“Floodgates Are Open” – German Banks Start Charging Retail Savers
It has been over 7 years since the European Central Bank’s key deposit facility rate was positive, and just a few weeks ago it was lowered to a record low of -50bps.
Source: Bloomberg
And during that time, European bank stocks have suffered greatly…
“Maybe at the end of the story, in three to five years, we will notice it was a historical mistake.”
Well, it appears we are about to reach the vinegar strokes of that ‘historical mistake’, as Bloomberg reports, German banks are breaking the last taboo: Charging retail clients for their savings starting with very first euro in the their accounts.
While many banks have been passing on negative rates to clients for some time, they have typically only done so for deposits of 100,000 euros ($111,000) or more. That is changing, with one small lender, Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Fuerstenfeldbruck, a regional bank close to Munich, planning to impose a rate of minus 0.5% to all savings in certain new accounts.
Another bank, Kreissparkasse Stendal, in the east of the country, has a similar policy for clients who have no other relationship with the bank; and a third, Frankfurter Volksbank, one of the country’s largest cooperative lenders, is considering going even further and charging some new customers 0.55% for all their deposits is considering an even higher charge.
“The floodgates are open,” said Friedrich Heinemann, who heads the department on Corporate Taxation and Public Finance at the ZEW economic research institute in Mannheim.
“We will soon see a chain reaction. Banks that do not follow with negative interest rates would be flooded with liquidity.”
It appears that European banks are coming around to the fact – and preparing for it – that negative rates are here to stay (especially under Lagarde who has already opined that there is nothing wrong with negative rates).
Bank CEOs across Europe have expressed their anger at the ECB’s policy over the last few months.
The ECB’s imposition of negative interest rates have created an “absurd situation” in which banks don’t want to hold deposits, rages UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, arguing that this policy is hurting social systems and savings rates.
“Negative interest rates are crazy. That means money is not worth anything anymore,” Gruebel exclaimed.
“As long as we have negative interest rates, the financial industry will continue to shrink.”
And finally, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing warned that more monetary easing by the ECB, as widely expected next week, will have “grave side effects” for a region that has already lived with negative interest rates for half a decade.
“In the long run, negative rates ruin the financial system.”
The German savings rate was around 10% in 2017, almost twice the euro-area average, but one wonders what will happen now that even mom-and-pop will have to pay to leave their spare cash in ‘safe-keeping’. Will deposit levels tumble in favor of the mattress? Or, as some have suggested, gold will get a bid as a costless way of storing wealth
Dozens of elderly residents were forced to leave their apartments in an area of Stockholm after the block was closed, only to be re-opened again for migrants to replace them.
Residents at Dianagården were told they would have to leave because the toilets in the facility were 5cm too small to comply with regulations.
However, soon after the 48 apartments were emptied, they were filled with newly arrived migrants.
“It was later revealed that politicians planned that immigrants would instead move into the premises,” reports Fria Tider.
In 2015, Sweden accepted more refugees per capita than any other country, and despite worsening problems with sexual assaults, grenade attacks and violent crime, the inflow shows no sign of being seriously restricted.
A recent opinion poll found that the anti-mass migration Sweden Democrats are now the most popular party in Sweden. The Sweden Democrats would get 24.2% of the votes if an election was held today, beating the ruling Social Democrats.
Back in October, Leif Östling, former CEO of trucking company Scania, warned that Sweden is heading towards civil war due to uncontrolled mass immigration.
“We’ve taken in far too many people from outside. And we have. Those who come from the Middle East and Africa live in a society that we left almost a hundred years ago,” he said.
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More Firms Go Uncovered As MiFid II Decimates Ranks Of Sell-Side Analysts
Sell-side analysis was never perfect.
Banks’ competition for lucrative deal flow has always ensured that the “Chinese wall” that’s supposed to exist between the front office and research department is about as impenetrable as a sieve. And then there’s the overpowering pressure for analysts to conform to the consensus, which works like this: If you conform to the consensus, then when everyone is wrong, you don’t look so bad, and you don’t need to worry about losing your job as head analyst.
But if you take a contrarian position and miss, then you’re at risk.
Unfortunately for those who have chosen to make a career in the research departments of big sell-side banks, new European banking regulations (MiFid II) are already forcing banks to reduce research department headcount, according to the FT.
Since MiFid forced banks to explicitly charge for research, new pricing structures being adopted by sell-side research departments have raised the cost for clients, forcing firms to pick and choose which banks they will continue paying for research.
The result? Wall Street research now comes with more fees than discount airlines.
And with fewer bodies in the research department, megabanks are increasingly being forced to dedicate limited resources to only the most lucrative businesses: I.e. large-cap companies who will bring in the research subscriptions from asset managers, and companies that might offer an M&A payoff.
