On the same day Matteo Renzi suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of alleged “populists” in Italy, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble ruled out debt relief for Greece ahead of a eurozone finance minister meeting.
Greece must implement economic reforms if it is to keep its place in the eurozone, Germany’s finance minister has insisted, ruling out debt relief for the country ahead of a crucial euro group meeting on Monday.
As the finance ministers of member states using the single currency prepared to discuss fiscal plans for the coming year, Wolfgang Schäuble in effect presented Greece with an ultimatum: either it must enforce unpopular structural reforms or exit the bloc.
“Athens must finally implement the needed reforms,” he told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview [in German] published on Sunday.
“If Greece wants to stay in the euro, there is no way around it – in fact completely regardless of the debt level.”
Asked if German voters should be prepared for the inevitability of debt relief in the run-up to national elections next year, Schäuble quipped: “That would not help Greece.”
Schäuble, who also asserted the Greek budget was not burdened by debt servicing because interest rates were now so low, made the comments as speculation mounted over how best to put the thrice-bailed-out nation back on the road to economic recovery.
In a strongly worded assessment, the IMF said that there was no prospect of Greece meeting the draconian terms of its current bailout plan and that interest payments on the soaring national debt would eat up 60% of the budget by 2060 in the absence of debt forgiveness.
The debt sustainability analysis by the Washington-based Fund said Greece should have longer to pay, have the interest rate on its loans fixed at 1.5%, and that its creditors should make debt relief automatic once the bailout programme ends in 2018.
“The implementation of debt relief should be completed by the end of the programme period”, the IMF said.
The IMF said that Greece’s national debt as a share of GDP would fall from just over 180% this year to around 140% by 2030 if debt relief was provided. The alternative, it added, was that Greece would face an ever-higher bill for servicing its rising debts.
Consequences
If Greece does not get debt relief, the IMF said it would drop out of the program.
If the IMF drops out of the program, Germany will have to pony up more money.
At one point the IMF worried about Greece having debt to the tune of 110% of GDP. Now, 140% seems acceptable and the IMF is even willing to wait until 2030 for such progress.
Schäuble’s Game
Schäuble has caught the IMF bluffing several times on such threats. Schäuble has caught Greece bluffing countless times.
Should lightning strike again, please remind me to put Schäuble’s announcement in my book of Great Timing Moments in Political History (as soon as I get around to writing such a book).
Newsweek’s now infamous issue “Madam President” that was delivered and recalled.
Nonetheless, Schäuble’s timing appears to be perfect. Angela Merkel will not exactly be pleased if the IMF drops out of the Troika at this moment given all that is going on with Italian banks, the Italian referendum, Beppe Grillo, and Marine le Pen.
We’ve gone through a succession of events and processes that were supposed to make gold go up. The following list is by no means exhaustive:
Quantitative Easing
Bernanke’s Helicopter Drops
Janet Yellen’s Keynesianism
Obama’s Deficits (US government debt is now a hair away from $20,000,000,000—and that’s just the little part of it they put on their balance sheet)
The election of Trump
The Italian Referendum (current as we write this)
Each has been good for a little blip that has been forgotten in the noise. We are seeing articles now that have moved on to the next old-new story. It seems that Trump is going to spend a lot on infrastructure. This will require massive deficits. But the market will distrust that the government can pay. So we will see a twin sell off of the US dollar in terms of other currencies, and Treasury bonds in terms of dollars. This will cause the mases to Discover Gold and the gold price is going to skyrocket. Click here to buy our fine gold, we have the very best gold.
We get it. Everyone thinks that interest rates are going up because inflation because more spending. Actually not quite everyone—our view is that the drivers which have caused the interest rate to fall for 35 years are still in full, deadly effect. Nor the folks who are bidding on junk bonds, or stocks for that matter.
But most everyone. Rates have to go up, because they’re lower than ever before history. Right?
And if rates are going up, then so is gold, right?
