• "Tone Policing" And The Left's Anger Privelege

  Authored by Daniel Greenfield via CanadaFreePress.com,

  If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn’t, follow the anger…

  

  There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can’t. If you’re angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn’t.

  James Hodgkinson’s rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he’s not alone. There’s Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you’re black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you’re white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you’re on the side of the angry angels. But if you’re white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

  If you’re an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you’re an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is “dangerous” because you aren’t allowed to be angry.

  Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

  Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s linguistically whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

  Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

  Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama’s victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like “Lock her up”.

  Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded

  Why were chants of “Lock her up” immoderate, but not Bush era cries of “Jail to the chief”?

   

  Why were Tea Party rallies “ominous” but the latest We Hate Trump march is “courageous”?

   

  Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

  Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

  It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

  And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker, I’m a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you’re fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn’t.

  There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

  Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed

  Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from “oppressed” protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is “tone policing”. An African-American millionaire’s child at Yale is fighting for her “existence”, unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

  Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

  The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority (“When they go low, we go high”) reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump’s victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

  But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

  The angry left has gained a great deal of power

  The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

  The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

  But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn’t go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

  The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn’t in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

  Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left’s monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can’t stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

  James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped

  When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won’t stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That’s what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the “resistance”. Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

  James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

  Anger has to go somewhere.

  The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it’s angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn’t the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

  Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

  Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election

  Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

  Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

  James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement.

  Or his violence will be our future.

  

  

• Trump: Mueller And Comey's BFF Status 'Very Bothersome'

  

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  President Trump told Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt in a Fox and Friends interview scheduled to air Friday that he is bothered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s close relationship with fired FBI Director James Comey.

  When asked of Mueller should recuse himself, Trump stated “Well he’s very, very good friends with Comey which is very bothersome… We’re going to have to see.”

  As Radio Host Mark Levin pointed out last week:

  John Legato is a former deep cover FBI special agent – and he writes that Comey and Mueller –their families have vacationed together, have had picnics together, hours spent at the office together, had a few cocktails after work. So Mueller can’t possibly be impartial here. Not when he’s very close friends with a key witness.

   

  The point is this – he’s not independent

  Hatchet Job

  Trump also made mention of the four democrat-supporting attorneys Mueller has hired for the investigation.

  “There’s been no collusion, no obstruction and virtually everybody agrees to that… So we’ll have to see. I can say that the people that’ve been hired [by Mueller] were all Hillary Clinton supporters.” -Donald Trump

  Something Newt Gingrich tweeted about on June 12:

  Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink.

  — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 12, 2017

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  Michael Dreeben – donated to Obama and Clinton

  Jeannie Rhee – deputy assist AG, Wilmer Hale, Donated to DNC, Obama, Clinton

  James Quarles – asst. special prosecutor, Wilmer Hale, long history of Dem donations, Clinton

  Andrew Weissman – oversees fraud at Justice. Donated six times to Obama PACs as well as DNC in 2006

  Levin also noted “He’s [Mueller] not looking into any of the financial relationships between the Clinton Foundation and Russia. Any of the violations of the espionage act by Hillary Clinton and if the Russians got a hold of any of those emails. Mr. Comey nicely and neatly closed that investigation.”

   

  No Investigation!

  Trump Attorney Jon Sekulow has been making the rounds to defend the President, telling a testy Chris Wallace that James Comey himself said Trump was “not a target or subject of investigation.”

  “There has been no notification from the special counsel’s office that the president is under investigation… I can’t imagine a scenario where the president would not be aware of it.”

  Sekulow then went on Hannity yesterday to suggest that James Comey should be the one under investigation for leaking a classified memo created after a meeting with President Trump.

  Trump’s interview with Fox and Friends airs on Friday.

  Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow § Subscribe to our YouTube channel

  

• Connecticut Campus Shut As Professor Flees Following "Let Them F**king Die" Tweet

  A professor at a Connecticut college said he was forced to flee the state after he received death threats for appearing to endorse the idea that first responders to last week’s congressional shooting should have let the victims "f**king die” instead of treating them, according to the Hartford Courant.

  Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams shared a link to a medium post which suggested that “bigots” should be left to die in life threatening situations. The medium article was accompanied by a photo of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was wounded in the shooting, along with the title “Let Them F**ing Die,” which Williams later used as a hashtag in his ill-conceived posts.

  

  In the post, the author describes a list of disturbing situations in which “bigots” should be left to die, while also encouraging readers to “smile a bit” as these figurative deaths unfold.

  “If you see them drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each other: do nothing,” the article instructs readers."

  “Least of all put your life on the line for theirs, and do not dare think doing so, putting your life on the line for theirs, gives you reason to feel celestial. Save the life of those that would kill you is the opposite of virtuous. Let. Them. Fucking. Die. And smile a bit when you do.”

  Williams also expressed his rage toward white people in a series of tweets. In one, Williams said he was “fed the f**k up” with white “bigots” who demean minorities, immigrants and LGBTQ people. In another, he said the time had come to “put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system.”

  

   

  

   

  As a result of the posts, which gained national attention, Williams said he has received more than 1,000 threats. The situation briefly forced the closure of Trinity College’s campus in downtown Hartford Thursday morning. The campus had reopened by late morning, though Hartford police provided heightened security.

  

  Unlike the administration at Evergreen State College in Washington, which has been willing to countenance threatening behavior and other provocations from its students, Trinity’s administrators have promised to hold Williams accountable for his actions, promising in a statement that there would be “an investigation" into Williams' conduct.

  "The Dean of the Faculty will review this matter and advise me on whether college procedures or policies were broken. I told Professor Williams that in my opinion his use of the hashtag was reprehensible and, at the very least, in poor judgment. No matter its intent, it goes against our fundamental values as an institution, and I believe its effect is to close minds rather than open them."

  Williams said he regrets the affect his actions have had on his family.

  "It was overwhelming for my family," Williams said. "I have to look out for family. I've got young kids."

  But rather than apologize for offending millions of Americans – not to mention the families of Scalise and the other four victims of the rampage shooting at an early-morning practice of the House Republicans baseball team – Williams claims his tweet was misinterpreted. He says the tweet was a response to the fatal shooting of a pregnant woman in Seattle who was armed with a knife.

  And what’s worse, he has committed 100% to playing the victim, saying that he’s considering filing a lawsuit.

  "This is about free speech as well as academic freedom," he said. "From my perspective, I'm considering whether I should file a defamation against Campus Reform, the site that first shared Williams’ posts.

   

  "The black community is beside itself all over the country with the constant killing. It doesn't matter what we do, we still be killed, we still go to jail. Just being black and living is a crime. That's what seems to be the problem," Williams told the Courant.

  Read the full text of Trinity's statement below:

  Dear Members of the Trinity Community,

   

  As many of you are aware, a set of social media posts by one of our faculty members has resulted in a loud and public rebuke and landed Trinity College in a national spotlight, both in the media and across various social media platforms. I understand the concerns many have expressed, and I’m especially grateful for the inquiries we’ve received from members of our community who’ve asked whether what they’re reading and hearing is accurate. To be clear, both personally and on behalf of the College that I represent, I do not condone hate speech or calls to incite violence.

   

  I’ve spoken with Johnny Williams, who has been a sociology professor at Trinity since 1996. I wanted to hear directly from him about the messages he posted and what has transpired since. It is important to clarify a few details. On June 16, a writer who goes by the name “Son of Baldwin”—and who is not Johnny Williams—wrote a piece for Medium.com that cited another writer’s perspective on the shooting that occurred at the Congressional baseball practice in Virginia last week. The Medium piece went on to explore broader issues concerning race and the relationship between “victims of bigotry” and “bigots.” The piece culminated with a call to show indifference to the lives of bigots. That call was reprehensible, and any such suggestion is abhorrent and wholly contrary to Trinity’s values.

   

  While Professor Williams did not write that article, he did share it on his personal social media accounts this week, and he did so with the use of a hashtag that connected directly to the inflammatory conclusion of that article. Professor Williams, who teaches about race and racism, shared the article on his personal Twitter account using that hashtag; he also shared it on his personal Facebook page.

   

  The Dean of the Faculty will review this matter and advise me on whether college procedures or policies were broken. I told Professor Williams that in my opinion his use of the hashtag was reprehensible and, at the very least, in poor judgment. No matter its intent, it goes against our fundamental values as an institution, and I believe its effect is to close minds rather than open them.

   

  I want to underscore that what we seek is to build a diverse college community that is welcoming to all viewpoints and backgrounds and that engages in civil discourse on even the most vexing issues. That requires that we continue to uphold our fundamental belief in academic freedom and support our community members’ constitutional right to free speech. But our aspirations for the community we want to be also demand we take particular care with the words we use and the contexts in which we use them.

   

  This incident has caused distress on our campus and beyond; threats of violence have been directed to Professor Williams and to our campus community, neither of which is an acceptable response.

   

  I denounce hate speech in all its forms, I will explore all options to resolve this matter, and I will be back in touch with our community members with our decisions.
   

  

  

• FEMA Is Preparing For A Solar Storm That Would Take Out The Grid

  Authored by Maco Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) is planning for a massive solar storm that would be so strong, it would take down the power grid.

  

  Noting that the rare, yet “high-consequence” scenario has “the potential for catastrophic impact on our nation and FEMA’s ability to respond.”

  According to unpublished FEMA documents obtained by Government Attic, a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) database and non-profit organization, the Department of Homeland Security agency once mapped out a disaster plan for the occurrence of another geomagnetic “super storm” like the one the occurred in 1859.

  Back then, the sun flung a giant plume of magnetized plasma out into space. The coronal mass ejection (CME), the sibling of a massive solar flare, traveled the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth in only 17.6 hours. Today, it’s known as the Carrington Event and is remembered by the largest geomagnetic storm in the history of recorded space weather.

  No other storm has matched it in speed or magnitude. When the shock wave of accelerated particles arrived on September 1, 1859, the disturbances to Earth’s magnetosphere were so great that telegraph communications across Europe and North America went on the fritz. Sparks leaped from the telegraph infrastructure, and machinery was so inundated with electric currents that operators were able to transmit messages while disconnected from battery power. Compasses even wiggled, and brilliant auroras were reportedly seen as far south as the Caribbean.

  But that doesn’t mean the ill-equipped government isn’t preparing for the inevitability, in fact, they are. Despite our superior ability to predict these events, the stakes are exponentially higher in a modern, hyper-connected world.  FEMA predicts that a geomagnetic storm of this intensity would be “a catastrophe in slow motion.” Space weather events happen all the time, and many are harmless. For example, an event causing radio blackouts, solar radiation storms, and geomagnetic storms would be abnormal, yet the ripple effects on the power grid and communications would severely limit FEMA’s ability to respond to a nationwide crisis.

  Within 20 minutes of the CME’s occurrence, FEMA estimates that 15 percent of the satellite fleet would be lost due to solar panel damage.

   

  Solar radiation from the incoming storm would add “3-5 years worth of exposure” to the panels, degrading older satellites to the point of inoperability.

   

  Low orbiting satellites, such as Iridium and Globalstar, may be less affected. Cellular service would be disrupted, and a loss of GPS capabilities could complicate FEMA operations.

   

  –Motherboard

  Should a storm of this magnitude hit, there wouldn’t be much the government can do. And of course, this would be the perfect opportunity to round up the masses for a trip to a FEMA camp. Individuals would need to band together to help get things back online, but it would all take time.  Those in heavily populated regions would be hit the hardest and evacuation of over 100 million people would be impossible, and even if it was, there would be no unaffected region to send the evacuees – other than the FEMA camps.

  Prepare yourself, because the mere fact that this government document exists could mean that there is something we don’t know.

  

  

• Whites Are The Slowest Growing US Group; Will Lose Majority Around 2040

  The median age in most areas of the US is rising, while the population is growing more diverse, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday. America’s median age – the age where half of the population is half younger and half older – rose from 35.3 years on April 1, 2000, to 37.9 years on July 1, 2016, according to the data. Meanwhile, the population of White Americans is growing at a much slower rate than most minority groups: The number of whites living in the US increased by 0.5% last year to 256 million. By comparison, the Asian population grew 3% to 21.4 million, the black or African American population grew by 1.2% to 46.8 million and the Hispanic population grew 2% to 57.5 million.

  The US isn’t the only country struggling with an aging population. With average marriage ages rising, and economic circumstances making it more difficult for couples in developed economies like the US, Japan and Europe to afford children, many countries are facing a demographic crunch in social welfare programs. But nowhere is this more of an immediate problem than China, where – thanks to its decades-long one-child policy – the working-age population will soon fall off a cliff.

  

  [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

  In the US, the baby-boom generation is largely responsible for this trend, according to Peter Borsella, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. “Baby boomers began turning 65 in 2011 and will continue to do so for many years to come.”

  Indeed, the number of US residents aged 65 and over grew from 35 million in 2000, to 49.2 million in 2016, accounting for 12.4 percent and 15.2 percent of the total population, respectively.

  With growth rates for white Americans expected to remain subdued, the Associated Press says they will cease being the majority ethnic group some time after 2040, though they will remain a plurality of the population.

  The youngest cohort of America's population is also one of its fastest-growing: The Census report showed that children in the US born from 2001 through 2016 were the nation's fastest-growing age group, with a 6.8 percent jump in the year beginning July 1, 2015.

  Putting its own spin on the census data, The New York Times compared each of the US’s 3,000 counties with the national population at different points in America's history – as well as its future. The Times found that counties with populations that are about 75 percent white tend to reflect the America of the 1970s and 1980s. Those where the population is half white and more diverse tend to reflect the (projected) America of the 2040s and 2050s.

  

  For example, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is 84% White, resembles America in 1989. Meanwhile, Tooele County, in Northwestern Utah, more closely resembles America from 1971, when the population was both less diverse and younger. Seminole County, near Orlando, Fla., most closely matches the nation’s current mix, followed by Richmond County, aka Staten Island, in New York City.

  Urban counties, which tend to be more diverse than suburban or exurban areas, more closely resemble the America of the future. Cook County, Ill., closely resembles what demographers believe the US will be like in 2047. Maricopa County, Ariz., resembles the demographics of the nation in 2020.

  

  

• Bitcoin In Perspective: Bill Gates Worth More, Gold 200 Times More

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  An interesting article on HowMuch puts the Bitcoin phenomenon into proper perspective.

  Google founder Larry Page’s net worth beats bitcoin’s entire market cap. Microsoft founder Bill Gates’s net worth is double Bitcoin.

  

  Please consider The Bitcoin Economy, in Perspective.

  Last year, Bitcoin became more stable than gold, and earlier this year, the price of a Bitcoin surpassed that of an ounce of gold for the first time. Currently, all the bitcoin in the world is worth $41 billion. If that amount is hard to grasp, just think of it as one Larry Page – because $41 billion also happens to be the net worth of the guy who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin.

   

  Bill Gates, the richest man in the world is worth $86 billion, or the net worth of Larry Page and Bitcoin combined – with enough change to buy the L.A. Lakers, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Chicago Cubs and the Solomon Islands (not a sports team, but an entire country).

   

  Money, of course, is fiduciary, which means it only has as much value as the trust we place in it. The same goes for gold: it derives its value solely from its rarity, combined with its desirability. The current world supply of mined gold is around 171,300 metric tonnes, which could be molded into a cube with sides of about 68 feet (20.7m). Its total value? Currently around $8.2 trillion. Or about 200 times the total value of Bitcoin.

   

  Does that sound overly dramatic? If the see-sawing rise of Bitcoin tells us anything, it is that people are losing their trust in money, and other traditional measures of wealth. Let’s talk again when the total value of all cryptocurrencies surpasses that of the world’s supply of gold.

  Cramer Yet Again

  Jim Cramer said the value of a Bitcoin could hit $1 million. The price is currently at $2629.

  If it the price of a bitcoin did hit $1 million, its total market cap value would go up to about $15 trillion.

  I spoofed Cramer’s analysis in Jim Cramer Goes Batty “Bitcoin May Hit $1,000,000”: Act Now Before It’s Too Late!

  It’s far more likely that bitcoin crashes to $100 than rises to $1 million.

  

  

• Hillary Not "Out Of The Woods": Arkansas Bar Considers Disciplinary Action Over Email Scandal

  It was just about a year ago that James Comey boldly consolidated the roles of investigator, lawyer, judge and jury when he announced that, although Hillary was “extremely careless” in her mishandling of classified State Department emails, no reasonable prosecutor would be willing to bring charges against her. 

  And even though she got a free pass from the former FBI Director, Hillary may not be “out of the woods” just yet.  As The Washington Times points out, a New York attorney has filed a “misconduct complaint” against Clinton with the Arkansas bar accusing her of “dishonest behavior” and “lying under oath”…allegations that could result in disciplinary actions by the middle of next month.

  But the issue continues to dog her, not only at the State Department, but as a lawyer.

   

  Ty Clevenger, a New York lawyer, filed an attorney misconduct complaint last year against Mrs. Clinton in Arkansas, accusing her of dishonest behavior and lying under oath in testimony to Congress.

   

  In an email Wednesday, Michael E. Harmon, deputy director of the state bar’s office of professional conduct, told Mr. Clevenger he’s still working on the matter. “It is my hope to have something to you by the middle of July at the latest,” he wrote.

  Clevenger has also asked for discipline in other venues against Clinton’s lawyers during the email fiasco: David Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson.

  

   

  Of course, this follows news from just a couple of days ago that the State Department has also opened a formal inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information on her private email server. Clinton, who has repeatedly blamed the FBI’s handling of the inquiry for her embarrassing defeat in November, is now facing the possibility of having her top-level security clearance revoked – a penalty that echoes the investigation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

  Here’s Fox:

  “The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides.

   

  Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.
  Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confirmed to Fox News the department’s formal inquiry.

   

  Meanwhile, Grassley’s committee launched its own inquiry into Clinton’s handling of emails, an inquiry that began in March. Grassley cited among his concerns the July 5 statement of former FBI Director James Comey that the agency found Clinton and her staff members were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

  So, perhaps it makes some sense to ‘stay in the woods’ for a while longer?
  

  Hillary Clinton: “I am ready to come out of the woods”

  Please just no. We are fed up with the Clintons. pic.twitter.com/YOMa5gXfKO

  — The Rouser (@RouserNews) March 18, 2017

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• The Left Melts Down After Trump Declares: 'There Are No Comey Tapes'

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  I’ve procured the full rundown for those of you interested in consuming the tears of liberals. This is the worst meltdown on the left since Trump took two scoops of iced cream, while giving everyone else 1.

  In summary, several weeks ago Trump alluded to the existence of tapes, recordings of conversations between himself and Comey. Today, he admitted, after teasing the media for weeks, that there weren’t any tapes. Meanwhile, coal miners in Virginia and programmers in San Francisco don’t give two shits whether there are tapes or not. The point: this is an issue that only political freaks and media shills care about. The net result is total and complete meltdown — with the media sojourning deep into the crevasses of despair — calling the President a liar, a suicide bomber, to demanding that Robert Mueller investigates these so called tapes — asking whether Trump intimidated a witness (Comey).

  The crimes of Trump keep piling up, ‘self-inflicted wounds’ and Russian nightmares plague DC, in an everlasting melodic symphony of Trump crashing whipped cream pies into the faces of his petty enemies.

  (Note: he even forces the media to turn their cameras off during the daily press briefings).

  MSNBC: Trump is a suicide bomber.

  CNN: Trump lied.

  Jake Tapper implies Trump lies all the time.

  MSNBC: Trump is like candy crush, wasting our time.

  Greta has a serious meltdown. Senator Markey demands Mueller investigates Trump over tapes. HAHAHAAHAHAH

  “This is stunning. Just stunning. Americans deserve better from their president.”
  ~@greta on Donald Trump admitting there are no tapes

  — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 22, 2017

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  Schiff: Trump can’t be a reality teevee host anymore (that’s where you’re wrong kiddo).
  

  Olbermann (sigh)
  

  

• Visualizing The Jeff Bezos Empire In One Giant Chart

  With a fortune largely tied to his 78.9 million shares of Amazon, the net worth of Jeff Bezos continues to be on the rise.

  Just days ago, Amazon shares reached all-time highs after the company’s ambitious acquisition of Whole Foods. This puts Bezos just $4 billion away from displacing Bill Gates as the world’s number one billionaire – and if the stock continues upwards, he could take the title any day.

  We’ve previously showed how Bezos built Amazon from scratch, but as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, today’s infographic focuses on the extent and reach of Jeff Bezos and his Amazon Empire.

  

  Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

   

  ALL STREAMS LEAD TO AMAZON

  Jeff Bezos makes investments and acquisitions through multiple vehicles:

  Amazon makes acquisitions and investments that relate to the company’s core business and future ambitions. This includes acquisitions of Whole Foods ($13.7 billion in 2017), Zappos.com ($1.2 billion in 2009), Twitch.tv ($970 million in 2014), and Kiva Systems ($780 million in 2012). It also includes investments in everything form failed dot-com company Kozmo.com (2000) to Twilio, which successfully IPO’d in 2016.

   

  Bezos Expeditions manages Jeff Bezos’ venture capital investments. Over the years, this venture arm has put money into Twitter, Domo, Juno Therapeutics, Workday, General Fusion, Rethink Robotics, Business Insider, MakerBot, and Stack Overflow. More recent investments include GRAIL, a startup that recently raised over $900 million to cure cancer before it happens, as well as EverFi, an edtech startup.

   

  Jeff Bezos also invests money on a personal level. He was an angel investor in Google in 1998, and has also put money in Uber and Airbnb. (Note: these last two companies are listed on the Bezos Expeditions website, but on Crunchbase they are listed as personal investments.)

   

  Nash Holdings LLC is the private company owned by Bezos that bought The Washington Post for $250 million.

   

  Bezos Family Foundation is run by Jeff Bezos’ parents, and is funded through Amazon stock. It focuses on early education, and has also made an investment in LightSail Education’s $11 million Series B round.

  It’s also worth noting that Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is competing with SpaceX in mankind’s final frontier.

  EARLY GROCERY AMBITIONS

  While the Whole Foods acquisition is the latest talking point for Amazon, it is certainly not the company’s first foray into the groceries business.

  Interestingly enough, the company actually invested heavily in HomeGrocer.com in 1999, a company that delivered groceries from large warehouses to homes. Sales peaked at $1.5 million per day, but unfortunately HomeGrocer couldn’t make it through the Dot-com bust.

  This postponed Amazon’s grocery ambitions, but it wouldn’t stop them.

  

  

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• Schaeuble Warns US Pullback Could "End Our Liberal World Order"

  Less than a month after German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “Europe must take its fate into its own hands,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble implored US President Donald Trump to reconsider his “America First” policy, claiming that a pullback by the US would risk the destruction of “our liberal world order” by ceding influence to the Chinese and the Russians.

  Trump’s hostility toward his European partners has strained relations between the US and its Continental allies. Since taking office, Trump has insulted fellow G-7 and NATO leaders, pulled out of the Paris Accord and attempted to ban travelers and refugees from six Muslim majority countries. Though Trump has treated at least one NATO leader with respect: Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, whom he honored with a Rose Garden press conference.

  

  Bloomberg described Schaeuble’s comments as “one of the strongest expressions of concern among European policy makers that President Donald Trump’s administration is disengaging the US from its global roles on trade, climate change and security.”

  “I doubt whether the United States truly believes that the world order would be equally sound if China or Russia were to fill the gaps left by the US, and if China and Russia were simply given a free hand to dominate the spheres of influence that they have defined for themselves,” Schaeuble, 74, said in a speech at the American Academy in Berlin, a think tank that promotes U.S.-German ties. “That would be the end of our liberal world order.”

  Schaeuble also claimed that maintaining global security is in the best interest of the US.

  “It is surely in the United States’ own interest to ensure security and economic stability in its markets, both in Europe and around the world…[t]his is a basic precondition if the US wants to increase its exports and cut its trade deficit.”

  Schauble was speaking to an audience at the American Academy of Berlin that included Henry Kissinger and Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In three weeks, Merkel will host Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and host of other world leaders at a G-20 summit in Hamburg.

  As Bloomberg reported, Merkel pushed back against some of Trump's comments regarding the US-German trade relationship on Wednesday during an event in Berlin marking the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. She defended free trade, claiming that protectionism and isolationism “impede innovation, and in the long run this is disadvantageous for everybody.”

  

  Trump has attacked Germany’s trade surplus as “very bad” and said he would stop German car companies from selling “millions of cars” in the US. Data form the Census Bureau show the United States had a $65 billion trade deficit in goods with Germany in 2016, the third-largest negative balance after a $69 billion shortfall with Japan and a $347 billion deficit with China.

  However, there’s an element of hypocrisy in Schauble and Merkel’s warnings about China. Germany has done nothing to stymie China's rise. It has only helped elevate China’s standing on the global stage by embracing it as an ally in the fight against climate change and as a partner in trade. To wit: China was Germany’s largest trading partner last year. eclipsing the US.

  Merkel also said that she’s open to discussing proposals for a joint “euro-area budget” with French President Emmanuel Macron – stealing a policy position from her political rival, Social Democrat leader Martin Schultz. A federal budget would help benefit the euro-area’s weakest economies, like Greece, Portugal and Italy, but it would also offset some of the immense advantages that Germany reaps as part of the monetary union. German citizens would effectively subsidize their European neighbors, though Germany would still benefit from a weaker currency.

  According to Bloomberg, Merkel’s comments come at a time of “special significance.” Merkel is seeking a fourth term in office in September, when Germany is holding a national election. But she’s been losing ground in the polls to Schultz and his social democrats. Worried about her standing, it seems Merkel has hit upon a new campaign strategy: Distract Germans from their domestic woes by bashing the US.

  

  

• Ever Closer To War

  Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has warned that the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear war is closer than since 1953. As explained by the Bulletin, in 1947 it devised the Doomsday Clock «using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet».

  Each year «the decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates». In 1953 the Clock was at two minutes to midnight. In the worst years of the cold war it was at 3 minutes to midnight when, in 1984 it was recorded that «US-Soviet relations reach their iciest point in decades. Dialogue between the two superpowers virtually stops. Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off…»

  And now, in 2017, it is apparent that channels of communication with Russia are being deliberately cut off — and the hands of the Doomsday Clock have been placed at just two-and-a-half minutes from midnight.

  Disaster looms.

  And as it looms, the United States Senate is heightening its global confrontational approach and announced that it intends to penalise Russia for a number of supposed misdemeanours.

  Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS News that the Senate will «punish Russia for interfering in our elections» — concerning which allegation there has not been one shred of proof provided by anyone. All-embracing inquiries are under way, of course, but be assured that if there were the slightest, tiniest, most microscopic morsel of actual proof of any interference, it would by now have been leaked to the media and made headline news.

  Senator Graham excelled himself by telling President Trump, via CBS News, that «You’re the commander in chief. You need to stand up to Russia. We’re never going to reset our relationship with Russia until we punish them for trying to destroy democracy. And that starts with more sanctions».

  Then the CBS interviewer brought up the subject of the many inquiries into allegations of Trump-Russia plotting and mentioned that a Democrat had said the investigations were a «fishing expedition… What’s your response to that?»

  The Senator replied «That’s not your, none of your business. We’re going to do what we think is best. The Russians interfered in our election. They’re doing it all over the world. No evidence yet that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. I don’t believe the president colluded with the Russians, just because of the way he behaves. There's zero evidence that President Trump did anything wrong with the Russians. There’s overwhelming evidence that Russia is trying to destroy democracy here and abroad. And if you forgive and forget with Putin, you’re going to get more of the same and you’re going to entice Iran and China to come in 2018 and 2020».

  The US Senate believes there is «zero evidence» that President Trump had help from Russia in his election campaign — which is true — but also thinks there is «overwhelming evidence» that Russia is trying to influence voting in America, although there is not a shred of proof to that effect.

  The Senator spoke with the authority, force and majesty of the US Senate, and the world has to accept that his pronouncements represent the wishes of the legislators of his mighty nation which is intent on imposing harsher sanctions on Russia. As observed by Forbes, the new Bill «punishes Russian oil and gas firms even more than the current sanctions regime… Russia has no friends on Capitol Hill».

  It is intriguing that the sanctions focus on oil and gas production, and Bloomberg reported that Germany and Austria consider «the measures sought to bolster US economic interests and included an unacceptable intervention in the region’s energy sector». In an unprecedented expression — indeed, explosion — of disapproval, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern said in a joint statement that «Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, not the United States of America… instruments for political sanctions should not be tied to economic interests» and that the Senate’s amendment heralded a »new and very negative quality in European-American relations».

  As London’s Financial Times reported, «the Russia sanctions outline opposition to Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that will double capacity for Gazprom… to supply gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea. The measures could affect European energy companies, including Shell, Engie and OMV, which are financing the pipeline. Shares in all four companies tumbled on Thursday».

  Washington’s mission of lucrative destruction was partly achieved, but that’s where we come to the essence of the matter. The part of the Sanctions Bill involving Russia was an add-on to a series of vindictive measures against Iran, but it seemed a good idea to also sanction Russia’s oil and gas production, because nobody would benefit more than the oil and gas companies of the United States.

  Bloomberg explained that the Nord Stream pipeline «would compete with US exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe». And the Senate made it plain that the US government «should prioritize the export of United States energy resources in order to create American jobs, help United States allies and partners, and strengthen United States foreign policy».

  It’s difficult to see how the Senate’s arrogant dabbling might «help allies and partners,» but those in America who own energy resources and want to continue making vast profits continue to help their allies and partners in the Senate and the House. Without their financial support, many legislators would never have got to Washington.

  As recorded by Open Secrets, companies closely associated with oil and gas production gave US politicians over fifty million dollars in 2015-2016 to help their democratic election:

  Top Contributors, 2015-2016

  

  Source: By kind permission of the Center for Responsive Politics

  And Senator Lindsay Graham was given a bundle by many commercial organisations, headed by Nelson, Mullins, whose $254,247 in 1993-2016 no doubt helped him along the way. Nelson Mullins, incidentally, has attorneys who «have experience in advising electrical and pipeline providers on legal matters». Then he got $175,605 from SCANA, which is «a $9 billion energy-based holding company, based in Cayce, South Carolina… Its businesses include… natural gas utility operations and other energy-related businesses». Another of Senator Graham’s generous sponsors is the Fluor Corporation ($94,801) which «understands the critical success factors driving onshore oil and gas production and terminal businesses, providing practical solutions to maximize project investment».

  It doesn’t matter to these people, or to the legislators they’ve bought with their donations, that the Doomsday Clock has ticked closer to the midnight of Armageddon, and that the hostile approach of the United States is alienating a proud nation that can take only so much before it reacts against Washington’s aggressive confrontation. The sleazy hypocrisy of US legislators is legendary, but it is their ignorance greed and arrogance that are worrying.

  While Senator Graham was dancing to the tune of his oil angels, the Washington Post reported that seven percent of American adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows. That is «16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people». The representative of FoodCorps which encourages sensible nourishment said this was unfortunate, and «We still get kids who are surprised that a French fry comes from a potato, or that a pickle is a cucumber. Knowledge is power. Without it, we can’t make informed decisions».

  Just like the US Senate.

  

  

• MiLLeNiaL FaRM…

  

  //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

• The Bustling Theranos Campus

  From the Slope of Hope: I have made no secret of my disdain for Theranos and Elizabeth “Crazy Eyes” Holmes by way of these six past posts. While driving through town, I passed by the gorgeous and expensive Theranos building, and I decided to swing into the parking lot. I was curious, because the one and only other time I had been there, it was totally empty, which I found bizarre for a weekday. But I swung into again and…………

  

  Yep. Not a soul. I tweeted out the photo with the caption, “Thought I would check out the Theranos parking lot to see how they were doing……you can draw your own conclusions.“

  I got a zillion Likes and Retweets, but one in particular made my day………….

  

  Mr. Carreyrou is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed Theranos to the world. When the company was still in a state of utter self-deception, there was a huge company-wide meeting, with Crazy Eyes at the front, and the whole company chanting “Fuck Carreyrou! Fuck Carreyrou!” as Holmes beamed.

  Karma’s a funny thing, ain’t it? Anyway, I’m honored Mr. Carreyrou saw my little tweet, and I hope to sit down and chat with him someday.If we do, I’ll be sure to write about it, with his permission.

  

  

• Is The American Empire's War Machine Running Out Of Steam?

  Authord by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,

  

  “Years of complex operations and the ongoing demands of units in the field have left the armed forces struggling to maintain both operational capacity and high levels of readiness, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office.”

  That’s the opening paragraph of an article published last week. The piece, titled “The US military is struggling to keep up with all its responsibilities,” could just as easily been titled “The American Empire is overextended,” as it thoroughly details the GAO’s negative assessment of the current state of the U.S. war machine.

  Writing that “unrelenting demands from geographic commanders for particular types of forces are disrupting manning, training, and equipping cycles,” the report breaks down how each branch of the military is essentially overburdened and underprepared to fulfill its national security obligations.

  The Air Force, for instance, has reported that less than 50 percent of its forces are at acceptable readiness levels. Additionally, the branch says, it’s short of 1,500 pilots and 3,400 maintenance crewmembers.

  The Marine Corps is also running short of resources, with 80 percent of its aviation units lacking the minimum number of aircraft available for training — with the same trend going for the number of craft ready for wartime.

  The Navy, the GAO found, suffers primarily from the high pace of operations and a lack of funds devoted to maintenance.

  As for the Army, the GAO found that while its level of readiness is generally favorable, the rate at which its readiness is declining is continuing to grow, due in large part to ever-increasing demands from the White House.

  In reporting on the GAO’s evaluation, Business Insider points out that criticism of the United States military’s preparedness for combat doesn’t come from Washington D.C. offices alone, but also from assets on the ground.

  One former trainer at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany, Captain Scott Metz, wrote in a paper published this spring that “many of our multinational partners are more tactically proficient at company level and below than their American counterparts.”

  The captain writes that “several of them are significantly better trained and more prepared for war than we are,” and goes on to detail how a lack of basic training at home bases before troops are deployed overseas could potentially lead to fatal mistakes in combat:

  “They will stop for long periods of time in the open with minimal dispersion. They will not effectively use their dismounted infantry and will likely leave them in the back of vehicles for too long, allowing them to be killed with the vehicle. They also will probably make little use of tactical formations and will not use terrain to their advantage.”

  Summarizing the GAO report, Business Insider writes that the root of the U.S. military’s problem is that it’s slowly — but surely — losing its edge:

  “Though the US armed forces maintains definite advantages over peers and other forces in technology, training, and capabilities, years of operations and, according to many officials, reductions in funding have imperiled the US military’s ability overcome opponents and fulfill its missions.”

  And while many would rejoice at the news of an American war machine that’s running out of steam, it’s important to remember that it’s reports such as these from the GAO that are held up as justification for that very same machine to receive infusions of resources.

  That is, in fact, the argument the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made before the House Armed Services Committee this month.

  “In just a few years, if we don’t change our trajectory, we will lose our qualitative and quantitative competitive advantage,” General Joseph Dunford said, adding that the U.S. military needs “sustained, sufficient and predictable funding,” or else it will lose its “ability to project power.”

  

  

• BLUMENTHAL THEORIZES: CONSPIRACY CHARGES POSSIBLE FOR TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Back in 1997, Harold J. Nicholson, a former employee for the CIA, was sentenced to 23 years in jail for conspiring with the Russian government. Tonight on Hardball, Sen. Blumenthal went off the deep end of his own conspiratorial bend — proclaiming that both Flynn, Kushner and others in the Trump White House could succumb to conspiracy charges.

  When discussing the matter of Flynn, the host, Chris Mathews, asked the Senator if he should be given immunity, so that he could spill the beans on the President — inferring that Trump had something to hide that Flynn knew about. Both Blumenthal and Mathews then started to theorize, incredulously as if disconnected from the real world, a grande Russian scheme had taken place — all at the behest of Trump, that could land Flynn 15 years in prison.

  Mathews then staggered on, praising the press for providing the public with leaks, revealing what he deemed to be ‘Russian shenanigans’, saying ‘the press should be commended’.

  ‘All these Russian things going, all the time, and the only reason why we know about them is the press.’

  Hmm, I wonder why democrats keep losing elections.

  

• Millennials' Savings Rate Climbs For First Time In A Decade

  America’s beleaguered millennials received a rare gift on Tuesday: A scrap of good news. Even with the aggregate student debt burden eclipsing the $1 trillion mark, and wages pressures across the US economy remaining relatively subdued, a new survey from Bankrate.com claims that Americans’ savings habits are improving for the first time in a decade, with the strongest gains recorded among the 18-26 demographic.

  Indeed, after almost a decade, Americans may finally be turning the corner on saving money. More than 30 percent of them say they have enough tucked away to cover six months’ worth of expenses—a seven-year high for this measure of financial calamity preparedness, a financial planning favorite, according to a Bloomberg report on the data.

  “Ever since the recession, we’ve noticed in surveys that people realize how important it is to have emergency savings, but for so many years post-recession they just weren’t making any progress,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, which released the survey on Tuesday. Now a broader swath of people are finally making headway, he said.

  “[A poll] of 1,003 Americans, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International [at the behest of Bankrate], showed impressive savings habits among millennials, particularly younger ones, McBride said. Thirty-one percent of Americans age 18-26 have enough saved to cover three to five months’ worth of expenses. (Some, however, are likely living at home or with roommates—or counting their trust funds.)

   

  “Millennials have a savings discipline that the preceding generations lacked,” he said.

