- 29% Of London Homeowners Are Panic Selling Homes Ahead Of Brexit Deadline
The pound sterling has lost nearly 10% of its value in the last 120 days, as a no-deal Brexit has become more likely. The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, has fallen into a bear market in the same period. Fear is spreading across the United Kingdom, also affecting the real estate market.
Nested, a London-based “data-driven” real estate firm, is reporting 29% of London homeowners are slashing their asking prices ahead of Brexit’s Oct. 31 deadline, reported Property Reporter.
The new report shows over £2 billion ($2.43 billion) of price cuts have so far occurred in the London Metropolitan Region ahead of the deadline.
About 11% of the listings in London (12,078) have seen at least £37,800 ($46,166) cut from the initial list price. Top areas of where the most substantial price discounts are being observed are in Westminster Kensington & Chelsea, Wandsworth, Camden, and Tower Hamlets.
Another 18% of homes listed in the London area have seen price drops of at least 10% ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline.
Jamie Salisbury, a property expert at Nested, said:
“Amid this endless uncertainty and gloom there are great opportunities out there for buyers if they’re bold enough to seize them. This is particularly true for homeowners who are trading up, presenting an opportunity to buy a new home that might otherwise have been out of reach.”
Brexit fears, along with an economy that is one step away from a recession, have sent real estate markets into turmoil this year.
Inner London home sales plunged to 2009 levels this summer:
“In Inner London, sales volume has plunged by 50% from the mid-range prevailing in the three years from mid-2013 to mid-2016. And it’s down about 65% from the peak in sales volume before the Financial Crisis. These numbers are very volatile from month to month. So, to smoothen out some of the sharp month-to-month ups and downs, I used a three-month moving average. At 2,057 transactions, sales volume has now fallen to levels not seen since the depth of the Financial Crisis in June 2009,” noted Wolf Richter of Wolf Street.
The overall trajectory of UK home prices is down:
“Overall UK home prices, after also peaking in August 2018, have inched down since then. On a year-over-year, they eked out a 1.2% gain in May, weighted down by the decline in the London housing market. May showed the lowest home price inflation, along with February, since January 2013 (by comparison, the UK’s consumer price inflation rose 1.9% through June),” Richter said.
And with the Oct. 31 deadline fast approaching – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is gung-ho on leaving the EU with a deal, but that it is “do or die,” that he would be willing to leave without a deal so long as it means leaving on the deadline. With the political uncertainty surrounding Brexit and an economy that is stumbling into a recession, it now makes sense why people are racing to sell their homes, even if that means deep price cuts, because the next economic downturn has already arrived.
- Europe: "Mediterranean Taxis" For People-Smugglers
Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,
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The captain’s refusal to accept Spain’s offer [to dock in Spain rather than Italy] fueled suspicion about the financial and political motivations behind the migrant rescues — including efforts by Open Arms and other NGOs to promote open borders by discrediting Salvini’s hardline immigration policies.
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“We are facing the umpteenth mockery of the Spanish Open Arms, which for days has been wandering around the Mediterranean for the sole purpose of gathering as many people as possible to bring them always and only to Italy. In all this time they already could have gone back and forth to a Spanish port three times. These NGOs are only political. They are using the immigrants against our country. I will not give up.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
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“Open Arms does not rescue shipwrecked people. If it did, it would take them to the nearest port. What it does is use immigrants as an extortion tool against countries that choose to defend their sovereignty. These fake humanitarian organizations, in the name of solidarity, exploit the good will of many people. But their work is promoted by those who want to destroy the borders of Europe, and only benefits human traffickers.” — Santiago Abascal, leader of the Spanish party Vox.
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The [Ipsos] poll also found that a majority of Italians (56%) believe that the NGOs involved in rescuing migrants are motivated by money; only 22% believe they are motivated by humanitarianism.
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The data indicates that most of the migrants who arrived in Italy during the first six months of 2019 are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing warzones.
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“It is quite clear that when the organized networks that control migrants from Libya throw people into the sea in vessels that lack even the slightest navigability conditions to safely transport them to European ports, what they are doing is deliberately placing them into the legal status of shipwrecked persons. These are not shipwrecks caused by maritime accidents, as contemplated by international law, they are ‘shipwrecks of convenience.'” — José María Ruiz Soroa, distinguished professor of maritime law at the University of the Basque Country.
Italian authorities have seized a Spanish migrant rescue ship after a three-week standoff between the Italian government and the Spanish charity operating the vessel.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had refused to allow the Open Arms rescue ship, carrying more than 80 mostly African migrants, to dock in Italy. The refusal was in line with his crackdown on migrant smuggling that has effectively closed Italian ports to migrant rescue boats since June 2018.
Salvini has accused European non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of coordinating with people-smuggling mafias to pick up migrants off the coast of Libya and transport them to Italian ports.
Italian officials have referred to the charity rescue boats as “Mediterranean taxis” for people-smugglers.
Sicilian prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio on August 20 ordered the Open Arms, anchored one kilometer off Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa, to dock in Sicily so that its passengers could disembark. He made the decision, in opposition to Salvini, after more than a dozen migrants jumped overboard and tried to swim to shore. Subsequent video footage showed that Open Arms staged the jumps to manipulate public opinion.
The Open Arms, operated by a Spanish NGO of the same name, had picked up 147 migrants off the coast of Libya on August 1. The Italian government allowed those in need of medical attention and all unaccompanied children to disembark on August 17. Five EU countries — Spain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal — agreed to take in the rest, although details of the understanding have yet to be finalized.
