- Bernie Sanders Cut Off After Saying 'CNN Fake News, Whaddaya Think?'
Hilarious stuff. The chimps over at CNN must have a keyword trigger for whenever a guest says the words ‘CNN Fake News’ — which prompts an instant audio cut. After all, calling a CNN journalist ‘fake news’ is no different than calling a black person the ‘N word.’
Shills.
Speaking of CNN fake news.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
- From New World Order To Hazy Global Disorder
Submitted by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The Donald Trump administration and the Brexit severance of ties between the United Kingdom and the European Union have, in a matter of a little over a half year, changed the world from a post-Cold War «new world order» based on American supremacy to a global «disorder» of altered alliances on a multipolar geo-political chessboard. In many respects, the new global disorder has also placed in jeopardy various post-World War II contrivances, including NATO, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) alliance.
Every international relations textbook and playbook can be thrown away with the advent of the new global disorder. Trump has kicked off his foreign policy by introducing an incoherent foreign policy. On one hand, Trump claims he wants to partner with Russia on the war against «radical Islamic terrorism». Yet, Trump has also indicated, through his UN ambassador Nicky Haley and Defense Secretary James Mattis, that he is committed to NATO and wants Russia to withdraw from Crimea. It is well known that the annual National Football League’s Super Bowl coordinates its patriotic military-oriented events with the Pentagon. In recent past years, U.S. troops serving in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were featured during and after the game on the host stadium’s jumbotron television screens.
The 2017 Super Bowl in Houston was different. This year the live shot of U.S. troops with the 3rd Brigade Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, was from a military base in Zagan, Poland. The Pentagon’s psychological operations specialists wanted to convey the message that under Trump, the new U.S. front lines were no longer in Afghanistan and Iraq in a war against Muslim radical insurgents but in Poland with Russia as the new «enemy». The optics simply do not match Trump’s statements about seeking closer ties with Russia.
Trump has indicated he hopes to increase the U.S. «defense» budget to accommodate a 90,000 troop increase in Army ranks; a 350-ship Navy, including new aircraft carriers at $12 billion per vessel; an increase in Marine Corps battalions from 23 to 36; and 100 additional advanced fighter planes for the Air Force. That is equivalent to an increase in the military budget from $500 billion to $1 trillion over a ten-year period.
Essentially, Trump’s national security team desires a military that can fight both Russia and China and that can be able to match every Russian and Chinese warplane, tank, and naval vessel in a battle space.
Trump and his national security team of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Mattis, and other war hawks are also laying the ground for a military confrontation with Iran. Team Trump has helped ratchet up tensions with Iran by authorizing the sale to Saudi Arabia of $300 million worth of precision-guided missiles and billions of dollars of advanced F-16 fighters to Saudi Arabia’s vassal state of Bahrain. These packages were suspended by the Obama administration because of Saudi war crimes in Yemen and Bahrain’s bloody suppression of its Shi’a majority. Trump is greenlighting continued Saudi genocidal aggression in Yemen’s civil war. The Saudis and Bahrainis are now being positioned by Trump to gain a military advantage over Iran. Trump’s executive order banning Iraqis with valid U.S. visas, refugee documents, and, originally, permanent U.S. resident «green cards», irritated the Iraqi government, an ally of Iran, to the point that it vowed to limit Iraqi visas for U.S. contractors and journalists. That will only embolden Islamic State and Al Qaeda irregulars fighting U.S. military forces in the country. Anything that threatens the Baghdad government is welcome news to the Saudi regime.
Trump, in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, emphasized close U.S.-Turkish relations. In July 2016, after an attempted coup against Erdogan, Trump, in an interview with The New York Times, praised Erdogan’s handling of the insurrection. Since the coup attempt, Erdogan has ordered the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of journalists, military and police officers, professors, civil servants, politicians, and businessmen for allegedly supporting the so-called «Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO)», a pejorative term for those affiliated with Turkish exile leader and former Erdogan ally Fethullah Gulen.
Gulen is currently exiled in Pennsylvania and has been under the protection of the Central Intelligence Agency. However, Flynn and others part of the Trump security apparatus favor extraditing Gulen, a political refugee, to Turkey to face trial and certain imprisonment, torture, and possibly, execution.
