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Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Are you a religious extremist?  For years, world leaders have been endlessly proclaiming that we need to eradicate “extremism”, but what actually is “extremism”?  Many would point to the ISIS jihadists over in the Middle East that are beheading people that don’t agree with them as examples of religious extremists, and I think that very few people would argue with that.  But our politicians (especially the liberal ones) rarely use the term “Islamic terrorists” anymore.  Instead, they tend to use the term “religious extremists”, and that has a much, much broader connotation.  In fact, if you are a Bible-believing Christian, you are probably included in that category.

Most Bible-believing Christians would never think of themselves as being similar to radical jihadists in the Middle East, but that is precisely how many of their fellow Americans very them.  The Barna Group has just released a shocking new study which found that 45 percent of all “non-religious” Americans believe that “Christianity is extremist”…

The perception that the Christian faith is extreme is now firmly entrenched among the nation’s non-Christians. A full forty-five percent of atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated in America agree with the statement “Christianity is extremist.” Almost as troubling is the fact that only 14 percent of atheists and agnostics strongly disagree that Christianity is extremist. The remaining four in ten (41%) disagree only somewhat. So even non-Christians who are reluctant to fully label Christianity as extremist, still harbor some hesitations and negative perceptions toward the religion.

Even more troubling is what the study discovered about how the general population views specific religious activities.  There has been a tremendous shift in society, and behaviors that were considered to be completely mainstream a few decades ago are now considered to be “extremism”.

Are you ready to take a test? Look over the Barna infographic that I have shared below very carefully.  Have you ever participated in any of these “extremist activities”?…

If you have ever participated in any of the activities listed in category 1 or category 2, you are a “religious extremist” according to most Americans.

Of course every single one of the behaviors in category 2 would potentially apply to me, so I guess that would make me an “extremist” according to this definition.

This is where our society is heading.  Of course “Christian extremists” are not normally put into prison in the United States quite yet, but hatred toward our faith in rapidly rising in society.  Church attendance is dropping like a rock, the Christian faith is relentlessly mocked in movies and on television, and incidents of hostility toward Christians have doubled over the past three years.

And the truth is that even the federal government and the military are rapidly turning against Bible-believing Christians.  For example, the slide that I have posted below comes from a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief that described “Evangelical Christianity” and “Catholicism” as examples of “religious extremism”…

Once this came out, there was a huge uproar and some people got into trouble over this.  But it should be exceedingly alarming to people of faith that U.S. military personnel were being trained that evangelical Christians are on the same level as the Ku Klux Klan.

And of course this is far from the only example of this phenomenon.  In fact, Christians have regularly been described as “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents since the day that Barack Obama first stepped into the White House.

The following is an extended excerpt from my previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“…

*****

Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents.  To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link.  As you can see, this list covers most of the country…

1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”

2. Those that advocate for states’ rights

3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”

4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”

5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”

6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”

7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”

8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”

9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”

10. “Anti-Gay”

11. “Anti-Immigrant”

12. “Anti-Muslim”

13. “The Patriot Movement”

14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”

15. Members of the Family Research Council

16. Members of the American Family Association

17. Those that believe that Mexico, Canada and the United States “are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ‘North American Union’”

18. Members of the American Border Patrol/American Patrol

19. Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform

20. Members of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition

21. Members of the Christian Action Network

22. Anyone that is “opposed to the New World Order”

23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”

24. Anyone that is opposed to Agenda 21

25. Anyone that is concerned about FEMA camps

26. Anyone that “fears impending gun control or weapons confiscations”

27. The militia movement

28. The sovereign citizen movement

29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”

30. Anyone that “complains about bias”

31. Anyone that “believes in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia”

32. Anyone that “is frustrated with mainstream ideologies”

33. Anyone that “visits extremist websites/blogs”

34. Anyone that “establishes website/blog to display extremist views”

35. Anyone that “attends rallies for extremist causes”

36. Anyone that “exhibits extreme religious intolerance”

37. Anyone that “is personally connected with a grievance”

38. Anyone that “suddenly acquires weapons”

39. Anyone that “organizes protests inspired by extremist ideology”

40. “Militia or unorganized militia”

