- Military Miscalculations
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
Market dislocations occur when financial markets, operating under stressful conditions, experience large widespread asset mispricing.Welcome to this week’s edition of “World Out Of Whack” where every Wednesday we take time out of our day to laugh, poke fun at and present to you absurdity in global financial markets in all its glorious insanity.
While we enjoy a good laugh, the truth is that the first step to protecting ourselves from losses is to protect ourselves from ignorance. Think of the “World Out Of Whack” as your double thick armour plated side impact protection system in a financial world littered with drunk drivers.
Selfishly we also know that the biggest (and often the fastest) returns come from asymmetric market moves. But, in order to identify these moves we must first identify where they live.
Occasionally we find opportunities where we can buy (or sell) assets for mere cents on the dollar – because, after all, we are capitalists.
In this week’s edition of the WOW we’re covering military miscalculations
When it comes to the stock and bond markets, the mandate’s pretty simple. Deny, then inflate another bubble. The central banks will continue to do this until the market takes their ability to do so away. It’s going to be quite something to witness.
What about geopolitics, though?
This is a bit trickier to determine, though for anyone with a history book or two thumbs and a search engine we know it can affect asset prices and global capital flows in ways that central bankers only wished they could.
NATO’s biggest buildup on Russia’s borders since the cold war. That’s what the Guardian’s calling it.
“Britain is sending fighter jets next year to Romania. The US is dispatching troops, tanks and artillery to Poland. Germany, Canada and other Nato countries also pledged forces at a meeting on Wednesday of defence chiefs in Brussels.”
NATO is already wobblier than a 2 year old without trainer wheels, and EU disintegration will continue to accelerate as nationalistic parties are elected across Europe. With an increasing focus on protecting their self interests rather than that of Europe, NATO’s days are probably numbered.
Germany, the strongest military power in Europe will remain reluctant to “lead the charge” due to it’s …ahem history, and the Brits reeling from Brexit have little appetite for military aggression, and that really leaves the empire. You see Europe is going to continue building walls. That’s defensive not aggressive.
Then of course there is the South China sea dispute.
Gone are the days when challenging the empire was a no-no. Tis no trivial matter.
China will continue to flex its muscles. After all its achilles heel is that its access to global sea lanes is blocked by a ring of small islands. Controlling these is both militarily strategic as well as economically strategic. America will increasingly be put to the test.
The Empire’s Involvement
Let me be clear. America is not threatened in any way. No foreign power will attack the US. But then they don’t need to. Osama Bin Liner did more damage with a rag tag army of sandal-wearing goat herders than any nation state has managed to do since WWII. Like all empires in their final years, the threat comes from within. Washington doing what Washington does: something incredibly stupid.
Which of course brings us to crook vs jerk.
It’s one reason the American elections actually matter this time around, which makes this Presidential election unusual.
Trump wants to “make America great”. War with Russia appears thankfully not to have crossed his mind.
My guess is he’d rather build a new hotel in Moscow and bring reality TV to the White House than sit in
the radiation footprintWashington after poking the bear.Hillary, on the other hand, is all for it. Her military understanding being that of steamed spinach, and being surrounded by an entire cadre of imbeciles who’ve gone before her: Bush, Cheney, Obama, that guy Bill.
In a recent speech she made her stance very clear:
“Our power comes with a responsibility to lead, humbly, thoughtfully, and with a fierce commitment to our values — because when America fails to lead we leave a vacuum that either causes chaos or other countries or networks rushing to fill the void.”
Oh, you mean like the power vacuums in the middle east now filled by ISIS?
And this doozy:
“We can’t cozy up to dictators, we have to stand up to them.”
Surely she can’t be referring to her push to take down Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. That gambit left Libya in absolute chaos, resulting in the terror group Daesh rising in power and displacing an estimated 400,000 people, all of them mad at America and Europeans and now targeting them in their home towns.
She seems eager to step up the game from her predecessors who made a habit of only attacked small third world countries with sand.
“We need to respond to evolving threats, from states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.”
“We need a military that is ready and agile so that it can meet the full range of threats — and operate on short notice across every domain — not just land, sea, air, and space, but also cyber space.”
Russia, sweetheart, is a nuclear power. China, a nuclear power.
Iran and North Korea? Look cupcake, if you can’t control a tiny pile of sand like Iraq, pray tell how you’re going to go after Iran.
The voting populace doesn’t want it. “Let me just relax and watch gratuitous violence on Netflix, dammit. And I don’t give a hoot about Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen and I sure as hell don’t want to pay for it.”
Even those who can’t read (a substantial and growing number) question why on earth US troops loiter in far flung places being terribly unsuccessful – repeatedly.
