Column: Central banks' eye on inequality makes QE uncomfortable



By Mike Dolan


LONDON (Reuters) - Central banks may not be out of ammunition just yet but parts of their strategic policy rethinks related to inequality and fairness raise questions about the extent they should use it.


Small toy figures are seen in front of an Economy and stock graph logo in this illustration taken, September 9, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Ever since the last financial crisis 12 years ago, investors have fretted about a moment when central banks - having floored borrowing rates to zero or below and ballooned their balance sheets - would simply run out of ways to support increasingly indebted economies and panic-prone markets.

The massive monetary response to this year’s pandemic shock to date showed there’s plenty still in the armoury. Policymakers insist they have more firepower if needed and both the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank are now loosening long-term inflation or employment goals as additional policy guidance.

But with borrowing rates already so low, and with a reluctance to go deeply negative for fear of undermining banking systems, ever-more purchases of government bonds and other assets is the only practical tool left to meet the rising list of increasingly more vague goals in any fresh downturn.

While that’s still useful to cap interest bills on exploding government debt or to support credit markets, it also risks exaggerating wealth inequality - something economists partly blame for putting central banks in this cul-de-sac to start off with.

The emphasis last month in the Fed’s strategic policy review on monitoring inequality in its pursuit of an enhanced full employment goal is getting more attention as a result.


Bastien Drut, strategist at Amundi-owned CPR Asset Management, argues that working to reduce inequality aims to give the Fed more policy room over time by helping re-establish better relationships between employment, wages and inflation.

“One of the problems posed by rising inequalities is that it contributes to the fall in the real natural (interest) rate,” he wrote. “As the natural rate has already fallen sharply in recent years, the rise in inequalities is tending to erode the Fed’s leeway.”

One of the macroeconomic puzzles of the past decade has been the inexorable decline in the “natural” rate of interest - the theoretical rate that keeps economies at full employment with stable inflation, or a rate above or below which policy rates are either a drag or spur for activity and prices.

As wage growth for large swathes of workers in developed countries has stalled over the past 10-15 years despite the lowest jobless rates in a generation, inflation and expectations of it also went missing in action. The presumed natural interest rate slumped - by many estimates to less than zero, even through 2019.

As a result, the only way central banks could get policy rates to stimulate growth and inflation was to either get rates to unprecedented sub-zero levels below that natural rate - something most seem unwilling to do - or ramp up bond-buying and asset purchases to loosen financial conditions another way.


The leftfield shock from COVID-19 provided that test, and central banks responded mostly with asset purchases once any remaining positive policy rates were removed - action that helped reverse a plunge in stock and bond markets despite unemployment rates that are still more than double pre-pandemic levels.

COVID GAPS

But the net result is both the pandemic, and perhaps the central bank response to it too, likely exaggerated inequality - and central banks may reasonably wonder if they can keep it up.

Fed data out this week showed U.S. income inequality narrowed slightly in the three years before the pandemic, but it said wealth inequality was unchanged in that period, with the richest 25% of families holding more than 90% of the nation’s wealth, and the bottom 25% having less than 1% of it.


Both income and wealth measures likely worsened this year. Washington think-tank the Institute for Policy Studies, for example, estimated U.S. billionaires increased their worth by over $800 billion or almost 30% in the six months to September.

And the COVID shock is widely expected to have hit low-income workers hardest - part-time staff, younger cohorts, those unable to work remotely and those in retail, transport or hospitality jobs.

HSBC economists this week said a disproportionate hit to young workers in particular could hit wage growth significantly, citing studies showing ageing workforces over the past decade may have been one aspect suppressing wage inflation as older workers may have higher earnings but weaker bargaining power.

“They (young workers) are also less likely to have benefited from the distributional consequences of central bank quantitative easing given they are less likely to own equities, other financial assets.”

And so when Fed chair Jerome Powell now talks of a “maximum employment” goal as not a single number but as a qualitative judgement mindful of disparities between ages, genders, races and communities, he’s partly responding to criticism that the Fed tightened policy too early in 2017/18, before all groups had experienced similar levels of low unemployment.