At any rate, in less than a decade, the average number of analysts covering the biggest European companies has fallen by nearly a quarter, largely because of MiFid 2.
The average number of analysts who cover European companies with a market capitalisation of $100bn or more has dropped 22 per cent since 2011, according to StarMine numbers compiled by Bank of America. Those companies with a market value of $10bn to $100bn have seen their coverage contract by 26 per cent, it found.
The numbers underscore how investment banks prefer to focus their limited resources on companies of a size necessary to interest big asset management clients, or those that may yield dealmaking work for the banks themselves. Coverage is declining everywhere but the trend is particularly acute in Europe, where the introduction of the Mifid II regulatory package in January 2018 has forced asset managers to “unbundle” payment for research from trading business.
As a result of having to pay directly for research, many investment groups have sharply curtailed how much they use. But the impact has been felt everywhere.
The number of equity analysts working at the 12 biggest banks has fallen below 4,000, which risks leaving dozens of important companies without any analysts covering them.
As the head of research at JPM explained, Mifid II is going to make everyone more conscious of the research they’re consuming…and it’s also ratcheting up the competition to be the top ranked analysts.
“Mifid II has made everyone a lot more aware of the research they consume, whether they’re directly affected by Mifid or not,” said Joyce Chang, chair of research at JPMorgan. “You’re not going to call 10 analysts, you’re only going to call the top people, so we have to work hard to stay comprehensive…if you’re numbers five through 10, it will be harder to stay on everyone’s radar.”
While headcount is falling in research departments everywhere, Europe has been particularly hard hit. And with most banks bracing for an economic downturn by trimming fat wherever they can, the full-year number for 2019 will likely be even lower.
When it comes to protecting children, families and Russian traditions, Vladimir Putin has few rivals in the developed world. But will Russia be able to holdout forever against the globalists’ ultra-liberal agenda now threatening the planet?
Had Peter the Great known what strange ideas would come to fixate the Western mind, perhaps he never would have built his northerly city of St. Petersburg, designed to throw open a ‘window to the West’. Indeed, he most likely would have evacuated the swampland, ditched his Europe-inspired beard tax and retreated inland as far as possible.
There is some craziness in this world, however, that could not have been predicted 30 years ago, to say nothing of 300 years. The new realities have forced Russian lawmakers to reflect upon the future of Russian identity in the face of radical liberal tendencies emanating from the West like some modern plague.
“You said the word mother ‘can’t be replaced.’ It turns out, perhaps, it can,” Putin reminded delegates at a meeting of the Council for Interethnic Relations, a Kremlin advisory group.
“In some countries, they now have ‘parent number one’ and ‘parent number two.’ I hope we never have that (in Russia).”
The Russian leader’s comment elicited chuckles from the assembled officials, long inured to the occasional Western crackups. Yet that good-natured response masked the looming uneasiness that yet another crazy train has departed the Western station and is on a collision course with Russia, as well as the rest of the world.
Indeed, Putin was referencing a law passed in France earlier this year that mandates schools refrain from using ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ substituting it for ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ in an effort to accommodate passage of a 2013 same-sex marriage law.
“We have families who find themselves faced with tick boxes stuck in rather old-fashioned social and family models,” said Valérie Petit, MP from the party of President Emmanuel Macron.
“For us, this article is a measurement of social equality.”
In case anyone thought that would settle the confusion, the issue has now turned to the question as to which parents will be designated ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2.’
Marine Le-Pen, leader of the far-Right National Rally, remarked that “the mask has fallen” from the Macron government regarding its views on family values.
Meanwhile, back in Russia, Putin began adjusting his country’s sails against such radical liberal experiments back in June 2013 with passage of a federal law entitled, ‘Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values’. Western media outlets quickly pounced on the legislation, portraying it as dangerous to homosexuals, even warning they risked arrest if they visited the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Vladimir Putin, today: “You said the word mother ‘can’t be replaced.’ It turns out, perhaps, it can. In some countries, they now have ‘parent number one’ and ‘parent number two.’ I hope we never have that (in Russia).”pic.twitter.com/O7mS7YNtfI
As Harvey Fierstein argued in the New York Times, for example, Putin’s ‘anti-gay’ law means that “any Olympic athlete, trainer, reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay — can go to jail.”
That was either deliberate fake news or extremely shoddy journalism, but since the New York Times articlecited Huff Post, which in turn quoted an obscure travel blog, we’ll give the Grey Lady some benefit of the doubt and go with the latter possibility.
