- Racist White Professor Calls For “White Genocide,” Then Blames Everyone Else For Misinterpreting His Racist Tweets
A Drexel University Political Science professor – who has a book coming out in February – and is a communist, graced the world with his Christmas wish to see an entire race of human beings exterminated. You know, like Hitler. 
Hilarious, right? Especially if you replace the word “white” with any other race. This warm holiday sentiment comes from the mind of George Ciccariello-Maher, a cultishly liberal academic who’s never existed outside of a university environment, having previously corrupted young minds at U.C. Berkeley and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. Ciccariello then doubles down on his Christmas Eve banter:
To review, this is what he’s talking about:
Nice guy. Now, in an attempt to backpedal during an Eichenwaldian moment of clarity liberals get after haphazardly revealing they’re fucking idiots underneath that academic exterior, Ciccariello is lashing out by blaming everyone who was offended for not having “bothered to do their research” in preparation for his satirical tweets.
Drexel university has issued a statement:
No word on which wrist Drexel plans to slap, but 4chan anon knows what’s up:
People like Ciccariello-Maher exist to indoctrinate adult children into a reactionary class of morons who hear a trigger word and start regurgitating information without even moderate possession of the facts. These perpetual winners are are easily manipulated by identity politics which “intellectual” losers like Ciccariello capitalize on. While undeniably atrocious, slavery in America was conducted almost entirely by rich southern democrats – a small percentage of Americans, in the 1800’s. It has been a fucked up institution for thousands of years, and is still happening today in many parts of the world. It’s also been abolished in the USA for over 130 years, and the playing field has been legally leveled for over half a century despite structural racism legislated into society. There are of course vestiges of slavery which affect minorities to this day, none of which should be used as a tool for manipulation to generate guilt or resent – or as a reason to exterminate white people. I wonder if Ciccariello-Maher would issue the same call to genocide for all brown people, since slavery is alive and well in places like Saudi Arabia?As long as angry radicalized career academics continue peddling white guilt to impressionable snowflakes – many of whom entered into lifelong debt to fund their own brainwashing, untold millions of basement-dwelling failures to launch will have a perpetual villain to blame for their shitty lives. That is, until the last white person has been exterminated.
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- India's Demonetization Debacle Highlights The Dangers Of Monetary Monopoly
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
As longtime readers know, I believe we are at the beginning stages of what will be historical paradigm level change across the planet. We sit on the precipice of the self-destruction of almost all the dominant institutions we’ve been accustomed to throughout our lifetimes. To borrow a bit of played out and painfully clichéd Silicon Valley lingo, everything is on the table for “disruption.”
Naturally, this doesn’t necessarily mean the paradigm that follows the current one will be materially better, but I am personally optimistic about what will emerge following a period of considerable confusion, hardship and conflict. In order to tilt the scales toward a positive outcome, those of us who wish to usher in a world characterized by human freedom, decentralization, self-government and kindness, need to recognize the most likely avenues we have to get there. Technology is obviously extremely important, as a recent move by Whisper Systems to thwart censorship demonstrates.
As Wired reported last week:
Any subversive software developer knows its app has truly caught on when repressive regimes around the world start to block it. Earlier this week the encryption app Signal, already a favorite within the security and cryptography community, unlocked that achievement. Now, it’s making its countermove in the cat-and-mouse game of online censorship.
On Wednesday, Open Whisper Systems, which created and maintains Signal, announced that it’s added a feature to its Android app that will allow it to sidestep censorship in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, where it was blocked just days ago. Android users can simply update the app to gain unfettered access to the encryption tool, according to Open Whisper Systems founder Moxie Marlinspike, and an iOS version of the update is coming soon.
Signal’s new anti-censorship feature uses a trick called “domain fronting,” Marlinspike explains. A country like Egypt, with only a few small internet service providers tightly controlled by the government, can block any direct request to a service on its blacklist. But clever services can circumvent that censorship by hiding their traffic inside of encrypted connections to a major internet service, like the content delivery networks (CDNs) that host content closer to users to speed up their online experience—or in Signal’s case, Google’s App Engine platform, designed to host apps on Google’s servers.
It goes without saying how critical technology such as the above, combined with dedicated activists such as Moxie Marlinspike, will be to making the world a better place. Beyond that, we also need to understand what our adversaries will do. I define such adversaries as the defenders of the status quo, who will do whatever it takes to retain power and influence in the face of their increasing irrelevance. As it becomes more and more obvious to people that these legacy institutions have become so corrupt and bureaucratic that they do far more harm than good, their leaders are likely to resort to more and more authoritarian tactics in order to defend their untenable position. This is where we need to see opportunity as opposed to cowering in fear.
