Month: October 2016

Submitted by Wayne Madsen via infowars.com

In an email sent to his business partner and Democratic fundraiser Jeffrey Leeds, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote of Hillary Clinton, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”

Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State during Barack Obama’s first term was an unmitigated disaster for many nations around the world. Neither the Donald Trump campaign nor the corporate media have adequately described how a number of countries around the world suffered horribly from Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy decisions.

Millions of people were adversely harmed by Clinton’s misguided policies and her “pay-to-play” operations involving favors in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.

The following is a before and after recap, country by country, of the destabilizing effects of Clinton’s policies as Secretary of State:

Abkhazia

Before Hillary: In 2009, more and more nations began recognizing the independence of this nation that broke away from Georgia and successfully repelled a U.S.-supported Georgian invasion in 2008.

After Hillary: Clinton pressured Vanuatu and Tuvalu to break off diplomatic relations with Abkhazia in 2011. The State Department pressured the governments of India, Germany, and Spain to refuse to recognize the validity of Abkhazian passports and, in violation of the US-UN Treaty, refused to permit Abkhazian diplomats to visit UN headquarters in New York. The Clinton State Department also threatened San Marino, Belarus, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Somalia, Uzbekistan, and Peru with recriminations if they recognized Abkhazia. Georgia was connected to Clinton through the representation of Georgia in Washington by the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, the brother of Mrs. Clinton’s close friend and current campaign chairman John Podesta.

Argentina

Before Hillary: Under President Nestor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina’s economy improved and the working class and students prospered.

After Hillary: After former president Nestor Kirchner’s sudden death in 2010, the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires became a nexus for anti-Kirchner activities, including the fomenting of political and labor protests against the government. Meanwhile, Clinton pressed Argentina hard on its debt obligations to the IMF, also crippling the economy.

Bolivia

Before Hillary: Bolivia’s progressive president Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous Aymara leader, provided government support to the country’s coca farmers and miners. Morales also committed his government to environmental protection. He kept his country out of the Free Trade Area of the Americas and helped start the Peoples’ Trade Agreement with Venezuela and Cuba.

After Hillary: Clinton permitted the U.S. embassy in La Paz to stir up separatist revolts in four mostly European-descent Bolivian provinces, as well as foment labor strikes among miners and other workers in the same model used in Venezuela.

Brazil

Before Hillary: Brazil’s progressive presidents, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, ushered in a new era for the country, with workers’ and students' rights at the forefront and environmental protection and economic development for the poor major priorities.

After Hillary: Clinton’s authorization of massive electronic spying from the US embassy in Brasilia and consulate general in Rio de Janeiro resulted in a “constitutional coup” against Rousseff and the Workers’ Party government, ushering in a right-wing, CIA-supported corrupt government.

Central African Republic

Before Hillary: Under President Francois Bozize, the CAR remained relatively calm under a peace agreement hammered out under the auspices of Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya.

After Hillary: In 2012, Islamist terrorists of the Seleka movement and supported by Saudi Arabia conducted an uprising, massacring Christians and riving Bozize’s government from power. The CAR became a failed state under Clinton’s State Department.

Ecuador

Before Hillary: Ecuador began sharing its oil wealth with the people and the economy and the plight of the nation’s poor improved.

After Hillary: Clinton authorized a 2010 National Police coup against President Rafael Correa. The economy soon plunged as labor disputes wracked the mining and oil sectors.

Egypt

Before Hillary: Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was a stable secular nation that suppressed jihadist politics in the mosques. The jihadist-oriented Muslim Brotherhood was kept at bay.

After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 “Arab Spring” and the toppling of Mubarak, Egypt saw Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood elected president. Immediately, the secular country began a process of Islamization with Christian Copts experiencing repression and violence, including massacres. Morsi’s rule resulted in a military coup, thus ending Egypt’s previous moves toward democracy.

Germany

Before Hillary: The nation was a peaceful country where German culture, as well as religious freedom and women’s rights were guaranteed.

After Hillary: Clinton’s “Arab Spring” eventually resulted in a flood of mainly Muslim refugees being welcomed into Germany from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Today, Germany is wracked by Muslim refugee street crime, unsanitary and harmful public health habits of migrants, sexual assaults by migrant men of women and children, increased acts of terrorism, and a diminution of German culture and religious practices.

