After 8-months of persistent decline (-11.75%), the US Dollar ($DXY) appears poised for a strong technical bounce across daily, weekly and monthly timeframes.

With $DXY’s 92.63 monthly close, August 2017’s end likely marked an 8-month high-to-low cycle for the US Dollar – which hovers a mere penny above major support at 92.62 (next major support ~ 91.92).

 

92.63

That’s where the Dollar ($DXY) closed the month of August.

A full 0.01 above major support at 92.62.

 

The Dollar’s been hammered for 8-months straight.

It’s gone down for all of 2017.

Yeah, it bounced in February – c’mon.

 

After an 8-month high-to-low time cycle that shaved off 11.75% (peak-to-trough), the US Dollar appears poised to find its footing and bounce markedly from acluster of strong price support spanning 92.62 – 91.92 (note $DXY price action and weekly candlesticks across the last few weekly bars of 2014 and first few of 2015 ~ extremely strong support range from massive technical breakout).

 

Technical Outlook for the US Dollar ($DXY)

~ why it wants higher from here

 

The combination of a strong 8-month selloff – that ends in a picture-perfect doji, 1 penny above the first major support level going back to 2015 – suggests that a strong bounce is more than likely to develop over the next few months, with 95/96 $DXY the likely target (round number 100 is a longer-term possibility and a floor to absolutely trampoline through 103 if Big Lil’ Kim launches an EMP that ‘fails’ over Hokkaido/ Sakhalin.

The daily chart below shows the US Dollar with the Super RSI, Super MACD, and Super DMI – it’s worth noting that all four of these technical indicators are showing a clear-cut bullish divergence. This is because every indicator is registering a higher value even though the price of $DXY printed a new swing low.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following chart shows the exact Pip Strength of individual currencies … 

(EUR, GBP, USD, JPY, CHF, CAD, AUD, NZD)

… over the last 8-months ~ the timespan when the USD registered it’s last major swing high.

Over this period of time, the USD has been the weakest currency when we tally the total amount of pips lost since January 1st. 

 

Working from the assumption (albeit measured) that the USD is about to turn up …

what may prove itself the best currency pair trade, from the perspective of technical risk:reward?

 

EUR has been the strongest performing major currency (represented via Cyan below) but appears ready to cool-off, lose its lust for the luster of 1.20 and turn south (after explicitly failing to plot a new swing high).

 

 

i) Looking at a EURUSD monthly chart shows that the open gap from January 2015 has just been filled (to within roughly 20 pips), and

ii) While the 1.2100 level has provided rock-solid support on numerous occasions, we’re now on the other side of it ..

iii) Meaning that same level will likely serve as resistance now – because price is approaching it from below instead of above.

 

 

[1] http://ift.tt/1qhvTzt

[2] http://ift.tt/2v4L6iZ

  

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Submitted by Nick Kamran – Letters from Norway

Decision Season

With Parliamentary elections looming, more Norwegians than usual are asking themselves the tough questions. It is now apparent that the slump in oil is not a temporary one. What will the country do now? Time for the lottery winner, after receiving the last annuity, to get a job before burning out the savings. Many are looking towards the sea, fishing and exploiting underwater natural resources. Others are looking to blast open the mountains to do the same.

However, commodity based economies, third-world in nature, are subject to mother nature’s whims, innovation, and ruthless competition.  Moreover, it creates complacency, catching the nation off guard when there is a shift in the supply curve (instead of hitting peak oil, the opposite happened). Hence, the decisions or lack thereof, made during the next four years will impact future generations. Two generations of Norwegians grew up on the delusion that their society, built on pre-socialist values and high oil prices, can endure any challenge. 

The Fund’s withdraws could accelerate amid a global financial crisis: politicians burning cash to shore up the economy and secure votes.

Burn Rate

Taking the sovereign wealth fund (The Fund) for granted, many fail to realize that the underlying investments are all pinned to the prevailing low-interest rate climate. If inflation gets out of control and rates must be pushed up to cut it off, the effect on stock and bond values could be substantial.

Norwegian GDP growth correlates to oil prices.

Currently, assuming constant tax revenues, budget and oil fund value, Norway is in great shape: able to fill the budget gap for the next 30 years. But then what? Also, one must ask, how often do assumptions, which depend on everything remaining constant, endure the test of time? Is it possible to dodge a decade’s worth of black swans, some of which haven’t even been born yet? Based on observation, most believe that a miracle will happen, like it did in the past (stumbling onto one of the largest oil reserves just offshore), or the situation will just work itself out.