We are on the right side of history, while the old institutions are simply living on borrowed time. We must be smart about how we see the world and understand that Donald Trump is likely to react to such a situation quite similarly to a Barack Obama. Whoever’s in charge of the government will by definition work to preserve the power of government as opposed to the liberty of the citizenry. This goes for pretty much every political leader and government worldwide. As such, we must assume government will lash out in increasingly irrational and authoritarian ways in the coming years, as the old paradigm becomes unglued.
As I mentioned earlier, when a government reacts in an absurd and harmful way, we need to see this for the opportunity it presents as opposed to becoming overcome with fear concerning its inevitable near-term harm. A perfect example is the recent extremely destructive decision by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to unilaterally scrap old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, which merely represents a particularly egregious move within a broader push by elitist and status quo bureaucrats across the world to ban cash. As disruptive as this move has been, it also carries with it a significant silver lining. For example, it’s causing us to ask the really big questions we need to be asking.
As R. Jagannathan wrote earlier today in Swaraja Magazine, where he is the editorial director:
A philosophical question that economists need to answer after Lehman, zero-interest money, QEs, and demonetisation (in our case) is whether central banks ought to have that kind of monopoly over money.
Most free-market economists would agree that monopolies are bad, but they do not usually challenge the state’s monopoly over violence and law-making or the central banks’ monopoly over the issue and regulation of currency.
Leaving aside the state’s monopoly on some kinds of power, let’s ask whether a central bank’s money monopoly is worthwhile since it does not appear to have delivered the kind of benefits to the world in recent decades which can justify the conferment of a monopoly.
The fundamental reason why we have grown to love (or learned to live with) central banks is that we cannot remember a time when they did not exist. So the argument is better the devil you know…
But consider their track record…
The US Fed could not prevent or even moderate the 1930s depression. It took a world war to rescue the US economy from deflation.
The US government (and the Fed) reneged on their most important commitment – to link the dollar value to gold – in 1971. This link was crucial to getting the world to accept payment in US dollars. But once that got done, the US did not want to honour its commitment since this was costing it a bit. In short, central banks cannot always be trusted.
“Independent” central banks were never able to prevent governments from debasing the currency by resorting to huge fiscal deficits. So they could not maintain the exchange values of their currencies without creating hardships for their people.
Central banks have been particularly bad at predicting when money was too cheap or too expensive – the main job they are supposed to do – and we have seen that in bold relief post-Lehman, and with the ongoing Eurozone crisis and Japan’s never-ending stagflation.
In India, we were happy to assume that for Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan brought inflation down, but this is a story we concocted after noting that the man was talking a lot about inflation. We presumed that what he did must have helped inflation come down, but we can never be sure. But his predecessor D Subbarao spent five years chasing down both inflation and disinflation (pre-2008, post-2008, and post-2011-12) and was considered “behind the curve” on policy. As if one human being can predict the net outcomes from the individual actions of a billion-and-a-quarter people responding to inflation or deflation.
And now we have a new Governor, Urjit Patel, taking the flak for a decision he was only partially involved in – demonetisation.
But the real question to ask of Urjit Patel and the government that appointed him is not whether demonetisation was a good idea or whether it has been implemented badly, but whether either government or the central bank should have had this monopoly power at all?
That Patel and the Modi government are being attacked both by Left and Right for demonetisation leads us to a larger and more basic question: Could demonetisation have happened if the Indian state did not have a monopoly in central banking, and there were several money issuers vying for the citizen’s custom?
The answer is probably no, for it is only monopoly that assures central banks this kind of power. If India had another currency issuer, the RBI could not have demonetised the currency in one go. It would have had to announce a plan, and take the bad money out in stages.
But the central bank’s monopoly is really a consequence of the state’s monopoly on law-making and power. This is why states, despite being at odds with their central banks on the short-term direction of monetary policy, are equally keen to let them retain their money monopoly.
In the US, a private player launched a gold-based currency called e-Gold, but when it grew big enough, the powers-that-be had it wound up. Launched in 1996, e-Gold, founded by Douglas Jackson, allowed account-holders to make cash transfers to other e-Gold account-holders through its website. At its zenith, e-Gold was said to be handling more than $2 billion worth of annual transactions. (Read more about e-Gold here and here).
But governments can’t stand a rival who challenges their own right to mint currency, and so in 2009, e-Gold was shut down, ostensibly because it did not have a licence to transfer money. The Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11, gave the US government powers to do this.
The 21st century will challenge the idea of the state and its monopoly powers, but Step One in that process is whether central banks should have a monopoly on money.
The answer is no. Competition will be good even in the business of creating money and managing its ebbs and flows.