Trump’s dalliance with Erdogan will also jeopardize the safety of the Kurdish forces in Syria, which have been allied with the United States against the Islamic State, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil in Iraq. Turkey considers the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds to be supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and if Trump sides with Erdogan against Kurdistan it will represent another double-cross by Washington of that beleaguered unrecognized nation. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abandoned the Kurds in the 1970s when he sacrificed their interests to the Iraqi military regime.
Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon is believed to have gotten involved in an internal «civil war» within the Vatican and which saw a virtual takeover of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) in Rome by Pope Francis. Bannon opposes what he considers the Pope’s «socialist ways». The Vatican may be a micro-state without a grand army, but a fracture in Vatican-Washington relations can only have a negative impact on the EU, NATO, and other traditional alliances.
Trump’s rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal has thrown the Asia-Pacific region into «controlled chaos». Mattis’s first foreign trip as Secretary of Defense was to reassure South Korea and Japan of America’s military commitment. But the abandonment of the TPP by its largest cheerleader, the United States, has provided impetus to China’s alternative trading bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). America’s longtime ally Australia, a supporter of the TPP, is now anxious to join the RCEP. Trump’s bellicose phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee swap, has Australia incensed with Trump. While they are friendly adversaries with Australia over sports and national pride, New Zealand came to Australia’s defense in its spat with Trump. The bottom line is that the ANZUS alliance is now severely damaged but, in any event, it had long outlived its usefulness.
Other testy phone exchanges between Trump and German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande also shook Euro-Atlantic bonds with Washington. Trump thundered to Hollande that the French and other NATO countries should pay the U.S. back for NATO expenditures. European Council president Donald Tusk called Trump a «threat» to the European Union.
After a meeting at the White House with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Trump shocked the Israeli government when he told Israel that it should stop announcing new settlements in the West Bank. While Trump’s rhetoric suggests that he is the most pro-Israeli president to ever occupy the White House, his mercurial attitude toward Israel has some Middle East observers wondering whether Trump’s promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is merely window-dressing for a different U.S. policy in the region.
The venerable, but relatively staid and useless OAS, headquartered in Washington, is not likely to survive Trump’s promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border or his saber-rattling toward Cuba, which has returned to the OAS and the Inter-American political system. Latin America and the Caribbean has more worthwhile alternatives to the OAS, including the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), all of which are free of U.S. membership and influence.
It is a new global disorder but in this chaos, a return to a multipolar world and the end of «sole U.S. superpower» status may be a blessing in the long run. In the short run, however, the chaos will confuse every foreign ministry and international organization bureaucracy on every continent.
- What Voter Fraud? – Mexican Citizen Sentenced To 8 Years In Prison After Illegally Voting In Texas
Rosa Ortega, a Mexican citizen, has been convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to 8 years in prison in Texas after inadvertently admitting to election officials that she had been voting in Dallas County for years. Apparently the voting fraud was discovered by chance after Ortega tried to register to vote in Tarrant County but was rejected after she admitted that she was not actually a citizen of the United States. While she should have probably just accepted the rejection, Ortega pushed back by arguing that she had already been voting in Dallas County, an argument that drew the attention of investigators.
Ortega’s voting privileges were approved in Dallas after she falsified her application by claiming to be a citizen. Of course, liberal lawyers, funded by George Soros, have done a masterful job convincing courts around the country that verifying things like a person’s identity and citizenship status prior to allowing them to vote is unconstitutional. Per CBS:
Prosecutors say the reason officials at the elections department in Dallas didn’t stop the voter fraud from happening is because Rosa Ortega claimed she was a citizen on her application.
Now the Tarrant County D.A.’s office is calling for those claims to be verified before handing out registration cards.
Prosecutors said whether this case prompts elections officials to verify citizenship is an issue for the legislature.
