At some point, an economic problem deepens so much that the piper has to be paid. Both in the U.S.and globally, one of those problems appears to be mountains of debt.
Jim Rickards recently issued a dire proclamation about the global debt situation:
Current global debt levels are simply not sustainable. Debt actually is sustainable if the debt is used for projects with positive returns and if the economy supporting the debt is growing faster than the debt itself. But neither of those conditions applies today.
In other words, most of the global debt we’re racking up isn’t being used for productive purposes. Instead it’s being used to service “benefits, interest and discretionary spending,” according to Rickards.
This debt growth should continue. According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), global debt is expected to pass $255 trillion by the end of this year, and they don’t see the pace of debt accumulation slowing down.
In fact, you can see below how the official global debt has already skyrocketed from about $80 trillion in 1999 to this new record:
Zero Hedge reports that, by year’s end, the global debt will be “roughly equivalent to a record 330% of global GDP.”
With debt outpacing growth by such a large margin, we are fast approaching a day of reckoning. And when that day arrives, it could be disastrous.
Rickards: “It’s a Catastrophic Global Debt Crisis Waiting to Happen”
The world bank looked at the four major episodes of debt increases that have occurred in more than 100 countries since 1970 — the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the global financial crisis from 2007 to 2009.
The bank says that we’re in the fourth episode now, and their prognosis isn’t good. In fact, they called the failure to properly manage the global debt “complacency”:
“The increase in debt globally has already been larger, faster, and more broad-based since the Great Financial Crisis than in the previous three waves. This should be seen as a leading indicator for the possibility of financial crises ahead and shake up the complacency that is evident in macroeconomic policy making today with regard to increasing levels of both public and private debt.”
Jim Rickards thinks the “trigger” for an imminent global debt crisis, if one happens, would boil down to rates:
Low interest rates facilitate unsustainable debt levels, at least in the short run. But with so much debt on the books, even modest rate increases will cause debt levels and deficits to explode as new borrowing is sought just to cover interest payments.
He also thinks that if these debt levels and deficits spiral out of control, it won’t take much to trigger a debt crisis not seen since the 1930s.
World Bank President David Malpass sounded another alarm that if a crisis were to hit: “Emerging and developing economies are already more vulnerable on a variety of fronts than they were ahead of the last crisis.”
Put simply, that means disaster for those economies if the global economy is upended. The ripple effects from such a crisis would also hit the U.S. economy hard.
Once it hits, no amount of wishful thinking, denial, or ignorance will make this problem go away.
Make Sure Your Retirement Stands On Solid Ground
Unabated debt fueled growth on a global scale has put the world economy on a “knife edge of a debt crisis,” if Jim Rickards ends up being right.
So now is an ideal time to consider fortifying your own “economy.” Market optimism is almost always pushed until it’s too late.
If you want to hedge against that, don’t wait to start preparing your exit plan. Consider adding precious metals like gold and silver to your savings, which tend to perform well under uncertain economic conditions.
US Conducts Air Strikes In Iraq And Syria, Targeting Iran-Backed Militia After US Contractor Killed
The U.S. military conducted air strikes in Iraq and Syria against the five facilities controlled by the Kataib Hezbollah militia group in response to the killing of a U.S. civilian contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, US Central Command said on Sunday. A U.S. official told Reuters that the strikes were carried out by F-15 fighter jets.
U.S. conducted defensive strikes in Iraq and Syria against 5 Kata’ib Hezbollah facilities in response to recent attacks against @CJTFOIR coalition forces. @ChiefPentSpoxhttps://t.co/YQXUnLzq2F
Iraqi security and militia sources said at least 18 militia fighters were killed and more than 50 wounded following three U.S. air strikes in Iraq on Sunday evening, with Reuters reporting that at least four local Kataib Hezbollah commanders were among the dead, adding that one of the strikes had targeted the militia group’s headquarters near the western Qaim district on the border with Syria.
The Pentagon said it had targeted three locations of the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militia group in Iraq and two in Syria. The locations included weapons storage facilities and command and control locations the group had used to plan and execute attacks on coalition forces.
