Month: September 2016

Following what even the mainstream media sheepishly admitted was a relatively successful trip across the border to meet with Pena Nieto this afternoon, Donald Trump is about to unveil his all-new – perhaps slightly softer on the rhetoric side – immigration policy (in an attempt to put to rest weeks of uncertainty).

So far the media's reaction can be summarized thus…

 

But the earlier press conference with Mexico's Pena Nieto went relatively well… (they did not scream, punch, kick, or yell at each other)

Although Pena Nieto did tweet this afterwards…

Al inicio de la conversación con Donald Trump dejé claro que México no pagará por el muro.

— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) August 31, 2016

Translated: "At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico would not pay for the wall."

*  *  *

So, as The Hill details, here are the five most important things to watch for in tonight's speech…

What’s his tone?

Like other major Trump speeches, the style and rhetoric could be as important as the content. A different Trump has taken to the stump since the elevation of pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager and the hiring of Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon — one that’s featured an almost constant diet of scripted remarks. As the campaign hashes out the content of the speech, the rhetorical decisions Trump and his aides make will show whether he’s prioritizing a push toward the center geared at attracting Hispanics and moderate voters or one aimed at reassuring and rallying his base. But the wildcard remains whether Trump will stick to the language approved by his campaign or if he’ll break in a way that could backfire later.

 

What about deportations?

The biggest question dogging Trump is whether he will still stand by his call for a “deportation force” to remove the 11 million undocumented immigrants.  That hard line helped him steamroll his GOP primary foes, but it is less helpful with a more moderate general election audience. So with polls sagging, Trump and his campaign have issued contradictory signals over whether he'd be willing to moderate, leading to even more confusion. The Trump campaign has recently focused on his call to immediately deport “criminal illegal immigrants.” But that doesn’t settle what happens to those who haven’t committed other crimes besides violating immigration laws.  One option could be a pathway to legal residency, perhaps with an immigration touch back, where those immigrants could leave the country briefly before returning to pay fines and ultimately remain in the country. Some conservative immigration activists see hope in that tactic thanks to Trump’s pronouncement from the start that he wants the “good” undocumented immigrants to come back into the country. 

Or he could stand by his primary rhetoric and call for the immediate removal of all 11 million undocumented immigrants.  There’s also the option of punting on that question too. Republicans have long argued that the immigration debate must be handled in two phases — securing the border before even dealing with those in America illegally. So Trump could fall back on that strategy to take the pressure off having to propose his own solution.

 

Any movement on the wall?

Trump’s “big, beautiful” wall has become the campaign’s central image, with supporters regularly breaking out into chants of “build that wall” at his rallies. But even that has come into question along with the rumors of a shift, with Rudy Giuliani describing Trump’s wall as a “technological, as well as a physical, wall.” It’s not the first time a Trump ally has cast doubt on his plans for a tangible barrier along the southern border. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry did so in July, as did New York Rep. Chris Collins in May. But the recent speculation as Trump considers a shift in his deportation stance has prompted surrogates to reiterate their boss’s plan for a physical wall and try to pour cold water on any assertions otherwise.

 

Will he make direct overtures to Hispanics?

It’s no secret that Trump is falling behind with Hispanic voters at the polls — in national polls released this week, Trump trails with Hispanics by as few as 19 percentage points and as many as 49 percentage points. The new Trump management appears more focused on closing that gap, as most speeches include some call to Hispanic voters. He could make a direct appeal Wednesday by either softening his rhetoric or providing for policy concessions like a touchback. Few believe that Trump can completely flip the script with the Hispanic electorate, but he’s polled significantly better with those either born in the U.S. or who primarily speak English. A July Pew poll found Trump down 70 points with Spanish-dominant Hispanics but by just 7 points with English-dominant Hispanics. It’s a similar pattern in a Gallup poll from this week that shows Trump still trailing but performing markedly better with U.S.-born Hispanics. Trump allies contend that his tough enforcement on the border may resonate with those who have recently gone through the legal immigration process. So if he hems close to the hard line, they are hopeful that those Hispanics will stay on board.

 

Can he keep his base engaged?

