Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

 

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In ancient times, like as far back as the 1990s, housing prices grew roughly inline with inflation rates because they were generally set by supply and demand forces determined by a market where buyers mostly just bought houses so they could live in them. Back in those ancient days, a more practical group of world citizens saw their homes as a place to raise a family rather that just another asset class that should be day traded to satisfy their gambling habits. 

But, thanks to the efforts of global central banks, the days where home prices roughly reflected the ability of the marginal local buyer to afford those homes, is long gone.  As a general rule of thumb, a house was historically considered “affordable” if it was less than 2.5 times a family’s annual gross income…by those metrics, at least according to the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index released earlier today, the median buyer can’t afford housing in pretty any of the major cities of the world.

Buying a 60m2 (650 sqft) apartment exceeds the budget of people who earn the average annual income in the highly skilled service sector in most world cities. In Hong Kong, even those who earn twice the city’s average income would struggle to afford an apartment of that size. House prices have also decoupled from local incomes in London, Paris, Singapore, New York and Tokyo, where price-to-income multiples exceed 10. Unaffordable housing is often a sign of strong investment demand from abroad, tight zoning and rental market regulations. If investment demand weakens, the risk of a price correction will increase and the long-term appreciation prospects will shrink.

Meanwhile, the price-to-rent ratios below further reflect the insanity of global real estate bubbles where yields have gradually trended toward 0% as speculators are once again utilizing cheap mortgages to bet on price appreciation with complete disregard for underlying fundamentals. 

Zurich and Munich have the peak price-to-rent ratios, followed by Stockholm and Vancouver. Extremely high multiplies indicate an undue dependence of housing prices on low interest rates. Overall, half of the covered cities have price-to-rent multiples above 30. House prices in all these cities are vulnerable to a sharp correction should interest rates rise.

 

Price-to-rent values below 20 are found only in the US cities of Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago. Their low multiplies reflect, among other things, higher interest rates and a relatively mildly regulated rental market. Conversely, rental laws in France, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden are strongly protenant, preventing rentals from reflecting true market levels.

 

But stratospheric price-to-rent multiples reflect not only interest rates and rental market regulation but expectations of rising prices, for example in Hong Kong and Vancouver. Investors anticipate being compensated with capital gains for overly low rental yields. If such hopes do not materialize and expectations deteriorate, homeowners in markets with high price-to-rent multiples are likely to suffer significant capital losses.

But there’s probably nothing to worry about…everything worked out just fine in 2009.

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Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Many readers are familiar with the original petrodollar deal the U.S made with Saudi Arabia.

It was set up by Henry Kissinger and Saudi princes in 1974 to prop up the U.S. dollar. At the time, confidence in the dollar was on shaky ground because President Nixon had ended gold convertibility of dollars in 1971.

Saudi Arabia was receiving dollars for their oil shipments, but they could no longer convert the dollars to gold at a guaranteed price directly with the U.S. Treasury. The Saudis were secretly dumping dollars and buying gold on the London market. This was putting pressure on the bullion banks receiving the dollar.

Confidence in the dollar began to crack. Henry Kissinger and Treasury Secretary William Simon worked out a plan. If the Saudis would price oil in dollars, U.S. banks would hold the dollar deposits for the Saudis.

These dollars would be “recycled” to developing economy borrowers, who in turn would buy manufactured goods from the U.S. and Europe. This would help the global economy and help the U.S. maintain price stability. The Saudis would get more customers and a stable dollar, and the U.S. would force the world to accept dollars because everyone would need the dollars to buy oil.

Behind this “deal” was a not so subtle threat to invade Saudi Arabia and take the oil by force.

I personally discussed these invasion plans in the White House with Kissinger’s deputy, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, at the time. The petrodollar plan worked brilliantly and the invasion never happened.

Now, 43 years later, the wheels are coming off. The world is losing confidence in the dollar again. China just announced that any oil-exporter that accepts yuan for oil can convert the oil to gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and hedge the hard currency value of the gold on the Shanghai Futures Exchange.

