Month: December 2018

Core provisions of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, were ruled unconstitutional by a Texas judge on Friday following a lawsuit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general from 20 states against Democratic attorneys general from 14 states led by California’s Xavier Becerra.

According to court documents (below) US District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth agreed with the GOP coalition that he had to gut key provisions of the Affordable Care Act after Congress last year eliminated the individual mandate – a tax penalty for not buying insurance.

Friday’s decision which will undoubtedly be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. 

The Texas-led Republicans argued that they’ve been harmed by an explosion of people on state-supported insurance rolls – claiming that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year it nullified the US Supreme Court’s rationale for deeming the ACA constitutional in 2012. 

The Democratic attorneys general argued that overturning Obamacare would toss millions of people from health insurance rolls by reversing Medicaid expansion – which would end tax credits and allow insurers to start denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. 

DOJ attorneys urged Judge O’Connor to strike down the individual mandate and pre-existing condition mandate, however they asked the judge to spare the rest of the law – including Medicaid expansion, health exchanges, the employer mandate, federal healthcare reimbursement rates for hospitals and premium subsidies. 

On September 13, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh tried to save Obamacare, seeking a judgement that the Affordable Care Act is indeed constitutional, in the form of a court order barring the United States from taking any action inconsistent with that conclusion. Frosh sued then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions along with the DOJ and department of Health and Human Services. 

 

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The impact of the incarceration crisis on America’s families and communities has been staggering, according to a new survey by criminal justice non-profit FWD.us and Cornell University.

The survey found that today’s incarceration rate stands at 710 inmates per 100,000 people compared to 147 in the United Kingdom, 118 in Canada and 98 in France.

FWD.us and Cornell University point out that more than 1.5 million people are currently behind bars in state or federal prisons in the US. Admissions to jails have been higher than 10 million per year for at least two decades. These figures explain how over 50% of adults (about 113 million people) has had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night in jail.

One in seven adults has had an immediate family member locked up for more than one year, and one in 34 adults has had a family member spend at least ten years in prison. The survey said an estimated 6.5 million people have an immediate family member currently incarcerated in jail or prison (1 in 38).

The adverse effects that individuals experience after being incarcerated have been well documented, but more research still needs to be done on the direct and indirect harms and challenges that families and communities suffer. 

The study shows that incarceration impacts all types of Americans, “rates of family incarceration are similar for Republicans and Democrats — but the impact is unevenly borne by communities of color and families who are low-income. Black people are 50% more likely than white people to have had a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely to have had a family member incarcerated for one year or longer. People earning less than $25,000 per year are 61% more likely than people earning more than $100,000 to have had a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely to have had a family member incarcerated for one year or longer,” the survey said.

The following infographics visualize the figures from the survey and highlight the shocking realities behind the crisis: 

Incarceration does not just impact the person who is sent to jail, it reverberates into families and destroys communities. So, the biggest threat to Americans is the American police state.

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The hubris and arrogance of Washington have been at work since the Clinton regime to destroy the power and relevance of the United States.

This website has an international audience. The most asked question from this audience is the world order. There is a realization that Washington’s control might weaken, a development people abroad see as hopeful. They ask me for verification of their hope.

Here is my answer:

The world order has already changed.  

China has a larger and more powerful industrial and manufacturing based economy than the US, and China’s potential domestic consumer market is four times larger than that of the US. As economies are consumer based, China’s potential is an economy four times larger than that of the US.

Russia has a far more capable military with weapon systems unmatched by the US.

The US is drowning in debt, and the illegal and irresponsible sanctions that Washington tries to impose on others are driving the world’s largest countries away from the use of the US dollar as world reserve currency and away from Western clearance systems such as SWIFT.  

The United States already has one foot in the grave.  Any country sufficiently stupid to ally with the US is allied with a dead man walking.

President Eisenhower, a five-star general, warned Americans 57 years ago to no effect that the military/security complex was already a threat to the American people’s ability to control their government.

Today the military/security complex is the Government.