The Treasury bond is payabl only in US dollars. The US dollar, which is the liability of the Federal Reserve, is backed on by Treasurys. It’s a nice little check-kiting scheme. But besides that, the two instruments have the same risks. If you don’t like the bond, then you won’t like the dollar either. The day will come when en masse, the market decides it doesn’t like both of them, and gold will be the only acceptable money.
With due respect to our old friend Aragorn, today is not that day!
We believe interest rates are headed lower, not higher. But that said, we do not see any particular causal relationship between the interest rate and the price of gold. The former is the spread between the Fed’s undefined asset and its undefined liability. It is unhinged and while it could shoot the moon from Truman through Carter, it’s sailing in the other direction now. Down to Hell.
The price of gold is the exchange rate between the Fed’s liability and metal. So long as people strive to get more dollars—most especially including those who bet on the price of gold, and those who write letters encouraging the bettors—there is no reason for this exchange rate to explode.
Today (Friday’s close), the price of gold is down seven Federal Reserve Notes from where it was a week ago.
So where to from here? Are those dratted fundamentals moving?
We will update those fundamentals below. But first, here’s the graph of the metals’ prices.
The Prices of Gold and Silver
Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It fell a bit more this week.
The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price
For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.
Here is the gold graph.
The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
The price of gold fell (i.e. the price of the dollar rose, green line), and the basis (abundance) fell and cobasis (scarcity) rose just a bit.
Our calculated fundamental price of gold fell about ten bucks, now about $1,200 even.
Now let’s look at silver.
The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
In silver, we see a 14-cent rise in price but the cobasis is up.
The fundamentals got ever-so-slightly tighter. And our calculated fundamental price moved up to just under $15.
We note that speculators bid silver up this evening (Arizona time) in the wake of the Italian vote, some 30 cents to just under $17. But as of this publication, they couldn’t hold the line and the price fell back and is now a nickel below Friday’s close.
We’ve gone through a succession of events and processes that were supposed to make gold go up. The following list is by no means exhaustive:
Quantitative Easing
Bernanke’s Helicopter Drops
Janet Yellen’s Keynesianism
Obama’s Deficits (US government debt is now a hair away from $20,000,000,000—and that’s just the little part of it they put on their balance sheet)
The election of Trump
The Italian Referendum (current as we write this)
Each has been good for a little blip that has been forgotten in the noise. We are seeing articles now that have moved on to the next old-new story. It seems that Trump is going to spend a lot on infrastructure. This will require massive deficits. But the market will distrust that the government can pay. So we will see a twin sell off of the US dollar in terms of other currencies, and Treasury bonds in terms of dollars. This will cause the mases to Discover Gold and the gold price is going to skyrocket. Click here to buy our fine gold, we have the very best gold.
We get it. Everyone thinks that interest rates are going up because inflation because more spending. Actually not quite everyone—our view is that the drivers which have caused the interest rate to fall for 35 years are still in full, deadly effect. Nor the folks who are bidding on junk bonds, or stocks for that matter.
But most everyone. Rates have to go up, because they’re lower than ever before history. Right?
And if rates are going up, then so is gold, right?
The Treasury bond is payabl only in US dollars. The US dollar, which is the liability of the Federal Reserve, is backed on by Treasurys. It’s a nice little check-kiting scheme. But besides that, the two instruments have the same risks. If you don’t like the bond, then you won’t like the dollar either. The day will come when en masse, the market decides it doesn’t like both of them, and gold will be the only acceptable money.
With due respect to our old friend Aragorn, today is not that day!
We believe interest rates are headed lower, not higher. But that said, we do not see any particular causal relationship between the interest rate and the price of gold. The former is the spread between the Fed’s undefined asset and its undefined liability. It is unhinged and while it could shoot the moon from Truman through Carter, it’s sailing in the other direction now. Down to Hell.
The price of gold is the exchange rate between the Fed’s liability and metal. So long as people strive to get more dollars—most especially including those who bet on the price of gold, and those who write letters encouraging the bettors—there is no reason for this exchange rate to explode.
Today (Friday’s close), the price of gold is down seven Federal Reserve Notes from where it was a week ago.
So where to from here? Are those dratted fundamentals moving?