The shortlist of active candidates doesn’t look pretty either:
- Iraq? a mess with no control and a power vacuum (as discussed in “7 Steps to the Easiest Short in Recent History.”) which looks a whole lot worse than Saddam.
- Afghanistan? Disaster. Still no control. Billions spent.
- Libya? Whoohoo, Gaddafi is overthrown and now the refugees can pour into Europe unrestrained. Oops, hadn’t thought of that. Actions have consequences. Someone ought to tell these guys.
- The war in Somalia where US forces are fighting a clandestine war against rebels sucks more capital from the US treasury. But never mind, the world still wants US debt… until it doesn’t.
- The Saudis propped up by Washington are now murdering Yemenis. Wining friends and influencing people folks.
- Assad is bad and so supporting ISIS in Syria while fighting them in Iraq, Afghanistan and increasingly on US streets is logical. What was the definition of insanity again?
I could list many more but you get the picture.
In fact, the US has over 1,400 military bases in over 120 countries. Not bad for a country which is importing capital rather than exporting it.
And while this is happening, the rest of the world pivots.
Russia is getting chummy with Iran, China, and now Turkey, which for scholars of history is the pivotal access point for both Europe and the Arab world. The Asian countries increasingly move East towards China, the latest being Duterte of the Philippines who has promised to kick the US out.
“For as long as I am there, do not treat us like a doormat because you’ll be sorry for it. I will not speak with you. I can always go to China.”
Maybe it’s just me but “go to hell you son of a whore” sounds awfully like Asia pivoting away from the US. Puts a bit of a spanner in the Obama administrations “Pivot Asia” foreign policy plan.
Some Troubling Signs
What has been troubling to watch from afar and as a non-American who typically doesn’t care who wins most elections, is the very obvious prepping of war Hillary’s camp has been doing over the last few months.
The Russians are hacking the election, they’re dangerous, they’re expanding, they’re killing
ISIScivilians in Syria, and they may even be the cause ofglobal warmingclimate change not to mention diabetes.It stands to reason: after all, Bill managed to distract an easily distracted electorate from his affair with Monica Lewinsky by launching missiles at Sudan. Why not threaten Russia to distract from the now daily barrage of revelations about the Clinton crime syndicate? Peter Thiel stated the threat lucidly in his recent address at the National Press club:
“Now Hillary Clinton has called for a no fly zone over Syria. Incredibly that would be a mistake even more reckless than invading Iraq, since most of the planes flying over Syria today are Russian planes, Clintons proposed course of action would do worse than involve us in a messy civil war, it would risk a direct nuclear conflict.”
Trump is a blowhard and Hillary part of the deep state. Happy days!
And now it seems that the outcome rests on a large swathe of the electorate drunk on football, Kim Kardashian’s latest antics, and prime time TV. Geopolitical knowledge? Not featuring so much.
The risk is that Washington in desperation does something phenomenally stupid rather than simply dumb which it’s proven itself quite adept at.
The empire will continue to lose its grip but if history is any indication (and it is) then it may not do so quietly.
Question
Cast your vote here and also see what others the biggest threat is
Know anyone that might enjoy this? Please share this with them.
Investing and protecting our capital in a world which is enjoying the most severe distortions of any period in mans recorded history means that a different approach is required. And traditional portfolio management fails miserably to accomplish this.
And so our goal here is simple: protecting the majority of our wealth from the inevitable consequences of absurdity, while finding the most asymmetric investment opportunities for our capital. Ironically, such opportunities are a result of the actions which have landed the world in such trouble to begin with.
– Chris
“Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.” — Groucho Marx
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- Russia: The West Is Trapped In Its Own "Propaganda-Created World"
Submitted by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,
As the American corporate media continues to tow the official line that Russia is working to undermine U.S. elections, the head of the U.K.’s MI5 spoke with the Guardian on Tuesday. It was the first time an acting spy chief has given a newspaper interview in the agency’s 107-year history, and the subject matter important enough to prompt such an atypical occurrence was hardly a surprising one — Russia.
Or, more accurately, Russia as the big bad enemy.
“Russia increasingly seems to define itself by opposition to the west and seems to act accordingly,” MI5 chief Andrew Parker told the Guardian. “You can see that on the ground with Russia’s activities in Ukraine and Syria. But there is high-volume activity out of sight with the cyber-threat.”
“Russia has been a covert threat for decades,” he continued. Then, evoking the U.S. election hacking hype, he added, “What’s different these days is that there are more and more methods available.”
And according to Parker, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is utilizing these methods in “increasingly aggressive ways” to project its global influence:
“It is using its wide range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways — involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks. Russia is at work across Europe and in the U.K. today.”
The Kremlin was quick to issue a response to the Parker interview, one the Guardian detailed in a follow-up piece.