Any step toward the center threatens to dissuade Trump’s base, including many who have been drawn to Trump by his stance on his signature issue.  Assuming Trump moderates either his policies or his language, he’ll have to keep a careful eye on his right flank. If his base views a shift as an abandonment of that key promise, it could prompt his most ardent supporters to stay home. That could be a high-stakes gamble unlikely to pay off for a candidate already behind at the polls, as few people believe that enough Hispanics will ever flock to Trump to make angering his base worth it. Trump could use policy or rhetoric to hug his base tight even if he moderates elsewhere — either with a new red meat proposal or a frame meant to direct their anger toward Democrat Hillary Clinton and hopefully keep their passion for Trump burning. It’s this dynamic that makes Wednesday’s speech such a difficult one for Trump, who sits in between two contradictory goals — keeping his base happy and expanding his tent wide enough to win in November.

Live Feed from Arizona – Trump delivers immigration speech…

 

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While the trading world was focused on the latest news involving Deutsche Bank, namely that the troubled German bank had been contemplating a merger with Germany’s other mega-bank, Commerzbank as part of a strategy to sell all or part of a key business to speed up its flagging overhaul, a more troubling report emerged in a German gold analysis website, according to which Deutsche Bank was unable to satisfy a gold delivery request when asked to do so by a client of Germany’s Xetra-Gold service.

But first, what is Xetra-Gold?

According to its website, the publicly traded company “provides investors with an efficient instrument to participate in the performance of the gold market. Xetra-Gold’s combination of features – cost-efficient trading and the right for physical delivery of gold – makes it an attractive product.”

Among its highlights, Xetra-Gold lists the following:

Cost-efficient trading: No mark-up fee, no transportation or insurance costs such as those incurred when purchasing physical gold. Only the standard transaction fees that are charged for on-exchange securities trading are payable at the time of acquisition. The spreads that apply to purchase and sale correspond to the standard conditions on the global market and are considerably lower than those for traditional gold-based financial products. Furthermore, management or administration fees relating to Xetra-Gold are not incurred. The investor pays the amount of custody fees which he/she has agreed upon with the depository bank.

 

Physically backed: The issuer uses the proceeds from the issue of Xetra-Gold to purchase gold. The physical gold is held in custody for the issuer in the Frankfurt vaults of Clearstream Banking AG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Börse AG. In order to facilitate the delivery of physical gold, the issuer holds a further limited amount of gold on an unallocated weight account with Umicore AG & Co. KG.

 

Transparent:  Xetra-Gold tracks the price of gold on a virtually 1:1 basis, and is always up to date.

 

Tradeable in euros per gram: While in the past, gold was mainly denominated in US dollars per troy ounce, you trade Xetra-Gold in euros per gram.

 

Stable/Constant holdings: The investor’s right to receive delivery of the certificated amount of gold is not reduced by management costs or other fees, unlike other investments in gold. 1,000 units of Xetra-Gold will still represent a kilogram of gold in 30 years’ time.

The company makes the following promise:

Redemption for gold: Investors always have the possibility of demanding delivery of the securitised amount of gold per bearer note against the issuer. If the investor is not able to exercise this right due to legal restrictions effective for him/her, he/she can demand the cashing of Xetra-Gold from the issuer. In this case, a settlement fee of EUR 0.02 per Xetra-Gold bond will be charged.

 

Delivery of gold: If an investor asserts his/her right to the delivery of the certificated volume of gold from the issuer, the gold will be transported to the respective point of delivery by Umicore AG & Co. KG, which is responsible for all physical delivery processes. The issuer will also have delivery rights of gold from Umicore AG & Co. KG, as the gold leaf debtor. Investors can find information on delivery and the alternative payment claims that are relevant for investment and insurance companies in the PDF document entitled ‘Information on the process for exercising Xetra-Gold’.

And yes, Deutsche Bank is involved, as the fund’s Designated Sponsor.

In other words, Xetra-Gold is an Exchange-Traded Commodity which differentiates itself by “representing that every gram of gold purchase electronically is backed by the same amount of physical gold” and its principal bank is none other than Deutsche Bank.

And with Germans recently rushing to buy safes or find sound money alternatives in a country where the interest rate is negative, the ETC, it is not surprising that the population has flocked to its offering.

According to recent report by LeapRate, the gold held in custody by Deutsche Borse Commodities for the purpose of physically backing the Xetra-Gold bond has risen to a new record high of 90.67 tons, an increase of more than 50% since the beginning of the year. “For each Xetra-Gold bond, exactly one gram of gold is deposited in the central vaults for German securities in Frankfurt” the report parrots the company’s website.

Among all exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) tradable on Xetra, Xetra-Gold is by far the most successful in terms of turnover. During the first seven months of the year, order book turnover on Xetra stood at approximately €1.5 billion. The assets managed by Xetra-Gold currently amount to €3.5 billion.

