- British Discontent About The EU: Only A Precursor To Unrest On The Continent
Authored by Peter Cleppe, originally posted at Euro Insight,
If Brexit marks the beginning of the end for the European project, Brussels will take its share of the blame
If Britain leaves the EU and if the reaction to Brexit causes years of uncertainty, the EU will reap what it has sowed. British discontent is only a precursor to unrest on the Continent, where populists from across the political spectrum feel they have lost control over their fate, and are gaining popularity.
We’ve seen the transfers of power to the European level after ignoring the referendums on the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands in 2004. We’ve witnessed the refusal to allow Grexit, which could have been an alternative for continued fiscal transfers and interventions into national budgetary decisions. Both have created a lot of discontent and anti-EU sentiment since 2010.
Last year, there was the decision to outvote Central and Eastern Europe on the sensitive issue of forcing countries to accept refugees, which isn’t even possible in a passport-free zone, as people can travel freely, but which was decided to divert attention from criticism on Angela Merkel’s controversial refugee policy and to organize yet another transfer of power to the EU level.
Finally, we could see how Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposals to bridge the gap between the EU and citizens were met with a lukewarm reaction. His proposal, for example, to allow national parliaments to block EU proposals was watered down to make it harder to implement.
If the British vote to ‘Remain’, they most likely won’t do so with a majority of more than 60%. That however is the threshold needed, according to pollster Comres, to really settle the debate for the next few years.
With a narrow victory for the ‘Remain’ camp, it is therefore more than likely that the debate would just start over the next day, very much like the Scottish demand for independence which has remained a prominent feature in UK politics after 44.7% of Scots voted to secede from the UK in a referendum in 2014.
If people vote to ‘Leave’ the EU, the government is likely to activate article 50 of the EU Treaty, which foresees that the status quo is maintained for two years and that both parties are given the chance to renegotiate their relationship.
Many think that two years will be much too short for this. The British government thinks that there could perhaps be 10 years of uncertainty, while EU Council President Tusk has mentioned seven years. Some in the ‘Leave’ camp have claimed that there may even be a second referendum after a Brexit vote, whereby Britain would get the chance to remain in the EU after all, but under better conditions than those negotiated by Cameron in February this year.
It’s unlikely that the UK would want a relationship similar to that between Norway and the EU. Norway may have complete access to the European single market because of its membership of the European Economic Area but in exchange it needs to comply with over a set of EU rules without having any influence over them within the EU institutions. That surely won’t be an option for a country which just would have left the EU because of a desire to have more sovereignty.
Also, to have the EU-Canada trade deal (CETA) as a model, as advocated by the ‘Leave’ campaign’s Boris Johnson, may not be appealing, given the lack of access the financial services industry would enjoy to the EU market.
The British may prefer something like the Swiss model instead, which means that the UK and the EU would negotiate which markets they would open to each other and which rules they would harmonise or mutually recognize. At the moment, a Swiss firm like Credit Suisse is based in London in order to be able to access the EU’s single market, so some extra hurdles may emerge.
Whatever trade relationships are pursued by a post-Brexit Britain, it’s very possible that a Brexit vote would unleash protectionist sentiment on the Continent and that the EU would want to punish the “naughty pupil” by means of limiting market access for British financial firms. Diplomats have already made clear that both France and the EU Commission are keen to “punish” the UK if it would vote to leave, while Germany, which exports a lot to Britain, is planning to be more conciliatory in the event of a vote for Brexit.
This protectionism would both hurt Britain and the Continent, given that the City of London can be seen as its financial lifeline. It would in any case be similar to the EU’s reaction to Switzerland, after the Swiss expressed in a referendum the desire to restrict free movement for EU citizens and the EU Commission essentially refused to negotiate.
British proponents of EU membership have made the case that Cameron’s deal guarantees that the “high-watermark” of EU intervention in British policy has been reached.
But EU opponents have questioned how legally binding the deal is, leading to obscure debates on the relationship between international and EU law. They have claimed that even after threatening the nuclear option – a referendum on Brexit – Cameron didn’t manage to obtain more than what they consider to be peanuts.
One thing is certain: if Brexit marks the beginning of the end of the EU project, many of those responsible are to be found in Brussels.
- Brexit: Why The Wrong Question Is Being Asked
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
Market dislocations occur when financial markets, operating under stressful conditions, experience large widespread asset mispricing.
Welcome to this weeks edition of “World Out Of Whack” where every Wednesday we take time out of our day to laugh, poke fun at and present to you absurdity in global financial markets in all it’s insanity.
While we enjoy a good laugh, the truth is that the first step to protecting ourselves from losses is to protect ourselves from ignorance. Think of the “World Out Of Whack” as your double thick armour plated side impact protection system in a financial world littered with drunk drivers.
Selfishly we also know that the biggest (and often the fastest) returns come from asymmetric market moves. But, in order to identify these moves we must first identify where they live.
Occasionally we find opportunities where we can buy (or sell) assets for mere cents on the dollar – because, after all, I’m a capitalist.
In this week’s edition of the WOW we’re covering Brexit.
In a show of just how disjointed British society has become with previously held cultural values, London’s mayor just banned all advertisements of models who are essentially non-sharia compliant.
“Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, announced Monday that “body shaming” advertisements will no longer be allowed in London’s public transport.”
I admit to having a fondness for London, having previously called it home for 6 years of my life. One of the reasons I chose to live there – instead of say Kabul or Riyadh – was because I never much fancied girls dressed like ninjas. And together with friends I quite liked the fact that we could enjoy a few pints at the pub and wouldn’t be jailed and flogged for doing so.