“Those words do not correspond to reality,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said flatly. With regard to alleged U.S. election tampering, he added, “Until someone produces proof, we will consider those statements unfounded and groundless.”
Russia’s embassy in London, meanwhile, stated on Twitter it was “saddened to see a professional trapped to [sic] his own propaganda-created world.” Accompanying that tweet was the movie poster for the 1966 film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming.
In the buildup to the U.S. presidential election on November 8 — and as Russian submarines are spotted off the British coast — Western nations are again amping up the anti-Russian narrative.
On October 7, for instance, the United States officially accused Russia of attempting to intervene in the U.S. political system. Then, just days ago, Western member countries of the G7 alliance agreed that continued sanctions against Russia for its role in Ukraine and Syria were “vital.”
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to such recriminations has been largely one of amusement, as demonstrated by comments he made last week.
While speaking to foreign policy experts in Sochi, Putin dismissed the “hysteria about Russia’s influence on the U.S. presidential election,” adding the “mythical and fictitious” issue has been used to distract the American voter from real problems facing the United States government.
“Does anyone seriously think Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice?” Putin asked. “Is America some kind of banana republic? America is a great power!”
A great power, the Russian president made certain to note, with a top notch propaganda arm:
“I would like to have such propaganda machine in Russia, but, regrettably, there is no such thing,” Putin said, touching on the bought and paid for nature of Western corporate media. “We don’t have such global media as CNN, BBC and others.”
- Currency Chaos Continues As Gold Tops $1300 Again, Nasdaq Futures Tumble Below Key Support
While Facebook's after-hours demise weighed on stock indices (Nasdaq futures broke key 100-DMA support), the overnight action in Asia is centered on currency turmoiling…
Facebook's plunge is hammering the NASDAQ but that drop accelerate as currencies snapped in AsiaPac…
Pushing Nasdaq futures below the key 100-day moving-average…
But the real fun is in Currencies tonight… (as traders focus on the World Series)
USDJPY broke below its 100-DMA, having fallen (Yen strength) non-stop since The BoJ…
Plunging through 103.00 stops…Chatter of a FOX news headline triggering the move…
And the Mexican Peso pounding continues, testing to 19.50..
With the USD Index extending its losses to three-week lows…
Sending Bitcoin soaring..
And the Long Bond is ripping higher (yields lower)…
And safe haven bids have pushed gold back above $1300…
- Secret Recordings Fueled Mutinous FBI Investigation of Clintons Despite DOJ Orders To "Stand Down"
It’s looking increasingly like there is an ongoing mutiny underway within the FBI as the Wall Street Journal is reporting that, according to “officials at multiple agencies”, FBI agents felt they had adequate evidence, including “secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation”, to pursue an investigation of the Clinton Foundation but were repeatedly obstructed by officials at the Department of Justice.
Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said.
The roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case, these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under Hillary Clinton.
Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said.
Despite clear signals from the Justice Department to abandon the Clinton Foundation inquiries, many FBI agents refused to stand down. Then, earlier this year in February 2016, the FBI presented initial evidence at a meeting with Leslie Caldwell, the head of the DOJ’s criminal division, after which agents were delivered a clear message that “we’re done here.” But, as the WSJ points out, DOJ became increasing frustrated with FBI agents that were “disregarding or disobeying their instructions” which subsequently prompted an emphatic “stand down” message from the DOJ to “all the offices involved.”
As 2015 came to a close, the FBI and Justice Department had a general understanding that neither side would take major action on Clinton Foundation matters without meeting and discussing it first. In February, a meeting was held in Washington among FBI officials, public-integrity prosecutors and Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York—Mr. Capers’ office—didn’t attend, these people said.
The public-integrity prosecutors weren’t impressed with the FBI presentation, people familiar with the discussion said. “The message was, ‘We’re done here,’ ” a person familiar with the matter said.
Justice Department officials became increasingly frustrated that the agents seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said.
The FBI had secretly recorded conversations of a suspect in a public-corruption case talking about alleged deals the Clintons made, these people said. The agents listening to the recordings couldn’t tell from the conversations if what the suspect was describing was accurate, but it was, they thought, worth checking out.
Despite the warnings, FBI agents continued to press forward leading to a tense August 12th call between a “senior DOJ official” and the FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, which ended abruptly when McCabe bluntly asked “are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?”
In subsequent conversations with the Justice Department, Mr. Capers told officials in Washington that the FBI agents on the case “won’t let it go,” these people said.
As a result of those complaints, these people said, a senior Justice Department official called the FBI deputy director, Mr. McCabe, on Aug. 12 to say the agents in New York seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions, these people said. The conversation was a tense one, they said, and at one point Mr. McCabe asked, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’’ The senior Justice Department official replied: ”Of course not.”