As Udo Ulfkotte documented in his book, Journalists for Hire: How the CIA buys the News – no you can’t buy a copy unless you can find a used copy in German in a German book store, the CIA has seen to that – journalism independent of official explanations no longer exists in the Western world.

Much of the world does not understand this. Aside from the material interests of Russian and Chinese capitalists, a portion of the youth of both superpowers, and also even in Iran, have succumbed to brainwashing by American propaganda. Gullible beyond belief, they are more loyal to America than they are to their own countries.

The United States itself is extremely unsuccessful, but its propaganda still rules the world. The consequence is that, based on its propagandistic success, Washington thinks it still holds the balance of economic and military power. This is a delusion that is leading Washington to nuclear war.

Considering the hypersonic speed, trajectory changeability and massive power of Russian nuclear weapons, war with Russia will result in nothing whatsoever being left of the US and its vassals, who sold out European peoples for Washington’s money.

*  *  *

Support PCR’s website. It keeps you from living in The Matrix. Donate now.

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Up until the end of September, credit investors in particular and Wall Street in general had nothing but good things to say about the leveraged loan market and demand for new issuance seemed relentless, despite growing warnings from various third parties and websites such as this one. And then, loan pricing nose-dived along with prices on most other credit products starting around the first week of October, right after Powell’s “neutral rate” speech…

… and suddenly complacency turned to sheer panic without passing go. But the catalyst for this wholesale dread was not so much the slump in prices as much as fund flows – i.e., observing in real time what one’s peers are doing – and as we showed yesterday, they are selling, with Lipper reporting that loan funds saw a record outflow of $2.53 billion in the week ended December 12, a fitting culmination to the fourth consecutive week of selling.

And then, as if on cue, the soundbites from the very same “concerned” investors who until two months ago were rushing to rushing to 4x oversubscribe any new loan deal, preferably with zero covenant protection, mutated into a cannonade of fear.

“Having outflows that are 2 to 3 percent of the market is scary. What happens if we get 10 or 15 percent?” Distenfeld, co-head of fixed income at AllianceBernstein, said on Bloomberg TV Friday. He has long been skeptical of the market. “I’m worried if this continues, we’re going to start hearing some liquidity fund issues from open-ended mutual funds.“

in addition to fears about declining rates – the primary attaction for floating-rate debt – some are worried that the bottom is about to drop out of the CLO market. As a reminder, the total outstanding volume of leveraged loans is about $1,130bn (~5.5% of GDP); of this universe, CLOs – which are repackaged corporate debt that has made up “most of the appetite” for loans – hold approximately half, or $600bn (~3% of GDP) of the total loans outstanding.

And like the broader space, while CLOs had been on a feeding frenzy for much of this year, in the wake of recent widespread market volatility and sliding prices, demand has waned, even causing some investors to pull offerings as we reported last night.

“When that changes and you’re seeing that supply demand come out of balance, who are you going to attract?” Gaffney said on Bloomberg TV. “The ones that are going to come in are probably more like me, total return, that are looking for much bigger discounts than that market has seen since 2008.“

In other words, deals will get done, sure, but at much lower prices and higher yields, resulting in even tighter financial conditions as companies are forced to allocate even more of their cash flow to paying interest.

To some investors the lower prices would represent a buying opportunity and a sign that loans still have a lot of value. Others including Steven Oh, global head of credit and fixed income at PineBridge Investments, say that leveraged loans are unlikely to cause systemic risk. While leverage levels are elevated like in the last recession, interest rates are much lower, so debt service is actually healthier, he said in an interview this week.

Goldman Sachs agrees, and writes on Friday that risk from runs on bank short-term liabilities as a result of losses on leveraged loans and CLOs is low as banks now own less than 5% of the outstanding leverage loans, down from 30% 20 years ago as the share of institutional investors has risen to 90%, while their exposure to riskier junior CLO tranches is relatively little.

