Today’s News 11th December 2018

• Soros Mimics Hitler's Bankers: Will Burden Europeans With Debt To 'Save' Them

  Via GEFIRA,

  After the Second World War, many economists racked their brains to answer the question of how Hitler managed to finance his armament, boost the economy and reduce unemployment.

  Today his trick is well known. The economic miracle of Führer’s time became possible thanks to the so-called Mefo promissory notes.

  The notes were the idea of the then President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, and served not only to finance the armament of the Wehrmacht for the Second World War, but also to create state jobs, which would otherwise not have been possible through the normal use of the money and capital markets, i.e. the annual increase in savings in Germany.

  

  The Reich thus financed the armaments industry by accepting notes issued by the dummy company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft GmbH (hence the name Mefo) rather than paying them in cash. The creation of money was in full swing from 1934 to 1938 – the total amount of notes issued at that time was 12 billion marks. The Reichsbank declared to the German banks that it was prepared to rediscount the Mefo notes, thus enabling the banks to discount them.

  Because of their five-year term, the redemption of notes had to begin in 1939 at the latest. This threatened with enormous inflation. Since Schacht saw this as a threat to the Reichsmark, he expressed his doubts about the Reich Minister of Finance. But it did not help, and Schacht was quickly replaced by Economics Minister Walther Funk, who declared that the Reich would not redeem the Mefo notes, but would give Reich bonds to the Reichsbank in exchange. At the time of Funk, the autonomous Reichsbank statute was abolished, the Reichsbank was nationalized, and inflation exploded in such a way that Mefo notes with a circulation of 60 billion Reichsmark burdened the budget in post-war Germany.

  George Soros also proposes such a money flurry in the style of Schacht and Funk.

  Soros is dissatisfied with the current EU refugee policy because it is still based on quotas. He calls on the EU heads of state and governments to effectively deal with the migrant crisis through money flooding, which he calls “surge funding”. 

  “This would help to keep the influx of refugees at a level that Europe can absorb.” 

  Can absorb? Soros would be satisfied with the reception of 300,000 to 500,000 migrants per year. However, he is aware that the costs of his ethnic exchange plan are not financially feasible. In addition to the already enormous costs caused by migrants already in Europe, such a large number of new arrivals would add billions each year.

  Soros calculates it at 30 billion euros a year, but argues that it would be worth it because “there is a real threat that the refugee crisis could cause the collapse of Europe’s Schengen system of open internal borders among twenty-six European states,” which would cost the EU between 47 and 100 billion euros in GDP losses.

  Soros thus sees the financing of migrants and also of non-European countries that primarily receive migrants (which he also advocates) as a win-win relationship. He calls for the introduction of a new tax for the refugee crisis in the member states, including a financial transaction tax, an increase in VAT and the establishment of refugee funds. Soros knows, however, that such measures would not be accepted in the EU countries, so he proposes a different solution, which does not require a vote in the sovereign countries.

  The new EU debt should be made by the EU taking advantage of its largely unused AAA credit status and issuing long-term bonds, which would boost the European economy. The funds could come from the European Stability Mechanism and the EU balance of payments support institution.

   “Both also have very similar institutional structures, and they are both backed entirely by the EU budget—and therefore do not require national guarantees or national parliamentary approval.“

  In this way, the ESM and the BoPA (Balance of Payments Assistance Facility) would become the new Mefo’s that could issue bills of exchange, perhaps even cheques for Turks, Soros NGOs. Soros calculates that both institutions have a credit capacity of 60 billion, which should only increase as Portugal, Ireland and Greece repay each year the loans they received during the euro crisis. According to Soros, the old debts should be used to finance the new ones in such a way that it officially does not burden the budget in any of the EU Member States. The financial institutions that are to carry out this debt fraud must extend (indeed – cancel) their status, as the leader of the refugees expressed such a wish in his speech.

  That Soros is striving to replace the indigenous European population with new arrivals from Africa and Asia is clear to anyone who observes its activities in Europe. The question is: what does he want to do this for and who is the real ruler, behind him, the real leader?

  

• Russia Deploys Nuclear-Capable Tu-160 Bombers To Venezuela

  Previously US defense officials warned that Russia was preparing to deploy nuclear-capable Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to Venezuela this week in continuation of scheduled training, but which Pentagon leaders see as a provocation, given both countries are under sanction and seen as “rogue” states. This comes as President Nicolas Maduro, who is overseeing one of Venezuela’s worst political and economic crisis in decades, has been increasingly reliant of Russia for aid, and after he visited Moscow last week and signed an estimated $6 billion deal with Putin, promising investment in the oil and mining sectors, with military modernization aid to boot. 

  

  The US defense officials had conveyed details of the planned flight to The Washington Free Beacon, which is the seventh such training flight to take place internationally involving Blackjack bombers in only the past three months. And on Monday Russia’s Sputnik News confirmed the training flights have been initiated, noting that two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers, escorted by an An-124 heavy-lift military transport aircraft and an IL-62 plane have landed at the Simon Bolivar International Airport in capital Caracas, according to Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) statements. 