But it’s hard to see how central bank asset purchases don’t just aggravate the problem as much as help it.

Underwriting the debt of governments who do have the means to address these gaps - even if not always the willingness - is one key route. But ensuring their political masters use the fiscal space is a harder task in the messier world of advocacy and politics, and will make parsing the course ahead trickier.

Graphic: Central bank assets: reut.rs/3aDxo8U

Graphic: Median family net worth by race: tmsnrt.rs/3kRPecY

The author is editor-at-large for finance and markets at Reuters News. Any views expressed here are his own.


by Mike Dolan, Twitter: @reutersMikeD; Editing by Prav

Turkey's EU membership bid evaporating, Commission says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s executive said on Tuesday that Turkey’s government was undermining its economy, eroding democracy and destroying independent courts, leaving its bid to join the EU further away than ever.

The criticism drew an angry retort from Ankara.

Blaming “excessively” centralised presidential power for deteriorating conditions in freedom of speech, prisons and the central bank, the European Commission said the government was also exposing Turkey to “rapid changes in investors’ sentiment”.

“The EU’s serious concerns on continued negative developments in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed by Turkey,” the Commission said in its annual report on the country.

“Turkey’s (EU) accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill,” it said.

A NATO ally, Turkey has been negotiating EU membership since 2005 after economic and political reforms that made it an important emerging market economy and trade partner.

Although never easy because of disputed Turkish claims over Cyprus, talks rapidly unravelled after a failed coup in Turkey in 2016 and President Tayyip Erdogan’s ensuing crackdown on perceived opponents.

“In Turkey, the serious backsliding observed since the 2016 coup attempt continued,” the Commission said.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “biased, far from constructive” and rejected criticism of its economy, democracy and courts.

“Just as it (Turkey) is not straying from the EU, it remains committed to the EU membership process despite attempts by some circles to push it away,” the ministry said. “Turkey is acting within the framework of universal norms, in line with fundamental rights, democracy and the principle of rule of law.”

Turkey has faced several years of harsh Commission reports, and the EU executive once again intensified its criticism, citing monetary policy, public administration and widespread corruption as failures of the Turkish government.

While the EU, Turkey’s biggest foreign investor, relies on the country to house some 4 million Syrians fleeing civil war rather than let them proceed to Europe, Brussels also reiterated its threat to impose economic sanctions on Ankara over an energy dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Reporting by Robin Emmott; Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Giles Elgood

Russia warns that Nagorno-Karabakh could become Islamist militant stronghold

By Nvard Hovhannisyan, Nailia Bagirova

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - The Kremlin issued a new appeal for an end to hostilities in and around Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday after Moscow’s foreign intelligence chief said the mountain enclave could become a launch pad for Islamist militants to enter Russia.

Moscow expressed alarm after the deadliest fighting in more than 25 years between ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces entered a 10th day, though the French news agency AFP later said Armenia had offered concessions only if Azerbaijan was ready to do so.

AFP gave no details of the offer it said had been made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Azerbaijan has said it will stop fighting only if Armenia sets a timetable to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh, which under international law belongs to Azerbaijan but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for fighting to stop and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced “serious concern about the unprecedented escalation” in a phone call with Iran’s foreign minister,

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, said the conflict was attracting people he described as mercenaries and terrorists from the Middle East.

“We are talking about hundreds and already even thousands of radicals hoping to earn money in a new Karabakh war,” Naryshkin said in a statement.

He warned that the South Caucasus region could become “a new launch pad for international terrorist organisations” from where militants could enter states including Russia.

His comments were released after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country is a close ally of Azerbaijan, urged Moscow to be more active in peacemaking

Russia, Iran concerned about risk of foreign fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh - ministry

NEW FIGHTING

Mediation efforts led by Russia, France and the United States have failed to prevent intermittent flare-ups of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh despite a ceasefire which ended a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000.

