Today’s News November 25, 2015

• Turkish Shootdown of Russian Jet: What You Need to Know

  A U.S. official told Reuters that the Russian jet was inside of Syria when it was shot down:

  The United States believes that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

  Russia denies that the Russian fighter jet – which was bombing ISIS – ever entered Turkish air space, and has put out its own map purporting to prove that claim.

  The Russian jet pilots who parachutted free of their burning plane were then purportedly killed by Turkish rebels inside Syria.  If true, this is a war crime.

  Then – when a Russian helicopter tried to save the pilots – it was shot down by American-backed Syrian rebels – using weapons provided to them by the United States  – and a Russian marine was killed.

  Russia is deploying a warship off the Syrian coast to “destroy any threats to Russian planes”.   Many believe this is the start of World War III.

  While the U.S. and NATO tried to blame Russia, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel slammed Turkey:

  “This incident shows for the first time that we are to dealing with an actor who is unpredictable according to statements from various parts of the region – that is not Russia, that is Turkey,” Gabriel said, as cited by DPA news agency. He added that Turkey was playing “a complicated role” in the Syrian conflict.

  Indeed, NATO-member Turkey is MASSIVELY supporting ISIS, provided chemical weapons used in the jihadi’s massacre of civilians, and has been bombing ISIS’ main on-the-ground enemy – Kurdish soldiers – using its air force.  And some of the Turkish people are also unsympathetic to the victims of ISIS terrorism.Turkey was also instrumental in the creation of ISIS.  An internal Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document produced recently shows, the U.S. knew that the actions of “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey” in Syria might create a terrorist group like ISIS and an Islamic CALIPHATE.

  As the former DIA head explained:

  It was a willful decision [by Turkey, the West and the Gulf states] to … support an insurgency that had salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood ….

  

  

  

  

• This Thanksgiving, Let's Say "No Thanks" To The Tyranny Of The American Police State

  Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”—Daniel Webster

  Thanksgiving is not what it once was.

  Then again, America is not what she once was.

  Americans have become so enthralled by the “bread and circuses” of our age—tables groaning under the weight of an abundance of rich foods, televisions tuned to sports and entertainments spectacles, stores competing for Black Friday shoppers, and a general devotion to excess and revelry—that we have lost sight of the true purpose of Thanksgiving.

  Indeed, the following is a lesson in how far we have traveled—and how low we have fallen—in the more than 200 years since George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation, calling upon the nation to give thanks for a government whose purpose was ensuring the safety and happiness of its people and for a Constitution designed to safeguard civil and religious liberty.

  This Thanksgiving finds us saddled with a government that is a far cry from Washington’s vision of a government that would be a blessing to all the people:

  • governed by wise, just and constitutional laws
  • faithfully executed and obeyed by its agents
  • assisting foreign nations with good government, peace, and concord
  • promoting true religion, virtue and science
  • and enabling temporal prosperity.

  Instead, as the following shows, the U.S. government has become a warring empire, governed by laws that are rash, unjust and unconstitutional, policed by government agents who are corrupt, hypocritical and abusive, a menace to its own people, and the antithesis of everything for which Washington hoped.

  George Washington didn’t intend Thanksgiving to be a day for offering up glib platitudes that require no thought, no effort and no sacrifice. He wanted it to be a day of contemplation, in which we frankly assessed our shortcomings, acknowledged our wrongdoings, and resolved to be a better, more peaceable nation in the year to come.

  It is in that true spirit of Thanksgiving that I offer the following list of things for which I’m not thankful about the American police state.

  The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. As such, the citizenry has little if any impact on the policies of government. There are 131 lobbyists to every Senator, reinforcing concerns that the government represents the corporate elite rather than the citizenry.

   

  Americans are being jailed for profit. Imprisoning Americans in private prisons and jails run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business, with states agreeing to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in privately run prisons for at least 20 years. And how do you keep the prisons full? By passing laws aimed at increasing the prison population, including the imposition of life sentences on people who commit minor or nonviolent crimes such as siphoning gasoline. Little surprise, then, that the United States has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. The government’s tendency towards militarization and overcriminalization, in which routine, everyday behaviors become targets of regulation and prohibition, have resulted in Americans getting arrested for making and selling unpasteurized goat cheese, cultivating certain types of orchids, feeding a whale, holding Bible studies in their homes, and picking their kids up from school.

   

  Endless wars have resulted in a battlefield mindset that is infecting the nation.  The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces. Even EMS crews and fire fighters are being “gifted” with military tanks, Kevlar helmets and ballistic vests. Police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war. It has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers. Communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets. Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser. Lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones. Hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later. And a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

   

  Militarized police, shootings of unarmed citizens, SWAT team raids, misconduct and qualified immunity have transformed the U.S. into a police state.  What we must contend with today is the danger of having a standing army (which is what police forces, increasingly made up of individuals with military backgrounds and/or training, have evolved into) that has been trained to view the citizenry as little more than potential suspects, combatants and insurgents. Despite propaganda to the contrary, it is estimated that U.S. police kill more people in days than other countries do in years. On an average day in America, at least 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams (although I’ve seen estimates as high as 300 a day), which are increasingly used to deal with routine police matters: angry dogs, domestic disputes, search warrants, etc. Every five days a police officer somewhere in America engages in sexual abuse or misconduct.

   

  The barrier between public and private property has been done away with. Call it what you will—taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc.—but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft. What Americans don’t seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights and no real property. In this way, the police state with all of its trappings—from surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray devices, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conduct—has become little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of the corporate oligarchy that rule over us.

   

  The technologically-driven surveillance state has become the fourth branch of government. This fourth branch—the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, etc.—came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC. This age of technological tyranny has been made possible by government secrets, government lies, government spies and their corporate ties. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead. The police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state.

   

  The schools, modeled after quasi-prisons, are churning out future compliant citizens. Within America’s public schools can be found almost every aspect of the American police state that plagues those of us on the “outside”: metal detectors, surveillance cameras, militarized police, drug-sniffing dogs, tasers, cyber-surveillance, random searches, senseless arrests, jail time, the list goes on. Whether it takes the form of draconian zero tolerance policies, overreaching anti-bullying statutes, police officers charged with tasering and arresting so-called unruly children, standardized testing with its emphasis on rote answers, political correctness, or the extensive surveillance systems cropping up in schools all over the country, young people in America are first in line to be indoctrinated into compliant citizens of the new American police state.