On August 18, the Spanish government announced that the Open Arms would be allowed to dock at the Spanish port of Algeciras in Cádiz, and at Mahón in Menorca in the Balearic Islands. The captain of the Open Arms, however, rejected the offer. He argued that it was “impossible” to attempt the four- to six-day journey given the conditions on board: “We cannot endanger the security and physical integrity of the migrants and crew. We need to dock now.”
The captain’s refusal to accept Spain’s offer fueled suspicion about the financial and political motivations behind the migrant rescues — including efforts by Open Arms and other NGOs to promote open borders by discrediting Salvini’s hardline immigration policies.
“We are facing the umpteenth mockery of the Spanish Open Arms, which for days has been wandering around the Mediterranean for the sole purpose of gathering as many people as possible to bring them always and only to Italy,” Salvini tweeted.
“In all this time they already could have gone back and forth to a Spanish port three times. These NGOs are only political. They are using the immigrants against our country. I will not give up.”
Spain’s acting Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo expressed bafflement at Open Arms. In an interview with Spanish radio Cadena SER, she noted that the ship could easily have docked in Tunisia or Malta but refused to do so:
“We do not understand the position of Open Arms. We have offered all types of support: medical attention, supplies. We understand the situation is critical because of the uncertainty and desperation, but once you tell them they have a safe port, the migrants know they are going to arrive, and anybody can understand that there is no problem.”
On August 20, the Spanish government dispatched a warship, the Audaz, from the Rota naval base to pick up the migrants and take them to the Spanish island of Mallorca. The round-trip voyage, however, was estimated to take at least a week and Patronaggio acted after reports that some migrants were suicidal.
The Italian government later impounded the Open Arms after the Italian Coast Guard, in an inspection, found “serious security anomalies.” The Italian Ministry of Transport said that the ship would not be allowed to leave Sicily until the problems were remedied.
Italian Transportation Minister Danilo Toninelli called on the Spanish government to crack down on the activities of the Open Arms by de-registering the vessel and removing its Spanish flag. “I hope that Spain answers our appeal and commits to stopping Open Arms in the future with the means, and in the ways, it deems right,” he said. A de-flagged ship would legally be unable to continue picking up migrants.
The Spanish government, facing growing criticism over its handling of the standoff, has since expressed a harder line against the Open Arms NGO. On August 21, Calvo told Cadena SER radio that the Open Arms did not have a permit to transport migrants and could be fined €900,000 ($1,000,000) for violating an express ban on sailing to the seas off Libya: “Open Arms does not have a permit to rescue, as the captain of the ship knows. This is a state ruled by law. We are all subject to the law.”
In the past, however, the Spanish government has worked closely with Open Arms. In August 2018, the NGO announced that it had reached an agreement with the government to coordinate migrant rescues in the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea. That same month, Spanish Development Minister José Luis Ábalos heaped praise on Open Arms for rescuing “tens of thousands of people since 2015.” It remains unclear if the NGO is receiving money from the government for its activities.
The Spanish anti-immigration party Vox filed a lawsuit against Open Arms and called for the arrest of the ship’s captain, Óscar Camps. “Disguising its activities as ‘rescue work,’ this ‘NGO’ is an accomplice to the people-smuggling of international mafia networks,” Vox leader Santiago Abascal tweeted, adding:
“Open Arms does not rescue shipwrecked people. If it did, it would take them to the nearest port. What it does is use immigrants as an extortion tool against countries that choose to defend their sovereignty.
“These fake humanitarian organizations, in the name of solidarity, exploit the good will of many people. Their work, however, is promoted by those who want to destroy the borders of Europe, and only benefits human traffickers.
“For all these reasons, we will act firmly and forcefully against any NGO, government, association or group that intends to continue promoting illegal, massive immigration and subject us to the interests of international human trafficking mafias.
“This unlawful and criminal activity endangers our welfare state, our sovereignty, the safety of Spaniards and even the lives they claim to rescue. They will have to answer to the courts sooner rather than later.”
European charity vessels have repeatedly attempted — with varying degrees of success — to bring migrants rescued at sea to Italian ports:
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December 22, 2018. The Spanish ship Open Arms, carrying 311 migrants rescued off the coast of Libya, sailed to the Spanish port of Algeciras after the vessel was refused entry by Italy and Malta. “Italian ports are CLOSED,” Salvini tweeted. “The human traffickers and their accomplices know that our ports are closed, STOP!” he added.
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March 19, 2019. The Italian-flagged charity ship Mare Jonio was impoundedafter it docked at a port in Lampedusa and dropped off 49 migrants picked up in waters off Libya. “The ship of the anarchist squats has been seized, excellent,” Salvini said. “In Italy there is now a government that defends borders and makes laws respected, above all by the people traffickers. Those who do wrong will pay.” Earlier he had said that the migrants would not be allowed to enter Italy: “They can be treated, dressed and fed. We can give them any kind of comfort, but they will not set foot in Italy.”
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May 10, 2019. The Mare Jonio was again impounded after it docked at a port in Lampedusa and dropped off 30 migrants rescued off the coast of Libya.
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June 29, 2019. Italian authorities arrested the 31-year-old German captain of the Dutch-flagged Sea-Watch 3, operated by German charity Sea-Watch, after she illegally docked the vessel carrying 40 migrants at Lampedusa. Salvini tweeted: “Outlaw arrested. Pirate ship seized. Big fine on foreign NGO. Migrants all redistributed in other European countries. Mission completed.” An Italian judge subsequently released her on the grounds that she had been acting to save lives. The decision angered Salvini, who said it would encourage other charity vessels to defy the docking ban.