As little as ten years ago it would have been unthinkable that either of these things would have been in question. And yet here we stand today, watching events unfold in real time. These little pieces of culture are under ever increasing threat, and it’s not just in Britain. Is it any wonder we are having a sweeping backlash and change in the zeitgeist?
What the political class in both Europe and Britain has miraculously failed to understand is that Brexit is much more about failures on multiple levels than it is about the concept of the EU. The EU has been so bastardised that it’s completely unrecognisable from the creature first established 23 years ago. This is understandable as the business of government is to grow cancer like never relinquishing power once established.
Having seen the slow but accelerating effects of a bureaucracy on tilt, the average Joe Citizen is now waking up to the fact that he finds himself with an oppressive and suffocating external form of government, an imperial overseeing force which understands his needs less and less.
Like an intestinal worm, the bureaucracy has grown to the point where the following areas of governance are now essentially dictated by a foreign imperial power:
- Immigration (the freedom of movement between EU member states works only if the EU’s external borders are controlled)
- Crime (closely tied to the flood of immigrants already pouring into Britain and other EU countries)
- Trade (44% of trade is with EU member states and nobody wants to see that hurt)
- Law (laws applying to British Citizens are increasingly made by the EU and not by the UK judicial system)
- Jobs (closely tied to trade)
- Finance (as the financial centre for Europe, London is subject to EU laws)
- Sovereignty (Britain’s parliament is no longer sovereign)
- Defence (Does Europe have defence?)
Is it any surprise that Joe Citizen is questioning the status quo?
It certainly shouldn’t be. This questioning has been met with a level of desperation by the establishment which can only be described as unprecedented.
Yes to Brexit or no to Brexit is less important a question than why Brexit in the first place?
The vote to stay or leave the EU is as much a vote for or a rejection of the establishment than any other European or British referendum I can think of.
We’re seeing an increasing divide across the developed world. The Trump vs Hillary debate is characterised by Hillary Clinton representing the establishment vote and Donald Trump positioning himself as a rejection of the establishment.
This is less a Republican vs Democrat vote than ever before and the rejection vote grows every day across the developed world.
Consider the following:
- Austria recently experienced something which would have been completely unimaginable just a decade ago. They came within a whisker (just 0.6%) of electing to power the Austrian Freedom Party, an openly racist, extremely anti-immigrant and anti-muslim party.
- According to a recent poll, over 90% of Dutchmen want a referendum on leaving.
- Italy’s right-wing party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, look like they’ll have their guy elected mayor of Rome.
- Marine Le Pen, France’s right-wing hopeful, looks like an increasingly likely candidate for presidency next year.
Der Spiegel has a nice map showing the trend. Countries with far right parties which have a presence in parliament are shown with yellow dots and those where far right parties are already part of the government are shown with red dots.
The xenophobic right-wing and rising backlash – a direct result of the European Union having lost control of its borders – has seen countries such as Sweden, Holland, and the UK experiencing surging right wing popularism.
Previously moderate Europeans no longer watch from the safety of their living rooms the Jihadi cauldron boiling in Damascus, Khartoum, or Islamabad, but instead find it exploding onto the streets of their own cities.
Nearly half of citizens in eight European countries polled want to hold a referendum on membership. Bottom line: Europe is in trouble and Brexit is simply bringing it to life in vivid colour for all to see.
As traders and investors it’s of no consequence what we may wish to happen. As incredibly important, wonderful, talented, intelligent, good looking, and well deserving readers of Capitalist Exploits are, the market doesn’t actually give a toss about us. Depressing, I know. But what actually takes place and how that affects asset prices is what matters.
And so the question to ask isn’t whether Britain leaves the EU, but rather from where will the next crisis of confidence come?
Cast your vote here and also see what others think
Or do you think it will be some other country? Let me know in the comments here.
Know anyone that might enjoy this? Please share this with them.
We’d love your feedback and if you have a market you think worthy of covering please send it to me here.
– Chris
“Darlin’ you got to let me know, should I stay or should I go?” – The Clash, Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
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- Gold Lower Despite “Panic” Due To “Supply Issues” In Inter Bank Gold Market
Gold Lower Despite “Panic” Due To “Supply Issues” In Inter Bank Gold Market
Gold fell again today to its lowest in a week despite continuing uncertainty about the outcome of the Brexit referendum. This is contributing to very significant high net worth and institutional demand in recent days, particularly in the UK, which is leading to “panic” and “supply issues” in the interbank gold market.
Supply issues which respected gold analysts and ourselves have warned in recent years were taking place, would deepen and would ultimately lead to a reset of gold prices to much higher levels.
Click chart for more
Increasing speculation that Britain may vote to stay in the European Union and hedge fund liquidations are being blamed for the recent price falls. However, bullion dealers such as GoldCore, mints and refineries that cater to the UK market have seen minimal selling this week and in fact there has been a surge in demand again this week.
We believe the price falls are due to hedge funds and banks liquidating positions and shorting the market. As ever, there is the risk that algo and high frequency trading (HFT) may be manipulating prices lower despite very robust physical demand and increasing liquidity issues in the interbank gold market.
Informed, senior sources at the highest level of the gold bullion industry have told us that there is “panic” in the inter bank or institutional gold market. According to the sources one of whom is from a leading Swiss gold refinery, we are in a “unique trading climate” that they have never seen before. This is not just due to Brexit but to “a number of factors” and so is likely to continue even after the Brexit referendum.
The market is subject to absolutely “unprecedented conditions” and a degree of illiquidity and “supply issues” not seen even in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, Lehman Brothers and the height of the Eurozone crisis.
