Apr 12

Today’s News 12th April 2018

  • Europe's Civilizational Exhaustion

    Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

    • Islam is filling the cultural vacuum of a society with no children and which believes — wrongly — it has no enemies.

    • In Sweden, by 2050, almost one in three people will be Muslim.

    • The European mainstream mindset now seems to believe that “evil” comes only from our own sins: racism, sexism, elitism, xenophobia, homophobia, the guilt of the heterosexual white Western male — and never from non-European cultures. Europe now postulates an infinite idealization of the “other”, above all the migrant.

    • A tiredness seems to be why these countries do not take meaningful measures to defeat jihadism, such as closing Salafist mosques or expelling radical imams.

    • Muslim extremists understand this advantage: so long as they avoid another enormous massacre like 9/11, they will be able to continue taking away human lives and undermining the West without awakening it from its inertia.

    In a prophetic conference held in Vienna on May 7, 1935, the philosopher Edmund Husserl said, “The greatest danger to Europe is tiredness”. Eighty years later, the same fatigue and passivity still dominate Western European societies.

    It is the sort of exhaustion that we see in Europeans’ falling birth rates, the mushrooming public debt, chaos in the streets, and Europe’s refusal to invest resources in its security and military might. Last month, in a Paris suburb, the Basilica of Saint Denis, where France’s Christian kings are buried, was occupied by 80 migrants and pro-illegal-immigration activists. The police had to intervene to free the site.

    Pictured: French police eject some of the 80 migrants and pro-illegal-immigration activists who occupied the Basilica of Saint Denis, on March 18, 2018. (Image source: Video screenshot, YouTube/Kenyan News & Politics)

    Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London, recently published a report, “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”:

    “Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years,” Bullivant said.

    According to Bullivant, many young Europeans “will have been baptised and then never darken the door of a church again. Cultural religious identities just aren’t being passed on from parents to children. It just washes straight off them… “And we know the Muslim birthrate is higher than the general population, and they have much higher [religious] retention rates.”

    Richard Dawkins, an atheist and the author of The God Delusion, responded to the study’s release by tweeting to his millions of Twitter followers:

    Before we rejoice at the death throes of the relatively benign Christian religion, let’s not forget Hilaire Belloc’s menacing rhyme:
    “Always keep a-hold of nurse
    For fear of finding something worse.”

    Dawkins is apparently concerned that that after the demise of Christianity in Europe, there will not be an atheistic utopia, but a rising Islam.

    That is the major point of what Philippe Bénéton in his book The Moral Disorder of the West (“Le dérèglement moral de l’Occident“): Islam is filling the cultural vacuum of a society with no children and which believes — wrongly — it has no enemies.

    According to Radio Sweden, fewer newborns in that country are being baptized due to the demographic shift. By 2050, almost one in three people in Sweden will be Muslim, according to a recent Pew report

    The European mainstream mindset now seems to believe that “evil” comes only from our own sins: racism, sexism, elitism, xenophobia, homophobia, the guilt of the heterosexual white Western male –and never from non-European cultures. So Europe now postulates an infinite idealization of the “other”, above all the migrant. The heritage and legacy of Western civilization gets sectioned off piece by piece so that nothing remains; our values are mocked and our survival instinct is inhibited. It is a process of decomposition that Europe’s political authorities seem to have decided to mediate, as if it were inevitable. Now, the European Union waits to receive the next surge of migrants, from Africa.

    In German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s major speech in the Bundestag after the unprecedentedly long and difficult process of forming a new government, she struck a conciliatory tone on immigration while offering an inclusive message on Islam. “With 4.5 million Muslims living with us, their religion, Islam, has also become a part of Germany”, she said.

    The most powerful politician in Europe capitulated: she evidently forgot (again) the difference between the civil rights of individuals, which Muslim citizens enjoy in Germany, and the sources of a national identity, on which Europe is based: humanistic, Judeo-Christian values. This realization may why a week earlier the new German Interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said that “Germany has been shaped by Christianity” and not by Islam.

    Europe’s tiredness can also be seen in a generational conflict embodied in the alarming rise of public debt. In Italy, the political establishment was recently shaken up by the election of two major populist parties. It is a country with a public debt of 40,000 euros per capita, and a tax burden equal to 43.3% of GDP. The average age of the population is the third oldest in the world, together with one of the lowest birthrates on the planet, one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe and the highest social security spending-to-GDP ratio in the Western world. It is also a country where pensions account for one-third of all public spending and where the percentage of pensioners in proportion to workers will rise from 37% today to 65% in 2040 (from three workers who support one pensioner to three workers who support two pensioners).

    An Islamist challenge to this tired and decaying society could be a decisive one. Only Europe’s Christian population is barren and aging. The Muslim population is fertile and young. “In most European countries—including England, Germany, Italy and Russia, Christian deaths outnumbered Christian births from 2010 to 2015,” writes the Wall Street Journal.

