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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Saker,

The central issue in the U.S. Presidential campaign can’t even be discussed in U.S. newsmedia, because America’s media have been almost uniformly complicit all along in hiding from the American public the crucial factual information that’s necessary in order for the public to vote in an intelligent and truthfully informed way about it. No news medium wants to report its own having been complicit in anything; so, the cover-up here just continues; it has a life of its own, even though it’s a life that brings the world closer and closer to a situation which would kill billions of people, as things get increasingly out-of-control the longer this coverup continues. The cycle of virtually uniform lying thus persists, despite the growing danger it produces. This article will need to be lengthy, because the American public have been almost consistently lied-to about so many very important things — things associated with the nation’s central issue — an issue even bigger than terrorism, and than global warming, and than rising economic inequality and corruption, but which is still virtually ignored. This article is thus intended to be ‘Drano’ for a political system that has become clogged by lies just jammed down into it, now backing up and pouring out onto America’s political floor. The overflowing sludge has got to be cleaned up, and discarded. Or else — and very suddenly — it will kill us all.

This central issue is whether or not to continue to move forward with the American government’s plan, ever since the Soviet Union and its military alliance the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991, to extend NATO — the anti-Russia military club — right up to Russia’s borders, surround Russia with NATO nuclear missiles a mere five minutes flight-time to Moscow, and simultaneously build a “Ballistic Missile Defense” or “Anti Ballistic Missile” (BMD or ABM) system to nullify Russia’s retaliatory missiles against an unannounced blitz U.S.-NATO invasion to take over, if not totally eliminate, Russia and its resistance to U.S. power. This operation is an ugly reality, but it is an American-led reality, and the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election will bring it into its final stage, either by ending it, or by culminating it — two drastically different outcomes, but one side or the other will prevail in this political contest, and the present article links to the documentation that America’s voters will need to be aware of that shows not only that they’ve been lied-to, but how and why they’ve been lied-to. The documentation is all-important, especially because the facts that are being documented have been hidden so successfully for so long. This is not a world that Americans want to know, but it is a world that especially the few Americans who are in control, don’t want the American public to know. That’s a toxic combination (public ignorance, which the people in control want to continue), but it is tragically real (as the documentation here will make clear).

U.S. President Barack Obama has stated, on many occasions, that the U.S. is the only “indispensable” country, and that any country which refuses to capitulate to American global supremacy is an enemy. This applies especially to Russia and to China — two formerly communist nations. Thus, the ‘Cold War’ is being resumed, and U.S. arms-makers are booming again, even though the ideological excuse (the “red scare,” communism) is now gone.

For example, Obama told graduating cadets at West Point, on 28 May 2014:

“The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world. The question we face, the question each of you will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead — not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.”

He was telling West Point graduates there, that economic competition can become a cause for America to go to war, and that America’s global supremacy is their job to enforce.

Obama placed this into a moralizing framework, as he always so skillfully does (for propaganda-purposes; he’s terrifically gifted at that), by saying to those cadets:

“America’s willingness to apply force around the world is the ultimate safeguard against chaos, and America’s failure to act in the face of Syrian brutality or Russian provocations not only violates our conscience, but invites escalating aggression in the future. … In the 21st century American isolationism is not an option. We don’t have a choice to ignore what happens beyond our borders. … As the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened extremist groups to come after us only increases. Regional aggression that goes unchecked — whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world — will ultimately impact our allies and could draw in our military. We can’t ignore what happens beyond our boundaries. And beyond these narrow rationales, I believe we have a real stake, an abiding self-interest, in making sure our children and our grandchildren grow up in a world where schoolgirls are not kidnapped and where individuals are not slaughtered because of tribe or faith or political belief. I believe that a world of greater freedom and tolerance is not only a moral imperative, it also helps to keep us safe.”

He was equating there the imposition of American control, as being “a world of greater freedom and tolerance,” which “helps to keep us safe.” Was it that, and did it do that, in Iraq? What about in Libya? What did it do for Ukraine? Is it really doing that in Syria? What about all of the refugees that are pouring out of all of those countries, which are being ‘saved’ by Obama’s policy, which has been America’s policy for decades, and which is not challenged, and which is bipartisan in every regard except for the style of lying rhetoric that’s being used to ‘justify’ it?

Obama’s predecessor in office, George W. Bush, was working on the same plan, when he invaded Iraq in 2003. His allegations that he was certain that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear-weapons program, and saying against “Saddam’s WMD program” that “a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need”, all of it were just bald lies from him, because all of it was false, and he knew that it was false. He knew that there was no such ‘IAEA’ ‘report’. And the press didn’t even challenge him on it, but instead just parroted the President’s lies as if they should automatically be taken as truths. (And the press also hid the IAEA’s immediate announcement that there was no such report.) It’s happening again, but the stakes this time are even more dangerous.

We’re going into a Presidential election, in which one candidate, Hillary Clinton, clearly wants to continue the policy that has been in place since 1990 (and which her husband played a major role in), and in which the other candidate, Donald Trump, wants to stop it  — he says we should end it. So, he is accused of being a ‘Soviet agent’. The same aristocracy that own the ‘news’ media and that control both of the political Parties, is being threatened by Trump’s repudiation of their program. They use moralisms — rightist ones for Republicans, and leftist ones for Democrats — to condemn him, but the real reason they are determined to defeat him is to continue their war which (on its U.S. side) never really was against communism; it was always a war for global conquest, global control; that’s how America’s controllers have been controlling this country since at least 1990. They want to continue it, though it’s heading all of us toward disaster.

