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Bernie Sanders has found the chink in Hillary Clinton’s political armor – and it has nothing to do with a private e-mail server.

The riley socialist has begun hitting the former First Lady hard on her liberal credentials, branding her a kind of wannabe progressive with an on-again off-again commitment to things like reforming the type of establishment politics that allow Wall Street to exercise undue influence on Capitol Hill.

In fact, Sanders has zeroed in on Clinton’s ties to the financial world’s biggest players including Goldman Sachs which has paid the Democratic frontrunner and her husband millions for speeches over the course of the last ten years. Those speeches in some cases coincided with Goldman’s efforts to lobby the State Department on issues that directly involved the bank.

Besides the speaking fees, Wall Street has also given more than $14 million to Clinton’s super PAC – the second highest total next to Jeb Bush. “I do not know any progressive who has a super PAC and takes $15 million from Wall Street,” Sanders said on Wednesday, at a town hall event organized by CNN.

“Enough is enough. If you’ve got something to say, say it directly,” Clinton said the next day, effectively daring Sanders to accuse her of being bought and paid for. She also said she would “look into” releasing the transcripts of her paid speeches. But by Friday morning, her campaign seemed to indicate that full disclosure was not forthcoming. “I don’t think voters are interested in the transcripts,” Joel Benenson, Clinton’s pollster.

Well actually voters are interested, and fortunately, Politico has an account of one recent address which underscores Sanders’ concerns. “Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish,” Politico writes. “[She struck] a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” Here’s more:

What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop. And indeed Goldman’s Tim O’Neill, who heads the bank’s asset management business, introduced Clinton by saying how courageous she was for speaking at the bank. (Brave, perhaps, but also well-compensated: Clinton’s minimum fee for paid remarks is $200,000).

 

Certainly, Clinton offered the money men—and, yes, they are mostly men—at Goldman’s HQ a bit of a morale boost. “It was like, ‘Here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game,’” said an attendee. “Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.”

 

 

Clinton’s remarks were hardly a sweeping absolution for the sins of Wall Street, whose leaders she courted assiduously for financial support over a decade, as a senator and a presidential candidate in 2008. But they did register as a repudiation of some of the angry anti-Wall Street rhetoric emanating from liberals rallying behind the likes of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). And perhaps even more than that, Clinton’s presence offered a glimpse to a future in which Wall Street might repair its frayed political relationships.

 

This is not the first time Wall Street has found itself at odds with one of the political parties in Washington. But it may be the first time since the Great Depression that the New York banker class has been this disconnected from both parties simultaneously.

 

The strained relations come at a consequential moment for the financial industry, which has rebounded from the 2008 financial crash faster and with bigger gains than the rest of the country, but is now facing the ire of newly emboldened and decidedly anti-Wall Street populists in both political parties. And yet the 2014 and 2016 election cycles will help determine whether banks, already restrained by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, will face new regulatory restrictions, further rounds of legal action and higher tax rates. “Traditionally, Wall Street plays both sides of the fence on its political donations,” says Charles Geisst, a financial historian and professor at Manhattan College. “What’s happening now is neither side is coming through with the things Wall Street feels it is entitled to, and so everybody just wants to give up. But they can’t, because they are going to continue to be in the limelight whether they like it or not.”

 

“Like the rest of America, Wall Street is looking at Washington and saying whether we agree or disagree, they’re looking at both parties with complete revulsion,” one private equity executive told Politico.

Right. Wall Street is looking at Washington “with complete revulsion.” Except when it comes to Clinton. Who offers “a way out of the wilderness.” 

Needless to say, Politico’s account only serves to underscore the notion that a vote for Hillary is a vote for business as usual inside the Beltway. A ballot for America’s entrenched political aristocracy, and a sure fire ticket to more of the same. 

Politico’s account brings to mind an important question: could it be that the best candidate for America’s highest office isn’t even running?… 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1S74SAc Tyler Durden

The current financial system is on borrowed time.

 

This is not fear mongering. It is fact.

 

The system almost went down in 2008. Since that time, every major decision made has been to double down on the very same bad ideas that created 2008.

