World View: Egypt Braces for Massive 'Tamarod' Rebellion on Sunday

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Ecuador ends U.S. trade deal in order to protect rapists and traitors
• Fed reverses itself on ending quantitative easing
• Egypt braces for massive ‘Tamarod’ rebellion on Sunday

Ecuador ends U.S. trade deal in order to protect rapists and traitors

Rafael Correa, protecting rapists and traitors (Reuters)

Ecuador announced on Thursday that it is unilaterally canceling itsdeal with the United States that provides trade benefits on $223million of Ecuadoran goods sold to the U.S., including everything fromroses and socks to ceramics. The existing deal is scheduled to end onJuly 31, and U.S. politicians were threatening not to renew if Ecuadorgranted asylum to the sleazy American traitor Edward Snowden, who iscurrently hiding out in the “transit area” of Moscow’s airport. SoEcuador decided to beat the U.S. to the punch, by unilaterallycanceling the deal. According to Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa:

“They’re threatening to take the trade preferencesaway because of the Snowden case. Our dignity doesn’t have aprice.”

This is really laughable because Correa himself is totally withoutdignity. He attacks and jails journalists on a regular basisif their newspapers print anything that he dislikes. His governmentjust passed a new law against “media lynching,” which isdefined as

“the dissemination of concerted and reiterativeinformation, either directly or by third parties, through mediaoutlets, with the purpose of undermining the prestige [of a personor legal entity or] reducing [their] credibility.”

At the same time, Correa is using his London embassy to protect sleazyalleged rapist Julian Assange from having to return to Sweden to facethe rape charges, and now he wants to protect sleazy traitor Snowden.So Correa is not only totally lacking in dignity, but in fact is asleazy politician who attacks journalists who disagree with him, butprotects rapists and traitors that he likes. Human Rights Watch #1 and Miami Herald and Human Rights Watch #2

Fed reverses itself on ending quantitative easing

Last week, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke suggested that theFed might begin to reduce the $85 billion quantitative easing that’spouring in the banking system each month. This money isn’t helpingyou and me, but it’s creating numerous distortions and it’s the onlything keeping the stock market bubble from crashing. (See “23-Jun-13 World View — The ‘experts’ scramble to explain the stock market plunge”.)

The suggestion panicked wealthy investors, who began selling stocks tobeat the crash and so, not surprisingly, the Fed is going intofull-scale damage control and reversing itself. The reversal wasannounced on Thursday by William Dudley, president of Federal ReserveBank of New York and vice-chairman of Ben Bernanke’s Federal OpenMarket Committee (FOMC). According to Dudley:

“Economic circumstances could diverge significantlyfrom the FOMC’s expectations. If labor market conditions and theeconomy’s growth momentum were to be less favorable than in theFOMC’s outlook — and this is what has happened in recent years — Iwould expect that the asset purchases would continue at a higherpace for longer.”

Dudley’s statement that “this is what has happened in recent years” isquite amusing. It’s worth repeating what I’ve said many times before:mainstream economists didn’t predict and still can’t explain the techbubble of the late 1990s, the Nasdaq crash of 2000, the credit andreal estate bubbles of the mid 2000s decade, the credit crunch of2007, and the financial crisis that began in 2008. Pretty much everyeconomic forecast since then has been totally wrong. Mainstreameconomists have no idea what’s going on now, which we’ve seen in thepast week, and have no clue what’s coming next year, which is whatDudley is saying. Reuters

Egypt braces for massive ‘Tamarod’ rebellion on Sunday

Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi is warning that the hugeanti-government demonstrations planned for Sunday are threatening thecountry with “paralysis and chaos,” and blamed the country’s problemson conspiracies by “thugs,” the supporters of the toppled regime ofdictator Hosni Mubarak. The demonstrations come two years aftersimilar demonstrations resulted in the deposing of Mubarak, andprotesters are now hoping to achieve a similar result with Morsi.However, many others are concerned that a new wave of violence willsweep the country, with the country extremely polarized betweenMorsi’s opponents and supporters. In a televised speech, Morsiadmitted unspecified “errors” since he became president, but:

“Political polarization and conflict have reached astage that threatens our nascent democratic experience andthreatens to put the whole nation in a state of paralysis andchaos.”

The opponents call themselves the “Tamarod” (or “Rebel”) campaign.They’ve collected over 15 million signatures on forms demanding thatMorsi step down as president, and 15 million is more than the numberof people who voted for Morsi in the last election. The army iswarning that it may step back in to keep order. The National (UAE) and Reuters

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