Refineries and mints are being advised that bullion banks may take the unprecedented step of “suspending the trading of physical gold.” Premiums have risen on larger orders creating the situation where spreads are higher on larger orders. An example of this is that a 1,000 ounce order worth $12.66 million at current prices is trading at a premium of $0.33 per ounce over a smaller order of 500 ounces.
There is also warnings that stop loss orders above 5,000 ounces may not be filled at agreed prices and could be filled at much lower prices. In addition, a number of large liquidity providers in the gold market, such as Intl FC Stone, have increased margins.
Thus counter intuitively, larger high net worth and institutional orders are costing more than somewhat smaller relative orders. This has the effect of discouraging larger buy orders for physical – whether by accident or by design. “Officialdom” does not want surging gold prices in advance of the referendum due to the risks that this poses to the financial and monetary system and therefore prices may be being “capped” prior to the vote tomorrow.
This bodes well for prices in the aftermath of the vote – whether the UK votes to remain or leave in the EU.
Bullion banks “have been panicking” and advising that soon, they may no longer be able to quote prices on large gold bar orders. This response is previously unheard of and indicates the increasing illiquidity in the large gold bar market due to a recent surge in HNW, UHNW and institutional (wealth managers, hedge funds, banks etc) demand across the world coupled with already robust central bank demand.
The increasingly illiquid physical gold market where supply cannot keep up with demand underlines the importance of owning physical bullion coins and bars – either in your possession or having direct legal title to your individual coins and bars. Bullion should be owned in your name or your company’s name and be stored directly in the safest vaults in the safest jurisdictions in the world – outside the financial, banking system.
- Who Is The "European Movement" And Why The Answer May Change How You Vote On "Brexit"
Submitted by Professor Richard A. Werner, D.Phil. (Oxon)
EU Basics – Your Guide to the Referendum
The British people should be clear about just what they will be voting on at the EU referendum this Thursday. What does it actually mean to stay in the EU? What does it mean to exit?
Concerning the second question, the dominant issue in the debate has been the question whether there will be a significant negative economic impact on the UK from exiting the EU. Prime Minister David Cameron, together with the heads of the IMF, the OECD and various EU agencies have given dire warnings that economic growth will drop, the fiscal position will deteriorate, the currency will weaken and UK exports will decline precipitously. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer has threatened to cut pensions if pensioners dare to vote for exit. But what are the facts?
I have been trained in international and monetary economics at the London School of Economics and have a doctorate from the University of Oxford in economics. I have studied such issues for several decades. I have also recently tested, using advanced quantitative techniques, the question of the size of impact on GDP from entry to or exit from the EU or the eurozone. The conclusion is that this makes no difference to economic growth, and everyone who claims the opposite is not guided by the facts. The reason is that economic growth and national income are almost entirely determined by a factor that is decided at home, namely the amount of bank credit created for productive purposes. This has sadly been very small in the UK in recent decades, thus much greater economic growth is possible as soon as steps are taken to boost bank credit for productive purposes – irrespective of whether the UK stays in the EU or not (although Brexit will make it much easier to take such policy steps). We should also remember that a much smaller economy like Norway – thought more dependent on international trade – fared extremely well after its people rejected EU membership in a referendum in 1995 (which happened against the dire warnings and threats from its cross-party elites, most of its media and the united chorus of the heads of international organisations). Besides, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China never needed EU membership to move from developing economy status to top industrialised nations within about half a century. The argument of dire economic consequences of Brexit is bogus.
As for the first question, namely what it means to stay inside the EU, we should consult the EU itself. Happily, the EU released a major official report about its key policies and what it plans to achieve in the near future in October 2015. This report was issued in the names of the “Five Presidents“ of the EU. In case you had not been aware that there was even a single, let alone five presidents of the EU, these are: The unelected president of the European Central Bank, Goldman Sachs alumnus Mario Draghi, the unelected president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected Brussels Commissar and “president of the Eurogroup“, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the “president of the Euro Summit“, Donald Tusk, and the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. What is the message of this not negligible number of EU presidents concerning the question of where the EU is going? The title of their joint report is a give-away: “The Five President’s (sic) Report: Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union“. https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/publications/five-presidents-report-completing-europes-economic-and-monetary-union_en
The report starts with the frank admission that “with 18 million unemployed in the euro area, a lot more needs to be done to improve economic policies” in the EU. Well said. But what exactly needs to be done?
“Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) today is like a house that was built over decades but only partially finished. When the storm hit, its walls and roof had to be stabilised quickly. It is now high time to reinforce its foundations and turn it into what EMU was meant to be…“
“ we will need to take further steps to complete EMU.”
The central planners in Brussels and at the ECB in Frankfurt are not unaware that under their command, a historically unprecedented economic dislocation has taken place in the EU during the past ten years, including massive asset and property bubbles, banking crises and large-scale unemployment in all the periphery countries – with over 50% youth unemployment in Greece, Spain and Portugal, as well as the lack of any serious controls of the EU external borders to prevent an influx of unparalleled numbers of illegal immigrants and economic migrants.
However, the EU central planners are in denial about the fact that these problems have been caused entirely by their own misguided and disastrous policies. As a result, they argue that the solution to such problems can only be further concentration of powers into their hands: “We need more Europe“, as Mrs Merkel put it (source: please read these Merkel claims about the EU http://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-priorities-2020/news/merkel-calls-for-political-union-to-save-the-euro/) This is what they propose to implement in the coming years, by turning all EU members into one single country.