   

  “They have a greater aversion to debt, they’re not as consumption-focused, and they have a greater propensity toward saving than we’ve seen in some time.”

  To be sure, millennials’ quest to save money is made easier by living with their parents, as nearly a third of them do, allowing them to save on rent, which is rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation. Millennials' age bestows another advantage: When they lose their jobs, they typically don’t struggle with long stretches of unemployment, unlike their parents (Americans aged 53-62) who are finding it increasingly difficult to secure a new job after being fired or laid off. Given their age, savings rates among this demographic – which Bloomberg has labeled “the young Boomers” – are particularly concerning, as only 32 percent say they have nothing set aside, while the same percentage say they have enough to cover at least six months.

  

  In terms of savings, Boomers were hit the hardest by the financial crisis, which wiped out the financial cushion – not to mention jobs – for many members of the demographic. Those who managed to stay employed, however, still have a cash hoard in place.

  As McBride tells it, many Americans made solid progress paying down debt or refinancing after the recession. Now they’re are putting more money into savings, but they’re also starting to add to their debt burden.

  

  “It’s gone almost full circle,” McBride said. “People started feeling better about their level of debt several years ago, but in the past 12 to 18 months, debt loads started to grow again, and now the comfort level people have with their debt isn’t as strong.”

  When comparing the savings rate as a percentage of disposable income, the picture is decidedly less rosy. That rate has turned up a bit and is well above its 2007 levels. But at the same time, debt on household balance sheets has been building.

  Here are some more highlights from the report via Bloomberg:

  • “The percentage of Americans with some savings, but not enough to cover three months’ worth of expenses, rose to 20 percent, up from 18 percent last year. The percentage of Americans with enough to cover expenses for three to five months inched up to 17 percent from 16 percent.”
  • “As you’d expect, older boomers, those age 63 and older, are the most likely to have at least six months’ of expenses saved for an emergency, coming in at 44 percent. Seventeen percent of them reported having nothing set aside for an emergency.”
  • “…almost a third of Generation X—those people between their late 30s and mid-50s—aren’t doing that great. Some 28 percent say they have some savings, but not enough to pay three months’ of expenses.”
  • “A look at emergency savings by region shows the Midwest with the highest percentage of Americans saying they have enough to cover six months of bills. Southerners have the least.”
  • “Lower- to middle-income households, those making $30,000 to $50,000 a year, are more likely to have an adequate cushion than to have no savings at all. Twenty-four percent of these households had saved enough to cover six months’ of expenses, the survey found. An earlier Bankrate.com survey found that 22 percent of these households were saving more than 10 percent of their annual income.”

  Household debt has returned to record highs, according to the most recent quarterly report from the New York Federal Reserve. Total debt held by US households reached $12.73 trillion during the first quarter of 2017, finally surpassing its $12.68 trillion peak reached during the recession in. This marked a$479 billion increase from a year ago, and up $149 billion from Q4 2016 after 11 consecutive quarters of growth since the deleveraging period immediately following the Great Recession.

  Here’s a breakdown of the Fed’s data:

  • Total household indebtedness stood at $12.73 trillion as of March 31, 2017. This increase put overall household debt $50 billion above its previous peak set in the third quarter of 2008 and 14.1 percent above the trough set in the second quarter of 2013.
  • Mortgage balances, the largest component of household debt, reached $8.63 trillion as of March 31, a $147 billion uptick from the fourth quarter of 2016.
  • Balances on home equity lines of credit fell slightly in the first quarter, down $17 billion to $456 billion.
  • Non-housing debt saw mixed changes—an increase of $10 billion in auto loans and $34 billion in student loan balances, and a $15 billion drop in credit card balances.
  • Despite the new nominal all-time high, on a relative basis, household debt remained below past levels in relation to the size of the overall U.S. economy, and in Q1 total debt was 66.9% of GDP, nearly 20% lower compared to 85.4% of GDP in Q3 of 2008.

  
   

  

  

• 64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details Of Iranian Coup

  Authored by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian via ForeignPolicy.com,

  

  Declassified documents released last week shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh, fueling a surge of nationalism which culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.

  The approximately 1,000 pages of documents also reveal for the first time the details of how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy on the ground.

  Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA plot was ultimately about oil. Western firms had for decades controlled the region’s oil wealth, whether Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. When the U.S. firm in Saudi Arabia bowed to pressure in late 1950 and agreed to share oil revenues evenly with Riyadh, the British concession in Iran came under intense pressure to follow suit. But London adamantly refused.

  So in early 1951, amid great popular acclaim, Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. A fuming Great Britain began conspiring with U.S. intelligence services to overthrow Mossadegh and restore the monarchy under the shah. (Though some in the U.S. State Department, the newly-released cables show, blamed British intransigence for the tensions and sought to work with Mossadegh.)

  The coup attempt began on August 15 but was swiftly thwarted. Mossadegh made dozens of arrests. General Fazlollah Zahedi, a top conspirator, went into hiding, and the shah fled the country.

  The CIA, believing the coup to have failed, called it off.

  “Operation has been tried and failed and we should not participate in any operation against Mossadegh which could be traced back to US,” CIA headquarters wrote to its station chief in Iran in  a newly declassified cable sent on August 18, 1953. “Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.”

  That is the cable which Kermit Roosevelt, top CIA officer in Iran, purportedly and famously ignored, according to Malcolm Byrne, who directs the U.S.-Iran Relations Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

  “One guy was in the room with Kermit Roosevelt when he got this cable,” Byrne told Foreign Policy. “[Roosevelt] said no – we’re not done here.” It was already known that Roosevelt had not carried out an order from Langley to cease and desist. But the cable itself and its contents were not previously known.

  The consequences of his decision were momentous. The next day, on August 19, 1953, with the aid of “rented” crowds widely believed to have been arranged with CIA assistance, the coup succeeded. Iran’s nationalist hero was jailed, the monarchy restored under a Western-friendly shah, and Anglo-Iranian oil — renamed British Petroleum — tried to get its fields back. (But didn’t really: Despite the coup, nationalist pushback against a return to foreign control of oil was too much, leaving BP and other majors to share Iran’s oil wealth with Tehran.)

  Operation Ajax has long been a bogeyman for conservatives in Iran — but also for liberals. The coup fanned the flames of anti-Western sentiment, which reached a crescendo in 1979 with the U.S. hostage crisis, the final overthrow of the shah, and the creation of the Islamic Republic to counter the “Great Satan.”

  The coup alienated liberals in Iran as well. Mossadegh is widely considered to be the closest thing Iran has ever had to a democratic leader. He openly championed democratic values and hoped to establish a democracy in Iran. The elected parliament selected him as prime minister, a position he used to reduce the power of the shah, thus bringing Iran closer in line with the political traditions that had developed in Europe. But any further democratic development was stymied on August 19.

  The U.S government long denied involvement in the coup. The State Department first released coup-related documents in 1989, but edited out any reference to CIA involvement. Public outrage coaxed a government promise to release a more complete edition, and some material came out in 2013. Two years later, the full installment of declassified material was scheduled — but might have interfered with Iran nuclear talks and were delayed again, Byrne said. They were finally released last week, though numerous original CIA telegrams from that period are known to have disappeared or been destroyed long ago.

  Byrne said that the long delay is due to several factors. Intelligence services are always concerned about protecting “sources and methods,” said Byrne, meaning the secret spycraft that enables them to operate on the ground. The CIA also needed to protect its relationship with British intelligence, which may have wished some of the material safeguarded.

  Beyond final proof of CIA involvement, there’s another very interesting takeaway in the documents, said Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian studies at Stanford University: New details on the true political leanings of Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, a cleric and leading political figure in the 1950s.

  In the Islamic Republic, clerics are always the good guys. Kashani has long been seen as one of the heroes of nationalism during that period. As recently as January of this year, Iran’s supreme leader praised Kashani’s role in the nationalization of oil.

  Kashani’s eventual split from Mossadegh is widely known. Religious leaders in the country feared the growing power of the communist Tudeh Party, and believed that Mossadegh was too weak to save the country from the socialist threat.

  But the newly released documents show that Kashani wasn’t just opposed to Mossadegh — he was also in close communication with the Americans throughout the period leading up to the coup, and he actually appears to have requested financial assistance from the United States, though there is no record of him receiving any money. His request was not previously known.

  On the make-or-break day of August 19, “Kashani was critical,” said Milani. “On that day Kashani’s forces were out in full force to defeat Mossadegh.”

   

  

  

• Emerging Market 'Risk' Has Never Been Lower, But…

  As global central bank exuberance suppresses equity volatility, emerging markets are catching up (or down).

  Expected uncertainty in Emerging Market Equities has never been lower… (in fact EEM implied vol is now less than half its lifetime average of 29.7%)

  

  However, as Bloomberg notes, the Federal Reserve’s hawkish posture last week sets the stage for an uptick in developing-nation volatility in the second half of the year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategists said.

  Oh and there’s one more thing…

  

  A resurgence in EM vol is baked in the cake, no matter what happens, as China’s collapsing credit impulse begins to ripple across the world.

  

  

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• "Brexit Is A Lose-Lose" – George Soros Slams Brits' "False Hopes" As UK Economy Nears "Tipping Point"

  A day after Brexit negotiations officially began, and seemingly unable to get over the result of democracy, George Soros is once again rattling his op-ed sabre, proclaiming the ignorance of British 'brexit' voters is about to get its come-uppance…

  Economic reality is beginning to catch up with the false hopes of many Britons.

   

  One year ago, when a slim majority voted for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, they believed the promises of the popular press, and of the politicians who backed the Leave campaign, that Brexit would not reduce their living standards. Indeed, in the year since, they have managed to maintain those standards by running up household debt.

   

  This worked for a while, because the increase in household consumption stimulated the economy. But the moment of truth for the UK economy is fast approaching.

  

  Soros said Britain’s eventual exit from the EU will take at least five years to complete, during which the country will probably hold another election.

  “If all went well, the two parties may want to remarry even before they have divorced,” he wrote.

  Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, in a speech at London’s Mansion House on Tuesday, said domestic inflation pressures remain subdued and signaled he isn’t in a hurry to raise interest rates. In his first major comments in six weeks, he also said he wants to see how the economy responds to the “reality of Brexit negotiations.” However, Soros warns that time's up…

  “We are fast approaching the tipping point that characterizes all unsustainable economic developments,”

   

  “The fact is that Brexit is a lose-lose proposition, harmful both to Britain and the European Union. It cannot be undone, but people can change their minds. Apparently, this is happening.”

  If the Brits had just left it all up to him and his elite brethren, everything would be awesome we are sure… and Soros has a final solution…

  If May wants to remain in power, she must change her approach to the Brexit negotiations. And there are signs that she is prepared to do so.

   

  By approaching the negotiations in a conciliatory spirit, May could reach an understanding with the EU on the agenda and agree to continue as a member of the single market for a period long enough to carry out all the legal work that will be needed. This would be a great relief to the EU, because it would postpone the evil day when Britain’s absence would create an enormous hole in the EU’s budget. That would be a win-win arrangement.

  Simple enough – despite the majority of Brist now in favor of Brexit, you should all shut up and do as your told!

  

  

• Leading The Multipolar Revolution: How Russia And China Are Creating A New World Order

  Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Stratgeic Culture Foundation,

  The last thirty days have shown another kind of world that is engaging in cooperation, dialogue and diplomatic efforts to resolve important issues. The meeting of the members of the Belt and Road Initiative laid the foundations for a physical and electronic connectivity among Eurasian countries, making it the backbone of sustainable and renewable trade development based on mutual cooperation. A few weeks later, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Astana outlined the necessary conditions for the success of the Chinese project, such as securing large areas of the Eurasian block and improving dialogue and trust among member states. The following AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) meeting in ROK will layout the economical necessities to finance and sustain the BRI projects.

  

  The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have many common features, and in many ways seem complementary. The SCO is an organization that focuses heavily on economic, political and security issues in the region, while the BRI is a collection of infrastructure projects that incorporates three-fifths of the globe and is driven by Beijing's economic might. In this context, the Eurasian block continues to develop the following initiatives to support both the BRI and SCO mega-projects. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CTSO) is a Moscow-based organization focusing mainly on the fight against terrorism, while the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a Beijing-based investment bank that is responsible for generating important funding for Beijing’s long-term initiatives along its maritime routes (ports and canals) and overland routes (road, bridges, railways, pipelines, industries, airports). The synergies between these initiatives find yet another point of convergence in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Together, the SCO, BRI, CTSO, AIIB, and EEU provide a compelling indication of the direction in which humanity is headed, which is to say towards integration, cooperation and peaceful development through diplomacy.

  On the other side we have the «old world order» made up of the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union, the UN, NATO, the WTO, with Washington being the ringmaster at the center of this vision of a world order. It is therefore not surprising that Washington should look askance at these Eurasian initiatives that threaten to deny its central and commanding role in the global order in favor of a greater say by Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi and even Tehran.

  One of the most significant and noteworthy events in the last month, or even in recent years, has been the admission into the SCO of India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers with a history of tension and conflict between them. These two countries are critical to the peaceful and fruitful integration of Eurasia. The slow, two-year process of India and Pakistan’s admission into the SCO benefited greatly from China and Russia’s mediation, culminating in the historical agreement signed by Modi, Sharif, Putin and Xi. This is not to mention Afghanistan’s Ghani being at the same table with Modi and Sharif, representing one of the most infamous locations where Eurasian powers have clashed with each other, acting as an obstacle to the integration and development of the region. The main goal of the new SCO organization is a peaceful mediation between New Delhi and Islamabad, and certainly to reach a wider agreement that can include Afghanistan. Kabul is a good example of how the SCO can offer the ideal framework for achieving a definitive peace settlement. This reflects the sentiment that was expressed during the meeting that took place a few weeks ago in Moscow between Pakistan, India, China, Russia and Afghanistan over the complicated situation in the country. Clearly there are conflicting interests, and it is only through the mediation of Beijing and Moscow that it will be possible to reach a wider agreement and end the 16-year-old conflict.

  Afghanistan is a good example of how the SCO intends to support the BRI. In this sense, it is important to note that Moscow and Beijing have decided to engage in a partnership that looks more like an alliance with long-term projects planned deep into 2030. The extent to which Russia and China are committed to common initiatives and projects can be seen in the BRI, SCO, AIIB and CTSO.

  Security and Development

  Beijing is fully aware that it is impossible to defeat terrorism without laying the foundation for economic growth in underdeveloped countries in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. Terrorist organizations are generally better able to recruit from populations suffering from low income and poor schooling. The SCO is required to manage and control its members’ most unstable areas (Central Asian republics, Afghanistan, India-Pakistan border, Beijing-New Delhi relations) and mediate between parties. The BRI and SCO go hand in hand, one being unable to operate without the other, as Xi and Putin have reiterated.

  The SCO and BRI are both capable of meeting the challenges of economic growth through development and progress. Just looking at the BRI's major projects helps one understand the level and extent of integration that has been agreed. The Eurasian Land Bridge begins in Western China and ends in Western Russia. The China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor begins in Northern China and arrives in Eastern Russia. Central Asia will be connected to Western Asia, which practically means China linking with Turkey. The China-Indochina corridor runs from Southern China to Singapore; and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor starts in Southern China and arrives in India. The nearly completed China-Pakistan corridor starts in south-western China and reaches Pakistan. Finally, the maritime route running from the Chinese coast through to Singapore will reach the Mediterranean in Greece or, in the future, Venice.

  What is evident is that countries like India, Singapore, Turkey and Myanmar, just to name a few, do not wish to miss the opportunity to join this initiative that promises to revolutionize trade and globalization as we know it. Today’s main economic problems, as well as the problem posed by terrorism, stems from the lack of economic growth brought on by a globalization that enriches the elites at the expense of ordinary people. The BRI aims to reinvent globalization, avoiding the protectionist drift that many countries today adopt in response to an aggressive and failed approach to globalization. Beijing intends to bring about a radical change to its industries by restructuring its production and boosting its investment in technology, generating more internal consumption, and becoming a country that offers services and not only manufacturing. For this process to be successful, it will be fundamental to reorganize the regional supply chain by transferring production to more competitive countries that will play important roles in sectors such as agriculture, energy, logistics and industrial projects. Southeast Asia in particular seems to offer ideal destinations for transferring Chinese industries.

  In this process of transforming a good part of the globe, some countries currently outside of the SCO organization are nevertheless fully part of the integration schemes and will play a decisive role in the future. In particular, Iran, Turkey and Egypt are the main focus when one looks at their geographical position. The importance of these three countries vis-a-vis the SCO arises mainly from the need of the organization to pursue its work of political expansion and, in the future, to counter militarily the problem of terrorism and its spread. Naturally, countries like Iran and Egypt already devote a large part of their resources towards counteracting the terrorist phenomenon in the Middle East and North Africa. Their entry into the SCO would be seen by many protagonists of the BRI, especially China, as providing the opportunity to expand their projects in areas in North Africa and the Middle East that are currently tumultuous.

  This should not come as a surprise, since even countries like Jordan and Israel have been taken into account by Beijing for important infrastructure projects related to the transport of desalinated water to regions with a high rate of drought. With Israel, the Chinese partnership is stronger than ever, counting on various factors such as technological development and the expansion of several Israeli ports to connect more Chinese maritime routes with destinations in the Mediterranean like Piraeus in Greece and probably Venice in Italy. Turkey's entry into the SCO is mainly aimed at gathering the region's major oil and gas suppliers and consumers under a single umbrella guaranteed by the SCO. These operations take time and a degree of cooperation that is hard to maintain, although the resolution of the situation in Syria, in addition to the crisis in the Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, could accelerate synergies and easily facilitate them.

  The entry of Iran, Egypt and Turkey into the SCO is inevitable, receiving the strong encouragement of China and Russia, especially as regards the future connection between BRI and other infrastructure projects that are part of the EEU. The advantages are quite obvious to everyone, bringing about greater integration and infrastructure links, the increase of trade between nations, and general cooperation in mutual development. Products can travel from one country to another based on conditions determined bilaterally, something that often favors bigger nations rather than smaller ones. The intention of ??China's Globalization 2.0, coupled with a Eurasian revival of the EEU, is to change the future of humanity by shifting the global pole of globalization and development towards the east. The BRI is immense and mind boggling in its scope, given that it embraces realities ranging from Panama (focused on the extended channel and the Nicaragua project for a new channel) to Australia, passing through Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Persian Gulf.

  Naturally, in this delicate balance, Europe is called on to play a decisive role in the future. The United States, with its «America First» policy, has already burned bridges with the Chinese BRI revolution, and indeed hopes to throw a spanner in China’s works. European countries including England, France, Germany and Italy have already begun to sign onto various Chinese proposals. It looks as if America’s allies are no longer listening to their former boss. The European Central Bank has for the first time diversified $500m into Yuan currency, and London, together with Rome, Berlin and Paris, was present in Beijing for the launch of the BRI. France, Germany and England sent high-level representations and delegations, Italy directly the Prime Minister. For Europe, the largest exporter to China and the second-largest regional block importing from China, it is inevitable that it will be an integral part of the BRI, looking to reach Iran, Turkey and Egypt for energy supplies and diversifying sources, all within the framework of the BRI.

  In this process of Eurasian integration, there are some key countries to keep in mind, but the first steps have already been made with almost indissoluble ties having been made between Moscow and Beijing, as well as the monumental inclusion of Pakistan and India at the same table. With an understanding between India, Russia and China, as well as a lack of hostility to the project in Iran, Israel, Germany, England, Turkey and Egypt, it will be possible to speed up this global change, bringing it to the African countries, Gulf monarchies, South Asian countries, and even South and Central America. Even Washington's historic allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the EU vacillate in the face of such an opportunity to broaden their horizons with significant gains. As far as their alliance with the United States, in this world rapidly heading towards a multipolar world order, not even Riyadh, Tel Aviv or London can afford the luxury of ignoring the project that perhaps more than any other will revolutionize the future of humanity in the near future. Not being a part of it is simply not an option.

  The United States has two diametrically opposed options before it. It can operate alongside the BRI project, trying to fashion its own sphere of influence, albeit smaller than the countries residing within the Eurasian continent; but of course for Washington, simply being part of a grand project may not be enough, since it is used to getting its own way and subordinating the interests of other countries to its own. If the US decides to try and sabotage the BRI with their normal tools like terrorism, it is very likely that the countries historically aligned with Washington in these affairs (such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) will be subjected to Chinese economic pressure and encouraged to instead participate in a more positive manner.

  Cooperation against Threats

  The main question is the extent to which Chinese economic persuasion will succeed in overcoming US military threats. In this respect the SCO will be a decisive factor as it expands its influence beyond the Eurasian bloc into Africa and the Middle East. To date, the SCO cannot be considered a military bloc opposed to NATO. Everything will depend on the pressures that the United States will bring to bear on participating countries. Therefore, it is likely that the SCO will evolve to include a strong military aspect in order to counter American destabilization efforts.

  It is difficult to predict whether the US will be neutral or belligerent. But considering recent history, American hostility is likely to force Moscow and Beijing into an asymmetric response that will hit Washington where it hurts most, namely its economic interests. Aiming at the dollar, and in particular the petrodollar, seems to be the best bet for advancing the BRI, threatening a massive de-dollarization that would end in disaster for Washington. This is the nuclear option that Beijing and Moscow are looking into, with more than a desire to accelerate this economic shift.

  The future of humanity seems to be changing in exciting and unprecedented ways. The full integration of the Eurasian bloc will eventually end up changing the course of history, allowing nations that are currently weak and poor to withstand colonial pressures and broaden their cooperation and dialogue. Peace as a method for developing synergies and prosperity seems to be the new paradigm, contrasting with war and destruction as has been the case in the last decades.

  

  

• In Historic Shakeup Saudi King Removes Crown Prince, Names Son As First Heir

  In a shocking development, on Wednesday Saudi Arabia’s King Salman appointed his 31-year-old son Mohammed bin Salman (his eldest son from his third wife) as crown prince, placing him as first-in-line to the throne and removing his nephew, 57-year-old Mohammed bin Nayef – the country’s counterterrorism czar and a figure well-known to Washington – from the royal line of succession, relieving him of his post as Interior Minister, and stripping him from all his titles.

  Bin Salman already controls the Kingdom’s defense, oil and economic policies; today’s announcement merely consolidates his power. He was also credited with arranging Trump’s “successful” trip to Riyadh.

  Al Arabiya television reported that the promotion of the prince was approved by the kingdom’s Allegiance Council with 31 of 34 members approving, and that the king had called for a public pledging of loyalty to Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday evening in Mecca. The surprise announcement follows 2-1/2 years of already major changes in Saudi Arabia, which stunned allies in 2015 by launching a war in Yemen, cutting old energy subsidies and in 2016 proposing partly privatizing state oil company Aramco.

  As AP further reports, in a series of royal decrees carried on the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the monarch stripped Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who had been positioned to inherit the throne, from his title as crown prince and from his powerful position as the country’s interior minister overseeing security.

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The newly announced Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman already oversees a vast portfolio as defense minister and head of an economic council tasked with overhauling the country’s economy. And while he had previously been the second-in-line to the throne as deputy crown prince, numerous royal watchers had suspected his rise to power under his father’s reign might also accelerate his ascension to the throne.

  The young prince was little known to Saudis and outsiders before Salman became king in January 2015, although he quickly rose to prominence when he emerged as the dominant voice in the OPEC production cut negotiations. He had previously been in charge of his father’s royal court when Salman was the crown prince. The Saudi monarch awarded his son expansive powers to the surprise of many within the royal family who are more senior and more experienced than Mohammed bin Salman.

  King Salman also reinstated all allowances and bonuses that were canceled or suspended to civil servants and military personnel, SPA reported.

  While the backroom negotiations that resulted in today’s stunning announcement will likely remain unknown indefinitely, today’s dramatic overhaul of the Saudi royal succession was previewed here as recently as December, when we discussed that the present Saudi king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, is the last of the sons of the first Saudi king, Abdul Aziz al Saud, who will ever sit on the Saudi throne. After Salman dies, Saudi leadership will pass to a new generation of Saudi royals. But not all the descendants of the first Saudi king are happy about how the future succession may turn out.

  Salman named his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, as crown prince after firing his half-brother, Mugrin bin Abdul Aziz, as crown prince after the death of King Abdullah in 2015. For good measure, Salman also named his son, Mohammad bin Salman, who is little-known outside the kingdom, as deputy prime minister. The 30-year old Mohammad bin Salman is seen by some as the eventual crown prince after King Salman figures out some way to ease Mohammad bin Nayef, the Interior Minister and close friend of the United States, out of the position of heir apparent to the throne.

   

  More and more power has been concentrated into Mohammad bin Salman’s hands, including control over the Defense Ministry, the Council of Economy and Development, and the Saudi government-owned Arabian-American oil company (ARAMCO). The deputy crown prince and defense minister is the architect of Saudi Arabia’s genocidal military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and continued Saudi support for jihadist guerrillas in Syria and Iraq, as well as military support for the Wahhabist royal regime in Bahrain in its bloody suppression of the Shi’a Muslim majority population. Mohammad bin Salman is also the major force in Saudi Arabia seeking a military confrontation with Iran.

   

  There is a schism within the Saudi royal family that has created a real-life «Game of Thrones» within the kingdom.

  Finally, while it remains unclear what domestic consequences the King’s decision will have, a decree which an official said was “due to special circumstances”, that this major power move comes at a time when OPEC and Saudi Arabia are both reeling, as a result of plunging oil prices leads one to believe that the current deteriorating state of the Saudi economy, coupled with plunging oil revenues, may have been a catalyst in today’s announcement.

  Live feed from Saudi TV:

  

  

• Bitcoin Surges Back Above $2700 As India "Legalizes" Cryptocurrency

  After crashing 30% last week, Bitcoin is now up over 33% in the last few days helped by a surge in demand from India exchanges after the India government ruled Bitcoin as legal in India…

  

  Yet another big rebound… this time as India – the world's second most-populous nation rules in favor of regulating Bitcoin…

  

  As CoinTelegraph reports, over the past three years, the big three Indian Bitcoin exchanges including Zebpay, Coinsecure and Unocoin operated with self-regulated trading platforms with strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering systems in place, despite the lack of regulations in the digital currency industry and market.

  The efforts of the Bitcoin exchanges in India to self-regulate the market allowed the Indian government to reconsider the Bitcoin and digital currency sectors, regardless of the criticisms by several politicians that significantly lack knowledge in cryptocurrency.

  On March 24, Cointelegraph reported that Kirit Somaiya, a member of parliament of the ruling BJP in India, was harshly criticized for his description of Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme.

  In a letter to the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, Somaiya explained that Bitcoin is a pyramid Ponzi-type scheme. However, Somaiya was criticized for his inability to understand the structural and fundamental difference between a Ponzi scheme and Bitcoin.

  The legalization of Bitcoin in India

  In spite of the negative attitude of certain politicians, the Indian government has come to a decision to regulate the market and provide an even playing field for Bitcoin exchanges that have allocated a significant amount of resources to standardize the market and industry.

  Back in April, Mohit Kalra, CEO of Coinsecure, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in India, told Cointelegraph in an interview that the Indian government has finally started to take Bitcoin seriously and are considering the possibility of regulating the market.

  Kalra said:

  “Finally, something positive for the industry. Authorities are now taking this technology seriously. We have been trying to get their attention for years now. I am glad it's all happening at the right time. At Coinsecure, we are seeing a massive increase in the number of users and volumes. We are positive with what will happen in these coming three months.”

  On June 20, CNBC India announced that the Indian government committee has ruled in favor of regulating Bitcoin and is currently establishing a task force to create various regulatory frameworks with the aim of fully legalizing Bitcoin in the short-term.

  Prior to the announcement of the Indian government, Chris Burniske, ARK Invest’s crypto lead, noted that the trading volumes in India have been on the rise. Burniske previously revealed that the Indian Bitcoin exchange market is responsible for processing around 11 percent of Bitcoin-to-USD trades.

  

  

  

• Execution By Firing Squad: The Militarized Police State Opens Fire

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal

  Legally owning a gun in America could get you killed by a government agent.

  While it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed.

  This same rule does not apply to government agents, however, who are armed to the hilt and rarely given more than a slap on the wrists for using their weapons to shoot and kill American citizens.

  According to the Washington Post, “1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police.”

  Just recently, for example, a Minnesota jury acquitted a police officer who shot and killed 32-year-old Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration. Castile’s girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter witnessed the entire exchange.

  Earlier this year, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida police will not be held accountable for banging on the wrong door at 1:30 am, failing to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shooting and killing the innocent homeowner who answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

  Continuing its own disturbing trend of siding with police in cases of excessive use of force, a unanimous Supreme Court recently acquitted police who recklessly fired 15 times into a backyard shack in which a homeless couple—Angel and Jennifer Mendez—was sheltering. Incredibly, the Court ruled that the shooting was justified because Angel was allegedly seen holding a BB gun that he used for shooting rats.

  What these cases add up to is a new paradigm in which legally owning a gun turns you into a target for government sharp-shooters.

  Ironically, while America continues to debate who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, or our violent culture—little has been said about the greatest perpetrator of violence in American society: the U.S. government.

  Violence has become the government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.

  You want to reduce gun violence? Start with the government.

  The government’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy. Under the auspices of a military “recycling” program, which allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990.

  In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become accepted instruments of tyranny, routine parts of America’s day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.

  This lopsided, top-heavy, authoritarian state of affairs is not the balance of power the founders intended for “we the people.”

  The Second Amendment, in conjunction with the multitude of prohibitions on government overreach enshrined in the Bill of Rights, was supposed to serve as a clear shackle on the government’s powers.

  To founders such as Thomas Jefferson, who viewed the government as a powerful entity that must be bound “down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution,” the right to bear arms was no different from any other right enshrined in the Constitution: it was intended to stand as a bulwark against a police state.

  As I explain in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, without any one of those freedoms, we are that much more vulnerable to the vagaries of out-of-control policemen, benevolent dictators, genuflecting politicians, and overly ambitious bureaucrats.

  Writing for Counterpunch, journalist Kevin Carson warns that prohibiting Americans from owning weapons would “lead to further erosion of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, further militarization of local police via SWAT teams, and further expansion of the squalid empire of civil forfeiture, perjured jailhouse snitch testimony, entrapment, planted evidence, and plea deal blackmail.”

  This is exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution feared: that laws and law enforcers would be used as tools by a despotic government to wage war against the citizenry.

  Now don’t get me wrong.

  I do not believe that violence should ever be the answer to our problems. Still there’s something to be said for George Orwell’s view that “that rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

  The Second Amendment serves as a check on the political power of the ruling authorities. It represents an implicit warning against governmental encroachments on one’s freedoms, the warning shot over the bow to discourage any unlawful violations of our persons or property.

  Certainly, dictators in past regimes have understood this principle only too well.

  As Adolf Hitler noted, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

  It should come as no surprise, then, that starting in December 1935, Jews in Germany were prevented from obtaining shooting licenses, because authorities believed that to allow them to do so would “endanger the German population.”

  In late 1938, special orders were delivered barring Jews from owning firearms, with the punishment for arms possession being 20 years in a concentration camp.

  The rest, as they say, is history. Yet it is a history that we should be wary of repeating.

  

  

• House Republicans Block Russia Sanctions Bill

  After recruiting Trump, the KGB and Moscow have clearly also managed to make all House Republicans their puppets, because the Senate bill that passed last week and slapped new sanctions on Russia (but really was meant to block the production on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia and which Germany, Austria and France all said is a provocation by the US and would prompt retaliation) just hit a major stumbling block in the House.

  At least that’s our interpretation of tomorrow’s CNN “hot take.”

  Shortly after House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas said that House leaders concluded that the legislation, S. 722, violated the origination clause of the Constitution, which requires legislation that raises revenue to originate in the House, and would require amendments, Democrats immediately accused the GOP of delaying tactics and “covering” for the Russian agent in the White House.

  “House Republicans are considering using a procedural excuse to hide what they’re really doing: covering for a president who has been far too soft on Russia,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement. “The Senate passed this bill on a strong bipartisan vote of 98-2, sending a powerful message to President Trump that he should not lift sanctions on Russia.”

  And, if the House does pass it, a huge diplomatic scandal would erupt only not between the US and Russia, but Washington and its European allies who have slammed this latest intervention by the US in European affairs… a scandal which the Democrats would also promptly blame on Trump.

  That said, the bill may still pass: Brady pushed back against Democrat suggestions that House GOP leadership is trying to delay the bill, stressing that he thought the Senate legislation was sound policy.

  “I strongly support sanctions against Iran and Russia to hold them accountable. We were willing to work with the Senate throughout the process, but the final bill and final language violated the origination clause in the Constitution,” Brady told reporters on Tuesday. “I am confident working with the Senate and Chairman [Ed] Royce that we can move this legislation forward. So at the end of the day, this isn’t a policy issue, it’s not a partisan issue, it is a Constitutional issue that we will address.”

  Or maybe not.

  AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said that “the Senate bill cannot be considered in the House its current form” according to The Hill. She added that Ryan strongly supports sanctions and “we will determine the next course of action after speaking with our Senate colleagues.” An aide for Sen. Bob Corker who was deeply involved in negotiating the Senate deal, said that the House has raised “concerns with one of the final provisions” of the bill.

  “The House has always, in a bipartisan way, followed protocol to avoid Origination Clause violations. It’s the Constitution. It’s pretty straightforward,” a senior GOP aide added.

  And yet, despite the clear procedural issues, Democrats would just not let it go and warned that Republicans are trying to delay the bill amid pushback from the Trump administration.

  As usual, Schumer lambasted the move, arguing they’re using the procedural roadblock to cover for Trump, “who has been far too soft on Russia.”

  “Responding to Russia’s assault on our democracy should be a bipartisan issue that unites both Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate. The House Republicans need to pass this bill as quickly as possible,” he said.

  Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, added that Republicans could easily work around the violation by introducing an indention House bill. “[But] I predict this isn’t the last excuse we’ll hear for trying to slow this bill’s momentum, but make no mistake, anything short of an up-or-down vote on this tough sanctions package is an attempt to let Russia off the hook,” he said.

  Another Democrat, Sen. Ben Cardin stressed that he didn’t think the Senate bill actually had a “blue slip” issue, but echoed Engel noting they it could be “easily corrected” by using a House bill.

  * * *

  Under the bill which was voted 98-2 in the Senate, new Russia sanctions could be levied on entities engaging in “malicious cyber activity”, perhaps like those which gave Republican Handel the victory in Georgia. It would require the administration to explain any moves to ease or lift sanctions, and create a new mechanism for Congress to review and block any such effort according to Bloomberg.

  And, of course, the most controversial issue, the legislation would also put into law penalties that were imposed by the Obama administration on some Russian energy projects, a move in 2014 that came in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. It is over this part of the legislation that America’s European “allies” have threatened the US with retaliation.

  The White House has said it is committed to existing sanctions and hasn’t taken a formal position on the Senate bill.

  

  

• Clinton Faces Loss Of Security Clearance After State Begins Probing Her Mishandling Of Classified Intel

  The State Department confirmed months of speculation on Tuesday when it leaked to Fox News that it had opened a formal inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information on her private email server. Clinton, who has repeatedly blamed the FBI’s handling of the inquiry for her embarrassing defeat in November, is now facing the possibility of having her top-level security clearance revoked – a penalty that echoes the investigation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

  President Donald Trump repeatedly promised to investigate the Clinton’s, so the probe could see the president fulfilling yet another campaign promise. As Fox reports, “during the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of top-secret and classified information on her private server, former FBI Director James Comey said there were seven email chains on Clinton’s computer that were classified at the “Top Secret/Special Access Program level.”

  Another 2,000 emails on her private server were found to have contained information deemed classified now, though not marked classified when sent. In addition, the server also contained 22 top-secret emails deemed too damaging to national security to be released.”

  

  To paraphrase Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that violations of statutes concerning the handling and dissemination of classified materials occurred.

  Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell said he believes Clinton and her “circle of national security criminals” should not have access to any classified information for any reason. 

  “Their conduct has cost them that privileged position of special trust and confidence,” Farrell said.

  Here’s Fox:

  “The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides.

   

  Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.
  Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confirmed to Fox News the department’s formal inquiry.

   

  Meanwhile, Grassley’s committee launched its own inquiry into Clinton’s handling of emails, an inquiry that began in March. Grassley cited among his concerns the July 5 statement of former FBI Director James Comey that the agency found Clinton and her staff members were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

  A response from a Clinton spokesman suggests that the Clinton camp hasn’t learned from its mistakes during the campaign.

  In the statement, Clinton’s top spokesman, Nick Merrill told Fox that a final judgment of Clinton has already been reached. “Nothing's been more thoroughly dissected. It's over. Case closed. Literally,” said Merrill.

  Former FBI Director Comey announced that the bureau had closed its investigation in July 2016, before turning around and announcing that it had been reopened following the discovery of emails from Clinton on a laptop owned by former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

  

  

• Crisis On The Horizon: Will It Be Economic Collapse? Global Civil Unrest? War? We Won't Have To Guess Much Longer…

  Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

  “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
   -Rahm Emmanuel

  

  The algorithm is simple: Governments coerce their pet monkeys to pay taxes into the system – the self-perpetuating machine – and thereby the monkeys become the very sources of funding to build, equip, staff, and enforce their own incarceration.

  There are too many individuals with dreams, plans, goals, and ambitions for themselves and their families.  There is too much individualism.  It eventually must be crushed, in order to maintain the existing social, political, religious, and economic order.  The order will eventually blend all of the elements and “homogenize” them to assure mutual self-support for the overall goal: the supremacy of the State and the subjugation of the masses.

