- Where The Rich Park Their Money
The amount of global offshore wealth held in 2017 was around $8.2 trillion – 6% higher than in the previous year in US dollar terms (a growth rate considerably lower than that of onshore wealth).
According to the Boston Consulting Group, Switzerland is still the prime destination for offshore wealth worldwide domiciling 2.3 trillion dollars in 2017.
You will find more infographics at Statista
However, as proximity remains a key factor in determining where investors choose to seek offshore financial services, the biggest growth was recorded in Hong Kong and Singapore due to wealth created in Mainland China.
- US Senate Bans Sale Of F-35s To Turkey: Dealing With An Unreliable Partner
Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
On June 19, the Senate passed a draft defense bill for FY 2019 that would halt the transfer of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft to Turkey, until the secretary of state certifies that Turkey will not accept deliveries of Russian S-400 Triumf air-defense systems. It paves the way for Ankara’s expulsion from the program if it does not bow to this pressure. The support for the measure (85-10) is too strong to be overridden.
Turkey has been one of six major partner nations in the JSF project since 2002. It is responsible for the production of certain components and for providing maintenance services in Europe to other operators of the aircraft. About a dozen Turkish companies are involved in the manufacturing, in accordance with the deal that was reached 16 years ago (2002). Ankara has placed an order to buy more than 100 F-35A Lightning IIs. It has already paid $800 million, so any restrictions that are imposed now will be an illegal breach of obligations by the US.
On June 21, the Senate Appropriations Committee added an amendment to the foreign-aid bill that would put a stop to future deliveries, if Ankara does not cancel the S-400 deal already concluded with Moscow. One of the arguments for blocking the F-35 transfer is the fear that Russia would get access to the JSF, enabling Moscow to detect and exploit its vulnerabilities. It would learn how the S-400 could take out an F-35.
The House version contains even more limits on arms transfers to Turkey. In May, the bill passed the House with a provision mandating a temporary hold on all major defense sales to Turkey, including F-35s, due in part to its impending purchase of the S-400. Almaz-Antey, the company that manufactures the Triumf, is on a State Department list of banned entities. Any deal with that firm could result in sanctions. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has introduced an amendment to the FY 2019 Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 6157) that would bar the planned transfer of the aircraft to Turkey. So, there may be some changes to the wording but that won’t significantly alter the final result — the F-35 transfer will remain blocked after the reconciliation process.
The bill is expected to become law this summer. The administration will have no choice but to exclude Turkey from the F-35 program, to remove any parts of the plane produced in that country, and to ban the Turkish F-35s from leaving the territory of the United States.
Despite the proceedings on Capitol Hill, officials from the government and Lockheed Martin held a ceremony on June 21 in Fort Worth, Texas, to mark the “roll out” of the first F-35A Lightning II jet under its Turkish program. It was an imposing ceremony, but it disguised some sleight of hand. The US government will retain custody of the aircraft while the Turkish pilots and service technicians are undergoing training at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. This is a long process that will take several years, but the bill will become law soon. Turkey may be denied access to the cloud-based Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) computer network, depriving it of software updates and other data. The US could insert some malicious code to disable the aircraft even if they are transferred and based in Turkey in 2020 as planned.
US officials don’t shy away from open statements about their intentions to exert pressure and prevent other countries from buying Russian weapons.
“I would work with our allies to dissuade them, or encourage them, to avoid military purchases that would be potentially sanctionable,” said David Schenker, the nominee for assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, at his Senate confirmation hearing on June 14.
“In other words, I would tell Saudi Arabia not to do it,” he explained. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in talks with Moscow to buy the S-400.
According to UAWire, The US State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction has announced a tender for the monitoring of open-source information about arms deals involving the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. That data will be collected in Russian, English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Urdu, and several other languages. The information will be used for decision-making and planning sanctions against foreign states.
So far, the policy of twisting arms has failed. Demand for Russian arms is booming in the Middle East and Africa. Just a few days ago, one of Iraq’s armored brigades swapped out its American-made M1 Abrams tanks for new Russian T-90s. Last year, Russia and Iraq signed a huge arms deal.
Unfazed by the US lawmakers’ stance, Ankara remains all set to go ahead with the purchase of the S-400 from Moscow. If the deal is blocked it will find an alternative, such as Russia’s Su-57 jet, or Turkey could produce an aircraft of its own, as part of its indigenous TFX stealth fighter program.