That does not mean there are zero liquidity concerns, however, and the biggest danger is the result of one of the biggest structural complaints about loan transactions namely the long settlement proce3ss. As Luke Hickmore, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, said on Bloomberg TV, unlike high-yield bonds, where trades typically settle in a matter of days, loan settlement periods can take closer to three to four weeks, which can (and in times of market turbulence, will) cause prices to drop even lower. In fact, the lengthy settlement time is one of the reasons why various Wall Street banks have proposed incorporating blockchain into loan transactions, to streamline buying and selling and mitigate liquidity risks.

“The market could get very gappy in funding those outflows, so the price that is going to be offered as we get further and further into that liquidity crunch in ETFs for loans could get pretty nasty,” Hickmore said. “It’s certainly one we are watching very, very carefully.”

And with good reason: while the loan market in itself may not be a systemic risk, there is more pain to come. The reason, as Bloomberg shows, is that any time investors have pulled more than $2 billion from the slow-to-settle loan market, loan prices sank and took months to recover. For example, in August 2011 when the US was downgraded and when the loan market was roughly half its current $1.3 trillion size, loan funds saw $2.1 billion of outflows, following just one other exit over $1 billion that year. In December 2015, they lost $2.04 billion. Both liquidations were followed by steep and lengthy price declines.

With this week’s record exodus marking the 4th straight weekly outflow, bringing the recent total to $6.6 billion, it is virtually inevitable that fresh multiyear lows lie ahead.

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For more than a year now, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and a non-profit organization called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration have been planning a radical economic experiment: Making Stockton the first city in the country to distribute a “Universal Basic Income” to its largely impoverished residents (the median income in the city is below $46,000).

And while the city of 300,000 – which recently emerged from bankruptcy after becoming a cautionary tale of the fallout from the financial crisis when it first filed in 2012 – won’t be sending checks to as many people as they would have liked, those lucky enough to receive the letters announcing their eligibility for the program will receive them this week.

Michael Tubbs

Stockton residents are struggling with stagnant wages, rising home prices due to the city’s proximity to Silicon Valley and a loss of middle class jobs – all against a backdrop of the looming threat of automation. The city first filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

The program, which is being financed by a non-profit called the SEED, will ultimately dole out $500 a month to the 100 lucky finalists for a year. Another 200 will be selected for a “control” group (they will receive a $20 gift card to compensate them for the time spent filling out surveys). At the end of the year, SEED will publish its findings to demonstrate the impact of UBI on recipients’ health and stress levels.

The pervasive poverty in the city helped inspire mayor Tubbs to announce last year that the city would soon begin an interesting social experiment. And on Friday, he took a few moments to crow about the project to a local TV station.

“Around this country, especially in communities like Stockton, people are working incredibly hard and falling further and further behind. We have people in our community that work two or three jobs, we have people that are working and still can’t pay rent,” said Mayor Michael Tubbs.

[…]

“People who are working incredibly hard are smart and they don’t have money because they are not good with money, they don’t have money because jobs aren’t paying enough for folks to live and survive. We believe something as small as $500 a month can make a world of difference,” he said.

One resident of one of the low-income neighborhoods eligible for the project said that he largely lives paycheck to paycheck because of the cost of his rent, as well as expenses associated with raising his children. Miranda said the money would be a huge windfall for himself or any of his neighbors.

Stockton dad Jose Miranda works hard to save his money, but setting aside a small portion of his paycheck every other week can be a challenge.  He says his expenses just keep piling up.

“Kids you know, my kids. I spend money on my kids the most, I think. And rent, in particular. Food and phone,” said Miranda.

Miranda lives in a neighborhood where the median income is at or below 46-thousand dollars.  It’s one of the areas the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration program (SEED) is sending letters to people who may be eligible to get $500 a month with no strings attached.

“I think for the people that really need it, it will be good for them, like a lot of people say groceries, rent, car payment, even if you want to help a family member, anything extra is good to get,” Miranda said.

There’s no question that this money could change the lives of its recipients. But we doubt any data gathered by SEED will be very effective in determining the overall economic impact of UBI, which, according to the most basic laws of economics, would likely trigger a destabilizing surge in inflation that would risk wiping out any wealth gains. Fortunately, that should come in handy when we need to inflate away all of that pesky debt…

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Authored by James Fite via Liberty Nation,

California is considering a bill to take the right to bear arms away from those convicted of “serious alcohol-related crimes.”

