Meet The NY Pension "Strategist" Who Traded Allocations For "Hookers And Blow"
By Tyler Durden
According to a complaint filed by U.S. prosecutors earlier today, Navnoor Kang, the former Director of Fixed Income and Head Portfolio Strategist at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, steered $2 billion worth of allocations to two “preferred brokers” in exchange for $100,000 worth of bribes in the form of the universal currency of “hookers and blow.”
According to NBC, from 2014 to 2016 Kang received bribes “in the form of entertainment, travel, lavish meals, prostitutes, nightclub bottle service, narcotics, luxury gifts, and cash payments, among other things” from Deborah Kelley, of Sterne Agee, and Gregg Schonhorn. Kang faces charges of securities fraud and wire fraud.
In a statement to CNN, the New York State Common Retirement Fund said it has “absolutely no tolerance for self-dealing” and fired Kang in February when it learned of his “misconduct.”
“We are outraged by Mr. Kang’s shocking betrayal of his responsibilities,” the fund said, adding that Kang was dismissed in February and it worked with law enforcement once the misconduct was uncovered by authorities.
Sure enough, a quick search of Kang’s LinkedIn account reveals that he left the NY Pension in February 2016, after spending 2 years and 2 months collecting substantial bribes. Prior to the NY Pension, Kang spent time at Guggenheim and PIMCO just after spending 2 years as professional tennis player.
According to his bio, Kang “outperformed his peers year after year because of his astute investment strategies and sound judgment for value”…while that could be interpreted as a veiled reference to “hookers and blow” we can’t be certain at this juncture.
Navnoor is a seasoned portfolio manager and macroeconomic strategist who has built and managed fixed income portfolios across various investor objectives in both the private and public sectors. He has outperformed his peers year after year because of his astute investment strategies and sound judgment for value.
Most recently, Navnoor was the Director of Fixed Income and the Head of Portfolio Strategy for the New York State Common Retirement Fund which is the third largest public plan in the country with over $185bn in assets. He was directly responsible for investing over $55bn in fixed income assets with a focus on credit products and for creating the macroeconomic framework for asset allocation for the entire $185bn fund. Earlier, Navnoor was co-head of investment grade corporate credit at Guggenheim Partners Asset Management and an associate portfolio manager for corporate credit at Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO). He began his career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in the credit default swap trading team.
In another avatar, Navnoor spent three years competing on the men’s professional tennis tour. He holds a degree in economics from Columbia University.
And that, folks, is how the brilliant minds of wall street manage to consistently underperform the broader markets year after year.
Baby Boomers Increasingly Having Social Security Checks Garnished To Cover Student Loan Payments
By Tyler Durden
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the federal government is increasingly garnishing Social Security benefits to help cover student loans payments owed by baby boomers. According the Wall Street Journal, a total of $1.1 billion has been garnished since 2001 with $171 million being collected in 2015 alone.
The government has collected about $1.1 billion from Social Security recipients of all ages to go toward unpaid student loans since 2001, including $171 million last year, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. Most affected recipients in fiscal year 2015—114,000—were age 50 or older and receiving disability benefits, with the typical borrower losing about $140 a month. About 38,000 were above age 64.
The report highlights the sharp growth in baby boomers entering retirement with student debt, most of it borrowed years ago to cover their own educations but some used to pay for their children’s schooling. Overall, about seven million Americans age 50 and older owed about $205 billion in federal student debt last year. About 1 in 3 were in default, raising the likelihood that garnishments will increase as more boomers retire.
“I believe this is the tip of the iceberg of what may be to come if we don’t work harder on this problem,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the top Democrat on the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Of course, the mere suggestion that people should be responsible for repaying debt they’ve incurred was enough to throw Elizabeth Warren into a tailspin as she described the idea of garnishing social security benefits as “predatory.”
The report showed garnishments left thousands with Social Security checks below the poverty line, prompting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to call the practice “predatory.” Both lawmakers said they will push legislation to ban it.
But consumer advocates and some congressional Democrats say the government’s tactics have become too aggressive, targeting many borrowers who are destitute and have no hope of repaying. Most Social Security recipients rely on their checks as their primary source of income, other research shows.
