Category: zerohedge

A day after grabbing headlines with his grandstanding during Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep Ted Lieu ( U.S. Representative for California’s 33rd congressional district since 2015) went on CNN for victory tour and exposed the reality of the Democratic Party’s deep desire to ‘amend’ the First Amendment.

During yesterday’s hearing Lieu quoted Google searches of Republican congressmen Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Steve King of Iowa in an attempt to ‘prove’ that conservative complaints that Google is biased against conservatives are false…

Having scored ‘1’ for the resistance, Lieu was quick to expand on his 15 minutes of fame and joined host Brianna Keilar on CNN. After congratulating Lieu for his “clever” move and pressed him, and his Democratic colleagues, to ask the Google CEO about how it and other tech companies can work to prevent the spread of conspiracy theories and fake news more broadly.

Lieu stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park:

“It’s a very good point you make,” Lieu said. “I would love if I could have more than five minutes to question witnesses. Unfortunately, I don’t get that opportunity. However, I would love to be able to regulate the content of speech.”

Wait what? Do go on…

“The First Amendment prevents me from doing so, and that’s simply a function of the First Amendment, but I think over the long run, it’s better the government does not regulate the content of speech.“

Watch the full clip here:

So – there is First Amendment, which seems to be very frustrating to the Democrats. And presumably, when Lieu says “over the long run,” he seems to imply that “in the short-run” – perhaps while President Trump is in office, or any conservative American remains alive, government limits on free speech are more than acceptable?

 

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Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com ,

Financial and precious metals expert Egon von Greyerz (EvG) says don’t expect the global financial situation to get better anytime soon.

EvG says, “You know what the politicians are doing now? Theresa May is my best example. These politicians are just running around posing and acting, but they are not achieving anything, and they are not achieving anything because the world is in a mess…”

“What we are seeing the beginning of is the decline of the western world economy, which means the whole world economy…

There is no use in putting a time period on it, that it’s going to happen this year or next year. The trend is clear. We know that the world economy is in a mess. It’s going to decline, and in my view, it’s going to be a rapid decline…

Gold will reflect all of this, and currencies will be totally debased…

You don’t need a lot, you might only need another few snowflakes to trigger this avalanche. It could come in a month or in three months time because the system is a fake system…

I count $2 quadrillion in money. If you add debt, unfunded liabilities and the risk of derivatives, you come up to $2 quadrillion of debt and liabilities. The global GDP is $70 trillion…So, you are talking about 30 times global GDP.”

What could go wrong? EvG says, “You don’t need much to go wrong. It will happen. They have no remedy anymore…”

“2007 to 2009, I have said many times that was a rehearsal. The real thing is coming now or in the next few years, and no money printing will ever stop it. They will try, but they will fail. This is why you will get the depressionary hyperinflation, and when that fails you get the implosion of the system. All values will shrink to very low numbers, all assets and debts will shrink together. That is the longer term play. It’s not going to be nice for the world. It’s going to be horrible for the world.”

In closing, EvG says, “Because of the artificial control of the system, the cycles becomes ten times or a hundred times bigger than they would have been by natural forces…”

“We have had a hundred years of excesses in the world and artificial wealth creation. Now, in the coming years, we will have a very long period of the opposite. Wealth will disappear. A lot of people will suffer, and, sadly, there will be famine. There will be misery. The world has gone through this before, but this will be bigger than it ever has been. The world will survive this, but there will be a lot of suffering when this implodes…

The fear hasn’t started yet, but it will, and then there will be a rush into gold and silver. Our clients are increasing their positions…

In my view, 25% of total net worth is the minimum (to invest in gold and silver), and, personally, I would not have any major assets in the bank because I don’t think the banking system will survive. If it survives, it will not be in its present form. Stocks, in relation to gold, will go down 90% to 95%. They went down 90% in 1929 to 1932…

There will be the most massive wealth destruction ever.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Egon von Greyerz of GoldSwitzerland.com.

