another site
France has banned restaurants and other places that sell drinks containing sugar or other sweeteners from offering free refills of those drinks. Some restaurants have already removed or moved their drink fountains, while Five Guys has placed microchips on drink cups that switch off their drink fountains if someone tries to refill a cup. The ban is aimed at fighting obesity.
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Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,
Economist and cycle trend forecaster Harry Dent sees crushing deflation ahead for nearly every financial asset class. We are at the nexus of a concurrent series of downtrends in the four most important predictive trends he tracks.
Laying out the thesis of his new book The Sale Of A Lifetime, Dent sees punishing losses ahead for investors who do not position themselves for safety beforehand. On the positive side, he predicts those that do will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to buy assets at incredible bargain prices once the carnage ends (and yes, for those of you wondering, he also addresses his outlook for gold):
All four of the cycles I track point down now. One after the next has peaked in the last several years. All four point down into early 2020 or so. That's only happened in the early to mid-'70s when we had the worst stock crashes back then, the OPEC embargo, etc — the worst set of crises since the 1930s.
Of course, in the early '30s we had this same configuration of all four of these fundamental cycles, cycles that have taken me 30 years to hone and say "these are the four that matter".
The next three years are likely to be the worst we see in our lifetimes. It will be more like the early 1930s when stocks hit a debt bubble and financial asset bubbles crashed, which they only do once in a lifetime such as the early 1930s. Stocks will be down 70, 80, 90% — that's to be as expected in this stage of the cycle after such a bubble.
I went from being the most bullish economist in the '80s and '90s to now being of the most bearish because what goes up goes down. That's what cycles do. At heart, I'm a cycle guy. Demographics just happens to be the most important cycle in this modern era since the middle class only formed recently — its only been since World War 2 that the everyday person mattered so much; because now they have $50,000-$60,000 in income and can buy homes over 30 years and borrow a lot of money. This was not the case before the Great Depression and World War 2.
And based on demographics, we predicted that the U.S. Baby Boom wouldn't peak until 2007, and then our economy will weaken — as both did in 2008. We've lived off of QE every since…
That's a brief summary of my fundamentals and of why I tell people this is not the time to believe in the Trump rally. I'll go into that. I'll show you why that cannot last and he cannot create 4% in growth.
Then we also go into which areas will have been favored by demographics and by our cycles. You'll never see prices this low if you protect your capital now and convert it to cash or to safe, long-term high quality bonds, then you can take advantage of the sale of a lifetime. If you don't, you'll have seen your financial assets wiped out a good bit more than they were in 2008 and '09, and the markets won't come roaring back to new highs next time.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Harry Dent (44m:31s).
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The last 4 months have seen something ‘odd’ happen in Europe’s periphery. Sovereign ‘risk’ has conspicuously (and rationally) risen as macro-fundamentals have deteriorated – something that we have not seen since Draghi’s 2012 “whatever it takes” moment.
For the first time since June 2015, Italian youth unemployment has risen above 40% and notably, Italian bond yields are rising…
And the result is growing concerns about Italy’s idiosyncratic risk as the risk premium of BTPs over Bunds soars to its highest sicne 2014 (worst now than the Referendum peak)…
Time for moar “whatever it takes” – just ignore the transitory inflation surge and currency war warnings from Trump.
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Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Trump has made it clear he does not like the EU. He prefers bilateral negotiations. And like it or not, Trump is succeeding in his efforts to split the EU.
How Trump is Dividing the EU
It took Donald Trump less than a week to drive a wedge between the constitutionally weak Europeans. His travel ban applies to people with dual passports – except to those with dual British citizenship. It was a concession Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, managed to negotiate directly with the White House.
Angela Merkel assures Germans with dual citizens her full support, and promised to co-ordinate the position with other European member states. She said yesterday that Trump’s policy did not reflect her idea of the international co-operation and how to deal with refugees, but there was not even a hint of any action, or counter-action. We noted a comment by Italy’s new foreign minister, Angelino Alfano, that we should stop hyperventilating about Trump. What else can the EU do, having made itself totally dependent on the US for its defence?
The Conservative Party yesterday strongly rallied behind Theresa May and her pro-US position. It is becoming very clear that the combination of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump will simultaneously reposition the UK geo-strategically and economically, and weaken the EU. This is why we think the EU would be best served by agreeing a friendly Brexit as quickly as possible.