Meanwhile, the WSJ points out that Obama’s “income-driven repayment” (IDR) plans only serve to make the student loan problem worse. Since the payment plans only cover a portion of monthly interest payments, debt balances continue to grow over time leaving borrowers with even larger debt balances as they reach retirement age.
Daniel Pianko, a managing director of University Ventures, which invests in for-profit and nonprofit schools, says the government may be worsening the troubles of older borrowers by promoting programs that set monthly payments as a share of borrowers’ earnings. Payments under “income-driven repayment” programs frequently cover only part of the interest and not the principal, allowing balances to grow.
In that sense, the income-driven repayment programs have the same effect as payday lenders, trapping poor borrowers in a growing amount of debt.
“Every month and every year the loan balances go up, which means by definition this problem will only get worse,” Mr. Pianko said.
We …read more
Source: Baby Boomers Increasingly Having Social Security Checks Garnished To Cover Student Loan Payments
Germany Offers $100,000 Bounty For Berlin Attacker Who Slipped Through Authorities’ Fingers
By Tyler Durden
Update: Germany has offered a €100,000 bounty for any information leading to the suspect’s arrest during a Europe-wide manhunt across the border-free area.
* * *
Storm clouds are gathering for Angela Merkel who, in the aftermath of Monday’s tragic Berlin truck attack said that “it would be particularly repulsive if a refugee, seeking protection in Germany, was the perpetrator.” According to the latest news out of Germany, not only was the suspect, Anis Amri, a (failed) refugee, as he was supposed to be deported from Germany, but more troubling for Merkel is that he was previously investigated in a separate terror plot, however was never apprehended.
According to Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state where the suspect had lived for some time, Amri was previously investigated in connection with an earlier terror plot. The man had been considered a potential threat by security authorities since November. After being turned down for asylum, he should have been deported but could not be returned to Tunisia because his documents were missing, added Jaeger.
Amri reportedly moved around Germany and lived in several places, Jäger said. Since February this year he lived mostly in Berlin, but he had been back in North Rhine-Westphalia recently.
Jäger said an investigation had been launched against the suspect earlier this year on suspicion of “preparing a serious crime endangering national safety”. The investigation was launched by police in North Rhine-Westphalia but mainly conducted in Berlin, he said.
Just as troubling is that the Tunisian suspect was supposed to be deported from Germany but could not be, “because he had no valid identity document that could be used to prove he was Tunisian”, Jager said cited by the Telegraph.
As Jäger was speaking, a police raid on refugee accommodation where Anis Amri lived was reportedly under way.
Jäger said that the suspect had been in Germany since July 2015. His claim for asylum was rejected in June this year but the authorities were unable to deport him as they could not prove his identity.
German authorities requested Tunisia issue him with a new passport or laissez-passer two months ago. Tunisia initially denied that he was Tunisian but document arrived on Wednesday – two days after the attack. Bild added that German authorities requested a passport for Amri from the Tunisian authorities two months ago so he could be deported.
It is unclear if Merkel’s government was pass the blame for Monday’s attack on the Tunisians for not being cooperative on time, and preventing Amri’s deportation.
The new details will add to a growing list of questions about whether security authorities missed opportunities to prevent the attack which claimed the lives of 12 people and was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980; it will also cast further doubt on how competent Merkel is to deal with the fallout from a problem which her political opponents, and much of the local population, allege she is responsible for.
Italy To Nationalize Monte Paschi After Private Sector Rescue Fails
By Tyler Durden
Update: the FT writes that the Italian govt set to take a stake worth as much as 70% in Monte dei Paschi after private sector rescue fails.
* * *
The third bailout, and re-nationalization, of Italy’s third largest banks is imminent following a Reuters report that the ongoing, JPM-led attempt to execute a complex private sector bailout of Monte Paschi has failed.
According to Reuters, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, long considered as the most likely anchor investor with a €1 billion allocation in any rescue plan cash call, decided it is unwilling to invest in the Italian bank, meanwhile Monte Paschi has been unable to find a replacement investor willing to put money in its privately funded rescue plan, less than 24 hours before the offer ends.
As a result, the bank entire share sale, which closes at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Thursday, has drawn very little interest from the wider investment community.
