Is GOP Foreign Policy Getting More Libertarian, or Is it Just Anti-Democrat Opportunism?

That was, more or less, the question bandied about in The
Independents
aftershow on
Monday
, featuring former Reagan-administration deputy defense
secretary K.T.
McFarland
 and New York Times Magazine politics
reporter Robert Draper, author of a
recent profile
of the libertarian movement:

When I
interviewed
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
one year ago
, during the run-up to what many believed was
imminent U.S. bombing of Syria, he assessed the foreign policy
divide within the GOP like this:

We’re losing, on a good day, 70/30 among the Republicans. But we
win every day among the grassroots, probably 80/20, 90/10.

In the case of Syria, the Rand Paul wing emerged
politically victorious
 that time. But as any cursory

search
of the Reason archives will attest, the foreign
policy civil war within the GOP is fierce and ongoing, and will
include
constant Republican attacks on Paul
, as well as
periodic
hawkish
embraces of Hillary Clinton
.

So I reckon that the 30/70 math still applies in 2014, and is
subject to even worse showing within two years, no matter how

anti-interventionist the public may be trending
. Why?

Because of the nature of power and tribalism. That is to say,
when your tribe’s not in power, you tend to be more sympathetic to
anti-authoritarian critiques. Republicans in 2014 are with a
straight face
suing the president
over the abuse of executive power, less
than six years after a Republican presidency that exuberantly
expanded the stuff
on basic principle. On the reverse angle,
Democrats in 2014 are psyched up to support a hawk with a lousy
civil-liberties record not six years after filling every available
airwave criticizing the “imperial presidency” of Darth W.
Cheney.

It is in that sense that I believe David Frum is probably
correct in his otherwise (in my judgment) incorrect
assessment of Draper’s piece
, when he says this about the
GOP:

The “libertarian moment” will last as long as, and no longer
than, it takes conservatives to win a presidential election
again.

That’s assuming, of course, that the winner ain’t Rand Paul….

Can an intervention-skeptic compete? |||There’s a reason why critics from both
right
and
left
want to quarantine societal libertarianism as a finite
political subset within the Republican Party: That way it can just
go away, next time the electoral pendulum swings. And they may be
right, in the narrow sense of how professional pols actually behave
once in power.

But skepticism about U.S. military interventionism runs a lot
deeper throughout the country as a whole than among the people most
invested in two-party politics. (See pollster Scott Rasmussen’s
interesting 2012 piece for Reason, “Ready
to Cut Military Spending
,” for some details about that
politician/populace gap.) As Jesse Walker
wrote here last month
,

In 2014, more Americans are skeptical about military action than
at any other time in the last half-century. It is not impossible to
get a majority to back certain sorts of intervention abroad. But it
hasn’t been this hard for a long time. 

Late last year, the Pew Research Center released one
of its periodic surveys of American attitudes about foreign policy.
Fifty-two percent of the country, a record high, endorsed the idea
that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let
other countries get along the best they can on their own.” Only 38
percent disagreed. This marked a striking change: Even in 1976, a
year after the fall of Saigon, the people who disagreed with the
statement narrowly outnumbered the ones who agreed with it. And
Pew’s results are not out of step with the data in other surveys.
When Politico published a poll of
likely voters in battleground races this week, for example, 67
percent said that American military actions “should be limited to
direct threats to our national security.”

One of the main points that Nick Gillespie and I emphasized in

The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix
What’s Wrong With America
, is that new technologies,
combined with the both the growing number of political independents
and the growing deployment of independence as a political
weapon, make it harder and harder for the two parties to govern in
ways measurably out of sync with their respective bases.

So yes, the GOP’s recent increase in intervention-skepticism
should not be trusted even one little bit. But in a presidential
election featuring an “unapologetically
hawkish
” front-runner, there’s a significant opening for a
candidate with foreign policy attitudes more in line with the
American people. A contest like that has the potential to be more
than mere “moment.” 

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3 GOP Congressmen Are Whining About SpaceX to NASA. Want to Guess Why?

Why would three seemingly
random congressmen suddenly taken an interest in relatively minor
delays in SpaceX’s otherwise
wildly successful
push to provide launch services?

Well, here’s our story so far, as
ably chronicled in Slate
:

Three House members—Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.),
and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)—have
sent a memo to NASA
 demanding that the agency investigate
what they call “an epidemic of anomalies” with SpaceX missions.

This is ridiculous for many reasons. For example, the
congressmen say that SpaceX should be accountable to the American
taxpayer, but in fact as a contractor the rules are different for
them than they would be if NASA themselves built the rockets, just
as the rules are for Boeing or any other contractor. In
fact, as
reported bySpace News
, NASA didn’t actually pay for
the development of the Falcon 9; Elon Musk did.