We will update those fundamentals below. But first, here’s the graph of the metals’ prices.
The Prices of Gold and Silver
Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It fell a bit more this week.
The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price
For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.
Here is the gold graph.
The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
The price of gold fell (i.e. the price of the dollar rose, green line), and the basis (abundance) fell and cobasis (scarcity) rose just a bit.
Our calculated fundamental price of gold fell about ten bucks, now about $1,200 even.
Now let’s look at silver.
The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
In silver, we see a 14-cent rise in price but the cobasis is up.
The fundamentals got ever-so-slightly tighter. And our calculated fundamental price moved up to just under $15.
We note that speculators bid silver up this evening (Arizona time) in the wake of the Italian vote, some 30 cents to just under $17. But as of this publication, they couldn’t hold the line and the price fell back and is now a nickel below Friday’s close.
Why is America’s homeownership rate at an all-time low despite rising household formation, record full-time employment and low interest rates? Perhaps, the trauma of the last housing crash is still fresh in the minds of potential home buyers who end up opting for rentals instead ? the rental vacancy rate is at a 31-year low. And prospective buyers who succeed in getting over that psychological barrier are then confronted by other obstacles such as tighter lending standards which pose problems, particularly for first-time home buyers holding student debt. After being burnt by lax lending during the subprime crisis, banks have gone to the other extreme as evidenced by latest data from the New York Fed which shows 58% of new mortgage originations this year has gone to borrowers with credit scores 760 and above. As today’s Hot Charts show, that’s the tightest mortgage standards in over a decade.
You’ve gotta give them credit. The plot, the plan, the conspiracy – it’s really well thought out, well funded – well executed. Bravo! It’s like a well planned ballet. In ballet, to acheive excellence, complete cooperation and syncrhonicity is required. Look what I found in my Twitter today from some Big Lebowski zombie:
The ‘fake news’ in question was from a Zero Hedge article “Why the Elite Hate Russia” that was written by Global Intel Hub during the election, in order to counterbalance some of the “Russian Propaganda” coming from the CIA/Illuminati basement in rural Virginia (you know the location).
They are moving so quickly to put the genie back in the bottle it’s alarming. The DOD originally created the internet initially for legitimate military purposes (secure communication) and as an aside wireless technology was developed during world war 2 and actively used in combat (field phones). Anyway once the internet was ‘released’ it clearly was a mistake, but not something they could stop. Even a Rockefeller himself admitted ‘it would be better if the internet didn’t exist:’
I can report that the spokesman was an American man, probably in his thirties or forties, who was well versed in Internet culture and swore enthusiastically. He said that the group numbered about forty people. “I can say we have people who work for major tech companies and people who have worked for the government in different regards, but we’re all acting in a private capacity,” he said. “One thing we’re all in agreement about is that Russia should not be able to fuck with the American people. That is not cool.” The spokesman said that the group began with fewer than a dozen members, who came together while following Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine. The crisis was accompanied by a flood of disinformation designed to confuse Ukraine and its allies. “That was a big wake-up call to us. It’s like, wait a minute, Russia is creating this very effective fake-news propaganda in conjunction with their military operation on the ground,” the spokesman said. “My God, if they can do that there, why can’t they do it here?” PropOrNot has said that the group includes Ukrainian-Americans, though the spokesman laughed at the suggestion that they were Ukrainian agents. PropOrNot has claimed total financial and editorial independence.
Given PropOrNot’s shadowy nature and the shoddiness of its work, I was puzzled by the group’s claim to have worked with Senator Ron Wyden’s office. In an e-mail, Keith Chu, a spokesman for Wyden, told me that the PropOrNot team reached out to the office in late October. Two of the group’s members, an ex-State Department employee and an I.T. researcher, described their research. “It sounded interesting, and tracked with reporting on Russian propaganda efforts,” Chu wrote. After a few phone calls with the members, it became clear that Wyden’s office could not validate the group’s findings. Chu advised the group on press strategy and suggested some reporters that it might reach out to. “I told them that if they had findings, some kind of document that they could share with reporters, that would be helpful,” he told me. Chu said that Wyden’s office played no role in creating the report and didn’t endorse the findings. Nonetheless, he added, “There has been bipartisan interest in these kind of Russian efforts, including interference in elections, for some time now, including from Senator Wyden.” This week, Wyden and six other senators sent a letter to the White House asking it to declassify information “concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election.”