There is a growing number of signs that what is happening in the US constitutes a national and global regime change. The elevation of Steven Bannon to a full seat of the National Security Council tells us that more outrages are now very likely. We noted this Bannon quote, as relayed by the New Yorker.
“I’m a Leninist…Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Four years of Trump should mercilessly expose the weaknesses of the EU.
The above viewpoint by Email from Eurointelligence. I believe they are correct.
However, Eurointelligence views the euro and the EU as good things. I view the euro as a failed project and the EU as a collection of massively overpaid statists best gotten rid of.
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Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
-Ayn Rand
The torch has been passed to a new president.
All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush – to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability – have been inherited by Donald Trump.
Whatever kind of president Trump chooses to be, he now has the power to completely alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.
He has this power because every successive occupant of the Oval Office has been allowed to expand the reach and power of the presidency through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements that can be activated by any sitting president.
Those of us who saw this eventuality coming have been warning for years about the growing danger of the Executive Branch with its presidential toolbox of terror that could be used—and abused—by future presidents.
The groundwork, we warned, was being laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the president—or whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the time—thinks. And if he or she thinks you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides. In effect, you will disappear.
Our warnings went largely unheeded.
First, we sounded the alarm over George W. Bush’s attempts to gut the Constitution, suspend habeas corpus, carry out warrantless surveillance on Americans, and generally undermine the Fourth Amendment, but the Republicans didn’t want to listen because Bush was a Republican.
Then we sounded the alarm over Barack Obama’s prosecution of whistleblowers, targeted drone killings, assassinations of American citizens, mass surveillance, and militarization of the police, but the Democrats didn’t want to listen because Obama was a Democrat and he talked a really good game.
It well may be that by the time Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—stop playing partisan games and start putting some safeguards in place, it will be too late.
Already, Donald Trump has indicated that he will pick up where his predecessors left off: he will continue to wage war, he will continue to federalize the police, and he will operate as if the Constitution does not apply to him.
Still, as tempting as it may be, don’t blame Donald Trump for what is to come.
If this nation eventually locks down… If Americans are rounded up and detained based on the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, or their political views… If law-and-order takes precedence over constitutional principles…
If martial law is eventually declared… If we find that there really is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from the surveillance state’s prying eyes and ears… And if our constitutional republic finally plunges headlong over the cliff and leaves us in the iron grip of totalitarianism…
Please, resist the urge to lay all the blame at Trump’s feet.
After all, President Trump didn’t create the police state.
He merely inherited it.
Frankly, there’s more than enough blame to go around.
So blame Obama. Blame Bush. Blame Bill Clinton.
Blame the Republicans and Democrats who justified every power grab, every expansion of presidential powers, and every attack on the Constitution as long as it was a member of their own party leading the charge.
Blame Congress for being a weak, inept body that spends more time running for office and pandering to the interests of the monied elite than representing the citizenry.
Blame the courts for caring more about order than justice, and for failing to hold government officials accountable to the rule of law.
Blame Corporate America for taking control of the government and calling the shots behind the scenes.
Most of all, blame the American people for not having objected louder, sooner and more vehemently when Barack Obama, George W. Bush and their predecessors laid the groundwork for this state of tyranny.
But wait, you say.
Americans are mobilizing. They are engaged. They are actively expressing their discontent with the government. They are demanding change. They are marching in the streets, picketing, protesting and engaging in acts of civil disobedience.
This is a good development, right? Isn’t this what we’ve been calling on Americans to do for so long: stand up and push back and say “enough is enough”?
Perhaps you’re right.
Perhaps Americans have finally had enough. At least, some Americans have finally had enough.
That is to say, some Americans have finally had enough of certain government practices that are illegal, immoral and inhumane.
Although, to be quite fair, it might be more accurate to state that some Americans have finally had enough of certain government practices that are illegal, immoral and inhumane provided that the ruling political party responsible for those actions is not their own.
Yes, that sounds about right. Except that it’s all wrong.
We still haven’t learned a thing.
Imagine: after more than eight years in which Americans remained largely silent while the United States military (directed by the Obama Administration) bombed parts of the Middle East to smithereens—dropping nearly three bombs an hour, and left a trail of innocent civilian deaths in its wake—suddenly, Americans are outraged by programs introduced by the Trump Administration that could discriminate against Muslim refugees. Never mind that we’ve been killing those same refugees for close to a decade.
