.

Resources

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-training-daily/questions-of-ethics-in-negotiation/

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/top-ten-effective-negotiation-skills-31534.html

[thisdaynews]

Ganduje Tell FG to Ban Herdsmen who Traveling From North To South.

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/ganduje-tell-fg-to-ban-herdsmen-who-traveling-from-north-to-south/

Ganduje Tell FG to Ban Herdsmen who Traveling From North To South.

We have been saying that as a way of solving the problem of herdsmen/farmers clash, the federal government should ban the herdsmen trekking from the northern part of Nigeria to the south because along the way, you get so many problems. Unless if they are domiciled in one place, then the issue of having peace and stability remain questionable. Not only that, the herdsmen men in Nigeria need to improve because herdsmanship is no more a socio-cultural issue, it should be a socio-economic issue. But the way they are managing it is socio-cultural because they have not succeeded in fighting poverty and poverty had not succeeded in fighting them. You cannot call a herdsman a poor man because he is moving with cows that are worth millions of naira. But if he trek thousands of kilometres, you cannot distinguish him from a poor man. That is why I said that he has not succeeded in killing poverty and poverty has not succeeded in killing him. Resettling the Fulanis is the solution. Already, I have sponsored 75 of their children to Turkey to learn artificial insemination which they are practising all over now. Also, when they are settled, there is need to introduce new system of rearing cattle.

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You created new emirates in Kano State that have created controversy. What would you say are your reasons for doing that?

The new Emirates has attracted a lot of attention and I think it is important for me to talk about it. There are three basic reasons why we created the new Emirates. First, it is because of history and demand by the people in the new Emirates. Secondly, to widen and deepen the participation of the traditional system in governance so that the traditional institution is no more an institution of regalia, but an institution that is functional, work with the people and assist the government in the implementation of important programmes and projects. Thirdly, we want to create mini cities in the state so that some big towns can develop into cities while Kano mega city will continue to grow, while other towns are improved upon to become cities. By so doing, we believe it will improve the socio economic development of the rural areas. If we are talking of compulsory education, who will help you to ensure that all children goes to school? It is the Emir, the District head and the village and ward heads. It is the village heads that will help you in security system because the security agents alone cannot do it. It is also to improve the cultural activities. From the information we received, thousands things were bought during this sallah because of the decentralisation of the sallah celebration to major towns. The emirates have been created to involve them in governance which is very good.

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But, there are those who believe that you created the new emirates because of the role the emir played during the election by not supporting your re-election bid. What is your take on that?

The Emir of Kano has no problem with the creation of new Emirates in Kano. Of course, he had a problem with anti-corruption agency in the state and the committee did its own work and submitted a report to the state government. Many people have been appealing to allow peace and stability in the state. The state government has already said that we do not intend to remove the Emir of Kano. But at the same time, we are skeptical in controlling the anti-corruption agency because it is an independent body. But I believe there is peace and stability in the state. The role the Emir played during the election has to do with his own conviction. What is important is that we have won the election and we are not going to look back. So, the creation of Emirates has nothing to do with that misunderstanding. Afterall, Abubakar Rimi of blessed memory created Emirates. But, Rimi was a much younger and radical politician, but he was not as experienced as we are. That was why his own emirates could not survive. But this time, I want to assure you that even though it is in the court, it will survive. This shows experience in politics and governance.

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Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said the party should abandon zoning for competence in 2023. What is your reaction?

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The way I looked at it is that it is an issue between idealism and realism. Idealism is a situation whereby things should be done in accordance with ideas. If things are done like that, then everybody should have equal treatment and everybody has equal chance to contest and then, what the people decide should be done. Now, the issue of realism. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country with several geopolitical zones. In reality, people are yearning for participation of different political zones and not the politics of North and South. So, the reality of the situation is that people are crying of marginalisation in the leadership of the country. But, the idealism is that people should participate and be elected based on their capacity. So, it is not the governor of Kano state that should decide whether it is idealism or realism. It is the party that will determine which should be applied in Nigeria and you know that it is a political strategy. So, the political party should decide which option to follow.

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Some people have said the herdmen killing people across the country are not Nigerians. What is your take on this…

I believe that there are three type of herdsmen in Nigeria. The first is those who are coming with thousands of cattle from West African countries and you don’t expect them to carry the food for the cattle. Along the way, they have to cut trees and provide food for the cattle and that create some problem. They are attacked by farmers and along the line, they have learnt to attack farmers as well. They go about with their families on horses and donkeys and also carry arms and have graduated into being bandits. That is one category of herdsmen who are coming from West Africa. That is an ECOWAS problem which Nigeria should negotiate. The second is the herdsmen who are from the northern part of Nigeria. They trek through the north central zone to the south. They normally don’t have a lot of cattle like the ones coming from West Africa. Those ones too create problems because of trekking from one place to the other. The third one are those herdsmen who are born in places different from places of their socio-cultural and socio-religious origin. I am sure that in the south, you can get some Fulani herdsmen who are born there and are not trekking to come to the north, but are permanently there. They also have problems because when their young ones cannot go to school, they can also cause problems. This is my own classification and I am doing it because I am a Fulani man. So, I know what it feels to be a herdsman and business should not continue as usual. Herdsmanship should be a socio-economic venture and not a socio-cultural venture as it is right now.

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What is your take on the call for revolution by a section of Nigerian youths?

This is unconstitutional and it is the creation of the opposition to some extent and those tribalists, especially when you consider what happened to the former Deputy Senate President in Germany. So, it is in the imagination of all those who wants to destabilise Nigeria. It is also the hand work of those religious extremists like El-Zakzaky people. If you know what happened in Iraq, you will discover that it is all about revolution. But, in Nigeria, we have elected a government. We have a constitution. We have a legislature and if you want to change the government, you go through the constitution. That is the most agreed change of government in all countries of the world. So, the call for revolution should not be taken lightly. They should be taken to court and treated according to the rule of law.

Also, you spoke of the influx of almajiris to Kano state. Are you saying that these almajiris are brought to the state from other places?

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As I told you, we undertook a survey and found out that most ofthem are not from Kano. Some are from Niger, Chad, Katsina, Borno among other. The almajiri system is not flushing in the north east because of the effect of Boko haram. So, sometimes, you find a trailer load of almajiris being off loaded in Kano. That is how we had such large population of almajiris in Kano. There are a few of them who are from the rural areas of Kano.

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You party, the APC can best be described as a house of commotion. There are insinuations that some of the governors are not happy with the national chairman and they are plotting his removal. Are you aware of this?

What are your achievements as governor of Kano State in the last four years?

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During the last four years in Kano State, we witnessed alot of developments. But, I will just mention the very conspicuous ones because there are projects which you can see and programmes which you may not see. But, may hear about. We tried as much as we can to improve the outlook of Kano metropolis. Kano, being a mega city, transportation, issue of road network and security and water supply are very important. In other to improve the transportation system and road network, we had to introduce a number of new designs in form of road inter-change. We introduced flyovers, constructing a flyover of almost two kilometres to Sabon Gari and an under pass at Kofar Ruwa and another one at Madobi road and Zoo road. We also constructed hundreds of kilometres of roads across the various local government. In the area of youth employment, we embarked upon the training of our youths in different skills and give them employment. For instance, we under took a survey and found out that most of the motor mechanics in Kano are road side mechanics and in the present transportation system, vehicles are computerised. So we signed an agreement with Peugeot Automobile Nigeria to train at least 1000 auto mechanics engineers. We took 75 to them, they spent one years and graduated and were given certificates and empowerment. All of them are gainfully employed now. We took another 200made up of 150 boys and 50 girls who have graduated and so, women are now auto mechanics in Kano. We have taken another 250 made up of 200 boys and 50 girls who are expected to round up by November this year after which, we take another set. We also undertook another research to find out the skill that will give our youth automatic employment after training or become self employed. We identified 24 different skills and we employed a consultant to advice us on what to do with that.

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What are your plans for the future?

What is important now is how do we take Kano to the next level? We have declared primary and secondary education free and compulsory, including girls education across the state. In fact, we are holding stakeholders summit on education in Kano state on the 3rd of September and the Vice President is coming to declare the summit open. What we intend to do is to ensure that instead of our population becoming a liability, it will be an asset. I am sure that you are aware of the almajiri issue. It is a serious issue in Nigeria today and breeding a lot of security issues. We decided to discuss with those who are operating the almajiri system so that we integrate it with our educational system. They have agreed and will be part of the summit. We made it compulsory because any child of school age in Kano must go to school. But Kano, being a commercial centre, we have influx of almajiris from all over north, from Chad and Niger. So, we are submitting a memo to the Northern States Governors Forum so that we have common legislation on the movement of almajiris from one state to the other. Unless we do that, the problem is difficult to solve in isolation and I believe that the memo will get the blessing of the northern states.

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On agriculture, we are clustering our irrigation scheme and construct farm centres and irrigation facilities provided there. On the herdsmen/farmers clashes, we have succeeded in curtailing it in the state and has resolved the issue of cattle rustling and given amnesty to the fulanis who are involved in that. Now, we are going to construct farm settlements so that the herdsmen will no longer travel from one place to the other.

[bountyofbeads]

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Republicans say that Trump’s quid pro quos were normal. Here’s why they’re wrong.

By James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders | Published November 02 at 3:15 PM ET | Washington Post |

Posted November 3, 2019 |

The steady release of new information from the House impeachment inquiry, including statements by the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, are causing Republicans to change their political line. Rather than continuing to claim that there was no quid pro quo, they are now maintaining that there was a quid pro quo but that it was normal foreign policy. Republican senators quietly discussed pivoting to this argument on Wednesday. Republican pundit Ben Shapiro has argued that “The White House should stop saying there was no quid pro quo. There was a quid pro quo. The question is whether it was a corrupt quid pro quo... Quid pro quos in foreign policy happen all the time.”

But the question then is: do quid pro quos such as the one that Trump reportedly offered, happen all the time? Even before Vindman’s explosive evidence, we knew enough to be reasonably sure that Trump’s reported offer was extremely unusual. Previous written testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., acting ambassador to Ukraine, already made clear that what was happening was not the ordinary political horse trading that every administration engages in.

Taylor’s opening statement stood out for several reasons. He outlined in careful, chronological detail that “there appeared to be two channels of U.S. policy-making and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular.”

His statement showed him to be a seasoned diplomat who kept detailed records and respected process and communication within the executive branch. And those qualities revealed just how much Trump’s foreign policy deviated from the norm. Separate channels have long been part of U.S. foreign policy, and leaders regularly consider domestic politics in their foreign policy plans. But Trump’s particular use of his separate channel, and this kind of quid pro quo, has not.

Domestic politics are a normal part of foreign policy. Inviting foreign interference in U.S. elections is not.

It certainly isn’t news to international relations scholars that democratic leaders consider domestic politics when making foreign policy.

U.S. leaders often discuss domestic politics in their internal policy debates. For example, Lyndon B. Johnson frequently and candidly discussed making policy in Vietnam with one eye on the 1964 election. In many phone calls with aides, Johnson fretted over the need to placate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the former Republican senator and potential future presidential candidate then serving as ambassador to South Vietnam. In a May 1964 phone call with Robert McNamara, Johnson urged his secretary of defense to back Lodge’s recommendations, saying that if they did what Lodge suggested, “we’re not in too bad a condition politically,” but otherwise, “we are caught with our britches down.”