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As we’ve pointed out time and time again, the notion that going to college guarantees a higher paying job and a better standard of living is a myth (‘millennial Congresswoman’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez effectively embodies this myth; she worked as a bartender before launching her upset primary campaign, despite graduating with a degree in economics from Boston University, and has spoken about feeling directionless after graduating with a mountain of student debt).

Generally speaking, data suggests that college graduates earn higher incomes, face lower unemployment and happier and healthier than their peers who don’t have a degree. But these general figures mask the fact that millions of degree holders are defaulting on their student loans (one study published in August said 30% of student loans are in their default, or in arrears) and also struggling with underemployment or being stuck working jobs that don’t require a college degree. One million Americans default on their student loans every year. And if defaults continue at their current pace, roughly 40% of borrowers will have defaulted by 2023.

With so many flashing red warning signs, the fact that the risks posed by this teetering pile of $1.4 trillion in debt have received only glancing coverage in the financial press is astounding. Coverage of the rising cost of higher education always carefully asserts the old conventional wisdom – that, even with the debt, the underemployment and their resulting stressors (reams of data suggest that American millennials are delaying marriage, family formation and buying a home, largely because of their student loan debt), young Americans are still better off with a degree than without one.

Which is why it was almost refreshing to see the Wall Street Journal publish a story deconstructing these myths. A story that acknowledged – in its opening paragraphs, no less – that “college graduates can end up worse off than people who haven’t gone to college at all.”

In fact, 32% of college grads (a group that, we imagine, includes a large number of gender studies majors) end up with jobs that don’t require a degree 10 years after graduation.

But students who start college, but never finish, are worse off than their peers who earn their degrees (regardless of how long it took to finish). But how many students end up in this predicament? A surprising number, as it turns out. For every 100 students who enroll in university, 40 will never finish. Of these 40, 32 will still need to pay off student loans. Roughly 10 of these 32 – roughly 30% – will eventually default. That’s compared with 5 out of 42 graduates who carry loans.

As the chart below shows, students with “some college” struggle with unemployment rates that are nearly as high as students with only a high school degree.

Their earnings potential is also far closer to those with only a high school diploma than students who finish college.

The average student loan burden for Americans has nearly doubled over the past 20 years.

To sum up, while a college degree can bestow higher earning capabilities, students shouldn’t enroll without a clear plan for how they’re going to make a living post-grad.

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Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The elites’ clever exploitation of politically correct cover stories has enthralled the comatose, uncritical Left, but not those who see their living standards in a free-fall.

A family member who has lived in France for decades summarized the source of the gilets jaunes protests in one sentence: “The government stopped listening to the people 20 years ago. It would be difficult to deny the generalization of this: many if not most governments stopped listening to their people decades ago, preferring instead to listen to financial and political elites and entrenched cultural elites who view commoners with disdain.

Legions of commentators are weighing in on the economic and cultural sources of France’s distemper. Many have characterized the protests as working class, broadly speaking, the multitudes who have seen an erosion in the purchasing power of their wages or pensions while France’s financial, political and cultural elites have feasted on whatever meager gains the French economy has registered in the past 20 years.

The protesters rightly perceive that they are politically invisible: the ruling class, regardless of its ideological flavor, doesn’t believe it needs the support of the I>politically invisible to rule as it sees fit. The ruling class has counted on the cultural elites to marginalize and suppress the politically invisible by dismissing any working-class dissent as racist, fascist, nationalistic and other words expressly intended to push dissent into the political wilderness.

The cultural elites reckoned their ceaseless depiction of working-class dissent as racist-fascist populism would continue marginalizing the commoners, but the worm has turned: the financially, politically and culturally marginalized classes are fed up.

Despite the usual squabbles between factions, the ruling class has long been united behind a simple tool of control: buy complicity with government benefits. Should dissent boil up in a broad-based movement, the solution is buy the protesters off with some new state subsidy or benefit.

This is one of the essential dynamics of Neofeudalism which are:

1. Debt penury and wage-slave loyalty to the New Nobility that owns the debt.

2. The financial-political nobility maximize their skim and justify this exploitation with airy assurances to the politically impotent debt-serfs that this systemic predation magically offers up the best possible outcome for the peasantry.