Certainly, there was little outcry when the U.S. military under Obama carried out an air strike against a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan. Doctors, patients—including children—and staff members were killed or wounded. There were also no protests when the Obama Administration targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen in Yemen, for assassination by drone strike. The man was killed without ever having been charged with a crime. Two weeks later, Obama—the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize—authorized another drone strike that killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen.
Most recently, picking up where President Obama left off, President Trump personally authorized a commando raid on a compound in Yemen suspected of harboring Al Qaeda officials. Among those killed were “at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13,” including Nora, the 8-year-old sister of the teenager killed by Obama years before.
Likewise, while most Americans failed to show much opposition to the government’s disregard for Americans’ bodily integrity, shrugging their collective shoulders dismissively over reports of their fellow citizens being subjected Americans to roadside strip searches, virtual strip searches, cavity searches and other equally denigrating acts, hundreds of thousands mobilized to protest policies that could be advanced by the Trump administration that might demean or deny equal rights to individuals based on their gender or orientation or take away their reproductive planning choices. Similarly, while tens of thousands have gathered annually for a March for Life to oppose abortion, many of those same marchers seem to have no qualms about the government’s practice of shooting unarmed citizens and executing innocent ones.
This begs the question: what are Americans really protesting? Is it politics or principle?
Or is it just Trump?
For instance, in the midst of the uproar over Trump’s appointment of Steven Bannon to the National Security Council, his detractors have accused Bannon of being a propagandist nationalist, and a white supremacist. Yet not one objection has been raised about the fact that the National Security Council authorizes secret, legal, targeted killings of American citizens (and others) without due process, a practice frequently employed by Obama.
The message coming across loud and clear: it’s fine for the government to carry out secret, targeted assassinations of American citizens without due process as long as the individuals advising the president aren’t Neo-Nazis.
Of course, this national hypocrisy goes both ways.
Conveniently, many of the same individuals who raised concerns over Obama’s “lawless” use of executive orders to sidestep Congress have defended Trump’s executive orders as “taking us back to the Constitution.” And those who sounded the alarm over the dangers of the American police state have gone curiously silent in the face of Trump’s pledge to put an end to “the dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America.”
We can’t have it both ways.
As long as we continue to put our politics ahead of our principles—moral, legal and constitutional—“we the people” will lose.
And you know who will keep winning by playing on our prejudices, capitalizing on our fears, deepening our distrust of our fellow citizens, and dividing us into polarized, warring camps incapable of finding consensus on the one true menace that is an immediate threat to all of our freedoms? The U.S. government.
In her essay on “The Nature of Government,” Ayn Rand explains that the only “proper” purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights. She continues: “The source of the government’s authority is ‘the consent of the governed.’ This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.”
When we lose sight of this true purpose of government—to protect our rights—and fail to keep the government in its place as our servant, we allow the government to overstep its bounds and become a tyrant that rules by brute force.
As Rand explains:
Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim—so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Rule by brute force.
That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our republic.
SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Citizens being jailed for growing vegetable gardens in their front yards and holding prayer services in their backyards. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.
The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.
We are approaching critical mass.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it may already be too late to save our republic. We have passed the point of easy fixes. When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.
So what is the answer?
Look to the past if you want to understand the future.
Too often, we look to the past to understand how tyrants come to power: the rise and fall of the Roman Empire; Hitler’s transformation of Germany into a Nazi state; the witch hunt tactics of the McCarthy Era.
Yet the past—especially our own American history—also teaches us valuable lessons about the quest for freedom. Here’s Rand again:
A free society—like any other human product—cannot be achieved by random means, by mere wishing or by the leaders’ “good intentions.” A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is required to make a society free and to keep it free-a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny. The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government. Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.
You want to save America? Then stop thinking like Republicans and Democrats and start acting like Americans.
The only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—work for us.
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Today’s infographic from Mint.com highlights the history of money, including the many monetary experiments that have taken place since ancient times…
As VisualCapitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, some innovations have stood the test of time – precious metals, for example, have been used for thousands of years. Paper money and banknotes are also widespread in use, after first being turned to in China in 806 after a copper shortage prevented the minting of new coins.
Other experiments didn’t have much staying power. The adoption of strange currencies such as squirrel pelts, cowry shells, or parmesan cheese are only remembered for their peculiarity.
