- Paul Craig Roberts: "There Is A Conspiracy… And It's Against The American People"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
In the United States “conspiracy theory” is the name given to explanations that differ from those that serve the ruling oligarchy, the establishment or whatever we want to call those who set and control the agendas and the explanations that support the agendas.
The explanations imposed on us by the ruling class are themselves conspiracy theories. Moreover, they are conspiracy theories designed to hide the real conspiracy that our rulers are operating.
For example, the official explanation of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory. Some Muslims, mainly Saudi Arabians, delivered the greatest humiliation to a superpower since David slew Goliath. They outsmarted all 17 US intelligence agencies and those of NATO and Israel, the National Security Council, the Transportation Safety Administration, Air Traffic Control, and Dick Cheney, hijacked four US airliners on one morning, brought down three World Trade Center skyscrapers, destroyed that part of the Pentagon where research was underway into the missing $2.3 trillion, and caused the morons in Washington to blame Afghanistan instead of Saudi Arabia.
Clearly, the Saudia Arabians who humiliated Ameria were involved in a conspiracy to do so.
Is it a believable conspiracy?
The ability of a few young Muslim men to pull off such a feat is unbelievable. Such total failure of the US National Security State means that America was blindly vulnerable throughout the decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union. If such total failure of the National Security State had really occurred, the White House and Congress would have been screaming for an investigation. People would have been held accountable for the long chain of security failures that allowed the plot to succeed. Instead, no one was even reprimanded, and the White House resisted all efforts for an investigation for a year. Finally, to shut up the 9/11 families, a 9/11 Commission was convened. The commission duly wrote down the government’s story and that was the “investigation.”
Moreover, there is no evidence to support the official conspiracy theory of 9/11. Indeed, all known evidence contradicts the official conspiracy theory.
For example, it is a proven fact that Building 7 came down at freefall acceleration, which means it was wired for demolition. Why was it wired for demolition? There is no official answer to this question.
It is the known evidence provided by scientists, architects, engineers, pilots, and the first responders who were in the twin towers and personally experienced the numerous explosions that brought down the towers that is described as a conspiracy theory.
The CIA introduced the term “conspiracy theory” into public discourse as part of its action plan to discredit skeptics of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Any explanation other than the one handed down, which is contradicted by all known evidence, was debunked as a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are the backbone of US foreign policy. For example, the George W. Bush regime was active in a conspiracy against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The Bush regime created fake evidence of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” sold the false story to a gullible world and used it to destroy Iraq and murder its leader. Similarly, Gaddafi was a victim of an Obama/Hillary conspiracy to destroy Libya and murder Gaddafi. Assad of Syria and Iran were slated for the same treatment until the Russians intervened.
Currently, Washington is engaged in conspiracies against Russia, China, and Venezuela. Proclaiming a non-existent “Iranian threat,” Washington put US missiles on Russia’s border and used the “North Korean threat” to put missiles on China’s border. The democratically elected leader of Venezuela is said by Washington to be a dictator, and sanctions have been put on Venezuela to help the small Spanish elite through whom Washington has traditionally ruled South American countries pull off a coup and reestablish US control over Venezuela.
Everyone is a threat: Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, tribes in Pakistan, Libya, Russia, China, North Korea, but never Washington.
The greatest conspiracy theory of our time is that Americans are surrounded by foreign threats. We are not even safe from Venezuela.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes are quick to debunk as conspiracy theories all explanations that differ from the explanations of the ruling interests that the presstitutes serve.
Yet, as I write and for some nine months to date, the presstitute media has itself been promoting the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the president of Russia and Russian intelligence services to hack the US presidential election and place Trump, a Russian agent, in the White House.
This conspiracy theory has no evidence whatsoever. It doesn’t need evidence, because it serves the interests of the military/security complex, the Democratic Party, the neoconservatives, and permits the presstitutes to show lavish devotion to their masters. By endless repetition a lie becomes truth.
There is a conspiracy, and it is against the American people. Their jobs have been offshored in order to enrich the already rich. They have been forced into debt in a futile effort to maintain their living standards. Their effort to stem their decline by electing a president who spoke for them is being subverted before their eyes by an utterly corrupt media and ruling class.