All of this reminds me of something I wrote recently with regard to the self-implosion of mainstream media in the post, ‘Then We Will Fight in the Shade’ – A Guide to Winning the Media Wars:
It is when you get desperate, scared and panicky that you make the biggest mistakes, and the legacy media is currently desperate, scared and panicky. As Napoleon Bonaparte allegedly said:
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
We mustn’t get in the way of the legacy media’s inevitable self-destruction. Part of this means that we do not self-destruct in the process. We need to recognize that there’s a reason independent, alternative media is winning the battle of ideas in the first place. For all the warts, mistakes and bad actors, the emergence of the internet is indeed the historical equivalent of the invention of the printing press on steroids.
The same mindset and strategy should be applied to the state as well. One thing I’m relatively certain of, is that as economies continue to decay under the weight of the status quo way of doing things, the incredibly corrupt men and women in charge of our dominant institutions will flail from one destructive, authoritarian action to the next. We must expect this and prepare to respond.
Technology will do its part by providing the necessary tools to transition from one paradigm to the other, but equally important will be winning the narrative when it comes to the 7 billion people inhabiting the planet. This is where websites such as Liberty Blitzkrieg and others will play an increasingly significant role in pointing out and articulating the harmful, irrational and destructive nature of the status quo response to challenges that arise. In this way, we can be sure to win the battle of ideas, which will be crucial to successfully ushering in a new age of human freedom, creativity, opportunity and progress.
- Commodity Futures Plunge Following China Growth Downgrade
Less than a month ago we warned that the Chinese commodity bubble 2.0 was bursting as speculative volume had exploded relative to open interest and exchanges had begun (after unreal surges in prices) to crackdown on the speculation. The carnage continued and over the last few days has bloodbath'd even more as China warns that it will miss its growth targets.
Spot The Odd One Out…
- Zinc -22%
- Iron Ore -20%
- Steel Rebar -20%
- China Coking Coal -25%
- Copper -13%
- Bitcoin +18%
It appears as China housing bubble pops, commodity bubble pops, and credit-fueled growth bubble pops… there is only one place left for Chinese trend-followers to flee to – Bitcoin.
- Refugee Admissions Surge 86% YoY As Obama Rushes Arrivals Ahead Of Trump Inauguration
In the first 84 days of the 2017 fiscal year (October 1, 2016 – December 23, 2016), the Obama administration has accepted 25,584 refugees into the United States, according to data provided by the State Department. Per Breitbart, compared to the same period in FY2016, that represents an 86% increase year-over-year. And while we were expecting a large increase in refugee admittances in 2017 (see “Hillbama Administration Plans To Admit At Least 110,000 Refugees In 2017“), the ~30% increase that Secretary John Kerry estimated back in September is looking like a fairly modest increase now compared to actual numbers.
And while the new Trump administration will likely slow the rate of the new arrivals after taking office next month, the current Obama run-rate puts us on track to blow through the 20-year record high set back in 1999.
As we’ve noted before, per data from the U.S. State Department, the overwhelming majority of refugees admitted into the U.S. over the past couple of months are coming from Syria, Iraq and Somalia…
…and being resettled in Texas, California, Arizona and New York.
Obviously, Trump has been fairly clear about is intention to “suspend immigration from areas in the world where there is proven history of terrorism against U.S.” which likely was a stance that helped him win the presidency in November.
Trump: Will suspend immigration from areas in the world where there is proven history of terrorism against U.S. https://t.co/rHkpUr7xiL
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 13, 2016
But, Obama doesn’t seem to care about any of that…nothing like completely ignoring the will of the American people to pursue your own agenda.
- "Operation Cankles" – Russian Intervention Exposed
Did the Russians really rig the 2016 US election? The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair exposes 'the truth' – You bet they did!
Secret documents recently discovered in a bin behind a Kremlin-district 24-hour cabbage and tobacco store reveal for the first time the devious extent of Russian interference. These plans were decades in the making.
Read on, as never-before-seen communiques between Russian agents Sergei Potrov and Dimitri Bienko outline the wicked plot – beginning in 1947, on the day of Hillary Clinton’s birth:
Dearest Dimitri
I am pleased to report that phase one of Operation Cankles is total success! Soviet implantation of stupid American woman resulted in birth today of hefty girl-child destined to be unelectable candidate 70 years from now.
Child is basically just ankles and head, similar to sturdy and hard-working female stock from adored Ilmensky Mountains. In decadent America, nobody will ever vote for such a noble being.
Yours in Soviet solidarity,
Sergei
Back in Moscow, Bienko receives the news from his undercover US-based operative with communist glee:
Dearest Sergei,
You have done very well, comrade! Especially with the implantation. I trust the child has your eyebrow.
We have already begun looking at similar strategies in other western nations. When you are next on leave, ask me to show you plans for Operation Julia. Australia is next to face unforgiving Soviet wrath!