3. State benefits are used as bribes to buy the complicity and passivity of the wage-slave debt-serfs.

4. The New Nobility offer politically correct cover stories for their exploitation and predation.

Now that this strategy has failed to silence gilets jaunes, France’s ruling class realizes the situation is serious. And as we all know, the ruling class everywhere follows this dictum: when it gets serious, you have to lie.

The lies are now continuous, hence the explosion of elite concern over fake news. The spark that lit the fuse of the current protests was a lie, of course; the fuel tax wasn’t intended to “save the planet”, it was intended to raise revenue so the elites could continue to extract their skim without endangering the economic order.

The elites’ clever exploitation of politically correct cover stories has enthralled the comatose, uncritical Left, but not those who see their living standards in a free-fall.

“We’re fine with being exploited serfs because our Nobility uses politically-correct phrases in public…”

*  *  *

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One of the key concerns voiced by finance professionals, politicians and rates traders over the past year, has been the gradual drop in foreigners as a percentage of the total universe of US Treasury buyers, which peaked earlier this decade and has since declined to just below 40% of the total public US debt outstanding as shown in the chart below.

And with the Fed’s treasury purchases out of the picture for the past three years, there was growing concern whether domestic buyers, and specifically US householders, would step up – whether directly or indirectly – and purchase US Treasurys.

It appears the answer is yes, because as the latest Fed Flows of Funds report revealed “mom and pop” have been aggressively bought Uncle Sam’s debt; and with yields rising and offering a viable alternative to the S&P’s dividend yield, look for this trend to continue, even if higher yields will ultimately result in even greater paper losses and negative equity for the Federal Reserve.

But in an even more memorable development, as of last week, total Household investment in US Treasury bonds jumped to a record $2.28 trillion in the third quarter, for the first time since 2010 surpassing the Fed’s own Treasury holdings of $2.24 trillion.

On the surface this is good news as it means that thanks to higher rates, ordinary individuals are attracted by yields that climbed as much as 83bps this year, and serve – for now – as a viable alternative to either foreign buyers or the Fed’s QE at a time when US deficits are only expected to keep growing for the near and not so near future.

The bad news? The accelerating purchases of US debt may also be the latest signal that investors are concerned U.S. economic growth is going to slow, and are betting on a return of lower yields and therefore, higher bond prices.

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

President Donald Trump commented on the possibility of impeachment on Tuesday waiving any concern at all.  He added that he believes “the people would revolt” if he is impeached.

During a White House interview with Reuters, which was Trump’s first since federal prosecutors in New York filed a sentencing memo for Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, he commented about the possibility of impeachment.

 “It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” said Trump. 

“I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened,” he said.

Prosecutors are still on their Russian election meddling witch hunt, and many Democrats believe that with control of the House of Representative in January will come an opportunity to impeach Trump. Federal prosecutors in New York said last week that Trump directed Cohen to make six-figure payments to two women so they would not discuss their alleged affairs with the candidate ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to Reuters.

[Prosecuters] said the payments violated laws that stipulate that campaign contributions, defined as things of value given to a campaign to influence an election, must be disclosed, and limited to $2,700 per person.

Democrats said such a campaign law violation would be an impeachable offense, although senior party leaders in Congress have questioned whether it is a serious enough crime to warrant politically charged impeachment proceedings. –Reuters

Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani also declared in August that the “American people would revolt” against impeachment.

“President Trump is completely cleared,” Giuliani said.

“You’d only impeach him for political reasons.”

Even though dedicated democrats believe Trump is impeachable, they have an uphill battle to actually convince a Republican-held Senate after the newly elected political elitists take control. Impeachment requires a simple majority to pass the House of Representatives, where Democrats will take control in January. But the removal of the president from office further requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, where Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a majority still.

Investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and federal prosecutors in New York have been escalating seemingly since the 2018 midterm elections. Documents have allegedly all but named Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator who helped deceive American voters during the 2016 presidential election.