So the Five Presidents‘ Report makes clear that the EU is not simply a free trade area. That project had been left behind with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and a very different kind of Europe has become enshrined with the 2007 European Constitution (called ‘Lisbon Treaty‘, since the people of Europe in several referenda rejected it. Source: please read what the author of the rejected European Constitution says: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/valeacutery-giscard-destaing-the-eu-treaty-is-the-same-as-the-constitution-398286.html ). Instead, the EU is the project to abandon all national sovereignty and borders within and melt away all European nations that don’t succeed in exiting in time, into a merged, joint new single country, with one central European government, centralised European monetary policy, centralised European fiscal policy, centralised European foreign policy, and centralised European regulation, including of financial markets and banking. This United States of Europe, an undemocratic leviathan that the European peoples never wanted, is the culmination of the much repeated mantra of “ever closer union“.
This project has been implemented steadily and stealthily over several decades, despite major and consistent policy blunders and scandals involving the central planners (e.g. in 1999 the entire European Commission – the unelected government and cabinet of the European superstate – resigned in disgrace, as it was found to have taken bribes and engaged in fraud, while the EU’s own Court of Auditors has repeatedly refused to sign off the EU’s official books).
The economics is clear: there is no need to be a member of the EU to thrive economically, and exiting does not have to impact UK economic growth at all. The UK can remain in the European Economic Area, as Norway has done, or simply agree on a trade deal, as Switzerland did, and enjoy free trade – the main intention of European agreements in the eyes of the public. The politics is also clear: the European superstate that has already been formed is not democratic. The so-called ‘European Parliament‘, unique among parliaments, cannot propose any legislation at all – laws are all formulated and proposed by the unelected European Commission! As a Russian observer has commented, the European Parliament is a rubber-stamping sham, just like the Soviet parliament during the days of the Soviet Union, while the unelected government is the European Commission – the Politibureau replete with its Commissars.
Big business and big banks, as well as central bankers and the IMF, constitute the financial elite that is behind this purposeful concentration of power – giving ever more power into the hands of ever fewer people. The undemocratic nature of EU institutions has reached such an extent that I have heard a recently retired member of the ECB governing council in private confessing that his biggest worry is the undemocratic nature and extent of the ECB’s powers, which have increasingly been abused for political ends. These facts have been drowned out by the constant drip of propaganda emanating from the powerful elites behind the creation of the United States of Europe.
During these years and decades of steady transfers of powers and sovereignty from nation states and their democratically elected assemblies to the unelected Brussels bureaucracy, I had always been puzzled by the apparent strong US support for all this. Whenever the ‘process‘ of ‘ever closer union‘ seemed to have hit an obstacle, a US president – no matter the post holder’s name or party affiliation – would intervene and in no uncertain terms tell the troublesome Europeans to get their act together and speed up unification of Europe into one state. In the naivety of my youth this had struck me as surprising. Likewise, the British public has recently been told by US president Obama that dropping out of the EU was not a good idea and they had better vote to stay in.
While it is not surprising that the global elite that has benefitted from the trend towards concentration of power is getting increasingly hysterical in their attempts to cajole the British public into voting to stay inside the EU, it is less clear why the US president and his government should be so keen on the EU project. We had been told in the past by the European media that the concentration of economic and political decision-making in Europe was being engineered in order to create a counter-weight against the US dominance. This seemed to motivate some pro-EU voices. Surely the US president must have heard about that?
There is another mystery. Only yesterday, an impressive-looking leaflet was dropped into the letterbox of my Winchester home, entitled “EU Basics – Your Guide to the Referendum“. It was issued by an organisation called the “European Movement“. The 16-page colour and high gloss booklet argues for Britain to stay in the EU. Who is this “European Movement“, and who is funding it? This little-known organisation seems financially powerful enough to drop a high-quality print booklet into every household in the entire UK.
The declassification of formerly secret records has solved both mysteries. For as it turns out, they are connected. In the words of Nottingham University academic Richard Aldrich:
“The use of covert operations for the specific promotion of European unity has attracted little scholarly attention and remains poorly understood. … the discreet injection of over three million dollars between 1949 and 1960, mostly from US government sources, was central to efforts to drum up mass support for the Schuman Plan, the European Defence Community and a European Assembly with sovereign powers. This covert contribution never formed less than half the European Movement’s budget and, after 1952, probably two-thirds. Simultaneously they sought to undermine the staunch resistance of the British Labour government to federalist ideas…. It is also particularly striking that the same small band of senior officials, many of them from the Western [note: this means US] intelligence community, were central in supporting the three most important transnational elite groups emerging in the 1950s: the European Movement, the Bilderberg Group and Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for a United States of Europe [ACUE]. Finally, at a time when some British antifederalists saw a continued ’special relationship‘ with the United States as an alternative to (perhaps even a refuge from) European federalism, it is ironic that some European federalist initiatives should have been sustained with American support.“
There is much more to read in this explosive piece of scholarly research (Richard J. Aldrich (1997), OSS, CIA and European unity: The American committee on United Europe, 1948-60, Diplomacy & Statecraft,8(1), pp. 184-227, online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592299708406035#.V2exrU36voo )
UK journalist and former Brussels correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was the only journalist to report on such academic research findings, in two articles in 2000 and 2007:
“DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. … US intelligence secretly funded the European Movement, paying over half its budget. Some of Europe’s founding fathers were on the US payroll….
“The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. Lest we forget, the French had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the federalist signing table in the early 1950s. Eisenhower threatened to cut off Marshall aid unless Paris agreed to kiss and make up with Berlin. France’s Jean Monnet, the EU’s mastermind, was viewed as an American agent – as indeed, he was. Monnet served as Roosevelt’s fixer in Europe during the war and orchestrated the failed US effort to stop de Gaulle taking power.
“One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA. … Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then. The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement’s funds. The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington.
“The leaders of the European Movement – Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak – were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.
“The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as head of ACUE in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth.
“It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which “adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable“.
