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Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

On Friday, President Trump signed the omnibus spending bill for 2018. The $1.3 trillion bill was so monstrous that it would have made the biggest spender in the Obama Administration blush. The image of leading Congressional Democrats Pelosi and Schumer grinning and gloating over getting everything they wanted — and then some — will likely come back to haunt Republicans at the midterm elections. If so, they will deserve it.

Even President Trump admitted the bill was horrible. As he said in the signing ceremony, “there are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced — if we want to build our military…”

This is why I often say: forget about needing a third political party – we need a second political party!

Trump is admitting that to fuel the warfare state and enrich the military-industrial complex, it was necessary to dump endless tax dollars into the welfare state.

But no one “forced” President Trump to sign the bill. His party controls both houses of Congress. He knows that no one in Washington cares about deficits so he was more than willing to spread some Fed-created money at home to get his massive war spending boost.

And about the militarism funded by the bill? Defense Secretary James Mattis said at the same press conference that, “As the President noted, today we received the largest military budget in history, reversing many years of decline and unpredictable funding.”

He’s right and wrong at the same time. Yes it is another big increase in military spending. In fact the US continues to spend more than at least the next seven or so largest countries combined. But his statement is misleading. Where are these several years of decline? Did we somehow miss a massive reduction in military spending under President Obama? Did the last Administration close the thousands of military bases in more than 150 countries while we weren’t looking?

Of course not.

On militarism, the Obama Administration was just an extension of the Bush Administration, which was an extension of the militarism of the Clinton Administration. And so on. The military-industrial complex continues to generate record profits from fictitious enemies. The mainstream media continues to play the game, amplifying the war propaganda produced by the think tanks, which are funded by the big defense contractors.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is conspiracy fact. Enemies must be created to keep Washington rich, even as the rest of the country suffers from the destruction of the dollar. That is why the neocons continue to do very well in this Administration.

While Trump and Mattis were celebrating big military spending increases, the president announced that John Bolton, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war debacle, would become his national security advisor. As former CIA analyst Paul Pillar has written, this is a man who, while at the State Department, demanded that intelligence analysts reach pre-determined conclusions about Iraq and WMDs. He cooked the books for war.

Bolton is on the record calling for war with Iran, North Korea, even Cuba! His return to a senior position in government is a return to the unconstitutional, immoral, and failed policies of pre-emptive war.

Make no mistake: the neocons are back and looking for another war. They’ve got the president’s ear. Iran? North Korea? Russia? China? Who’s next for the warmongers?

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US economic growth expectations have slipped dramatically throughout Q1 as weaker-than-expected (real) macro data has spoiled the party (along with rising geopolitical risk). However, surveys of economic hope are hyped up on goldilocks-like hype – to an extent we have never seen before… ever.

As BofAML’s latest report shows, based on economic survey data, US economic growth should be (and should have been) up near 7%… a far cry from ‘reality’…

 

And perhaps even more worrisome is BofAML’s macro model divergence from the ‘micro’-economic surge in company’s earnings expectations (think tax cuts)…

In other words, profit bulls are now massively dependent on a sharp snapback in US GDP growth in Q2… just as the treade wars are hotting up.

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Dunno Why There’s No Sun Up in the Sky

Newsflash: President Donald J. Trump had sex with a whore twelve years ago…

Let that sink into your limbic lobes, you poor, opiated, Facebook-addled, morbidly-obese, fly-over nation of lumbering, deplorable, gun-gripping, Jesus-haunted voters. A hoor! Do you hear?

Wait a minute, you say. Stormy Daniels is no such thing, She’s an actress in, and director of, adult films, an auteur, if you like, at least a sex worker, toiling in the rolling mills of eros, sweating and grunting as much as any Mahoning Valley steel worker, or hood ornament buffer on the Tesla assembly line. And anyway, three times over the years she denied having sex with that man, at least once in writing, though last night on CBS’s Sixty Minutes she stated that she actually did have sex with the Golden Golem of Greatness.

In which case, she may be some kind of a lyin’ hoor… or savior of a nation yearning to cast off the loathsome rule of this odious president-by-mistake.

The Sixty Minutes make-up and costume crew knocked themselves out coming up with her on-camera look Sunday night: WalMart Shopper.