In support of this aggressive agenda — a metastatically cancerous NATO — Obama in 2014 perpetrated a very bloody Ukrainian coup (propagandized as ‘democracy demonstrations’), carried out by U.S.-paid rabid racist-anti-Russian fascists, nazis actually (and from a tradition in Ukraine that descended from the pro-Hitler, anti-Stalin, side of Ukraine during World War II — the side that did Ukraine’s pogroms, etc.) and which had been allied with the Axis powers during WW II — but that now were in the pay of the U.S. government.

Some of the top members of Congress who have responsibility over foreign affairs refuse even to become acquainted with the evidence disproving the U.S. government’s lies on this. Elizabeth Murray was shocked to find in government officials, this intentional refusal to see evidence. She had served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government. (She should be the head of the CIA.) On 24 July 2016, in an article titled “Rep. Rick Larsen Bases Russia Policy on Myth”, she described her efforts to inform congressman Larsen about the reality of the U.S. operation in Ukraine. Wikipedia says: “Richard Ray ‘Rick’ Larsen is the United States Representative for Washington’s 2nd congressional district and a member of the Democratic Party. … Larsen is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. … He formerly worked as director of public affairs for the Washington State Dental Association and as a lobbyist for the dental profession. … the Second District was represented by future U.S. Senator Henry M. ‘Scoop’ Jackson between 1941 and 1953.” (Jackson later became famous as “the Senator from Boeing,” the first of the Democratic Party neoconservatives.)

Murray wrote (and the links here are added by me):

I mentioned to Rep. Larsen that I had just returned from Russia with a U.S. delegation, and that all the people in Russia I had spoken with — including teachers, students, journalists, medical doctors, entrepreneurs and war veterans — had no desire for a nuclear war with the United States, but instead expressed the wish for peaceful, normalized relations . . . During our time in Yalta, I had organized a ‘swim for peace’ with Americans and Russian war vets swimming together in the Black Sea, which had caused quite a stir in local Russian language media. I explained to Rep. Larsen my understanding of why the Russian public is suspicious about U.S. moves in the region (based on what I heard from people there), and why they would expect the United States to be the first to make a unilateral confidence-building measure in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Russians were savvy to the Nuland ‘Yats’ youtube recording (in which Victoria Nuland is distinctly heard telling U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt that ‘Yats is the guy’ just prior to the regime change in which Arseniy Yatsenyuk became prime minister, and which directly implicated the U.S. in the Ukrainian coup), felt threatened by the recent NATO/Operation Anakonda maneuvers that took place during our delegation’s visit, and were extremely concerned about other provocative U.S. moves in the region, including economic sanctions on Russia and Crimea, the latter enacted after a majority of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in response to what they saw as outside interference in the affairs of Ukraine.

Larsen immediately responded with rebuttals, stating flat-out he didn’t believe there was a U.S. role in the Ukrainian events — that what I’d just told him was ‘not what I’ve been hearing’ – and he went on to talk about how the Baltic states felt threatened by Russia, etc. He didn’t know what ‘Operation Anakonda’ was and seemed unaware that the largest-ever NATO military maneuvers since WWII had just taken place on Russia’s borders. I offered to send his office additional information about that and the Ukrainian events – an offer he ignored.

The path we’re on can end only in one of two ways: Either the U.S. ‘news’ media will get real and start reporting the crucial realities (such as that the aggression in Ukraine wasn’t Putin’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea but the immediately prior coup — and its necessary ethnic cleansing afterwards — by Obama’s hirees, which started being organized by him no later than 1 March 2013, and which culminated nearly a year later), these being the crucial realities that contradict the official lies and thus might (if we’re extremely lucky) compel the U.S. government to reverse its present course; or else, there will be a surprise blitz attack by U.S.-NATO against Russia, or else by Russia against U.S.-NATO. The closer we get to the end of this matter, the more difficult the former option becomes, and the more inevitable the latter option — a blitz attack (by either side) — becomes. That’s the reality.

Obama’s ‘mono-polar world’ is a fiction, and the sooner that he and his Big Lie can be exposed (by the Western press, to the Western publics), the safer everyone will be. Discomforts on the parts of those who have promulgated and propagandized that lie will be vastly less than the disastrous alternative, which would destroy the world for everyone.

*  *  *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

via http://ift.tt/2akUyor Tyler Durden

After admitting to investors last Friday (after the close) that they won’t be able to rely on Pokemon Go to bolster profits, the company came clean this week that a widely anticipated accessory for the blockbuster app will be delayed until September. The effect is simple – Nintendo shares are down 27% this week – the worst week since Aug 1989 (when the exuberance over Super Famicom died).

Thanks to this double Pokemon “no,” Nintendo has lost over $14 billion of market capitalization in the last week.

 

 

As Bloomberg details, Pokemon Go Plus, a 3,500 yen ($33) Bluetooth gadget that helps users detect nearby virtual pocket monsters, was supposed to be Nintendo’s one measurable benefit from the explosive popularity of the game. It was set to go on sale in Japan this week, until Nintendo, Pokemon Co. and developer Niantic Inc. pushed back the accessory’s debut.

In addition, the delay will probably force analysts to adjust their estimates, which were already in disarray because of the lack of clarity over how Pokemon Go will impact the company’s bottom line. Nintendo maintained its outlook for 35 billion yen in profit for the current fiscal year when it reported earnings shortly after announcing the delay.

 

“The delay is disappointing, especially since it’s just a Bluetooth accessory that has already been available for pre-order,” said Atul Goyal, an analyst at Jefferies Group. “The sales will still accrue to Nintendo with a delay. Just as all eyes turn to Nintendo, the company’s management can’t seem to get their communication right.”

 

Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. estimated that Pokemon Go Plus would add 45 billion yen in sales and 8.2 billion yen in income to Nintendo for the current fiscal year, based on its original sale date. Analysts at Bank of America Corp. were predicting an extra 10.5 billion yen in profit.

