Jeff Nielson: Single Digit Silver, Confiscation, Golden Black Market

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

 

 

 

 

Over the past several months, there have been comments from various sources calling for the bottom in gold and silver. There have been a couple of people that have stated this is not the case. One of those people is Jeff Nielson of Bullion Bulls Canada and writer for Sprott Money. Jeff, beginning in February, has gone so far as to call the upswing in silver, in particular, as well as gold, as being a “fake rally”.

 

I sat down with Jeff to get an update to our conversation from March 24, 2016 when he stated the same “fake rally”. In March, Jeff explained it like this:

 

Currently, what’s taking place in bullion markets, over the short term, we are in the middle of a fake rally. My premise for that is really simple. As we’ve seen the metals prices advance, the price of gold has been leading silver, but in any legitimate precious metals rally, the price of silver always leads the price of gold. This is a rule of precious metals markets for a very simple reason. By dollar value the silver market is much, much smaller than the gold market. Jeff Nielson, The Daily Coin

This call goes against the contrarian view point – contrarian to the contrarian! Jeff even stated the pullback would begin at this time:

 

If you want to crash metals prices and they are already at bargain basement levels then you have to march them up a bit first, if you wanna give them a really good crash. So, you take them up so you can push them down even harder and faster. Maybe that harder and faster is starting today (Editor’s Note: Gold was down approximately $24.00 and silver was down approximately $0.60 when we recorded this on March 23.) My sense is this is a little premature; my sense is this will be a false takedown, if you will, and then we’ll see metals prices quickly bounce back again to assume their pseudo rally and the actual take down will occur a few weeks down the road. – Jeff Nielson, The Daily Coin

This has proven to be precisely how it played out. It was three weeks ago when the Federal Reserve began their nonsensical talk of “raise interest rates”, “don’t raise interest rates” and the metals have been on a downward spiral ever since.

 

The metals are another of the (now confirmed) manipulated markets. They move according to the people that pull the levers and produce the “news” which points the “HFT” trading algorithms in the direction that is desired. The “trading” then begins to move prices in the manner which benefits the people/companies at the very, very top.

 

Fast forward to today. As Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics explains on the Silver Doctors Metals and Markets Weekly Wrap, all the news that has been produced over the past three weeks has all been specifically to attack the gold price and, equally, the silver price. The one exception to this overall economic/financial news cycle is the BLS labor report on Friday, June 3. This one piece of news stopped gold and silver from sliding further, at least for the moment.

 

Prices are generally moving down and we are just a few days away from the Federal Reserve meeting. The precious metals market will, in all likelihood, continue moving downward. The only question is: will gold and silver reach new lows or test the low that was established in December 2015?

 

Jeff seems to think the metals, especially silver, could revisit lows that have not been seen for several years. Gold, in his opinion, could retreat to $1,000 per ounce before it’s all over, and silver could revisit a single digit trading number. Can you imagine $9.99 per ounce for silver? Would there be any physical silver available at that price? My guess is absolutely not. I believe the physical markets would seize up and Jeff believes this as well. Jeff has some ideas on how the people in charge may handle such a situation.

 

This interview is not to be missed. As the title implies, we are reviewing the market from a different perspective and discuss aspects of what is potentially coming down the pike. We should challenge ourselves everyday to reach a stronger, deeper understanding of how these rigged markets move and pay close attention to the clues the oligarchs share through their memos, meeting minutes and public dialogue. We are all here to learn and we hope you learn something from this conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE

 

 

 

 

Jeff Nielson: Single Digit Silver, Confiscation, Golden Black Market

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

via http://ift.tt/1XKCt6h Sprott Money

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Offending People Left and Right

Bill Bonner, whose Diaries we republish here, is well-known for being an equal opportunity offender  – meaning that political affiliation, gender, age, or any other defining characteristics won’t save worthy targets from getting offended. As far as we are concerned, we generally try not to be unnecessarily rude to people, but occasionally giving offense is not exactly beneath us either.

 

The motto of the equal opportunity offender….

 

Some people really deserve it after all…which is why we often refer to modern-day central bankers as lunatics, politicians as psychopaths, governments as gangs  of highway robbers waving a flag, and so forth. On one occasion we even provided a translation of Mr. Böhmermann’s “abusive criticism” of Mr. Erdogan, which fell afoul of a 19^th century lèse majesté law on Germany’s statute books.

That poem really was rude and insulting, no doubt about it. However, locking up journalists and opposition politicians under the pretext that they “threaten national security”, or bombing and suppressing ethnic minorities (for narrow and selfish political goals to boot) seems a lot worse to us.

The person responsible actually deserves to be insulted day and night, and given how thin-skinned Mr. Erdogan is, insulting him is great fun to boot. Admittedly, only as long as one is not within grabbing distance of his enforcers.

 

Gollum and his twin brother Erdogan – fair game

 

Similar to Bill, we also believe in equal opportunity offending. Since we are often at odds with the mainstream narrative on a wide variety of subjects, it seems unavoidable. For all their diversity, most of the targets are united by one overarching defining characteristic: they are either exercising power over other people, or dispensing advice to those exercising such power. In our opinion, this makes them fair game.

As has been pointed out in these pages, so-called “political correctness” is essentially an attempt to muzzle free speech and introduce thought control (see  “Cultural Marxism and the Birth of Modern Thought Crime” by Claudio Grass for an in-depth discussion of the topic). It also has the uncanny power to transform normally intelligent people into gibbering idiots and pansies (“Reality is a Formidable Enemy” provides  a few striking examples).

Unfortunately, equal opportunity offenders are an increasingly endangered species. The world’s densest concentration of powerful and unaccountable statist control freaks in Brussels has just decided that “hate speech” is in need of more policing. Given the salami tactics favored by the eurocracy, this is quite alarming.

