The Threat Continues: Yuan Weakens For 6th Straight Day – Longest Losing Streak In 2 Years

PBOC fixed the Yuan at its weakest in 3 weeks, pushing the devaluation streak to its longest since early January. However, Offshore Yuan has now dropped over 1.1% against the USD, extending losses for the 6th straight day to 3-week lows. This is the longest streak of weakness in the offshore Yuan since April 2014.

 

 

It appears EUR and JPY took enough pain so the basket is revrting to the USD again…

 

What’s the opposite of passive-aggressive as a clear message is being sent to The Fed – tighten and we unleash the Yuan-weakness-driven turmoil…


via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RCu2r4 Tyler Durden

Watch Matt Welch Talk About Gary Johnson’s Chances and Toes on Red Eye

Tonight’s Red Eye w/ Tom Shillue (Fox News 3 a.m.) will feature some extended discussion on the prospects for Gary Johnson (if he be the nominee) and the Libertarian Party in the nation’s upcoming Trump/Hillary bummer. I will be co-panelizing along with stand-up comic Sam Morril, actor Matt Walton, and the beautiful mind of Joanne Nosuchinsky. Other topics may include Starbucks’ sappy centrism, the Internet’s favorite new Nazi-bot, President Barack Obama’s dance moves, and more.

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Refugee Crisis: Using Chaos To Build Power

Submitted by Alex Newman via TheNewAmerica.com,

A European Union military force with power to intervene in member states. A new “Marshall Plan” to radically redesign whole regions of the world and impose regional government. A United Nations empowered to manage it all. Christendom under siege. And the end of nationhood as it is understood today. That is where the “refugee crisis” is heading, as the engineered disaster wreaks havoc across Europe and beyond. Despite the appearance of chaos, though, it is all by design, with a series of radical goals in mind.

While the establishment’s demands on Europe to accept millions of Middle Eastern refugees have been couched in “humanitarian” rhetoric, the real agenda is nothing of the sort. Rather than helping out their fellow human beings, globalist forces actually created the refugee crisis and the suffering behind it. And they are using it to advance multiple, related agendas — primarily globalism and statism. That the crisis is being exploited to undermine Western culture, national sovereignty, and even nationhood itself is now beyond dispute. Top globalists are openly bragging about it.

“I will ask the governments to cooperate, to recognize that sovereignty is an illusion — that sovereignty is an absolute illusion that has to be put behind us,” declared former Goldman Sachs chairman Peter Sutherland, an ex-member of the Bilderberg Steering Committee who currently “serves” as the UN special representative of the secretary-general for international migration. “The days of hiding behind borders and fences are long gone. We have to work together and cooperate together to make a better world. And that means taking on some of the old shibboleths, taking on some of the old historic memories and images of our own country and recognizing that we’re part of humankind.”

Billionaire globalist and open-borders zealot George Soros, in denouncing European officials trying to control the human tsunami coming across their borders, similarly declared, “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

In essence, then, the engineered refugee crisis was created and is being used, at least in part, to advance what globalists often refer to in public as “global governance” and their “new world order.” As part of that, even the idea of nationhood is under fire — everybody is just part of “humankind,” as Sutherland put it. And as such, people must be governed by the “Parliament of Humanity,” as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the dictators club known as the UN last year.

Already, the UN manages a global refugee program via the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This agency decides which refugees will be settled where, including those destined to be settled in the United States at U.S. taxpayer expense. Further clues about the agenda can be found in the fact that the UN refugee outfit was until very recently led by António Guterres, the former president of the powerful global socialist-government-promoting Socialist International, as senior editor William Jasper documented in an October 19, 2015 cover story for this magazine.

There are several elements to the globalist plot as it relates to the refugee crisis.

Creating the Refugee Crisis

To begin with, it is important to understand that the same self-styled humanitarians claiming to be concerned about refugees, while demanding that they be given asylum in the West by the millions, are, in reality, the same people responsible for making their victims into refugees to begin with. As this magazine documented extensively in its October 19 cover story package, the globalist establishment literally unleashed the refugee exodus.

 

Among other actions to spark the crisis, Western governments and their allies — not to mention the globalist forces behind them, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and other global-government-promoting powerhouses — destroyed multiple Middle Eastern nations via war and chaos. These include Libya, bombed to smithereens by Obama and NATO under the supposed authority of the UN; as well as Syria, destroyed by civil war fueled by the globalist establishment; and of course Iraq, also crushed by Western intervention and globalist-fueled civil war.

 

Those same globalist forces were also responsible for wreaking havoc in many more nations — such as Yemen, Egypt, Ivory Coast, and Tunisia — through supporting uprisings, revolutions, terror groups, dictatorships, and more.

 

The predictable response to having one’s nation destroyed, of course, is attempting to leave — particularly if wealthier, freer nations throw down the welcome mat. And that is exactly what has happened and is still happening. Many of the same globalists responsible for creating the chaos and terror that refugees are fleeing from are publicly and loudly opening Europe’s doors to the growing tsunami of displaced victims. Obama and his billionaire supporter Soros, for example, were both instrumental in the UN-authorized war to destroy Libya, which was based on lies, and in fueling the civil war that is destroying what remains of Syria. And both of those figures have been very outspoken in demanding that the West welcome millions of refugees, regardless of the costs or the desires of Western voters.

 

The question that must be asked is: “Why?” The answers can be found in what has happened and what is happening, and especially in the policy prescriptions allegedly aimed at dealing with the crisis that globalists unleashed. At this point, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are all in the cross hairs of internationalists, who are exploiting the refugee crisis to build up supranational institutions at the regional and global level to smash national sovereignty and even nationhood, to build up the power of government generally, and to destabilize societies. If left unchecked and unexposed, the refugee crisis will serve as a powerful tool to push the world ever closer to “global governance,” with a great deal of pain and misery along the way.

 

A New Marshall Plan: Regional Government for the Middle East

With the refugee situation quickly spiraling out of control across parts of the continent — the mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve across Germany and beyond, the implosion of law and order around Calais in France, the widely reported overrunning of Stockholm’s central station by refugee youths, and more — the public is now growing increasingly outraged. Indeed, even the establishment forces responsible for unleashing the chaos are now in some cases denouncing it. The New York Times, an establishment mouthpiece that dutifully promoted the globalist wars that sparked the refugee crisis and the subsequent flooding of the West with the victims of those wars (and many opportunists who joined the exodus), ran an op-ed pointing out that Germany was “on the brink” due to the crisis. Top European political bosses have also been sounding the alarm.

 

Another senior globalist, Rothschild banking dynasty protégé and billionaire hedge-fund boss Soros, played an instrumental role in encouraging the myriad wars and the subsequent tsunami of refugees into Europe that was sparked by those wars. And now, like other establishment voices, Soros is also pointing out the obvious. The European Union, he said in a recent interview, is “on the verge of collapse” due to the sudden influx of well over a million Islamic refugees last year. Not coincidentally, Soros also has ideas about “solutions.” And not surprisingly, those alleged “solutions” involve more globalism for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East — along with less sovereignty, self-government, and liberty.