 

Those bad ideas:

 

1)   Excess debt driven by loose money policy.

 

2)   Moral hazard (not allowing those who make terrible choices in the banking industry to fail).

 

3)    Increased Centralization of the economy.

 

The first two are a product of the third. You can only get into a place where one terrible decision is made after another when you have only a handful of people making decisions in a consequence free environment.

 

The drive for Centralization has been ongoing for 70+ years. Today, 4-5 players dominate every industry in the US. Media, drugs, energy, banking, you name it, there are 4-5 companies that control 90% of the market.

 

The flip side of this is that self-employment is at an all-time low relative to total employment. This hollows out the economy, eviscerates the Middle Class, drives incomes lower, and makes the US a less competitive, vibrant economy.

 

 

It also kills creativity and risk-taking as an increasing percentage of the US relies on big business for their incomes and so is afraid to speak out of turn or take risks (start new businesses). Consider the financial media where one wrong question of a Central Banker gets you fired. This benefits neither the reporter, nor the banker, nor the economy as it kills creativity/ competition/ quality of work and the like.

 

The drive for Centralization goes all the way up the corporate food chain. With innovation dulled by bloated corporate structures, executives increasingly rely on financial engineering to juice returns (it doesn’t help that such a large percentage of executive compensation is based on stock prices, but that’s a topic for another time).

 

As a result of this, companies are issuing debt to buyback shares, leveraging up their corporate balance sheets (again the Centralization/concentration of wealth theme) to increase earnings per share.

 

Today, US corporations are 30% more leveraged than they were in 2007 (the previous credit bubble). But they are not the only ones. Central Governments have been issuing debt at a record pace as they cajole an ever-increasing number of voters to buy into the status quo by dangling social services programs in front of them.

 

As a result of this, today the financial system has over $20 trillion MORE debt than it did in 2008. Put another way, whatever problems the system had in 2008, there are $20 trillion worth more of them today.

 

By logic alone, this tells us as that another 2008-type event is coming on a larger scale. 2008 was caused by derivatives based on consumer-focused assets (houses). The next crisis will be driven by derivatives on government-focused assets (bonds).

 

That will be the ultimate crisis. The crisis to which 2008 was the warm-up. The Crisis of Centralization breaking apart.

 

If you’ve yet to take action to prepare yourself and your portfolio for the next round of the Crisis, we just published a 21-page investment report titled Stock Market Crash Survival Guide.

 

In it, we outline precisely how the crash will unfold as well as which investments will perform best during a stock market crash.

 

We are giving away just 1,000 copies for FREE to the public.

 

To pick up yours, swing by:

 

http://ift.tt/1HW1LSz

 

Best Regards

 

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

 

 

 

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/23PGNlD Phoenix Capital Research

Ten days ago, when Deutsche Bank stock was about 10% higher, the biggest German commercial bank declared war on Mario Draghi, as we put it, warning him that any further easing by the ECB would only push stocks (with an emphasis on DB stock which has gotten pummeled over the past few months) lower. What it got, instead, was a slap in the face in the form of a major new easing program when the Bank of Japan announced it is unveiling negative rates just three days later.

Which is why overnight a badly wounded Deutsche Bank has expanded its war against the ECB to include the BOJ as well, and in a note titled “The Risks From Further ECB and BOJ Easing” it wants that with the Zero Lower Bound already breached in nearly a third of global markets, the benefits to risk assets from further easing no longer exist, and in fact it says that while central banks have hoped that such measures would “push investors out the risk spectrum” the “impact has been exactly the opposite.”

In other words, we have reached that fork in the road within the monetary twilight zone, where Europe’s largest bank is openly defying central bank policy and demanding an end to easy money. Alas, since tighter monetary policy assures just as much if not more pain, one can’t help but wonder just how the central banks get themselves out of this particular trap they set up for themselves.