Sooner or later it will dawn on them that there is nothing they can do but violently revolt. Most likely, by the time they reach this conclusion it will be too late. Americans are very slow to escape from the false reality in which they live. Americans are a thoroughly brainwashed people who hold tightly to their false life within The Matrix.
For the gullible and naive who have been brainwashed into believing that any explanation that differs from the officially-blessed one is a conspiracy theory, there are available online long lists of government conspiracies that succeeded in deceiving the people in order that the governments could achieve agendas that the people would have rejected.
If liberty continues to exist on earth, it will not be in the Western world. It will be in Russia and China, countries that emerged out of the opposite and know the value of liberty, and it will be in those South American countries, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia that fight for their sovereignty against American oppression.
Indeed, as historians unconcerned with their careers are beginning to write, the primary lesson in history is that governments deceive their peoples.
Everywhere in the Western world, government is a conspiracy against the people.
- "We're Coming For You": AP Accuses NRA Of "Inciting Violence" Against Journalists
In a series of videos released earlier this month, the National Rifle Association declared war on mainstream media and their "globalists masters", a sign of the group’s transformation into an advocate for conservative causes beyond protecting the second amendment.
Predictably, the Associated Press is not happy. In a story about the new campaign – which debuted on the NRA’s NRATV, a web-video platform run by the association – the AP accused the NRA of employing dangerous rhetoric that risked inciting violence against journalists.
“The election of President Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress meant the National Rifle Association could probably rest easy that gun laws wouldn’t change for at least four years. But the NRA has begun a campaign not against pending legislation but what it sees as liberal forces bent on undoing the progress it’s made — and the political powerhouse is resorting to language that some believe could incite violence.
Using the hashtags #counterresistance and #clenchedfistoftruth, the NRA has put out a series of videos that announce a “shot across the bow,” and say the gun-rights group is “coming for you” and that “elites … threaten our very survival,” terms that suggest opponents are enemy combatants.”
In a video published earlier this month, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch warned the New York Times that the NRA would be “coming for you," adding that the NRA "had re-dedicated itself to exposing the lies of the mainstream press" while shining an uncomfortable spotlight on the relationship between the MSM and "globalist, corporate elites" who oppose the agenda of President Donald Trump… at least until Steve Bannon's departure, which has since been taken over by former Goldman bankers.
"The times are burning and the media elites have been caught holding the match" Loesch said.
"We’ve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news. We’ve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life. And we’ve had it with your tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism,” Loesch says. “Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow. … In short? We’re coming for you.”
The AP countered with various “expert” soundbites who alleged the NRA could inspire an unstable person to incite violence. One of the AP’s sources, a director at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at UPenn, blamed the NRA for trying to incite violence with its videos.
“Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the tone and language is “overwrought rhetoric” that, viewed by the wrong person, could lead to violence. The kicker on one of the videos — “We’re coming for you” — is straight out of the movies, she said, and “that phrase means that violence is imminent and we will perpetrate it.”
Another source, chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Cortland, said the NRA cribbed its “hyperangry” approach from – who else – President Trump.
“They’re not inventing this hyperangry, nasty partisan tone but piggybacking on Trump’s approach. Of course, NRA voters by and large are Trump voters, so they would be sympathetic to that kind of message,” said Robert Spitzer, chairman of the political science department at State University of New York at Cortland, who has examined the firearms industry and Second Amendment issues extensively.
Spitzer, a member of the NRA as well as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said it’s a pattern the NRA has exhibited as the group evolved from an almost exclusive focus on gun safety into a political beacon for conservatives who fear changes to the Second Amendment and the gun industry.
“It was Bill Clinton in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, it was John McCain. It was Hillary Clinton. It was the United Nations. They’ve held up the U.N. as ready to swoop in and take everybody’s guns,” Spitzer said. “The focus of their ire has changed, but the basic message has been the same.”
In an interesting twist, the AP insinuated that the NRA’s aggressive rhetoric was a ploy to revive gun sales, which have stagnated since Trump took office.