Renewed fighting since Sept. 27 has increased concern that Turkey and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia, could be sucked into the South Caucasus conflict.

Iran, which borders Azerbaijan and Armenia, is also worried about the conflict and President Hassan Rouhani underlined the importance of peace in the region in a phone call with Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday.

In the latest fighting, Armenia said Azerbaijan launched an attack with tanks and artillery on a southern part of the contact line that divides ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces.

Nagorno-Karabakh said four cluster bombs had exploded in the centre of Stepanakert, its main administrative centre.

Azerbaijan says Azeri cities outside the conflict zone have been struck, taking the fighting closer to territory from which pipelines carry Azeri gas and oil to Europe.

Both sides say the other has hit civilian areas. Each denies targeting civilians.

Nagorno-Karabakh said 244 of its servicemen and 19 civilians had been killed since Sept. 27 and many more wounded.

The Azeri prosecutor’s office said 27 Azeri civilians had been killed in the renewed fighting. Azerbaijan has not disclosed information about its military casualties.

In an interview with Russian news agency RIA, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was “the main instigator and the initiator of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia”.

Reiterating accusations first levelled by French President Emmanuel Macron that Turkey has sent Syrian jihadists to fight in the conflict, Assad said: “Damascus can confirm this.”

Assad offered no evidence for his allegation against Turkey, which backs rebels trying to oust him in Syria’s civil war.

Ankara did not immediately respond but has described similar accusations as part of attempts by Armenia to create “dark propaganda” about Turkey.

Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Jonathan Spicer in Ankara, and Alexander Marrow, and Andrew Osborn and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Giles Elgood and Gareth Jones/Mark Heinrich

Facebook bans all QAnon groups as dangerous amid surging misinformation


SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc FB.O on Tuesday classified the QAnon conspiracy theory movement as dangerous and began removing Facebook groups and pages as well as Instagram accounts that hold themselves out as representatives.

The step escalates an August policy that banned a third of QAnon groups here for promoting violence while allowing most to stay, albeit with content appearing less often in news feeds. Instead of relying on user reports, Facebook staff now will treat QAnon like other militarized bodies, seeking out and deleting groups and pages, the company said in a blog post here.

Since the August restrictions, some QAnon groups have added members, and others used coded language to evade detection, for example referring to “cue” instead of Q. Meanwhile, adherents have worked to integrate themselves in other groups, such as those concerned with child safety and those critical of restrictions on gatherings due to the coronavirus, according to researchers at Facebook and elsewhere.


“While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups,” Facebook wrote.

“QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another.”

Recent QAnon posts have spread false information about voting and about COVID-19, researchers said, even claiming that President Donald Trump faked his diagnosis of COVID-19 in order to orchestrate secret arrests.

Classed as a potential source of domestic terrorism by the FBI, QAnon is driven by an anonymous internet poster nicknamed Q who claims to be a Trump administration insider. The core, nonsensical claim is that Trump is secretly leading a crackdown against an enormous pedophile ring that includes prominent Democrats and the Hollywood elite.

There has been no surge in arrests, and the fictitious Satanic rituals that the group cites echo longstanding legends used to anger people for political reasons, often against minorities.

Trump has praised the group as patriotic, and more than a dozen Republican congressional candidates have promoted it.


Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by David Gregorio and

Kyrgyz opposition groups make rival power grabs after toppling government


By Olga Dzyubenko


BISHKEK (Reuters) - The Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan slid deeper into chaos as rival opposition factions made grabs for power on Wednesday, a day after they stormed government buildings, forcing the prime minister to quit and a parliamentary election to be annulled

Left isolated by the resignation of Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov’s government late on Tuesday, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov called for all party talks in a statement on Wednesday, reiterating his willingness to mediate.

Two presidents have been overthrown in Kyrgyzstan in the past 15 years, and longtime ally Russia expressed concern as protests spread across the country in the wake of Sunday’s vote.

Kyrgyzstan borders China and hosts both a Russian military airbase and a large Canadian-owned gold mining operation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Moscow was in touch with all the sides in the conflict and hoped that democratic process would be restored soon. China’s foreign ministry said it was highly concerned about the situation.