The fact is, what the Russian law explicitly forbids is the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relationships” to children. Full stop. Adults can behave any way they want in the privacy of their own homes or hotels, but please keep the underage children away from the spectacles. Sounds pretty logical, right? In fact, if the Western media had not become sold-out sycophants of the LGBTQ movement, together with the insidious induction of children into the act, they would probably find that the overwhelming majority of Westerners would gladly stand behind the Russian law as well.
“We have no problem with LGBT persons,” Putin said in an interview with the Financial Times.
“God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.”
He added:
“Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”
This is an issue that few Western leaders are willing or able to promote: the traditional family, which is increasingly portrayed as some sort of radical institution in Western eyes. At the same time, the average citizen has absolutely zero say in the LGBTQ indoctrination program that is happening practically everywhere in the West, including inside of the public school system.
As a consequence of the madness, the West is facing demons of its own making as hundreds of adolescents who underwent so-called ‘sexual reassignment surgery’ – the removal of the breasts in women, the penis in men, together with the ingestion of powerful and potentially deadly sex hormones – want to change back to their original selves. Unfortunately for them, that is nearly mission impossible.
Meanwhile, transgender females, that is, biological males at birth, are now triumphing on the field of dream against their female competition. Needless to say, this radical new development in the world of sports has set back feminism to the somewhere around the time of the Moon landing.
And here is where the next great East-West showdown will get ugly – at some future Olympic event when the West insists on fielding transgender females against the East’s more feminine counterparts. In fact, the debate on the transgender issue is already underway ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Games.
One thing is clear from all of this nonsense: Vladimir Putin and other like-minded leaders have their work cut out for them in a world gone absolutely mad.
It’s that time again: the United Nations is officially releasing the all new Agenda 2030 sustainable development plan, or what some have hailed as “the new Agenda 21 on steroids,” at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit kicking off today in New York City.
Since these supposedly non-binding international agreements can sometimes be a bit tricky to decode, what with all the weaponized buzz terms and semantics games, we’ve prepared a handy dandy translator on the 17 new Agenda 2030 goals below.
Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Translation: Centralized banks, IMF, World Bank, Fed to control all finances, digital one world currency in a cashless society
Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Translation: GMO
Goal3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Translation: Mass vaccination, Codex Alimentarius
Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Translation: UN propaganda, brainwashing through compulsory education from cradle to grave
Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Translation: Population control through forced “Family Planning”
Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Translation: Privatize all water sources, don’t forget to add fluoride
Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Translation: Smart grid with smart meters on everything, peak pricing
Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Translation: TPP, free trade zones that favor megacorporate interests
Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
Translation: Even more regional government bureaucracy like a mutant octopus
Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Translation: Big brother big data surveillance state
Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Translation: Forced austerity
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
Translation: Cap and Trade, carbon taxes/credits, footprint taxes (aka Al Gore’s wet dream)
Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Translation: Environmental restrictions, control all oceans including mineral rights from ocean floors
Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Translation: More environmental restrictions, more controlling resources and mineral rights
Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Translation: UN “peacekeeping” missions (ex 1, ex 2), the International Court of (blind) Justice, force people together via fake refugee crises and then mediate with more “UN peacekeeping” when tension breaks out to gain more control over a region, remove 2nd Amendment in USA
Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
Translation: Remove national sovereignty worldwide, promote globalism under the “authority” and bloated, Orwellian bureaucracy of the UN
The Catholic Church in America is suffering yet another in a series of seemingly never-ending crises stemming from the Church’s rampant mishandling of sex abuse and misconduct claims. But finally, it looks like one of the biggest problems for the church’s image in New York State has just stepped aside: The New York Times reports that Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo has resigned after weeks of pressure from inside and outside his diocese, which is one of the largest in the US, with 600,000.
Richard Malone
The Vatican reportedly accepted Malone’s resignation on Wednesday, hopefully bringing an end to a period of turmoil for Buffalo Catholics, who organized to try and oust Malone.
“I have concluded, after much prayer and discernment, that the people of Buffalo will be better served by a new bishop who perhaps is better able to bring about the reconciliation, healing and renewal that is so needed,” Malone wrote in his goodbye statement. “It is my honest assessment that I have accomplished as much as I am able to, and that there remain divisions and wounds that I am unable to bind and heal.”
As CNN points out, for more than a year, a dedicated group of parishoners has been trying to convince Malone to leave. They’ve done everything from circulate petitions to try and meet the bishop’s plane.
Since the Catholic church’s sexual abuse scandal reignited in 2018, bishops across the country have come under greater scrutiny for the crimes and cover-ups alleged to have occurred during their tenure. That’s what got Malone: records showing he actively sought to protect pedophile priests.
In one incident back in March 2018, Bishop Malone released a list of 42 priests accused of abuse over decades. But Siobhan O’Connor, a source worked in the bishop’s office, had seen 117 names on a draft list in the diocese’s secret files, and began photocopying and then leaking the documents to WKBW, the local ABC affiliate.