California State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) has an idea to help keep the good citizens of the Golden State safe: Disarm the drunks. If her recently submitted bill becomes law, those convicted of “serious alcohol-related” crimes would lose their right to keep and bear arms for ten years. While it’s true that firearms and intoxicants don’t mix well, this proposal – much like other “common sense” reforms in the state that we’ve covered – ignore the basic principle behind the Second Amendment. It’s a simple point, really. So why is it that so many politicians – and voters – seem to miss it?

What Passes For Freedom

At the federal level, convicted felons nationwide officially lost the right to keep and bear arms with the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 – though the background check designed to enforce that rule wasn’t established in law until the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, and wasn’t implemented until 1998.  In addition to felonies, the Lautenberg Amendment of 1996 added domestic violence misdemeanors to the prohibited persons list.

Beyond the federal regulations, Californians are subject to a whole host of other state restrictions. According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, no one is allowed to purchase a firearm who:

• Is convicted of a felony or is addicted to narcotics.

• Is convicted of crimes – misdemeanor or felony – involving violence, hate, or the unlawful use of firearms. (This prohibition lasts ten years after conviction.)

• Is subject to an outstanding arrest warrant for some other prohibiting offense.

• Is prohibited by their conditions of probation.

• Is adjudged a ward of the juvenile court over violent, drug, or firearms offenses. (This prohibition lasts until the subject is 30.)

• Knowingly is subject to a protective order, restraining order, or injunction issued by a court pursuant to state law.

• Has a history of severe mental illness or chronic alcoholism.

The Golden State also prohibits the sale of any semi-automatic firearms they consider “assault weapons” – read: scary black guns – .50 BMG rifles, and magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds. As previously reported at Liberty Nation, the minimum purchase age for all guns will be 21 effective January 1, 2019. And, believe it or not, that’s not the complete list of gun regulations in California.

Clamping Down

If passed, SB 55, simply titled: “Firearms: prohibited persons,” would grow the list of folks barred from owning a gun.  Here are the misdemeanors it adds, along with the explanation of what each is (notably missing from the bill text):

1. “Possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell in violation of Section 11357.5 of the Health and Safety Code.” – This deals with synthetic cannabinoid compounds.

2. “Possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell in violation of paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 11375 of the Health and Safety Code.” – This deals with cannabis.

3. “Possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell in violation of Section 11379.2 of the Health and Safety Code.” – That’s Ketamine and any material, compound, mixture, or preparation containing ketamine.

4. “Section 191.5.” – That’s vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated: an accident, but still due to the general misconduct of the offender.

5. “Subdivision (f) of Section 647.” – Anyone caught drunk or high in public.

6. “Section 23152 of the Vehicle Code.” – These last two involve driving under the influence in general.

7. “Section 23153 of the Vehicle Code.”

8. To be added to the prohibited list, someone would need to be convicted of two of these crimes or two instances of the same one in three years, or get caught with a firearm or ammo during a ten-year prohibition already in place. And of course, in that last scenario, the ten-year period starts over.

The Missing Point

Those who have paid attention to history – or the third paragraph of this article – will note that criminals weren’t disbarred the use of firearms for the vast majority of this nation’s existence. Why is that? The idea of disenfranchising certain criminals and labeling them felons was not unknown to our Founders; it came to us from the same place many of them did: England. Yet they chose not to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms as punishment for crimes – with the exception, of course, of the fact that anyone who is executed loses all capacity to exercise any rights upon death.

But why? To answer that question – and to shine some light on the point missed by so many on both sides of the gun control debate today – we must go to the Declaration of Independence. In the second paragraph, we see that they believed three rights were self-evident, God-given, and inalienable: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

There is no shortage of letters, speeches, and other writings to clearly show what our Founders believed regarding the right to keep and bear arms, but the logic itself is easy to follow. If we have the right to live and to do so free from interference by others, even governments, then we must have the right to defend both life and liberty. Simply put, having and using whatever arms are required to match or exceed the firepower of those who would kill or enslave us is a fundamental human right.