As you may recall, we wrote about a similar incident back in September in which the Cascade Mall shooter, a Turkish citizen, who killed 5 people in the state of Washington was found to have also been illegally voting for years. And, just like the case above, Washington’s Secretary of State noted that there was no way to prevent the voter fraud because “we don’t have a provision in state law that allows either county elections officials or the Secretary of State’s office to verify someone’s citizenship.”
“We don’t have a provision in state law that allows either county elections officials or the Secretary of State’s office to verify someone’s citizenship. So, we’re in this place where we want to make sure we’re maintaining people’s confidence in the elections and the integrity of the process, but also that we’re giving this individual, like we would any voter, his due process. We’re moving forward, and that investigation is really coming out of the investigation from the shootings.”
“The penalties are very serious. That’s why we want to make sure we’re very measured, and this is why we want to make sure we’re very calm and purposeful in how we move forward. The stakes are very high on both sides. You want to keep the confidence level high, but you also want to protect the voting rights of everyone.”
“Our hands are kind of tied, but make no mistake, we want to make sure that everybody has confidence that people casting ballots are eligible. This is certainly going to be a topic at next legislation.”
Of course, Ortega’s lawyer tried to argue that a learning disability made it impossible for her to comprehend the complex laws that allow only U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections…Sure, because why wouldn’t Mexican citizens be allowed to vote in the U.S.?
Her attorney said she has a learning disability and was confused about the difference between being a citizen and a legal resident, so she thought she was allowed to vote.
“The jury didn’t believe that story. They believed that the defendant knew exactly what she was doing, and they responded accordingly,” Prosecutor Jonathan White said.
“Once she gets out of prison and she’s deported, does she bring her four minor children to Mexico? As a mother I think that would be a difficult choice for her,” Birdsall said.
We’re currently awaiting confirmation from Democrats and MSNBC that there is still no concrete evidence of voter fraud and that Trump’s vow to conduct a “major investigation” into the topic is still just a political sham.
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
- Russian Government Considers Offering Snowden As "Gift" To President Trump, NBC Reports
Echoing a now eerily prophetic comment by Edward Snowden in December that "there could be some kind of deal – give this guy to me as a present," NBC News reports, citing US intelligence official sources, that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to President Donald Trump – who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who deserves to be executed.
Message to Edward Snowden, you’re banned from @MissUniverse. Unless you want me to take you back home to face justice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In an interview streamed on Twitter in December, Snowden said being forced to return to the U.S. would be a human-rights violation but would also put to rest to accusations that he is a Russian spy.
"A lot of people have asked me: Is there going to be some kind of deal where Trump says, 'Hey look, give this guy to me as some kind of present'? Will I be sent back to the U.S., where I'll be facing a show trial?" Snowden said. "Is this going to happen? I don't know. Could it happen? Sure. Am I worried about it? Not really, because here's the thing: I am very comfortable with the decisions that I've made. I know I did the right thing."
Here’s what @snowden told me about the possibility of Putin handing him over as a good will gesture to the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/LdoxE7cYvA
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Then a month ago, none other than Michael Morell (former CIA acting director and Clinton supporter and adamant anti-Trumper) suggested that Snowden would make “the perfect inauguration gift” for Donald Trump.
There are “a lot of reasons” that would “make sense” for Russia to take such a step, Morell wrote in his column in the Cipher Brief. The former CIA acting chief believes that “the Russian president needs a relationship with the incoming US president where the US overlooks Moscow’s anti-democratic activities at home and destabilizing activities abroad.”
Moreover, “gifting” Snowden could also become a good way “to poke his [Putin’s] finger in the eye of his adversary Barack Obama,” Morell added.
In addition, “this would give President Putin one of the things he desires the most – being seen at home and abroad as an equal of the US.”
To which Edward Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena exclaimed:
“These statements coming from the former CIA head are stirring mixed feelings and can be seen only as a kind of utter nonsense, there is hardly any other way to put it,”
But now, as NBC News reports, according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports detailing Russian deliberations, a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to "curry favor" with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.
Snowden's ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told NBC News they are unaware of any plans that would send him back to the United States.
"Team Snowden has received no such signals and has no new reason for concern," Wizner said.