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July 6, 2019. The Italian-flagged charity vessel Alex, in defiance of Salvini, brought 41 shipwrecked migrants into port in Lampedusa. Salvini tweeted: “To break the law, these jackals put the lives of immigrants on board at risk. Will they also go unpunished? In a serious country, arrests and seizure of the vessel would be immediate: what will the judges do this time???”
Meanwhile, the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, operated by two French charities, was allowed to dock in Malta late on August 23 after being refused entry into Italy. The ship, carrying 356 migrants, had been sailing between Sicily and Lampedusa for two weeks while waiting for permission to dock in Italy. The migrants will be relocated to France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania.
In an essay published by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo on August 24, José María Ruiz Soroa, a distinguished professor of maritime law at the University of the Basque Country, explained that European NGOs are manipulating gaps between national laws, which restrict migration, and international law, which require helping shipwrecked persons, in order to deliver illegal immigrants to the EU.
Ruiz Soroa wrote that NGOs are abusing international maritime laws (mainly the International Convention on Salvage and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue) which require ship captains to rescue shipwrecked persons they find at sea and deliver them to a safe place or port. He noted that “safe ports” as defined by those laws would allow NGOs to return shipwrecked persons to Libya, but the NGOs insist on transporting them to Europe:
“It is quite clear that when the organized networks that control migrants from Libya throw people into the sea in vessels that lack even the slightest navigability conditions to safely transport them to European ports, what they are doing is deliberately placing them into the legal status of shipwrecked persons. These are not shipwrecks caused by maritime accidents, as contemplated by international law, they are ‘shipwrecks of convenience.’ No matter how much migrants do it out of desperation, they formally become shipwrecked to obtain that legal status, and once rescued, they are allowed to enter Europe by bypassing the ban on illegal immigration.
“In the final analysis, what we are witnessing in Mediterranean waters is one of the most obvious cases of legal fraud imaginable: intentionally creating the appearance of a factual event regulated in a certain way in a special law… to escape the inexorable application of the general law that really corresponds to that underlying factual situation; which is one of emigration and that is prohibitive. Bypass one law based on another. The Civil Code, and common sense, say that such a trick is illegal.
“Does this mean that the castaways found (pursued by?) by the Open Arms should have been abandoned to their fate? Obviously not. Human life is well above such consideration, and the fake shipwrecked persons of the Open Arms should be helped…. This situation of widespread legal fraud, however, is that the affected states intervene to stop and prevent the actions of private individuals, enthusiasts and well-intentioned do-gooders who only aggravate the problem. The rescues become a state matter when relevant public interest aspects are at stake, as it is with the environment, and as it should be in the case of illegal immigration.
“The Spanish government intervened months ago: The Open Arms was prohibited from rescuing shipwrecked people in Libyan waters. The ban was not made on a whim but on the well-founded suspicion that the presence of the Open Arms in those waters would encourage potential migrants to endanger themselves in the hope of being rescued. The shipowners, however, violated the ban when they decided on their own that the law can be broken when a suffering humanity is placed on the other side of the scale of justice….
“There will be shipwrecked people of convenience (and some will die for it) as long as they have a confirmed hope that there will be rescuers waiting for them out there. It is an unsustainable deadly loop that must be cut somewhere.”
A recent Ipsos poll published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera foundthat a majority of Italians support Salvini’s hard line on immigration: 59% said that they agree with his decision to close Italian ports to migrant rescue ships; 71% said that other European countries should do more to share the burden. The poll also found that a majority of Italians (56%) believe that the NGOs involved in rescuing migrants are motivated by money; only 22% believe they are motivated by humanitarianism.
Since Salvini announced his hardline immigration policies in June 2018, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy — as well as the number of dead and missing — has significantly decreased. The number of arrivals by sea fell from 119,369 in 2017 to 23,370 in 2018, a drop of 80%, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. During that same period, the number of dead and missing fell from 2,873 to 1,311, a decline of more than 50%.
A similar trend has continued in 2019: 2,800 migrants arrived in Italy by sea between January and June of 2019, compared to 16,600 during the same six-month period in 2018 and 83,800 in 2017, according to the UNHCR.
Of those who arrived in Italy by sea in 2019, 600 (21%) were from Tunisia; 400 (14%) were from Pakistan; 300 (10%) were from Algeria; 300 (10%) were from Iraq; 200 (7%) were from Ivory Coast; 200 (7%) were from Bangladesh; 100 (3.5%) were from Sudan; 100 (3.5%) were from Iran; 100 (3.5%) were from Morocco; and 50 (1.7%) were from Egypt, according to the UNHCR.
The data indicates that most of the migrants who arrived in Italy during the first six months of 2019 are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing warzones.
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- Lebanese Army Opens Fire On Multiple Israeli Drones At Southern Border
Gunfire has erupted over southern Lebanon amid soaring tensions after Lebanon accused Israel of launching aggression tantamount to “a declaration of war” – in the words of President Michel Aoun, in reference to the twin Israeli drone attack on Hezbollah offices in south Beirut the past weekend.
Specifically on Wednesday the Lebanese army is reported to have opened fire on up to three “Israeli reconnaissance drones” for violating the country’s airspace, according to the official National News Agency.
An Israeli Hermes 450 drone photographed along the Gaza border in 2018, via AFP. Reuters also reports that troops initially opened fire on the unmanned vehicles with M16 assault rifles, forcing the drones to return to Israeli airspace.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) appear to have confirmed the incident, but didn’t specify whether the drones violated Lebanese airspace.
“Gunfire was heard from Lebanese territory toward the area where IDF drones were flying. The drones completed their mission, and no damage was caused,” the Israeli army said.