41. “General right-wing extremist”

42. Citizens that have “bumper stickers” that are patriotic or anti-U.N.

43. Those that refer to an “Army of God”

44. Those that are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”

45. Those that are “anti-global”

46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”

47. Those that are “reverent of individual liberty”

48. Those that “believe in conspiracy theories”

49. Those that have “a belief that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack”

50. Those that possess “a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”

51. Those that would “impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”

52. Those that would “insert religion into the political sphere”

53. Anyone that would “seek to politicize religion”

54. Those that have “supported political movements for autonomy”

55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”

56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”

57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”

58. “Rightwing extremists”

59. “Returning veterans”

60. Those concerned about “illegal immigration”

61. Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”

62. Anyone that is engaged in “ammunition stockpiling”

63. Anyone that exhibits “fear of Communist regimes”

64. “Anti-abortion activists”

65. Those that are against illegal immigration

66. Those that talk about “the New World Order” in a “derogatory” manner

67. Those that have a negative view of the United Nations

68. Those that are opposed “to the collection of federal income taxes”

69. Those that supported former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr

70. Those that display the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”)

71. Those that believe in “end times” prophecies

72. Evangelical Christians

*****

Are you starting to get the picture?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/24CjNqw Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

We broke out in the copper market today. We look at what resistance levels are in play going forward in the market.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle    

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1QmNyUY EconMatters

One month ago, when we looked at the (very opaque) European banking sector and the pains it was undergoing as a result of its China and commodity exposure, we asked whether Canadian banks are next, focusing on the uncharacteristically low reserves local banks have to the loans in the oil and gas sector.

As we summarized, using an RBC report, if using the same average reserve level as that applied by US banks, Canadian banks’ current loss allowance excluding RBC would surge from $170MM to over $2.5 billion, resulting in a substantial hit to earnings, and potentially impairing the banks’ ability to service dividends and future cash distributions.

We also wondered what other cockroaches may be hiding inside the uncharacteristically optimistic Canadian banks’ balance sheets.

One answer was revealed today when Bloomberg reported that if one includes untapped loans in the form of undrawn revolvers and other committed but unused credit facilities, Canadian banks’ exposure to the struggling oil-and-gas industry more than doubles from the current C$50 billion in outstanding loans generally highlighted by Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and the country’s four other large lenders in quarterly earnings calls and presentations, to C$107 billion ($80 billion).

As Bloomberg explains for those unfamiliar with how gross exposure works, in addition to existing loans and drawn credit facilities, banks also have exposure in the form of commitments, such as credit lines. They can potentially increase a bank’s risk, because the weakest borrowers often tap their entire credit line when nearing default. The banks’ exposure to oil-and-gas companies from outstanding loans and commitments range from about C$5 billion for National Bank of Canada to C$32 billion for Bank of Nova Scotia.

And when a liquidity shortage arrives as it most certainly will should oil continue to trade at current prices, distressed energy companies will promptly fully draw the last dollar available under untapped credit lines.

Borrowing the full amount before the credit line is cut helps companies preserve liquidity to keep paying their bills, and gives them leverage to negotiate with their creditors. For example, Royal Bank is among the lead lenders to SandRidge Energy Inc., which drew its entire $500 million credit line in January. The Oklahoma City-based company then missed a bond interest payment on Feb. 16, starting a 30-day countdown to default unless the coupon is paid or an agreement is reached with its lenders.

Remember when in late 2013 this website was warning about the unprecedented surge in issuance of covenant-lite loans? This is the reason.

Barring breaching contracts, “the banks really don’t have a lot of recourse to prevent you from drawing the credit line,” said Jason Wangler, an energy analyst at Wunderlich Securities in Houston. “They were really lax last year on covenants and it’s starting to cost them.”

