Saturday, November 11, 2017
Grant's Interest Rate Observer
Dispatches from the upside down
Talk about lower-for-longer: Ewald Nowotny, governing council member of the European Central bank, told Austrian public broadcaster ORF in a radio interview today that the ECB will keep its benchmark deposit rate on the far side of zero (it’s currently minus-0.40%) not only through the end of this year, but through next year as well. “Realistically speaking, from this perspective, there will only be a change in interest rate policy in the year 2019,” said Nowotny.
Readers of the ECB tea-leaves expect more EZ monetary policy: Quantitative easing (albeit at a slower pace. The ECB is set to taper its current €60 billion monthly purchase pace to €30 billion in January) and negative interest rates aren’t going anywhere for the time being. “We change our ECB call,” declares Johnny Bo Jakobsen, strategist at Nordea Markets: “We now expect the ECB to extend QE once more and the first rate hike is not seen until 4Q 2019. Thus, we no longer anticipate a deposit rate hike in 1Q 2019.”
The Kingdom of Spain is taking its cues accordingly. The Iberian nation today announced plans to sell bonds next week in four maturities: 2021 at a 0.05% coupon, 2022 at 0.45%, 2027 at 1.45% and 2066 at 3.45% (size is still to be determined). For comparison, France, which is rated Aa2 at Moody’s (the third highest rung on its scale) borrows for 10 years at a 1.00% coupon. Spain, which already has existing 1.45% coupon bonds due in 2027 (they are trading a bit below 99 cents on the euro) is situated at Baa2 at Moody’s, just two notches above junk status.
On the ropes through the eurozone debt crisis of 2010 to 2012, Spain has enjoyed a resurgence in economic growth in recent years. GDP has expanded by more than 3% on a year-over-year basis in 10 straight quarters going back to June of 2015, although growth is starting to wane. The trailing four quarter average advance of 3.1% year-over-year is down slightly from 3.4% in the four quarters prior.
Political unrest has gripped the Kingdom of late, with the early-fall secession movement undertaken by Catalonia (its most prosperous region) being met with a heavy handed response from Madrid, including the imposition of direct rule. Today a Spanish Supreme Court judge set bail for five Catalonian parliament members who have been cooling their heels in jail on charges of sedition related to the Oct. 1 independence referendum. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told reporters yesterday that the strife could lead to lower growth: Indeed the government already revised its 2018 GDP forecast to 2.3% from 2.6%.
A substantial recent divergence in the Spanish Leading Indicators Index with GDP lends additional credence to the idea of an upcoming decline in growth.
While growth looks set to decline, inflation is stirring. The year-over-year change in Spanish CPI has jumped to an average of 2.1% in the 10 monthly readings seen this year. By contrast, 2016 and 2015 averaged year-over-year changes of negative 0.2% and negative 0.5%, respectively. Among the new issues, only the bonds maturing in 2066 offer a positive real return at that 2.1% rate of inflation.
For investors seeking alternatives, a pair of trades immediately come to mind. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index, which trades at just under 21 times trailing earnings and just over 16 times estimated 2017 earnings, sports a relatively princely dividend yield of 3.28%. If sovereign fixed income is what fits the bill, then how about 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, priced at a yield-to-worst of 2.40% and bearing a triple-A rating from Moody’s.
The ECB wants them? Let have the ECB have them.
Dispatches from the upside down
Talk about lower-for-longer: Ewald Nowotny, governing council member of the European Central bank, told Austrian public broadcaster ORF in a radio interview today that the ECB will keep its benchmark deposit rate on the far side of zero (it’s currently minus-0.40%) not only through the end of this year, but through next year as well. “Realistically speaking, from this perspective, there will only be a change in interest rate policy in the year 2019,” said Nowotny.
Readers of the ECB tea-leaves expect more EZ monetary policy: Quantitative easing (albeit at a slower pace. The ECB is set to taper its current €60 billion monthly purchase pace to €30 billion in January) and negative interest rates aren’t going anywhere for the time being. “We change our ECB call,” declares Johnny Bo Jakobsen, strategist at Nordea Markets: “We now expect the ECB to extend QE once more and the first rate hike is not seen until 4Q 2019. Thus, we no longer anticipate a deposit rate hike in 1Q 2019.”
The Kingdom of Spain is taking its cues accordingly. The Iberian nation today announced plans to sell bonds next week in four maturities: 2021 at a 0.05% coupon, 2022 at 0.45%, 2027 at 1.45% and 2066 at 3.45% (size is still to be determined). For comparison, France, which is rated Aa2 at Moody’s (the third highest rung on its scale) borrows for 10 years at a 1.00% coupon. Spain, which already has existing 1.45% coupon bonds due in 2027 (they are trading a bit below 99 cents on the euro) is situated at Baa2 at Moody’s, just two notches above junk status.