Furthermore, Snowden's Russian lawyer told the state-run news agency last month that his client would like to return to the United States – with no criminal charges hanging over his head.
"We hope very much that the new U.S. president would show some weighted approach to the issue and make the one and only correct decision – to stop prosecution against Edward Snowden," Kucherena said.
Former deputy national security adviser Juan Zarate urged the Trump administration to be cautious in accepting any Snowden offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Again, seemingly based on pure speculation, Zarate tells NBC there is no way to predict if Putin will deliver Snowden — or when.
"I think this is one of those rare cases where the stakes are so high, the diplomatic implications so deep, that anything can happen," he said.
"So this could be a secret diplomatic deal made in the dead of night, or it could be a weeks-in-formation deal with lawyers on all sides," he said.
"I think at the end of the day, Moscow holds the cards here."
"For Russia, this would be a win-win. They've already extracted what they needed from Edward Snowden in terms of information and they've certainly used him to beat the United States over the head in terms of its surveillance and cyber activity," Zarate said.
"It would signal warmer relations and some desire for greater cooperation with the new administration, but it would also no doubt stoke controversies and cases in the U.S. around the role of surveillance, the role of the U.S. intelligence community, and the future of privacy and civil liberties in an American context.
"All of that would perhaps be music to the ears of Putin."
In light of the sources (or lack of them), NBC News is forced to admit that The White House had no comment, but the Justice Department told NBC News it would welcome the return of Snowden, who currently faces federal charges that carry a minimum of 30 years in prison. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talk about returning Snowden is "nonsense."
Finally, moments ago Snowden himself responded to the article in steide, tweeting that – if true – it would be evidence that contrary to repeat accusations and even a major Congressional report claiming otherwise, he had not worked with the Russians…
Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel. No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they're next. https://t.co/YONqZ1gYqm
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 10, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
… followed moments by a Snowden retweet of a Katie Couric interview, explaining that he is "encouraged" by the possibility of being sent back to the US.
Here’s what @snowden told me about the possibility of Putin handing him over as a good will gesture to the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/LdoxE7cYvA
— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) February 10, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
- The Reason The Elite Hate Trump So Much: He Is Opposed To The One World Agenda Of The Globalists
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
Have you ever wondered why the elite hate Donald Trump so much? There have certainly been many politicians throughout the years that have been disliked, but with Trump there is a hatred that is so intense that it almost seems tangible at times. During the campaign, they went to extraordinary lengths to destroy him, but it didn’t work. And now that he is president, the attacks against him have been absolutely relentless. So why is there so much animosity toward Trump? Is it just because he is not a member of their club?
The truth, of course, is that it runs much deeper than that. Ultimately, the elite hate Trump because he is opposed to their demonic one world agenda. Many among the elite are referred to as “globalists” because their eventual goal is to unite the whole world under a single planetary system. These globalists truly believe that they know better than all the rest of us, and they want to impose their way of doing things on every man, woman and child on the entire planet.
So they get really angry when Donald Trump talks of “building a wall” or establishing a travel ban from certain countries because they eventually want a world without any borders at all.
And they get really angry when Donald Trump says that he wants to pull the United States out of international trade deals, because the elite were using those international trade deals to slowly integrate all nations into a single one world economy.
And they really don’t like when Donald Trump criticizes Islam, because Islam is going to be a key component of the one world religion that they plan to establish.
For quite a while the globalists were on a roll, but recently they have experienced some tremendous setbacks. Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump were not supposed to happen, and this has left many globalists searching for answers. In fact, just today I came across a New York Times article entitled “Besieged Globalists Ponder What Went Wrong“…
Until recently, you didn’t hear people being referred to as “globalist” very often. But in a time of rising nationalism, those who see the upside of globalism have become a distinct — and often embattled — tribe.
Last week, the globalists had a big family reunion in New York. The gathering was focused on the United Nations General Assembly, but a growing array of side conferences and summits and dinners also attracted concerned internationalists of every stripe: humanitarians, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, donors, investors, app peddlers, celebrities.
As you can see, even the New York Times uses the term “globalists” to describe these elitists.