Further, other attempts to stabilize the monetary system were abandoned early as well. The original U.S. gold standard lasted just 54 years, after FDR ditched it during the Great Depression. The Bretton Woods version (gold-exchange standard) lasted even shorter, abandoned after being in place for 26 years when Nixon ended all convertibility between the U.S. dollar and gold in 1971.
Although the infographic ends with the introduction of cryptocurrency in 2009, it should be noted that the newest chapter in the history of money is taking place right before our eyes.
The “War on Cash” has been accelerating in recent years, as governments and central banks have called for the elimination of high denomination banknotes. While these anti-cash motions have also been made in many Western countries, the most vivid example of the demonetization is currently happening in India.
In November 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetized 500 and 1000 rupee notes, eliminating 86% of the country’s notes overnight. While Indians could theoretically exchange 500 and 1,000 rupee notes for higher denominations, it was only up to a limit of 4,000 rupees per person. Sums above that had to be routed through a bank account in a country where only 50% of Indians have such access.
There have been at least 112 reported deaths associated with this demonetization – including suicides and the passing of elderly people waiting in bank queues for days to exchange money. India’s largest organization of manufacturers, the All India Manufacturers Organization, also estimates in a report that micro-small scale industries suffered 35% jobs losses and a 50% dip in revenue in the first 34 days since demonetization.
While demonetization in India is off to a rough start, some believe it can still be ultimately successful in the long-term. Regardless, the “War on Cash” still has incredible global momentum – and the end result – however it turns out – will likely form another important chapter in the history of money.
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A decision last week from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that being armed, even legally, is the same as being “armed and dangerous” and leaves you open to police search. It also implies, according to a concurring opinion, that gun carriers lose significant First Amendment as well as Fourth Amendment rights.
Shaquille Robinson in March 2014 was a passenger in a car pulled over by police in Ranson, West Virginia. It was pulled over, ostensibly, because driver and passenger were not wearing seat belts.
However, the police had received a tip that Robinson had been seen loading a gun and putting it in his pocket before he got in the car. He was in a 7-11 parking lot known to cops as a frequent site of drug sales.
The police searched Robinson after pulling the car over and found the gun in his pocket, and arrested him for an illegal possession of a gun by a felon.
Robinson sued to challenge the search. Since merely having the gun on his person, as the police already suspected from the call, could have been a perfectly legal act—he might have had a permit—the police, he insisted, had no legal grounds for the search that did find the (actually illegally possessed) weapon.
To quote from the decision last week, Robinson argued as part of his appeals process that “Under the logic of the district court, in any state where carrying a firearm is a perfectly legal activity, every citizen could be dangerous, and subject to a Terry frisk and pat down.”
Last year, a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Robinson and overturned his initial conviction. The government appealed for a decision of the full court, and now last week that full court disagreed with the panel decision.
The whole case hinges, as the Court explains, in whether “armed” should legally be presumed to mean the same thing as “armed and dangerous,” and they conclude that yes, it can be.
The decision, by Judge Paul Niemeyer, says that Robinson “argues illogically that when a person forcefully stopped may be legally permitted to possess a firearm, any risk of danger to police officers posed by the firearm is eliminated….Robinson’s position…fails as a matter of logic to recognize that the risk inherent in a forced stop of a person who is armed exists even when the firearm is legally possessed. “
Niemeyer’s majority opinion states that precedent all the way back to the 1968 Terry case that established current legal standards for police frisking make it clear that mere suspicion of gun possession, whether legal or not, is more than enough to justify a search, noting that in that original case the court noted in “approving Officer McFadden’s frisk of Terry that ‘a reasonably prudent man would have been warranted in believing petitioner was armed and thus presented a threat to the officer’s safety.’ In this manner, the Court adopted the now well-known standard that an officer can frisk a validly stopped person if the officer reasonably believes that the person is ‘armed and dangerous.'”
A separate concurring opinion from the 4th Circuit in the case, also against Robinson, by Judge James Wynn tries to separate out the majority opinion’s apparent belief that “armed” and “dangerous” mean essentially the same thing to declare more clearly that being armed with a gun specifically (not, for example, a wine bottle) is the thing that indeed takes away your constitutional right to be free from unwarranted search.
As Wynn plainly writes, “individuals who choose to carry firearms forego certain constitutional protections afforded to individuals who elect not to carry firearms.”