A total of 16 parties took part in Sunday’s election and 11 refused to accept the results, which had handed victory two establishment groups. As protests grew, the election commission annulled the vote.

At least three distinct groups have now attempted to claim leadership. The first was the Coordination Council set up on Tuesday and largely made up of established political parties opposing Jeenbekov.

Kyrgyz opposition faction claims state power in rift with allies

Crowd attacks office of biggest Kyrgyz gold miner - media

Another group which called itself People’s Coordination Council emerged on Wednesday and united five lesser-known opposition parties whose leaders have not held any senior government positions.

Finally, the Ata Zhurt political party has attempted to outmanoeuvre competitors by getting parliament to nominate its candidate Sadyr Zhaparov - freed from prison by protesters just hours earlier - for prime minister on Tuesday night.

However, an angry mob then broke into the hotel where parliament convened, forcing Zhaparov to flee through a back door, according to Kyrgyz media. It was not clear when parliament might convene again to confirm him as premier.

Making a late night appearance on television, Zhaparov said he would propose a constitutional reform before holding presidential and parliamentary elections in two to three months.

While opposition parties have made rival claims to power, the establishment parties that claimed initial victory in the election have largely kept quiet, accepting the decision to annul the vote. Jeenbekov has told his supporters not to confront the protesters to avoid escalation.

But the split among opposition parties and power grabs by competing factions have plunged the nation of 6.5 million people into uncertainty. Kyrgyz security forces appeared to avoid siding with any of the factions although their support could eventually help decide the winner.

Residents in the capital, Bishkek, quickly formed vigilante neighbourhood watch units to reinforce police, having suffered during violent revolts followed by looting in 2005 and 2010.

There were scuffles overnight between vigilantes and protesters who tried to force their way into government buildings or attacked businesses such as shops and restaurants, according to a report by local news website 24.kg.

Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff

Breakingviews - Review: London is global corruption’s top offender


By Aimee Donnellan

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - In May 2016, David Cameron raised an uncomfortable topic. At an anti-corruption summit in London, the former British prime minister sat alongside Nigeria’s president and other dignitaries and declared that money laundering was “the cancer at the heart of so many problems we need to tackle in our world”. The setting was telling, as the British capital had become the location of choice for oligarchs and corporate crooks to sanitise their ill-gotten gains.


Cameron’s tough talk did little to eradicate the problem. In “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World”, Tom Burgis catalogues the shady dollars that have flowed through Swiss banks, Mayfair mansions and even the London Stock Exchange. The stranger-than-fiction tale carries the reader to Zurich, New York, China and Zimbabwe. But the main takeaway is that, without London, global financial crime would not be possible on this scale.

Burgis reckons the city’s relationship with questionable cash traces to the fall of Britain’s empire. In its imperial heyday, London facilitated trade with the colonies. But after global power ebbed, some of the smaller outposts developed other activities. Instead of producing tobacco or tea, islands like the Bahamas provided shelter for banks and tax avoiders. The French economist Gabriel Zucman estimates $7.6 trillion ended up offshore. Once these hubs were up and running, a London location gave bankers close access to the money movers – and to the property market.

Awareness of the scale of the problem picked up after the 2008 financial crisis. The year that Lehman Brothers collapsed, just half of Britain’s commercial properties were registered to a named person. The houses on a North London road known as “Billionaires’ Row” belonged to oligarchs and a front company for former Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Other recent books like Oliver Bullough’s “Moneyland” have catalogued the scale of the kleptocracy. Burgis, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, adds to the narrative by showing the human toll of stashing money in London property. When Grenfell Tower in west London went up in flames in 2017, killing 71 and leaving 250 people homeless, the local council said it did not have enough housing. Yet the district includes 2,000 homes which are mostly empty.