Another reason this is silly is that every rocket ever made has
undergone problems; they are fiendishly complex machines and no
design has ever gotten from the drafting board to the launch pad
without issues. Sure, SpaceX has experienced launch delays and
other problems, but the critical thing to remember is that those
problems are noted, assessed, and fixed … sometimes within hours or
minutes. I remember a
LIDAR issue in 2012 that prevented a SpaceX Dragon capsule from
berthing to the ISS
; the issue was examined and fixed so
rapidly I was stunned. “Anomalies” are inevitable; what’s important
is if the lessons were learned, and the mission was successful. If
SpaceX were suffering more than the usual number of problems that
would be worth investigating, but that’s not the case here.

So what could those congressmen—along with Sen. Richard Shelby
(R-Ala.)—have in common? Hmmm. Oh right: Porky deals in their
states or districts with the big legacy government contractors who
are threatened by SpaceX’s success. 

I’ll note that Boeing (the major SLS contractor) has a big plant
in Alabama, Brooks’ (and Shelby’s) home state, and United Launch
Alliance has its HQ in Colorado, home to Gardner and Coffman (it’s
even in Coffman’s district). This sounds more like they’re trying
to protect their own turf more than honestly wanting transparency
from SpaceX.

This is just the latest in a long line of WTF
Republicans
moments, where the supposed party of free
enterprise has repeatedly moved to squelch, redirect, or otherwise
discourage moves to allow private competition into the top heavy,
state-dominated space sector. In recent month, Congress has tried
to
saddle SpaceX with extra costs and more
paperwork
When
it comes to space, House Republicans still prefer big
government
space
pork
, and crony capitalism.

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LAPD Suggests Mentally Disturbed Man They Killed Was In A Gang, Maybe

An eyewitness to the killing of Ezell Ford
told
The Huffington Post on Wednesday that he heard an officer
with the Los Angeles Police Department shout “shoot him” before
three bullets were unloaded into the unarmed, 25-year-old black
man, who was on the ground.

“It is unknown if the suspect has any gang affiliations,” the
LAPD said in a statement after the killing.

But people in Ford’s neighborhood said the young man was not
remotely involved in gang activity. Leroy Hill said he was an
eyewitness to the shooting Monday night, and confirmed that he
heard three shots.


More…

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Anonymous Releases Ferguson Police Audio From Day Of Mike Brown Murder

The hackers’ group “Anonymous” has released the full audio recordings of the Ferguson Police Department from the night of Mike Brown’s murder.

 

 

 

Via Anonymous (@Anonymous

These files compiled in this video contains audio of St. Louis police dispatch from the date of August 9th 2014, the day Mike Brown was murdered by a Ferguson PD officer.

We have released these tapes to the public so as they are able to get a sense of the atmosphere the moments before and the hours after Mike Brown was shot.

These raw audio files have been compiled and long quiet moments have been cut down. Time stamps are available within the video.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY POLICE DISPATCH AUDIO TAPES, AUGUST 9TH 2014 11:05 AM – 6:05 PM, INCIDENT IS REPORTED AS “CROWD CONTROL PROBLEM”

AT 12:05PM, NO SHOOTING MENTIONED UNTIL IT IS CALLED IN TO DISPATCH BY WITNESS. FERGUSON PD DENIES IT KNEW ANYTHING AT THAT TIME. NO EMS WAS CALLED.




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The Iraq War Officially Begins (Again): US Troops Prepare For Rollout As US Drones Strike ISIS Positions

U.S. military officials say an armed American MQ-1 Predator drone has attacked and destroyed a mortar position of Islamic militants in northern Iraq. As WaPo reports, the drone attack marks a departure for the U.S. military, which had said previously that drones were flying missions over Iraq only to collect intelligence. No boots hit the ground in the carrying out of this action…

As NBC reports,

An American MQ-1 drone strike took out a firing position that Islamic militants used to target Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, according to the U.S. military.

 

The military said in a statement that a U.S. drone struck and destroyed an ISIS mortar position at around 7:55 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

 

The mortar position was firing on Kurdish forces defending members of the Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority who were trying to evacuate the area, U.S. Central command added.

The MQ-1 Predator:

 

Update:

  • U.S. SAID TO LAND TROOPS ON MT. SINJAR IN IRAQ, ABC NEWS SAYS

More:

United States Marines, special forces and the USAID disaster assistance relief team briefly landed today on Mt. Sinjar in Iraq, a U.S. official told ABC News.

 

It was the first time ABC News has learned of any Americans landing on the mountain, where thousands of Yazidis are trapped and facing a humanitarian crisis.

 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Tuesday that the United States has sent a 130 member military assessment team to Erbil in the autonomous Iraqi province ofKurdistan to determine what further assistance the U.S. can provide to the Yazidis.