The Lebanese Air Force (LAF) mentioned three UAVs appearing near the village of Adaisseh, as well as in the vicinity of Kafr Kila, near the border with Israel. “The army confronted it and fired at it, forcing it to retreat,” the LAF said in a statement.
Some Arab regional media actually claimed one or more of the drones were destroyed by the gunfire, but it remains unclear.
#Watch| The Lebanese army shoots down a third Israeli drone near the borders with occupied #Palestine. #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/lfGV1DDUPV
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) August 28, 2019
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There are significant fears that Lebanon and Israel could be barreling toward a major conflict similar to the 2006 war, also after on Sunday a separate Israeli drone strike (following the south Beirut incident) reached deep into Lebanon, killing a PFLP-GC leader in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley (a Palestinian paramilitary group).
Both the national army and Hezbollah have vowed to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft in violation of Lebanese airspace, despite Israel over the past couple years violating it frequently to conduct air raids on targets in Syria.
- Whitehead Exposes The American Gulag: Brick by Brick, Our Prison Walls Get More Oppressive By The Day
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”
– Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History
This is how freedom dies.
This is how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by brainwashing them into believing they are free so that they will march in lockstep with the state and be incapable of recognizing the prison walls that surround them.
Face the facts: we are no longer free.
We in the American Police State may enjoy the illusion of freedom, but that is all it is: an elaborate deception, rooted in denial and delusion, that hides the grasping, greedy, power-hungry, megalomaniacal force that lurks beneath the surface.
Brick by brick, the prison walls being erected around us by the government and its corporate partners-in-crime grow more oppressive and more pervasive by the day.
Brick by brick, we are finding there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Brick by brick, we are being walled in, locked down and locked up.
That’s the curious thing about walls: they not only keep those on the outside from getting in, they also keep those on the inside from getting out.
Consider, if you will, some of the “bricks” in the police state’s wall that serve to imprison the citizenry: Red flag gun laws that strip citizens of their rights based on the flimsiest of pretexts concocted by self-serving politicians. Overcriminalization resulting in jail time for nonviolent offenses such as feeding stray cats and buying foreign honey. Military training drills—showy exercises in armed intimidation—and live action “role playing” between soldiers and “freedom fighters” staged in small rural communities throughout the country. Profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies. Overt surveillance that turns citizens into suspects.
Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. Punitive programs that strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes. Government agents that view segments of the populace as “subhuman” and treat them accordingly. A social credit system (similar to China’s) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate.
These are just a small sampling of the oppressive measures used by the government to control and constrict the American people.
What these despotic tactics add up to is an authoritarian prison in every sense of the word.
Granted this prison may not appear as overtly bleak as the soul-destroying gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, but that’s just a matter of aesthetics.
Strip away the surface embellishments and you’ll find the core is no less sinister than that of the gulags of the Cold War-era Soviet Union.
Those gulags, according to historian Anne Applebaum, used as a form of “administrative exile—which required no trial and no sentencing procedure—was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.”
The word “gulag” refers to a labor or concentration camp where prisoners (oftentimes political prisoners or so-called “enemies of the state,” real or imagined) were imprisoned as punishment for their crimes against the state. As Applebaum explains:
Over time, the word “Gulag” has also come to signify not only the administration of the concentration camps but also the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps. Even more broadly, “Gulag” has come to mean the Soviet repressive system itself, the set of procedures that prisoners once called the “meat-grinder”: the arrests, the interrogations, the transport in unheated cattle cars, the forced labor, the destruction of families, the years spent in exile, the early and unnecessary deaths.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was such a political prisoner.
For the crime of daring to criticize Stalin in a private letter to a school friend, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to eight years in exile in a labor camp.
That was before psychiatry paved the way for totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union to declare dissidents mentally ill and consign political prisoners to prisons disguised as psychiatric hospitals, where they could be isolated from the rest of society, their ideas discredited, and subjected to electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures to break them physically and mentally.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan describes a process in which:
The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years.
Warrantless seizures, surveillance, indefinite detention, isolation, exile… sound familiar?
It should.
The age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by making them disappear—or forcing them to flee—or exiling them literally or figuratively or virtually from their fellow citizens—is happening with increasing frequency in America.
We saw it happen with Julian Assange. With Edward Snowden. With Bradley Manning.
They, too, were exiled for daring to challenge the powers-that-be.
It happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub, who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.
Raub’s case exposed the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting Americans—especially military veterans—for expressing their discontent over America’s rapid transition to a police state.
Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the government is laying the groundwork that would allow it to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) its critics is diabolically brilliant. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these individuals are declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.
These developments are merely the realization of various U.S. government initiatives dating back to 2009, including one dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Coupled with the report on “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” issued by the Department of Homeland Security (curiously enough, a Soviet term), which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government. Although these initiatives caused an initial uproar when announced in 2009, they were quickly subsumed by the ever-shifting cacophony of the news media and its ten-day cycles.
Yet while the American public may have forgotten about the government’s plans to identify and disable anyone deemed a potential “threat,” the government has put its plan into action.
Thus, what began as a blueprint under the Bush administration has become an operation manual under the Obama and Trump administrations to exile those who are challenging the government’s authority.
An important point to consider, however, is that the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is locking up individuals trained in military warfare who are voicing feelings of discontent.
Under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as ticking time bombs in need of intervention.
For instance, the Justice Department launched a pilot program aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
One tactic being used to deal with so-called “mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare” is through the use of civil commitment laws, found in all states and employed throughout American history to not only silence but cause dissidents to disappear.
For example, in 2006, NSA officials attempted to label former employee Russ Tice, who was willing to testify in Congress about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, as “mentally unbalanced” based upon two psychiatric evaluations ordered by his superiors.