 

In an interview with Bloomberg from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, the radical anti-national sovereignty statist claimed that Europe needed to finance a new “Marshall Plan” for the regions of the world from which the refugees are fleeing — regions and nations destroyed in large part by the globalist Western establishment figures pushing the new plan. Soros was expressing support for a proposal made earlier by a fellow globalist, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. The new Marshall Plan they envision seeks to transfer wealth from struggling European taxpayers to areas of the globe ruined by globalist machinations — but the real agenda goes much deeper, as did the last Marshall Plan after World War II.

 

“What is most important is for us to invest billions in those regions from which the refugees come to reduce the pressure on the external frontiers of Europe,” Schäuble argued in a panel discussion at the globalist WEF, speaking alongside several European prime ministers who also played a key role in flooding Europe with refugees displaced from the nations they helped destroy. “That will cost Europe much more than we thought.” Of course it will, and taxpayers, already suffering under a crushing burden, will pay for it all. Writing in the Soros-backed “Project Syndicate” propaganda organ in 2014, Schäuble previously called for a global taxation regime in a piece called Why Taxation Must Go Global,one of his many calls for more globalism and statism.

 

So what would a new “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East and Africa look like? A brief history of the original Marshall Plan might offer some clues. Officially known as the “European Recovery Program,” or ERP, the scheme involved transferring the equivalent of almost $150 billion in today’s dollars from U.S. taxpayers to Western European governments. The ostensible purpose was to help rebuild Europe after World War II. In practice, though, it served as a key tool in the transformation of Western Europe into a statist region dominated by Big Government and supranational institutions, eventually culminating in the subjugation of Europeans under the unaccountable EU super-state. That was the goal all along.

 

As far back as 1947, then-U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall (CFR) — a key player in handing China to Chairman Mao’s murderous communists, and perhaps mass-murdering dictator Joseph Stalin’s most important ally in the world — called for European “economic cooperation” as a precondition for the desperately needed American aid after the war. “It is already evident that, before the United States government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government,” said Marshall, the man after whom the scheme was named. “The initiative, I think, must come from Europe…. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all European nations.” The Committee of European Economic Cooperation responded with a major report signed by government representatives from across Europe outlining efforts to create a “customs union” that could eventually lead to even further cooperation. U.S. officials were pleased.

 

Members of Congress even tried to get language in the statement of purpose for the original Marshall Plan bill of 1948 explicitly declaring that it was the policy of the United States to encourage the economic unification and the political federation of Europe. In the end, language calling for the development of economic cooperation was included instead. The next year, the “political federation” amendment was pursued again, with the result being the addition of the sentence: “It is further declared to be the policy of the people of the United States to encourage the unification of Europe.” By 1951, Congress finally came out and said it openly, with a clause included in the 1951 Mutual Security Act stating that its purpose was “to further encourage the economic unification and the political federation of Europe.”

 

The goals of U.S. government support for European integration were explained in part decades ago, though largely ignored, by top U.S. officials. On September 20, 1966, for example, then-Under Secretary of State George Ball (CFR) testified before Congress on the State Department’s view on forming an “Atlantic Community,” essentially merging the United States with Europe. “I find little evidence of any strong interest among Europeans for any immediate move toward greater political unity with the United States,” he explained. “They fear the overwhelming weight of U.S. power and influence in our common councils…. We believe that so long as Europe remains merely a continent of medium- and small-sized states there are definite limits to the degree of political unity we can achieve across the ocean.” Globalism was the agenda then, just as it is today.

 

Creating a Middle East Union

Not coincidentally, the new “Marshall Plan” is being pushed by the same globalist establishment that has been openly advancing the imposition of a “Middle East Union” on the region in recent years. “Just as a warring [European] continent found peace through unity by creating what became the EU, Arabs, Turks, Kurds and other groups in the region could find relative peace in ever closer union,” claimed Mohamed “Ed” Husain, a former caliphate-seeking Islamist and current “adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies” at the CFR, in a piece published in the Financial Times and on the CFR website in mid-2014. “After all, most of its problems — terrorism, poverty, unemployment, sectarianism, refugee crises, water shortages — require regional answers. No country can solve its problems on its own.” That is, of course, nonsense, but it is standard globalist rhetoric.

 

Plenty of other globalists have offered similar admissions. It has become fashionable for establishment figures and their hangers-on to compare today’s Middle East with Europe before the EU. Indeed, Richard Haass, the CFR boss and a former leader at the U.S. State Department, writing in Soros’ Project Syndicate, does precisely that. In an incredible admission, Haass explains, without admitting the CFR’s giant role in instigating all of the tragedies he mentions, that the CFR-backed globalist wars of the last decade and a half were crucial in setting the region on fire — the same blaze that now supposedly can only be extinguished by a CFR-inspired “Middle East Union.” The globalist strategy used over and over again goes like this: Create a problem, then exploit and manage the inevitable reaction to push a “solution.”

 

“The 2003 Iraq war was highly consequential, for it exacerbated Sunni-Shia tensions in one of the region’s most important countries and, as a result, in many of the region’s other divided societies,” Haass wrote. “Regime change in Libya [by Obama, the UN, NATO, and CFR apparatchiks] has created a failing state; lukewarm support for [CFR- and Soros-backed] regime change in Syria has set the stage for prolonged civil war.” And the chaos, bloodshed, and terror will continue, he says, until “a new local order emerges or exhaustion sets in.” In the meantime, globalists should treat the region as a “condition to be managed,” Haass said. How convenient — the CFR sets a fire, and now purports to have the fire extinguisher, promising a raging inferno unless and until everyone submits to the globalist demands, including a new regional “order,” which, as in “new world order,” is globalist-speak for transnational government.

 

Of course, Husain, Haass, and the CFR are not alone. In 2011, the Islamist president of Turkey at the time, Abdullah Gül, also called for an EU-style regime to rule the Middle East. Speaking in the United Kingdom, Gül claimed “an efficient regional economic cooperation and integration mechanism” was needed for the region. “We all saw the role played by the European Union in facilitating the democratic transition in central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he claimed. Islamic Turkey is also working to join the EU.

 

Various Middle Eastern tyrants have echoed the calls for a regional regime, too — the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for example. As Husain pointed out, the radical Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist group Hamas are also working to unify the Middle East under one single tyrannical government of gargantuan proportions. With financial backing from the West under a new “Marshall Plan” and the bloodshed fueled by globalist-engineered wars, not to mention EU and UN support, the plot could easily become a reality.

 

Further Empowering the European Union

Also being advanced using the refugee crisis is the further empowerment of the EU itself, the regional government created thanks in large part to the original Marshall Plan. Among the various schemes allegedly needed to deal with the immigrant influx is the creation of military outfits — a border and coast-guard force — ostensibly aimed at “protecting Europe’s borders” from the immigration tsunami. The force would also fight “transnational crime and terrorism,” according to an EU outline of the scheme. The plan calls for mandatory biometric ID checks to come or go from the super-state’s territory, so everyone can be checked against Interpol’s databases.