    Terrorist attacks will continue in Europe. Recently, in Trèbes, southern France, a jihadist took hostages in a supermarket and claimed allegiance to ISIS. It seems that Europe’s societies consider themselves so strong and their ability to absorb mass immigration so extensive, that nothing will prevent them from believing they can assimilate and manage terrorist acts as they have automobile fatalities or natural disasters. A tiredness also seems to be why these countries do not take meaningful measures to defeat jihadism, such as closing Salafist mosques or expelling radical imams.

    Muslim extremists understand this advantage: so long as they avoid another enormous massacre like 9/11, they will be able to continue murdering people and undermining the West without awakening it from its inertia. The most likely scenario is that everything will continue: the internal fracture of Europe, two parallel societies and the debasement of Western culture. Piece by piece, European society seems to be coming irreparably apart.

  • The World's Two Superpower Countries Are Walking On The Edge Of The Abyss In Syria

    Authored by Elijah J. Magnier,

    For the first time since he is in office, the US President Donald Trump has launched a clear threat in the direction of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin saying “he will pay a price”. This menace is related to the claim that the Syrian army had launched a chemical attack against the city of Duma, in eastern Ghouta, the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s proxies close to Damascus.

    Trump is maybe thinking of bombing the Syrian Army positions spread throughout the Syrian geography, or perhaps even the Al-Muhajereen President’s palace in Damascus- of course, without necessarily saying when and where his army will strike.

    On the other side, Russia is saying it won’t stand still and will respond to any threat against its soldiers. Indeed, Russian officers are deployed in every single Syrian unit on the ground and in command and control headquarters in the Levant, coordinating and participating in attacks against jihadists since September 2015. Therefore, it is almost certain that any direct hit against the Syrian Army will cause Russian casualties.

    Such an act of war may trigger a Russian response by President Putin who will certainly not want to look weak in front of Russian politicians, the Russian military and in front of his own people. Russia has just returned to the international arena, not only as a country in possession of nuclear weapons, but also as a country trying to create a world balance and put an end to the US unilateral dominance that Washington enjoyed since the Perestroika in 1991.

    But how could the US benefit from military action in Syria?

    The mainstream media, the think tank generously financed and nourished by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrein, Trump’s team and the intelligence community- are all asking the US President to go to war in Syria to change the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and replace it with “freedom fighters” that the same Donald Trump is very familiar with and has specifically criticised.

    These rely on a video by activists close to the jihadists, claiming civilians were killed by a chemical attack on the city of Duma, which has gone viral on social media.

    The world chooses to believe mainstream media reporting the content of this video without proof or reference to any verified sources or neutral investigation by any reliable and international investigation committee. The lies of mainstream media during the war in Syria are too numerous to count, amplified by a journalism motivated by the “regime change” agenda, rather than by accurately reporting verifiable events.

    It was perfectly possible for the world to send an international investigation team, since the jihadists of “Jaish al-Islam” have been talking for a long time with the Russians, who are coordinating the exit of these to the north of Syria. Nonetheless, this option seems unavailable and remains unused. The US thirst for waging war and seeing blood flow may not be realisable if the jihadists’ version of the “incident” were seen to be untrue.

    What is more plausible is the fact that the US is not after Assad’s head to cut off, but after Putin’s hands, to cut him off from his new dominance over the Levant.Moreover, what the US would like to see ending is Russia offering the possibility of rejecting US supremacy to Middle Eastern countries (and others in far continents to reject US supremacy).

    The other problem the US finds difficult to digest is the fact that both Assad and Putin have won the war with the help of Iran, and that the US failed to change the regime, and did not protect its Kurdish allies in Afrin. It was unable to stop its NATO partner, Turkey, from striking alliances with Russia and Iran.

    Moreover, the Jihadists (al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State” ISIS) card failed to achieve their objective to replacing a secular Syrian regime with a bloody radical Islamic regime. These Takferee were willing to eliminate the presence of all minorities (Christian, Shia, Allawite and others) and cover the Middle East with black banners. Transforming the Middle East into a sectarian arena and creating failed states like in Libya was not possible to reproduce in the Levant, thanks to the strategies pursued by Russia and Iran.

    So as a winner, it would be foolish for Assad to use chemical attacks and turn the entire world against him when he is about to celebrate his total victory over Ghouta. The city of Duma was not only surrounded but thousands of Jihadists had already left.

    Negotiations failed last week only because these Jihadists in Duma were buying time and were asked to hold on until the world intervened in their favour. They have presented many excuses to their Russian interlocutor asking that:

    • 1000 of these would remain in the city and take up the police role.
    • The $900 million they have accumulated throughout the years from taxes and donations should be transported outside Ghouta by those exiting to the north of Syria.
    • No Syrian intelligence services be allowed to be in Duma.

    All these demands were rejected by the Russian and the Syrian government, who finally understood that the jihadists were waiting for something, a hope: a chemical attack! This is why Russia and Damascus ordered the military to resume the pressure. Today over 165,000 jihadists and civilians left eastern Ghouta and the remaining twenty to thirty thousands are expected to leave in the coming days.

    So Damascus will be totally cleared and no force on the ground – as the US four star general Joseph Votel said – can make a change on the ground in Syria or defeat /change the regime. Therefore, there will be no one who could take advantage of the consequences of a possible US attack on Syria in the coming days.

