Category: zerohedge

While we assumed everyone knew that correspondence from Nigerian leaders requesting funds were always fradulent, it appears the US government decided the opportunity was worth the risk…

• *U.S. FORFEITS OVER $480 MILLION STOLEN BY FORMER NIGERIAN DICTATOR
• *DOJ SAYS MONEY WAS STOLEN BY FORMER NIGERIAN DICTATOR
• *DOJ: $480M IN CORRUPTION PROCEEDS FROM SANI ABACHA

Oh well – we hear Rwanda is looking to issue some bonds…”We might go for double that or more, up to $1 billion.”

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kpsiBt Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Charles Arntzen is the Regents' Professor and Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Dr. Arntzen is known as a pioneer in the development of edible plant-based vaccines, and he has also been a key collaborator on what appears to be a promising new Ebola drug.

The Washington Post recently reported that:

It took nearly three decades of tireless research and countless millions of U.S. government dollars to produce a few grams of the experimental Ebola drug that may have saved the lives of two U.S. missionaries stricken by the virus in West Africa.

 

And now some are asking this question: If the drug did help missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, whose conditions appear to be improving, could the same drug be given to the hundreds of people dying of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria?

 

What would it cost? What are the ethics of distributing a drug that had never been tested on humans in foreign countries – even if medical authorities could persuade people to take it? And how fast could it be done?

 

"Two months," said Charles J. Arntzen, a professor at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, who has collaborated for the past 15 years with Mapp Biopharmaceutical, the small San Diego company that produced the experimental serum given to the two Americans. "Maybe they could do it in a month. If they were [already] planning on it, I'm sure they could produce 10,000 doses in a month."

 

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was more cautious in an interview on CNN on Tuesday. "It is not easy to make this serum," he said. "The number of doses that are available right now, today… is less than a handful.

Two months, or maybe even one month! Wow, this certainly seems like a miracle, right? The only problem is this guy is kind of creepy. In fact, he was apparently caught in 2012 joking about culling 25% of the world’s population to solve the challenging problem of feeding 8 billion people.

It was all caught on video:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1urKOcR Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Charles Arntzen is the Regents' Professor and Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Dr. Arntzen is known as a pioneer in the development of edible plant-based vaccines, and he has also been a key collaborator on what appears to be a promising new Ebola drug.

The Washington Post recently reported that:

It took nearly three decades of tireless research and countless millions of U.S. government dollars to produce a few grams of the experimental Ebola drug that may have saved the lives of two U.S. missionaries stricken by the virus in West Africa.

 

And now some are asking this question: If the drug did help missionaries Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, whose conditions appear to be improving, could the same drug be given to the hundreds of people dying of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria?

 

What would it cost? What are the ethics of distributing a drug that had never been tested on humans in foreign countries – even if medical authorities could persuade people to take it? And how fast could it be done?

 

"Two months," said Charles J. Arntzen, a professor at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, who has collaborated for the past 15 years with Mapp Biopharmaceutical, the small San Diego company that produced the experimental serum given to the two Americans. "Maybe they could do it in a month. If they were [already] planning on it, I'm sure they could produce 10,000 doses in a month."

 

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was more cautious in an interview on CNN on Tuesday. "It is not easy to make this serum," he said. "The number of doses that are available right now, today… is less than a handful.

Two months, or maybe even one month! Wow, this certainly seems like a miracle, right? The only problem is this guy is kind of creepy. In fact, he was apparently caught in 2012 joking about culling 25% of the world’s population to solve the challenging problem of feeding 8 billion people.

It was all caught on video:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1urKOcR Tyler Durden

“Don’t fight the Fed,” unless she tells you to sell your favorite idiot-maker momo stock. For a few days, investors were anxious after Yellen’s July 15th warning, then a barrage of disgruntled asset-gatherers explained how ‘she knows nothing about stock valuations’ (but we must trust her every word on the economy). Now – 3 weeks later, Dow and Trannies are down 4%, S&P and Russell down 3%, and Nasdaq down 2% from her warnings… still wanna fight the Fed?

 

 

However, Bullard’s “sell your bonds” – BULLARD: MARKETS SHOULD BE PRICING IN RATE INCREASES BASED ON WHAT THE FED SAYS call did not work out so well…

 

Charts: Bloomberg

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sBflog Tyler Durden

“Don’t fight the Fed,” unless she tells you to sell your favorite idiot-maker momo stock. For a few days, investors were anxious after Yellen’s July 15th warning, then a barrage of disgruntled asset-gatherers explained how ‘she knows nothing about stock valuations’ (but we must trust her every word on the economy). Now – 3 weeks later, Dow and Trannies are down 4%, S&P and Russell down 3%, and Nasdaq down 2% from her warnings… still wanna fight the Fed?