“Kleptopia” also shows the at-times violent origins of the questionable cash. In 2011, oil workers in Kazakhstan went on strike when they realised their employers were only paying them half what they declared to the country’s treasury. Police used live ammunition on the protesters, while others suffered torture. The international outrage raised uncomfortable questions for Kazakhstan’s then leader, Nazarbayev. To smooth things over before an upcoming trip to Cambridge University, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair offered him tips on how to downplay the incident.

Amid the parade of villains, “Kleptopia” features some do-gooders. Nigel Wilkins, a compliance officer at Swiss bank BSI, makes an entertaining and admirable hero. But principled individuals cannot fix the porous regulatory system that is supposed to police crooked money.

This becomes evident when Wilkins joins Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority. The watchdog is supposed to be a fiercer institution than its predecessor, which was found wanting by the financial crisis. But when Wilkins tries to show its officers how fraud happens using thousands of documents he hoarded from his time at BSI, they dismiss him.

London’s role in facilitating corporate crime could prove the capital’s undoing. The financial centre has benefitted from a robust legal system, stable markets and transparent regulations. But unchecked inflows of corrupt money are undermining the institutions that made London attractive. A parliamentary committee’s report on Russian influence in British politics, released in July, is a timely reminder of how oligarchs have converted questionable cash into political clout.

Burgis is short on practical solutions. Only the very last page of “Kleptopia” offers suggestions for weeding out financial crime. His plea to resist “lies and bullshit” is a start, but seems unlikely to stop warlords and oligarchs from robbing their compatriots and buying mansions in Chelsea.

London has made some progress in deterring money laundering. Authorities can use so-called unexplained wealth orders to confiscate suspect assets. Britain’s crown dependencies must now reveal the ownership of firms registered in their jurisdictions. But “Kleptopia” is an urgent reminder that there is a lot more to do to clean up London.

RIP

Eddie Van Halen dies at 65, guitar virtuoso ruled '70s, '80s rock


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Eddie Van Halen, the pioneering guitar player whose hard-rocking band emerged from the Sunset Strip music scene in Los Angeles in the early 1970s to stand at the top of rock ‘n’ roll for a decade, died of cancer on Tuesday. He was 65.

Van Halen’s death was announced by his 29-year-old son, Wolfgang, a bass player who joined the band, best known for songs like “Jump” and “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love,” in later years.

“I can’t believe I’m having to write this but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning,” Wolfgang Van Halen said on Twitter.

Representatives for Eddie Van Halen did not disclose details of his death. People magazine reported the rocker died at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his wife, Janie, son and other family members at his side.


“Through all your challenging treatments for lung cancer you kept your gorgeous spirit and that impish grin,” his former wife of 26 years, actress Valerie Bertinelli, said on Twitter.

Fans placed flowers and guitar picks on Van Halen’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“What a long, great trip its been,” the band’s flamboyant frontman during its glory years, David Lee Roth, said in a message on Twitter above a black-and-white photo of the two men clenching hands backstage at a concert.

Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on Jan. 26, 1955, and studied classical piano after moving to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena with his family in the 1960s.

After switching to guitar, he and his older brother, Alex, who took up the drums, formed bands that would eventually become Van Halen in the mid-1970s, with lead singer Roth and bassist Michael Anthony.

The hard-rock band, featuring Eddie Van Halen’s explosive riffs and solos, quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzari’s and the Whisky a Go Go before releasing their eponymous debut album in 1978.

That album shot to No. 19 on the Billboard charts, becoming one of the most successful debuts of the decade and the first in a string of top-selling albums that would make Van Halen one of the biggest rock acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Eddie Van Halen, known for his two-handed tapping technique on the strings, earned a place along Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists. In 2012, readers of Guitar World magazine voted him the greatest of all time.

Roth, who often clashed with the Van Halen brothers, split from the band in the mid-1980s and was replaced for a decade by Sammy Hagar. The original lineup reunited in 2007 for a tour and, four years later, an album.

“My heart is broken. Eddie was not only a Guitar God, but a genuinely beautiful soul,” Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss and an early champion of Van Halen with record companies, said on Twitter.

Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Mimi Dwyer, Lisa Richwine, Steve Gorman and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Gerry Doyle and Peter Cooney

Polish watchdog fines Gazprom $7.6 billion over Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

By Reuters Staff

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's anti-monopoly watchdog said on Wednesday it had fined Russia's Gazprom GAZP.MM more than 29 billion zlotys ($7.6 billion) for building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline without its approval.

FILE PHOTO: A logo of Gazprom Transgaz Tomsk is pictured at the Atamanskaya compressor station, facility of Gazprom's Power Of Siberia project outside the far eastern town of Svobodny, in Amur region, Russia November 29, 2019. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov.

The UOKiK watchdog also said it had imposed a 234 million zloty fine on five other firms involved in financing $11 billion project set to double Russia’s gas export capacity via the Baltic Sea.

Nord Stream 2 is led by Gazprom, with half of the funding provided by Germany's Uniper UN01.DE and BASF's BASFn.DE Wintershall unit, Anglo-Dutch company Shell RDSa.L, Austria's OMV OMVV.VI and Engie ENGIE.PA.

Poland sees Nord Stream 2 as a threat to Europe’s energy security as it will increase reliance on Russian energy.


The United States has also imposed sanctions on companies laying pipes for the project.

UOKiK has been examining the project for years. In August it fined Gazprom 213 million zlotys over a lack of cooperation regarding the project.

“The launch of NS2 will threaten the continuity of natural gas supplies to Poland. An increase in the price of the product is also highly likely, with the said increase being borne by Polish consumers,” said Tomasz Chrostny, president of UOKiK.


“Completion of this investment project increases economic dependence on Russian gas - not only in the case of Poland, but also of other European states,” Chrostny said.

Gazprom did not reply to a request for immediate comment.

Construction of the 1,230-kilometre pipeline is nearly finished but for a final stretch of roughly 120 km in Danish waters.

Work was halted in December as pipe-laying company Swiss-Dutch Allseas suspended operations because of the U.S. sanctions targeting companies providing vessels.

Cruise ship dismantling booms in Turkey after pandemic scuttles sector

By Bulent Usta

ALIAGA, Turkey (Reuters) - Business is booming at a sea dock in western Turkey, where five hulking cruise ships are being dismantled for scrap metal sales after the COVID-19 pandemic all but destroyed the industry, the head of a ship recyclers’ group said on Friday.

Cruise ships were home to the some of the earliest clusters of COVID-19 as the pandemic spread globally early this year.

In March, U.S. authorities issued a no-sail order for all cruise ships that remains in place.

On Friday, dozens of workers stripped walls, windows, floors and railings from several vessels in the dock in Aliaga, a town 45 km north of Izmir on Turkey’s west coast. Three more ships are set to join those already being dismantled.

Before the pandemic, Turkey’s ship-breaking yards typically handled cargo and container ships, Kamil Onal, chairman of a ship recycling industrialists’ association, told Reuters.

“But after the pandemic, cruise ships changed course towards Aliaga in a very significant way,” he said of the town. “There was growth in the sector due to the crisis. When the ships couldn’t find work, they turned to dismantling.”

Onal said some 2,500 people worked at the yard in teams that take around six months to dismantle a full passenger ship. The vessels arrived from Britain, Italy and the United States.



The shipyard aims to increase the volume of dismantled steel to 1.1 million tonnes by the end of the year, from 700,000 tonnes in January, he said.

“We are trying to change the crisis into an opportunity,” he said.

Even the ships’ non-metal fittings do not go to waste as hotel operators have come to the yard to buy useful materials, he added.

Reporting by Bulent Usta; Writing by Daren Butler and Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Barbara Lewis

 

How healthy is Trump? Years of misinformation make it difficult to know


The president’s doctors have been prone to hyperbole, even as concern has grown over his weight and a secretive hospital visit



Adam Gabbatt
Mon 5 Oct 2020 
 

Donald Trump with the former White House doctor Ronny Jackson in 2018. When discussing his medical report of that year, Jackson told reporters Trump’s health was ‘excellent’. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

On Friday morning, ex-White House doctor Ronny Jackson confidently told Fox News that Donald Trump was not exhibiting any symptoms from coronavirus.