The deal has several parts, which together spell dollar doom.

The first part is that China will buy oil from Russia and Iran in exchange for yuan.

The yuan is not a major reserve currency, so it’s not an especially attractive asset for Russia or Iran to hold. China solves that problem by offering to convert yuan into gold on a spot basis on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

This straight-through processing of oil-to-yuan-to-gold eliminates the role of the dollar.

Russia was the first country to agree to accept yuan. The rest of the BRICS nations (Brazil, India and South Africa) endorsed China’s plan at the BRICS summit in China earlier this month.

Now Venezuela has also now signed on to the plan. Russia is #2 and Venezuela is #7 on the list of the ten largest oil exporters in the world. Others will follow quickly. What can we take away from this?

This marks the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system that Henry Kissinger worked out with Saudi Arabia in 1974, after Nixon abandoned gold.

Of course, leading reserve currencies do die — but not necessarily overnight. The process can persist over many years.

For example, the U.S. dollar replaced the UK pound sterling as the leading reserve currency in the 20^th century. That process was completed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, but it began thirty years earlier in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.

That’s when gold began to flow from the UK to New York to pay for badly needed war materials and agricultural exports.

The UK also took massive loans from New York bankers organized by Jack Morgan, head of the Morgan bank at the time. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a long, slow decline in sterling as it devalued against gold in 1931, and devalued again against the dollar in 1936.

The dollar is losing its leading reserve currency status now, but there’s no single announcement or crucial event, just a long, slow process of marginalization. I mentioned that Russia and Venezuela are now pricing oil in yuan instead of dollars. But Russia has taken its “de-dollarization” plans one step further.

Russia has now banned dollar payments at its seaports. Although these seaport facilities are mostly state-owned, many payments, like those for fuel and tariffs, were still conducted in dollars. Not anymore.

This is just one of many stories from around the world showing how the dollar is being pushed out of international trade and payments to be replaced by yuan, rubles, euros or gold in this case.

I believe gold is ultimately heading to $10,000 an ounce, or higher.

Now, people often ask me, “How can you say gold prices will rise to $10,000 without knowing developments in the world economy, or even what actions will be taken by the Federal Reserve?”

It’s not made up. I don’t throw it out there to get headlines, et cetera.

It’s the implied non-deflationary price of gold. Everyone says you can’t have a gold standard, because there’s not enough gold. There’s always enough gold, you just have to get the price right.

I’m not saying that we will have a gold standard. I’m saying if you have anything like a gold standard, it will be critical to get the price right.

The analytical question is, you can have a gold standard if you get the price right; what is the non-deflationary price? What price would gold have to be in order to support global trade and commerce, and bank balance sheets, without reducing the money supply?

The answer is, $10,000 an ounce.

I use a 40% backing of the M1 money supply. Some people argue for 100% backing. Historically, it’s been as low as 20%, so 40% is my number. If you take the global M1 of the major economies, times 40%, and divide that by the amount of official gold in the world, the answer is approximately $10,000 an ounce.

There’s no mystery here. It’s not a made-up number. The math is eighth grade math, it’s not calculus.

That’s where I get the $10,000 figure. It is also worth noting that you don’t have to have a gold standard, but if you do, this will be the price.

The now impending question is, are we going to have a gold standard?

That’s a function of collapse of confidence in central bank money, which is already being seen. It’s happened three times before, in 1914, 1939 and 1971. Let us not forget that in 1977, the United States issued treasury bonds denominated in Swiss francs, because no other country wanted dollars.

The United States treasury then borrowed in Swiss francs, because people didn’t want dollars, at least at an interest rate that the treasury was willing to pay.

That’s how bad things were, and this type of crisis happens every 30 or 40 years. Again, we can look to history and see what happened in 1998. Wall Street bailed out a hedge fund to save the world. What happened in 2008? The central banks bailed out Wall Street to save the world.