Greece

Before Hillary: Greece was a nation that saw government safety net social services extended to all in need. It also remained a top tourist destination for northern Europeans.

After Hillary: The 2010 debt crisis emaciated the Greek economy and Clinton remained adamant that Greece comply with draconian economic measures dictated by Germany, the European Union, and the IMF/World Bank. Making matters worse, Clinton’s “Arab Spring” eventually resulted in a flood of mainly Muslim refugees being welcomed into first, the Greek isles, and then mainland Greece, from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Today, Greece, especially the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Symi, Rhodes, Leros, and Kos, are wracked by Muslim refugee crime, unsanitary public health habits of migrants, sexual assaults by migrant men of women and children, acts of arson and vandalism, and a diminution of Greek culture and religious practices.

Guatemala

Before Hillary: Under President Alvaro Colom, the nation’s first populist progressive president, the poor received access to health, education, and social security.

After Hillary: Clinton authorized the U.S. embassy in Guatemala to work against the 2011 election of president Colom’s wife, Sandra Torres. Colom was succeeded by a right-wing corrupt president who resigned for corruption and then was arrested.

Haiti

Before Hillary: Haiti was prepared in 2011 to re-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forced out of office and into exile in a 2004 CIA coup. The prospects of Artistide’s return to power was a blessing for the slum dwellers of Haiti.

After Hillary: Clinton refused to allow Aristide to return to Haiti from exile in South Africa until it was too late for him to run in the 2011 election. Under a series of U.S.-installed presidents, all approved by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Haiti is a virtual cash cow for the Clintons. The Clinton Foundation diverted for its own use, international aid to Haiti, and the Clintons ensured that their wealthy friends in the hotel, textile, and construction businesses landed lucrative contracts for Haitian projects, none of which have benefited the Haitian poor and many of which resulted in sweat shops and extremely low wage labor practices.

Honduras

Before Hillary: Emergent multi-party democracy with a populist progressive president, Manuel Zelaya. Children received free education, poor children received free school meals, interest rates were reduced, and the poorest families were given free electricity.

After Hillary: Clinton authorized a military coup d’etat against Zelaya in 2009. Clinton family “fix-it” man Lanny Davis became a public relations flack for the military dictatorship. A fascist dictatorship involved in extrajudicial death squad killings of journalists, politicians, and indigenous leaders followed the “constitutional coup” against Zelaya. During 2012, Clinton ordered U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa to work against the 2013 election of Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as president.

Iraq

Before Hillary: Under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq experienced small moves toward an accommodation with the Kurds of the north and Sunnis. Iran acted as a moderating political force in the country that deterred any attempts by Saudi-supported jihadis to disrupt the central government in Baghdad.

After Hillary: Clinton’s Arab Spring resulted in the rise of the Sunni/Wahhabist Islamic State in northern and western Iraq and Iraq’s plunge into failed state status. Shi’as, Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrian Christians, and moderate Sunnis were massacred by the jihadis in northern, western, and central Iraq. The Iraqi cities of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Nineveh fell to ISIL forces with non-Muslims being raped, tortured, and executed and priceless antiquities being destroyed by the marauding jihadists.

Kosovo

Before Hillary: Kosovo, which became independent in 2008, initially granted its Serbian minority in northern Kosovo and Metohija some degree of self-government.

After Hillary: In 2009, Kosovo increasingly became a state ruled by criminal syndicates and terrorists of the former Kosovo Liberation Army. The rights of Serbs were increasingly marginalized and Kosovo became a prime recruiting ground for jihadist guerrillas in Arab countries subjected to Clinton’s “Arab Spring” operations, including Libya and Syria.

Clinton pressured states receiving U.S. aid and other U.S. allies to recognize Kosovo’s independence. These included Pakistan, Palau, Maldives, St. Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Burundi, East Timor, Haiti, Chad, Gambia, Brunei, Ghana, Kuwait, Ivory Coast, Gabon, St. Lucia, Benin, Niger, Guinea, Central African Republic, Andorra, Oman, Guinea-Bissau, Qatar, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Honduras, Somalia, Djibouti, Vanuatu, Swaziland, Mauritania, Malawi, New Zealand, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Bahrain, and Comoros. In the Kosovo capital of Pristina, there is a 10-foot-high statue of Bill Clinton standing over Bill Clinton Boulevard. Not far away is a women’s clothing store called “Hillary.”