  During part of the flight, Norway’s Air Force scrambled F-16 fighter jets to shadow the Russian long range bombers, according to the MoD:

  At certain stages of the flight, the Tu-160 bombers were followed by F-16 fighter aircraft of the Norwegian Air Force while the flight was carried out in strict accordance with the international rules on the use of airspace. 

  The Russian MoD described the flight path of the nuclear-capable bombers as over the Atlantic Ocean, the Barents Sea, the Sea of Norway and the Caribbean Sea, at a total single take-off distance of over 10,000 kilometers (about 6,213 miles).

  This is the second incident in two months involving Russian bombers being shadowed by foreign jets, as in late October British and Norwegian fighters monitored Tu-160s as they flew over the Barents Sea. Russian military officials have recently noted that “Russia’s long-range aircraft make regular flights over the international waters” and defended the right to continue doing so, according to TASS.

  Just before Monday’s flights US defense officials described the series of training exercises as focusing on routine aerial maneuvers like long-range refueling; however, they described further the training includes landing in Venezuela as a “provocative” and “unusual” action which is “clearly aimed at us” following other flights over the past months.

  

  Currently tensions between Moscow and Washington are at their highest in months following US plans to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing alleged Russian violations of the accord. US officials have interpreted the uptick in Russian bomber flights as a “show of force” response to American threats over the INF.

  Last March Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov announced plans for major upgrades to the Tu-160, which carries nuclear-tipped KH-55 cruise missiles among others. He said at the time: “We are going to… carry out deep modernization of the planes [that are currently] in service when only the fuselage would remain while all the avionics equipment and engines would be replaced.”

  Borisov further touted plans for significantly increased range in missile delivery as well: “One cannot even compare the Tu-160 aircraft equipped with the X-55, X-555, and X-101 missiles and a plane that we are hoping to get by 2030 equipped with new air-delivered ordnance that would have completely different effective distance,” he said at the time.

  During last week’s trip to Moscow, Maduro had called Russia a “brother country” with which Venezuela had “raised the flag for the creation of a multipolar and multicentric world.”

  Despite Russia offering to throw cash-strapped Venezuela a multi-billion dollar life-line, the Latin American country has routinely been unable to repay its debts.

  

• What Didn't Happen At G20 Is Far More Important Than What Did

  Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Sometimes what doesn’t occur tells us much more than what did – as in Sherlock Holmes’ case of the dog that did not bark in the night. Yes, two things did not occur at the G20, at the end of last week: Why? And what do they signify?

  What these two lacunae tell us is something important: that Mr Trump’s presidency has reached a key point of inflection – the end of the beginning, or perhaps even the beginning of the end?

  

  First, there was ‘no deal’ with China. As Christopher Balding, former associate professor of business and economics at the HSBC Business School in China, frankly put it:

  “It cannot be emphasized enough: This is not a deal, and it is not a resolution. This is an agreement to delay further escalation. Neither side really gave anything, except some cotton candy sweeteners. Nothing fundamental”.

  Most of the subsequent media commentary has focussed on the prospects of a return to the Cold War trenches at the end of ninety days (a deadline which incidentally China has yet to confirm) or, even sooner, as Trump returns to Twitter belligerency. But the real question is not what happens towards the end of the first quarter 2019, but why was there ‘no deal’ on Saturday? 

  Trump has been promising ‘big’: “I am a tariff man”, he proclaims in a tweet, adding: “Make America Rich Again”. And, the Administration keeps repeating that the US economy is strong, whilst the Chinese one is weak: ‘We have all the leverage’, the Administration outs at regular intervals. We can ‘tariff’ double the goods, and double the tariffs too, Trump warns, whilst the US exercises its military muscle, regularly, right into Xi’s face.

  And then? Come G20, ‘nothing’. Trump stalks the edges of G20 looking tense and defensive. He was no alpha-male, dominating these events. He looked crocked. It was all a bit of a dud, really.

  Recall however, that the G20 followed immediately in the wake of the ‘guilty plea’ to Robert Mueller, for lying to Congress, by Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. This, as Harvard Law Professor Dershowitz notes, is evidence of Mueller again creating new crimes (through entrapment), in place of investigating the possibility of past crimes – yet Mueller, clearly is still ‘after’ Trump: And maybe, he will not prove any crime (collusion, were it to have occurred, is no crime anyway) – but that is not the point. Mueller is cornering Trump politically, as opposed to legally, through painting him as sleazy, and surrounded by liars and scoundrels. Mueller is targeting Trump’s vanity: shredding Trump’s self-image as somehow a heroic figure set on restoring the greatness of America: Making America Rich Again. Mueller is slowly paralysing the President’s potency, whilst making him appear a mere empty vessel.

  Former US diplomat, James Jatras thus hints at the answer to ‘why no deal’:

  “With the Democrats set to take over in the House of Representatives in just over a month, we’ll soon see intensified investigations coordinated with Mueller to find any possible pretext for impeachment in Trump’s business or private life. It’s conventional wisdom that even if the Democrat-controlled House can find something to support articles of impeachment, the GOP-held Senate will be Trump’s firewall. Bunk. Democrats rallied around their president Bill Clinton but it was Republicans who threw Richard Nixon to the wolves. Are there a dozen or so Republican Senators who would be ready to dump Trump and install Mike Pence in the Oval Office? You betcha. Start with Mitt Romney.”

