- Paul Craig Roberts Warns "The World Is Going Down With Trump"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
On June 21 the editorial board of the Washington Post, long a propaganda instrument believed to be in cahoots with the CIA and the deep state, called for more sanctions and more pressure on Russia.
One second’s thought is sufficient to realize how bad this advice is. The orchestrated demonization of Russia and its president began in the late summer of 2013 when the British Parliament and Russian diplomacy blocked the neoconned Obama regime’s planned invasion of Syria. An example had to be made of Russia before other countries began standing up to Washington. While the Russians were focused on the Sochi Olympic Games, Washington staged a coup in Ukraine, replacing the elected democratic government with a gang of Banderite neo-nazi thugs whose forebears fought for Hitler in World War II. Washington claimed it had brought democracy to Ukraine by putting neo-nazi thugs in control of the government.
Washington’s thugs immediately began violent attacks on the Russian population in Ukraine. Soviet war memorials were destroyed. The Russian language was declared banned from official use. Instantly, separatist movements began in the Russian parts of Ukraine that had been administratively attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders. Crimea, a Russian province since the 1700s, voted overwhelmingly to seperate from Ukraine and requested to be reunited with Russia. The same occurred in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
These independent actions were misrepresented by Washington and the presstitutes who whore for Washington as a “Russian invasion.” Despite all facts to the contrary, this misrepresentation continues today. In US foreign policy, facts are not part of the analysis.
The most important fact that is overlooked by the Washington Post and the Russophobic members of the US government is that it is an act of insanity to call for more punishment and more pressure on a country with a powerful military and strategic nuclear capability whose military high command and government have already concluded that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack.
Are the Washington Post editors trying to bring on nuclear armageddon? If there was any intelligence present in the Washington Post, the newspaper would be urging that President Trump immediately call President Putin with reassurances and arrange the necessary meetings to defuse the situation. Instead the utterly stupid editors urge actions that can only raise the level of tension. It should be obvious even to the Washington Post morons that Russia is not going to sit there, shaking in its boots, and wait for Washington’s attack. Putin has issued many warnings about the West’s rising threat to Russian security. He has said that Russia “will never again fight a war on its own territory.” He has said that the lesson he has learned is that “if a fight is unavoidable, strike first.” He has also said that the fact that no one hears his warnings makes the situation even more dangerous.
What explains the deafness of the West? The answer is arrogance and hubris.
As the presstitute media is incapable of reason, I will do their job for them. I call for an immediate face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin at Reykjavik. Cold War II, begun by Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, must be ended now.
So, where is President Trump? Why is the President of the United States unable to rise to the challenge? Why isn’t he the man Ronald Reagan was? Is it, as David Stockman says, that Trump is incapable of anything except tweeting?
Why hasn’t President Trump long ago ordered all intercepts of Russian chatter gathered, declassified, and made public? Why hasn’t Trump launched a criminal prosecution against John Brennan, Susan Rice, Comey, and the rest of the hit squad that is trying to destroy him?
Why has Trump disarmed himself with an administration chosen by Russiaphobes and Israel?
As David Stockman writes, Trump “is up against a Deep State/Dem/Neocon/mainstream media prosecution” and “has no chance of survival short of an aggressive offensive” against those working to destroy him. But there is no Trump offensive, “because the man is clueless about what he is doing in the White House and is being advised by a cacophonous coterie of amateurs and nincompoops. So he has no action plan except to impulsively reach for his Twitter account.”
Our president twitters while he and Earth itself are pushed toward destruction.
- The EU's Greatest Achievements, According To Europeans
A year on from the UK's Brexit referendum, Prime Minister Theresa May is set to visit Brussels today and outline her government's negotiating position on the future rights of EU citizens living in the UK.
As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, a recently released Chatham House-Kantar survey found that freedom to live and work across the EU is considered one of the EU's top three triumphs by its citizens.
You will find more statistics at Statista
When polled about the EU's greatest achievements to date, 29 percent of people in the UK said there were none, along with 17 percent in nine other countries.
Peace on the European continent was considered the EU's greatest achievement by 14 percent of people on the continent and 17 percent in the UK.