   

  The courts have become courts of order in an age of government-sanctioned tyranny. With every ruling handed down by the courts, 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 that have nothing to do with true justice. 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. Given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, and corporate corruption, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater. Yet when presented with an opportunity to weigh in on these issues, what does our current Supreme Court usually do? It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern. More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt. Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

  As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these are abuses that no American should tolerate from its government, and yet not only do we tolerate them, but we help to advance them by supporting meaningless elections, allowing ourselves to be divided by partisan politics, and failing to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

  Mark my words: if we do not push back against the menace of the police state now, if we fail to hold onto the Constitution and our constitutional republic, and if we allow the government to remain the greatest threat to our freedoms, then future Thanksgivings will find us paying the price with tyranny at home and anarchy throughout the world.

  

  

  

  

  

• There is little difference between rich and poor in America

  The further you go towards the tails of the bell curve, the more similar social characteristics.  In a society that has been even more polarized, we increasingly see similarities between the very wealthy, and the very poor.  The declining middle class is more and more a world of it’s own (as the elite used to be). 

  In Summary, the Superclass “Elite” UHNWI and the ultra poor have the following in common:

  • Both have usually a less than superior education, or even are illiterate (and/or extremely out of touch with ‘the real world’)
  • Both have nearly no daily obligations but are ‘busy’ by choice
  • Both have a tendency toward extreme substance abuse (i.e. constant drinking / drug use)
  • Both have extreme freedoms 
  • Both are near handicapped, having many ‘caretakers’ (whether it be in the case of the rich, a staff of servants – in the case of the poor, government / social workers, government support, etc.)
  • Both don’t worry about money!
  • Both have little respect for the laws 
  • Both have a fleet of vehicles, half of which are not working or in the shop
  • Both have little regard for the trend of the time
  • Both may occupy a space, having almost no assets in their own name (of course, for greatly different reasons – the rich don’t want tax obligations and in business ‘conflicts of interest’ for owning certain assets)
  • Both could care less about foreign affairs, unless it impacts their business or daily life
  • Both usually have a lifelong advisor they turn to and speak with constantly (in the case of the poor it is their ‘friend’ or their ‘cousin’ – in the case of the superrich, probably their ‘lawyer’ or ‘advisor’ in some cases their ‘brother’)
  • Both ‘don’t work’ 

  What is the difference between tent cities and the growth of ‘billionaire hubs’ – primarily, it is a difference of infrastructure.  Both are largely anti-social, and live outside the realms of society, on the edge of the law.  The point here is that the destruction of the middle class as it is colloquially referred, is really a breakdown of modern civil society.  Investment funds have shifted away from public development uses, so in parallel to these billionaire hubs we’ve seen a great deterioration of public infrastructure (i.e. bridges, roads, schools, dams, levees around New Orleans, etc.).  Even the poor have their own Web 2.0 startups, such as “Rent a Tent.” 

  But of course – the big difference.  The UHNWI can make choices that could change all that.  But can they?  Are they just as much slaves as anyone?  Through the vast vestiges of the social control paradigm, maybe it is in fact they too – who are the victims – or if not the main victims.  We here at Zero Hedge often have disdain for some of both of these classes (although many UHNWI are our clients, even if through their various proxy entity networks).  So it may be important to take a step back, and realize what’s happened economically speaking since the economic polarization of our modern capitalist society.  

  How did we get here?  How is it that – in the city with explosive real estate value growth (San Francisco), has sewers built more than 150 years ago?  What’s wrong with this picture?  Billionaires drive on bad roads too.  As traders and investors it’s easy to be sucked into our niches of analysis, i.e. technical vs. fundamental, without looking at the system as a whole.  When we can understand the system as a whole better, we can make better investment decisions, and create better markets (with less fraud, less volatility, and less regulation).  The only thing that can save the freefall economy – it’s knowledge and education!  Fractional reserve capitalism is all about hiding and profiting from information.  

  From the very beginning of the modern free-markets system, huge investments have been made in anti-education efforts, counter-propoganda, social and biological control mechanisms, and so on.  The CIA has openly been involved in cultural propoganda and social engineering programs, including but not limited to, the ‘womans rights’ movement, ‘gay rights’ movements, ‘flower power’ (specifically, Timothy Leary and various military experiments released into the youth culture), and generally – promoting a culture of stupidity (where it’s ‘cool’ to be stupid).  We don’t need to mention Beavis and Butthead, Jackass, because this is all low hanging fruit.  What they do now is simple – because a roadmap was laid during the 60’s and 70’s, and now far greater technology has been developed.  That means a child growing up in ‘civil society’ doesn’t stand a chance!  

  All this is designed for one thing – send your money to the power elite.  Spend your time, energy, doing whatever you want, as long as every 20 or 30 years, all your hard work and wealth, will be donated to your local Rothchild branch.

  The billionaire class – as proved with Russia after privatization – is a great tool for controlling the masses.  It gives people false heroes, material gods, someone to look up to; and at the same time appeals to their ego and vanity.  So, for the elite, it is most critical to program and enslave this very special group of people, and if they don’t exist – to create them!  As the Europeans learned more than 1000 years ago – people need Kings and Queens – not to be ‘ruled’ – and to be ‘taxed’ – but to exist!  At the end of the day, most humans are like animals that need to be herded.  For whatever reason, humans haven’t evolved enough to live in a real utopia – which is possible with current technology (free energy and no one works, all are happy).  

  So, when you realize all this, and consider how important it is that UHNWI are the social templates used for the programming on down the genetic chain, it’s no wonder that the billionaire favelas are not much different than the real favelas, in a nation built by tired and poor people:

  “Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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• 17 Seconds That Changed The World – Leaked Letter Exposes Turkey's Hair-Trigger Reality

  Needless to say, Moscow and Ankara are at odds over precisely what happened on Tuesday when a Russian Su-24 was shot down near the Syrian border. 

  The two pilots ejected and attempted to parachute to safety but Turkmen FSA-allied Alwiya al-Ashar militiamen shot at them as they fell before posting a video purporting to show rebel soldiers celebrating over one of the bodies. It only got worse from there when the FSA’s 1st Coastal Brigade used a US-made TOW to destroy a Russian search and rescue helicopter. 

  Clearly, this was a marked escalation and indeed it was the first time a NATO member had engaged a Russian or Soviet warplane in more than 60 years.

  The Kremlin was not happy as Vladimir Putin – who was meeting with King Abdullah in Jordan – proceeded to brand Erdogan a “backstabber” and an ISIS supporter. Sergei Lavrov subsequently canceled a planned trip to Turkey.

  At issue now, is whether the Russian fighter jet did indeed, as Turkey claims, venture into Turkish airspace or whether the Turks actually engaged Moscow’s warplane in the skies over Syria. 