In 2009, NYPD Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had his home raided, and he was handcuffed to a gurney and taken into emergency custody for an alleged psychiatric episode. It was later discovered by way of an internal investigation that his superiors were retaliating against him for reporting police misconduct. Schoolcraft spent six days in the mental facility, and as a further indignity, was presented with a bill for $7,185 upon his release.
In 2012, it was Virginia’s civil commitment law that was used to justify arresting and detaining Marine Brandon Raub—a 9/11 truther—in a psychiatric ward based on posts he had made on his Facebook page that were critical of the government.
Incredibly, in Virginia alone, over 20,000 people annually are forced into psychiatric wards by way of so-called Emergency Custody Orders and civil commitment procedures.
Each state has its own set of civil, or involuntary, commitment laws. These laws are extensions of two legal principles: parens patriae Parens patriae (Latin for “parent of the country”), which allows the government to intervene on behalf of citizens who cannot act in their own best interest, and police power, which requires a state to protect the interests of its citizens.
The fusion of these two principles, coupled with a shift towards a dangerousness standard, has resulted in a Nanny State mindset carried out with the militant force of the Police State.
The problem, of course, is that the diagnosis of mental illness, while a legitimate concern for some Americans, has over time become a convenient means by which the government and its corporate partners can penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.
In fact, in recent years, we have witnessed the pathologizing of individuals who resist authority as suffering from oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), defined as “a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures.” Under such a definition, every activist of note throughout our history—from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.—could be classified as suffering from an ODD mental disorder.
Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.
Red flag gun laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are a perfect example of this mindset at work. “We need to stop dangerous people before they act”: that’s the rationale behind the NRA’s support of these red flag laws, and at first glance, it appears to be perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others.
Where the problem arises, of course, is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
This is the same government that has, along with its corporate counterparts (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.), made it abundantly clear at all levels (whether it be the FBI, NSA, local police, school personnel, etc.) that they want no one challenging their authority.
This is a government that pays lip service to the nation’s freedom principles while working overtime to shred the Constitution.
Yes, this is a prison alright.
Thus, for those who take to the streets to constitutionally express their opinions and beliefs, rows of riot police, clad in jackboots, military vests, and helmets, holding batons, stun guns, assault rifles, and sometimes even grenade launchers, are there to keep them in line.
For those who take to social media to express their opinions and beliefs, squadrons of AI censors are there to shadowban them and keep them in line.
As for that wall President Trump keeps promising to build, it’s already being built, one tyranny at a time, transforming our constitutional republic into a carceral state.
Yet be warned: in a carceral state, there are only two kinds of people: the prisoners and the prison guards.
In a carceral state—a.k.a. a prison state or a police state—there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite.
With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, “we the people”—the prisoners of the American police state—are being pushed that much further into a corner, our backs against the prison wall.
This concept of a carceral state in which we possess no rights except for that which the government grants on an as-needed basis is the only way I can begin to comprehend, let alone articulate, the irrational, surreal, topsy-turvy, through-the-looking-glass state of affairs that is being imposed upon us in America today.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we who pretend we are free are no different from those who spend their lives behind bars.
You see, by gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.
Aided and abetted by the legislatures, the courts and Corporate America, the government has been busily rewriting the contract (a.k.a. the Constitution) that establishes the citizenry as the masters and agents of the government as the servants. We are now only as good as we are useful, and our usefulness is calculated on an economic scale by how much we are worth—in terms of profit and resale value—to our “owners.”
Under the new terms of this revised, one-sided agreement, the government and its many operatives have all the privileges and rights and “we the prisoners” have none.
- BP Is The Latest Major Oil Company To Shutter Operations In Alaska
Yet another major oil company has backed away from one of the frontier oil discoveries of the late 20th century that not only cushioned them from OPEC, but helped them learn to drill in some of the most difficult areas of the globe.
After six decades, BP has officially exited Alaska with the sale of its business there for $5.6 billion to Hilcorp Energy, according to Bloomberg. The deal makes Hilcorp the second largest producer in the state behind ConocoPhillips. The deal includes BP’s stake in Prudhoe Bay, which is the largest producing oil field in U.S. history. It also includes BP’s Alaskan pipelines.
Alaska, meanwhile, is receding into a second tier oil province as a result of field depletion, cost-cutting and the rise of shale. The state’s oil output has slumped from its peak in the 1980s, as discoveries have dried up and major producers seek to produce crude elsewhere, most recently from shale in Texas.
Hilcorp and ConocoPhillips are two of the few big remaining oil companies still interested in investing fresh capital in Alaska.
Oswald Clint, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. said:
“The divestment prov[es] that no asset is sacred even if it is 60 years old and synonymous with the company. We see the transaction as a positive catalyst, which should help the shares recover lost ground this year.”
The divestiture includes BP’s stake in the Trans-Alaskan pipeline system, which has been running below capacity for years as a result of declining oil production. Wood Mackenzie, Ltd. values the asses at a “slight premium” to the $5.6 billion purchase price, almost 1/3 of which will be paid subject to production over time. It’s a strategic move for BP, as the company looks to shift more towards shale basins and natural gas.
Jason Gammel, an analyst at Jefferies LLC, said:
“The Alaska transaction puts BP in a good position to reach its divestiture target. The transaction is expected to close in 2020 and the upfront cash would reduce BP’s gearing by 2 percentage points.”
Meanwhile, Hilcorp has bought more than $6 billion of oil and gas assets over the last five years and produced about 108,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. The company in 2017 also acquired assets in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico for $3 billion and has holdings in both Alaska and Wyoming.