- Preparing For War? US House Wants To Create First New Military Branch Since 1947
There’s currently a push in the halls of Washington D.C., to establish a new branch of the military by 2019, one whose focus would be operations among the stars. Proposed legislation by House representatives would create a “Space Corps” that would serve “as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force.”
It would be the first branch added to the military since 1947 when the Air Force was officially established.
On Tuesday, the top two lawmakers of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Representatives Mike Rogers and Jim Cooper, added the legislation to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The subcommittee oversees military space operations and works within the umbrella of the House Armed Services Committee.
“There is bipartisan acknowledgement that the strategic advantages we derive from our national security space systems are eroding,” Rogers and Cooper said in a joint statement.
“We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems.”
Under the proposed legislation, the Space Corps would serve under the direction of the Air Force much like the Marine Corps serves under the direction of the Navy. But the military branch would have its own chief, equal in rank to that of Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Additionally, the Space Corps head would have a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Air Force itself, however, seems somewhat cool to the congressmen’s idea. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the NDAA on Thursday, Air Force spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said the United States military should be focusing on coordination:
“We think right now it’s important to take the capabilities and the resources that we have and focus on implementation and integration with the broader force, versus creating a separate service.”
Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson echoed a similar sentiment while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday:
“The Pentagon is complicated enough. This will make it more complex, add more boxes to the organization chart, and cost more money. And if I had more money, I would put it into lethality, not bureaucracy…I don’t need another chief of staff and another six deputy chiefs of staff.”
The entire House Armed Services Committee will have to approve the subcommittee’s additions to the NDAA before they can go any further. If that happens, the debate will move to the House floor, where the NDAA is expected to be voted on sometime after the Fourth of July.
Whether or not the legislation makes the cut, however, it should be noted that the idea of militarizing space is nothing new for the United States. As Anti-Media has reported, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work stated at a conference back in 2015 that space must “be considered a contested operational domain in ways that we haven’t had to think about in the past.”
- New Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Think Russia Probes Are "A Distraction"
Last month, we reported on a poll showing most Americans don’t want to see President Donald Trump impeached. Today, a new poll released exclusively to the Hill shows that most Americans feel the investigations into alleged collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign are a distraction.
The poll found that 64% of Americans believe the investigations are hurting the country, and a whopping 73% believe that the focus on Russia is distracting Congress from important issues like health care and tax reform.
Here’s the Hill:
A majority of voters believe the Russia investigations are damaging to the country and are eager to see Congress shift its focus to healthcare, terrorism, national security, the economy and jobs.Those are the findings of the latest Harvard-Harris Poll survey, provided exclusively to The Hill, which paints a complicated picture of voters’ opinions about the numerous probes that have engulfed the White House.
Sixty-four percent of voters said the investigations into President Trump and Russia are hurting the country. Fifty-six percent of voters said it’s time for Congress and the media to move on to other issues, compared to 44 percent who said the focus should stay on Russia.
But other surveys have found strong support for the special counsel investigating the Russia probe. A Harvard-Harris survey released last month found 75 percent support for former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation.
There is evidence in the Harvard-Harris survey that voters are taking the investigations seriously: Fifty-eight percent say they’re concerned by allegations of obstruction of justice against Trump, with the same number worried about possible dealings between Trump and the Russian government.
But far more — 73 percent — say they’re concerned that the Russia probes have caused Congress to lose focus on the issues important to them. That figure encompasses 81 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats.
“While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping the country,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn. “Most voters believe that the president's actions don't rise to the level of impeachable offenses, even if some of them were inappropriate.”
The poll is the latest indication that, despite the best efforts of the New York Times-CNN-Washington Post media cabal, Americans have not been swayed by the steady flow of unsourced allegations. The FBI's probe allegedly began in July of 2016, meaning it's been ongoing for a year now, and yet, nothing even resembling a smoking gun has been shared with the public, one of many of many conspicuous loose ends in the investigation narrative.
Maybe now that the Senate Judiciary Committee is finally investigating alleged misconduct by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, lawmakers will start to slowly turn their attention away from Trump and his associates and focus on an official who clearly abused a position of public trust for political gain.