 

Most alarmingly, perhaps, the EU military force would be able to “intervene” in European nations — even without permission from national authorities, as long as EU bosses claim the situation is “urgent.” In fact, even if the nation “considers that there is no need for additional intervention” from the new EU force, it could still be imposed by Brussels. The force would also have the power to commandeer national governments’ resources, something even the U.S. federal government cannot do to state or local authorities.

 

At the national level, some European officials were appalled. Creating such a structure “that is independent of member states is shocking,” said Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, noting that nobody even knew who the force would be accountable to. Greek and Swedish officials also spoke out.

 

Among EU leadership, though, it is par for the course. “Managing Europe’s external borders must be a shared responsibility,” claimed European Commission “First Vice President” Frans Timmermans with the Dutch Labor Party, a Bilderberg summit attendee. Noting that the new force could take over the management of national borders in some circumstances, the globalist official claimed, “It is essential to restore the credibility of our border management system.”

 

Meanwhile, EU officials and apparatchiks have taken to shrieking whenever a government actually takes serious actions to “restore the credibility” of border management. The howls have been especially pronounced when border checks were re-introduced along some intra-EU borders. When Hungarian authorities tried to stop the tsunami with a fence along the border with Serbia, for instance, eurocrats were fuming. In a letter sent to the government of Hungary, the European Commission — essentially the unelected regime now ruling Europe — blasted the use of troops on the border, complained about criminal sanctions imposed on illegal immigrants who damage the fence, and demanded that refugees stop being denied entry on the grounds that they transitted through a safe country. In short, actually guarding the borders appears to be the last thing on the EU’s agenda, except as an excuse to create a paramilitary force with powers to intervene in member nations.

 

Also at the top of the EU-empowerment agenda is a new agency in charge of refugees, with the power to resettle refugees in EU members against their will. A number of Eastern European governments have fought back against the plot, but it continues to advance, having already allocated a number of immigrants throughout the bloc. Last year the EU agreed to relocate 40,000, with that number set to balloon even further. (More than a million others are simply staying in nations where they registered without involvement with EU.)

 

For the UN, even all of that has not been enough. “UNHCR is deeply disappointed that although a majority of member States were in agreement with a wider relocation proposal involving 120,000 people, a final consensus on this could not be reached,” a UNHCR spokesperson said after the EU approved the deal. “Decisive agreement is needed without further delay to address the needs, as is bold action based on solidarity from all member States.” The then- “High Commissioner” himself, former Socialist International boss António Guterres, has also been loudly demanding that the EU usurp all power over asylum and resettlement. In other words, more assaults on sovereignty.

 

Some Europeans, though, have seen through the scheming and the exploitation of the refugee crisis by the Brussels-based super-state to advance its radical agenda. “Is Western Europe to be a series of democratic nation states that govern themselves, control their borders and trade with each other, or is the supra nationalist agenda of Brussels going to win? That’s the real debate that’s going on,” said EU Parliamentarian and U.K. Independence Party chief Nigel Farage.

Separately, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has described the orchestrated refugee tsunami as a tool of a “treasonous conspiracy” to destroy nationhood, Western civilization, and Christendom. “Ladies and gentlemen, what we face is nothing less than the challenge of finding ourselves at the gateway to the implementation of a deliberate conceptual project, which could be described as left-wing and which seeks to marginalize the nation states of Europe,” he told his countrymen. “Where this project has failed to overcome Christianity and the identity of the nation state — and the values and responsibility springing from it — in conventional political struggle, it will strive to eliminate it on ethnic grounds.”

 

Beyond crushing sovereignty, the crisis is also advancing assaults on liberty. Especially useful to the assault on individual freedoms has been the threat of terrorism posed by the influx of millions of Muslims, at least some of whom are and will be radicalized.

 

ISIS has been boasting that its operatives are among the refugees, and U.S. presidential contender Ben Carson even said it would be “jihadist malpractice” not to send terrorists into the West among the immigrants. He is right, of course, as the Paris attacks last year showed. Now, the jihadists will be used as the justification to wage war on liberty.

 

Already, as The New American has documented extensively, “Islamic” terror — much of it fomented behind the scenes by globalists and communists — is being used as a pretext to radically expand government. Just last year, EU “police,” known as Europol, announced the creation of a new unit to censor the Internet under the guise of fighting “extremism.” In Britain, authorities are cracking down on homeschoolers and Sunday schools under the guise of rooting out Islamic extremism. Attacks on gun rights, free speech, and more are all advancing under the guise of stopping “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamic extremism.” And as millions of Muslims continue to flood Europe, the totalitarian advances will only accelerate.

The end game is clear: using the increasingly powerful regional blocs such as the European Union, the African Union, Putin’s Eurasian Union, and the Middle East Union as building blocks to build what globalists such as Soros, Bush, Clinton, Biden, and others often refer to in public as their “New World Order.” In his recent book World Order, globalist operative and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger laid out the plan. “The contemporary quest for world order [world government] will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order [regional government] within the various regions and to relate these regional orders [governments] to one another,” he wrote. State Department documents going back decades outline the same strategy.

If humanitarianism were truly the motivation, countless experts have pointed out, it would be radically more cost effective, not to mention humane, to help refugees and victims of globalist wars closer to their homes. Literally 25 to 50 times more people could be supported in Lebanon or Jordan than in Europe for the same amount of tax funds. The wars that destroyed Middle Eastern countries and caused the crisis to begin with would never have been launched if the purported “humanitarian concerns” of the establishment were genuine. Instead, the agenda is to advance globalism, pure and simple, and the establishment seems barely interested in concealing it anymore.

In short, the “refugee crisis” appears to have been engineered in yet another typical example of what legendary French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat described as concocting the antidote and the poison in the same laboratory. Now that the deed is done, politicians and establishment figures are pointing out the obvious while exploiting the inevitable public reaction. Hopefully the people of Europe and the world will be smarter than to fall for the ruse yet again, as the consequences are deadly serious.


via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1RoV8wy Tyler Durden

Tough Guy Ted Warns “Sniveling Coward” Trump: “Leave My Wife Alone”

This embarrassing episode just goes from farce to farcical-er.

Phase 1:Cruz Reps "Cross The Line"

Almost a week ago, we were stunned when we learned that in order to support Ted Cruz and to "attack" Donald Trump, Liz Mair's anti-Trump Make America Awesome super PAC launched a Facebook campaign which in addition to showcasing Mitt Romney's support for Ted Cruz, emphasizing Trump’s past support for pro-choice policies, it also crossed the family line when it showed a GQ modeling photo of Melania Trump posing nude.

 

 

Phase 2: Trumps Warns Cruz…

Phase 3: Cruz Warns Trump – Don't Do The Same Thing To Me That [My Reps] Just Did To You (Or Else!)

Phase 4: Trump Goes There

Phase 5: Cruz Goes Full Rambo

So to sum up – 'Cruz' uses naked images of Trump's wife to disparage him to saintly 'Utah-ans'; Trump pissed; Cruz warns Trump not to reciprocate; Trump shows ugly picture of Cruz's wife… Cruz unleashes inner Hulk as Trump dares to do what Cruz reps did to him…

All we can say is – thank goodness there are no naked picture of Heidi floating around.