 

“Voluntary” Agreement and Official Goals

The EU Commission and three large US technology companies (Facebook, Google and Microsoft) have just signed an agreement on policing and eradicating so-called “hate speech” – under, you probably guessed it, the pretext of “fighting terrorism”.

Terrorism has become a catch-all very similar to “climate change”. Just as there is apparently no ill in this world that cannot somehow be traced to the latter (global warming is responsible for such diverse evils as heroin addiction, the rise of ISIS, a lack of red-haired people, bear attacks in Japan, collapsing gingerbread houses in Sweden and even global cooling) – there are seemingly no civil liberties that cannot be done away with at the stroke of a pen in order to “fight terrorism”.

 

Don’t worry, we’ll only muzzle the bad guys!

 

You won’t be surprised to learn that there has been no public consultation, parliamentary debate or vote on this agreement. It has simply sprung into being overnight. After all, who could possibly be against it? No-one is in favor of hate or terrorism, and since the “code of conduct” agreement is “voluntary” and doesn’t constitute legislation, the EU bureaucrats decided no debate was necessary.

To this one must keep in mind that US technology companies are subject to regular shakedowns by the EU’s “competition commission”, as if competing European companies actually existed. They don’t exist of course, because innovation and capital accumulation have become nigh impossible tasks in the sclerotic socialistic EU.

Normally, big businesses use “anti-trust” laws as a means to bludgeon the competition. In this case though, the shakedowns are initiated by bureaucrats themselves, in the name of protecting non-existing companies. This makes the whole exercise especially bizarre, but no less costly to its victims.

The upshot is though that US technology companies are eager to please EU bureaucrats, so as to avoid getting shaken down again for big money too soon.

The official goal of these restrictions on “hate speech” is to remove messages and postings by jihadists supporting ISIS. These are held to entice impressionable youngsters living in various “no future” ghettos across Europe – the people so eagerly invited in by the very same politicians imposing these restrictions now – to join the IS in Syria or commit violence in its name.

Granted, confused young Muslims surely need and deserve better role models than propagandists of IS and the violent medieval retro-philosophy they preach. The problem is however that what constitutes “hate speech” is very much in the eye of the beholder.

 

A Problem of Definitions

For once we are on the same page with the usually firmly etatiste pro-establishment magazine “The Economist”, which has surprised us positively  with a critical assessment of the EU’s latest move to restrict free speech. As the Economist notes:

[T]he idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended. This may sound innocuous. Politeness is a virtue, after all. But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs. Since offense is subjective, the power to police it is both vast and arbitrary.

If one doesn’t agree with someone’s speech, one should simply counter it with more convincing speech. Suppressing views one disagrees with by law (or by means of a “voluntary” agreement as is the case here) may only end up convincing those holding these views that they have to resort to more forceful means if they want to make themselves heard. In other words, more, rather than less violence may be the result.

The “code of conduct” is supposed to be applied to speech identified as “racist and xenophobic” – as if racism and xenophobia could be eradicated by prohibiting people from voicing it!

Immigration is moreover a hot button political issue in Europe right now, so it is easy to see how the charge of “racism and xenophobia” could be misused to simply suppress political dissent. In fact, the vultures are already beginning to circle.

Here is an article by the left-leaning Guardian on the issue, which contrary to the Economist, seems perfectly unconcerned with the free speech angle. In fact, it seems far more concerned with “areas of online abuse” that “remain uncovered by the limited scope of the agreement”!

If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, you will see the following insert on the left-hand side (which links to another article on the topic):

 

Does this mean we can no longer call militant feminists names? Can we still call Hillary a blood-thirsty war-mongering lying harpy?

 

As we noted above, the vultures are already circling. The Guardian erroneously asserts that the agreement is “very narrowly worded”:

“The definition of hate speech covered by the code of conduct is narrow: it is defined in the document as “all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

 

That ban is counterbalanced by the right to freedom of expression, which, the code highlights, covers “not only… ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population”.

(emphasis added)

This may indeed seem innocuous at first glance, but it really isn’t. We may agree that the “incitement to violence” part is largely not really contentious. But what exactly constitutes “hate speech”, apart from the general idea that it supposedly “incites hatred”?

 

Who Decides What Constitutes Hate Speech?

The vagueness of this definition may well invite all sorts of interventions by self-anointed censors. As Paul Coleman writes at Spiked

[T]he European Court of Human Rights once produced a fact sheet on hate speech in which it conceded that the ‘identification of expressions that could be qualified as “hate speech” is sometimes difficult because this kind of speech does not necessarily manifest itself through the expression of hatred or of emotions. It can also be concealed in statements which at a first glance may seem to be rational or normal.’

 

In another document, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights took hate speech to include a ‘broader spectrum of verbal acts’, including ‘disrespectful public discourse’. And in an EU-funded manual on online hate speech by IGLYO (the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth and Student Organisation), we are reminded that ‘the vast majority of hate speech is being perpetrated by regular people, not by extremists or radicals’.

 

To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, hate speech means just what those in power choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

(emphasis added)

Free speech has been qualified by V?ra Jourová, the EU commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality (another utterly superfluous job) as “free and ‘democratic’ expression”, according to the Guardian. “Free” alone is apparently not enough

“This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected.”

(emphasis added)

 

V?ra Jourová, EU commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality – arbiter of what constitutes hate speech?

 

As Mr. Coleman reports, while the commissioner has sprinkled the term “terrorism” liberally across the press release announcing the agreement, her personal views on what should be regarded as “hate speech” (and therefore prohibited and “taken off the web as soon as it is reported”) seem to be a lot less “narrow”:

As V?ra Jourová, the EU commissioner responsible for the code, said during its unveiling: ‘The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalise young people and racists use to spread violence and hatred.’