  And what might, in Trump’s view, stand between him and the unbearable indignity – and blow to his ego – of being ‘dumped’ by his party, and being further humiliated by being hounded from office? Well, what wouldn’t is a collapsing market, and an US economy stalling into approaching recession. That, in itself, could possibly deliver the President precisely into the hands of those Republican Senators who despise him, and who would side with the Democrats in a heartbeat, if they thought they could get away with dumping the President – just as Jatras suggests.

  The US market was already sinking into the doldrums in the week before the G20. The trade-war fear, initially discounted, has begun gripping market sentiment. And tell-tale harbingers (though not definitive) of a recessional economy are being espied (such as the inversion of part of the Treasury yield curve, and the oil futures curve having been in contango. Both are considered as signals of a global economy that may be slowing).

  The point here is simply that Trump has, very explicitly, hitched his presidential fortunes to a rising stock market and a roaring economy. So, if it might stop the market from puncturing his business-savvy image, why not a offer a trade-war respite with China? Why not give the markets a pre-Christmas goosing?

  Then there was the other notable G20 omission: another dog that significantly failed to bark. The Presidents of two pre-eminent military and nuclear powers, who sit astride major geo-political faultlines, and who need to talk, circled each other, closed-faced, and without stretching out hands – they could not find even, the subterfuge for sitting together.

  Why? Ostensibly, because a tug-boat and a couple of Ukrainian armed coastal vessels were told to enter the Azoz ‘Sea’, whilst ignoring the required norms of obtaining prior permission. Really? For that? How bizarre. Trump no longer can pull Mr Putin aside, send away his aides, to sit and talk? Even more interesting, was that the Kremlin spokesman subsequently said that there ‘had been exchanges’ with Washington, and that John Bolton would be coming to Moscow, to discuss a possible future meeting between Trump and Putin. And that couldn’t have been done face-to-face in Buenos Aires because of an arrested tugboat? And that such meeting now requires Bolton’s prior imprimatur and involvement?

  All in all, President Trump emerges from this summit, a pussy-cat. Big on talk, short on action: Short on action domestically; short on action in cleaning the swamp; and short on action generally. Jatras concludes, more in sorrow than in anger, “it would be only a small exaggeration to say that with respect to foreign and security policy, Trump is now a mere figurehead of the permanent state. Even if Trump and Putin do happen to meet again, what can the latter expect the former to say that would make any difference?”.

  Why? We can only speculate: Simply, it may be that he fears that the markets and economy are turning against him. Perhaps Trump fears a Republican ‘Brutus’ will smell his weakness (stripped of his market-raising ‘magic’), and plunge the dagger in his back?

  In his book, Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates distinguishes between different debt cycles: the short-term cycles, and debt ‘super-cycles’. Short-term debt cycles move more or less in parallel with the underlying economic cycles, and last on average 7-8 years – in line with the average length of economic cycles. Debt ‘super-cycles’ typically last 50-75 years, and have a long history. Dalio notes their mention in the Old Testament, which described the need to wipe out debt every 50 years or so, whence it was known as the ‘Year of Jubilee’.

  “Debt super-cycles always end with a big bang”, Nils Jensen writes: “The previous debt super-cycle ended with the breakout of World War II, and a new debt super-cycle commenced its life when the canons fell silent in 1945. We are now almost 75 years into the current super-cycle; i.e. it will go down in history as one of the longer ones”.

  It is Trump’s misfortune that his Presidency seems to be coinciding with the end to not just ‘any’ super-cycle, but to a turbo-charged, global debt super-cycle, fuelled by radical interest rate suppression, and massive credit creation (which may explain its ‘longevity’). ‘Doubly unfortunate’, perhaps, because at the same time – for related reasons – the US simply is running out of fiscal ‘space’. The Treasury has a big (a repeating, dollar, Trillion-plus) borrowing requirement, in this and coming years, and foreigners are no longer buying US debt. In short, for the first time in seventy years, the Reserve Currency holder is finding it hard to finance itself – and in the current atmosphere of Washington polarisation – the US cannot reform itself, either. It is stuck.

  This represents the primordial paradox that is binding the US President: Politically he needs a rising market and a roaring economy, but the ‘Oracles’ are mouthing that the Goldilocks market already may be behind him. He wants the Fed to lift the market aloft, but the Fed is more concerned to prepare for the next phase to the economic cycle. For that, it needs the elbow-room to be able to drop interest rates by 4%, which of course is impossible now. And the Fed needs a leaner balance sheet – in case of needing to charge to the rescue of the economy.