“Fifty years after the Treaty of Rome, the architects of post-war US policy would be quite pleased, I think, if they were alive today. …
(excerpted from: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (2000), Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs, The Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2000; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (2007), The scare of a superstate has passed, but do we want to lose the EU altogether? The Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2007)
No wonder Mr Evans-Pritchard has now concluded that he will vote for Brexit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/12/brexit-vote-is-about-the-supremacy-of-parliament-and-nothing-els/
The revelation that the EU is the result of a major US secret service operation – effectively just yet another secret creature of deception launched by the CIA (taking seat of honour in the hall of infamy that includes false flag operations, invasions, coup-detats, and the establishment of organisations such as Al Qaida and ISIS) solves the third mystery, namely how on earth the allegedly democratic European nations could design such an undemocratic, virtually dictatorial structure. With the EU/United States of Europe the US not only achieves its geo-strategic goals in Europe, but it has also eliminated the role of pesky national parliaments that could on occasion get in the way of US or CIA foreign policy. And another puzzle is solved, namely why the EU had so readily agreed to a US request a few years back that US spy agencies get access to all European emails and telephone calls….
A vote to stay in the EU thus is a vote to abolish the United Kingdom as a sovereign state and merge it into the undemocratic United States of Europe which the European elites are building under US tutelage. That the European public – and, it seems, even European politicians – have little or no input in key European decisions can be seen from the increasingly aggressive NATO stance against Russia (Brussels-based NATO being the military arm of the EU, which is overtly under direct US control), and the one-sided sanctions against Russia that the US could simply order the Europeans to implement (causing significant losses in incomes and jobs in Europe, while boosting US business interests). Immigration policies are another case in point. If the US had in the past considered the largely homogeneous European populations a source of potential European resistance against its plans for Europe, then the policy to replace them with balkanised failed ‘melting pots‘ also makes sense.
Norway voted in 1995 on EU membership. Leading parties were all in favour. Big business and central banks, major media outlets and the talking heads on TV were frantically bullying and cajoling the Norwegian public to vote ‘in‘. The people remained steadfast and voted ‘out‘. Norway did splendidly. And so much more will the UK.
Professor Werner is Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Southampton. He is known for proposing the concept of ‘Quantitative Easing‘ in Japan. His 2003 book Princes of the Yen warned of the dangers of excessive central bank independence and predicted that the ECB was likely to create credit bubbles, banking crises and recessions in the eurozone.
- Silver Options Traders Follow Gold To Longest Bullish Bet Since 2009
Where gold goes, silver often follows, and in the options markets that is increasingly so…
3 month Puts have now been cheaper than Calls for more than 97 days…
As the chart shows, bearish options on exchange-traded funds tracking the metals have been cheaper than bullish ones for the longest time since at least 2009.
It doesn't appear the trend is set to change anytime soon, as Fed credibility collapses (red line – inverted expectations of rate-hike-pace) so Gold (gold line) and global developed market bonds (green line) have soared tick for tick…
So what happens next?
“There’s more upside risk for gold than there is downside,” Josh Crumb, the chief strategy officer who helps oversee $1.7 billion at Toronto-based GoldMoney, said in an interview in New York. “For gold to fall, they would have to raise interest rates more than the market expects, and I think that’s a very unlikely scenario.”
- Brexit: Global Trigger Event, Fake Out Or Something Else?
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Those people who do not avidly track global economic events may be a bit confused by the growing tensions surrounding the U.K. referendum to exit the European Union, otherwise known as the “Brexit.” Or, they are completely indifferent. Unfortunately, the potential fallout surrounding the event could very well affect the entire world, but perhaps not in the manner the mainstream media and international financiers would have us believe…
I would point out that under normal global economic conditions, the Brexit really shouldn’t matter much to anyone outside of the U.K. If the EU was fiscally stable, if its banks were solvent and its national debts well in hand, if the EU was actually a practical and successful supranational body, then the damage done by a British vote to leave the union would be minimal. Of course, this is not the case. As many other independent economic analysts and I have been outlining for years, the European Union is on the verge of economic breakdown. Look at it this way — if financial turmoil in a tiny member state like Greece can cause widespread doubts about the EU’s stability, then there is something fundamentally volatile about the entire structure.
The Brexit matters greatly to the future of the EU because, theoretically, if one of its most prominent members says adios, then other members may do the same. As it stands now, the EU cannot afford to have even one member, economically large or small, drop out of the system.
The Brexit matters to the rest of the world including the U.S. because of the brilliantly-destructive program of interdependency and globalism that has shaped our financial house for decades. Interdependency leads to extreme economic weakness because no piece of the global system has the tools to survive without the other pieces; and on top of this, when one part of the machine goes down, ALL the other parts are affected.
It is a truly horrible and seemingly idiotic system; but not so idiotic if you accept the reality that it is deliberately engineered to fail.
When you examine the fiscal foundations of every major economy in the world today, what you find is a financial shell game. The fundamentals tell us the truth; with global exports and imports in decline, global shipping of raw materials in decline, manufacturing in decline, retail in decline, employment in decline, real unemployment numbers including those people no longer counted by the Labor Department skyrocketing and the number of people on welfare and food stamps skyrocketing.
In reality, the global economy is one massive thin-skinned bubble searching for a sharp object to impale itself on. The Brexit may very well be that sharp object.
Before I go into the various details surrounding Thursday’s vote, I want to state that I am in full support of the British movement to leave the European Union. The reasoning behind a successful Brexit is solid. The European Union’s rabid socialist tendencies have created a doom scenario for all those shackled to the supranational body. Forced multiculturalism and cultural Marxism has opened a floodgate of Islamic refugees which hold ideological beliefs completely incompatible with western principles and heritage while at the same time introducing a massive vampiric drain on the prevailing social welfare systems.