“In response to repeated Kata’ib Hizbollah attacks on Iraqi bases that host @CJTFOIR forces, U.S. forces conducted precision defensive strikes against 5 KH facilities in Iraq & Syria [to] degrade KH’s ability to conduct future attacks against @coalition forces.” ~@ChiefPentSpoxpic.twitter.com/g2hmTD4Eqw
— OIR Spokesman Col. Myles B. Caggins III (@OIRSpox) December 29, 2019
“In response to repeated Kata’ib Hizbollah attacks on Iraqi bases that host Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) coalition forces, U.S. forces have conducted precision defensive strikes … that will degrade KH’s ability to conduct future attacks against OIR coalition forces” chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.
The US has accused Kataib Hezbollah of carrying out a strike involving more than 30 rockets on Friday which killed a US civilian contractor and injured four US service members and two members of the Iraqi Security Forces near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
#BREAKING: #PMU released first images of the aftermath of #USAF airstrike at the local command & control base & ammunition depot of #IRGC‘s Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization in #AlQaim, west of #Iraq. Death of several terrorists including two from #IRGC-QF is reported! pic.twitter.com/q8r1aTRlaH
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iranian-backed forces for a series of attacks on bases in Iraq and warned Iran that any attacks by Tehran or proxies that harmed Americans or allies would be “answered with a decisive U.S. response” which begs the question if today’s attack is just a precursor to a broader Iranian offensive.
And in what may perhaps be an early response to this question, shortly after news of the air strikes, the US evacuated all staff from the Iraq embassy in Baghdad following speculation that Kataib Hezbollah might carry-out a rocket attack in retaliation
And while we wait to see if an attack will indeed take place against the US embassy in Baghdad, there were unconfirmed reports that Kataib Hezbollah had fired four 107mm rockets at Camp Taji where US troops are present and the Iraqi Air Force has a base; the attack was in response to the US airstrike targeting the Kataib Hezbollah’s local HQ.
#BREAKING: Minutes ago, #IRGC backed 47th Brigade of #PMU (Kataib Hezbollah) fired four 107mm rockets at Camp #Taji where #US troops are present & #Iraq|i Army Aviation has a base. This attack is carried-out in response to #USAF airstrike at Kataib Hezbollah’s local HQ in #AlQaimpic.twitter.com/2qrvRpMKOy
A bankruptcy boom has hit the oil and gas industry, and it’s just getting started. Investors have lost their appetite for shale, and energy debt has become among the least desirable in the market.
The industry has been teetering on the verge of mass hysteria for much of 2019 as a record number of energy companies folded.
According to Energy and Restructuring law firm Hayes and Boone’s, a grand total of 50 energy companies filed for bankruptcy during the first nine months of the year, including 33 oil and gas producers, 15 oilfield services companies and two midstream companies.
In contrast, 43 oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy for the whole of 2018.
The biggest oil and gas bankruptcy of the year–indeed, the biggest since 2016–was EP Energy, which filed for bankruptcy in October, unable to pay back some $5 billion in debt.
Now, some observers are warning that the shakeout will pick up serious momentum in 2020.
Bingeing on Debt
During the latest shale boom, the putative class valedictorian of the modern energy industry, American drillers binged on mountains of readily available debt as they capitalized on investors and financiers willing to gamble on the premise that fracking operations could be significantly cheaper and more efficient than conventional drillers.
Before long, oil markets were flooded with a deluge of the commodity far outstripping demand. In what few could have foreseen, the US became the world’s largest oil producer, with its nearly 13 million b/d output turning it from a net importer to a net exporter of crude. Predictably, prices tanked by a sizable margin, dropping to levels well below the breakeven points of many drillers.
Suddenly, investors became wary of the shale industry and energy debt became anathema.
They have good reason to be scared.
Companies with junk-rated bonds have been defaulting on interest payments at record levels, while dozens of smaller drillers that had saddled themselves with too much debt have been dropping like flies.
Now analysts see this taking an even sharper turn, with more mergers and more debt restructurings required to get the industry back in shape.
As Ken Monaghan, Amundi Pioneer co-director of high yield, has told CNBC:
“We’re at the early stages [of the shakeout]. The problem is some of these companies still have a bit of rope to go. they don’t have [debt] maturities that are coming up in 2020 and 2021. They’re going to try to outrun the clock and hope that oil prices move higher.”
Michael Bradley, energy strategist with Tudor, Pickering, Holt, has expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the market is no longer rewarding energy companies with aggressive expansion schemes, preferring instead to see profits and money returned to shareholders.