With that, it seems that we’re starting to get a little more insight into why the FBI didn’t “follow protocol” by alerting the DOJ before sending their most recent letter to Congress announcing the re-opening of Hillary’s email investigation.
Meanwhile, Fox News reported earlier this evening that “sources” claim to have an “avalanche of evidence” in their case against Hillary and that “barring obstruction” they would continue to push for an indictment. The next 5 days should be very interesting.
I said sources described an “avalanche of evidence” in case & barring obstruction they’d likely continue 2 push to try for an indictment” https://t.co/2TjzxdJod1
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) November 2, 2016
- Not Guilty: The Power Of Nullification To Counteract Government Tyranny
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon
How do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs?
Politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.
No matter who sits in the White House, the shadow government will continue to call the shots behind the scenes.
Relying on the courts to restore justice seems futile.
Indeed, with every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts, largely lacking in vision and scope, rendering narrow rulings focused on the letter of the law. This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Even so, justice matters.
It matters whether you’re a rancher protesting a federal land-grab by the Bureau of Land Management, a Native American protesting an oil pipeline that will endanger sacred sites and pollute water supplies, or an African-American taking to the streets to protest yet another police shooting of an unarmed citizen.
Unfortunately, protests and populist movements haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.
It doesn’t matter who the activists are (environmentalists, peaceniks, Native Americans, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, or the Bundys and their followers) or what the source of the discontent is (endless wars abroad, police shootings, contaminated drinking water, government land-grabs), the government’s modus operandi has remained the same: shut down the protests using all means available, prosecute First Amendment activities to the fullest extent of the law, and discourage any future civil uprisings by criminalizing expressive activities, labelling dissidents as extremists or terrorists, and conducting widespread surveillance on the general populace in order to put down any whispers of resistance before it can take root.
Thus, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
Just recently, in fact, an Oregon jury rejected the government’s attempts to prosecute seven activists who staged a six-week, armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
In finding the defendants not guilty—of conspiracy to impede federal officers, of possession of firearms in a federal facility, and of stealing a government-owned truck—the jury sent its own message to the government and those following the case: justice matters.
Many other equally sincere activists with eloquent lawyers and ardent supporters have gone to jail for lesser offenses than those committed at the Malheur Refuge, so what made the difference here?
The jury made all the difference.
These seven Oregon protesters were found not guilty because a jury of their peers recognized the sincerity of their convictions, sympathized with the complaints against an overreaching government, and balanced the scales of justice using the only tools available to them: common sense, compassion and the power of the jury box.
Jury nullification works.
As law professor Ilya Somin explains, jury nullification is the practice by which a jury refuses to convict someone accused of a crime if they believe the “law in question is unjust or the punishment is excessive.” According to former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, the doctrine of jury nullification is “premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished.”
Imagine that: a world where the citizenry—not the government or its corporate controllers—actually calls the shots and determines what is just.
“We the people” can and should be determining what laws are just, what activities are criminal and who can be jailed for what crimes.
This is where the power of jury nullification is so critical: to reject inane laws and extreme sentences and counteract the edicts of a profit-driven governmental elite that sees nothing wrong with jailing someone for a lifetime for a relatively insignificant crime.
Jury nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.
For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.
Nullification is one way of doing so.
Various cities and states have been using this historic doctrine with mixed results on issues as wide ranging as gun control and healthcare to “claim freedom from federal laws they find onerous or wrongheaded.”
Where nullification can be particularly powerful, however, is in the hands of the juror.
The reality with which we must contend is that justice in America is reserved for those who can afford to buy their way out of jail.
For the rest of us who are dependent on the “fairness” of the system, there exists a multitude of ways in which justice can and does go wrong every day. Police misconduct. Prosecutorial misconduct. Judicial bias. Inadequate defense. Prosecutors who care more about winning a case than seeking justice. Judges who care more about what is legal than what is just. Jurors who know nothing of the law and are left to deliberate in the dark about life-and-death decisions. And an overwhelming body of laws, statutes and ordinances that render the average American a criminal, no matter how law-abiding they might think themselves.
If you’re to have any hope of remaining free—and I use that word loosely—your best bet remains in your fellow citizens.
Your fellow citizens may not know what the Constitution says and they may not know what the laws are, but if you’re lucky, those who serve on a jury will have a conscience that speaks louder than the legalistic tones of the prosecutors and the judges and reminds them that justice and fairness go hand in hand.
That’s ultimately what jury nullification is all about: restoring a sense of fairness to our system of justice. It’s the best protection for “we the people” against the oppression and tyranny of the government, and God knows, we can use all the protection we can get.