  The paradigm shift is from the rugged individual raising a family of self-supporting and producing citizens that contribute to their government to the collective, where the individual is a number and controlled/controllable in every aspect.  The family has been divided to not think for the family and to be in awe and obedience to the State.  The end-state is this phrase:

  “I am the State; the State is all.”
  -The words of Quarlo in the episode “Soldier,” (The Outer Limits)

  We are seeing the transformation occur before our eyes.  We are also seeing the “justification” for such control in the form of a rise in various stages of actions labeled either as “civil unrest” or “terrorism” by the governments.  It was just announced on by Gateway Pundit in an article entitled Macron Hopes to Put France in a Permanent State of Emergency, via a bill that will make it a law of the land.  Hello?

  The United States did that with the NDAA and the EO’s that recertified the continuous succession of “states of emergency,” and added to that by making (labeling under color of law) the whole world a “battlefield” in the “war on terror.”  The UK is “toying” with the idea of imposing Martial Law indefinitely upon Britain in wake of the “terrorist” bombings…the ones that coincided so nicely with Teresa May’s calling for an election…one that backfired on her.

  The shooting of House Representative Steve Scalise, the multiple shootings occurring nationwide, and the growing calls for the government to take action…all of these are examples of crises that will not be allowed to go to waste.  The governments are allowing the actions to occur in order to justify Draconian measures that will be implemented for the greatest reason of all: to protect the citizen…from himself.

  The endless and ever-increasing surveillance in the form of CCTV cameras, all of the cameras tied in to the tracking devices (deliberately labeled as “cellular telephones”), the monitoring, tracking, and recording of every purchase, deposit, withdraw, and shift with funds: The Big Brother state isn’t around the corner.  The Big Brother state is here.

  What will it be?  Global economic collapses that occur as a result of the credit bubble suddenly bursting and the bottoms falling out?  Will it be civil unrest globally?  Or will it be the most likely event, a war that escalates and brings about the previous two actions. 

  We won’t have to guess much longer, as the events are unfolding before us by the day and narrowing down the possibilities…making them probable, as well.

  

  

• Beer ATMs Threaten America's "Waiter & Bartender" Recovery

  For 87 straight months, America's recovery has been dominated by one 'job'…

  Well over 5 years ago, we first dubbed the economy under Barack Obama as the "Waiter and Bartender recovery", because while most other job categories had grown at a moderate pace at best, the growth in the category defined by the BLS as "Food Service and Drinking Workers" has been nothing short of spectacular.

  How spectacular? As the chart below shows, starting in March of 2010 and continuing through April of 2017, there have been 87 consecutive month of payroll gains for America's waiters and bartenders, an unprecedented feat and an all time record for any job category. Putting this number in context, total job gains for the sector over the past 7 years have amounted to 2.378 million or just under 15% of the total 16.4 million in new jobs created by the US over the past 87 months.

  

  As a tangent, putting the "waiter and bartender" recovery in the context of America's manufacturing sector, the following chart shows that while nearly 816,000 "food service and drinking places" jobs were created since 2014, over the same period the number of manufacturing jobs created has been just 107,000. Also, after six months of increases, in May manufacturing jobs posted their first drop since last October.

  

   

  Which is why recent headlines from Vinepair should terrify policy-makers across the nation, as Climateer notes, that could all be about to end… Bartenders are being replaced by Robots…

  According to Metro, Brooklyn-based Randolph Beer has come up with an innovative “Beer ATM.”

  

  We know– we don’t understand how we didn’t come up with it first, either.

  Located on South 4th Street in Williamsburg, Randolph Bar does indeed have real-live bartenders and a normally operating bar– though why would anyone spring for that when a self-serve beer ATM is within arm’s reach? As Food & Wine reports, the beer ATM functions as a self-service wall of taps.

  In exchange for a credit card at the bar, the customer is given a beer ATM card; all you have to do is insert the card into the slot above the beer you’d like and choose the size of the pour. Pours range anywhere from 1 – 12 ounces, perfect for those who can’t commit to an entire brew.

  The concept not only allows consumers to serve themselves, but also provides opportunities to taste-test multiple unknown beers for a fraction of the cost. Not only does the client benefit from getting a quick taste, the bartender is saved lots of time (and aggravation) from pouring multiple samples.

  The pressure is totally off, and the consumer can take as long as they want in finalizing their beer decision.

  Make America Drink Again?

  

  

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• Are Pope Francis & Angela Merkel Enemies Of European Civilization?

  Authored by Antonius Aquinas,

  Two of Europe’s greatest contemporary enemies recently got together to compare notes and discuss how they were going to further undermine and destabilize what remains of the Continent’s civilization.  Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met on June 17, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to discuss the issues which will be raised at a Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, from July 7-8.

  

  The Vatican said that Frau Merkel and the Pope discussed the need “for the international community to combat poverty, hunger, terrorism and climate change.” Ms. Merkel, in an obvious swipe at US President Donald Trump, said that “we are a world in which we want to work multilaterally, a world in which we don’t want to build walls but bring down walls.”  The reference to “walls,” of course, was to President Trump’s promise to construct a wall on the Mexican-American border.  The pope, too, has been critical of Mr. Trump’s proposed plan.

  Ms. Merkel also lamented about the Trump Administration’s decision to opt out of the 2015 Paris climate accord.  Pope Francis urged President Trump to remain in the accord and gave him a copy of his encyclical, “Praise Be,” when they met earlier this spring.  The encyclical elevated “climate change” and protection of the environment as “moral obligations” while it criticized “perverse” economic development models that “enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.”

  As has been the case since the Second Vatican Anti-Council (1962-65), popes have spent most of their time on secular concerns in which they have little competency and less on matters of the Faith.  Pope Francis has taken this to a new level and rarely preaches on doctrine.  This, in one sense, is good because when he does speak on religion, he usually spouts out some heresy or falsehood which scandalizes the Church.  His many blasphemies and heresies, plus the fact that he was never ordained as a priest in the traditional Catholic rite or traditionally consecrated as a bishop (neither was Benedict XVI), makes him ineligible to be a true Catholic pope.

  The latest fraud that these two cretins are now pushing is the supposed threat of global warming.  The idea that “climate change” has had some nefarious effect on the environment has long ago been debunked by legitimate scientists and scholars.  Climate change is a ruse used by global elites to further tax, regulate and enslave humanity.

  Facts and sound theory, however, do not bother the collectivist minds of Pope Francis and Angela Merkel. What they are interested in is power and control and they intend to keep it through lies like global warming and by coercive massive migration which will fundamentally alter Europe’s demographics to their New World Order masters’ advantage.

  Had it not been for the likes of Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel, it is unlikely that Europe would be under a deluge of mostly Mohammedan “asylum seekers.”  The claim that the invasion was “spontaneous” due to the turmoil in the Middle East from US and Western nation-states military intervention is implausible.  The region has been unstable for decades.  Why all of a sudden is there a mass exodus and why it is mostly of young single Muslim men?

  The invasion of Europe was carefully orchestrated and planned by the world’s power elite whose goal is to eliminate what is left of the Continent’s white Christian heterogeneous male population.  Pope Francis and Ms. Merkel are the New World Order’s puppets carrying out their marching orders.

  While the outlook for Europeans may currently appear grim, it is not hopeless.  While Pope Francis and Angela Merkel cannot at present be deposed for their crimes, they can be defeated in the court of public opinion.  For Europe to become once again the center of human civilization, the ideals of multiculturalism and the fraud of global warming must be slain on ideological grounds.

  This is the duty that confronts those that seek a return of Europe’s previous glories.  While the task appears monumental, it must be remembered that the pagan Roman Empire was eventually converted by the teaching of twelve men and one indomitable former Pharisee from Tarsus.

  

  

• Putin: US Routinely Meddles In Russian And Other Nations' Elections

  Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  

  In a Showtime interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by American film-maker Oliver Stone, which started airing on June 12^th, Putin called «lies» many of the allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies, to the effect that he or his government attempted to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He also accused the U.S. government of having actually done not only that (influencing other countries’ democratic process), but far more actual meddling in Russian elections, and in the elections in other former Soviet-and-allied countries, and even done it in recent times, and even done it to countries that had never been friendly toward Russia. The way he asserted this accusation was veiled, however, so that he didn’t identify the specific governments he was referring to, other than to say: «In 2000, and in 2012, this always happened. But especially aggressively in 2012. I will not go into details.» (This article will supply some of those «details», in what follows.) 

  Putin described the current accusations against Russia, by the U.S. government, as a deceitful and fictitious tat, which ignores the very real and longstanding American tit, of CIA and other U.S., meddling in the electoral processes of foreign countries. 

  The neoconservative American Jan Wenner’s Rolling Stone magazine headlined on June 16^th about these Showtime interviews, «10 Most WTF Things We Learned From Oliver Stone's Putin Interviews», and sub-headlined: «From denying any involvement with U.S. election hacking to Putin's love of Judo and Stalin, our takeaways from these truly baffling conversations». Wenner’s reporter opened:

  What's the Russian equivalent of Kool-Aid? Whatever it is, it's definitely red – and Oliver Stone has eagerly drunk it down.

   

  The trailers for The Putin Interviews, Showtime's four-part series documenting a series of conversations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Stone, would have you believe that you're going to hear some pretty hard-hitting stuff as the autocrat and the filmmaker face off, Frost-Nixon style. What we got instead was a series of softballs lobbed lovingly in the direction of one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world.

   

  Except for a few moments, Stone seems serenely unconcerned with anything beyond flattering his subject – and engaging in some supremely one-sided exchanges about history and policy along the way.

  The term «red» in this context refers, of course, to communism, and alleges that Russia is still a communist country. To allow that type of smear to appear in any ‘news’ vehicle, is to expose itself as being actually a propaganda-vehicle, unless the allegation is backed up by solid documentation, which Wenner’s magazine didn’t do — Wenner’s magazine presented no documentation at all, for the inflammatory allegation. The magazine’s presumption was that their readers will simply believe what Wenner’s operation delivers, to be ipso-facto ‘true’. But any such reader would be welcoming his own deception by Wenner’s propaganda-operation. Evidently, successful magazines can insult their own subscribers’ intelligence, so long as it’s done in ‘the right way’ — the subscribers won’t despise the publisher for trying to deceive them about such important matters as what countries to invade, or whether to invade, or why to invade. The U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) can attract cannon-fodder for its operations, by means of such ‘news’ media to produce dupes for that MIC.

  During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, Mr. Wenner’s propaganda-machine had ardently campaigned for the neoconservative Hillary Clinton against the moderately progressive Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Democratic Party primaries; and, then, once she (and her friend Debbie Wasserman Schultz who ran the Democratic National Committee) managed to steal the nomination from her opponent, Wenner’s operation campaigned for Ms. Clinton against her Republican opponent Trump, who claimed (falsely as it turns out, in lies exceeding Clinton’s own) to be opposed to neoconservatives (whom he has actually loaded into his Administration). Trump now relies upon neocons for his support, but perhaps Wenner and Robert Kagan and other neoconservatives won’t be satisfied until the U.S. government takes control over Russia — which cannot happen except upon all of our dead bodies (WW III) — which is precisely what Hillary Clinton was aiming for (and maybe Trump is, too). That’s how insane the U.S. aristocracy (and its PR organs such as Wenner’s) now is — they’re pushing the world toward nuclear Armageddon.

  So, the American system had offered to its public a choice between two neoconservatives, one of whom hid his neoconservatism and won the election but still isn’t sufficiently neoconservative to suit the neoconservatives (such as Wenner).

  What, then, about the substance of Putin’s allegation here, that the U.S. government meddles in other nations’ democratic processes?

  Here are some prominent examples of that phenomenon:

  From the very moment when Barack Obama became the U.S. President on 20 January 2009, the U.S. government was aiming for a ‘revolution’ to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Then, by no later than 2011, the operation was already under way in the U.S. State Department.

   

  Furthermore, also by no later than 2011, a parallel operation was under way to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Whereas in Syria it would be ‘freedom fighters’ who would be paid by the Sauds but armed and trained mainly by the U.S., and mainly organized and led by Al Qaeda; in Ukraine it would be ‘Maidan demonstrators’ who would be paid by the U.S., and mainly led and organized by leaders of Ukraine’s existing two racist-facist, or ideologically nazi, political parties, Right Sektor, and the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine (renamed by the CIA as «Svoboda» or «Freedom» Party).

   

  Furthermore, on 28 June 2009, shortly after Obama became President, a coup by Honduras’s twenty-four richest families overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who had been trying to institute land reform so that serfdom could become replaced there by a real democracy, but all governments except the U.S. refused to recognize the coup-regime, until first Hillary Clinton and then her boss Barack Obama recognized it and financed it with U.S. taxpayer money so that the international pressure to restore the democratically elected President failed and the junta-regime became stabilized. The U.S. government supported the aristocratic families, and helped them rig an ‘election’ amongst only contenders whom that oligarchy and the U.S. oligarchy supported. Much manipulation of the Honduran ‘news’ media and deceit against the Honduran public were perpetrated by both the U.S. aristocracy and the Honduran aristocracy in order to silence of else kill anyone who would challenge it. Here’s the excellent 3-minute video summary of that; and here’s my article documenting it with 72 links to the sources on that matter.

   

  So: those are three examples of extremely severe «meddling» — Syria, Ukraine, and Honduras — all three of which occurred during Obama’s Presidency (and so we’re not talking here about Iran in 1953 or Chile in 1973 or Iraq in 2003 or anything other than the most recent U.S. President). Each and every one of them is vastly more heinous than anything that Putin and Russia did, but Russia isn’t imposing sanctions upon the U.S. Even if all of the U.S. regime’s propaganda against Russia were true, the U.S. regime does vastly more damage to democracy, and to national sovereignty, around the world, than Russia does.

  On 14 June 2017, at 2:08 in the afternoon, the U.S. Senate passed, by a vote of 97 to 2 (only Rand Paul and Mike Lee voted against it) an intensification of U.S. economic sanctions against Russia, sanctions that President Obama had first instituted when Russia accepted the petition supported by more than 96% of Crimeans, for Crimea to become again a part of Russia, from which the Soviet dictator Khrushchev had transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 without even consulting the residents there at all. Obama’s brutal coup overthrowing the Ukrainian President for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted is what had sparked Crimeans to seek to become, yet again — as they had been for hundreds of years until 1954 — Russians. For this ‘conquest of land’ as Obama called it, Russia was slapped with sanctions by Obama, and even now increasingly by the U.S. Congress. One of the four co-sponsors of that bill was the ‘progressive’ Democrat, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. Apparently, corruption (or else one would need to call it simply «evil») is quite bi-partisan. And, given that the vote to increase sanctions was 97 to 2, that corruption (or evil) is almost universal in the U.S. Senate.

  This government of the United States became finally entrenched as a facsist regime on 24 February 1990, when the U.S. President, George Herbert Walker Bush, began telling America’s allies, in secret, that, though the Cold War was now ending on the Soviet side, it would be continuing on the U.S. side, until Russia itself is finally conquered by the U.S. What we’re seeing now is an intensification of that aggression by the U.S. government.

  

  

• FOIA Request On Susan Rice's Unmaskings Rejected Because "Records Were Moved To Obama Library"

  Back in April, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request for documents related to the unmasking of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” by Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice.  Unfortunately, and quite conveniently for members of the Obama administration, Judicial Watch has been informed by the National Security Council that records related to their request can not be shared because they ” have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library” and will “remain closed to the public for five years.” 

  Here is the full letter received from the National Secruity Council:

  “Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library.  You may send your request to the Obama Library.  However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”

  

   

  Here was Judicial Watch’s full request:

  1.) Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to any Intelligence Community member agency or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following:

   

  • Any actual or suspected effort by the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government to influence or otherwise interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
  • The alleged hacking of computer systems utilized by the Democratic National Committee and/or the Clinton presidential campaign.
  • Any actual or suspected communication between any member of the Trump presidential campaign or transition team and any official or employee of the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government.
  • The identities of U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.

   

  2.) Any and all records or responses received by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council in response to any request described in part 1 of this request.

   

  3.) Any and all records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of any Intelligence Community member agency and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council regarding, concerning, or related to any request described in Part 1 of this request.

  Luckily, even if the media and Democrats are unsuccessful at getting Trump impeached in the near future, 5 years is still enough time to make sure that his reputation is sufficiently tarnished that he gets booted from office in 2020.  Even better, as The Hill points out today, Joe Biden appears to be getting groomed to take yet another shot at the White House in 2020 which means we may never actually get a shot at understanding exactly what happened in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

  

  

• There Have Been 296 Earthquakes Near The Yellowstone Supervolcano Within The Last 7 Days

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

  Is it possible that the Yellowstone supervolcano is gearing up for a major eruption? If you follow my work on a regular basis, then you already know that I spend a lot of time documenting how the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. Most of this shaking is taking place far away from the continental United States, and so most Americans are not too concerned about it. But we should be concerned about it, because a major seismic event could change all of our lives in a single instant. For instance, a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would have the potential of being an E.L.E. (extinction level event). That is why it is so alarming that there have been 296 earthquakes in the vicinity of the Yellowstone supervolcano within the last 7 days. Scientists are trying to convince us that everything is going to be okay, but there are others that are not so sure.

  

  The biggest earthquake in this swarm occurred last Thursday evening. It was initially measured to be a magnitude 4.5 earthquake, but it was later downgraded to a 4.4. It was the biggest quake in the region since a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck close to Norris Geyser Basin in March 2014. This magnitude 4.4 earthquake was so powerful that people felt it as far away as Bozeman…

  The main quake was centered about 5.8 miles underground.

   

  The quake and aftershocks occurred just over 8 miles northeast from West Yellowstone, according to the U.S. Geological Service.

   

  A witness reported that she felt the building she was in move.

   

  Dozens of people reported that they felt it in and around West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Ennis, and Bozeman.

  But by itself that one quake would only be of minor concern. What is troubling many of the experts is that this earthquake has been accompanied by 295 smaller ones.

  

  There is normally a rise in seismic activity before a volcano erupts, and according to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, a long overdue eruption at Yellowstone could “rip the guts out of the USA”…

  Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.

   

  The grey haired physicist told Shepard Smith that the “danger” we are now facing with the caldera is that it’s long overdue for an eruption which Kaku said could “rip the guts out of the USA.”

   

  Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought.

  I would like to try to describe for you what a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would mean for this country.

  Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those that live in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.

  Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.

  Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.

  In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.

  The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.

  In the end, billions could die.

  So yes, this is a threat that we should take very seriously.

  But today, most Americans think of Yellowstone as little more than a fun tourist attraction. But the truth is that many tourists have discovered just how dangerous Yellowstone can be. Some have been scalded by boiling water from geysers that can get as hot as 250 degrees Fahrenheit, and one man from North Carolina recently had to be flown to a burn center after he mistakenly fell into a hot spring…

  A North Carolina man was flown to the University of Utah Burn Center after falling into a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park late Tuesday night.

   

  Gervais Dylan Gatete, 21, was with seven other people in the Lower Geyser Basin north of Old Faithful when he fell, according to a park news release.

   

  The group attempted to transport Gatete, an employee with Xanterra Parks and Resorts, by car for medical treatment. Just before midnight, they flagged down a park ranger near Seven Mile Bridge on the West Entrance Road.

  Since Yellowstone is still very active, scientists assure us that it will erupt again one day.

  And when that happens, all of our lives will be completely turned upside down in a single moment.

  

  

• Otto Warmbier Has Died, Family Blames "North Korea's Torturous Mistreatment", Trump Condemns "Brutal Regime… Will Handle It"

  Just days after North Korea released Otto Warmbier after holding him hostage for 17 months, his family has just reported the sad news of his passing.

  

  Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in North Korea, convicted of subversion after he tearfully confessed he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.

  The University of Virginia student was held for more than 17 months and medically evacuated from North Korea last week. Doctors said he returned with severe brain damage, but it wasn't clear what caused it.

  Family Statement:

  It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home. Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20pm.

   

  It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost – future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds. But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person. You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched – Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two – that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family. Otto went well beyond his immediate family.

   

  We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who did everything they could for Otto.

   

  Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.

   

  When Otto returned to Cincinnati late on June 13th he was unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands. He looked very uncomfortable – almost anguished. Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day the countenance of his face changed – he was at peace. He was home and we believe he could sense that.

   

  We thank everyone around the world who has kept him and our family in their thoughts and prayers. We are at peace and at home too.

  Fred & Cindy Warmbier and Family

  Quoted by Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs, on the death of Warmbier Trump said "at least he got home to his parents" and added: "It's a brutal regime and we'll be able to handle it." It's unclear just how.

  The White House's full, just released statement is below;

  THE WHITE HOUSE
  Office of the Press Secretary
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  June 19, 2017

   

  Statement by President Donald J. Trump on the Passing of Otto Warmbier

   

  Melania and I offer our deepest condolences to the family of Otto Warmbier on his untimely passing. There is nothing more tragic for a parent than to lose a child in the prime of life. Our thoughts and prayers are with Otto's family and friends, and all who loved him.

   

  Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency. The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim.

  And here John McCain who wants to “state the facts plainly: Otto Warmbier, an American citizen, was murdered by the Kim Jong-un regime.”

  

  

  

• Good Luck Getting Out Of That Subprime Auto Loan When Used Car Prices Crash

  We’ve written frequently in recent months about the coming subprime auto crisis which will very likely be prompted by a wave of off-lease vehicles that will flood the market with used inventory over the coming years.  In fact, Morgan Stanley recently predicted that the surge in used inventory could result in as much as a 50% crash in used car prices over the next couple of years which would, in turn, put further pressure on the new car market which has already resorted to record incentive spending to maintain volumes.

  Here are just a couple of our most recent notes on the topic:

  • Signs Of An Auto Bubble: Soaring Delinquencies In These 266 Subprime ABS Deals Can’t Be Good
  • New Warning Signs Emerge For Subprime Auto Securitizations
  • Auto Lending Update – Someone Please Explain How This Is Not A Bubble

  Of course, while pretty much anyone has been able to purchase that brand new BMW of their dreams over the past 5 years…courtesy of a surge in subprime lending volumes….

  

   

  …getting out of those loans once used car prices crash and millions of Americans are left with massive negative equity balances won’t be quite so easy…just ask Yvette Harris who is still making payments on her 1997 Mitsubishi nearly a decade after her car was repossessed.  Per the New York Times:

  More than a decade after Yvette Harris’s 1997 Mitsubishi was repossessed, she is still paying off her car loan.

   

  She has no choice. Her auto lender took her to court and won the right to seize a portion of her income to cover her debt. The lender has so far been able to garnish $4,133 from her paychecks — a drain that at one point forced Ms. Harris, a single mother who lives in the Bronx, to go on public assistance to support her two sons.

   

  “How am I still paying for a car I don’t have?” she asked.

   

  For millions of Americans like Ms. Harris who have shaky credit and had to turn to subprime auto loans with high interest rates and hefty fees to buy a car, there is no getting out.

   

  Many of these auto loans, it turns out, have a habit of haunting people long after their cars have been repossessed.

  And while the aggregate subprime auto credit balances are no where near the trillions in debt that was extended to subprime mortgage borrowers leading up to the great recession, for many low-income Americans the fallout could actually be worse because they can’t simply walk away.

  With mortgages, people could turn in the keys to their house and walk away. But with auto debt, there is increasingly no exit. Repossession, rather than being the end, is just the beginning.

   

  “Low-income earners are shackled to this debt,” said Shanna Tallarico, a consumer lawyer with the New York Legal Assistance Group.

  Meanwhile, with low-income borrowers unable to afford a lawyer in many cases, defendants often skip court dates and don’t even realize they’re still on the hook for payments until debt collectors start to garnish their wages.

  “Essentially, the dealers are not selling cars. They are selling bad loans,” said Adam Taub, a lawyer in Detroit who has defended consumers in hundreds of these cases.

   

  Many lawyers assisting poor borrowers like Ms. Robinson say they learn about the lawsuits only after a judge has issued a decision in favor of the lender.

   

  Most borrowers can’t afford lawyers and don’t show up to court to challenge the lawsuits. That means the collectors win many cases, transforming the debts into judgments they can use to garnish wages.

  Of course, if used car prices tank leaving millions of people with negative equity balances and defaults from auto loans they could never afford in the first place…you know what that means for new car prices…

  

  

  

• Deep State Operatives Attempt A Coup D'Etat Of Donald Trump

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Presidential historian and author Doug Wead claims that the deep state, which has successfully overthrown the governments of foreign countries, is going to continue to actively seek a coup d’etat of the duly elected president of the United States.

  If there was ever a time in history to be concerned about another rise in communism, now is that time. Wead says that the deep state is determined to overthrow Donald Trump. The presidential historian refused to mince words, saying:

  We have very skilled, talented professionals. They’ve overthrown governments in Vietnam and the Philippines, in Iraq and Iran, in Egypt, in the Ukraine. Duly elected democratic governments.

   

  They created what they called 'popular uprisings'…

   

  Here we go, let's try this is America…

   

  There's no going back."

  Of course, we should expect nothing less from shadow governments. The very same people who work in the State Department, some of them in intelligence, and some of them in the media, have successfully caused uprisings in several other countries. They’ve worked together to overthrow foreign governments, and Wead believes Trump is a thorn in their side preventing a global takeover.

  The deep state has become somewhat of a mainstream topic of discussion since Trump’s election.  Before, it was more of a “conspiracy theory.”  But the goals of the deep state are simple: the complete enslavement of mankind by political elites. 

  They [republicans in congress] see themselves as “partners” with the Left in the same game: to establish an elitist politico-oligarchic ruling class, broken down into divisions throughout the globe for ethno-cultural manipulation, yet with the same end-state.

   

  That goal is the enslavement and complete control of all of mankind with the elitists ensconced as the ruling moneyed class.  They see themselves as the educated, sensible minority with tender sensibilities and true humanistic views…who must…must…take a stand in the globalist crusade against the barbaric Neanderthals of the proletariat and populist serfs.

   

  –SHTFPlan

  The average IQ of an American has dropped 14 points over the past century and with the media actively peddling propaganda, there’s no need for anyone to desire their own mental and physical freedom.  In fact, we now hear the weakest members of society clamor for communism, as if they wouldn’t be the first the state “extinguishes” in the event that they succeed.  Communism preys on those who are producers and has little interest in those who actually desire it.

  It has been apparent to those not blinded by partisan politics that something is going on in the government right now, yet most simply call it a “witch hunt,” simply for lack of wanting to admit the deep state exists.  It certainly looks like a battle between democracy and the deep state. And we aren’t sure we’d put money on democracy at this point in history.

  

  

• Moody's Cuts Aussie Bank Ratings Due To "Tail Risk" Concerns

  Back in 2007, the ratings agencies were so woefully behind the eight ball in understanding and reporting the credit risks in the U.S. financial system that it was nearly impossible to tell from day to day whether they were really just that incompetent or if they were complicit in the biggest financial fraud in history.  Regardless of which you believe is more likely, they seem intent upon not making the same mistake again…at least not in Australia. 

  As The Sydney Morning Herald points out today, Moody’s has cut the long-term credit rating of Australia’s four biggest banks after pointing to surging home prices, rising household debt and sluggish wage growth as potential threats to the financial industry down under.  Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp. were all downgraded to Aa3 from Aa2, Moody’s said in a statement released earlier today. Per The Sydney Morning Herald:

  “In Moody’s view, elevated risks within the household sector heighten the sensitivity of Australian banks’ credit profiles to an adverse shock, notwithstanding improvements in their capital and liquidity in recent years,” the statement said.

   

  “In Moody’s assessment, risks associated with the housing market have risen sharply in recent years. Latent risks in the housing market have been rising in recent years, because significant house price appreciation in the core housing markets of Sydney and Melbourne has led to very high and rising household indebtedness,” the statement said.

   

  “The rise in household indebtedness comes against the backdrop of low wage growth and structural changes in the labour market, which have led to rising levels of underemployment.

   

  “Whilst mortgage affordability for most borrowers remains good at current interest rates, the reduction in the savings rate, the rise in household leverage and the rising prevalence of interest-only and investment loans are all indicators of rising risks.”

  Of course, as we’ve pointed out multiple times before, the Chinese money laundering operation…sorry, we meant Sydney “housing market”…puts the previous U.S. housing bubble to shame.

  

   

  Of course, all of the banks that are now being downgraded are the same ones that assured us just a couple of months ago that Australian home prices were not in a “speculative bubble.” Testifying before a parliamentary committee, the chief executives of National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking and Commonwealth Bank of Australia all said that while they were worried about elements of the housing market, prices weren’t over-inflated.  Per Bloomberg:

  “I would draw the distinction between a speculative bubble in prices and prices beyond what fundamentals would justify,” Westpac’s Brian Hartzer told the committee in Canberra Wednesday. A bubble isn’t occurring in Sydney or Melbourne, where house prices have risen the most, he said.

   

  “There are increasing risks, but I still believe the answer is no,” National Australia Bank’s Andrew Thorburn said when asked if houses in Sydney and Melbourne are overpriced.

   

  Commonwealth Bank, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, is “lending at levels we are comfortable with” across Australia, Chief Executive Officer Ian Narev told the committee when he testified Tuesday.

  Meanwhile, the ever-important “crane-index” helps to put some perspective around just how ‘bubbly’ the Australia market has become.

  

   

  Of course, maybe Australia’s bankers are right and bubbly home prices are just the result of strong fundamentals.  Although, the last time a prominent banker made a similar prediction in the U.S. he turned out to be just a bit off the mark.  Ben Bernanke (July 2005):

  “Well, unquestionably, housing prices are up quite a bit; I think it’s important to note that fundamentals are also very strong. We’ve got a growing economy, jobs, incomes. We’ve got very low mortgage rates. We’ve got demographics supporting housing growth. We’ve got restricted supply in some places. So it’s certainly understandable that prices would go up some. I don’t know whether prices are exactly where they should be, but I think it’s fair to say that much of what’s happened is supported by the strength of the economy.”

  Oops.
  

  

  

• CNN's Jim Acosta Throws Dramatic Tantrum Over Sean Spicer's Silent Press Briefing

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  CNN’s Jim Acosta is beside himself after (soon to be former) White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called for the media to turn off cameras and audio recording devices for a ‘silent’ press briefing. Acosta, apparently unaware that there was a time when the Press Corps used to take notes by hand, staged a silent protest by tweeting a picture of his retarded socks.

  The Spicer off-camera/no audio gaggle has begun. I can’t show you a pic of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd pic.twitter.com/wO9erspwYa

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “If he can’t come out and answer the questions and they’re just not gonna do this on-camera or audio—why are we even having these briefings or these gaggles in the first place?”

  

  STONEWALLED!

  Acosta tweeted that he was ‘stonewalled’ by Spicer’s silent briefing.

  Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 19, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The CNN host then whined on air about being passed over for questions. Looks like the White House’s war on Fake News is getting under Jim’s skin…

  It’s like we’re just covering bad reality television, is what it feels like now.

  How will the press corps ever recover? Will the ever-evasive White House confiscate pencils and paper next? Can Jim Acosta walk and chew gum at the same time?

  Watch the anchor-socked anchor’s dramatic tantrum below:

    

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• The Fed Rate Hike and Gold, Report 18 June, 2017

  The big news this week comes from the Fed, which announced two things. One, it hiked the Fed Funds rate another 25 basis points. The target is now 1.00 to 1.25%, and there will be further increases this year. Two, the Fed to reduce its balance sheet, its portfolio of bonds. It won’t do this by actually selling, but by not reinvesting some of the principle repaid as the Treasury rolls over each bond at maturity. This is like reducing the workforce by a hiring freeze and attrition, rather than by layoffs.

  We are no Fed insiders, but if we were to take an educated guess, we would read the last part as a shuffle between the Fed and the banks. No one can afford rising long-term bond yields, as the banks hold plenty of them and this would be a capital loss. Also, if bond prices drop then all other asset prices would drop too. Banks would take another hit.

  Right now, the banks are lending to the Fed at 1.25%. The Fed uses this cash to finance its purchase of long Treasury bonds. The 10-year bond closed on Friday at a yield of 2.16%. If the Fed can arrange for the banks to swap, basically slowly draw down their excess reserves and buy the bonds, then it would not cause the bond market to crash. At the same time, the Fed can say that it has shrunken its balance sheet. There would be no change in the bond market, but the banks can bypass the Fed, while increasing their net interest by about 0.9%.

  This move would have one nonobvious side effect. The duration risk moves from the Fed to the banks. This is the risk of capital loss, if the interest rate should move upwards. At least the risk moves to the banks nominally. In practice, the Fed will have to bail out the banks should they get hit by this (or assure the banks that the Fed will do everything it can to prevent long bond yields from rising).

  We present the issue in these terms, because bank solvency (and the Fed’s own solvency) is the real motivation of the Fed. Price stability—defined to make Orwell proud, as rising prices of 2% per year—is not occurring right now. That is, the Fed has failed to stimulate the price increases that it wishes.

  And the Yellen Fed does wish for rising prices. In a key paper she wrote in 1990 with her husband George Ackerlof, Yellen presented her theory of inflation and the labor market. Let’s strip the academic regalia, to see it in plain terms.

  1. Disgruntled employees don’t work hard, and may even sabotage machinery.
  2. So companies must overpay to keep them from slacking.
  3. Higher pay per worker means fewer workers, because companies have a finite budget. Yellen concludes—you guessed it:
  4. Inflation provides corporations with more money to hire more people.

  It’s not much as a theory of labor, but does rationalize money printing rather neatly.

  The mainstream belief held by Yellen, along with her most trenchant critics, is that rising quantity of money causes rising prices. Never mind that it has failed to work out that way since the Fed turned on the printing press afterburners in 2008. It remains the prevailing belief. So it is somewhat amazing that, with consumer prices falling short of the Fed’s official policy goal of 2% per annum, the Fed is decelerating.

  Maybe, Yellen feels that jawboning—saying the economy is getting stronger, etc.—will be more effective than another round of quantitative easing. Maybe. The Keynesians have a cherished belief that so called animal spirits animate markets (and Yellen is a member of the New Keynesian School).

  Or, it could be that banks are getting strangled. Banks don’t care about unemployment, nor about consumer prices. They don’t even care about the dollar, being both long and short. That is, they are both borrowers and lenders. They borrow short to lend long.

  While the short-term rate has been rising, the long-term rate is back to falling again (which has been the trend since 1981). The effect on banks is: margin compression. The banks are choking, for lack of net revenue oxygen. They will breathe a bit easier if they can make 2.16% rather than the 1.25% as now.

  What does this have to do with inflation? Another news item this week illustrates. Amazon bought Whole Foods. Amazon has unlimited access to credit through the bond and stock markets. The lower the interest rate, the more access the big corporations have, to dirtier cheaper credit. They can’t necessarily use this credit to grow their real businesses (one cause and also effect of it being so cheap) but they can use it to make acquisitions. Acquisitions that would not be economic at higher rates.

  What will Amazon do with Whole Foods? We would guess that they will pursue Jeff Bezos’ stated vision for the future: that people will always want faster delivery and lower prices. Amazon will use its superior information technology, logistics, scale—and dirt cheap credit—to drive down costs, prices, and margins at Whole Foods. And all other grocers will likely have to follow suit.

  So much for higher prices. An expansion of the credit supply (the dollar is not money, which would be gold) is supposed to stoke higher prices, and here is a case where it causes lower prices.

  By the way, lest anyone think that this is good because consumers get lower prices, it’s not. Sure, consumers benefit for now. But the real damage comes from the fact that the whole process is fueled by burning investor capital. That is the real nature of too-cheap credit.

  And this right here is the indictment of the dollar. Not rising prices, skyrocketing prices, or hyperinflation. At least not now nor the foreseeable future. Falling interest, capital consumption, wage pressures, and unfair advantages handed to crony corporations. All managed by a Fed Chair with a frivolous theory on inflation who knows not what she does.

  What does this have to do with the price of gold? Well, the price jumped up early on Wednesday as weak retail sales and inflation data numbers came out. But when Yellen spoke, the gold price fell back down, giving back the whole move and then some.

  Which is all just noise. Speculators gonna speculate, but the fundamentals of gold supply and demand do not change with an inflation data report or a Fed Chair monetary policy announcement.

  Over time, if people perceive gold as an inflation hedge, and continue to see a lack of inflation, maybe they won’t buy gold or even sell it. If so, they are betting on the dollar as it continues on in its ultra-low interest rate (and long-term falling) environment.

  We will take a look at the Wednesday intraday gold basis overlaid with the gold price, below.

  …

  This week, the prices of the metals fell. Gold went down about $13, and silver about 50 cents. As always, we are interested in the supply and demand fundamentals. But first charts of their prices and the gold-silver ratio.

  

  Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It moved up a sharply.

  In this graph, we show both bid and offer prices. If you were to sell gold on the bid and buy silver at the ask, that is the lower bid price. Conversely, if you sold silver on the bid and bought gold at the offer, that is the higher offer price.

  

  For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.

  Here is the gold graph.

  

  We had a rising price of the dollar (the mirror image of the dropping price of gold). The abundance fell (the basis) and the scarcity increase (the cobasis).

  Our gold fundamental price shows a decrease of about $10 to $1,334 (see chart here on our website).

  Here is the intraday graph of Wednesday (all times are London) showing the gold price overlaid with the August basis.

  

  The basis starts a little over 0.6% and droops along with the price from about $1,266 to $1,265. As the price shoots up $12, the basis shoots up 12bps. Later, the price begins to drop and so does the basis.