    Furthermore, a possible US war in the Middle East would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to Trump, he who is digging into the Saudi and Emirates’ pockets to take every single penny, for any excuse.

    It is not a matter of cost or a question of human principle because Saudi Arabia, with US, France and UK support, has been killing tens of thousands of Yemenites for 3 years without blinking an eyelid, under the gaze of the world.

    It is absolutely not a matter of “chemical attack”, because Russia warned the world about this staged excuse Jihadists were preparing, weeks before it was announced to the world in Duma. When it comes to human casualties, the US, responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths as a result of the embargo on Iraq (and indeed in many other US “adventures”), clearly has almost zero sensitivity, considering these casualties as collateral damage.

    So what can hundreds of tomahawks do against the empty Presidential Palace? Are these going to create a difference on the ground? Will bombing Syrian Army airports and military bases defeat Assad? No, it will only increase the number of those killed. The Syrian war casualties are close to 400,000 men, women and children. If the number becomes 401 or 405 or 410,000 to achieve……. There is no answer here but one: to slap the face of Putin and make him look weak, a head of state incapable of defending his friends and allies.

    So the aim is to create a balance in the existing equation to embarrass Russia. The US has no friends, only “common interests”, whereas ‘rising Russia’ is striking alliances yet feels impotent to react faced with an American decision to strike Moscow’s ally.

    Yes, all these possibilities exist. But these other possibilities are much more dangerous:

    • What if Syria decides to react by bombing Israel with dozens of missiles? Damascus already has an excuse to retaliate against the Israeli violation of its air space this week and the bombing of a military air base at the T4 in rural Homs, killing 8 Syrian and 7 Iranian officers. Iran, at the Syrian government’s request, supports the Syrian Army in its fight against jihadists.

    • What if US destroys the Syrian air force? Not a huge change because Russia overwhelms the sky above Syria and is running the show against the Jihadists. It would be an opportunity for the Syrian Air Force to get more modern jets.

    • What if Russia decides to react and hit back at all sources firing against Syria? What if Russia executes its menace and stands against the US? Are the American people ready to die for a country only few would manage to find on the world map? Are Americans ready to receive their children in plastic bags just because Moscow’s influence in the Levant is increasing and therefore bothering Washington?

    This is a very dangerous game Trump is venturing into with his head hidden in the sand, without weighing all the possible consequences.

    The two superpower countries are walking on the edge of the abyss.

    Will both the US and Russia fall into it or will Trump stand down, pull out of this game with his tail between his legs, accept his defeat and try to find another less dangerous arena than the Levant to face Russia? Could it be that Trump is gathering larger coalition, to make sure Russia can’t respond against several nations, and therefore avoid a wider war? The coming days will carry the answer for the world.

  • This Japanese Firm Is Paying Employees In Bitcoin

    As Japan becomes more accepting as cryptocurrencies as a means of exchange, a Japanese company is offering its employees the option to receive some of their pay in crypto.

    The company, GMO Internet Group, said it introduced the option last month, and it will gradually be extended to all of the company’s 4,000 full-time employees.

    Those opting in can select what portion of their monthly salary will be received in bitcoin, between a minimum of 10,000 yen (around $88) and a maximum of 100,000 yen ($882), Fortune said.

    The company is even incentivizing its employees to choose the bitcoin option by offering to tack on a bonus of 10% to whatever portion of their salary is being paid in crypto. 

    While Japanese labor laws require paying salaries in yen, GMO claims it’s not breaking any laws since the optional bitcoin payment would be based on mutual consent and deducted from an employee’s monthly paycheck.

    Bitcoin

    GMO registers domain names and offers web hosting and other services. It also launched an exchange in May, GMO-Z.com Coin, which was later rebranded as GMO Coin. In September, GMO announced it would invest $3 million to mine bitcoin beginning in early 2018.

    The firm says it believes cryptocurrencies like bitcoin will evolve into “universal currencies” available to anyone globally, leading to a “new borderless economic zone.”

    Of course, many financial luminaries from Warren Buffett to Ray Dalio to Robert Shiller would disagree.

    Earlier this week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller compared bitcoin to a “contagion” with rapid price fluctuations reflecting the “intensity of the epidemic”. He said this despite Fed officials’ insistence that the crypto market isn’t large enough to have an impact on the broader financial system.

    According to Japanese bitcoin monitoring site Jpbitcoin.com, yen-denominated bitcoin trading reached a record 4.51 million bitcoins last year – or nearly half of the volume on the world’s major exchanges.

  • America 2.0

    Authored by “Dr.D.” via Raul Ilargi Meijer’s Automatic Earth blog,

    Herbert Stein’s Law states “What Can’t Go On Forever, Doesn’t.” 

    This is a neat summary of the present trade and currency imbalance. China makes real goods and the U.S. consumes them by typing digits on a keyboard. This is the very definition of what cannot go on forever.

    • How long do you expect a nation can make nothing and consume everything?

    • How long do you expect a nation without manufacturing, without a workforce, and now without a viable military to remain pre-eminent?