The New Normal

Yesterday’s lows are today’s highs: far off the $70/barrel required to balance the budget.  Technology turned oil, a once scarce resource, into an abundant commodity.

Rising rig counts rose, in the latest months, despite flat to downward trending oil prices, indicate lower break-even prices.

The technology from the American Energy Renaissance, is going global, offering all nations additional options, regarding energy sources. In addition to continuously improving fracking technology, clean coal, natural gas, wind, and geo-thermal sources, further reducing the need for imported hydrocarbons.   

The Fish Story vs. Reality

Although many Norwegian leaders believe that the nation can switch from one commodity to another, fish cannot replace oil.  However, the Norwegian Salmon’s strong brand equity could be diminished by increased on production on the back of industrial techniques. Moreover, commodity production, especially this kind, can be replicated worldwide.

The coastlines of the UK, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Chile, Maine, Alaska, Japan, and Russia offer similar habitats, suitable for fish farming, like those of coastal Norway.  Moreover, fish farming is not rocket science. The required equipment is available on Alibaba.  Perhaps that’s where Salmar bought their latest system.

Sources: Statistics Norway: SSB.no and Fish Information and Services (FIS.com)

In addition to the law of supply and demand realities, new entrants joining the marketplace as long as profit opportunity exists, industrial fish farming offers a new set of problems:

• Sea Lice poses one of the greatest challenges. Concentrated and congested in relatively small pens, the critters spread quickly, contaminating entire batches. Although the lice itself is not harmful to humans, it kills the fish. Currently, the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Industry states that there is a high risk of fish dying from lice between Karmøy and Sotra. Sometime soon, they will have a color code system (red, yellow, or green), overlaying a map of the nation’s coastlines, indicating risk levels.

• Escapes post a major environmental hazard similar to that of Kudzu in the American South. When the genetically engineered (GMO) fish find their way into the open seas, they inevitably breed with the wild fish, weakening and mutating them. Based on a recent study, the problem is widespread.

Scientists tested half the rivers in Norway and found that every wild Atlantic Salmon population contains significant “Frankenstein” genes, introduced by the GMOs.  Escapes happen when storms tear open the containment nets, freeing hundreds of thousands of Salmon. Also, sloppy handlers and smolt (baby salmon) can slip out of containment system. The problem was so widespread in 2013 after a major “jailbreak”, which freed 127,000 fish, that a major fish producer offered a bounty: $90 per recaptured fish.

Nutritional differences exist between farm raised and natural salmon. Source: Alexandra Morton – an activist in Canada. Norwegian salmon distinguishes and defines itself on quality. Mass production could diminish that advantage. 

Fish, especially Salmon, are an important component to the Norwegian economy but considering the public expenditure, marketplace competition, and industry risks outlined above, it will not carry the country forward.

Debt Fueled Economy

Nevertheless, Norway continues to party on.  The nearly trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund can carry the nation forward until they find a strategic replacement to oil: but for how long?

Norwegian consumers are some of the most indebted in the world while the national government runs accelerating deficits in the face of a declining oil industry.  Source: SSB.no and the Norwegian Ministry of Finance

There are risks that could shorten that ability. Consumer debt, fueled by excessively low interest rates and rapidly growing money supply as well as a widening budget gap, could stoke a crisis. Such a crisis, generally international in nature, could also hit asset prices in a time of need, reducing the lead time from 30 years to perhaps 10. Imagine withdrawals accelerate while The Fund’s value takes a hit from a major stock market pullback and bursting of the bond bubble?

Source: SSB.no M1 ,M2 & M3 Money Supply Aggregates. It is quite apparent that once issued, currency is hard to take back. Norwegians are not supposed to discuss this but rather just trust in Norges Bank.

Sadly, very few Norwegians understand the underlying economics tied to their prosperity, blindly believing the headlines and Central Bank headline statements.  Who is richer, the guy with a new BMW bought on credit or the used Chevy bought with cash? Culturally, there is a lot of public trust in Norges Bank (The Norwegian Central Bank) and the mainstream media.  No one appears to question the consequences of simultaneously persistent negative real interest rates and rising in money supply (systematic currency destruction and standard of living degradation).

Based on street level observations and conversations with the politicians, campaigning for the September 11, 2017 general election, it appears that “kick the can down the road” is the way to go.  Politics is the art of delaying a decision until it is no longer relevant. Hence, they could burn this fund out, trying to buy votes for the next elections, taking place every two years (alternating national and local elections every two years).

The Critical Need for Leadership vs. Management

Generally, Norwegians are overly skeptical, unimaginative, and cautious, hindering their ability to innovate and invent on a grand scale.  Letting a generation slide by without thinking about the future affirms that. There is no industry stepping in to cover oil, revealed in the trade figures above.