Putting Canada’s energy loans in context, European banks disclosed during the most recent earnings season that they have almost $200 billion in oil-and-gas loans, while U.S. banks have an estimated $123 billion of outstanding loans and commitments to the industry. In other words when adding the committed but undrawn exposure, total Canadian bank exposure of $80 billion is fast approaching that of the entire US banking sector.

Not surprisingly, it was bank analysts who promptly tried to put liptsick on this pig:

Including oil-and-gas lending commitments overstates the banks’ risks, since the borrowers may not fully draw down those credit lines in times of trouble, said Peter Routledge, an analyst with National Bank Financial.

 

“The banks will lower the undrawn commitments before the borrowers go bankrupt,” Routledge said in an interview. “There will be some lines cut so it’s not going to be as big.”

Incidentally, this is precisely what US banks are quietly doing right now as we also reported two months ago, when we first explained that U.S. banks have been quietly shrinking the credit facilities of numerous oil and gas companies.

However, the banks better hurry: with every passing day energy company liquidity is getting increasingly more dire, to the point where they will soon scramble to take out as much cash as they possibly can before the banks perform their periodic redeterimation, and cut the borrowing bases based on new strip assumptions.

Who is most exposed?

According to Bloomberg, Scotiabank, Canada’s third-largest lender, has the highest credit exposure to oil-and-gas, including C$17.9 billion in outstanding loans and C$14.1 billion of commitments, according to March 1 disclosures. About 60 percent of the drawn exposure is investment grade, compared with about 75 percent for the undrawn commitments, the bank said.

“When you back out the investment grade, what’s left is a very small portion that is an area of focus, but we’re very comfortable,” Chief Financial Officer Sean McGuckin said Tuesday in telephone interview from Toronto. “We do a name-by-name analysis on a regular basis and we’ve got a good handle on this portfolio.”

Royal Bank, Canada’s largest lender, had the second-highest exposure. Chief Risk Officer Mark Hughes said on a Feb. 24 call that the bank’s drawn wholesale loan book to the oil-and-gas industry represented about 1.6 percent of its total, with an accompanying presentation showing the amount was C$8.4 billion. Gross exposure to oil-and-gas firms was C$22.1 billion, including C$13.7 billion of undrawn commitments, according to a report to shareholders.

Some banks, such as RBC are hoping their covenants will provide sufficient protection. Royal Bank’s Chief Risk Officer Mark Hughes said that “The vast majority of our clients’ credit profiles are strong and have remained stable over the past year,” Hughes said in an e-mailed statement. “We have covenants in place as safeguards, such as liquidity and coverage requirements, which serve to restrict drawings in times of stress. If the company can demonstrate their compliance with these requirements, they can continue to draw on their facilities.”

“We do remain very comfortable because our oil and gas exposure is below our peers,” CFO Riaz Ahmed said in a Feb. 25 phone interview.

The other Canadian banks are just as optimistic that these credit facilities, most of which were drafted when oil was at $100, will prevent capital losses.

Oil-and-gas loans at Bank of Montreal were C$7.4 billion in the first quarter, representing about 2 percent of its portfolio, the Toronto-based firm said in a Feb. 23 disclosure. The undrawn exposure shows that the lender had an additional C$8.24 billion of undrawn commitments, raising its exposure to C$16.3 billion.

 

“We evaluate the risk on both drawn and undrawn basis,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Downe said in a Feb. 29 interview in Florida. “We assume that lines will be drawn under periods of stress. I think our disclosure is fair.”

 

National Bank reported C$3.2 billion of outstanding oil-and-gas loans in the first quarter, a “low and manageable” exposure representing about 2.7 percent of its loan book, Chief Risk Officer William Bonnell said during a Feb. 23 earnings call.

Unless oil rebounds, the entire world will find out very soon just how contained this particular “cockroach” is, even as we look forward to discovering the next one.