    • How long does wealth and influence remain in a nation that makes nothing, does nothing, and knows nothing?

    Reminds me of that other Law: “A fool and his money should be parted as soon as possible”, for to be wealthy, and helpless, and dumb, is not a combination that lasts for very long.

    Since China cannot send the U.S. free goods forever, ergo, they won’t. That means slowly or quickly, now or later, they will cut us off. Right now it appears that can never happen, but I assure you it will very soon. And what will the U.S. do then?

    Actually, that’s very simple: the U.S. will have to close a $600B trade deficit instantly. Roughly, that means the U.S. will no longer import $600B worth of goods and be $600B/year poorer, or $2,000/year per person. Nor is this unusual. History is rife with examples of nations that once were prosperous and were suddenly cut off: Spain and Greece come immediately to mind. So how does this happen?

    The Core nation, the trading hub has failed dozens of times in history, from Venice to Holland, Spain to England, and although most of history was on a gold standard, nevertheless the same thing happened: repudiation and devaluation of the currency. That’s why a U.K. Pound is no longer a troy pound of pure silver ($192) and why the U.S. Dollar is no longer 1/20th ounce of gold ($267). So let’s run down how this might unfold.

    Like other empires, the U.S. rose to prominence with hard work and industry. Like other empires, this personal and physical industry was the foundation of an effective military. This military eventually stood alone, leaving the U.S. to set the rules of trade, the rules of diplomacy, and the rules of conduct. Like other nations, the U.S. bent those rules in its own favor, both early and late. Like other nations, the natural way to take advantage was to run an overvalued currency, which draws in capital from all trading partners worldwide, creating a 100-year spiral of wealth and influence that seems truly endless.

    However math, the cruelest of Mother Nature’s laws, is not fooled. If you bend the rules to create market distortions, those distortions are indeed created. If there were fair trade, a gold standard, a nation that increases their wealth would find its currency rise. A rising currency would dampen manufacturing and efficiency, the gold would flow back out, and the unfair advantage would be corrected. But only in a free market. Any market on Earth has an Army, and that Army’s job day and night is to make sure that unfair advantage does NOT end. Ask Smedley Butler.

    Mother Nature is never deterred. However long it takes, she waits. Lacking fair trade, an abnormally strong currency does the only other thing it can: destroy the Core nation’s industry, totally and completely. More certain than a nuclear explosion, economics will not miss a single spot until the wrong is righted and the truth is out. At first the low-gain commodity industries go: mining, shipping, smelting; then their sooty kinsmen: heavy rail, ships, ports, transportation.

    After that go the lighter industries: manufacturing, stamping, autos, and so on up to mainframes, silicon chips and phones, and with them, their children, manufacturing processes and R&D. However, as London and NY showed, you can forestall currency correction even now by moving market distortions into services and financial engineering. At this point, however, the Core nation has nothing left but Banks, Universities, and the Government/Military, and no underlying economy to support them.

    However, what Charles Hugh Smith calls the fiefdoms of monopoly cartels and apparatchiks of the 1% now lead an empty parade, horse-whipping the uncompliant 99% into supporting an economy that exists only in their minds. And then “What can’t go on, doesn’t.” The empire collapses from within, to the total surprise of historians of the 1%, and the total lack of interest of the 99%, for whom it had already collapsed decades before.

    And of the other side? Thanks to the overly-high currency of the Core nation, the perimeter nation has an artificially LOW currency. They didn’t do that, because they are by definition small and weak and aren’t using an army to set the rules. The artificially low currency leads to low costs, low labor, high enterprise, and in the mirror image of the Core nation, the constant INCREASE in manufacturing. The increase in wealth, and the addition of commodity goods, then heavy industry, then manufacturing, then R&D. Whose fault is that? Who used a worldwide army to enforce the very rules that gutted their homeland? Not the Vandals; not China. It was Rome; it was D.C.

    What is this whole imbalance based on? In our case, the artificially strong dollar, backed by a worldwide U.S. military. So how must it end? With a weak dollar, falling real markets, and a U.S. military returning home.

    You say this can’t happen? Yet it must happen. To say otherwise means China will give us free goods for 10,000 years, and the U.S. will get always weaker that whole time. So how does the transition go?

    The U.S. financial bulwark cracks, being highest and most based on psychology, not reality, very likely in conjunction to a military failure or withdrawal, as in empire finance, the military and currency are equivalent. Slowly, then rapidly, the tide flows out, the U.S. dollar gets weaker, the Chinese Yuan gets stronger, and the whole process reversed as it should have done years ago.

    (mind the log scale)

    Mother Nature isn’t fooled, and those 70 years of repression and manipulation are made up in a few years.

    Down on the ground, what happens is not that China shuts off free imports to the U.S. directly, with a political embargo, what happens is the U.S. is seen as a has-been and the U.S. dollar falls in purchasing power on the world market, raising the price of foreign goods in a “free” and “open” marketplace. Lacking manufacturing and the military power to stop it, the U.S. can’t hold off Mother Nature and the laws of physics any more.