Libya

Before Hillary: Under Muammar Qaddafi, post-sanction Libya saw a boom in urban construction and a new major international airport to serve as a hub for Africa. Plans announced for an African dinar, supported by Libyan gold holdings, to serve the needs of Africa. All Libyans received free education and medical care. There was a program for revenue sharing of Libya’s oil wealth with the Libyan people.

After Hillary: Clinton’s 2011 regime change operations against Qaddafi, which saw the Libyan leader sodomized, beaten, and shot in the head by U.S.-supervised jihadist rebels, resulted in Clinton laughing about the incident in the infamous, “We came, we saw, he died” comment. Libya became a failed state where Islamic jihadist terrorists vied for control of the country and Qaddafi’s arm caches were given or sold to jihadist terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the pan-Sahel region, and sub-Saharan Africa. After Qaddafi’s ouster, black African guest workers and their families were massacred by jihadist forces.

Malaysia

Before Hillary:  Malaysia, before 2009, was a religiously tolerant nation where Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus enjoyed freedom of religion.

After Hillary: In 2009, Najib Razak became prime minister and he began accepting bribes from Saudi Arabia that totaled some $2.6 billion with additional Malaysian public money in Razak’s personal bank accounts plus the Saudi cash totaling some $3.5 billion. Razak began allowing Saudi-influenced clerics to push for sharia law throughout Malaysia and Christians in Sarawak, Sabah, and Penang began experiencing Wahhabist repression. Clinton was silent about Malaysian persecution of non-Muslims. The reason may have been a reported several hundred million donation from Razak’s slush fund into the Clinton Foundation’s coffers.

Palestine

Before Hillary: In 2012, Palestine was granted non-member observer status in the United nations. The 2009 Goldstone Report of the UN found that Israel violated international humanitarian law in its war against Gaza in 2009. Palestine was gaining more support and sympathy internationally and was successfully putting to rest Israeli propaganda disinformation.

After Hillary: Hillary Clinton rejected the Goldstone Report as “one-sided.” Clinton’s unbridled support for expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its silence on the dehumanizing Israeli blockade of Gaza, emboldened Israel’s theocratic right-wing government to further encroach on Palestinian territories and cementing into place an apartheid-like series of Palestinian “Bantustans” in the West Bank and an open-air ghetto in Gaza.

Paraguay

Before Hillary: The country under Fernando Lugo began lifting out of poverty the nation’s rural campesinos and urban workers. Paraguay also began a steady move toward democratization after years of military dictatorships.

After Hillary: Clinton’s 2012 “constitutional coup” against Fernando Lugo brought back into power the military-industrial oligarchy with the nation’s campesinos being forced back into poverty and repressive rule.

South Sudan

Before Hillary: Prior to independence in 2011, South Sudan, while rife with intra-tribal feuding, was relatively calm.

After Hillary: After being rushed into independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan, a special project of Clinton, George Soros, and actor George Clooney, descended into civil war and chaos. It beat all records in being transformed from a newly-independent state into a failed state.

Syria

Before Hillary: Syria was a multi-cultural and multi-religious secular state championing the concept of pan-Arab socialism and progressive policies advanced by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Syria was not a safe place for jihadism.

After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 green light for the “Arab Spring,” Syria became a failed state where the Islamic State gained a firm foothold. Minority Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds were massacred by jihadist groups aided and abetted by NGOs and other interests backed by Clinton.

Thailand

Before Hillary: Thailand’s Red Shirt movement was a powerful force that demanded a return to democracy in Thailand and the restoration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 military coup, to power.

After Hillary: A Red Shirt protest in 2010 resulted in a bloody crackdown by the Thai military. Clinton remained silent about the Thai army’s killing of protesters and the mass arrests of Red Shirt leaders. U.S. military assistance to the Thai government was continued by Clinton. When Thaskin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became prime minister in 2011, Clinton began working to undermine her and her government in a manner not unlike Clinton’s subterfuge against Rousseff in Brazil and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. When it comes to women leaders, Clinton only tolerates conservatives who kow-tow to the United States. The pressure against Yingluck eventually resulted in her ouster in 2014 and her being criminally charged in the same manner that saw Rousseff charged in Brazil.