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

Submitted by Ben Hunt via Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,

But here's the thing, and this is true for any Competitive game, whether it's poker or World War I or a Republican primary or strategic monetary policy — once one player enjoys some success with a new strategy or a new weapon, ALL players must adopt that strategy or weapon, regardless of whether or not a player thinks it's distasteful or misguided. Even if you think you're doing the wrong thing in the long run, if you don't adopt the new strategy you're going to lose in the short run, and that's something no politician and no central banker can stomach. I'm reminded of the (in)famous line from Chuck Prince, former Citigroup CEO, in 2007: "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance." Just as all of the big banks were dancing to the music of Alt-A mortgages and trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securitizations in 2007, so are all central bankers dancing to the music of negative rates and currency devaluation today. It was the rational move for Prince and Fuld and Thain and Mozilo then, and it's the rational move for Yellen and Draghi and Kuroda and Zhou today. Once negative rates (or liar loans or Trump-esque campaign tactics) are introduced into the field of battle you can't wish them away. You have to fight fire with fire until a big structure burns down, with the hope that at that point everyone can get together and rebuild. Or you can surrender. Welcome to the jungle.

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

“When the Mexican peso gets a cold, Laredo sneezes,” Les Norton, head of the Downtown Merchants Association says.

Despite the fact that Banxico managed to take MXN shorts out into the alley and execute them earlier this month in an epic “franc moment,” the trend, so to speak, is not your friend here.

Mexico’s currency has taken a dramatic hit from the slump in crude. Like other EM FX pairs, the USDMXN hasn’t been the place to be over the past year (again, recent weakness notwithstanding).

And much like what we’ve seen with the loonie, the FX malaise has real implications for people’s purchasing decisions. Need proof? Look no further than Silvia Guerra’s store in Laredo, Texas which is on the state-side of the Rio Grande. As Bloomberg notes, Guerra sells “dresses and colorful rolls of fabric,” but these days, the collapsing peso means “she’ll be out of business by May.” 

As Bloomberg goes on to recount, Silvia is a poster child for the malaise that’s accrued from the collapse in oil prices. “Her husband lost his job leasing drilling equipment for Weatherford [and] their daughter, an administrator for Baker Hughes in San Antonio, was told her position is at risk after more than 700 firings recently at the oil-services company.” Furthermore, “their son, who supervises fracking operations for C&J Energy Services, has seen his paycheck shrink so much he’s looking for side work.”

Earlier this month, Weatherford fired 15% of its workforce or, around 6,000 people. Guerra’s husband was fired after 16 years at the company. 

“The news hit us like a bomb,” she said. 

“Most of the 115 million people who cross into Texas legally from Mexico every year are on shopping expeditions, and by some estimates are responsible for one of every two retail dollars spent in Laredo,” Bloomberg notes. “They buy everything from jeans to smart phones to toys.”

Well, unless the exchange rate crashes. Then they don’t buy anything. 

“Now with the peso, my customers are not coming anymore,” Kush Samtani who owns a 27-year-old electronics shop bemoans.

As Bloomberg goes on to note, around a third of Laredo’s residents live below the poverty line. Per capita income is less than $16K. “What’s different this time is that Laredo is also taking a hit from the bust in the Eagle Ford, one of the fields behind the surge in U.S. oil output in the past half-decade,” Bloomberg adds. 

For those who might have missed it, here’s what the situation looks like: 

But that’s ok, because Robert Kaplan is on the job. 

And he’ll definitley make things right again. Besides, there’s nothing wrong in the first place (i.e. there are no struggling financial institutions, just ask the Dallas Fed, who told Zero Hedge that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to O&G reserves). 

On second thought, you should worry. At least if you’re Silvia Guerra. Because a surging dollar is going to continue to pressure EM. And thanks to Saudi Arabia (and Iran, through no fault of their own), commodity prices are going to remain subdued. As will EM FX. In fact the correlation between EM FX and commodities has intensified: 

So good luck Silvia.