Prudhoe Bay has produced about 13 billion barrels over its life and has another billion barrels of potential, according to BP.
Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Europe Ltd., said:
“Our production estimates for Alaska upstream are declining by about 5% to 7% per annum. This deal highlights that it remains a buyers’ market for upstream assets, and big price tags require selling high-quality assets such as this one.”
BP was one of the original partners in building the 800 mile Trans-Alaskan Pipeline system in 1977, which was designed specifically to bring oil from the North Slope to the port of Valdez on Alaska’s southern coast. It was one of the largest privately funded construction projects in history. BP holds a 49% stake in the pipeline, with ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Unocal Pipeline holding the rest
Exxon could also soon be on the list to sell their Alaskan assets. The company is looking to raise $15 billion from sales globally by the end of 2021. Over the last few years, companies like Anadarko Petroleum, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Marathon Petroleum have all sold out of Alaska.
Alaska’s annual production peaked at 2 million barrels a day in 1988, the year before the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last year, it averaged just 479,000 barrels a day.
The US Interior Department is also preparing to sell drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) later this year. The refuge’s coastal plain is said to contain billions of barrels of oil, but tapping it was off-limits due to regulation for decades until 2017, when Congress ordered the government sell drilling rights there.
- USSA Social Credit: US Denied Entry To Student Because Of Friend's Social Media Posts
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
A Harvard student has been denied entry to the United States because of what one of his friends posted on social media. Ismail Ajjawi reportedly had his visa canceled after hours of questioning at Boston’s airport by the USSA.
Silicon Valley is already hard at work manipulating behavior, taking on the role of anauthoritarian government, and attempting to punish people for not acting the way they see fit.
The New York State Department of Financial Services announced earlier this yearthat life insurance companies can base premiums on what they find in your social media posts. That Instagram pic showing you teasing a grizzly bear at Yellowstone with a martini in one hand, a bucket of cheese fries in the other, and a cigarette in your mouth, could cost you. On the other hand, a Facebook post showing you doing yoga might save you money.
Airbnb can disable your account for life for any reason it chooses, and it reserves the right to not tell you the reason. The company’s canned message includes the assertion that “This decision is irreversible and will affect any duplicated or future accounts. Please understand that we are not obligated to provide an explanation for the action taken against your account.” The ban can be based on something the host privately tells Airbnb about something they believe you did while staying at their property. Airbnb’s competitors have similar policies.
It’s now easy to get banned by Uber, too. Whenever you get out of the car after an Uber ride, the app invites you to rate the driver. What many passengers don’t know is that the driver now also gets an invitation to rate you. Under a new policy announced in May: If your average rating is “significantly below average,” Uber will ban you from the service.
You can be banned on WhatsApp if too many other users block you. You can also get banned for sending spam, threatening messages, trying to hack or reverse-engineer the WhatsApp app, or using the service with an unauthorized app.-Fast Company
But it’s gone a step further.
The government is now rejecting entry to the country for foreigners based on their friends’ actions and social media posts. This is the dystopian future George Orwell warned us about in his iconic book, 1984.
Written 70 years ago, 1984 was Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984, the year, has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever.
“We see what happened to the USSR is happening to the USSA. It’s breaking down. You cannot control a number of people, over 300 million, by a centralized government. It’s too big to operate. In the future we definitely see more secessionist movements and even regional governments.”
Ajjawi’s friends posted “political points of view that oppose the United States,” reported CNET. The U.S. government is obviously probing visa applicants’ social media profiles and punishing people for their friends’ opinions.
Ajjawi, from Lebanon, didn’t actually do anything wrong. He’s “guilty by association.” The U.S. government is one of totalitarian control and wants ultimate power over everything, including your very thoughts and opinions. This is a truly horrific time in human history.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson Michael McCarthy said in an emailed statement that he couldn’t offer specific details on Ajjawi’s case due to confidentiality clauses.
“This individual was deemed inadmissible to the United States based on information discovered during the CBP inspection,” he wrote. Ajjawi, who got a scholarship to study in the U.S., returned home to Lebanon over the weekend. He and the university are working to resolve the matter before classes start next Tuesday.
The establishment is working extra hard to make sure that their official narrative is the only acceptable line of thought.
- Rep. Ilhan Omar Paid $230k To 'Political Consultant' She Had Affair With
Maybe Representative Ilhan Omar is for separating families after all…
A mother from Washington DC is claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is on her second (or third, who knows at this point?) marriage stole her husband away from her, according to explosive new divorce papers reported on yesterday by the Post.
Dr. Beth Mynett alleges that her cheating spouse, Tim Mynett, revealed to her in April that he was having an affair with Rep. Omar and that he had even made a “shocking declaration of love” for the congresswoman before leaving his wife.
Even better?
Representative Omar paid Mynett and his E. Street Group consulting company approximately $230,000 through her campaign since 2018 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, internet advertising and travel expenses.
55-year-old Mynett, along with her 38-year-old husband, have a 13-year-old son together. Tim Mynett has worked for left-wing Democrats like Omar and her Minnesota predecessor, Keith Ellison.
The filing read:
“The parties physically separated on or about April 7, 2019, when Defendant told Plaintiff that he was romantically involved with and in love with another woman, Ilhan Omar.”
Beth and Tim Mynett It continued:
“Defendant met Rep. Omar while working for her. Although devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded his abrupt declaration, Plaintiff told Defendant that she loved him, and was willing to fight for the marriage. Defendant, however, told her that was not an option for him. It is clear to Plaintiff that her marriage to Defendant is over and that there is no hope of reconciliation.”
The Mynetts had previously lived together for six years before marrying in 2012.