  Here’s Russia’s version of the story, presented via a video released by the Defense Ministry:

  And here’s Turkey’s account:

   

  Finally, here’s The New York Times with a compare and constrast visual:

  

  In the wake of an emergency NATO meeting this afternoon, new information has come to light. First, there’s Ankara’s letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the 15 members of the UN Security Council. Here it is: 

  

  The highlighted passage reads: “Disregarding these warnings, both planes, at an altitude of 19,000 feet, violated Turkish national airspace to a depth of 1.36 miles and 1.15 miles in length for 17 seconds from 9:24:05 local time.”

  So, as RT notes, even if we buy Turkey’s story (i.e. if we accept that Russia actually did violate Turkish airspace), then it would appear that Ankara has something of an itchy trigger finger. That is, Turkey was apparently willing to risk sparking a wider conflict between NATO and Russia over a 17 second incursion.

  But something doesn’t sound right.  

  Journalists: Learn to do basic maths. Look at Turkey’s statement to UN: 1.15 miles / 17 seconds x 60 x 60 = 243 miles/hour = 391 km/hour

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 24, 2015

  In other words, as Sputnik put it earlier this evening, “according to those numbers, the Su-24 would have had to be flying at stall speed.”

  The Su-24’s max speed is 1,320 km/hour.

  So if we assume the Su-24 was actually going much faster, was 17 seconds more like 5 seconds? Or perhaps even less? 

  It’s important not to forget the context here. Ankara is fiercly anti-Assad and in addition to being generally displeased with Russia’s efforts to support the regime, just four days ago, Turkey summoned Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov over the alleged bombing of Turkish villages near the border. “Turkey has asked Russia to ‘immediately end its operation,'” AFP reported, adding that “Ankara warned bombing villages populated by the Turkmen minority in Syria could lead to ‘serious consequences.'”

  Of course Russia wasn’t just bombing Turkish civilians for the sheer hell of it. It’s likely Moscow was targeting the very same FSA-affiliated Alwiya al-Ashar militiamen who shot and killed the parachuting Russian pilot earlier today. 

  In short, it looks like Ankara saw an opportunity to shoot down a Russian jet in retaliation for strikes on Turkish rebel fighters who are operating alongside anti-Assad forces. Erdogan is essentially gambling that Russia will not retailiate militarily against Turkey because doing so would open the door for a direct confrontation with NATO. 

  Time will tell whether that gamble pays off or whether Moscow decides that the next time a Turkish F-16 gets “lost” over Latakia, a little payback is in order.

   

  

  

  

  

  

• Profound Political Disunity Is Now Pitting Rising Elites Against Fading Elites

  Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

  The American Power Elite may yet discover that throw the bums out applies to all existing Establishment parties and Elites.

  As I have often noted, historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling class as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a book I have been recommending since 2009.

  The chapter titles of the book provide a precis of the other causes Grant identifies:

  The Gulfs Between the Classes

  The Credibility Gap

  The Partnerships That Failed

  The Groups That Opted Out

  The Undermining of Effort

  Today we focus on the rising profound political disunity of the Power Elites of the U.S. As a general observation, the largely theatrical polarization of the two political parties is being replaced by fault lines within each party and American society that no longer respect the ideological lines of Republican and Democrat.

  While conventional media pundits have observed the disorder in Republican ranks with more than a little schadenfreude (pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune), relatively little attention has been paid to the equivalent fractures in the Democratic Party.

  Longtime correspondent Mark G. forwarded an insightful article by Joel Kotkin that explains one of the key fractures: Tech titans want to be masters of all media we survey.

  In effect, the Old Left (currently represented by Bernie Sanders) is splintering from the mainstream Imperial Democrats (my term) of Hillary Clinton, while Kotkin’s Tech Titans are pursuing a Libertarian-flavored dominance.

  Mark G. provides the analytic structure needed to understand why both parties are coming apart at the seams:

  What Kotkin describes here is best characterized as a civil war among Democratic Party Elites. This parallels a similar struggle taking place inside the GOP between the ‘GOP Establishment’ and probably 70% of the GOP’s electoral base.

  (Excerpt from Kotkin:) “The rising tech oligarchy, having disrupted everything from hotels and taxis to banking, music and travel, is also taking over the content side of the media business. In the process, we might see the future decline of traditional media, including both news and entertainment, and a huge shift in media power away from both Hollywood and New York and toward the Bay Area and Seattle.”

  (Mark G.:) I think the most important finding from the present political cycle is the evidence of rapidly rising factionalism and infighting among our 0.01%’ers. Their ships are not “all sailing in the same direction,” as Don Lucchesi said in Godfather III. Their goals are becoming very divergent indeed to the point of directly opposing each other.

  Contrary to received MSM wisdom, this warfare appears to be most pronounced at present inside the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders is clearly the AFL-CIO’s man in a sense, along with the aged New Left. And he’s drawing crowds to match. Like Bill, Hillary is the creature of Wall Street, NYC-based Mainstream Media, Hollywood and the Government Educational complex. The Tech Oligarchs really don’t have a candidate of their own in the field this cycle.

  Meanwhile the “GOP Establishment” is increasingly at open war with its own electoral base. So is the Democratic Party under the aegis of the digital ‘Tech Oligarchs.’ The older ‘Mainframe’ Democratic elites were far more attentive to middle class interests in their political coalition. The Tech Oligarchs are displaying a streak of Libertarian “My Way Or The Highway” rawness where it comes to political issues and the interests of nominal coalition partners.

  I think The Donald could easily be found possessing support from some surprising quarters when the time comes.

  Thank you, Mark, for the analysis.

  For further evidence of the fault lines shattering the Democratic Party consider Who Turned My Blue State Red? Why poor areas vote for politicians who want to slash the safety net.

  Perhaps we can summarize this as the resentment of the remaining middle class/working class for free-riders who are living as well or better than the heavily burdened workers supporting their guaranteed income.

  Game theory has shown that participants will choose to punish cheaters over skimming rewards, until the cheaters are in the majority. At that point, everyone converts to cheating/free-riding and the system collapses.

  This rising sense of injustice applies to three classes: the super-wealthy skimmers who buy political influence; protected state workers drawing benefits that are distant memories for 99% of private-sector workers, and the free-riders at the bottom buying groceries with SNAP cards and non-food items with wads of cash earned without the burdens of taxes.

  So we have two volatile brews being mixed together: the anger and resentment of what’s left of the middle and working classes against those above and below them, and the widening political disunity of the Elites.

  All those Democratic Party stalwarts whose power base is being disrupted by digital forces beyond their control are not happy campers. Unfortunately for them, history can’t be turned back.