That reddish blouse, for instance, which did not display Stormy’s… er… assets in the usual way (i.e., an enticing fleshy slot descending into deep milky realms of mystery), but just innocently swimming around in there like a couple of frolicking dolphins confined in an above-the-ground backyard pool. Who wouldn’t want to jump in and swim with them?

Maybe not the undistractible Anderson Cooper, who did ferret out many interesting particulars of that one romantic encounter: Stormy accepted Trump’s invitation for dinner… in his hotel suite. Just the two of them, ahem. They watched a TV show about sharks. It apparently lacked aphrodisiac punch. So he showed her a magazine with his picture on the cover, perhaps to get the point across that he was a really important person in case she didn’t already know. She said she ought to take it and spank him with it. He concurred, dropped trou, and presented the rear of his tighty-whitey small-clothes to facilitate that proposal. After that ice-breaker, he said, “I really like you!” and “You remind me of my daughter” — instantly be-sliming the proceedings with overtones of incest. Stormy went to the bathroom and emerged to find Trump perched on the bed. “Here we go,” the thought popped into her head, she says.

But she didn’t say “no.” After all, was this performance that much different from the… I dunno, just guessing… 1043 previous scenes with co-stars she had enacted amorous relations with on-camera? Surely not all of them were husband-material, or crushes.

Oh, she didn’t ask him to wear a condom, and he didn’t gallantly volunteer to do so. (A love-child was not conceived.) At some point in the proceedings, Trump dangled the possibility of a role on his fabulous TV show, Celebrity Apprentice. But I suppose that was just the cherry-on-top of a romantic confection baked in the oven of America’s great dream industry. As it happened, Stormy didn’t get on the show. I suspect she didn’t try hard enough.

And now, as the cartoon Puritans of America’s great judgment industry say, there is hell to pay.

Stormy received a large-ish check for $130,000 from an attorney associated with Mr. Trump.

It is proposed by legal scholars at Anderson Cooper’s home-base, CNN, that this might have constituted an illegal campaign contribution, and is surely something that must be brought to the attention of Robert Mueller, special prosecutor for the Russia collusion case. That will be an interesting hook-up, all right. I have to say, Mr. Mueller would probably benefit from a spanking with the Penn Law Review, and who knows what side benefits might accrue from the encounter. Perhaps Stormy will wear a pair of Russian army tactical Spetsnaz boots instead of those four-inch heels and a Russian bearskin hat. I’d pay to see a film of that!

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

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Between now and John Bolton taking up his post as Trump’s new national security adviser, set to happen April 9, there will no doubt continue to be an avalanche of testimony coming out of US and foreign officials highlighting the crazed and hawkish actions he’s taken in the past.

And Bolton seems fully aware of this, as he told Fox News last week in an attempt to perhaps soften his image as the preeminent beltway hawk on Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria: “Look, I have my views, I’m sure I’ll have a chance to articulate them to the president… If the government can’t have a free interchange of ideas among the president’s advisors, then I think the president is not well served.”

Yet Bolton’s past actions in government suggest that instead of merely “articulating” his views he’s willing to break ranks to get things done on his terms, even reaching out to allied foreign officials to push for preemptive strikes on America’s enemies. 

One notable example of this was revealed in bombshell testimony over the weekend issued by a former Israeli defense minister (2002-2006) and deputy prime minister (2006-2009) who had extensive interaction with Bolton when he was ambassador to the UN under the Bush administration.

According to the Times of Israel, Bolton pushed then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz to attack Iran even though no discernible threat was presented by Iran. As the Times reports:

A former Israeli defense minister and chief of staff said Sunday that John Bolton, US  President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser, once pushed him to order airstrikes against Iran.

“I know John Bolton from when he was the US ambassador to the UN. He tried to convince me that Israel needs to attack Iran,” Shaul Mofaz told a Jerusalem conference held by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

“I don’t think this is a smart move—not on the part of the Americans today or anyone else until the threat is real,” he added.