- The Government's Plan To Survive Nuclear War Doesn't Include You
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Once again this week, the United States teetered a little closer towards war with the Russians. On Sunday, the US military shot down a Syrian jet that was allegedly targeting US backed forces. The Russians have since claimed that the aircraft was engaging ISIS, and have revealed that their air defense systems will now track any of our aircraft that happen to fly over Western Syria. They also suspended a hotline between the US and Russia that was in place to prevent mid-air collisions over the crowded skies of Syria.
Amid incidents like this, you have to wonder what our government is thinking. For most Americans, Syria must seem inconsequential. Why is our military involved in a country, where we are brushing shoulders with a nuclear armed nation? If it’s to fight ISIS, then we could easily sit back and let Russian and Syrian forces wipe them out. If it’s to affect regime change, then clearly our government hasn’t learned anything from Iraq or Afghanistan. Why are we risking a war with the Russians just to influence the outcome of a regional civil war that has little bearing on the daily lives of most Americans?
The answer to that question could probably fill a novel, but there is one reason that the elites in Washington will never admit to. They can afford to make careless decisions because they are insulated from the results. If there is a war with Russia, which could easily turn into a nuclear war, they’ll have plenty of spacious bunkers to hide out in while the rest of America burns. And that’s been our government’s plan in regards to nuclear war since the beginning of the Cold War.
That’s the main takeaway from a new book called Raven Rock: The Story of the US Government’s Plan to Save Itself. Our government has spent decades building sprawling bunkers, like Raven Rock, that high ranking officials can flee to in the event of a nuclear war.
The idea for Raven Rock was to have a military base that would function as an alternative to the Pentagon and would be dug out of a mountain and deep enough to survive any Russian attack.
A site was chosen six miles from Camp David, the Presidential retreat in Maryland, and work began in 1951 on the $17 million project
Some 300 men worked round the clock in three shifts to carve a 3,100ft tunnel out of the granite; engineers invented technology as they went along including blast doors and blast valves.
Inside the facility there was 100,000sq/ft of office space in five parallel caverns big enough to hold a three story building in each.
The entire facility could fit 1,400 people and was placed on giant springs to reduce the impact of a blast.
Via Daily Mail
Meanwhile, as they were building these bunkers and trying to convince Americans that nuclear war could be easily survivable, behind the scenes they knew it would be a bloodbath for civilians.
At the end of the 1950s, the FCDA created ‘Battleground USA’, a grim 120-page report on how cities should manage civil defense operations in the event of an attack.
It said that the area should be divided into ‘mortuary zones’ with ‘collection teams’ in charge of identifying bodies.
Post Office mail trucks would ferry the wounded to one of 900 improvised hospitals set up near attack sites in places like federal prisons.In Kansas officials planned to confiscate household vitamins for use by the general population.
Planners estimated they could assemble two million pounds of food after an attack from their own reserves and from stores.
They could also could find 11 million ‘man-days’ of food in the forests and plains in rabbit meat, 10 million ‘man-days of wild birds and five million ‘man-days’ of fish.
Most chillingly they budgeted nearly 20 million ‘man-days’ of meat in residential pets.
It was disturbing reading and a view of the world that summed up by Eisenhower in one meeting: ‘The destruction might be such that we might ultimately have to go back to bows and arrows’
During another meeting Eisenhower admitted that nation didn’t have ‘enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the street’ in the event of a nuclear strike’.
And as we all know, our government didn’t take many measures to protect civilians from the potential carnage that would be inflicted by a nuclear war. They didn’t build many bunkers for the rest of us.
At first glance that may sound like an impossible task, but it’s not. Take Switzerland for instance. Despite not having any nuclear weapons, they’ve built enough fallout shelters to house every Swiss citizen. You might say that we could never afford that many shelters, but it’s not a question of cost. Switzerland’s GDP per capita is similar to America’s.
The truth of the matter, is that our leaders don’t give a damn about what happens to American civilians. As long as they have their bunkers, they feel safe while antagonizing nuclear armed nations like Russia. They know that if there’s a war, they’ll survive while the rest of us burn and starve.
Make no mistake, if there’s ever a war with Russia, you’ll be on your own. Whether or not you survive depends entirely on your willingness and ability to prepare now.