But let’s be fair: every single politician ever elected has deceived voters. It’s the only way to gain political power.  If politicians were honest and came right out and told voters the truth, it would sound more like this:

“We’ll control every aspect of your life and take what little freedom you have left and steal your money to make it happen!”

And if they did that, the government wouldn’t exist.

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Harvard University’s endowment (valued at $39 billion as of 2018) is the largest academic endowment in the world. The private investment company has been quietly snapping up farmland and related water rights to properties located in the California region.

Instead of purchasing the land in Harvard Management Company, Inc.’s own name, asset managers secretly formed a wholly owned subsidiary – called Brodiaea, which was the vehicle to purchase more than a dozen investments in California vineyards over the last six years.

Harvard formed Brodiaea in 2012, and by 2015 the company had already acquired 10,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties for roughly $60 million, according to Reuters.

In April, the Harvard Crimson said that Brodiaea had continued to acquire California vineyards, especially ones sitting on massive aquifers.

There are no tourist nor visitors allowed on many of the vineyards owned by Harvard, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, adding that the endowment is acquiring rights to large water sources in the arid Central Coast region, all under the name of Brodiaea, which is masked as a grape-growing business.

Drought has plagued much the Central Coast in recent years, hitting the agriculture industry the hardest.

“Drought has The Central Coast experienced drought conditions for 30% of the past two decades, compared with 14% of the prior 100 years, a 2015 study found. Droughts have led to spikes in withdrawals from aquifers, many of which aren’t recharging as much during rainy season,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University professor.

The Journal said the endowment now values its vineyards at $305 million, up 300% from 2013, while most of its other natural-resources investments have performed poorly.

Harvard’s green thumb dates back to 2012, when Matt Turrentine and James Ontiveros, local vineyard managers, established an agricultural investment advisory firm named Grapevine Capital Partners LLC. and pitched the idea of water rights to Harvard. As history shows, the endowment was all about plundering natural resources.

Grapevine Capital “identified an area where the groundwater is very good, and it’s outside the red zone,” said Tony Correia, an agricultural-land appraiser specializing in vineyards.

Wine-industry analyst Rusty Gaffney wrote in 2015 that Mr. Ontiveros had spoken to him of the land Grapevine helped Harvard acquire, telling him “the region had sufficient underground water aquifers to be successfully farmed despite recent climate changes and drought conditions.”

In 2016, Brodiaea hired drilling companies to drill 12 wells on its Cuyama Valley property. When the wells were completed, the vineyard opened, pumping up aquifer water to feed the plants.

Cindy Steinbeck, a vineyard owner whose family had grown grapes in the area for decades. Wrote to Harvard in March 2016 saying its use of mysterious companies “seems designed to obfuscate Harvard’s activities in the area.”

“Such an investment does not make economic sense,” she wrote, regarding massive premiums, Harvard was paying for the land, “if your intent is simply to grow and sell grapes. It would, however, make perfect sense if the investment wasn’t for farming but rather for the brokering of water.”

A Harvard official responded that Brodiaea is “purely agricultural in nature” and that the vineyards prioritized water conservation.

The Journal notes that some local farmers are not concerned about Harvard’s purchases of vineyards, others, however, express concern that the aquifers will be used to benefit landowners who are based on the other side of the country. 

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Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The news still isn’t the news, and I’m getting afraid it never will be again, because ‘not the news’ just simply sells so much better than plain old real events…

Maria Butina suddenly popped back into the public eye, because she was either charged with something or confessed to it. And I’m thinking, excuse me, but that poor girl has been kept in isolation for how long now? And for what reason exactly?

I vividly remember thinking that when she first became ‘news’ for ‘infiltrating’ the NRA, for which there were plenty cute pictures taken, I remember thinking she would have been 22 or 23 years old when as a super- devious Russian redhead she allegedly penetrated the trillion dollar NRA, and the trillion dollar Republican Party, and the Trump campaign, which according to some people is now worth negative $1 trillion.

If any of said organizations allow for a 22-year old to take all of their most secret and damning secrets and send them to her alleged puppet master Vladimir Vladimirovich, I say they deserve everything they’re getting. But it IS the sort of thing that if you want to report it like it’s actual news, you sure need to be convincing, you need proof, that sort of thing, not the anti-Putin innuendo US media rely on as their main standard today. Butina with no proof is just a nice by now 30-year old girl who happens to be Russian.