“The friction between the gun lobby and the media isn’t new. But critics of the NRA contend the organization is relying on the “fake news” mantra started by Trump to whip up its followers after a dip in gun sales that has taken place since Trump succeeded President Barack Obama, who favored stricter gun-control laws.”
Joe Plenzler, a Marine veteran and NRA member, said the association had “gone well out of the bounds of any sort of sane responsible behavior.”
“Lately, it seems like they’ve gone well out of the bounds of any sort of sane responsible behavior. If you want to advocate for the Second Amendment, which I unapologetically believe in, that’s fine,” he said. “But I think at the point where you are going to demonize half the American population in a recruitment effort to get more members, I’ve got a big problem with that.”
So did the NRA cross a line by engaging in a similar – but opposite – campaign to that of the Trump "resistance" (hence dubbed #counterresistance) and has it gone too far by accusing the press of creating "narratives, propaganda, and fake news", the same way the press accuses the "alt right" of doing the same, and who is – ultimately – right? Readers can decide for themselves after watching the video below:
- China Is Weaponizing Water
Authored by Eugene Chow via The National Interest,
Hidden in plain sight is an intimidating Chinese weapon that allows it to hold a quarter of the world’s population hostage without firing a single shot. While much attention has been given to the nation’s fearsome new military hardware, a formidable component in its arsenal has largely escaped notice: dams.
With more than 87,000 dams and control of the Tibetan plateau, the source of ten major rivers which 2 billion people depend on, China possesses a weapon of mass destruction. With the flip of a switch, the Middle Kingdom can release hundreds of millions of gallons of water from its mega dams, causing catastrophic floods that would reshape entire ecosystems in countries downstream.
China knows first-hand the destructive power of water. In an attempt to halt advancing Japanese troops during World War II, Chang Kai-Shek, commander of the Chinese Nationalist Army, destroyed a dike along the Yellow River flooding thousands of miles of farmland, killing an estimated 800,000 Chinese, and displacing nearly 4 million.
It is highly unlikely that China would ever deliberately unleash such a destructive act upon its neighbors, but the fact remains that it wields enormous leverage as an upstream nation by its ability to control life’s most essential resource.
High in the Himalayan Mountains are what has been dubbed the “Water Towers of Asia.” Seven of the continent’s greatest rivers start life here including the Mekong, Ganges, Yangtze, Indus and Irrawaddy. What begins as dribble from snow melt in the Tibetan plateau builds into mighty rivers that flow across China’s borders before eventually reaching South Asia.
To satisfy its insatiable demand for electricity and as part of its shift away from coal, China has gone on a dam building spree. In 1949, China had less than forty small hydroelectric dams, but now it has more dams than the United States, Brazil and Canada combined.
On the upper Mekong alone, China has erected seven mega dams with plans to build an additional twenty-one. Just one of its latest dams is capable of producing more hydropower than all of Vietnam and Thailand’s dams on the Mekong.
This dramatic increase in dam building activity has had an outsized environmental impact and stoked fears in downstream nations.
“Beside having environmental issues those dams in Tibet can be disastrous for [India]. They can unleash their fury during earthquake, accidents or by intentional destruction can easily be used against India during war,” said Milap Chandra Sharma, a glaciologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
China’s southern neighbors are not worried without reason. In the past, India has blamed sudden discharges from Chinese dams for several flash floods including one that caused an estimated $30 million in damage and left 50,000 homeless in northeast India.
Each year, during China’s rainy season, downstream nations are on high alert as Chinese dams release water to ease pressure with little warning.
“A discharge by a dam will have a domino effect on the whole system, which can cause huge damages,” explained Le Anh Tuan, deputy director of the Research Institute for Climate Change in Vietnam.
In addition to floods, Chinese dams are also believed to be responsible for worsening droughts. Last year, Vietnam pleaded with China to release water from the Yunnan dam on the Mekong River to ease severe water shortages downstream. China agreed and waters flowed into Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
These two extremes not only highlight the environmental impact of Chinese dams, but also serve as a stark reminder of China’s influence over its southern neighbors. These rivers are foundational to life in South Asia, providing drinking water, irrigation for farming, habitats for fisheries and transportation for commerce.