“I’m very sad that I have to close my store,” she told Bloomberg. 

Tell it to King Salman. And then maybe see if he’ll lend you some gold to cover your bills.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Y2PhS2 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

No matter what ailed you, the doctor had one cure: attaching leeches to your body.

In the Middle Ages, doctors used leeches to treat everything from headaches to ear infections, asthma, smallpox, the plague, and hundreds of other diseases. If there was something wrong with you, leeches were the solution. If that didn’t work, the answer was more leeches.

Today, modern medicine has discredited leeches as a cure-all. We look back on it and laugh. “How could we have been so stupid?”

But back then, people didn’t think it was stupid. They thought it was a solution. “Experts” and conventional wisdom endorsed the practice wholeheartedly.

Some things haven’t changed much. The average person is still willing to blindly accept conventional thinking—maybe even more so than he was in the past. Today, he hears the financial equivalent of “more leeches!” and agrees.

Conventional wisdom and economic “experts” continually prescribe treatments that we will no doubt look back on and say, “How could we have been so stupid?”

Establishment economists advocate upside-down concepts like negative interest rates, banning cash, debt-fueled consumption, government spending, and rampant money printing as the cures to economic ailments. “Money printing, debt, and low interest rates didn’t stimulate the economy? Well, we just need more money printing, more debt, and even lower interest rates.”

It’s nothing but the same bad medicine that caused many of these problems in the first place. No matter what, their solution is more financial leeches!

Modern Soothsayers

The average person doesn't care about economics. But to the extent that he does, he only reads mainstream publications like The Economist and editorials in The New York Times.

As far as I’m concerned, the establishment economists in these publications are nothing more than overpaid government apologists and social engineers. They use complex but irrelevant mathematical models to help politicians show their necessity to society. They help politicians grab more power, which only helps the government grow.

Paul Krugman of The New York Times once infamously advocated for faking a space alien invasion as an excuse to get the government to spend enormous amounts of money countering the faux threat.

Larry Summers, a Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary, recently wrote an article in The Washington Post titled “It’s time to kill the $100 bill.” Summers became the latest high-profile “economist” to call for the abolition of physical cash.

Economists at Bloomberg and The Financial Times have similarly called for the elimination of paper currency.

These are just a couple recent examples. This list goes on and on.

To make matters worse, these economists have terrible forecasting track records. Their “fine tuning” of the economy often results in disaster. Yet, the public still holds them up as unassailable financial experts.

It’s as if these witch doctors have convinced everyone they’re neurosurgeons.

Rather than place your confidence in these economic witch doctors, I recommend thinking for yourself. You don’t need any special training to be your own economist. You just need a healthy dose of common sense. That way, next time the economists offer up more economic leeches, you can say “no thank you.”

Negative Interest Rates and the War on Cash – More Economic Leeches

Rather than admit that their theories and models were wrong, establishment economists have come up with another harebrained gimmick. They’ve decided we need negative interest rates to stimulate the economy. But negative interest rates only work if people can’t withdraw physical cash from the bank. So, they’ve decided to wage a War on Cash, too.

When you deposit money in a bank, you are lending the bank money. In return, you expect to earn some interest. That doesn’t happen with negative rates. Instead, you pay the bank.

Put $1,000 in your bank account at the beginning of the year, and it becomes $950 by the end of the year. Good luck saving for retirement in that environment.

It’s a bizarre, perverse concept.

Negative rates could not exist in a free market. They can only exist in an Alice in Wonderland economy created by central bankers (more accurately called “central economic planners”).

If you don’t like that plan, you can certainly stash your cash under the mattress. As a practical matter, this limits how far governments and central banks can take negative interest rates. The more it costs to store money at the bank, the less inclined people are to do it.

Of course, central bankers don’t want you to withdraw money from the bank. This is a big reason why they are trying to incrementally eliminate cash.