As for the Trump campaign having a negative $1 trillion value, I derive that from all the people who’ve once again, after a handful Mueller tidbits, started saying the Donald will be impeached any moment now, any many around him will go to jail for decades. You know, I can read too, and that’s not what I see. Much of what I see comes down to the reasoning that Trump has not yet been impeached as President because .. he is the President.

Yes, that is pretty funny, but it’s not humor beyond my abilities, and I’m not a comedian by trade. We’re still, even after those Mueller bits, stuck with Papadopoulos who’s been framed and went to jail for 2 weeks for it (shame on Mueller for that, deep deep shame!), there’s Cohen who lost his tracks in between lying for Trump and lying about Trump, and Manafort, a thirteenth wheel on a wagon of which there are dozens in DC, fixers and handlers.

You tell me why Manafort faces years in jail while Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago. But if you’d actually want to explain, I suggest you prepare well, maybe talk to a few lawyers in the process. Washington attracts shady characters like dung beetles to horse shit and honey bees to Mountain Dew, and only a special counsel would ever think of picking them off one by one if he can’t find any of the actual crimes that he was appointed for to find. Cue: Rahm Emanuel.

Meantime my pal in arms Jim Kunstler thinks Michael Flynn is laying low as Mueller whoops his ass because he can, only to hit back at Mueller as soon as he’s freed from what are at best shaky allegations. Talking to a Russian is not a crime, not even, or even especially, when you’re the security adviser to the next president.

Michael Flynn’s real suspicious job was advising Turkey on security issues, but then that’s not what Mueller targeted him for. So yeah, Let Flynn rise. And once again, don’t let’s forget that he said when the whole circus began, that he saw no way he could defend himself against anything Mueller might have thrown at him, that his entire family was on the verge of bankruptcy.

“But you talked to a Russian!” say the news media. Cue mushroom clouds in the remote background. But don’t you see, Trump is a criminal with decades of crimes under his belt, and all of his family are too! Look, I don’t know these people, and I’m fine not knowing them, not my cup of tea, but how much time did any of them spend behind bars so far?

And now they would have to go to jail just because Donald was elected president and the DOJ appointed a friendly ex-FBO head special counsel on the basis of a dossier paid for by his political opponents? To what extent does that spell justice to you? Yes, feel free to cue Rahm Emanuel again.

See, if certain people can be sent to jail because they rise too high in certain circles that don’t want them to disturb the power inherent in their sphere, while other operatives from the exact same mold though perhaps another political affiliation, are nominated to lofty and lucrative careers and positions, isn’t there something awry?

Are any of them perfectly innocent? Hell no, but them if they were, they wouldn’t be in the positions they’re in, the very positions that allow Robert Mueller to target them. From that point of view, it obvious it’s just a little power game played out in front of your eyes, you who have nothing to do with it but think you’re supposed to have an opinion on it.

Is Donald Trump a worse and bigger criminal than George H.W. Bush was? One half of America can answer that in no time flat. The other is thinking they wouldn’t be so sure. How many people has the Donald condemned to death so far? And he’s already about half way through the time Bush41 spent in the White House.

Perhaps it’s not about who’s a criminal, but about who’s the prosecutor.

And with Mueller’s role in the sordid Whitey Bulger tale, and his even more sordid testimony in the Iraq WMD fantasies that led to millions of legalized murders celebrated as victory by both Washington and the US media, which kettle is blaming which pot here?

But hey, I’m ready to be corrected. And it’s by no means just the US that feels twisted these days, either. How about French president Emmanuel Macron, who hadn’t addressed his people live for 10-12 days as the Yellow Vests protests just got worse and more violent by the day, and then yesterday decided to make his long awaited response to them through a pre-recorded video? Honestly, how far removed from reality can one be?