 

In September 2015, the German Federal Fiscal Court (Bundesfinanzhof) had ruled that after a minimum holding period, any profits from the sale or redemption of Xetra-Gold are not subject to the capital gains tax. From a fiscal point of view, the purchase, redemption or sale are thus to be treated equal to a direct purchase or sale of physical gold, such as in bullions or coins.

But what is most notable, is that, as noted above, Xetra-Gold investors are entitled to the delivery of the certified amount of physical gold at any time, and adds that “since the introduction of Xetra-Gold in 2007, investors have exercised this right 900 times, with a total of 4.5 tons of gold delivered.“

However, something appears to have changed.

As Oliver Baron reports, those who ask for gold delivery at this moment, “could encounter difficulties.” The reason is that according to Baron, a reader of GodmodeTrader “sought physical delivery of his holdings of Xetra-Gold. For this he approached, as instructed by the German Borse document, his principal bank, Deutsche Bank.”

At that point then he encountered a big surprise: the Deutsche Bank account executive informed the investor that “the service”, is no longer offered, namely exercising physical delivery at Xetra-Gold, for “reasons of business policy” and therefore the order form provided by Clearstream Banking AG for exercising Xetra-gold is no longer available.

Baron writes that since Deutsche Bank is no longer serving the physical exercising of delivery request of Xetra-Gold is remarkable, as Deutsche Bank is the “designated sponsor” as well as fiscal, principal and redemption agent of Xetra-Gold according to its prospectus, and as the explainer of how to exercise physical delivery also reveals. Even if one is a customer of another bank, Xetra-Gold should – at least on paper- guarantee delivery by way of Deutsche Bank, as the Deutsche Borse Commodities GmbH explains in its “process description for exercising units“

Step-by-step description of exercise

 

Together with a representative of his principal bank, the investor creates the transaction and sends it to the principal bank’s custodian with the relevant process data described above. The custodian in turn instructs its custodian, stipulating all process-relevant data, until a bank which is a customer of Clearstream Banking is authorised.

 

The customer may use the attached exercise form to instruct the designated sponsor (here Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt) to deliver a specified number of gold bars to the point of delivery. The process is similar to that for the delivery of physical certificates.

 

The customer should send the original exercise form to the following address:

 

Deutsche Bank AG
“Ausübung Xetra-Gold” CIB-Global Banking
Trust & Securities Services
Grosse Gallusstrasse 10 – 14
60311 Frankfurt am Main
Germany

 

To transfer the required amount of Xetra-Gold units to the blocked account of Deutsche Börse Commodities, the customer should also place an FoP instruction via CASCADE or File Transfer/SWIFT.

 

Delivery will be initiated if Deutsche Bank receives the securities and the application form by 10:00 CET. As a rule it takes one to two weeks to deliver retail gold bars and four days for London Good Delivery gold bars from date of ordering. As soon as the delivered gold arrives at the point of delivery, the Xetra-Gold® units are removed and recovered from the “Ausübungskonto DBCo” (DBCo exercise account).

 

Due to the provisions of the Money Laundering Act (Geldwäschegesetz) only the branch of a bank may be used as point of delivery. Investors expecting a large delivery of gold should contact their principal bank to discuss the transfer of the gold to the point of delivery.

The article goes on to note that it was not clear whether the exercise and physical delivery at other banks is actually still possible. Baron said that Deutsche Borse Commodities advised to transfer the Xetra-Gold shares in a cooperative/Raiffeisenbank since physical delivery is allegedly still possible here. The Deutsche Borse also announced that it is currently working on the “possibility of delivery regardless of bank branch.” However, since this process was not described in the prospectus of Xetra-Gold, it would have to be legally tested, which could take considerable time.

The article’s conclusion: anyone who wants to easily convert their Xetra-Gold holdings into physical gold – at least for clients of Deutsche Bank – can do so only by selling their shares, and then buying gold coins or bars directly elsewhere. Which leads the author to the logical question: what is the worth of the Xetra-Gold service, which certifies the right to redeem physical gold, if said delivery is no longer possible?

In other words, what was supposedly an ETC which promised physical delivery upon demand, is nothing more than yet another “paper only” play.

We, on the other hand, have a more focused question: is the inability to deliver physical gold an incipient issue with Xetra-Gold, or with the company’s “designated sponor” Deutsche Bank, and if the latter is suddenly unable to satisfy even the smallest of delivery requests by retail clients, just how unprecedented is the global physical gold shortage?

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Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Chicago is launching a creepy new campaign to blanket the mega-city in more surveillance through its Array of Things, creating a network of (at least) 500 sensors devices that will be shared in a growing Big Data cloud.