India has recently been warned against buying the Russian S-400. If it does, a ban will be put in place on sharing sensitive American military technology with Delhi, which is refusing to back down under pressure.
A deal is not always what one may think it is. A deal signed with the US is a special case because there are strings attached, which cannot be found in the text and are not mentioned during the negotiations. All of a sudden a partner finds out that there is a caveat that goes without saying. One may sign a deal and be naive enough to take it at face value, only to find out later that it will not be valid if certain unwritten conditions are not met. If you cooperate with another country without US approval, like Turkey does, you don’t get what you are entitled to under the terms of that agreement. Buy American, they say, but if you make a deal with Russia, like India wants to do, the access to the best technology the US has is going to be cut off.
Congress has offered a lesson to those who cooperate with America. They should remember that whatever they may sign with Washington cannot be taken for granted. US lawmakers can change everything to their heart’s content at any time they wish. There is nothing worse than an unreliable partner. And that’s what America is.
- Is This The Most Profitable Export Route In The World?
Forget the WTI-Brent spread in oil – the best commodity arb in the market today might instead center around the global marijuana trade.
As the chart below (courtesy of Statista) shows, prices of cannabis differ wildly around the world and these differences are intensifying as more countries and regions (particularly in North America and South America, where Canada just became the second country to legalize weed sales) remove the legal restrictions from a product that was for decades confined to the black market.
Whereas Latin American countries (like, say, Colombia, for example) tend to have low prices per gram of marijuana, countries in the Far East – where penalties for possession and sale of the drug remain among the stiffest in the world – still sport incredibly high prices, as smugglers demand “hazard pay” for the fact that being caught smuggling illegal drugs can earn one a death sentence in Singapore and a multi-decade prison term in Seoul.
All of this begs the question: Would it be worthwhile to smuggle marijuana from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where marijuana prices are among the lowest in the world, to Tokyo, where the price-per-gram is among the highest?
Clearly, smugglers, who move drugs like marijuana and cocaine from South America to far-flung regions of the world, are more than happy with the risk-reward profile.
The annual ABCD Cannabis Price Index offered a city-by-city price breakdown, which can be viewed in full here.
Shown: Marijuana being cultivated in a US lab.
For enterprising drug dealers, there are plenty of arb opportunities within the US, as prices between states where weed has been legalized or decriminalized diverge from states where prohibition remains unchallenged. The price-per-gram in Denver is just $7.79, compared with $18 in Washington, DC – more than twice as much.
So while ‘exporting’ your Colombian weed to the United States may be ‘simple’ – it is four times more profitable to ‘export’ it to Japan…
- These Are The Benefits Of A US-Russia Summit
Authored by Matthew Rojansky and Audrey Kortunov via The National Interest,
The history of relations between the United States and Russia demonstrates that there is no substitute for personal contacts between the leaders of the two countries…
Presidents Trump and Putin appear set to hold a summit meeting in July. This will be their third in-person meeting even though both leaders have made statements about how they have a positive working relationship and that they have spoken often by phone.
The U.S. domestic political climate on Russia is especially fraught at present. The White House is at odds with the Justice Department “Russia investigation” team led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has reportedly sought to question President Trump. At the same time, momentum is building ahead of November’s midterm elections, with leaders from both parties warning about the risks of further “Russian meddling.”
In Russia there is widespread skepticism about any Trump-Putin meeting. Pundits and opinion-makers raise doubts about whether Trump can deliver on any significant matters important to Moscow. The predominant mood is that the U.S. president remains a hostage to the unanimously anti-Russian Washington establishment and that any agreement with him can be overruled by the U.S. Congress or even by his own administration.
Yet what should be in the forefront of the minds of both presidents is the dangerous state of U.S.-Russia relations, and its consequences for the interests of both countries and for global security.
Since the end of the Cold War, and perhaps even since the early 1980s, Moscow and Washington have never been closer to direct military confrontation, a consequence of increasing deployments, exercises, and operations by air, sea, and ground forces from the Baltic region to the Middle East. In some cases, Russian and NATO forces have nearly come into hostile contact, and escalation has been avoided by only the narrowest of margins.