It’s also a powerful way to remind the government—all of those bureaucrats who have appointed themselves judge, jury and jailer over all that we are, have and do—that we’re the ones who set the rules.
So how do you not only push back against the police state’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?
You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.
Employ militant nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.
Take part in grassroots activism, which takes a trickle-up approach to governmental reform by implementing change at the local level (in other words, think nationally, but act locally).
And then, as I explain in more detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, nullify everything. Nullify the court cases. Nullify the laws. Nullify everything the government does that is illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
- According To Obama, This Is The Reason Why Hillary Isn't "50 Points Ahead"
Having expressed her frustration at not being 50 points ahead against a man who is supported by mere deplorables…
Hillary Clinton piled on this week exclaiming Trump supporters as "dark ", "divisive", and "angry" (all 40-plus percent of the US population of them)…
And so, with neither the racist nor the Putin-puppet label sticking to Trump, as Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger so eloquently notes, Team Clinton and its lobotomized surrogates have regressed back to square one: playing the woman card.
As a reminder Krieger noted earlier this week, a professor of linguistics at Berkeley just published an article at Time claiming (with zero evidence of course), that the Hillary Clinton email server scandal only exists because she is a woman. Here’s a brief snippet of what she said:
‘It’s not about emails; it’s about public communication by a woman’
I am mad. I am mad because I am scared. And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.
The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man? Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere. There is so much of that going around.
It’s not about emails; it’s about public communication by a woman in general. Of course, in the year 2016, no one (probably not even The Donald) could make this argument explicitly. After all, he and his fellow Republicans are not waging a war on women. How do we know that? They have said so. And they’re men, so they must be telling the truth.
I know. It’s really hard to believe the above is real, but it is.
But now President Obama himself is now getting in the mud.
Here’s what he had to say today in Ohio, according to NBC:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Barack Obama said Tuesday that sexism is to blame for the tight race for the White House, telling an Ohio crowd that “Hillary Clinton is consistently treated differently than just about any other candidate I see out there.”
Obama went on: “There’s a reason we haven’t had a woman president.”
Speaking specifically to “the guys out there,” Obama told them to “look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff how much of it is that we’re just not used to it?”
Yep, because the American public handily elected a black man twice, but somehow we all draw the line at a woman. Perhaps, just perhaps, the problem is with Hillary.
Moving along, all this reminded me of a very prescient comment made by Glenn Greenwald a couple of years ago, which I highlighted in the post, Glenn Greenwald on the 2016 Elections – “They’ll Probably Have a Gay Person After Hillary”:
Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion. I mean, she’s been around forever, the Clinton circle. She’s a fucking hawk and like a neocon, practically. She’s surrounded by all these sleazy money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she’s going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It’s going to be this completely symbolic messaging that’s going to overshadow the fact that she’ll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power. They’ll probably have a gay person after Hillary who’s just going to do the same thing.
Obama could’ve gone out on a high note, but he decided to go low.
Sad!
- Why The U.S. Presidential Election Has The Entire World Confused
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Well, everyone thought it was a sure thing — Hillary Clinton had the White House in the bag; the entire political system from the DNC to the RNC and the mainstream media had already called the election over and done. Online gambling sites listed Clinton as a sure bet and Irish site Paddy Power even paid out one million dollars on the assumption of a Clinton win. And then, one Weiner ruined everything — Anthony Weiner.
The revelation of an October surprise re-opening of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified data on private and vulnerable email servers does not come as a shock to me, but it certainly does to many people around the world. Hundreds of mainstream outlets are scrambling to spin the news as misconduct by the FBI rather than a victory for the halls of justice. Numerous alternative media analysts are rushing to cover their butts and admit that there is now a “chance” of a Trump win. Confusion reigns supreme as the weirdest election in U.S. history continues to bewilder observers.
The first issue that needs to be addressed is the lack of an open mind displayed by some when it comes to the real purpose behind this election. The second issue here, of course, is one of timing.
Through the majority of this election cycle the public consensus has been that Clinton will win. Some argued that Trump would not be able to compete with the leftist media empire standing against him, while others have argued that the entire system including the Republican establishment would ensure that Trump would fail. The alternative media has in the past simply pointed out that elections have always been rigged, either by the elites playing both sides of the competition, or through outright voter fraud. They have assumed that the elites want Clinton, and therefore, the election has already been decided.
I tend to agree with the latter point of view, though I disagree with the conclusion. U.S. elections are indeed controlled, and have been for decades, primarily through the false left/right paradigm. However, as I have been pointing out since I correctly predicted the success of the Brexit referendum, I don’t think that Clinton is the choice of the elites.