 

But given the non-definition of hate speech, it is clear the code will go far beyond countering terrorism. In fact, Jourová has confirmed as much in other venues. In October 2015, she addressed the annual conference of ILGA-Europe and said ‘a narrative undermining LGBTI rights is quietly spreading, often disguised as so-called religious principles. This is unacceptable… It is clear that we must fight all hate speech, online and offline, whatever group of society it targets. We will work with internet providers to ensure hate speech is taken off the web as soon as it is reported.’

 

So, with very little effort, the EU commissioner is happy to shift from countering terrorism to countering ‘so-called religious principles’ – and she bundles up all this ‘unacceptable’ speech under the banner of hate speech.

(emphasis added)

Perhaps someone can explain to us how exactly this jibes with “the right to freedom of expression, which, the code highlights, covers “not only… ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population”.

 

Serious Consequences

It is also worth considering the legal consequences suffered by European citizens falling afoul of already existing legal restrictions on free speech across European countries. Mr. Coleman provides us with several concrete examples:

In 2008, film star Brigitte Bardot was convicted  by French authorities for placing a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy online, in which she complained about the Islamic practice of ritual animal slaughter. It was her fifth  conviction for hate speech

 

In 2011, Scottish football fan Stephen Birrell was sentenced to an extraordinary eight months in prison for insulting Celtic fans, Catholics and the Pope on a Facebook page. During sentencing, the sheriff, Bill Totten, told Birrell that his views would not be tolerated by ‘the right-thinking people of Glasgow and Scotland’.

 

And between 2014 and 2016, 78-year-old Northern Irish pastor James McConnell endured an 18-month police investigation and criminal prosecution after criticizing Islam in a sermon that was posted online . Apparently he was acquitted because his comments were ‘offensive’ but not ‘grossly offensive’ – a legal standard that nobody can be expected to understand or follow.

 

With the new code of conduct in place, we can expect more cases like these before the courts, and a lot more censorship. The powerful have spoken and the rest of us will be forced into silence.”

(emphasis added)

 

Brigitte Bardot – has five convictions for “hate speech” to her name by now

 

People in Europe may generally have less to fear from running afoul of the State’s censors than people in many other even places in the world, but this strikes us as bad enough.

Note as an aside to this that people questioning the officially sanctioned history of the Third Reich can be thrown into jail for years in Germany and Austria, especially if they are repeat offenders. We are anything but fans of Hitler and fascism. We despise the Nazi ideology and are horrified by the crimes committed in its name. We do however believe that even the most odious views should be open to debate. The truth should not be in need of legal protection.

Americans should be very happy that the constitutional right to freedom of speech has so far been held in far higher regard by the US legislative and judiciary than anyone’s alleged “right” not to be offended. This is one of the things with respect to which the US remains a shining light and an example to the world worth following. Don’t let them ever take that right away.

 

Conclusion

Speech is either free or it isn’t. One cannot have it both ways, as the EU apparatchiks apparently think. As soon as restrictions on free speech are introduced, abuse is sure to follow.

 

via http://ift.tt/1PjNpiz Tyler Durden

As we first pointed out back in April, due to slumping demand for luxury apartments in the UK, desperate developers had started to offer significant discounts in an indication that the UK real estate bubble had officially burst.

Today, we receive further confirmation of that fact. In order to stem hot money flows into the market (see: China), the UK implemented a 3% tax on anyone purchasing a second home. This effort has slowed the demand for luxury real estate, catching developers off guard, and has created even further oversupply issues for developers to deal with. As even steeper discounts are provided in order to try and fill vacancies, margins are coming under significant pressure.

From the FT

Widespread discounting of newly built luxury apartments is cutting into developers’ margins, prompting cost-cutting measures and delays to projects across London.

 

Developers including the FTSE 100 companies Barratt Developments and Berkeley Group are offering “stamp duty paid” deals in the capital, which amount to a discount of at least £30,000 on a £800,000 home.

 

Such deals are reducing developers’ margins by about 4 percentage points on “prime” homes costing £1,350-£3,499 per square foot, and 7 percentage points on “super prime” homes priced above that, according to data from Arcadis, a building consultancy.

 

Developers plan for a typical profit margin of 20 per cent, said Mark Cleverly, a partner at Arcadis, but have faced a different picture since the stamp duty rise on luxury homes cut into an already faltering market.

 

“This hits straight at the margin, at a bad time for the market,” Mr Cleverly said, arguing that higher stamp duty amounts to a “tax on development”.

 

Barratt is offering discounts from £32,149 on selected homes in its Nine Elms Point development, which is part of London’s largest residential building site in Battersea. Berkeley Group offered discounts on its Riverlight apartments in the same area, which have now all been sold.

The rush to buy land and construct apartments is now coming back to haunt developers as the demand is slowing. The number of homes in development and coming to market is creating an even larger supply glut, and will continue to cause downward margin pressure as discounts become even more pronounced.

The Nine Elms area, where 19 developers are constructing at least 12,800 apartments, forms part of a wave of new luxury flats under construction. Some 35,000 are planned over the next 10 years, according to Arcadis. This has raised concerns over a potential oversupply.

 

Developers vied to acquire land for prime London homes as values rose after the financial crisis, but the market has since softened thanks to the large supply, a fall-off in demand from Asian buyers, and higher stamp duty on homes costing more than £937,500 from December 2014.

Developers are scrambling to figure out just how to deal with the oversupply, from delaying projects to scaling back the size of some planned developments in order to make the apartments more affordable. Whatever decisions are made, one thing is clear – the pain in the UK real estate market has just begun.