Both Russia and the United States are set to invest billions in modernizing their nuclear arsenals, which, although positive from a safety and reliability standpoint, create the impression of a new “arms race,” as the presidents acknowledged in a March phone call. An especially worrying new dimension to the nuclear risk is the possibility that cyber attacks by states or non-state actors could lead either party to raise its nuclear alert level, thus triggering a matching response from the other side, and possibly touching off a dangerous escalatory cycle.
The forthcoming Trump-Putin meeting cannot resolve fundamental problems between Washington and Moscow. Neither leader would or should make unilateral concessions on matters he views as critical to his country’s national security. However, the meeting might open a path toward stabilizing the relationship, which under the circumstances, would be an important accomplishment in itself.
A simple but vital step toward such de-escalation could be for the two presidents to reiterate the joint view of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev from their 1986 Reykjavik summit, that “a nuclear war cannot be won, and so should never be fought.” In fact, thirty-two years ago the U.S. and Soviet leaders discussed the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether, a goal which then Presidents Obama and Medvedev confirmed and supported in 2009.
Yet with the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces practically defunct thanks to reciprocal alleged violations, and the New START treaty limiting overall strategic nuclear arsenals under stress, an optimistic long-term goal like nuclear zero is hardly on the agenda for Moscow or Washington. Instead, both must now confront the urgent negative consequences of stalled U.S.-Russian bilateral arms control for global nuclear nonproliferation.
This is especially true after the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, and given the real chance that Iran is determined to develop a weapon, which would trigger cascading nuclear breakouts across the Middle East. If the upcoming 2020 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is to be anything but a last gasp for the half-century old nonproliferation regime, Presidents Trump and Putin will have to offer some hope that Washington and Moscow take their own responsibilities to reduce and disarm under the treaty seriously.
The wars in Syria and Ukraine have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and displaced millions of people across the Middle East, Europe and beyond. Washington and Moscow each control resources and levers of influence vital for managing and ultimately resolving these conflicts. Although officials have sought to negotiate small steps, such as implementation of the Minsk agreements in Ukraine and getting the Syria talks in Geneva back on track, political will is lacking, and a meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents is by far the best opportunity for each to signal their commitment to progress.
Finally, in the aftermath of years of sanctions and counter-sanctions, policies of mutual isolation have atrophied relations between ordinary Americans and Russians to an unacceptable degree that does not serve the interests of either side. Basic embassy and consular services have been severely constrained by expulsions of diplomats on both sides, and by the closure of U.S. and Russian diplomatic facilities.
As a result, tourism, trade, scientific, cultural and educational exchanges are all plummeting for the first sustained period in the fifty years since the General Agreement on Exchanges was signed at the height of the Cold War in 1958. Even while sanctions remain in place, the two presidents should clearly signal that contacts between diplomats, legislators, businesses, scholars and civic groups are foundational to peaceful, productive relations, and thus are especially important when official ties are strained.
Despite a deep crisis in the state-to-state relationship, Americans and Russians are still interested in each other, and they largely reject the current paradigm of battling official narratives. Russians still line up at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, eager for U.S. visas, and Americans constituted the largest cohort of foreigners visiting Russia for the World Cup this month. It is simply unfair and shortsighted to make ordinary citizens pay the price for conflict between their governments.
Disagreements between Moscow and Washington are extensive, and the two presidents will not find common ground on many issues. The point of meeting is not for them to overlook these differences or to strike a grand bargain. Rather, it should be to send a clear message and create the space necessary for the two governments to restart a cooperative engagement that is in the clear interest of both sides.
The history of relations between the United States and Russia demonstrates that there is no substitute for personal contacts between the leaders of the two countries. This was the case with Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. These historical examples are especially important now, when official contacts at lower levels are hampered.
The current conflict is not a new Cold War, nor will it become one. But attention should be paid to the vital lesson from that conflict, which is that summit diplomacy is not just for celebrating big victories – it is for giving momentum to the small steps and everyday interactions that kept that war from turning hot.
- These Are The Most Affordable Cities For Young Professionals
In most cases, switching cities is a lot easier than switching professions. But if you’re thinking of moving (perhaps away from a crowded, expensive urban center like New York City of San Francisco and to somewhere more affordable) it might make sense to pick somewhere where you can live comfortably and have some money left over at the end of the year. To that end, RentCafe crunched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find out which are the best and worst metro areas for each professionals in the management, legal, computer and mathematical, health, education, protective services and community and social services fields. Overall, RentCafe discovered that managers make the most on average annually – with a national average of $89,500. Legal follows with $80,7000. At the bottom of the list is food preparation and service related jobs, with $20,500.