  As for the Republicans, the party’s long reliance on social polarization for its support is wearing thin, as thin as the wallets and purses of traditional Republican audiences.

  What’s upending the existing political Elites is this: there’s no free lunch. As the phantom free lunch of the past seven years is shattered by economic realities, the parties’ fiefdoms are discovering there isn’t enough money for all fiefdoms to expand as they have for 60 years.

  As a result, each fiefdom is forced to battle other Elites for increasingly scarce financial and political oxygen.

  The American Power Elite may yet discover that throw the bums out applies to all existing Establishment parties and Elites.

  

  

  

  

  

• NATO Is Harboring ISIS, And Here's The Evidence

  For the better part of a year, Turkey remained on the sidelines in the “fight” against ISIS.

  Then, on July 20, a powerful explosion ripped through the town of Suruc. 33 people were killed including a number of Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF) members who planned to assist in the rebuilding of Kobani.

  The attack was promptly attributed to Islamic State who took “credit” for the tragedy the next day.

  To be sure, the attack came at a rather convenient time for President Tayyip Erdogan. A little over a month earlier, the ruling AKP party lost its absolute parliamentary majority in part due to a strong showing at the ballot box for the pro-Kurdish (and PKK-aligned) HDP. What happened in the wake of the Suruc bombing was nothing short of a largely successful attempt on Erdogan’s part to use fear and violence to scare the electorate into restoring AKP’s dominance in snap elections that took place earlier this month. 

  In short, Erdogan used Suruc as an excuse to begin a “war on terror.” Part and parcel of the new campaign was an invite from Ankara for Washington to use Turkey’s Incirlik air base. Subsequently, Erdogan reminded the world that the PKK is also considered a terrorist organization and as such, the anti-ISIS campaign would also include a crackdown on Kurdish militants operating in Turkey. Erdogan proceeded to focus squarely on the PKK, all but ignoring ISIS while simultaneously undercutting the coalition building process on the way to calling for new elections. Unsurprisingly, AKP put on a much better showing in the electoral redo, and with that, Erdogan had succeeded in using ISIS as a smokescreen to start a civil war with the PKK, in the process frightening voters into restoring his party’s grip on power.

  Through it all, the PKK has suggested that Ankara is and always has been in bed with Islamic State. That contention will come as no surprise to those who frequent these pages. It’s common knowledge that Turkey backs the FSA and participates in the US/Saudi-led effort to supply Syrian rebels with weapons, money, and training. Indeed, those weapons were on full display Tuesday when the FSA’s 1st Coastal Brigade used a US-made TOW to destroy a Russian search and rescue helicopter. That came just hours after the Turkmen FSA-allied Alwiya al-Ashar militia posted a video of its fighters celebrating over the body of an ejected Russian pilot. 

  In short, Turkey has made a habit out of supporting anyone and everyone who opposes Assad in Syria and that includes ISIS. In fact, if one were to rank the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in order of who is suspected of providing the most assistance to Islamic State, Turkey would likely top the list. Here’s what Vladimir Putin had to say earlier today after Turkey downed the Russian Su-24:

  • PUTIN: OIL FROM ISLAMIC STATE IS BEING SHIPPED TO TURKEY
  • PUTIN SAYS ISLAMIC STATE GETS CASH BY SELLING OIL TO TURKEY
  • PUTIN: ISLAMIC STATE GETS MILITARY SUPPORT FROM MANY STATES

  It’s with all of this in mind that we bring you excerpts from a new piece by Nafeez Ahmed who, you’re reminded, penned a lengthy expose earlier this year explaining how the US views ISIS as a “strategic asset.” In his latest, Ahmed takes a close look at the relationship between Ankara and Islamic State. The evidence is truly damning. 

  *  *  *

  From “NATO is harbouring the Islamic State: Why France’s brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks,” by Nafeez Ahmed, originally published in Medium

  “We stand alongside Turkey in its efforts in protecting its national security and fighting against terrorism. France and Turkey are on the same side within the framework of the international coalition against the terrorist group ISIS.” —Statement by French Foreign Ministry, July 2015

  

  The 13th November Paris massacre will be remembered, like 9/11, as a defining moment in world history.

  The murder of 129 people, the injury of 352 more, by ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) acolytes striking multiple targets simultaneously in the heart of Europe, mark a major sea-change in the terror threat.

  For the first time, a Mumbai-style attack has occurred on Western soil?—?the worst attack on Europe in decades. As such, it has triggered a seemingly commensurate response from France: the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1961 Algerian war.

  ISIS has followed up with threats to attack Washington and New York City.

  Meanwhile, President Hollande wants European Union leaders to suspend the Schengen Agreement on open borders to allow dramatic restrictions on freedom of movement across Europe. He also demands the EU-wide adoption of the Passenger Name Records (PNR) system allowing intelligence services to meticulously track the travel patterns of Europeans, along with an extension of the state of emergency to at least three months.

  Under the extension, French police can now block any website, put people under house arrest without trial, search homes without a warrant, and prevent suspects from meeting others deemed a threat.

  “We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” said the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”

  Hollande plans to strengthen the powers of police and security services under new anti-terror legislation, and to pursue amendments to the constitution that would permanently enshrine the state of emergency into French politics. “We need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency,” he explained.

  Parallel with martial law at home, Hollande was quick to accelerate military action abroad, launching 30 airstrikes on over a dozen Islamic State targets in its de facto capital, Raqqa.

  […]

  Conspicuously missing from President Hollande’s decisive declaration of war, however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship.

  Syrian passports discovered near the bodies of two of the suspected Paris attackers, according to police sources, were fake, and likely forged in Turkey.

  Earlier this year, the Turkish daily Meydan reported citing an Uighur source that more than 100,000 fake Turkish passports had been given to ISIS. The figure, according to the US Army’s Foreign Studies Military Office (FSMO), is likely exaggerated, but corroborated “by Uighurs captured with Turkish passports in Thailand and Malaysia.”

  […]

  A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”

  The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”

  In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

  The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” ISIS militants would freely travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” and stop “at safehouses along the way.”

  The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely “connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” adding that “the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks.”

  In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey’s intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck “to the al-Qaeda terror organisation” in Syria.

  According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011.

  The allegations have been corroborated by a prosecutor and court testimony of Turkish military police officers, who confirmed that Turkish intelligence was delivering arms to Syrian jihadists from 2013 to 2014.

  Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. A clandestine plane from Germany delivered arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey and split into three containers, two of which were dispatched to ISIS.

  A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons?—?but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments.

  Information of that nature emerged separately. Just two months ago, Turkish police raided a news outlet that published revelations on how the local customs director had approved weapons shipments from Turkey to ISIS.

  Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS’ expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country.

  Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million?—?that was over a year ago.

  By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.

  […]

  The liberal Turkish daily Taraf quoted an AKP founder, Dengir Mir Mehmet F?rat, admitting: “In order to weaken the developments in Rojova [Kurdish province in Syria] the government gave concessions and arms to extreme religious groups…the government was helping the wounded. The Minister of Health said something such as, it’s a human obligation to care for the ISIS wounded.”

  The paper also reported that ISIS militants routinely receive medical treatment in hospitals in southeast Turkey—?including al-Baghdadi’s right-hand man.

  […]

  Meanwhile, NATO leaders feign outrage and learned liberal pundits continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to ISIS’ extraordinary resilience and inexorable expansion.

  […]

  As Professor David Graeber of London School of Economics pointed out:

  “Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria… that blood-stained ‘caliphate’ would long since have collapsed?—?and arguably, the Paris attacks may never have happened. And if Turkey were to do the same today, Isis would probably collapse in a matter of months. Yet, has a single western leader called on Erdo?an to do this?”

  […]

  In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2014, General Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Senator Lindsay Graham whether he knew of “any major Arab ally that embraces ISIL”?

  General Dempsey replied:

  “I know major Arab allies who fund them.”

  In other words, the most senior US military official at the time had confirmed that ISIS was being funded by the very same “major Arab allies” that had just joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition.

  These allies include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait in particular.

  […]

  Porous links between some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, Islamist militant groups like al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS, have enabled prolific weapons transfers from ‘moderate’ to Islamist militants.

  The consistent transfers of CIA-Gulf-Turkish arms supplies to ISIS have been documented through analysis of weapons serial numbers by the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR), whose database on the illicit weapons trade is funded by the EU and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

  […]

  ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored?—?indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition.

  Which then begs the question as to why Hollande and other Western leaders expressing their determination to “destroy” ISIS using all means necessary, would prefer to avoid the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS’ emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region.

  

  

  

  

  

• Student "Tyrants In Training" Demand Journalists Swear Loyalty Oath Before Reporting On Them

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  Students and faculty at Smith College apparently didn’t want a repeat of that ugly episode at the University of Missouri, where a communications professor was filmed calling for the forcible removal of a journalist from an on-campus demonstration earlier this month.

   

  So when they held a sit-in Wednesday to protest racial discrimination, their solution was to not let in members of the media in the first place — unless said media members pledged allegiance to the cause.

   

  – From the Washington Post article: These College Protesters are Demanding the Media Who Cover Them Support Their Cause

  In yesterday’s post, Not a Safe Space – Canadian University Suspends Yoga Class After Students Become Offended, I explained how those most responsible for the almost inconceivable authoritarian idiocy spreading across college campuses are not the students themselves, but their spineless and inept administrators.

  These kids are more or less acting like Wall Street financiers after the bailouts. After the bankers were provided with trillions of dollars in backstops and no one went to jail for destroying the economy, they immediately paid themselves record bonuses a year after the worst of the crisis, and are now once again thieving and pillaging at will.

  Why? Because no one is held accountable, the incentives are in place to steal. Similarly, no adults are holding these out of control child-fascists accountable for their despicable behavior. As such, these tyrants-in-training are getting more out of control every day, and getting away with it. Thank you college administrators.

  In the latest example of the above, I present to you the stupidity of Smith College.

  From the Washington Post:

  Students and faculty at Smith College apparently didn’t want a repeat of that ugly episode at the University of Missouri, where a communications professor was filmed calling for the forcible removal of a journalist from an on-campus demonstration earlier this month.

   

  So when they held a sit-in Wednesday to protest racial discrimination, their solution was to not let in members of the media in the first place — unless said media members pledged allegiance to the cause.

  To be fair, it seems they’ve simply learned a lesson from the U.S. military when it comes to propaganda “reporting” from war zones. This remarkable passage comes from MassLive.com, whose reporter was turned away:

  Alyssa Mata-Flores, a 21-year-old Smith College senior and one of the sit-in’s organizers, explained that the rule was born from “the way that media has historically painted radical black movements as violent and aggressive.”

   

  “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color,” she told MassLive in the Student Center Wednesday. “By taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight.”

   

  Smith organizers said journalists were welcome to cover the event if they agreed to explicitly state they supported the movement in their articles.

   

  Wait, it gets better/worse:

   

  Stacey Schmeidel, Smith College director of media relations, said the college supports the activists’ ban on media.

   

  “It’s a student event, and we respect their right to do that, although it poses problems for the traditional media,” Shmeidel said.

   

  Schmeidel went on to say that the college reserves the right to remove reporters from the Student Center because it’s a private campus.

   

  Smith is, indeed, a private school — $63,950 per year worth of private school — which is a relevant differentiator from the state-run University of Missouri. And if students and faculty need to discuss sensitive issues behind closed doors, they’re certainly entitled to do so.

   

  But to welcome some reporters and not others — and to make support for the cause the price of admission — is to disregard not only the fundamental principles of journalism but also the school itself (though Smith is the place where the student newspaper censored “crazy” in a published transcript last year, calling it an “ableist slur”).

  Incredibly, the only lesson college students and administrators learned from the Mizzou incident where a faculty member asked for “muscle” to remove a reporter from public space, was to ban neutral reporters altogether.

  Meanwhile, we recently learned that 40% of millennials are in favor of discarding free speech. If these kids represent the future of America, we are in deep, deep trouble.

  

  

  

  

  

• Goldman Finally Looks At The Freight Charts, Raises Alarm About The "Broader Health Of The US Economy"

  In the first days of November, we showed that global trade is in freefall with “China Container Freight At Record Low; Rail Traffic Tumbles, Trucking Slows Down.” Now, Goldman has finally caught up, and writes that “indicators of freight activity—the volume of goods carried by truck, rail, air or ship—have slowed recently, raising concerns about the broader health of the US economy.“

  This is how Goldman finally admits what we have been saying for the past two years: the biggest threat to the US, and global, economy is the gradual and ever faster slowdown in trade, something which central banks are incapable of “printing.”

  Freight transportation data can be a useful gauge of activity in the goods-producing sectors of the economy, for obvious reasons. Products need to move from manufacturers to end consumers, and will be carried along the way by at least one of the four modes of transportation—truck, rail, air or ship—and frequently by multiple types (“intermodal” transport). The economic indicators measuring US transportation activity are also relatively transparent—counting things like the number of containers or rail cars—and in some cases quite timely. They are therefore popular among investors. Recently some of these measures have slowed, raising concerns about the broader health of the US economy.