 

via http://ift.tt/21bKsH7 Tyler Durden

Submitted by John Browne via Euro Pacific Capital,

As the June 23rd BREXIT (the UK-wide referendum to leave the EU) vote draws near, the polls indicate a close result. Those urging a vote for the UK to remain inside the EU are suggesting increasingly dire economic consequences that would follow a yes vote by the British people to leave. Voices from London, Brussels, and Washington have all put immense pressure on British voters to bend to the will of the elites.

To listen to their commentary one would think that apocalypse was just around the corner. But is there any substance to their warnings?

The Pro-EU membership camp is led by Prime Minister David Cameron, supported by most of his cabinet, the Bank of England, the BBC and the massive support from the UK and EU governments that have funded enormous advertising campaigns against separation. Given this weight of their power, it is amazing how strong the support for a British exit (BREXIT) has remained.

When Britain first joined the European Economic Community (the precursor to the EU) in 1973, the primary motivation was the hopes of increasing British trade through participation in the world’s largest free-trade zone. However, the hope that the union would simply be a free-trading zone of sovereign countries has morphed into a drive for an EU superstate that has relentlessly pushed for greater regulations on businesses and people and greater control of local laws that have nothing to do with trade.

It has been kept remarkably quiet, for instance, that the EU intends to divide the UK into eleven administrative regions, all reporting directly to Brussels. Although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will remain intact as individual national regions, England will be split into eight regions. Worse still, the coastal counties of England will be teamed with regions in Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Germany, where they will remain in a minority role. Even the English Channel is to be renamed. Very little mention is of the EU proposal for EU-wide ID and tax numbers, likely heralding a heavy EU taxation regime.

Likewise, the proposals to create EU-wide armed forces have been put quietly on the back burner. England has a long and proud history of struggling for its sovereignty. In just the past two centuries she has stood alone against Napoleon and Hitler, before inspiring other nations to join the fray. The presence of French or German armed forces used to support a European police force in the UK will not sit well with the English.

All this and many more threats to the British people have been kept largely quiet. Instead, the main activities of the Pro-EU group have been concentrated on the economic and monetary catastrophe that would face the UK if it were to cut itself off from trading with the EU. Some call this, ‘Project Fear’. The actual underlying facts paint a somewhat different picture, one that makes the Pro-EU case appear misleading, even deliberately so.

The basic argument is that with about 50 percent of its current trade with the EU, the UK would face a catastrophic economic and monetary collapse if it left the EU. As a threat, this sounds potentially devastating. Doubtless it has persuaded some. But in the light of reality, a different and far less worrying image emerges.

The UK has the fifth largest national economy in the world, according to 2015 figures compiled by the International Monetary Fund. In its present state of economic stagnation, the EU can ill-afford to lose the UK. According to the March 2016 Statistical Bulletin from the Office for National Statistics, the UK has had a negative trade balance in goods with the EU that has averaged about $8 billion a month this first quarter. If the UK were to leave without being able to negotiate an independent trade deal, the EU economy might shrink by some $96 billion a year. The UK was the second largest net contributor to the EU budget last year. It follows that the 8 English regions (with Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland considered as 'relatively poor') may in aggregate be the second largest suppliers of future intra-EU money transfers from the so-called 'rich' to the poorer southern and eastern regions of Europe. In that sense, the EU needs the UK more than the other way round.

The Pro-EU camp ignore the trade balance issue completely and threaten, as did President Obama, that the UK would be left out in the cold, like Switzerland, and unable to negotiate its way out of a disaster. Switzerland is not an EU member and has an economy of less than a quarter the size of the UK’s. And yet from 2009-2013 she exported, on average, 4.6 times the value per person to the EU than does the UK (The Truth About Trade Outside the EU, William Dartmouth MEP, June 2015). With a negative EU trade balance, why would the UK be unable to negotiate, from outside, a trade agreement at least as good as that achieved by Switzerland?

[As an aside, over dinner many years ago, my occasional Lords and Commons golfing partner Dennis Thatcher asked me how the UK would survive alone in an era when world power blocks and corporations were getting bigger? I replied, “In the same way as Switzerland.” He retorted while hitting the table hard with his hand, “That’s just what Margaret thinks!”]

Further, the EU negotiates international trade agreements under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in the primary interests of the EU, not of the UK. England has flourished by trading globally, especially with the U.S. and the British Commonwealth. The EU has no trade agreements yet with China or Japan. Outside the EU, the UK would be enabled to negotiate freely to trade with the entire world and be unfettered by the EU where it has a muted voice of 1 among 28 members. Furthermore, free of burdensome and costly EU regulations, the British economy likely would be re-energized, particularly among the vital job-creating small business sector.

In addition to economic collapse, the Pro-EU camp postulates that the British pound sterling, still one of the top five global trading currencies, would plummet following a BREXIT. However, many informed observers believe the international monetary system is on the cusp of a major collapse. In these circumstances, the vital interests of the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and even the Bank of China would be to steady the ship to avert a collapse of fiat currency. Unimaginable amounts of central bank money could be deployed to save the pound, rendering it a false scare.

On the other hand, although the UK is not a member of the euro, a BREXIT indirectly could threaten the euro, now the world’s second currency.

Already a number of EU members are experiencing anti-EU sentiments among their people. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which forced the BREXIT vote, is not alone. It is part of a sizable block, styled the Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group, in the EU parliament. It is comprised of representatives from the UK, France, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. In addition, countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are becoming very unhappy about the implications of Eurozone membership. A for BREXIT vote could ignite an implosion within the Eurozone rather than being a threat to Sterling. This may be what worries the international central banking and political elite most. It has led directly to massive global elite support for Cameron’s Project Fear.