What’s going to happen in 2018?

We don’t know for sure.

But eventually a tipping point will be reached where the dollar collapse suddenly accelerates as happened to sterling in 1931. Investors should acquire gold and other hard assets before that happens.

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Ethereum (ETHUSD) Weekly/Daily

Ethereum (ETHUSD) is showing fatigue after about 2 weeks of bouncing off roughly 200, with the selloff today intensifying after failing to hold the psychologically key 300 whole figure level.  300 also represents the 50% Fib retrace of the fall from roughly 400 to 200.  With daily RSI and Stochastics tiring, and the weekly Stochastics and MACD turning down, the weekly Tombstone forming is increasingly ominous for bulls.  ETHUSD continues to be relatively weaker than Bitcoin (BTCUSD), with ETHUSD serving as a leading indicator for BTCUSD price momentum.  Risk:reward will further improve for bears once the daily MACD blue line flattens and begins tilting lower.

 

 

 

 

Bitcoin (BTCUSD) Weekly/Daily

Bitcoin (BTCUSD) is showing fatigue after about 2 weeks of bouncing off roughly 3000, with the selloff today intensifying after failing to hold the 61.8% Fib retrace of the fall from roughly 5000 to 3000.  With daily RSI and Stochastics tiring, and the weekly MACD trying to negatively cross, BTCUSD could be in the early stages of forming a downchannel (on the daily and weekly chart).  Risk:reward will further improve for BTCUSD bears once the daily MACD blue line flattens and begins tilting lower.

 

 

Click here for today’s technical analysis on EURUSD

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Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The biggest purveyors of “fake news” and irresponsible journalism are the news media outlets complaining most about it.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is at the forefront of the latest fake news on Russia.

Maddow’s Rant

The story went viral of course.

Another Story Falls Apart

Today, Glen Greenwald reports Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?

LAST FRIDAY, most major media outlets touted a major story about Russian attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems, based exclusively on claims made by the Department of Homeland Security. “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, officials said Friday,” began the USA Today story, similar to how most other outlets presented this extraordinary claim.

 

MSNBC’s Paul Revere for all matters relating to the Kremlin take-over, Rachel Maddow, was indignant that this wasn’t told to us earlier and that we still aren’t getting all the details. “What we have now figured out,” Maddow gravely intoned as she showed the multi-colored maps she made, is that “Homeland Security knew at least by June that 21 states had been targeted by Russian hackers during the election. . .targeting their election infrastructure.”

 

So what was wrong with this story? Just one small thing: it was false. The story began to fall apart yesterday when the Associated Press reported that Wisconsin – one of the states included in the original report that, for obvious reasons, caused the most excitement – did not, in fact, have its election systems targeted by Russian hackers.

 

 

The spokesman for Homeland Security then tried to walk back that reversal, insisting that there was still evidence that some computer networks had been targeted, but could not say that they had anything to do with elections or voting.

 

Then the story collapsed completely last night. The Secretary of State for another one of the named states, California, issued a scathing statement repudiating the claimed report:

 

 

This has happened over and over and over again. Inflammatory claims about Russia get mindlessly hyped by media outlets, almost always based on nothing more than evidence-free claims from government officials, only to collapse under the slightest scrutiny, because they are entirely lacking in evidence.

 

The examples of such debacles when it comes to claims about Russia are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. I wrote about this phenomenon many times and listed many of the examples, the last time in June when 3 CNN journalists “resigned” over a completely false story linking Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci to investigations into a Russian investment fund which the network was forced to retract.

 

Remember that time the Washington Post claimed that Russia had hacked the U.S. electricity grid, causing politicians to denounce Putin for trying to deny heat to Americans in winter, only to have to issue multiple retractions because none of that ever happened?

 

Or the time that the Post had to publish a massive editor’s note after its reporters made claims about Russian infiltration of the internet and spreading of “Fake News” based on an anonymous group’s McCarthyite blacklist that counted sites like the Drudge Report and various left-wing outlets as Kremlin agents?