Omar was spotted with Mynett at a California restaurant in March. Mynett’s wife is seeking primary physical custody of their son in part because of her husband’s “extensive travel” with Omar, which the document claims is “not part of the job description”.
The court papers state:
“Defendant’s more recent travel and long work hours now appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments.”
Beth Mynett stated, via the filing: “When he was home he was preoccupied and emotionally volatile.” At the same time, she has been handling “the vast majority of responsibilities related to [their son’s] school, medical care, and extracurricular activities.’’
Tim Mynett and Rep. Omar She also says she doesn’t trust her husband’s judgement with their son anymore after Tim Mynett took the child to meet Omar while Beth was out of town:
“By way of example, days prior to Defendant’s devastating and shocking declaration of love for Rep. Omar and admission of their affair, he and Rep. Omar took the parties’ son to dinner to formally meet for the first time at the family’s favorite neighborhood restaurant while Plaintiff was out of town.”
In the classiest of fashion, Rep. Omar apparently gave the son a gift during their meeting: “Rep. Omar gave the parties’ son a gift and the Defendant later brought her back inside the family’s home,” the filing says.
Beth Mynett argues that her husband “put his son in harm’s way by taking him out in public with Rep. Omar, who at that time had garnered a plethora of media attention along with death threats, one rising to the level of arresting the known would-be assassin that same week.”
Mynett is seeking full control of the couple’s DC home, child support and legal fees.
Meanwhile, we have heard no comment from Omar’s current husband, Ahmed Hirsi. He currently works as a senior policy aide to a Minnesota city councilwoman. There’s been no word (yet) on whether or not those two are having an affair, but we’ll keep our eyes on the story, because hey, you never know.
- The Places In America With The Highest And Lowest STD Rates
Submitted by Priceonomics
With drugs and treatment available that have lengthened the lifespan of HIV positive patients, you hear less about STDs in the news than you did decades ago when an HIV positive result was the equivalent of a death sentence. Because of the declining media coverage, you might be tempted to conclude that STDs aren’t as common as they used to be.
You’d be wrong. According to the latest data from the CDC, STDs have reached an all-time high in America and over 2 million new cases are reported each year. While STDs may have faded from the media and popular consciousness, they continue to inexorably rise in America.
Along with Priceonomics customer AtHomeSTDKit.com, we analyzed this most recent STD data from the CDC in order to calculate what states had the highest and lowest overall STD rates. We also performed this state-level analysis for four major sexually transmitted diseases: Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, HIV and Syphilis.
We found overall Alaska has the highest rate of STDs in the nation, while West Virginia has the lowest. This is primarily driven by Alaska’s very high Chlamydia rate (the most common STD among the four we looked at) and West Virginia’s low rate for that disease. Gonorrhea is most common in Mississippi, which is 10 times more common than in Vermont, the state with the lowest rate. By a considerable margin, syphilis is most common in Nevada where it is almost 30 times more common than in Wyoming, the state with the lowest syphilis rate. Wyoming also has the lowest new HIV infection rate while Georgia has the highest rate in the nation.
***
Before diving into the results, it’s worth spending a moment on the data used for this analysis. We looked at two different data sets from the CDC in 2017, which is the most recent data available. First, for the diseases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, we looked at the number of reports of new cases received by the CDC in that year. For HIV, we looked at the new diagnosis rate for the latest year 2017, as reported here by state. For all results, we look at the rate of cases per 100,000 people living in the state to calculate the “per-capita rate” of STDs in each location.
To provide some context, just how prevalent are each of these STDs we are discussing? The chart shows the rate of new reports per 100,000 people in the United States:
Among these major STDs tracked by the CDC, chlamydia is by far the most common. Over 500 people out of 100,000 report a case of chlamydia each year. This is more than twice as much as the reported cases of gonorrhea, HIV, syphilis combined. With the exception of HIV, these diseases can be cured, but catching them early is critical for minimizing their damage.
So which places in America have the highest and lowest rates of STDs? The chart below shows the newly reported cases per capita by state for all four of these diseases combined:
STD rates vary considerably depending on where you are in America. Alaska, Mississippi and Louisiana have the highest STD rates in the nation with over 1,000 people out of 100,000 reporting a new case each year. Put differently, that’s over 1% of the population.
On the other hand, STD rates in West Virginia, and New Hampshire are the lowest in the nation. In these locations, the STD rates are nearly three times lower than in the states with the highest rates.
What drives places like Alaska to have the highest STD rate in the nation and West Virginia to have the lowest one? Given that chlamydia is much more common than other diseases, it’s prevalence by state drives the overall averages. Below shows the chlamydia rate by state:
Alaska has the highest chlamydia rate in the nation with 800 new cases per capita each year. The problem is so severe in the state that the state health department recently issued a bulletin warning residents about the rising risk. West Virginia has the lowest chlamydia rate in the nation, contributing to its ranking as the state with the lowest overall STD rate in the country.
Next, let’s turn our attention to the second most common STD, gonorrhea:
As it turns out, the three states with the highest chlamydia rates also have the highest gonorrhea rates in America. Mississippi, Alaska and Louisiana top the nation when it comes to the rate of new gonorrhea, chlamydia, and overall STD infections. The gonorrhea infection rate is nearly 100 times higher in Mississippi than in Vermont, the state with the lowest rate. Across the country, there is an enormous spread in the probability of gonorrhea infection depending on where you live.
While HIV is much less common than chlamydia or gonorrhea, there is no cure. And while advances in medicine mean that HIV patients can live into their seventies, the life span of those with HIV is still much lower than those without the disease.