Yours,
Dimitri
As the years go by, our pair of dedicated spies continue to monitor Hillary’s progress and other events:
Dearest Dimitri,
Greetings again from Americas. Heh heh heh! Apologies for chuckles, but am watching hilarious documentary called Honeymooners. Is about domestic violence. Very good.
Am needing laugh because hips in pain from imitating the Elvis Presley. Will send you LP of the Presley once Russia has record players.
Hillary now at school and shunned by corrupt classmates in thrall of military-industrial capitalism. All proceeding exactly according to strategic project timeline.
Yours in everlasting revolution,
Sergei
Called away from Operation Cankles for a brief and triumphant mission to Dallas in 1963, Potrov soon returns to his main quest:
Dearest Dimitri,
My ‘holiday’ in Texas was wonderful, thank you for asking. Not so good for Agent Oswald, however. I will miss him. He could make a fine okroshka soup, which is very rare here. The Americans, they prefer their eggs shelled and cooked. And from birds.
How is this for funny? Hillary ran for president of high school and lost to braggart teen with big crazy hair and grabby hands! Is almost like a practice run or something.
Next step is to find university for her. Wellesley is ideal. More communists than all of Soviet Union, except parents drive Cadillacs (sort of like our ZiL, but wheels stay on).
Yours in earnest progress,
Sergei
Occasionally Agent Potrov would vanish from the attention of his Soviet overlords, as this urgent 1967 cable shows:
Comrade Sergei Potrov,
We have not heard from you since you volunteered to investigate the ‘counterculture movement’ in San Francisco three months ago. We assume that your one message, requesting ‘more bread, man’ to buy ‘reefer and doobies’, was written in a code unknown even to our finest cryptographers.
Also, the message was sent on paper from which several strips had been torn. Have you insufficient funds to purchase cigarettes? Please contact your superiors immediately. And stop playing Creedence on our interspy sonic network. This is not what the Soviet surveillance system is for.
Yours in concern,
Central Command
During the mid-70s, the Russians toast a mission-advancing coup:
It is not to be believed! Hillary is getting married – to a man! You owe me 50 rubles, Dimitri.
The fellow is Bill, called by friends ‘horn dog’, ‘el squeezo’ and ‘the Arkansas assman’. He is very political. All his girlfriends say so. By ‘all his girlfriends’, I mean whole female population of Little Rock. He go through them like great winter purge of traitor generals.
This can only assist our mission. Perhaps this Bill will even make it to the White House, if he can keep it in his pants for long enough (is phrase I pick up here).
Yours in jubilation,
Sergei
Even tectonic global changes could not sway Agents Potrov and Bienko from their cause:
Dearest Sergei,
Alas, our beloved Soviet Union is no more. Gorbachev has ruined everything. Please do not give up on Operation Cankles. It may prove to be the final major accomplishment of our great land and heroic peoples.
In other news, our budget has been slightly trimmed. Suggest you monitor Hillary from American streets, where lucrative sign-holding job will provide cover and help pay rent.
Yours in Glasnost,
Dimitri
Finally, on November 8, 2016, Sergei’s long mission comes to a victorious conclusion – on the veteran agent’s 94th birthday:
Dearest Dimitri,
I know you have been dead ten years already, but I write to you for fondness and memories. Great friend, it is done. All that we have worked for, all that we have planned, all that we have dreamed. Our unelectable candidate was truly unelectable. Even the other patients here in the home did not vote for her. One voted for Eisenhower.
My time is not long, Dimitri. Soon I shall see you again, in the heaven that is a frozen-solid Siberian grave. We will rest in honour. Our work on this earth is complete.
Yours in espionage,
Sergei
Satirical Source: The Daily Telegraph
- As Mystery Of China's Multi-Billionaire Default Deepens, A New "Bond Scare" Emerges
Last week, in a largely “under the radar” event, one of China’s wealthiest billionaires (if only on paper), Wu Ruilin, chairman of the Guangdong based telecom company Cosun Group, and whose personal fortune of 98.2 billion yuan ($14 billion) makes him wealthier than Baidu founder Robin Li who is ranked 8th on the Hurun Rich List 2016, shocked Chinese bond market watchers when he defaulted on a paltry 100 million yuan ($14 million) in bonds sold to retail investors through an Alibaba-backed online wealth management platform, citing “tight cash flow.”
Needless to say, many were stunned that a billionaire for whom $14 million is pocket change, blamed “tight cash flow” for defaulting on mom and pop investors. In any case, as South China Morning Post reported, despite the founder’s personal fortune, according to a notice put up by the Guangdong Equity Exchange on Tuesday, two subsidiaries of Cosun Group are each defaulting on seven batches of privately raised bonds they issued in 2014. According to the notice, “the issuer had sent over a notice on December 15, claiming not to be able to make the payments on the bonds on time, due to short-term capital crunch.”