  While the amount is coincidence, the relationship is not. It is causal. This is what first speculative buying, then speculative selling, looks like. All in one day.

  Now let’s look at silver.

  

  In silver terms, the dollar rose more (i.e. the price of silver fell more). The decrease in abundance and increase in scarcity were correspondingly greater.

  Our silver fundamental price increased two cents (to $17.54). That gives us a fundamental gold-silver ratio of 76.07 (see chart on our website). Not too far from the close on Friday of 75.12 bid and 75.29 offer.

   

  Monetary Metals will be exhibiting and FreedomFest in Las Vegas in July. If you are an investor and would like a meeting there, please click here.

   

  © 2017 Monetary Metals

  

• Washington's "Good Terrorists, Bad Terrorists" Policy In Middle East

  Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,

  Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The only difference between the Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s that spawned Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad: back then, the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

  After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which Islamic jihadists (aka terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels” with secular and nationalist ambitions to the Western audience.

  Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terrorism, therefore the Western political establishments and the corporate media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in Syria: such as the red militants of the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

  If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm Afghan “Mujahideen” against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

  Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide training and weapons to Sunni Arab militants to battle the Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime with the collaboration of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

  During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact that the bulk of so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban Movement.

  Similarly, in Syria, the majority of so-called “moderate rebels” is comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists, such as Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army (FSA).

  Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in character than secular or nationalist, as such.

  Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, were allied with the Baathist regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.

  At the behest of American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014, from where, the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

  Regarding the Western powers’ modus operandi of waging proxy wars in the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

  More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; and the benefit of buying weapons from the unregulated arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists are the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.

  On the subject of the supposed “powerlessness” of the US in the global affairs, the Western think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors generally claim that Pakistan deceived the US in Afghanistan by not “doing more” to rein in the Taliban; Turkey hoodwinked the US in Syria by using the war against Islamic State as a pretext for cracking down on Kurds; Saudi Arabia and UAE betrayed the US in Yemen by mounting airstrikes against the Houthis and Saleh’s loyalists; and once again Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt went against the ostensible policy of the US in Libya by destabilizing the Tripoli-based government, even though the renegade general in eastern Libya, Khalifa Haftar, is an American stooge who had lived for two decades in the US right next to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia.

  If the US policymakers are so naïve then how come they still control the global political and economic order? This perennially whining attitude of the Western corporate media that such and such regional actors had betrayed them otherwise they were on the top of their game is actually a clever stratagem that has been deliberately designed by the spin-doctors of the Western mainstream media and foreign policy think tanks to cast the Western powers in a positive light and to vilify adversaries, even if the latter are their tactical allies in some of the regional conflicts.

  Fighting wars through proxies allows the international power brokers the luxury of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” in their defense and at the same time they can shift all the blame for wrongdoing on the minor regional players. The Western powers’ culpability lies in the fact that because of them a system of international justice based on sound principles of morality and justice cannot be constructed in which the violators can be punished for their wrongdoing and the victims of injustice, tyranny and violence can be protected.

  Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling Satans as saviors.

  

  

• The Fallacies Of The 'Russia-Truthers'

  Authored by James Carden via ConsortiumNews.com,

  The anti-Russia hysteria – now rivaling past Red Scares with Russians hiding under every bed – has led to factual errors in press accounts and has erased standards of political fairness.

  One of the more extraordinary developments since the U.S. presidential election is that the paranoia and the grotesque disregard for facts, evidence and logic that characterized the Trump-inspired “birther movement” can now be reasonably said to characterize the Left’s stance toward Donald J. Trump.

  

  Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

  There seems to be nothing that Trump opponents will not say and no charge, however low, they will not stoop to making as long as it furthers the goal of removing Trump from office. But, alas, the liberal case against Trump rests upon little more than widely shared fictions and unsubstantiated claims about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

  For instance, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, former FBI Director James Comey cast doubt on a Feb. 14 New York Times report titled “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”

  The article, which relied on “four current and former government officials,” said that “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election” and that “the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.”

  Comey was asked about the report during an exchange with Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho.

  RISCH:  I remember, you — you talked with us shortly after February 14th, when the New York Times wrote an article that suggested that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians. This is not factual. Do you recall that?

   

  COMEY: Yes.

   

  RISCH: OK. So — so, again, so the American people can understand this, that report by the New York Times was not true. Is that a fair statement?

   

  COMEY: In — in the main, it was not true.

  Later in the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, asked Comey: “Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?” To which Comey replied: “Yes.”

  Spreading Hysteria

  However, the anti-Russian hysteria has spread well beyond the pages of The New York Times and even beyond the circumstances of the 2016 presidential campaign. Allegations about Russian meddling have included U.S. government attacks on Russia’s RT network for allegedly undermining Americans’ faith in their democracy by broadcasting debates among third-party presidential candidates and covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.

  

  The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)

  Even American journalists have come in for a taste of the lash for not joining in the Russia-bashing. Last Thanksgiving Day, The Washington Post ran a front-page story based on an anonymous Web site called PropOrNot that accused 200 Web sites – including Consortiumnews.com, Counterpunch, Truthout, Truthdig and other leading independent news sources in America – of peddling “Russian propaganda,” presumably in part, because they questioned the State Department’s narratives about the Ukraine crisis or the Syrian conflict.

  The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, recently issued a report warning that Russian President Putin is building a European “5th column” to advance a goal of undermining Western democracy. Anybody who does not join in the ritual denunciations of Putin and Russia is under suspicion.

  Yet in light of Comey’s testimony, perhaps it is worth recalling a number of other instances in which Russia was accused of seeking to disrupt and discredit Western democracies and see how well they’ve held up.

  In April of last year, Dutch voters rejected a referendum on whether to approve an Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. Russia was quickly accused of meddling in the referendum.

  One New York Times headline screamed: “Fake News, Fake Ukrainians: How a Group of Russians Tilted A Dutch Vote.” The Times reported that two Russians had worked against the referendum for the Dutch Socialist Party.

  But, as the Dutch journalist and author Chris Kaspar de Ploeg points out, the Times story credits “these mere two (!) individuals” with having “tilted the Dutch vote.” In the end, De Ploeg notes, the Times was forced to admit that “no one has yet come up with concrete evidence that the Russian state, rather than individual Russians, is working to skew the election and many wonder why Moscow would even bother trying to do so in a small country.”

  Brexit Accusations

  Similar accusations of meddling were leveled against Russia in the run-up to the June 2016 Brexit vote. Joerg Forbrig of the German Marshall Fund told the Daily Beast, “I do think that the Kremlin has been trying to reach out to the leave campaign. There may well be support but it will be very hard to find out about this because they will be extremely discrete.”

  

  Russians taking part in an Immortal Regiment march, honoring family members who died during World War II, on May 9, 2017.

  “We do know,” said Forbrig, “that the Kremlin is also materially supporting other actors that have potential to undermine European unity, and the European Union.”

  After the “Leave” campaign emerged victorious, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw told the House of Commons “I don’t think we have even begun to wake up to what Russia is doing when it comes to cyber warfare.”

  And yet, despite all the handwringing, U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson was recently forced to admit: “We have no evidence the Russians are actually involved in trying to undermine our democratic processes at the moment. We don’t actually have that evidence. But what we do have is plenty of evidence that the Russians are capable of doing that.”

  A December 2016 New York Times editorial also expressed concern that Putin had set his sights on Europe, citing “ominous signs that Russia is spreading propaganda and engaging in cyberattacks in Europe in advance of several national elections next year.”

  And yet, according to Politico Europe, a year-long investigation by German intelligence issued in February 2017 “failed to uncover evidence of Kremlin-backed meddling” and “found no concrete proof of disinformation campaigns targeting the government.”

  In the run-up to May’s presidential election in France, Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the New York Times: “I think it’s safe by everybody’s judgment that the Russians are actively involved in the French elections.”

  Speculation about Russian interference went into overdrive just hours before the vote when emails from the campaign of pro-E.U. candidate Emmanuel Macron were leaked. The culprit? You guessed it! According to a May 6 report in The Independent, “Vitali Kremez, director of research with US-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said his analysis indicated that APT 28, a group tied to Russia’s GRU military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak.”

  But once again, no evidence was to be found. In an interview with the Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard, director general of France’s cyber-defense agency, said his agency “found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible” for the leak.

  But that didn’t stop Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, from repeating the accusations. After all, why let facts get in the way of a good story? Raskin screeched to protesters at the so-called “March for Truth” that Russia “hacked and trashed Macron, in a bid to elect the right-wing, immigrant bashing Marine Le Pen.”

  Viral Distortions

  Needless to say there have been many reports of Russian cyber attacks in the U.S. that have gone viral but were quickly shown to be untrue.

  

  A busy tourist scene in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Photo by Robert Parry)

  Of these, perhaps the best known was a story in Slate by former New Republic editor Franklin Foer in which Foer claimed a computer server belonging to the Trump Organization was secretly communicating with what Hillary Clinton described as a “Putin-tied bank” in Russia.

  And yet, as On the Media’s Bob Garfield sardonically noted, “it took cyber experts about 5 minutes to knock that story down.” As it turns out, the “secret server” wasn’t secret and the domain in question didn’t even belong to Trump; it belonged to a marketing company called Cendyn.

  The link to the Russia’s Alfa bank? Executives from Alfa frequented Trump hotels and as a matter of course received marketing/promotional emails from Cendyn on behalf of the Trump Organization. Cyber expert Robert Graham described Foer’s story as “nonsense.”

  Yet Foer, was if anything, in good company. The Washington Post, in a December 2016 story accused the Russian government of hacking into an electrical grid in Burlington, Vermont. The sensational headline read: “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say.”

  Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin was quick to denounce the Kremlin, declaring “Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety.”

  But, alas, the story was quickly debunked by the electrical utility in question, which released a statement, which read, in part: “There is no indication that either our electric grid or customer information has been compromised. Media reports stating that Burlington Electric was hacked or that the electric grid was breached are false.” The Post had to append an embarrassing editor’s note explaining why their story didn’t hold up to the minutest scrutiny.

  Given all this, our hardy band of “Russia Truthers” might do well to curb their hysteria until such time as Independent Counsel Robert Mueller concludes his investigation. Maybe then there might be at least some evidence attached to the various allegations. But the prospects for such self-control are not good. There is too much momentum – and political self-interest – behind the sordid campaign to paint the 2016 election result as the product of sinister Russian interference.

  

  

• Stunning Footage Of American's Crumbling Infrastructure

  Via StockBoardAsset.com,

  It’s no secret that America’s infrastructure is in dire need of repairs. Earlier this year, America received her infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers’ and received a repulsive D+. The ASCE guesstimates the US would need to spend $4.5 trillion by 2025 on infrastructure.

  Here’s the breakdown of the report card:  

  • Aviation: D
  • Bridges: C+
  • Dams: D
  • Drinking Water: D
  • Energy: D+
  • Hazardous Waste: D+
  • Inland Waterways: D
  • Levees: D
  • Parks and Recreation: D+
  • Ports: C+
  • Rail: B
  • Roads: D
  • Schools: D
  • Solid Waste: C+
  • Transit: D-
  • Wastewater: D+

  With that being said, I’ve spent the entire weekend inspecting America’s infrastructure at the Port of Baltimore.

  At some locations, I was given special access to a behind the scenes view of America’s crumbling infrastructure that the public is not allowed to see. The reasons you’re left out of the know is because it destroys the mainstream narrative that everything is awesome.

  Even Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group says, “the US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure”.

  In the Sunday Edition, Alastair Williamson is on site at a marine terminal in the Port of Baltimore. He provides an interesting view of America’s deteriorating infrastructure blended with the current shape of the US economy.

  In this video, Alastair is given special access to behind the scenes of America’s crumbling infrastructure. This view is rarely seen by the mainstream public. Enjoy!

  

  

• Mueller Has "Not Yet" Decided Whether To Investigate Trump: ABC

  In the biggest political story of the past week, one which was timed to coincide with Donald Trump’s Birthday, the WaPo reported citing anonymous sources, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating President Trump for possible obstruction of justice. Just a few hours later on Thursday night, the DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Russia probe due to Jeff Sessions recusal, released a stunning announcement which urged Americans to be “skeptical about anonymous allegations” in the media, which many interpreted as being issued in response to the WaPo report.

  “Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch or agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated. Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long-established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations.

  Then on Sunday, the plot thickened further when according to ABC, special counsel Robert Mueller has not yet decided whether to investigate President Trump as part of the Russia probe, suggesting the WaPo report that a probe had already started was inaccurate.

  “Now, my sources are telling me he’s begun some preliminary planning,” Pierre Thomas, the ABC News senior justice correspondent, said of Mueller on ABC’s “This Week” although he too, like the WaPo, was referring to anonymous sources, so who knows who is telling the truth.

  “Plans to talk to some people in the administration. But he’s not yet made that momentous decision to go for a full-scale investigation.”

  .@PierreTABC: Mueller has preliminary plans to speak to people in admin, but no decision yet for “full scale” investigation of Pres. Trump. pic.twitter.com/BXcv9OeYIK

  — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 18, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  On Friday, Trump responded to the Washington Post story by tweeting: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.” But also on Sunday Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow insisted the president was not literally confirming the investigation but was just referring to the story.

  “Let me be clear: the president is not under investigation as James Comey stated in his testimony, that the president was not the target of investigation on three different occasions,” Sekulow said Sunday. “The president is not a subject or target of an investigation.”

  “Now Mueller faces a huge decision,” Thomas told “This Week” host Martha Raddatz. “Does he believe the president, who says there’s no wrongdoing here, or does he go after the president in the way James Comey wants him to do?”

  And so, yet another blockbuster media report has been cast into doubt as a result of more “he said, he said” innuendo, which will be resolved only if Mueller steps up and discloses on the record whether he is indeed investiating Trump for obstruction, or any other reason. That however is unlikely to happen, and so the daily ping-ponging media innuendos will continue indefinitely.

  

  

• With New Patent, Amazon Will Collect As Much Customer Data As Google

  A day after Amazon announced it would jump head-long into the bricks-and-mortar grocery business by agreeing to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, reports from earlier this week about a new patent issued to the company are starting to make more sense. The patent, which was first reported by the Verge, is for wireless technology that can effectively block customers in Whole Food’s retail locations from “showrooming." "Showrooming" is the practice of using retail locations to test out products before buying them online – a practice that Amazon, by making it easy to comparison shop on a smartphone, helped pioneer.

  In its report, the Verge focuses on how the technology will help the company solve a problem that Amazon itself helped create – a problem that has plagued virtually every other traditional retailer.

  "Systems and methods for controlling online shopping within a physical store or retailer location are provided. A wireless network connection may be provided to a consumer device at a retailer location on behalf of a retailer, and content requested by the consumer device via the wireless network connection may be identified. Based upon an evaluation of the identified content, a determination may be made that the consumer device is attempting to access information associated with a competitor of the retailer or an item offered for sale by the retailer. At least one control action may then be directed based upon the determination.”

  But the technology described in the patent also raises serious concerns about the company’s plans for vastly expanding its capacity to collect and store customers' data. As MarketWatch’s Theresa Poletti reports, with this added capability, Amazon may soon be gathering as much data on its consumers now as Alphabet’s Google Inc.

  

  Stephen DiFranco, an executive-in-residence at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., offered a few disturbing hints about the scope of Amazon’s data-collection capabilities in an interview with MarketWatch.

  “[The technology] will also triangulate your position in the store, market to you while you are in the store, and understand your behavior in the store,” said DiFranco, who previously worked at Broadcom’s Internet of Things business and led the sale to Cypress Semiconductor CY, -1.72% “If they can collect the same kind of info that they can get while I am surfing on their site, they are going to be able to deliver the same value, the same experience that I get on their site…The company that knows more about the online behavior of me, will now own this same science…while I am in the Whole Foods retail environment.”

   

  The positive aspect, he said, is that it will result in better, more convenient shopping experiences for consumers, with their preferences and habits known. It has the ability to turn into a real assistant for shopping. “You passed the milk, you always get milk,” your smartphone may tell you while shopping.

   

  DiFranco said that by combining the data Amazon already has about its current customers, plus far more frequent data that comes from grocery shopping, will turn it into an even bigger giant with vastly more data. “This is jet fuel in retail analytics that no one else will have.”

  But while some customers might balk at the prospect of shopping in a store where literally every single action and preference is being recorded, investors don't seem to mind.

  Whole Foods’ Market’s largest competitors lost a combined $32 billion in market capitalization yesterday after the announcement. Sell-side analysts have long been calling for a stronger management team to step in and take control of Whole Foods after years of chronically weak earnings and sluggish stock performance. Amazon’s stock also climbed 2.4% on the news, helping it slough off broader weakness in the FAAMG contingent.

  

  Amazon, which already operates a grocery-delivery service in select markets, announced its plans for entering the bricks-and-mortar grocery business late last year when it opened its first small-format grocery store. At the time, the company said it could envision expanding to 2,000 stores. One of the store's most widely publicized features was its use of automation and AI technology to eliminate check-out lines and allow customers to freely walk out with their purchases. But following the latest revelation about Amazon’s big-data tactics, investors should hope the ecommerce giant also plans to address the more prosaic flaws plaguing Whole Food’s business: Namely, that, as stagnant wages and rising rents force consumers to cut back on spending, the “Whole Paycheck” image will likely continue to alienate shoppers.

  

  

• Van Slams Into Pedestrians Near London Mosque Leaving "Number Of Casualties", Driver Arrested

  Live Feed from Sky News:

  * * *

  A van plowed into pedestrians on Seven Sisters road in the Finsbury Park area in north London just after 12:20am London Time, in what the police has described a “major incident.” There are “a number of casualties being worked on at the scene,” London police said in a statement, with at least 10 people injured according to press reports.

  

  The incident happened near the prominent Finsbury Park Mosque as witnesses claim the driver intentionally struck the victims; a male driver, who has not been identified, has been taken into police custody while the van appears to be rented. LBC radio adds that there has been a “huge emergency response” and ambulances have been dispatched to help the injured.

  One witness told Sky News that the incident happened after worshippers were leaving the Finsbury Park mosque after midnight prayers.

  Eyewitnesses reported seeing bystanders wrestle the suspect to the ground and pin him down until officers arrived.

  According to the Telegraph, pictures posted on social media show more than a dozen emergency vehicles near the UKCG Help Centre at the junction of Seven Sisters Road and the A503 Tollington Road.

  UK: London’s Finsbury Park terror scene after police arrest van driver | June 19 2017 pic.twitter.com/kUKRJBLIId

  — redball (@redball2) June 19, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  So far, the incident is not being called a terrorist attacks, as a person has been arrested unlike previous incidents.

  One eyewitness speaking to LBC said the van had hit people on the pavement, but had not collided with a building. “It looked like he had lost control of the van or something,” he said.  Locals said they had heard shouting and a helicopter was circling overhead.

  Another caller told LBC her sister was at the scene when it happened. She said she described it as “something from a horror movie, everyone running everywhere”.

  This racist bastard ran over innocent civilians on their way home from taraweh #FinsburyPark pic.twitter.com/YHvsVZHqIY

  — Didier (@Known_As_H) June 18, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Some social media reports describe the attack as “Islamophobic”, and described the attack as a van “randomly swerving off the main road and running over several Muslim men.”

  Islamaphobic attack in finsbury park right now. A van randomly swerved off the main road and ran over several muslim men. pic.twitter.com/FM2RP0Fd4d

  — ???? (@__ABDULQAADIR) June 19, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The U.K. Muslim Council of Britain said they had been told worshippers were ran over as they left a local mosque. “Our prayers are with the victims,” they said on Twitter.

  The van used tonight at Finsbury Park mosque is shown below

  Here’s the van used tonight at Finsbury Park mosque pic.twitter.com/p5Oi39VZrT

  — Tommy Robinson ???????? (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 19, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  One caller told LBC said people from a local mosque had been drinking coffee at a cafe by the mosque. He said he had seen six people on the floor. Another caller said:  “I saw police giving CPR, getting the heart going again and another guy on the floor.”

  There was no immediate word on an exact number of victims according to LBC, whose live broadcast can be heard here.

  BREAKING: Police are dealing with an incident on Seven Sisters Road nr Finsbury Park. Reports of a van hitting pedestrians (Image: @aaalec) pic.twitter.com/UeI5IIrwnp

  — London Updates (@LondonUpdates) June 18, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  According to the Guardian, Al Qaeda operatives including the “shoebomber” Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui attended the Finsbury Park mosque. In 2002, weapons training had taken place inside the building. The mosque rose to notoriety when Abu Hamza al-Masri became Imam of the Mosque due to his extremist ideologies and views on terrorism.

  

  

• NATO Holds Defense Drill Simulating Russian Invasion Of Baltics

  NATO officials are growing increasingly nervous about the possibility of an invasion of the Baltic states ahead of Russian wargames planned this fall on the border of Belarus and Poland that could involve as many as 100,000 troops. That "anxiety" was on display this week, when US and British troops carried out the first NATO military exercise that involved a simulated defense of the Suwalki Gap, an area in northern Poland on the border with Lithuania that serves as the gateway to the Baltic region.

  In other words, a drill against a Russian invasion of the Baltics states, and by extension, Europe.

  

  NATO officials described the area as a “choke point” that, if it were taken by an invading force, could potentially isolate the Baltic states from their NATO allies, according to Reuters.

  "The gap is vulnerable because of the geography. It's not inevitable that there's going to be an attack, of course, but … if that was closed, then you have three allies that are north that are potentially isolated from the rest of the alliance", said U.S. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.

   

  "We have to practice, we have to demonstrate that we can support allies in keeping (the Gap) open, in maintaining that connection," he said.

   

  Since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine back in 2014, NATO has shifted four battlegroups totaling just over 4,500 troops to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

  US and UK aircraft took part in the exercises, alongside troops from Poland, Lithuania and Croatia in a simulated defense of the potential flashpoint in an area several hours' drive from where a U.S. battalion is stationed at Orzysz base in Poland, Reuters reported.

  

  Of course, Russia has repeatedly said it has no plans to invade the Baltics, and has warned that the "defensive" buildup in NATO forces against its borders is an unprovoked act of aggression againt Russia.

  However, Russia's protests have done little to sway the US Senate, which passed new sanctions against Russia this week, allegedly in retribution for Russia’s meddling in the US election. The measures were included in an Iran sanctions bill that was widely expected to pass, but as the Hill reported yesterday, President Donald Trump is leaning on House Republicans to drop the bill because he fears it could damage US-Russia relations.

  

  In addition to Trump, Germany and Austria have also voiced their displeasure for one measure outlined in the sanctions bill, asking the US drop its opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump Russian gas to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea. Austria's Chancellor Christian Kern and Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said earlier this week that it appeared that the opposition of the pipeline was aimed at securing US energy jobs and pushing out Russian gas deliveries to Europe.

  

  “Europe's energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not for the United States of America," Kern and Gabriel said.

  Meanwhile, NATO acknowledged the symtoblic nature of the drills, saying the exercises were more of a gesture than a dress rehearsal for war. As Brigadier General Valdemaras Rupsys, head of Lithuania's land forces, explained, “this is only a small-scale drill compared to what would be needed in case of a real attack.”

  

  

• The Big Collusion Narrative Keeps Melting Down

  Authored by David French via National Review,

  After two days and almost six hours of high-stakes public testimony, I’m struck by the total lack of any compelling claims supporting the “big” collusion narrative, that Russia conspired with Trump or Trump officials to “hack” election.

  

  While we certainly aren’t privy to all the relevant information or all the relevant testimony, nothing that James Comey said last week or that Jeff Sessions said this week (much less any of the questions directed his way) contained so much as a meaningful hint that the Committee was on the verge of uncovering the political scandal of the century.

  

  Rather, the focus keeps shifting to much narrower questions regarding Trump’s decision to fire James Comey – questions that are important but far less historically consequential than any claim that a president or his attorney general are traitors to their country.

  Here’s where we stand:

  1. Not only is there no evidence that Trump personally colluded with Russians or ordered anyone to collude with Russians, there’s now evidence that he hasn’t been under personal investigation by the FBI.

   

  2. There is absolutely zero available evidence that Jeff Sessions colluded with the Russians.

   

  3. Similarly, there is so far no evidence that even Trump’s more unsavory aides – men like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — colluded to influence the election

   

  4. To the extent that there is evidence of wrongdoing connected with a foreign power, it deals not with the election itself but rather with Flynn’s alleged failures to disclose foreign payments and contacts.

  Millions of American believe the worst about their current president, claims every bit as toxic in their own way as “truther” smears against George Bush or “birther” smears against Barack Obama.

  The Trump collusion narrative has gotten a far wider and more respectable hearing than either of the two conspiracy theories that plagued the Bush and Obama administrations.

  Truth is truth, and it’s important for responsible people to not just understand and respond to actual evidence – no matter where it leads – but also acknowledge its absence. And so far the absence of evidence points to Trump’s innocence of some of the worst allegations ever leveled against an American president or his senior team.

  

  

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• What Rich Used To Be

  From the Slope of Hope: I’ve had a lifelong fascination with wealth and, more recently, wealth disparity (for proof, look no further than the SocialTrade stack on this very topic). I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in a happy, financially-secure, but very much middle-class family. We lived in this house:

  

  Everyone I knew had the same situation. We all had pretty much the same kind of house, the same quantity of toys, the same simple vacations………everything was so equal, you’d think we were living in some kind of socialist paradise.

  We weren’t, of course, and there was, naturally, one “rich kid” in the neighborhood. Everything about his life was just a little bit nicer, starting with the house he lived in:

  

  Doesn’t look too much different, does it? Well, that’s kind of the point of this post.

  As a youngster, I was acutely aware of many differences between the life I had and the one my friend Steven (AKA the rich kid) had. Although many decades have passed since then, I don’t have to even try hard to remember some of those contrasts:

  The White Carpet
  One of my most vivid memories was walking into Steven’s house and seeing stark-white wall-to-wall carpeting. In my house, we had four kids, and white carpet would have been just nuts to have. But in Steven’s, there it was, white and looking good as new. It helped, I suppose, that there was plastic runners, so you had to walk on them, as if it was a plastic sidewalk in the middle of the house. Even as a child, I thought it was kind of silly to carpet a house and then lay down a strip of plastic to protect it, but who was I to say?

  The Treehouse
  In Steven’s back yard, there was the most gorgeous treehouse. His dad ran a Ford dealership, so I guess he could pretty easily afford a carpenter to come out and construct it for him. Now, when I say “gorgeous”, all I mean was that it looked good to my ten-year-old eyes. It was just a simple cube – – but it was made of high-quality wood, was obviously professionally-constructed, and conjured up much envy within me. I asked my dad every summer if I could have a treehouse, and the response was always the same: “I’ll think about it.” It never came.

  The Thunderbird
  As I mentioned, Steven’s dad had a dealership (well, at least he was the general manager there), and their family had a nice, new “luxury” car. It was certainly fancier than our station wagon, and I was amazed that it had this thing called “Cruise Control”, which to my young mind meant the car would actually drive itself. Steven and I were in the back seat, and he told me that the little windows were called “opera windows”, which likewise sounded like something far more elegant and expensive than I’d ever own personally.

  Dad Salaries
  I distinctly remember one conversation my friend and I had in which our father’s salaries came up. Now, I actually had no earthly clue what my father made, but for some reason I was feeling competitive and insecure that day, so I told Steven my father made $35,000 a year, which sounded tremendous to me. He countered that if MY dad made $35,000 a year, then HIS dad must make $50,000 a year. I shut up at that point, because I figured it must be true, given their apparently luxurious lifestyle.

  The Boom Boom Cannon
  This one seemed to sting the most of all: one Christmas, my “big gift” was a plastic UFO that could fly by way of a motorized propeller. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the damn thing to fly, in spite of my father’s best efforts. So it was pretty disappointing. I visited Steven to see what he got for Christmas, and he was the proud owner of a tiny working cannon called the Boom Boom (yeah, safety concerns weren’t as prevalent those days……….this was actually a working cannon, with gunpowder, albeit very small). It was made of nice, heavy metal, and I’d never seen one before. It seemed like just about the best toy imaginable.

  Looking back, it was as if my dad was 6 feet tall, just like everyone’s else’s dad, and here was my friend who had a dad that was 6 feet and 1 inch tall. Steven’s toys were just a LITTLE bit nicer. His house was a LITTLE bit cleaner. His vacations were a LITTLE bit fancier. But, in truth, the difference between his life and everyone else’s was really, really small. Back then, though, I always felt poor when I was with Steven.

  These days, the difference isn’t between a 6 foot guy and someone 6’1″. It’s more like suddenly there are some people who are 900 feet tall – – 1500 feet tall – – 5000 feet tall. Their wealth is just as absurdly large as such heights would be, while at the same time the mass of humanity seems to be getting shorter by the week.

  For decades – – mainly the 40s, 50s, and 60s – – wealth distribution in America was incredibly even. Someone very middle-of-the-road could still aspire to be “the rich guy” in town. If my father, for instance, got it in his head that he wanted to win the rat race in our neighborhood, it wouldn’t have been that difficult. It was totally feasible. That extra inch wasn’t unattainable.

  Starting in the 70s, thought, and picking up speed in the 1980s, things started to change. Over the past third of a century, policy has clearly handed the wealth of the country over to the rich kids.

  

  Notice the change that took place in 1982. Interestingly, that was exactly the same year that the original Forbes 400 list came out. Their timing couldn’t have been better, because the very existence of such a “rich list” was the equivalent of ringing in an era of plutocracy. But read what the list was like in the inaugural issue………

  In the first Forbes 400 list, there were only 13 billionaires, and a net worth of 75 Million USD secured a spot on the list. The 1982 list represented 2.8% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. The 1982 Forbes 400 had 22.8% of the list composed of oil fortunes, with 15.3% from manufacturing, 9% from finance and only 3% from technology driven fortunes.

  Being a billionaire was a big, big deal. Only 13 entries! These days, just to on the list at ALL, you need a net worth of at least $1.7 billion, 23 times higher than the original list. Amazingly, there are nearly 200 people who are billionaires that don’t even make it on the list at all, because they don’t have enough! So the 1982 list seems absolutely quaint in the modern era.

  Life tends to move in cycles, and I doubt the scenario in which this massive disparity exists is a permanent feature of life. However, it will take many decades – – and probably more than a little social pain – – to share the wealth again.

  All I can say to my younger self regarding my rich friend……….it really wasn’t so bad, and Boom Boom Cannon notwithstanding, financial life was a lot more evenly-balanced back then than it is now. And I still don’t have a treehouse.

  

• "It's The 'Russia', Stupid!"

  Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  

  It’s another week in Washington and another horror show. This time it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions being grilled by Senators on whether, when, and how he might have met with certain Russians, or any Russian, or someone who might actually know a Russian. In addition to fishing for any inconsistency that could be used to support an accusation of obstruction of justice or perjury – the usual sleazy methodology of politically motivated investigations here – the transparent aim was to further poison the well on any possible initiative to improve ties with Moscow.

  The strategy appears to be working. The Russian Embassy in Washington confirms that for the first time since the Russian Federation’s founding the State Department did not send pro forma national day greetings. Perhaps the bureaucrats were afraid they would be tainted and themselves become targets of multiple investigations into «collusion» with the Kremlin. (Luckily, this intrepid Washington analyst has no qualms about such associations.)

  Or more likely, they themselves are part of the Russophobic mob undermining the White House. It has been reported that soon after the inauguration Trump sought to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with President Vladimir Putin. This produced a hysterical counteraction from the Deep State. As reported by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:

  «The State Department was tasked with working out the details.

   

  «Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.

   

  «Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

   

  «‘It would have been a win-win for Moscow,’ said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own».

  So much for constitutional government and the rule of law…

  But now it gets even worse. This week Congress moved legislation designed to codify in statute sanctions imposed on Russia by Barack Obama over Ukraine and evidence-free charges of Russian election interference. Provisions for a presidential waiver, which are standard in any sanctions legislation, are unusually narrow. Congressional proponents are clear that their aim is to take the matter out of the president’s hands. Democrats, seemingly devoid of any other policy agenda or ideas, vow to keep banging the Russia drum through the 2018 Congressional elections.

  When all is said and done, there are lots of reasons the political class hates Trump. His heresies on immigration and trade are near the top of the list. But make no mistake: for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, demonizing Russia and Vladimir Putin personally is a dangerous obsession. (There is reason to suspect «Russian collusion» figured in the thinking of a fanatical Leftist’s shooting attack on Republican Congressmen: «The shooter also signed a petition calling for an investigation into Trump-Russia ties, confirming he was radicalized by the mainstream media’s obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia interfering with the election».)

  It remains to be seen whether Oliver Stone’s extended interview with Putin on the Showtime network will have any impact. So far the commentary seems to be divided between descriptions of the substance of the discussion and attacks on Stone for talking with such a bad, bad man: «Speaking after the interview, Stone refuted allegations that he became an unwitting messenger of pro-Putin propaganda or of dishonest information given by the president».

  With regard to substance, relatively little attention has been accorded in American media to Putin’s flat accusation that U.S. «special services» have supported terrorists, including in Chechnya. Of course anyone paying attention would know that arming jihadists is a standard part of U.S. policy, going back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s and repeated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and today in Syria. Indeed, as early as the 1950s the U.S. had established a very close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist elements as a weapon against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Baathists in Syria and Iraq, who Washington thought were a little too cozy with the Soviet Union and far too socialist and secular for the taste of our pals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

  There is a real symbiosis between the anti-Russian imperative in American foreign policy and support for radical Islamic elements. It did not end when the Soviet Union and communism collapsed but rather was intensified. This is why Moscow’s constant calls for a common front against terrorism are always rebuffed. Such cooperation doesn’t make any sense for anomenklatura whose number one goal is hostility to Moscow and for whom jihadists are at worst «frienemies» – people who may be troublesome but useful.

  We can only imagine how completely different the world would be if the U.S. were to recognize that Russia is a country that in many respects is not that different from the United States or Europe and that we had common interests. But for the U.S. Deep State, that would amount to switching sides in a global conflict, where we see jihadists essentially as «freedom fighters» against a geopolitical adversary. These same clueless «elites» are then puzzled when their carefully nurtured, cuddly, «moderate» jihad terrorists attack us back here at home.

  This irrational pattern is at the root of the hostility of American policymakers toward Russia and any prospect of normalizing bilateral ties. In large part, it’s what underlies the «soft coup» being directed against Trump, of which the Sessions pillorying was an episode. (A late report based on unreliable, unverified sources suggests that Special Counsel on the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, is expanding his investigation to include potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller, a close personal friend of ousted FBI Director James Comey, has already packed his team with partisan Democrats.)

  Those behind this attempted coup think we can continue to treat Russia as though it were a minor power of the magnitude of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, or even Iran. They think if we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, either the Russians will collapse or back down. They will do everything possible to box Trump in and prevent him from pursuing any path other than the disastrous course laid out by Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. They can see no other outcome than removing Putin and returning Russia to the condition of a Yeltsin-era vassal state – a term Putin used in the Stone interview – or, better yet, its territorial breakup along the lines suggested by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski.

  Will the Oliver Stone interview change any minds? It’s too soon to tell. But if the soft coup against Trump succeeds, it might not matter, since then America could not be considered a self-governing constitutional republic even in a residual sense. We may have already passed our own Rubicon and just don’t know it yet.

  

  

• Richest Americans Will Control 70% Of Country's Wealth By 2021, BCG Says

  Being rich is great. But being rich in America? That’s even better.

  With US stock benchmarks trading just below record highs, and Treasury yields not too far from the all-time lows reached last summer, the gulf between the world’s wealthy elite – those 18 million households worldwide with more than $1 million in assets – and everybody else is rapidly widening.

  According to a new study by Boston Consulting Group via Bloomberg, these households – with a total head count of roughly 70 million people, or about 1% of the world’s population – control 45 percent of the $166.5 trillion in wealth. By 2021, they will control more than half, suggesting that, while wealth inequality in the rest of the world is simply accelerating, in America, it’s gone into overdrive. Right now, 63 percent of America’s private wealth in the hands of U.S. millionaires and billionaires, BCG said. By 2021, their share of the nation’s wealth will rise to an estimated 70 percent.

  

  “The share of income going to the top 1 percent in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last 35 years, after dropping in the decades after World War II (when the rich were taxed at high double-digit rates). The tide shifted in the 1980s under Republican President Ronald Reagan, a decade when “trickle-down economics” saw tax rates for the rich fall, union membership shrink, and stock markets spike.”

  In its report, BCG puts the global rate of wealth creation in 2015 and 2016 at 5.3 percent, though the consulting firm expects it to accelerate to about 6 percent annually for the next five years. Those gains will accrue almost exclusively to the wealthiest Americans, while wealth held by everyone else is just barely growing.

  Of course, there’s a caveat: In America, most of these gains exist only on paper. More than 70% of new wealth creation is derived from the rising value of rich investors’ portfolios. The rest is what BGC describes as “new wealth creation” aka real money earned by workers and entrepreneurs. Globally, the share derived from asset valuations falls to about 50%.

  “In the U.S., the creation of “new” wealth is a minor factor, making up just 28 percent of the nation’s wealth increase last year. It’s even lower in Japan, at 21 percent. In the rest of the Asia Pacific region, meanwhile, two-thirds of the rise is driven by new wealth creation.”

  The richest Americans could receive an additional bump if/when President Donald Trump pushes the fiscal agenda on which he campaigned through Congress – an agenda that includes tax cuts, deregulation and trillions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure projects. However, since the exact details of these policies are not yet widely known, it’s difficult to predict their specific impact, BCG says.