If the British public wises up to David Cameron’s game of fear and vote for BREXIT, there will be some short-term shock and disruption in currencies, equities, bonds, precious metals and possibly employment. However, the global central bank and political elites could be expected to move very fast to avoid the development of deeper problems. Negotiations likely would be concluded very quickly to calm things down with minimal damage to the UK economy or its currency.

via http://ift.tt/1YdLRxC Tyler Durden

Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted at RT.com,

No one ever lost money betting on the Pentagon refraining from exceptionalist rhetoric.

Once again the current Pentagon supremo, certified neocon Ash Carter, did not disappoint at the Shangri-La Dialogue – the annual, must-go regional security forum in Singapore attended by top defense ministers, scholars and business executives from across Asia.

Context is key. The Shangri-La Dialogue is organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which is essentially a pro-Anglo-American think tank. And it takes place in the privileged aircraft carrier of imperial geostrategic interests in South East Asia: Singapore.

As expressed by neocon Carter, Pentagon rhetoric – faithful to its own estimation of China as the second biggest “existential threat” to the US (Russia is first) – revolves around the same themes; US military might and superiority is bound to last forever; we are the “main underwriter of Asian security” for, well, forever; and China better behave in the South China Sea – or else.

This is all embedded in the much ballyhooed but so far anemic “pivoting to Asia” advanced by the lame duck Obama administration – but bound to go on overdrive in the event Hillary Clinton becomes the next tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Real threats are predictably embedded in the rhetoric. According to Carter, if Beijing reclaims land in the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, “it will result in actions being taken by the both United States and … by others in the region.”

What’s left for China, in Pentagonese, is just to be a member of a hazy “principled security network” for Asia – which will also help protect the East against “Russia’s worrying actions”. Carter mentioned“principled” no less than 37 times in his speech. “Principled” cheerleaders so far include Japan, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia.

So here’s an instant translation: we do a NATO in Asia; we control it; you will answer to us; and then we encircle you – and Russia – for good. If China says no, that’s simple. Carter proclaimed Beijing will erect a “Great Wall of self-isolation” in the South China Sea.

If this is the best Pentagon planners have to counteract the Russia-China strategic partnership, they’d better go back to the classroom. In elementary school.

Navigate in freedom, dear vassals

Predictably, the South China Sea was quite big at Shangri-La. The South China Sea, the throughway of trillions of US dollars in annual trade, doubles as home to a wealth of unexplored oil and gas. Stagnated and increasingly irrelevant Japan, via its Defense Minister Gen. Nakatani, even advanced the Japanese would help Southeast Asian nations build their “security capabilities” to deal with what he called “unilateral” and “coercive” Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Cynics could not help to draw similarities with Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Beijing delegation kept its cool – to a point. Rear Admiral Guan Youfei stressed, “The US action to take sides is not agreed by many countries.” Youfei – the head of the Chinese office of international military cooperation – did not refrain though from condemning a “Cold War mentality” by the usual suspects.

As for Japan, China’s Foreign Ministry detailed that “countries outside the region should stick to their promises and not make thoughtless remarks about issues of territorial sovereignty.” Japan has absolutely nothing to do with the South China Sea.

Beijing’s reclamation work on reefs in the South China Sea naturally put it in direct conflict with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. So US meddling – under the convenient cover of“freedom of navigation” – had to be inevitable. “Freedom of navigation” operations are a silly intimidation game in which a US Navy ship or plane passes by a Chinese-claimed island in the South China Sea.

It was up to Admiral Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission, to cut to the chase, stressing “the provocation of certain countries” and adding that “selfish interests” have led to the South China Sea issue becoming “overheated”. He slammed the Pentagon for double standards and “irresponsible behavior”. And he slammed the Philippines for taking the conflict to a dubious UN arbitration court after breaching a bilateral agreement with China;“We do not make trouble but we have no fear of trouble.”

The Chinese position prefers dialogue and cooperation – and Jianguo re-stressed it, calling for ASEAN to make a move. In fact China has already reached what is called a four-point consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos on the South China Sea two months ago. The Philippines are a much harder nut to crack – as the Pentagon is taking no prisoners to lead Manila “from behind”.

Even Vietnam, via Deputy Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh, made it clear – in the same plenary session as Admiral Jianguo – that Vietnam prefers solutions via the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as well as negotiation between China and ASEAN.

Bend over to our rules – or else

After Shangri-La’s rhetorical excesses, the action moved to Beijing, the site of the 8th China-US Strategic and Development Dialogue. That’s the annual talkfest launched in 2009 by Obama and then Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang painted a rosy picture, stressing the exchange of“candid, in-depth views on important and sensitive issues of shared concern.” Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai once again needed to point out that the relationship is just “too important” to be “hijacked” by the South China Sea. And yet this is exactly the Pentagon’s agenda.

Beijing though won’t be derailed. As State Councilor Yang Jiechi put it, ASEAN-China dialogue is progressing via what Beijing calls the “dual-track” approach, according to which disputes are negotiated between the parties directly involved. That implies no Washington interference.

Beyond what is discussed either at Shangri-La or at the China-US dialogue, the Big Picture is clear. ‘Exceptionalistan’ planners have molded a narrative where China is being forced to make a choice; either you bend over to “our” rules – as in the current unipolar geostrategic game – or else.

Well, Beijing has already made its own choice; and that entails a multipolar world of sovereign nations with no primus inter pares. The Beijing leadership under Xi Jinping clearly sees how the so-called international“order”, actually disorder, is a rigged system set up at the end of WWII.