Stay Classy San Diego!


via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1S9WUBq Tyler Durden

For The Average American, Owning A Home Is Increasingly Unaffordable

One month ago, in its traditionally cheerful assessment of the US housing market, the NAR’s Larry Yun snuck in an unexpected warning:

“Home prices ascending near or above double-digit appreciation aren’t healthy – especially considering the fact that household income and wages are barely rising.

He did it again just a few days ago:

“The overall demand for buying is still solid entering the busy spring season, but home prices and rents outpacing wages and anxiety about the health of the economy are holding back a segment of would-be buyers.

This is about as close to a warning that the US housing market is back into bubble territory as one can hope to get from the NAR.

Overnight, we got another confirmation of American runaway – if only for the vast majority of people – home prices, when RealtyTrac released its Q1 2016 Home Affordability Index, which showed that in Q1 2016, 9% of U.S. county housing markets were less affordable than their historically normal levels, up from 2 percent of markets that exceeded historic home affordability levels a year ago.

That may not sound like much but it means that marginal “bubble” conditions of the type the NAR was warning about, have returned.  It means that home buyers need to spend more of their incomes on housing, leaving less money for other purchases.

But where this home inflation is most evident is in the clear disconnect between home prices which are rising faster than wages in most of the United States, making homeownership increasingly difficult for average Americans. 

The report found that home price growth exceeded wage growth in nearly two thirds of the nation’s housing markets so far this year, with urban centers like San Francisco and New York City among the least affordable.

This is what the RealtyTrac report found:

Annual change in median home prices in Q1 2016 outpaced annual change in average weekly wages in Q3 2015 (the most recent county-level wage data available from BLS) in 276 of the 456 counties analyzed for the report (61 percent).

 

The top five most-populated county housing markets where price growth outpaced wage growth were Los Angeles County, California (5 percent median home price growth and 3 percent average wage growth); Maricopa County, Arizona in the Phoenix metro area (8 percent median home price growth and 2 percent average wage growth); San Diego County, California (5 percent median home price growth and 4 percent average wage growth); and Orange County, California (5 percent median home price growth and 2 percent average wage growth).

 

Other markets where median home price growth outpaced average wage growth included counties in Miami, Brooklyn, Dallas, Seattle and Las Vegas.

 

“I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone in Seattle that it’s getting harder and harder to afford a home,” said Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, covering the Seattle market. “Thanks in part to strong income growth and intense competition, home prices continue to escalate at rates that are negatively impacting affordability. Something else pushing up prices is the Washington State Growth Management Act, which continues to limit developable land and is holding back many builders from adding much-needed inventory to the market.”

More troubling is that at the national level, prevailing home prices have now risen faster than average wages for four consecutive years.

 

It is this troubling trend – which is leading to declining demand as well as even bubblier, debt-fueled conditions for the rest – that the NAR is worried about.

So is RealtyTrac: “While the vast majority of housing markets are still affordable by their own historic standards, home prices are floating out of reach for average wage earners in a growing number of U.S. housing markets,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at RealtyTrac, which monitors housing market trends.

Well, that’s what mortgage debt is for; the same debt the Fed is hoping US consumer will splurge on and US lenders will eagerly hand out just so the housing bubble of 2006/7 can be recreated and housing can again become a “money-like” instrument – which as we have explained in our shadow debt series is the all important missing link which the Fed needs to come back so it can finally stop micromanaging the US market and to a lesser extent, economy.

It is the stubborn unwillingness of Americans to comply with this directive to go out and rake up as much mortgage debt as they can that is the biggest hurdle to “renormalizing” to a post-bubble economy, because in addition to a stock bubble, the US economy also needs a housing bubble to restore its previous “shine.”

RealtyTrac also found that the national median home price requires 30% of average wage. This means that in Q1, the average wage earner needed to spend 30.2% of monthly wages to make monthly mortgage payments (including property taxes and insurance) on a median-priced home ($199,000), up from 26.4 percent of average wages needed to buy a median-priced home in the first quarter of 2015.

It adds that “when home prices were most affordable nationwide in Q1 2012, the average wage earner needed to spend 22.2 percent of monthly wages to buy a median-priced home. When home prices were least affordable nationwide in Q2 2006, the average wage earner needed to spend 53.2 percent of monthly wages to buy a median priced home.

* * *

What this simply means is that while few will want to admit it, the bubble conditions of an unaffordable (for most) housing bubble have returned.

Finally, for those curious, these are the least and most affordable housing markets in the US:

Markets least affordable by absolute standard

The top five least affordable counties based on percentage of average wages to buy a median priced home were Kings County, New York (Brooklyn) at 120.4 percent; Marin County, California in the San Francisco metro area at 109.2 percent; Santa Cruz County, California in the Santa Cruz metro area at 106.9 percent; New York County, New York (Manhattan) at 105.1 percent; and San Francisco County, California at 95.3 percent.

Markets most affordable by absolute standard

The top five most affordable counties based on percentage of average wages to buy a median priced home were Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) at 8.5 percent; Baltimore County, Maryland at 9.2 percent; Clayton County, Georgia in the Atlanta metro area at 10.1 percent; Bay County, Michigan in the Bay City metro area at 11.5 percent; and Rock Island County, Illinois in the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island metro area at 12.3 percent.

 


via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1T8viSa Tyler Durden

It’s 1790 All Over Again – The World Is Sunk By Central Banker Conceit

Authored by Hugo Salinas Price via Plata.com,

It was 1790 and the revolutionary National Assembly in Paris was worried.

Complaints were reaching the Assembly from all over France, that business was stagnant, sales were down, people were without work, and there was a great scarcity of money.

This was quite natural, because all business slows down when the prevailing source of Authority is under question. The Bastille prison had been taken the prior year by a revolutionary crowd and all sorts of ugly things were being said about King Louis XVI and his pretty young Queen, Marie Antoinette.

But this was the "Age of Reason" and the most educated, intelligent and reasonable people in France were members of the revolutionary National Assembly, which gathered daily in Paris.

The Assembly put their highly educated heads together and came to the conclusion that a scarcity of money was quite intolerable and that the Assembly must really do something about it.

"What do we have highly educated brains for, if we can't solve the problem of a scarcity of money? Without a doubt, Reason can overcome this problem."

So the members of the National Assembly thought about the problem of the scarcity of money, and came up with a splendid idea: "Let us create the necessary money, and things will go swimmingly."

Thus was born the "Assignat". Out of the collective wisdom of the Assembly, the Assignat was born as a claim upon the vast extension of lands recently taken by the State of France, from the Catholic Church. What could be more solid than a claim upon the lovely lands of dear France?

The Assignats were soon printed up, with various denominations of monetary value in gold Francs.

At first, the Assignats circulated alongside gold coin at par value. But soon enough, the exchange value of the Assignats against gold began to fall.

Thus began a nightmare episode that lasted seven years.