By controlling the flow of the lifeblood of the region, China has gained enormous power, which has led to accusations of abuse.
“When it comes to diplomacy, China uses rivers as a bargain chip,” said Tanasak Phosrikun, a Mekong river activist from Thailand.
China has denied these charges. Last year, in response to rising anger in India over Chinese dams, the state-run Global Times published an op-ed stating, “China-India relations should not be affected by an imaginary ‘water war.’”
“Frankly, there is no need for India to overact to such [dam building] projects, which aim to help with reasonable development and utilization of water resources,” the piece continued.
While China denies that a “water war” exists, the nation has refused to share hydrological data with India this year, despite signing an agreement. The data is critical during monsoon season as it helps India more accurately forecast floods and warn its residents, ultimately saving lives and minimizing damage.
Whether intentional or not, water has become a de facto weapon providing China with significant political leverage over its southern neighbors. As water scarcity worsens with climate change and population increases, the need for this precious resource will grow, amplifying China’s power and intensifying conflict.
Despite the best efforts of regional partnerships South Asian nations have had little success in encouraging sustainable and responsible development of rivers. With control of the Tibetan plateau by dint of its geography, China is king of the hill when it comes to water in Asia and there is little downstream nations can do to change the whims of this monarch.
- All The Countries America Has Invaded… In One Map
From Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, the US has had a military presence across the world, from almost day one of its independence. For those who have ever wanted a clearer picture of the true reach of the United States military – both historically and currently – but shied away due to the sheer volume of research required to find an answer, The Anti Media points out that a crew at the Independent just made things a whole lot simpler.
Using data compiled by a Geography and Native Studies professor from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the indy100 team created an interactive map of U.S. military incursions outside its own borders from Argentina in 1890 to Syria in 2014.
To avoid confusion, indy100 laid out its prerequisites for what constitutes an invasion:
“Deployment of the military to evacuate American citizens, covert military actions by US intelligence, providing military support to an internal opposition group, providing military support in one side of a conflict, use of the army in drug enforcement actions.”
But indy100 didn’t stop there. To put all that history into context, using data from the Department of Defense (DOD), the team also put together a map to display all the countries in which nearly 200,000 active members of the U.S. military are now stationed.
For more details, click on the country:
The three countries with the biggest U.S. presence, according to DOD numbers, are Japan at 39,623, Germany at 34,399 and South Korea at 23,297.
The publication of the maps comes just after President Donald Trump announced the military would not be pulling out of its 16-year engagement in Afghanistan – a reversal of his previous stance – and that the U.S. would seek stronger ties with India to combat terrorism in South and Central Asia.
- Matt Taibbi: Media Is The Real Villain (For Creating A World Dumb Enough For Trump)
Authored by Matt Taibbi via RollingStone.com,
The craziest part of Donald Trump's 77-minute loon-a-thon in Phoenix earlier this week came when he rehashed his shtick about the networks turning off live coverage of his speech. Trump seemed to really believe they were shutting the cameras off because "the very dishonest media" was so terrified of his powerful words.
"They're turning those lights off so fast!" he said. "CNN doesn't want its failing viewership to see this!"
Trump is wrong about a lot of things, but it's hard to be more wrong about any one thing than he was about this particular point.
No news director would turn off the feed in the middle of a Trump-meltdown. This presidency has become the ultimate ratings bonanza. Trump couldn't do better numbers if he jumped off Mount Kilimanjaro carrying a Kardashian.
This was confirmed this week by yet another shruggingly honest TV executive – in this case Tony Maddox, head of CNN International. Maddox said CNN is doing business at "record levels." He hinted also that the monster ratings they're getting have taken the sting out of being accused of promoting fake news.
"[Trump] is good for business," Maddox said. "It's a glib thing to say. But our performance has been enhanced during this news period." Maddox, speaking at the Edinburgh TV festival, added that most of the outlets that have been singled out by Trump are doing a swimming business.
"If you look at the groups that Trump has primarily targeted: CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Colbert," he said, "every single one of those has seen a quite remarkable growth in their viewing figures, in their sales figures."