Wily Chinese diplomacy – and trade – knows how to use the system to advance Chinese national interests. That’s how modern China became the “savior” of global turbo-capitalism. But that does not mean a resurgent China will forever comply with these extraneous “rules” – not to mention the morality lessons. Beijing knows ‘Exceptionalistan’ would not agree even to divide the spoils in a geopolitical spheres-of-influence arrangement. Plan A in Washington is containment – with possibly dangerous ramifications. There is no Plan B.

The bottom line – thinly disguised by the somewhat polite responses to Pentagon threats – is that Beijing simply won’t accept anymore a geopolitical disorder that it did not create. The Chinese could not give a damn to the New World Order (NWO) dreamed up by selected ‘Masters of the Universe’. Beijing is engaged in building a new, multipolar order. No wonder – alongside with strategic partner Russia – they are and will continue to be the Pentagon’s top twin threat.

via http://ift.tt/1XdbyiF Tyler Durden

Back in April, Japan's largest brokerage, Nomura, announced that it was quitting the European equity business. The decision was a cost cutting measure, and was made easier by the fact that the European operation hadn't made a profit since 2010.

Nomura isn't alone, Investment banks across the globe are cutting equity traders as a result of the current trading environment.

The following is what it was like for a group of London traders the day Nomura made the announcement that their services were no longer required, as chronicled by Bloomberg.

* * *

The fact that the division had only made one annual pretax profit since being bought from bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings in 2008 created an environment where traders would have to filter out the rumors of impending cuts quite frequently. However on April 11, it wasn't business as usual.

At One Angel Lane, Nomura’s stylish, eco-friendly European headquarters, employees have learned to filter out rumors of impending cuts. The division has only made an annual pretax profit once since it was bought from bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in October 2008 — a fact so often mentioned one half-expects it to be printed on employees’ business cards.

 

On April 11, though, the noise was louder than usual. A senior executive had let slip to a colleague at a barbecue that he was dreading the following week because the bank was shutting down equities. By the time media reports of unspecified job cuts in the U.S. and Europe appeared at lunchtime, all semblance of work had ground to a halt. Desk heads asked their managers what was going on. According to one of those doing the asking, they were told there was nothing to worry about.

 

That changed early the next morning when e-mails went round ordering staff to attend a compulsory meeting. Research analysts and salespeople caught the elevators up to the 11th floor; traders congregated on the third. By 9 a.m., it was official. Everyone was given an “at risk” letter, in which the firm offered to help them find alternative roles over the next 45 days, but they knew it was typically just a formality.

After listening to speeches by senior managers and human resources personnel, everyone was told to gather their belongings, leave key cards at reception, and exit the building. Most made their way to All Bar One and The Folly, the only pubs open in the city of London at that hour, to have a pint, and perhaps even to express a sigh of relief that there was no longer a daily worry about whether or not a job would be there the next morning.

The Folly, a pub operated by Drake and Morgan Bars and Restaurants

They made their way in dribs and drabs. Hundreds of displaced bankers, shuffling up Suffolk Lane to All Bar One and along Upper Thames Street toward the Folly, the only pubs in the City of London open that early on an overcast Tuesday morning.

 

The shell-shocked men and women sipping pints and consoling each other had become part of a growing population. Faced with a toxic blend of zero-interest rates, stiffer capital requirements and a collapse in trading revenue, banks including Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG and Credit Suisse Group AG have announced large cuts to their European operations in recent months. Even U.S. firms, with higher profitability, are trimming staff.

 

Among the bankers who stayed in the pubs until late in the evening, seemingly attempting to stave off the inevitable by remaining in the financial district, there were at least some expressions of relief. Nomura had already conducted one round of restructuring, in 2012, following the appointment of Koji Nagai as chief executive officer. Unlike his predecessor, Nagai was openly skeptical about Nomura’s place in a saturated and tightly regulated European market. The whiff of insecurity pervaded the trading floor.

 

The bank went on a cost-cutting drive and, under the direction of a new compliance team hired from UBS Group AG, started to clamp down on even minor breaches to company rules. Staff members were chastised for sending presentations to their personal e-mail accounts to work on over the weekend. One group of traders was threatened with dismissal after being caught on closed-circuit TV stealing candy from a vending machine.

Knowing their fate was one thing, however one important question remained unanswered: would those that were let go still receive a bonus. Figuring that the financial year finished prior to being let go, many assumed that a bonus would still be provided – sadly, they were wrong.

For the newly unemployed, one question loomed large: Would they still get a bonus? Nomura’s financial year finished at the end of March — well before any decision was announced regarding job cuts. Some traders and bankers assumed that, since they’d worked a full year, they would still receive an award.

 

They were wrong. On May 9, Nomura wrote to staff notifying them they would get nothing. Discretionary bonuses, the letters pointed out, were based on factors including future value to the company. Some bankers are now considering challenging the decision, citing a 2000 case in which a departing Nomura prop trader successfully sued the firm for 1.35 million pounds ($2 million). Nomura declined to comment on the bonus decision.

To top everything off, in addition to being fired and told no bonus would be paid out, some traders were summoned back to the office to face a disciplinary hearing. In trying to prepare for a future job search, they forwarded themselves documents they felt may be needed in the future, such as research reports, excel models, and even in one case, even a list of clients. Not only did the bank clamp down on those cases, which as a result will inevitably make it more difficult to find work in the future for those involved, the bank has yet to respond to those that simply asked for some work documents that may help in a future job search, even though Nomura had pulled out of Europe.

A second letter landed on the doorsteps of a handful of employees later that month, summoning them back to the office for a disciplinary hearing. In the hours before the cuts were announced, about five analysts had forwarded themselves documents they might need if they lost their jobs: research reports, Excel models and, in at least one case, a list of clients.