Instead of investigating the facts about the Paris Agreement, Norwegian leaders jumped on the bandwagon, signing the speculative and flawed agreement because everyone else did.

Europeans love per-capita statistics. Very few nations can compete with Minnesota in innovation.

Instead, they should have used their influential position, regarding environmental issues, to question the underlying science.  The agreement is based on speculation and voluntary compliance by third-world nations, still struggling with human rights and corruption. If Trump had not withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, the world would have become complacent, believing the environmental crisis was solved.  Essentially, they would have falsely believed that India could enforce the rules.

On paper and at the UN, such nations can say anything. However, the reality on the ground is very different.  Considering India’s massive population and the public sector pay scale, individual factories will operate “business as usual,” paying bribes to the uninterested civil servants, getting them off their back. It is naïve to think otherwise. 

Living in Northern Brazil for a brief time, I personally witnessed farmers and ranchers blatantly cut down rain forest, despite the rules, to expand grazing land. Hence, Russia and China will outright lie.  Then, twenty years from now, we will be in the midst of an environmental disaster, caused by unaccounted third-world development.

Remember, that Hitler’s Germany, built up a military in secret, unleashing it on the world by surprise. The solution to climate change and environmental havoc requires much more than a piece of paper designed to crippled American development to the benefit of third world nations.

Therefore, the Paris Agreement would have doomed the planet, offering a delusion that problem had been “solved” after signing. Much needed attention to the environment would have been diverted to something trivial like removing offensive statues.  Environmental issues go far beyond emissions. It also includes plastic in the oceans, clean drinking water, and deforestation in India, Africa, and South America.  

The Paris Agreement forgot those issues. Our allies should have seen through this fallacy and expressed interest in real solutions, especially the Norwegians.

Thor’s Hammer

Hence, Norwegians need to elect a decisive “Viking like leader.” Someone with lofty ambitions and ideals who is daring, seizing the opportunity with Thorium. The land of fire and ice not only holds around 15% of the world’s thorium supply but also leads in reactor technology development. Thor Energy (Halden, Norway) is in the second phase of a five-year trial, validating the viability as a commercial energy source.

This technology offers the basis to a comprehensive environmental solution that would not only cover emissions but also take care of ocean plastic, deforestation, and chronic poverty. Integrating it with other existing Norwegian technologies: shipbuilding (Aker), automated garbage sorting (Tomra Systems), autonomous systems (Kongsberg Defense) and heavy engineering (Kongsberg Maritime) and working with North African leaders, Norwegian industry could fill the massive Sahara Desert with water, terraforming it into a lush rain forest and vast fields.

The Genesis of New Greenland

Running massive Thorium powered desalinization plants, pumping water into the dessert underground over the next 100+ years, vegetation and eventually forests could take root. A new society would emerge, built on green values and sustainable technologies. That concept would do more to ensure our planets survival than a piece of paper, written by professional politicians intended to upend America. 

But how could we make this happen? It would require the massive integration of existing technologies and proven concepts:

The massive dessert, larger than the United States, was once a rain forest, recycling massive amount of CO2. Thorium technologies could restore that quicker than the Paris Agreement could lower temperatures by .5 degrees over the same time period.

• Ship Building: Norway is already a leader in specialty ships and the floating nuclear reactor concept has been around for over 50 years. Once the people in Halden industrialize the Thorium concept, they can mount the reactors onto highly automated ships, ensuring safety, security, efficiency. 

Two types of ships are needed. The first would be one that generates electricity and desalinizes seawater. The second type would collect ocean plastic, turning into drip irrigation equipment.  

• Electricity created by the onboard powerplant could be delivered from ship to shore by undersea cable, directly into a modern grid.

• Desalinization technology, using excess heat generated by nuclear powerplants, already exists. For the past 20+ years, India, Japan, and Kazakhstan have been doing this on an industrial scale. 
• Drip Irrigation tubing, pipes, and other fixtures can be made from recycled ocean plastic onboard a thorium powered ship as it collects plastic from the massive Pacific Ocean plastic patch (it is the size of Mexico). Water would be delivered by pipeline from the shipboard plant to shore, distributed underground and directly to the plant root systems.

Israel has already proven that drip irrigation works: growing crops in the dessert with almost 90% less water than by open air.

Drip Irrigation in Libya, sourcing water from an underground aquifer. It would be better to use purified seawater, preserving the underground systems. Therefore, It is already possible to grow forests in the desert with this technology.