Would we take from felons – and a growing list of select misdemeanors – the freedom to speak or exercise religion, if they so choose? Would we stop them from settling down, finding a job, a home, a family, and moving on with their lives? Ah, that would be inhumane, you might say. But what’s the difference? When we tell anyone that they no longer have a fundamental human right, what we’re saying is that they’re less than human – that they’re not people.

And there’s the problem. Even those who have made bad decisions in the past are still people. They have the right to defend their own and their loved ones’ lives and liberty. This issue exists at every level of gun control – you’ve probably noticed that there’s no “except” clauses to the Second Amendment, after all.

Bills like SB 55, however, merely bring it into focus for a broader range of folks. It’s easy for someone who has never made one of the “big mistakes” that results in felony convictions to say “yes, but that’s a big mistake, and should have lasting consequences.” But what about these misdemeanors? How many adults in the nation have been drunk in public? What about driving under the influence? Is that the sort of behavior we think people can’t mature out of, or that simply cannot be forgiven?

Does that not narrow the field enough to encompass you, dear reader, or someone you care about? Then consider where this is going. As we add more misdemeanor offenses to the list, we leave fewer people excluded. How many have never committed any crime, been drunk or high, or had any sort of emotional issue? And at what point do we declare someone’s behavior so reprehensible that we can alienate the inalienable right to life and liberty?

Those who have committed dangerous crimes in the past may or may not do so again – just as someone without a criminal history might or might not undertake their first. We all have the right to be safe from those who would gladly hurt us to satisfy their whims, whether they have a criminal record or not. But the irony of prohibiting certain people from owning guns is that it only disarms those who have already reformed and don’t plan to continue to break the law and violate the rights of others.

Therefore, the answer isn’t to disarm those who are convicted of some arbitrarily selected list of crimes, but for everyone else to arm themselves. When someone attacks or robs you, defend yourself, your loved ones, and your property. Let would-be criminals suffer the natural consequences of their actions, be that a bullet in the gut or a term in prison, and let that be the end of it.

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If you needed another indication of how little people care about billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer’s campaign to push Congress to impeach President Trump (despite sinking millions of dollars into a hokey ad campaign and petition), just look at the crowd size at Steyer’s “impeach Trump” tour.

During a recent speech, Steyer exhorted his audience to rise up and “crush” their Republican overlords to an audience of dozens of people – and that’s a generous estimate.

Going into more detail, Steyer explained his plan for fostering “economic justice” in the US, saying the country should follow California’s lead (though, considering the state’s exaggerated poverty rate and rampant unaffordability, Steyer might want to reconsider the reasoning undergirding his calls for “economic justice”).

“So basically when you think about how we’re going to succeed and actually kick their ass, it’s going to be based on justice,” Steyer said, “environmental justice, economic justice and coloration. That is how California worked, we lead with justice.”

“And so when we look at what’s going to happen in 2020, we are going to have to crush these people,” he added.

“Honestly,” he continued, “I think the whole idea that they’re going to compromise, they’re going to come to their senses, they don’t really understand what’s going on,” he said.

In what sounded like a subtle dig at Yale alumnus (who should feel very guilty about attending the same college as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh), Steyer shamed Yale alumni in the room to rise up and take on the administration, warning that “the time for politeness is over.”

Crowd size was an issue for Steyer during another talk in South Carolina. But the lack of witnesses was probably a net positive for Steyer, who was filmed comparing his effort to take down a Democratically elected president to that of the firefighters who tried to rescue victims in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Talk about ‘out of touch’…

“This society has a history of running towards the fire,” Steyer said. “If you think about 9/11, there were people running to the fire. And was that the smart thing to do? No, but was that the American thing to do? Very much so.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he followed it up by comparing Trump’s electoral victory with 9/11.

“There is some stuff that has gone on in the United States that is just like 9/11.”