In Wynn’s opinion, in a statement that alarmed many in the gun rights community, the majority opinion as it stands has further (bad) implications for gun carriers and their constitutional rights:
I see no basis–nor does the majority opinion provide any– for limiting our conclusion that individuals who choose to carry firearms are categorically dangerous to the Terry frisk inquiry. Accordingly, the majority decision today necessarily leads to the conclusion that individuals who elect to carry firearms forego other constitutional rights, like the Fourth Amendment right to have law enforcement officers “knock-and-announce” before forcibly entering homes. See Richards v. Wisconsin…(1997) (“In order to justify a ‘no-knock’ entry, the police must have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile.” (emphasis added)).
Likewise, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that individuals who choose to carry firearms necessarily face greater restriction on their concurrent exercise of other constitutional rights, like those protected by the First Amendment. See Schenck v. United States...(1919) (Holmes, J.) (“The question in every [freedom of speech] case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” (emphasis added)).
A dissent written by Judge Pamela Harris disagrees, after noting that so many law-abiding citizens have carry rights that it just doesn’t hold up to conflate “armed” (even with a gun) and “dangerous” the way the majority decision does, and that:
unless and until the Supreme Court takes us there, I cannot endorse a rule that puts us on a collision course with rights to gun possession rooted in the Second Amendment and conferred by state legislatures. Nor would I adopt a rule that leaves to unbridled police discretion the decision as to which legally armed citizens will be targeted for frisks, opening the door to the very abuses the Fourth Amendment is designed to prevent.
Harris’ dissent also spells out what seems to this non-lawyer a clear circuit split on the question that the 4th Circuit has just created, one that might require the Supreme Court to hash out:
We are not alone in this insight. In Northrup v. City of Toledo Police Dep’t…(6th Cir. 2015), for instance, the Sixth Circuit held that where state law permits the open carry of firearms, the police are not authorized by Terry to conduct a stop – or an attendant frisk – of a person brandishing a gun in public. Where the state legislature “has decided its citizens may be entrusted with firearms on public streets,” the court reasoned, the police have “no authority to disregard this decision” by subjecting law-abiding citizens to Terry stops and frisks…..; see also, e.g., United States v. Leo…(7th Cir. 2015) (rejecting “frisk” and search of backpack on suspicion that it contains gun in light of “important developments in Second Amendment law together with Wisconsin’s [concealed-carry] gun laws”); United States v. Ubiles (3d Cir. 2000) (invalidating Terry stop based on suspicion of gun possession in open-carry jurisdiction).
Wynn’s boldly stated conclusions about all the rights that gun carriers lose based on this 4th Circuit judgment have been viewed-with-alarm by, among others, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action and Ammoland.
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Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog,
GotNews posted an article yesterday about a “refugee problem” America has, referring to approximately 20,000 Americans who have renounced their citizenship under Obama’s leadership, and suggesting America “repatriate” said citizens:
America has a refugee problem. Not the Syrian refugees. No, not the Afghan ones. No, not even the Cuban refugees. I’m talking about the born-and-raised American citizens who got fed up, gave up their U.S. citizenship, and escaped Obama’s America while they still could.
Yes, that’s right: nearly 20,000 American citizens left Obama’s America and forfeited their American citizenship while Obama was President.
Nearly 20,000 U.S. citizens voluntarily gave up their rights to vote, run for office, and the freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, while Obama was in office.
We shouldn’t be allowing anyone from the violent and dangerous Middle East, including so-called “refugees”, into the United States right now. The only refugees who should be entering the United States are the American refugees who fled Obama’s America. Not only do we have that duty to our fellow Americans, but they pose no threat to us like Middle Eastern “refugees” do.
What was missing from the article? Discussion of the Obama-sponsored law that caused many citizens (mostly expats) to renounce their citizenship: FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act).
FATCA has been beaten to death by other sources, but surprisingly, very few people are aware of what it does. The whole purpose of the law was to “crack down” on overseas tax evasion. Simon Black of Sovereign Man did an excellent job of summarizing the net effect:
Deep within its bowels fell the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA for short. It was a sort of ‘law within a law’, and one of the dumbest in US history.
FATCA effectively commanded every single bank on the planet to enter into an information-sharing agreement with the IRS.
(Well, not so much ‘information sharing’. More like ‘information giving’. Because the US government doesn’t share anything with anyone.)