Leaders have also talked about U.S. domestic politics with foreign leaders. For instance, Bill Clinton explained to Russian President Boris Yeltsin in May 1995 that adding countries like Poland to NATO would solidify the support he received from American voters of Central and Eastern European descent in his reelection bid, saying: “Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio are key; they represented a big part of my majority last time — states where I won by a narrow margin. The Republicans think they can take away those states by playing on the idea of NATO expansion.” But Clinton wasn’t asking Yeltsin for any favors, adding: “Let me be clear, Boris: I’m not bargaining with you. I’m not saying, ‘Do what I want or I’ll change my position.’ ”

Political scientist Paul Poast explained that leaders commonly deal in some foreign policy behaviors we might call quid pro quos, such as side payments or issue linkages, i.e., trading policy concessions or linking progress on one issue to another.

But Trump asking a foreign leader for help investigating a political rival crossed the line into using secret government communications and relations for personal gain. The resulting whistleblower complaint and political pressure pushed Trump to release a rough transcript of his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, setting off the impeachment inquiry.

Separate channels aren’t new. But this one was highly unusual.

Taylor’s testimony clarified the picture of a separate channel for Ukraine policy that evaded the normal diplomatic and bureaucratic processes. Separate channels aren’t new, although the historical record shows some familiar patterns.

Sometimes, presidents rely on a loyal aide or insider and cut other officials out of the loop. For example, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger frequently circumvented the State Department when making foreign policy — and even went behind the back of their own negotiator in talks leading up to the 1972 SALT I accords.

Presidents also use special messengers for added credibility. During the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy relied heavily on his brother Robert, who was his attorney general, not his secretary of state, using him to make sure the Soviets knew when messages came directly from the president.

Nor is Trump the first president to contact foreign leaders through aides who don’t have official roles at all. After being defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie asked FDR about his close adviser Harry Hopkins, who lacked a formal White House position but became a key go-between with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Roosevelt replied: “Someday you may well be sitting here where I am now as president of the United States. And when you are … you’ll learn what a lonely job this is, and you’ll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins who asks for nothing except to serve you.”

But while these messengers may have been loyalists or insiders, the message was still official U.S. national security policy.

Another way presidents have set up separate channels is through special envoys. Such envoys are typically experienced and knowledgeable enough to gather information and focus intensively on an issue, ideally with clear White House backing. And it’s true the Trump administration appointed longtime diplomat Kurt Volker to serve as special envoy to Ukraine (albeit part time and unpaid).

But the channel became highly irregular through the involvement of individuals like former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) and Republican Party donor turned ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who had no experience in dealing with a geopolitically important and sensitive issue like Ukraine. The contrast between Sondland and the highly experienced Taylor was very clear in what is publicly known of their testimony, as the latter kept detailed notes and could draw on decades of experience in explaining what was and wasn’t proper.

IT’S STILL THE OFFICIAL CHANNEL THAT MATTERS

In this case, what may matter in the end is something that has plenty of precedent: the regular diplomatic channel. By acting as a diplomat normally does — keeping records, attempting to stick to the formal process, communicating with his colleagues in Washington and, ultimately, testifying to Congress, which authorized the aid in the first place — Taylor took the regular, usually invisible work of diplomacy and used it to show us how Trump crossed a line.

Political history makes it clear that the claims that Republicans are now making are factually incorrect. The kind of quid pro quo that Trump apparently requested is not the kind of quid pro quo that is typical of previous presidential administrations, because it had nothing to do with American national interests but rather the president’s personal gain. Furthermore, the channels through which it was offered were highly irregular, and plausibly structured so as to circumvent the ordinary mechanisms of foreign policy decision making.

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Adam Schiff, a Trump Punching Bag, Takes His Case to a Bigger Ring

Mr. Schiff leads the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Depending on one’s viewpoint, he will either save the republic — or destroy it.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos | Published Nov. 3, 2019, 5:00 AM ET | New York Times | Posted November 3, 2019 |

LOS ANGELES — The crowd was buzzing with Hollywood types — the actress Patricia Arquette, the producer Norman Lear — at a private film screening on Sunset Boulevard one recent Sunday afternoon. But here in liberal America, the biggest celebrity in the room was not someone who makes a living in what people call “the industry.”

It was Representative Adam B. Schiff, the strait-laced former federal prosecutor who was on the brink of prosecuting his biggest defendant yet: President Trump.

These are heady but perilous days for Mr. Schiff, the inscrutable and slightly nerdy chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who is leading the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. Adored by the left, reviled by the right, he has become a Rorschach test for American politics. Depending on one’s point of view, he is either going to save the republic, or destroy it.

Here in his home district, at the screening of “The Great Hack,” a film about misinformation in the 2016 election, Mr. Lear introduced Mr. Schiff as a “current American hero.” As the audience leapt to its feet in a standing ovation, the congressman emerged from backstage in standard Washington uniform — navy blazer, white shirt, light blue tie — his manner as inoffensive as his attire.

“We thank them for their patriotism,” Mr. Schiff said somberly, praising whistle-blowers, including the anonymous one whose complaint against Mr. Trump prompted the impeachment inquiry, “and we hope others will follow their courageous example.”

Now Mr. Schiff, 59, is poised to take a much bigger stage, as his inquiry moves from a secure office suite in a Capitol Hill basement into nationally televised public hearings. He will make the case against Mr. Trump to a divided nation, in what amounts to an epic courtroom drama meant to unveil evidence of the president’s pressure campaign to enlist Ukraine to smear his political rivals — a moment that is bound to be must-watch TV.

At home in his district, which stretches from West Hollywood to Pasadena and north to the San Gabriel Mountains, Mr. Schiff is well acquainted with the celebrity lifestyle.

He lives with his wife, Eve (yes, Adam and Eve) and their two children in suburban Maryland, but they also have an apartment in Burbank, home to Walt Disney Studios. He favors vegan Chinese food, and drives an Audi whose license plate frame bears a line from the movie “The Big Lebowski” (“I don’t roll on Shabbos”), from which he can quote at length. He has dabbled at screenwriting, once drafting a script that featured a prosecutor as the hero. He tried stand-up comedy, too, during a fund-raiser at the Improv in Hollywood.

“He did a whole riff on being a nihilist,” said one of his best friends, the former congressman Steve Israel, who joined him onstage. “Basically, we got told to stick to our day jobs.”

But if Mr. Schiff has a sense of humor (his friends insist he does have a dry one), he rarely shows it in Washington, where he has carefully cultivated his image as the stylistic and substantive opposite of Mr. Trump: calm, measured, reserved and brainy.

He makes no secret of his disdain for the president, who refers to him as “Little Pencil Neck” or “Shifty Schiff” when he is not replacing the congressman’s surname with the expletive with which it rhymes. In an interview, he called Mr. Trump a “grave risk to our democracy,” who is conducting an “amoral presidency” and has debased his office with “infantile” insults.

“What comes through in the president’s comments and his tweets and his outrage and his anger toward me in particular, is this president feels he has a God-given right to abuse his office in any way he sees fit,” Mr. Schiff said.

Mr. Trump and his allies, sensing the threat posed by Mr. Schiff’s inquiry and divided over how to defend the president against a rush of damning testimony, have united in trying to undermine the congressman’s credibility. They sought unsuccessfully to have the House censure him and have accused him of running a “Soviet-style impeachment inquiry.” On Saturday, Mr. Trump proclaimed him “a corrupt politician” on Twitter.

Republicans who work side by side with him on the Intelligence Committee contend that he has changed as his star has risen alongside Mr. Trump’s. A figure they once saw as a serious and studious policy wonk they now describe in viscerally negative terms, as a liar and a hypocrite who will stop at nothing to oust a duly elected president.

Mr. Schiff has an “absolute maniacal focus on Donald Trump” said one committee Republican, Representative Michael Turner of Ohio, who accused Mr. Schiff of routinely lying to the press and the public about what happened in private interviews, and conducting the inquiry’s initial hearings out of public view so he and other Democrats could distort the findings.

And Mr. Schiff has let the publicity go to his head, Mr. Turner said: “Schiff finds the media intoxicating. And he is pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to get to the top of the media cycle.”

Mr. Schiff has made some missteps. His dramatized description of the president’s phone call with the leader of Ukraine drew attacks from the president and Republican lawmakers who said he was fabricating evidence — and surprised even a close friend, Alice Hill, who knows the congressman from their days as young prosecutors in Los Angeles.

“I was a bit surprised because he is reserved and not prone to overstatement, very careful with his words, very careful with the facts and keeping to the facts,” she said, adding, “It felt out of character.”

And Mr. Schiff’s assertion that he had not had any contact with the whistle-blower who incited the inquiry drew a “false” rating from The Washington Post; the whistle-blower had approached his panel for guidance before filing his complaint. Mr. Schiff conceded he “should have been much more clear” about that.

Democrats, who are united behind Mr. Schiff, counter that the attacks are opportunistic; Republicans, they say, are attacking Mr. Schiff over process because they cannot defend the president on the merits of his behavior.

There is little room for error as Mr. Schiff pushes the inquiry forward in the coming months. His performance could determine not only Mr. Trump’s future, but also his own. Mr. Schiff is a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and viewed by some as her possible successor. At a recent news conference, Ms. Pelosi — not ordinarily one to cede control — took the rare step of sitting with reporters to watch admiringly as the congressman spoke.

“He’s a full package,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview, praising Mr. Schiff as “always gracious, always lovely.” She added, “He knows his purpose, and his purpose is not to engage in that silliness that the president is engaged in.”

A lawyer educated at Stanford University and Harvard Law School, Mr. Schiff tried his first big case three decades ago when, as a young federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, he secured the conviction of an F.B.I. agent who was seduced by a Soviet spy and traded secrets for gold and cash. In 1996, he won a seat in the California Senate; in 2000, he was elected to the House by beating a Republican who had been a manager in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

In Washington, Mr. Schiff joined the Blue Dogs, a group of conservative Democrats, and made a name for himself as a national security expert. He joined the Intelligence Committee in 2008 — drawn to it, Mr. Israel said, because he viewed it as “a quiet place for bipartisanship.”

His breakout moment came in 2014, when the Republican-led House established a committee to investigate the attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Schiff had argued that Democrats should not participate in what he viewed as a partisan exercise, but Ms. Pelosi put him on the committee.

But it was the election of Mr. Trump that elevated Mr. Schiff’s profile, and made him a sought-after speaker and fund-raiser in Democratic circles. As the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee last term, when Republicans still had the majority, he vigorously investigated Russian election interference and questions around whether the Trump campaign had conspired with hostile foreign actors, becoming the most recognizable public face explaining the biggest story in Washington on national TV. When Democrats won the majority in the House, he helped Ms. Pelosi draft a broad investigative strategy.

Mr. Schiff was a late convert to the impeachment push; like Ms. Pelosi, he held back until revelations about Ukraine emerged. For the last five weeks, he has spent much of his time in a secure room four floors below the Capitol, overseeing the closed-door questioning of witnesses. He opens each witness interview and sometimes steps in to conduct questioning himself.

“The American people have a right to know — they have a need to know — how deep this misconduct goes,” he said, adding, “There’s no hiding the president’s hand in any of this.”

These days, Mr. Schiff has tried to tightly control his public profile. He goes on television less than he used to, and zips wordlessly through the Capitol, trailed by a phalanx of aides and a scrum of journalists, smiling wanly as they pepper him with questions.