As laid out previously, the bank needs to raise €5 billion by the end of this month to avert being wound down. The Italian government, which earlier today got a greenlight to issue €20 billion in public debt to use for bank bailout purposes, is expected to step in this week and nationalize the bank.
The approval came after the ECB refused to extend a deadline on a €5bn recapitalisation before the end of the year and fears mounted the lender’s liquidity levels were becoming unsustainable. MPS has lost €14bn, or 11 per cent of its total deposits, from January to September 2016 and warned its liquidity provision would fall under the required levels should it suffer another €10bn of deposit outflows under a “stress” scenario calculated by the ECB. The news sent the stock plunging to record lows, shortly before the government agreed to let taxpayers shoulder the burden of yet another bailout of the insolvent bank. In addition to Monte Paschi, other banks expected to benefit from Italy’s imminent state aid include Veneto Banca, Popolare Vicenza, Cassa di Cesena, Cassa di Rimini and Cassa di San Miniato.
In addition to the new capital injection by the government, it is unclear what the “bail-in” terms of the rescue will be. While a reported by Il Messaggero earlier said that the planned government bank aid won’t hurt depositors because funds will be given under EU’s precautionary recapitalization plans, it is likely that at least some of the bondholders will be impaired. The Italian newspaper said that holders of shares and bonds in banks affected to face “soft” burden-sharing by having to participate in conversion of subordinated bonds into shares.
As shown previously, Italy is unique in that the vast majority of “bail-inable” debt on bank balance sheets is held by domestic, retail investors.
The terms of their impairment may determine the longevity of the brand new Italian government.
There is another problem: in the past both Merkel and Schauble, not to mention Djisselbloem, have made it expressly clear that a bail-in mechanism should be used to …read more
Source: Italy To Nationalize Monte Paschi After Private Sector Rescue Fails
Ex-Blackrock Portfolio Manager Sentenced To 12 Months In Prison For Insider Trading
By Tyler Durden
Former Blackrock star portfolio manager Mark Lyttleton, 45, has been sentenced to 12 months in prison after pleading guilty to an “elaborate web of insider trading, using offshore companies, unregistered mobile phones and cash payments.” Lyttleton was arrested at his west London home in 2013 as part of an investigation, known as Operation Rye, by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority. The ex-portfolio manager, who was based in BlackRock’s London office, ran funds including the BlackRock U.K. Dynamic Fund and the BlackRock U.K. Absolute Alpha Fund, once overseeing as much as 2 billion pounds.
The ex-Blackrocker will now spend Christmas behind bars following his sentencing at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday for insider trading that netted him £45,000 profit. He was also confiscated of £149,000.
Lyttleton previously pleaded guilty last month to two counts of insider trading. As the FT adds, he admitted using inside information to trade in the securities of Encore Oil and Cairn Energy in a case brought by the City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority. Both those companies were on BlackRock’s list of stocks about which employees had received inside information, the FCA said. Lyttleton’s lawyer Paddy Gibbs said he gleaned the information through overhearing colleagues’ remarks.
The court heard that Lyttleton created a complex web of trading via an anonymous bank account, a Swiss-based asset manager, and a Panamanian offshore company of which his wife was the beneficiary.
“These offences are premeditated and dishonest. What remains a mystery is why such a successful trader would descend into such criminality,” Zoe Johnson QC for the FCA told the court.
“It’s clear that he had been one of BlackRock’s star performers — although it was also apparent that perhaps his star was waning… perhaps what emerges is this was an expression of power.” His sentence is a sharp fall from grace from being BlackRock’s “big thing”, as the court heard. The 21-year City veteran traded in shares as a “vocation” after winning a Daily Telegraph stock-picking competition aged just 7.
Wearing a dark suit and tie, he embraced his wife Delphine before entering the dock. She was also originally arrested with him in 2013 but then dropped from the FCA’s enquiries. No other individual has been charged in connection with the FCA’s three-year probe.
“The first thing Mr Lyttleton would wish me to say publicly to the court is: sorry,” Mr Gibbs said. Lyttleton was in “mental free-fall” following difficulties in his domestic life, as well as turning from “hero to liability” in his professional career after funds he managed did badly.