The first issue of Assignats did not relieve the problem of business being in a funk. So a second issue followed the first; and then another, and then more, and thick and fast they came at last, and more and more and more, falling, falling, always falling in value against gold.

The highly intelligent gentlemen of the Assembly decided that this fall in value of their Assignat must be the work of wicked, unpatriotic people who should be severely punished.

The Assembly decreed that a merchant should be punished by being sent to the galleys or to the guillotine, if he should venture to ask a customer who wanted to know the price of bread, with what money he planned to pay for the bread – whether it was with gold coin or with Assignats?

The Assembly created a national net of spies to hunt down the wicked hoarders of gold, confiscate their gold and have them part with their heads with a short, sharp shock on a big, black block.

In the meantime, the more intelligent of the citizenry took out enormous debts in Assignats, with the certainty that their value would soon plummet; with borrowed Assignats they purchased all sorts of things of lasting value, such as real estate, art and jewelry. In due course, the value of the Assignat fell to next to nothing and the debts were wiped out. Enormous wealth was transferred from the mass of the ignorant to the few who were able to see what was going on.

Eventually, the common people of Paris found that bread was hard to come by. Starvation set in, and the Parisian government had to provide rations of bread for the multitude – rotting, wormy bread.

In 1797 Napoleon came to power in France. He put a stop to the very reasonable plans of the highly educated men of the National Assembly, and declared that henceforth, only gold would be money.

In the center of the Place Vendome, where today there stands a great column surmounted by a statue of Napoleon, a huge bonfire consumed piles of freshly printed Assignats and the wooden printing machinery which fabricated them.

The highly educated and eminently reasonable men of the National Assembly had succeeded – in the mighty work of bringing France to its knees. But not one of those men, responsible for the colossal disaster, was ever known to have said about it: "We were mistaken".

2016: Why is it 1790 all over again? Because just as in France in 1790, today we have a set of conceited men running the world's economic policy on the basis of a flawed intellectual construct. In 1790, the flawed construct was the Assignat. Today, the flawed intellectual construct is the irredeemable dollar and its derivative currencies.

In 1790, gold was the enemy of those conceited men, because the depreciation of the Assignat against gold revealed the falsity of the Assignat; so the National Assembly did their best to suppress the use of gold by violence against its owners. Today, gold is once again the enemy of our conceited masters: gold, whose value threatens to expose the falsity of the irredeemable dollar.

In 1933, the value of the dollar in gold was 1 1/2 grams. Today, the value of the dollar is only about 2 1/2 hundredths of a gram of gold. Our conceited masters are struggling to keep their intellectual construct, the irredeemable currency which is the dollar, from plunging in value to thousandths and ten-thousandths of a gram.

Like the Assignat, which in 1797 fell to a value of zero grams of gold, the dollar faces the same inevitable fate. And since the rest-of-the-world's currencies are derivatives of the dollar, they too will become worthless.

The fundamental flaw in the thinking of the conceited members of the National Assembly of France in 1790 was their mistaken idea that they could invent a money more suitable than gold to achieve the prosperity of France.

Today, the fundamental flaw in the thinking of our conceited Masters of the Universe is the same as that which blinded the members of the National Assembly in France, in 1790: they are convinced that their intellectual construct, the irredeemable dollar, is far more suitable than gold for use as money.

The conceit of the majority of the members of the National Assembly in France in 1790 led to the total prostration of the economy of France in the course of seven years. The conceited Central Bankers of today will without a doubt achieve a world sunk in economic prostration. But don't expect any one of them to ever say "We were mistaken".

So that's why It's 1790 All Over Again.


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

Libya: It Was About Regime Change, and It Was a Disaster

Five years ago this week, the U.S. began its intervention in the Libyan revolts against Moammar Qaddafi. Hillary Clinton, likely Democratic presidential candidate and reasonably likely next president of these United States, had a lot to do with all that mess, being secretary of state at the time.

In a detailed and damning look back on our little Libyan adventure and its aftermath in Foreign Policy, Micah Zenko looks at what Secretary Clinton thought about what had happened and her role in it. He notes that she very much sloughs over the time period when the clear purpose, from the U.S. perspective, went from “protect[ing] civilians in Libya” to overthrowing the regime. 

She has little to say about a U.S.-led NATO coalition’s role in helping the rebels along and adding both to casualties at the time and enduring trouble and chaos five years later.

Zenko sees, with merit, that the the Libya story and would-be president Hillary Clinton’s role in it is a valuable and informative “case study for the ways that supposedly limited interventions tend to mushroom into campaigns for regime change.”

Obama started on March 28, 2011, assuring us it was all about “protect[ing] the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone.… Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Various other administration officials echoed that in the coming weeks.

Then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, though, “told the New York Times last month that ‘I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’ although at the time “‘the fiction was maintained” that the goal was limited to disabling Colonel Qaddafi’s command and control.”

Zenko details that the actual pattern of NATO’s strikes makes it hard to believe they weren’t trying to kill Qaddafi pretty much form the beginning though it was denied straight-up by administration figures.

In fact, the NATO forces were not only not sticking to enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions but actively facilitating their violation when it came to supplying arms to the rebels, which was supposed to be a no-no.

In this sense, then, it was an American intervention that at least achieved its real goal, if not one worth the expenditure of U.S. treasure and reputation, and one we should have lived to regret. As Zenko wrote:

on Oct. 20, 2011, it was a U.S. Predator drone and French fighter aircraft that attacked a convoy of regime loyalists trying to flee Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. The dictator was injured in the attack, captured alive, and then extrajudicially murdered by rebel forces.

This sort of lying to the American people about what our military is trying to do is a long tradition and ongoing to this day in terms of our essentially combat operations against ISIS. This sort of thing, this:

gradual accretion of troops, capabilities, arms transfers, and expanded military missions seemingly just “happens,” because officials frame each policy step as normal and necessary. The reality is that, collectively, they represent a fundamentally larger and different intervention.

Clinton tried to show some warrior cojones with her famous “We came, we saw, he died” zinger. Clinton described that before an October 2015 hearing as “an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.”

But as Zenko’s article makes clear, that wasn’t the end that we the people were told was being pursued. And Clinton’s eager central role in such a game of tricking both U.S. and world opinion into not caring much about military actions by misleading us about their goals and intentions is something I hope voters don’t forget.

I wrote on some larger issues involving the penumbra of misleading secrecy surrounding American foreign policy in “Secret Foreign Policy is Bad for Democracy.” That’s still quite true, even when the secrets are kept by Democratic presidential aspirants.

Reason TV on the Obama administration’s tendency to wage wars that aren’t “really wars.”

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Q1 2016 Marijuana Industry Survey & Outlook

Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,

Our latest quarterly report on the recreational marijuana business shows a vibrant and growing industry as more states legalize the drug.

 

We survey numerous stores in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon to track how a newly legalized market develops its cost structure and product mix. Our Colorado contacts reported steady pricing and customer traffic compared to three months ago, and brought in $576 million in retail marijuana sales last year – 84% more than in 2014.