The leaks revealed that Bishop Malone, who had been the highest official in the diocese since 2012, clearly tried to minimize disclosure of the full extent of the diocese’s sex abuse issues.
“We did not remove him from ministry despite full knowledge of the case, and so including him on list might require explanation,” lawyers wrote to Bishop Malone about one priest who was accused of having sex with a teenager .
Back in August came the final blow: Secret audio recordings where Bishop Malone can be heard fretting about a scandal involving sexual harassment of a seminarian by a pastor, which he worried “could be the end of me as bishop.”
Shortly after, the Vatican sent another Bishop to investigate the claims against Malone, but this bishop was also implicated in a sex abuse scandal.
One advocate for the victims said that with Malone gone, people can believe in change once again.
“People were so frustrated and angry at Bishop Malone that they were losing their faith over it,” said Ms. O’Connor, who is now an advocate for the abuse victims. His resignation “is a sign for people that change can happen,” she said.
All bishops are required to submit their resignation to the Pope when they turn 75, but Malone is retiring a couple of years early at 73.
Despite having gotten away with murder, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman has just filed a $100 million lawsuit against the family of Trayvon Martin and attorney Ben Crump, claiming that they engineered false evidence against him.
Zimmerman, who was acquitted of homicide charges in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, is being represented by high-profile lawyer, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, and former US Department of Justice prosecutor, Larry Klayman in a lawsuit seeking damages for defamation, abuse of civil process, and conspiracy.
Martin was shot and killed on February 26, 2012 when he was returning to his father’s home, whom he was visiting, after purchasing candy at a local store. Zimmerman reported Martin as suspicious in a call to police. Zimmerman claims he followed Martin after making the call and was attacked by the teen before killing him. Martin was unarmed, carrying only the Skittles and a drink he had just purchased.
The lawsuit, to be filed Wednesday in Polk County where Zimmerman lives, alleges that Rachel Jeantel, a key witness in the 2013 murder trial, actually wasn’t a witness at all and was instead “an imposter and fake witness” coached by the family and their lawyers to take the place of Diamond Eugene.
Information cited in the case comes from the book and accompanying documentary The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America, which accuses the family of creating false testimony. The film was scheduled to be screened in Coral Gables, Florida but, in light of recent developments, Coral Gables Art Cinema announced it would be canceling the event along with a press conference with the film’s director, Joe Gilbert.
Coral Gables Art Cinema was not aware of all of the details surrounding this event and has made a decision to cancel it.
According to the book, Martin’s cell phone records prove that Eugene, whom they say was Martin’s actual girlfriend at the time, was on the phone with him at the time of the shooting. The book accuses Martin’s family and lawyers for swapping Eugene out for Jeantel when Eugene refused to testify. The book charges that Jeantel “lied repeatedly to cause Zimmerman’s arrest and to try to send him to prison for life.”
A media advisory posted on Klayman’s website prior to the filing of the suit mentions the now cancelled press conference and screening and explains the inspiration behind the suit:
“Specifically, the complaint alleges that in March 2012, the Sanford Police Department thoroughly investigated the shooting of Trayvon Martin and closed the case as self-defense. A week later, Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump produced a recorded audio tape of “Diamond Eugene” whom he said was Trayvon’s 16-year-old girlfriend who was on the phone with Trayvon just before the altercation. However, two weeks later, 18-year-old Rachel Jeantel, the alleged imposter, appeared before prosecutors claiming to be “Diamond Eugene” and provided false statements to incriminate Zimmerman based on coaching from others.
These allegations are the result of newly discovered evidence just published in a book and film by Hollywood film director Joel Gilbert, called The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America. Based on Trayvon’s cell phone records, they allegedly show that Rachel Jeantel was not Trayvon’s girlfriend, was not on the phone with Trayvon before the altercation, and that she lied repeatedly to cause Zimmerman’s arrest and to try to send him to prison for life. The research also allegedly reveals that Trayvon’s real girlfriend and legitimate phone witness was in fact Miami resident Brittany Diamond Eugene, who was switched out for Jeantel when Eugene refused to bear false witness against Zimmerman.”
According to the Miami Herald, the film’s director distributed a copy of the suit, which does not yet appear in the online docket of the Polk County court system, to media.
Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, is the lead defendant in the suit. Since her son’s death, Fulton has become somewhat of a national figure both as an advocate for reducing gun deaths and as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Fulton is currently running for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission.
The family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, also a defendant in the suit, responded in a statement on Wednesday:
“I have every confidence that this unfounded and reckless lawsuit will be revealed for what it is—another failed attempt to defend the indefensible and a shameless attempt to profit off the lives and grief of others.”