As The Chicago Tribune reports:.

The first of a network of data-collecting sensors that could one day blanket Chicago are now live.

 

The city installed two nodes containing computers and sensors including low-resolution cameras as well as air quality sensors last week. They went up on traffic light poles at Damen and Archer avenues in the McKinley Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side and Damen and Cermak Road in the Heart of Chicago on the Lower West Side. The installation marks the launch of the Array of Things project, which was conceived in 2012 and originally slated to start in mid-2014.

 

The project is a collaboration between the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. AT&T is the internet provider for the project, which is backed by a $3.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The selling point is that many of the sensors will collect data about air quality and monitor traffic patterns for public safety.

But in reality, Chicago is a failing, gang-infested and corrupt city that epitomizes the collapse of America. These sensors, and the thousands of other surveillance cameras and input devices are erecting an electronic concentration camp inside the nation’s most chaotic and unruly areas.

Simply put, Chicago will quickly become one of the United States’ foremost police states, though they will be in good company with Seattle as a partner city, and most of the rest of the metros across the country soon to follow.

Be warned, things get darker from here.

The data will be publicly ‘released’ and also shared with city officials, “policy makers”, scientists/experts, law enforcement and (surely) government agencies, all of whom will process and analyze the data.

By making data public, it makes everyone a participant in their own enslavement, making the ultimate ‘transparency’ the data invasion of your life.

This article could go on for a while with in depth examples of how quickly the total surveillance society is taking over, and why we shouldn’t take it lying down.

Suffice to say, wise money will be diversified into cash, assets and raw survival supplies. There are 1001 ways in which your wealth is being looted and, your activities monitored, and your energy is being drained on the grid.

But soon, that grid will be almost impossible to escape from. Ever wanted to live life as a number?

Here’s what the CIA and NSA have been drooling over, while they watch the world opt into data rape:

Petraeus: “We’ll Spy On You Through Your Dishwasher”

The new age has dawned. Tagged, traced, tracked. Nearly every member in society is leaving a huge web of footprints and electronic prints everywhere they go, which computers can automatically flag for eccentric behavior and closer inspection. Many have opted in for greater data sharing with heartbeat monitors, step counters and other biometric data tools.

Even those who go to great lengths to pay cash, stay out of debt and off the radar and in the physical world stand to leave behind traces, and ping in the system of the Internet of Things (IoT) where all devices become smart appliances sending 2-way communication.

As Brandon Turbeville writes:

CIA Director David Petraeus made headlines with a speech given at the summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. In this talk, Petraeus discussed the emerging “internet of things” and the implications it will have for increased levels of surveillance. Petraeus explained that, because of the rise of gadgets which are connected and controlled by apps, intelligence agencies will no longer need to place spy devices inside your home – you will do it for them.

 

[…] the fact is virtually every piece of electronic equipment (including appliances) can be controlled via apps and Internet-based systems. It is for this reason that Petraeus stated that the CIA will be able to read these devices via the Internet and even radio waves outside of the home. Petraeus further stated:

 

‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies.

 

Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.

It seems that only Phillip K. Dick could foresee how far this system is going.

Still have nothing to hide?

‘We Live In Public’

If you want to know what it is like to live in a world where all your intimate data is shared, then check out the documentary “We Live in Public,” about the rise and fall of an Internet entrepreneur who went Truman Show and put everything on the web, including an experimentally surveillance society housed in an underground bunker.

His intent was to reveal how we are all going to live in the near future, where this technology is taking us.

“One day we’re all going to wake up and realize that we’re just servants. It’s captured us.”

 

“We built a bunker and showed people the future”

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A student at Festus High School in Missouri has been suspended for 3 days for holding up the "Trump" sign seen in the image below at a school pep rally. 

 

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Superintendent Link Luttrell said the suspension came from the student's refusal to put the sign away when asked noting that students are generally not allowed to have items at school events that are "unnecessary and could distract from the current environment."

"If there are items that are really unnecessary, they're going to be asked that those be put away. You are violating rules about following simple commands," Luttrell said.

 

"I do not feel at all that this instance was an instance where anyone's freedom to express was violated at all. Again, this is like I said earlier, there's a proper place for anything."

Don't think for one minute you can walk into the "safe space" of a high school pep rally with your hateful "trigger words" and not face punishment young man.  Now you run home and think hard over the next 3 days about how you can pull off voting for Hillary at least twice in November.  And this whole "I'm not even 18" argument isn't going to work with us.

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