 

Washington dispensaries, on the other hand, are where Colorado stores were a few quarters ago, facing falling prices partly due to new entrants. Demand remains strong, however, with about 150 to 300 customers still visiting stores each day.

 

Oregon marijuana stores are in an even earlier stage, with only medical dispensaries allowed to sell recreational marijuana in the form of flower until later this year. Even still, Washington dispensaries posted $486 million in total sales last year, not too far behind Colorado even with fewer months to mature. The state of Oregon also brought in $3.5 million in tax revenue during the first month cannabis sales were taxed in January. That’s more than Colorado or Washington earned during their first month runs. Read on for the details of each developing market.

In less than a month, tens of thousands of people will gather at festivals to celebrate a national holiday: “420”. Never heard of it? It’s like Oktoberfest, but centers on the consumption of marijuana instead of beer. As for where the designation 420 started, there are many origin stories but one in particular seems to carry the most credence:

  • It supposedly all started back in 1971 at San Rafael high school in northern California with a group of five teenagers and a map. Known as the “Waldos” because they met by a wall after school at 4:20pm, they sought out what was their version of treasure in Point Reyes forest: marijuana plants.
  • They never found the plants, but “420” became a code word, synonymous with the prospect of smoking cannabis but suggesting so discreetly. Then the Grateful Dead moved into town, elevating the term to another level. The Waldos started hanging around the band’s rehearsals and parties. One of the member’s older brother “managed a Dead sideband and was good friends with bassist Phil Lesh” according to the Huffington Post, while another member’s Dad handled the band’s real estate. The term eventually made its way through the Dead Head community as the band toured in the 80s and 90s.
  • In 1990, a reporter at High Times saw an explanation of “420” on a Grateful Dead Concert flyer. This gave the term international recognition as the magazine started basing events around it, even buying 420.com. And the rest is history. Every year on April 20th, people pay homage to the drug, ideally smoking at 4:20pm.

High Times magazine’s annual U.S. Cannabis Cup remains the most highly anticipated event for the 4/20 holiday. The festival holds a contest that judges and awards companies for the best flower, concentrates, and edibles, for example. It also features educational seminars, expositions, concerts, and product showcases. More than 35,000 people attended the five-day event every day last year in Denver. Not this year, however, as county governments in Colorado prevented High Times from obtaining a permit in Denver and subsequently in Pueblo. The magazine will host a one-day Colorado Cannabis Cup award show in Denver, but the main event will occur over three days in San Bernardino, California.

This is not a welcomed development at Colorado retail marijuana dispensaries, which would have benefitted from the extra foot traffic. According to our latest quarterly survey on the legal recreational marijuana market, our interviews of managers and employees at several Colorado retail dispensaries expressed their disappointment that the event was moved out of state. They expect fewer customers than last year due to lost tourist activity, and they miss out on an opportunity to network. One respondent, for example, found a seed company he continues to use at one of these rallies in the past. But ever since marijuana was legalized in the state, they’ve experienced a crackdown on events surrounding 420.

Nevertheless, these dispensaries still expect some rallies and a spike in sales during the holiday.They are already preparing by planning specials for that week, adding staff, and placing early orders with vendors for concentrates and edibles, for example. Based on our usual analysis including price, units, and mix, here’s a snapshot of our most recent findings on retail marijuana businesses in Colorado:

#1 – Price: Competition continues to put pressure on prices as stores still try to find an equilibrium, but they’ve remained relatively steady over the past couple of quarters. Customers can still find an ounce for $150 to $350, and an eighth for $25 to $45 – especially with frequent specials and discounts. One contact said he sees a more pronounced tier structure developing on the recreational side of business. People can choose to pay less for lower quality or accept higher prices for better quality strains. Overall, prices have mostly stabilized after declining significantly from when we first started our surveys in June 2014 ($400/ounce and $50-$70/eighth) to September 2015 ($300/ounce and $30-$45/eighth).

 

#2 – Units/Traffic: About 150 to 350 customers still visit our contacts stores each day, spending $50 to $60 on average. Fridays and holidays also remain the busiest periods, similar to all retail stores. Tourists account for about 50% of their customers, so they are also expecting greater business this spring and summer as the weather warms. You may guess they received a slight boost in sales on St. Patrick’s Day, but most survey respondents said snow actually offset any holiday bump.

 

#3 – Mix: Most stores report a 50/50 split between purchases of flower and concentrates/edibles. Some dispensaries claimed flower sells the most, while one manager said sour gummies outsell all of his store’s other products. Our contacts reported an improvement in the quality of edibles as more vendors come to market. Dispensaries also have a greater appreciation for what sells best. The most interesting product we heard about was gluten free chocolate, which shows just how far these vendors have come. Lastly, vaporizer pens and cartridges continue to gain popularity as a cleaner and odorless means of smoking.

All in all, recreational marijuana stores in Colorado received $575.8 million in 2015 revenue based on tax data from the Colorado Department of Revenue. That’s an 84% comp to 2014, showing robust growth in the industry. Turn to other states in which retail marijuana is legal and you’ll see they have posted impressive growth figures as well, even with less time to mature. We’ve expanded our survey to include marijuana dispensaries in Washington and Oregon, which started selling retail cannabis in July 2014 and October 2015 respectively. Here are our takeaways for both markets:

The price for an eighth carried a wide range of between $25 to $60, depending on the strain, at dispensaries in Washington and Oregon. Washington, however, continues to experience more downward pressure in pricing, whereas prices have remained steady in Oregon. Only medical marijuana stores in Oregon can sell recreational cannabis until later this year, so they won’t feel the competition of those new entrants until then. In the meantime, the ability to sell recreational marijuana in addition to medical marijuana has been a huge boon to business. One store manager said retail cannabis now accounts for as much as 85% of her overall sales.

 

There are two reasons Washington’s prices continue to fall: more awarding of licenses to retailers and lower wholesale prices after the tax structure was changed from 25% levied on producers, processors, and retailers to 37% on only retailers. The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) raised the former retail store cap of 334 to 556 to help in the process of merging the medical and recreational markets on July 1st.

 

One contact, for example, noted the Vancouver City Council recently approved 3 more marijuana stores, increasing the cap from 6 to 9. He also said he sees a couple of price drops once every other week. This forces stores to lower their prices and offer more discounts to stay competitive. Consequently, the WSLCB reported that the average statewide price per gram of marijuana neared $10 at the beginning of this year compared to upwards of $25 when it was first sold legally in July 2014.

 

Washington continues to experience similar product trends to Colorado, with flower accounting for half of sales and edibles/concentrates making up the balance. Vaporizer pens and cartridges are also their most sought after product of late. They also run daily and weekly specials.

 

Stores in Southern Washington experienced competition with dispensaries in Oregon during the fourth quarter, as Oregon did not have a sales tax. Since January, recreational marijuana sold in Oregon medical dispensaries have been subject to a 25% sales tax, which will drop to 17% at the state level when retail stores open in the fall. These rates are lower than Washington’s sales tax of 37%, but some of our Washington contacts said they are taking business from Oregon because they are allowed to sell edibles and concentrates. Oregon dispensaries can only sell flower to those without a medical card, but hope they will be allowed to sell edibles and extracts when retail stores open in the second half of this year. They can also only sell up to 7 grams, whereas customers can buy up to an ounce in Washington.