“Most people are saying we don’t want you to spend money on growth. We want you to give the money back because you guys are dummies.”
Monaghan says there are more distressed companies in the energy sector than in any other, with energy bonds only recently moving to the green after remaining in losing territory for much of the year thanks to the latest oil price mini-rally.
Bradley estimates that about $30 billion- $40 billion of high-yield energy debt [bonds] is now at risk. These companies have little choice but to seek bankruptcy protection and restructure if they hope to live to see another oil boom.
Catch 22
Shale drillers face a catch 22 situation because of the very nature of their business. Young shale wells decline at notoriously fast clips, with many depleting 70 percent to 75 percent of their reserves in the first year, thus forcing shale drillers to continue drilling new wells to replace lost supply. But with a freeze-out in debt and oil prices still low, they are bound to find it increasingly hard to keep up production.
Bradley sees many mid-cap oil companies resorting to mergers in order to survive with an estimated $2B-$7B in M&A deals over the next two years.
These won’t be the usual gilt-edged mergers with fat premiums, though, as the tie-up between WPX Energy and Felix Energy has proved. This was a smart and sober $2.5-billion tie-up that reflects the fact that investors have soured on the sector.
In other words, the consolidation wave that everyone seems to expect is going to focus on smart deals, or none at all.
This also means that large-cap independent players such as Concho Resources Inc. (NYSE:CXO) and Diamondback Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:FANG) are likely to see their market shares grow.
Ultimately, the ongoing shakeout is likely to leave the industry in a much better patch, though not so much for the consumer who will have to contend with higher oil prices thanks to higher levels of production discipline.
China Launches Stealth Rate Cut By Switching Benchmark Lending Rate, Lowering Funding Costs
More than 4 years since the last official Chinese rate cut (not of its far more targeted Required Reserve Ratio but its broad Benchmark rate), economists and pundits were wondering when, if ever, Beijing would finally cut its main rate again to ease financial conditions again at the broadest level and boost fading corporate profits while kickstarting the country’s moribund economy whose GDP is now growing below 6% GDP, the lowest on record. To be sure, China has had its share of setbacks in the past year preventing it from implementing the type of monetary policy it desires, most notably soaring food inflation as a result 110% pork CPI…
… even as producer prices, a driver of industrial profits, slumped below zero earlier in 2019, a clear indicator that China’s enterprises desperate for lower rates.
And yet, a wholesale easing, such as cutting the benchmark rate, could potentially spark even more food inflation, setting off violent popular protests. After all, the Chinese population’s patience is already running thin, forcing Beijing to scrap import tariffs on US pork exports, a move which Xi Jinping (and Trump) quickly spun as a trade war concession, but in reality was a matter of preserving the peace for China which is desperate for any sources of cheaper protein to keep its 1.4 billion people fed, and happy.
Well, overnight China finally did what so many had been expecting to do, if once again it did so in a roundabout way.
Remember that back on August 17, China’s central bank unveiled detailed measures on its long-awaited interest rate reform by establishing a reference rate for new loans issued by banks to help steer corporate borrowing costs lower and support a slowing economy.
As a key part of the rate overhaul, the Loan Prime Rate (LPR) would eventually become the new Benchmark Reference Rate to be used by banks for lending which is aimed at supporting funding as well as lower borrowing costs for small businesses; the rate will be set monthly (20th of every month) and will be linked to the Medium-term Lending Facility rate. The current 1 year LPR stands at 4.15% after its latest cut on Nov 30 versus the Benchmark Rate 4.35%.
So even with the PBOC pushing the LPR lower by 10bps since its August inception, the benchmark rate has remained unchanged at 4.35% since October 2015.
It is in this context that on Saturday, China’s entire interest rate framework was overhauled when the PBOC ordered lenders to adopt the new LPR rate as the de facto basis for all credit from next year, marking an end to the previous benchmark in what Bloomberg said was another step toward liberalizing the financial system (although many disagree).
In a statement, the PBOC said that financial institutions should stop using the old lending rate as the pricing reference for all credit from January, and gradually convert existing loans to a new base using the loan prime rate, from March to August. The one-year lending rate had provided the previous anchor for loans across the economy.
And since the PBOC is effectively forcing lenders to adopt a reference rate that is 20bps lower than the benchmark, Saturday’s announcement is effectively stealth easing, and will lower costs for the roughly 152 trillion yuan ($21.7 trillion) in yuan-denominated outstanding loans held by financial institutions and boost economic growth, even though – as with most things in China – it does not involve a straightforward cut to interest rates.