I outline my reasons for this conclusion in-depth in articles like '2016 Will End With Economic Instability And A Trump Presidency', published in August. For the past several months it seems as though I have been the only person holding the view that Trump will be president. Only in the past few days have I received emails from readers stating that they used to think I was probably crazy, but now they aren’t so sure…
To be clear, my position is that Trump is slated to take the White House and that this is by design. This has been my position since before Trump won the Republican Primaries, it was my position when the election cycle began, it has never changed, nor have my views on the reasons for this outcome ever changed. Of course, the election is not over yet, and if Clinton ends up soiling the already thoroughly soiled Oval Office with her presence, then everyone can color me confused as well. That said, here are some issues that I think many people are overlooking when coming to conclusions on the election and the events surrounding it.
Clinton Is The Worst Candidate The Elites Could Have Chosen
I have been studying the activities and behaviors of establishment elites for over a decade and I have to say… they are not stupid. They certainly have hubris, and I would not call them “wise,” but they are definitely devious. They know how to rig a game. They know how to play both sides. They know how to cheat to get what they want when it comes to politics and how to manufacture consent from portions of the public. They’ve been doing it a long time. They have mastered it.
So, in my view it is rather insane for the elites to field a candidate such as Hillary Clinton IF the entirety of their globalist empire hangs in the balance (I don't think it does). Though she is fond of BleachBit, the woman is unbleachable. With a decades-long rap sheet from her work at Rose Law Firm (in which document destruction and “misplacement” was apparently routine) to her interference with investigations into Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions, to the strange odyssey surrounding her lies on the Benghazi attack, as well as her rampant mishandling of classified documents as head of the State Department, not to mention the Clinton Foundation’s pay to play scandals, it is impossible to endear her to the masses. Her dismal crowd turnouts are rather indicative of this.
On top of all this, Clinton’s anti-Russia rhetoric is coming off as absolutely crazy, and I think this is by design. Many in the alternative media, while assuming that Clinton is paving the way for WWIII, forget that the average person may not be up to speed on the same information we are, but most of them aren’t ignorant. Clinton’s ravings on Russian hacking and potential war are even putting liberals off rather than inspiring their confidence.
One would think that if the elites have their veritable pick of any politician to represent their interests in the White House and convince the American public to go along for the ride, Clinton would be the worst choice. Even if the intention were to rig the election in favor of Clinton, she would be a lame-duck president the second she took office, and, her mere presence would galvanize conservatives to the point of mass rebellion.
This is not generally how the elites play the game. Instead, they prefer co-option to direct confrontation.
Which President Is Better For The Elites During An Economic Breakdown?
If you consider the premise that Clinton is NOT the chosen one, and that the entire election is theater, the situation changes rather drastically.
Those that follow the underlying economic data that the mainstream tends to ignore know that large swaths of the global financial system are not long for this world. With Europe’s banking system plunging towards a Lehman-style event, the OPEC production freeze deal ready to fall apart yet again, and the Federal Reserve threatening to raise rates into recessionary conditions in December, our already floundering fiscal structure is approaching another crisis.
My question has always been who would the elites rather have in office when this crisis occurs? I’ve said it a hundred times before and I’ll say it again here: with Clinton in office, globalists and international financiers get the blame for any economic downturn. With Trump in office, conservative movements will be blamed. In fact, I suggest anyone who doubts this scenario watch stock market reactions every time Trump rises in the polls or Clinton faces renewed scandal. The narrative is already being prepared — a Trump win equals a market loss.
For those that think it outlandish that the public could be tricked into blaming Trump and conservatives for an economic crisis, I suggest they consider that possession is nine-tenths of the law in the minds of many. People can also be irrational when facing financial ruin. I would remind readers that history is written by the victors. The globalists plan to be victorious in the dismantling of America and our founding principles. Whether or not they succeed is really up to average conservatives and liberty proponents, not Trump.
The FBI’s Move Prepares The Way For Trump
Clinton and the DNC argue that FBI Director James Comey’s announcement of a re-opened investigation is politically motivated. And they are right, sort of. The real motivation, I believe, is that Clinton was never meant to win the election in the first place, and that the elites want Trump placed in power during the final hours of the U.S. economy. Everything else is just a Kabuki dance.
The democrats are crying foul and accusing Comey of “working with Putin,” or working with the alt-right. The nefarious Harry Reid has even accused the FBI of hiding Trump’s supposed ties to the Russian government and violating the Hatch Act.
I think much of this outrage is real, as I believe much of the mainstream media attacks on Trump are coming from people who really think they are waging a propaganda war to get Hillary Clinton elected. This, however, does not mean that the elites plan to install Clinton.
Some might see my position as bizarre. I understand. But equally bizarre to me are some of the rationalizations people attempt to argue when dealing with the Comey revelation.