 

Or that time when Slate claimed that Trump had created a secret server with a Russian bank, all based on evidence that every other media outlet which looked at it were too embarrassed to get near?

 

Or the time the Guardian was forced to retract its report by Ben Jacobs – which went viral – that casually asserted that WikiLeaks has a long relationship with the Kremlin? Or the time that Fortune retracted suggestions that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN’s network?

 

And then there’s the huge market that was created – led by leading Democrats – that blindly ingested every conspiratorial, unhinged claim about Russia churned out by an army of crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch and Claude “TrueFactsStated” Taylor?

 

And now we have the Russia-hacked-the-voting-systems-of-21-states to add to this trash heap.

 

Each time the stories go viral; each time they further shape the narrative; each time those who spread them say little to nothing when it is debunked.

 

Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. Just look at how many major, incredibly inflammatory stories, from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is it not clear that there is something very wrong with how we are discussing and reporting on relations between these two nuclear-armed powers?

Hello Rachel Maddow!

My Quick Take

 

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After a summer plagued by hours-long delays and service outages, New Yorkers’ frustration with the city’s rapidly deteriorating subway system has reached a boiling point. But while the MTA is desperately trying to close massive budget shortfalls by hiking fares in lieu  of any kind of meaningful assistance from the State of New York, commuters have noticed that a series of mysterious metal towers have started appearing at the entrances of tunnels and bridges around the city.

And some are expressing frustration with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA for refusing to release any details about the towers' purpose, despite planning to spend $100 million on them.

One New Yorker, Jose Lugo, told CBS that the quickly appeared after the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel toll booths came down.

Earlier this month, Reinvent Albany asked the Authorities Budget Office to investigate whether the 'MTA board was fully informed, before approving contracts' related to the construction of the towers. The group is trying to figure out if the MTA board knew what it was doing when it approved a series of contract amendments worth some $47 million worth of expenses for the towers that currently sit at the entrance to the Battery and Queens Midtown Tunnels.

Eventually, the MTA plans to construct 18 such towers, saying only that they will serve some vague anti-terrorism-related purpose.

“It’s a bit mind-boggling that the MTA is approving $100 million for what appears to us to be big, decorative pylons,” says John Kaehny, the leader of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. “What we’re asking for is transparency from the MTA.”

 

“What we're asking for is transparency from the MTA.”  

But the individuals in charge are staying tight-lipped about what the towers actually do.

Cedrick Fulton, the head of the MTA's bridges and tunnels, refused to comment to media organizations asking about the towers, and MTA chaiman and former mayoral candidate Joe Lhota said he wasn't at liberty to discuss details of the project, other than to confirm that they would serve some type of anti-terrorism-related purpose.

Shams Tarek, a spokesman for the MTA, told Politico that the towers 'host cameras, traffic monitoring and other equipment related to homeland security that would otherwise have been hosted by the former toll booth structures'.

If this is accurate, then $100 million seems like a hefty price tag for such a project.

Citizens aren’t the only ones asking questions about the towers. According to CBS, some MTA board members, including New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, say they know too little about the towers – especially considering that the MTA has already spent $50 million on them.

“It’s a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So, what are they exactly?” Trottenberg said.

Let’s hope – for the MTA’s sake – that these pylons do have some kind of sophisticated functionality, and that this isn’t another classic example of the wasteful spending habits that have contributed to the subway’s present-day troubles.  
 

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Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The gunfire on the streets near my hotel started around 9pm last night.

The sound is unmistakable, especially at night on an otherwise quiet city street.

I had recently returned to the hotel after a few evening meetings. And coming back after dark it was as if they had rolled the sidewalks up — restaurants with no patrons, bars and clubs that were totally empty.

There was an incredibly striking woman I remember, standing in front of her restaurant playing hostess to absolutely nobody.

And with few people on the streets, it felt like some sort of zombie apocalypse.