On the ropes through the eurozone debt crisis of 2010 to 2012, Spain has enjoyed a resurgence in economic growth in recent years. GDP has expanded by more than 3% on a year-over-year basis in 10 straight quarters going back to June of 2015, although growth is starting to wane. The trailing four quarter average advance of 3.1% year-over-year is down slightly from 3.4% in the four quarters prior.
Political unrest has gripped the Kingdom of late, with the early-fall secession movement undertaken by Catalonia (its most prosperous region) being met with a heavy handed response from Madrid, including the imposition of direct rule. Today a Spanish Supreme Court judge set bail for five Catalonian parliament members who have been cooling their heels in jail on charges of sedition related to the Oct. 1 independence referendum. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told reporters yesterday that the strife could lead to lower growth: Indeed the government already revised its 2018 GDP forecast to 2.3% from 2.6%.
A substantial recent divergence in the Spanish Leading Indicators Index with GDP lends additional credence to the idea of an upcoming decline in growth.
While growth looks set to decline, inflation is stirring. The year-over-year change in Spanish CPI has jumped to an average of 2.1% in the 10 monthly readings seen this year. By contrast, 2016 and 2015 averaged year-over-year changes of negative 0.2% and negative 0.5%, respectively. Among the new issues, only the bonds maturing in 2066 offer a positive real return at that 2.1% rate of inflation.
For investors seeking alternatives, a pair of trades immediately come to mind. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index, which trades at just under 21 times trailing earnings and just over 16 times estimated 2017 earnings, sports a relatively princely dividend yield of 3.28%. If sovereign fixed income is what fits the bill, then how about 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, priced at a yield-to-worst of 2.40% and bearing a triple-A rating from Moody’s.
The ECB wants them? Let have the ECB have them.
Friday, November 10, 2017
On this day in 1975,
Edmund Fitzgerald Sinks in Lake Superior
From This Day in History:
On this day in 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board. It was the worst single accident in Lake Superior’s history.
The ship weighed more than 13,000 tons and was 730 feet long. It was launched in 1958 as the biggest carrier in the Great Lakes and became the first ship to carry more than a million tons of iron ore through the Soo Locks.
On November 9, the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, with 26,000 tons of ore heading for Detroit, Michigan. The following afternoon, Ernest McSorely, the captain of the Fitzgerald and a 44-year veteran, contacted the Avafor, another ship traveling on Lake Superior and reported that his ship had encountered “one of the worst seas he had ever been in.” The Fitzgerald had lost its radar equipment and was listing badly to one side.
A couple of hours later, another ship made contact and was told that the Fitzgerald was holding its own. However, minutes afterward, the Fitzgerald disappeared from radar screens. A subsequent investigation showed that the sinking of the Fitzgerald occurred very suddenly; no distress signal was sent and the condition of the lifeboats suggested that little or no attempt was made to abandon the ship.
One possible reason for the wreck is that the Fitzgerald was carrying too much cargo. This made the ship sit low in the water and made it more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a sudden large wave. The official report also cited the possibility that the hatches to the cargo area may have been faulty, leading to a sudden shift of the cargo that capsized the boat.
The Fitzgerald was eventually found 530 feet below the surface, 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, at the northeastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The ship had broken into two parts that were found approximately 150 feet apart. As there were no survivors among the 29 crewmembers, there will likely never be a definitive explanation of the Fitzgerald‘s sinking.
The Fitzgerald‘s sinking was the worst wreck in the Great Lakes since November 29, 1966, when 28 people died in the sinking of the Daniel J. Morrell in Lake Huron.
The disaster was immortalized in song the following year in Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
On this day in 1865,
Commandant of Andersonville, Dr. Henry Wirz, Hanged for War Civil War Crimes
From This Day in History:
On this day in 1865, Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant and the commander of Andersonville prison in Georgia, is hanged for the murder of soldiers incarcerated there during the Civil War.
Wirz was born in Switzerland in 1823 andmoved to the United States in 1849. He lived in the South, primarily in Louisiana, and became a physician. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Fourth Louisiana Battalion. After the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, in July 1861, Wirz guarded prisoners in Richmond, Virginia,and was noticed by Inspector General John Winder. Winder had Wirz transferred to his department, and Wirz spent the rest of theconflict working with prisoners of war. He commanded a prison in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; escorted prisoners around the Confederacy; handled exchanges with the Union; and was wounded in a stagecoach accident. After returning to duty, he traveled to Europe and likely delivered messages to Confederate envoys. When Wirz arrived back in the Confederacy in early 1864, he was assigned the responsibility for Andersonville prison, officially known as Camp Sumter.