It all started based on a phony assumption that millions of Americans were hiding trillions of dollars in secret offshore accounts. And given how broke the US government is, they wanted every penny they were entitled to.
So the plan was to turn every bank in the world into a global spy network.
Any bank that didn’t comply was threatened with a crippling 30% withholding tax on every dollar that went in, out, and through the Land of the Free.
In a nutshell, if you are an American expat living abroad, you just had to jump through thousands of hurdles to prove to the IRS that you aren’t evading any taxes, report all this information correctly, and within a confusing legal framework that leaves even the best accountants stumped, often triggering audits for “violation” of FATCA, even if it was not violated at all.
Unsurprisingly, since the law was enacted, the amount of expatriates who renounce their citizenship has risen exponentially:
FATCA forces any American opening a bank account overseas to be in compliance with the law, by having the IRS punish foreign nations that do not comply. Because of FATCA, the majority of foreign banks quickly turned to outright refusal of US clients. Good luck finding one that doesn’t charge a ridiculous litany of fees.
Obviously, you need to live abroad to renounce your citizenship. But who is doing the renouncing? For the most part, permanent expats who have no intention of ever moving back. Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder whose story was on full display in the movie The Social Network, is the biggest name of the group. However, billionaires like Saverin aren’t most people. A more pertinent real-world example is Rachel Heller:
This state of affairs comes about because the US bases its taxation system on citizenship, unlike the rest of the world, where taxation is residence-based. In other words, while I live in the Netherlands, pay taxes in the Netherlands, and receive services in return for my taxes from the Netherlands, I was also expected to pay in the US, despite the fact that I received no services for my tax dollars.
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), passed in 2010 and in effect since 2014, was intended to catch “tax cheats”: billionaires living in the US who send their money abroad to hide it from the IRS. The problem is that people like me, who have moved abroad for jobs or for love, are persecuted as a consequence of that effort.
This does not mean that I was trying to avoid paying my “fair share,” the misleading phrase often used by politicians and repeated by the press. Because of a treaty between the US and the Netherlands (and many other countries), I only had to pay US taxes if my income was higher than about $100,000, which, as a teacher, it will never be. Instead, I pay where I live. I am in the 42 percent tax bracket here in the Netherlands, and my husband’s income puts him in the 52 percent bracket. That is much higher than it would be in the US, so I cannot be accused of avoiding taxes. If I wanted to do that, the Netherlands would be the last place I would live.
Nevertheless, I had to fill out US tax forms every year, plus extra forms to claim my foreign tax exemption, all to prove that I in fact do not owe any US taxes.
I repeat: I love the US. But I had to fill out lengthy forms (or rather, I spent almost a thousand euros a year to pay an accountant to do them for me), exposing my and my husband’s accounts to US government scrutiny, and I risked losing the ability to do the sort of banking that any middle-class American would normally take for granted.
Yes, it is true, the majority of US expats are willing to give up their citizenship. It’s not because they aren’t American. It’s because by not living in America, FATCA has effectively rendered them second-class citizens.
The USA is one of only two countries in the world that has this system of taxation. The other is Eritrea, which levies a simple 2% flat tax on its citizens who live abroad. And still, the media, and even the UN have weighed on Eritrea’s simple regime, calling it “authoritarian”:
Nearly every country in the world bases its tax system on residency rather than citizenship. If you’re an Italian citizen, and you leave Italy to live and work in Dubai, you don’t have to pay taxes on the income you earn abroad to the Italian government.
But Eritrea levies a 2% flat tax on its citizens who live abroad. If you’re an Eritrean citizen, you have to pay taxes to the Eritrean government, no matter where you live and work.
The media has condemned this as “extortion” and a “repressive” measure by an “authoritarian” government.
The UN has even weighed in. In Resolution 2023, the UN Security Council condemned Eritrea for “using extortion, threats of violence, fraud and other illicit means to collect taxes outside of Eritrea from its nationals.”
FATCA is far more onerous, costly, and authoritarian than anything Eritrea does. But don’t hold your breath expecting the UN to condemn what the USA is doing to its own citizens.
Rachel Heller went into detail on how difficult the renunciation process is in her above linked article, but even after months and months of interviews, the USA piles on a $2,350 “renunciation fee” and an exit tax on your net worth, in addition to a “doxxing” of your name and personal details in a Federal register, done to “name and shame” you for renouncing your citizenship.