It has all given him “a new appreciation” of the struggles his celebrity constituents face in maintaining their privacy, he says. And he is well aware that, out there in the rest of America, he has become a polarizing figure.

“I feel I’ve become kind of a human focus group,” he said during a panel discussion after the screening here. “People will stop me in the airport in close succession. One will come up to me and say, ‘Are you Adam Schiff? I just want to shake your hand, you’re my hero,’ immediately to be followed by someone else who says, ‘Why are you destroying our democracy?’ ”

The congressman paused for a moment, and concluded that both couldn’t be right, “because last time I checked, I’m the same person.”

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Mueller documents: Manafort pushed Ukraine hack theory

By ERIC TUCKER, MIKE BALSAMO and JONATHAN LEMIRE | Published November 3, 2019 9:00 AM ET | AP |

Posted November 3, 2019 |

WASHINGTON (AP) — During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pushed the idea that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee servers, Manafort's deputy told investigators during the special counsel's Russia probe. The unsubstantiated theory, advanced by President Donald Trump even after he took office, would later help trigger the impeachment inquiry now consuming the White House.

Notes from an FBI interview were released Saturday after lawsuits by BuzzFeed News and CNN led to public access to hundreds of pages of documents from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. The documents included summaries of interviews with other figures from the Mueller probe, including Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Information related to Ukraine took on renewed interest after calls for impeachment based on efforts by the president and his administration to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden. Trump, when speaking with Ukraine's new president in July, asked about the DNC servers in the same phone call in which he pushed for an investigation into Biden.

Manafort speculated about Ukraine's responsibility as the campaign sought to capitalize on DNC email disclosures and as Trump associates discussed how they could get hold of the material themselves, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates told investigators, according to a summary of one of his interviews.

Gates said Manafort's assertion that Ukraine might have done it echoed the position of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate who had also speculated that the hack could have been carried out by Russian operatives in Ukraine. U.S. authorities have assessed that Kilimnik, who was also charged in Mueller's investigation, has ties to Russian intelligence. American intelligence agencies have determined that Russia was behind the hack, and Mueller's team indicted 12 Russian agents in connection with the intrusion.

Gates also said the campaign believed that Michael Flynn, who later became Trump's first national security adviser, would be in the best position to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails because of his Russia connections. Flynn said he could use his intelligence sources to obtain the emails and was "adamant that Russians did not carry out the hack" because he believed that the U.S. intelligence community couldn't have figured out the source, according to the agent's notes. Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

Mueller's investigation concluded in March with a report that found insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. The report also examined multiple episodes in which Trump sought to seize control of the Russia probe but did not conclude one way or the other about whether the president had illegally obstructed justice. Attorney General William Barr ultimately concluded that the president had not committed a crime.

Gates worked with Manafort in a lucrative international political consulting business that included Ukraine and later testified against him. Gates pleaded guilty last year in Mueller's investigation and has been one of the government's key cooperators. He has yet to be sentenced as he continues working with investigators. Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, in part for financial crimes arising from his Ukraine work.

During his interviews with investigators, Gates said that Donald Trump Jr. would ask where the hacked emails were during family meetings in the summer of 2016. Gates recalled that other key campaign aides, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Flynn, also "expressed interest in obtaining the emails as well," according to an agent's written summary of one interview. The identity of one of the people who expressed interest in the emails is blanked out.

One time on the campaign aircraft, Gates told the FBI, candidate Trump said "get the emails." Gates also said that another point, Trump told him that more leaks were coming, though the heavily redacted documents do not indicate how Trump knew that.

Gates also described conversations with the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, who later entered the White House as the first chief of staff. Gates described the RNC as energized by the emails and said that though Trump and Kushner were initially skeptical about cooperating with the RNC, "the WikiLeaks issue was a turning point," the FBI notes show. WikiLeaks was the website that published the stolen emails in the weeks before the election.

The campaign was also very pleased by the releases, though Trump was advised not to react to it but rather to let it all play out, according to the interview summaries.

The RNC would put out press releases to amplify the emails' release, Gates told the FBI. "The RNC also indicated they knew the timing of the upcoming releases," though Gates didn't specify who at the RNC had that information. "Gates said the only non-public information the RNC had was related to the timing of the releases."

Manafort, meanwhile, was trying to advise the Trump campaign even after severing ties with the campaign, causing alarm among some of the candidate's most senior advisers.

Manafort emailed Kushner, on Nov. 5, 2016, just days before the election, saying he was feeling good about the prospect of a Trump presidency. In the email, Manafort said he was "focusing on preserving the victory" and that he had sent a memo to Priebus and had briefed Gates and Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close Trump ally.

Kushner sent Manafort's email to Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who replied: "we need to avoid this guy like the plague."

"They are going to try and say the Russians worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us," Bannon wrote to Kushner and David Bossie, another Trump associate, in his reply. "Paul is nice guy but can't let word get out he is advising us."

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REMEMBER WHEN MICHAEL COHEN TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS THAT TRUMP TALKS IN CODE(LIKE THE MAFIA). This is the PERFECT EXAMPLE of what he was speaking about.

How 'do us a favor' led to Trump impeachment inquiry

By CALVIN WOODWARD, COLLEEN LONG, ERIC TUCKER and LYNN Berry | Published November 2, 2019 | AP | Posted November 3, 2019 |

WASHINGTON (AP) — The words from one president to another, somewhat casual in tone, were not casual at all in meaning: "I would like you to do us a favor, though."

Those words have now prompted deployment of the ultimate political weapon, an impeachment process  enshrined in the Constitution as a means other than the ballot to remove a president from office.

When history writes the story, the seemingly innocent request from President Donald Trump to his Ukrainian counterpart will show their infamous July 25 phone call had a lot behind it, at least implicitly.

It had the weight of U.S. military power behind it. The dangling jewel of a White House meeting if things turned out right. And the prospect that Ukraine's very future could be in the balance, as a country aspiring to join the West while feeling threatened by an aggressive Russia to the east.

Dancing to the edge of legality and maybe over it, Trump asked the Ukrainians to investigate his own political rivals at home and interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

That was the favor.

And what in return?

Quid pro quo means something for something.

That Latin phrase is at the core of today's mountain of subpoenas, the pile of insider text messages that weren't supposed to come out, the tug of war between Congress and the White House over willing and reluctant witnesses and the blizzard of aggrieved Trump tweets.

This, as Democrats move closer to a Senate impeachment trial that would be only the third in the nation's history.

A familiar pattern is emerging. Trump, like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton before him, is striking back at his accusers, though Trump does it with more bite, force and relentless volume. He also has near-lockstep support from his party, as Clinton did, and Nixon, until he didn't and resigned in disgrace.

Among underlings, loyalties fracture. Conspiratorial thinking, even paranoia, creeps in. Who is next to talk, stonewall, turn, quit? Who will break and when? Who won't break? Nixon was undone in part by Deep Throat. Trump thinks the Deep State is out to get him.

Trump, ever defiant, never contrite, insists he did nothing wrong, that his communication with the leader of a corruption-plagued country was appropriate and that the impeachment effort is a politically orchestrated hit by Democrats to nail him on Ukraine when they couldn't get him on Russia.

How we got here is something of a play in three acts, involving machinations by Ukrainians, Trump and Democrats in turn, with the fourth act to be written.

_______

THE BLACK EARTH

Ukraine is a land of dark, fertile soil where corruption and assorted American conspiracy theories have taken root along with the wheat and cabbage. Trump's preoccupation with Joe Biden and his son Hunter flourished there.

A true if flawed democracy on Russia's doorstep, Ukraine in 2014 ushered out a pro-Russian leader who tolerated corruption and replaced him with an anti-Russian leader who tolerated somewhat less corruption.

Then in 2019 came Volodymyr Zelenskiy . The comedian and political novice proposed to govern with a straight face and an eye to making Ukraine more like its European neighbors to the west while ending the war against Russian-backed forces in the east.

He was counting on unflagging support from the U.S. Instead he got Trump, with his faith in Russia's good intentions and fixation on conspiracy theories against Democrats.

For Trump, the Bidens may have looked like easy prey. While Joe Biden was Barack Obama's vice president and counseling Ukraine's government on fighting corruption, the younger Biden was hired by Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company whose owner was feeling some heat.

By putting Hunter Biden on the board in spring 2014, Burisma's owner probably wanted to show the new Western-leaning Ukrainian government that powerful people in the West had his back.

Although no evidence of anything illegal emerged, it looked bad and caused some to question whether Burisma was buying influence with the Obama administration. In early 2016, Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to fire the prosecutor charged with investigating Burisma, except that he had stopped investigating.

What the U.S. and its European allies wanted was a Ukrainian prosecutor more committed to combating corruption, not less.

Trump also seemingly bought into a long-discredited conspiracy theory that connects Ukraine, not Russia, to the 2016 political interference and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

U.S. intelligence agencies attributed the hack to Russia. So did Robert Mueller, who as special counsel charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers. Even a former Trump homeland security adviser has urged the president to stop pushing the false story.

The day Zelenskiy was inaugurated, May 20, saw the abrupt departure of the American ambassador, a longtime diplomat who Trump apparently believed was undermining his efforts to push Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

Trump's motive in recalling Marie Yovanovitch — he called her "bad news" — is now part of the impeachment inquiry. In her testimony in October, she described a "concerted campaign" against her based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives."

On that list, she suggested, was Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, whose associates "may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stumped by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine."

Two Soviet-born Florida businessmen who worked with Giuliani and made large donations to Republicans, including a Trump-allied PAC, leveraged these political contacts to pursue a business deal involving the Ukrainian state gas company. They were arrested in October, charged with making illegal campaign donations.

_______

THE CALL & THE WHISTLE

July 25: Trump and Zelenskiy speak for a half hour, 9:03 a.m.-9:33 a.m. Eastern time.

Trump congratulates the new leader: "The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It's a fantastic achievement."

Zelenskiy then turns a Trump phrase, "we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country," and flatters the president some more. Then they get down to business and Trump asks for his favor.

"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son," Trump says. He goes on to say that Joe Biden "went around bragging" about derailing the Ukrainian corruption prosecutor.

"So if you can look into it," Trump goes on. "It sounds horrible to me."

Zelenskiy is noncommittal in the phone call, which ends with more mutual flattery.

"Perfect" phone call, Trump said, defensively and repeatedly afterward.

But among the dozen or more political appointees and civil servants who listened in — as part of standard White House practice — and among the insiders who heard about it after, it was immediately clear that something troubling had happened.

A U.S. president had asked a foreign leader to investigate U.S. citizens in a matter that stood to benefit his re-election chances.

And that was before another element of this episode was widely known, even throughout the administration: Trump had ordered military aid , already approved by Congress, to be held up, and without explanation.

White House lawyers assigned to the National Security Council were among those who were alarmed, and they broke with common practice to have a rough transcript of the call stored on a computer server used for only the most sensitive information.

There's no recording. The White House stopped taping presidential calls in the 1970s, after Watergate investigators used tapes made by Nixon.

Instead, information specialists speak into a device that renders words into text and from that a rough transcript emerges. That transcript is circulated to those who were also listening to the call and taking real time notes to ensure accuracy.

And on this call was U.S. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whose family fled Ukraine when he was 3. He was so concerned that he rushed to one of the NSC lawyers to tell them of a serious discrepancy.

"I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained," Vindman later wrote in prepared remarks to House impeachment investigators. "This would all undermine U.S. national security."