Lol: “briefly”…

It didn’t take long for Obama’s latest stern promise that no US troops would be on the ground to become… troops are now on the ground.

The good news, as US troops are about to fight ISIS mercenaries armed with US weapons, is that for now at least, no US troops have died in this most recent US intervention in Iraq – the latest in a series of US humanitarian liberation of the middle east country beginning in 1990.

But what happens when the first bodybags come home? What will the Nobel Peace Prize winning president’s spin be then?




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The Bank for International Settlements’ Backdoor Betrayal

Written by Bruno de Landevoisin of  the DEATHFLATION Blog.

The Bank for International Settlements, otherwise known as the BIS, should more aptly be named the Bank for International division and domination.  It’s clearly an institution with global reach, whose hidden covert purpose is to impose the financial globalist’s agenda on all sovereign nation states.  The above luminous photo is of their luxurious Headquarters.

Ten times a year, once a month except in August and October, a small group of well dressed men arrives in Basel, Switzerland. Carrying elegant overnight bags and stylish brief cases, they discreetly check into the Euler Hotel, across from the railroad station. They come to this quiet city from places as disparate as Tokyo, Paris, Brasília, London, and Washington, D.C., for the regular meeting of the most exclusive, secretive, and powerful supranational club in the world.

Each visiting member has his own office at the club, with secure telephone lines to his home country. These elite international bankers are fully serviced by a permanent staff of about 300, including chauffeurs, chefs, guards, messengers, translators, stenographers, secretaries, and researchers. Also at their disposal are a brilliant research unit, well equipped medical facility and deep underground bunker, as well as a secluded country club with tennis courts and a swimming pool, a few kilometers outside of Basel.

Undoubtedly, we have all heard of this all important international organization, but how many of us really know much about it, or even understand its intended purpose. The only thing that I knew about this powerful global entity was that it is often described as the Central Bank of Central Banks. Clearly, we all need to know more, let’s constructively begin with some benign elementary historical background transcribed from Investopedia, and also lay out the venerable institution’s specific functions & mission statement, directly from the BIS website itself.images (2)

Founding and brief History of the BIS:

Founded in 1930, the Bank for International Settlements is the oldest global financial institution and operates under the auspices of international law. But from its inception to the present day, the role of the BIS has been ever-changing, as it adapts to the dynamic global financial community and its needs. The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany – as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles.


After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks. More recently, it has concentrated its efforts on the global financial stability and capital reserve requirement accords. The BIS has also emerged as an emergency “funder” to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.


The BIS has also functioned as trustee and agent. For example, from 1979 to 1994, the BIS was the agent for the European Monetary System, which is the administration that paved the way for a single European currency. Today, the BIS has become the central bank of central banks. The Bank now represents the interests of nearly all of the world’s central bank institutions, and manages a significant share of their reserves, including gold holdings. The organization now serves and presides over 60 central banks worldwide. Accordingly the BIS requires the capital/asset ratio of central banks to be above a prescribed minimum international standard, for the protection of all central banks involved.

2014-08-02_1054

In broad outline, the BIS pursues its mission by:

  • promoting discussion and facilitating collaboration among central banks;
  • supporting dialogue with other authorities that are responsible for promoting financial stability;
  • conducting research on policy issues confronting central banks and financial supervisory authorities;
  • acting as a prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions; and
  • serving as an agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations.   

Der-BIZ-Turm-in-Basel-Hauptquartier-der-Bank-fuer-internationalen-Zahlungsausgleich-Archiv-

Now that we are up to speed on the BIS’s alleged “raison d’etre”, and fully indoctrinated in the organization’s whitewashed history, self proclaimed mission statement and assumed functions, let’s expose the true nature of this supposedly benign bastion of banking balance. Trust me, they are anything but the modest measured men of monetary moderation and management they pretend to be.  This odious institution is nothing but a conceited cunning cabal of carnivorous cannibals bent on global financial domination, who deftly deploy dreaded debt disbursements the world over. They will stop at nothing to achieve their ends, absolutely nothing.

To fully comprehend the self-serving nature of the BIS, one has to understand that it is an autocratic institution run by a very select group of the highest ranking bankers on the planet, representing both private banking interests, as well as those of the vast worldwide network of central banks that are ultimately owned by those same private commercial & financial interests. It is important to note that these top flight international bankers have intentionally organized themselves, so as not to be directed by their own national governments for the crucial decisions and actions they take. In effect, they are a supranational organization, controlled by an elite group of men, who preside over most of the world’s financial and monetary systems of exchange which regulate and facilitate most of the globe’s commerce.