 

“Is Nintendo really not even capable of producing a low-end accessory these days?,” said Serkan Toto, founder of consultant Kantan Games Inc. “It has now delayed the launch to a time when at least the initial hype around the game will definitely be over. In contrast to Pokemon Go earnings, Nintendo would have pocketed most of the margin for the device.”

 

While the Pokemon Go Plus delay was announced in Japan and the U.S., it wasn’t clear what the impact would be in other places where the game has debuted.

Maybe The Bank of Japan will buy them? Stranger things have happened.

via http://ift.tt/2aBavrY Tyler Durden

Japanese ‘markets’ are total disaster tonight…

Liquidity is gone… as another 104.00 run breaks…

Yen futures again show the surge in volume…

“There was no visible news, but markets are nervous ahead of the BOJ meeting,” said Yuji Saito, Tokyo-based head of the foreign-exchange department at Credit Agricole SA.

This siwhat happens when everything becomes binary – based on a handful of ivory tower academics fumbling in the dark.

via http://ift.tt/2arOFXm Tyler Durden

Those pesky Russian hackers are working overtime.

According to Reuters, the FBI is probing a “cyber intrusion” at yet another Democratic organization, this time the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) which may or may not be related to an earlier hack at the Democratic National Committee. The previously unreported incident at the DCCC, which raises money for Democrats running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, is said to have been intended to gather information about Democratic donors.

We anticipate another media freakout, one which again blames the Kremlin, is imminent. As Reuters puts it, “the breach and its potential ties to Russian hackers are likely to sharpen concern, so far unproven, that Moscow is attempting to meddle in U.S. elections. The issue has clouded this week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.”

The DCCC intrusion could have begun as recently as June, two of the sources told Reuters. That was when a spoof website was registered with a name closely resembling that of a main donation site connected to the DCCC. For some time, Internet traffic associated with donations that was supposed to go to a company that processes campaign donations instead went to the spoof site, two sources said. How this went on as long as it did is unclear: perhaps in addition to having problems with “email”, the Democratic party is simply unable to keep keep up with modern technology.

Sure enough, a Russian “trail” has emerged quickly. Reuters’ sources said the Internet Protocol address of the spurious site resembled one used by a Russian government-linked hacking group, one of two such groups suspected in the breach of the DNC, the nationwide strategy setting and money-raising body for the Democratic Party.

The DCCC had no immediate comment. Donation processing company ActBlue had no immediate comment.

Reuters adds that the FBI referred questions to a statement it made on Monday on the DNC hack: “The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter. A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”

While private cyber experts and the government were aware of the DNC hack months ago, embarrassing emails were leaked last weekend by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group just as the party prepared to anoint Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate for the Nov. 8 election. 

The revelation of the DCCC breach is likely to further stoke concerns among Democratic Party operatives, many of whom have acknowledged they fear further dumps of hacked files that could harm their candidates. WikiLeaks has said it has more material related to the U.S. election that it intends to release.

While fingers will surely point to Russia, earlier today Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to “make the call on attribution” as to who was responsible for the DNC hack. The White House said earlier the FBI had not disclosed any information about who was behind the hack.

Clapper, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, acknowledged that “there’s just a few usual suspects out there” who might be responsible for the cyber intrusion, suggesting it was the work of a state actor rather than an independent hacking group.

 

Russian officials have dismissed the allegations of Moscow’s involvement. “It is so absurd it borders on total stupidity,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

So far nobody has claimed responsibility.

via http://ift.tt/2aOaihJ Tyler Durden

At 2051ET, Japanese government bond futures suddenly halted trading. There was no limit moves or sudden surge in volume and the Osaka Excchange has confirmed it is investigatingthe reasons for the halt. Following the earlier flash-crash in USDJPY, one wonders just what is going on.. and what is coming?

• *TOKYO EXCHANGE CONFIRMS HALT OCCURRED IN 10-YR JGB FUTURES

 

And sure nough once everyone started to look:

• *JGB FUTURES RESUMED; HALT BETWEEN 9:51 TO 10:12 A.M. TOKYO

Following this week’s terrible tail in the 2Y JGB auction, and repeated claims by primary dealers that BoJ had killedthe JGB market, it is unsurprising that such a ‘glitch’ could happen… but within an hour of the biggest BoJ announcement in history is too suspicious.

via http://ift.tt/2aAhrpG Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Having recently finished reading The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final novel of Jim Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast his dystopian post economic collapse America versus our current warped egocentric pre-economic collapse America. His world made by hand is forced upon Americans who have survived some sort of conflict resulting in the destruction of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles by nuclear blasts.

The Federal government has ceased to exist. The nation has splintered and varied factions are vying for power in autonomous regions of the country, but the small community of Union Grove, New York has been left to fend for itself. The four novels detail the trials and tribulations of average Americans in a small rural town after the implosion of modernity, as the world is stripped of its technological oil based comforts, devastated by terrorism, racked by epidemics, and having endured the ravages of economic collapse.

Kunstler’s dystopian future isn’t as bleak as the dystopian visions of 1984 or Brave New World. If dystopian means a world characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or a cataclysmic decline in society, then Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series doesn’t match that characterization. There is more humanity and hope in his novels than you would expect in a dystopian vision of the future. The novels focus on various types of societal segments who represent the different courses society could chart after a breakdown of modern social norms, enforced by central authorities. Living through a national catastrophe and stripped of the modern conveniences provided by cheap plentiful oil, the citizens of Union Grove see their community falling apart from neglect, natural decay, disease, and lack of hope for the future.