    Knowing this to be inevitable, how would a nation prepare? For one thing, you would need to kick-start your industry, post-haste. Anything that can be made internally will find its prices stabilize and not rise. Yet before the currency rates are corrected this face overwhelming headwinds. Second, as income will be lost and the borders will be shut off, you need to switch the focus of taxation from income to tariffs, from finance to real goods.

    Third, you need to open your pipelines, ports, and infrastructure, and expand the required steel, oil by any means necessary, even armed standoffs. Fourth, you’ll need to shove the culture away from government support and subsidies that will soon disappear, and into self-reliance and productivity. Firth, you’ll need to downsize the government and especially the military, which will and must return home. Any of those platforms sound familiar?

    Despite what you read, it’s not all bad. Just as “The arrogant people will be brought down, and high and mighty people will be humbled”, “Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth.”

    This is a master reversal of all manipulations, of all imbalances that have reached extremes. As the U.S. – China trade deficit must balance, we know that Chinese goods must rise. But that also means the cost of production for U.S. goods must fall. This cost-advantage puts Americans back to work just as it did the Chinese, while the rise of the Yuan will make China rich, but less productive.

    What’s more, as matters reverse, the U.S. will raise prices on their exports: food and oil, two things China must have and cannot get elsewhere. Agriculture is at an all-time, 1,000 year low and must rise. Stocks and housing are at an all-time high and must fall. In a reversal, the high prices fall, the low prices rise, that’s obvious. That’s what “reversal” means, that’s what “extreme” means.

    As for manufacturing, the world is changing fast. Even China is opening “dark” factories that employ no people, only robots. That will be true here as well, which undercuts any labor savings they once had. There’s a few problems, however: robotic mega-factories only work with very large scale of identical goods that can source reliable, high-quality inputs. If oil is too high, and/or shipping or marketing fractures, those factories scale down, retool more, and therefore require more people than presently.

    How is China going to have huge robotic mega-factories if half their export market can no longer afford them? If the U.S. and China split the market, aren’t all those factories half the size of present? Since the U.S. will now have low-cost people and raw materials, what advantage does China bring to offset shipping and tariffs? The “market” isn’t uniform. There was worldwide mass-integration of manufacturing between India and England and the world in 1910 too, yet it’s didn’t persist; it changed.

    One way it can change is to leapfrog China. We hear about how the U.S. is a has-been as we are supporting legacy copper telephones while the 3rd world goes directly to fiber and cell, and this is true. However, China has mainlined on low-price, low-profit, mass-manufacturing. Why would anyone compete with them there? It’s irrational. Build a baseline and let them have all the low-profit, environment-destroying work they want, the U.S. can’t and won’t beat them there.

    We can beat them by leapfrogging into technology that’s out there, but no one is revealing yet, things they haven’t done, but Americans are good at doing: innovating, high-tech, medical. Much as I hate high-tech and its panacea as an answer, yet I believe there are goods, ideas out there that can transform the way things work.

    Look at the rapid development and uptake of LEDs for example. The patent office is filled with them, and an outsized number are American. We have superconducting maglev, field physics, material science of no-weight foam, color-shifting paint, hyperconducting graphite, and transparent concrete to name a few. All there, all unused. Let’s make an example case in a very large, very quiet investment.

    Medical and Biotech are to some extent used up, with overpriced, mass-market pharmaceuticals being rejected by price and form even by the wider population. But that’s so last-century. The new biotech is going to take a blood or DNA sample and synthesize a drug specifically for your blood and DNA. They are going to create another organ, a blood transfusion no one but you can use.

    In one way, this may be more expensive, and that’s good for profits, but in another way, they will work for you, much better and guaranteed, and therefore fix your health faster, spare you useless drugs, bad side effects, and actually work, and therefore be cheaper. What does it take to make them? A complete revolution in drug manufacturing. Multi-billion dollars’ worth of equipment, extremely unique development and patents, a 20 year head start.

    Could you sell such a thing to the Chinese? You bet. Could they get off retail manufacturing and scoop us on it? Not a chance. So you see how such a thing could happen, even with a U.S. dollar falling and a hard readjustment ahead. And that’s just one.

    If boutique and robotic goods are the new industries, what do we do with 200 million unemployed? We won’t have 200 million. That’s a consequence of the distorted extreme of our finance, our centralization, our currency. For one thing, we have only 100 million now and a lower dollar will definitely restore the competitive advantage of highly-productive U.S. workers. At the same time, if work requires fewer workers, we will find a solution. Why?

    Because you can’t have 200 million unemployed. Not even 100 million. The resulting inequity and income disparity can and has caused a revolution. Faced with that, any nation will adjust because they must or perish. As difficult as Americans can be, they are a practical people above all. This has happened to dozens of nations in the past: Spain, France, Germany, England, China, Japan, and they all still exist. Things rotated out in the big wheel of time. New things were made and the old ones faded away, and we will too.

    We’re going back to being just one of many nations, and a fair and productive one too. There are ways and we will find them. How can I be so sure? Because “What Can’t Go On Forever, Doesn’t,” and it won’t this time either.