Even though it has been ranked one of the most expensive places in the country, RentCafe found that San Jose, Calif. is a city where educated workers can save the largest chunk of their income at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Jackson, Mississippi, with its paucity of jobs requiring advanced degrees, is one of the worst cities for lawyers and computer scientists.
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Of course, places like San Jose suddenly become much more inhospitable for construction workers and food-service workers. There is a middle ground, however. With its tourism-centric economy, Las Vegas is more affordable for people working in food service. Still, food-service workers are left with only $500 at the end of the year.
Looking at the metros where people are left with the lowest amount of money, one city stands out: McAllen, Texas, is the worst choice for people working in six different fields measured by RentCafe. Workers in each field are left with little money after paying for basic expenses.
Hartford, Conn. is the best place for most professionals
High atop the list of the10 best metro areas for professionals is Hartford, Conn.: Though the city might be drowning in debt, it’s the best area to live for 12 out of 21 professions. People in these fields are, on average, left with more than $11,000 a year: Business & Financial Operations, Computer & Mathematical, Life, Physical & Social Science, Community & Social Services, Education, Training & Library, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports & Media, Protective Service, Office & Administrative Support, Installation, Maintenance, & Repair and Production.
We wanted to find out which are the best and worst metros to live in according to each profession and turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for more information. From the average net income per professional field we substracted the average cost of living per metro to calculate the average amount of money left each year. It’s important to point out that for the cost of living we used MIT data which includes the minimum cost of food, health insurance, housing, transportation and other living expenses, plus income taxes.
Meanwhile, in Honolulu, the area where basic goods are among the most expensive in the country thanks to the fact that everything must be imported, personal care and food-service professionals are, on average, unable to afford their basic living expenses, thanks to low salaries and a high cost of living.
What metros have the narrowest and widest gender pay gaps?
According to Census data, on a national scale, women earn a median amount of $41,554 annually while men earn $51,640. According to RentCafe’s calculations, the metro area where women earn the highest percentage of their male peers’ earnings is Las Vegas-Henderson, Paradise, Nev. – where women earn 83.9% of what men earn, on average.
What’s the region with the highest gender pay gap? It happens to be Provo-Orem, Utah., where women earn just 44% of what men do.
- Sarah Sanders, Red Hen, & Social Engineering By The State
Authored by Kurt Nimmo via Another Day In The Empire blog,
This will be seriously politically incorrect.
The management at Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant that booted Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has all the right in the world to deny service to any person it does not want patronizing its business.
It is illegal in many states to do this, especially based in skin color, religion, sexual orientation, disability, etc. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it so.
Three jurisdictions forbid discrimination based on political affiliation – Washington DC, Seattle, and the Virgin Islands.
According to the Law & Crime website, if “establishments in D.C. take a cue from [Red Hen], they could be held in violation of D.C. Code Section 2-1402.31, which bars discriminatory actions against people in whole or in part due to characteristics including race, religion, nationality, sex, age, and more, including political affiliation. Violations can result in punishments including court-ordered corrective action or monetary penalties.”
If you own a restaurant or any other “public accommodation” in DC, you cannot “discriminate” against people holding political opinions you disagree with. You are bound by law to serve Ku Klux Klan members and Antifa terrorists alike.
It was Thomas Jefferson who said the only moral commercial transaction is one truly voluntary on the part of the buyer and the seller.
The ideas of Thomas Jefferson – principal author of the Declaration of Independence – went out of fashion many years ago. According to the Identity politics crowd, his wisdom is the wisdom of a privileged white slave owner.
The liberal social engineers busy at working destroying the Constitution believe the exercise of natural rights – the rights you are born with – permits racists, homophobes, and sexists to spread their poison throughout Hillary Clinton’s village. Natural rights are an excuse for privileged white heterosexual males to act deplorably.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot – a “privileged white” was denied service for the crime of working for the president of the United States – it will be interesting to see what the response is.
For these folks, application of the law is predicated on “diversity.” It revolves around “protected groups” of people designated by the state, people said to have been oppressed for centuries by evil white slave owners and Indian killers.
According to the Identity crowd Trump is Hitler, a racist, a child abuser, a pervert who had sex with a porn star and soiled a bed Obama slept in. It is “justice”—as one tweeter put it—Sanders was denied service.