Everyone hisses whenever they hear quotes like these. They recall the infamous line from last year by CBS chief Les Moonves, about how Trump "may not be good for America, but he's damn good for CBS." Moonves was even cheekier than Maddox. He laughed and added, "The money's rolling in, and this is fun. They're not even talking about issues, they're throwing bombs at each other, and I think the advertising reflects that."
For more than two years now, it's been obvious that Donald Trump is a disaster on almost every level except one – he's great for the media business. Most of us who do this work have already gone through the process of working out just how guilty we should or should not feel about this.
Many execs and editors – and Maddox seems to fall into this category – have convinced themselves that the ratings and the money are a kind of cosmic reward for covering Trump responsibly. But deep down, most of us know that's a lie. Donald Trump gets awesome ratings for the same reason Fear Factor made money feeding people rat-hair tortilla chips: nothing sells like a freak show. If a meteor crashes into jello night at the Playboy mansion, it doesn't matter if you send Edward R. Murrow to do the standup. Some things sell themselves.
The Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed. It's Battle of the Network Stars meets Wrestlemania meets Survivor meets the Kursk disaster. It's got the immediacy of a breaking news crash, with themes of impending doom, conflict, celebrity meltdown, anger, racism, gender war, everything.
Trump even sells on the level of those Outbrain click-addicting photos of plastic surgery failures. With his mystery comb-over and his great rolls of restrained blubber and the infamous tales of violent fights with his ex over a failed scalp-reduction procedure, Trump on top of being Hitler and Hulk Hogan from a ratings perspective is also a physical monster, the world's very own bearded-lady tent.
Trump's monstrousness is ironic, since the image of Trump as the media's very own Frankenstein's monster has been used and re-used in the last years. Many in the business are of the opinion that, having created Trump and let him loose in the village, we in the press now have a responsibility to hunt him down with aggressive investigative reporting, to make the world safe again.
That might indeed be a good idea. But that take also implies that slaying the monster will fix the problem. Are we sure that's true?
Reporters seem to think so, and keep trying to find the magic formula. Just this week, staffers at the Wall Street Journal rebelled against editor-in-chief Gerard Baker. Baker, who has long been accused of being too soft on Trump, blasted his people for going too negative on the president in their coverage of the Arizona speech. He sent around a letter asking staff to "stick to reporting what [Trump] said," rather than "packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism."
Reporters fought back by (apparently) leaking the memo to the rival New York Times. This followed an incident in which a transcript of Baker's recent interview with Trump was leaked to Politico earlier this month. In it, Baker mentions being glad to have seen Ivanka Trump in Southampton, and small-talks with Trump about travel and golf. The implication here is that it's improper or unseemly for a newspaper editor to have a chummy relationship with this kind of a president.
And it is, sometimes. Reporters who should be challenging presidents and candidates are pretty much always cheating the public when they turn interviews into mutual back rub sessions.
But these intramural ethical wars within our business may just be deflections that keep us from facing bigger problems – like, for instance, the fact that we have been systematically making the entire country more stupid for decades.
We learned long ago in this business that dumber and more alarmist always beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race and gender resentment.
There isn't a news executive alive low enough to deny that we use xenophobia and racism to sell ads. Black people on TV for decades were almost always shirtless and chased by cops, and the "rock-throwing Arab" photo was a staple of international news sections even before 9/11. And when all else fails in the media world, just show more cleavage somewhere, and ratings go up, every time.
Donald Trump didn't just take advantage of these conditions. He was created in part by them. What's left of Trump's mind is like a parody of the average American media consumer: credulous, self-centered, manic, sex-obsessed, unfocused, and glued to stories that appeal to his sense of outrage and victimhood.
We've created a generation of people like this: anger addicts who can't read past the first page of a book. This is why the howls of outrage from within the ranks of the news media about Trump's election ring a little bit false. What the hell did we expect would happen? Who did we think would rise to prominence in our rage-filled, hyper-stimulated media environment? Sensitive geniuses?
We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to pretend this is an innocent coincidence?
- Burger King Russia Introduces The "Whoppercoin" – The Fast-Food Industry's First Digital Currency
In what we believe to be a first for the global fast-food industry, Burger King Russia has reportedly created a virtual currency called the “Whoppercoin.”