It is sad that Americans have been forced to renounce their citizenship to comply with the onerous restrictions on their rights as a result of the Obama administration’s FATCA law. But they didn’t give up their citizenship because they all of a sudden became un-American; no, they did it because of a law that has turned living and/or working abroad into an expensive, onerous, bureaucratic nightmare for the ordinary American citizen. Repealing FATCA should be almost as high on Trump’s list as repealing Obamacare, but unfortunately for the citizens living abroad, a repeal of this law is not likely anytime soon, as Trump seems quite preoccupied with other affairs at the moment.
What is even more sad, however, is that these citizens who have renounced will not be coming back, or re-applying for citizenship anytime soon. Most were already living abroad permanently, and had no interest in ever moving back. Because of FATCA and the IRS, and nothing else, they will no longer enjoy the protections of afforded to them when they were born. FATCA and its ridiculous system has ensnared law-abiding American expats into a constant battle with the IRS, all over the day-to-day activities all citizens engage in.
Regrettably, no new legislation can change that fact, undo all of the damage FATCA has already caused, or magically bring back the citizenship rights of those who have chosen to give it up, solely to avoid FATCA’s unjust burden.
via http://ift.tt/2jB1SNE Tyler Durden
China has been on a skyscraper-building boom for years, but, we suspect, 2016 may have seen the mal-investment boom jump the shark.
As Goldman Sachs illustrates in the following chart, China was head, shoulders, knees, and toes above the aggregate of the rest of the world in terms of skyscraper completions in 2016…
Could record-setting skyscrapers signal economic over-expansion and a misallocation of capital?
EWN Interactive, a subscription service focused on technical analysis, thinks so. The following infographic follows the “Skyscraper Curse” through six different market tops and subsequent crashes over the past century.
It is gigantic in size, so please click here or the below image to access the legible version:
EWM Interactive sums up the infographic with these words:
In the market, extreme optimism results in price bubbles. One of the real-life manifestations of extremely positive social mood is the construction of enormous buildings. Market tops and skyscrapers often seem to emerge simultaneously, because both phenomena are the result of the illusion of infinite prosperity.
But extreme psychological conditions do not last very long. That is the reason why record-breaking buildings, whose construction starts during a market bubble, are often completed after the bubble’s collapse.
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In January we noted a perfect example of the smoke-and-mirror-ness of China's credit-fueled expansion, as a 27-storey high-rise building which was completed on November 15th 2015 was just demolished, "having been left unused for too long."
And just this week, another illustration of Keynesian perfection as China created, then destroyed 19 massive structures, to make room for an even bigger skyscraper. The epic explosion that took place in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, leveled 19 seven to 12-story structures in a controlled demolition, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported, citing local media. The city authorities are planning to demolish at least 32 buildings to make way for a new business center that will reportedly feature a 707-meter tall skyscraper, which is to be one of the tallest buildings in the world.
* * *
The silver-lining – now workers can clean up the mess, dig a bigger hole… and fill that in – all in the name of Keynesian "growth."
via http://ift.tt/2kpA7LI Tyler Durden
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
My view of Trump is conditional and awaits evidence. I am encouraged by the One Percent’s opposition to Trump, or we have just experienced the greatest ruse in history. Indeed, a pointless ruse, as the Establishment had its candidate in Hillary.
Trump’s executive orders don’t support the argument that he is acting for the One Percent. Trump nixed the global corporations’ beloved TPP. He is trying to close down the mass immigration that the corporations use to suppress domestic wage rates. He is committed to normalizing relations with Russia, much to the discomfort of the neoconservatives and the military/security complex.
As for Mnuchin, he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, the same year that Nomi Prins left Goldman Sachs. That was 14 years ago. We know for a fact that Nomi, a former managing director, is not an operative for Goldman Sachs, so my position is to wait and see what Mnuchin does before we declare him to be a Goldman Sachs agent. For a different view see Nomi Prins in the Guest section of this website.
Think about it this way: If Trump is sincere, and the Ruling Establishment seems to think that he is, about cleaning out a nest of outlaws, what better help could he have than one of the outlaws?
Change from the top requires tough mean people. Anyone else would be run over.
My position is to wait for the evidence. For years my readers have said that they need some hope. Trump’s attack on the Ruling Establishment gives them hope. Why take this hope away prematurely?