The setting for the story appears to be only a couple decades in the future and is entirely believable when you step back and observe our current unsustainable economic path, increasing threats from Islamic radicals, warmongering politicians beating the drums of war with Russia and China, disintegrating social fabric, increasingly fragile electrical grid, and our brittle just in time supply chain, dependent upon cheap and ample supplies of oil. The faultless community of Union Grove struggles to regain some semblance of normalcy after events beyond their control force them to confront a new reality. The way of life they had taken for granted, with its modern conveniences, technological wonders, and taken for granted luxuries, had suddenly faded away.

Wallowing in their depression and sorrow would only lead to further needless death and suffering. It needed to be replaced with a new found respect for each other and a pragmatic approach to creating a new future based upon the reality of their situation. Gone was electricity, oil based transportation modes (automobiles, trucks, airliners ships), mass produced anti-biotics, frankenfoods sold at warehouse stores, policemen and soldiers to “protect” them from bad guys, and politicians bribing you with debt financed entitlements for your vote. That paradigm was always unsustainable, but Americans preferred the illusion of sustainability to facing the reality.

For people unable to adapt mentally and/or physically to these new challenging circumstances, it was a frightening, undesirable dystopian existence. In reality, society had essentially reset itself back to 1850, before the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake. The people of Union Grove, New York were forced into a pre-industrial revolution existence without warning. But they were the lucky ones. Most of the people in urban and suburban America perished, as their existence was totally dependent upon technology, oil based transportation, and food supply from foreign countries.

In the foreseeable future, Kunstler’s less than apocalyptic vision is entirely probable, with rural communities much more likely to survive a catastrophic collapse of our high tech, oil dependent, head in the sand society of delusional willfully ignorant consumers. Kunstler focuses his stories on the characters inhabiting Unionville, but he provides glimpses into the regional breakup of the country, with the United States becoming a fragmented shell of itself, with little or no central authority. With Washington D.C. and Los Angeles uninhabitable, various other cities served as the capital after the collapse. The south broke apart into three new countries – The Republic of Texas, Firefox Republic, and New Africa – which went to war with each other and the remnants of the original U.S. With the current state of party politics and racial divide, this type of regional break-up is not farfetched.

When you put Kunstler’s History of the Future scenario in context with the current insane path we are racing along, it is entirely believable and preferable to even more cataclysmic outcomes. With $13 trillion of worldwide government debt with negative interest rates, central bankers on a suicide mission of debasement, delusional Americans using debt to live far above their means as their standard of living declines, politicians continuing to obligate their bankrupt countries to even more social welfare liabilities, saber rattling by leaders at the behest of the military industrial complex against Russia & China, the Middle East ready to explode in a cataclysm of Islamic mayhem, nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable governments, radical Islamic terrorism spreading across Europe and America, and a U.S. populace more divided by race, religion, social beliefs, wealth, geography, and political parties than ever before, some version of Kunstler’s apocalyptic vision is inevitable.

I read the final novel in the series The Harrows of Spring while vacationing at the Jersey shore in Wildwood. I was struck by the contrast in Kunstler’s future world made by hand and the world made by hand currently on display in this decaying, delusional, empire of debt. Kunstler’s world made by hand is forced upon survivors as the country and world encounter a systematic failure with no possibility for a reboot. All the creature comforts they had been accustomed to, like central air, electric lights, cable television, refrigerators, big box retail stores, smart phones, SUVs, superhighways, jetliners, junk food, high rise office towers, McMansions in suburbia, 401ks, and central bankers printing fiat paper like candy, evaporated like a puddle of water on a hot summer day. They were left in a post-modern world where their survival depended upon their own two hands.

They had to grow their own food or utilize a particular skill (medical, carpentry, hunter, laborer) to acquire food. They needed to scavenge, hunt, fish, sew, raise livestock, trade, barter, and make due with less, in their new world made by hand. Life was somewhat brutish and hard, compared to what most had been accustomed. The slightest illness or infection could lead to death. Lack of modern sanitation led to outbreaks of disease and death. For those who refused or couldn’t mentally adapt to a new reality, depression, anger, and bitterness filled their lives and slowly destroyed them.

Those who acclimated themselves to their new existence and accepted the hardships with the frontier spirit that originally built the country were able to survive and sometimes thrive in the Union Grove, New York of the future. They became a community again, not trapped in that modern iGadget world, living like hermits in their hermetically sealed 100% financed McMansions, shuttling to and from paper pushing jobs in their leased BMWs to 50 story office catacombs in filthy decaying urban concrete jungles. The rat race had ceased. Kindling the stove for heat, preparing meals, tending to livestock and gardens, fixing what had broken, and looking out for your neighbor became their daily routine.

As you would expect, leaders naturally arose, but in a small community the power and control was disbursed. Some of the leaders were religious, others led by the example of their humanity and intelligence, and others by their willingness to fight and defend the community. Men started businesses, people began to trade among themselves and with other communities, new buildings were constructed, using hydro-power to generate electricity was reintroduced, and the community spirit was boosted by shows, music, and social gatherings. Bad men are always present in every society, but the community rallied to fight them off. Violent death was an ever present danger in the world made by hand. Amazingly, the world survived without bankers and computer generated electronic currencies, derivatives of mass destruction, or paper fiat. Citizens and merchants conducted their business using silver, gold or barter.

The world made by hand I observed in Wildwood, NJ was as far from Kunstler’s world made by hand as humanly possible. Rather than using their hands to produce, create, fix, hunt, plant, or fish, their hands are busy tapping on their iGadgets – tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, texting, taking selfies, and videoing their experiences rather than experiencing them. The people ambling on the Wildwood boardwalk and shuffling across the land are addicted to these technological chains enslaving themselves in triviality, irrelevance, and egotism. The gadgets are attached to the hands of millennials and middle aged alike.