While both sides incarcerated prisoners under horrible conditions, Andersonville deserves special mention for the inhumane circumstances under which its inmates were kept. A stockade held thousands of men on a barren, polluted patch of ground. Barracks were planned but never built; the men slept in makeshift housing, called “shebangs,” constructed from scrap wood and blankets that offered little protection from the elements. A small stream flowed through the compound and provided water for the Union soldiers, but this became a cesspool of disease and human waste. Erosion caused by the prisoners turned the stream into a huge swamp. The prison was designed to hold 10,000 men but the Confederates had packed it with more than 31,000 inmates by August 1864.
Wirz oversaw an operation in which thousands of inmates died. Partly a victim of circumstance,he was given few resources with which to work, and the Union ceased prisoner exchanges in 1864. As the Confederacy began to dissolve, food and medicine for prisoners were difficult to obtain. When word about Andersonville leaked out, Northerners were horrified. Poet Walt Whitman saw some of the camp survivorsand wrote, “There are deeds, crimes that may be forgiven, but this is not among them.”
Wirz was charged with conspiracy to injure the health and lives of Union soldiers and murder. His trial began in August 1865, and ran for two months. During the trial, some 160 witnesses were called to testify. Though Wirz did demonstrate indifference towards Andersonville’s prisoners, he was, in part, a scapegoat and some evidence against him was fabricated entirely. He was found guilty and sentenced to die on November 10 in Washington, D.C. On the scaffold, Wirz reportedly said to the officer in charge, “I know what orders are, Major. I am being hanged for obeying them.” The 41-year-old Wirz was one of the few people convicted and executed for crimes committed during the Civil War.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
On this day in 1989,
EAST GERMANY OPENS BERLIN WALL
From This Day in History:
East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters. The East German action followed a decision by Hungarian officials a few weeks earlier to open the border between Hungary and Austria. This effectively ended the purpose of the Berlin Wall, since East German citizens could now circumvent it by going through Hungary, into Austria, and thence into West Germany. The decision to open the wall was also a reflection of the immense political changes taking place in East Germany, where the old communist leadership was rapidly losing power and the populace was demanding free elections and movement toward a free market system.The action also had an impact on President George Bush and his advisors. After watching television coverage of the delirious German crowds demolishing the wall, many in the Bush administration became more convinced than ever that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s statements about desiring a new relationship with the West must be taken more seriously. Unlike 1956 and 1968, when Soviet forces ruthlessly crushed protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, respectively, Gorbachev actually encouraged the East German action. As such, the destruction of the Berlin Wall was one of the most significant actions leading to the end of the Cold War.
On this day in 1938,
From This Day in History:
On this day in 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.
The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents’ sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath’s death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as “spontaneous demonstrations” against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere. In the face of all the devastation, some Jews, including entire families, committed suicide.
In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks (or $400 million in 1938 dollars) for vom Rath’s death. As repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. In its quest to create a master Aryan race, the Nazi government enacted further discriminatory policies that essentially excluded Jews from all aspects of public life.
Over 100,000 Jews fled Germany for other countries after Kristallnacht. The international community was outraged by the violent events of November 9 and 10. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations in protest, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe they could get away with the mass murder that was the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million European Jews died.
Kristallnacht
From This Day in History:
On this day in 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.
The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents’ sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath’s death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as “spontaneous demonstrations” against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere. In the face of all the devastation, some Jews, including entire families, committed suicide.
In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks (or $400 million in 1938 dollars) for vom Rath’s death. As repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. In its quest to create a master Aryan race, the Nazi government enacted further discriminatory policies that essentially excluded Jews from all aspects of public life.
Over 100,000 Jews fled Germany for other countries after Kristallnacht. The international community was outraged by the violent events of November 9 and 10. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations in protest, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe they could get away with the mass murder that was the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million European Jews died.
Trump Hailed as ‘Most Pro-Life President in Modern History’
“President Trump has been the most pro-life president in modern history, slashing the Mexico City Policy shortly after taking office, which sent millions of taxpayer dollars overseas to pay for abortions,” Penny Nance, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America, tells Breitbart News.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Why I am not bothered by Trump's alleged lack of decorum
Author unknown.
"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." Abraham Lincoln
My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #Never Trumpers) constantly ask me if I'm not bothered by Donald Trump's lack of decorum. They ask if I don't think his tweets are "beneath the dignity of the office."
Here's my answer:
We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.
We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized "collegiality" as John McCain?
We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being than Mitt Romney?
And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
I don't find anything "dignified," "collegial" or "proper" about Barack Obama's lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don't see anything "dignified" in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don't see anything "statesman-like" in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was "articulate" and "polished" but in no way was he in the least bit "dignified," "collegial" or "proper."