The EU’s governing body is a mostly faceless and unaccountable bureaucracy that hands down legal dictates from on high while the general population of the member states have little or no input. The European Central Bank’s monetary policies support failed financial institutions and fraudulent markets while siphoning tax dollars from stronger and more successful nations in order to feed the debt addictions of weaker countries. The very philosophical engine behind the EU is one of collectivism; it is a system that requires a hive mentality in order to function. Only a fool would WANT to participate in such a political and financial farce.
That said, I think we need to take stock of certain underlying realities.
First, as mentioned earlier, the EU, like most other economies today, is an interdependent structure and is thus designed to fail. The EU is not the golden goose for globalists, it is just another appendage that can be sacrificed or rearranged in order to achieve greater goals. The EU is a means to an end, it is not the ultimate prize.
The ultimate prize for globalists would be a system like the EU with a single currency and a single monetary authority, but this new system would erase all sovereign borders and install a single governmental authority as well.
What does this mean? It means that the failure of the EU does not necessarily mean a failure for the internationalists. For groups of globalists that promote an ideology of Fabian Socialism, a breakdown of the EU, whether partial or total, can be used as leverage for a larger and more centralized global power structure in the long term. Mark my words, when the system comes crashing down (whether after the Brexit or after another trigger event), internationalists will say that the EU failed not because it was centralized, but because it was not centralized ENOUGH.
Even though I support the Brexit movement based on the principle that supranational unions are a heinous affliction upon free individuals and nations, I have no illusions that a successful Brexit vote will actually harm the globalists. In fact, they may very well desire the U.K. to leave the EU.
Why? As noted, the global economy is on the verge of implosion. The ONLY elements of the system that are not yet crashing are stock markets. This is because stock markets do not in any way reflect the fundamentals of the economy, they only reflect investor perceptions of the economy. Perceptions can be manipulated for a time, and public psychology can be subdued by false optimism and lies. It can take years for a population to psychologically accept the idea that they are in the midst of a recession or depression. Therefore, it can take years for stock markets to finally reflect the legitimate dangers within the economy.
Central banks at the behest of globalist institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank For International Settlements have spent incredible amounts of capital and energy managing public perception. Through subversive monetary policies, they have weakened national economies to the point of collapse, and this collapse is meant to create enough chaos to inspire the masses through fear to support greater centralization.
While certain banking institutions may fall, the bankers themselves have no intention of taking any blame for the inevitable collapse.
If you examine modern history (the past century), you will find in the aftermath of every crisis that globalist organizations have consistently blamed nationalism and sovereignty while promoting socialism and centralization as the most civilized solution. That is to say, globalists create widespread war and financial terror, blame conservative ideals such as sovereignty, then argue that such ideals must be eradicated for the greater good of the greater number.
We have to be honest in our exploration of the Brexit event and admit that in this case the globalists win either way.
If the Brexit succeeds, the globalists can allow the market systems they have been inflating for years to finally crash. They can then blame those dastardly "far-Right extremists" in the U.K. for triggering a domino effect within the global financial system, conveniently scapegoating British conservatives, moderates and sovereigns for a breakdown that was going to happen eventually anyway. Their solution will once again be to argue for the end of “barbaric” conservative principles and install complete centralization and socialism as the cure.
If the Brexit fails, or if it is a controlled fake out, they can artificially boost markets for perhaps another month while distracting the public away from the negative fundamentals yet again.
We should also not overlook the possibility that the referendum vote may be rigged one way or the other. Current polls indicate a tie between the “Leave” crowd and the “Remain” crowd. Any vote this close is the easiest kind of vote to rig a few percentage points to either side.
I believe the Brexit vote may be allowed to succeed, here’s why…
1) Elites including George Soros have suddenly decided to dive into the market to place bets on the negative side. Dumping large portions of their stock holdings, shorting equities and buying up gold and gold mining shares. Soros has been preparing his portfolio for a successful Brexit vote while at the same time publicly warning of the supposed dire consequences if the referendum passes. The last time Soros put this much capital into the markets was in 2007, just before the crash of 2008.
2) The IMF and the BIS have been warning since late 2015 (for six to eight months) that a global economic downturn is on the way in 2016. We saw considerable volatility at the beginning of this year, and markets are due for another shock. The last time the BIS and IMF were so adamant about an impending crash was in late 2007, just before the 2008 market plunge.
3) While the Federal Reserve has not yet implemented a second rate hike (I still believe they could use a rate hike this year to stab markets in the back if necessary), Janet Yellen pulled a maneuver which was almost as upsetting to investors. After the Fed policy meeting last week, markets were moderately exuberant and stocks were rising, then, Yellen opened her mouth and blamed the Brexit for the rate hike delay… Here is what the Fed has done: By delaying the second hike for another month, and then blaming the Brexit vote as a primary reason, they have created a bit of a paradox. If the Brexit vote passes, the Fed is asserting that they may not hike rates for a while, giving market investors the impression that the global economic recovery is not all that it is cracked up to be. If the Brexit vote fails, then the Fed MUST hike rates in July, otherwise, they lose all credibility. I believe Yellen’s claim that the Brexit vote was the cause of the hike delay was highly deliberate. It has triggered what may become a growing firestorm in equities and commodities.
From the point of view of investors, if the Brexit passes, then all hell breaks loose. If the Brexit fails, then the Fed will hike rates and once again, all hell breaks loose. Or, the Fed refuses to hike rates even though its number one scapegoat is out of the picture, it loses all credibility, and all hell breaks loose.