The suit also names book publisher Harper Collins over Crump’s book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People, as well as Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father; Florida prosecutors Bernie de la Rionda, John Guy, and Angela Corey; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and the state of Florida.
Zimmerman contends that his version of events that took place on the evening of February 26, 2012 are correct while Martin’s family engineered a false narrative. All of the defendants in the suit are accused of “knowing about or should have known about the witness fraud, obstructing justice” or repeatedly lying “under oath in order to cover up their knowledge of the witness fraud.”
This week, the veil has been lifted on President Trump’s trade war narrative of an imminent trade deal with China.
Investors are starting to figure out that many trade headlines in the last 12 months from the White House, other Trump administration officials, and unnamed sources at major wirehouses have been mostly fake trade news, with one intention and one intention only: pump the stock market.
Investors discovered this week that an actual phase one trade deal might not occur this year; nevertheless, the signing of a full trade deal might not happen until after 2020. This was a shock to many PhDs on Wall Street, who have based their entire growth models for 2020 on a trade resolution. With no trade resolution likely and no massive rebound in growth, markets are setting up for a disappointment phase that could begin if an escalation of the trade war is seen on Dec. 15.
The Trump administration has learned this week that their control of the “trade optimism” narrative is becoming harder and harder.
For instance, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had to spill the beans on CNBC this morning and indicate that China isn’t purchasing US soybeans. Perdue said the latest export numbers for US soybeans this year have been rather depressing, citing China wasn’t living up to its purchase commitments and Brazil and Argentina “trying to infringe on our market time here.”
Perdue says he was surprised by how weak US soybean exports have been after harvest this year, citing China not living up to its purchase commitments and Brazil and Argentina “trying to infringe on our market time here.”
Though if readers remember, President Trump tweeted in early October that he signed the most fantastic trade deal that was going to do wonders for “Great Patriot Farmers.”
The deal I just made with China is, by far, the greatest and biggest deal ever made for our Great Patriot Farmers in the history of our Country. In fact, there is a question as to whether or not this much product can be produced? Our farmers will figure it out. Thank you China!
As we’ve clearly outlined for readers in the last five months, China started to heavily source agriculture products from Brazil and Argentina, as a way to quickly diversify away from the US, though, at the same time, President Trump promoted huge deals for “patriot farmers.”
CHINA HAS ALREADY BEGUN AGRICULTURAL PURCHASES FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS & RANCHERS!
And it seems that President Trump lied not just about the trade deal several months ago, but also lied about all the agriculture purchases China was executing.
The reason for President Trump threatening to impose metal tariffs on Brazil and Argentina is because China ditched US farmers for South American ones.
China isn’t going to source agriculture products from the US altogether, the reason: Beijing understands that President Trump could hold back purchases whenever he wants and call it a “national security” threat. So the fantasy about China purchasing all these agriculture products from the US was once again nothing more than a fabrication to pump stocks.
And props to CNBC’s Eamon Javers, who called out the Trump administration on Tuesday for their questionable trade deal President Trump tweeted in early October. Even the mainstream is starting to get it.
Given Trump’s new comment that he may want to wait until after ‘20 for a China trade deal, here’s an exchange I had with Kellyanne Conway at the WH yesterday. I asked her if the president was wrong to announce the trade deal in October, before it was actually done. pic.twitter.com/29P7556akj
Even the senior editor of China’s Global Times trolled President Trump Wednesday morning for pumping fake trade news: “I predict there is a high probability that President Trump or a senior US official will openly say in a few hours that China-US trade talks have made a big progress in order to pump up the US stock markets. They’ve been doing this a lot.”
I predict there is a high probability that President Trump or a senior US official will openly say in a few hours that China-US trade talks have made a big progress in order to pump up the US stock markets. They’ve been doing this a lot.😀
What happens next could be a credibility issue forming where investors lose faith in the Trump administration for peddling an entire year of fake trade news with absolutely no progress.
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, were a watershed event for the United States, not only because of the large death toll and property destruction but, more important, because they spelled the death knell for American liberty.
Americans had already lost a large portion of their freedom when the federal government was converted into what is called a “welfare state,” a governmental system that is based on the concept of mandatory charity. Examples of mandatory-charity programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, corporate bailouts, foreign aid, and every other program by which the government takes money from people to whom it belongs and gives it to people to whom it does not belong.
There is no way to reconcile a system of mandatory charity with the principles of a free society. A genuinely free society is one in which people are free to keep everything they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money. An unfree society is one in which the government mandates that people be good and caring to others.