To be sure, yet another default in a Chinese landscape suddenly littered with bankrupting debt dominoes would have been the end of it, however this morning Reuters added to the mystery when it said that the fate of the defaulted $45 million Chinese corporate bond sold through an Alibaba-backed online wealth management platform was thrown into doubt on Monday, after a bank said letters of guarantee for the bonds were counterfeit.
Quoted by Reuters, China Guangfa Bank Co Ltd (CGB) said guarantee documents, official seals and personal seals presented by the insurer of the bonds “are all fake” and that it has reported the matter to the police.
The dispute highlights challenges in China’s loosely regulated online finance industry, where retail investors often buy high-yielding bonds and other assets, expecting them to be “risk-free” due to guarantees provided by various parties.
As first reported last Wednesday, at the center of the latest dispute are up to 312 million yuan ($45 million) worth of high-yielding bonds issued by southern Chinese phone maker Cosun Group that defaulted this month. The bonds were sold through Zhao Cai Bao, an online platform run by Ant Financial Services Group, the payment affiliate of e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Ant Financial has asked Zheshang Property and Casualty Insurance Co Ltd, which wrote insurance on the bonds, to repay investors. On Sunday, Zheshang Insurance published two documents on its website that it said were from CGB carrying the bank’s official seals, and that guaranteed Zheshang Insurance policies for the Consun bonds. The letters were issued at CGB’s Huizhou branch in December 2014, when the Cosun bonds were sold, Zheshang Insurance said.
And yet, suggesting there is a massive landmine hiding just below the surface of China’s bond market, far worse than merely the consequences rising interest rates, on Monday, CGB said the documents were fake and that it had reported the incident to police as “suspected financial fraud.”
While material misrepresentation of facts in Chinese finance is hardly new, the recent alleged violations usher in a whole new breed of fraud, one which is far less nuanced and far more simpllistic and includes outright forgeries of documents that backstop tens if not hundreds of billions in debt. The Cosun dispute follows similar instances of financial fraud this year including forged bond agreements that led to brokerage Sealand Securities sharing potential losses of up to $2.4 billion. In May, the government advised banks to be vigilant after several cases of bill fraud.
Ant Financial on Tuesday said Zheshang Insurance “hasn’t any reason to refuse repayment” which it was obliged to do “within three days” of default.
Making matters worse, the fraud has taken place in the context of a bond default that, according to an Ant Financial spokeswoman cited by Reuters, was a “a one in billions incident” on the platform.
Incidentally, Cosun’s bond issuance totals 1 billion yuan, according to Zheshang Insurance. The insurer’s total registered capital is 1.5 billion yuan.
Should more such “one in billions incidents” emerge, Chinese bond investors – already freaked out by the recent record plunge in Chinese govt bond futures, soaring overnight funding rates, and fears over Fed rate hikes – will rush for the exits just as China’s housing bubble is also popping as reported yesterday, leading to a rerun of the US 2006/2007 dual bursting of the housing/credit bubbles, only this time instead of an $8 trillion financial system, the world will have to backstop China… whose banking system at last check had over $30 trillion in liabilities.
Incidentally, we wonder if now that China’s bond insurers are also under the spotlight, if that means China’s very own MBIA/Ambac moments is imminent, as billions in bond insurance contracts are deemed “fake” by the insurers who would rather not pay up on what is set to be an avalanche of defaults.
* * *
Finally, for those interested in what Bloomberg last week dubbed the “latest China Finance Scare”, namely outright forgeries in various debt products, mostly focusing on Entrusted Bonds, here is a useful primer courtesy of BBG:
There’s another Chinese financial practice that’s prompting high-decibel warnings. So-called entrusted bond holdings are a way for financial institutions to skirt rules on using borrowed money to invest in bonds. How? By getting a third party to buy the bonds and agreeing to purchase them at a later date. What could possibly go wrong? How about the worst rout in China’s bond market in a decade. That’s left regulators concerned about the prospect of investors failing to make good on such arrangements, estimated to involve at least $144 billion of bonds.
1. Why entrust us with this news only now?
Concerns about entrusted bond holdings have worsened the tumble in the debt market. Last week, Caixin cited market rumors when it reported a brokerage called Sealand Securities Co. had refused to take over bonds held by a counterparty. That got investors worried. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. then said in a note, citing media reports it didn’t identify, that the entrusted holding agreement may have been tied to alleged fraud by ex-staff. Sealand cleared the air when it said it would in fact fulfill the bond contracts that had been stamped with a forged seal. The whole incident was enough to frighten an already jittery market.