Ironically Mofaz himself – in line with the Israeli defense establishment – takes a generally hawkish position on Iran, as he told the Jerusalem conference during the same speech, “the Iranian threat is very significant to Israel’s security… It is impossible to guarantee a future for the children of Israel if Iran has a nuclear weapon.” And yet he recognized Bolton’s proposal as not “a smart move” as the existential threat level from Iran wasn’t “real”.

In prior reporting, the Times of Israel has noted that while outside of government Bolton wasn’t shy about expressing his desire that Israel should bomb Iran:

Bolton, who’s been a resident at the conservative American Enterprise Institute since he left the Bush administration, has advocated for Israel bombing Iran to curtail its nuclear ambitions.

“Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed,” he wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times in May 2015. “Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

This accurately highlights something that shouldn’t be forgotten amidst the current national flurry of Bolton commentary: on Iran and other so-called “threats” like Syria and Russia, Bolton speaks from within the very heart of the national security establishment. 

A recent Al-Jazeera op-ed articulates the problem of seeing Bolton as in truth some kind of exceptionally hawkish D.C. outlier:

Mr Bolton, however, is only a by-product of a general policy environment in Washington continually primed to directly confront Iran. Such a policy may not regularly appear overt, but it always seems to lie in waiting. As many will correctly worry that Mr Bolton’s appointment raises the likelihood of war with another Middle Eastern country, of equal concern should be his ability to draw upon a robust think-tank, policy and lobbying complex heavily populated with ideas advocating opposition to Iran, designating it as the premier security threat to a stable Middle East, and well-disposed to grease the wheels of confrontation.

It should be remembered, for example, that the Iran nuclear deal was struck under the Obama administration at the very moment the CIA and Pentagon under Obama were arming Sunni jihadists in Syria in order to wage proxy war against pro-Iran and regional Shia interests.

As one as one formerly secret US intelligence memo spelled out, US sponsored proxy war was geared in the long term toward rolling back “the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” This had a broad following within the beltway consensus – a consensus within which full and overt regime change in Tehran is hardly a fringe or outlier position. 

Iran, for its part, has stayed relatively quiet regarding Trump’s appointing Bolton as national security adviser. One high official in Iranian parliament called the move “a matter of shame” while highlighting Bolton’s closeness to the Iran opposition group in exile, Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK) – considered by Iran and many other countries (and not long ago by the US State Dept.) as a terror organization.

But Bolton is not alone here either as the MEK has for years received broad financial and political support from within the Washington mainstream, with dozens of sitting Congressmen and notable US politicians having attended their international conferences on an annual basis. 

Thus Bolton and others like him are a logical consequence of the system, and certainly don’t stand in opposition to it. As the latest testimony from a former Israeli defense chief confirms, Bolton was urging Israel to accomplish the neocons’ dirty work in bombing Tehran. This trend really constitutes nothing new, but sadly is more in line with the norm.

* * *

Interestingly (and surprisingly refreshing) even Foreign Policy magazine – in a rare moment of clarity from the deep within the establishment – recognizes the uncomfortable fact of Bolton’s quite “mainstream” and “acceptable” views:

Instead, whether Trump knows it or not, putting Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel in key positions looks more like a return to “Cheneyism,” by which I mean a foreign policy that inflates threats, dismisses serious diplomacy, thinks allies are mostly a burden, is contemptuous of institutions, believes that the United States is so powerful that it can just issue ultimatums and expect others to cave, and believes that a lot of thorny foreign-policy problems can be solved by just blowing something up… [sound familiar to basically all mainstream foreign policy-related public discourse???]

* * *

…Thus, the real lesson of the Bolton appointment has less to do with Bolton himself and more about what it says about the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. You’re undoubtedly going to read a lot of heartfelt, knickers-in-a-twist commentaries in the next few weeks about the dangers of appointing a wild-eyed radical to such a sensitive position, but the plain fact is that Bolton is not really an outlier within the U.S. foreign-policy community.

It’s not like Trump just appointed Medea Benjamin (from the left) or Rand Paul (from the right) or even an experienced and knowledgeable contrarian such as Charles W. Freeman Jr. or Andrew Bacevich. Instead, he appointed someone with decidedly hawkish views but who is still within the “acceptable” consensus in Washington.