The supreme inner club is made up of the half-dozen powerful central bankers at the apex of a privately devised international monetary system. Their dictate, which enshrines the inner club from the rest of the lessor BIS members, is the firm belief that central banks should act independently of their home governments. Their controlling organization is at the epicenter of global finance, and has inherently become increasingly connected and indispensable over time by design. A glaring early example of their self-serving grandiosity can be found in their despicable double dealings before the outbreak and during the hostilities of the 2nd World War.

The following passage, by well-respected financial historian Adam LeBor, details the nefarious activities of Thomas McKittrick, a former president of the BIS:

The BIS was founded in Basel in 1930, where it is still headquartered today. Ostensibly set up as part of the Young Plan to administer German reparations payments for WWI, its real purpose was detailed in its statutes: to “promote the cooperation of central banks and provide additional facilities for international financial operations.” The establishment of the BIS was the culmination of the central bankers’ decades-old dream to have their own bank powerful, independent, and free from interfering politicians and nosy reporters.


Under the terms of the founding treaty, the bank’s assets could never be seized, even in times of war. Most felicitous of all, the BIS was self-financing and would be in perpetuity. Its clients were its own founders and shareholders, the central banks. The BIS, boasted Gates McGarrah, an American banker who served as its first president, was “completely removed from any government or political control.” McKittrick’s involvement with the BIS began in 1931, when he joined the German Credits Arbitration Committee, which adjudicated disputes involving German commercial banks. One of the other two members was Marcus Wallenberg, of Sweden’s Enskilda Bank, who taught McKittrick about the intricacies of international finance. Marcus and his brother Jacob were two of the most powerful bankers in the world. During the war, the Wallenberg brothers used Enskilda Bank to play both sides and harvest enormous profits.


2011-07-16180202In May 1939 McKittrick was offered the position of president of the BIS, which he readily accepted. As head of the BIS, headquartered in Basel, from 1940 to 1946, McKittrick played a crucial role in abetting Hitler’s war—and, at the same time, in revealing details about his Nazi colleagues to his friends in Washington, D.C. On McKittrick’s watch, the BIS willingly accepted looted Nazi gold, carried out foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and recognized the Nazi invasion and annexation of conquered countries. By doing so, it also legitimized the role of the national banks in the occupied countries in appropriating Jewish-owned assets. Indeed, the BIS was so indispensable to the overall Nazi project that the vice-president of the Reichsbank, Emil Puhl, who was later tried for war crimes, once referred to the BIS as the Reichsbank’s only “foreign branch.” In the closing months of the war, as American GIs fought their way across Europe, McKittrick was arranging deals with Nazi industrialists to guarantee their profits after the Allied victory.

Additionally, the following indictment from Wikipedia:

As a result of Nazi collaboration allegations, at the Bretton Woods Conference held in July 1944, Norway proposed the “liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment”. This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the American and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as the United States (including Harry Dexter White, Secretary of the Treasury, and Henry Morgenthau),[6] but opposed by John Maynard Keynes, head of the British delegation. Fearing that the BIS would be dissolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent the dissolution, or have it postponed, but the next day the dissolution of the BIS was approved. However, the liquidation of the bank was never actually undertaken.[7] In April 1945, the new U.S. president Harry S. Truman and the British government suspended the dissolution, and the decision to liquidate the BIS was officially reversed in 1948.

Fast forward to Today. Would the very same elite banking interests not be behind the destabilization and financing of multiple military conflicts sprouting up all over the globe? After all, the U.S. just finished squandering over $3 trillion endlessly tussling with a fanatical bunch of burka wearing nomads in the sparse mountains of Afghanistan for well over a decade. In the end, what, and who the hell was all of that money really for? Might it be supranational bank financing concerns funneling their central bank issued easy money government treasury funding directly into the military industrial complex.

Jihadist1MENA, after years of relative calm imposed by despotic regimes often legitimized by Western commercial interests, suddenly, all at once, seemingly out of nowhere, rose up in a spontaneous combustion of political awareness, the so called Arab Spring, which has brought as much disillusionment as promise. What was really behind this?  While Syria, on the other hand, has been in a perpetual state of war due to ISIS insurgents supported by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Iraq is on the verge of complete disintegration as the same western organized ISIS move in on Baghdad. Libya is erupting, with American, British and French embassy’s being swiftly evacuated. What gives? Are all of these simultaneous regional conflicts simply a sheer coincidence? Further war financing requirements perhaps.

The Hamas / Israel connection has certainly duped many, even though it is historical fact that the creation of Hamas itself was funded and supported by covert elements of the Israel government. Why did Israel put money and arms at the disposal of Muslim extremist groups like Hamas and ISIS, only to enter into brutal conflict with them later? Again, are the international bankers involved here as well?  Why bother with inflation when you can create DeathFlation!