• Modular Housing Components, also made from ocean plastic onboard the Thorium powered collections ships, could provide a place to live for many of the worlds displaced people and SJW’s. The houses could be covered in Earth and vegetation protecting residents from the elements in a cost-efficient manner.  Those same people could also work in the field cultivating various crops for export and consumption, making this model sustainable.

Dirt prefabricated homes – Green Magic Homes Over time, the dessert above in Libya could look like this. Eventually a rainforest canopy could take root, furthering the reduction of carbon-dioxide.

The rainforests throughout the world act as our planet’s lungs, cycling carbon dioxide into oxygen.  Hence, this concept would not only clean up the ocean but also turn the dessert into a rain forest over the next few hundred years, permanently and naturally balancing carbon dioxide instead of depending on human compliance.

The question is who would pay for it and what would be the return?

• National government funds in Europe set aside for refugees could be spent on making them a new nation, which they will have a part in building and take pride in.

• Bored billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and George Soros who supposedly want to do some good in the world.

• Multi-National Corporations that supported the Paris Agreement and oppose President Trump.

• The return would be from crop and electricity exports as well as tourism.  In addition, this new nation would be leaders in ocean plastic recycling innovation, selling housing solutions throughout the world. Norway could be at the forefront as an investor and benefactor.  

Conclusion

The greatest consequences of Nordic socialism are how it instills a lack of courage and imagination when facing global problems. For such a system to work, people must be mostly compliant and amicable. Currently, Norway can manage the economic shift by drawing from The Fund but I would hope that they want to do more than just get by. It is obvious that betting on fish is a bad idea.

However, culture of modesty and skepticism holds them back. Norway needs to think big if it wants to maintain the standard of living for future generations. They need to move beyond apps and electronic gadgets to true innovation: the kind that changes the world.  

Think about that when voting on September 11, 2017!

 

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Private security guards have become a common sight across our society, whether they’re escorting cash in transit, patrolling shopping malls, conducting screening at airports or protecting VIPs. In many places, the guards dress like police officers and are equipped with firearms.

As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, private security is booming and the sector is worth approximately $180 billion, a number that’s expected to increase to $240 billion by 2020. That’s greater than the GDPs of 100 countries including Portugal, Romania and Hungary. An estimated 20 million workers are employed in the private security sector while its biggest company, G4S, has 585,000 employees and revenues of nearly $10 billion.

Research conducted by the Guardian has found that half of the planet’s population lives in countries where there are more private security workers than police officers.

You will find more statistics at Statista

India and South Africa have glaring disparities while in the U.S., there are over 1.1 million private security guards compared to 666,000 police officers.

Things are far more even in Germany, though private security still has a slight edge over the Polizei by a margin of 2,000.

When companies like Blackwater (now called Academi) flocked to Iraq more than a decade ago to fulfill lucrative contracts, the industry really started flourishing.

However, increasing levels of wealth and growing global inequality have proven the real driving forces behind its inexorable rise. The global pool of super rich individuals is bigger than ever, resulting in heavy demand for services like alarm monitoring and armored transport. That demand isn’t going to slacken anytime soon with the private security sector growing 6 percent every year.

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Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

• Although the European Union successfully bribed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year — inducing him to slow the flow of migrants heading through Turkey into Greece — Italy has received almost 100,000 people so far this year.
• This summer, even more than in previous years, it has become plain that some of the NGOs working in the Mediterranean are acting as something more than intermediaries. Many have in fact been acting as facilitators. This makes the NGOs effectively no more than the benign face of the smuggling networks. Undercover workers have also discovered NGOs handing vessels back to the smugglers' networks, effectively helping them to continue their criminal enterprise indefinitely.
• A group that which seeks to oppose Europe's current self-destructive insane trajectory can now not even source independent financial support. Groups, however, that continue to push Europe along its current trajectory continue to get all the official support they need. In the difference in reaction to these two groups lies a significant part of the story of the ruin of a continent.

Sometimes it is in the gap between things that the truth emerges.

In recent years Europe has been on the receiving end of one of the most significant migrant crises in history. In 2015, in just a single year, countries such as Germany and Sweden found themselves adding 2% to their respective populations. Although much of the public continue to labour under the misapprehension that those still coming are fleeing the Syrian civil war; in fact, the majority of those now entering Europe are from Africa, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa.

Although the European Union successfully bribed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year — inducing him to slow the flow of migrants heading through Turkey into Greece — Italy has received almost 100,000 people so far this year. Spain — which had ducked much of the movement of recent years — now finds itself receiving thousands of people who are sometimes (as in this memorable footage from earlier this month) simply landing on the country's beaches and running straight into the country. In doing so, they are not only breaking into Europe in a fashion that is illegal, but flouting all the asylum protocols, and other protocols, however inadequate, that are meant to exist.