It’s a lose/lose/lose scenario for the investment world, which is probably why global markets plunged after Yellen’s remarks. Investors have been relying on the predictability of central bank intervention for so long that now when ANY uncertainty arises, they run for the hedges.
The Fed decision to blame the Brexit for their rate hike delay could indicate foreknowledge of a successful Brexit vote.
4) The recent murder of British lawmaker Jo Cox is perhaps the weirdest piece in the puzzle of the Brexit. For one thing, it makes no sense for a pro-Brexit nationalist (Thomas Mair) to attack and kill a pro-EU lawmaker when the polls for the “Leave” group were clearly ahead. One could simply argue that the guy was nuts, but I’m rather suspicious of “lone gunman,” and his insanity has yet to be proven. I see no reason for this man, insane or not, to be angry enough to kill while the Brexit side was winning in all the polls.
If someone was using him as a weapon only to discredit the Brexit vote or sway the public towards staying in the EU, you would think that they would have initiated the murder closer to the day of the referendum when it would have the most effect. The information flooded public has days to digest new data and forget Jo Cox.
My theory? Thomas Mair has handlers or he is just a mentally disturbed patsy, and his purpose is indeed to paint the Brexit movement as “angry” or crazy. But this does not necessarily mean the intent behind the assassination of Jo Cox was to break the back of the Brexit movement. Rather, the goal may only be to perpetuate a longer term narrative that conservatives in general are a destructive element of society. We kill, we’re racists, we have an archaic mindset that prevents “progress,” we divide supranational unions, we even destroy global economies. We’re storybook monsters.
Even the cultural Marxists at the Southern Poverty Law Center somehow produced documents allegedly linking Mair (a veritable unknown) to Neo-Nazi groups in 1999. Wherever the SPLC is involved, the official story is always skewed.
The murder of Jo Cox has had a minimal effect on Brexit polling numbers. In the end, the elites may find Thomas Mair more useful as a mascot for the Brexit AFTER the vote, rather than before the vote.
So now the Brexit movement, which is conservative in spirit, is labeled a “divisive” and “hateful group”, and if the referendum is triumphant, they will also be called economic saboteurs.
There is also the possibility that the Brexit is yet another fake out. We have seen many of them over the past few years. So many in fact that a lot of analysts in the Liberty Movement have grown pretty cynical, as if the system could be propped up forever. The issue is always, of course, one of timing. All fundamentals indicate that the global economy is going down regardless of what central banks and international financiers do in the long run. The only question is whether or not they feel it is time to pull the plug on one of the last remaining bubbles (stocks). A successful Brexit could be a perfect scapegoat for the next leg down in the economy, or it could be a perfect placebo to boost markets for a short time if it fails. In either case, I have no doubt that the outcome has already been decided.
- China Warns The US That It Is "The Wrong Opponent To Play Games With"
Two US aircraft carriers, the John C. Stennis and Ronald Reagan, began joint operations in the seas just east of the Philippines over the weekend the US Navy announced on Monday. The operations come during a tense time in the region, as China recently announced that it would not adhere to any unfavorable ruling that may come from The Hague regarding the Philippines formal challenge of territorial claims in the South China Sea.
China has been very clear in its position that the US should stay out of the maritime disputes in the region, however the US has already made it clear that it intends to be the policeman in the region for decades to come, so the move comes as no surprise. Admiral John Richardson, the chief of US Naval Operations said that it was not often the US had two carrier strike groups in the same waters and it was a sign of US commitment to regional security.
According to Reuters, Richardson made a correlation between the Asian deployment and the deployment the US recently sent to the Mediterranean Sea in order to send a message to Russia.
"Both here and in the Mediterranean, it's a signal to everyone in the region that we're committed, we're going to be there for our allies, to reassure them and for anyone who wants to destabilize that region. And we hope there's a deterrent message there as well."
A US Pacific Command (PACOM) statement quoted Rear Admiral John D. Alexander, commander of the Ronald Reagan carrier group, as saying it was an opportunity to practice techniques needed to prevail in modern naval operations.
"The US Navy has flown, sailed and operated throughout the Western Pacific in accordance with international law for decades, and will continue to do so."
One additional piece to this story is that as Reuters points out, the People's Daily (the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, which is often used to express foreign policy views), had the following to say about the US decision to send carriers in.
Conveying a so-called message about security through the exhibition of military might, and furthermore describing the events as an act of deterrence is something that the U.S. has done far too many times. Regardless of how many times it may have gone smoothly in other parts of the world the U.S. has chosen the wrong opponent by selecting China for this type of game. Behind all of this is lack of patience and brassy moves and it also reveals a nature of hegemony beneath the surface.
* * *
It is obvious that China is getting tired of the games that the US is playing in the region, and no matter how many times China has warned that the US should stay out of its affairs, the US remains steadfast in its effort to police the region. It is only a matter of time before a confrontation takes place, intentional or otherwise, and then the world will be undoubtedly pushed to the brink of war – which would be bullish for stocks of course.
- BREXIT EXPLaiNeD…
If Brexit passes Goldman won’t be able to sodomize Greece from London…
- Trump's Anti-Interventionism – Neocons Hate It As Anti-War Left Comes Around
Submitted by John Walsh via LewRockwell.com,
Until recently the progressive mind has been resolutely closed and stubbornly frozen in place against all things Trump.
But cracks are appearing in the ice. With increasing frequency over the last few months, some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy. Let us hear from these heretics, among them William Greider, Glen Ford, John Pilger, Jean Bricmont, Stephen F. Cohen and William Blum. Their words are not to be construed as “endorsements,” but rather an acknowledgment of Trump’s anti-interventionist views, the impact those views are having and the alternative he poses to Hillary Clinton in the current electoral contest.