They were gazing at their gadgets as they rode bikes, jogged, or gorged their pieholes with fried oreos and funnel cake. Rather than relaxing and enjoying watching the tranquil sunrise over the Atlantic ocean as seagulls darted about over the deserted beach, the majority have their heads buried in their smart phones retweeting the latest Kanye and Kim scandal. No one reads a book on the beach anymore, as they are consumed by the trivial culture available on their iGadgets. Rather than experience the beauty of a fireworks display, they must record it and send it to all their friends to prove they are having fun. The American public has an almost unlimited craving for diversions. Reality and the truth are drowned in an ocean of irrelevance.

The other frightening aspect of our current warped world made by hand is the madness of the masses in having their bodies deformed and covered in hideous tattoos. And if there was ever a place to witness this mass insanity in all its putrid glory, it’s Wildwood NJ. The Wildwood boardwalk has a tattoo parlor on virtually every block and they are generally packed with herds of non-thinking masses making insane decisions, guaranteeing they will never get a decent paying job in their lifetime. How can the low income masses afford this high priced ink? How do they afford those expensive iGadgets? What a stupid question. Debt of course. Thank you Federal Reserve.

As I observed young men, middle aged women, teenage girls, fathers, mothers, and grandparents sporting repulsive ink on their arms, necks, legs, backs, chests, and faces, I was reminded of a quote by Charles McKay from his book  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds written in 1841.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

With the proliferation of mass media propaganda in the last few decades, along with the dumbing down of the populace through public school indoctrination, vast swaths of the population are unable to critically think, reason, or understand the long term consequences of their actions and the actions of their political and financial leaders. The madness of crowds is being borne out by millions of Americans copying each other and imprinting pictures and words upon their skin to be special. This herd like behavior has been seen in financial markets, the fashion industry, and elsewhere in popular culture. These pathetic attempts to be unique are nothing but a cry for attention in a world where they are nothing but a cog in the machinery.

As their standard of living has steadily fallen over the last three decades and their lack of education has left them wallowing in near poverty, they are desperately grasping at straws to be noticed in this egotistical world made by hand. When the inevitable economic reset occurs, these shallow displays of narcissism will cease. Americans have gone mad in herds, but when they recover their senses their permanent idiot stamps will still be there – forever. Debt financed tattoo removal will not be available. The psychosis is so intense today that Wildwood holds conventions to draw the herds of cattle to voluntarily receive their branding.

There were two particular passages in The Harrows of Spring which captured the zeitgeist of our period of history and how denial of reality ultimately leads to collapse. The first passage describes the thoughts of a young character as she travels past the shattered remnants of modernity.

“She rambled past the intersection where the car dealers had battled for supremacy of annual sales, their vacant parking lots now miniature forests of poplar and sumac, the showrooms empty shells. The sight of these ruins and the monumental waste they represented made her momentarily angry. She knew that the people running things in the old times understood that their way of life was a dead end, and she could even imagine that they were so locked into their systems and habits that they were more or less trapped. What she couldn’t grasp was their utter failure even to imagine another plan. So they took it as far as it would go and then just let it all crash. She remembered riding in cars, but they were all gone by the time she was seven years old, and then incrementally so were all the other things that had made life so comfortable. Yet she didn’t especially miss it. She was used to the new ways and the new times, and ordinarily she didn’t suffer from how it was now.”

The description of vacant crumbling car dealer lots overgrown with weeds and trees is already a reality in the pre-collapse America of today. Driving along the pothole strewn roads of suburban Philadelphia, the landscape is dotted with dilapidated car dealerships, decrepit vacant gas stations, decaying deserted strip malls, empty moldy office complexes, boarded up industrial buildings, ramshackle residential properties, and a proliferation of Space Available signs. The urban ghettos of West and North Philadelphia resemble Dresden after the fire bombing. The road to ruin is pretty far along at this point.

The people running the show today know the country is on a burning platform of unsustainable fiscal, monetary, social welfare, and military practices which imperil the future of the nation.  Wall Street/K Street oligarchs have financialized every aspect of our society, gutted the productive industries, indebted our grandchildren to the tune of $200 trillion, and outsourced the jobs needed to sustain our nation to foreign countries. The frantic efforts of the Federal Reserve, their minions in NYC & DC, and the propaganda press, to prop up this hollowed out carcass of a country are failing. The debt is too vast; corruption too entrenched; vital systems too damaged; populace too apathetic and distracted by bread and circuses; and leaders too feckless and corrupt to do what it would take to save the country.

Leaders willing to level with the American people and tell them the truth about the real state of our dire fiscal circumstances are virtually non-existent. Telling the truth is considered painting an unnecessarily dark picture of our situation. Everything is great according to the establishment, because it is great for them. Spineless weak minded politicians prefer platitudes, promises, and puerile happy talk, rather than the blunt truth when buying the votes of their constituents. The American people prefer willful ignorance, safety and security to liberty, freedom and personal responsibility, so they continue to elect feeble minded toadies as their representatives. Therefore, the country has gotten what we deserve – good and hard. The second passage captures the halting collapse as we squandered our dwindling financial resources fighting useless wars in distant lands.

“But the war in the Holy Land was far far away, and the situation was quite different. The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted on to its excessive and malfunctioning hyper-complexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures, and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or drink.”  

We have wasted $2 trillion on wars of choice in the Middle East over the last fourteen years, while creating a police surveillance state of massive proportions at home. While recklessly pissing away our diminishing national wealth trying to police the world, and only stirring up Islamic fanatics, we are witnessing the slow disintegration of our hyper-complex systems of production, supply, energy, and finance. The ruling class pretends all is well and use their media mouthpieces to portray a narrative that is unequivocally untrue. We are consuming ourselves to death.