In reaction to such events, the Spanish authorities have done something extraordinary. They have gone the way of the Italian authorities and made more efforts to intercept boats heading towards the country. Not in order to turn them around or block them, but in order to "rescue" them. In merely one day last week, the Spanish coastguards "rescued" 600 migrants. The purpose of the quotation marks around "rescue" is because its use in this context is highly contestable. Somebody may be rescued from a burning car, or rescued from a sinking boat. But if thousands of people intentionally head across narrow stretches of water, it can hardly be said that each and every one of them has been "rescued'.

What have they been rescued from? They may be rescued from war. Or they may be rescued from poverty. Or slightly less rosy economic prospects than someone born in Spain. Most of these people have simply been rescued from Africa or whatever their country of origin. This situation leads to the questions which European politicians even now refuse to address — which is whether Europe should indeed be "rescuing" anyone who ends up in a boat near Europe.

Whenever they are polled, the public in Europe consistently say that they want the migration to slow down or stop. This is a majority opinion in every European country. Across the EU as a whole, a recent survey found that 76% of the European public think that the European Union's handling of the whole crisis has been poor. But it is in the gap between the treatment of two actors in this crisis that we can discern a terrible fact about the fate of Europe.

Throughout the crisis of recent years — and especially since the height of the crisis in 2015 — the official vessels operated by the European states have been joined by members of non-governmental organsations (NGOs), either on the vessels or running vessels of their own. A significant amount of the "rescue" part of the migrant crisis (finding boats and transferring those onboard onto safe vessels or guiding their vessels into port) has been done by NGOs. Organisations such as Save the Children and Médecins sans Frontières have been invited to do this by European government agencies, and many of them receive significant levels of government funding as well as charitable giving from the public.

Yet, this summer, even more than in previous years, it has become plain that some of the NGOs working in the Mediterranean are acting as something more than intermediaries. Many have in fact been acting as facilitators. Agents who have infiltrated the NGO groups have found collusion between the NGOs and the smugglers networks, including coordination with these brutal and mercenary organisations. Investigations have found NGOs to have been breaking their own agreed operating rules by coordinating locations to meet and pick up vessels sent out by the smugglers. This makes the NGOs effectively no more than the benign face of the smuggling networks. Undercover workers have also discovered NGOs handing vessels back to the smugglers' networks, effectively helping them to continue their criminal enterprise indefinitely.

Some NGOs that work to pick up migrants from boats in the Mediterranean and transport them to Europe have been discovered handing vessels back to smuggler networks, helping their criminal enterprise. Pictured: A small rubber boat overcrowded with migrants passes a boat set alight by the crews of Phoenix, a vessel operated by the "Migrant Offshore Aid Station" (MOAS) NGO, after all passengers were evacuated, on May 18, 2017. MOAS's protocol of torching the smuggling boats after debarkation prevents smugglers from reusing the vessel. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

In frontline countries such as Italy, this unlawful activity has been causing growing public anger. Elsewhere in Europe, the notion that these NGOs are not entirely angelic in their operations is taking longer to sink in. But compare the reaction to them — in receipt as they continue to be of large quantities of public and governmental money — with a group that has a different view to that of the NGOs.

At the start of this summer, a group called "Defend Europe" raised money to hire and sail a ship off the coast of Italy. The ship aimed to deter migrants from crossing the Mediterranean. One activist was recorded saying, "We want to get a crew, equip a boat and set sail to the Mediterranean ocean to chase down the enemies of Europe." Some of the other characters and rhetoric associated with this movement may be equally unsavoury. For some weeks, the "Defend Europe" vessel, with banners prominently displayed, has floated in the Mediterranean and told people in a variety of languages, "No Way. You will not make Europe home" and "Stop human trafficking."

Now one may abhor this tactic, approve of it, or feel a whole range of emotions in between. The treatment of "Defend Europe', however, compared to the pro-migration NGOs, is startling. In recent weeks, when the "Defend Europe" vessel had some minor technical problems, it caused undisguised glee in the Western media. The suggestion that a pro-migration NGO vessel might have to rescue it caused even more delight. Now the group has had its sources of funding withdrawn. Not that "Defend Europe" would ever have received government aid. Far from it. But this past week, the US-based crowd-funding website Patreon shut down the group's profile page, making it impossible for them to raise funds through it. The ostensible cause was that Patreon believed the actions of "Defend Europe" were "likely to cause loss of life."