Another person, a CIA officer who was not on the call but learned of it from multiple administration officials, shared Vindman's concerns. The officer compiled a detailed letter outlining suspected transgressions by the president, and on Aug. 12 sent it to the inspector general for the intelligence community.

Trump has since called for the whistleblower to be identified, as have several of his fellow Republicans.

"In the course of my official duties," the whistleblower wrote , "I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."

The letter was also addressed to the heads of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Alarms sounded inside the CIA general counsel's office. A White House lawyer got involved. So did the Justice Department.

It took weeks for those concerns to make it to Congress and the public, but they set in motion a process that has only happened four times in the nation's history.

_______

TOWARD IMPEACHMENT

Trump entered office with his campaign facing investigation by his very own Justice Department, which examined whether his aides coordinated with Russia to sway the election. The investigation by Mueller into Russia's attack on the 2016 race won plenty of convictions and exposed suspect behavior by the president.

When it came to Trump himself, Mueller said Justice Department guidelines prohibited charging a president with a crime. But he notably also said he did not exonerate Trump, effectively kicking any decision over to Congress to use its powers of impeachment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at one point said it was "not worth it" to impeach Trump, and any fire lit by Mueller's investigation quickly seemed to expire.

The whistleblower letter, however, gave unexpected life to the notion that Congress would investigate whether Trump should be removed from office. A group of moderate Democrats voiced support for the inquiry, and Pelosi eventually agreed, and now is leading the push.

"The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections," she said on Sept. 24.

"In the darkest days of the American revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, 'the times have found us,'" Pelosi said. "The times have found us today."

Trump has long struggled to find a derisive nickname that sticks for his Democratic foe in the House. Oddly, he has shown flashes of respect and admiration for her.

He's now come up with "Nervous Nancy."

Yet if anyone's nervous now, it seems to be him.

_______

Trump has railed against the process, now declaring this inquiry as history's greatest witch hunt, apparently a successor to the Mueller investigation which he derided similarly.

House Democrats leading the inquiry have been conducting it akin to a grand jury looking into a crime, interviewing witnesses behind closed doors, building a case that could become public before Christmas.

Morning after morning, witnesses stream into a basement room inside the Capitol, where they defy White House directives not to testify and dish dirt on the president who employed them — or at least used to.

None has come to praise him.

There was the brash hotelier who once withdrew from a fundraiser for candidate Trump only to later donate $1 million to his inaugural committee. There was the ambassador who spent more than 30 years in public service only to be ordered back to Washington "on the next plane."

There was the foreign service officer and trusted adviser inside the State Department who ended a decades-long career in part over frustration with the Trump administration's Ukraine policy.

There was Vindman, an Army officer who served in Iraq and appeared at the Capitol in military blue with medals. There was, as well, the State Department envoy who appeared with text messages outlining the clear contours of a quid pro quo.

The president's top adviser for Russian and European affairs — a man who told colleagues of his "sinking feeling" when he learned Trump was pressing for dirt on the Bidens — appeared just one day after news broke that he was leaving his position at the White House. He said the two events were not related.

Peeling back layers, House lawmakers moved through the diplomats, career subject-matter experts and bureaucrats on the periphery of the president's life before ultimately reaching out to the more intimate advisers, snagging some, still trying for others.

The tale the witnesses told differed at the margins but largely converged on this point: There was something off, even alarming, about the White House dealings with Ukraine.

They voiced plenty of concern, too, about the shadow foreign policy effort, conducted against the judgment of many career officials, to secure a commitment from the new Ukrainian leader to investigate the man who the president thought might be his Democratic challenger.

Even Gordon Sondland, the Trump appointee as envoy to the European Union, expressed after-the-fact misgivings about following directives from the president.

Perhaps the most damaging and evocative testimony came from the diplomat who had warned in a text message with Sondland that it would be "crazy" to withhold military aid in exchange for "help with a political campaign."

Bill Taylor is a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran and career civil servant who took the job as chief of mission in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, against his wife's judgment and made detailed notes when the actions of his peers ran afoul of his own judgment.

Taylor described explicitly how Trump held back military aid for Ukraine unless the country agreed to investigate Democrats.

He recounted "ultimately alarming circumstances" that threatened to erode the U.S. relationship with Ukraine and laid out an "irregular" policy channel led not by a seasoned diplomat but by Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump's current personal lawyer.

And he described being told how "everything" Ukraine wanted, including sought-after military aid, hinged on that country's leader committing to the investigations that Trump sought.

The hearings yielded a trove of text messages among diplomats, surfacing concern and confusion about the backchannel effort led by Giuliani to secure Ukraine's cooperation.

"As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," wrote Taylor.

"Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions," Sondland responded "The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind."

But if that response was meant as reassurance, it wasn't exactly genuine.

Sondland told Congress he said there was no quid pro quo because that's simply what the president himself had told him over the phone, in the hours between the time Taylor texted him and when he texted Taylor back.

Behind the scenes, Trump's then-national security adviser, John Bolton, is said to have described Giuliani as "a hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up," according to the testimony of one witness.

He likened the shadow Ukraine campaign to a "drug deal" being cooked up by other top officials.

None of this has undermined Trump with his party.

The testimony has produced few cracks in the Republican wall of support. No Republican voted Thursday to formalize the inquiry. Yet there is more to come.

_______

ACT 4

The coming week could bring the testimony of Bolton, who as national security adviser was at odds with the president inside the White House and on his way out. Trump said he fired him, Bolton said he offered to quit.

But it's not clear that will happen. Bolton's attorney signaled his client wouldn't appear without a subpoena.

Meanwhile, Bolton's former deputy, Charles Kupperman, is waiting for a judge to resolve whether he can be forced to testify since he was a close adviser to Trump.

Public hearings may start in mid-November, possibly followed by the drafting of articles of impeachment and a House vote on them by the end of year. The Senate's impeachment trial, if there is one, could be pushed into 2020.

Previous impeachment drives sprang from diverse causes.

For Andrew Johnson in 1868, it was from his racial animus and resistance to black civil rights after the Civil War. For Nixon, it flowed from misdeeds rooted in his obsession with re-election and his cover-up of them. For Clinton, it was about his lies over women.

For Trump, it's about making a deal.

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: December 21, 2018

Yesterday included such an intense flood of news stories, all of them front page above-the-field in their own right, that it is difficult to know where to start. Generally speaking, the resignation of a cabinet level official—especially one with the clout and seniority of Secretary of Defense—is probably the most significant; though the list of high-ranking Trump administration officials who have left office in less than two years is so long that it reminds one of the opening crawl in a Star Wars movie. Late yesterday, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general, would leave office at the end of February. Shortly thereafter, the text of Mattis’s resignation letter were publicized, indicating that Mattis was not leaving office out of choice, but rather out of policy differences with the president. Mattis’s letter amounts to a widespread rejection of Trump’s entire approach to foreign policy. The departure of Mattis, and the prospect of Trump nominating someone who more closely resembles Trump’s skepticism of the international order and America’s role in it—which in a previous generation was referred to as “isolationism,” caused a wave of near-panic to erupt among Democrats and conservative Trump critics.

The departure of Mattis, an ardent believer in America’s place—both militarily and diplomatically—on the international scene, along with the abrupt announcement by the White House by Trump had ordered the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. military from Syria—first claiming that ISIS had been defeated, but then followed by an assertion that dealing with ISIS was the problem of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Russia—exacerbated feelings towards the sudden pivot in Trump’s foreign policy. The withdrawal of the approximately 2,000 troops in Syria was quickly followed late yesterday by an announcement that half of the 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan would also be withdrawn. The problem with these announcements is not the withdrawal of troops. There is, and has been for years now, a cogent argument for reducing the American military footprint in Middle East and of finally winding down American involvement in Afghanistan. The campaign to contain ISIS has turned into a proxy war in Iraq and Syria to counter Iranian and Russian influence in the region; an extension of the “Great Game” geopolitics of the 19th century and the worldwide chess moves between East and West during the Cold War. Afghanistan is a different story. The United States military has had a presence in Afghanistan so long—over 17 tears now—that some recent military casualties there have been suffered by soldiers who were barely one year of age when the U.S. first intervened in the fall of 2001. The problem is the procedure, the method by which the Trump administration goes about these withdrawals. There is, so far, little reasoning given for either withdrawal, let alone a plan for either a phased or a rapid withdrawal. If Donald Trump cannot articulate a reason for the withdrawals, then his motivation, at this point in his presidency, is suspect. And there is nothing to suggest that Trump has closely considered the consequences, either intended or unintended, of such moves. This fuels the level of discomfit among Trump critics and proponents of a salient American presence on the world stage.

In what would normally be the story driving the news cycle, it appeared this week that Congressional Republicans had spending measure in place which the president would sign and which would fund the operations of the federal government through early February. This measure provided no funding for a border wall, despite Donald Trump’s insistence that $5 billion be appropriated for immediate construction of a wall—in fulfillment of a campaign promise—which then prompted the president, after criticism from his base (notably, Ann Coulter) to refuse to sign any spending measure which did not include at least some spending on border wall construction. Despite being in the minority—for only a few more weeks in the House—Congressional Democrats are emboldened by the president’s recent televised gaffe in which he pledged, bragged even, that he would take responsibility for any government shutdown. In the past, Democratic leaders, especially Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have been willing to compromise on funding for a border wall, but Trump has always demurred. Now Schumer and Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi are refusing to vote for any measure which includes border wall funding. Late yesterday, House Republicans inserted language providing border wall funding and the spending bill passed, albeit with over 30 members absent. Word is, however, that members of the Senate, of both parties, are uncomfortable with how the border wall language was inserted so late in the process and many consider the spending bill DOA in the upper chamber.

Normally, the passage of a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill would be the signature legislative achievement of an administration, especially a Democratic administration. Instead, this package of reforms, which target jail time and provides job programs for non-violent offenders. For an administration that has largely been construed as playing to the viewpoints of its white and rural base, this would and should be a landmark bill, paraded before the media as an example of how an administration can work beyond base politics. But this administration has exhibited some of the poorest message control of any modern presidential staff, and so, given all of the above, it should not be surprise that, within the context of this week, this bill is now a mere footnote to the week.

Violent crime is at record-level lows throughout the country, unemployment is at its lowest level in two decades, inflation remains low, and the economy is humming, even if wages are still tracking behind GDP growth. And yet drug abuse remains endemic, especially opioid based drugs. In Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, the largest outdoor drug market in the United States persists, despite two coordinated, well-organized city programs to drive addicts out of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and efforts to move them into recovery shelters and to establish safe-injection sites. This is a fascinating deep dive into an open drug community, which has a structure and expectations, and how this marketplace functions alongside neighborhood residents who loathe their new fellow residents. What is notable about this piece is that it is not a meditation on drug policy in this country, or even in Philadelphia, it is a simple examination of what life is like in a homeless, drug encampment in one of the nation’s largest cities. It is worth reading.

2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The war, quite correctly, is noted often as a significant splice between the old war and that of the 20th century; kingdoms and empires which existed prior to the war were split into polyglot republics afterward. The First World War undoubtedly set the stage for the Second, which in turn provided the basis for which the world has existed ever since; American involvement with Western Europe in contradiction to Eastern Bloc nations. As American power has allegedly waned, it is tempting to compare it to that of the British Empire before and after the First World War and to Britain’s approach to both the First and Second World War. This is a subject which has attracted academics for decades, as the article notes (and which I could, if I had the time, expend thousands of words on for a hagiographic post). The primary criticism of British strategy by American brass in the 1940s was that the British were too reliant upon peripheral operations, with a marked reticence to engage in direct operations. This argument has often ignored the direct involvement of large British field armies in Europe and other places, something which this post touches upon, along with the role of the Royal Navy.