Assuming Steyer decides to soldier on, we look forward to hearing him lie about the size of the crowds during an appearance on cable news, in what would be a hilarious irony. And if tickets to his upcoming dates don’t sell, maybe he should take a page out of the Clinton’s book and give Groupon a shot. We hear they have great deals!

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Authored by JG Martinez D. via Daisy Luther’s Organic Prepper blog,

This article by Jose about the blocking of personal bank accounts in Venezuela made me think about how the “Patriot” Act put similar rules in place here in the United States. When you open an account at a bank here, you have to prove you aren’t a terrorist by using multiple forms of ID and you become aware that you are constantly under suspicion of being guilty of money laundering with terrorists. Banks can quiz you about transactions and report you if they feel you’re suspicious. You can learn more about how the “Patriot” Act could potentially set us up for something identical to what Jose is describing here.  And the next time you’re in the bank, look for those little triangle paper signs sitting around everywhere that explain why your transactions may be questioned in the name of “fighting terrorism.” ~ Daisy

Controlling a society is not an easy task. It is about controlling food production means, limiting the mobility of people, denying access to everything, allowing basic human rights to be violated by the uniformed corps (very important because these groups have weaponry), and allowing irregular gangs take over resources that, otherwise, they would never be able to have control of.

Therefore, they NEED desperately to make people knee, and one of the ways they can do it, is via the control of the circulating money. This is nothing new.

The original Rothschild said once “give me the control of the currency of a country, and I wouldn´t mind who governs it”. Or something like that. That is exactly what this mafia has done.

They’re now freezing bank accounts within Venezuela

To do so, the criminal gang in power has reinforced their strategy.  They are freezing bank accounts inside Venezuela, in our national currency, if they detect someone is using the account from another country. My own bank accounts, with over 15 years of history, included.

This is against the right to use the private and personal property, guaranteed in our Constitution. They want so eagerly to change and seize our private property, just like Cuba did. Sending money back to family is not an easy task. There is an entire underground economy that works receiving money in foreign currency in accounts overseas and exchanging national currency in a circular flow because the bolivar is not exchangeable for some other currency.

The last steps to instate totalitarianism definitely, are now slowly being taken: the financial infrastructure is being stormed with greater intensity these days.

Let´s make this clear. Since the beginning of the takeover, when everyone was charmed by the Uncle Hugo´s charisma, without any clue about what was going on under the table (things like Alejandro Andrade being in charge of the National Treasury, ”assigned” personally by Hugo), this was the plan. The subjugation of any private initiative in the financial world.

“The state must control everything” is the communist motto in Venezuela.

The “empire” (sounds familiar?) is ready to “attack us” because they “need our resources”.

Funny. Those stealing our gold and coltan are Russia, China and Turkey. I can´t see any other nation around.

But controlling 20 million persons without any popularity, regardless of the number of armed soldiers, is not an easy task. After controlling access to food, medicines and some other basic life necessities, the following is to seize the ability of people to dispose of their money as they please.

By doing so, they increase as much as their control level, as the stress on the people they need to distract. And this stress is exactly what they want.

By controlling the amount of who transfers to whom, when and where…well, they could use to put in prison ANYONE THEY WANT. As a matter of fact, the reason they don’t do it just because they don’t have the facilities to lock down so many people. But the attempts to convert the country into a police state just like East Germany is there.

The recent creation of the Migratory Police is just another indication. The worst thing is, that it is going to be a tropical version, with the consequent favoring of the criminals, and the repression and harassing of regular, decent citizens who are exposed to being kidnapped or stolen.

Upon controlling the money flow, they could strangle any entity that is opposed to the totalitarian state. Of course, this is not a specialty of the communist world. This is known to happen in the western world too. Hollywood and Wall Street are no exceptions. At this point in our lives, we all should be aware of what seems to be happening beneath the surface.

Here’s how they justify blocking the bank accounts.

Of course, they justify blocking the bank accounts, especially in the state-owned banking institutions, because they say they are “fighting terrorism”.