The only answer Macron has to the thousands of people who want him out, and who have been willing to express that opinion in 4 consecutive weekends, is money. He thinks if he gives them €100 a month extra, and some tax breaks, they’ll let them continue on his little Napoleon trip. Well, if they do, we’ll know who they are. But are they? I don’t think Macron counts on that.

And then, as Macron increasingly retreats into his little palace(s), cue Marie Antoinette, only to communicate with the unwashed masses who want him gone through pre-scripted and recorded promises of crumbs off his table in exchange for no power at all, British PM Theresa May reacts to her latest and ostensibly worst -though it’s hard to keep track- defeat by … fleeing the country.

That’s how its ‘leaders’ rule Europe these days. Angela Merkel says she’s gone, though she wants to be Chancellor until 2021 (that way no-one can hold her responsible for anything), Theresa May hops on a plane to Europe to grovel some hopelessly more in her already defeated stance.

And Macron has his servants shove crumbs off his table, a gesture that still costs him more than everything Salvini and Di Maio wanted to do in Italy which got him whistled down by Brussels. C’mon, who still believes in the EU? Everyone’s running away from it.

If Macron must hide from his own French people, how can he reform the EU? If May must flee the UK and go to the EU to get a Brexit deal, what’s her authority back home where 50% voted against that same EU?

And if Merkel can only remain in charge by relinquishing her power, who exactly’s going to run Europe? It’s kind of like the same question as for the US. Who’s going to run it? Not Trump, if Mueller and the Democrats have any say although they lost the election. Not Hillary, says about everyone else.

We all tend to think that these things are normal and eternal. Just politics. But all the usual suspects appear to be under siege. In Europe, France, UK, Germany are shaking heavily. Italy’s already overboard. That’s the biggest 4 EU members. That’s the EU. No certainties, no future, though the EU itself will never admit it, and instead just push for more EU.

And what’s certain politically in the US anymore? Trump has eviscerated the entire GOP, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The Democrats killed off Bernie Sanders to allow Hillary to continue her dead before arrival power grab. She came she saw she lost.

My point, I think, is that political strongholds are being defeated everywhere at the same time. And when that happens, there’s always a reason for it. I think that reason can be found in the fact that the global economy is rumbling and crumbling as we speak, with politics and economics acting as precursors for one and other.

Like, Macron can only save his political ass by violating the EU budget terms he just chided Italy for. Merkel can only save her legacy by creating a situation she’s no longer responsible for. And Theresa May would be well advised, now that she’s on the continent, to simply stay there and let Britain figure things out without her.

The US won’t and can’t be so lucky. We’re still up for much more, marathon more, of Trump vs Mueller, and there will be many more courts and judges who have to speak on all of it before there’s anything even remotely resembling a conclusion. Because the whole Mueller circus -reluctantly- threatens to open up a Pandora swamp that’s been DC’s lifeblood forever.

Yeah, you got your Flynn and Manafort, but you also got your Podesta brothers. Yeah, there’s the Trump Foundation, but there’s also the Clinton Foundation, and Uranium One. Who’s worse? Good one!

Both things should be investigated, it shouldn’t just be Trump and Mueller, Hillary and the DNC and Comey etc etc also must be under the microscope. Or America will forever lose its faith in democracy. Not that there’s much of it left, mind you, but hey, at the very least it’s the thought that counts.

Bottom line: it all appears to be about local, domestic, national politics, but don’t be deceived: the global economy is tanking, and all of the political mayhem on all these levels is just a derivative of that. The dinosaurs want to live another day.

None of which is going to make your situation any better, but who knows, you just might feel better about it for a bit. Until you don’t.

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When Congress passed (and President Trump signed) a bill to dole out tax breaks to investors financing projects in designated “opportunity zones,” we’re not sure this is what they had in mind.

According to Bloomberg, Former Trump Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is taking advantage of the tax breaks to cash in on the “gentrification boom” in Oakland, Calif. by building what he describes as a “swank hotel” on the site of a now-closed gas station. Scaramucci, who is launching a REIT to invest in several projects (the hotel is one of the first), described the project thusly during a call with possible investors.