 

Last year, Washington dispensaries posted $486.2 million in total sales (excluding the excise tax), about $90 million less than recreational sales alone in Colorado. With that said, Washington stores brought in $63.3 million in January compared to $52.1 million in Colorado retail sales.

 

Oregon’s Department of Revenue reported the state collected $3.5 million in taxes for recreational marijuana sales in January. That suggests $14 million in retail revenue during the first month the tax took effect. It also exceeded the $2.9 million in taxes collected for both medical and retail marijuana sales in Colorado when stores were first able to sell the drug recreationally in January 2014. Washington also received less, only $1 million in August 2014.

Despite the success of recreational marijuana stores in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, the drug remains illegal on a Federal level and banking is limited as a result. Marijuana business residency ownership requirements also act as a roadblock to outside investment. The U.S. Department of Justice frowns upon outside money flowing into the marijuana industry as well. In order to invest in a marijuana business, you must have been a resident for two years in Colorado. Cannabis businesses can raise funds by issuing convertible notes to out of state individuals, with the exception of foreigners, but the holders of debt can only purchase equity when they meet the requirements for ownership of a licensed marijuana business.  

The residency requirement used to be six months in Washington, but the WSLCB recently applied new rules that allow an investor from out of state to loan money to a marijuana business. It’s still murky as to whether an investor can receive profits in exchange for financing, however. Moreover, the governor of Oregon recently signed House Bill 4014 into law, which removes a 2-year residency requirement for recreational marijuana producers, processors and retailers. This will make it easier for marijuana business owners to access capital. 

In sum, keep paying attention to the developments in this growth industry and we’ll provide updates along the way. Investing in current marijuana markets remains risky, but states where cannabis is legal continue to push for changes that are friendlier to outside investment. Colorado, Washington, and Oregon serve as informative experiments, with Alaska joining the mix once stores open later this year. Progress in these states and greater legalization elsewhere will continue to unfold within the next few years. The next major ballot initiative for legalizing marijuana occurs in California this fall. Hopefully changes in regulations that support marijuana businesses and investment will continue to follow suit.

We’ll leave you with this: ever wonder about the 419.99 mile marker on I-70 in Colorado? That’s because people kept stealing the original 420 sign for reasons you now know.

Sources:
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“Why We Need To Beat Russia”

Submitted by The Saker, authored by Cathal Haughian

250,000 capitalists read the Financial Times, and it has been our undertaking to chronicle our understanding of capitalism via our book The Philosophy of Capitalism. A USA led team has answered the question ‘What is The Nature of the Monetary System?’ The Monetary system has three layers – the core is Religion and the unconscious mind – as they formed first. The outer layer is operational and intersects with geopolitics, it explains:

Why we need to beat Russia

We may see Syria as a testing ground for Imperial Power. Russia has tested our influence and shown the World it’s wanting, so it’s crucial to appreciate why and of what consequence.

Our Imperial weapons give definite form to our Empire. And nothing has shaped our Empire more than the FIAT. The deformation began in 1971, when the US imposed her Power to re-define the rules of the monetary system for her sole benefit. The ability to print IOU’s in exchange for real value is more clever than theft as we borrow and do not pay back in kind due to inflation. Our enemies, adversaries and vassals must found their financial systems upon the printed dollar which they must purchase with hard earned money. That seizure has financed a vast network of military bases, bribery, assassinations, coup d´états and perpetual war.

What’s not to like? All that Power without taxing the produce of the American people. So why have we lost in Syria?

Let’s begin by appreciating that the global “FIAT system” is responsible for our moral crisis and departure from virtue. As we embrace further the gods of greed – listen to the masses cheer for Clinton and Trump – we must recall that virtue is knowledge of what is good. We are getting weak because we have forgotten what is good for us.

The root of this evil is our love of easy money, or FIAT money, defined by those with power as “wealth by decree” which places an arbitrary value upon “wealth issued by men” such that buying power has no natural governor, as it did when gold was freely traded along currencies in truly free markets. But whom, may we ask, has the power to decree wealth? And with such great power to do so, who can be trusted with such great responsibility?

No one. That is who.

But nonetheless, governments and monarchies throughout the ages have been entrusted to issue wealth by decree. All have failed, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So in every FIAT timeline we see the more powerful become wealthier and the wealthy become more powerful, because it is they who control the issuance and distribution of wealth. Inequality of Wealth, therefore, always reaches its peak at the end of the FIAT timeline. As social position offers more favours than purpose and production. What has happened is what always happens – you have a system politicized to such an extent that political access – and not profits from innovative new solutions – Become the core of the incentive structure.

Notice how productivity declined after Bretton Woods and later when Bretton Woods was abandoned. One of the problems of easy money, not the only one mind you, is the financialization of the economy. Financialization drains key human capital and generates malinvestment. Nuclear engineers are doing MBA’s so that they can work as investment bankers! Trillions of dollars have been invested in real estate developments that provide no productivity gains. Easy money kept fracking companies alive –producing an endless glut of gas that had nowhere to go but heat tar sands in Canada – what waste!

This is the real economic evil of our current monetary system – malinvestment – with two insidious effects:

  1. A halt in fundamental scientific breakthroughs and
  2. The West, apart from Germany and Norway, has run at a loss for decades

If the common man had a say in all this, he would declare his modest holdings to be the pinnacle of wealth, by his decree. He will offer you his apartment for your mansion, his hot dog for your lobster, his bike for your car and so forth. If this sounds ridiculous, then think how absurd it is to offer stacks of paper for these same items, which (based upon the numbers and signatures printed upon them) you would gladly accept, by decree.

We know that paper is just as intrinsically worthless as the electronic digits they represent in a bank account. The issue here is who holds the power of decree. The little people never will. The monied men hold this power – like a parasite feeding upon any who deign to offer value at the marketplace.

And that is the cut of the second edge my friends. That is the death blow. The Fiat produced a parasite – the financial sector – that in its greed is killing the real economy. So when we read about absence of opportunity with such empathy, know that the parasite suffers too, as the problem of debt reaches higher toward senior capital.

When we see debt piled on debt just to prolong the dying system, take note that a few monied men enjoy the fruits of this easy money for a time before defaulting … and with no collateral to make lenders whole, many walk away with nothing more than an impaired credit rating – into a waiting system where debt is harshly devalued.

Monsanto can darken the sunflower harvest in the Ukraine, and Allianz can steal a few tranquil Greek islands, but the ambience is never quite the same as when hard working people had their just rewards, and goodness and charity and kind souls rejoiced – with compassion and cooperation – while loving the narrative of a life written while desiring only the product of their work.

The world this Global Reserve Fiat creates is one of misery and strife where evil and greed feeds upon the spirit, and the world becomes an immoral wasteland of modernity. The worker is discriminated against as all pressure and stress is heaped upon his future, as the law discriminates between debts held as an asset vs. debt held as a liability.