In popular movies, the professional safecracker is usually a thief-for-hire by other professional burglars; think Don Cheadle in Ocean’s 11 or Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa. Such individuals, notwithstanding the adherence to explosives or the drunkenness, actually exist and, if they have a reputation for promptness and discretion, are in demand in the square world of safe-cracking deceased grandparents and forgetful bank officers. Geoff Manaugh of The Atlantic followed around a professional safe cracker in Southern California for six months and the industry, through small, is as busy as it ever was.

It has become common, especially in this day where craft breweries have reached widespread popularity, to deride American lagers as tasteless, flavorless brews for the unsophisticated masses. Putting this aside—Miller High Life has its place alongside one of my own personal local favorites, Lakewood Lager—there is a reason that lagers are the preeminent American beer, and it has to do with German immigrants, the American climate being markedly different from that of Britain, and the Civil War. Rather than try to summarize, I invite you to read this thoroughly enjoyable, and informative, piece on why we drink what we drink.

Finally, any good political handicapper should be bound by their predictions of the previous year and to account for those that went right and, especially, those that were completely wrong. The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics does just this in their 2018 year end review.

Welcome to the Winter Solstice.

[businessweekme]

Debrief: Varouj Nerguizian

Varouj Nerguizian, CEO, Bank of Sharjah, tells Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East Editor Roger Field about plans for expansion, regulation and why supporting customers in tough times makes good business sense.

Tell me about the size and scale of the bank?

Bank of Sharjah has grown from a small bank in 1973 with $4 million capital into a much bigger player today with capital of $0.6 billion and equity of around $1.2 billion. We are considered to be the first commercial bank in Sharjah and we were the fifth bank to be established in the UAE. The size of our total assets today is around $8 billion with $5.5 billion of deposits and $4.2 billion of loans. We have a very healthy structure and we have always been liquid. Liquidity has been primary for us even if it comes at a cost in terms of P&L. That was partly due to a ratio that was imposed on us from day one to maintain 20 to 30% of our deposit in cash and securities. We have never encountered a situation where we were short of liquidity, even during the most difficult times of the Gulf Wars or the financial crisis of 2008. This has been our philosophy: to maintain high liquidity and to back our customers. We support our customers in good times and bad times and we have been successful in proving that this philosophy is beneficial. Of course, the borrower’s integrity remains essential.

It sounds like a softer approach than many banks would adopt. Does it make good business sense too?

It is and it does and it has paid off with time. This year we will be celebrating our 45th anniversary. For the last 44 years we have been able to pay dividends, cash or bonus issue and sometimes both, and we have always made sure that our stakeholders benefit from our activities.

How has business been over the past year?

We are going through difficult times in terms of geopolitical risk and this is something we were not accustomed to over the recent past. Over the last couple of years we have been encountering more and more challenges in the region, so growth was not quite as it used to be. We have been more cautious in terms of loans book growth and we have been more active in deposit collection because we wanted to maintain our liquidity. Within an ever challenging environment we have been taking a more risk-averse approach.

Where do you have a presence in the region and which markets have the best potential at the moment?

We are more a UAE-based bank especially with our head office in Sharjah, two branches in Dubai, two in Abu Dhabi and one branch in Al Ain. We are also to a lesser degree active in Beirut thanks to our acquisition of the operations of BNPI Beirut which was an affiliate of BNP Paribas, about 10 years ago. In June of this year we celebrated 10 years of our presence in Lebanon.

Do you plan to expand into any new territories?

We don’t have any plans to make acquisitions outside of the UAE for the moment. However, I believe that there will be opportunities in the UAE and we will be ready to take advantage of such opportunities when they present themselves. We are witnessing significant consolidation in the industry and region.

Where do you see growth opportunities in terms of sectors or verticals?

We have always been extremely active in trade and industries. The emirate of Sharjah captures around 46% of the industrial base of the UAE and this has always been our area of expertise. On top of that we have lately entered the services market as well as real-estate financing.

It was not by choice but more by necessity and we have been doing fine by financing specific projects in Dubai and Sharjah and we are happy to be contributing to the development of dynamic cities like Dubai and Sharjah. Historically we were also heavily involved in the oil services industry and although this side of the business has declined we would like to reactivate it again as it is an area of natural expertise for us, as for a long time we were very active in the oil business.

We are still working on some projects, mainly related to the trade cycle and infrastructure. We have recently approved certain transactions around a gas project in Kurdistan. Production of gas is a major opportunity for all parties – us as the financer, our client and the country they are operating in. We are moving towards services for the oil industry, so we’re financing companies that cater for these big players and at the same time we are getting more involved in infrastructure projects because it is easier to follow up and it generates a very strong revenue stream for the bank.

Ultimately any transaction that we finance always has a social side to it and everyone should benefit. The bank will benefit, but we would usually exit after a few years, and whatever we have achieved will continue to benefit the local population and companies involved.

You mentioned the service sector as well. Can you tell me about any investments there?

We have been recently active in the hospitality business, telecoms and a number of other segments and we believe that there is added value in the services industry. After all, the UAE is a country where a lot of people come in and out. This creates a need for services and we are now capturing a big percentage of that.

Which sector is biggest for you after the service industry?

The bulk of our activities are trade-related. We finance trade, then comes industries followed by services. These are the three main sectors, and then we have real estate financing, but this is mainly transactional. Real estate finance requires long-term sources of funds and the UAE is a country where deposits work on cycles of three months to maximum one year. New regulations might soon allow corporate bonds – even if they are not rated – and that would create an opportunity to have longer-term deposits. If that happens, the retail real estate market would be interesting as well.

The emirate of Sharjah captures around 46% of the industrial base of the UAE

How is technology changing the banking industry and how are you adapting?

Bank of Sharjah has been a firm believer in IT. We have always invested in technology. We’ve always made sure that we are at the forefront of the available technology. Fintech is a new notion and it will replace a big chunk of the activities of banks, especially on the operational cycle.

In the longer term a banker will no longer be someone who makes transfers or receives funds. Bankers will move to advisory roles thanks to fintech. A lot of people speak about fintech but most of them do not really understand what fintech is. The reality is we need to be able to move from what we do today to something more oriented toward your smartphone.

Fintech will enable us to harness the opportunity of replacing our current operations with new techniques and move forward with an even greater focus on the advisory and private banking role. In the future a banker will be the party that will give you advice about your business, will tell you where your weaknesses are, what you need to do in order to improve your profitability and sustainability. The rest of the operations will be done by internet or cloud-related solutions. The challenge for banks is deciding which solutions and services they are going to focus on: You have to be able to find the right solution and move forward, and it’s a challenge as this is a long-term investment.

What technologies are you adopting at the moment in terms of services for customers?

Most of the banks offer similar services and they are all smartphone and tablet driven. This is the new way of banking. The young generation do not want to go to the bank and have a chitchat with the manager; they don’t have time for that. They would like to be able to do all their transactions through a smartphone or tablet. The banks that can offer all these services will have a certain advantage. Your internet banking must stand out and have the latest technology. We all know that the young generation is impatient. They want to click and see the answer immediately. This is important for us when we assess any new product; it’s the speed of the service and speed of what we are offering.

The government of the UAE is putting a lot of effort into diversifying the economy. Do you see banks as having an important role to play in this?

The economy, especially in this part of the world is driven by the government. The government initiates certain actions or puts in place a vision and all the various parts of the economy, including banks, participate. We have been always proactive with governments. Every time there was a project that required some sort of financing we have been present. It’s part of our approach to development because it’s not a matter of just profit and loss; you need to have the necessary vision to follow the government’s vision, to have the ability and the intention to be there and share the success.

The regulatory framework is there to prevent any wrongdoing and excess. The main objective of all regulations is to ensure the safety of the banking industry. It’s very important that no bank fails. From that perspective we all respect the regulatory framework. In terms of the current regulatory framework we are happy with the requirements but feel there could be some improvements in its implementation. Unfortunately the regulatory requirements are becoming more time-consuming. I dedicate more than 25% of my time to regulatory-related issues. I am optimistic that this will improve as the UAE’s legal framework is being upgraded and once this happens things will be much easier for us to cope with.

Are the bank’s invited to give feedback on regulations to help the government develop?

Yes of course; especially in the UAE we have a very active association. I think the UAE Bankers Federation has done a great job. Most of the CEOs meet regularly and we have a number of committees. The central bank has a very positive approach. Before publishing a regulation, before blind application there is always a period of concert action. We receive the draft of the regulations; we discuss them and review them and certain committees come up with recommendations. The UAE central bank always listens.

What are the main challenges that you face in the banking industry?

Currently it is the geopolitical risk. We need to get more stability back to the region. We have a number of issues that are a burden to the broader GCC and Middle East economies and which need to be sorted out quickly. Thankfully, the oil price, which was a challenge a couple of years ago, has remained fairly steady and is unlikely to drop drastically. It will be in the range between $60 and $80 and at that level almost all of the GCC countries will have a very good stream of revenue and we should be able to move forward positively.

What’s your overriding vision for the Bank of Sharjah?

I’ve been associated with Bank of Sharjah for a long time. My ambition is that within the next 10 years Bank of Sharjah will be a much bigger bank, at least three times bigger if not more. When a bank reaches that critical size it becomes a very active participant in the economy. It’s not easy; it requires a lot of changes and the ability to seize the right opportunities, but I am sure we will get there. <BW>

  The post Debrief: Varouj Nerguizian appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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[ronnykblair]

The Rates Trading Desk in London: How to Break In, and What to Expect on the Job

Is sales & trading still a good industry?

If it is, what’s the best desk for you, and how should you recruit for it?

It’s tough to give universal answers to these questions, so we like to present different groups and let you decide.

We’ve published articles on equities and fixed income, but I’ve always wanted to go into detail on individual desks within those areas.

And just as I had this thought, a reader who works on the rates trading desk at a large bank in London volunteered to share his experiences:

What is the Rates Trading Desk?

Q: Before we get started, can you explain what the “rates trading desk” does and how it’s different from other areas in FICC (Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities), such as credit trading?

A: Most assets that a bank trades are split into cash vs. derivatives vs. exotics, and the same split applies to the rates trading desk.

“Cash” here means sovereign bonds, while “derivatives” means interest rate swaps and futures, and “exotics” means structured products based on rates, options on swaps, and others.

Of those, we focus on making markets in sovereign bonds and interest rate derivatives.

Sovereign bonds are ones issued by governments, such as U.K. Gilts, U.S. Treasuries, EUR-denominated bonds issued by European countries, and Australian Government Bonds (AGBs).

In London, EUR-denominated bonds and U.K. Gilts are the most common, though there are teams for the others as well.

Interest rate derivatives are financial instruments whose values increase or decrease based on movements in interest rates.

The simplest type is the “vanilla” interest rate swap, where one party receives payments based on a floating interest rate and pays the counterparty based on a fixed interest rate.

If you’re receiving payments based on a floating rate, you hope that LIBOR increases so you receive more; if you’re paying based on a floating rate, you hope that LIBOR decreases so you pay less.

Other derivatives include caps and floors, STIRT futures, Eurostrips, swaptions, and interest rate call options.

“Making a market” means providing liquidity to clients who want to buy and sell.