The story of PropOrNot should serve as a cautionary tale to those who fixate on malignant digital influences as a primary explanation for Trump’s stunning election. The story combines two of the most popular technological villains of post-election analysis—fake news and Russian subterfuge—into a single tantalizing package. Like the most effective Russian propaganda, the report weaved together truth and misinformation.
Bogus news stories, which overwhelmingly favored Trump, did flood social media throughout the campaign, and the hack of the Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s e-mail seems likely to have been the work of Russian intelligence services. But, as harmful as these phenomena might be, the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labelled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier. Vasily Gatov told me, “To blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.”
This PropOrNot is clearly a Soros funded psy-op. But it’s amateurish, it’s pathetic. It’s amazing people really believe this stuff. But this is coming from a group of people who previously, just believed everything they saw on TV. Now that they are ‘surprised’ Trump was elected, they are searching the net for answers, looking at sites they didn’t look before (like Drudge, Zero Hedge, and many others). They still doubt anything they see ‘online’ because clearly, TV is the only real authority for information, not ‘the internets’.
Facebook was their first attempt to seize control of the internet as a new social control mechanism, but that is largely failing. Facebook does control a certain marginal percentage of the population but those with above room temperature IQ are not so susceptible for such easy manipulation. So post-election they’re going into overdrive. Fortunately, part of the dichotomy we witnessed during the election was also in parallel with the ‘digital divide’ with those more ‘technically savvy’ people being pro-Trump (although this is a reality the perception in the MSM is the opposite, as Silicon Valley backed Clinton, this was only the billionaire class and liberals, women, minorities, and others – the majority of tech savvy computer users backed Trump). This means that the ‘establishment’ that Trump defeated, they’re not too technically savvy. Sure, they can hire the best and the brightest with their money, but this too was a huge failure, as Clinton hired some unprofessional goons who allowed themselves to be taped in real time speaking about corruption and illegal activities for all to see. So childish. They can’t even decide who is a good subcontractor! Fortunately, globalintelhub.com wasn’t listed on their list, but zerohedge.com is – and we are a major contributor. Actually, ZeroHedge is the best ‘real news’ source of market info, maybe only in the same class as bloomberg (which is, a ‘real news’ agency although biased by a billionaire liberal owner).
On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news“, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017“, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”
A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”, whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”
The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:
Establishment or funding of a front group.
Covert broadcasting.
Media manipulation.
Disinformation and forgeries.
Funding agents of influence.
Incitement and offensive counterintelligence.
Assassinations.
Terrorist acts.
As ActivistPost correctly notes, it is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called “fake news” websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.
Curiously, the bill which was passed on November 30, was introduced on November 22, two days before the Washington Post published its Nov. 24 article citing “experts” who claim Russian propaganda helped Donald Trump get elected.
Anyone who is aware of how the world works (if you aren’t, you can read a list of books here to see how the world really works, or checkout Splitting Pennies) should be extremely ALARMED by this! Everyone has probably heard of the term ‘wire fraud’ -this was a catch all crime used by the FBI for more than 50 years to ensnare virtually anyone they wanted to convict for any crime. Wire fraud is “financial fraud involving the use of telecommunications or information technology.”
Which is a pretty broad, general definition. So many criminals who they couldn’t find evidence for their crimes, they would charge them with ‘wire fraud’ which was the bureaus goto law created for the purpose of convicting criminals without the need of ‘smoking gun’ evidence which was in many cases, like the JFK investigation, IMPOSSIBLE to find.
Fortunately, they aren’t so powerful – they are unpopular, and seem to be a dying breed. But we should prepare – we shouldn’t hope!
“US intelligence officials believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election, two US intelligence sources told BuzzFeed News.
‘They’re doing this continuously, that’s a known fact,’ one US intelligence official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive national security issue.