- Angry Dems Turn On Obama, Pelosi, Schumer: "Talk Less About Russia"
It’s been a rough week for the legacy of the Obama administration. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee launched a Democrat-endorsed probe into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s conduct during the campaign – when it’s widely believed she colluded with the Clinton’s to “soften” the FBI’s probe into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information. Earlier, sure-thing Democratic neophyte Jon Ossoff lost a special election in Georgia that he was supposedly guaranteed to win, leading America’s least—preferred party of overly brazen corporatists to an embarrassing 5-0 defeat, and stoking calls for Nancy Pelosi – the Dem’s longtime leader in Congress – to step aside.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, revelations that Russian hackers targeted voting systems in 21 states – and the Obama administration did nothing about it – have inspired the president’s fellow Democrats to turn on their once-revered leader.
As the Hill reports, Democrats are criticizing no-drama Obama for being too cautious with his disclosures about “the Russia problem” in the run-up to the 2016 election, claiming that he shouldn't have hesitated to inform the public about the allegations:
“The Obama administration is under fresh scrutiny for its response to Russian meddling in the election after new details emerged this week about how the White House weighed its actions against the 2016 political environment.
Then-President Obama was too cautious in the months leading up to the election, frustrated Democratic lawmakers and strategists say.
“It was inadequate. I think they could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who co-chairs the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee."
Meanwhile, Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan, who recently challenged Pelosi for leadership of the party, is leading a small group of Congressional Dems in criticizing Chuck Schumer, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership's irrational focus on the Russia investigations. Ryan believes the focus on making the Dems appear out of touch to working Americans who care more about economic issues than the Trump witch hunt, as the Hill reports. Ryan's attempt to lead from behind comes as some of his peers push for the creation of a 9/11-style Commission to launch what would be the fourth investigation into the Trump campaign.
Even though the contradiction here is obvious – Dems are complaining that the party is too focused on Russia, while criticizing Obama for not releasing more scurrilous details about alleged interference –at least Ryan recognizes that the focus on Russia will hurt the Dems where it counts: In next year's midterms.
"We can't just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren't really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday. “They're trying to figure out how they're going to make the mortgage payment, how they're going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like.
“And if we don't talk more about their interest than we do about how we're so angry with Donald Trump and everything that's going on,” he added, “then we're never going to be able to win elections.”
Turning back to Obama, the president's motives in withholding the information definitely leave room for speculation. Was he worried that the public would interpret the disclosure as transparent fearmongering intended to benefit the Clinton campaign – or maybe he thought it would make the Democrats and Clinton look ineffectual in the face of a problem that couldn’t be solved with a couple of well-timed drone strikes? For what it's worth, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says Obama withheld the information because he didn’t want to play into Trump’s claims that the election was being “rigged.”
"Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday told lawmakers that the White House held back on responding to Russia because it didn’t want to play into fears, propagated by then-candidate Trump, that the election would be “rigged.”
“One of the candidates, as you'll recall, was predicting that the election was going to be rigged in some way,” Johnson said. “And so we were concerned that, by making the statement, we might in and of itself be challenging the integrity of the election process itself.”
Trump had repeatedly claimed that the outcome of the election would be “rigged” against him, alleging widespread voter fraud and inaccurate polling. He provided no evidence to back up his claims, but critics feared that his rhetoric could undermine public trust in the outcome of the election.
In any event, Obama’s decision to withhold the information has made the Dems look weak, desperate and disorganized. And now they’re rightfully worried that the administration’s countermeasures – kicking out a few dozen diplomats – have helped them lose what little credibility they still had in the eyes of the public. Meanwhile, President Trump has a few questions of his own;
'Some Republicans argue the Obama administration only started to take the Russia threat seriously after President Trump had won the election.
Trump has called the influence operation a “hoax” and dismissed the various inquiries into Russian interference in the election — which include looking for possible collusion between his campaign and Moscow — as a “witch hunt.”
“By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?” Trump tweeted Thursday.