  So here is the tension that ‘binds’ Trump: He can act politically, and risk a deeper end-of-cycle ‘big bang’; or act sagely, to limit the potential consequences of a possible debt crisis. But, acting ‘sagely’ also implies understanding that America’s fiscal situation of having to sell a mountain of US debt paper, on a market bereft of foreign buyers is likely to lead interest rates up – and stock prices down (as institutions sell shares to buy the higher yielding USTs). In short,politically he wants shares up and interest rates down, but America’s present fiscal situation is likely to impose the inverse – and therefore expose him to the potential ‘Brutus’ lurking in the Senate corridors.

  

  Which will he choose? Well, we can see it already: Trump is desperate to keep the equity market up. His own security is tied to it: He is bullying Jerome Powell to halt the projected Fed interest rate interest rate hikes; and he wants the price of oil down – so that Powell has no excuse (of rising inflation), to hike rates further. So anxious was Trump, it seems, that he was ready to issue several oil waivers in respect to purchasers of Iranian oil. His 25 November tweet makes the link between low oil prices and his expectation that the Fed should forego hikes, quite explicit:

  So great that oil prices are falling (thank you President T). Add that, which is like a big Tax Cut, to our other good Economic news. Inflation down (are you listening Fed)!

  What does all this mean? It means that Trump, whose entire business acculturation favours debt – more debt and low or zero-based interest rates – will hope to get his way – and he may partially. The signs are that the Fed will raise rates this month, but may slow the pace of rises next year. (At least, this is what the shape of the futures curves would imply).

  But the auguries are adverse:

  World trade is slowing;

  China is slowing;

  Japan is slowing;

  Germany and Europe are slowing ; and

  the first shoots, hinting that the US has peaked in 2Q18, are poking through the soil.

  Trump may end with neither a roaring stock market – nor, more ominously, a bond market, painlessly digesting the Trillions of US debt.

  In terms of foreign policy, the Hawks run it: Pence, Navarro and Lighthizer will pursue their ‘all-government’ cold war with China, but who knows what will be the state of the US market in 90 days.

  I would not bet on those additional tariffs and 25% rates emerging in April. Xi has played it perfectly: Sun Tzu would be proud.

  And Mr Bolton will continue to press Russia at all points of its border; to disrupt it economically, through a regular diet of sanctions; trouble-raising in Ukraine, and trying to diss Russia’s political process in Syria (the Astana Process).

  

• How Many People Want To Have Sex With A Robot? The Numbers Are In…

  Social psychologist and prominent “sexpert” author, Dr. Justin J. Lehmiller, a Research Fellow at Indiana University’s The Kinsey Institute, has actually compiled the data. He posed the question as part of his research:

  I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about sex robots and how they’re supposedly going to revolutionize our sex lives. A lot of these articles make the assumption that there’s a lot of demand and desire for sex robots, but is that really the case?

  

  His inquiry sought to find out: How many people are into the idea of getting it on with a bot anyway? And also, are robots likely to replace a lot of human-on-human sex?

  Lehmiller wrote: “I collected data from more than 4,000 Americans about their sexual fantasies for my book Tell Me What You Want, and the results can speak to these questions.”

  Dr. Lehmiller documented, among other things, whether participants ever fantasized about sex with a robot, especially in a time when the world’s first “sex doll brothels” are popping up in cities across the globe. Stories about the latest trends from the robot sex doll industry have proven sensationally popular, often going viral, including increasing reports of brothels being shut down soon after they open.

  Despite the media popularity and hype over the bizarre trend which took off in 2018, Dr. Lehmiller found that only 14.3% of the 4,000 men and women surveyed had fantasized about sex with a robot. The numbers varied by gender. 

  Here’s what he found out, per the report:

  • Just 10.7% of women reported having had a fantasy about sex with a robot
  • Males were more likely to fantasize about sex with a robot, at 17% (anyone surprised?)
  • 22.8% of people who identified as “non-binary” gender (about 5% of the sample) were most likely to fantasize about this
  • Dr. Lehmiller concluded that “the vast majority of people who had robot fantasies had them infrequently, which suggests that they’re not necessarily big on the idea.”
  • In terms of frequency, a mere 1.2% of women, 1.4% of men, and 4.3% identifying as non-binary fantasize “often” about sex with robots.
  • Indeed, just 1.2% of women, 1.4% of men, and 4.3% of non-binary folks said they fantasize about sex with robots often. This constitutes “a pretty small group” showing “a strong interest” in robot sex. 

  Ultimately, the data suggests that about 1 in 7 people have thought about having sex with a robot at least once in their lives. Dr. Lehmiller connected the results with the desire for most people to meet emotional needs through sex. 

  

  So despite the titillating media buzz, it’s unlikely that the sex robot industry will take off anytime soon, as people’s interest appears to stop only at checking out the lurid headlines.

  Dr. Lehmiller’s report noted:

  In other words, our fantasies usually aren’t just about some mechanical sex act—and mechanical sex is literally what robots provide. Of course, it may be possible for robots to offer some emotional connection with the right programming and appearance. To the extent that robots can eventually be created where you can have what feels like a human interaction (you know, like the robots in Westworld and Ex Machina), people may start to warm up to the idea.

  He concludes that “the sex robot revolution we’ve been hearing so much about may be a bit overhyped.” 