Tunisia

Before Hillary: Tunisia was one of the most secular nations in the Arab and Islamic world. A top destination for European tourists, the country was more European in its outlook than North African.

After Hillary: After Clinton’s 2011 “Jasmine Revolution,” a textbook themed revolution crafted by Clinton’s friend George Soros, Tunisia descended into Islamist rule and violence. Today, Tunisia is the top country for recruits to the Islamic State.

Turkey

Before Hillary: Turkey was moving steadily closer to European standards on human rights and democracy. Even under the Islamist-oriented Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country remained committed to pluralism.

After Hillary: Clinton authorized the shipment of Libyan weapons captured from Qaddafi’s arms caches to Turkish middlemen in the employment of Erdogan’s government for transfer to the jihadist rebels in Syria. A complication in this arrangement resulted in the September 11, 2012 jihadist attack on the CIA warehouse facility in Benghazi, which killed U.S. envoy Chris Stevens and other State Department personnel. Turkey’s dalliance with jihadist rebels in Syria was mirrored by increasing Islamization of Turkey. The events of 2011 and 2012 resulted in Turkey today being ruled by an Islamist strongman, Erdogan, with open political opposition being stamped out.

Ukraine

Before Hillary: Ukraine was a stable and neutral country that neither aligned itself with the West and NATO nor with Russia under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, elected in 2009 and inaugurated in 2010.

After Hillary: Clinton tried everything possible to ensure the 2009 defeat of Viktor Yanukovych. The State Department and its friends in the George Soros camp provided assistance to Clinton’s favorite candidate Yulia Tymoshenko to defeat Yanokovych. It was this early interference in the 2009 election that ultimately led to the “Euromaidan” themed revolution in 2014 against the government, resulting in civil war, the retrocession of Crimea back to Russia, and secessionist states in eastern Ukraine. Clinton’s policies directly led to a failed state in Europe.

Venezuela

Before Hillary: Under Hugo Chavez, the country provided basic social services to its poorest of citizens. Venezuela also provided discounted gasoline to several Caribbean and Central American countries through the PetroCaribe consortium.

After Hillary: After Clinton allowed the U.S. embassy in Caracas to foment anti-Chavez labor and political protests, the country began to falter economically. After Chavez’s 2012 diagnosis of terminal cancer, the State Department stepped up pressure on Venezuela, crippling the nation’s economy and political system.

Western Sahara

Before Hillary: Recognized by the African Union and several nations around the world as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Western Sahara saw some hope for an evacuation of illegal Moroccan occupation troops from its territory.

After Hillary: In 2010, Moroccan troops began entering Sahrawi refugee camps and attacking residents, even in UN-protected exclusion zones, where Moroccan troops were prohibited from entering. Clinton ensured that UN talks and a proposed popular referendum on the future of Western Sahara were stalled. Clinton pressured a number of states to withdraw their recognition of the SADR, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Paraguay, Haiti, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Malawi, Kenya, Mauritius, Zambia, Panama, and Burundi. The Clinton Foundation received a 2011 donation of $1 million from a Moroccan phosphate company owned by the Moroccan government and which has mining operations in Western Sahara.

Yemen

Before Hillary: Yemen was a largely secular state that was transforming into a federation where the rights of South Yemen and the Zaidi Houthis of north Yemen were being recognized.

After Hillary: Clinton’s “Arab Spring” of 2011 and the fall of Abdullah Saleh from power saw Yemen become a failed state. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State gained control over several areas of North and South Yemen. The fall of Saleh permitted Saudi Arabia to conduct a genocidal war in the country with Mrs. Clinton’s full support.

 

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They say that history tends to repeat itself and for the China housing market, and its constantly repeating cycle of bubbles, that certainly seems to be the case.  It seems like just yesterday that we pointed out the following video of ghost towns springing up all over China with millions of square feet of newly constructed residential living space but not a single resident. 

 

And now, as we’ve pointed out numerous times recently (see posts here and here), China’s home prices are bubbling up all over again.  Prices in China’s smaller cities, in particular, are seeing the largest gains as buyers from the larger tier one cities go hunting for “bargains.”  In fact, per a recent account from Reuters, home prices in the city of Changsha have risen 30% in two months all while 13.5mm square meters of residential real estate remains unoccupied.