Here is DB’s Parag Thatte explaining the “The risks from further ECB and BOJ easing”

The BOJ surprised with a move to negative rates last week, while ECB rhetoric suggests additional easing measures forthcoming in March. While a fundamental tenet of these measures, in particular negative rates, has been to push investors out the risk spectrum, we remind that arguably the impact has been exactly the opposite:

• Declining bond yields have been robustly associated with larger inflows into bonds at the expense of equities. Though a large over allocation to fixed income at the expense of equities already exists as a result of past Fed QEs and a lack of normalization of rates, further easing by the ECB and BOJ that lower bond yields globally will only exacerbate the over allocation to bonds;
• Asynchronous easing by the ECB and BOJ while the Fed is on hold risks speeding up the dollar’s up cycle, pushing oil prices lower and exacerbating credit concerns in the Energy, Metals and Mining sectors. It is notable that the ECB’s adoption of negative rates in mid-2014 which prompted the large move in the dollar and collapse in oil prices, marked the beginning of the now huge outflows from High Yield. These flows out of High Yield rotated into High Grade, ironically moving up not down the risk spectrum. The downside risk to oil prices is tempered somewhat by the fact that they look cheap and look to be already pricing in the next leg of dollar strength;
• Asynchronous easing by the ECB and BOJ that is reflected in the US dollar commensurately raises the trade-weighted RMB and increase the risk of a disorderly devaluation by China. The risk of further declines in the JPY is tempered by the fact that it is already very (-29%) cheap, but there is plenty of valuation room for the euro to fall.

Broad-based move across asset classes towards neutral amidst uncertainties

• US equity fund positioning inched closer to neutral; as anticipated the returning buyback bid is being offset by large persistent outflows (-$42bn ytd);
• European equity positioning is also close to neutral amidst slowing inflows; Japanese funds trimmed exposure from very overweight levels while flows turned negative for the first time in 2 months;
• The large short in US bond futures has started to be cut; 2y bond shorts were cut by half this week while short-dated rates futures are already long. Robust inflows into government bond funds which began this year have continued while the pace of outflows from HY and EM funds has slowed;
• A move toward neutral was also evident in FX positions. The surprise BoJ cut to negative rates caught yen longs by surprise, with the large initial subsequent depreciation in the yen partly reflecting a paring of positions. Meanwhile, the euro rose to a 3 month high as crowded leveraged fund shorts were being covered despite the ECB’s dovish rhetoric;
• As the dollar fell, net speculative long positions in oil rose, reflecting mainly an increase in gross longs while shorts remain at record highs; copper shorts continue to edge back from extremes; gold longs are rising.

Declining bond yields mean larger inflows into bonds at the expense of equities

• A fundamental tenet of central bank easing has been to push investors out the risk spectrum. The impact has arguably been exactly the opposite
• Beyond any negative signal further monetary easing sends on underlying growth prospects, historically falling bond yields with the attendant capital gains on bonds have seen inflows rotate into bonds at the expense of equities. The correlation between equities and bond yields remains strongly positive. Notably, the best period of inflows for equities was after the taper announcement in 2013 when bond yields rose sharply

Large over-allocation to fixed income already

• Past Fed QEs, a lack of normalization of Fed rates and easing by other central banks means that a large over-allocation already exists in fixed income while the underallocation in equities remains massive
• Additional easing by the ECB and BoJ by encouraging inflows into bonds will only exacerbate the over allocation to fixed income

Asynchronous easing behind decline in oil and flight from HY

• Asynchronous monetary easing by the ECB or BoJ while the Fed is on hold puts upward pressure on the dollar, downward pressure on oil prices and heightens credit concerns in the Energy, Metals and Mining sectors
• It is notable that the huge outflows from HY began to the day with the ECB’s adoption of negative rates in Jun 2014. Those outflows from HY moved into HG, ironically moving up not down the risk spectrum
• The risk to oil prices is somewhat tempered by the fact that oil prices are cheap to fair value and look to be pricing in the next leg of dollar strength

Asynchronous easing that is reflected in a higher dollar is reflected commensurately in the trade-weighted RMB

• By virtue of the near-peg to the US dollar, by early 2015 the trade-weighted RMB had risen along with the US dollar by 32% in trade-weighted terms and has been in a relatively narrow range since
• A variety of Chinese economic indicators have been strongly negatively correlated with the US dollar: Chinese data surprises (-42%); IP (-65%); and retail sales (-59%)