  It could also be due to the rising number of reports noting poor sanitation and failure to “properly clean” the silicone seductresses for repeat masturbatory purposes. We can’t imagine too many people’s fantasies incorporating that deeply unpleasant little detail. 

  

• Newly-Released MKUltra Docs: The CIA Made Remote-Controlled Dogs With Brain Surgery

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  The Central Intelligence Agency made six remote-controlled dogs as a part of their MKULTRA “behavior modification” or mind control program.  Using brain surgery, newly requested documents show that the dogs were “field operational” and controlled by human beings.

  

  The CIA marked the 65th anniversary of the launch of Project MKULTRA. And the public is finally getting a more broad and detailed look at just how far those attempting these gruesome experiments were willing to go in order to gain control of our thoughts.

  The documents were provided under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by  The Black Vault founder, John Greenewald. According to a report by Newsweek, The Black Vault specializes in declassified government records. In one declassified letter (released as file C00021825) a redacted individual writes to a doctor (whose name has also been redacted) with advice about launching a laboratory for experiments in animal mind control. The writer of the letter is already an expert in the field, whose earlier work had culminated with the creation of six remote control dogs, which could be made to run, turn, and stop.

  “As you know, I spent about three years working in the research area of rewarding electrical stimulation of the brain,” the individual writes.

  “In the laboratory, we performed a number of experiments with rats; in the open field, we employed dogs of several breeds.”

  As if their mind control experiments on humans were not disturbing enough, the CIA also admits that the goal was to control the behavior of a dog.

  “The specific aim of the research program was to examine the possibility of controlling the behavior of a dog, in an open field, by means of remotely triggering electrical stimulation of the brain,” the report states.

  “Such a system depends for its effectiveness on two properties of electrical stimulation delivered to certain deep-lying structures of the dog brain: the well-known reward effect, and a tendency for such stimulation to initiate and maintain locomotion in a direction which is accompanied by the continued delivery of stimulation.”

  After the surgery to control the mind of a dog, the CIA states that the gruesome side effects could be “infection at the electrode site due to a failure of the surgical wound to heal.” Newsweek reported that after trying out a plastic helmet, government scientists instead settled on the new surgical technique that involved, “embedding the electrode entirely within a mound of dental cement on the skull and running the leads subcutaneously to a point between the shoulder blades, where the leads are brought to the surface and affixed to a standard dog harness.”

  

  Once the surgeons implanted the electrodes deep in the subject dog’s brain, a battery pack and stimulator was added to the harness, through which signals could be sent to the electrodes. “The stimulator had to be reliable and capable of sufficient voltage output to be usable in the face of expected impedance variation across individual dogs.”

  Another of the documents revealed perhaps even more disturbing new details on the use of experimental mind control drugs on unwilling human beings, suggesting experimenting with the use of such drugs on inmates in prison hospitals and drugging suspected criminals awaiting trial. According to Sputnik News, it gets even worse. Yet another document details experimentation with hypnotic speaking techniques to enable mind control over “large audiences.”

  Read the newly released documents in their entirety here, at The Black Vault.

  

• Australia Warned To Prepare For "Severe Housing Collapse" And "Banking Crisis"

  Just weeks after we noted that Australia’s household debt to income ratio has ballooned to shocking levels over the past three decades as Sydney is ranked as one of the most overvalued cities in the world, Australia’s regulators have been warned to prepare “contingency plans for a severe collapse in the housing market” that could lead to a “crisis situation” in one or more financial institutions.

  

  Australia has transitioned from the lowest household debt-to-income ratio to the highest in the world, in just three decades.

  

  And now Australia’s News.com.au reports that The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest in-depth assessment of Australia maintains that while the “current trajectory” of house price declines “would suggest a soft landing… some risk of a hard landing remains.”

  

  Wage stagnation and elevated home prices have turned into the perfect storm that will bring forward a housing crisis.

  The Paris-based global forum recommends the Aussie Reserve Bank begin raising the cash rate from its record low as soon as possible to prevent “imbalances accumulating further”.

  The RBA last cut the cash rate to 1.5 per cent in August 2016, following an earlier cut to 1.75 per cent in May. There has not been an official cash rate increase since November 2010.

  “Australia’s housing market is a source of vulnerabilities due to elevated prices and related household debt. A direct hit to the financial sector from a wave of mortgage defaults is unlikely,” the report says.

  “However, if house prices collapse consumer spending could suffer, via negative impact on wealth, including from exposures to bank shares, which would encourage deleveraging. Together with reduced housing-related expenditures, this would put pressure on the whole economy.”

  Additionally, News.com reports that while describing the housing market slowdown as “welcome” after a period where prices were overvalued by 5 to 15 per cent and noting current evidence pointed to a soft landing, the OECD said its research in the past “has found soft landings are rare”.

  The OECD report recommends contingency plans in the form of “a loss-absorbing regime in the case of financial-institution insolvency”, including controversial “bail-in provisions”.

  “… the possibility of financial-institution crisis should not be discounted entirely.”