At one time you would have been considered a “conspiracy theorist” is you spoke of “globalists”, but at this point the elite are not even trying to put up a facade any longer.
And of course Donald Trump made opposition to globalism one of the central themes of his campaign, and it really struck a chord all across America. As Dr. Jim Garlow noted in an article that went viral just before the election, Trump’s opposition to globalism was one of the key things that set him apart from Hillary Clinton…
Trump opposes globalism. Hillary thrives on it. Globalism is far more than “geographical” or “eliminating national borders and boundaries.” It is spiritual and demonic at its core. Few—very few—understand this. This is quite likely one of the main reasons why Trump is hated. Do your homework on this one. Think “principalities and powers.” Serious. Extremely serious.
The reason why the threat of globalism is so serious is because if a single global system is ever established there will be no escape from it.
Just think about it – where could you go to escape a government that literally rules the entire world?
These globalists are completely convinced that if they could just get control of everyone and everything that they could establish some sort of environmentally-friendly socialist utopia where war and poverty are eradicated. But in order to do that, they would need to be in a position to micro-manage the lives of every single person on the planet.
In their minds it would not be tyranny, but for those of us that love freedom that is precisely what it would be.
The globalists want a one world government, a one world economy and a one world religion. Those of us that are Christians know that the Bible speaks of a time when this will happen, but even many that are not Christians are deeply concerned about what the globalists are pushing for. Just consider the words of George Mason University Law School Professor Jeremy Rabkin…
George Mason University Law School Professor and author of the 2004 book The Case for Sovereignty: Why The World Should Welcome American Independence Jeremy Rabkin argues that globalism fundamentally stands at odds with democratic forms of government.
In a Tuesday CP interview, Rabkin, a Jew, expressed his distaste for Donald Trump. But on globalism, he said, “beyond that it is not democratic, there’s something about it that is a little creepy, a little uncanny.”
“It’s basically saying ‘We are going to organize the world in a way that establishes an artificial consensus.’ It’s not enough to say it’s undemocratic. It’s threatening; it’s almost demonic. It is a world organized independently of people’s fundamental religious convictions,” Rabkin said.
I think that when Rabkin chose the word “demonic” that he was right on point.
The global elite have already had a tremendous amount of success in promoting values, systems and laws that are “anti-Christian” around the globe.
The globalists control the mainstream media, they control Hollywood, they control our education system and they control most of our politicians.
They thought that they were almost ready to move into the final stages of their agenda, but then Donald Trump happened.
For the moment, the momentum toward a one world system has been stopped cold.
But that doesn’t mean that the globalists will stop trying. Just because Trump won the election does not mean that they are going to roll over and die.
The elite are going to use all of the resources at their disposal to try to destroy Trump, even if that means creating a tremendous amount of chaos.
If you study the globalists, you will quickly discover that one of their favorite tactics is to create order out of chaos. So in the months ahead I think that it is quite likely that we may see quite a bit of chaos as the globalists attempt to get their program back on track.
But if we understand what they are doing, we will be able to see through their games. So let’s keep shining a light on these globalists, because they always prefer to operate in the darkness.
- Merkel Forced To Deny Plans For European Nuclear Superpower
In the wake of President Trump's comments that NATO is "obsolete", and European 'leaders' renewed calls for a European army, Angela Merkel has been forced to deny Germany is interested in acquiring nuclear weapons amid calls for it to lead a European "nuclear superpower."
As we noted previously, calls for an EU Army pre-exist current trends among Europeans and Americans to reject international institutionalism for a more nationalistic, sovereign state oriented model of governance. The Guardian was reporting in 2015 that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was calling for an EU Army to show Russia that the bloc was "serious about defending its values." The shock result of Brexit merely accelerated plans within the EU that were already in progress.
But with Trump's NATO comments, chatter picked up further in recent weeks of the need for the European Union to invest in its own nuclear deterrent.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of Poland’s ruling party, told a German newspaper this week he would “welcome an EU nuclear superpower”.
A senior MP from Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) has called for Germany to press for a European nuclear deterrent.
Spiegel magazine has questioned whether it is time for Germany to acquire its own nuclear weapons.