You see, reader, while we all hold “deposits” at banks, which is an euphemism for bank debt, only the lending class (and I use this term in the broadest sense) get to hold debt on their balance sheets as a wealth asset, whereas the little people hold debt as an obligatory liability. If there is a default, all the better as the law allows them to seize the “secured” assets as collateral. Is there a flaw in my thinking? Let us see…

You may say that banks are able to hold debt as an asset because they have the capital to cover that debt – to which I would say, “Really ??!!” As we understand the nature of debt in this modern era of aging debt, and the derivatives that attempt to hedge those obligations, this is simply not the case, as the lessons of Enron, AIG, Lehman, MF Global – ad nauseam – clearly prove. The empire of debt is hallmarked by misery for the masses though this is no accident, for a system cannot discriminate in and of itself. Financial laws are written by and for the hidden agenda of monied men, how can we conclude otherwise? A few of which see war or systemic crisis as an opportunity to rewrite the social contract e.g. the tax payer takes over bank debt, see Ireland, Britain and soon Australia and the Eurozone.

Look at the workers as they make their way home on the subway, standing tightly together, neither wanting nor caring to utter a word to one another, their grey features melted by the stress of their “wealth as debt”. Their one shot at consciousness ground away while vampire and zombie stories speak to their existence. Look at the once prosperous cities around you, like Detroit, or Camden, crumbling into 3rd world ghettos. Not exactly a world that the 1% wants to live in, but one they deserve – one of their making.

They can insulate themselves in the Hamptons for only so long until the sirens sound. It has always been this way, and it will always be this way, until man changes his nature by recognizing what is good for him.

Now, the East – China / Russia / India – challenge the Global Reserve Fiat. And when the dollar fails, and it will: For debt is the essence of fiat, and when it defaults, the system defaults with it.

Fiat Debt is unstable for two reasons:

  1. Because no natural ecosystem is able to sustain unlimited, continuous exponential growth – as all 100% fiat (debt-based) valuation systems require. More debt is required to repay existing debt plus interest. The basic operational problem: you can inflate a system easily by issuing new “secured” debt against collateral and thereby increasing collateral value (think about mortgages as buying power to buy houses, pushing house prices up, collateral looks fine even if debtors cannot pay interest or principal – as long they can easily refinance or banks can sell recovered properties in a real estate market spiked by easy credit and demographics (like in the US from 2001-2005, or London and Sidney now). Easy credit can paper over affordability and to some extent demographics. Now this definitely does not work in reverse; you cannot even stop because once credit stops flowing, prices start to tatter; and in the latter stages even an decrease in the rate of increase might be enough to crash the system.
  2. Because it is entered into and created so lightly, and it is based on the assumption of a fixed future performance by an entity or individual. And when the 98% – their future burdened by intolerable debt, unemployment and declining wages – decide to walk away? The fear of that decision has been driving interest rates down for decades, to make it bearable not for the good of mankind but to prolong the system. This brings into relief an internal contradiction: wages decline in sync with interest rates because the bargaining power of workers evaporates as Central Bankers reduce the cost of capital, contributing to the substitution of labour and labour wages by that of the machines and AI software. Until the workers walk away from more debt for less income, we watch this balancing act between debt pretending to be wealth, and wealth being treated as a “bad investment”. All performed for the benefit of gradually changing our definitions, as we evolve into a new equilibrium determined by the East – Their collective gold reserves will be large enough to re-price the currencies and free the markets.

As we look at the precarious nature of our faith-based money, we must acknowledge the moral implications of “dishonest money”. Seizure by decree, whether judged just by Constituted Power, is immoral. But the fact that dishonest money is so easy to create, control and redistribute helps one understand the wave of immorality that has swept over our world.

Paying tribute with labor and exchange rates is not enough for the empire of debt. Rather, its vassals must accept and embrace the ideology of the empire as well – “Wealth as Debt” and Globalism. It’s their separation in language which causes the confusion – Globalism and Absolutism – for they are one and the same thing.

When Russia and China stockpile honest money, they attack our most potent weapon and father of our decline. Our Imperial weapon will die by both edges of its own sword, one being the contempt with which it is so easily created to bend the will of the world to its bidding, and the other sharp edge which the wicked are blind to recognize: The evil that sound money prohibits.

Will Russia and China attack the fiat dollar using overt enemy action? Possible, but not probable: as they can simply undermine “confidence” in the FIAT and wait upon the 2% to bury the blade. The Dynasties of Wealth – Have you ever wondered how we hedge our holdings through turmoil? The top 85 patricians of which own more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion humans – will move first. The 1%, then 2% and whoever else left standing will be forced to follow through.

Only Gold has the history, depth, unique qualities, loyalty of the elite and transitional power to challenge any man, any nation, any system on earth, past, present and future. The Dynasties understand this, because they have both witnessed and authored this axiom across generations of asset accumulation.

When they vote, they vote with their ability to make markets, and then reap the profit from the market they make, offering favor to those who protect their interests. They easily control men through greed and are beholden to Gold alone. Gold transitions their wealth recycling system through change.

As the sand peters past the last curve of the hour glass the Dynastic hand is clear to see. So the Neo-cons need to beat Russia, and soon, as only Globalism can keep the markets enchained.


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

Presenting The Complete Brussels ISIS Cell Org Chart

Earlier today and on several occasions since Tuesday morning when the Bakraoui brothers blew themselves up at the Brussels airport and city metro, we’ve documented the connection between the Brussels attacks, the brazen assault on Paris in November, and other terror-related events that have unfolded in Belgium over the past 14 months.

Here are some bullet points worth noting:

  • In January 2015, two men are killed in a police raid on a flat in Verviers; the men are later pictured with Paris ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud in a cover story for Islamic State magazine Dabiq
  • In September, one “Soufiane Kayal” was seen with Salah Abdeslam at a Hungary-Austria border checkpoint; Kayal would later turn out to be bomb maker Najim Laachraoui whose DNA was found on explosive material in Paris and also in two residences (one in Auvelais that was raided on November 26 and one on Rue Henri Bergé, in the Schaerbeek section of Brussels that was searched in December); he is now thought to have blown himself up on Tuesday at the Brussels airport
  • A November 30 raid on a home in Auvelais where Abaaoud may have met with suicide bombers turns up a 10-minute surveillance tape apparently filmed at the home of a senior Belgian nuclear official; reports later suggested the camera was set up and retrieved by the Bakraoui brothers
  • A March 14 raid on an apartment in Forest rented to one of the Bakraoui brothers leaves one gunman dead, but two other presumed jihadis escape; Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprints are found in the apartment

And the list goes on. The takeaway seems to be that beginning some years ago, Abdelhamid Abaaoud (who allegedly became Emir of War in Deir ez-Zor after Omar the Chechen was transferred to Iraq) established the Brussels cell and it’s been growing and building its operational capabilities ever since.

For those interested in understanding how it all fits together, we bring you the following org chart from The Guardian:


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