  And here is Goldman doing its best recap of our charting, using its own words:

  • Railcar traffic, for example, has been notably weak, falling by about 3% from a year earlier based on monthly data (Exhibit 1, left panel).

  

  • Data on trucking activity—which is nearly four times as large as rail activity by the dollar value of gross output—offers a similar message. The American Trucking Association’s truck tonnage index showed an impressive recovery after bottoming in early 2009, but growth slowed over the last year (Exhibit 2). Year-over-year growth was +1.7% as of Q3, down from +4.2% in Q4 2014 and +9.0% in Q4 2013.

  

  • Air freight volumes as well as port traffic have also slowed, and in both cases the data hint that weakness in foreign growth is playing a role. Exhibit 3 shows the cargo “ton-miles” (i.e. 2,000 pounds/907 kilograms of cargo transported one mile) of US air carriers, divided into domestic and international operations. Total cargo ton-miles have declined by about 3% over the last year, with a 6% decline in international shipments but a 1% gain in domestic traffic (albeit from a low base).

  

  • The largest ports in the US report monthly on their volumes of loaded inbound and outbound shipping containers—the ubiquitous symbol of global trade. In the year to October, total loaded container traffic fell 1.2%, reflecting a 0.6% gain in inbound containers and a 4.3% decline in outbound containers (Exhibit 4). A large portion of outbound port activity reflects trade with Asia (70-90% for the largest West Coast ports and about 35% for the Port of New York/New Jersey, the largest on the East Coast), and the observed weakness may therefore reflect tepid demand for US goods from the region.

  

  We dread to imagine what would happen to Goldman’s economists if they were to find out that a third of all containers shipped from Long Beach harbor are empty…

  Finally Goldman’s attempt to put a silver lining on what is clear collapse in global trade:

  • The relative performance of different aspects of freight volumes mirrors what we see in other statistics, with greater weakness in areas closely related to commodities, heavy industry and exports, and somewhat better activity for traffic more associated with consumer goods (e.g. intermodal rail volumes) and imports. The contrast in the airline industry is particularly striking: while cargo ton-miles are down 3% year-over-year, passenger ton-miles are up about 5% over the same period. Sluggish freight volumes are therefore more confirmation that activity in goods-producing sectors of the economy remains soft.

  

   

  In summary, a perfect time for the Fed to hike rates.

  

  

  

  

• Russia Deploys Warship Off Syrian Coast To "Destroy Any Threats To Russian Planes"

  Despite demands from France's Hollande, America's Obama, and NATO's Stoltenberg that this situation not esclate, it appears Putin is not taking the shooting down of a fighter jet lying down. The seemingly cagey confirmation by NATO and Obama of Turkey's claims that Russia invaded its airspace has been rebuked by Russia which claims the Hmeimim airbase radar shows the attacking Turkish plane violating Syrian airspace. In response, Russia is moving a Cruiser 'Moskva' off the coast to strengthen air-defenses – just as French and US carriers are on their way.

  Here is The Turkish version mapping of the flight paths.

  

   

  Russia claims otherwise:

  • HMEIMIM AIRBASE'S RADAR SYSTEM RECORDS VIOLATION OF SYRIAN AIRSPACE BY ATTACKING TURKISH WARPLANE – RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY

  And is escalating:

  • RUSSIAN 'MOSKVA" CRUISER TO GO TO AREA IN COASTAL LATAKIA TO STRENGTHEN AIR DEFENSE IN SYRIA – RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY

  The Missile cruiser in question:

  

  The reason for the deployment:

  • RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES GENERAL STAFF: NONE OF OUR PARTNERS, COUNTRIES FIGHTING ISIL HAVE EVER TOLD US THAT SO-CALLED MODERATE OPPOSITION UNITS WERE IN AREA WHERE SU-24 DOWNED
  • NO ATTEMPTS REGISTERED ON PART OF TURKISH PLANE TO GET IN TOUCH OR ESTABLISH VISUAL CONTACT WITH OUR CREW VIA OBJECTVE CONTROL DEVICES – RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINSTRY
  • WARSHIP TO DESTROY ANY THREATS SEEN TO RUSSIAN PLANES: IFX

  Specifically, as RT reports, the steps announced by Russian top brass as the following:Three steps as announced by top brass:

  1. Each and every strike groups’ operation is to be carried out under the guise of fighter jets
  2. Air defense to be boosted with the deployment of Moskva guided missile cruiser off Latakia coast with an aim to destroy any target that may pose danger
  3. Military contacts with Turkey to be suspended

  Just like the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, it has quickly become a case of "he said, she said":

  Rudskoy said the Russian warplane did not violate Turkish airspace. Additionally, according to the Hmeymim airfield radar, it was the Turkish fighter jet that actually entered Syrian airspace as it attacked the Russian bomber. The Turkish fighter jet made no attempts to contact Russian pilots before attacking the bomber, Rudskoy added.

  “We assume the strike was carried out with a close range missile with an infra-red seeker,” Rudskoy said. “The Turkish jet made no attempts to communicate or establish visual contact with our crew that our equipment would have registered. The Su-24 was hit by a missile over Syria’s territory."

  Sergey Rudskoy, a top official with the Russian General Staff, condemned the attack on the Russian bomber in Syrian airspace by a Turkish fighter jet as “a severe violation of international law”. He stressed that the Su-24 was downed over the Syrian territory. The crash site was four kilometers away from the Turkish border, he said.

  As a result, Russia now plans to implement new measures aimed at strengthening the security of the country’s air base in Syria and in particular to bolster air defense. Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva, equipped with the ‘Fort’ air defense system, similar to the S-300, will be deployed off Latakia province's coast.

  "We warn that every target posing a potential threat will be destroyed,” lieutenant general Sergey Rudskoy said during the briefing.

  “All military contacts with Turkey will be suspended,” he added.

  Furthermore, as the Russian Ministry of Defense explained, going forward, any Turkish plane that enters Syrian airspace will be fair game.

  #SYRIA #Rudskoy Russian Defence Ministry warns that all the potentially dangerous targets will be destroyed

  — ?????????? ?????? (@mod_russia) November 24, 2015

  And again, all this is happening as both the French carrier de Gaulle and the US carrier CVN-75 USS Harry S. Truman are on their way to a very dangerous rendezvous off the Syrian coast.

  

  So just as we warned in September, the situation has become a complete rerun of the 2013 Syria "Mediterranean" showdown, with full naval engagement by all parties, except this time the tensions are significantly escalated, a Russian fighter jet has just been taken down, US and French aircraft carriers are arriving in weeks, and Putin will not hestitate to go as far as he has to in order to save face.