And the Financial Times has called for Germany to “think the unthinkable” on the issue.
As The Guardian reports, the German Government has moved quickly to stymie those rumors…
“There are no plans for nuclear armament in Europe involving the federal government,” a spokesman for Angela Merkel said.
Leading voices in Germany have warned that the country acquiring its own nuclear weapons is not the solution.
“We would open Pandora's box and start an arms race,” General Hans-Lothar Domröse, a former Nato commander, said. “It would make it even more difficult to prevent other countries like Iran from getting the bomb.”
“Obtaining nuclear weapons, either directly or indirectly through the EU, would be a serious violation of international law for Germany,” Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the influential Munich Security Conference, said.
Still, all this talk of nuclear arms race is a great reason to buy moar stocks by the looks of the market.
- Economists: Le Pen Victory Would Lead To "Massive Sovereign Default", Global Financial Chaos
With two months left until the French election, analysts and political experts find themselves in a quandary: on one hand, political polls show that while National Front’s Marine Le Pen will likely win the first round, she is virtually assured a loss in the runoff round against either Fillon, or more recently Macron, having between 20 and 30% of the vote; on the other, all those same analysts and political experts were dead wrong with their forecasts about both Brexit and Trump, and are desperate to avoid a trifecta as being wrong 3 out of 3 just may be result in losing one’s job.
Meanwhile, markets are taking Le Pen’s rise in the polls in stride, and French spreads over Germany are moving in lockstep with Le Pen’s rising odds. In fact, as noted earlier in the week, French debt is now the riskiest it has been relative to German in four years.
Why are markets spooked?
As per her recently released manifesto, Le Pen has promised to unilaterally take France out of the Euro within six months, sparking concerns over what might happen then. The answer comes from the National Front itself, which overnight revealed its plans to the FT, suggesting that €1.7 trillion of French public debt would be redenominated into francs if the far-right National Front party gets into power.
Call it Yanis Varoufakis’ dream scenario.
As the FT reports, “in comments that are likely to amplify fears about the impact of a FN victory on the global financial system, several senior-ranking party members have told the Financial Times that in power the far-right would seek to redenominate about 80 per cent of the France’s €2.1tn public debt — the part that was issued under French law — in a new national currency. Confirming that Le Pen’s party had extensively studied the topic, David Rachline, FN’s head of strategy, said in an interview that only about 20% of France’s total public debt “falls under international law [and would stay denominated in euros] . . . but for the rest we will have the right to change the currency”.
So with the green line in the chart above continuing to rise, a potential currency redenomination and “Frexit” on the table, and with memories of “impossible” events like Brexit and Trump quite fresh in everyone’s memory, the time has come to bring out the big scaremongering guns, starting with the rating agencies, and sure enough they did not disappoint, because as quoted by the FT, an event envisioned by Le Pen would, according to rating agencies, be likely to amount to the largest sovereign default on record, nearly 10 times larger than the €200bn Greek debt restructuring in 2012, threatening chaos to the world financial system on top of the collapse of the single currency.
Moritz Kraemer, S&P’s head of sovereign ratings, said in a statement that this would be a default. “There is no ambiguity here . . . If an issuer does not adhere to the contractual obligations to its creditors, including payment in the currency stipulated, [we] would declare a default.”
Alastair Wilson, head of sovereign ratings at Moody’s, said they would consider any country leaving the euro to be in default if changing the currency of its debt caused investors to lose out financially relative to the original promise. “The test for us is: do we think investors will be able to get back the value they put in, when they expected to get it back,” he said.
The FN’s Rachline said French debt would be redenominated on a “one franc to one euro” basis. But he added that reintroducing a national currency that could fall in value against the rump euro would lower France’s total debt burden. “[Having our own currency] will allow us to do a competitive devaluation,” he said.
Again, this was precisely the scenario contemplated by Vaourfakis, until he realized that the ECB has full control over the Greek banking system and the population’s euro-denominated deposits: there simply was not enough cash for the Greek people if everyone decided to withdraw funds, which is what ultimately killed the Varoufakis revolution. And to think that fractional reserve banking would have been understood by now.