Amazingly enough this country used to be THE wealthiest in the region. And not too long ago.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Venezuela enjoyed robust growth. Low inflation. Substantial foreign investment. High wages. It was the envy of Latin America.

It was all based on one industry: oil. Venezuela has effectively been a one-trick pony for decades.

And when oil prices were strong, the government was swimming in cash. Even as recently as 2007, the Venezuelan government’s oil revenue was so high that they PAID OFF ALL FOREIGN DEBT.

Think about that: only ten years ago Venezuela had ZERO foreign debt.

But at the same time the government here had a long history of excessive spending. Social programs. Military. Fuel and electricity subsidies. Whatever it took to remain in power.

The government spent so much money that, even when oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel between 2011 and 2013, they STILL couldn’t break even.

Then oil prices collapsed. By early 2016, a barrel of oil was fetching less than $30.

Venezuela’s public finances were in shambles… so the government resorted to the same old tactics that nearly every bankrupt government has relied on throughout history.

For one, they started spending their foreign reserves– essentially burning through the public savings account.

Today Venezuela has its lowest level of foreign reserves in decades, less than $10 billion, compared to $42 billion in December 2008.

They’ve also sold off a huge portion of their gold reserves.

In late 2015 Venezuela held 373 metric tons of gold. Today that’s down to 188 metric tons, a nearly 50% drop in less than two years.

More importantly, though, the government has resorted to printing incomprehensible quantities of paper currency and vastly expanding the central bank balance sheet.

This chart is really amazing to see– the Venezuelan central bank’s balance sheet literally TRIPLED in a SINGLE MONTH between April and May of this year.

They keep printing more and more money, to the point that the currency has become totally worthless.

I remember coming here a few years ago when the black-market rate was around 8 bolivars per US dollar.

On my next trip, it took 100 bolivars to buy a dollar in the black market. And the rate kept dropping with each trip.

This time I exchanged dollars at around 27,000 per US dollar. Meanwhile the ‘official’ rate is a laughable 10:1. It’s a nearly 3000x difference.

So, depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela is either absurdly expensive or absurdly cheap.

A ride from the airport was about 80,000 bolivars. At official rates that’s EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS. For a taxi ride.

But at black market rates it’s less than three bucks. Quite a difference.

Last night I exchanged $100 and received this brick of cash in exchange.

Needless to say this monetary insanity makes life extremely difficult.

Anything imported is prohibitively expensive. And with the economy collapsing, domestic production is also grinding to a halt.

There’s very little economic activity. People are sitting in their homes trying to survive. Medicine is scarce. And even staples like food are running out… which is totally nuts.

Venezuela is a vast country with rich, fertile soil and abundant sources of water. There is absolutely no reason why there should be food shortages here.

Chalk up another victory for socialism and central planning.

In their desperation, people are turning to crime, prostitution… anything they have to do to make ends meet. I routinely see people picking through garbage cans eating scraps, anything they can find.

Incredibly there is still a hint of normalcy in the city, at least during the daytime.

People are out on the streets going about their lives… heading to work, taking their kids to school, playing sports, chatting with their friends.

I find it remarkable how well this place has held itself together. Venezuelans constantly display ingenuity and resilience in their ability to deal with such an epic crisis.

And the good news is that this will one day get better.

The government has nearly run out of money and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debts. At some point they’ll no longer be able to pay the armed thugs who keep the population in line.

It’s inevitable. Totalitarian governments almost invariably fall when they run out of resources to sustain themselves.

It may get worse before it gets better. But eventually this madness and oppression WILL come to an end, whether through war, revolution, peaceful means.

What I find so strange is how little optimism there is for Venezuela.

By comparison, investors are perennially excited about Cuba. People have been saying for decades that Cuba will be an investment paradise once the authoritarian regime comes to an end.

Sure, great. I’ve been to Cuba. I like it. And there will certainly be great opportunities there.

But few people apply this same logic to Venezuela. And I find that strange.