“Prices have risen 2,000 yuan ($299.84) per square meter on average in the past two months. That’s almost a 30 percent rise from July,” said Hu Yi, marketing manager at Central Courtyard, a residential project in Changsha targeting mid- to high-end buyers.

 

Chen Xiaochuan, marketing manager with local residential property project Xiang-Shore Park said speculators make up about a third of homebuyers in Changsha.

 

They are mainly from first-tier cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, property agents said, but are also from Hefei, where home prices have doubled since the start of the year.

 

China Index Academy data shows there are 126,945 homes, or 13.46 million square meters, sitting empty in Changsha.

 

 

But Changsha isn’t the only city where home prices are bubbling over.  Prices in the Zhengdong district have risen two-thirds this year with sales managers in the area caught off guard, “Even we didn’t expect the prices to go up this much.”

“We have already bought an apartment here, and we are looking to buy a second one,” a woman who goes by her last name Wang told Reuters just outside of project’s sales office.

 

“We see a flux of buyers from people outside of Zhengzhou, especially those from smaller cities in the same province,” Xu said, who apologized for his raspy voice, which he said was due to one too many sales pitches.

 

And for Zhang Liyang, a sales manager at Greenland Group’s HK.600606 Zhengzhou office, the price surge in the past few months came as a surprise, which meant missed opportunities as she was entitled to employee discount rates.

Of course, as we’ve pointed out numerous times, and confirmed here with data from Deutsche Bank’s China Chief Economist, Zhiwei Zhang, the whole thing is yet another debt-fueled bubble that will inevitably come crashing down again at some point in the not-so-distant future.

Per the chart below, accompanying China’s booming property market is a surge in mortgage loans with LTV’s skyrocketing to 71.2% in recent months, twice the level in 2016H1, 34.8%, which was already much higher than its peak, around 25%, in previous years.

 

Meanwhile, DB points out the average land auction premium for tier 1 cities rose from around 40% at the beginning of the year to over 90% by August.  In tier 2 cities it soared to almost 70% from 25%.  Note, these are premia to asking prices not even YoY price changes…seems very reasonable.

 

And, of course, pricing growth is almost perfectly correlated with credit expansion.

 

But, just like last time around, its probably nothing…

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Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

The Fed argues that low rates have worked. The economy emerged from recession. Unemployment drifted back down. “Yay for us,” said the Fed.

Don't buy that statistical economic garbage. The economy recovered in spite of Fed policy, not because of it. The economy recovered because business owners, entrepreneurs, and workers rolled up their sleeves and made things happen.

It involved a lot of pain: layoffs, asset sales, lost customers, and more. But the hard-working citizens of this country slowly and painfully pulled themselves out of the nosedive.

Those are the people who deserve the credit, not the Fed. Keeping rates at artificially low levels did nothing other than push our economy into the mother of all corners.

Look where we are now.

The next recession means rates will go below zero

The US economy is going to suffer another recession in the not-too-distant future. So, for lack of anything else to do, the Fed is preparing to send rates below zero when the economy next needs goosing. That was clearly the message from Jackson Hole.

What then? Here is the most likely scenario I think we are facing—and you are not going to like it.

We are going to go into the next recession with interest rates still stuck in the sub-1% range. This doesn’t give the Fed much ammunition.

Economists (who could certainly qualify as High Priests) have done studies on recent Fed policies. These show that quantitative easing didn’t really do anything, other than maybe goose the stock market.

There is also no data that shows any positive benefit from the so-called wealth effect, which was all the academic rage at the beginning of this process. Forget the wealth effect. The fact is that when the stock market goes up, it does not trickle down to the average guy on Main Street.

(It’s ironic that the same economists who derided supply-side economics as trickle-down economics have adopted trickle-down monetary policy. I mean, that is so messed up on so many levels.)

We know that the Fed will not simply do nothing. We’ll get quantitative easing on a scale that is currently unimaginable. This will blow out the Fed’s balance sheet to a level that is unrecognizable.

Unless there’s considerable pushback from Congress. And it must come from more than just the usual suspects on the far right of the Republican Party. If not, we will see negative rates in the world’s reserve currency.