Gibbs added that his client had not created the offshore structures purposefully for insider trading but rather that his French wife and he were planning on moving abroad, and that the structures existed long before the offences. Lyttleton used the structures and pay-as-you-go mobile phones and cash payments at the suggestion of his Swiss-based adviser, Philip Caldwell, the court heard.
BlackRock has previously said that the offences were committed for Lyttleton’s personal gain off the …read more
Source: Ex-Blackrock Portfolio Manager Sentenced To 12 Months In Prison For Insider Trading
Al-Nusra Claims Responsibility For Murder Of Russian Ambassador, Warns Of More Attacks
By Tyler Durden
The Jabhat Fatah al-Sham organization (formerly the al-Nusra Front) claimed to be responsible for Monday’s murder of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov’s in Ankara. The terrorist group claimed responsibility via a letter which appeared on the Internet. The letter was written in Arabic.
In its statement, the group said “one of the heroes of the Jaish al-Fatah, Mert Alt?ntas carried out the execution of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov in Ankara,” because the world remains silent to what is taking place in Aleppo, no support comes to the Muslims in the Levant and for the victory of the Syrian people.
The 22-year-old policeman Mevlüt Mert Alt?ntas shot Karlov to death while the ambassador was giving a speech at an art gallery. Turkish media reports said Alt?ntas entered the art gallery without undergoing a security check as he showed his police ID.
Jaish al-Fatah wrote the name of Karlov’s killer in big letters as “Martry Mert Alt?ntas.”
Signaling similar attacks in the future, the group also said the assassination of the Russian ambassador was the “first act of revenge” for the women, children and the elderly killed in Aleppo as well as all the Muslims killed across the world.
Immediately after the ambassador’s killing, Turkish government officials and the pro-government media circles pointed to the faith-based Gulen movement as the mastermind of the attack.
Earlier in the day, Turkish media reported that the number of people detained in the investigation over the assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov has grown to 13. The arrests were carried out in the province of Ankara, in addition to the southwestern provinces of Izmir and Aydin, the NTV broadcaster cited police as saying.
Meanwhile, as reported yesterday, after the ambassador’s killing, Turkish government officials and the pro-government media circles pointed to the faith-based Gulen movement as the mastermind of the attack. Pro-government media outlets ran stories suggesting that Alt?nta? went to a Gulen-linked university preparation course and some of his relatives worked at Gülen-linked organizations. Erdogan has been waging an all-out war against the movement since the outbreak of a corruption scandal in late 2013. The government’s crackdown on the movement reached new heights with a failed coup attempt on July 15 as the government held the movement responsible for the coup attempt. The movement strongly denies having any role in the failed coup.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu even told his US counterpart John Kerry in a phone conversation on late Dec. 19 that both Turkey and Russia “know” that the Gulen movement is behind the ambassador’s murder. However, in a statement early on Wednesday, the Kremlin said it was too early to conclude who was behind the murder of Russian ambassador Ankara.
In the meantime, one of the advisers of the Turkish-Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen denied allegations by an unnamed senior Turkish security official of “very strong signs” that the gunman who killed the ambassador belonged to Gulen’s movement. Allegations by an unnamed senior Turkish security official are “laughable” and intended to cover up lax …read more
Source: Al-Nusra Claims Responsibility For Murder Of Russian Ambassador, Warns Of More Attacks
New Suspect In Berlin Terror Attack: German Police Hunt For Tunisian Islamist Man
By Tyler Durden
German police is searching for a Tunisian man after conveniently finding a temporary-stay permit under the driver’s seat of the truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people, according to Spiegel Online. The man is aged 21 or 23 and known by three different names, according to reports in the daily Allgemeine Zeitung and the Bild newspaper. According to a slightly conflicting report, the document was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern city of Tataouine in 1992.
Anis A.
As a reminder the man who rammed a truck through a crowd in Nice during Bastille Day celebrations, killing 86, was also Tunisian-born.
Bild reported that the Tunisian was known to police as a possibly dangerous individual, and part of a large Islamist network. A police operation is said to be under way in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where the permit was issued. Reports also say the suspect may have been injured in a struggle with the driver.
He applied for asylum in April and was given a temporary residence permit, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.
Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene, but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.