This place is huge. There is SO MUCH opportunity here. 30+ million people. Enormous reserves of natural resources. Plenty of coastline. Ports. Infrastructure. Manufacturing capacity. Strategic geography. Renewable energy.

Whether it’s next year or ten years from now, this country has the potential to some day become one of the most exciting places in the world. 

Do you have a Plan B?

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Since the financial crisis, most market observers and economists have cheerfully ignored the aggregate student-debt load in the US, which recently swelled to an economy-threatening $1.4 trillion. Even as student-debt, which can't be discharged in bankruptcy, grew to represent 10% of the total US debt burden, defenders of the status quo pointed to declining default rates as evidence that the government-backed student loan industry wasn’t in danger of imploding.

But that may soon change.

As Bloomberg reports, the student-loan default rate in the US ticked higher during the second quarter for the first time since 2013. While it’s only one quarter of data, it should send a chill down the spine of government and private lenders, who have every reason to worry that this could be more than a temporary blip.

To wit, the share of Americans at least 31 days late on loans from the U.S. Department of Education ticked up to 18.8% as of June 30, up from 18.6% during the same period a year ago, according to new federal data. Meanwhile, about 3.3 million Americans have gone more than a month without making a required payment on their Education Department loans—up about 320,000 borrowers.

The rise interrupts a period of 12 straight quarters of declines in delinquency rates, according to numbers dating to 2013. It also comes at a time when US economic growth is nominally expanding (the BEA announced earlier today that the US economy expanded by 3.1% during the second quarter, an improvement over its previous estimate).

While the uptick may be small compared with the 17 million debtors making student-loan payments, according to Bloomberg, it has baffled economists, who’ve struggled to find a suitable explanation.

“There's no fundamental reason for that to be happening,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior U.S. economist for Bloomberg Intelligence. After all, she said, the U.S. economy has improved since June of last year, with lower unemployment, higher household incomes and increased wealth, federal data show. Consumers are more confident about the economy and their own personal finances, too, according to Bloomberg Consumer Comfort data.

In the name of generosity, let’s assume that these economists aren’t being willfully ignorant, and that the argument that there are no “fundamental reasons” for the uptick in delinquencies is grounded in some type of institutional shortsightedness.

To be sure, when it comes to the precarious finances of student-loan borrowers, nothing has changed in the past three months. Instead, we’d posit that the US’s massive pile of student-loan debt has for years posed an underappreciated threat to the US economy.

Case in point: The recently released Student Loan Debt and Housing Report 2017, an annual study conducted by the National Associated of Realtors, confirmed that many borrowers are putting off moving out of their parents’ house, purchasing homes, and myriad other purchases because of their student debt.

The U.S. currently has a student debt load of $1.4 trillion, which accounts for 10 percent of all outstanding debt and 35 percent of non-housing debt. The magnitude of the debt continues to grow in size and share of the overall debt in the economy. While this amount of debt has risen, the homeownership rate has fallen, and fallen more steeply among younger generations.

Student loan debt impacts other life decisions including employment, the state the debt holder lives in, life choices such as continuing education, starting a family, and retirement.

 

Twenty-two percent were delayed by at least two years in moving out of a family member’s home after college due to their student loans.

 

Among non-homeowners, 83 percent cite student loan debt as the factor delaying them from buying a home. This is most frequently the case due to the fact that the borrowers cannot save for a downpayment because of their student debt. Among homeowners, 28 percent say student debt is impacting the ability to sell their existing home and move to a different home. The delay in buying a home among non-homeowners is seven years and three

years for homeowners.

But perhaps the most dismaying evidence was when the NAR tried to gauge “buyer awareness” – i.e. the student’s understanding and frame of mind when they first applied for the loans.

• Before attending college, 28 percent of borrowers knew generally the school “might be expensive” or “might be cheap”, but had no further information.
• More than one-quarter of borrowers had an understanding of tuition, but had little understanding of other costs such as fees and housing expenses.
• One in five borrowers understood all the costs including tuition, fees, and housing.