Look at Bolton’s pedigree and career. He’s a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School. He worked at Covington & Burling, a venerable D.C. law firm where former Secretary of State Dean Acheson also worked. He has been a senior fellow for years at the conservative but mainstream American Enterprise Institute. He writes frequently for obscure, wild-and-crazy, “radical” publications including, er … the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and even Foreign Policy. Is this your idea of a “fringe” figure?

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Small Caps and Dow Transports remain laggards as The Dow leads today’s rebound – up 550 points from Friday’s close.

The S&P and Nasdaq have just scrambled back to unchanged from Thursday’s close…

What happens next?

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As we detailed previously, China’s yuan-denominated crude oil futures launched overnight in Shanghai with 62,500 contracts traded in aggregate, meaning over 62 million barrels of oil changed hands for a notional volume around 27 billion yuan (over $4 billion).

As OilPrice.com’s Tsvetana Paraskova notes, Glencore, Trafigura, and Freepoint Commodities were among the first to buy the new contract, Reuters reports.

After an initial surge in volume that outpaced overnight transactions in global benchmark Brent crude in London, trading tapered off toward the end of the session

Within minutes of the launch, the price had gone up to almost US$70.85 (447 yuan) from a starting price of US$69.94 (440.4 yuan) per barrel. The overall price jump for the short trading session came in at 3.92 percent.

Many awaited the launch eagerly, seeking to tap China’s bustling commodity markets, although doubts remain whether the Shanghai futures contract will be able to become another international oil benchmark. These doubts center on the fact that China is not a market economy, and the government is quick to interfere in the workings of the local commodity markets on any suspicion of a bubble coming.

To prevent such a bubble in oil, the authorities made sure the contract will trade within a set band of 5 percent on either side, with 10 percent on either side for the first trading day. Margin has been set at 7 percent. Storage costs for the crude are higher than the international average in hopes of discouraging speculators.

As a result of these tight reins on the new market segment, some analysts believe international investors would be discouraged to tap the Shanghai oil futures. If the first day of trading is any indication, however, this is not the case, at least not for large commodity trading firms.

While it remains to be seen whether they’re in it for the long haul, the participation of Glencore, Trafigura and other foreign investors in the contract’s debut is a boon.

On the other hand, China is not leaving everything to market forces.

One energy consultant told Reuters that:

“The government (in Beijing) seems determined to support it, and I hear a number of firms are being asked or pressured to trade on it, which could help.”

PetroChina and Sinopec are seen as instrumental in providing long-term liquidity for the new market as well.

Additionally, Bloomberg reports that contract grades in Shanghai crude oil futures exchange could account for around 200 billion yuan in trades, based on China’s current import volumes, helping the nation in its efforts to internationalize its currency, Wood Mackenzie’s research director Sushant Gupta says in an emailed note.

Woodmac expects China’s crude import requirements to grow by ~2.1m b/d from 2017 to 2023, noting that incremental oil-requirement growth in China is much larger than any other country – meaning China would want to play a more active role in influencing the price of crude oil.

Trades on Shanghai International Energy Exchange, also known as INE, will enable China’s crude-buying patterns to become more transparent to the world in the longer term, and will reflect China’s crude supply-demand dynamic, becoming a reference for China’s crude market (which is likely to have a bigger influence on global prices).

Woodmac expects INE prices to influence Basrah Light, Oman prices as a start as the grades account for a significant portion of contract volumes. China imports ~600k b/d of Oman crude which is large enough to start influencing Oman prices, which are retroactively set by the Oman Ministry of Oil and Gas.

Interestingly, as the PetroYuan started trading, so offshore yuan began to rally and has extended those gains today…

As we most recently noted, after numerous “false starts” over the last decade,  the “petroyuan” is now real and China will set out to challenge the “petrodollar” for dominance. Adam Levinson, managing partner and chief investment officer at hedge fund manager Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), already warned last year that China launching a yuan-denominated oil futures contract will shock those investors who have not been paying attention.

This could be a death blow for an already weakening U.S. dollar, and the rise of the yuan as the dominant world currency.

But this isn’t just some slow, news day “fad” that will fizzle in a few days.

A Warning for Investors Since 2015

Back in 2015, the first of a number of strikes against the petrodollar was dealt by China. Gazprom Neft, the third-largest oil producer in Russia, decided to move away from the dollar and towards the yuan and other Asian currencies.