The Obama administration announced on Oct. 7 that the theft and release of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails was part of a widespread campaign “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”So what’s next for the Dems? Obama, who has already pivoted from politician to social-media celebrity, will probably continue to chime in every now and then from the peanut gallery. Meanwhile, we wait to see if the DOJ or any other interested parties piggy-back on the Senate’s investigation into Lynch’s blatant attempt at obstruction, and wonder: Could this be the controversy that leads to the unraveling of the modern Democratic Party?
Of course, President Trump couldn't resist taking a shot at his predecessor on Twitter:
Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017
By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017
- Meet The Money-Laundering, Nigerian Oil Magnate Behind New York's $50MM Condo Foreclosure
Last night we noted that yet another luxury condo at Manhattan’s One57 tower, a member of “Billionaire’s Row,” a group of high-end towers clustered along the southern edge of Central Park, had gone into foreclosure – the second in the span of a month. The 6,240-square-foot, full-floor penthouse in question, One57’s Apartment 79, sold for $50.9 million in December 2014, making it the eighth-priciest in the building and likely the largest residential foreclosure in Manhattan’s history.
According to Bloomberg, the owner of the apartment attempted to conceal his/her identity by using a shell company (you know how those kooky billionaires can be) but was able to obtain an ‘unusually large’ mortgage with an even more unusual term: one-year.
In September 2015, the company took out a $35.3 million mortgage from lender Banque Havilland SA, based in Luxembourg. The full payment of the loan was due one year later, according to court documents filed in connection with the foreclosure.
The borrower failed to repay, and now Banque Havilland is forcing a sale to recoup the funds, plus interest.
Of course, it was only a matter of time until the mystery man behind Manhattan’s most recent luxury real estate epic fail was exposed. As such, meet Nigerian oil magnate, Kola Aluko.
As it turns out, the world renowned, Nigerian-born, billionaire playboy is about $25,000 behind on his property taxes. But, that is probably the least of his worries as the New York Post points out that he currently wanted by authorities in both Nigeria and Europe for defrauding the Nigerian government out of oil sale profits.
But Aluko has bigger problem, it seems. The 47-year-old tycoon is under investigation in Nigeria and in Europe for alleged money-laundering crimes.
A Nigerian court, according to various reports, tried to freeze Aluko’s assets, including his One57 unit, as part of the alleged scheme to defraud the government of oil sale profits.
Meanwhile, it seems that the only reason Aluko isn’t already in prison is because the Nigerian courts can’t seem to find him to serve papers. Apparently he’s been hiding out on this 213-foot, $100 million yacht, the Galactica Star, for over a year.
Over the past year, the boat has been spotted making port calls in Cancun, Mexico and Turkey.
Of course, if you’re going to be an international playboy then you need to have rich and famous friends and, as it turns out, rappers Jay-Z and P. Diddy seemed to have fulfilled that role for Aluko. Back in 2012 the rap duo apparently hosted Aluko’s birthday party in Beverly Hills. Then, just a few years later in 2015, Jay-Z and wife Beyonce rented Aluko’s mega-yacht for the bargain basement price of just $900,000 per week to sail around the Mediterranean.
Well, presumably it was fun while it lasted.
- An Open Letter To The Fed's William Dudley
Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,
Dear Mr. Dudley,
Your recent remarks in the wake of last week’s FOMC statement were notably unhelpful.
In particular, your excuses for further rate hikes to prevent crashing unemployment and rising inflation stunk of rotten eggs.
Crashing Unemployment
Quite frankly, crashing unemployment is a construct that’s new to popular economic discourse, and a suspect one at that.
Years ago, prior to the nirvana of globalization, the potential for wage inflation stemming from full employment was the going concern. Now that the official unemployment rate’s just 4.3 percent, and wages are still down in the dumps, it appears the Fed has fabricated a new bugaboo to rally around. What to make of it?
For starters, the Fed’s unconventional monetary policy has successfully pushed the financial order completely out of the economy’s orbit. The once impossible is now commonplace.
For example, the absurdity of negative interest rates was unfathomable until very recently. But that was before years of central bank asset purchases made this a reality.
Perhaps, the imminent danger of crashing unemployment will give way to the impossibility of negative unemployment. Crazy things can happen, you know, especially considering the design limitations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ birth-death model.