After offering a handful of specious explanations, ranging from a rise in the number of debtors actively making payments, to the notion that the best borrowers have already “graduated” (i.e. paid off their loans), Bloomberg offers a nugget of sense.  

Finally, Tarkan said, there could be a simpler reason: Maybe more Americans just can’t afford their monthly payments.

Sometimes, the best explanations are also the simplest.
 

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Via StockBoardAsset.com,

Project Baltimore, an investigative reporting initiative, which was launched in March 2017, by Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc, the largest U.S. broadcaster, has uncovered more evidence of a massive grade manipulation scheme brewing in Baltimore City Schools.

The report indicates, the problem is more widespread than thought.

A high-level district administrator, who works in inside the school system says Project Baltimore now has “concrete evidence” of grade manipulation through 13 report cards obtained from Calverton Elementary/Middle School in west Baltimore.

For each report card, Project Baltimore has two versions, one which teachers submitted, and a second version, where every single failing grade was changed to a passing mark.

Per the report,

The high level district administrator exclaimed, “once a report card is generated, that means that’s the end of the quarter. There would have been no further credit given because the first quarter had already ended”.

That leaves the grade manipulation to a higher authority than a teacher, such as the principle, assistant principal, and or whoever the principal has given the authority.

Back in August, the Baltimore community was outraged, after Northwood Appold Community Academy II, a high school in the area, had zero students proficient in math, but had one of the highest graduation rates in the district.

Meanwhile, the grade rigging scandal in Baltimore, is now spreading across Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan will be investigating claims of widespread corruption in Prince George’s County Schools aimed at inflating graduation rates.

The school system is conveniently boarding Washington, D.C., where school board members alleged in a May 30 letter to Hogan that “widespread systemic corruption” in the district since 2014 contributed to grade rigging.

“Whistleblowers at almost every level in (Prince George’s County Public Schools) have clear and convincing evidence that PGCPS has graduated hundreds of students who did not meet the Maryland State Department of Education graduation requirements,” the board members wrote.

*  *  *

The outbreak of grade rigging scandals in Maryland’s public school system is alarming. America’s public education system is cracking and the scandals are quite evident of it.

For President Trump, overhauling America’s broken public education system could be a hefty task. Whoever said ‘Making America Great Again’ was an easy thing? Let’s not kid ourselves, America is in a transitional period and it will take some time to realign the country.

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Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

A recent report published by a U.N. commissioned organization concludes that America’s history of slavery justifies reparations for African Americans. The submission by the ‘Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent’ – which one might assume would study all ‘People of African Descent’ around the world, notably fails to opine on other nations which have engaged in the practice – considering that less than 10% of African slaves were brought to North America, or the fact that arabs operated the slave trade for over 1300 years – a practice which continues to this day, primarily in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia.

The group presented its findings on Monday, pointing to what they say is a “continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history.”

“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”

The report cites last year’s spate of blacks killed by police officers around the United States, which the panel says has created a “human rights crisis” that “must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today,” it said in a statement. “The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.”

Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, chairwoman of a United Nations working group for people of African descent, reads findings about institutionalized racism after an official visit to the U.S. (Youtube/UN Human Rights)

What about the rest of the story?

Conspicuously absent from the U.N. report is the fact that the slavery in the United States was facilitated by 1300 years of Arab slave trade. According to Wikipedia:

Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.^[5]  

The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.^[4][6][7]

Will this report pave the way for universal basic income for low income blacks in America?

Ignoring modern slave trade

Meanwhile, the U.N. has been quiet on the topic of countries which haven’t cracked down on the slave trade, including UN Human Rights Council member Saudi Arabia. There are an estimated 21 – 46 million slaves around the world today, with India dominating the top of the list.

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Perhaps we can look forward to a followup report from the U.N. on reparations owed by the other 90% of the world which participated in the slave trade, as well as their thoughts on what’s owed to the 48 million modern slaves around the world.

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