The transition is “in line with the need to further reduce the financing costs for the real economy, although there’s still a long way to go,” said Fan Ruoying, analyst at the Bank of China’s Institute of International Finance in Beijing, as quoted by Bloomberg. The shift to the LPR comes at a time when Beijing has unveiled a raft of pro-growth measures, including tax cuts, more infrastructure spending, reductions in the amount of cash banks must keep on reserve and lending rates to boost credit.
Ironically, while the move will benefit end-consumers and debtors, it could have an especially adverse impact for creditors, forcing even more bank failures, bank runs, bailouts and nationalizations. As Fan warned, “the move will present more challenges for commercial banks because the interest margin will be squeezed and lenders will need to improve their pricing ability.” As a reminder, many of the small and medium-bank failures that took place in 2019 – and there have been more this year than ever on record – have been attributed to the ongoing drop in rates that banks can charge client which in a time of shadow bank crackdowns, has meant more bank failures amid a flattening of the Net Interest Margin curve.
“The purpose of the step is to make interest rates more market-driven and help lower financing costs,” said Wen Bin, an economist at Minsheng Bank in Beijing.
To be sure, the impact of the loan reform won’t be groundbreaking as most new loans issued in the past 4 or so months already track the LPR: “By now close to 90% of new loans are priced with the LPR, but outstanding loans with floating rates are still based on the benchmark lending rate,” the central bank said in a separate statement. That means the real lending cost “can’t reflect changes in market interest rates.”
Why did the PBOC decide to shift to the LPR, which we also dubbed China’s Libor rate when we discussed it in the summer, besides providing it a convenient way to cut rates by 20bps without actually implementing a 20bps rate cut? As a reminder, the rate which will become the benchmark for new loans this year, is based on the interest rate for one-year loans that 18 banks offer their best customers. Banks submit the quoted price each month in the form of a spread over the rate of the PBOC’s medium-term loans.
According to Bloomberg, the move may help make monetary policy more effective, resolving a long-standing problem in which cheap funding that the PBOC offers banks doesn’t result in cheaper loans to businesses. In the new scenario when all borrowing is based on the LPR, the supply of central bank funding or cuts to the rates of medium-term loans will in theory push down the LPR, and reduce the cost of all lending to businesses. One can almost call it trickle down credit with Chinese characteristics…
Whether or not such a move will succeed remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the transition to just one short-term rate will simply somewhat China’s arcane rate system. The following Bloomberg explainer makes it clear why this was long overdue: most central banks govern the price of money in an economy via the rate that banks are charged to borrow cash over short time periods. In China, that approach had been divided into two steps. First, the PBOC guided prices for funding in the inter-bank market via its reverse repurchase agreements and medium-term lending facility. Then, it set the benchmark rates that were used to price mortgages, business loans and other commercial lending – the one-year and five-year lending rates.
So will a successful transition from a benchmark to an LPR rate stoke another asset bubble? Perhaps, although the PBOC is careful to avoid overheating among China’s most important assets: housing. While the interest rate of home mortgages should also be converted to the LPR, the central bank said that the new borrowing cost must be the same as the current charges to “reflect the request to regulate the property market.” Eventually, at some point in the future, home mortgages could be repriced in the future, based on the LPR, the PBOC said, giving itself a buffer for when China’s housing market takes its next leg down.
And while Bloomberg concludes that this latest stealth rate cut shows the PBOC’s “commitment to making the interest-rate system more market-driven” controls on deposits remain for now. In short, the step-by-step approach appears to be trying to open up the system without shrinking interest margins too rapidly and adding more pressure to smaller lenders. Unfortunately, with numerous banks having already failed previously in 2019 (as discussed here), and with more than half of China’s banks failing a recent central bank stress test, the only guaranteed outcome from this weekend’s effective rate cut is that, paradoxically, it will only accelerate the rate of failure of China’s already cash strapped, and in many cases insolvent, banks.
Which begs the question: did Beijing, in hopes of gently stimulating the economy, start a cascade of failures that will eventually drag down more than just the small and medium banks (and result in the executions of many more bank CEOs) despite such “brilliant” marketing ploys as offering a pound of pork to starving savers with every new deposit, and precipitate China’s long-overdue financial crisis?