It is unclear if Le Pen, or the FN, has planned for this contingency yet: it would be silly not too less than two years after the Greek 2015 fiasco. Nonetheless, the process is distinctly possible. Lawyers contacted by the FT said the currency redenomination for the bonds governed by French law would be theoretically possible because any nation can change its own laws. This means that bondholders would struggle to pursue France in the courts in the same way they pursued Argentina after its default in 2001.
Matthew Hartley, a debt capital markets partner at Allen & Overy, said: “Because the bonds are governed by French law, they just have to change French law to change the terms of the bonds.”
Meanwhile, just in case rating agencies were not sufficiently convincing, mainstream economists – because their reputation is obviously much higher – also chimed in, arguing that France leaving the euro would cause chaos in Europe. Benoît Cœuré, executive board member at the European Central Bank, this week said that leaving the euro would lead to “impoverishment”, higher interest rates, a heavier debt burden, unemployment and inflation.
The European Central Banker will likely be even more angry when he learned that Le Pen plans on doing what the Developed World’s central bank would love to do, but are – for the time being – stopped: deploy helicopter money. The FN has said that, following a shift back to the French franc, rules governing the country’s central bank would be changed to allow it to directly finance the French state, for example servicing French welfare payments and government debts.
Leaving the euro is just one pillar of the FN’s economic strategy, which is focused on making French industry more competitive, taking a page right out of the Trump playbook. However, since France does not share the US’ exorbitant privilege of the global’s reserve currency and world’s strongest army, France – unable to bully its trading partners, hopes that a fall in the value of the new national currency will boost exports.
The second thrust of the party’s economic policy is to use “intelligent protectionism” to allow them to defend French industries — something that they are currently prevented from doing by EU rules, says the FN.
One senior official said it was a return to the politics of postwar head of state Charles de Gaulle, who kept a tight hand on the French economy. “We are not extreme, we are Gaullists,” said the person, who did not want to be named.
This dirigiste strategy would see them imposing trade barriers on any “unfair competition” from abroad, according to party officials. There would also be a 3 per cent import tax on foreign goods that would be given as tax breaks to the poorest.
For now, it is unclear whether Le Pen will win or not: there are two more months to go, and even with her rise in the polls against scandal-ridden opponents, one can debate if she has enough support to win. But no matter the outcome, Mikael Sala, the head of Croissance Bleu Marine, a think-tank supporting the FN, summarized it perfectly when he shrugged off concerns that the redenomination of the currency would be considered a default by the rating agencies. “We will be elected by the French people — it is not our job to please [the rating agency] S&P,” he said. “They do not have much credibility after the financial crisis anyway.”
- The Unintended & Deadly Societal Consequences Of Quantitative Easing
Authored by Jesse Felder via TheFelderReport.com,
“As I look back, it now seems that, with all the thought and work and good intentions, which we provided, we achieved absolutely nothing… nothing that I did, and very little that old Ben [Strong of the Federal Reserve] did, internationally produced any good effect – or indeed any effect at all except that we collected money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds.”
-Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England 1920-1944
Since the financial crisis nearly a decade ago, the Federal Reserve has printed trillions of dollars in an effort to create a “wealth effect” in the economy. Their theory goes that quantitative easing would make for rising prices of financial assets which should, in turn, make the wealthy feel more confident and thus spend more. By this process, a trickle-down effect would boost the economy.
Last year, however, I started to note that, even if this theory were true, a number of developments could possibly derail this “wealth effect” and even put it into reverse. Those developments have continued into 2017. High-end home prices continue to slump.
Bear market for home prices in Aspen and the Hamptons: https://t.co/wtCU3nIatv
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 26, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And luxury retailers are suffering at least as much as the major department stores. In fact, sales here have not been so poor since the “Great Recession.”
Luxury retail via @SoberLook pic.twitter.com/GgBHzVhEED
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 24, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
At the same time that these luxury markets are rapidly declining, the stock market is soaring to all time highs. This is probably all the evidence we need to understand that the wealth effect is a myth. Still, the BIS recently quantified the failure of quantitative easing to boost the economy even while noting its efficacy in boosting asset prices.