According to Reuters, the Polish driver of the killer truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. An autopsy indicated that the driver was still alive at the time of the attack, the daily Bild reported. It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured. The 37-year-old Pole named Lukasz worked for his cousin Ariel Zurawski’s transport company in northern Poland. Zurawski described him as a “good guy” and said his body showed signs of a struggle with the assailant or assailants.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for a similar attack in July when a Tunisian-born man rammed a truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice. Eighty-six people were killed, and the driver was shot dead by police.
The head of the Association of German Criminal Detectives, Andre Schulz, told German television late on Tuesday that police hoped to make another arrest soon. “I am relatively confident that we will perhaps tomorrow or in the near future be able to present a new suspect,” he said.
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s Passauer Neue Presse quoted the head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.
“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the paper.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repulsive …read more
Source: New Suspect In Berlin Terror Attack: German Police Hunt For Tunisian Islamist Man
Monte Paschi Crashes To All Time Low, Rebounds After Government Agrees To Fund Bank Bailouts
By Tyler Durden
In early European trading, shares of Italy’s third largest and most troubled bank were halted after crashing 17%, dropping to fresh all time lows, after the bank warned it is not only insolvent, but its liquidity could run out far sooner than expected.
BMPS shares initially dropped following yesterday’s news that the €5 billion private sector rescue plan appeared to be a dead end, after only €500 million in new capital was said to have been lined up, coming far short of the targeted bogey. An analysis by Swedbank said that adverse reports about Paschi’s efforts to find private capital are “quite discouraging” and added that “it seems as if a government intervention comes closer by the day.” It also noted that that government intervention that also abides by BRRD (Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive) rules will punish equity and junior bond holders, which is a major concern.
This was, however, compounded after Monte Paschi warned it expects to burn through around €11 billion euros of liquidity more quickly than previously forecast, according to a revised prospectus on the bank’s website. The world’s oldest bank said it now expected its net liquidity position, currently standing at €10.6 billion, to turn negative after four months. This was a sharp deterioration from the most recent liquidity update just three days prior, when on Sunday the bank had forecast that a current net liquidity position would turn negative after 11 months under a number of assumptions. It said on Wednesday the position would be negative for 15 million euros on the 5th month and could worsen further to minus 740 million euros by the 12th month. This compares with the minus 100 million-euro level it forecast on Sunday for the 12th month.
The bank also noted that it had lost 11%, or €14 bilion, of its total deposits from January to September 2016, and added that its liquidity levels would fall under the required level should it suffer another €10bn of deposit outflows under a “stress” scenario calculated by the European Central Bank. From the prospectus, as quoted by the FT:
The situation of the liquidity of the bank had progressively deteriorated until it reached, following the constitutional referendum of December 4, a time horizon of 29 days before which the bank would not be able to meet its liquidity requirements without seeking help from new interventions. That time horizon was calculated applying a stress situation where the bank saw an outflow of €10.3bn in a month.
However, just as the situation appeared terminally grim for the twice-bailedout bank, its shares soared briefly recovering all losses when moments ago Italy’s upper house of parliament approved a government request to borrow up to €20 billion in new public debt to underwrite bailouts of the country’s various troubled banks. The vote came just minutes after the lower house had also given its authorisation for a hike in the national debt to cover an eventual intervention.
The twin votes clear the way for government action, possibly this week, …read more
Source: Monte Paschi Crashes To All Time Low, Rebounds After Government Agrees To Fund Bank Bailouts
Who Won The 2016 Oil War?
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
Heading into the New Year with oil prices above US$50, both OPEC and the U.S. shale industry are claiming victory in the latest oil war battle – and both expect to benefit from higher prices, but there can really only be one winner here.
The oil price crash of 2014 has left OPEC scrambling to offset declining revenues while trying to maintain their much-coveted market share. The price bust – the consequence of a shale boom and the pump-at-will policy of that very same OPEC despite the global oil glut – has sent the U.S. shale patch trying to adapt to lower crude prices by slashing investments and costs and scaling back production.
After the failed Doha attempt in April at reaching an agreement, OPEC managed last month to reach a deal on cutting collective output to 32.5 million bpd as of January. It even managed to convince 11 non-OPEC producers – including Russia – to join the global supply reduction with another 558,000 bpd in an attempt to prop up crude oil prices.