One way they are waging the War on Cash is by lowering the threshold for mandatory reporting of cash transactions. Some countries have even made large cash transactions flat-out illegal. In just the last few years…

• Italy made cash transactions over €1,000 illegal;
• Switzerland has proposed banning cash payments in excess of 100,000 francs;
• Russia banned cash transactions over $10,000;
• Spain banned cash transactions over €2,500;
• Mexico made cash payments of more than $11,000 illegal;
• Uruguay banned cash transactions over $5,000; and
• France made cash transactions over €1,000 illegal, down from the previous limit of €3,000.

Establishment economists are also calling for the elimination of large-denomination currency notes, like the $100 bill and €500 note. They’ve even advocated declaring all dollar bills with a serial number ending in “9” invalid.

These are just some of their methods. In short, they all make it inconvenient or illegal to avoid the sting of negative interest rates by using cash.

But governments have an even more sinister goal…

Forcing people to only use electronic payment methods is exactly what the U.S. government wants. Their goal is to eliminate the use of hand-to-hand currency so they can document, control, and tax everything.

Today, negative interest rates and the War on Cash are increasingly dangerous threats to your personal freedom and financial prosperity.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Y2K4db Tyler Durden

Once again we find that it is only after they leave their official posts that central bankers finally tell the truth.

Last night, it was Alan Greenspan who blasted the state of the economy, saying that “we’re in trouble basically because productivity is dead in the water” and when asked if he is optimistic going forward, Greenspan replied “no, I haven’t been for quite a while.”

Then on Sunday, the former head of the BOE, Mervyn King, warned that another aspect of the global economy, namely the financial system whose structural problems remain untouched since the financial crisis have been untouched, is “certain to have another crisis.”

To be sure, warnings by former central bankers who are more responsible about the current global mess sound as nothing but revisionist bullshit. And yet, it was what King said today at the launch of his new book that left us surprised.

As the Telegraph reports today, according to the former head of the Bank of England Europe’s economic depression “is the result of “deliberate” policy choices made by EU elites. Mervyn King continued his scathing assault on Europe’s economic and monetary union, having predicted the beleaguered currency zone will need to be dismantled to free its weakest members from unremitting austerity and record levels of unemployment.

King also said he could never have envisaged an economic collapse of the depths of the 1930s returning to Europe’s shores in the modern age. But, he added, the fate of Greece since 2009 – which has suffered a contraction eclipsing the US depression in the inter-war years – was an “appalling” example of economic policy failure, he told an audience at the London School of Economics.

“I never imagined that we would ever again in an industrialised country have a depression deeper than the United States experienced in the 1930s and that’s what’s happened in Greece. 

Lord King – who spent a decade fighting the worst financial crisis in history at the Bank of England – has said the weakest eurozone members face little choice but to return to their national currencies as “the only way to plot a route back to economic growth and full employment”.

But the biggest question about Europe’s depression has always been whether it was the result of sheer stupidity and poor economic decisions or deliberate. King’s answer was stunning: “it is appalling and it has happened almost as a deliberate act of policy which makes it even worse”.

The reason this statement is profound, is because it validates what “that” 2008 AIG report predicted long ago, and certainly years before the European crisis was unleashed, namely that Europe would specifically create a financial crisis (as well as an environmental crisis, as well as terrorism) in order to fortify “Empire Europe.”

Recall what then-AIG Banque’s strategist Bernard Connolly said in response to the rhetorical question of “What Europe wants“

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance
• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance
• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)
• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

The tragedy for Europe is that it has all panned out just as Europe’s unelected, ruling oligarchy as expected, and while we should congratulate Brussels which has managed to not only preserve but solidify its power, it now rules over a decaying, economically insolvent continent, with an entire generation left unemployed, with millions of refugees scrambling to get in, and with Europe’s cultural “integration” back to levels not seen in decades.

And whereas before we could speculate that all of this had been at most a chance occurrence, we now know better: it was premeditated from day one.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Y2K2BO Tyler Durden