 

Nomura, like most banks, prohibits employees from forwarding any work documents to personal e-mail accounts. In tense meetings, the individuals explained themselves and asked for leniency. The bank is now considering what action, if any, to take. Possibilities include firing them for gross misconduct, thereby depriving them of severance pay and making it hard to find a job elsewhere; or handing out written warnings that will show up in a reference to a prospective employer. The analysts, who range from a junior associate to an industry veteran, fear that any measures will hamper their efforts to find alternative positions at a time when the industry is retrenching. Nomura declined to comment on the situation.

 

Separately, several former employees have asked the company to provide them with work documents they say will help them find roles elsewhere, such as their proprietary models and databases. They argue there is no reason for Nomura to refuse since it will no longer be competing in Europe. So far, no decision has been reached.

In the rush to leave One Angel Lane, many employees didn't have time to grab all of their belongings. Old family photographs, items of clothing and professional mementos lie in storage awaiting collection, a reminder of the human cost when a business fails.

 

 

 

via http://ift.tt/1tffFOH Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFPlan.com,

Readers, you’re awake to the horrors of the Federal Government, our rapidly-declining GDP and ever-increasing debts.  Trillions of dollars have been stolen, in the form of appropriations and programs that funnel directly from the tax-base: the fat “cash-cow” that the government suckles from.  The taxes are life-sustaining to the government juggernaut, managed by the ever self-serving “representatives” of Congress who approve pay raises for themselves, immunity from prosecution from (what was formerly) insider trading, and exonerate themselves from any and all ethics violations.

Taxes keep the government going, keep the system emplaced and you the citizen in your place, from birth to death.  The website ivn.us reports the breakdown for the federal government’s feedings:

Personal income taxes               47.4%

Corporate income taxes             34.1%

Social insurance taxes                9.9%

Tariffs/gas taxes/fees                 8.5%

Ben Franklin summarized the position of the average citizen two centuries ago:

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Franklin was correct; however, he should have reversed the order, because taxes can both bring on death and still haunt the deceased after their passing.  The best example of this is the death tax, where a person’s estate is assessed after their death.  Their heirs better pay the tax man!  Yes, how exactly does all of that work?  The deceased individual worked all of their lives, paying income taxes both federal and state, paying off their house and mortgage, paying their property tax.

If they paid for their house in full, and all related property taxes, then why is it assessed for a death tax?

The death tax is labeled conveniently as an “inheritance tax,” much in the manner that conquest and possession of more property is done by a municipality.  Labeled aseptically as “annexation,” it is where the nabobs of the “grand council” of the municipality vote to take for themselves (sorry, the municipality) more land/territory.  It’s all within their laws, and everyone smiles and pays the additional taxes happily ever after.

This year more than $3.4 trillion in federal taxes are estimated to be taken in by the federal government.  Add to this the $1.5 trillion in local and state taxes, and this figure amounts to more than 31% of the nation’s income.  Meanwhile look at the tax dodges that the Clinton’s perform, such as the multiple-listed addresses for corporations in the state of Delaware, and the undeclared revenues for their books and speaking engagements.

On December 16, 1773, American colonists disguised as Indians destroyed 342 cases of tea stored on board 3 cargo ships of the British navy.  The price of tea included a tax of 30 pence per pound in England.  In the American colonies, that tax was only 3 pence per pound, and yet the colonists wouldn’t take it: they acted.  A far cry from today, where the citizens just accept all of it complacently and without more than an anguished bleat.

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

-Will Rogers

For the most part that is true, with the exception of the inheritance taxes, in which the dead person’s estate is divided up: the heirs either pay or lose the property that has already been paid for and property taxes paid year after year!  If you have a million dollars in the bank saved over 20 years, and you suddenly die, if the taxes have already been paid year after year on your income, then why do they double-dip and tax you after your death?

It is all about control and dominion.  Government produces nothing, takes everything it can, and consumes all of it with wanton, avaricious gluttony.  The greed of government can never be overstated.  There are only politicians, no leaders, and those who misrepresent themselves and the Constitution in order to manipulate us and claim to represent us. They only represent themselves.  The fiat currency and the Petrodollar are already leveraged to the hilt with a negative balance after the phony, inflated, CBO-doctored GDP.

We have no leaders, only rulers.  The communist truism is correct: all authority comes from the barrel of a gun.  Taxes are a means with which to destroy wealth and property passed from one generation to the next, and control the masses, subjugating them and dominating them via the color of law that make them always answerable to a superficially-benevolent but in reality malevolent government.  All governments are vampires, and the blood they drain from the people is the blood of their taxes.  We have taxation with misrepresentation, while these miscreants continue to wine, dine, and fete themselves on their trips to Martha’s Vineyard and Cozumel.  On death and taxes, only the former allows you to escape the latter, and not even then.

---

via http://ift.tt/1Xd92Zw Tyler Durden

As tensions escalate to dangerous levels in the South China Sea and in eastern Europe, an interesting decision has been made be the Chinese government.

According to Sputnik, back in January the People's Liberation Army Air Force was preparing to develop a new fleet of stealth fighters and heavy transport aircraft. The heavy transport aircraft, the Xian Y-20 transport, was going to be built in order to give Beijing a "fast and reliable platform" to deliver arms and soldiers over long distances.

Model Y-20 Transport

During a technology exhibition in Beijing, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) elaborated on the governments plans for the Y-20. Although originally thought that Beijing would want only 400,  "More than 1,000 Y-20s will be needed" said Zhu Qian, head of AVIC's large aircraft development office – the reason? "Based on the experience of the United States and Russia" Zhu says.

Now that's an interesting nugget of information. So due to the fact that the US and Russia are at odds, China needs 1,000 heavy transport aircraft – why would that be, is China planning on getting involved if ever the US and Russia got into a military dispute?