Further dollar strength raises the risk of a disorderly Chinese devaluation

• Asynchronous easing by the ECB and BOJ reflected in the US dollar and in turn the trade-weighted RMB increases the risk of a disorderly devaluation by China
• The risk of further declines in the JPY is tempered by the fact that it is already very cheap (-29%), but there is plenty of valuation room for the euro to fall
• The surprise BoJ easing in January prompted a paring of longs, while investors are unwinding short positions in the euro despite dovish rhetoric by the ECB

* * *

A few last words. Since DB, whose CDS has soared to very dangerous levels in recent days suggesting the market is suddenly concerned about its counterparty status, is effectively the Bundesbank, one can make the argument that any incremental easing by the jawboning Mario Draghi during the ECB’s next meeting suddenly looks very precarious.

On the other hand if Draghi once again isolates Weidmann and does cut rates to -0.40% as the market has largely priced in, because the ECB head fulfills the desires of his former employer Goldman Sachs first and foremost, one would wonder if as we speculated last summer Deutsche Bank is not indeed the next Lehman, if for no other reason than Goldman has decided the German financial behemoth should be the next bank to fail, and unleash the next global taxpayer-funded bailout episode.

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

From the Slope of Hope: A couple of Thursdays ago, we were all wringing our hands (or at least I was) about the powerful bureaucrat and lifetime government employee Haruhiko Kuroda and what his next move would be. He dropped a big bomb – negative interest rates – and created precisely the kind of market reaction he wanted………….for less than a single day. Since then, his world has once again fallen to pieces, since the cold fact of the matter is that Japan is doomed to be an old age colony, hopelessly mired in debt, with its economic glory of the 1980s an increasingly distant memory.

Even though these moronic central bankers are becoming increasingly impotent (a trait normally assigned merely to those who dared gaze at the hideous visage of Janet Yellen), we’re all still afraid of them and what they might do, simply because the horrid memories of 2009-2014 are too painful to forget. The latest chatter is about the Chinese government, and whatever falsified data they intend to trot out Sunday night. I personally wish they’d all choke on their chopsticks.

What we must remember, however, is this: we are in a bear market, and the risk of a countertrend rally is present, but confined. Looking at the Dow Jones Composite, for example, I’ve tinted in my view as to the worst risk scenario. God forbid even this happening:

Context is important, however, because the big picture shows global mayhem, economic cataclysm, and a plunge that would push Draghi, Yellen, Kuroda, and the unnamed stooges of China to seek out the cleanest, sharpest razor blades available to slit their collective wrists. I have, as a way to emphasize the contrast between bearish and bullish risk, tinted in green below the same area as I did above. Magnifying glasses may be required:

As you might have divined, I deeply resent these bankers and the fact they have any say-so in market movement, even if this effect is short-lived. My belief in the importance of organic markets flows through every molecule of my being, and what these government flunkies are doing is grotesquely offensive to every concept I have of decency and natural order.

These clowns are going to keep dicking with the markets, but the three words to remember are: They. Will. Fail.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1K40q2S Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

In a breaking development that has been completely ignored by mainstream news sources, the leaking natural gas well near Los Angeles, California is now reportedly spewing lethal levels of radioactive material, according to a report from Steve Quayle and a group with expertise in nuclear material.

A leaking natural gas well outside Los Angeles is spewing so much naturally-occurring Uranium and Radon, that “breathable” radiation levels have hit “lethal levels” according to a Nuclear Expert group.

Hal Turner of Super Station 95 reports that the well is releasing 1.91 Curies (Ci) of radiation per hour.

This rogue well is spewing huge amounts of natural gas and about 1.91 curies an hour of natural radioactive material in the natural gas… 1.91 curies an hour is about 45.9 curies per day… It’s a really, really big leak.

 

A curie is a unit of measure in the U.S. to describe very large radioactive releases.

The French utilize a unit of measure called a Becquerel to measure radiation levels. A single Becquerel measures the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second.