We commit to buy and sell anything from clients, even if we don’t want the position, and then we address the risk and try to turn it into a profitable trade.

Rates trading is very macro-focused compared with equities and areas of FICC such as credit trading or distressed debt.

In credit trading, you focus on securities like corporate bonds and credit default swaps (CDS), and company-specific knowledge (“the micro”) is critical.

But almost anything could affect interest rates, so you focus on “the macro” on the rates trading desk: economic growth, trade policy, inflation, exchange rates, and monetary policy.

Rates products offer significantly more liquidity than other types of bonds, so flow trading desks here tend to be loud and busy.

When there are central bank policy announcements, geopolitical developments, or economic data releases, activity on the desk flares up.

Rates Trading Desk Recruiting and Interviews

Q: Great, thanks for that overview.

What should you expect in the recruiting process?

A: You don’t specify a desk upfront, so you’ll just apply to the sales & trading divisions of banks, usually starting in August; sometimes you will pick equities vs. fixed income upfront.

Typically, you’ll have a first-round interview with junior traders in-person or on the phone, followed by an assessment center if you’re in the EMEA region (or a Superday if you’re in North America).

Traders look for technically-minded people who are comfortable with numbers and quick decisions under stress, which is why there are so many athletes on the trading floor.

It’s critical to apply early in London, especially if you’re from a non-target school.

Networking definitely “works,” but there are some cultural differences.

Q: Such as?

A: Just as in the U.S. and other regions, alumni networks at top schools are very helpful, but they work much better for recent graduates (i.e., those within 2-3 years of graduation).

After a few years, school affiliation in the U.K. becomes a weaker connection than it is in the U.S., so just going to the same university as a senior trader usually doesn’t cut it.

Traders won’t have time to meet during market hours and generally won’t be inclined for sit-down meetings – so your best bet is to aim for drinks right after work, especially on Thursday nights.

The after-work drinking culture is so prevalent in London that you might even be able to network with traders simply by going bar-hopping at the right times.

In London, Canary Wharf and the area between the Liverpool St. and Bank stations are the hot spots.

Q: That sounds more fun than coffee meetings…

Once you get past the networking stage, are there any London-specific interview differences?

A: Not really; you should expect a few brainteasers and math questions, lots of competency questions (“Why our bank?” and “Why sales & trading?”) as well as questions about market trends and trade ideas.

Especially for macro-oriented and fixed-income desks, you need to articulate clear views about central bank policy, geopolitics, market data, and news stories.

Product knowledge is also helpful so you can answer the “Why S&T?” question convincingly, but groups here stagger their expectations based on your background – they’ll expect someone with an MSF degree to know more than someone with a liberal arts degree.

Q: And what should you expect in S&T assessment centers?

A: Long days! ACs for S&T can sometimes run from 8 AM to 5 PM.

As with any AC, you’ll interview with senior professionals and complete individual and group case studies.

The three most common case studies here are trading games, group investment presentations, and individual trade idea presentations.

With the trading games, you’ll form groups, and in each turn, one group will make a market while the other group will buy and sell. You’ll receive more information about prices and orders in each turn as well.

The winner matters less than how you play the game – always track your positions and P&L and manage risk appropriately (e.g., don’t buy a huge volume of shares under the assumption that you can easily sell them).

Write down what others are doing so you can quote appropriate prices and present your ideas without being overly aggressive.

The usual group presentation task is to recommend 1-2 investments out of a set of 5-10 companies.

There is no “correct” answer, so make a decision quickly and then spend most of your time outlining your pitch and anticipating the questions you’ll get.

You should volunteer for a useful task that no one else wants to do (such as timekeeping or note-taking) so that you come across as a “team player.”

When you present, try to speak at the beginning or end so they remember you, and stick to your allotted time (usually 30 seconds per person).

If you have an observed group discussion, try to bring others into the conversation and don’t just give your opinions the whole time – recruiters like to see “humility.”

With the individual presentation, you’ll receive market information and research, and you’ll have to propose a trade idea.

Once again, make a decision quickly and aim for only a few minutes of presentation time so that you can spend more time answering the interviewers’ questions.

With trade ideas, many students don’t consider how they might hedge the risks.

It is not necessarily a good idea to suggest something specific, such as using call or put options, because you’ll almost always be quizzed on how exactly it would work. And if you don’t fully understand the specifics, it could easily backfire.

However, it is worth doing a bit of research beforehand on possible hedges so you can answer follow-up questions if the interviewers ask you about the topic.

Finally, don’t tell everyone that their desk is your #1 choice, and don’t focus too much on one specific desk.

You need senior traders across the desks to like you, so say that you’re open to anything, even if you do have a preference for one product.

You can always say that you’re very interested in what the person does and that you would like to know more, as markets people love to talk about their own roles.

On the Rates Trading Desk: A Day in the Life

Q: Thanks for that summary.

Can you walk us through an average day on the rates trading desk?

A: I need to be there before the European markets open, so I arrive around 6:30 AM, start preparing my comments for the 7 AM morning meeting, send our “axes” (trades we want to make) to the sales force, and mark my bond prices once the market opens.

I’m then at the desk for almost the entire day until 5 PM, when the market closes, except for ~20 minutes to grab lunch at mid-day.

If U.S. payrolls come in lower than expected, the ECB makes an unexpected announcement, and China announces a new trade deal, activity will spike, and we’ll be very busy making markets for clients (in front of all 8 of my screens).

But if it’s a quieter day with no major announcements or surprises, I’ll spend more time on analysis, Excel modeling, and longer-term projects.

It’s not the type of modeling you do in investment banking – it’s more for retrieving prices and positions and building graphs and analysis for swap curves (for example).

Senior traders rarely stay past 5:30 PM, but junior traders often stay later to finish P&L and risk reporting or other projects. But even they usually leave by 6-7 PM.

Q: How much do you interact with the sales force and structurers?

A: If you cover products with high flow, such as government bonds and swaps, you’ll work with sales force quite a bit.

For example, a salesperson might come to us and ask for a price on a government bond that a client wants to buy. Then, we look at our positions, who the client is, market activity, and recent prices, and give a quote.

The salesperson then relays this quote to the client, and the client says yes or no or makes a counter-offer.

If the trade goes through, the salesperson will confirm and book it, and I’ll start planning the next steps: unwind it right away, keep some or all of it, or buy something else as a hedge.

The structurers tend to have more contact with the sales force than us because the salespeople manage the relationships with clients that want custom products; traders just price and execute the trades and manage risk.

Q: Have new regulations, such as MiFID II, affected the job? What about automation?

A: Yes; they’ve changed the trading floor dramatically over the past decade.

These regulations are intended to reduce insider and rogue trading by making discussions between market participants more transparent, but some people argue that they’re killing liquidity and forcing banks to consolidate.

I think banks will have to specialize in fewer markets in the future, and that consolidation will continue because regulations tend to favor large incumbents.

It’s ironic because regulators want to eliminate “too big to fail” institutions, but many new regulations have the opposite effect because they increase the costs of doing business and grant advantages to large banks that can leverage their franchises.

Evercore closed its European equities execution desk two weeks after MiFID II was implemented, and we’ll continue to see stories like that.

Automation has affected many parts of S&T, but rates products are more complex, and therefore harder to automate, so my desk hasn’t seen a huge impact yet.

But it’s certainly true that banks want to hire computer science graduates and train existing employees to gain the technical and coding skills required to build and maintain trading systems.

Q: How does the advancement process work in S&T?

A: After your 2-3 years as an Analyst, compensation and advancement are less rigidly defined than they are in IB.

Bonuses depend on individual, team, and bank-wide performances, and if you perform well for a few years, you could accelerate your career and compensation.

But the job is also quite volatile – especially when the markets are volatile – and firing rounds can be frequent and ruthless.

There’s a huge range in compensation and advancement because everything comes down to performance. Star traders could advance to the top in 5-10 years, while others could struggle for years and never make it far beyond the entry level.

Your title may change as you move up, but in practice, all that changes are your risk limits – unless you move to the managerial side.

Some traders do move into managerial roles to reduce career volatility, and if they do that, their base salaries tend to increase.

However, they’re also far less likely to earn “star trader” bonus packages as managers, and their total compensation may fall.

Rates Trading Desk Exit Opportunities

Q: On that note, how long do most rates traders stick around? Are there solid exit opportunities for something so specialized?

A: The turnover between teams at different banks is quite high, and it’s common to work at 4-5 different banks over your career.

Rates trading is very specialized, so banks are always looking to poach other traders who have the skill set; normal companies and non-trading firms don’t necessarily place a high value on those skills.

Some traders do leave for hedge funds (usually global macro ones) and prop trading firms, and others switch to different desks, but these options become more difficult as your career progresses.

It is common to switch geographies and move to New York, Hong Kong, or another financial center since you can trade almost anywhere in the world.

But the bottom line is that if you want broad exit opportunities, go into investment banking, or work in sales rather than trading.

Q: Thinking about everything we’ve discussed, who would be a good fit for the rates trading desk, and who would not be a good fit?

A: You’d be a good fit for the rates trading desk if:

You’re comfortable with risk.

You’re able to work in intense environments while communicating with salespeople, clients, and brokers.

You prefer macro analysis.

You prefer fast-paced day-to-day tasks rather than longer-term projects.

You like math, but not quite enough to be a quant.

If you’re more project-oriented, or you want to work at your own rhythm, you’d be better off in structuring or research.

If you’re less comfortable with risk, but you have great people skills and you can work the phones quite well, you’d be better off in sales.

Q: Great. Would you recommend any books or other resources to learn more about this area?

A: Sure. Some of these books get very technical, but if you want to learn more about rates, I’d recommend:

Interest Rate Swaps and Other Derivatives

The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities

Interest Rate Markets: A Practical Approach to Fixed Income

Q: Thanks for your time. I learned a lot!

A: My pleasure.

The post The Rates Trading Desk in London: How to Break In, and What to Expect on the Job appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/rates-trading-desk/

[hellokryskim-blog]

Islington Associates Zurich Switzerland: Fix the Roof While the Window of Opportunity is Open: Three Priorities for the Global Economy

Islington Associates wealth management Zurich Switzerland thanks ”Christine Lagarde”  of IMF for reproducing the following article.

Good afternoon—ńgh ōn!

I would like to thank the Asia Global Institute and the University of Hong Kong for welcoming me back to this great city.

Like others, I am always struck by Hong Kong SAR’s unique flavor. Think of the incredible ingenuity and energy of its people. And think of their ability not just to adapt to change, but to actively shape their future.

Hong Kong’s transformation—from manufacturing powerhouse, to global trade engine, to world-class financial center—reflects its unique commitment to openness, to combining home-grown talent with fresh ideas and expertise from across the world.

Of course, greater economic openness increases one’s sensitivity to shifting trends.

Hong Kongers are keenly aware that economic history never moves in a straight line but in cycles. And they know that when the economy is moving—up or down—policymakers cannot afford to stand still.

This is also the story of our global economy.

The world is currently experiencing a strong upswing that holds the promise of higher incomes and living standards. Delivering on this promise is critical, not just here in Asia but around the world.

I have been calling on all governments to use the current growth momentum for much-needed policy actions and reforms, especially in labor markets and service sectors.

In other words, fix the roof while the sun is still shining.

These reforms are often politically difficult, but they are more effective and easier to implement when economies are moving up, not down.

Some governments have taken action, but more needs to be done.

The window of opportunity is open. Yet there is new urgency because uncertainties have significantly increased—from trade tensions, to rising financial and fiscal risks, to more uncertain geopolitics.