It may easily be argued, of course, that pro-migration NGOs that are colluding with smuggling gangs and assisting them in their work are "likely to cause loss of life", if not in the Mediterranean then in encouraging thousands of people to give their money to smuggling gangs and encouraging millions more to set out for a new life in a continent which is increasingly less likely to receive them with warmth. A group that seeks to oppose Europe's current self-destructive trajectory can now not even source independent financial support. Groups, however, that continue to push Europe along its current trajectory continue to get all the official support they need. In the difference in reaction to these two groups lies a significant part of the story of the ruin of a continent.

via http://ift.tt/2vDUhZB Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

While many in the United States firmly believe that the government just isn’t working, it is.  But it’s only working for the powerful and rich elites in the government and the media who have a desire to cling to their oppressive control of others and the money many are willing to allow them to steal.

The fight has never been between the republicans and the democrats.

As Americans choose sides, their rights and freedoms are sold to the highest bidder. According to Intellectual Takeout, the fight is between “us” and the deep state; not those on the right and those on the left.  More and more often we are seeing bureaucrats, lobbyists, and elected officials of both parties circle the wagons in an effort to prevent any true reforms of the government. They constantly write laws they exclude themselves from,  come up with inventive ways to tax us to our breaking point and destroy the healthcare system.  And this is all by design.

According to Joost Meerloo in his seminal book The Rape of the Mind, the author discusses the psychology of brainwashing that’s allowing every American to succumb to tyranny right before their eyes and not only not realize it, but beg for more oppression.  “The burning psychological question is whether man will eventually master his institutions so that these will serve him and not rule him,” said Meerloo in his discussion of the Deep State or the “administrative machine” published in 1956.

Meerlo describes the rise of the deep state as:

“… The development of a kind of bureaucratic absolutism is not limited, however, to totalitarian countries. A mild form of professional absolutism is evident in every country in the mediating class of civil servants who bridge the gap between man and his rulers. Such a bureaucracy may be used to help or to harm the citizens it should serve.

 

It is important to realize that a peculiar, silent form of battle goes on in all of the countries of the world — under every form of government — a battle between the common man and the government apparatus he himself has created. In many places we can see that this governing tool, which was originally meant to serve and assist man, has gradually obtained more power than it was intended to have.

 

… Governmental techniques are no different from any other psychological strategy; the deadening hold of regimentation can take mental possession of those dedicated to it, if they are not alert. And this is the intrinsic danger of the various agencies that mediate between the common man and his government. It is a tragic aspect of life that man has to place another fallible man between himself and the attainment of his highest ideals.”

 

–The Rape of the Mind

Meerlo goes on to say that the power of simply being in government will corrupt:

Being a high civil servant subjects man to a dangerous temptation, simply because he is a part of the ruling apparatus. He finds himself caught in the strategy complex. The magic of becoming an executive and a strategist provokes long-repressed feelings of omnipotence. A strategist feels like a chess player. He wants to manipulate the world by remote control. Now he can keep others waiting, as he was forced to wait himself in his salad days, and thus he can feel himself superior.

 

–The Rape of the Mind

But what we are seeing now is not only the corruption of the government.

We are witnessing the deep state pulling the strings of every politician and fight to keep their power and money. The members of the Deep State are fighting for not only their jobs and their power but their sense of being. It is an ego boost to control entire populations. But what meaning do they have in life if they were shown that they are in fact dispensable, that they and their departments can be eliminated? In the end, their egos depend upon the maintenance and growth of the power and prestige.

Over many decades, the very government so many still trust to keep them safe has put in place compulsive orders, red tape, and regulations while expanding exponentially to enforce what it creates and stealing more tax money to cover the rising costs. All the while, its roots drive deeper and deeper into the very government many still fight to protect. Even the politicians who we send to D.C. thinking that they represent us are ensnared in the game. They begin to play by the rules set forth by the Deep State; indeed, our elected officials even become dependent upon the Deep State.

So the question is, how do we combat the deep state and get our freedom back?

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On Friday, the White House announced that Trump would make his decision whether to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or “Dreamer, program on Tuesday. Well, we won’t have to wait to long, because according to Politico, Trump has made the decision to end the DAVA program with a six-month delay.

Trump, who has faced strong warnings from both Democrats and Republicans not to scrap the program and struggled with his own misgivings about targeting minors for deportation, is said to have made up his mind and according to Politico, “senior White House aides huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the president’s core campaign promises.”