To put things into perspective, Turner explains that a single Curie is equivalent to about 37 Billion Becquerels (Bq) of radiation:

A Becquerel is a much more human sized unit of measure… it’s one radioactive burst of energy per second… One Curie is 37 billion Becquerels per second.

 

That’s 1.7 trillion Becquerels per day coming out of that natural gas well.

 

This is a real Fukushima class disaster and it’s happening right here in the USA.

 

…

 

In 80 days of fumes at a pace of 1,115 tons per day coming out of that ground… could carry with it 301.2 terra-Becquerels of natural radioactivity… This converts to a resperable… a breathable emanation of 12 million Sieverts (Sv)… 2.4 million times the lethal dose by inhalation.

 

Full audio report via Hal Turner (begins at approximately 49:00 minutes)

In short, the leak is massive and researchers at UC Davis have indicated that they have never encountered as much methane in the air as they have over suburban Los Angeles in recent months.

While resident complaints of feeling ill, vomiting and nausea have been chalked off by officials as the result of breathing in the natural gas, it is quite possible and increasingly likely that what they are experiencing is actually radiation poisoning.

According to one report, the radiation levels in the Chernobyl control room following the 1986 disaster reached about 300 Sv per hour. That was enough to provide a lethal dose to anyone in the room within 1-2 minutes.

While the Los Angeles leak is widespread with radiation disbursing across the city, the fact remains that millions of Sieverts of radiation have been released and will continue to be released until such time that the well is permanently sealed.

The following map shows the spread of methane over the Los Angeles area and researchers from Eco Watch report that elevated levels of natural gas have been detected as far as 10 miles from the leak:

For those living in the area, be warned: you are inhaling deadly radiation. And while the dose is not immediately lethal, prolonged inhalation and exposure may lead to a spike in cancer-related disease and deaths over coming years.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/20MVSBR Tyler Durden

The Great Depression was the most severe economic depression ever experienced by the Western world.

As VisualCapitalist notes, it was during this troubled time that the world’s most famous case of deflation also happened. The resulting aftermath was so bad that economic policy since has been chiefly designed to prevent deflation at all costs.

 

 

Setting the Stage

The transition from wartime to peacetime created a bumpy economic road after World War I.

Growth has hard to come by in the first years after the war, and by 1920-21 the economy fell into a brief deflationary depression. Prices dropped -18%, and unemployment jumped up to 11.7% in 1921.

However, the troubles wouldn’t last. During the “Roaring Twenties”, economic growth picked up as the new technologies like the automobile, household appliances, and other mass-produced products led to a vibrant consumer culture and growth in the economy.

More than half of the automobiles in the nation were sold on credit by the end of the 1920s. Consumer debt more than doubled during the decade.

While GDP growth during this period was extremely strong, the Roaring Twenties also had a dark side. Income inequality during this era was the highest in American history. By 1929, the income of the top 1% had increased by 75%. Income for the rest of people (99%) increased by only 9%.

The Roaring Twenties ended with a bang. On Black Thursday (Oct 24, 1929), the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 11% at the open in very heavy volume, precipitating the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Cause of the Great Depression

Economists continue to debate to this day on the cause of the Great Depression. Here’s perspectives from three different economic schools:

Keynesian:

John Maynard Keynes saw the causes of the Great Depression hinge upon a lack of aggregate demand. This later became the subject of his most influential work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which was published in 1936.

Keynes argued that the solution was to stimulate the economy through some combination of two approaches:
1. A reduction in interest rates (monetary policy), and
2. Government investment in infrastructure (fiscal policy).

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes

Monetarist:

Monetarists such as Milton Friedman viewed the cause of the Great Depression as a fall in the money supply.

Friedman and Schwartz argue that people wanted to hold more money than the Federal Reserve was supplying. As a result, people hoarded money by consuming less. This caused a contraction in employment and production since prices were not flexible enough to immediately fall.

“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.” ? Milton Friedman

Austrian:

Austrian economists argue that the Great Depression was the inevitable outcome of the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve during the 1920s.

In their opinion, the central bank’s policy was an “easy credit policy” which led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom.

“Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption-investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.” – Murray Rothbard

The Great Depression and Deflation

Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%.

Deflation hit.

Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices plunged. International trade fell by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%.

These statistics were only the tip of the iceberg. Learn about the full effects, the stories, and the recovery from the Great Depression in Part 2.

The Money Project aims to use intuitive visualizations to explore ideas around the very concept of money itself. Founded in 2015 by Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals, the Money Project will look at the evolving nature of money, and will try to answer the difficult questions that prevent us from truly understanding the role that money plays in finance, investments, and accumulating wealth.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1TJOHs5 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Douglas Murray via The Gatestone Institute,

It was only a few weeks ago that Facebook was forced to back down when caught permitting anti-Israel postings, but censoring equivalent anti-Palestinian postings.

Now one of the most sinister stories of the past year was hardly even reported. In September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook at a UN development summit in New York. As they sat down, Chancellor Merkel's microphone, still on, recorded Merkel asking Zuckerberg what could be done to stop anti-immigration postings being written on Facebook. She asked if it was something he was working on, and he assured her it was.

At the time, perhaps the most revealing aspect of this exchange was that the German Chancellor — at the very moment that her country was going through one of the most significant events in its post-war history — should have been spending any time worrying about how to stop public dislike of her policies being vented on social media. But now it appears that the discussion yielded consequential results.

Last month, Facebook launched what it called an "Initiative for civil courage online," the aim of which, it claims, is to remove "hate speech" from Facebook — specifically by removing comments that "promote xenophobia." Facebook is working with a unit of the publisher Bertelsmann, which aims to identify and then erase "racist" posts from the site. The work is intended particularly to focus on Facebook users in Germany. At the launch of the new initiative, Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, explained that, "Hate speech has no place in our society — not even on the internet." She went to say that, "Facebook is not a place for the dissemination of hate speech or incitement to violence." Of course, Facebook can do what it likes on its own website. What is troubling is what this organization of effort and muddled thinking reveals about what is going on in Europe.

The mass movement of millions of people — from across Africa, the Middle East and further afield — into Europe has happened in record time and is a huge event in its history. As events in Paris, Cologne and Sweden have shown, it is also by no means a series of events only with positive connotations.

As well as being fearful of the security implications of allowing in millions of people whose identities, beliefs and intentions are unknown and — in such large numbers — unknowable, many Europeans are deeply concerned that this movement heralds an irreversible alteration in the fabric of their society. Many Europeans do not want to become a melting pot for the Middle East and Africa, but want to retain something of their own identities and traditions. Apparently, it is not just a minority who feel concern about this. Poll after poll shows a significant majority of the public in each and every European country opposed to immigration at anything like the current rate.

The sinister thing about what Facebook is doing is that it is now removing speech that presumably almost everybody might consider racist — along with speech that only someone at Facebook decides is "racist."

And it just so happens to turn out that, lo and behold, this idea of "racist" speech appears to include anything critical of the EU's current catastrophic immigration policy.

By deciding that "xenophobic" comment in reaction to the crisis is also "racist," Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people (who, it must be stressed, are opposed to Chancellor Merkel's policies) into "racist" views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as "racist." This is a policy that will do its part in pushing Europe into a disastrous future.

Because even if some of the speech Facebook is so scared of is in some way "xenophobic," there are deep questions as to why such speech should be banned. In lieu of violence, speech is one of the best ways for people to vent their feelings and frustrations. Remove the right to speak about your frustrations, and only violence is left. Weimar Germany — to give just one example — was replete with hate-speech laws intended to limit speech the state did not like. These laws did nothing whatsoever to limit the rise of extremism; it only made martyrs out of those it pursued, and persuaded an even larger number of people that the time for talking was over.

The sinister reality of a society in which the expression of majority opinion is being turned into a crime has already been seen across Europe. Just last week, reports from the Netherlands told of Dutch citizens being visited by the police and warned about posting anti-mass-immigration sentiments on Twitter and other social media.

In this toxic mix, Facebook has now — knowingly or unknowingly — played its part. The lid is being put on the pressure cooker at precisely the moment that the heat is being turned up. A true "initiative for civil courage" would explain to both Merkel and Zuckerberg that their policy can have only one possible result.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1S6eUSi Tyler Durden

Five years ago, in July of 2011, the house at 4182 West 8th Avenue in Vancouver in sold for $4.6 million. It now rests vacant, abandoned and rotting.