Once the account is blocked, they will ask for some proof that the money comes from a legal transaction. Of course, the evidence is subject to their criteria. If they suspect that the origin of the money is suspicious, they will seize it and the account holder will be sent to the…”authorities”.

If you can demonstrate that the money is legit, people usually can walk free.

For the moment.

The organization in charge of the investigation of this things is the SUDEBAN, and they have strict orders to call the SEBIN, the intelligence corps being used as Praetorian Guard, to take care of the issue, and these are trained by the Cubans. So you know what that means already.

All the stories you could have heard about what happened in Cuba, are happening now in my country. The Cubans imposed the Cuban convertible peso, a currency designed for limited usage within the country. The mafia tried to do something similar, with the technological improvement of the cryptocurrencies with the “petro”…but of course, there is not even the slightest indication of trust that favors anything coming from those thugs. Therefore, that “cryptocurrency” is useless.

The entire purpose of that useless currency? Evading the sanctions generated by their defiant violation of our human rights for years. The iron fist over the financial infrastructure is executed in some instances using the intelligence services.

Of course, there is a lot of business involving this: people with large accounts being…”released” after paying some…let´s say “fines”, and an adequate collaboration with the “authorities”. You know what I mean.

There is a history of taking over entire industries to control the people.

Of course, the blocking is not something that was improvised. Many years ago, Uncle Hugo had taken control of the Internet in Venezuela. He did this by seizing the largest private company of communications, the CANTV. Then, with the Ministry of Telecommunications providing to this (now) state-owned company the entire rights to be the only internet provider in the country (which is something).

Now, they are using another institution to violate our rights over our private property, our financial assets, the money, with the SUDEBAN. This “institution” is supposedly in charge of the banking institutions, and establish the appropriate regulations for their functioning.

Of course, the real intention is to control the information regarding the money flow. This is not unprecedented. Cubans could force their people into slavery because they did not have means to escape of the financial grip back then.

The main idea behind this is to produce a slow asphyxiation of the trade, regardless if this is between commerce or private parties. They need to know what accounts are being used to bypass the currency control exchange so they can block them, and harass the people that are making business and trying to make a living outside the unreal conditions they want to force in the economy. The price fixation has resulted in a huge black market, with a very limited production controlled almost totally by a military mafia.

All of this helps to keep the people busy and not rebelling.

They have tried for years to impose a price for the dollar; but that price fixation is unreal, because you can´t go to ANYWHERE and buy dollars at the official exchange rate. The reason is simple: there are no dollars available because they stole every single dime that came into the country. The oil production is not enough to keep pumping dollars into the financial system that has become a gigantic laundry, under the regime terror that Rafael Ramirez instated as president of the oil corporation PDVSA.  They are looking now for the extradition of Alejandro Andrade, the manufacturer of the financial infrastructure that allowed them to steal OUR money…BILLIONS of dollars.

As a result, they are trying to screw the population as much as they can, because they know that, keeping them busy, they won´t get organized and start fighting them. You can´t train a rebel militia if your kids are starving, though.

Of course, this is going to be the final result…perhaps a highly chaotic mass of people that will result in a huge snowball that will sweep the mafias, colectivos, and everything in the middle. There is nothing as powerful as the rage of millions of people. It is just a matter of time, and I know it.

Of course, we ex-pats won´t be sitting around just watching. But for my own safety, I will leave this to the imagination of my fellow libertarians. They have suspended the access to “unofficial” exchange pages such as AirTM, and other similar ones. All of this is somehow by-passed, but I won´t give details here because of the harm it can do to those who try to send money there without recurring to the official exchange rate. It should be on the net, though, for those interested.

As an interesting note, me, being an analytical person, I have detected some mistakes that (people with much more knowledge of economy science should be able to tell this) we are committing, and one of these is using a foreign currency (without any possibility to get) to try to stabilize that craziness. Of course, the mafia is using the joke of that crypto “Petro”, that they definitely don´t have a clue about. Recently the Big Pig (if you don´t know whom I refer to…you should see the news about Venezuela in YT) said: “I have decided to fixate the price of the Petro in 9000 Bolivares”…THAT IS A JOKE YOU STUPID!…

The barter system is the only way to get by now.