2. So why do investors use entrusted holding agreements?
Brokerages and other institutional investors ask counterparties to buy bonds from them when they need to circumvent internal rules on note holdings and leverage, according to Xu Hanfei, a bond analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co. Or they can simply have third parties buy the notes directly from the market. The practice boosts leverage by effectively giving the financial institutions loans: As brokerages and institutional investors don’t carry the bonds on their books, they can use the funds freed up on paper to purchase more bonds, which can then be rolled into more such agreements. “Non-bank financial institutions, which emphasize returns, have more motivation to amplify leverage through entrusted holdings,” said Li Liuyang, a market analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in Shanghai.
3. How widespread is the practice?
Outstanding entrusted holdings are “in the trillions of yuan,” according to Guotai Junan’s Xu. That estimate is based on the bond holdings of the brokerages and smaller banks that are major participants in such transactions. That means the amount of money tied up in such deals is at least 5 percent of the 21 trillion yuan ($3 trillion) of outstanding corporate notes in China, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
4. What broader risks does it pose to China’s financial markets?
A default in an entrusted holding could turn what otherwise might have been a problem with one company’s liquidity into a broader credit event, given that multiple parties may be involved, according to Li at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. Li says “everyone is worried about similar situations in their transactions with non-bank financial institutions.” OCBC said that things had got so bad that banks were reluctant to lend to non-bank institutions amid a breakdown in trust between investors.
5. What are regulators doing about it?
Authorities including the central bank and the China Securities Regulatory Commission are investigating some financial institutions’ entrusted bond holdings after the Sealand incident, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The holdings run contrary to the central bank’s push to trim investments made on borrowed money, according to China Merchants Bank Co. “It’s just a question of when Chinese regulators will clean up entrusted bond holdings,” said Liu Dongliang, a senior analyst at the bank. Tommy Xie, an economist in Singapore at OCBC, says China’s market rout may prompt regulators to strengthen rules on entrusted holdings. He describes them as “a common practice in the grey area of the bond market.”
- The Future Of Passports (& Citizenship By Investment)
Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
"The bottom line is that anyone can be ISIS. We therefore need an approach to securing civilized societies that doesn't allow individuals to hide behind the cloak of Western passports… The time has come for a "global passport," a parallel digital certification of a person's identity, background, criminal record, travel history, and other details. The digital record would be regularly updated based on databases from airlines, customs agencies, banks and other sources, and could be managed by an independent international authority.”
The above quote comers from CNN, an American news network that has done such an exemplary job in recent years in serving as a mouthpiece for the US Government.
The argument for global passports is a familiar one – “You are in danger of being killed by terrorists. We will save you by removing yet another of your freedoms.” Or, as Hermann Goering said,
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Over one billion people presently cross borders each year. In addition, there are over 250 million people who are expatriates – living outside their home country. These numbers are higher than ever before in history and growing. As The Great Unravelling progresses, we will witness a dramatic increase in both statistics. Along the way, we can expect the more restrictive governments, particularly those of the EU and US, to institute limitations on travel for their citizens, in order to keep them captive at home.
So, we can therefore anticipate changes in the issuance of passports. There are two concepts afoot with regard to the future of passports, and they’re direct opposites of each other. The first is for a Global Passport, that all countries would issue and all would share computer information on all passport holders. The other is a proliferation of passports created by an easing of citizenship requirements in small countries, resulting in each individual having the ability to possess several passports, thus diminishing his “ownership” by his home country.
These two concepts are both almost certain to develop considerably in the coming years and for the same reason. As stated, the more restrictive countries are likely to push for a global passport – an Orwellian document that says, “No matter where you are, you travel on our document. We have all your information and we own you.” The more this trend increases in prominence, the more the second trend will increase, in direct reaction. More and more countries will offer citizenship to non-nationals, as the demand for freedom increases amongst oppressed people.
Most of the countries that presently offer “Citizenship by Investment” are small countries – Malta and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, plus five island nations in the Caribbean: Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Dominica and, recently, St. Lucia.
A visit to any of the small Caribbean countries will reveal that since the decline of the sugar industry, they have had few choices with regard to future prosperity. Quaint small towns and villages and nice beaches attract a certain amount of tourism, but something greater is needed to support an entire population. Decades ago, St. Kitts & Nevis decided to try Citizenship by Investment. At first, the takers were few, but, in recent years, with much of the world imploding, the programme has attracted greater interest.
The way it works is that an applicant can either buy citizenship (approval takes only a month or two) for $250,000, or he can buy into a real estate project for $400,000 or more. Due to recent success, other island nations have jumped on board, offering their own programmes… and here’s where it gets interesting.