  

  “’No one knows’ what kind of tax changes will become law, said BCG senior partner Bruce Holley. However, “this could buoy the [growth in U.S. wealth] that we are predicting.”

  America remains home to the highest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in the world, and their ranks are growing fast: Today, about 7 million Americans are worth more than $1 million. BCG expects that number to balloon to 10.4 million by 2021 – an annual growth rate of 8 percent, or about 670,000 new millionaires each year.

  China has the second most millionaires and billionaires, at 2.1 million, though its population is four times the size of the US.

  Within the US, glaring disparities exist from region to region. As Fortune reported back in 2015, roughly two-thirds of America’s millionaires and billionaires live in 12 metro areas, mostly wealthy enclaves along the coasts.

  

  Meanwhile, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of household economics and decisionmaking, a quarter of American adults can’t pay all their monthly bills, and 44% have less than $400 cash on hand in case of an emergency.

  

  

• Scientists Warn Current Yellowstone Quake-Swarm "Could Rip The Guts Out Of America"

  Authored by Shepard Ambellas via Intellihub.com,

  U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park on Friday triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0.

  Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, animal, and plant life in the Continental United States.

  Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.

  

  The grey haired physicist told Shepard Smith that the “danger” we are now facing with the caldera is that it’s long overdue for an eruption which Kaku said could “rip the guts out of the USA.”

  Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought.

  Scientist concur that the last eruption of the caldera took place some 640,000 years ago.

  The U.S. is currently under contract with at least 4 countries all of which have agreed to house displaced U.S. citizens in the unfortunate event the Yellowstone supervolcano were to erupt. Hundreds of billions of dollars were paid to foreign governments to facilitate the agreement which spans a ten year period from its signing, ending in 2024.

  An excerpt from an article I authored in April of 2014 titled: “Report: Brazil, Argentina and Australia sign contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars to house displaced U.S. populace when Yellowstone supervolcano erupts” reads:

  The U.S. plan for relocation was formulated after a recent scientific analysis of the park revealed that Yellowstone’s supervolcano has the potential to violently erupt within the next 10-years as noted by others including the famous astrophysicist Michio Kaku.

  In fact, Praag, a Pakistani publication, recently reported:

  It may take up to ten years for pressure in the magma chamber of the super volcano to build. According to Dr. Jean-Philippe Perrillat of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Grenoble, France, “it is the difference in density between the molten magma in the caldera and the surrounding rock big enough for the magma from the chamber to the surface to increase “.

   

  “The effect is the same as the extra buoyancy of a soccer ball under water fill with air, after which it rises to the surface because the surrounding water poet,” said dr. Perrillat. “If the magma volume is large enough, it should go to the surface to rise and explode like a champagne bottle that ontkurk be.”

   

  According to Dr. Sipho Mathetwe, the South African government “sympathy for the American challenge (challenge) to Yellowstone, but we have our own challenges in South Africa. There are 200 million white people in America, and if too many of them to South Africa flights, it is a big problem, even though there is enough housing and infrastructure available. It will destabilize the country and may even bring back apartheid. South Africa is not for sale.”

  However, according to the report, “Brazil, Argentina and Australia” jumped on the bandwagon, accepting the request from Washington.

  The calm before the storm started a few weeks back when researchers noticed a downtick in seismic activity before Friday’s swarm struck.

  Earthquake expert “dutchsense” chimed on Yellowstone in a video posted to YouTube on June 15, one day before the swarm occurred, to warn of future activity in the region…

  

  

• Venezuela's 'Goldman Bounce' In Reserves Is Gone

  The boost in foreign reserves Venezuela enjoyed after Goldman Sachs investment arm picked up $2.8 billion of bonds from the state oil company is almost gone.

  "We're gonna need another boost…" – time for some more Goldman 'swaps'?

  

  As Bloomberg notes, the country’s cash hoard has fallen $326 million this week to $10.2 billion, near the 15-year low reached last month before the windfall.

  Investors follow the level intently, trying to gauge how much time Venezuela has left before its dollar shortage results in a default.

  

  

• Welcome To The Valium Era

  Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,

  Don’t Be Fooled by These Calm Markets

  What is happening in the world of money? Well – the most striking thing is: nothing.

  It doesn’t seem to matter what happens. Dysfunction in Washington. Meltdown of the techs. No matter how rough the seas get, the markets glide along… scarcely noticing the storm-tossed waves below.

   

  

  Thankfully the world’s central planners are so well-versed in egging on the creation of an ever greater mountain of debt and seemingly limitless asset price inflation with their “scientific” monetary policy that a complete blow-up of the the financial system only threatens now and then… most of the time we are in “moderation” mode. Nowadays we are in something that feels like a Valium-induced waking dream. It couldn’t be better… volatility has just served up its greatest disappearance act since the end of the last “moderation”.  What could possibly go wrong? – click to enlarge.

  Remember “The Great Moderation”? That was the title of a speech then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave in 2004. Thanks to such able guidance by the Fed, he implied, the world’s financial system was calm, stable, and safe:

  “One of the most striking features of the economic landscape over the past 20 years or so has been a substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility…

   

  Several writers on the topic have dubbed this remarkable decline in the variability of both output and inflation “the Great Moderation.” Similar declines in the volatility of output and inflation occurred at about the same time in other major industrial countries, with the recent exception of Japan, a country that has faced a distinctive set of economic problems in the past decade.

   

  Reduced macroeconomic volatility has numerous benefits.”

  (emphasis added)

   

  

  The courageous mastermind of the Valium Era explains the secret sauce behind his success.

   

  Well, yes. Bernanke was talking about the economy. But investors got the message. The Fed chairman was not merely describing “moderation.” He was promising it.

  And so, for the next three years, it was up, up, and up for the stock market. And then, it was down. The Great Moderation set up investors for the crisis of 2008.

  When market volatility – a.k.a. price swings – seems to vanish, people feel no need to protect themselves.  They buy without doing research. Or if they are traders, they sell “vol” – confident that whatever heebie-jeebies markets may have suffered in the past, they’ve got nothing to worry about now.

  No need to put on hedges. No need to hold some cash just in case. And no need to watch your back. The Fed will watch it for you!

   

  Foolish Courage

  The Great Moderation continued… until it was history. In 2008, stocks were cut in half and the entire world’s finances were on the verge of a complete meltdown.

  This overdue correction was snuffed by the Fed – led by Mr. Moderation himself, Ben Bernanke, who mounted the most immodest rescue effort ever attempted.

  The Fed increased its balance sheet eightfold. The world – suckered by lower borrowing rates – added another $80 trillion of new debt. Mr. Bernanke, with conceit bordering on insanity, lauded this act of bumbling vandalism in his book, calling it The Courage to Act.

   

  

  An illustration of what happens when Fed chairmen are overwhelmed by courage – click to enlarge.

   

  And now, thanks to continued reckless courage on the part of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan – which are both still pumping more cash into the system – we enjoy another period of “moderation.”

  Volatility is back down to brain-dead levels. The news hath no sting. Bloomberg:

  “U.S. stocks snapped a two-day slide to close at fresh records as technology shares rebounded from the worst drop of the year… Treasuries were steady as the Federal Reserve policy meeting kicked off.”

  Nothing shocks this market. Nothing rocks it. Nothing socks it to it.

  Nothing does –  that is, until something does.

  

  

• WTF Chart Of The Day – Mapping Jihadi Arrests Across Europe

  According to a new report from Europol, the EU saw a total of 1,002 arrests for terrorism offences in 2016. The number of people arrested on suspicion of Islamist terrorism offences rose for the third year in a row.

  There were 395 such arrests in 2014, 687 in 2015 and 718 last year.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  As the chart above, via Statista's Nial McCarthy exposes, France had 429 jihadist arrests last year, far ahead of second placed Spain's 69.

  Belgium, well known as a source of ISIS foreign fighters in Syria, came third with 62 arrests.

  

  

• Mark Levin: Mueller Investigation Is Pretext To Impeachment

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Mark Levin – Radio host and Editor-in-Chief at Conservative Review, elegantly laid out how the Democrats have orchestrated a kangaroo court to go after the Trump adminstration with the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the FBI investigation Russia and the Trump campaign – referred to by many including Trump as a “witch hunt.”

  You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  For starters, Comey and Mueller personal friends…

  John Legato is a former deep cover FBI special agent – and he writes that Comey and Mueller – their families have vacationed together, have had picnics together, hours spent at the office together, had a few cocktails after work. So Mueller can’t possibly be impartial here. Not when he’s very close friends with a key witness.

  The point is this – he’s not independent.

  Levin then brought up the four democrat-supporting attorneys Mueller has hired for the investigation – which Newt Gingrich tweeted about last week:

  Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink.

  — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 12, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Michael Dreeben – donated to Obama and Clinton

  Jeannie Rhee – deputy assist AG, Wilmer Hale, Donated to DNC, Obama, Clinton

  James Quarles – asst. special prosecutor, Wilmer Hale, long history of Dem donations, Clinton

  Andrew Weissman – oversees fraud at Justice. Donated six times to Obama PACs as well as DNC in 2006.

  Noting the hypocrisy of it all…

  I can assure you if the shoe were on the other foot, if Hillary Clinton was being investigated like she should have been and there was a special counsel, and that special counsel had a close relationship with a key witness against Hillary Clinton, a personal relationship – a professional realationship, and if that special counsel had hired four republicans who were prosecutors that donated heavily to a Trump PAC or Trump campaign or Bush campaign, you would never hear the end of this. Never.

  The hypocrisy, the contradictions smack you in the face.

  Mechanics of the setup

  James Comey’s leaked memo resulted in the Special Counsel, which has morphed in scope from Russian interference to obstruction and collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow – as well as the finances of members of Trump’s team such as Jared Kushner.

  And so now, because Mr. Comey leaked the memo information and Mr. Rosenstein buckled under the slightest Democrat pressure, the Russia investigation has moved from a counter intelligence investigation to a criminal investigation, and now Mr. Mueller is claiming authority over all the Russia investigation, the Flynn investigation, now he’s looking into financial relationship.

  And MORE Hypocrisy!

  He’s [Mueller] not looking into any of the financial relationships between the Clinton Foundation and Russia. Any of the violations of the espionage act by Hillary Clinton and if the Russians got a hold of any of those emails. Mr. Comey nicely and neatly closed that investigation.

  So what do we have now?

  What have the democrats and Mr. Comey succeeded in doing? Completely gumming up the works at the Justice dept. Gumming up the works at the WH, and trying to create a pretext for impeachment.

  Clip below. Well worth 16 minutes and 32 seconds of your life, and for more of Levin’s show from Friday, click here.

   

  Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow § Subscribe to our YouTube channel
  

  a

  

• Conservatives Prepare "Secret Plot" To Oust UK's May If She Backs Off "Hard Brexit"

  The walls are closing in on UK’s embattled prime minister Theresa May, who after the disastrous outcome in the general election, and following a torrid week in which she faced fierce criticism for her handling of the Grenfell Tower catastrophe, in which 58 people are now presumed dead, is reportedly facing what the Telegraph calls a “secret plot” – well, not so secret any more – involving a “stalking horse” challenge to remove her as prime minister if she caves to Labour demands, and waters down the “Hard Brexit.”

  With the NYT reporting that “‘Soft Brexit’ Forces Rise in Britain on the Eve of Talks” scheduled for Monday, (despite 70% of Britons still supporting Brexit according to a Thursday YouGov poll), the Telegraph reports that according to leading Eurosceptic MPs they are prepared to mount an immediate leadership challenge if Mrs May deviates from her original plan. The British publication adds that “conservative MPs – including Cabinet ministers – have concluded that Mrs May cannot lead them into the next election and they are now discussing when she could go.

  Fearing that the chorus of “soft Brexit” demands rising across the UK following May’s sudden weakness, while Germany’s economy minister Brigitte Zypries going so far as telling Reuters that an outright “reversal of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union would be great,” Eurosceptic MPs have warned that any attempt to keep Britain in the customs union and single market or any leeway for the European Court of Justice to retain an oversight function will trigger an “overnight” coup.

  The plot has been likened to Sir Anthony Meyer’s 1989 challenge against Margaret Thatcher. One influential former minister said: “If we had a strong signal that she were backsliding I think she would be in major difficulty.

   

  The point is she is not a unifying figure any more. She has really hacked off the parliamentary party for obvious reasons. So I’m afraid to say there is no goodwill towards her.”

   

  They added: “What we would do is to put up a candidate to run against her, a stalking horse. You can imagine who would do it. It would be a rerun of the Margaret Thatcher scenario, with Anthony Meyer.

  Another former minister told the Telegraph that “if she weakened on Brexit, the world would fall in… all hell would break loose.” Additionally, many other Eurosceptics have effectively made their support for May conditional on her fulfilling the terms set out in her Lancaster House speech, delivered in January, which was also reflected in the Tory manifesto.

  To be sure, even if May relented to demands for a “Soft Brexit”, it is unclear just how the UK could afford the €100 billion soft Brexit bill demanded by Brussels to arrange an amicable divorce; and as a reminder, in October, EU summit chair Donald Tusk said:

  “The only real alternative to a ‘hard Brexit’ is ‘no Brexit’.” Pushing soft Brexit over hard is seen increasing the risk of replacing a smooth Brexit with rough.

  But even if mutiny is averted this time, May’s days could be numbered for a different reason altogether: her response to this week’s tragic conflagration at the Grenfell Tower, where critics questioned why May failed to meet victims and relatives on her first visit to the Grenfell Tower – in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. As the Telegraph notes, “Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, defended Mrs May on Saturday, saying she was “distraught” about the blaze and said the criticism was “terribly unfair”.”

  But some Tories have admitted they are concerned about a “very serious” backlash and fear Mrs May’s image may have been damaged irrevocably.

  Meanwhile, May has been scrambling to contain as much damage as possible: 
  

  Mrs May last night attempted to stabilize her new Government – still less than a fortnight old – by announcing there would be no Queen’s Speech in 2018. The move, which will mean Parliament sitting for a two-year session rather than one, was framed as a way of ensuring Brexit-related laws are passed in time.

   

  However, it also removes a critical vote that could have toppled the Government and comes as a crucial support deal with the Democratic Unionist Party has yet to be finalized.

  All this is taking place as Brexit enters the spotlight when UK’s David Davis, the Brexit Secretary,  goes to Brussels for the formal start of talks tomorrow.

  A Cabinet row that has played out all week goes public on Sunday as Liam Fox and Boris Johnson issue a thinly veiled rebuttal of Philip Hammond’s views. Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary, writes in The Telegraph that Britain must be able to sign free trade deals after Brexit – which means leaving the customs union.

   

  “We want Britain to be able to negotiate its own trade agreements, and as we leave the European Union that is what we will do,” he writes. Mr Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to make public similar comments.

   

  However, Mr Hammond, the Chancellor, will appear on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday to argue for a softer Brexit with an emphasis on maintaining free trade links with the EU.

  The biggest irony of all, perhaps, is that the UK political crisis is blowing up just as France is set to elect a government led by Emanuel Macron’s party in a landslide in tomorrow‘s parliamentary elections, making France – the country which everyone was so worried about at the start of the year – the rock of establishment stability, even as the UK teeters on the edge.

  

  

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• The Treasonous Secession Of Climate Confederacy States

  Authored by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,

  After President Trump rejected the Paris Climate treaty, which had never been ratified by the Senate, the European Union announced that it would work with a climate confederacy of secessionist US states.

  Scotland and Norway’s environmental ministers have mentioned a focus on individual American states. And the secessionist governments of California, New York and Washington have announced that they will unilaterally and illegally enter into a foreign treaty rejected by the President of the United States.

  The Constitution is very clear about this. “No state shall enter into any treaty.” Governor Cuomo of New York has been equally clear. “New York State is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington's irresponsible actions.”

  Cuomo’s statement conveniently comes in French, Chinese and Russian translations.

  “It is a little bold to talk about the China-California partnership as though we were a separate nation, but we are a separate nation,” Governor Brown of California announced.

  In an interview with the Huffington Post, the radical leftist described California as “a real nation-state”.

  Brown was taking a swing through China to reassure the Communist dictatorship of California’s loyalty to an illegal treaty at the same time as EU boss Juncker was bashing America and kissing up to Premier Li Keqiang at the EU-China summit. It’s one thing when the EU and China form a united front against America. It’s quite another when California and China form a united front against America.

  The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island looks a lot like the Confederacy’s Montgomery Convention. Both serve as meeting points for a secessionist alliance of states to air their grievances against the Federal government over an issue in which they are out of step with the nation.

  "We’re a powerful state government. We have nine other states that agree with us," Brown boasted.

  Two more and Jim Jones' old pal could have his own confederacy.

  All the bragging and boasting about how much wealth and power the secessionist states of the climate confederacy represent sounds very familiar. But that wealth and power is based around small enclaves, the Bay Area and a few dozen blocks in Manhattan, which wield disproportionate influence.

  Like the slaveowner class, leftist elites are letting the arrogance of their wealth lead them into treason. And as they look out from their mansions and skyscrapers, they should remember that the majority of working class people in California and New York will be far less enthusiastic about fighting a war to protect their dirty investments in solar energy plants and carbon credits funded by taxes seized from many of those same people in these left-wing slave states.

  The declared intention of the Climate Alliance, in words appearing on the New York State government website, is to treasonously “convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement”.

  States cannot and are not allowed to unilaterally choose to “uphold” a treaty rejected by the President. Their leaders are certainly not allowed to travel to enemy nations to inform foreign powers of their treasonous designs and to solicit their aid against the policies of the United States government.

  This is all the more treasonous at a time when the United States is on a collision course with the People’s Republic of China over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and trade agreements.

  “It’s important for the world to know that America is not Washington," Brown declared. "Yes, we’re part of the union, but we’re also a sovereign state that can promote the necessary policies that are required for survival.”

  Governors don’t normally feel the need to declare that their state is still part of the union. But they also don’t announce that they’re a separate nation and then set off to cut separate deals with enemy powers. No state should be issuing, “Yes, we’re part of the union, but” disclaimers before going to China.

  The disclaimer is the first step to leaving the union.

  Governor Brown's trip to China isn't funded by California taxpayers. That might be a relief to that overburdened tribe except that it's partially being paid for by the Energy Foundation. Behind that generic name for a pass through organization are a number of left-wing foundations who have been paying for American politicians to travel to the People’s Republic of China.

  Donors to the energy foundation include Ecocrat billionaire Tom Steyer who has pumped millions into EF. Steyer’s finances are entangled with China and even with members of the Chinese government.

  Steyer has accused President Trump of treason for rejecting the unconstitutional Paris Climate Treaty. But who are the real traitors here?

  Other major EF donors include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bloomberg and George Soros.

  There is something deeply troubling about a governor’s treasonous trip being funded by private interests with business ties to a foreign power. If Democrats were really serious about rooting out influence by foreign powers, they would be taking a very close look at Brown’s backers.

  But the greater outrage is that the governors of secessionist states are using a manufactured crisis to conduct “diplomacy” with foreign governments in defiance of the policies of the United States.

  Washington’s Jay Inslee was recently talking Global Warming in a meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. “We’re both very strongly engaged on issues of climate change, on issues of openness to trade, on leadership on refugees as well,” Trudeau declared.

  “We share an incredible commitment to defeating climate change,” Inslee flattered him. “And it is a great pleasure we have a national leader on the North American continent who is committed to that.”

  And he didn’t mean the President of the United States.

  Inslee’s fondness for the illegal Paris Climate treaty is unsurprising as his own efforts on Global Warming similarly depended on unilateral moves that lacked legislative support. But that is a problem for Washington’s Constitution. His participation in a secessionist pact is a problem for our Constitution.

  And the problem isn’t limited to the Climate Alliance.

  California and many of the other entities declaring that they will enforce an illegal treaty are also sanctuary states and cities. They are choosing not to follow Federal law while implementing foreign treaties that they have no right to unilaterally participate in.

  This is a treasonous situation that is more troubling in some ways than the original Civil War because it involves states making open alliance with enemy powers such as China and welcoming them in. State governments are undermining the united front of the national government in the face of the enemy.

  "California will resist this misguided and insane course of action," Governor Brown ranted. The logic of “resistance” has inevitably turned into treason.

  A civil war is underway. In the last election the territorial majority of Americans rejected the rule of a minority of wealthy and powerful urban enclaves. Outside of their bicoastal bases, the political power of the Democrat faction has been shattered. And so it has retreated into subversion and secessionism.

  “China is moving forward in a very serious way, and so is California,” Brown declared. “And we're going in the opposite direction of Donald Trump.”

  While Democrats have spent the better part of the previous week waving their arms in the air over a back channel with Russia, one of their faction’s leading governors is openly allying with China against the President of the United States. And the treasonous Democrat media is cheering this betrayal.

  Brown and his colleagues are in blatant violation of the Logan Act. Their actions are in violation of the United States Constitution. And all this is another dark step on the road to another civil war.

  If the climate confederacy is not held accountable for its treason, the crisis will only grow.

  

  

• Republicans Go On Offensive Against Mueller; Call For 'Special Counsel' To Investigate AG Lynch

  Last night, after Trump launched yet another furious tweetstorm intended to expose the double standard applied in the Hillary investigation compared to the Russia probe, we noted that Republicans might be well served to stop sitting around twiddling their thumbs and actually go on the offensive against an investigation that has obviously morphed into mass hysteria courtesy of free-flowing leaks from a conflicted “intelligence community” intent upon bringing down a presidency.  Here’s what we said:

  Of course, until someone within the Trump administration or Republican Party smartens up and calls for the appointment of a ‘Special Counsel’ to look into Hillary’s email scandal, something that should have been done long ago, and not for retaliatory reasons but simply due to Comey’s and AG Lynch’s blatant mishandling of the investigation (a point which Deputy AG Rosenstein obviously agreed with), the Democrats have no reason to calm their mass hysteria.  Then, and only then, do we suspect that Hillary might just be able to ‘convince’ her party to exercise some form of reasonable judgement.

  Now, according to a note this morning from The Hill, Republicans seem to be doing just that with several members of the GOP calling on the Special Counsel to look into whether former Attorney General Loretta Lynch illegally meddled in the Hillary investigation when she met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Phoenix and/or instructed Comey to refer to his case as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.”

  Rather than wasting resources on investigating Trump, the GOP says the special counsel must look into whether former attorney general Loretta Lynch meddled with the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Comey testified that Lynch told him to downplay the seriousness of the FBI’s email server investigation.

  For those who missed it, here is Comey’s testimony in which he confirms that Lynch “directed” him to refer to the Hillary email case as a “matter” rather than an ‘investigation”…not to mention that ill-advised meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac just days before the Justice Department was set to announce the results of their investigation.

   

  Now, and perhaps because of a recent attack which targeted Republicans and in which the shooter seemed to be fueled by rage from largely fake, anonymously-sourced new stories, it appears that the GOP is finally starting to push back.

  “These special counsels have a way of going off the rails,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Az.) told The Hill. “And the ostensible purpose of the special counsel has now been essentially vitiated and everybody knows that. And so they’ve got to try to find something to do. In this case, it was almost the intent from the beginning to try to create something out of nothing. And it doesn’t work in physics, but in politics it seems to be pretty effective.”

   

  “This is the most coordinated communications effort on behalf of the president that we’ve seen in a long time,” said Barry Bennett, a former adviser to Trump. “They need it — it’s tough to fight nameless, faceless quotes from people purposefully twisting these stories on you.”

   

  Trump’s lead outside counsel, Mark Kasowitz responded to the Post story by decrying the “illegal” leaks, which he said had come directly from the FBI.

   

  Jay Sekulow, a new member of Trump’s legal team, went on Fox News Channel to say that the leaks may have come from inside Mueller’s special counsel. Sekulow asked why the FBI is “not sending agents to people’s houses” to put an end to it.

   

  Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, which chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has described as the “political arm” of the White House, has led the effort to cast doubt on the special counsel investigation.

  Of course, Trump has been fairly direct and open with his feelings about the ongoing “witch hunt.”

  They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

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  Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, ‘bleached’ emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared- & they talk about obstruction?

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Meanwhile, as we noted earlier this morning, even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has grown weary of the constant leaks and what they mean for the credibility of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation….which seems to have prompted him to release the following statement:

  “Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch or agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated. Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long-established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations.

  Of course, it’s only a matter of time until the Washington Post uses to the Republican fury to allege guilt…afterall, why would they attempt to fight back if they’re innocent?  Surely it can’t have anything to do with the barrage of anonymously-sourced, fake news stories released daily with the sole intent of bringing down a Republican President while never producing a shred of actual evidence. 

  

  

• Netflix Now Has More Subscribers Than Cable

  Despite going all-in on Adam Sandler content – a bizarre choice – Netflix has managed to continue growing its subscriber base, recently reaching a new milestone: It now has more paying customers than Comcast Corp., Charter Communications and all other US cable companies combined.

  As Forbes reports, Netflix now has 50.85 million subscribers, surpassing cable's 48.61 million. There is one caveat, though: Cable’s total doesn’t include minor cable networks, which could amount to 5% of total customers.

  

  Over the past five years, Netflix has managed to more than double its subscriber base from 23.4 million in the first quarter of 2012. But growth has slowed recently due to intensifying competition from a host of rival streaming services, causing Netflix to miss both its domestic and foreign subscriber targets for the first quarter.

  Here’s a summary of Netflix's Q1 results:

  1Q revenue $2.64b vs est. $2.65b

  1Q GAAP EPS 40c vs 37c

  1Q domestic streaming net adds 1.42 million, vs consensus est. 1.59MM vs company forecast 1.5MM

  1Q international streaming net adds 3.53MM consensus est. 3.90m vs company forecast 3.7MM

  2Q GAAP EPS forecast 15c vs est. 23c

  2Q revenue forecast 2.755BN  vs est. $2.76BN

  Luckily for American cable companies, the battle for subscribers isn’t a zero-sum game. Here's Forbes:

  While cable subs are down by 4 million in the same five years that Netflix has seen huge growth, that's not a massive drop off. It's also worth bearing in mind that cable TV makes up only 50% of total TV viewership in pay TV. That said, Q1 2017 shows a net loss in subscriptions while Q1 2016 saw cable grow a little.

   

  Satellite TV is doing okay, with around 38 million subscribers. Dish Network added 318,000 customers in Q1 with Direct TV stalling with gains that didn't outpace customer loses. Satellite is still growing faster than cable though.

   

  Faster still though are the internet-delivered services like Sling TV and Direct TV now which have added 350,000 in Q1. These services now have 1.7 million customers between them, and it's likely that this segment will continue to see growth as customers move away from cable TV.

  Cable, satellite and internet streaming services in the US have a combined 93.3 million subscribers. Even as Netflix expands into more foreign markets, it likely won’t match that total any time.

  To be sure, the Netflix to cable comparison isn’t really fair to the cable companies: While the exact cost depends on the specific package, monthly fees associated with cable are typically many times more expensive than Netflix's $10 fee.

  Which brings us to our next, and final topic: Slowing subscriber growth isn’t the only metric that makes Netflix's critics uncomfortable. The company’s unprecedented cash burn is another major red flag. In Q1, the company burned $422 million, which while less than the record $640 million burned in Q4 (over $1 billion in the last 6 months) was $160 million than its cash burn from a year ago. The company still expects to burn a total of $2 billion for the full year.

  Here’s how the company explains it:

  Free cash flow in Q1’17 was -$423 million vs. -$261 million in the year ago quarter and an improvement from -$639 million in Q4’16. The growth in our original content means we continue to plan to have around $2B in negative FCF this year.

   

  We have a large market opportunity ahead of us and we’re optimizing long-term FCF by growing our original content aggressively. Negative near-term FCF is the result of the big increases in our original content, combined with small but growing operating margins. Since we want our operating margins to grow slowly so we can spend enough to quickly grow revenue and original content, we anticipate negative FCF to accompany our rapid growth for many years.

   

  Our operating margins are our key indicator of improving global profitability; they are already growing and we plan to keep them growing for many years ahead. Eventually, at a much larger revenue base, original content and revenue growth will be slower, and we anticipate substantial positive FCF, like our media peers.

  It remains to be seen if the transition from massive cash burn to cash flow positive is as simple as the company expects it to be.

  

  

• How Much Do People Actually Make From "Gigs" Like Uber And Airbnb

  Via Priceonomics.com,

  Coined shortly after the financial crisis in 2009, the so-called “gig economy” or “sharing economy” refers to the growing cadre of companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit—platforms that employ temporary workers who provide a wide variety of services: delivery, ridesharing, rentals, and odd jobs. A recent Pew study estimated that nearly a quarter of all Americans earn some money through these platforms.

  

  But how much money are the service providers in the sharing economy actually making from their "side-gigs"?

  We analyzed anonymized data from Priceonomics customer Earnest, a loan provider, and examined tens of thousands of loan applicants to see how much people are earning on side-gig platforms and how these platforms stack up against each other.

  We looked at a span of data accounting for just over two years, and for each worker, we analyzed a pay period of between one and 27 months. We do not know how many hours of work the income represents for each platform, as each one has a unique pricing and commission structure. 

  Furthermore, this data is just reflective of the Earnest user base, who are typically refinancing college loans and therefore may be more likely to be treating these services as a “side-gig” than the typical service provider who may be more likely to treat it as a fulltime job and have different earning levels.

  We found that 85% of side-gig workers make less than $500 a month. And of all the side-gig platforms we examined, Airbnb hosts earn the most by far.

  

  In our data, on all but Lyft and Uber, we excluded any worker who made a total $10 or less from a platform to eliminate data points that could simply represent a refund from the company. For Lyft and Uber, we excluded anyone with a total income of $50 or less. Then we tallied the average monthly incomes made by workers at each company.

  

  Data source: Earnest

  Making an average of $924 off their platform each month, Airbnb hosts make nearly three times as much as other workers. Workers at the general task-service platform, TaskRabbit, rank second at $380 per month. Overall, Lyft and Uber drivers make roughly the same average per month at $377 and $364 respectively. We also observed that nearly a quarter of Lyft drivers also earned income from Uber—and of that subset, we saw that the average income was actually higher for Uber ($481 vs $396.)

  Of course, on all of these platforms, there is a wide range of earners. Several Airbnb hosts in our records, for instance, made over $10,000 per month, while others made less than $200.

  To really understand these averages above, we took a deeper look at these ranges. Below, we’ve charted out the income distribution for each company. The figures represent the percentage of workers who fall into each month income bracket.

  

  Data source: Earnest

  Airbnb hosts enjoy the highest average monthly earnings because there is a much wider range of income distribution on that platform than at other companies: Nearly half of all hosts make more than $500 per month.

  Conversely, the majority of workers at some other companies (Etsy, Uber, Fiverr) fall into the $100 or under per month bracket.

  Tallying all of these companies up, the overall distribution tilts strongly toward the lower end.

  

  Data source: Earnest

  Some 84% of all gig economy workers make less than $500 per month—but in particular, workers at Getaround (98.3% under $500 per month), Fiverr (96.3%), and Etsy (95%) have especially high percentages of low-earners.

  Reasons for the low income could vary—some workers may be simply trying the platform, or put in very few hours.

  Lyft, Taskrabbit, and Airbnb seem to beat this “84% under $500” average.

  

  Data source: Earnest

  It might be easy to look at this data and assume that gig economy workers are working at below market rates. After all, $500 per month is hardly a livable wage. For the industry, the key question is how many of these workers are utilizing these platforms to make a little extra cash as a side-gig versus trying to forage a full-time living.

  

  

• What Housing Recovery? Real Home Prices Still 16% Below 2007 Peak

  Since the financial crisis, home equity has gone from being America’s biggest driver of (illusory) wealth to one of the biggest sources of economic inequality.

  And while the post-crisis recovery has returned the national home price index to its highs from early 2007, most of this rise was generated by a handful of urban markets like New York City and San Francisco, leaving most Americans behind.

  To wit: home prices in the 10 most expensive metro areas have risen 63% since 2000, while home prices in the 10 cheapest areas have gained just 3.6%, according to Harvard’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing report. And while nominal prices may have returned to their pre-recession levels, when you adjust for inflation, real prices are as much as 16 percent below past peaks.

  

  Despite seven years of rock-bottom interest rates, valuations in 3 out of 5 metropolitan areas remain below their pre-recession peak. Outside, of a few rich coastal cities, the only advantage that this “housing recovery” has brought is that some homes remain affordable for some Americans. However, thanks to the disproportionate rise in home valuations in certain densely populated areas, the number of Americans paying more than 50% of their income in rent is near a record high.

  US house prices rose 5.6 percent in 2016, finally surpassing the high reached nearly a decade earlier. Achieving this milestone reduced the number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages to 3.2 million by year’s end, a remarkable drop from the 12.1 million peak in 2011.But as Bloomberg reports, nationally, just 1 in 3 homes has recovered peak value. Meanwhile, in the country’s most densely-populated markets, housing supplies are incredibly tight following nearly a decade of historically low construction.

  The lack of inventory for sale is evident in both the new and existing segments of the market. In 2016, the typical new home for sale was on the market for 3.3 months, well below the 5.1 months averaged since recordkeeping began in 1988. Meanwhile, only 1.65 million existing homes were for sale in 2016, the lowest count in 16 years. And with sales volumes picking up, the inventory represented just 3.6 months of supply, an 11-year low.

  

  Conditions are particularly tight at the lower end of the market, likely reflecting both the slower price recovery in this segment and the fact that fewer entry-level homes are being built. Between 2004 and 2015, completions of smaller single-family homes (under 1,800 square feet) fell from nearly 500,000 units to only 136,000. Similarly, the number of townhouses started in 2016 (98,000) was less than half the number started in 2005.

  Renters, it seems, are bearing the brunt of the US housing stock crunch. Despite a relatively strong pickup in multi-family housing, rental markets are tighter than they’ve been in more than 30 years, though there has been some softening on the high end.

  According to the Housing Vacancy Survey, the rental vacancy rate fell for the seventh straight year in 2016, dipping to 6.9 percent—its lowest level in more than three decades. MPF Research reports that the vacancy rate for professionally managed apartments was also just 4.4 percent. While some rental markets showed signs of softening in early 2017—most notably in San Francisco and New York—there is generally little indication that increases in supply are outstripping demand.

  Meanwhile, the number of Americans exceeding the 30%-of-income “affordability threshold” has declined for five straight years, but while homeowners have enjoyed greater financial freedom, rates for renters have barely budged.

  Indeed, 11.1 million renter households were severely cost burdened in 2015, a 3.7 million increase from 2001. By comparison, 7.6 million owners were severely burdened in 2015, up 1.1 million from 2001. The share of renters with severe burdens varies widely across the nation’s 100 largest metros, ranging from a high of 35.4 percent in Miami to a low of 18.4 percent in El Paso. While most common in high-cost markets, renter cost burdens are also widespread in areas with moderate rents but relatively low incomes. Augusta is a case in point, where the severely cost-burdened share of renters was at 30.3 percent in 2015.

  

  In summary, the US housing market's gains since the crisis have disproportionately benefited certain cities, which creates two problems:

  Renters in markets that have seen the strongest comebacks are being squeezed as wages fail to keep up with runaway rents; and,

   

  Cities in the south and midwest, typically post-industrial towns, are filled with homeowners who might still be struggling with an underwater mortgage, and with only tepid gains in housing prices, many are trapped in their homes.

  

  

• Special Prosecutor Mueller Is a Political Hack

  The New York Times characterizes special prosecutor Robert Mueller as being independent and fair:

  Robert S. Mueller III managed in a dozen years as F.B.I. director to stay above the partisan fray, carefully cultivating a rare reputation for independence and fairness.

  Let’s fact-check the Times …

  Anthrax Frame-Up

  Mueller presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

  The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI’s investigation was “flawed and inaccurate”.  The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an “independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case.”

  The head of the FBI’s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation”, that there were “politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters”.

  Moreover, the anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins.  On July 6, 2006, the FBI’s anthrax investigation FBI Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

  (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

   

  Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.

  In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this).

  Unsure About Assassination of U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

  Rather than saying “of course not!”, Mueller said that he wasn’t sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil.

  Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

  One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

   

  ***

   

  He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

  Spying on Americans

  Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history.  As we noted in 2013:

  NBC News reports:

  NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

  On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:

  We put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.

  http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?clipid=4461761

  Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.

   

  On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN’s Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded:

  BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

   

  CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

   

  BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

   

  CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

  The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored:

  NSA whistleblowers say that this means that the NSA collects “word for word” all of our communications.

  FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley writes:

  Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the lhttp://www.washingtonsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=68066&action=edita… improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

  Torture

  FBI special agent Colleen Rowley points out:

  Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

  Iraq War

  Rowley notes:

  When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

  Post 9/11 Round-Up

  FBI special agent Rowley also notes:

  Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

  9/11 Cover Up

  Rowley points out:

  The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee … [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn’t say anything terribly embarrassing. …

  But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.

  Rowley also said says:

  TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11.

  In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style “minders” to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn’t say anything the FBI didn’t like.  The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

  Mueller’s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example,  an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location.  And see this.

  And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out:

  Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

  Conclusion

  Rather than being “above the fray”, Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.

  As Coleen Rowley puts it:

  It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

   

  Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

  And:

  While not the worst of the bunch, neither Comey nor Mueller deserve their Jimmy Stewart ‘G-man’ reputations for absolute integrity but have merely been, along the lines of George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet, capable and flexible politicized sycophants to power, that enmeshed them in numerous wrongful abuses of power along with presiding over plain official incompetence. It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.