Trump will announce his decision on Tuesday, with Politico noting that the White House informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the president’s decision on Sunday morning. Ryan had said during a radio interview on Friday that he didn’t think the president should terminate DACA, and that Congress should act on the issue. However, Trump’s conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress rather than the executive branch is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program, although Politico hedges that “the White House aides caution that — as with everything in the Trump White House — nothing is set in stone until an official announcement has been made.”

In what appears to be another victory for the recently exiled “nationalist” wing of the Trump inner circle, the president’s expected announcement is likely to shore up his base, which rallied behind his broader campaign message about the importance of enforcing the country’s immigration laws and securing the border. At the same time, the president’s decision is likely to be one of the most contentious of his early administration, opposed by leaders of both parties and by the political establishment more broadly. It also indicates that despite his departure, Steve Bannon still continues to have major influence on the Trump White House.

Still, in a nod to reservations held by many lawmakers, the White House plans to delay the enforcement of the president’s decision for six months, giving Congress a window to act, according to one White House official. But a senior White House aide said that chief of staff John Kelly, who has been running the West Wing policy process on the issue, “thinks Congress should’ve gotten its act together a lot longer ago.”

As a result, the vast majority of the nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children and who have benefitted from the program, are expected to lose their legal basis for continued presence in the United States, promoting even greater animosity between the Trump administration and the immigrant community.

via http://ift.tt/2vXuqXC Tyler Durden

If you had any reasons to question why increasing numbers of Americans are turning to Amazon.com for their everyday and anyday needs, the following clip will erase them…

On Monday of last week, an argument broke out between two pairs of women over the last notebook on the shelf at the Novi Towne Center WalMart store, according to police.

Video from a bystander shows a woman pull out a gun during the fight…

The fight involved two Farmington Hills residents, ages 46 and 32, and a mother and daughter from South Lyon, ages 51 and 20.

WCRZ-FM reports that the two Farmington Hills women were shopping for school supplies, and when one of them reached for the last notebook on the shelf, a South Lyon woman also reached for it. Police told the Free Press that it was the 20-year-old who reached for it.

The two women pulled the 20-year-old’s hair, and the woman's mother was pushed aside before pulling out a gun, according to Fox2Detroit.

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And that's why Amazon's sales are soaring…

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As Hurricane Irma continues to move  west as a Category three storm, in what still is said to be an indeterminate path, according to the latest projections from Met Scientist Michael Ventrice, it now looks like Florida has the highest probability of a US landfall…

Latest 12Z Calibrated ECMWF Ensembles indicates that Florida now has the highest probability to see Hurricane #Irma impacts/landfall ???? http://pic.twitter.com/YVgjueeKYx

— Michael Ventrice (@MJVentrice) September 3, 2017

…though that doesn’t mean the Gulf of Mexico can rest easy. Hurricane forecasting is notoriously inaccurate one or two weeks out…

Not a shift in guidance anyone wanted to see. Looks like #Irma threat growing again for Gulf States. Forecast remains extremely difficult https://t.co/sZs5t2ppHJ

— Michael Ventrice (@MJVentrice) September 3, 2017

Before it nears the US, however, the storm is headed toward the Northern Caribbean, threatening to bring flooding rain and damaging winds to the Leeward Islands. Preparations for the storm should already be taking place in these areas, according to Accuweather.com.

“Rain and gusty winds may start as early as Tuesday,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Rob Miller said.

According to Accuweather, Irma’s intensity has vacillated over the past few days. But the storm is expected to strengthen to a category four hurricane with sustained winds of 130-156 mph as it approaches the islands. Thereafter, the storm will turn to the north and west over the coming days. This track will put Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands, in the brunt of the storm's rain and wind spanning Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hurricane watches issued for portions of the Leeward Islands. Latest information on #Irma available at https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFb http://pic.twitter.com/BPiAPelf3D

— NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) September 3, 2017

Cruise and shipping vessels in the hurricane’s path will need to reroute.

Later in the week, Irma will move close to Puerto Rico and Hispaniola with the worst of the storm expected to miss the islands to the north. Even so, rough surf, gusty winds and heavy rain will increase.

Experts are concerned that the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas could face dangerous conditions at the end of the week and into the weekend as Irma passes nearby or possibly through the islands. Impacts will be severe if Irma maintains its strength and passes over them.

Ultimately, the storm could land in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas or even closer to the Delmarva Peninsula. Or it could curve northward and miss the east coast entirely.

“The eastward or northeast progression of a non-tropical system pushing across the central and eastern U.S. this week will highly impact the long-range movement of Irma,” AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said.

How fast or slow this non-tropical system moves will determine whether Irma takes a west-northwest path toward the southern Atlantic Seaboard or gets steered north and away from land.