From the beginning my concern has been that Trump has no experience in the economic and foreign policy debates. He doesn’t know the issues or the players. But he knows two big things: the middle and working class are hurting, and conflict with Russia could result in thermo-nuclear war. My view is support him on these two most important of all issues.
My worry is that Trump has already gone off course on better relations with Russia. Trump had the sense to speak during his first week in office with Russia’s President Putin. Reports are that the one hour conversation went well. However, the report from the Trump administration is that the sanctions were not mentioned and that Trump is considering connecting the removal of the sanctions with a reduction in nuclear arms.
Clearly, Trump needs more astute advisors than he has. Confronted with 28 NATO countries, Russia, the population of which is dwarfed by this collection of countries and armaments, relies on its nuclear weapons to deal with the potential threat. During the Obama regime, the threat to Russia must have seemed to be very real, as the demonization of Russia and its President were based entirely on obvious lies and reached levels of provocation seldom seem in history without leading to war.
If I had been Trump’s advisor, I would have insisted that the first thing that Trump tell Putin is that “the sanctions are history and I apologize for the insult based on the fabricated lies of my predecessor.”
This is what was needed. Once trust is restored, then the matter of reduction in nuclear arms can be raised without making the Russian government concerned that the duplicitous Americans are setting them up for attack.
If you were a Russian, if you were a member of the Russian government, if you were president of Russia, if you had experienced an American coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, a province that was part of Russia for 300 years, if you had experienced an American inspired attack on the Russian residents and Russian peace-keeping forces in South Ossetia, long a province of Russia, that caused the intervention of the Russian armed forces, an intervention blamed by the US government on “Russian aggression,” would you trust the United States? Only if you are a complete fool.
Trump needs advisors sufficiently knowledgable to tell him about the situation that he has committed himself to improve.
Who are these advisors?
Consider now the “Muslim ban.” Muslim refugees are a problem for the US and Europe because the US and its NATO puppets have bombed a large number of Muslim countries entirely on the basis of lies. One might have thought, that with all its experience of war, the Western countries would be aware that wars produce refugees. But apparently not.
The easiest and most certain way to deal with the problem of Muslim refugees is to stop the bombings that produce refugees.
Apparently, this solution is beyond the grasp of the Trump administration. According to news reports—and considering the presstitute status of news organizations one never knows—the new Trump administration authorized a SEAL team attack in Yemen that murdered an 8 year old girl along with a number of women and children on January 29. As far as I can ascertain, no women are marching in opposition to the Trump administration’s continuation of the policy of the Bush/Obama regime of murdering Muslims in the name of a hoax “war on terror.”
Trump’s Archilles’ heel is his belief in the “Muslim threat,” an orchestrated threat cooked up by the neoconservatives. If Trump wants to defeat ISIS, all he needs to do is to stop the US government and CIA from funding ISIS. ISIS is Washington’s creation, used to overthrow Libya and sent to Syria to overthrow Assad until the Russians intervened.
Someone needs to have enough geo-political knowledge to tell Trump that he cannot simultaneously mend relations with Russia and revive the conflict with Iran and threaten China.
As I feared, Trump has no idea who to appoint in order to achieve his agenda.
Now let’s turn to Trump’s critics: Identity Politics, that is, the explanation of Western history as the victimization of everyone by white heterosexual males. The attacks on Trump lack legitimacy, and everyone except those immersed in victim politics sees that. The same people who march against Trump and condemn his Muslim ban do not march against the wars that produce the Muslim refugees and immigrants. Trump’s opponents are in the illogical position of supporting the “war on terror” and the 9/11 story on which the war is based, but objecting to the ban on entry of “Muslim terrorists” into the US. If Muslims are terrorists as the Bush/Obama narative claims, it is totally irresponsible to admit into the US Muslims harmed by Washington’s attacks on their countries who might have thoughts of revenge.
The liberal/progressive/left long ago abandoned the working class. The consequence of their illegitimate complaints will be to lump all dissent into their illegitimate category. Thus truth-tellers along with fiction-tellers will be shut down. The public will not be able to differenate between the orchestrated attacks on Trump and those telling the truth.
My conclusion is that the stupidity of Identity Politics by discrediting dissent will empower the worst elements of the right-wing. If Goldman Sachs is also operating against us, as Nomi Prins believes, then the US is history.
via http://ift.tt/2jANCUW Tyler Durden