The Ukraine crisis is only further intensifying after the attack on Malaysian flight MH17. In just the past week, the EU has instituted serious economic and financial sanctions, fighting has become even more fierce in the ethnic Russian speaking regions, and Russia itself has been accused of firing heavy artillery into the war zone.Ukraine-Protest_Horo-1-e1392750277144 Moreover, the U.S. now claims that Russia has demonstrably violated the terms of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Astonishingly, assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland recently proudly trumpeted that U.S. sponsored NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) had spent over $5 billion fomenting political protest on the ground in Kiev, in order to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the former president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych. Again, who or what institution actually facilitated the financing of such an excessive amount of funds, and why?

Is it simply the usual bane of proxy war profiteering which is underway, or is something more sinister also a foot here. Is the western central bank hegemonic monetary system attempting to further assert itself on the arising and defiant BRICS?  Moreover, since all out military conflict is no longer a viable option, due to assured mutual destruction from imposing nuclear arsenals, another most effective avenue for global domination would be via strategic financial and economic power. Is this what the international banking cabal is now seizing upon?

21aPic1B2102124325_zz_anthems-cover-2007-smallA perfect example of a BIS sponsored strategic global economic initiative, orchestrated by its self-serving megalomaniac banking power brokers, was its behind the scene’s role in devising and pushing forward the concept for a European Union with a single common currency. It established a new role for itself in the postwar world, first as the financial mechanism for American efforts to rebuild Europe, and then for the accelerating project of European unification. Some believe that the trans-national vision of a modern Europe ruled by mandarins in Brussels and Basel was originally hatched and concocted in a secret meeting held at the Bank for International Settlements.

Clearly, the driving force behind the financial engineering ambitions of the elite global bankers at the BIS has always been the same. Namely; to further establish themselves as the indispensable international financial body, whose ultimate authority supersedes any national jurisdiction, thereby interminably dismantling and diminishing the sovereignty of the individual nation states. In other words, they consolidate their subjugation of the local citizenry by championing the benefits of economies of scale which only globalization can achieve, and, of course, that only their financial frameworks can administer.

The UN, EU, NAU, IMF, WBC, CFR, NATO, WTO, OECD, WHO, and a myriad other IGOs (Intergovernmental organizations), all use much the same modus operandi as the BIS to expand their dominion. In the end, it’s mostly about their self-seeking interests, entitled importance and institutional aggrandizement. Throughout history, elite groups of men have always attempted to subjugate the masses, this is no different. The once magnificent self determined Republic of the United States, for the people of the people, must stop these globalists dead in their tracks, before their self-serving hubris and unrelenting drive for hegemony brings unsuspecting Americans down to their knees.

Carroll Quigley, the renown academic historian, in his monumental tome Tragedy and Hope published in 1966, clearly identified the underlying scheme of this scourge. images (1)Having studied the rise and fall of civilizations, Quigley found the explanation of disintegration in the gradual transformation of social “instruments” into “institutions”, that is, transformation of social arrangements functioning to meet real social needs into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.

Many discerning Americans are certainly aware of the prevalence of the false Left/Right paradigm in American politics which is clearly driven by the buying off of politicians via an army of private lobbyists on behalf of avaricious corporate institutions and demanding special interest groups. There is also a solid case to be made that our multinational banking institutions directly serve to promote this debilitating duplicitous demagoguery. The once esteemed news networks have also degenerated into a cronyism cesspool of unabashed corporatism, no longer reporting news, but rather dishing out distilled disinformation and various valueless vicissitudes. Institutional disintegration indeed, Mr. Quigley was flat out dead right back in 66′!

Professor Carroll Quigley directed his poignant prescient prose specifically at the Bank for International Settlements:

“The Power of financial capitalism had a far reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks, which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence co-operative politicians by subsequent rewards in the business world.”

banksters6The ominous premise of this lengthy piece is precisely why the United States should become increasingly alarmed as these globalists continue to extend their supremacy. Just as the once proud independent self governing sovereign nation states of Europe have become subservient to an autocratic international banking class, which promptly imposed a common currency, and is now actively crafting a fiscal union to complete its ascendancy and authority, the United States also is a prime target in the cross hairs of these very same avaricious financial oligarchs.

Make no mistake, the likes of the BIS, IMF, IFC, OECD and the World Bank are on a maniacal maraudering mission to subvert the existing U.S. monetary system, via a crafty and cunning central bank, in our very own complicit Federal Reserve.

In my view, this is the only valid explanation as to why we are systematically being driven off a fiscal and monetary cliff, almost as if we were preforming a national financial and economic Hari Kari ritual. At this point, they have mandated a market cataclysm and deliberately determined the dollar’s demise. To be sure, the BIS and IMF are waiting in the wings with a new global means of exchange based on an archetype of the presently established SDR mechanism.

Why else would the BIS be stating the following today regarding the FED’s current monetary measures?