The central bankers of Europe who are experimenting with negative rates came to Jackson Hole to advise the Fed. They said that negative rates are working wonderfully. Never mind that cash hoarding in Switzerland is at astronomical levels.

(It’s a fascinating arbitrage: bank rates are -75 bips, and you can insure your cash in a safe deposit box for about 10 bips. And in Switzerland, you can find a bill worth $1000. It makes total sense.)

Negative rates will drive consumer spending down, not up. They will result in less income in retirees' pockets—forcing them to save more, work longer, and spend less.

The next 10 years will see an explosion of government debt and an implosion of the ability of governments to fulfill their promises. Any economic or investment model based on past performance under previous economic conditions will be worthless. Just as worthless as the Federal Reserve’s models.

The toughest investing climate of the last 100 years

We are truly going to have to go outside the box if we are going to figure out how to get our portfolios from where we are today to the other side of the coming crisis. There is no way to predict what our investment portfolios should look like six months or one year or two years or six years from now.

I see no way for Europe to avoid that crisis. The US might if we make some radical decisions in 2017. You can ask yourself how likely that is.

I’m telling you, this is not going to end well. You cannot assume that your investment returns will look anything like the average for the last 20, 30, 40 years.

I know some people will say that is exactly what’s going to happen. Many of them are my friends, and I enjoy sitting and talking with them over a bottle of wine and a great meal. But I will look them in the eye and tell them that they’re walking into economic hell with their eyes closed. And anyone who follows them will see their portfolio go up in smoke.

This is going to be the most difficult investing environment of the last 100 years. Only a public outcry can stop it.

*  *  *

Follow Mauldin as he uncovers the truth behind, and beyond, the financial headlines in his free publication, Thoughts from the Frontline. The publication explores developments overlooked by mainstream news and analyzes challenges and opportunities on the horizon.

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Almost one week after the first presidential debate, and days after Trump claimed that there were problems with his microphone, earlier today the Commission on Presidential Debates issued a brief, one-sentence statement Friday admitting “issues” with Donald Trump’s audio in during the first presidential debate held on Monday.

“Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump’s audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall,” the statement read.

Was Trump’s audio purposefully impaired? It is unclear, however we do know that while Trump argued after the debate that his microphone was defective, Hillary Clinton dismissed it an excuse of someone who did poorly. Clinton, who put Trump on the defensive, mocked the republican on Tuesday for complaining about his microphone.

“Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night,” Clinton quipped while speaking to reporters on her plane.

Trump told reporters immediately following the debate that event organizers “gave me a defective mic” that he said affected the audio inside the Hofstra University venue. 

In retrospect it means he was right.

“Did you notice that?” he asked a reporter immediately after the debate. “My mic was defective within the room.” 

While the issue didn’t appear to affect the broadcast of the debate, it may have led to a loss of concentration at the high stakes event, giving Hillary an advantage.

“Was that on purpose?” Trump asked. We will likely never know.

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Helicopters and warships dominated the South China Sea, as Russia and China continued their joint eight-day naval exercises, dubbed Joint Sea 2016.

A total of 18 ships and supply vessels, 21 aircraft and over 250 service personnel took part in the Joint Sea 2016 naval drills on September 12-19 in the South China Sea.

Does this look like Russia and China are sending a message?

h/t The Burning Platform

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Submitted by Sean Corrigan via TrueSinews.com,

I was recently flattered to be asked how I envisaged the dreaded ‘helicopter money’ working if it were not to simply add further to commercial banks’ already crippling mass of deadweight liabilities and assets, given that not only would printing it up in physical form be tortuous but that cash itself is only one conveniently heinous crime away from being proscribed altogether.

The first possibility is that the central bank issues requisition vouchers – i.e., it credits the Treasury in a dedicated internal account – and the happy recipients of Leviathan’s outlays get direct access there, too, to funds which are also, of course, legal tender for the whole bestiary of its taxes, licences, levies, and fines.

Effectively, the CB would set up some kind of separate giro bank in parallel with commercial bank system so that which ‘droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven’ would all be ‘outside’ money, i.e., M0, just as is today’s wickedly untraceable cash. In fact, this latter, allegedly criminal medium could – in the Bitcoin-Rogoff dystopia into which it seems we peons must soon be driven – easily be merged into it, then quietly abolished by not being re-issued in physical form, once paid in.