  

• Beware The Collapsing Social Contract

  Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,

  "[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of June 8, 2017, the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
       —Paul Buchheit, Alternet

   

  "Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
       —NBC News, June 14, 2017

   

  "4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
       —ABC7News, June 14, 2017

   

  "Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry nut-bars with guns."
       —MarianneW via Twitter

   

  "We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through the news of another shooting in the same day."
       —SamT via Twitter

   

  "If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm arguing for justice and peace."
       —Yours truly

  When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.

  

  Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze, expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era, there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.

  As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure – the storm that kills this year, the hurricane that kills the next – but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the beatings from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves, the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.

  Then where will we be?

  America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain

  I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp,"? if that makes sense to you (it does if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).

  The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to but down — physically, economically, emotionally. The Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?

  The pot isn't boiling yet — these shootings are random, individualized — but they seem to be piling on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.

  Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier

  My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's more than one way to be a denier of change.

  These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a pre-revolutionary state; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have chosen Sanders over Trump.

  The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched – tightly "ordered" states, highly chaotic ones – have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.

  Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur.

  

  

• US Navy Destroyer Collides With Merchant Vessel Off Japan

  The USS Fitzgerald, a guided missile destroyer, collided with a merchant vessel southwest of Yokosuka, Japan, the U.S. Navy said in a statement on Friday afternoon. The crash happened at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time on June 17, and the Navy requested Japan’s Coast Guard’s assistance.

  Aerial footage of the destroyer after the collision

  The Navy said the Fitzgerald collided with a merchant vessel 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka and the extent of injuries to U.S. personnel “is being determined.” It added that the Navy had requested the assistance of the Japanese Coast Guard.

  According to Reuters, Japan’s NHK public television website reported that the commercial vessel is a Philippines container ship and that the destroyer had suffered some flooding and was “unable to operate”.

  

  Full navy statement below:

  USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) was involved in a collision with a merchant vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time, June 17, while operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan.

   

  The U.S. Navy has requested Japanese Coast Guard assistance in responding to the collision.

   

  The extent of damage is being determined. The extent of personnel injuries is being determined. The incident will be investigated.

  The Fitzgerald recently made a port call to the US Navy’s Subic Bay base in the Philippines and conducted patrols in the South China Sea. The destroyer maintains constant contact with Japan as it is forward-based in Yokosuka.

  The latest weekly summary of US naval asset around the world is shown in the map below. It shows that the the Nimitz carrier group is headed for the Middle East, via Hawaii, while the Vinson is also leaving the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf is lightly attended, following the departure of the USS Bush which recently was headed west in the Med, only to make an unexpected 180 and is now parked off the coast of Israel.

  

  

  

• Tennessee Counties Sue Opioid Makers Using Local "Crack Tax" Law

  The US opioid epidemic has continued to worsen in 2017 as super-powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil taint the nation’s heroin supply. While the FBI’s final tally has yet to arrive, preliminary data suggest that overdose deaths last year eclipsed the 50,000 recorded nationally in 2015 – the most ever. And the body count is expected to be even higher in 2017. As the death toll in some of the hardest-hit areas of the country skyrockets – in some cases forcing county coroners to build larger freezers to store the bodies – states have begun filing lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies responsible for making and marketing opioid painkillers, in hopes of offsetting the ballooning public-health costs that have been a byproduct of the crisis.

  Three Tennessee district attorneys are the latest prosecutors to file suit against the drug makers, joining a group that includes the attorneys general of Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, New York and Santa Clara and Orange County in California – not to mention the Cherokee Nation. But the Tennessee prosecutors' approach differs from their peers in one unique way:

  They are suing under the state’s long-ridiculed and rarely used “crack tax” law, which would hold Big Pharma liable for damages as if they were street-level drug dealers, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

  

  While the companies targeted by individual states differ, prosecutors are all alleging similar misconduct: That the pharmaceutical companies leaned on researchers to play down the drugs’ addictive qualities, while spending millions on marketing them to both patients and doctors.

  Another lawsuit filed in Washington in January alleged that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, was aware of the drug’s immense popularity on the streets, but did nothing to curb its distribution.

  The suit also names a “Baby Doe” as a plaintiff. “Baby Doe,” the News Sentinel reports, is a boy born in March 2015 addicted to opiates because his mother, identified as “Mary Doe,” was an opiate addict and bought her drugs in Sullivan County, one of the three judicial districts represented in the legal action.

  Filed on behalf of the three prosecutors and Baby Doe by Nashville law firm Branstetter, Stranch and Jennings, the lawsuit spends dozens of pages detailing publicly available accounts of alleged fraud and deceptive marketing practices by opiate manufacturers.

  “It is now beyond reasonable question that the manufacturer defendants’ fraud caused Mary Doe and thousands of others in Tennessee to become addicted to opioids — an addiction that, thanks to their fraudulent conduct, was all but certain to occur,” the lawsuit stated.

  Tennessee logs more opiate prescriptions per capita than every state in the nation except West Virginia, the News Sentinel reported. Sullivan County is considered an epicenter, so much so its law enforcement agencies snared their own reality television shows. Shelby County in West Tennessee is also considering joining the lawsuit.

  Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III issued a statement Tuesday in which he said his office is investigating the state's options in pursuing its own legal action.

  "Our objective is to identify and hold accountable the parties responsible for this opioid epidemic," the statement read.

  That “crack tax” – otherwise known as the drug dealer liability statute – was passed in 2005 to allow for civil action against street drug dealers, many of whom were peddling crack.

  However, since police typically seize convicted drug dealers’ profits under criminal and civil forfeiture laws – and since most drug dealers go to prison after they’re arrested – there was rarely anything left to be claimed in civil court.

  But unlike street dealers, pharma firms are flush with cash. Purdue has annual sales of nearly $3 billion, while Mallinckrodt and Endo also rack up billions each year from sales of opiate drugs.

  Many legal experts have said that the current batch of lawsuits resembles the 1998 settlement between the four largest US tobacco companies – Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard – and 46 states attorneys general. In accordance with that judgment, the tobacco companies agreed to pay out more than $200 billion through 2025, with payments to be made in perpetuity.

  While states are no doubt in need of financial resources to offset the public-health costs they’re forced to absorb because of the epidemic, pharmaceutical companies have at least one strategy to legally deflect blame: If the showdown ever makes it to trial, defense attorneys will try to slough off as much blame as possible on the overprescribing doctors, like one elderly physician who was arrested earlier this month in New York City and charged with needlessly prescribing millions of pills. 

  

  

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• Is Kashmir The Trigger For Nuclear War?

  Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The disputed of territory of Kashmir, lying in the north of the sub-continent between India and Pakistan, does not often feature in the world news media, but recently the little-known yet most sensitive region has received attention, not only because of boundary clashes between the armies of India and Pakistan but because there have been some dramatic incidents in the Indian-administered region. Tension is rising, as indicated by comments from politicians and media in both countries, which have been swinging from casual abuse to extremes of frenzied condemnation.

  

  The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in India is a right-wing, religiously-based ultra-nationalist political party with a large following which actively supports the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which bases its policies on the aspirations of a strongly nationalistic community. The leader of the VHP, Acharya Dharmendra, declared in a speech on June 2 that «India should drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan for creating tension at the border. It is a rogue nation and India must teach that country a lesson. It is important for peace in the Indian subcontinent».

  So far as can be determined, no Pakistani politician has yet made such a statement, publicly, at least, but the feeling in Pakistan as regards the use of nuclear weapons is much the same as in India: very many citizens of both countries believe that nuclear weapons just make a bigger bang. This is worrying, to put it mildly, especially as these two well-armed nations are squaring up to each other over the Kashmir imbroglio.

  Before India and Pakistan became independent in 1947 there were some 560 feudal rulers of princely states, of which Kashmir was one of the few in which a Muslim majority were subjects of a Hindu maharajah. He decided to accede to India but the territory continued to be disputed between India and Pakistan, and remains in such status on the books of the UN Security Council.

  The main UNSC resolution about Kashmir is 122 of 24 January 1957. It reminds the governments of India and Pakistan that «the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations».

  India has tried for many years to convince the world that the 1972 India-Pakistan Simla Accord following their war of 1971 in some way invalidates UN Security Council resolutions regarding Kashmir. But the first paragraph of the Simla Agreement is «that the Principles and Purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the countries». Then it states that «the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them» [emphasis added]. It is obvious that, contrary to Indian claims, there is no legal exclusion of the UN or any third party from mediation over Kashmir, given the covenant to include «any other means» towards settlement.

  India, however, seized upon its selective interpretation of the wording of the Accord to unilaterally forbid the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to carry out its duties to «observe and report» on both sides of the line of Control dividing the disputed territory. That Mission has forty uniformed observers who investigate cease-fire violations on the Pakistan side, but are not permitted to operate in Indian-administered Kashmir. This state of affairs neutralises objective UN reporting about the region, and one has to ask the question : who benefits from that?

  Indian-administered Kashmir is a scenically beautiful region which is economically self-supporting by virtue of food production, tourism, and export of world-class handicrafts — carpets and papier-mâché and carvings. Its citizens desire only fair governance, but over the years have become increasingly alienated from the Indian mainstream, and the recent increase in anti-India violence in the Valley is an indication of infuriated frustration. The insurgency has settled into a grumbling resentment with occasional outbreaks of forcefulness, and some barbaric incidents such as the recent unforgivable murder of a young man.

  On 9 May 2017 a young Indian army officer was kidnapped and murdered. He was aged 22, recently commissioned, unarmed, and home to attend a family wedding in Indian-administered Kashmir when five men burst into his father’s house and overpowered him, took him away and shot him dead after treating him despicably.

  

  Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz was an enlightened Kashmiri from a humble background who had made good because he was intelligent and hard-working. He was, of course, a Muslim, which made him doubly vulnerable to those evil fellow-Muslims who killed him. Their achievements were to plunge a family into grief, deprive the world of a good upright citizen, spread even deeper hatred throughout India, and demonstrate that they were vile savages who murdered a defenceless man. These reptiles are not freedom fighters. They are simply murderous criminals who lack any sort of morality and possess not a shred of compassion for their fellow human beings.

  Which brings us to the treatment of another young man, Farooq Dar, a Kashmiri not much older than Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, who survived to tell his tale, but also suffered at the hands of brutal bullies who had no fear of justice being applied.

  

  According to the Economist, a reputable publication with no axe to grind in the India-Pakistan imbroglio over Kashmir, Mr Farooq Dar «suffered a severe beating» by Indian soldiers and was then «tied up on a spare tyre attached to the front bumper of an armoured jeep. Indian soldiers claimed he had been throwing stones. Mr Dar was driven in agony through villages… The soldiers reckoned the sight of him would deter others from throwing stones at their patrol».

  By far the majority of the citizens of Indian-administered Kashmir who object to draconian Indian rule in the disputed territory are peaceful and want matters to be resolved politically, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions, but some have resorted to barbarism, and unfortunately the Indian army and paramilitary forces have lowered themselves to the level of the extremists. The use of pellet-firing shotguns to deliberately blind protestors was particularly malevolent, but in line with the recent statement by India’s army chief that «This is a proxy war and proxy war is a dirty war. It is played in a dirty way… You fight a dirty war with innovations». Like blinding people. The Indian Express reported that after one demonstration in 2016, doctors performed nearly 100 operations on people with pellet gun injuries. Sixteen had been blinded. Welcome to free Kashmir.

  As Human Rights Watch observed, «a major grievance of those protesting in Kashmir is the failure of authorities to respect basic human rights», but the whole Kashmir catastrophe is about human rights, and it is time India and Pakistan devised a solution about the disputed territory. Countless lives would be saved if these governments eschewed the crude and dangerous attractions of ultra-nationalism and agreed to settle the dispute by referring it to independent arbitration. There is no possibility that India would ever agree to surrender the territory it occupies, because no Indian government would survive five minutes after making such a decision. Pakistan must live with the unpalatable fact that it has lost the territory and must make the best compromise.

  At this moment the disagreement between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is one of the world’s most dangerous confrontations. It could only too easily lead to nuclear war, given Pakistan’s preparedness to use tactical nuclear weapons if Indian forces penetrate Pakistani territory, as they will probably do if there is a major fire-exchange incident along the Line of Control.

  Then there will be a world catastrophe, because there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war.

  The Line of Control in Kashmir should be declared the international border, with minor adjustments effected after independent mediation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan should meet and declare that the Kashmir imbroglio is over, and that the countries have agreed to go forward to mutually beneficial cooperation.

  Then they could go to Norway to accept their Nobel Peace Prizes.

  

  

• Is The People's Bank Of China Manipulating The Bitcoin Price?

  China’s dominance of the bitcoin network is incredibly concerning to the digital currency’s techno-libertarian purists, who fear that the concentration of mining power in the world’s second-largest economy is threatening to subvert bitcoin’s democratic nature. With more than half of the network’s hashing power resting in their hands, giant Chinese mining pools like AntPool, Bitmain and the other massive bitcoin-mining conglomerates can effectively monopolize control over the bitcoin blockchain.

  Given bitcoin’s stated aim – to bypass the authority of central banks and governments and return control of the world’s money supply to individuals – many have noted the incongruity between the currency’s democratic aspirations, and the Chinese government’s apparent willingness to tolerate, and even nurture, the country’s bitcoin industry.

  “Bitcoin Uncensored” explained one theory for the Chinese government's embrace of bitcoin: The People’s Bank of China is using its jawboning powers to manipulate the price of the digital currency to benefit politically connected elites.

  “The CCP is not out to kill bitcoin – at least not right now. Since China can have such a huge impact on the price of bitcoin, why wouldn’t the Chinese government use this power to its advantage? Chinese government regulators can, in theory, exert a huge influence on the global price of bitcoin. So, if you own bitcoin, well, the value of your money can be heavily influenced by the whims of the world’s largest authoritarian regime.”

  As the theory goes, the massive swings in bitcoin’s valuation witnessed back in 2013 were engineered by the PBOC when authorities prohibited local financial institutions from dealing in the digital currency. In early September of that year, one bitcoin was worth $100. By late November, the price had ballooned to $1,000. Then the price came crashing down seemingly overnight. Chinese authorities were widely blamed for the drop, which created what should’ve been an incredible buying opportunity.

  But whatever the PBOC’s plans might’ve been, they were disrupted by the collapse of Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which ushered in a bear market that endured until late 2015.

  However, more than two years later, Chinese authorities again resorted to jawboning to influence the bitcoin price when they announced in January that they were investigating the country’s digital currency exchanges. After forcing the three biggest exchanges in the country, BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin, trading volumes in China dissipated and the price fell – though not by as much as in 2013, creating yet another buying opportunity. But the time withdrawals were reinstated four months later, the digital currency had climbed to all-time highs, driven largely by an influx of Japanese and South Korean retail investors who have been enticed by the promise of exponential returns during the modern low-interest rate environment.

  Of course, Chinese authorities have plenty of other reasons to try and control the bitcoin market. Here’s BU with more:

  “So why has the Chinese regime been targeting bitcoin other than it being a democratic currency? There are a few reasons. First Chinese people can use bitcoin to get their money out of China. The Chinese regime has limits on the amount of foreign currency people can buy. But Chinese investors can buy bitcoin in China then later exchange that for foreign currency in any amount they want.

   

  Huge fortunes that might be made through corruption could be safely stored out of reach of China’s pesky investigators. That is why China’s central bank started investigating bitcoin exchanges back in February, and threatened to shut down exchanges that violated rules on foreign exchange payments and settlement. That was why China’s central bank started investigating bitcoin exchanges back in February and threatened to shut down exchanges that violated rules on foreign exchange management, money laundering and payment and settlement.

  To be sure, it’s unclear how much money is being moved out of China through bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions in China are not anonymous since you have to link a Chinese bank card to your bitcoin account. You could move a few thousand yuan, but large amounts would attract attention.”

  Should it choose to use it, Chinese authorities have at their disposal what BU describes as “the ultimate sword of Damocles.”

  “The Chinese government has the ultimate sword of Damocles over bitcoin operations in China. Chinese regulators could crack down on bitcoin by classifying it as a foreign currency which would limit individual transactions to $50,000 a year.”

  While the Chinese government could easily crush the bitcoin market, it hasn’t because that would allow miners in other countries to usurp its dominance – something the PBOC might find difficult to undo. China is home to between 50% and 70% of the world’s bitcoin mining operations, BU reports.

  Below is chart illustrates the bitcoin network's hashrate distribution by mining pool. As the graphic clearly shows, Chinese pools control more than half of the network's power, though the exact percentage is in constant flux because miners are constantly competing to process the next block of transactions: (source: blockchain.info)

  

  Instead of cracking down on the mining community, the Chinese government has been effectively propping it up by supplying its miners with cheap electricity.

  Major bitcoin mines in China’s northwest are being given access to government supported low cost wind and solar power. Powering the computer servers needed to mine digital currencies is one of the biggest financial challenges that bitcoin miners face. The PBOC’s logic here is easy to spot: The more bitcoin miners who set up shop in the China, the greater the control the PBOC exercises over the global bitcoin market.

  Lingering fears of a crackdown have only served to benefit the government’s position. As BU explains:

  “A lot of people feel they should buy as much bitcoin as they can right now, which will of course further drive up the price, possibly making officials very rich.”

  ****

  After bitcoin plunged to a two-week low earlier Thursday, CNBC and a handful of other media organizations blamed the latest drop on a trifecta of reasons ranging from cyberattacks to new regulations that are presently being debated by US Congress. An outline of their reasoning can be found below:

  Cyber attack

  As CNBC reports, major bitcoin exchanges were hit with multiple cyberattacks this week. Bitfinex, the largest U.S. dollar based bitcoin exchange, announced it was under ‘distributed denial-of-service’ attacks (DDOS) which slowed the service down.  The attacks come at a time when consumer interest in bitcoins have also led to heavier than normal traffic on the exchanges, compounding the attacks.

  We are currently running slow due to a DDoS attack, hang tight while we make some adjustments to speed it up. #bitcoin #localbitcoins

  — LocalBitcoins.com (@LocalBitcoins) August 16, 2016

  Platform upgrade

  On August 1st, the bitcoin platform will be undergoing a protocol upgrade labeled BIP148, meant to solve the block size debate – an argument over the size of bitcoin’s ‘blocks’ (a record of transactions on the public ledger – the ‘blockchain’). The planned improvements are supposed to help ‘scale’ bitcoin for future growth, lower fees, and speed up transaction times –  however the upgrade is not without risks, and the Bitcoin community is divided.

  #Bitcoin scaling negotiations / compromises are over.
  Either we support BIP148 and save Bitcoin from destruction or 8 years gone to waste. ????

  — Hisham Fahmy (@fahmyeu) June 14, 2017

  Whether we like it or not, at this point not supporting BIP148 is the dangerous path. With most risks being to miners & services, not users.

  — Neo M. Atrix (@RedPillTrading) June 4, 2017

  Inclusion in Anti-Money Laundering Bill:

  Last but not least, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have co-sponsored bill S.1241 (Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act), which adds language to existing anti-money laundering provisions to include digital wallets, prepaid access devices, and other ‘digital currency exchangers’ if they contain over $10,000 of cryptocurrency. Also included in the bill are cell phones, flash drives, and computers containing information on holdings which will need to be declared and reported upon entry into the U.S. In other words, the notion of using digital currency to transact anonymously will become much less attractive if this bill is signed into law.

  Demand for cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed over the last few months, beginning with Japan recognizing bitcoin as legal currency in April. Other countries including South Korea and Malaysia are reportedly set to follow suit.

  Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to combat corruption among China’s business and political elite – a crackdown that recently led to the detention of the CEO of Anbang, China's hyperacquisitive insurance conglomerate. The company has been blamed for a sizable portion of China's merger spree between 2014 and 2016, and which has since been accused of being a money laundering vehicle, of wreaking "havoc" with the Chinese insurance market.
   

  

  

• CBS Anchor Blames Trump's Tweets for Congressional Baseball Field Shooting

  Now this is the sort of journalism that gets the blood pumping. Scott Pelley from SHEE-BEE-ESH News asked the question last night, ‘Was the congressional shootings self inflicted?’ To prove his case, Pelley didn’t cite the endless barrage of violent protest by leftists in the streets or Democratic politicians calling for ‘resistance.’ Instead, Pelley called into question President Trump’s tweets, especially one that said the enemy of America was the media — as the millstone from which killers like Hodgkinson drew energy from to activate into seditious violence.
  

  The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Source: SHEE-BEE-ESH News

  It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress Wednesday was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.

  Too many leaders, and political commentators, who set an example for us to follow have led us into an abyss of violent rhetoric which, it should be no surprise, has led to violence.

  Wednesday was not the first time.

  In December last year, a man with an assault rifle stormed into a Washington-area pizzeria to free child sex slaves whom Hillary Clinton was holding there — or at least that’s what political blog sites had said. He fired into a locked door to discover no children in chains.

  Sen. Bernie Sanders has called the president the “most dangerous in history.” The shooter on Wednesday was a Sanders volunteer.

  You might think that no sane person would act on political hate speech, and you’d be right. Trouble is, there are a lot of Americans who struggle with mental illness.

  In February, the president tweeted that the news media were the “enemy of the American people.”

  Later, at a lunch for reporters, President Trump was asked whether he worried that language would incite violence. His pause indicated it had never crossed his mind. Then he said, “No, that doesn’t worry me.”

  As children we’re taught, “Words will never hurt me.” But when you think about it, violence almost always begins with words. In “Twitter world,” we’ve come to believe that our first thought is our best thought.

  It’s past time for all of us — presidents, politicians, reporters, citizens, all of us — to pause to think again.

  It’s past time for all of us — presidents, politicians, reporters, citizens, all of us — to pause to think again.

  In summary, Hodgkinson shot up a baseball field filled with GOP politicians because of pizzagate, which Pelley said inplicated Hillary Clinton in holding child sex slaves inside of Comet Ping Pong’s basement (even the most extreme conspiracy theorists never implicated Clinton, just Podesta), Trump’s hatred for the media, and also mental illnesses pervading America’s collective psyche. CBS never bothered to mention, in this disgraceful display of agitprop, the fact that left wing extremists have been slandering the President of the United States with false accusations of treason, blatant lies regarding Russia’s involvement in the elections, and a wholesale disregard and contempt for the highest office in the land. To blame right wingers for inciting violence conducted by a left wing Berniebro is reprehensible, but not unexpected by the cromagnons who traverse the indecorous halls of SHE-BEE-ESH News.

  

• Bank Of Japan Leaves Policy, Economic Outlook Unchanged

  As expected by all 43 economists who estimate such things, the Bank of Japan left their policy mix unchanged and in a desperate bid to appear modestly positive about how things are going, maintained that "Japan's economy has been turning toward a moderate expansion," adding that that consumer spending "increased its resilience." Hardly a rousing evaluation of the state of the economy after who-knows-how-many-years of so-called 'stimulus'.

  Following The Fed's 4th rate hike in 11 years, The Bank of Japan sat on its hands once again…

  • The BOJ maintained its short-term policy rate on some bank reserves at -0.1 percent and…
  • left its target for 10-year government bond yields at around 0 percent.
  • It kept the pace of its asset purchases unchanged at about 80 trillion yen ($700 billion) annually.

  As Bloomberg's Enda Curran notes, looking through the statement, there's not much new in terms of signalling or a change to the narrative. This may suggest the BOJ is reasonably comfortable with where the economy is headed and policy makers are happy to tread water.

  USDJPY chopped around a litle, but NKY futures were entirely unimpressed as Kuroda delivered the anticipated 'nothing-burger'.

  

   

  The vote to do nothing was 7 to 2 with the two dissenters, Mr. Sato and Mr. Kiuchi, having one more policy meeting — July 19-20 — before their terms are up. Assuming they are sworn in by then, their replacements could change the 7-2 vote tallies that we've been seeing.

  Kuroda's news conference today could be interesting. Will he stick to being evasive about the topic of an exit, or will he drop any hints that the BOJ is starting to think about it?

  As we noted earlier, the central bank is "technically tapering," said Hiroshi Shiraishi, senior economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo. This can be clearly seen in the following chart from Bank of America.

  

  Aside from the a declining supply of bonds held by the private sector, one tactical reason why the BOJ may be buying fewer bonds is its "yield curve control" policy, which aims to keep the yield on 10-year government bonds at zero. This implies it can buy fewer bonds when the yield is close to that target. Wednesday, the yield was at 0.06%.

  Previously, Kuroda has acknowledged this slowdown, but has been quick to declare that what effectively amounts to a 35% taper doesn't signal a retreat from easy-money policies. "At this stage, we are not exiting," Kuroda said at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council meeting in Tokyo on May 16.

  

  

• What's Triggering The Left Now? Soon You Won't Be Allowed To Say "Patriot"

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  There was a time when liberals and conservatives both agreed on one thing. They both used to love their country. Though they differed on what values and policies would be best for their homeland, they still had that shred of common ground.

  That’s clearly no longer the case. Across the Western world, you’ll find that even moderate liberals are often uncomfortable with terms like “patriotism” and “nationalism.” As for the far-left, they now view these terms as poisonous and archaic. That’s because they want the whole world to be one big happy family, where borders are meaningless, people can freely move from one country to the next, and no society is inherently better than another. They preach diversity, but they want the world to be blended into one drab monoculture that falls in line with their beliefs.

  So it was only a matter of time before leftists would start being triggered by patriotic rhetoric. It’s happening in Australia, where Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull recently stated that he wants the government to tighten citizenship and visa requirements.

  “There is no more important title in our democracy than “Australian Citizen”. And we should make no apology for asking those who seek to join our Australian family to join us as Australian patriots – committed to the values that define us, committed to the values that unite us. Our success as a multicultural society is built on strong foundations which include the confidence of the Australian people that their government, and it alone, determines who comes to Australia.”

  Sounds pretty inoffensive right? Not to many Australians, who have taken umbrage with his use of the word “patriot.”

  Demanding loyalty to the state… don't fascists like Trump keep spraying that bile?

  — Agent Arioch [Umbra] (@the_LoungeFly) June 13, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It's UN-Australian to use that right-wing American term. Didn't need it for Italians,British, Greeks, Chinese,Vietnamese, etc. etc.#false

  — RODH2 (@2hdor) June 14, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  "I resent the word 'patriot', its use & application to immigrants. It feels Trumpesque, someone who's either a zealot/ extremist" #TheDrum pic.twitter.com/YXlcuGwh2o

  — ABC The Drum (@ABCthedrum) June 13, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  That of course, is so typical of the Left. They care more about how they feel regarding an issue, rather than the objective truth. And the truth of the matter, is that these people don’t seem to know what patriotism means. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it simply means “love for or devotion to one’s country.” According to thefreedictionary.com, a patriot is “a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests.”

  What’s so bad about that?

  Make no mistake, people are increasingly being offended by patriotism across the Western world. It’s even ramping up in America, which is considered one of the most patriotic nations on the planet. Here we have leftists melting down over sports fans wearing red, white and blue clothing. Even in Germany, a country that is notorious for frowning upon most patriotic displays, it’s not taboo to wave the German flag at a sports game.

  This trend has to be fought at every turn, because there’s nothing shameful about loving where you come from.

  To everyone in the Western world, take note. What happens in you culture, will eventually influence government policies. So if this derision of patriotism ever goes mainstream, you can say goodbye to our borders. And when our nations are flooded with migrants who come face to face with a self-loathing culture, they’ll have no motivation to assimilate. Then you can say goodbye to your values and way of life as well.

  

  

• Time To Get Over Your Myriad Of Reasons Not To Invest In Greece – by Michael Carino

   

  Human beings are flawed in many ways. One flaw is the desire
  to act in a repetitive manor, not adjusting and evolving as conditions change. Those
  that can change prosper and those that don’t, well, sometimes it doesn’t turn
  out so well.  Greece has been stuck in a
  repetitive negative feedback loop for almost a decade.  Yes, many of their problems are self-inflicted
  wounds.  But the patient that has been in
  a coma then moved to life support just left the hospital with a clean bill of
  health.  It seems most investors are preoccupied
  or refuse to pay attention, preferring to remain soured to the Greek markets
  after being disappointed time and time again.

   

  With today’s conclusion of the Eurogroup meeting of the
  Eurozone’s finance ministers and the IMF in Luxembourg, Greece secured the
  final $9.5 bn loan installment officially putting an end to their financial
  crisis.  The IMF has signed on board as
  well with their level of commitment to be determined pending conclusion of
  long-term debt relief. Eurogroup Chariman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said today’s
  agreement is “a major step forward” that will lead to Greece’s conclusion of
  its support program in 2018.

   

  The Eurozone also agreed on debt relief linking debt
  repayment to its rate of growth as well as deferring and extending repayment of
  $145 bn of loans – or around half Greece’s debt – by up to 15 years.
  Additionally, the Eurogroup will specify further debt relief measures by July
  27^th.  This is a precondition
  for the IMF’s participation.

   

  Believe it or not, with today’s meeting, Greece has decided
  to steer the country in the direction of stability and prosperity.  The political landscape is, dare I say it, stable
  for the foreseeable future.

   

  Unbeknownst to many investors, the Greek main benchmark
  index, the ASE is one of the top performing equity markets so far this
  year.  It is up approximately 23% year to
  date.  I know, I know, how and when did
  that happen.  Though this sounds great,
  the index is still off around 85% from its peak in 2007.  Some Greek companies can still be found
  trading around 20% of asset value.  There
  are many equity markets currently trading at historically expensive levels over-crowded
  with heard like investors.  Get over your
  preconceived notions that nothing positive will come out of Greece.  It’s time to acknowledge the progress and
  positive developments and start a list of reasons to invest in Greece.

   

   

   

  by Michael Carino, 6/15/17

   

  Michael Carino is the CEO of Greenwich Endeavors, a
  financial service firm, and has been a fund manager and owner for more than 20
  years.  He is optimistically invested in
  Greek equities.

   

   

      

  

  

• JPMorgan's Kolanovic: "$1.3 Trillion In S&P 500 Options Expire Tomorrow"

  With Nasdaq 'VIX' reaching 15-year highs relative to S&P 'VIX' in the last week, we suspect tomorrow's quad-witching will be a little more noisy than normal as traders scramble to cope with $1.3 trillion of expiring S&P options…

  

   

  JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic lays out the details…

  In our view, it will be difficult for the market to go much higher from these levels (~2,450) unless there is meaningful progress on US fiscal reform (i.e. tax cut).

   

  Current positioning of various investors is already quite high and that poses additional risk going into weak seasonals.

   

  

   

  Low volatility and positive price momentum resulted in high leverage of systematic investors: CTAs are likely at their ~95th percentile of equity exposure, Volatility targeting funds are likely at maximum equity exposure, and other investors (such as equity long-short and risk parity funds) also have above average equity exposure and leverage.

  Certainly, the last month has seen a regime shift in Risk Parity funds from the year-to-date upward thrust…

  

  But it is tomorrow's quad witch which has Kolanovic most worried…

  The impact of S&P 500 derivatives has been supporting the market going higher in the first few days of this week (expiry momentum)…

   

  …and will turn into a headwind next and the following week (reversion of expiry effect, and reversion due to monthly/quarterly rebalances).

   

  $1.3T of S&P 500 options expire on Friday, and this will change dealers’ positioning (half of the long gamma positions will expire).

   

  This can result in market volatility starting on Friday and into next week.

  In english, Friday's expiration could change options dealers' positions in a manner that could leave them more likely to feed into any uptick in stock market volatility going forward, and after tomorrow, dealers' positions in S&P 500  options will change so that any stock market selloff could quickly see dealers boosting volatility as they hedge their positions.

  Or even more simply put, the foot on the throat of volatility could well be lifted tomorrow… and positioning suggests any pain will quickly feed on itself.

  

  

• The UN Just Accused The US Of Killing 300 Civilians Since Last Week In Raqqa

  Authohred by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

  

  According to a U.N. Commission of Inquiry tasked with investigating violations of international war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, the intensification of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition has led to a “staggering loss of civilian life,” the Guardian reports.

  The U.N. war crimes investigators found that since the acceleration of airstrikes in the Syrian city of Raqqa commenced last week, 300 civilians have already died. This statistic arguably makes Bashar al-Assad pale in comparison; Assad’s regime reportedly kills approximately 20-50 people in any given week.

  “We note in particular that the intensification of air strikes, which have paved the ground for an SDF advance in Raqqa, has resulted not only in staggering loss of civilian life, but has also led to 160,000 civilians fleeing their homes and becoming internally displaced,” Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry told the human rights council in Geneva.

  According to Karen Abuzayd, an American commissioner on the independent panel, the figure of 300 is based only on deaths caused by airstrikes. Therefore, the figure of civilian deaths caused by troops on the ground may ultimately higher.

  As the Guardian also notes, speculation that the coalition has been using white phosphorous has already drawn strong condemnation.

  Not surprisingly, this operation was conducted with full knowledge that there would be mass suffering for the civilian population. At the end of May of this year, Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis announced that the U.S. would be switching to so-called “annihilation tactics” against ISIS, stating:

  “Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa, we are not going to allow them to do so…We are going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.”

   

  According to Mattis, civilian deaths “are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” However, Mattis did add that the U.S. military would “do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.”

  Mattis’ announcement that the U.S. would annihilate ISIS (and massacre civilians by the hundreds) is still somewhat dubious, considering video footage appears to have emerged of ISIS fighters fleeing the conflict in Raqqa safely despite the hundreds of bombs and white phosphorous loaded munitions U.S.-backed forces have been dropping over the city. It has been speculated that in reality, these ISIS fighters are being granted safe passage to put added pressure on the Syrian government, a longtime adversary of the United States.

  Further, using a dangerous element like white phosphorous and burying over 300 civilians after approximately a week of fighting seems, on the face of it, to be nothing short of a blatant war crime. The Commission of Inquiry and the mainstream media may not use the term “war crime” outright, but that is surely an inference one can draw from their calculations.

  If anything, it would appear the U.S. is annihilating civilians — and not much else.

  

  

• Four Reasons Why College Degrees Are Becoming Useless

  Authored by Jonathan Newman via The Mises Institute,

  Students are running out of reasons to pursue higher education. Here are four trends documented in recent articles:

  Graduates have little to no improvement in critical thinking skills

  The Wall Street Journal reported on the troubling results of the College Learning Assessment Plus test (CLA+), administered in over 200 colleges across the US.

  According to the WSJ, “At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table”. The outcomes were the worst in large, flagship schools: “At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.”

  There is extensive literature on two mechanisms by which college graduates earn higher wages: actually learning new skills or by merely holding a degree for the world to see (signaling). The CLA+ results indicate that many students aren’t really learning valuable skills in college.

  As these graduates enter the workforce and reveal that they do not have the required skills to excel in their jobs, employers are beginning to discount the degree signal as well. Google, for example, doesn’t care if potential hires have a college degree. They look past academic credentials for other characteristics that better predict job performance.

  Shouting matches have invaded campuses across the country

  It seems that developing critical thinking skills has taken a backseat to shouting matches in many US colleges. At Evergreen State College in Washington, student protests have hijacked classrooms and administration. Protesters took over the administration offices last month, and have disrupted classes as well. It has come to the point where enrollment has fallen so dramatically that government funding is now on the line.

  The chaos at Evergreen resulted in “anonymous threats of mass murder, resulting in the campus being closed for three days.” One wonders if some of these students are just trying to get out of class work and studying by staging a campus takeover in the name of identity politics and thinly-veiled racism.

  The shouting match epidemic hit Auburn University last semester when certain alt-right and Antifa groups (who are more similar than either side would admit) came from out of town to stir up trouble. Neither outside group offered anything of substance for discourse, just empty platitudes and shouting. I was happy to see that the general response from Auburn students was to mock both sides or to ignore the event altogether. Perhaps the Auburn Young Americans for Liberty group chose the best course of action: hosting a concert elsewhere on campus to pull attention and attendance away from both groups of loud but empty-headed out-of-towners. Of the students who chose not to ignore the event, my favorite Auburn student response was a guy dressed as a carrot holding a sign that read, “I Don’t CARROT ALL About Your Outrage.”

  

  Source. 

  Trade schools and self-study offer better outcomes for many

  College dropouts are doing just fine, bucking the stereotype. Some determined young people are skipping college altogether to pursue their business ideas. Many are also choosing trade schools, which require less time and tuition money, but graduates end up with a specific set of skills. Trade school graduates leave school prepared for the industry they enter, where they can earn much higher wages than many four-year degree-holders.

  Young men in particular are leaving colleges in droves. Over the past decade, 30% of male freshmen dropped out before starting a second year. The journalists, psychologists, and sociologists who comment on this trend can’t figure out how to fit it into a narrative [emphasis mine]:

  “This is very concerning to me,” Hunter Reed said. Young men — like all students, she emphasized — need support from a variety of groups to thrive in higher education.

   

  “The most successful have a sense of place in college,” she said.

   

  Stark, 28, studied computer science for a year and a half before leaving Metro State University to study on his own.

   

  Now a software engineer for a music company in Denver, Stark also DJs at some of the area’s most notable nightclubs. “What I was getting in the classroom just didn’t jibe with me. I felt I could teach myself on the Internet,” he said.

   

  He worked a fast-food job and then took a corporate gig to support himself while he studied on his own. The alternative, he said, was to work four years to get a bachelor’s degree and then another year or two to earn a master’s degree, then “go to work for some huge company and go home at night and live my life with my family. And that just didn’t sound appealing to me at the time.”