 

 

However, Bullard’s “sell your bonds” – BULLARD: MARKETS SHOULD BE PRICING IN RATE INCREASES BASED ON WHAT THE FED SAYS call did not work out so well…

 

Charts: Bloomberg

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sBflog Tyler Durden

Having admitted that a Russian fighter jet flew within 30 meters of a US spy plane (on the border of Russia) a month ago, The Washington Times reports defense officials confirming Russian strategic nuclear bombers conducted at least 16 incursions into northwestern U.S. air defense identification zones over the past 10 days – an unusually sharp increase in aerial penetrations.

 

 

As Free Beacon reports,

The numerous flight encounters by Tu-95 Russian Bear H bombers prompted the scrambling of U.S. jet fighters on several occasions, and come amid heightened U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine.

 

 

Also, during one bomber incursion near Alaska, a Russian intelligence-gathering jet was detected along with the bombers.

 

“Over the past week, NORAD has visually identified Russian aircraft operating in and around the U.S. air defense identification zones,” said Maj. Beth Smith, spokeswoman for U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

 

Smith called the Russian flights “a spike in activity” but sought to play down the threat, stating the flights were assessed as routine training missions and exercises.

 

The bomber flights took place mainly along the Alaskan air defense identification zone that covers the Aleutian Islands and the continental part of the state, and one incursion involved entry into Canada’s air defense zone, Smith said.

 

The Russian strategic aircraft included a mix of Tu-95 Bear H heavy bombers and Tu-142 Bear F maritime reconnaissance aircraft, she said, adding that one IL-20 intelligence collection aircraft was detected during the flight incursions over the past week to 10 days.

Perhaps most worrying…

A defense official disagreed with the spokeswoman on the increased bomber forays. Russian strategic nuclear forces appear to be “trying to test our air defense reactions, or our command and control systems,” said an official familiar with reports of the incursions.

 

“These are not just training missions,” the official added.

“Additionally, we have seen significant Russian strategic aircraft deployments in the vicinity of places like Japan, Korea, and even our West Coast,” Haney said at a defense industry breakfast.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1u1UvRW Tyler Durden

Having admitted that a Russian fighter jet flew within 30 meters of a US spy plane (on the border of Russia) a month ago, The Washington Times reports defense officials confirming Russian strategic nuclear bombers conducted at least 16 incursions into northwestern U.S. air defense identification zones over the past 10 days – an unusually sharp increase in aerial penetrations.

 

 

As Free Beacon reports,

The numerous flight encounters by Tu-95 Russian Bear H bombers prompted the scrambling of U.S. jet fighters on several occasions, and come amid heightened U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine.

 

 

Also, during one bomber incursion near Alaska, a Russian intelligence-gathering jet was detected along with the bombers.

 

“Over the past week, NORAD has visually identified Russian aircraft operating in and around the U.S. air defense identification zones,” said Maj. Beth Smith, spokeswoman for U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

 

Smith called the Russian flights “a spike in activity” but sought to play down the threat, stating the flights were assessed as routine training missions and exercises.

 

The bomber flights took place mainly along the Alaskan air defense identification zone that covers the Aleutian Islands and the continental part of the state, and one incursion involved entry into Canada’s air defense zone, Smith said.

 

The Russian strategic aircraft included a mix of Tu-95 Bear H heavy bombers and Tu-142 Bear F maritime reconnaissance aircraft, she said, adding that one IL-20 intelligence collection aircraft was detected during the flight incursions over the past week to 10 days.

Perhaps most worrying…

A defense official disagreed with the spokeswoman on the increased bomber forays. Russian strategic nuclear forces appear to be “trying to test our air defense reactions, or our command and control systems,” said an official familiar with reports of the incursions.

 

“These are not just training missions,” the official added.

“Additionally, we have seen significant Russian strategic aircraft deployments in the vicinity of places like Japan, Korea, and even our West Coast,” Haney said at a defense industry breakfast.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1u1UvRW Tyler Durden

Just in case there weren’t enough potential GDP-boosting war hotzones around the world, Obama is now preparing to go back to ground zero, Iraq, where the NYT just reported he is “considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountain top after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, administration officials said on Thursday.”

NYT adds that Obama is currently meeting with his national security team (at the White House, not on a golf course) and a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently — this could be a fast-moving train.” The official adds that “there could be a humanitarian catastrophe there.”

To be sure the possibility of US-launched airstrikes in Iraq is nothing new, and was reported here previously, and in fact Iraq itself requested US airborne assistance before, but conventional wisdom was that Obama would delay until there is a new Iraq government, and the former US puppet, Maliki, stepped down.  “But administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Mount Sinjar may be forcing their hand. Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, according to Unicef, while more than 40,000 people have been sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water or access to supplies.”

How does the NYT know all this?

The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One official said that any military action would be “limited, specific and achievable,” noting that Mr. Maliki’s political party was supposed to announce a new candidate for prime minister on Thursday, but hadn’t yet.