Saudi Arabia – OPEC’s largest single producer and de facto leader – saw its oil revenues shrink in the past two years to the point of leading to fiscal deficits, a concept unthinkable three years ago. Having recorded fiscal surpluses of 11.2 percent, 12 percent, and 5.8 percent, respectively in 2011, 2012, and 2013, Saudi Arabia has now been running fiscal deficits, which stood at 3.4 percent in 2014 and a massive 15.9 percent last year, figures by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show. This year’s deficit is expected at 13 percent. The Saudis are canceling projects worth billions of dollars, cutting perks for civil servants, and raising fuel prices.
Now the OPEC/NON-OPEC deal to cut global supply – if producers stick to promised cuts – would give the Saudis some respite for their heavily-oil-dependent economy.
Still, they believe they won the 2014-2016 oil war with U.S. shale. According to Saudi officials quoted by The Wall Street Journal, the sting to U.S. shale output was worth Saudi Arabia’s and OPEC’s tactics to pump as much as they saw fit.
U.S. shale, on the other hand, had to go through a rough patch of lay-offs, investment cuts, and production declines in the past year and a half.
According to Haynes and Boone’s Oil Patch Bankruptcy Monitor, as many as 105 North American oil and gas producers have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015. U.S. field production of crude oil was 9.627 million bpd in April 2015, and has dropped to 8.58 million bpd in September of this year, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows.
However, in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA said that “oil production, particularly in the United States, has been more resilient in the current oil price environment than had been expected, as reflected in improving financial conditions at oil companies”.
U.S. producers have been adapting to the low prices and are …read more
Source: Who Won The 2016 Oil War?
Open Letter To Bavaria Minister-President Horst Seehofer
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by a Zero Hedge reader who wishes to remain anonymous:
OPEN LETTER TO MINISTER-PRESIDENT SEEHOFER
(Sent before the carnage in Berlin’s Christmas market)
Dear Minister-President Seehofer,
I would like to commend you on your opposition to mass uncontrolled immigration into Europe. One would think that it would be trivial to praise politicians – who are elected to uphold law and order, meaning our culture and values – for doing so, but these are the times we are living in.
In 1973 French author Jean Raspail asked a prophetic question in his best-selling novel, The Camp of Saints. What if France had at its borders millions of people ready to move in, not carrying weapons but complete destitution instead? If you refuse entry they will face a very uncertain future; but if you let them in millions more will follow and your culture and national identity will die. What should be done?
Today we have the answer: an unprecedented population replacement across much of Western Europe, largely funded by those being replaced. Based on current demographic and immigration trends, Austria will become a majority Muslim country by the end of this century, likely followed by France, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and even the UK.
Somehow I don’t believe that the millions who died defending Europe over centuries had this outcome in mind. But then again neither did the mighty Byzantines and their Persian archrivals, both of which after reaching the pinnacle of Human civilization at the time ended up being irrevocably absorbed by the Islamic demographic and military onslaughts.
As an immigrant myself (who lived in Munich at one point) I have great empathy for anyone leaving their homelands in search of a better life. I certainly have no ill feelings towards my Muslim brothers and sisters, whose aspirations are as worthy as anyone’s. If you build a nice house, then throw away the “quaint” tools like your values and religion used in its construction, it shouldn’t be a surprise that as the front door is left wide open others will come in and set up their own values and religion in that empty space. Why shouldn’t they? I would too if I had the chance.
Unfortunately, as you well know change at this scale is seldom easy… and peaceful. We only need to look at the Balkans, a beautiful region with wonderful people, to get a glimpse of how fractured our own multicultural societies might become. Actually, we are already feeling its effects, with national armies having to patrol European cities to prevent further atrocities – and no resolution in sight. And it can get much worse, not least in terms of personal freedoms, to the detriment of both natives and immigrants. Even a breakup of Germany at some point is not unthinkable.
Large economic crises have reliably sparked social revolutions over generations. We may not have to wait long for another one to hit Europe, now with the novelty of an imported multiethnic component. It is in times of strife that we can truly …read more
Source: Open Letter To Bavaria Minister-President Horst Seehofer
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