The Y-20 weighs roughly 220 tons, has four turbofan engines, and can carry up to 66 tons of cargo at a range of about 3,230 miles. This means the heavy transport aircraft can reach everywhere in Europe and Asia, the US state of Alaska, Australia, and North Africa.

So to summarize, due to what's happening between Russia and the United States, China has ordered nearly triple the amount of heavy transport aircraft it originally intended so that it could take tanks and other military equipment anywhere in Europe.

Which reminds us of what we reported earlier today. As China sailed a warship by disputed islands that are claimed to be controlled by Japan, Japanese officials also stated that a two Russian vessels were also spotted in the contested zone. Something tells us that there may be a military alliance in the works between Russia and China, and that could present significant problems for the US as it tries to bully both simultaneously.

via http://ift.tt/21biZoW Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blutzkrieg blog,

Obstruction anyone?

Recall that a couple of days ago in the post, Obama Administration Delays Release of Hillary Clinton TPP Emails Until After the Election, we learned:

Trade is a hot issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. But correspondence from Hillary Clinton and her top State Department aides about a controversial 12-nation trade deal will not be available for public review — at least not until after the election. The Obama administration abruptly blocked the release of Clinton’s State Department correspondence about the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), after first saying it expected to produce the emails this spring.

Well there’s more to this story. International Business Times reports:

As the election season accelerates, requests for public information from the State Department surrounding communications from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have hit speed bumps.

 

A review of publicly available records requests from users of the transparency site MuckRock shows that inquiries related to the Democratic presidential nominee are more likely to be delayed until after the election than other requests to the State Department — a trend government watchdogs say highlights the challenges the government has faced under President Obama to live up to its transparency aims.

 

Though the files reviewed by IBT constitute just a fraction of the tens of thousands of inquiries the State Department processes annually — too few, experts said, to establish any sign of deliberate obstruction — they underscore the difficulty of probing Clinton’s tenure as the top U.S. diplomat, even as interest in her record mounts.

 

Four of the five Clinton-related records requests maintained at MuckRock have been given approximate due dates after the election in early November. These include a request filed by International Business Times Senior Investigations Editor David Sirota regarding Clinton’s contested record on trade issues, reported Monday. The fifth request has passed its estimated May completion date and has yet to be updated.

 

By contrast, of 20 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests updated in the past three weeks by the State Department, only half had been postponed until after the 2016 presidential election, receiving estimated completion dates in October or earlier.

 

Though the agency has fulfilled numerous Clinton-related requests in the past year, spokespeople declined to specify how many outstanding inquiries into Clinton records remain or how many responses are due before the election.

 

Despite adding dozens of staffers to its FOIA offices, the State Department argued in court that it would take 75 years to complete a review of documents related to the Republican National Committee’s sweeping request of records for former Clinton aides.

 

But it isn’t all external pressures hobbling the State Department. A scathing agency audit earlier this year into the agency’s processes found “procedural weaknesses” leading to “inaccurate and incomplete” responses. The State Department, on average, takes the longest among government agencies to complete simple requests: 111 days.

 

Complicating matters is the fact that Clinton emails must face review not only from the State Department, but also from any other government agency that feels it has a stake in disclosure of the contents. The intelligence community has played a particularly active role in scrutinizing the cache, retroactively marking dozens of Clinton emails classified. More than 2,000 documents have been kept from public view over secrecy concerns.

The White House is one of the government offices that gets to view documents, and watchdogs have accused the executive branch of delaying the release of politically sensitive material. Though Obama launched his presidency with a promise to be the “most transparent” in history, his administration has had a fitful record on openness — earlier this year, Vice News reported that executive officials worked to undermine congressional FOIA reforms.

Of course, this appears to be part of a much larger effort to conceal who Hillary Clinton really is from the voting public. It’s the same reason she refuses to release her Wall Street speech transcripts — she needs to be able to pretend to be something she’s not during the election.

Here’s another related example, also from International Business Times:

Facing an increasingly tough primary fight against Bernie Sanders last October, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, tried to distance herself from her push to negotiate the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal during her time atop the State Department (2009-2013). After months of taking positions on the deal that were criticized — even by members of her own party — as vague, Clinton said the deal wasn’t what she’d hoped it might be.

 

Since then she’s held fast on that position, weathering a primary fight that was anything but expected from the populist, self-described Democratic socialist Sanders, who has repeatedly railed against the TPP. At the same time, a review of the hardback edition of her memoir as secretary of state, “Hard Choices,” compared to the paperback — first noted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) — finds that segments of the book where Clinton describes an effort to convince American countries to join the TPP negotiations have been left out.

 

We encouraged “all open-market democracies driving toward a more prosperous future to join negotiations with Asian nations on TPP, the trans-Pacific trade agreement,” the original version of the book reads in a two-page segment discussing a 2009 conference in El Salvador. Those two pages have been cut from the paperback version of the book, according to CEPR.

 

Requests for comment sent to the Clinton campaign and Simon & Schuster, publisher of “Hard Choices,” were not immediately returned.

hmm…

via http://ift.tt/1XJvJFL Tyler Durden

The world will experience “peak youth” in 2020 for the first time in human history, as the number of people aged over 65 is expected to outnumber those under 5 years old.

 

 

As BofAML notes, a key implication of an aging population is that an economy’s savings rate tends to rise while increases in investments tend to decline.

It is this aging global population that has thwarted the “war on deflation” in recent years (among other things like excess debt, deleveraging, and technical disruption)…

Aging populations increase the need to save for a longer retirement and lead to higher healthcare costs (note that in the next 10 days, 112,000 people will reach retirement age in the US, Europe, and Japan).

Source: BofAML

via http://ift.tt/1PNcd8h Tyler Durden