BIS: 'QE Don't Work' https://t.co/Ec6EPHkEvw ht @tracyalloway pic.twitter.com/L0FsCShJiZ
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 18, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So the Fed has accomplished its goal of making the wealthy wealthier it just hasn’t trickled down to the rest of the economy as they had hoped. The end result is the Fed has only exacerbated the greatest wealth inequality in this country since the Great Depression.
Ray Dalio: The world today 'rhymes' with the 1930's https://t.co/YojXHA7PtM
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 23, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The fact is rapidly growing wealth inequality, rather than boosting the confidence of the wealthy, has had the opposite effect, making them increasingly concerned about its societal ramifications.
'People attuned to societal levers understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.' https://t.co/yqTSeSJGpz
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 23, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And rightly so. While the rich have become richer in recent years, the average American has only become increasingly squeezed by inflation in things like rent and healthcare while their wages have remained relatively stagnant.
Why the current economy feels like recession to so many: https://t.co/fKumkcC5um by @JeffSnider_AIP pic.twitter.com/gOzcYgV4HK
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 19, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
This dramatic disparity in economic fortunes between the wealthy and the rest of the country in recent years is surely one of the major drivers behind the rising global trends toward populism and anti-elitism.
'Brexit was the Bears Stearns moment in the rise of populism. Trump is the Lehman Brothers.' https://t.co/wtTvu1HGRD ht @freecotdata
— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) January 23, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And I can’t help but think of those famous words quoted above and uttered by the former Governor of the Bank of England near the end of his life. Trillions of dollars printed and ultimately pumped into the asset markets over the better part of the last decade and to accomplish what? To enable corporations to borrow cheap money to buyback stock (give it over to the four winds)? To create the sort of societal division that foments unrest? To allow the wealthy to be able to afford the “survival condos” to ride it out? In years to come, with the benefit of hindsight, will Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen feel any different than their famous forebears?
- Shia LaBeouf Anti-Trump Rally Shut Down After Becoming A "Flashpoint For Violence"
After standing in front of a live stream camera for weeks shouting “He Will Not Divide Us”, an apparent “art project”, an increasingly mentally unstable Shia LaBeouf has finally been forced to move on with his life after the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens pulled the plug saying the site had become a “flashpoint for violence.”
Apparently the museum was able to do something that Trump never could, namely “Divide Them.”
#HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS pic.twitter.com/NMarcz85NB
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) February 10, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Going live on January 20, 2017, the day of President Trump’s inauguration, the live stream was supposed to keep running for as long as Trump held the White House but unfortunately, at least for the mental health of the the 30-year-old Hollywood snowflake of Transformers fame, it was shut down after just three weeks.
As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the first instance of violence occurred on January 25th and resulted in LaBeouf getting hauled away by cops after allegedly assaulting another protester.
Oh hell no. They arrested Comrade Shia LaBeouf. I’m pissed. #FreeShia pic.twitter.com/V9MOWrNTA5
— TayGo (@taygogo) January 26, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
According to the DailyMail, LaBeouf attacked another protester for shouting something into a live camera feed that he didn’t like.
Police say LaBeouf pulled the scarf of an unidentified 25-year-old man this morning, scratching his face in the process.
Police say he also pushed the man, who refused medical attention.
According to local reports, the protester had said something to the camera LaBeouf did not agree with.
This video allegedly shows part of the assault:
Meanwhile, here is a glorious montage of Shia seemingly going completely insane while repeatedly physically and sexually assaulting a number of other people on his live stream.
Per RT, the museum issued the following statement after pulling the plug on Shia’s pet art project:
“We are proud to have launched this engaging and thought-provoking digital art installation which was experienced by millions of online viewers worldwide,” the museum said.
“Until public safety concerns overrode the intent of the installation, HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US generated an important conversation allowing interaction among people from many backgrounds and with different viewpoints,” it continued.
“However, ending our engagement with the installation is the most prudent path forward to restore public safety to the Museum, its visitors, staff and the community.”
With that, we say so long for now, dear Shia, but we eagerly await your next nervous breakdown.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...