Shortly after, a White House official came forward to confirm that Trump was, actually, experiencing symptoms – albeit minor ones – and reports said Trump had appeared tired on Wednesday and “seemed lethargic” on Thursday. On Friday afternoon he was taken to Walter Reed military hospital.

The flip-flop after Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, tested positive for coronavirus fit a long-running pattern of misdirection by Trump and his aides over the president’s health – making it difficult to trust any official statements even at a time of intense crisis.

The litany of incidents is long. Eyebrows were raised over Trump’s supposed robustness during his first presidential campaign, after his then doctor released a hyperbolic letter about his health.

“If elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Harold Bornstein wrote in December 2015.

The letter gushed that Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary”, and his bloodwork was “astonishingly excellent”.

Nearly three years later Bornstein confessed that Trump had dictated the note himself, but the skulduggery over Trump’s wellbeing did not end there.

Bornstein, whose flowing hair, grey beard and penchant for chunky silver necklaces gave him an unlikely appearance for a man of medicine, also claimed that Trump’s longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, had conducted a “raid” on his office in February 2017, scooping up Trump’s medical charts and lab reports.

The gushing dispatch about Trump’s fitness wasn’t the last doctor’s note to be questioned.

In 2018 Jackson reported that Donald Trump weighed in at 239lb during his annual medical exam.

That put Trump a pound shy of being obese.

But in Jackson’s report, he had clocked Trump as being 6ft 3in tall – meaning the president had apparently grown an inch since 2012, when his driving license listed him as 6ft 2in.

Using Trump’s driving license height, he would have been classed as medically obese.

Many at the time were quick to point to photos of Trump standing next to Alex Rodriguez, the former New York Yankees star, who is 6ft 3in tall. In the pictures, Rodriguez is clearly taller than Trump. Similarly, photos of Trump standing next to the 6ft 1in Barack Obama in 2017 seemed to show that the pair were the same height.

When discussing his 2018 report, Jackson told reporters Trump’s health was “excellent”.

Asked how the president, who has a penchant for fast food and who avoids exercise because he believes it drains the body’s “finite” energy resources, could be in such great shape, Jackson said.

“I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. But I would say the answer to your question is he has incredibly good genes and it’s just the way God made him.”

Jackson, a former rear admiral in the navy who resigned from the White House in 2018, is running for the House of Representatives in November, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by Trump.

In 2019 Trump’s medical revealed that the president had gained weight, and was now considered obese.

More serious, and clandestine, was Trump’s impromptu hospital trip, on a Saturday, in November 2019.

Just as contradictory messaging was sent out about Trump’s Covid-19 symptoms, the White House offered differing descriptions of why the president was taken to the Walter Reed national military medical center, just outside Washington.

The then White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, initially said Trump had gone to the hospital to begin his annual medical, but CNN soon reported that the visit “did not follow the protocol of a routine presidential medical exam”, and was not listed on the White House schedule.

Two days after the trip, the Trump administration language changed. Trump was no longer at hospital to begin his medical, but was instead undergoing an “interim checkup”.

In September this year a book by the New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt alleged that Vice-President Mike Pence was put on standby as Trump went to the hospital.

Trump and his aides have also sought to exaggerate his mental acuity, as well as his physical duress.

The president has repeatedly said he aced a “difficult” cognitive test, as Trump has attacked Joe Biden’s sharpness.

In an interview with Trump in June, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace brought up the issue of the cognitive test. Wallace said he had taken the test himself.

“It’s not the hardest test,” Wallace said.

“They have a picture and it says: ‘What’s that?’ and it’s an elephant.”

SEE 

MORE TRUMP QUACKERY

HIS SO CALLED DOCTOR IS A BONE CRUNCHER,

A CHIROPRACTOR BY ANY OTHER NAME