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Readers may be wondering, if the storm slams southeast Florida, as is looking increasingly likely. Well, the Miami Herald spoke with one engineer who built a “dynamic” weather forecasting model that incorporates data like rainwater evaporation rates and how much of a given surface area is paved.

“Omar Abdul-Aziz, an engineer and assistant professor at West Virginia University, has done just that with a new model he built while at Florida International University as part of a state-funded project to improve hurricane loss models. At the request of the Herald, he agreed to run three rainfall scenarios that might resemble Hurricane Harvey.

 

The maps he produced stretch from Homestead north to Port St. Lucie, not including barrier islands which are separate land masses, and depict flooding after 48 hours from 20 inches of rain, 30 inches of rain, and 40 inches of rain.

 

Because the maps cover a large area, they don’t show flooding at street level. But Abdul-Aziz said they do provide a far more accurate picture of what would happen across the region.”

If his models are accurate, residents of densely populated cities like Miami might want to start bracing for floods. Abdul-Aziz found that floodwaters in parts of Miami, Hialeah, South Dade and Fort Lauderdale could rise between nine and 17 inches at least with this amount of rain. And with 40 inches of rain, flooding in those same neighborhoods, as well as many more, rises to between 23 inches and more than three feet — enough to begin damaging houses and partially submerge cars.

“Because of the flat land and low elevation, water does not move fast. It goes slow and the drainage capacity is not designed to take that much rainfall,” he said.

To build the model, funded with $533,000 from the state, Abdul-Aziz used the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest stormwater management model, which has been used since the 1970s to help communities plan water and sewer systems. They include local hydrology, land cover, ground level and local climate, but cover a smaller area.

Abdul-Aziz mapped out three different flooding scenarios below:

 

To be sure, the storm is still at least a week away. Depending on atmospheric conditions, it could menace a wide stretch of the US east coast. If it’s still a powerful category 3 or 4 storm when it hits – as projections suggest it would be – the US could be bracing for its second major natural disaster in two weeks.

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Authored by James Rickards via Daily Reckoning blog,

Just because something is inevitable does not mean it cannot be postponed.

The popular name for this is “kicking the can down the road,” which is a perfectly good description.

I prefer more technical terms such as dynamic systems in “subcritical” and “supercritical” state space, but it amounts to the same thing.

A financial crisis can be a long time in the making, but it will definitely erupt. When it does, there will be huge losses for those who ignored the warning signs.

China is in a pre-crisis situation today.

It is confronting the harsh logic of the “Impossible Trinity.”

The Impossible Trinity theory was advanced in the early 1960s by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell. It says that no country can have an open capital account, a fixed exchange rate and an independent monetary policy at the same time.

You can have one or two out of three, but not all three. If you try, you will fail – markets will make sure of that.

Those failures (which do happen) represent some of the best profit-making opportunities of all.

Understanding the Impossible Trinity is how George Soros broke the Bank of England on Sept. 16, 1992 (still referred to as “Black Wednesday” in British banking circles. Soros also made over $1 billion that day).

The reason is that if more attractive total returns are available abroad, money will flee a home country at a fixed exchange rate to seek the higher return. This will cause a foreign exchange crisis and a policy response that abandons one of the three policies.

But just because the trinity is impossible in the long run does not mean it cannot be pursued in the short run. China is trying to peg the yuan to the U.S. dollar while maintaining a partially open capital account and semi-independent monetary policy. It’s a nice finesse, but isn’t sustainable.

China cannot keep the capital account even partly closed for long without drying up direct foreign investment. Similarly, China cannot raise interest rates much higher without bankrupting state-owned enterprises.

China is buying time until the Communist Party Congress in October.

It’s important to realize that for Beijing, the Chinese economy is more than about jobs, goods and services. It’s a means of ensuring its legitimacy. The Chinese regime is deeply concerned that a faltering economy and mass unemployment could threaten its hold on power.

Chinese markets are wildly distorted by the actions of its central bank. Given the problems inherent in trying to manage an economy without proper price signals, the challenge facing Beijing gets harder by the day.

China has a long history of violent political fracturing, and the government is deeply worried about regime survival if it stumbles. Many in the West fail to appreciate Beijing’s fears and overestimate the support it has among the disparate Chinese people.

What does China do next?

Under the unforgiving logic of the Impossible Trinity, China will have to either devalue the yuan or see its reserves evaporate.

In the end, China will have to break the yuan’s peg to the dollar in order to stop capital outflows without killing the economy with high rates. The Impossible Trinity really is impossible in the long run. China will find this out the hard way.

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