In 1913, Americans brought into existence the progressive income tax, which became the primary engine for funding America’s welfare state. To enforce the collection of the tax, Americans called into existence the IRS, which became one of the most tyrannical agencies in U.S. history. In the same year, the Federal Reserve was established, a central bank that would ultimately debase and destroy the gold-coin monetary system that the Constitution established and that had been America’s monetary system for well over a century.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Americans had lost another large portion of their freedom with the war on drugs, a governmental program that jails or fines people for possessing or distributing substances that the government doesn’t approve of. As the drug war failed to achieve its goal of a drug-free society, the government initiated an ever-increasing array of harsh enforcement measures that have further contributed to the destruction of freedom, including mandatory minimum sentences, asset-forfeiture laws, no-knock raids, and warrantless searches and seizures.
There is no way one can reconcile drug laws with the principles of a free society. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful, dangerous, or destructive a substance might be.
Americans have also lost a large portion of their freedom through government central planning and regulation of economic activity. Examples include trade and immigration controls, the Federal Reserve, and public schooling. There is no way one can reconcile socialist central planning and economic regulation with freedom. In a genuinely free society, people plan their own lives and coordinate their activities with others in a free-market environment.
It is not a coincidence that for the first 125 years of American life, there was no income tax, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, drug laws, central planning, economic regulation, public schooling, Federal Reserve, or other parts of what can also be labeled the “paternalistic state.” Our American ancestors understood that those things violate the principles of liberty.
The federal government’s response to the 9/11 attacks completed the destruction of American liberty. Seizing on the attacks as an opportunity to expand power at the expense of freedom, U.S. officials, especially those in the national-security branch of the government, ended up with omnipotent power over the American people. When a regime wields omnipotent power, there is no way that people in that society can legitimately be considered free.
Irreconcilables
Owing to the 9/11 attacks, we now live in a society in which a vast, permanent, and ever-growing military establishment wields the power to take Americans into custody and incarcerate them in military dungeons or detention centers for as long as the military desires. All that military officials have to do is label the American detainee a “terrorist” or a “threat to national security.” Once that designation is made, there is nothing the person can do about it. He will find no relief in the federal courts because the courts have made it clear that they are not about to interfere with military operations, especially during time of war, including the ongoing, never-ending, post–9/11 “war on terrorism.”
That is what the José Padilla case was all about. That case established the power of the military to take Americans into custody and keep them incarcerated as part of the federal government’s “war on terrorism.” Since the war on terrorism is going to last for decades, perhaps forever, the military detention of American citizens as terrorists or as threats to national security will also last for decades or forever.
It is true that the military is not currently exercising its power by incarcerating Americans in military dungeons or detention centers. But whether a tyrannical power is being exercised is not the test of a free society. The test is whether the government wields omnipotent powers, ones that can be exercised later on during an “emergency” or “crisis.” If the government wields omnipotent powers, even if it isn’t exercising them, there is no way that people in such a society can legitimately be considered free.
For example, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly prohibits the federal government from depriving a person of liberty without due process of law. “Due process” is a phrase that stretches back to Magna Carta in 1215, when the barons of England forced their king to acknowledge that his powers over the English people were limited. Due process entails notice and trial. Thus, the Fifth Amendment prohibits the federal government from depriving people, including Americans, of liberty without notice and trial.
But as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks, that is precisely what the Pentagon now wields the power to do as part of its ongoing, never-ending war on terrorism. Despite the Fifth Amendment, the military now has the power to take Americans into custody and jail them forever without notice or trial, simply by labeling them “terrorists” or “threats to national security.”
As a consequence of the 9/11 attacks, the American people also now live under a government that wields the power to assassinate them, again without notice or trial. It is virtually impossible to find a more tyrannical power than the power to kill people, including a government’s own citizenry. That’s what the post–9/11 case of Anwar al-Awlaki was about — the power of the federal government to kill American citizens who are labeled “terrorists” or “threats to national security.” The federal judiciary has made it clear that as long as the government is waging its ongoing, never-ending, post–9/11 war on terrorism, the federal courts will not interfere with this extraordinary power.
Once again, the fact that U.S. officials are currently exercising this power primarily against foreigners does not affect the destruction of freedom here at home. A free society is measured not by whether a certain power is being exercised but rather by whether the government even possesses that power. That’s why the Fifth Amendment expressly prohibits the federal government from killing anyone without due process of law, which, again, means notice and trial. The idea behind that provision was that freedom necessarily entails a government that does not possess the power to assassinate people.
The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks also eviscerated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Even before the attacks, the federal government had made inroads on the search-and-seizure provision of that Amendment by lowering the probable-cause requirement for searches entailing the gathering of foreign intelligence. That’s what the super-secret FISA court was all about. Meeting in secret and scared to death to second-guess any warrant request entailing national security, the FISA judges effectively became rubber-stamps for the national-security establishment. But at least there was a thin barrier between domestic criminal investigations and foreign-intelligence investigations.