Rants apart (Jeez, that felt good J ), the idea is to use some kind of exchange or bartering system that can be used to level the playground, so to speak. Once achieved some kind of agreement, then some degree of stabilization is going to be present.

For example, if I have a couple of brand new tires, that last for a couple of years of normal usage, perhaps I could ask for them engine oil enough to keep my own SUV running for that couple of years. Or, perhaps we could check the websites overseas and see the prices in some foreign currency, and adjust ourselves. However, that means a strong, person-to-person interaction, something that is unlikely to exist with a big shop or store.

But here is where the ingenuity should prevail, and some special warehouses could be used very discreetly for such purpose (Mos Eisley, anyone?). I am pretty sure that, without the “authorities” harassing so much to the farmers and food producers or processors like they do in Cuba, things would be much easier.

Thanks very much to those special persons that have been sending some assistance continuously, we appreciate that gesture, and we know it comes from the heart, and that is the best. Under the current circumstances, uncertainty about the date of our return is now greater…I only can hope, and try to organize some demonstrations around here, in an attempt to make the world not forget our tragedy.

God bless us all, people!.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Gi4MHI Tyler Durden

Beijing may be cracking down on the peer-2-peer loan industry, but industrious Chinese have found a new way to borrow and lend money under even “shadier” circumstances.

With the cost of living rising, there is a brand-new trend in China’s financial services that have taken the country by storm: Chinese millennials are borrowing excessive amounts of money and exchanging naked photos as collateral.

ABC reports that LexinFintech Holdings Ltd.’s e-commerce platform Fenqile allows millennials to buy automobiles, iPhones, jewelry, and even a wide variety of snacks all on credit with payback installments.

For example, a box of Oreo biscuits can be acquired for 50 yuan ($10) and paid back in monthly installments of 2.07 yuan ($0.41) over three years. Customers of the microloan website can expect annual interest rates of over 20% (advice: don’t try this at home).

Dorrit Chen, Euromonitor International’s Consumer Finance analyst in China said millennials spend much differently than their parents. While their parents saved, millennials prefer the buy-now-pay-later scheme. “This trend is not only happening in metropolitans, but also [being taken up by] young generations from small towns,” Chen said.

“Ant Check Later — the [loan service] affiliate of Alibaba — as one of the most popular online credit service providers is a case in point,” Chen added. “[It] offers credit from 500 yuan ($100) to 50,000 yuan ($10,000) based on big data analysis from their Alipay account history.”

But what is most surprising, or rather alarming, is that according to ABC some of these microloan websites use “nudie selfies” as loan collateral. A 10 gigabytes batch of naked selfies of Chinese college students was recently leaked online.

These pictures of 161 female students showed their naked bodies while holding government photo IDs. It was alleged that an illegal microloan website had asked for the images to secure payday loans.

Many of the victims were young female college students, many from China’s rural, impoverished regions. 

Some of these lenders used WeChat or QQ to target their victims. The 161 college students “borrowed between  $1,000 to $2,000 with interest rates up to 30%. The victims were threatened to leak the naked photos to their friends and family if they did not repay the loan,” said ABC. And even more shocking, is that some of these millennials were sent into the sex industry to repay their debts. 

China’s Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission referenced one case where Bing Chen, a resident in eastern Nanjing city, received a nude photo of his daughter, Xue Chen, via a text message from an illegal lender.

Xue Chen reportedly sent several nude pictures to the lender to receive a 4,000 yuan loan ($800), which jumped to 100,000 yuan ($20,000) in under six months, according to the Commission.

During that period, Xue Chen was forced to send more nudes photos and even videos to extend the due date of her repayment. 

The Commission started cracking down on “naked loan services” in late 2016. The situation has improved, as China’s financial regulators have enforced new laws that have shut down many illegal microloan websites, but many more remain as there will always be demand for loans in China and if desperate enough, people will do anything to get the needed funds.

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