For example, the argument that the entire re-opening of the investigation is a complex ploy designed by the establishment to distract away from the Wikileaks data dumps. This makes little sense. If anything, the re-opening investigation is only bringing MORE attention to the Wikileaks data, not less. If the elites were hoping to create a distraction, they failed miserably.
The FBI’s announcement ONLY harms the Clinton campaign. Period. Even if it fizzles out, even if they announce that nothing was found, the investigation hitting the news streams so close to election day refocuses all public attention back on Clinton’s corruption and will continue to do so for the next week at least. The idea that the elites hope to use it to help Clinton is nonsensical.
I have also seen the argument that Comey is acting to cover his own posterior, perhaps because of a fear that Trump may steal away a victory. I find this equally absurd. Months back the consensus among alternative analysts was that Comey (placed in the FBI by Obama) was a traitor and the FBI was a puppet agency of the establishment. Now, suddenly, Comey is worried about a possible Trump win and so takes an action which might self-fulfill the prophecy?
Comey does what he is told. The FBI is an owned and operated elitist franchise. They do not go rogue. If the rogue FBI narrative were true and Comey actually feels the need to cover his bases with Trump, then it is only because he knows something the rest of us do not. With Clinton in office, his goose would be cooked after this little incident. Comey only gains an advantage if Trump is slated to win.
Trump May Or May Not Be Aware Of The Plan
The bottom line, according to the evidence I have seen in terms of elitists influence over U.S. elections, is that if Trump wins it will only be because they wanted him to win. The FBI firestorm this past week appears to support my view and we still have another week left for further Clinton ugliness to be revealed. I also expect that if Trump wins, the reaction from conservatives and liberty activists will be that the event was a “miracle,” a shocking upset against the establishment. Much like the reaction to the Brexit referendum. I continue to hold that conservatives and sovereignty champions in Europe and America are being set up to take the fall for a coming global destabilization.
I have not taken this position just to be contrary. If I think about it honestly, my position is truly a losing position. If I am mistaken and Clinton wins on the 8th then I’ll probably never hear the end of it, but that’s a risk that has to be taken, because what I see here is a move on the chess board that others are not considering. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong.
That said, if I am right, then I still lose, because Trump supporters and half the liberty movement will be so enraptured that they will probably ignore the greater issue — that Trump is the candidate the elites wanted all along.
If I am right, I cannot say either way if Trump is aware that he will be a potential scapegoat for the elites. With Trump on the way to the White House I can guarantee a Fed rate hike in December. Imagine what a staged war between Trump and the Federal Reserve will do to the U.S. dollar? What a way to destroy the currency's world reserve status and make way for the IMF's Special Drawing Rights! I also suspect that widespread rioting is on the schedule as well from various social justice mobs; a perfect excuse for expansive martial law measures, don’t you think?
The point is, as horrifying as a Clinton presidency might be to conservatives (or to everyone), don’t get too comfortable under Trump. The party is just getting started and our vigilance must be even greater with a conservative White House, because, like it or not, everything Trump does is going to reflect on us. We can no more allow unconstitutional activities under Trump than we could under Clinton. If you think the election has been chaotic and confusing so far, just wait until after it is over.
- Wikileaks Exposes Collusion Between Clinton Campaign, State Department, And New York Times
And the hits just keep on coming.
At the same time as the latest Wikileaks email dump revealed an email sent from the gmail account of DOJ assistant attorney general, Peter Kadzik, to the gmail account of John Podesta, warning him of a FOIA case that would make it “a while before the State Department posts the [Hillary] emails”, an off-the-record communication which the DOJ apparently had no complaints about, we learned of another coordinated, collusive event, this time involving not the Department of Justice, but the Secretary of State, the New York Times, and the Clinton campaign.
In an email dated March 1, 2015, just one day before the NYT’s story revealing that Hillary Clinton had a personal email server, a State Department official, Lauren Hickey, coordinated with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staffers Heather Samuelson as well as Philippe Reines and Nick Merrill, on a statement given to The New York Times regarding how to frame its landmark story.
In the email also sent from the gmail account of State Department press aide Lauren Hickey (laurenashleyhickey@gmail.com), the government employee told Clinton aides that then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki had “just cleared” a statement to a New York Times reporter. Hickey attached the statement, which appeared to include a change made at the behest of the Clinton aides.
“Yes on your point re records – done below,” she wrote although it is unclear what change the Clinton campaign had requested.
Hi guys – Jen just cleared. She made the highlighted change — just rephrased a line about NARA updates state is undertaking. Yes on your point re records – done below. And yes will let you know — should be in the new few minutes.
The statement describes the State Department’s efforts to respond to document requests from the House Benghazi Committee, which uncovered the existence of Clinton’s server.