  • Four CBS Producers "Terrified" Over Upcoming Charlie Rose Sex Scandal Exposé

    CBS has been scrambling to have employees sign NDAs in order to silence potential sources ahead of an upcoming Exposé on Charlie Rose in the Washington Post, reports Page Six.

    We’re told that CBS News president David Rhodes, “CBS This Morning” executive producer Ryan Kadro, “60 Minutes” executive producer Jeff Fager and former “CBS This Morning” executive producer Chris Licht are all terrified about a looming Washington Post investigation that’s now been in the works for months.

    “There are a lot of executives looking around corners, hoping they’re not named in the story,” an industry insider told us. “[CBS is] trying to suppress [the story] by using the NDAs.” Meanwhile, said the source, “Jeff, Ryan and David are all waiting for the other shoe to drop.”  –Page Six

    Page Six notes the hypocrisy of CBS News framing alleged Donald Trump mistress Stormy Daniels as “brave” for breaking her NDA, while forcing their own employees to sign them. 

    Rose, a veteran journalist and paragon of the MSM saw his nearly half-century career end within hours of eight women coming forward in a November 2017 Washington Post Exposé – accusing him of predatory “casting couch” behavior similar to Harvey Weinstein. 

    Eight women have told The Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.

    The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the “Charlie Rose” show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011. They ranged in age from 21 to 37 at the time of the alleged encounters. Rose, 75, whose show airs on PBS and Bloomberg TV, also co-hosts “CBS This Morning” and is a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes.” –WaPo

    *POOF* …end of the road Charlie. 

    Rose issued an “I’m sorry and ashamed for walking around with my dick out and groping women” statement before his dishonorable discharge into a shame-filled retirement full of country-club whisperings and fewer holiday parties, we imagine. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It looks, however, like the Washington Post isn’t done with Rose – as those previously in his orbit who may have enabled his behavior appear to be firmly in the crosshairs of JEFF BEZOS (and his robot dog).

  • Holter: "It's Pure Math – We're Headed For A Train Wreck"

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

    Financial writer and gold expert Bill Holter says China has a lot of weapons to fight a trade war with the U.S. China could stop buying Treasury bonds (as it reportedly already has done).  It could sell Treasury bonds.  It could slash the value of the Yuan, or something much simpler could happen such as a failed delivery of physical precious metals.  Holter says,

    “If what has happened so far in the first three months of the year were to continue for the full year, you would be over three billion ounces (of silver).  That is not deliverable.”

    What happen when the world figures out that three billion ounces of physical silver cannot and will not be delivered to the buyers?

    Holter explains, “That’s called an old fashion run on the banks.  It will be a run on the entire system.  You would have a run on every metals exchange, and you would probably have runs on many physical commodities.  Confidence throughout the whole system would break.  You would basically show the western fractional reserve system is a fraud and has been for many, many years…

    Can London deliver a billion ounces, or two billion ounces or three billion ounces of silver?  The answer to that is no.”

    So, when does this all blow up? Holter says, “I think this whole thing has a very good chance of blowing this year.”

    There are a variety of financial trip wires, according to Bill Holter, such as thousands of sealed criminal indictments that will be unsealed in 2018. Holter also points out the explosion of global debt.  Holter charges,

    “It’s now $237 trillion.  The amount of debt grew by $21 trillion globally over the last 12 months. That’s roughly 10 %.  How much did global GDP grow?   2% or 3%, I mean that is totally unsustainable.”

    The biggest worry for Holter right now is escalating military action in Syria. Holter warns,

    “This is so, so dangerous.  Obviously, you worry about a hot war because with the weapons you have today, you could have WWIII start in a heartbeat.  But look at the market today.  It’s up 400 or 500 points.  You have talk of trade wars.  You have talk of hot wars.  It amazing the markets can hold together and ignore potential annihilation.”

    In closing, Holter says,

    “This is math logic and common sense. This is no longer opinion.  You could go back to 2006 and 2007, and it could be argued it was opinion at that point.  It’s no longer opinion.  It’s pure math.  The system is unsustainable.  We’re headed for a train wreck.  Do I absolutely know it’s going to be this year?  No, I don’t know that, but you can see the events are piling up so quickly it certainly looks like it’s going to come to a crescendo very soon.”

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Bill Holter of JSMineset.com.

  • China Launches Massive Combat Drill In Hainan As War With Taiwan "Becomes More Probable"

    Chinese President Xi Jinping promised a more transparent China on Tuesday, during a keynote speech at an economic forum in Boao, on the southern island of Hainan. Immediately after the conference, China’s PLA Navy began a 3-day combat war drill in waters to the south of Sanya, the southern tip of China’s Hainan Island, which is about 112-miles south from the economic forum.

    The Hainan Maritime Safety Administration has demarcated an area in the South China Sea that will be closed to all civilian and commercial vessels from April 10 through 13. The military exercise was made public earlier this week on the government’s website.

    The warning of yet another war drill by China comes after military jets from the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command conducted exercises over rugged terrain in western China to simulate an invasion of Taiwan, said the Daily Express.