As soon as eight or 10 island nations are offering similar programmes, it will become a citizenship norm for the Caribbean. And, of course, that will mean competition will develop. With many countries to choose from, prices will need to drop. At some point, national leaders will seek to increase gross sales by lowering the sale price. Although $400,000 is out of reach to most who dream of buying an alternate passport, there will be far more takers at $200,000 or even $100,000, but I believe the magic price point to be $50,000. At that price, hundreds of thousands of second-passport seekers will jump on board. Indeed, many will purchase passports from several islands. (If one backup passport is good, multiple backup passports are better.)
But, why are “bargain” passports not already available? From my own experience, as a West Indian, this is due to the fact that our political leaders often fear a dramatic influx of new voters. They feel safer appealing to natives than outsiders and worry that the electorate balance may be upset and cost them their seats in future elections.
Yet, many West Indian countries already have laws that limit the rights of new citizens (with particular regard to the right to run for public office). To date, none of these countries has figured out that citizenship without the right to vote is an easy solution. Once they twig onto this new category of citizenship, we may see a major drop in citizenship costs and a dramatic increase in the number of applicants.
At present, the passport schemes have attracted Russians, Canadians, Middle Easterners, Chinese and, increasingly, Americans. At present, the US is the foremost objector to Citizenship by Investment, describing its purpose to be “to provide cover for financial crimes.” However, over one hundred other countries, including most of Europe, accept the passports and the US is very much in the minority here.
This is an issue to be watched closely. Historically, whenever governments have put the squeeze on their citizens’ freedoms, citizens have reacted by trying to wriggle out. The squeeze in many countries is presently at its zenith and many, many people are voting with their feet. There will always be takers in the world when this occurs and, in the Caribbean, opportunities for increased freedom are very much on the increase.
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A second passport is the ultimate insurance policy against an out-of-control government. Think of it as your “freedom insurance.” The rules on second passports can change quickly. This is why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date, accurate, and actionable information out there. Be sure to get the guide we just released on the easiest countries to get a second passport from. Click here to download the PDF.
- Did Donald Trump Just Jump The 'Dow 20,000' Shark?
It appears the sugar-high from holiday celebrations is still running through president-elect Trump's veins as his tweets took an even more narcisistic tone on this oh-so-aptly-named 'Boxing Day' in America.
First Trump decided to take credit for the unprecedented short-squeeze in US stock markets – and the Christmas spending numbers…
The world was gloomy before I won – there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016
We just wonder what he will sat if/when Goldman Sachs stops rising and stocks tumble ("never gonna happen", probably The Fed's fault after all), but perhaps even more importantly, how does he feel about the $1.2 trillion of value he has erased from global capital markets since his election?
The drop in global debt and equity values in Q4 2016 is very reminiscent of the drop into 2015's Fed rate hike… which did not end well…
But, the last time that global stocks and global bonds decoupled so aggressively was following the end of QE3… here's what happened next…
But it's probably different this time, right? China is fine (oh wait, failed auctions and liquidity crisis), Europe is fine (oh wait, Italian banks are collapsing), and the US economy is great (oh wait, automakers are shuttering plants due to credit-created excess inventory).
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But Trump was not done there, he took on the arrogance of Obama, as we detailed earlier…
President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016
Invincible politician and stock market savior…Let's just hope nothing goes wrong to break that narrative in the next 4 years (or 4 weeks).
- Exit, Hope & Change – The Obama Post-Mortem
Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
By now, anyone in this country still of sound mind knows that Barack Obama presided through eight years of remarkable continuity – of changeless conditions that left a great many hopeless. As the days of his tenure dwindle, what do we make of the departing 44th president?
He played the role with cool-headed decorum, but that raises the question: was he just playing a role? From the get-go, he made himself hostage to some of the most sinister puppeteers of the Deep State: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner on the money side, and the Beltway Neocon war party infestation on the foreign affairs side. I’m convinced that the top dogs of both these gangs worked Obama over woodshed-style sometime after the 2008 election and told him to stick with the program, or else.
What was the program?
On the money side, it was to float the banks and the whole groaning daisy chain of their dependents in shadow finance, real estate, and insurance, at all costs. Hence, the extension of Bush Two’s bailout policy with the trillion-dollar “shovel-ready” stimulus, the rescue of the car-makers, and a much greater and surreptitious multi-trillion dollar hand-off from the Federal Reserve to backstop the European banks with counter-party obligations to US banks.
In April of 2009, Obama’s new SEC appointees, strong-armed by bank lobbyists, pushed the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) into suspending their crucial Rule 157, which had required publically-held companies to report their asset holdings based on standard market-based valuation procedures — called “mark-to-market.” After that, companies like Too-Big-Too-Fail banks could just make shit up. This opened the door to the pervasive accounting fraud that allowed the financial sector to pretend it was healthy for the eight years that followed. The net effect of their criminal fakery was to only make the financial sector artificially larger, more dangerously fragile, and more prone to cataclysmic collapse.