  Finally, the OECD notes, unlike in the US or EU, the law does not include provisions that would automatically convert some unsecured senior bonds and deposits from other banks into equity in the event of a crisis

   “The absence of explicit bail-in provisions could slow down the speed of resolution and risk encouraging financial institutions to gamble for resuscitation.”

  Notably, OECD’s ominous warnings come after RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle raised alarms (after Q3 GDP dramatically undershot expectations at just 2.8%) by suggesting the next move in rates could be down, not up, and floated the possibility of controversial money printing policies known as quantitative easing in the event of a crisis.

  As John Rubino recently noted, for the past few years, homeowners just about everywhere have been able to finesse life’s problems by thinking “at least my house is going up.”… But now that’s ending, and a reverse wealth effect is kicking in. Homeowners are seeing their home equity – aka their net worth – stop growing and in some cases drop by shocking amounts. In Australia it’s $1,000 a week, which is enough to darken the mood of pretty much anyone not in the 1%. A consumer with a dark mood is an unenthusiastic shopper because new debt accelerates the decline in net worth.

  As home prices fall, so therefore does “discretionary” spending. Australians will continue to eat and to air condition their bedrooms, but they’ll cut way back on vacations, new cars, etc. And the debt-based part of the economy will suffer. This will cause stock prices to fall, knocking another leg out from under the average citizen’s net worth and making them even less likely to splurge. And so on.

  Credit-bubble capitalism depends on mood, which makes it fragile. That fragility is about to be on full display pretty much everywhere.

  

• Sabotage? Has The Deep State Destroyed Trump's Chances Of A China Trade Deal?

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  Somebody out there apparently does not want President Trump to make a trade deal with China. 

  

  Just after U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to suspend the implementation of new tariffs for 90 days, one of China’s most important tech executives was literally kidnapped as she was changing planes in Canada.  Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was simply on her way to Mexico, but at the urging of U.S. authorities the Canadians grabbed her and are refusing to let her go.  Reportedly, the plan is to extradite her to the United States where she will apparently face charges relating to Huawei’s evasion of U.S. sanctions against Iran.  When Trump was negotiating face to face with the Chinese, he was not aware that this was taking place.  So now all of Trump’s hard work is out the window, and our relations with the Chinese are probably the worst that they have been since the Korean War.

  If U.S. authorities wanted to punish Huawei, they should have just slapped a big fine on them and have been done with it.

  The Chinese would have been annoyed, but not that much damage would have been done.

  But kidnapping a high profile member of Chinese tech loyalty and throwing her in prison is something that the Chinese will not forgive.

  The Chinese are a deeply nationalistic people, and the kidnapping of Meng Wanzhou is being treated as a grave national insult in China.  If the goal of the Deep State was to really upset the Chinese, they picked a perfect target.  The following comes from Robert Wenzel…

  “This is a really big deal. Ms. Meng is by birth and position a member of China’s corporate royalty,” David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, is quoted by TGM as having said.

  According to TGM, Meng, 46, who also goes by the name Sabrina, was appointed CFO of Huawei in 2011 and is also one of four deputy chairs. She appears to be being groomed for the top job at Shenzhen-based Huawei, which is now the world’s second-largest maker of telecommunications equipment.

  Just imagine how Americans would feel if China kidnapped a high profile member of our tech royalty and multiply that outrage by about 10.

  Until Meng Wanzhou is let go, there is not going to be any deal with China.  Many Americans are not familiar with Huawei, but they are essentially China’s version of Apple or Microsoft.  The following originally comes from CNN…

  Huawei is one of the world’s biggest makers of smartphones and networking equipment. It is at the heart of China’s ambitions to reduce its reliance on foreign technology and become an innovation powerhouse in its own right.

  The country is pumping hundreds of billions into its “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to make China a global leader in industries such as robotics, electric cars and computer chips. The introduction of 5G wireless technology, which hinges on Huawei, is a top priority.

  Meng Wanzhou is not just the CFO of the company.  She is also the daughter of the founder of the company and she is considered to be a hero by millions of Chinese.

  So what in the world is the Deep State thinking?  Are we going to start regularly kidnapping individuals that work for foreign corporations that have somehow violated U.S. laws?

  And should Americans expect the same treatment?  How would you like it if your mother or daughter was kidnapped while changing planes in a foreign country because the company that she works for had committed some sort of violation?

  I don’t want to make it sound like Huawei is perfectly innocent, because they aren’t.  But this is a move that is not just going to ensure a nightmarish trade war with China.  Ultimately, things could get a whole lot worse than that.

  At this point, the Chinese have summoned the U.S. ambassador and have formally demanded Meng Wanzhou’s release…

  The Chinese foreign ministry on Sunday summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to protest the detention of a senior tech executive by the Canadian authorities “at the unreasonable behest of the United States.”

  Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng demanded the release of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, who is accused by U.S. officials of attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.

  It would be wonderful if Meng Wanzhou was released, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.

  So now our relationship with China is officially in the toilet, and this is one of the factors that could push stock prices much lower once again this week.  In fact, as I write this article Dow futures are way down…

  U.S. stock futures fell on Sunday night as traders feared an intensifying trade war between the United States and China.

  Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped 197 points, implying a decline of 173.95 points at Monday’s open. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also declined. The losses would add to a steep decline from last week.

  This current “correction” was supposed to be over by the time December rolled around, but instead stock prices accelerated their decline last week.

  And many of those that work in financial circles are starting to use language that is much more pessimistic than we have become accustomed to seeing.  Here is just one example…

  “We’re very mindful once again where we’re at in the cycle,” Gregory Carmichael, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based lender Fifth Third, said at a conference last week. “We’re well positioned to deal with the downturn in the economy, and we’ll be very cautious.”

  I don’t know what “well positioned to deal with the downturn in the economy” means exactly, but it sounds nice.

  It frustrates me that so few people seem to understand the gravity of the situation that we are facing.  Our stores are filled with cheap products that come from China and they own more than a trillion dollars of our national debt.  The two largest economies in the entire world are decoupling from one another, and if the Chinese conclude that they are not able to salvage the relationship then they will rapidly become an exceedingly dangerous enemy.

  This is a major turning point, and the kidnapping of Meng Wanzhou has put us on a road that doesn’t lead anywhere good.  Hopefully things can rapidly be fixed, because if not, events are likely to start escalating quite dramatically.

  

• Former CIA Chief Of Disguise Explains How Spy Agency Trains Agents To Blend In

  The CIA has a long and checkered history of sending highly trained agents into very foreign environments to conduct everything from espionage to assassinations. 

  In order to pull off these clandestine and high-risk assignments, CIA agents must have a watertight cover story and a disguise that could fool your average Russian FSB officer as he flips through a carefully forged passport – eyeballing a highly trained agent dressed, perhaps, as a migrant worker or a retired ballerina out for a swim. 

  

  To that end, WIRED magazine’s Angela Watercutter penned an exclusive interview with the CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez – who spent her career training agents to blend in, disappear and even “quick change” their appearance if they need to shake a tail. Mendez’s husband, Tony Mendez, was the subject of a 2007 story in WIRED which was the basis for the movie Argo. 

  

  “One of our officers, probably working out of the American embassy, would have surveillance 24 hours a day; they’d have teams of people following them,” said Mendez, adding “But they had work to do; they had to communicate with people, clandestinely. The extremes we would go to to disguise those people was the most interesting, and the most challenging, part of the job.”

  Mendez says that the secret to a good disguise is hiding a person’s tell-tale features. 

  If they have straight hair, make it curly. If they’re young, give them a few streaks of gray. It also helps to change the way they walk or talk by putting a brace on their leg or an “artificial palate” in their mouth. Americans have a certain way of standing—weight on one foot or the other—and if they’re trying to pass themselves off as European, it helps if they stand squarely on both feet. Good disguises, Mendez says, are almost always “additive;” you can make someone taller, heavier, or older, but “we can’t go the other direction.” –WIRED

  And when it comes to “quick changes,” Mendez says that an agent can change their appearance as they move through busy sidewalks – adding sunglasses or a hat, or changing their shirt. If done correctly, it will look like the spy has simply vanished. 

  “You want to be the person that gets on the elevator, and then gets off, and nobody really remembers that you were even there,” she said. “That is a design goal at the disguise labs at CIA.” 

  Watch more below, and check out Mendez’s Reddit AMA here: 

  

• The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  The US State Department has issued a statement accusing the Syrian government of having carried out a false flag chemical weapons attack in northwestern Aleppo with the intent to blame it on the jihadist factions in the region, citing “credible info” that the public has not been permitted to see.

  Never mind the known fact that there are actual, literal Al Qaeda affiliateswho have admitted to using chemical weapons in Aleppo, and who are known to have used chemical weapons throughout Syria even by the State Department’s own admission: the Official Narrative is that only the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, so the chemical weapons usage must necessarily be a false flag staged by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

  

  Except they didn’t use the words “false flag”. Despite the accusation being the exact definition of the thing that a false flag attack is, you won’t see the US government using that term, nor will you ever see it used in this instance by any of the authorized mainstream narrative-framing institutions like CNN or Fox News. This is because the term “false flag” is reserved solely for mention when referring to crazy, kooky Kremlin propaganda, as in the insane, unhinged, tinfoil hat belief that terrorists in Syria might possibly have some kind of motive to stage a false flag chemical attack in order to get the US, UK and France to act as their air force in a retaliatory strike against the Syrian government. That kind of false flag would be completely inconceivable to any right-minded empire loyalist, and is forbidden to even think about.

  #MSM trying to link the #GiletJaunes protests to #Russia and #Putin.

  Only surprising thing is how long it took.https://t.co/0A0p8dnQiq

  — OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) December 8, 2018

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  At the same time we are seeing a push from the mass media to advance a narrative that the Yellow Vests protests in France are due to Russian influence, with Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot publishing a column today in the Washington Post that is based entirely around the talking point that two trending Russian topics on social media have been “giletsjaune” and “France,” and Bloomberg putting out an article blatantly titled “Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow Vests Rage”. Their entire theory is that since there are people in Russia talking about a major event that everyone else in the world is also talking about, the protests against Macron’s unpopular centrist policies are therefore the result of a conspiracy seeded by Russia.