  

  

  

  

  

• Chicago Mayor Emanuel Urges "Remain Peaceful" As Protests Begin After Video Shows Cop Killing Black Teen

  Latest update…

  Peaceful Protests have begun…

  

  

  

  

   

  Turning Physical…

  Group of protesters trying to cross bridge east of Michigan on Balbo. #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/cj9UGW8w8B

  — Justin Allen (@Allen_Justin) November 25, 2015

   

  Scene has calmed down now. Several detained. Group yelling "let them go" #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/uoun5JkbkU

  — Justin Allen (@Allen_Justin) November 25, 2015

   

  

  Video…

   

  Onward down Roosevelt #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/2DvQTcj9JA

  — Dawn Rhodes (@rhodes_dawn) November 25, 2015

   

  *  *  *

  Just as we warned earlier..

  With the release of this video, we suggest anyone living in and around Chicago 'brace' for potential social unrest. The Chicago Police Department has released video footage of the officer-involved shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was struck 16 times during a confrontation with officers.

  The dashcam video, described by Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says that this video is "graphic, violent, and chilling," is expected to provoke a very strong emotional reaction from Chicago’s very large African-American community.

  As John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, said, the video "could tear Chicago apart," which is why Mayor Emanuel has already urged Chicagoans, "it is fine to be passionate, but it is essential to remain peaceful."

  The following comes from CNN…

  Laquan McDonald was walking down a Chicago street the night of October 20, 2014, carrying a four-inch knife and behaving erratically, authorities say.

   

  A police officer told him to drop the knife. He didn’t listen, and the officer fired on him out of fear for his life, according to a police union spokesman.

   

  McDonald, 17, died. He was shot 16 times.

  RT @BlueDuPage 16 rounds in 6 seconds. It was an execution. https://t.co/BNlRhi9Bt4 #tcot #p2 pic.twitter.com/TVlWLUId6I

  — Karen (@KarenRegis) November 25, 2015

  Now, more than a year later, the public will be able to see what happened.

  Warning: this video is graphic (the confrontation begins around 5:00)

  *  *  *

  As RT reports, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel urged calm as City Hall got set to release police dash cam footage from the shooting incident, which occurred in October 2014. During the incident, 37-year-old Jason Van Dyke, a white officer, shot and killed McDonald, an African-American teen.

  “I understand people will be upset and want to protest when they see this video,” Emanuel told reporters during a Tuesday afternoon press conference.

   

  Emanuel cited the McDonald family, saying, “They have asked for calm, and for those who do protest to do so peacefully.”

   

  “It is fine to be passionate, but it is essential to remain peaceful,” Emanuel added.

  Earlier in the day, Van Dyke became the first on-duty Chicago officer to be charged with first-degree murder. He was ordered held without bail at a hearing. He has been placed on a "no pay" status by the department. As Michael Snyder adds,

  Over the past few years, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray have all become household names because of the way that they died, and now it looks like Laquan McDonald’s name will be added to that list. But the situation in Chicago is potentially even more volatile what we witnessed in either Ferguson or Baltimore.

   

  More than a million African-Americans live in the Chicago metropolitan area, and the crime rate in the city has already been skyrocketing. In fact, it is being projected that Chicago’s murder rate will increase by 20 percent in 2015. This is a city that is always living on the edge of chaos, and now the case of Laquan McDonald could be the spark that sets Chicago ablaze.

   

  After everything that has happened over the past few years, the last thing that we need is another incident that will make racial tensions in this country even worse. Unfortunately, that appears to be exactly what we are going to get.

  

  

  

  

  

• "What's The Worst That Could Happen?"

  Let them in…

   

  

   

  Source: Townhall.com

  

  

  

  

  

• No End In Sight For Commodity Carnage As Chinese Fear Fed Hike Blowback

  Today's 1.75% rally in copper (ripping vertical at the US open) broke a record 14-day losing-streak after COMEX futures tested towards a '1' handle numerous times for the first time since March 2009 (when the S&P 500 traded around 800). The metals market appears to be increasingly pricing concurrent and/or future weakness in China’s old economy, according to Goldman, as China futures open interest surges, but discussions at the 2015 Shanghai CESCO conference last week exposed the extremely bearish views of Chinese market participants regarding Chinese metals demand in 2016 (notably sentiment was worse than that expressed by investors outside of China) specifically citing a Fed rate hike before year-end as a further bearish factor for metals.

   

  Today's "bounce" broke the losing streak…

  

   

  This was the longest losing streak on record (based on Bloomberg data) and is the worst 14-day loss (down 13.8%) since October 2011…

  

   

  The last time copper traded here, S&P 500 was around 800…

  

   

  And as we previously noted, Goldman Sachs warns that rising SHFE open interest may flag China demand deterioration

  Metals prices have declined by 12%-17% since late October. Over this period, China’s economic data for October has disappointed, the US dollar has strengthened on a trade weighted basis, and the broader commodity complex has moved lower, including most notably, energy prices. 

   

  What has also occurred since late October has been an eye catching rise in Shanghai Futures Exchange open interest across the metals complex – for copper, it has been the largest increase in Shanghai open interest in 12 months – since the 1Q15 collapse in Chinese metals demand.

   

  

   

  In our view, this development raises a red flag regarding ongoing and near term activity in China’s ‘old economy’ and metals demand growth, as measured by our GS China Metals Consumption Index (see chart below).  Indeed, over the past five years, periods of rising SHFE open interest and falling metals prices have been associated with concurrent or imminent weakening in China’s commodity intensive ‘old economy’. 

   

  Meanwhile, though LME and Comex net speculative positioning has also declined over the period, it remains well above its August 2015 lows. 

   

  Overall, the metals market appears to be increasingly pricing concurrent and/or future weakness in China’s old economy, and related metals demand. To the extent that the metals market positioning predicts ongoing and potential future China growth weakness – since mid-2011 SHFE open interest has given a correct bearish signal on four out of five occasions – the latest metal market developments have bearish implications for China’s upcoming activity data releases and asset classes dependent on this data.

  However, it is anything but close to being over. As Goldman notes today, China-led demand concerns point to further downside risk

  Our discussions with market participants at the 2015 Shanghai CESCO Conference last week highlighted the extremely bearish views of Chinese market participants regarding Chinese metals demand in 2016. We continue to see that the risks surrounding our metals demand and price forecasts, in particular our Chinese demand forecasts, are skewed to the downside.

   

  Chinese participants were generally at least as concerned as us, if not more so. Participants generally anticipated no improvement in Chinese activity at least before 2Q2016, with persistent weakness expected in property and manufacturing in particular. Participants saw the potential Federal Reserve rate hike before year-end as a further bearish factor for metals.