Another feature of life on the money-side of the Obama presidency was that nobody paid a personal price for financial misconduct. This established the basic ethos of Obama-era finance: anything goes, and nothing matters. All the regulators looked the other way most of the time. And when forced to act by egregious behavior, they made deals that let banking executives off-the-hook while their companies shelled out fines that amounted to the mere cost of doing business. It happened again and again. The poster boy for this kind of “policy” — or just plain racketeering — was Jon Corzine, the head of the commodities brokerage MF Global, whose company looted “segregated” customer accounts to the tune of nearly a billion dollars in the fall of 2011. Corzine was never prosecuted and remains at large to this day.
Another signal failure in the money realm was Obama’s response to the 2010 Citizen United Supreme Court decision, which declared that the alleged legal “personhood” of corporations entitled them to exercise “free speech” by giving as much money as they wanted to political candidates for election. Big business no longer had to just rent congressmen and senators, they could buy them outright with cash.
A conservative Supreme Court made the call, but Obama could have acted forcefully in the face of it. The former constitutional law professor-turned-politician could have marshaled a response in his Democratic Party-controlled congress to draft legislation, or a constitutional amendment, that would properly redefine the personhood of corporations. It should be obvious, for instance, that corporations, unlike human citizens, do not have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to the public interest; by legal charter they have only to answer to their shareholders and boards of directors. How does this confer the kind of political free speech “rights” that the court allowed them to claim? And how did the Obama and his allies in the legislative branch roll over to allow this disgraceful affront to the constitution to stand? And how is that almost nobody in the mainstream press or academic law even pressed these issues? Thanks to all of them, we’ve set up the primary means for establishing a fascist Deep State: the official marriage of corporate money and politics. Anything goes and nothing matters.
Finally, in foreign affairs, there is Obama’s mystifying campaign against the Russian Federation. The US had an agreement with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union that we would not expand NATO if they gave us a quantity of nuclear material that was in danger of falling into questionable hands in the disorder that followed the collapse. Russia complied. What did we do? We expanded NATO to include most of the former eastern European countries (except the remnants of Yugoslavia), and then under Obama, NATO began holding war games on Russia’s border. For what reason? The fictitious notion that Russia wanted to “take back” these nations — as if they needed to adopt a host of dependents that had only recently bankrupted the Soviet state. Any reasonable analysis would call these war games naked aggression by the West.
Then there was the 2014 US State Department-sponsored coup against Ukraine’s elected government and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych. Why? Because his government wanted to join the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union instead of an association with European Union. We didn’t like that and we decided to oppose it by subverting the Ukrainian government. In the violence and disorder that ensued, Russia took back the Crimea — which had been gifted to the former Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic (a province of Soviet Russia) one drunken night by the Ukraine-born Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. What did we expect after turning Ukraine into another failed state? The Crimean peninsula had been part of Russia for longer than the US had been a country. Its only warm water naval ports were located there. They held a referendum and the Crimean people voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia. So, President Obama decided to punish Russia with economic sanctions.
Then there was Syria, a battleground between the different branches of Islam, their sponsors (Iran and Saudi Arabia), and their proxies, (Hezbollah and the various Salafist jihad armies). The US “solution” was to sponsor the downfall of the legitimate Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad. We apparently still favored foreign relations based on creating failed states — after our experience in Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and Ukraine. President Obama completely muffed his initial attempt at intervention — the “line-in-the-sand” moment — and then decided to send arms and money to the various Salafist jihadi groups fighting Assad, claiming that our bad guys were “moderates.” Meanwhile, Russia stepped in to prop up Assad’s government, apparently based on the idea that the Middle East didn’t need yet another failed state. We castigated Russia for that.
The idiotic behavior of the US toward Russia in these matters led to the most dangerous state of relations between the two since the heart of the Cold War. It culminated in the ridiculous campaign this fall to blame Russia for the defeat of Hillary Clinton. And here we are.
I didn’t vote for Hillary or Donald Trump (I wrote-in David Stockman). I’m not happy to see Donald Trump become president. But I’ve had enough of Mr. Obama. He put up a good front. He seemed congenial and intelligent. But in the end, he appears to be a kind of stooge for the darker forces in America’s overgrown bureaucratic Deep State racketeering operation. Washington truly is a swamp that needs to be drained. Barack Obama was not one of the alligators in it, but he was some kind of bird with elegant plumage that sang a song of greeting at every sunrise to the reptiles who stirred in the mud. And now he is flying away.
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