  But you’ll never hear this theory about a Russian conspiracy referred to as a “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream press. The theory that Russian elites have conspired to infiltrate the highest levels of the US government has been given serious treatment at the top echelons of media and political influence, despite its lacking any discernible evidence whatsoever, but when they talk about these alleged conspiracies they always make a point of using the word “collusion” instead. There is no actual difference between the words collude and conspire when used in this way, but the former is used because a deliberate effort has been made to stigmatize the word “conspiracy” while the word “collude” remains effectively neutral in the public eye.

  But the fact of the matter is that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, and there is no legitimate reason to call the authorized, power-manufactured conspiracy theories by a different name than the grassroots narratives like those about 9/11 or the JFK assassination. Indeed, due to the nature of populist folk narratives there is a lot more publicly available evidence contradicting the official 9/11 and JFK assassination stories than there is for the establishment Russia conspiracy theories, because those narratives often boil down to nothing more than secretive intelligence agencies saying “This is true because we said so.” Since grassroots conspiracy theories are unable to rely on empty assertions from authority, they tend to be built upon information that is publicly available.

  Some people get annoyed with me for using the term conspiracy theory at all, but I insist that the phrase is itself intrinsically neutral: a theory about a conspiracy. The problem is not the phrase, it is the stigma that has been attached to that phrase by establishment media and establishment politicians; shifting to a different phrase to describe theories about conspiracies would only ensure that that phrase becomes stigmatized in the exact same way by the same sort of campaign. This would only ensure the survival of the tactic of regurgitating a pre-stigmatized label in the war of ideas instead of advancing actual arguments. The fact of the matter is that powerful people do indeed conspire, those conspiracies do indeed need to be talked about, and the largest promulgators of conspiracy theories are not Infowars or RT, but mainstream media and the US State Department.

  Those who dismiss an idea by calling it a “conspiracy theory” without providing further argumentation are simply admitting to you that they have no argument, and it is right to point this out when they do it, because something being a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s not grounded in facts. Some conspiracy theories are good and are backed by solid evidence, some are stupid and are circulated for intellectually dishonest reasons. Once upon a time you would be called a conspiracy theorist for saying the west is arming terrorists in Syria or the DNC is conspiring to ensure the primary victory of Hillary Clinton; those things are now conspiracy facts, as history has vindicated the solid theories which predicted them. Other conspiracy theories are promulgated by dim-witted partisan loyalists for no other reason than dim-witted partisan loyalty, like the aforementioned Russiagate conspiracy theory, or the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is leading a rebellion against the Deep State as cryptically reported by an anonymous user on 8chan.

  Other conspiracy theories are subscribed to simply because they help people escape the cognitive dissonance of conflicting beliefs. For example, a strong believer in capitalism who sees the undeniable signs that a plutocratic class has control of their government, but who cannot accept that this plutocratic takeover was facilitated by a rampant capitalist system which ensures that the greediest sociopaths rise to the top, may avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the existence of the corrupt dominator class with conspiracy theories about Jews or pedovore cults. A liberal who cannot accept that neoliberal empire loyalists like Macron have failed to “make centrism cool” as Max Boot predicted will avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the failures of the Church of the Status Quo with conspiracy theories about Russian social media campaigns.

  To defeat populism, America needs its own Macron–a charismatic leader who can make centrism cool. My take: https://t.co/AAF1YwTnqb

  — Max Boot (@MaxBoot) June 15, 2017

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  Conspiracy theories, in reality, are nothing more than people’s attempts to explain what is going on in their world. Why Trump got elected. Why things stay shitty despite our perfectly rational attempts to change them. Why voting doesn’t seem to make much difference in the actual behaviors of one’s government. Why we keep marching into stupid wars, Orwellian dystopia and climate collapse despite having every incentive not to. Why the wealthiest of the wealthy keep getting wealthier while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Some attempts to explain these things will come from a well-informed and intellectually honest place, and some will come from a myopic and intellectually dishonest place. Their individual merits can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

  And in my opinion the conspiracy theories coming from the world’s most powerful institutions are the most dishonest by far. I saw a recent post by the WikiLeaks Twitter account which referred to the corporate media as “the narrative business pretending to be in the news business,” which is in my opinion a perfect way to phrase it. The real currency of the world is not gold, nor is it bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military force; it’s narrative control.The ability to control the stories people tell about what’s going on in their world means the ability to control how they think, how they vote, how they behave, and how they all agree money and power itself operates within our society. Since society is made of narrative, controlling the narrative is controlling that society.

  Conspiracy theories are a way for those in power to manipulate the narrative without actually giving the public any hard facts and evidence, and the world’s most powerful institutions are increasingly relying on conspiracy theories because they don’t have facts and evidence on their side. And why would they? The same power establishment which deceived the world into destroying Iraq is obviously far too depraved to be able to justify its global hegemony with factual evidence. All they have is narrative control, and they’re starting to lose even that.

  *  *  *

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