The company has reportedly issued one billion of the tokens using the Waves blockchain platform. According to Fortune, the coin was launched alongside a new loyalty program: For every Whopper purchased, customers will receive one Whoppercoin. However, it’s unclear if the company will accept the digital tokens as payment.
“The Whoppercoin launched in tandem with a new loyalty program. For each Whopper burger customers purchase, they'll receive one Whoppercoin in a special cryptocurrency wallet. While the coins’ wider use is unclear, some reports suggest that the Whoppercoin will be accepted as payment at Burger Kings across Russia.”
Burger King’s decision comes amid a thaw in Russia’s posture toward digital currencies. After initially threatening to jail digital-currency users, the Russian government is reportedly considering legislation to legalize digital-currency payments. Earlier this month, an aid to Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would be seeking to raise $100 million to build a large bitcoin-mining operation with the goal of eventually claiming 30% of the bitcoin network’s hashing power.
The Whoppercoin was officially introduced on Aug. 22. Its introduction followed reports earlier this summer that Burger King Russia was planning to start accepting payment in bitcoin.
- Grant Williams: "History Is About To Repeat Itself Again… And It Might Get Ugly"
Real Vision's Grant Williams believes that the 76 million retiring Baby Boomers will trigger a major pension crisis.
“With that potentially bad situation we could face,” the seasoned asset manager and co-founder of Real Vision TV said in a recent extended Metal Masters interview (full interview below), “holding physical metal, somewhere safe, somewhere outside the banking system, is just a sensible precaution to take.”
His outlook has changed drastically since he started his first job trading Japanese markets in 1986: “What I walked into at that time was one of the greatest bull market bubbles the world had ever seen, in the Japanese equity market and real estate market.” During this heyday, precious metals weren’t on his radar at all—until a year later, when he witnessed his first stock market crash and started asking some inconvenient questions.
“I’ve always been a fan of history,” says Williams, who also writes the wildly popular macroeconomic newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm… “So I read financial history and I just kept reading. And it was clear to me that at this point in time, I needed to buy some gold.”
Until then, the gold price didn’t mean much to him, except as an indicator of other things, so he considers the crashes he witnessed in his career wake-up calls and blessings in disguise.
The 1987 crash, he says, was more like “a bad day at the office; it came and went so fast… The bounce-back was quick, but it was a real shock to the system that that could happen.” When the dotcom bubble burst, he was well prepared. “I recognized the madness for what it was much sooner… and so that taught me that markets can reverse and just go down.”
He remembers reading a story about a boy from Chicago who studied in Weimar Germany, and his parents sent him tuition and rent money every month. At some point, “the Reichsmark was going through the roof—four billion to one, compared to one to one a few months earlier—and this kid, with his one hundred dollars that his parents sent him… ended up buying the entire street he lived on, all the houses, and became a landlord.”
Over the years, his study of monetary history and current economic events has convinced him that it would be prudent to hold some gold as crisis insurance. “I remember I wanted just to buy an ounce of gold… and I very consciously took cash to pay for this thing. I handed over $333 in paper, and [the dealer] gave me this coin.” The experience of holding physical gold in your hand, he says, answers a lot of questions. “People get stuck in this trap of ‘Why does it have value?’ These are the wrong questions to ask, because you’re driving yourself mad. It does. Pure and simple.”
Williams says gold is still undervalued: “At heart, I’m a value investor, and I think gold offers incredible value now.”
He says he’s followed the gold market ever since that pivotal day and recommends that everyone should have at least some allocation to precious metals: “I think if you don’t own some gold in your portfolio now, you either don’t understand history, or you don’t want to understand history.”
Much more from the author of "Things That Make You Go Hmmm" in the full video below.
- Former Australian PM Admits He Was Passed Out Drunk During Crucial Financial Crisis Vote
After years of lies and deflections, Australia’s former prime minister Tony Abbott has admitted on a local television program that he missed a crucial 2009 vote on a $42 billion stimulus package intended to shore up the country’s banking system during the financial crisis because he was passed out drunk.