“The temptation to postpone adjustment can prove irresistible, especially when times are good and financial booms sprinkle the fairy dust of illusory riches. The consequence is a growth model that relies too much on debt, both private and public, and which over time sows the seeds of its own demise. To return to sustainable and balanced growth, policies need to go beyond their traditional focus on the business cycle and take a longer-term perspective – one in which the financial cycle takes centre stage…They need to address head-on the structural deficiencies and resource misallocations masked by strong financial booms and revealed only in the subsequent busts. The only source of lasting prosperity is a stronger supply side. It is essential to move away from debt as the main engine of growth.”

images (3)Ask yourselves, if Janet Yellen sits on the Board of Directors of the BIS, why have she and all her 21st century predecessors been conducting a brazen, unproven, uncharted and surely precarious monetary policy with complete abandon, that totally contradicts the sage and proven advice, judiciously laid out above, by the very institution which is central to monitoring, regulating and advising on global central bank direction.

Something stinks here, it just doesn’t add up. Is our Federal Reserve, whose top leadership also happens to be elite members of the BIS banking cabal club, actually double dealing here? Setting us up for a great fall, so the financial globalists can come sweeping in to our rescue, installing themselves as our monetary overlords? Far fetched, you say? Remember, this is well within their past predatory precepts, and typical of their self-serving Modus Operandi!

If I can’t convince you, perhaps the view of billionaire hedge-fund legend with the very same observation will.  Paul Singer in his own words:

We were astounded to learn that the board of the BIS is comprised of none other than the heads of the major central banks of the developed world! Yes – Yellen, Draghi, et al! So, these central bankers are simultaneously failing to tell their respective governments that (1) monetary policy has done enough; (2) monetary policy is causing massive risks and distortions; and (3) political leaders must grab the reins and make structural changes, these same central bankers are authorizing BIS reports that will enable them to say, after the coming multifactor crisis, that they told us about the risks.president-andrew-jackson

We wonder who from the Fed authorized the report, and why they haven’t shared these harsh views of Fed policy in the FOMC meeting minutes or the endless public speeches by Fed officials. It is duplicitous for the Fed to authorize the views in the BIS report yet keep quiet about them elsewhere. But then, the Fed has never accepted much responsibility for the 2008 crisis, despite its decisions to keep interest rates artificially low for an extended period of time, to do a poor job of regulating the banking system and to abet Fannie and Freddie in their utter irresponsibility. History rhymes. The Fed has created the fuel for another crisis, seems to know it judging by the BIS report, and yet is covering itself with an “I told you so” report from the BIS rather than changing course.

In closing, the following list identifies the current Board of Directors who preside over the Bank for International Settlements today, see if you recognize any of these supranational scoundrels.

The BIS Board of Directors:

Chairman: Christian Noyer, Paris Mark Carney, London Agustín Carstens, Mexico City Luc Coene, Brussels Jon Cunliffe, London Andreas Dombret, Frankfurt am Main Mario Draghi, Frankfurt am Main William C Dudley, New York Stefan Ingves, Stockholm Thomas Jordan, Zurich Klaas Knot, Amsterdam Haruhiko Kuroda, Tokyo Ann Le Lorier, Paris Stephen S Poloz, Ottawa Raghuram Rajan, Mumbai Jan Smets, Brussels Alexandre A Tombini, Brasília Ignazio Visco, Rome Jens Weidmann, Frankfurt am Main Janet L Yellen, Washington Zhou Xiaochuan, Beijing

Banking-Elite-infograph

  The Globalists are indeed on the move…………….




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The 10 Best-Paying Jobs For 2014

First it was the Fed’s unemployment rate target. This was quickly ignored and forgotten – just as we predicted would happen in December 2012 – when the unemployment rate “hit and beat” the Fed’s target, even as the Fed’s Russell 200,000 target was still far, far away.

Then it implicitly became the rate of those long-term unemployed, but now that even this number is starting to indicate lack of slack, the central bank “target” has shifted once again, this time as hinted by the BOE’s Marc Carney, who is now looking at the one indicator we said was the only relevant one from day 1 – the lack of real wage growth, or in other words, not quantity of jobs but quality.

And of course, as we have shown over the past two years, the reason for the lack of wage growth is that the jobs added are either of the part-time variety, or predominantly low paying jobs.

Still, there is some hope left, even for choose not to pursue the final days of what once were the best-paying if least constructive and beneficial to society jobs in the US, namely finance.

According to a new analysis from CareerCast jobs, seven of the top 10 careers are in the healthcare industry and, as expected, require an advanced degree. As CBS reports, while these jobs are all pegged to show strong earnings growth through 2022, there is a downside: Becoming a surgeon or physician requires years of graduate school and training, which requires an investment of time and money. “There is a tradeoff for every job,” CareerCast publisher Tony Lee told CBS MoneyWatch. “Surgeon might be the best paid job in the country, but what it takes to become a surgeon is substantial in terms of cost and years when your earnings are minimal,” such as during a residency.