Patently, banks themselves would be in need of a ‘different business model’ or else these perpetual embarrassments to the New Order – these ‘dinosaurs’, as the Buba’s Andreas Dombret recently mocked them – might be made entirely redundant and simply allowed to perish.

Rather than sounding outlandish, that is something which might already have a familiar ring to it, since it has recently become the topic of that insidious, carefully concerted seeding of ideas which the elite has learned to practice in order that its most devilish innovations are introduced, not so much with a fanfare, as with blasé acceptance on the part of the carefully habituated.

Additionally, it would be a trivial matter to insist that all monies held captive in this Orwellian clearing house would not be able to be invested in financial assets but only spent on (approved) goods and services, as well as the exactions by which the state nefariously reduces the pro quo which its quid would otherwise command. Combine all this with that other well-prepared novelty, the universal income, and the apparatus of control becomes almost complete.

As an adjunct, note that those exactions can now be taken automatically, with the subject of such depredations having only the option to lodge a guilty-until-proven-innocent appeal in which the defendant will judge the merits of its own case. Nor is this some wild fantasy: Gordon Brown’s late, unlamented government in the UK was said to be actively looking into the feasibility of a scheme whereby one’s employer did not just withhold taxes from one’s salary, but pay the whole shebang over to the Revenue so it could decide, ex ante, how much wool to leave on the shivering sheep’s backs.

Having sealed the money in sufficiently tightly, those subversively insistent upon what remained of their freedom could now circumvent the rules only by resort to some kind of complicated and increasingly risky subterfuge, or by the narrow frustrations of barter. Gesell charges – negative interest rates, if you will – could readily be applied to make sure the title-holders kept the claims rapidly circulating. Further digital niceties could be employed to make the penalties of disuse vary according to the social profile of the holder as well as to vary that same money’s purchasing power, depending on how favourably the Panopticon in charge of the accounts looked upon the object and timing of his expenditure.

Once that babbling tributary of the Rubicon had been crossed, other, more insidious forms of social discipline could be effected here, too. One could easily imagine that there would be no pay or access for, say, supporters of ‘outsiders’ like Trump, Le Pen, Petry, or Farage, for climate ‘deniers’, or ultimately for anyone else not in complete harmony with the Davos Dominicans and the social-justice Jacobins who are their foot-soldiers in the war to re-engineer humanity.

The state could also limit your access to alcohol, or tobacco, or sugar, or meat – the first three as part of a Thaler-Shiller tyranny aimed at stopping those regarded as ignorant do not harm themselves; the fourth an NGO-approved imposition to prevent them from ‘harming the planet’. Along those lines, it could be made extremely difficult for anyone either to produce or consume proper, hydrocarbon energy rather than having to scrape by on the desultory and highly-costly output of some Carney- or Grantham-approved mediaevalism.

Big Brother might monitor your online presence to award points or deduct penalties for what it divines are your attitudes and inclinations. Mixed in with the ubiquity of smartphone and Bluetooth, WiFi and cellular networks, the Internet of Things could be used to score your performance all the livelong day. Londoners will know what I mean when I say that all aspects of life could thus be tracked and charged by means of a universal Oyster card, though others might draw the analogy rather with that of some endless, quest-based RPG which one is positively compelled always to play.

What a Brave New World that would be!

Even before we got to such dark Sci-Fi extremes of intimate, personalized stick-and-carrot ‘behavioural economics’, the mercantilists who, like the proverbial poor, are always with us would be swift to ensure the new money was not negotiable abroad unless some sort of CB swap mechanism was specifically authorised to that end. That way, the state could become instantly and completely protectionist in its buying – much to the detriment of the people’s welfare as it takes its shears to the enriching web of the international division of labour.

At a stroke, the customs department’s toll-gates could be made foolproof, on the part of both buyer AND seller- a possibility one could imagine as warming the heart of the PBoC, for example, by relieving it of its whack-a-mole attempts to limit its subjects’ widespread and constantly shifting efforts at cross-border financial and legal arbitrage.

Be under no illusions, however: for the rest of us, the heat so generated would be nothing short of a bonfire of our remaining liberties.

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