Imperialist spinmeisters are trial-ballooning a new Syria narrative that is so breathtakingly stupid it needs its own article solely for the purpose of mockery.
On Christmas Eve PBS aired a bizarre segment on the death of James Le Mesurier, the former military intelligence officer who founded the extremely shady propaganda construct known as the White Helmets. The segment makes relentless, ham-fisted appeals to emotion, even attempting to associate the White Helmets with Armistice Day using wistful camera pans over poppy flowers and misty war memorial art exhibits, but by far the most yogurt-brained part is its repeated suggestions that Le Mesurier killed himself because people had been accusing him of being a propagandist.
“And now a story of a humanitarian trying to help Syria: the suspicious death in Turkey last month of James Le Mesurier, the co-founder of the White Helmets rescue organization in Syria,” opens PBS News Hour’s Judy Woodruff.
“Friends and colleagues fear that he may have been murdered or driven to suicide by a campaign of character assassination.”
“Whatever the cause, Le Mesurier was a victim of a very modern war,” the special’s narrator solemnly intones.
“There is no hiding place in cyberspace. Le Mesurier was at the epicenter of a propaganda war, and his friends are appalled at what they regard as a campaign of character assassination.”
“The amount of abuse, the amount of ill-placed propaganda, disinformation that’s on social media and the Internet coming out of Russian bots and Syria, Syrian regime, and others was unbearable,” Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon mourns.
This ridiculous narrative was picked up and run with by Syria narrative managers on Twitter.
“This is a disturbing report by Malcolm Brabant on the lethal consequences of conspiracism. It shows how slander and disinformation may have pushed James Le Mesurier, one of the finest humanitarians, to his death. The report highlights the pernicious lies issuing from the self-described ‘Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media’, which is a small group of academics, none specialising in Syria or the Middle East, in alliance with a group of pro-Kremlin trolls like Vanessa Beeley et al.”
It is true that both Beeley and the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media have accused Le Mesurier of running a propaganda operation on behalf of western governments using western government funding. But if Ahmad truly believed that accusing people of conducting propaganda caused them to kill themselves, he should turn himself in for attempted murder, because he accuses people of being propagandists constantly.
Here’s a link to Ahmad calling journalist Max Blumenthal a “propagandist for Maduro”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling Beeley a “pro-regime propagandist”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele “a fabricator and a propagandist”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou “a propagandist for Putin”.
Talk about “lethal disinformation”, Idrees.
Alexander “I’m so far left I agree with Mike Pompeo on every foreign policy issue” Reid Ross also assures us that questioning establishment Syria narratives definitely kills people. https://t.co/RyDlQ7Ex7X
But of course, no one really believes that accusations of conducting propaganda actually drive people to suicide. If that were so, people like me would have thrown ourselves off a building years ago.
I am accused of being a propagandist nearly every day. At the height of Russiagate hysteria it happened many times a day in my blog post comments and social media notifications. Depending on what’s in the news and how I’ve responded to it I’ve been accused of writing paid propaganda for the Kremlin, Assad, the Iranian government, Palestinians, Pyongyang, Beijing, Maduro, the alt-right, George Soros, and WikiLeaks, just off the top of my head.
Every anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist, and antiwar activist with any kind of platform has had this experience. Ever since the new McCarthyism of establishment-driven Russia hysteria took off, accusing people who question imperialist narratives of conducting psyops for foreign governments has become the norm in political discourse. It’s created an extremely hostile and vitriolic environment in which productive conversations are vanishingly rare.
Where’s our PBS special? Does anyone care? Is there any compassion from these hand-wringing establishment loyalists for the fact that Vanessa Beeley and the members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media are hounded day in and day out by establishment narrative managers and their brainwashed followers with accusations of spreading propaganda, supporting genocide, and embracing war crimes? I know I’ve never had a garment-rending Idrees Ahmad thread written about concerns for my psychological well being, and I’ve been targeted by multiple online harassment campaigns over the years.
The amount of hateful vitriol that gets leveled at people for simply opposing imperialism, for wanting peace, is truly astonishing. Just for saying “Hey here are some reasons we should maybe reconsider toppling yet another government in yet another Middle Eastern nation” will bring in complete strangers calling you all sorts of names, calling you disgusting, calling you evil, calling you a monster. For supporting peace.