Secondly, muddying up the Fed’s message with inane nonsense like crashing unemployment severely diminishes the Fed’s goal of providing transparent communication. In short, Fed communication has regressed from backassward to assbackward.
During the halcyon days of Alan Greenspan’s Goldilocks economy, for instance, the Fed regularly used jawboning as a tactic to manage inflation expectations. Through smiling teeth Greenspan would talk out of the side of his neck. He’d jawbone down inflation expectations while cutting rates.
Certainly, a lot has changed over the years. So, too, the Fed seems to have reversed its jawboning tactic. By all accounts, including your Monday remarks, the Fed is now jawboning up inflation expectations while raising rates.
Congratulations and Thank You!
History will prove this policy tactic to be a complete fiasco. But at least the Fed is consistent in one respect. The Fed has a consistent record of getting everything dead wrong.
If you recall, on January 10, 2008, a full month after the onset of the Great Recession, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke stated that “The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.” Granted, a recession is generally identified by two successive quarters of declining GDP; so, you don’t technically know you’re in a recession until after it is underway. But, come on, what good is a forecast if it can’t discern a recession when you’re in the midst of one?
Bernanke’s quote ranks up there in sheer idiocy with Irving Fisher’s public declaration in October 1929, on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression, that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” By the month’s end the stock market had crashed and crashed again, never to return to its prior highs in Fisher’s lifetime.
To be fair, Fisher wasn’t a Fed man. However, he was a dyed-in-the-wool central planner cut from the same cloth. Moreover, it is bloopers like these from the supposed experts like Bernanke and Fisher that make life so amiably pleasurable. Do you agree?
Hence, Mr. Dudley, words of congratulations are in order! Because on Monday you added what’ll most definitely be a sidesplitting quote to the annals of economic banter:
“I’m actually very confident that even though the expansion is relatively long in the tooth, we still have quite a long way to go. This is actually a pretty good place to be.” – William Dudley, June 19, 2017
Thank you, sir, for your shrewd insights. They’ll offer up countless laughs through the many dreary years ahead.
Too Little, Too Late
When it comes down to it, your excuses for raising rates are not about some unfounded fear of a crashing unemployment rate. Nor are they about controlling price inflation. These are mere cover for past mistakes.
The esteemed James Rickards, in an article titled The Fed’s Road Ahead, recently boiled present Fed policy down to its very core:
“Now we’re at a very delicate point, because the Fed missed the opportunity to raise rates five years ago. They’re trying to play catch-up, and yesterday’s [June 14] was the third rate hike in six months.
“Economic research shows that in a recession, they [the Fed] have to cut interest rates 300 basis points or more, or 3 percent, to lift the economy out of recession. I’m not saying we are in a recession now, although we’re probably close.
“But if a recession arrives a few months or even a year from now, how is the Fed going to cut rates 3 percent if they’re only at 1.25 percent?
“The answer is, they can’t.
“So the Fed’s desperately trying to raise interest rates up to 300 basis points, or 3 percent, before the next recession, so they have room to start cutting again. In other words, they are raising rates so they can cut them.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Dudley, the Fed miscalculated. Efforts to now raise rates will be too little, too late. To be clear, there ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell the Fed will get the federal funds rate up to 3 percent before the next recession. You likely won’t even get it up to 2 percent.
Nonetheless, you should stay the course. If you’re gonna raise rates, then raise rates. Don’t cut them. Raise them. Then raise them some more.
Crash stocks. Crash bonds. Crash real estate. Crush asset prices. Purge the debt and speculative excesses from financial markets.
Let marginal businesses go broke. Let too big to fail banks, fail. You can even consult with Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld, if needed. Then let nature do its work.
In essence, bring the paper money experiment to a close and shutter the doors of the Federal Reserve. No doubt, the economy and millions of people will suffer a painful multi-decade restructuring. But what choice is there, really?
Let’s face it. The Fed can’t hold the financial order together much longer anyway. Why pretend you can with utter nonsense like crashing unemployment? It’s insulting.
Your credibility’s shot. Better to get on with it now, before it’s forced upon you.
P.S. What’s up with Neel Kashkari? The man has gone rogue.