    An editorial piece in the Global Times announced: “The mainland needs to continue to prepare for a possible military clash across the Straits.”

    “Beijing cannot be led by the nose. We have to figure out more fronts to showcase our strength and to be the venue for the battle with Taiwan.

    Meanwhile, the mainland needs to continue to prepare for a possible military clash across the Straits. A military showdown with Taiwan is becoming more probable and may take place sooner rather than later. Beijing needs to make clear its bottom line and inform Taiwan society of the dangerous acts which may lead to a military showdown, to avoid a war that could break out due to serious misjudgments by the US and Taiwan. Having got the upper hand strategically, the mainland won’t lose its head. Only the decisions of the mainland will count in deciding the future cross-Straits situation.”

    A Twitter war observer said, “A maritime area of 8 749 km², located south of the island of Haïnan, is closed from 11 to 13 April due to military maneuvers.”

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    The observer added, “At least 7 Chinese nuclear submarines are currently at the Sanya Naval base on Haïnan Island, which borders the South China Sea. This is also the case for a few dozen surface ships of the Chinese navy. Some things are getting ready…” (not verified)

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    Another Twitter user said, “On the heels of the #Boao2018 Forum and Xi Jinping’s keynote speech there- looks like large-scale exercises off Hainan.”

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    On Tuesday, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, sailed through the heavily disputed waters in the South China Sea to the Philippines. As the trade war with China climaxed last week, we reported how the United States Navy deployed three carrier battle groups to face-off against China’s only aircraft carrier and 40 warships.

    ” Satellite images had captured China’s only aircraft carrier in deployment, the Liaoning, flanked by 40 other warships and submarines, conducting unprecedented live-fire drills in the South China Sea. This massive Chinese naval exercise was observed for the first time, with China watchers pointing out that such a forceful display of deterrence was highly unusual for the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Perhaps in light of recent events, it was merely a warning.”

    Now it seems with all the chess pieces positioned around the South China Sea, the epicenter of World War III could easily be Taiwan as tensions between both countries escalate even further. China has declared Taiwan a “rogue state” and has never ruled out military intervention, said the Daily Express.

    General Rolando Bautista from the Philippine army said, as quoted by the Daily Express: “It’s a showcase of the capability of the US armed forces not only by sea but also by air.”

    “The Americans are our friends.

    “In one way or another, they can help us to deter any threat.”

    Last month it was also revealed in aerial photos of the alarming rate of expansion of Chinese military installations in the South China Sea.

    The photos show the extent of Beijing’s construction in the disputed Spratly Islands, with its previously minor outposts now transformed into fortresses featuring air and naval bases.

    Diplomatic relations between the five nations which have laid claim to the islands are already extremely strained, and the recent construction of bunkers on some of the atols point to China preparing to “protection against air or missile strikes”, raising the prospect of a conflict which could spark World War 3.

    While we do not have a crystal ball of the precise epicenter of World War III, in recent weeks, geopolitical events/shifts have provided us with critical knowledge that a trigger point for the next global shooting war could be somewhere around the South China Sea and or Syria. War is coming, have you prepared?

  • The Top 5 Possible Paul Ryan Replacements

    Submitted by Jim E. of The Political Insider

    This morning we learned that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will soon be announcing his retirement from Congress. With Democrat fervor at an all-time high, and Republicans set to lose a massive number of seats in the November midterm elections, Ryan appears to be turning his tail just as his party is set to lose power. Whoever replaces Ryan isn’t guaranteed to be Speaker anymore.

    Axios initially reported that Ryan would make his retirement announcement tomorrow. But House Majority Whip Steve Scalise went on “Fox and Friends” this morning to confirm that Ryan will make his announcement later today:

    With Ryan’s retirement confirmed by the man himself, all talk in Washington is now focused on who will be the next Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

    Here are the top 5 possible replacements for Paul Ryan:

    1. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise – Rep. Scalise is the most likely heir apparent, and it has been rumored for the past few weeks that he is the lawmaker with the best chance of replacing Ryan. Scalise is liked and respected on both sides of the aisle. He’s also a heroic survivor of the shooting spree last spring where a crazed Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to mow down an entire baseball field full of Republicans. During President Trump’s last State of the Union speech, he specifically named Scalise “one of the toughest people ever to serve in this House” to raucous applause.

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    2. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy – Currently the second in command, Rep. McCarthy is reportedly vying with Scalise for the coveted position of House Speaker. Politico reported earlier this week that McCarthy is quietly courting support from rank-and-file members. Back when John Boehner retired from the speakership, McCarthy was heavily favored to replace him, until rumors of an affair derailed his candidacy. Rep. McCarthy is also scheduled to have dinner with President Trump tonight:

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    3. Rep. Daniel Webster – When John Boehner retired, Rep. Webster, a Florida Republican, was the conservative choice for Speaker. His short-lived campaign didn’t garner many votes, but it showed dissent from the more conservative members of the GOP caucus. Webster reportedly has no plans to run for Speaker of the House again in the near future.