The alt-right MAGA supporters want to punish the Red Hen for its behavior. MAGA tweets call for a boycott. This is certainly their right—unless the boycott target is Israel—but the effort is not likely to be effective. Democrats may respond by packing the restaurant every night with comrades from the rank and file of Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer’s Resistance.
In a more sane and rational world, every property owner would have the freedom to exercise the natural born right to deny service or goods to any person for any reason. When government steps in and tells you what you can and can’t do with your property, you are reduced to the status of a landless serf at the mercy of the state.
I’m afraid we’re at the point now where far too many Americans believe the state should be the final arbiter in personal matters. Decades of social engineering have resulted in a dumbed-down public, citizens that agree the state has the right to use violence against those who nonviolently resist its authority.
- US General Warns China Could Deploy Hypersonic Weapons On A "Large Scale"
The United States could lose its military technological superiority to China by late 2020s if it does not spend its $700 billion defense budget wisely, like more investments in artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and hypersonic missiles, former deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Gen. Paul Selva, vice-chairman of the Joint Chief warned Thursday at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) conference on “Strategic Competition: Maintaining The Edge.”
“We should be prepared to be surprised in any conflict with China, not only because it has invested heavily in modernizing its armed forces but also how it has invested in next-generation military technology,” said former Deputy Secretary Work.
China “wants to be a first mover” in artificial intelligence, by incorporating machine learning algorithms into submarines, drones, hypersonics, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). “That will be how they will get ahead of the United States,” Work warned.
Former Deputy SECDEF Robert O. Work answers a question about who’s winning the race for #AI: We’ve never gone up against a high technology competitor like China so it’s hard for me to say: are we ahead, are we not? #CNAS2018 pic.twitter.com/dXaTdyMH77
— CNAS (@CNASdc) June 21, 2018
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Both presenters harped on the idea that China has advanced its hypersonic program to a level where it could soon deploy on a large scale. Gen. Selva said that the Pentagon needs further investment in hypersonic research and development for an asymmetric advantage against China and Russia.
During the discussion at CNAS in Washington, D.C., Gen. Selva said China has yet to “mass deploy hypersonics or long-range [tactical] ballistic missiles,” however, “they are able now to deploy those capabilities at a large scale” if they decide to move in that direction, he added.
Gen. Selva then dropped a bombshell indicating the Pentagon is behind in the demonstration of hypersonic technologies, but he did mention that the Pentagon still holds an advantage when it comes to sensor and sensor-integration technologies.
“If we just sit back and don’t react we will lose our technological superiority” over China, Selva said.
In mid-April, Lockheed Martin announced that it had won a $928 million contract to develop a hypersonic missile for the U.S. Air Force to counter Chinese and Russian missile defense systems.
“What we’re really trying to do there is prototype using … [new rapid prototyping] authorities to see what we can advance, and what the art of the possible is to see how quickly we can get a capability out there,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, technology, and logistics, told journalists during a June 21 meeting at the Pentagon.
Earlier this year, presenting the 2018 National Defense Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University, Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned about a world in which U.S. military is on the decline.
“Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace,” he said. “And it is continually eroding.”
“It’s very clear from our national defense strategy … that we intend to react” to what the Chinese are doing, Selva said. “If you accept that the Chinese are trying to offset our capability in the Western Pacific and that the Russians are trying to offset our capability in Europe, it’s incumbent upon us as strategists to react to that ambition.”
The Department of Defense must “analyze what your opponent is trying to do to you, make this a competition … and checkmate them or prevent them from getting so much of an advantage that they can prevent you from doing the things that are in your national interest,” Selva added.
The Pentagon is making a substantial investment via taxpayers to fund its research-and-development programs related to artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and hypersonic missiles.
After the failed wars in the Middle East and trillions of dollars the Pentagon mysteriously lost, Washington is getting one last shot to remain relevant in the ever so changing world; otherwise, China could surpass America’s military technological superiority within the next decade.
Its quite evident that the Pentagon is willing to send this country even closer to bankruptcy by demanding $700 billion in its new budget, as it struggles to enforce its rule in the South China Sea.
“Given the size of our budget, if we don’t have the money to do this then we’re not paying attention,” Selva said.
“We have to put the money where it matters and that means allocating money to research and development in the technologies that are important to achieve asymmetric approaches to both China and Russia’s technology trends,” he concluded.