  Notice the call for helping these poor young men “thrive in higher education” that precedes a small anecdote about one man who dropped out and ended up just fine. Later in the same article, the author says that young men shouldn’t assume they will do well if they drop out, but then equivocates by turning it into a gender wage-gap problem to explain how some men do seem to turn out fine after dropping out:

  Observers say many young men delude themselves into thinking they are one idea away from being the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. They think they can make a fortune without a college degree, said Riseman. “As a result, they enter college with little sense of purpose and end up failing out,” he said. “While these dropouts imagine they can succeed without a degree, successful start-ups are rare.”

   

  While young men without degrees, in general, land higher-paying jobs than their female peers, many of the top-paying jobs are in high-risk industries like oil and gas or manufacturing.

  Tuition is increasing, but future earnings are decreasing

  In another recent WSJ article, we see the financial consequences of these trends. While tuition keeps climbing across the country, the prospective earnings of graduates aren’t keeping up. There is a lot of variation across colleges and majors, but the overall trend is that the returns to a four-year degree are decreasing.

  Since students are just getting started in life, it means that they must borrow to pay for these expensive degrees that don’t guarantee higher earnings. Total student loans are at $1.3 trillion and climbing. These loans have no collateral and cannot be dissolved through bankruptcy.

  

  The New York Fed tracks the delinquency rate for different types of loans. As of the first quarter of 2017, total student loan debt was increasing the most and had the highest delinquency rate.

  These trends are unsustainable. The higher education system seems to be suffering from both economic and cultural issues, but these two types of problems often cause each other in a feedback loop. The ultimate cause for both of them is political.

   

  

  

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• US Marshals Arrest 2 Erdogan Supporters For Turkish Embassy Melee

  Sen. John McCain must be pleased. US Marshals have arrested two Turkish men living in the US and charged them in the vicious beating of opponents of the Turkish regime who had been peacefully protesting outside the Turkish embassy in Washington last month.

  The attack, which unfolded during a visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month, triggered outrage from the US media and from lawmakers, including McCain, who condemned the attackers, warning that they should “get the hell out” of the US if they didn’t know how to follow its laws.

  The Turkish government blamed the US government and the DC police for failing to corral the protesters. Last week, the House passed a bill officially condemning the attack.

  

  The State Department identified the men as Eyup Yildirim and Sinan Narin, two American residents of Turkish descent who gathered to be part of Erdogan’s entourage that day. Yildirim, a 50-year-old construction company owner from New Jersey, faces charges of assault with significant bodily injury and aggravated assault. Narin, from Virginia, faces an aggravated assault charge, according to the Daily Caller.

  The State Department is also weighing additional action “as appropriate under relevant laws and regulations.”

  Both Yildirim and Narin were part of a group of Erdogan supporters who showed up at the Turkish embassy.

  The protesters were members of the Kurdish ethnic group, a minority in Turkey who primarily live in a semi-autonomous region in the country’s southeast. Erdogan has in recent years cracked down on the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, a group that has for years waged an insurgent campaign of violence in Turkey. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the US.

  And some of those attacked were women, including one who was allegedly beaten by the two men.

  Here’s the Daily Caller.

  Lucy Usoyan, the woman kicked and stomped by Yildirim, Narin and other Erdogan supporters, told TheDC that she went to the hospital where she was diagnosed with head trauma. Narin, who was first identified by The New York Times last month, acknowledged to the newspaper that he kicked Usoyan. But he claimed that he thought that Usoyan was a man. Usoyan, a Kurdish activist, said that she feared for her life during the assault. She also said that her doctor told her she would need six weeks to fully recover from the beating.

  Erdogan can be seen watching the confrontation from a black Mercedes SUV. The president, who was in town meeting with US President Donald Trump, had just narrowly won a referendum vote granting him sweeping executive powers. The Daily Caller noted that Erdogan might have ordered the assault, according to audio recordings taken during the confrontation. The State Department has identified two of Erdogan’s bodyguards, who also participated in the assault.

  "The Department would like to thank the Department of Justice and the investigative agencies for their diligence,” the State Department said in its statement.

   

  “We are committed to holding those responsible for the violence on May 16 accountable. As we have previously stated, the events surrounding the conduct of Turkish Security personnel during President Erdogan’s visit to the United States is troubling.”

  The Metro police department says that additional information about the case will be released on Thursday.

  The video shows men in suits, apparently bodyguards and supporters of Erdogan, punching and kicking the protesters as the police tried to intervene. At one point, a man threw a bullhorn, two men could be seen bleeding from the head, and another man was on the ground being violently kicked. Two men were arrested following the brawl, though it’s unclear if it’s the same two men who were charged.

  “All of the sudden they just ran towards us,” Yazidi Kurd demonstrator Lucy Usoyan told ABC, adding that she was attacked by a pro-Erdogan supporter quoted by the Associated Press.

   

  “Someone was beating me in the head nonstop, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’m on the ground already, what is the purpose to beat me?’

  Hours earlier Trump and Erdogan stood side by side at the White House and promised to strengthen strained ties despite the Turkish leader’s stern warning about Washington’s decision to arm a Kurdish militia.

  While the two men arrested live in the US, the US government could try to punish the Turks another way, including through diplomatic channels. At least two lawmakers have called on the U.S. State Department to halt the planned sale of $1.6 million worth of firearms to the Turkish security detail, the Daily Caller reported.

  

  

• Is California Replacing Its 'Prison-Industrial Complex' With Something Worse?

  Authored by Sarah Cronin via TheAntiMedia.org,

  California made headlines last week when Governor Jerry Brown allocated a record $11.4 billion to the state’s corrections department in his May Revision to the budget, translating to $75,560 per individual — the highest per-inmate cost in the nation.

  

  Media outlets ran amok with headlines comparing the costs of imprisonment to tuition at the country’s premier private university.

  “That’s enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer,” quipped Don Thompson of the Associated Press.

  Yet in consideration of decreasing prison populations and statewide ‘reforms,’ this five-figure sum is more alarming than amusing.

  Since 2006, California’s inmate population has gone down by nearly a quarter, due in part to a Supreme Court mandate that found conditions in California’s notoriously overcrowded prisons to be ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ The inmate population further declined after California passed a proposition in 2014 that reduced sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders. Still, the annual corrections budget has continued to increase, with current costs now double what they were in 2005.

  But the very same budget report that allocates $11.3 billion to corrections also predicts an additional population decrease of 11,500 inmates over the next four years.

  So what gives?

  Part of the answer, at least, comes down to prison unions.

  “It’s an example of how powerful public-sector unions keep the state from getting spending under control, even when the need for such spending plummets,” wrote Steven Greenhut in an op-ed for the California Policy Center.

  The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) is one of the most powerful public sector unions in the state. In an article shared on the Prison Activist Resource Center, writer Tim Kowell tracked CCPOA’s massive legacy of influence in a timeline spanning over 50 years.

  This includes a $2 million dollar campaign contribution that the CCPOA made to Brown’s gubernatorial bid in 2010, reportedly by funneling the money into independent campaign expenditures. This, CalWatch.org says, made Brown “Prisoner of the Guards Union.”

  If the union has Brown in a bind, it could explain why correctional officers in California are the second-highest paid in the nation (the first is New Jersey), earning an average of $70,020/year.

  “That’s more than the average salary of an assistant professor with a PhD at the University of California,” Kowell noted.

  It’s no wonder, then, that incarceration costs are beginning to resemble the tuition fees of a top-tier university.

  Further, as the Associated Press reported, California Correctional Peace Officers Association are currently negotiating the details of a contract that would cost taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next three years.

  Nichol Gomez, spokeswoman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association Union, says the extra funds are needed for special programming.

  “Vocational, academic, mental health and medical programs are not cheap, but we’re doing our best to provide programs that give people the best chance to succeed once released,” she said in an interview with the Associated Press.

  California Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer, who also spoke with the AP, backed Gomez’s claims, attributing the increasing cost to “unique pressures,” such as prison healthcare and remote prisons.

  What Palmer and Gomez are describing is consistent with a trend in recent years that has states investing more money in reform and rehabilitation than in prisons themselves. This has lead to the corporate privatization of these social services in what is now being called the “treatment-industrial complex.”

  The treatment-industrial complex is similar in theory to the well-known prison-industrial complex. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has explained that “the financial incentive for private prison corporations is to keep people in custody or under some form of supervision for as long as possible at the highest per diem rate possible in order to maximize profits.“

  The difference between the two is that instead of privatized carceral facilities, the treatment-industrial complex leads to outsourced social services, including privatized treatment centers and halfway houses.

  The main players in the treatment-industrial complex are the very same ones involved in the for-profit prison industry. They are corporations like GEO Group, the second-largest private correctional facilities provider in the U.S. In recent years, they have strategically shifted their focus toward prison alternatives.

  As the AFSC reports:

  “In 2010, GEO Group acquired BI Incorporated, which makes electronic monitoring products, including GPS ankle bracelet monitors, voice verification technology, and alcohol monitors for individuals on home confinement. The company boasts of its newly reorganized ‘Community Services’ unit, which operates halfway houses, day reporting centers, and juvenile detention facilities. This segment represented 20% of GEO Group’s operations in 2012.”

  According to their website, Geo Group owns 101 ‘Residential Reentry” “Day Reporting” facilities nationwide. California alone houses 23 of these sites, the most of any state.

  As Politico reported last March, California is one of 25 states that contracts some or all of their correctional health care to private companies.

  In last year’s Budget Act, California put aside $25 million for a community-based transitional housing program that “encourages cities and counties to support transitional housing that provides treatment and reentry programming to offenders released from the criminal justice system, and to any other persons who the applicant city or county believes may benefit.”

  Notably, Brown’s May revision to the program asserts that “there is no limit on the amount the city or county may provide the facility operator.”

  For corporations like Geo Group, this means that ‘rehabilitation’ is turning out to be a lucrative business.

  As Michelle Chen of The Nation writes:

  “On principle, reducing incarceration is necessary and just. But some activists fear private-sector solutions might pervert prison reform into a neoliberal variation of convict leasing, in which industry and state collude to ‘redeem” society’s undesirables.’”

  In terms of the costs to taxpayers, criminal justice analyst Drew Soderborg told the Associated Press that “[r]eal savings won’t come unless the inmate population drops so low that the state can start closing prisons.”

  Yet within so many vested interests involved in keeping correctional facilities open, that reality seems far-fetched. Even if prisons were to be shut down, the treatment-industrial complex indicates that the next iteration of for-profit prison institutions is already here, and they are already taking our money.

  

  

• Peak Economic Delusion Signals Coming Crisis

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  

  In my article 'The Trump Collapse Scapegoat Narrative Has Now Been Launched', I discussed the ongoing and highly obvious plan by globalists and international financiers to pull the plug on their fiat support for stock markets and portions of the general economy while blaming the Trump Administration (and the conservative ideal) for the subsequent crash. Numerous economic shocks and negative data which had been simmering for years before the 2016 elections are rising to the surface of the normally oblivious mainstream. This recently culminated in a surprise stock dive that stunned investors; investors that have grown used to the Dow moving perpetually upward, while the economic media immediately began connecting the entire event to Trump and the “Comey memos”, which likely do not exist.

  My position according to Trump's behavior and cabinet selection is that he is aware of this agenda and is playing along. That said, there is another important issue to consider – the participation of the ignorant in helping the Ponzi con-game continue.

  There is a famous investor's anecdote from Joe Kennedy, the father of John F. Kennedy, about the onset of the Great Depression – he relates that one day, just before the crash of 1929, a shoe shine boy tried to give him stock tips. He realized at that moment that when the shoe shiner is offering market tips the market is too popular for its own good. He cashed out of the market and avoided the crash that many people now wrongly assume was the “cause” of the Great Depression.

  I don't know that this story is true, but if it is, it is an interesting example of peak economic delusion. We do not have quite the same investment environment as existed in those days. Today, algorithmic computers dominate the functions of the stock market, chasing headlines and each other, but this does not and will not save the economy from another depression. In fact, all they have done along with substantial aid from central banks is artificially elevate equities while every other fiscal indicator implodes.

  But this farce in stocks could not succeed for so many years without help. I would say the real “shoe shine boys” of our era are actually the dullards in the mainstream financial media, stabbing in the dark and desperate to believe that the astonishing “recovery” since 2009 is real.

  This attitude is evident in a recent article published by Bloomberg titled 'Prophets Of Doom With Too Much Gloom'. The piece focuses not on alternative analysts like myself which are usually targeted with the mentally lazy “doom and gloom” label by the MSM. Rather, the targets are “big names” in the investment world who now finally agree with what alternative analysts have been saying for some time. Names like Bill Gross and Paul Singer.

  Bloomberg laments the sudden tide of negative predictions for their beloved Dow Jones and other exchanges from people who have the ear of the larger mainstream. Instead of considering their warnings and looking at the available evidence, Bloomberg instead decides to craft a conspiracy theory in which bond traders and hedge fund managers like Gross and Singer feel jilted by the unnatural rise in stocks and now scheme to lure investors away from the infinite fountain of wealth. Yes, that's right, Bloomberg accuses Gross and Singer of “stock envy”.

  I say, Bloomberg is a modern day shoe shine boy.

  Some might argue that Bloomberg is perfectly cognizant of the fact that the economy is in severe decline and that they are helping their central banker buddies keep the public in the dark through misinformation. While this may be true for Bloomberg himself and media elites like him, I think the average analyst at Bloomberg news is just as ignorant of the fiscal situation as most people. I think they are legitimately biased and will conjure whatever story they need to help them and others believe that the system is in ascendance rather than decline.

  For those of us who were analysts before the derivatives crash of 2008, this mindset is nothing new. I remember the complete arrogance present in the mainstream just before the implosion; the sneering and attacks that were used in an attempt to silence anyone with the guts to openly suggest the fundamentals and the data did not support the investment exuberance. I remember many people asserting that that the economy's progress was unstoppable, that another crash like 1929 was impossible, that the real estate market was an invincible engine. They were all wrong, yet, they were so confident. Most of these same people still work in the financial press to this day. Imagine that…

  I would prefer to point to the hard data on hand than mere mainstream opinion. Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but I've already seen mainstream analysts fail on numerous occasions.

  First, consider the fact that the Federal Reserve, the key component along with other central banks around the world in the rise of stock markets, is now cutting off the flow of easy money through continued interest rate hikes. I predicted this move back in 2015 when almost everyone said the Fed would go to negative rates instead. Without no-cost Fed money to feed the machine, stock markets have essentially stalled, and now, there is talk of a “tech dump” on the horizon.  With the vast majority of gains in equities the past year attributed to only five major companies, all of them tech oriented, this would be a disaster for stocks.

  

  This is a considerable shift away from the last few years, in which it was expected by many that markets would expand exponentially for the foreseeable future. Now that the Fed's quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates have been removed as fuel, the true economic picture is becoming clear, even to the mainstream.

  According to the Atlanta Fed, US GDP in the first quarter of 2017 has declined to 0.7% , going back to lows touched on in 2014 after the Fed reduced QE.

  

  The US has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since the year 2000, and this trend has accelerated in recent years. Manufacturing in the US only accounts for 8.48% of all jobs according to May statistics.

  102 million working age Americans do not currently have a job. This includes the 95 million Americans not counted by the Bureau of Labor because they assume these people have been unemployed so long they “do not want to work”.

  Thousands of retail outlet stores, the primary engine of the American economy, are set to close in 2017.  Sweeping bankruptcies and downsizing are ravaging the retail sector, and internet retailers are not taking up the slack despite highly publicized growth.  In 2016, online retail sales only accounted for 8.1% of all retail sales.

  Oil inventories continue to amass as US energy demand declines. Declining energy demand is a sure sign of overall economic decline. OPEC and other entities continue to argue that “too much supply” is the issue; an attempt to distract away from the reality of lower consumption and the falling wealth of consumers.

  Corporate earnings expectations continue their dismal path, suggesting that stock markets have been supported by central bank stimulus and blind investor faith in central bank intervention. The stimulus is now being cut off. How long before investor faith is finally lost?

  

  These are only a few of the MANY data points that paint a very ugly picture for the US economy. The rest of the world is just as tenuous if not worse.

  This is why when I hear the phrase “doom and gloom” I have to laugh and think of the shoe shine boys. These are people with limited experience in tracking the economy, or very short memories, or both. This is also the product of a vast misconception about economic crisis or collapse – the assumption that crisis and collapse are “events”, that they happen suddenly and without warning. If the nation does not look like a television zombie drama tomorrow, there must not be a collapse. In truth, economic collapse NEVER happens without warning, because as I have said ten thousand times and will say ten thousand times more, collapse is a process, not an event. The data points above show an economy that is in severe deterioration, not recovery. Stock markets are next, not that stock markets matter much in the grand scheme of things.

  It is unfortunate that so many people only track stocks when accounting for economic health. They have crippled themselves and their own observations, and actually condescend when confronted with counter-observations and data. They help globalists and international financiers by perpetuating false narratives; sometimes knowingly but often unconsciously. And, when the system does destabilize to the point that they actually realize it, they will blame all the wrong culprits for their pain and suffering.

  The question is not “when” we will enter collapse; we are already in the midst of an economic collapse. The real question is, when will the uneducated and the biased finally notice? I suspect the only thing that will shock them out of their stupor will be a swift stock market drop, since this is the only factor they seem to pay attention to. This will happen soon enough.

  In the meantime, anyone who discusses legitimate data and warns of the dangers to come is a “doom and gloomer”. Mark my words, one day this label will be considered a badge of honor.

  

  

• These Are The Most, And Least, Expensive States For Car Drivers

  The most expensive state for drivers isn’t what you’d expect. While conventional wisdom suggests that it costs more to be a driver in densely populated northeastern states with large, densely populated cities and bad winters, the truth is that states like New York and New Jersey don’t even crack the top five.

  It turns out, in the state with the highest spending – rural Wyoming – gas accounts for 70% of drivers’ costs. In North Dakota, the No. 3 most expensive state for drivers, 69% of expenses are due to gas costs.

  This color-coded graphic illustrates how much each state spends, while also breaking down the ratio between gas and insurance:

  

  Meanwhile, states that have lower overall costs for drivers tend to have below average insurance and gasoline prices. But there does not appear to be a trend between a state’s overall cost to drivers and the size of the state’s population.

  In some instances, the differences in costs between neighboring states make little sense. For example, North Dakota has one of the highest overall cost to drivers at $2,251, while nearby South Dakota is on the lower end of the spectrum at $1,883.

  Based on an average of all 50 states, the national average insurance cost is around $887 per year and the national average gasoline spending is around $1,127 per year, for an average total driver spending cost of $2,014.

  

  

• We Want A Government So Small That We Can Barely See It

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

  We need to fundamentally redefine the relationship between government and the people in this country. Today, we have become so accustomed to big government that most of us can’t even imagine another way of doing things. And I am not just talking about the federal government either. Even in a red state like Idaho, the state government has become a sprawling bureaucracy that requires 3.5 billion dollars a year to keep going. And all over the country many local governments are “supersized” as well. But this isn’t the way that our Founding Fathers intended for things to work. They intended to create a society where government is very limited and where liberty and freedom are maximized.

  

  Back in 2015, U.S. Senator Rand Paul made headlines all over the country when he tweeted that he wanted “a government so small I can barely see it!”

  In my opinion, we need 99 more senators that see things the exact same way.

  The reason why we want the federal government to be so limited is because there is an inverse correlation between the size of government and the level of freedom and liberty that we are able to enjoy. In other words, every time government gets bigger, we lose more freedom and liberty. And when government becomes the center of virtually everything (like in North Korea), the result is nightmarish tyranny.

  We have been trained to believe that government should be working to solve all of our problems, but the truth is that much of the time government is the problem.

  Those that are constantly advocating big government solutions to everything are actually promoting an anti-liberty agenda. If we can get people to start understanding this, it will result in an enormous political shift in this country.

  We need to start having more conversations about the proper role of government in our society. Government does have a role, but that role should be very limited. I really like how Idaho State Representative Karey Hanks made this point just recently…

  What is the “proper function” of government? It is debated on TV, social media and election campaigns. Many people don’t care much, as long as they have gas in the car, a paycheck, food to eat and a little spare time. Life is good! How many people actually take the time to vote in any given election?

   

  Laws were established by our Founding Fathers to preserve freedom–not restrict it. They believed laws should be enacted only to protect against physical harm, theft and involuntary bondage. Government should not be a means of compelling citizens to perform acts of charity against their will—“redistribution of wealth” in current terminology.

  “Redistribution of wealth” is one of my pet peeves. The federal government should not be taking trillions of dollars away from some Americans and giving that money to other Americans.

  But that is precisely what is happening, and if our Founding Fathers could see what is happening today they would be rolling over in their graves.

  Of course the centerpiece of the system is the income tax. In 1913, a very basic income tax was introduced and most Americans were taxed at a rate of only one percent. But of course once the progressives get their feet in the door they are never satisfied, and so our tax system has just gotten bigger and more complicated with each passing year.

  According to Forbes, Congress has made more than a change a day to the tax code since 2001, and at this point it is nearly four million words long…

  How complicated? Since 2001, Congress has made nearly 5,000 changes to the Tax Code. That’s more than a change per day. The Tax Code is now about four million words, nearly as long as seven versions of War and Peace or the novel version of Les Miserables and just under four times the number of words in all of the Harry Potter books put together.

  Americans spend approximately six billion hours complying with the tax code every year.

  That breaks down to 8,758 lifetimes spent on taxes every 12 months.

  How much better would our society be if the American people could spend all of that time on more productive matters?

  If I run for Congress, and if I end up winning, one of my long-term goals will be to completely eliminate the income tax. But we will need a lot more liberty-minded people to win seats in Congress in order for that to happen, and so I am encouraging as many as possible to consider running in 2018.

  We also need to dramatically reduce the red tape that is absolutely killing entrepreneurs and small businesses all over the nation.

  And it isn’t just the federal government that is doing this. Sometimes it is state and local governments that are the worst offenders, and I want to share one example with you from right here in Idaho…

  Miranda Hale, Nadia Saakyan and Micalah Howard are three innovative women who launched a mobile makeup-application business that fits today’s busy lifestyles. The trio came up with an original idea: Bring the make-up studio to help brides feel just a little more beautiful on their special day, no matter the location.

   

  Yet, senseless state regulations ruined the trio’s dream. Idaho rules don’t allow the three to apply makeup anywhere outside of a licensed and inspected beauty salon.

   

  This regulation, and hundreds more like it, were not built for the modern economy. Outdated regulations stifle innovation and kill jobs.

  This is the sort of thing that I would expect to see in California, but unfortunately it is happening right here in my state.

  If we sit back and do nothing, then nothing is going to change. The reason why we have so many rules and regulations is because control freaks tend to be greatly attracted to the world of politics. And once they get into positions of power, they love to lord it over the rest of us and impose as many rules and regulations as they possibly can.

  It is time for those of us that believe in constitutional values to rise up and take our country back. It won’t be easy, but if we want this nation to have any sort of a future at all we have no choice but to act.

  

  

• Will Fear Of A Terror Lawsuit Stop The Saudis From Listing Aramco In the US?

  The signing of a $350 billion arms deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US might not be enough to convince the Saudis to bring the Aramco IPO – expected to be the biggest public offering in markets history – to New York City. While the Saudi royal family, who hosted the president in May during his first-ever official visit to a foreign country, would like to see Aramco – the kingom's state-owned oil company – list on the New York Stock Exchange, the executives who are nominally in charge of the company apparently told the Wall Street Journal that they’d prefer to list on the London Stock Exchange, where there’s less risk of being hit with a shareholder lawsuit.

  Here’s WSJ:

  Executives at Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, are pushing Saudi Arabia’s king and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on the merits of listing the state-owned oil company on the London Stock Exchange . Executives believe that listing in the U.S. would expose the company to greater legal risks, including from potential class-action shareholder lawsuits, according to these people.

   

  But the Saudi Arabian royal court favors the New York Stock Exchange, according to the people familiar with the matter, in part because of the kingdom’s longstanding political ties to the U.S., and because the U.S. market represents the deepest pool of capital in the world.

  A listing in New York, along with one on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange, has long been the favored listing option for Prince Mohammed, who is driving the IPO as part of a broader push to overhaul and diversify the country’s economy.

   

  For months, the New York and London exchanges, along with other major global exchanges, have been pitching the merits of their trading venues, in some cases touting their existing crop of energy stocks and the breadth of their country’s energy sector to win the listing of what is likely to be the largest IPO in history.

   

  The IPO could value Saudi Aramco as high as $2 trillion. In addition to fees generated, such a listing for an exchange promises to attract international investors looking for a piece of the giant oil producer, and that interest would generate greater trading volumes, the lifeblood of any stock market.

  While WSJ neglected to elaborate on the executives’ reasoning – after all, plenty of foreign companies seem to have no issue listing their shares in the US, the world’s most vibrant IPO market – it’s likely that the Kingdom’s longstanding status as a financier of terror is one reason for their hesitation.

  

  A few months back, Politico profiled a New York lawyer named Jim Kreindler who is representing more than 850 clients in a civil suit against the Saudi government seeking compensation for victims of the attacks.

  Kreindler, who filed the lawsuit against the Saudis in a Manhattan court back in March, is the son of Lee Kriendler, who won a $3 billion judgment against Libya for the bomb that in 1988 destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

  After the Supreme court ruled last year that nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to the families of those killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks for which Iran was found liable, it’s not out of question that a similar judgment could be made against Saudi Arabia. Especially since the release of the fabled “28 pages” that had been redacted from the 9/11 Commission’s official report on the Sept. 11 attacks appeared to support Kriendler’s argument that without financial and logistical support from members of the government of Saudi Arabia, the 9/11 attacks would never have taken place.

  A decision on the venue is expected next month, WSJ reported, again citing one of its anonymous sources, though the timing could change. The paper’s sources tell it that a decision on the venue had originally been expected before the Islamic month of Ramadan, which started in late May.

  Sources close to the royal family reportedly assured WSJ’s reporters that the listing would happen in New York – and it very well may. But what does it say that the people who are accountable for running Aramco view listing in the US as risky? The longstanding commercial ties between the US and Saudi Arabia – not to mention the praise of the Kingdom and its values offered by Trump during his visit – might be enough to satisfy the royals. But as WSJ reports, the planned sale of a 5% stake in Aramco – a stake worth between $1.5 and $2 trillion – could yield at least $75 billion in profits for the kingdom.

  With that much at stake, it’s important to be realistic. And the fact remains that there are undeniable links between the Saudi government and the funding of terror. 

  

  

• Mueller Is Investigating Trump For Possible Obstruction Of Justice: Wapo

  If Trump wasn’t under investigation before for colluding with Russian spies to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, it seems that he may be now for claims that he intentionally obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey just over a month ago…at least according to more anonymous sources from the Washington Post which have proven themselves to be slightly less than completely ‘accurate’ several times in the recent past. 

  According to Wapo, this new revelation marks a “major turning point” in the investigation of the Trump administration and will get underway with interviews of numerous “senior intelligence officials” as early as this week.

  The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.

   

  The move by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate Trump’s own conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.

   

  Five people briefed on the requests, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Adm. Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers’ recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators as early as this week. The investigation has been cloaked in secrecy and it’s unclear how many others have been questioned by the FBI.

  

  And, like many of these stories from the past 6 months, the breathless headline from Wapo is followed, some 10 paragraphs into the story, with a slightly more realistic ‘hedge’ which suggests that the whole story may just another fishing expedition into prompting yet another infuriated response by Trump, which would assure he digs himself into an even deeper hole.  Here is today’s ‘hedge’:

  The interviews suggest Mueller sees the attempted obstruction of justice question as more than just a “he said, he said” dispute between the president and the fired FBI director, an official said.

  Of course, as we pointed out last week, Senator Jim Risch did a masterful job of dismantled any ‘hopes’ of an obstruction of justice case when he essentially got Comey himself to admit there was no ‘there’ there:

  Risch: “Boy you nailed this down on page 5 paragraph 3, you put this in quotes, words matter, you wrote down the words so we could all have the words in front of us now.  There are 28 words there that are in quotes and it says, ‘I hope’, this is the President speaking, ‘I hope you can see your way claer to letting this go, to letting Flynn go…I hope you can let this go.'”

   

  “Now those are his exact words, is that correct”

   

  Comey:  “Correct.”

   

  Risch:  “And you wrote them here and you put them in quotes?”

   

  Comey:  “Correct.”

   

  Risch:  “Thank you for that.  He did not direct you to let it go.”

   

  Comey:  “Not in his words, no.”

   

  Risch:  “He did not order you to let it go.”

   

  Comey:  “Again, those words are not an order.”

   

  Risch:  “He said ‘I hope’.  Now, like me you probably did 100’s of cases, maybe 1,000s of cases charging people with criminal offenses.  And, of course, you have knowlege of the 1,000s of cases out there where people have been charged.  Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice, for that matter of any other criminal offense,  where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?”

   

  Comey:  “I don’t know well enough to answer.  And the reason I keep saying ‘his words’ is I took it as a direction…”

   

  Risch:  “You may have taken it as a direction but that is not what he said.  He said, ‘I hope.’  You don’t know of anyone who has ever been charged for hoping something, is that a fair statement?”

   

  Comey:  “I don’t as I sit here.”

  Comey: “I took it as – this is what he wants me to do” when Trump said he hoped he’d lay off the Flynn, but I didn’t do it pic.twitter.com/Uoz4wf2ORg

  — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 8, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  So, to summarize, for anyone who has managed to ignore all the mass hysteria of the past 6 months, the intelligence community basically forced Trump’s hand by slowly leaking out damaging innuendos and accusations over the past several months, all while refusing to confirm that he, himself, was never actually under investigation.  In the end, those damaging leaks, combined with Comey’s refusal to confirm publicly that Trump was not under investigation, resulted in Comey’s sudden dismissal on May 9th.  And now, even though he was never a target of any investigation, leaks from the intelligence community have forced a situation where Trump may be under investigation by the intelligence community, a rather confounding, if perhaps well-orchestrated, outcome.

  

  

• Ann Coulter Explodes: The Left is 'Trying to Incite Violence Against Trump and His Supporters'

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Ann Coulter thundered on the Mark Simone show today, in light of recent events — calling out the left for fomenting violence — all stemming from their refusal to accept the election results on November 8th, 2016.

  “Hillary Clinton, the opponent, has announced she’s joining ‘The Resistance’, the resistance Mark Simone — a militaristic term. If Trump has lost the election and later turned around and said that ‘I am joining the resistance’, that would be a dog whistle for the militias, the right wing fascists, and in fact, we have left wing armed, masked, going around in groups, beating up conservatives, police being told to stand down, so that the left can beat up conservatives.”

  Coulter then talked about actor Scott Baio, who was attacked last week at his daughter’s school last week for being a Trump supporter as being a minor occurrence in the larger scheme of left wing violence against conservatives, saying “that’s minor compared to the hospitalization, the blood, this is not just a bloodless coup that the left is pulling off through the bureaucracy, the democrats, and mostly through the media…but they are trying to incite violence against both Trump and his supporters.”

  Touching on the appointment of Robert Mueller, Ann pointed out that he had hired ‘a bunch of never Trumpers’ , ridiculing Rod Rosenstein and the ‘hundreds of lawyers’ at the DOJ for recusing himself from such a minor case, in terms of scale.

  “What there’s some huge conflict with Rod Rosenstein? He can’t oversee that investigation? No, the whole point of this is to put a never Trumper within the executive branch to make sure that Trump is prevented from ever fulfilling the promises that he made that put him in the White House.”

  

• Scalise Still "Critical", Will Require More Surgeries; Trump Urges "Pray For Steve"

  While it appears some have already moved on from this morning's devastating actions in Virginia…

  

  

  Some are still concerned and so MedStar Washington Hospital Center released a statement on the condition of the Majority Whip (via Rep. Scalise's Twitter account)…

  "Congressman Steve Scalise sustained a single rifle shot to the left hip. The bullet travelled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding.

   

  He was transported in shock to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a Level I Trauma Center.

   

  He underwent immediate surgery, and an additional procedure to stop bleeding. He has received multiple units of blood transfusion.  

   

  His condition is critical, and he will require additional operations. We will provide periodic updates."

  President Trump has just got back from visiting Majority Whip Scalise and tweeted his thoughts…

  Just left hospital. Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the truly great people, is in very tough shape – but he is a real fighter. Pray for Steve!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

   

  

  

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• Multipolar World Order: The Big Picture In The Qatar-Saudi Fracture

  Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In a climate of outright confrontation, even the Gulf monarchies have been overtaken by a series of unprecedented events. The differences between Qatar on one side, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the other, have escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis with outcomes difficult to foresee.

  

  Officially, everything started with statements made by Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that appeared on the Qatar News Agency (QNA) on May 23, 2017. A few hours before the conference between the 50 Arab countries and the US President, Al Thani was reported to have said the same words that appeared on QNA. The speech was very indulgent towards Iran and described the idea of an «Arab NATO» as unnecessary. The exact words are not known because the event in which Al Thani had made such incendiary remarks concerned military matters and was thus not accessible to the general public. Especially to be noted is that QNA denies having published words in question and attributed them to a cyber-attack.

  The public dissemination of the Emir's words on QNA promptly provoked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis in the Gulf. Immediately, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt and the Maldives took advantage of the confusion created by Al Thani’s alleged words by enacting a series of extreme measures while accusing Doha of supporting international terrorism (through Hamas, al Qaeda, Iran and Daesh). Qatar’s ambassadors in the countries mentioned were requested to return home within 48 hours, and Qatari citizens were given 14 days to leave Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. At the same time, Riyadh proceeded to close its airspace as well as land and sea borders to Qatar, effectively isolating the peninsula from the rest of the world.

  Realistically, what interest would Qatar have had in promulgating the words of Al Thani in order to antagonize Riyadh and Abu Dhabi? Even if the Emir had made such remarks, Doha would certainly not have given them to QNA to publish on its website. If it was not a cyber-attack, it was certainly a miscalculation on Doha's part or, worse, possibly internal sabotage to damage the Al Thani family.

  To explain the dynamics that have officially created this unprecedented situation, it is necessary to sift through the facts in order to discern reality from fiction.

  There is no difference between Saudi Arabia and Qatar

  The Saudi charge that Qatar supports terrorism is well supported by the facts, Doha having long supported terrorist groups in North Africa and the Middle East, from Libya to Syria through to Egypt and Iraq. The problem is that the one throwing the charge, Saudi Arabia, is as guilty of it as is the accused. Both countries have provided the financial backing for much of the extremism that has been infesting the globe for decades. The Saudi royal family is the ultimate expression of the Wahhabi heresy that historically corresponds to the ideology of al Qaeda. Riyadh's support for terrorist organizations was complemented by the US neoconservative strategy designed to destabilize Afghanistan in the context of anti-USSR geopolitics, as admitted by the recently deceased Zbigniew Brzezinski.

  The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has deep roots and affects not only the ideological difference between Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood, but also the increased religious tolerance of Doha as opposed to the ideological intransigence of Riyadh.

  Qatar, through the Muslim Brotherhood, has supported the Arab Spring that deposed Mubarak and placed Morsi in charge of Egypt, creating in the process strong tensions with the Saudis. Riyadh supported al Sisi to remedy the situation in Egypt, financing the coup that sent Morsi to jail. In 2014 this prompted a crisis between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, with Qatar’s ambassadors being expelled from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Differences were soon patched up by the convergence of interests in destabilizing Syria and Iraq with extremist terrorism funded by both nations together with Turkey's important contribution.

  The Neocon Zionist and Wahhabi plans

  What is interesting to note in connection with the Gulf crisis is the change in strategy in recent months by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Washington's plan, shared by Tel Aviv and supported by Riyadh, is to pin the blame for sponsoring international terrorism on Tehran and Doha, fingering Qatar as the key financer of Hamas, al Qaeda and Daesh. The reason and purpose behind this are manifold.

  The problem of Islamic terrorism has become a subject of focussed attention for European and American citizens because of frequent attacks. Security agencies are incapable of preventing terrorist attacks from the same elements they have for years funded and supported as part of their anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian strategy. The difficulties faced by secret services in halting such attacks (as opposed to rogue secret services who aid terrorist networks a la Operation Gladio) have made people question.

  Citizens, increasingly frightened and angry with their governments for the lack of security, are beginning to realize that the extremists receive their financial support from the Gulf countries, who are known to be in business with many European capitals. The last thing that the governments of France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the US want is the revelation that they are in league with Islamic terrorism for geopolitical purposes. The consequences would be disastrous for the already fragile credibility of the West.

  Further confirmation of this strategy to gang up on Qatar can be seen in the economic field. S&P downgraded the credit rating of Qatar a short time ago to AA-, setting the stage for a further downgrade that could have important implications for the future economic stability of the emirate.

  Trump and other leaders of the G7 seem to have made up their minds, agreeing with Saudi wishes, heaping on Qatar all the blame for Islamic terrorism. The US administration, more eagerly than its European vassals, also insists on including Tehran in the charge of state sponsors of terrorism. For Washington, the aim is to curtail covert Western support for terrorism, all the more urgent given the worsening state of affairs in Europe. Politicians from the Old Continent understand that it is fundamental for a culprit to be found before being accused of being unable to stop Islamist terrorism. It is a desperate exit strategy that aims to attribute primary blame to Qatar and secondary blame to Iran.