There are all kinds of people in the world who are very deserving of harsh words. Powerful exploiters, oppressors and manipulators. People who destroy the environment for profit. People who get rich selling weapons of war while paying politicians and think tanks to advance the cause of war. War criminals who’ve never faced justice. With all those people in the world who we can all agree are terrible, you wouldn’t think peace activists should feature anywhere near the top of anyone’s list. But they do. Because war propaganda is just that influential.
And, of course, nobody cares. None of these narrative managers care about what psychological burden they might be placing on people by assuring their audiences that it’s perfectly sane and normal to hound and harass anyone who questions imperialist propaganda. Their concern is not and has never been about anyone’s psychological health. Their concern is in managing narratives in a way that favors the US-centralized empire that they serve.
I do not know what caused Le Mesurier’s death; to be in any way confident that a known spook committed suicide at all, or was murdered by Russians, is absurd. Maybe he killed himself because he failed to listen to the adage “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”
What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that only idiots believe that skepticism about western regime change agendas in the Middle East kills people.
Shocking Photos: Two Seriously Injured After Tesla Slams Into Parked Firetruck (Again)
Two vehicle occupants have been seriously injured after a Tesla slammed into the back of a Cloverdale Township Volunteer Fire Department Truck early Sunday morning. According to the Greencastle Banner-Graphic, the accident took place in Cloverdale, IN.
The fire truck was in the eastbound lands of the interstate, responding to an earlier wreck, when a Tesla ran into the rear of the truck, causing “heavy damage” to both.
Reports from the scene indicated that both the driver and the passenger were unconscious and trapped. There is no word yet on whether or not Autopilot played a role in the accident.
Both occupants were extricated from the vehicle and the Indiana State Police said that the accident involved “serious personal injury.”
Recall, this is not the first time a Tesla has slammed into the back of an inanimate fire truck. In 2018, an accident occurred when a driver smashed into the back of a fire truck in Southern California. That driver was found to have been “looking down” at “what appeared to be a mobile phone” while the car’s Autopilot was engaged, according to Bloomberg.
The NTSB revealed in preliminary reports on Tuesday that a witness statement from the collision corroborated this conclusion, which was also supported by additional data released by investigators.
The driver had engaged Autopilot, which had been active for 13 minutes and 48 seconds prior to the accident. The driver’s hands were not on the wheel for the “majority of the time” it was engaged, according to Tesla data provided to the NTSB.
The stock market reached new all-time highs. This has occurred because the Federal Reserve’s ‘quantitative easing’ never really ended. Instead of consulting Congress like they did in 2008, the Fed simply creates currency out of thin air and hands it out to its member banks. A lot of that easy money goes into the stock market, which mostly benefits the top of the pyramid that owns most of the major global corporations.
Over 50 percent of Americans have no money in the stock market. Many millennials cannot afford to buy a house, let alone stocks.
For many, the American Dream will never become a reality. The wealth divide in this country continues to widen, thanks to the cancerous creation of the Federal Reserve. Instead of stopping booms and busts, they created larger ones, all to their own benefit.
The national debt continues to make new highs along with the stock market. That means more tax dollars will go toward paying interest on the debt. Paying down the principal is impossible unless the president declares a debt jubilee. I’m all for that as long as it also means ending the Fed.
The melt up will grow even more absurd and the wealth divide will worsen unless we change our current immoral system of money. The end of the Federal Reserve is long overdue. Let’s hope President Trump makes it one of his resolutions for 2020.
Twitter Scrubs Viral Trump Retweet Of Alleged Hoaxblower’s Name; Blames Glitch Before Banning User
Twitter blamed a computer glitch after President Trump’s retweet of a post containing the name alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella mysteriously disappeared from his timeline. After ‘fixing’ the issue and restoring the retweet, the user was simply bannedfrom the platform so that nobody could see the tweet, which quickly went viral.
“Rep. Ratliffe suggested Monday that the “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella committed perjury by making false statements in his written forms filed with the ICIG and that Adam Schiff is hiding evidence of Ciaramella’s crimes to protect him from criminal investigations,” read the tweet made by by now-banned @surfermom77, which describes herself as living in California and a “100% Trump supporter.”
Ciaramella has been outed in several outlets as the ‘anonymous’ CIA official whose whistleblower complaint over a July 25 phone call between Trump and with his Ukrainian counterpart is at the heart of Congressional impeachment proceedings.