Abbott, then a member of the Liberal party’s front bench, said he fell asleep on the couch in his office after consuming “quite a few bottles of wine” with two of his peers in the MP’s dining room “and could not be roused.” The next thing he knew, it was morning, and he had missed the vote, according to the Herald Sun.
The admission comes years after a public row erupted between Abbott and former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan when, back in 2013, Swan accused Abbott of missing the crucial vote because he drank too much. At the time, Abbott demanded that Swan stop “telling lies” about him, and members of Abbott’s party asked that Swan withdraw his comments from the parliamentary record.
The disclosure, which was seemingly made on a whim, took Abbott’s friends and opponents by surprise. Abbott served as prime minister for two years between 2013 to 2015 before losing a party leadership vote to his former communications minister and current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Abbott made his big reveal during an interview with Annabel Crabb, the eponymous host of popular Australian politics program “The House With Annabel Crabb.” The interview will be included in an episode set to air on September 5, according to the Herald Sun.
“There was one famous occasion when Peter Costello, Kevin Andrews and I hung out rather a long time here,” he told Crabb.
“The night that the then-Rudd government was trying to bring in measures to deal with the GFC.
“I think quite a few bottles of wine were consumed by the three of us,” Abbott said with a laugh.
“Peter was close to leaving at that stage, and I think all of us were in a mellow and reflective mood, so the reflections went on for longer, and later, than they should have.
“The impact was rather greater than it should have been.
“I think I famously slept through several divisions.”
Crabb pressed Abbott to confirm that the rumors about his drinking were, in fact, true.
“Crabb prompted the former PM to go on, saying, “the story was that you repaired … to the couch in your room and could not be roused”.
Mr Abbott confirmed this is what happened.
“It was a late night sitting, against all OH&S rules as you can imagine,” he said.
“I lay down, and the next thing I knew it was morning.”
Swan jumped on the opportunity to take a few jabs at his longtime political rival. Both Swan and Abbott continue to serve in Australia’s House of Representatives.
“When the jobs of Australians were on the line, Tony Abbott didn’t care,” he said.
“His recklessness knows no bounds.”
While the revelation is amusing, it likely won’t impact Abbott’s chances of retaining his seat. Abbott’s district, Warringah, which is located along the northern edge of Sydney, has long been dominated by Liberal Party politicians.
- It's Can-Kicking Time Again In The Imperial City
Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,
You have to hand it to the Donald. He speaks his mind. This week he dropped an unwelcome stink bomb on Capitol Hill during his Phoenix rant Tuesday night. If Mexico won’t pay for my wall, he seemed to say, than Congress will—-even if I have to shutdown the Imperial City to extract the first $1.6 billion of seed money:
“We’re going to get our wall,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Phoenix. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”
The Mexican Wall waste an estimated $20 billion needed to complete, and would place ICE agents at the border handing out guest worker papers to anyone who comes across looking for a job. That would mean more domestic production and tax revenue, and a tad less addition to the crushing national debt that Washington is handing generations to come.
It didn’t take long for Washington’s permanent political class to say “no dice” to the shutdown idea. It seems Speaker Paul Ryan has been domiciled in the Imperial City since he was 21 years old and makes no bones about his priorities.
“I don’t think anyone’s interested in having a shutdown,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a stop at an Intel Corp. facility in Oregon on Wednesday…….
Mr.. Ryan said he expected lawmakers would need to pass a short-term spending bill in September to give them more time to work out a broader budget agreement later this year.
What has the GOP Congress been doing the last nine months that it hasn’t enacted into law a single one of the 12 annual appropriations bills? The same bills that would provide upwards of $1.1 trillion to run the Pentagon and the domestic agencies.
The answer is simple. They’ve been deliberately burning up the clock in order to force spending measures through as emergency continuing resolutions (CRs) or 11th hour compromises to keep the government open. This has been going on for years. It is the very reason Washington now stands on the edge of raising the national debt ceiling above $20 trillion.
So we’ve officially entered the kick-the-can season. You can count on Paul Ryan to spin and misdirect in order to obfuscate what’s actually going on. The House Speaker is about to capitulate again to the nation’s fiscal doomsday machine. Expect clever maneuvers designed to hide the truth through yet another election cycle.