How can we sustain the current upswing in the face of these rising risks? And how can we foster long-term growth that benefits all?

These are the issues that Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors will discuss next week at the IMF and World Bank’s Spring Meetings.

And they are the issues that I would like to talk about today.

State of the Global Economy

The good news is that the economic picture is mostly bright—the sun is still shining.

We see global momentum—driven by stronger investment, a rebound in trade, and favorable financial conditions—which is encouraging companies and households to increase their spending.

That is why the IMF in January projected 3.9 percent global growth for 2018 and 2019, and as you will see from our forecast next week, we continue to be optimistic.

Advanced economies are expected to grow above their medium-term potential this year and next. In Europe, for example, the upswing is now more widely spread across the region.

The United States is already at full employment, and growth will likely accelerate further due to expansionary fiscal policy.

Meanwhile, here in Asia the outlook remains bright—which is good for everyone, because this region contributes close to two-thirds of global growth.

Japan’s economy continues to grow strongly, and Asian emerging markets—led by China and India—are driven by rising exports and higher domestic consumption.

Challenges remain in some other emerging and developing countries—including in sub-Saharan Africa—though commodity exporters are experiencing a modest upswing.

So yes, the current global picture is bright.

But we can see darker clouds looming.

The reality is that the momentum expected for 2018 and 2019 will eventually slow.

It will slow because of fading fiscal stimulus, including in the U.S. and China; and because of rising interest rates and tighter financial conditions as major central banks normalize monetary policy.

Add to this the issue of aging populations and weak productivity, and you have a challenging medium-term outlook, especially in the advanced world.

What can policymakers do? I see three priorities that can make a difference.

Three Priorities for the Global Economy

1. Steer Clear of Protectionism

First—governments need to steer clear of protectionism in all its forms.

History shows that import restrictions hurt everyone, especially poorer consumers.

Not only do they lead to more expensive products and more limited choices, but they also prevent trade from playing its essential role in boosting productivity and spreading new technologies.[1]

As a result, even protected industries eventually suffer as they become less dynamic than their foreign competitors.

And yet, discussions about trade restrictions are often bound up with the concept of trade deficits and surpluses. Some people argue that these imbalances indicate unfair trade practices.

Yes, there are unfair practices—which must be eliminated—and which can leave their mark on trade balances between two countries.

But in general, these bilateral imbalances are a snapshot of the division of labor across economies, including global value chains.

For example, a country that focuses on assembling smartphones will tend to have bilateral trade deficits with countries that produce the components, and surpluses with countries that buy the finished devices.

More importantly, unfair trade practices have little impact on a country’s overall trade deficit with the rest of the world. That imbalance is driven by the fact that a country spends above its income.

The best way to address these macroeconomic imbalances is not to impose tariffs, but to use policies that affect the economy as a whole, such as fiscal tools or structural reforms.

The United States, for example, could help tackle excessive global imbalances by curbing gradually the dynamics of public spending and by increasing revenue—which would help reduce future fiscal deficits.

Germany, which is facing an aging population, could use its excess savings to boost its growth potential—including through investments in physical and digital infrastructure.

So, what can policymakers do about unfair practices?

Each country has a responsibility to improve the trade system by looking at its own practices and by committing to a level playing field where everyone follows the rules.

This includes better protecting intellectual property, and reducing the distortions of policies that favor state enterprises. It also means trading by the rules—the WTO rules that all 164 members agreed upon.

We can all do more—but we cannot do it alone.

Remember: the multilateral trade system has transformed our world over the past generation. It helped reduce by half the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty.[2] It has reduced the cost of living, and has created millions of new jobs with higher wages.

But that system of rules and shared responsibility is now in danger of being torn apart. This would be an inexcusable, collective policy failure.

So let us redouble our efforts to reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures.

Let us work together to build on forward-looking trade initiatives, including the recent agreement between Japan and the European Union, the new African Continental Free Trade Area, and the so-called TPP-11.

And let us also ensure that policies help those affected by dislocations, whether from trade or technological advances. Consider the benefits of scaling up investment in training and social safety nets—so that workers can upgrade their skills and transition to higher-quality jobs.

In all these efforts, we at the IMF are supporting our members through analysis and advice and by offering a platform for dialogue and cooperation.

This is what we were set up to do. Our experience over more than seven decades shows that when countries work together, global challenges become more manageable.

We need that spirit of cooperation to avoid protectionism—and to sustain the global upswing.

2. Guard against Fiscal and Financial Risk

We also need to guard against fiscal and financial risks. This is my second priority.

Here, numbers tell the story.

New IMF analysis[3] shows that, after a decade of easy financial conditions, global debt—both public and private—has reached an all-time high of $164 trillion.

Compared to its 2007 level, this debt is now 40 percent higher, with China alone accounting for just over 40 percent of that increase.

A major driver of this buildup is the private sector, which makes up two thirds of the total debt level. But that is not the whole story.

Public debt in advanced economies is at levels[4] not seen since the Second World War. And if recent trends continue, many low-income countries will face unsustainable debt burdens.

High debt in low-income countries could jeopardize development goals as governments spend more on debt service and less on infrastructure, health, and education.

The bottom line is that high debt burdens have left governments, companies, and households more vulnerable to a sudden tightening of financial conditions. This potential shift could prompt market corrections, debt sustainability concerns, and capital flow reversals in emerging markets.

So, we must use the current window of opportunity to prepare for the challenges ahead.

This is about creating more room to act when the next downturn inevitably comes—or as the economists like to say, it is about “building policy buffers.”

What does that mean specifically?

For many economies, it means reducing government deficits, strengthening fiscal frameworks, and placing public debt on a gradual downward path. This should be done in a growth-friendly way through more efficient spending and progressive taxation.

It also calls for more exchange rate flexibility to cope with volatile capital flows, especially in emerging and developing countries.

These efforts help reduce the severity and duration of recessions.

For example, a recent study[5] shows that the decline in output after a financial crisis is less than 1 percent in a country with adequate fiscal and monetary buffers, but almost 10 percent in a country with no buffers.

So, using macroeconomic tools is critical. But it is not enough.

Strengthening financial stability by increasing buffers in corporate and banking sectors is key, especially in large emerging markets such as China and India.

This means reducing corporate debt and bolstering bank capital and liquidity where needed. It also means implementing policies to address booming housing markets, including here in Hong Kong.

New IMF analysis[6] shows that housing markets in major cities across the world are increasingly moving in tandem—which could amplify the financial and macroeconomic shocks coming from any one country.

That is why we need global buffers as well.

For one thing, we must keep our financial systems safe by avoiding a rollback of the regulatory framework put in place since the global financial crisis to boost capital and liquidity buffers.

And the international regulatory framework needs to keep pace with the rapidly evolving fintech landscape to head off new risks while harnessing the potential.

Most importantly, we want a strong global financial safety net. Here the IMF plays a central role in helping countries to better cope with capital flow volatility in times of distress.

Together these policy actions will help sustain the current upswing.

But it is also essential to foster longer-term growth that is more sustainable and more widely shared. That is my third priority.

3. Foster Long-term Growth that Benefits Everyone

Fostering stronger and more inclusive growth is a key challenge.

If, as projected, advanced economies return to disappointing medium-term growth, this would worsen economic inequality, debt concerns, and political polarization.

At the same time, more than 40 emerging and developing countries are projected to grow more slowly in per capita terms than advanced economies.

This means slower improvements in living standards and a widening income gap between those countries and the advanced world.

As I said earlier, the window of opportunity is open. But to boost productivity and potential growth, countries need to step up economic reforms and policy actions.

Let me touch on two potential game-changers:

(i) First, unlock the potential of the service sector, especially in developing economies.

In moving from an agriculture-based to a service-based economy, many of these countries are bypassing a traditional industrialization phase.

This raises concerns that countries could get stuck at lower-productivity levels, with little chance of catching up to advanced economy incomes.

Our latest research[7] shows, however, that some service sectors—led by transportation, communications, and business services—can match the productivity levels of manufacturing.

This is critical for countries such as the Philippines, Colombia, and Ghana where employment and output are shifting from agricultural production to higher-value services.

It is also important for the economic wellbeing of millions of women, who often account for the majority of service industry workers.

Unlocking this potential is not an easy task. It requires more public investment in education, training, and job-search assistance. It also means opening service sectors to more competition.

At the global level, there is work to be done as well. We need to increase trade in services, including e-commerce, by reducing barriers in this area—which are still extremely high.

(ii) The second potential game-changer is the digital transformation of government.[8]

When it comes to cutting-edge technologies and systems, public sectors can lead the way—and we are seeing great examples here in Asia:

In India, citizens receive subsidies and welfare payments directly into their bank accounts, which are linked to unique biometric identifiers.

In Australia, tax authorities collect information on wages in real time, which gives them immediate insight into the state of the economy.

And here in Hong Kong, bank customers will soon be able to use their mobile phone numbers and email addresses to transfer money or make retail purchases, thanks to a new, government-funded payment system.[9]

These initiatives are just the beginning. Governments across the world are now also looking at ways of generating efficiency gains.

For example, one recent study[10] estimates that almost 20 percent of public revenues worldwide, or about $5 trillion, go missing each year, because of tax noncompliance and misdirected government payments.

By using new tools—such as big data analysis—governments can reduce these leakages, which are often directly related to corruption and tax evasion. Reducing leakages would enable countries to increase priority spending.

The bottom line is that digital government can deliver public services more efficiently and more effectively, and help improve people’s lives.[11]

Think about it: more households in developing countries now have access to digital technology—such as the internet and smartphones—than have access to clean water and secondary education.[12]

What huge potential for digital interaction! But also, what a reminder that we need to leverage technology effectively to make broader development progress.

Conclusion

Let me conclude. This generation of policymakers is facing a stark choice:

They can simply copy the policies of the past, which have delivered mixed results—raising living standards substantially, but leaving too many behind.

Or they can paint a new economic landscape—where open trade is fairer and more collaborative; where financial systems are safer and more supportive of economic growth; and where the digital revolution benefits not just the fortunate few but all people.

As the great artist Henri Matisse once said: “Creativity takes courage.”

We certainly need more courage—in the halls of government, in company conference rooms, and in our hearts and minds.

Thank you.

[1] April 2018 World Economic Outlook, Chapter 4.

[2] From 1990-2010. World Bank figures: World Development Indicators.

[3] April 2018 Fiscal Monitor, Chapter 1; global debt of $164 trillion in 2016.

[4] In advanced economies, public debt as a proportion of GDP was at 105 percent on average in 2017.

[5] Romer, C. D., and D. H. Romer. 2018. “Phillips Lecture—Why Some Times Are Different: Macroeconomic Policy and the Aftermath of Financial Crises.” Economica 85 (337): 1–40.

[6] April 2018 Global Financial Stability Report, Chapter 3.

[7] April 2018 World Economic Outlook, Chapter 3.

[8] April 2018 Fiscal Monitor, Chapter 2.

[9] The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is creating a so-called Faster Payment System, to be launched in September 2018.

[10] McKinsey research.

[11] Gupta, Sanjeev, Michael Keen, Alpa Shah, and Geneviève Verdier, Digital Revolutions in Public Finance, International Monetary Fund, 2017.

[12] World Bank data.