That barrier came crashing down in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That’s what the USA PATRIOT Act accomplished. It enabled U.S. officials to secure search warrants at a reduced standard for both intelligence investigations and criminal investigations and to do it before a super-secret court whose decisions could not, as a practical matter, be challenged by those who were being targeted for secret surveillance.
The 9/11 attacks led to expanded mass-surveillance powers for the NSA, enabling this secretive agency to conduct warrantless surveillance on the American people. Operating under a misguided concept of patriotism involving unswerving allegiance to the government, some of America’s telecommunications companies were induced to illegally betray their clients by illegally providing their personal data to federal officials.
It is still impossible for Americans to know precisely what the NSA is doing to spy on them, given the highly secretive nature of the agency and the refusal of the federal courts to permit any piercing of its operations, especially since NSA officials know that nothing bad will happen to them if they are later caught violating the law or lying about it to prevent disclosure. That’s what the James Clapper episode was all about. When that director of National Intelligence was caught lying to Congress about illegal surveillance of the American people, neither Congress nor the Justice Department dared to seek a criminal indictment against him.
There is no way to reconcile a society in which a regime wields the omnipotent power to conduct secret surveillance on the citizenry with a genuinely free society. Freedom necessarily entails an absolute protection of privacy.
And then there is torture, which, although conducted by the military, is actually the specialty of the Central Intelligence Agency, which is the third component of the national security establishment (the other two being the military and the NSA). While the CIA had engaged in torture before the 9/11 attacks, it was always done secretly and with the understanding that the torture was illegal. With the 9/11 attacks, the CIA and the Pentagon were effectively given a license to torture people, including Americans, with impunity.
Both Pentagon and CIA officials know that they can torture anyone they want with impunity. As long as the person being tortured is labeled a “terrorist” or a “threat to national security,” military officials and CIA officials know that no one is going to be prosecuted for torture. Indeed, when the CIA knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately destroyed its videotapes depicting its torture of people, it did so with full certainty that no one would be prosecuted for destroying evidence of criminal misconduct. The CIA is simply too powerful for that.
It is worth noting that the post–9/11 power to torture people extends to American citizens. That principle was established in the José Padilla case, where the military knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately — and with impunity — subjected Padilla to psychological torture with the aim of causing him permanent mental damage.
It is impossible to reconcile a system in which the government wields the omnipotent power to torture people with the principles of a free society. Freedom necessarily entails a system in which the government lacks even the power to torture. That is why the Eighth Amendment expressly prohibits the federal government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishments” on people.
The way we were
It wasn’t always this way in America. For more than 150 years, the American people lived under a governmental system in which federal officials lacked the power to deprive them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law and the power to torture them. While federal officials would, from time to time, violate the express restrictions on power enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, everyone understood that such violations constituted breaches of the law rather than an established legal structure within the law.
In fact, if the proponents of the Constitution had told the American people after the Constitutional Convention that the Constitution was bringing into existence a national-security state in which federal officials would wield the power to assassinate, indefinitely detain, spy on, and torture them, as well as a welfare state that would mandate charity, to put them into jail for drug possession, and to centrally control and manage their economic activity, they would have summarily rejected the deal and continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, the governmental system under which they had been operating and one in which the powers of the federal government were so weak that it didn’t even have the power to tax.
That’s how our American ancestors who established this country wanted it. They understood that the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry lies with their own government. The reason they accepted the Constitution is that they were assured that it would bring into existence a government of few and limited powers — that is, only those that were enumerated within the document itself. To make certain that federal officials got the point, the American people demanded that the Constitution immediately be amended to expressly prohibit federal officials from destroying their rights and liberties.
For more than 100 years, there was no mandatory charity, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, and foreign aid, income taxation, IRS, economic regulations, minimum-wage laws, price controls, central management of economic activity, immigration controls, Federal Reserve, fiat (i.e., paper) money, public (i.e., government) schooling, drug laws, gun control, and most of the federal departments, agencies, and programs under which Americans today live.
More important, there was no Pentagon, vast military establishment, foreign military bases, CIA, NSA, or FBI. Therefore, there were no endless undeclared wars, torture, indefinite detention, spying on the citizenry, foreign military bases, coups, conscription, draft registration, alliances with foreign dictatorships, foreign aid, or assassination programs.
Americans had chosen a type of governmental system known as a limited-government republic, which is the opposite of a welfare state and a national-security state. Americans kept everything they earned and decided for themselves what to do with it. They weren’t subject to indefinite detention, torture, conscription, regulations, drug laws, secret surveillance, or endless undeclared wars. The citizens, not the federal government, were sovereign.