Oh well, at least it doesn’t require stealing from widows and orphans, and one can even sleep at night without ingesting industrial amounts of horse tranquilizer.

So without further ado, here are the ten top paying jobs for 2014:

1. Surgeon 

Annual average salary: $233,150

Projected growth by 2022: 18 percent

While surgeons are the top-earning workers in the analysis, the tradeoff is often a staggering amount of student debt. Graduates in the class of 2013 left medical school with a median debt of $175,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Still, some surgeons can far exceed the average, with about 6 percent of general surgeons bringing home at least $500,000, according to a Medscape report last year.

 

2. General Practice Physician 

Annual average salary: $187,200

Projected growth by 2022: 18 percent

General practice physicians rank as the second highest-paid career. Like surgeons, the profession is forecast to have an above-average rate of growth through 2022.

One reason is that baby boomers are starting to retire from their medical practices, but an aging population is keeping demand high for medical professionals. Yet not enough students are enrolling in medical school to make up the shortfall, causing the Association of American Medical Colleges to estimate a shortfall of more than 65,000 primary-care doctors by 2025.

Some medical students are preferring to enroll in training for medical specialties such as cardiology, given higher pay for specialists and the often stressful role of a general practitioner.

 

3. Psychiatrist 

Annual average salary: $178,950

Projected growth by 2022: 18 percent

Becoming a psychiatrist also requires years of training. After medical school, students enroll in a residency program before getting licensed to practice. While they earn less than some other medical specialists, psychiatrists enjoy higher job satisfaction than others in the medical field, Medscape found.

 

4. Orthodontist 

Annual average salary: $149,310

Projected growth by 2022: 16 percent

Orthodontists attend dental school before enrolling in either a Doctor of Dental Surgery or a Doctor of Dental Medicine. The next step is to enroll in a post-doctoral orthodontics program. Overall, training can take 10 years from bachelor’s degree to the final specialty program.

 

5. Dentist 

Annual average salary: $146,340

Projected growth by 2022: 16 percent

Getting into dental school can be competitive, notes the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While they often earn high salaries, the downside is that the profession comes with a high level of stress, partly from dealing with fearful patients.

 

6. Petroleum Engineer 

Annual average salary: $130,280

Projected growth by 2022: 26 percent

Some petroleum engineers are nearing retirement, which is opening up opportunities to younger workers, Lee notes. That’s also helping the growth rate for this industry, as well as demand from the growing oil and gas exploration sites.

 

7. Air Traffic Controller 

Annual average salary: $122,530

Projected growth by 2022: 1 percent

While a high-paying job, working as an air-traffic controller carries a high level of stress. Because of this, some workers burn out while still young, Lee notes. It’s also facing a below average growth rate because some functions of air control are being automated, requiring fewer workers.

 

8. Pharmacist 

Annual average salary: $116,670

Projected growth by 2022: 14 percent

Like other medical professions, becoming a pharmacist also requires years of training. Pharmacists earn a four-year Doctor of Pharmacy degree, and must become licensed by passing two exams, the BLS notes.

 

9. Podiatrist 

Annual average salary: $116,440

Projected growth by 2022: 23 percent

This medical specialty is projected to grow faster than the average U.S. profession, thanks to the aging American population, the BLS notes. Podiatrists will be increasingly in demand to treat patients with foot and ankle problems created by chronic illnesses such as obesity, the agency adds.

 

10. Attorney 

Annual average salary: $113,530

Projected growth by 2022: 10 percent

Last but not least, lawyers still rank among the top 10 paying professions in the U.S. Following a downturn after the recession, the job market for attorneys is improving, Lee notes. Some Baby Boomer attorneys will be retiring, opening up more demand for younger legal eagles.

Via: CBS




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Why Are Unwed Women in U.S. Are Having Fewer Babies?

Brandi
Zadrozny of The Daily Beast
reports an interesting
trend that most people will find a positive one. The rate of
children born to single women has declined:

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
shows the most recent upward trend, begun in 2002, seems to have
reversed, in the steepest decline ever recorded, dropping 14
percent from its 2007 peak, to 44.8 per 1,000 women of childbearing
age (15-44). The number of births to unwed mothers also dropped 7
percent, to approximately 1.6 million, from 2012 to 2013. Mostly
women under 30 years old drove the declines. Hispanic and black
women saw the biggest drops.

Zadrozny notes that the overall birth rate has fallen so it
kinda/sorta makes sense that the rate for unwed women would also
drop (though not necessarily, as different forces could be at
work). Why are women having fewer kids, especially in the U.S. and
the “developed world”? Scroll down for the basic answer. (Spoiler
alert: Because they can.)