[caveartfair]

Thaddaeus Ropac On Why Global Galleries Aren’t in Artists’ Best Interest

Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

Portrait of Thaddaeus Ropac by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

Thaddaeus Ropac would likely wince at the designation “megadealer,” but he’s undoubtedly one of the world’s greats—a European powerhouse overseeing four spaces on the continent (two each in Salzburg, Austria, and Paris, France) and a new 16,000-square-foot London outpost designed by Annabelle Selldorf and opening this week in Ely House, an 18th-century mansion in Mayfair. Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac represents 57 artists, ranging from art-historical luminaries such as Joseph Beuys, James Rosenquist, and Robert Rauschenberg, to highly sought-after living artists including Georg Baselitz, Sylvie Fleury,  Adrian Ghenie, and Alex Katz.

Ahead of the London gallery’s opening, Ropac spoke to Artsy about the value of a London outpost, why he’s okay with the side effects of today’s fast-paced art market, and the role and future of mid-sized galleries.

Anna Louie Sussman: I had read in earlier interviews that you didn’t see yourself in London. Why London?

Thaddaeus Ropac: London was on my radar for several reasons. First of all, I feel—and this sounds a little bit ironic in the situation we are in now—I feel staunchly European. London is so close to Paris, but still it was rather far away in terms of attracting a different audience. The two most important cities in Europe—and I still consider England part of Europe—are London and Paris. When I was talking to people in China, or India, in the Arab world, in Latin America, or of course in the U.S., I would ask them where do they go when they come to Europe? They all said either London or Paris. They would eventually go to Vienna, or to Berlin, or to Italy or so on. With London and Paris you really cover an incredible reach, and you still don’t lose your identity—and I think my identity is very European.

We never really wanted to have worldwide representation for an artist, because I don’t really believe it’s in the interest of an artist to be with one gallery worldwide. You always have an expertise for one area where you want to be the best or one of the best, and for us that is Europe. I really feel we can do the best for our artists in Europe. Our biggest projects are in Europe, and working with museums—from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to the museum in Naples—we have that real expertise. Opening in London cements this and makes this even stronger. We want to be one of the great, great European galleries. And if an artist wants to do a project in Europe, they should feel we are the best partner for them.

ALS: That’s very interesting. The European market, by some measures, has been shrinking.

TR: Really? I’m surprised. I don’t think so, I don’t feel so. Maybe the numbers say something else; please tell me if you know.

ALS: As Asia grows its share of the market we’ve seen the European share of the market fall [11% since 2006, according to The Art Market | 2017]. But what does the European scene feel like to you? How are your collectors, how are the institutions doing?

TR: I feel we’re entering one of the most active periods we’ve experienced in a long time. I feel like every great European country or city has been adding to their cultural power; every week I could go to an opening of a museum. So I don’t feel we only leave this to Asia to open new museums; across Germany, across Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, I think even more the smaller countries. Just the projects we are involved in, it’s really across Europe, and I feel a real dynamic happening. And also the numbers in terms of sales are…I think it was one of the most successful first three months of the year we ever experienced.

ALS: And that’s largely based on a European collector base?

TR: Yes—for us, yes. And it’s really across Europe. We were very surprised when we analyzed the first three months and compared it to last year and the year before. Last year was maybe a little bit…it went a bit down, so 2015 was really strong and ’16 was kind of reduced, and ’17 now is very, very strong.

Installation view from left to right: Donald Judd, Untitled, 1989; Carl Andre, Tenth Copper Cardinal, 1973. Photo by Steve White. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

ALS: This idea of a presence across Europe, a lot of the countries you just mentioned are Northern European countries, and Europe does feel like it’s at a little bit of a crossroads now. Can you talk a little bit about where you think that’s going and how that affects your business? Either with Brexit or the Southern countries which aren’t doing as well economically as the Northern ones.

TR: It doesn’t affect our business. First of all, I think the art world doesn’t think in a geopolitical order. So when people ask me about Brexit, well, I’m very, very disappointed, personally. I’m staunchly European: I believe in the European vision, I absolutely believe that we will succeed with it, and I’m very upset with London and with England leaving it. But it has nothing to do with my business or with galleries because I really think, as I said, the gallery world, and the art world, doesn’t think in a geopolitical order. So it will not affect it.

Maybe I will think differently if the opposite happens, but at this point I don’t expect it will make really anything in terms of business. It will make our life more complicated because administration will become a burden. Now if a collector in Paris wants to see something which is at the moment in our gallery in Salzburg, or in London, we can organize it within one day. Maybe this will become more complicated and we can’t do it in one day. And of course it will upset us because we are all used to a speed, which has to slow down. But I’m talking about technicalities, and our logistic department, which is the biggest department in my team. We are 100 people in the gallery, and a good third are doing logistics, only the moving of art; this team will become even bigger. So this is upsetting and annoying but as I said, more a technicality. And I’m happy that I’m personally not working in this department.

ALS: That’s funny. The collector Egidio Marzona, whose collection you’re showing at your London opening, you’ve talked about him having audacious taste and being very dedicated to collecting different art. Has that changed? I hear a lot from dealers that collectors are playing it safe.

TR: Yeah, I know. What we are trying to do more and more is to work with a group of collectors and help them really build their collections. This could be with younger artists, this could be in mid-career, or this could be finding the absolute most important work, which they’re missing in their collection. All three levels are interesting. We found the most incredible Duchamp sculpture for a collector recently, and on the other hand we are very happy to introduce this English artist, Oliver Beer, now, to an English audience. We’ve worked with him in Paris already; he’s collected by the Pompidou and by other museums in Europe. We love the way the collectors react and try to understand his universe. When I think of Marzona, the collector you mentioned before, in the late ’60s and ’70s, how he started his relationship with the artists, trusted them—they were not famous, they were not confirmed—and built this incredible collection. It’s from people like him that we can all really learn. And those are of course our dream partners in a gallery.

ALS: Your collectors who are interested in young artists, how much of that has to do with the fact that they can trust you, even if they’re not sure about the art?

TR: I’m sometimes not so happy when collectors come with wish lists that somebody gave them and they just collect what’s on the list, and when they have their one painting they’ll move on. I have to say, in America you’ll find this type of wish list. I prefer go in depth into collections, to understand an artist and to follow an artist, and to turn it into your own taste, you know? I can help a collector only up to a certain point but I cannot replace his taste. Collections which are entirely done by advisors, you feel it. It’s so much more enjoyable to help people to develop their own taste.

ALS: But do you see people taking risks in the way that they used to, say, 40 years ago?

TR:  Yes, there are still people. Who we don’t want to cater to are investors. We’re trying to avoid it because I think we’re not here to make people just make a profit.

ALS: Do you think flipping is still a big presence in the art market?

TR: When we sit down in my gallery and we go through an exhibition, we make sure that we are not selling to people when we know they are flipping it in a year. We know the people and we’re discussing it. For every exhibition we have a meeting, which brings the sales team together, and one person says, “I could place this here,” and I say, “No, not here because we are not sure what he’s doing with it.” And sometimes when we co-represent an artist with another gallery I will even say to my colleague, “Please try to avoid to sell to this person because he will just flip it.” I don’t say, “Don’t do it,” but I say, “I give you this advice. If you will do it or not it’s your thing, but it’s not in the interest of the artist,” but it’s not a list which I have in my pocket.

Gilbert & George, Smashed (detail), 1972. © Gilbert & George. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

Oliver Beer performing Composition for London, 2017. © Oliver Beer. Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

ALS: I recently attended a lunch honoring Jeffrey Deitch, and he observed that New York in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, and Paris at the turn-of-the-century and early 20th-century, were vibrant, concentrated hubs of creativity. Now things are very decentralized. Where do you see the creativity coming from? And how does that relate to the market?

TR: I understand what he means, but I have always said the art world changed entirely in the last 20 years. I have seen this. I have seen how the art world moved from the ivory tower to the center of life, I’ve always said this. It’s a positive move, it’s a great move. I don’t want to be back in the ivory tower. But it also had some negative side effects. I think we can live with the side effects, but we don’t want to miss this overall dynamic the art world got into, where everything is open in every direction. Before, we were only cities in Europe and in America; now the world has absolutely no borders anymore. We’re working with an artist from Pakistan, we’re working with Eastern European artists, we are preparing a show with an artist in Seoul, Korea. You know? And this is what I believe in, in this kind of multiple interests of where artists live. And all of this we haven’t seen 25 years ago; we were very much concentrated on a smaller horizon.

ALS: What are the most pernicious side effects?

TR: Things are becoming too fast, too driven, movements come and go. Before, there was more time, artists had more time to develop and they were not put on the spot within a very short period of time. There were not these strong movements which were becoming fashions, and then the fashions were out. When you think of the abstract artist which became so strong five years ago, today they have a hard time. This is all part of the speed we got into.

ALS: You mentioned you were looking at your results from this quarter. How you have incorporated new business practices into running your galleries?

TR: I think the success of the last years has allowed galleries to really grow; I never thought that we would be a team of 100 people. I think everything became really more professional, and on every level. The way we use social media, it’s very carefully crafted, every way we kind of develop the brand is part of what we think about today—and this was not in our thoughts a couple of years ago. So I think the growth in the business, and to be able to afford also this kind of reaching excellence in different ways, was not something we took for granted, and we still don’t take it for granted.

But I think it is possible today to invest into many more things than in the core business. And this way you also offer the artists a much better service, a much better infrastructure, and you offer the partners and the museums a way that they can rely on us—when we want to be part of a project, obviously we can. I think a gallery can become very complicated and it takes a lot of details. You know, sometimes I ask myself…there’s a whole team working in digital. I don’t even know what they’re doing.

ALS: [Laughs].

TR: No, because I say, “My god, what do they do?” And then I go into their office and then I think, “My god, five people? What are they are doing? Digital.” And the Executive Director says, “Yeah, it’s very important what they do. Look…” I still didn’t get it.

But I know we need them and I know without them we would not have the infrastructure we need. So this is kind of part of it.

Joseph Beuys, Zwei Frauen, 1955. © Joseph Beuys Estate / DACS, London 2017. Photo by Ulrich Ghezzi. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

Joseph Beuys, Backrest of a fine-limbed person (hare-type) of the 20th Century AD, 1972-82. © Joseph Beuys Estate / DACS, London 2017. Photo by Ulrich Ghezzi. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

ALS: Can you talk about the gallery ecosystem and the role of mid-sized galleries, which we always hear are struggling?

I am really spending time to encourage these mid-sized galleries because they’re so important to the art world. The art world cannot exist without them and we have to be really aware of this. But I’m surprised that we always hear that there are big galleries with multiple spaces, but the mid-sized is struggling so much. I feel that the market is so strong and so big that everybody can participate, but apparently this is not the case.

But I also think it’s a bit overrated when two mid-sized galleries close. If you count all the mid-sized galleries that open, I don’t really hear that so many galleries are closing compared to the ones that are open. When one gallery closes, there’s a huge article saying the mid-sized gallery is dying, but look at the numbers: not just how many are opening but also how many galleries moving into being mid-sized, being not only one to two people, but three to five. In Paris, there are 400 galleries for contemporary art, and five years ago it was 350, and 10 years ago it was 300. I don’t really think you can say the mid-sized gallery is dying.

ALS: Was there a catalyst when you went from small-sized to mid-sized?

It was so natural. It was 30 years ago, it was so different then. I don’t think you can take anything from 30 years ago and put it as a model today, the art world has changed too much. I always say growth is not a necessity, it is an opportunity. You can do it when you think you can do it.

—Anna Louie Sussman

[This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]

from Artsy News