That’s exactly what Ryan did back during the 2013 shutdown crisiswhen he negotiated a sell-out deal with ultra-liberal Dem Senator Murray to keep the government open through the 2014 election.
In that case, he agreed with Sen. Murray to bust the sequesters caps by $64 billion over FY2014-2015.
Per the typical routine, Ryan got $32 billionon top of the $1.01 trillion already slated to be wasted by the Pentagon during that two year period, while Murray got $32 billion more (a 3.5% increase ) to sprinkle across a myriad of domestic social programs. At the end, all parties were praised by the beltway lobbies.
Likewise, Ryan’s first act as Speaker after succeeding John Boehner following the shutdown crisis of 2015was to pass the Boehner-Obama deal that suspended the national debt limit and empowered the Obama Treasury to borrow at will.
That it did!
As of October 1, 2015, the net debt of the US was $17.66 trillion. After the Ryan-enacted debt limit suspension expired on March 15, 2017, the net debt soared to $19.82 trillion.
Paul Ryan and Continuing Resolutions in the Imperial City
This time, Speaker Ryan is going to need to deploy his best tricks to avoid a giant fiscal mishap. That’s because the White House is occupied by the Great Disrupter. By the looks of Trump’s Twitter account he’s still capable of unleashing the kind of impulsive curve ball that the Imperial City simply cannot anticipate.
Having already complicated the appropriations and CR, the Donald piled on more by suggesting GOP leadership had already screwed up raising the debt ceiling during the few days available when Congress returns from August recess.
Opined the Donald,
I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They……didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy—–now a mess!
Here’s the thing. Trump is 70 years old and has spent just eight months in the Imperial City, or about 1.0%of his life. Ryan and McConnell are collectively 122years old and have been playing their trades in the Great Swamp for 82collective years, or two-thirdsof their lives.
The rank and file Republicans on Capitol Hill desperately fear being blamed for a shutdown. They have bound themselves as hostage to both the Fiscal Doomsday machine and the main street media’s need to safeguard Uncle Sam’s credit at all costs.
CNN talking boxes would have a field day excoriating the GOP for shutting down the government. Now that the GOP allegedly controls the White House and both chambers of Congress the situation is even more muddled. Thus, as one member of the Freedom Caucus opined to the Wall Street Journal,
“A government shutdown hurts Republicans—it’s the last thing I want,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus who was at Mr. Trump’s rally Tuesday. “It is a political liability of profound significance to us.”
Many GOP lawmakers worry a shutdown or a failure to raise the government’s borrowing limit—another deadline they are facing this fall—could harm their chances of retaining the House majority in next year’s midterm elections. Treasury officials have said Congress must raise the government’s borrowing limit at some point near the end of September.
The real aim is herding legislators into the Christmas holiday. In that circumstance, as has been proven over and over in the past, not even the most resolute hawks have been able to stand by their convictions. The mantra always becomes “on to next year for real reform!”
Goldman Sachs, Debt Ceilings and Can Kicking
But perhaps this time it will be even worse. The Goldman Sachs Regency in the White House would readily sign up for the skinny bill and three-month punt. They are flat-out desperate to keep the casino at bay and the stock average from plunging.
Assuming that the Donald doesn’t blow-up the proceedings on a skinny bill, the maneuvering for a December deadline would be where the rubber could finally meet the road. That’s because there would need to be at least a $1.5 trillion debtceiling increase just to make it to December 2018 under current tax and spending policy.
The Treasury will need to borrow $500 billionor more to replenish its depleted cash balances and to pay back the funds which allowed it to pay the bills since March 15. The Treasury will be running upwards of an $800 billionannualized cash deficit between now and December 2018.
Even with a $1.5 trillion interim debt ceiling increase, there still wouldn’t be room for a single dime of tax cuts on top of the red ink that is already baked in. When it comes to Wall Street’s hope that Congress will pass a tax bill before the end of the year, or the next election – fuggedaboutit!
There’s no way to get a big enough debt ceiling increase to accommodate the current structural deficits and the Trump Stimulus, without major help from the Democrats.
The can kicking season is once again here, and this one will be like no other.
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