  Europeans are more reluctant to endorse this vision, given the possible trade opportunities for the European private sector in Iran following the removal of sanctions. It is even possible that some European leaders are opposed to Trump's idea, probably discussed during the G7 in Italy, given Qatar's billions of investment poured into the dying European economy.

  Israel has officially maintained a neutral position concerning the Arab Spring, benefiting from the chaos in the region and the weakening of geopolitical opponents like Syria and Egypt. Qatar's support for Hamas, Israel's historic enemy, is a factor that has contributed to Tel Aviv's support for Riyadh's manoeuvres against Doha.

  The Saudis, on the other hand, have multiple reasons for attacking Qatar. Firstly, it brings Doha's foreign policy back into line after showing leanings towards Tehran. Secondly, it aims to incorporate Qatar in order to absorb its enormous financial resources, as an extreme measure to help solve Saudi Arabia’s disastrous economic situation.

  Chaos as a means of preserving global hegemony

  Behind a convergence of convenience involving the triumvirate of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar lies a well-outlined project of preventing Tehran from becoming a regional hegemon. The Saudis regard Iran as a heretical nation with regard to Islam and have always promoted policies against Tehran. Israel considers Iran the only real danger in the region as it is also a military powerhouse like Israel. As for the United States, the main objective is to mediate a diplomatic rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is needed for the two nations to officially develop a military alliance against Tehran. The final goal is the creation of an Arab NATO to contain Iran, mirroring NATO's stance towards the Russian Federation.

  The fault lies in Qatar.

  Washington sees only one possible way to at once allay the concerns of her European allies suffering an onslaught of Islamist attacks while simultaneously giving the impression to a domestic audience of fighting extremists. It plans to do this by entering into a major agreement with the two nations closest to Islamist terrorism – Israel and Saudi Arabia – while blaming a third terrorist-supporting nation for all the terrorism -Qatar. Of course the weakest and strategically least relevant of these three countries is Qatar.

  The real challenge: Unipolarity vs. Multipolarity.

  The most salient point in this story is the contrast between the new multipolar order and the American unipolar world order. Qatar, thanks to its enormous financial resources, has maintained high-level contacts with a wide variety of countries that are not necessarily allied to Riyadh.

  From the point of view of energy, Qatar is the region's second power after Riyadh, getting 90% of its revenue from exports of liquefied natural gas from the world's largest deposit that is shared with Iran. In the case of relations with Moscow, the problem is not significant given the relations between Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation. For example, Qatar has recently injected capital into Rosneft by acquiring a large share of stocks. Qatar foreign minister meet with Lavrov in Moscow a couple of days ago discussing how to deescalate tensions but also reaffirming the importance of relations between Doha and Moscow. Qatar, on the back of its economic wealth, has expanded its political horizons by moving away from Riyadh, infuriating Washington and Tel Aviv.

  The strengthening of the Iranian position in the region was achieved thanks to two main factors, namely the victories in the Syrian war and the agreement with the Obama administration over Iranian nuclear power. This rehabilitation of Iran on the international scene following the signing of the agreement slowly led Doha to advance back-channel dialogue with Tehran to reach a compromise, especially in relation to the exploitation of the South Pars / North Dome gas field. About three months ago, Qatar removed the moratorium on exploiting the field and carried out dialogue with Iran over its development. It seems that an agreement has been reached between Qatar and Iran for the future construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to the Mediterranean or Turkey that will also carry Qatari gas to Europe. In exchange, Doha’s ending of support for terrorism has been demanded, openly contravening Saudi and American directives to destroy Syria.

  The Saudis have bet all their chips on the continuation of American hegemony. They prefer to please the United States by avoiding the sale of oil to China in yuan, and are consequently paying the price, with China buying more and more oil from Angola and Russia instead. Moscow Central Bank has even opened a bank branch in Shanghai to convert yuan into gold, creating something that resembles the US dollar gold standard of yesteryear.

  In Yemen, Riyadh has compromised its future by squandering huge amounts of wealth, with the only thing to show for it being a pending military defeat at the hands of the poorest Arab country on the planet. The collapse of the price of oil has only exacerbated these difficulties. Qatar has avoided these problems by virtue of having huge gas reserves as well as a somewhat more diversified foreign policy than Riyadh. For the Saudis, placing under their control the world's largest gas reserve, as well as an obscene amount of cash, would offer the opportunity of at least recovering in part the huge losses experienced recently.

  In this bloody game, Qatar is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the mainstream media's coverage of the events leaves us with little doubts as to what the future for Doha will be. CNN's interview with the Qatari ambassador to the United States represented a rare example of journalistic integrity when the ambassador was embarrassed by the CNN host’s airing accusations of Qatar’s support for terrorists.

  Neocon Deep State Vs Neoliberal Deep State

  The fratricidal war within the US deep state also affects the Middle East, especially in the clash between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It has long been known that Huma Abedin has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as did the previous American administration as well as Hillary Clinton. This proximity has had repercussions on the relationship between Obama and the Sunni countries, especially Saudi Arabia.

  Until a few months ago, Washington was full of rumours about alleged lobbying efforts by former Trump adviser Michael Flynn on behalf of Erdogan. Considering that the former general was fired, this could be an important indicator of Trump’s position on Qatar, as the Turkish President is very close to the Muslim Brotherhood, a Doha-backed ideological movement. Flynn could have been fired by Trump for his close indirect relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood.

  The mainstream media close to the Clinton/Obama clan may have used the alleged links between Flynn and Russia to obscure the hidden links between Washington and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, the evidence of collusion between the Muslim Brotherhood and Washington dates even before 2010, with Obama's speech in Cairo in 2009 and the resulting Arab springs, all funded by Qatar via the Muslim Brotherhood, with Washington’s blessing. The consequences of those actions are well known, having increased the chaos in the region, forced a greater US presence in the Middle East, and contributed to increasing synergies between the Shiite axis in response to terrorist aggression.

  In this context, Turkey backed the same terrorist groups as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the abortive July 2016 coup only served to strengthen the takeover of power by Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood faction supporting him. Even today the consequences of the coup reverberate in the region, with the alliance between Ankara and Doha recently strengthened with the presence of Turkish troops in Qatar. Another element not to underestimate was Iran's attitude towards Ankara following the failed coup d'état, with Tehran declaring its solidarity with Ankara.

  The strategic choices of previous administrations in the Middle East were disastrous in every respect. They strengthened enemies and weakened historic allies. No wonder Trump has decided to hit the rewind button, placing strong confidence in the two main allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

  Trump and the deep-state faction loyal to him aims to create an Arab NATO able to confront Iran in its own right, freeing Washington from a constant presence in the Middle East. The United States is focussed on two key factors in this strategy, namely the sale of Saudi oil in US dollars, and the sale of weapons to US allies to keep its military-industrial complex happy. These goals coincide with what happened recently in the emirates with Trump's visit. The United States and Saudi Arabia have signed agreements worth over 350 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia strongly supports the creation of an Arab NATO. The organization would make official Tehran's role as the greatest danger for the entire region. Moreover, the project of an Arab NATO would suit Israel fine, as it hates Tehran.

  For the US deep state, or at least part of it, the most urgent strategy concerns the transfer of American forces in terms of presence and focus, from the Middle East and Europe to Asia in order to face the main challenge of the future, namely China’s intention to dominate the Asian region. What is happening in the Philippines with Daesh, which the author wrote about last week, is simply the continuation of a wider strategy that also affects the Saudi-Qatar conflict.

  With Obama and the ruling Democrats, much attention had been paid to the issue of human rights. In particular, the component of the deep state close to the Clinton/Obama clan embraced the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt to subvert power in the Middle Eastern region through the Arab Spring. The approach of neoconservatives and neoliberals towards hegemony is very different and shows conflicting strategies, highlighting the diversity between the two souls of the US deep state that has long been battling each other.

  On one hand, the neoliberal/human-rights clan is very close to Obama and Clinton as well as supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar indirectly. Neoconservatives, however, are historically more aligned with Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom seem to support Trump in order to make the US role in the Middle East less central, thanks to an Arabian NATO that would free the US up to shift its attention to Asia by delegating regional control to Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

  In this regard, the nuclear agreement between the Obama administration and Tehran is explained. The neoliberals hoped to see Iranian revolts in the wake of the Arab Spring, leading to the overthrowing of the regime and the ushering in of democracy. Neoliberal human-rights interventionists abuse the word democracy, wielding it as a baton. The results of these efforts can be seen in the disasters in Libya and Syria. Paradoxically, Obama and Clinton's strategy has backfired on Washington, since Iran, thanks to the nuclear agreement, has increased its weight in the region, forcing the Neocon-Saudi-Zionist faction to try to sabotage it in any way.

  Conclusion

  Qatar is at a crossroads. Acquiescing to Saudi pressure means falling into line and abandoning its dalliance with the multipolar world order. The fate of Doha is probably already determined, with Iran and Russia hardly desirous of becoming too much involved in the sanguinary game. A likely outcome is that the Al Thani family will in the end acquiesce to Saudi demands after resisting thanks to foreign partners help. What is interesting to note is that the situation in Washington has deteriorated to such an extent that even Washington's historic allies are fighting each other.

  Iran, Russia and China, assisting Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, have created the necessary conditions to end Middle-Eastern destabilization, even prompting an internal crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council. The bet that Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington embarked on with the aggression against Doha could prove to be an unforgivable strategic error, even leading to the end of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the weakening of the anti-Iran coalition in the region.

  If Qatar should decide to resist Saudi pressure, which is only possible with the covert support of Russia, China and Iran, it is likely that the Syrian war has its days numbered. This is not to mention the fact that such an outcome would provide Turkey with an even easier path to transition into the Eurasian alliance.

  Should Doha decide to oppose the demands of Riyadh (their economic capacity is certainly not lacking), it will be up to Russia, Iran and China to decide whether to risk supporting Qatar against Saudi Arabia in order to stabilize the region. The hostility of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel hold towards Qatar are warning signs for the Eurasian bloc, already facing many obstacles in the world as it is.

  Despite this, Tehran and Moscow are providing and offering Qatar's first needed goods in terms of food and medicine. Iran is also opening its own airspace to Doha-based companies. Iran, in addition to being a nation usually ready to help when demanded, sees the opportunity to continue the destruction of the axis opposed to it. An overall assessment (In Astana at the SCO meeting?) will be needed to determine which strategy is best to follow. Above all it will be necessary to understand how Qatar will want to proceed in this unprecedented crisis in the Gulf region.

  Even in Syria, the terrorist groups funded by the monarchies and Turkey are fighting each other, reflecting the divisions and tensions within the Gulf. It is only a matter of time before the conflicts between various organizations extends to other places in Syria, leading to the collapse of the opposition groups. In light of these developments, it appears that Iran and Syria have proposed to Qatar that they switch from supporting terrorism and instead cooperate in the reconstruction of Syria with Chinese and Iranian partners. Receiving credible responses to such a proposition is impossible, but following dialogue between Doha and Tehran on the development of the North Pars Gas Field, one cannot rule out that an agreement could be reached in Syria in the medium term, which would also bring enormous benefits to Doha as well as to Damascus and Tehran.

  The American century is rapidly coming to an end. Terrorists are biting their masters’ hands and the vassals are rebelling. The unipolar world order that defers to the United States is rapidly disappearing, and the consequences are being felt in many areas of the world.

  

  

• Gundlach: "You Should Be Raising Cash Literally Today"

  While there was nothing markedly new from Jeff Gundlach in his latest monthly webcast, it appeared that the DoubleLine CEO either had just read or otherwise agreed completely with JPM’s Marko Kolanovic, who as we noted earlier, warned that even a modest spike in vol coupled with a plunge in liquidity, could lead to “catastrophic losses” for the year’s best performing strategy: short convexity, or otherwise selling volatility. Recall what JPM said.

  May 17th and similar events bring substantial risk for short volatility strategies. Given the low starting point of the VIX, these strategies are at risk of catastrophic losses. For some strategies, this would happen if the VIX increases from ~10 to only ~20 (not far from the historical average level for VIX). While historically such an increase never happened, we think that this time may be different and sudden increases of that magnitude are possible. One scenario would be of e.g. VIX increasing from ~10 to ~15, followed by a collapse in liquidity given the market’s knowledge that certain structures need to cover short positions.

  A few hours later, in not so many words, Gundlach made the same warning during the webcast, in which he – like Gandalf – warned that “we’re on increasing watch for volatility,” Gundlach said, pointing out that “there is a massive amount of money that is being short VIX.”

  

  

  “It’s a trade that’s made a lot of money and its very very crowded, which suggests to me the days of low volatility are numbered,” he said. We “probably won’t see it continue through year end.”

  

  

  What does the above mean in trading terms? “If you’re a trader or a speculator I think you should be raising cash today literally today. If you’re an investor you can easily sit through a seasonally weak period,” Gundlach repeated that while he does not expect a recession any time soon, he does anticipate a summer correction in S&P.

  Aside from an imminent vol spike, Gundlach also went off on a political tangent and summarized his views on the ongoing drama in DC, saying “the establishment: in Washington is trying to undermine Trump by running out the clock on his administration. “They’re really just trying to wait Trump out, trying to obstruct his agenda as much as possible,” Gundlach said quoted by Bloomberg. “Small change is what they’re looking for.”

  Speaking during the Sessions testimony, he called the political charade taking place in DC “a sideshow or entertainment” and said the US political conflict is “rope-a-dope,” after the strategy used by Muhammad Ali to wear out opponents. It remains to be seen if the Democrats, or Trump, win this particular boxing match.

  * * *

  Finally for those who missed it, here is Gundlach’s full slideshow

  

  

• Paul Craig Roberts Warns "Without Glass-Steagall, America Will Fail"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  For 66 years the Glass-Steagall act reduced the risks in the banking system. Eight years after the act was repealed, the banking system blew up threatening the international economy. US taxpayers were forced to come up with $750 billion dollars, a sum much larger than the Pentagon’s budget, in order to bail out the banks. This huge sum was insufficient to do the job. The Federal Reserve had to step in and expand its balance sheet by $4 trillion in order to protect the solvency of banks declared “too big to fail.”

  The enormous increase in the supply of dollars known as Quantitative Easing inflated financial asset prices instead of the consumer price index. This rise in bond and stock prices is a major cause of the worsening income and wealth distribution in the United States. The economic polarization has undercut the image and reality of the US as a land of opportunity and has introduced political and economic instability into the life of the country.

  These are huge costs and for the benefit only of the rich who were already rich.

  So, what we can say about the repeal of Glass-Steagall is that it turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 percent. The repeal resulted in the destruction of the image of the United States as an open prosperous society. The electorate is very much aware of the decline in their economic situation, and this awareness expressed itself in the last presidential election.

  Americans know that the nonsense from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics about a 4.3% unemploment rate and an abundance of new jobs is fake news. The BLS gets the low rate of unemployment by not counting the millions of discouraged workers who cannot find employment. If you haven’t looked for a job in the last 4 weeks, you are not considered unemployed. The birth/death model, a purely theoretical construct, accounts for a large percentage of the non-existent new jobs. The jobs are there by assumption. The jobs are not really there. Moreover, the replacement of full time jobs with part time jobs proceeds. Pension and health care benefits that once were a substantial part of the pay package are being terminated.

  It makes perfect sense to separate commercial from investment banking. The taxpayer insured deposits of commercial banking should not serve as backing for investment banking’s creation of risky financial instruments, such as subprime and other derivatives. The US government understood that in 1933, but no longer did in 1999. This deterioration in government competence has cost America dearly.

  By merging commercial banking with investment banking, the repeal of Glass-Steagall greatly increased the capability of the banking system to create risky financial instruments for which taxpayer backing was available. So, we have the extraordinary situation that the repeal of Glass-Steagall forced the 99 percent to bail out the One Percent.

  The repeal of Glass-Steagall has turned the United States into an unstable economic, political, and social system. We have a situation in which millions of Americans who have lost full time employment with benefits to jobs offshoring, whose lower income employment in part time and contract employment leaves them no discretionary income after payment of interest and fees to the financial system (insurance on home and car, health insurance, credit card interest, car payment interest, student loan interest, home mortgage interest, bank charges for insufficient minimum balance, etc.), are on the hook for bailing out financial institutions that make foolish and risky investments.

  This is not politically viable unless Congress and the President are going to resign and turn over the governance of America to Wall Street and the Big Banks. A growing cresendo of voices are saying that this has already happened.

  So, where is there any democracy when the One Percent can cover their losses at the expense of the 99 Percent, which is what the repeal of Glass-Steagall guarantees?

  Not only must Glass-Steagall be restored, but also the large banks must be reduced in size. That any corporation is too big to fail is a contradiction of the justification of capitalism. Capitalism’s justification is that those corporations that misuse resources and make losses go out of business, thus releasing the misused resources to those who can use them profitably. Capitalism is supposed to benefit society, not be dependent on society to bail it out.

  I was present when George Champion, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank testified before the Senate Banking Committee against national branch banking. Champion said that it would result in the banks becoming too large and that the branches would suck savings out of local communities for investment in traded financial assets. Consequently, local communities would be faced with a dearth of loanable funds, and local businesses would die or not be born from lack of loanable funds.

  I covered the story for Business Week. But despite the facts as laid out by the pre-eminent banker of our time, the palms had been greased, and the folly proceeded.

  As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration, I opposed all financial deregulation. Financial deregulation does nothing but open the gates to fraud and sharp dealing. It allows one institution, even one individual, to make a fortune by wrecking the lives of millions.

  The American public is not sufficiently sophisticated to understand these matters, but they know when they are hurting. Few in the House and Senate are sufficiently sophisticated to understand these matters, but they do know that to understand them is not conducive to having their palms greased. So how do the elected representatives manage to represent those who vote them into office?

  The answer is that they seldom do.

  The question before Congress today is whether they will take the country down for the sake of campaign contributions and cushy jobs if they lose their seat, or will they take personal risks in order to save the country.

  America cannot survive if excessive risks and financial fraud can be bailed out by taxpayers.

  US Representatives Walter Jones and Marcy Kaptur and members of the House and staff on both sides of the aisle, along with former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins and leaders of citizens’ groups,  have arranged a briefing in the House of Representatives on June 14 about the importance of Glass-Steagall to the economic, political, and social stability of the United States.  Let your representative know that you do not want the financial responsibility for the reckless financial practices of the big banks.  Let your representative know also that you do not want big banks that dominate the financial arena. Let them know that you want the return of Glass-Steagall.

  The effort to reduce the financial risks arising from the commingling of commercial and investment banking by requiring stronger capital positions of financial corporations is futile. The 2007-08 financial crisis required the taxpayers and the printing press and an amount of money that exceeded any realistic capital and liquidity requirements for financial institutions.

  If we don’t re-enact Glass-Steagall, the risks taken by financial greed will complete the economic destruction of America.

  Congress must serve the people, not Mammon.

  

  

• White House: "Trump Has No Intention" To Fire Mueller

  Hopefully putting to rest another narrative in which the press went off on a wild goose chase, after the CEO of Newsmax Chris Ruddy first said in an interview on Monday that he thought Trump was considering firing the special prosecutor on the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller, and then the NYT boldly followed, the White House said late on Tuesday that President Trump has “no intention” to fire Mueller.

  On AF-1, @SHSanders45 told reporters Pres Trump has “no intention” to fire Robert Mueller as special counsel, though he has the right to.

  — Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 14, 2017

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  “While the president has the right to, he has no intention to do so,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who earlier today was rumored would soon be replacing Sean Spicer) told reporters flying with Trump back to Washington from a day trip to Wisconsin.

  Despite Trump’s lack of commentary on the matter – and Trump would have quickly made it very clear if he indeed wanted Mueller out in one of his morning tweetstorms – some rank-and-file Republicans on Tuesday, gripped by the media frenzy, voiced concerns that ousting Mueller a month after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey would appear as obstruction of justice. Somehow the fact that Trump originally conceded to the appointment of a special prosecutor was lost on most.

  Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department to helm the investigation after Trump abruptly fired Comey – who was the one previously leading the Russia probe – in early May. Mueller’s hiring was meant to ensure the probe would be conducted without interference.

  Meanwhile, not helping was Newt Gingrich, who said he spoke with Trump on Monday night and raised questions about the fairness of the Mueller-led probe. Gingrich noted that at least four members of Mueller’s team had donated to Democratic presidential campaigns and groups, saying it’s “time to rethink” Mueller’s role.

  Earlier on Tuesday, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mueller and continues to oversee the investigation, promised lawmakers he would not permit Mueller to be dismissed without legitimate reason. “As long as I’m in this position, he’s not going to be fired without good cause,” Rosenstein said. “I’m not going to follow any orders unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders,” he said, emphasizing that the attorney general “actually does not know what we’re investigating.” He added, “Director Mueller is going to have the full independence he needs to conduct that investigation appropriately.”

  And still the vortex of speculation grew.

  Finally, also on Tuesday, the NYT elbowed its way into the NewsMax inspired media frenzy, and reported that “behind the scenes, the president began entertaining the idea of firing Mr. Mueller even as his staff tried to discourage him from something they believed would turn a bad situation into a catastrophe.”

  Who were the NYT’s sources? The usual suspects: “several people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s interactions” and “one longtime Trump associate who remains close to the White House.”

  

  

• Houston Resorts To Selling Off City Streets To Try And Close $100 Million Budget Shortfall

  With the US shale industry producing at near-record levels as oil prices languish around $50 a barrel, cities in oil-dependent states like Texas are resorting to increasingly creative means to compensate for the shortfall left by falling energy revenues, including selling off public assets, like Houston just did.

  The city held what the Houston Chronicle described as “a yard sale of sorts” last week when the city council approved selling or swapping almost $2 million worth of city streets and utilities easements in a deal that will help close what’s expected to be a $100 million budget shortfall over the next five years.

  Specifically, the council abandoned or sold several streets and easements on the east side of the city. The land is adjacent to an oil refinery owned by Valero Energy. The oil giant already owns the blocks immediately surrounding its facility, and the move will let the company assume the intersecting streets onto its land as part of a plan to build an office building, warehouse, security building and to add parking farther away from the central plant, the Chronicle reported.

  

  The second example also comes from the east side, around Houston’s public Milby High School. The city agreed to abandon and sell parts of five streets and a sewer easement in and around the school campus for $431,000. But rather than pony up that cash, the school district is instead giving the city a 7.5-acre tract valued at $443,000 that used to be home to the now-defunct Clinton Park Elementary.

  

  City officials have ramped up efforts to jettison useless easements and strips of city land in recent years amid repeated budget crunches. However, it’s somewhat less common for the dollar amounts to rise into the millions on the same meeting agenda. Councilman Robert Gallegos, whose district includes both sites, said he hopes the land swap can be beneficial for the neighborhood.

  "Now that the city is taking over these 7.5 acres I hope this is a partnership that maybe the city and County Commissioner [Rodney] Ellis, we could work on hopefully making a community center," Gallegos said. "There's a desperate need for a community center in that community."

  

  In another development that is draining the city’s tax base, Houston, one of the hardest hit markets from the collapse of oil prices, saw commercial vacancies rise to a 22-year high during the first quarter, according to a report by NAI Partners.

  Unfortunately for Houston officials, there's little the city can do about the price of oil aside from praying that OPEC will come through with yet another production cut.

  

  

• "Fire" in the Bond Market – Fed Raising Rates and US Issuing Ultra Long Bonds – by Michael Carino

   

  The bond market is on fire and you are about to get
  burned!!!  Bond yields are lower and interest
  spreads as tight or tighter than that of the bond market crisis of 2008.  This will lead to a catastrophic financial
  train wreck that can happen at any moment. 
  Why do I feel like I’m the only one sounding the alarms?  Where is the media to help warn and prepare
  the marketplace?  Why are investors going
  along and playing in what seems to be a rigged and tragically destructive game?
   It reminds me of the story of a frog
  jumping into a boiling pot of water. Once the frog hits the hot water, it jumps
  right out.  But the frogs that is in the
  pot when the water starts out cold slowly gets cooked.  The Fed has excessively accommodated financial
  markets for almost a decade. This has been such a long, accommodative cycle,
  investors can’t tell how close they are to getting cooked.

   

  Some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors
  who pride themselves on being some of the smartest individuals are taking some
  of the most expensive risks with the worst payoff profiles of all time.  Obviously, most investors have short term
  memories.  Longer-term government bonds
  typically trade above the level of inflation by 2-3%. That should put the long
  bond around 5-6%. However, when there is an asymmetric skew in the economic
  data, like there is today, where growth and inflation has a higher probability
  to surprise to the upside, the premium should be even higher.  Longer-term US Treasuries now yield 2-2.8%.  If the longest US Treasuries normalize, the market
  losses could be as high as 50%!

   

  Over the last couple of weeks, long dated US Treasuries
  rallied 40 basis points. That may not seem like much, but this is days before
  the Fed is going to raise rates another 25 bps.  What makes this move absurd is that the rally
  happened not when rates are normal, but still priced for a recession or a
  depression.  When factoring this 25 bp
  hike in short term rates, that is a 65 bp compression in spreads – a huge move!
  Why?  Was there a natural disaster?  Was there a financial catastrophe?  Both of these might be justification for a 25
  or 30 bp spread tightening. But 65 bps? 65 bps is over 20% of the US Treasury long
  bond yield!

   

  What has come out over the last couple of weeks is that GDP
  is running around 3%, CPI and PPI – core and headline inflation are running 2%,
  the unemployment is at a cycle low of 4.3% and the Fed is hiking rates and going
  to reduce their balance sheet.  This is
  an environment where overpriced bonds should be getting decimated because current
  yield levels are so low.  It is clear
  that fundamentals have nothing to do with setting yields in the bond
  market.  What has been setting yields is a
  consortium of Treasury market investors that have been high volume trading
  Treasuries aggressively during typically low volume periods and making the
  market believe – through price action – that there is great demand for bonds.
  This is nothing more than squeezing the bond market and giving it misinformation
  in hopes of bluffing bond investors to not pull the ripcord and cash out of the
  bond market. 

   

  This is not a unique strategy.  This is the same strategy employed during 2006
  and 2007 to coax longer term bonds into a low volatility state.  This flattened the yield curve with declining
  long term yields as the Fed raised Fed Funds from the historically low 1% last
  cycle.  And what did that lead to?  This high volume, volatility diminishing
  trading of long term rates led to mispricing of all risks embedded in the bond
  markets.  And when those risks eventually
  were realized (when Fed Funds raised high enough to be a substitute for
  overvalued bonds), the normalization process was rapid.  This market move confused investors that were
  clueless as to what was setting yield levels before, during and after the
  crisis.  The financial crisis of 2008 was
  only a crisis because yields were mispriced too low due to the manipulation in
  the Treasury market.  If rates were
  normalized in 2008, there would have never been a crisis.  Yields and spreads would have only moved a
  little bit higher instead of having to adjust so drastically that anyone with
  leverage or a low risk tolerance was forced to sell.  This led to a lack of liquidity in the bond
  market and the Fed having to step in to provide liquidity.  The Feds mistake is they provided the
  liquidity then and still are today.  This
  encourages reckless risk taking in the bond market and the insanity continues
  today. 

   

  To make this last paragraph a little clearer, monetary
  policy in the last cycle was over accommodative. These conditions led to the
  2008 financial crisis.  The Fed’s
  response was to be even more accommodative for an even longer period of time.
  They expect different results this time? (Definition of insanity!)  I fear with this next crisis congress will
  place the blame squarely on the Fed.  The
  result, most likely, will be a different mandate for the Fed – if the Fed
  continues to exist at all.  But I
  digress.

   

  The Fed will raise interest rates in two days.  The US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin just repeated
  he is looking into issuing ultra-long bonds (great timing).  The job market is tight and global economy
  roaring.  In the US, you can’t find a
  parking spot and homes are selling over asking price again.  This is not the recessionary or depressionary
  conditions reflected in the bond market.

   

  Congratulations to the Fed.  They saved us from the last financial crisis
  by sowing the seeds of the next, never to be out done, even more spectacular
  financial crisis.  The Fed has
  manipulated the markets by buying 5 Trillion of bonds and a consortium of bond
  investors are manipulating the markets, trading 1 trillion of government bonds in
  the cash and futures markets daily.  If
  you think fundamentals are setting prices in the bond market, your wrong.  Let’s be clear: when fundamentals matter in
  the market place, yields and yield spreads will be double to triple of what
  they are today.  So get ready to hop out
  of the financial pot before the water gets too hot.  With the Fed hiking rates and reducing their
  balance sheet and the bond market grossly overvalued, the pot may start to boil
  faster than most expect.

   

   

   

  by Michael Carino, 6/13/17

   

  Michael Carino is the CEO of Greenwich Endeavors, a
  financial service firm, and has been a fund manager and owner for more than 20
  years.  He has positions that benefit
  from a normalized bond market and higher yields.  Do you?

      

  

  

• "Any Crisis Can Bring About Immediate Shortages" – Food Is A Weapon In The Hands Of The Powerful

  Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

  

  The U.S. has experienced some record droughts for the past several years, and now that the summer has begun, everyone is speculating on this year’s crop forecasts.  The Midwest has been struck by severe flooding and rainfall levels that are far above average, complicating startups of this year’s crops.  Another dry summer could push the prices up even higher, with an ever-growing demand that always exceeds the available supplies.

  One of the problems in the overall food industry in the U.S. is not brought on by weather patterns and rainfall shortages.  The problem is inflation, the rise in the prices due to higher demand, lower supply, and less purchasing power with the fiat dollar; that problem is coupled with (and followed by) deflation, where the grocery industry is forced to lower prices to capture a declining consumer base, but to its own cost.

  Wal-Mart’s sales of groceries and food supplies now account for more than 50% of its overall revenues.  That is a staggering fact, and it also outlines the way a large retailer not originally intending to enter the arena of food sales has staked out a claim for itself.  This claim has not been without its effects, however, as what Wal-Mart earns detracts from supermarkets and other concerns whose main bread-and-butter (no pun intended) is income from food sales.

  The largest supermarket chain in the U.S. is the Kroger Company, and along with Wal-Mart taking a bite out of its business comes an increase in retail stores such as the Dollar Trees, Dollar General Stores, and others that are rapidly expanding their food sales and cutting a big slice out of that market where traditional grocery concerns have dominated in the past.  Foreign competitors, such as the German firms Aldi’s and Lidl are also posing a challenge to domestic supermarket concerns.

  Eight years of Obamanomics has severely crippled the U.S. manufacturing base, and the food industry has not been immune to that destruction by a longshot.  The dramatic rise in entitlements expanded by Obama has also caused the prices of consumer goods to shoot up drastically: more handouts by the government places more money in the hands of the entitlement-society…at taxpayer expense.  This devalues the fiat currency even further and pushes up the prices of food.

  The EBT is now looked upon by the sheeple as some sort of “necessity,” or a “status symbol” of some kind…a plethora laughing at the expense of the government, vis-à-vis the productive members of society who are forced to “contribute” to this fiasco in the form of taxes.  What is next?  The Platinum EBT card?  Producers are bearing the burdens of and paying for consumers, and worse: the consumers are parasitic, and their consumption only increases the prices of all goods consumed while decreasing the supply.

  Food is also a weapon (as poignantly illustrated by that evil icon of globalism, Henry Kissinger) that can bring other countries or populations of a given country under control.  The prices rise, the supplies dip, and the populace suffers.  The government, remember, always has its warehouses stuffed to the gills with freeze-dried foods and shelf-stable supplies for when the seams on the U.S. come apart.  The politicians in power always have a place to run to in the event of a war or a crisis…on our dime…and you can bet that none of them will miss a meal when it all comes apart.

  Raising the prices of food benefits the government, because the grocery stores, retail stores, and businesses then have extra income with the rising prices, providing extra tax income to the politicians.  The people suffer; nevertheless, they’ll pay: they must have the food, and will bear the extra cost or enter the ranks of those nonproductive eaters on the public dole.  The government and the politicians are the only ones who win in the end: endless “authority” and firearms with a smile, to tax and line their own pockets while their serfs labor endlessly to feed their elected feudal overlords.

  It is all interrelated, and any crisis can bring about immediate food shortages.  Such a crisis not gone to waste (Rahm Emmanuel) or a crisis contrived?  No matter.  The end state plays into the dynamics of what those in power wish to achieve.  Please refer to an excellent article from a few years back “When the Trucks Stop, America Will Stop” to see one segment that can trigger the burst dam that overflows into a full-blown economic collapse and a dearth (and eventual complete cessation) in the food supply.  Food is a necessity, and is a weapon in the hands of the powerful…against us.

  ---

  

  

• Watch an Unhinged Kamala Harris Instructed to Simmer Down Again

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Senator Kamala Harris will most likely be the DNC’s next Presidential candidate, since they’re all about identity politics. She’s a pitbull and very effective at rattling cages. A week ago, she was scolded by Senator Burr for attempting to steamroll Rod Rosenstein.

  Today, she, indecorously, did the same thing to our acting AG, which drew the ire of Sessions. She asked ridiculous questions, like ‘did you meet with any Russian nationals?” Since when is it a crime to meet with people of Russian origin? I thought the left was obsessed with XENOPHOBIA? Or, does XENOPHOBIA only apply to people of color? Just asking.
   
  Sen. Harris asked, “Did you have any communication with Russian businessmen or any Russian nationals?”
   
  Sessions replied, “I don’t believe I had any conversations with Russian businessmen or Russian nationals.”
   
  Harris filibustered, saying, “Are you aware of any communications…”
   
  Sessions interrupted, “A lot of people were at the convention, it’s conceivable that somebody came…”
   
  Harris filibustered again, “Sir, I have just a few minutes…”
   
  Sessions, raising his voice said, “Will you let me qualify? If I don’t qualify, you’ll accuse me of lying, so I need to be correct as best I can. I am not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.”
   
  Later on, she was scolded for interrupting Sessions — and cordially asked to simmer down.
   

  Kamala Harris asked to simmer down again. pic.twitter.com/kaBV7IXGmu

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) June 14, 2017

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  Here was the full exchange.
  

  On the issue of executive privilege, former Deputy AG under George H.W. Bush, George Terwilliger, said Sessions was correct.
  

  

• RBC: Tomorrow's CPI Print Is More Important To The Market Than The Fed

  With a 95% implied probability of a rate hike tomorrow, there is little doubt that Janet Yellen will raise rates, although as Goldman previewed two days, there are at least two open issues should make tomorrow’s meeting somewhat interesting: First, will Fed officials alter their policy views in response to the increasingly different signals that both sides of the mandate are sending about the urgency of further tightening… and… Second, will the press conference provide some clarity on what the next tightening step following the June hike will be?

  But by and far, tomorrow’s FOMC announcement will be a non-event, unless – as some have suggested – Yellen tries to collapse the extra easy monetary conditions which as DB and GS calculated recently, are the loosest they have been since 2014, courtesy of the ongoing QE at the ECB and BOJ.

  

  So instead of the much anticipated FOMC, keep a closer eye on tomorrow’s inflation report. According to RBC’s Charlie McElliggott, the Wednesday CPI print will have a more meaningful impact on the near term direction of the market than Yellen’s priced in decision. Charlie explains:

  • A splash of “FOMC Drift / FOMC Alpha” into tomorrow’s Fed meeting, your standard ‘Spooz bid / USD offered’ pre-Fed behavior
    • Further contributing to today’s S&P melt-up was the $57B of calls btwn 2425 and 2475 levels, $20B of which sits at the 2450 ‘gravitational pull’ level into Friday’s expiration (H/T A. Ramsey)
    • Nominal rates a touch lower / curves flattening into the Fed as well -> UST’s VERY firm despite another day of meaningful Treasury issuance ($12B 30Y traded through WI) and ‘pretty-good’ PPI #’s
    • Solid—not spectacular—bounce-back day for equities ‘Momentum’ / ‘Growth’ -> Tech and Consumer Discretionary mega-longs thus two of the S&P’s top sectors on the day 
  • That said, ‘Value’ acted well too, with all four key cyclical sectors– Materials, Energy, Financials and Industrials—in the top half of S&P sector performance tables on the session
  • Tomorrow’s event risk is actually the CPI print and its impact on forward-looking Fed path
  • Macro backdrop remains entirely focused on the ‘disinflation’ versus ‘reflation’ debate ->’Macro Range Trade’ still exists
  • Fixed-income’s ‘latent-bid’ speaks to expectations for another disappointing CPI print tomorrow and growing-‘consensuality’ of the “slow-flation” narrative
  • CPI likely to dictate the near-term direction of the equities ‘Value / Growth’ factor-rotation in ‘binary’ fashion
  • Better CPI would re-rack ‘reflation’ hopes, drive nominal rates higher and reverse recently-collapsed breakevens
  • Better CPI too would further perpetuate the recent equities ‘Momentum’ unwind: into ‘Value’ (cyclicals) / ‘Size’ (small cap) / ‘High Beta,’ out of ‘Growth’ (secular growers) / ‘Anti-Beta’ (defensives / yield plays) / ‘Quality’
  • Conversely, if CPI comes in ‘soft,’ will crystalize “slow-flation” and may see consensus begin shifting to a Fed ‘one and done over balance of 2017’ view
  • Said inflation disappointment would see rates again grind lower, while equities trade will revert- back to the prior YTD status quo ‘risk barbell’ trade: long ‘Secular Growth’ and ‘Defensives,’ short ‘Cyclicals’—as if Thursday, Friday and Monday didn’t happen

  Then again maybe not even the CPI will be a surprise: going into tomorrow’s print, virtually all inflation proxies have already thrown in the towel.

  

  

  

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