    4. Rep. Mike Conaway – The Texas congressman was once seen as a “compromise choice” among the Republican caucus. Politico reported back in 2016 after speculation of Ryan’s departure had reached a fever pitch: “Several senior Republican lawmakers and aides speculate that Conaway, first elected in 2005, could jump into the speaker race if Ryan steps aside and McCarthy doesn’t have the votes to take the gavel or passes.” Conaway not only has the Texas delegation to back his candidacy, but he’s also an accountant, which gives him a reputation for even-handedness.

    5. Rep. Jim Jordan – Another conservative darling and former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jordan has a lot of connections to outside conservative advocacy groups. If Scalise chooses not to run and Webster doesn’t take another stab at it, Jordan would have the instant backing of many influential groups. Jordan’s so outspoken and driven that Politico once referred to him as “the other Speaker of the House.”

  • RBC Warns Cracks "Starting To Show" In Canadian Credit

    One often wonders if the government will ever realize that, due to its policies, its “solutions” often wind up turning into bigger problems than the ones they set out to address initially? Not only that, but this has been the case for decades, and it will continue to be the case until we “engineer” ourselves into a crisis that is too big to fix or too overwhelming to print our way out of.

    Every day we discuss various aspects of a system that ends up far worse off due to a government apparatus that is convinced it knows best and that intervention and interfering are the solution to the problem. In essence, much of the financial crisis of 2008 was a result of the government interfering in the housing market in years prior, combined with the Fed not being able to forecast the crisis, despite widely ostracized skeptics such as Peter Schiff stating repeatedly that the housing market was heading into the abyss.

    Today, we face a new set of challenges as a result of the way governments and central banks dealt (or rather, didn’t) with the 2008 financial crisis. In the United States there are bubbles forming in student loans and subprime auto lending,  while mortgage debt and consumer credit both look to soon be out of control yet again.

    Meanwhile, the problem is spreading geographically and today we are presented with yet another “solution turned into problem”, and as Bloomberg reports, RBC now sees “cracks” in consumer credit becoming a problem yet again, this time in Canada. The combination of low interest rates and the cheap and easy access to capital has yet again gone from being a solution to a problem, as Canadian lenders are seeing delinquency rates “roll” out in time and duration.

    RBC analyst Vivek Selot wrote in a Monday note to clients that “cracks are starting to show in more and more places.”

    The quality of Canadian consumer credit is beginning to deteriorate, according to Royal Bank of Canada credit analyst Vivek Selot.

    The roll rate — the percentage of credit card users who “roll” from early stage delinquencies to 60-89 day delinquencies — reached the highest since 2008 for one credit card program, while delinquencies for another program were above the 10-year average, Selot said in a monthly analysis of credit securitization programs.

    As we have discussed previously, strong labor markets and historically low borrowing costs have allowed Canada’s households to amass one of the highest debt-to-income ratios in the developed world.

    However, amid rising interest rates and a cooling real estate market, there is growing speculation the debt burden poses a threat to the financial system even as Canadian housing prices remain one of the world’s true bubbles.

    As RBC adds, roll rates in National Bank of Canada’s Canadian Credit Card Trust program are at the highest since 2008, while for CIBC’s CARDS II program, early stage delinquencies, 60-89 day delinquencies and roll rates are all above the 10-year average, Selot said.

    Of course, this would not be a problem if supply and demand as it relates to credit and borrowing were simply allowed to operate freely, thus establishing a free market interest-rate versus a central bank mandated cost of money. Meanwhile, Bloomberg is quick to attempt to mitigate the adverse consequences of what the above implies and quotes none other than the RBC analyst, who – perhaps worried about keeping his job – notes that these trends are really quite benign and that the rolling out of delinquencies isn’t necessarily a problem yet because they haven’t “rolled’ all the way to becoming actual charge-offs:

    To be sure, Selot pointed out “consumer credit quality seems benign,” with charge-offs — or recognized losses — remaining near cyclical lows. The average payment rate in February fell about 600 basis points from January to 41.1 percent but was up 162 basis points from the same month a year earlier.

    Which reminds us of an analysis we put together in February 2018 ,detailing discrete trends within U.S. consumer credit, and identifying where the next major problem could be hiding. 

    Net Charge-Off Rate on Credit Card Loans, All Commercial Banks

    Why the very gradual increase in aggregated NCO, and thus why the lack of economist concerns about the state of the US consumer? Simple: the larger banks that dominate credit card issuance have focused on prime and super prime consumers post the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and have enjoyed a prolonged period of low charge off rates concurrent with the Fed’s almost decade long ZIRP.  The problem here is that the vast majority of bank assets is held by a small minority of individuals as in most 80/20 distributions. Meanwhile, smaller banks – those where the bulk of the population holds its meager assets – starting to panic, as charge-off rates are back to financial crisis levels.

    Net Charge Off Rate on Credit Card Loans, (Banks Not in Top 100 by Assets)

    Canada is about to experience something very similar, and as Selot concedes “considering that fragile household balance sheets could be a precipitating factor for the credit cycle to turn, any signs of consumer credit quality deterioration seem worthy of attention.“

    A few more rate hikes by the BOC should do it.

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