The non-thinking tattooed masses are unaware and apathetic, as their inability to think critically has left them trapped in the “all is well” paradigm peddled by their government keepers and their corporate fascist benefactors. But a growing minority of critical thinking individuals recognizes the desperate attempts of the elite establishment to cover-up the systematic breakdown of our degraded systems of commerce and finance. The alternative media proliferating on the internet is providing rational, fact based analysis of our true situation. That is why the establishment wants to lock down and control the internet.

The increasing level of power failures, electric grid blackouts, water shortages, drinking water contamination, droughts, oil price spikes and crashes, crumbling bridges, disintegrating highways, bursting water mains, train derailments, refinery explosions, aging nuclear plants and lack of capital investment by businesses and governments ensures an inevitable breakdown of our infrastructure. This structural decay is far outweighed by the frantic efforts by the Federal Reserve puppets and their Wall Street puppeteers to use their supercomputers and electronically created currencies to prop up this debt laden, insolvent Ponzi financial system.

The non-stop bubbles and subsequent crashes over the last sixteen years are a flashing red signal of vulnerability. The fragility of this house of cards built on a foundation of bad debt is extreme. At this point, any grain of sand added to the pile of debt could trigger the catastrophic collapse. And the “experts” will declare no one could have seen it coming, as their establishment employers strip mined the national wealth of the people until the very end. That the establishment disregards the warning signals is not surprising, as they live in an insular bubble reaping the riches of easy money and crony capitalism. The oligarchy is thriving in NYC, D.C. and Silicon Valley. They will take it as far as it will go until it all crashes in a heap of destruction, despair and death.

Kunstler’s World Made By Hand is inevitable. It’s just a matter of time. Today we only exist for the benefit of the state. Society does not have to be built for the benefit of an essentially criminal organization – the coercive state. There is nothing in human nature that makes it impossible to create communities of people that respect each other’s natural rights and follow accepted moral standards for working out differences. Humans can collaborate, trade, exercise personal responsibility and create social order without the dictates of authoritarian government rulers. What binds communities together are not thousands of overbearing laws and a ruthless police state – it’s basically peer pressure, moral suasion, and social censure. We interact with other humans every day, without some higher authority dictating how it should be done.

Despite the catastrophic conditions faced by the people of Union Grove they never lost their integrity, humanity or sense of community. Hard work, kindness, generosity, intelligence, adaptability, courageousness and willingness to use whatever means necessary to survive are traits essential to living in the future world made by hand. Approaching every situation in a realistic, resolute mode and choosing to not deny the reality of your situation will be indispensable in a post collapse environment. There will be no time for the trivialities of tattoos and tweets in the world of the future. Survival of the fittest will replace checking in on Facebook from your favorite five star restaurant and posting pictures of your meal for all your friends and followers. I don’t think we’ll have an obesity epidemic in the world made by hand of the future.

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As BBG’s Vincent Cingarella says, nothing short of a Herculean effort is likely to weaken the Yen over the long-term amid speculation about what the BOJ and government stimulus will look like. Over the short-term it is a different story, because as reported earlier, a report in mid afternoon NY time about the government pressuring the “independent” central bank to boost its stimulus sent USD/JPY higher but only back to levels seen early in the session, with the Yen rising gradually since because as we wrote earlier, the BOJ will be hard pressed to surpass latent expectations of outright helicopter money.

Thoughts from various market participants on what may happen tonight:

• USD/JPY little changed at 105.25, 104.49/105.51 range; pair spiked in
  late afternoon as algos tripped stops on Reuters report MOF was
  preparing statement in the event BOJ eases
  • Any token stimulus from BOJ would need to target banks to have durable impact on market, such as equity purchases and/or rate reductions in loan support program, TD’s Mazen Issa said
• Headline stimulus figures haven’t necessarily gotten to the real story; actual new money may be far less
• Majority of economists in a Bloomberg survey expect BOJ to cut further into negative rates.
• Downside potential for JPY limited; combination of a small extension of the asset purchase program and small rate cut seems likely, Commerzbank’s Antje Praefcke wrote to clients
• Pimco’s Clarida sees 50% chance that the BOJ disappoints

What Wall Street banks expect will happen:

Citi’s Naoki Lizuka

• BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda can disappoint investors by just extending widely unpopular negative rates.
• BOJ may take step even as PM Shinzo Abe’s unusual 28t yen stimulus seen as putting pressure on BOJ to aid economy

Negative rates

• Base case; stocks may react negatively
• Nikkei’s July-Sept. range 14,750-17,250
• Buy so-called “bond refugees” like Takeda, Daiichi Sankyo, Japan Airline, NTT Docomo and REITs; underweight banks, insurers

Quantitative and qualitative easing

• Expected by 20% of Bloomberg survey respondents
• To be interpreted as so-called helicopter money
• Nikkei will rise past 17,000 with July-Sept. range of 15,750-18,000
• Buy realty, brokers, financial stocks

Fully-fledged easing

• 25% of Bloomberg survey respondents expect this
• Same reaction as to QQE with more uncertainty on forex effect

Small easing or postponement

• 25% of Bloomberg survey respondents expect this
• Would be negative surprise to investors, sending Nikkei down to 15,000-15,500 range
• Wouldn’t expect any marked recovery; July–Sept. range would be 14,000-16,500

* * *

BofA’s Shuici Ohsaki

• The Bank is likely to lower its price forecasts and we look for it to double its ETF purchases to around ¥6tn annually and potentially lift its JGB purchase pace in line with the increased issuance from the fiscal stimulus plan. Inclusion of municipal and agency bonds is also possible, but given their small market and limited liquidity, we see this as more of a symbolic gesture.
• We do not expect a further cut in interest rates at this time, but we would not completely rule it out either. The BoJ would need to find a way to minimize the adverse impact upon banks from a more negative policy rate.
• The BoJ’s potential easing is not an isolated action as we have been expecting a stimulus package of ¥15-20tn in total spending.