To be sure, there is no mention that the same ISIS extremists which Obama is about to bomb are getting their weapons either directly from the US, via US assistance to Syrian “rebels” whose armaments end up in the Islamic State, or indirectly, by pillaging cities such as Mosul, where among the spoils were such US trophies as BlackHawk choppers and countless Humvees.

As for ISIS, who as we reported over the weekend have now captured the largest Iraq dam, the only question is whether their retaliation to the third US invasion of Iraq, which will surely be to release the dam flood nearby towns, water and leave Baghdad without a water source, will be worse than or equal to the Russian response to western sanctions, neither of which anyone could have possible predicted.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sB0pGF Tyler Durden

Central Bankers will never openly admit that they or their policies have failed. Moreover, they do not rush into sudden tightening (more on this in a moment). But one can begin to notice subtle changes in their language and actions that indicate they have noticed what’s happening in Japan (the failure of the BoJ’s “shock and awe” QE program to generate growth).

 

Nowhere is this more clear than at the US’s Federal Reserve or Fed. Indeed, starting in August 2013, various Fed officials began questioning the efficacy of QE.

 

First came the San Francisco Fed with a study revealing that QE generally doesn’t appear to generate economic growth:

 

Asset purchase programs like QE2 appear to have, at best, moderate effects on economic growth and inflation. Research suggests that the key reason these effects are limited is that bond market segmentation is small.

 

Moreover, the magnitude of LSAP effects depends greatly on expectations for interest rate policy, but those effects are weaker and more uncertain than conventional interest rate policy. This suggests that communication about the beginning of federal funds rate increases will have stronger effects than guidance about the end of asset purchases.

 

http://ift.tt/14HG3Uw

 

A few months later, the former Fed official in charge of the Fed’s first round of QE, penned a Wall Street Journal article stating that QE was in fact a Wall Street bailout.

 

I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time…

 

It wasn't long before my old doubts resurfaced. Despite the Fed's rhetoric, my program [QE] wasn't helping to make credit any more accessible for the average American. The banks were only issuing fewer and fewer loans. More insidiously, whatever credit they were extending wasn't getting much cheaper. QE may have been driving down the wholesale cost for banks to make loans, but Wall Street was pocketing most of the extra cash.

 

http://ift.tt/1djUD3Z

 

Around this time, the Fed began to taper QE first by $10 billion in December… and another $10 billion in January. By this point even uber-dove Fed President Bill Dudley (he formerly claimed inflation is low because iPads are getting cheaper) even admitted the following:

 

We don't understand fully how large-scale asset purchase programs work to ease financial market conditions—is it the effect of the purchases on the portfolios of private investors, or alternatively is the major channel one of signaling?

 

http://ift.tt/1g8bdVY

 

At this point, Ben Bernanke handed off the reins for Fed Chairman to Janet Yellen. Yellen has since continued Bernanke’s tapering projects, reducing the monthly QE spend from $65 billion to $55 billion.

 

The failure of the Bank of Japan’s massive QE program and the Fed’s decision to taper are not unrelated. Take a look at the timeline.

 

·      April 2013: Japan announces a “shock and awe” QE program.

·      August 2013: San Francisco Fed economists (where future Chairman of the Fed Janet Yellen is President) write a study showing QE is ineffective at generating economic growth.

·      November 2013: Former Fed officials admit QE was not meant to help Main Street.

·      December 2013: the Fed begins to taper its QE programs by $10 billion

·      January 2014: Bernanke’s last FOMC as Fed Chairman, Fed announces another $10 billion taper

·      March 2014: Janet Yellen takes over at the Fed and announces another $10 billion QE taper.

 

This represents a tectonic shift in the financial markets. It does not mean that Central Banks will never engage in QE again. But it does show that they are increasingly aware that QE is no longer the “be all, end all” for monetary policy.

 

Investors take note. One of the primary market props of the last five years is being removed. What happens when the markets finally catch on?

 

This concludes this article. If you’re looking for the means of protecting your portfolio from the coming collapse, you can pick up a FREE investment report titled Protect Your Portfolio at http://ift.tt/170oFLH.

 

This report outlines a number of strategies you can implement to prepare yourself and your loved ones from the coming market carnage.

 

Best Regards

 

Phoenix Capital Research

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sB0kTF Phoenix Capital Research

Gold futures broke above $1315 as a double whammy of NATO threats and Ukraine headlines spark safe-haven buying:

• *FIGHTER JET SHOT DOWN OVER REBEL-HELD EAST UKRAINE: AFP

10Y Treasury yields are under 2.43% and JPY is strengthening once again as carry trades are unwound.

 

As Bloomberg notes, Fighter jet shot down over East Ukraine, AFP reports, without citing where it obtained the information.

As AFP reports,

A Ukranian fighter jet was shot down on Thursday as it flew low over rebel-held territory in the east of the country, an AFP journalist witnessed.

 

The aircraft crashed into a field after an explosion and the pilot was seen parachuting out in an area some 40km east of the insurgent bastion of Donetsk

The reaction…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1AXOtUk Tyler Durden