The whole article is worth reading
and packed with some
interesting charts, including this one, which shows that more kids
born to unwed mothers are coming home to houses with two
parents:

As Zadrozny writes, “Almost three in five births to unwed women
are to women who are cohabitating with a partner. In 2002 and the
years 2006-10, the percentage of children born to cohabiting
parents rose from 41 percent to 58 percent.”

Cohabitating households are not as stable as
married ones, but they also have far more resources than true
single-parent households. And Zadrozny links to a study showing
that cohabitating fathers are as involved in child-rearing as
married ones. She also quotes a researcher who argues:

“Four in 10 births are outside of marriage….That’s not going
to reverse in a big way. It hasn’t gone down even as the nonmarital
birth rates have. I think this is the family formation of the
future and so there needs to be approaches to improving well-being
in these types of families.”

I think that’s probably right: Family structures have always
been subject to changes that can’t be reeled back to whatever
preferred golden-age you want. It’s an interesting question to ask
what are the best ways to adapt to new forms of social
organization.

I reviewed Jonathan Last’s interesting What to Expect When
No One’s Expecting
, which charts a global decline in birth
rates, for BookForum. The short answer for why women are
having fewer babies: modernity. Read all about
it
.

And I talked about the unacknowledged constant change in family
structure for Reason back in 1997. A snippet:

Anyone who even occasionally tunes into television and radio
talk shows, skims a newspaper editorial page or an opinion
magazine, or browses the nonfiction aisles at a bookstore is
familiar with some variation on the following theme: “The family,
in its old sense…is disappearing from our land, and not only our
free institutions are threatened but the very existence of our
society is endangered.” This formulation of the problems facing
“the family” is interesting for at least three reasons. First, as
is often the case in such discussions, it
invokes the family as a wholly self-evident,
unitary phenomenon with no possible variation. Second, it captures
the lure of traditional social arrangements and articulates the
centrality of the family to society at large. Third, the statement
is well over a century old, having originally appeared in an 1859
issue of the Boston Quarterly Review. That it
sounds so current is worth pausing over.

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Obama’s Security Frisks Golfers, U.S. Might Send Ground Troops to Iraq, Study Says Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter: P.M. Links

  • President Obama needs to golf during his
    vacation, and that means
    other golfers must be frisked
    .
  • The U.S. is trying to figure out what to do about
    all the refugees
    that this ISIS-Iraq debacle is creating and …
    did someone say
    ground troops
    ?
  • “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a
    minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon
    public policy,” says a new, sad, and not particularly surprising

    study
    .
  • Same-sex marriages could begin in Virginia as early as
    next week
    .  
  • The latest Israeli-Gaza ceasefire officially expires in

    half an hour
    (5 p.m. ET). Also, an Associated Press reporter

    was killed
    by a previously undetonated ordinance from an
    Israeli airstrike.
  • Two German artists took responsibility for the
    white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge
    . Five bucks says Merkel had
    them do it as payback for all that espionage. 
  • Brazil’s socialist
    presidential candidate
     was killed in a plane crash. That’s
    a downer.

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Stocks Up, Bonds Up, Gold Up, Oil Up, Dollar Up, F’d Up

Worst Japanese consumer spending data drop ever – BTFD. China financing slowed – BTFD. European industrial production tumbled – BTFD. US retail sales miss dramatically – BTFD. The worse the news the better the buy-the-dippiness as between JPY (102.50) and VIX (12 handle), US equities shrugged off shitty data and worsening geopolitics to jump to August highs. But it wasn't just stocks… investors piled into Treasuries (slamming yields 7bps lower from pre-retail sales), bought gold (back over $1310), bid for US Dollars (now up 0.25% on the week), and lifted oil prices (WTI $97.50). S&P futures volume was the worst of the week (50% below average). Notable oddities: Copper clubbed today (-2% on the week), Brent-WTI jumped $1.50, and the VIX curve remains inverted for 14th day in a row.

The last 24 hours have been "odd" to say the least – in a new normal way of course… (and volume remains abysmal) with futures driven by the European session one way or another and then stalling as EU closes…

 

On the day, Nasdaq outperformed notably

 

As bonds and stocks were both bid…The MOAR QE TRADE

 

And all that mattered fun-durr-mentally was AUDJPY…

 

VIX cracked back to a 12 handle helping stocks surge…

 

VIX has now been inverted (short-dated risk above longer-dated risk) for 14 days…

 

The entire Treasury curve cracked 5-7bps lower after retail sales hit…

 

And despite a big plunge on retail sales, the USD kept on its path higher (helped by a dump in GBP)…

 

Gold and WTI rose but copper wass smacked lower after Chinese credit data and US retail sales…

 

Brent-WTI jumped $1.50 today… as Brent surged

 

Charts: Bloomberg




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