Implicit fiscal-monetary coordination

We are not calling for “helicopter money”, which has been a hot media topic. In the financial markets, expectations of fiscal and monetary easing are building, but there seem to be different ideas about the degree of coordination.

1. Implicitly coordinated fiscal-monetary easing: The government unleashes huge economic measures with a supplementary budget. The BoJ expands monetary easing, potentially including through increased purchases of JGBs. The two are “synchronized” with roughly concurrent announcements.

2. Explicit coordination between the government and the BoJ: In addition to the above fiscal-monetary easing, the government and BoJ announce an accord of commitment to fiscal expansion financed (semi-)directly by the BoJ’s JGB purchases until the inflation target is met (from the 13 July Sankei Shimbun’s front page).

3. Debt monetization: The BoJ restructures its existing JGB holdings to zero coupon perpetual JGBs, and/or the government issues perpetual bonds to the BoJ directly. (leaving legal issues aside, where there is a will there is a way).

Options (2) and (3) could be called the soft and hard versions of “helicopter money”, and the likelihood of either being adopted in the near term is low, in our view. This is because (1) Japan’s economy, with its 3.3% unemployment rate, can hardly be defined as in crisis; (2) such drastic policies could shake the JGB market and JGB investors; and (3) there have been no cases of developed economies resorting to dropping “helicopter money” in recent history, and considerable uncertainty surrounds the consequences of such a plan.

At the end, we find it hard to believe anyone in Japan, including the Abe Administration, the MoF, the BoJ, or the public, hopes for hard “helicopter money” at the moment. Even if they did, nobody seems to have the political capital to pull it off and conduct it for a prolonged period of time. As such, “implicitly coordinated fiscal-monetary easing” is the most likely possibility, in our view.

USD/JPY110 unlikely to be broken decisively on coordinated easing

The fiscal-monetary easing we expect at the end of this month is unlikely to allow USD/JPY to break 110 decisively, which is the maximum we originally expected a potential technical rebound could extend to right after the Brexit vote ($/¥ close to the bottom, but global risks to deepen the downside into autumn 26 June 2016).

(1) A comprehensive monetary easing with a potential deep vote-split among the policy board may be perceived as one last shot. (2) Spot market rebounds, a rise in volatility, and moderation in skew suggest doubling ETF purchases in conjunction with fiscal expansion of around a ¥3tn supplementary budget have mostly been priced in. (3) Medium-term uncertainties in the global market after the Brexit vote have not fundamentally dissipated and external economies may not welcome Japan’s deflation export. (4) Fiscal-monetary coordination is about Arrows 1 and 2 of Abenomics while Arrow 3 may be left out so “risk-on” yen weakness may not be supported. On the other hand, external conditions that lead to a bad JPY weakening–high oil prices, solid economic fundamentals for other currencies, and strong global inflation pressures are not present, and (5) exporter USD selling is expected into 110.

Positioning is building, but probably not close to extreme yet from the historical standard, so it is hard to think the market will sell the fact hard if the BoJ delivers easing, but we need stronger catalysts to lift USD/JPY above 110 sustainably.

Risks: BoJ standing pat a bigger risk than real “helicopter money” If the government and BoJ decide to engage in hard “helicopter money”, the longer-term fundamental value of the JPY will likely be called into question and could weaken well past 110 and regain its structural bearish trend. In our view. a more likely risk scenario, however, is that the BoJ could also be saving its easing card until autumn in view of the political calendar (Japan for “whatever it takes”; monetary-fiscal coordination not helicopter money 15 July 2016). The market focuses more on the fiscal expansion, but expectations of fiscal-monetary coordination have grown significantly, and it would come as an outright disappointment if the BoJ holds firm. Further, fiscal expansion alone would usually be considered positive for the currency. If the BoJ decides to stay on hold, we think the USD/JPY is likely to sell off with 105 now becoming a ceiling and our scenario that USD/JPY breaks 100 will become increasingly likely.

* * *

ISI Evecore

• Just wanted to chime in on the Yen reversal lower today, which is likely helping support risk assets this afternoon.
• This came an hour ago, “Japan’s MOF has prepared a draft statement in the event of BOJ action” – Reuters.
• Given some recent concerns over potential BOJ disappointment, the expectations of something bigger from BOJ have increased.
• Krishna expects easing with more ETF, some corp bond purchases, more JGB purchases and a -10bp rate cut.
• That being said, he notes it is a very difficult meeting to call as the BoJ faces real problems with both of its main tools (JGB purchases, negative rates) and its reaction function has been unstable ever since the backlash against negative rates in Jan.
• The Yen move will likely dictate the move in Nikkei and risk assets generally following the decision…

* * *

Goldman

In our view, the government will want to pursue a policy mix of fiscal and monetary measures so that each of these policies, which might not appear significant in isolation, supplement one another. We think radical policy proposals, such as the so-called helicopter money from advisors close to the Prime Minister and others suggest a strategy designed to elicit a strong market reaction from such a policy mix (see our July 15 Japan Views). A normal policy mix would break little new ground and would possibly not be viewed that favorably by the market. By alluding in advance to the possibility of a radical measure like helicopter money, the government may be trying to engender a stronger response in the market even if it does not in fact implement such a policy.

We see additional easing measures as uncertain, and cannot deny any possibilities except for the implementation of helicopter money. That said, we believe that they will center on (1) increased exchange-traded fund purchases (to around ¥6 tn/year, from ¥3.3 tn), and (2) deeper negative interest rates.