‘This is beyond propaganda, that’s my understanding,’ the second US intelligence official said. The official said they believed those efforts likely included the dissemination of completely fake news stories. …
One intelligence official said, ‘In the context, did Russia attempt to influence the US elections; the aperture is as wide as it can possibly be.’” ‘The real unanswered question is, why did they do it?’ the second US intelligence official said. ‘Is it because they love Donald Trump? Because they hated Hillary Clinton? Or just because they like undermining Western democracies?’”
Who are these US intelligence officials who are portraying the president-elect of the United States to be a “Putin stooge, a tool of Russia”? Once in office, Trump must investigate these hostile elements in US intelligence who are working to discredit the US president and the American people who voted him into office.
As one reader pointed out, those who debunk “conspiracy theories,” that is, explanations that they do not like, now have a conspiracy theory of their own: Vladimir Putin used independent American websites to elect Trump with fake news. Only voters living in a few large coastal cities were immune to the fake news.
In other words, the presstitute media has lost control over Americans’ minds to Putin.
With an opponent this powerful, neoconservatives better think a dozen times before fomenting any more tension with the Kremlin.
Open the link above to Zeusse’s column and look at the cover of Time magazine. This cover delegitimizes the presidential election. Which US intelligence agency planted this cover on Time? President Trump must have the Secret Service investigate this attack from inside the US government on the US President. Congress, both House and Senate, should immediately summon Time magazine to hearings under oath. This interference by US intelligence in American political life is illegal. Those responsible must be discovered, indicted, convicted, and sentenced. Otherwise fake news will displace facts as Americans are wrapped in a Matrix inside a Matrix.
Title V of the bill establishes an interagency executive branch committee “to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence.” Russian manipulation of US media (a routine practice of the US government) to spread disinformation (fake news) is one of the “active measures by Russia” to be countered. In other words, websites that do not participate in the demonization of Russia and President Putin will be subjected to McCarthyite suspicions and accusations. Countering is an open-ended activity that easily extends to enforcement actions against suspected parties.
If this bill becomes law, it can be used to discredit and destroy truthtellers as agents of foreign intelligence.
In other words, the message is: if you dispute our lies you are a foreign agent and subject to arrest or elimination.
This is the state of democracy in America today.
More than any other country, the United States needs to be liberated. Can Trump do it?
There’s so much hate out there. The EU has decided they’re going to do something about it, god damn it. All of the damned, fucking, voters running astray this year must have the autocrats going apeshit trying to figure out ways to suppress populism. As such, the EU is demanding that US tech giants comply with their demands to curtail ‘hate speech’ else be literally forced to do so — according to law. The laws are designed to protect migrants streaming into the EU, raping and pillaging along the way.
Europeans, you must comply.
source: Reuters
The European Union (EU) executive’s warning comes six months after the companies signed up to a voluntary code of conduct to take action in Europe within 24 hours, following rising concerns triggered by the refugee crisis and terror attacks.
This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of “counter-narratives” to hate speech.
Such as propaganda, like the correct the record shills? Counter-narratives.
The code of conduct is largely a continuation of efforts that the companies already take to counter hate speech on their websites, such as developing tools for people to report hateful content and training staff to handle such requests.
The EU Justice Commission wants tech companies to censor speech at a much faster pace than the current 80% after 48 hours. Permitting 20% of speech that is deemed hateful to be disseminated after 48 hours is 2o% too much, according to the Commissioner Vera Jourova.
“If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months,” Jourova told the Financial Times.
Jourova’s report showed an uneven pace across the 28-country bloc, with the removal rate of racist posts in Germany and France above 50 percent, but just 11 percent in Austria and 4 percent in Italy.
Coincidentally, the Italians just told the EU to fuck off this evening, voting against the referendum. I suppose they’re all a bunch of racist bastards.
EU justice ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss the report on Thursday. They are also expected to ask the companies to clarify issues including taking down “terrorist propaganda” and helping provide evidence to convict foreign fighters.