To sum up, this is it – the dying American empire gets one last shot to stay relevant in the world, as the clearly defined race against China to develop artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and most importantly – hypersonic missiles. What comes next if Washington’s power slips in the Pacific? Well, you guessed it…War.
- Ron Paul Rewind: The Constitution and Its Rejection By The US Government
Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
The United States Constitution was ratified 230 years ago this week as the foundational law of the US government, when on June 21, 1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document. In the year 2000, then-United States House of Representatives Member Ron Paul (R-TX) delivered a speech on the House floor titled “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” in which he discussed in detail his thoughts on the Constitution, the individual rights he viewed the document as seeking to protect, and the great extent to which the US government had expanded beyond and rejected constitutional limits.
Paul, who always would ask if legislation he was presented with in the House was authorized by the Constitution, early on in the speech explains:
Our constitutional republic, according to our Founders, should, above all else, protect the rights of the minority against the abuses of an authoritarian majority. They feared democracy as much as monarchy and demanded a weak executive, a restrained court, and a handicapped legislature.
Paul soon after in his speech notes:
The Constitution made it clear that the government was not to interfere with productive non-violent human energy. This is the key element that has permitted America’s great achievements. It was a great plan; we should all be thankful for the bravery and wisdom of those who established this nation and secured the Constitution for us. We have been the political and economic envy of the world. We have truly been blessed. The Founders often spoke of “divine providence” and that God willed us this great nation. It has been a grand experiment, but it is important that the fundamental moral premises that underpin this nation are understood and maintained. We as Members of Congress have that responsibility.
Yet, despite the effort of the Founders to ensure respect for liberty, government in America grew much over time, engaging in pervasive rights violations. In his speech, Paul provides many examples of such government action concerning matters from mass surveillance to a high tax system to US government involvement in education to the US monetary system to the increase in executive branch powers to the creation of an “armed national police state” to a policy of foreign interventionism including “global military activism.” In all these instances the US government exercises power to the detriment of liberty and in violation of constitutional limitations. Overall, Paul makes this stark assessment of the situation as of the year 2000:
Almost every daily activity we engage in is monitored or regulated by some government agency. If one attempts to just avoid government harassment, one finds himself in deep trouble with the law.
Paul notes in the speech a contest between people seeking liberty and people seeking power:
In every society there are always those waiting in the wings for an opportunity to show how brilliant they are, as they lust for power, convinced they know what’s best for everyone. But the defenders of liberty know that what is best for everyone is to be left alone, with a government limited to stopping aggressive behavior.
Unfortunately, in America the power seekers have won in many ways as government has expanded far beyond constitutional bounds. Indeed, Paul laments in his speech that the Constitution “no longer serves as the guide for the rule of law” and that “[i]n its place we have substituted the rule of man and the special interests.”
Yet, Paul in his 2000 speech, as in his comments since leaving the House and founding the Ron Paul Institute, is optimistic. He suggests toward the end of his speech that liberty proponents, though they “face tough odds,” can win and should work hard for victory. Says Paul:
The grand experiment in human liberty must not be abandoned. A renewed hope and understanding of liberty is what we need as we move into the 21st Century.
In his concluding sentences Paul expresses this aspiration:
Let’s hope and pray that our political focus will soon shift toward preserving liberty and individual responsibility and away from authoritarianism. The future of the American Republic depends on it. Let us not forget the American dream depends on keeping alive the spirit of liberty.
Watch Paul’s wide-ranging, thought-provoking speech (in eight parts) here:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
Part 7:
Part 8:
- Chinese Stocks Slump Into Bear Market As 'Weaponized' Yuan Continues To Tumble
China’s Shanghai Composite is down 22.8% from its late-January peak – officially entering its 4th bear market in 3 years – as Trade Wars (for now) are weighing heavier on China than US markets.
SHCOMP is down 45% from its highs in June 2015
Year-to-Date, the more tech heavy Shenzhen Composite is the worst performer…
And TATS (Tencent, Alibaba, Taiwan Semi, Samsung)are notably underperforming FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) for now…
And while China has dramatically underperformed US markets this year, judging by the last two days, perhaps the global trade war contagion has finally washed ashore in America…
Meanwhile – USDJPY has erased all of its Navarro-bounce…
And offshore Yuan continues its tumble/devaluation…
‘Weaponized’ Yuan is now down over 5% from March highs…
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