 

Six years ago this $6.2-million Point Grey home boasted unobstructed vistas of the North Shore mountains, English Bay and Vancouver’s skyline. A park sits across a quiet street. The home represents everything a family could aspire to.

As the National Post reports, it too is vacant and rotting. Windows have been left open and debris sits in the yard. Like a symbol of futility, a June 2015 City of Vancouver “untidy-premises” order remains pinned to the door.

 

The two formerly multi-million mansions devolving to derelict status is not the only thing they share in common: a second uniting feature is what they were meant to become once they were purchased half a decade ago – a store of wealth to Chinese investors eager to park “hot money” outside of their native country, and bid up any Canadian real estate they could get their hands on.

And then the investors disappeared.

The Point Grey property stopped functioning as a home and became a storage of wealth six years ago, according to property documents and a neighbour’s account.

It was well-cared for in 2010 when it was sold to an investor. Since then it has been flipped through a property transfer in a Beijing law office and left unoccupied.

Current owners of the other vacant property residing on the 4100-block 8th Avenue West home are Huai Can Ren and Xue Pei Sun. They bought the home from Wei Min Zhang in July 2011 for $4.6 million. 

The couple’s occupations were both listed as “business person.” Wei Min Zhang had bought the home in July 2010 for $3.35 million.

Since the purchase, the current “owners” have not been seen.

City hall is currently trying to estimate how many Vancouver homes are vacant. And these online communities are anecdotally gathering photo evidence and coming to conclusions that offshore investment is to blame.

In other words, the “Chinese.”

“That is what is driving everything,” said Caroline Adderson, whose website, Vancouver Vanishes, has over 8,000 followers. “It is sickening on all levels.”

City of Vancouver spokesman Tobin Postma said a 2015 order to clean up the property was “remedied.” However the order remains pinned to the property and messy conditions appear to continue, according to a reporter’s observations Wednesday.

 

Postma said city departments respond to safety and mess complaints at vacant homes and issue cleanup orders in warranted cases.

 

If owners don’t respond, the city will clean up and issue a bill. In 2014, there were 213 actions taken against 85 properties, Postma said.

Huai Can Ren and Xue Pei Sun are also owners of a $3.57-million Arbutus Ridge home in the 2300-block 21st Avenue West, records show.

The home also appears to be unoccupied: on Wednesday, a Postmedia reporter found that the windows were shuttered, a phone book was left on the doorstep and a mailbox was stuffed with letters. No one answered the door and the home’s external condition seemed degraded.

Huai Can Ren, then listed as “businessman,” and Xue Pei Sun, as “homemaker,” bought the home in 2006 for $1.75 million from transferees Zhaohong Su and Xin Li.

In transfer documents, Xin Li was listed as lawyer for Su, who had bought the home in 2005 for $778,000.

Needless to say the locals are furious with this increasing incidence of derelict houses, which destroy neighborhood character. They are also confused how this is allowed to go on.

And in case it is unclear what “this”, what is happening is quite simple:

1. Chinese investors smuggled out millions in embezzled cash, hot money or perfectly legal funds, bypassing the $50,000/year limit in legal capital outflows.
2. They make “all cash” purchases, usually sight unseen, using third parties intermediaries to preserve their anonymity, or directly in perso, in cities like Vancouver, New York, London or San Francisco.
3. The house becomes a new “Swiss bank account”, providing the promise of an anonymous store of value and retaining the cash equivalent value of the original capital outflow.
4. Then the owners disappear, never to be heard from or seen again.

As more Chinese scramble to engage and repeat if only the first three steps, the price of local housing, which is merely a store of value to price indiscriminate foreign buyers, soars while it makes home purchases for the domestic population prohibitively expensive and virtually impossible.

The end result, in the case of Vancouver, is this:

 

We, and the local residents of Vancouver wonder, “how much longer will such money laundering fraud be permitted?“

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Q0oAO4 Tyler Durden