“From the moment that the Select Committee was created, the State Department has been proactively and consistently engaged in responding to the Committee’s many requests in a timely manner, providing more than 40,000 pages of documents, scheduling more than 20 transcribed interviews and participating in several briefings and each of the Committee’s hearings.
One day after the exchange, the New York Times published its “groundbreaking”, if preapproved report revealing Clinton’s server to the public. A short time later, Hillary Clinton would announce her candidacy for president.
In a briefing Wednesday afternoon, State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the alleged leaked documents in a statement, but noted that “[providing] accurate information to the media and the public related to former Secretary Clinton’s emails… at times required communicating with her representatives to ensure accuracy.”
Stated simply, collusion happen: it’s all for the sake of “accuracy.”
To summarize: on the same day we obtained evidence of collusion between the Clinton campaign’s chairman, John Podesta, and one of the top-ranked staffers at the Justice Department, we also have confirmation of collusion between the State Department, the Clinton campaign and the New York Times.
Or, as president Obama put it, “an honest mistake.”
* * *
The email in question showing the coordinated effort between State, the NYT and the Clinton campaign is shown below.
- What Keeps Elliott's Paul Singer Up At Night: "A Spike In Inflation Could Leat To A Market Crash"
One month ago, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio warned the New York Fed that even a modest, 1% rise in rates, and thus inflation, would lead to trillions in losses and “trigger the worst price decline in bonds since the 1981 bond market crash.” Now, it is the turn of Elliott Management’s Paul Singer. In a letter to investors seen by CNBC’s Kate Kelly, Elliott Management execs warned of essentially the same thing: that a rapid inflation is the $30 billion hedge fund’s biggest concern in the current environment, and that such a spike would not only collapse bond prices, but potentially lead to a stock market crash.
“This may seem like a strange thing to worry about under the current circumstances, but the tide toward inflation could turn rather abruptly,” wrote the money managers in their Q3 letter dated Oct. 28. “If inflation starts accelerating to an annual rate of high single digits or greater, it will be quite difficult for the mix of strategies that Elliott favors to ‘keep up.'”
However, sudden price hikes were only one of the Elliott team’s worries, according to the recent letter. Another is Singer’s biggest recurring fear: that the artificial market created by central bankers over the past 7 years will undergo rapid “renormalization.” Lingering over Elliott’s portfolio management is a persistent fear that central bankers — by collectively cutting interest rates 673 times since the financial crisis — have so upended the natural price levels of stocks, bonds and many other assets, “that the economy and markets are operating in denial of reality.”
Paraphrasing from the latest Greenlight letter, sent on the same day, in which David Einhorn said that “we have central bankers who are determined to see flashing lights that aren’t there…. we are more than seven years into an economic recovery, yet central bankers behave as if we’re still in crisis”, Elliott writes that “every sniffle is being treated by central banks as acute respiratory distress syndrome worthy of ‘code-blues’ and teams of frantic pumpers and fixers… what this policy landscape has engendered is a widespread belief, or at least a strong suspicion, that stock and bond prices won’t ever be allowed to go down in any meaningful way.”
Such a mentality, according to Singer, “has encouraged massively risky behavior.”
Aside from his traditional pessimistic warning that the central-bank created “market” will implode sooner or later, Elliott predicts that during the coming months or years, oil prices will trend higher than their current $45 level, but not by much. “The oil market has largely achieved balance,” the managers wrote, “albeit with high stock levels, and we expect medium-term price appreciation to be limited by the return of U.S. production growth in the $50-60 range.”
Singer also touched on one of his long-running favorite investments, gold, and noted that its flat performance during the third quarter, and the move down in response to the increasing belief that the Fed will soon rate interest rates, seemed puzzling: “Given the market gyrations that have accompanied each of the Fed’s previous attempts at hiking policy rates over the last few years, now would seem to be an inopportune time to abandon the only actual safe haven that investors may reach for as an alternative to the really bad deal offered by fixed income instruments given current pricing.“
Translated: Elliott is buying gold here.
Singer then looked at Europe, and specifically Italy which he said is in a state of “tremendous flux” that will only continue should Prime Minister Matteo Renzi fail to win a Dec. 4 referendum intended to simplify the country’s governance.
“The resulting unrest may be more impactful than Brexit,” the letter stated. Meanwhile, in Germany, the straits faced by Deutsche Bank, the troubled financial giant now in talks to settle fraud charges with the U.S. Justice Department, may be overplayed in the market, given that the German government, in Elliott’s view, will do whatever is ultimately needed to stabilize the biggest German lender.
“Regardless of what Chancellor (Angela) Merkel currently says, Germany will stand behind Deutsche Bank in extremis.”
He is right,
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