- CIA Director Mike Pompeo: Trump's "An Avid Consumer" Of Intel, Will "Punish Leakers"
In his first interview since becoming the head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo pushed back against accusations that President Donald Trump doesn’t read his daily intelligence briefings, claiming that the president is “very interested” in what’s happening at the intelligence communities and that his daily in-person briefings with the president typically run longer than their allotted time.
Pompeo tells MSNBC that Trump is a demanding boss who asks “great questions” and is trying to enable the CIA to take a more active “operational” role in countering threats posed by the US’s enemies.
Pompeo began by responding to criticism that some say Trump is "uninterested in facts":
“I cannot imagine a statement that is any more false than one that would attribute President Trump of not being interested in the intelligence community. He is an avid consumer of the products the CIA provides he thinks about them and comes back and asks great questions and perhaps most importantly relies on them.”
As the Hill pointed out, Pompeo acknowledged that the CIA has been harmed by information leaks in recent years, but said that he and Trump are focused on shutting down the leakers.
“There have been failures,” he said. “You have not only nation states trying to steal our stuff but … folks like Wikileaks.”
He went on to say that he believes under Trump, the intelligence community will be able to both stop and punish leaking.
“We and all of President Trump’s government are focused on stopping leaks," he said, "and I think we'll have some successes both on the deterrence side, that is stopping them from happening, as well as on punishing those who we catch who have done it."
When asked about cooperation within the intelligence community, Pompeo said he suspects it has improved since the pre-9/11 era, though imperfections remain.
“I think we’re in a much better place today whether we’ve connected them all or not I suspect perfection cannot be achieved. The intelligence community have taken answers to today’s problems and applied them in really interesting ways.”
As Pompeo’s interviewer, NBC’s Hugh Hewitt, noted, the intelligence community almost universally assumed that Clinton was going to win November’s election.
But now that Trump is in power, how is the administration triaging the US’s enemies? Pompeo says he and the president spend the most time discussing the threat posed by North Korea. Trump scored a major foreign policy victory this week after Chinese state media reported that the Communist Party has agreed with the US that the Korean peninsula needs to undergo “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization.
Chinese state media described the talks, the first of their kind with the Trump administration, as an upgrade in dialogue mechanisms between China and the United States, following on from President Xi Jinping's meeting with Trump in Florida in April.
“North Korea is a very real danger. I hardly escape a day at the White House without the president asking me about North Korea and how the US is responding to that threat. For the past 20 years, the US has whistled past the graveyard hoping on hope that North Korea would see a change of color."
"They have the capacity to put America at risk with a nuclear weapon.”
Countering Iran, ISIS and Hezbollah also rank highly on the president’s list of priorities. When comparing Hezbollah to Iran, Pompeo said that the latter’s resources increase its capability to threaten the US.
“Iran is a powerful nation state with wealth and resources an organized government and an established piece of real estate of which they have complete control…I would say Iran poses the larger challenge, though I hesitate to rank them. ISIS is an enormous risk to the US today and we need to do everything to defeat them.”
In a sudden, unexpected turn, Hewitt asked Pompeo about Saudi Arabia and the allegations that radical elements within the kingdom’s government helped aid and abet the 9/11 hijackers. While Pompeo wouldn’t comment on these claims, he offered something almost as telling.
Pompeo said he believes the Saudi Arabian government values the cooperation and friendship of the US, and that the kingdom has made “a fundamental decision” not to condone acts of terror, or terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.
“They welcomed an American who wasn’t on the side of the Iranians for coming to visit with them. They’ve come to understand that America will support them when pushing back against enemies that we share and support them to expand their economies as well."
"The Saudis have made a fundamental decision not to engage in that kind of activity that has led to all kinds of trouble in past decades…I think they understand that it’s not in Saudi Arabia’s best interest to not support terrorism.”
Of course, Pompeo’s response carefully sidestepped any acknowledgment of whether Saudi Arabia once collaborated with Al Qaeda to launch acts of terror against the US. Maybe Pompeo was trying to reassure executives at Saudi Aramco, who have argued against bringing the impending IPO of a 5% stake in the state-owned oil giant to New York City, fearing a lawsuit. Don’t worry, he seemed to suggest: All has been forgiven.
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