We think the BOJ will come to further rely on negative interest rates, given that it likely continues to think that the negative rate policy is effective as a forex measure while the BOJ is seemingly becoming more cautious about the marginal effectiveness (vs. associated costs) of large JGB purchases. The Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices at Large Japanese Banks, released by the BOJ on July 20, revealed that household mortgage demand has risen sharply, potentially supporting the rate cut decision. However, given criticism from financial institutions, we expect the negative rate on the policy-rate balance (part of excess reserves) to be lowered only slightly to -0.2% from -0.1% (previously we forecast -0.3%), and for the negative rate to apply also to the loan support scheme, a facility designed to promote bank lending (to -0.1%, from 0%). Other possibilities include the BOJ deciding to purchase non-JGBs, such as regional government bonds, FILP agency bonds, government-guaranteed bonds, and MBS, to supplement the JGB purchases.

* * *

Finally, Jose Canseco

BoJ if u want 2% inflation raise ur stupid Nirp rates to plus 4%.Yes up 5 pts.Interest rates are the fuel for inflation smh #canseconomics

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) July 28, 2016

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Authored by Kenneth Timmerman, originally posted Op-Ed at TheHill.com,

If you had just arrived from Mars to observe the Republican and Democratic conventions, one after the other, you undoubtedly would conclude that they were talking about two different countries.

One America recognizes real threats from foreign jihadi fighters who seek to eradicate our existence and to replace our freedoms with Islamic sharia law. It believes that economic revival — through tax reform, trade reform, and enforcing our borders and immigration laws – holds the key to future prosperity.

 

The other America believes we face no real foreign threats, the economy is doing great, and that our biggest challenge comes from crop failures, rising seas, and monster storms caused by — you guessed it, climate change.

It wasn’t by chance that the Democrats made no mention of ISIS on the first day of the convention and scarcely mentioned it on the next two days.

Terrorism and Islamist ideology that seek to replace our democratic republic with a “superior” law written by Allah are a distraction from the real mission of Democrats in Philadelphia. As former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley put it: “to hell with Trump’s American nightmare.”

In his first year in office, President Obama directed the Central Intelligence Agency to divert significant assets from the war against real threats from terrorists and enemy nations to the hypothetic dangers of “climate change.”

The Defense Department was ordered to follow suit, and under Obama’s direction, launched massive building programs at American naval bases to shelter them from rising seas.

President Obama squandered billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in pursuit of an ideological agenda.

This past May, the CIA quietly shuttered its climate change initiative, since it was unable to find data to sustain the Left’s faith in its new religion that man-made climate change would destroy the earth, or significant portions of it.

Cyclical changes in our climate have always occurred and have had dramatic impacts in the past, long before the carbon emissions the Left blames for today’s droughts and tsunamis.

Hollywood actress Signourey Weaver, hair on fire, introduced a “scare-me” video by James Cameron and claimed that farmers in Kansas were losing their crops today because of climate change.

I understand that Ms. Weaver is too young to have lived through the Dust Bowl — so am I. But I would hope she isn’t too dumb to have read about it and to have understood that these things have happened before, and will happen again.

Government’s role, in such circumstances, is to extend a helping hand of solidarity to individuals who lose their livelihoods to disasters they had no way of foreseeing. Its role is not to preemptively cripple the nation with fantasy-driven regulations and shut down entire sectors of the economy.

Incapable of a sustained conversation about national security, we’re left with Sen. Harry Reid suggesting that the Director of National Intelligence should “fake” national security briefings to Donald Trump. Why? Because Trump suggested that perhaps the Russians might be able to find the 33,000 emails Hillary Clinton admitted she deleted from the private server even President Obama warned her not to use.

In Senator Reid’s mind, entrusting Mrs. Clinton with our national security secrets is just fine, even though FBI Director James Comey acknowledged she had been “extremely careless” by transmitting highly-classified intelligence information on her personal email server. Let’s not forget that the FBI still hasn’t found more than 2,000 classified emails Mrs. Clinton deleted.

Bill Clinton thought he had found a “trump” card that would earn his wife a place in the pantheon of national security heroes.

“She launched a team — and this is really important today — she launched a team to fight back against terrorists — online — and built a new global counterterrorism effort,” he said.

Think about that for a moment. In the words of her own husband, Mrs. Clinton’s main achievement in the war against the terrorists attacking us was to hire a few social media analysts whose advice she didn’t consult and in fact ignored when they informed her the Benghazi attacks had nothing to do with a YouTube video insulting Mohammad.

I’ve got news for the Clintons: our intelligence community has been focusing on social media for years. The biggest growth industry among the Beltway bandits is foreign language experts who can mine Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for evidence of jihadi connections.

That’s great, but it isn’t enough.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta went overboard in his support for Mrs. Clinton, claiming that, if elected, she would take office as someone who “has the trust of our troops who know she will always have their back.”

Four men died in Benghazi because Mrs. Clinton didn’t have their backs. Instead of rushing to the rescue, she spent hours in meetings trying to keep Panetta from sending reinforcements to their rescue.

But that’s the other America. The America of facts.

The differences of our two Americas are many.

One America lionizes the mothers of young black men killed by the police – often after they had committed assaults of one sort or another.

 

The other celebrates as heroes police officers gunned down by snipers seeking vengeance.

 

One America believes that women, illegal immigrants, invalids, minorities, and people with kaleidoscope glasses constitute grievance classes who deserve special treatment.

 

The other believes that all Americans deserve equal treatment under the law and equal opportunity under our system.

As a life-long investigative reporter, I remain committed to the facts. But I recognize that the contest in November will be determined not by facts, but by faith, and by how many believers on each side come to the polls.

That is the new reality of the two Americas of 2016.

 

Source: Townhall.com

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