When U.S. lawmakers enacted a new tax break to help low-income communities last year, backers said it would lift up some of the most distressed parts of the country.

But that wasn’t the pitch former White House spokesman Anthony Scaramucci used on Tuesday to recruit investors for a real estate investment trust that will seek to claim the tax incentives by investing in some of the nation’s newly created “opportunity zones.” Here’s how he described one of the REIT’s first projects, a Moxy Hotel on the site of a gas station in Oakland, during a conference call with potential clients.

“For those of you who have yet to go to Oakland, California, or that part of the Bay Area, I can tell you that it’s fully gentrifying. Oakland is effectively becoming the Brooklyn Heights of San Francisco,” Scaramucci said. “We think we’re going to be building a swank, boutique hotel there that’s going to create excessive economic rents for the REIT.”

The Mooch’s project appears to validate criticisms from non-profit groups who have questioned whether some of the eligible urban communities included in the bill (Amazon’s Queens headquarters will sit inside one) truly stand to benefit from these incentives. Some have even argued that the handouts to investors will only accelerate the displacement of low-income residents (as gentrification has been known to do). Swaths of New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle have also been targeted for incentives. Though, to be fair, many of the rural areas affected by these “opportunity zones” aren’t gentrifying (in fact, they’re most likely facing the opposite of gentrification as anybody who can leaves for a part of the country with a better economy).

And the Mooch is also planning another project near South Carolina’s Port of Savannagh that could create 1,000 jobs by building a warehouse and logistics facility.

And as we have pointed out in the past, if you think gentrification is such a bad thing, keep in mind: The opposite is much worse.

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Market analyst and financial guru Peter Schiff says that the United States economy is headed for a disaster.  In a recent interview, Schiff said that when the dollar goes away as a reserve currency, so will the American standard of living.

Schiff says the U.S. is flexing more muscle than it has.  After the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese businessman who is accused of violating U.S. sanction laws, the Chinese are already planning economically destructive ways to reduce the dollar’s influence and power.

“The dollar, having the reserve currency, that status is in jeopardy. And I don’t think the world likes giving America this kind of power that we can impose our own rules and demand that the entire world live by it. 

So, I think this has a much bigger and broader ramifications other than what’s going on in the stock market today. I think long-term, this is going to undermine the dollar and its role as a reserve currency. And when that goes, so does the American standard of living because it’s going to collapse.” –Peter Schiff

Schiff added that he thinks China is in a much better position than many are willing to admit.

“People think we have the upper hand because we have this huge trade deficit with China. But I think it’s the other way. I think the fact that they supply us with all this merchandise that our economy needs, and the fact that they hold a lot of our bonds and continue to lend us a lot of money so we can live beyond our means, they’re the ones, I think, that call the tunes and we have to dance to it.” –Peter Schiff

There is a growing movement around the world to create alternatives to the global dollar system. The Russians have developed a money transfer system that could one day compete with SWIFT, and even the Europeans have announced plans to develop a special payment channel to circumvent U.S. economic sanctions and facilitate trade with Iran.

When RT‘s host told Schiff that China was “wobbly” right now, Schiff said that the U.S. economy isn’t exactly rock solid, despite the media’s talking heads declaring it as such.

“I was listening to the broadcast before I came in and you talked about how the U.S. economy was sailing along. It wasn’t sailing anywhere. It was blowing up like a gigantic bubble. That’s what was happening. And now the air is coming out. We are headed for a much worse financial crisis than the one we experienced in ’08, and we are headed for a much greater recession than the one we lived through following that crisis – the one we call the ‘Great Recession.’ And what’s going to make it so much worse is it’s going to be inflationary. Consumer prices are going to be going up as the economy is going down.” –Peter Schiff

But that’s not even the worst news. Because of all of the problems being underscored by so many, the collapse of the dollar and the American standard of living that will follow aren’t even a concern for most. But the bubble is bursting, according to Schiff, and the market will go so much lower.

“This is a bear market. That’s why the market went down. If it wasn’t that, they would have found another excuse. If we were in a bull market, I think the market would have shrugged it off. So, we’re going lower.”

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