Trump retweeted the post around midnight Friday. By Saturday morning, it was no longer visible in his Twitter feed.
When contacted by The Guardian‘s Lois Beckett for explanation, Twitter blamed an “outage with one of our systems.”
Some people reported earlier today that someone had deleted the alleged-whistleblower’s name-retweet from Trump’s timeline. Others of us still see *that tweet* on Trump’s timeline. When asked for clarification, Twitter said this: https://t.co/Rftkg3nbushttps://t.co/XREAvvxjhf
By Sunday morning, the tweet had been restored to Trump’s timeline – however hours later the user, @Surfermom77, was banned from the platform.
Running cover for Twitter is the Washington Post, which claims “The account shows some indications of automation, including an unusually high amount of activity and profile pictures featuring stock images from the internet.”
Surfermom77 has displayed some hallmarks of a Twitter bot, an automated account. A recent profile picture on the account, for instance, is a stock photo of a woman in business attire that is available for use online.
Surfermom77 has also tweeted far more than typical users, more than 170,000 times since the account was activated in 2013. Surfermom77 has posted, on average, 72 tweets a day, according to Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation. –WaPo
Meanwhile, Trump retweeted another Ciaramella reference on Thursday, after the @TrumpWarRoom responded to whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid’s tweet calling for the resignation of Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) from the Senate Whistleblower Caucus after she made “hostile” comments – after she tweeted in November that “Vindictive Vindman is the “whistleblower’s” handler (a reference to impeachment witness Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.
“The watchdog group requested conversations between Ciaramella and special counsel Robert Mueller, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.”
The United Nations wants to hand power to dictatorial regimes like China to control the Internet, prompting fears of a massive new free speech purge.
The General Assembly has approved a resolution sponsored by China and Russia to set up a committee of “international experts” whose role would be to stop “the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes.”
However, many caution that the move is merely a back door for authoritarian regimes to further censor dissent.
“The United States, European powers and rights groups fear that the language is code for legitimizing crackdowns on expression, with numerous countries defining criticism of the government as “criminal,” reports AFP.
Human Rights Watch said the list of sponsors for the resolution is “a rogue’s gallery of some of the earth’s most repressive governments” and “gives countries legal cover for internet blackouts and censorship, while creating the potential for criminalizing free speech.”
Governments like China already censor and turn off the Internet during times of civil unrest while doling out ‘social credit score’ punishments for those who criticize the state.
The Communist country is also rolling out a plan to force its citizens to pass a facial recognition test to use the Internet. Criticized the authorities? No Internet for you.
We predicted that all this would come to fruition nearly 10 years ago in an article entitled ‘Cybersecurity Measures Will Mandate Government “ID Tokens” To Use The Internet’.
“Under the guise of “cybersecurity,” the government is moving to discredit and shut down the existing Internet infrastructure in the pursuit of a new, centralized, regulated world wide web,” I wrote in June 2010.
The fact that the United Nations is attempting to legitimize this framework by handing oppressive regimes more power to define certain types of speech as criminal is part of a long term agenda.
As we previously highlighted, the United Nations global compact on migration expanded the definition of ‘hate speech’ to make it a crime to criticize mass immigration.
Under a second Trump administration the U.S. is almost certain to ignore any UN attempt to impose its hegemony over the Internet, but if the Democrats win in 2020 it could be a very different story.
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“If He’d Take It, Yes” – Biden Considers Obama For Supreme Court Nomination
Joe Biden’s campaign trip through eastern Iowa on Saturday was met with a rather unusual conversation with reporters.
The Wall Street Journal’s Ken Thomas said that reporters asked Biden in Washington, Iowa, if he would ever consider nominating former President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court if he was elected president in 2020.
Biden responded by saying: “If he’d take it, yes.”
Biden asked here in Washington, Iowa, if he would ever nominate former President Obama to serve on the Supreme Court. “If he’d take it, yes,” Biden says.
The Daily Caller noted that on “National Best Friends Day” over the summer, Biden tweeted a picture of a friendship bracelet that read “Joe and Barack.”
And with the 2020 elections quickly approaching during one of the most polarized moments in recent American politics, if for whatever so reason that President Trump is impeached, and Biden becomes president, the installment of Obama on the Supreme Court would undoubtedly lead to angry with many Americans.