Iran followed suit the same year, using the yuan with a host of other foreign currencies in trade, including Iranian oil.

During the same year China also developed its Silk Road, while the yuan was beginning to establish more dominance in the European markets.

But the U.S. petrodollar still had a fighting chance in 2015 because China’s oil imports were all over the place. Back then, Nick Cunningham of OilPrice.com wrote…

Despite accounting for much of the world’s growth in demand in the 21st Century, China’s oil imports have been all over the map in recent months. In April, China imported 7.4 million barrels per day, a record high and enough to make it the world’s largest oil importer. But a month later, imports plummeted to just 5.5 million barrels per day.

That problem has since gone away, signaling China’s rise to oil dominance…

The Slippery Slope to the Petroyuan Begins Here

The petrodollar is backed by Treasuries, so it can help fuel U.S. deficit spending. Take that away, and the U.S. is in trouble.

It looks like that time has come…

A death blow that began in 2015 hit again in 2017 when China became the world’s largest consumer of imported crude…

Now that China is the world’s leading consumer of oil, Beijing can exert some real leverage over Saudi Arabia to pay for crude in yuan. It’s suspected that this is what’s motivating Chinese officials to make a full-fledged effort to renegotiate their trade deal.

So fast-forward to now, and the final blow to the petrodollar could happen starting today. We hinted at this possibility back in September 2017…

With major oil exporters finally having a viable way to circumvent the petrodollar system, the U.S. economy could soon encounter severely troubled waters.

First of all, the dollar’s value depends massively on its use as an oil trade vehicle. When that goes away, we will likely see a strong and steady decline in the dollar’s value.

Once the oil markets are upended, the yuan has an opportunity to become the dominant world currency overall. This will further weaken the dollar.

The Petrodollar’s Downfall Could be a Lift for Gold

Amongst all the trouble ahead for the dollar, there are some good news too. The U.S. might have ditched the gold standard in the 1970’s, but with gold making a return to world headlines… we could see a resurgence.

For the first time since our nation abandoned the gold standard decades ago, physical gold is being reintroduced to the global monetary system in a major way. That alone is incredibly good news for gold owners.

A reintroduction of gold to the global economy could result in a notable rise in gold prices. It’s safe to assume exporters are more likely to choose a gold-backed financial instrument over one created out of thin air any day of the week.

Soon after, we could see more and more nations jump on the bandwagon, resulting in a substantial rise in gold prices.

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Countries around the world have announced that they would expel Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with the UK, but now the Queen’s government is taking things one step further:

It’s preparing to enforce a newly passed law that will allow the government to confiscate or freeze any Russian capital “of dubious origin” – a measure clearly intended to permit a crackdown on Russian oligarchs living in London. 

According to Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, warrants for the seizure of Russian capital and assets of doubtful origin have already been issued, according to Sputnik News. The goal is to ensure that any property attained by unknown means is registered, according to the law. Williams said during his speech that Russia’s goal was to divide Europe, but that actions of solidarity by Estonia and other European countries have shown “that’s not possible.”

Wilson promised that the government would work diligently during the coming days and weeks until this problem is solved. Relations between the two countries have markedly worsened since the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia earlier this month. Prime Minister Theresa May has said she’s doubtful Skripal will recover – and that more than 100 bystanders have sought medical treatment.

The UK has said Russia is the only plausible suspect thanks to the use of Novichok, a nerve agent that was purportedly developed by the Soviet Union.

The Russian side has denied all the accusations and suggested participating jointly in the investigation. However, Moscow’s request for samples was ignored. Moscow in turn also expelled 23 UK diplomats and ordered the British Council to stop its activities in Russia in response to London’s move.

Williamson has been a fan of bellicose language toward Russia in the wake of the attack.

He famously said earlier this month that Russia “should go away and shut up” while responding to a question about Moscow’s statements that it would expel British diplomats (which it did), as RT notes.

Carrying out such a crackdown would be one way to show that the UK government is interested not only in the perfunctory expulsion of diplomats, but also the in making life more difficult for some Russian oligarchs and other businessmen who call London home.

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