Where are new HIV infections most common in America? The following chart shows the per capita rate by state:
Georgia has the highest new infection rate of HIV in the country, with 30 people per capita reporting the disease. Louisiana (a state that also ranks in the top three for chlamydia and gonorrhea) ranks second when it comes to HIV infections. The states where HIV infections are much less common are all states with mostly rural environments.
Lastly, let’s examine the syphilis rate. Compared to the other three diseases we’ve looked at so far, syphilis is the least common. However, it can have very serious effects if not detected and treated early.
By a considerable margin, Nevada has the highest syphilis rate in the United States. This is largely driven by Clark County (the home of Las Vegas) having the highest syphilis rate of all counties in the United States. Of the four disease we examined in this article, Louisiana was the only state that ranked in the top three of new infections for all of them.
***
In the United States, there is an enormous variance in the prevalence of STDs by location. For some diseases an STD can be 100 times more likely in one state than another. Overall, places like Alaska, Mississippi and Louisiana have the highest STD rates, while West Virginia, Vermont and New Hampshire have the lowest. Given that sexually transmitted diseases are by definition locally transmitted, perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that their prevalence is closely associated with geography.
- Senator Calls For Probe Into Fed Independence After Bill Dudley Urges Fed To Overthrow Trump
In the aftermath of the shocking Bill Dudley op-ed, which has “opened a staggering can of worms“, and prompted many to call the former NY Fed central banker “rogue”…
Dudley is now officially a rogue central banker.
— Kyle Bass (@Jkylebass) August 28, 2019
… it was only a matter of time before someone called for an official inquiry into the “independence” of the Federal Reserve: the world’s most important central bank, the same one which Bernanke’s former advisor Andrew Levin said 3 years ago, “a lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned.”
And sure enough, on Wednesday afternoon, Republican Senator Thom Tillis called for the Senate Banking Committee to probe the Federal Reserve’s independence after Bill Dudley infamously suggested the upcoming presidential election “falls within the Fed’s purview”, hinting that it is ultimately the Fed – through its monetary policy – that picks the US president.
Tillis, who is up for reelection next fall in swing state North Carolina, said he plans to ask the Banking Committee’s chairman, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), about convening a hearing “regarding Fed independence and the danger of this institution taking unprecedented and inappropriate steps to meddle in the presidential election.”
Quoted by Politico, Tillis said “I am very disappointed that former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley is lobbying the Fed to use its authority as a political weapon against President Trump. The President is standing up for America against China after 30 years of our country and our workers being ripped off and there is now an effort to get the Fed to try to sabotage the President’s efforts.”
Unreal: the fmr Fed Chair is lobbying the Fed to use its authority to meddle in the election to defeat @realDonaldTrump. POTUS is standing up for America against China after 30 years of our country & workers being ripped off and now some are trying anything to stop his efforts.
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) August 28, 2019
Dudley’s op-ed was supposedly the result of an increasingly hostile relationship between the US president and the world’s top central banker, which has culminated in a barrage of angry tweets by Trump slamming both Powell and the Fed for not easing more.
More recently, Trump slammed Powell saying “The only problem we have is Jay Powell and the Fed. He’s like a golfer who can’t putt, has no touch. Big U.S. growth if he does the right thing, BIG CUT — but don’t count on him! So far he has called it wrong, and only let us down.”
Of course, none of this tension between the president and Fed chair is new or unique, and for a far more colorful example of just how laughable the concept of Fed “independence” is, we go to the NYT with this brief but highly memorable anecdote from a meeting between President Lyndon B Johnson and Fed president William McChesney Martin
… in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who wanted cheap credit to finance the Vietnam War and his Great Society, summoned Fed chairman William McChesney Martin to his Texas ranch. There, after asking other officials to leave the room, Johnson reportedly shoved Martin against the wall as he demanding that the Fed once again hold down interest rates.
“I hope you have examined your conscience and you’re convinced you’re on the right track.” Lady Bird Johnson said to William McChesney Martin, on his arrival at the LBJ ranch.
Martin caved, the Fed printed money, and inflation kept climbing until the early 1980s.
Finally, while we doubt that anything will come out of the hearing on Fed “independence” as any actual discovery would reveal that the Fed was never actually independent (nor the ECB for that matter, which singlehandedly overthrew Sylvio Berlusconi in 2011 when it sent Italian bond yields soaring after it briefly stopped buying Italian debt), but an integral part of the US political apparatus (and privately owned to boot), we would like to repost this reaction to the original Dudley op-ed as it capture both the zeitgeist and what is coming next, perfectly:
This is so arrogant, cynical, ironic and completely disingenuous that it can’t pass without comment.
A $500B trade war does not tank the global economy. But a 10-year campaign to publicly bail out reckless private banks and insurance companies while blowing the largest most comprehensive debt bubble in history and then raising interest rates on $250T in global debt surely the hell will.
I don’t care who is, has been or will be President, the Federal Reserve and ONLY the Federal Reserve should be blamed for the tepid economy of the last 10 years. A world full of zombie companies, mountains of productivity-crushing debt and disconnected stock markets that reward a tiny minority of the citizenry with bloated “gains.” All this while regular people live hand-to-mouth saddled with stagnant wages and, dare I say it, daily inflation eating at their incomes.
For a Fed official to blame a paltry trade war for its own foolishness and THEN recommend the Fed purposely crush the economy with a deep recession in order to punish His Orangeness, is terrifying and nearly Soviet in its punitive childishness. Like all good technocrats, Mr. Dudley believes only his class of Brahmins may decide for you unwashed masses what is best. The Road to Hell and all that…
What is coming should be pinned forever on the hubris, blindness and arrogance of the Fed. Naturally, regular people will be hurt the most.
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