The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the '60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they've fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America's first wartime president in the Culture War.
During wartime, things like "dignity" and "collegiality" simply aren't the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.
Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, "I cannot spare this man. He fights."
General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich
Trump is fighting. And what's particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel's, he's shouting, "You magnificent bastards, I read your book!"
That is just the icing on the cake, but it's wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he's defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals' war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
Trump's tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after "the fake media" — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal.
Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as "the most powerful weapon of all."... Most importantly, Trump's tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. .... They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either "go high" (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve
It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama's close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright's church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration's weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration's cover-up.
So, to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be "collegial" and "dignified" and "proper"? Of course I do. These aren't those times. This is war. And it's a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years. So, say anything you want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don't care I can't spare this man. He fights for America!
Another fake
Black cadet admits writing racial slurs at Air Force Academy dorm that had sparked outrage
Washington Times article
On this day 100 years ago,
Lenin makes first appearance before Russian Congress following October Revolution
From This Day In History:
On November 8, 1917, one day after an armed uprising led by his radical socialist Bolsheviks toppled the provisional Russian government, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin rises before the newly formed All-Russian Congress of Soviets to call for an immediate armistice with the Central Powers in World War I.
Lenin, in exile in Western Europe when the war broke out in 1914, managed to secure passage through Germany back to Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) in April 1917, after the first wave of Russia’s revolution in March overthrew the regime of Czar Nicholas II. In the months that followed, the Bolsheviks increased their influence, aided in their cause by Russia’s dismal economic situation and widespread frustration with the continuing war effort. In late June, the spectacular failure of an offensive ordered by the provisional government’s minister of war, Alexander Kerensky, sent the army into a tailspin, with millions of soldiers deserting the front and streaming home to join the socialist cause.
Over the next several months, Russia’s revolutionary fervor only increased, as Kerensky–by now serving as prime minister–struggled to maintain order in the face of growing opposition. Meanwhile, Lenin was hiding in Finland after an abortive workers’ uprising in July. He returned to Russia in late September, in time to push the Bolshevik Central Committee to organize an armed insurrection and seize power. The committee approved the plan in late October. On the night of November 6-7, under the direction of Leon Trotsky, an armed band of workers, soldiers and sailors stormed the Winter Palace, headquarters of the provisional government. The following morning, after a virtually bloodless victory, Trotsky announced that the government had fallen. Kerensky escaped and went into exile, while several other ministers were arrested later that day.
On November 8, Lenin made his first appearance before the Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks held a 60 percent majority. “We shall now proceed to the construction of the socialist order,” he announced. The first order of business for the new Bolshevik state was putting an end to Russia’s participation in what Lenin and his followers considered an imperialist, upper-class war. That day, the Congress adopted a manifesto calling for “all warring peoples and their governments to open immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace.” A formal ceasefire between Russia and the Central Powers was declared on December 2.
Russia’s exit from the war–which was formalized in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the following March–shook the Allied war effort to its very foundations, as Germany and Austria-Hungary would be now be able to shift all their efforts to the west. Even more importantly, the rise to power of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia announced the arrival of a new vision of the world order–a vision that would over the next decades rise to challenge the ideals of liberal democracy not only in Europe but around the world.
On this day in 1923,
Hitler Launches Beer Hall Putsch Attempted Coup
 |
| The Beer Hall Putsch Defendants |
From This Day In History:
Adolf Hitler, president of the far-right Nazi Party, launches the Beer Hall Putsch, his first attempt at seizing control of the German government.
After World War I, the victorious allies demanded billions of dollars in war reparations from Germany. Efforts by Germany’s democratic government to comply hurt the country’s economy and led to severe inflation. The German mark, which at the beginning of 1921 was valued at five marks per dollar, fell to a disastrous four billion marks per dollar in 1923. Meanwhile, the ranks of the nationalist Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party’s bitter hatred of the democratic government, leftist politics, and German Jews. In early November 1923, the government resumed war-reparation payments, and the Nazis decided to strike.
Hitler planned a coup against the state government of Bavaria, which he hoped would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the central, democratic government in Berlin. On the evening of November 8, Nazi forces under Hermann Goering surrounded the Munich beer hall where Bavarian government officials were meeting with local business leaders. A moment later, Hitler burst in with a group of Nazi storm troopers, discharged his pistol into the air, and declared that “the national revolution has begun.” Threatened at gunpoint, the Bavarian leaders reluctantly agreed to support Hitler’s new regime.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Bannon: George W. Bush Was ‘Single Most Destructive President in U.S. History, Including James Buchanan’
Breitbart article
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