How nice of them to also include the censorship of terrorists. Kiss your free speech goodbye Europe. The EU has gone full Soviet Union with the aim to suppress freedom of expression.
Pizzagate took a turn for the even more bizarre on Sunday, as a man with an assault rifle walked into Comet Ping Pong to "self-investigate" the Baltimore, Maryland, pizza parlor that internet conspiracy theorists say is at the center of an international child sex ring run by prominent Democrats. 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., reportedly fired the rifle at least once inside the restaurant but no one was injured.
As HeatSt.com reports, Washington, D.C., police arrested the man Sunday afternoon, after restaurant employees saw a man, described as being in his early 20s and carrying an “assault rifle,” work his way through the dining room and then attempt to enter the staff work area at the back of the building.
Restaurant workers acted quickly, getting staff and patrons—including a number of children—to safety and dialing 911. Authorities were quick to respond. They subdued and arrested the man and secured the restaurant. No one was injured.
The Washington Post noted that the incident caused panic, with several businesses going into lockdown as police swarmed the neighborhood after receiving the call shortly before 3 p.m.
Police said 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., walked in the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee. The employee was able to flee and notify police. Police said Welch proceeded to discharge the rifle inside the restaurant.
The man told police he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” the election-related conspiracy theory.
Police said in addition to the assault rifle, they also recovered two firearms inside the restaurant; an additional weapon was recovered in Welch’s car. Bomb-sniffing dogs and at least one armored vehicle were present at the scene.
He has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
As President-elect Donald Trump met with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — a potential pick for head of the Department of Homeland Security — the internet lit up with the leaked contents of their meeting, triggering another round of talks concerning a possible “national registry” of Americans or immigrants who subscribe to Islam.
While Kobach’s plan involves the George W. Bush-era National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) — a system that remained in place under President Barack Obama until 2011 (only to be replaced with a more comprehensive program) — few caught up to the fact NSEERS only involves the collection and crosschecking of data pertaining to immigrants coming to the United States from Muslim-majority countries. But as news sources ran with the story that Trump could eventually turn this into a registry of American Muslims and immigrants already living in the country, the president-elect’s spokesman Jason Miller reassured the public that no, a registry system targeting Muslims was not in the cards for the Trump administration.
Nevertheless, there is one event in our country’s history that serves as a precedent for a system that could effectively single out and help report on specific Americans and immigrants. But the US government would never be able to put it in place if it wasn’t for the presence of the Census Bureau, an agency that costs billions of taxpayer dollars yearly.
While the agency threatens those taking the survey with a $5,000 fine for failing to comply with its demands, it never had to answer to its blatant disregard for the law in the 1940s, when the US government had access to information on Japanese Americans thanks to the data collected by Census workers. With detailed information in hand, the Army eventually rounded Japanese Americans up, throwing them in internment camps and making this period in the history of the country one of the most infamous legacies of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In his piece, Bovard added that the detentions are now “widely recognized … as among the largest civil liberties violations in modern U.S. history,” prompting Congress to vote to compensate victims in 1988. But despite the shame often associated with this episode, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that research unveiled documents proving that the Census Bureau had been an important part in this charade, prompting the agency to admit culpability — but only to a certain extent.
To this day, the Census Bureau claims it never provided names and addresses of all Japanese Americans. But despite the bureau’s claims, a study carried out by William Seltzer of Fordham University and Margo Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee proved the Secret Service had access to, at least, all the names and addresses of individuals of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C. area thanks to the bureau.
So if you are concerned that the United States government could — under a Trump administration or a future administration — round up any group of Americans and immigrants based solely on their religion or another particular characteristic, tackling the power and inquisitiveness of the US Census Bureau would be a great first step, helping to trim the government’s power and ensure the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of all individuals are being properly protected.
So much has changed in just the 8 months since April 25, 2016, when this “White House Photo” of the day was taken.
As Will Jordan notes, the photo showed a meeting of the world’s top political leaders, President Barack Obama talking with European leaders before their meeting in Hannover, Germany.
From left: British Prime Minister David Cameron, the President, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
As of this evening, of the five, just one remains on the global political scene. The real question is for how much longer.