First, let’s consider the estimable William Greider, a regular contributor to The Nation and author of Secrets of the Temple. He titled a recent article for the Nation, “Donald Trump Could be The Military Industrial Complex’s Worst Nightmare: The Republican Front Runner is Against Nation Building. Imagine That.”
Greider’s article is brief, and I recommend reading every precious word of it. Here is but one quote: “Trump has, in his usual unvarnished manner, kicked open the door to an important and fundamental foreign-policy debate.” And here is a passage from Trump’s interview with the Washington Post that Greider chooses to quote:
“’I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up,’ Trump told the editors. ‘And we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn.… at what point do you say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner cities.’”
Trump talks about building infrastructure for the inner cities, especially better schools for African American children, rather than bombing people of color halfway around the world! That is hardly racism. And it is not how the mainstream media wants us to think of The Donald.
Next, Glen Ford, the eloquent radical Left executive editor of Black Agenda Report, a superb and widely read outlet, penned an article in March 2016, with the following title: “Trump Way to the Left of Clinton on Foreign Policy – In Fact, He’s Damn Near Anti-Empire.” Ford’s piece is well worth reading in its entirety; here are just a few quotes :
“Trump has rejected the whole gamut of U.S. imperial war rationales, from FDR straight through to the present.”
“If Trump’s tens of millions of white, so-called ‘Middle American’ followers stick by him, it will utterly shatter the prevailing assumption that the American public favors maintenance of U.S. empire by military means.”
“Trump shows no interest in ‘spreading democracy,’ like George W. Bush, or assuming a responsibility to ‘protect’ other peoples from their own governments, like Barack Obama and his political twin, Hillary Clinton.”
“It is sad beyond measure that the near-extinction of independent Black politics has placed African Americans in the most untenable position imaginable at this critical moment: in the Hillary Clinton camp.”
Next, let’s turn to John Pilger, the Left wing Australian journalist and documentary film maker who has been writing about Western foreign policy with unimpeachable accuracy and wisdom since the Vietnam War era. Here are some of his comments on Trump:
“..Donald Trump is being presented (by the mass media) as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our skepticism.”
“Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.”
“In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as ‘a world substantially made over in [America’s] own image’. The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. …”
“Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.”
The money quote is: “The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton.” When Pilger submitted his article to the “progressive” magazine Truthout, this sentence was deleted, censored as he reported, along with a few of the surrounding sentences. Such censorship had not been imposed on Pilger by Truthout ever before. Truthout’s commitment to free speech apparently has limits in the case of The Donald versus Hillary, rather severe ones. So one must read even the progressive press with some skepticism when it comes to Trump.
Trump has also been noticed by the Left in Europe, notably by the sharp minded Jean Bricmont, physicist and author of Humanitarian Imperialism who writes here:
(Trump) “is the first major political figure to call for ‘America First’ meaning non-interventionism. He not only denounces the trillions of dollars spent in wars, deplores the dead and wounded American soldiers, but also speaks of the Iraqi victims of a war launched by a Republican President. He does so to a Republican public and manages to win its support. He denounces the empire of US military bases, claiming to prefer to build schools here in the United States. He wants good relations with Russia. He observes that the militarist policies pursued for decades have caused the United States to be hated throughout the world. He calls Sarkozy a criminal who should be judged for his role in Libya. Another advantage of Trump: he is detested by the neoconservatives, who are the main architects of the present disaster.”
And then there is Stephen F. Cohen, contributing editor for The Nation and Professor Emeritus of Russian History at Princeton and NYU. Cohen makes the point that Trump, alone among the presidential candidates, has raised five urgent and fundamental questions, which all other candidates in the major parties have either scorned or more frequently ignored. The five questions all call into question the interventionist warlike stance of the US for the past 20 plus years. Cohen enumerates the questions here, thus:
“Should the United States always be the world’s leader and policeman?
“What is NATO’s proper mission today, 25 years after the end of the Soviet Union and when international terrorism is the main threat to the West?
“Why does Washington repeatedly pursue a policy of regime change, in Iraq, Libya, possibly in Ukraine, and now in Damascus, even though it always ends in “disaster”?
“Why is the United States treating Putin’s Russia as an enemy and not as a security partner?
“And should US nuclear weapons doctrine include a no-first use pledge, which it does not?”
Cohen comments in detail on these questions here. Whatever one may think of the answers Trump has provided to the five questions, there is no doubt that he alone among the presidential candidates has raised them – and that in itself is an important contribution.
At this point, I mention my own piece, which appeared late last year. Entitled “Who is the Arch Racist, Hillary or The Donald”? Like Cohen’s pieces, it finds merit with the Trump foreign policy in the context of posing a question.
Finally, let us turn to Bill Blum, who wrote an article entitled, “American Exceptionalism and the Election Made in Hell (Or Why I’d Vote for Trump Over Hillary).” Again there is little doubt about the stance of Blum, who is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, a scholarly compendium, which Noam Chomsky calls “Far and away the best book on the topic.”
Blum begins his piece:
“If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.”
“My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted.”
And he concludes:
“He (Trump) calls Iraq ‘a complete disaster’, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. ‘They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.’ He even questions the idea that ‘Bush kept us safe’, and adds that ‘Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists’.”
“Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?”
I conclude with Blum’s words because they are most pertinent to our present situation. The world is living through a perilous time when the likes of the neocons and Hillary Clinton could lead us into a nuclear Armageddon with their belligerence toward Russia and their militaristic confrontation with China.
The reality is that we are faced with a choice between Clinton and Trump, a choice which informs much of the above commentary. Survival is at stake and we must consider survival first if our judgments are to be sane.
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