Losing liberty
That all came to an end, first with the adoption of the progressive income tax and the Federal Reserve, followed by the conversion of the federal government to a welfare state and, later, the conversion to a national-security state. Those two conversions began the road toward the destruction of American liberty, a destruction that was completed after the 9/11 attacks.
The justification that Americans were given for the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state was that the federal government needed to wage a Cold War against America’s World War II partner, the Soviet Union. Once the Cold War was over, however, the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA opposed the reconversion of the federal government to a limited-government republic.
Instead, after the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly ended, the Pentagon and the CIA went into the Middle East and began wreaking death and destruction in that part of the world, knowing full well that such actions were likely to produce massive anger and rage that could manifest itself in terrorist counterstrikes. They waged the Persian Gulf War, killing countless thousands of Iraqis. They intentionally bombed the water- and sewage-treatment plants in Iraq, with the aim of spreading infectious illness among the populace. They imposed and enforced one of the most brutal sanctions regimes in history, one that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. They openly declared that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.” They maintained “no-fly zones” over Iraq, which they used to kill more Iraqis. They stationed U.S. troops near Muslim holy lands. They unconditionally supported the Israeli government.
They knew exactly what they were doing. In his pre–911 book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the noted scholar Chalmers Johnson, warned that if they continued with their interventionist policies in the Middle East, the result would be a major terrorist attack on American soil. Here at FFF, we were publishing op-eds prior to the 9/11 attacks saying the same thing. Others were issuing the same warning.
Moreover, U.S. officials were warned by actual events. There were the pre–9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, all of which, the terrorists had openly declared, were motivated by the death and destruction that U.S. officials were wreaking in their post–Cold War interventions in the Middle East.
Yet none of those pre–9/11 warnings and attacks induced U.S. officials to cease and desist their interventionist policies. When the 9/11 attacks came, U.S. officials were being clearly disingenuous when they declared that the terrorists had been motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.
It was no surprise when U.S. officials seized upon the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to complete the destruction of American liberty. Of course, that’s how people throughout history have lost their liberty at the hands of their own governments — during crises and emergencies, when fearful people are eager and willing to trade their liberty for “security” and government officials are eager and willing to oblige them.
What must be done to regain our liberty?
The first step is for Americans to come to the realization that they are no longer a free people.
The second step is for a sufficient number of Americans to fervently desire to regain their freedom.
The third step is the repeal, abolition, and end of all mandatory-charity programs, central planning of economic activity, economic regulations, drug laws, and trade and immigration controls.
The fourth step is the dismantling of the national-security state — i.e., the Pentagon, military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA — and the restoration of a limited-government republic to our land.
The final step is the repeal of the taxes that fund America’s welfare-warfare state.
Elon Musk’s Father Has A Baby With His Step-Daughter, 40 Years His Junior
As goes the news cycle, sometimes one piece of news can begat another.
And in this case, amidst all the talk about Elon Musk referring to Vern Unsworth as “pedo guy” and standing trial for it, Google searches for “Elon Musk” and “pedo” turned up another very interesting result: a little covered article by The Telegraph that claims Elon Musk’s 72 year old father, Errol Musk, has a baby with his 30 year old step daugther, Jana Bezuidenhout, whom he has known since she was 4.
Errol Musk
Errol married Jana’s mother Heide when Jana was four but says he doesn’t consider her to be his stepdaughter because she had been “raised away from the family for long periods of time.”
Errol Musk also described the baby he had with Jana as “exquisite”. He also had two children with Jana’s mother, before divorcing her after 18 years of being married. Errol claims that Jana contacted him in 2017 after splitting up with a boyfriend.
“We were lonely, lost people,” Errol Musk said. “One thing led to another — you can call it God’s plan or nature’s plan.”
Two months later, Jana was pregnant. Paternity tests confirmed that Errol Musk was, indeed, the father.
“Jana is a delightful girl and a wonderful mother. She said I had changed her life,” Errol said.
Jana Bezuidenhout
Elon Musk has always seemed to have tension with his father, calling him a “terrible human being” in a Rolling Stone magazine interview. As of The Telegraph’s report in 2018, Musk had not spoken to his father in over a year.
Elon said of his father: “You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”
Recall, during Elon’s examination yesterday while on trial, Musk was asked by his own attorney about his childhood in South Africa.
“It wasn’t good,” Musk responded.
Surprise moment when @elonmusk own attorney asked him to describe his childhood in South Africa. Musk paused. And paused. Said in a thick voice, “It wasn’t good.” He left at 17.