   

  Demand weakness saw 2016 annual contract premiums decline

   

  Conference participants are most worried about the Chinese demand outlook. We view the slashed 2016 copper premium by Codelco ($98/t for 2016 term shipments from $133/t in 2015) as further proof of demand weakness from China’s ‘old economy’. There was general belief from Chinese participants that the slowdown of credit growth and currency depreciation (via less financing deals) would place further downside risks on Chinese copper demand growth in 2016 (c.0-1% refined growth was considered realistic vs. our base case of 3%). Were this lower Chinese growth to materialize, our projection for a c.500ktpa copper market surplus through 2019 would rise to a c.700-800ktpa surplus, all else equal.

   

  Sharp depreciation or devaluation present further downside risks

   

  While China’ SDR inclusion was not at the top of discussions, the potential for sharp RMB/USD depreciation or devaluation in 2016 is high according to participants. We believe that the timing and range of deprecation is a significant risk to metals prices in the next 12 months, while placing renewed downside risk to pricing in the LME metals complex, as the overall marginal cost of Chinese base metals production would be lower, in dollar terms, and for aluminium particularly.

   

  Copper-aluminium substitution underestimated

   

  There was some discussion about copper-aluminium substitution in China. From the topend users (large SOEs) we believe the impact is generally limited given copper’s high quality in terms of electricity conduction and those top end-users see the current copper-aluminium price ratio (3x) not significantly economic. However, substitution at lower-end users could be substantial and the actual substituted amount is likely more than generally known (participants believe it could be between c.600kt-1mt in 2015), which would be a potential negative factor for copper pricing and leaves risks surrounding our forecasts as skewed to the downside.

   

  Zinc still the least bearish overall

   

  Given Glencore’s zinc output cuts and 500kt aligned production cuts from Chinese smelters, which is roughly 7% of global supply, the zinc supply and demand balance is set to tighten. However, overhang of the stockpile in the form of both concentrates and refined zinc and ongoing demand weakness left most market participants we spoke with negative on zinc prices.

   

  Chinese aluminium cuts are not significant

   

  The price sell-off of Chinese aluminium prices since late October was driven by the bearish supply dynamic in aluminium and the surge in open interest on the SHFE. Further cost reduction via government subsidies and power tariff cuts is making sufficient Chinese cuts more difficult and shifting burden to ex-China producers. We believe aluminium will stay lower for longer and see the risks surrounding our price forecasts as increasingly skewed to the downside.

   

  Chinese market participants turn bearish on nickel

   

  Given increasing concerns over Chinese stainless production in 2016 and ramp-up of Indonesian ferronickel supply, participants that we talked with expect the nickel market to remain loose in addition to the current overhang of nickel stockpiles. Even if Chinese NPI and refined nickel production continues to decline through 2016, high stocks and pressure on currency depreciation suggest that nickel is a risky long trade with both demand and supply deteriorating.

  *  *  *

  Does this trend look over?

  

  

  

  

  

  

• US Backed "Rebels" Execute Russian Pilots While Parachuting, Caught On Tape

  If Putin was angry when Turkey shot down a Russian plane, which may or may not have crossed Turkish territory – reports on both sides are conflicting – he will be absolutely livid to learn that, according to Turkey’s Dogan News, the Russian pilots who had parachuted in an attempt to save their lives after the plane was shot down, had been executed while parachuting down by local rebels, which considering the video released earlier belonged to the Free Syrian Army, are same “rebels” who are funded directly by the CIA.

  Both Russian pilots shot dead while parachuting down says Dogan News Agency citing Turkmen opposition commander

  — Fercan Yalinkilic (@FercanY) November 24, 2015

  And this:

  DHA Muhabirinin görü?tü?ü Türkmen 2’nci Sahil Tümen Komutan Yard?mc?s? Alpaslan Çelik: Pilotlardan ikisini de para?ütle inerken vurduk

  — Damla Do?an (@dmladogan) November 24, 2015

  As Telegraph points out, the above tweet is from CNN Turk’s Foreign Editor who tweeted that the Turkmen rebels DHA spoke to said: “We hit at the two pilots after they parachuted.”

  This, as many have already pointed out, is a war crime.

  The only question is whether this, together with the provocative action by Turkey which many can see being an act of war, will be deemed as such by Putin.

  The parachuters can be seen in the second half of the clip below:

   

  For those who missed it, here is the video uploaded by the Free Syrian Army of at least one dead parachuter.

   

  And here is the video of rebels opening fire on Russian pilots:

  As one commentator notes, in the video one person shouts over the gun fire, “don’t fire. Let’s take them prisoners. Don’t fire. Prisoners” but it was not meant to be.

  Reuters confirms the pilots’ death: Turkmen forces in Syria shot dead the two pilots of a Russian jet downed by Turkish warplanes near the border with Turkey on Tuesday as they descended with parachutes, a deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters.

  “Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air,” Alpaslan Celik, a deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade said near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece of a pilot’s parachute.

  “Our units, who received the information that the two pilots were alive, are working to get them from opposition rebels safely,” the official said.

  The Russian General Staff said that, according to preliminary data, one of the Su-24 pilots has died after being fired at from the ground.

  * * *

  According to the Geneva Convention attacks on persons parachuting from an aircraft in distress are stricly banned: if the person in distress is not acting in a hostile manner, he is to be given the chance to surrender after reaching the ground.

  

  

  

  

  

• It's A Fake, Fake, Fake America

  Submitted by The Burning Platform contributor Stucky

  Remember the hilarious 1960s movie, “It’s a Mad Mad Mad World?” Well, we live in a fake fake fake America. Politicians, economists, all MSM talking heads, Big Business, virtually every commercial that has ever aired, preachers, and on and on and on, all have one thing in common. They’re all liars and fake as a three dollar bill.

  

  "Fake", a simple definition: something that is not what it purports to be, a worthless imitation passed off as genuine; an impostor or charlatan. Example: “American society is extraordinarily fake; filled with lies, fraud, facades, mirages, deception, disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and brainwashing.”

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  1)– FAKE BODIES

  

  When was the last time a woman had to wonder if that twelve inch python was real, or a Silicone Imposter? Never! Concerning bodies, women are so darned deceptive! Look at the cosmetics aisle at your supermarket. There are ten thousand items all designed to make a woman look like she’s not … and adding insult to injury, it takes her an hour to look not real. I get out of bed and I’m ready in ten minutes …. on a slow morning. I believe in pre-marital steam baths. You men want a GOOD look at your woman before getting married in order to combat her false advertising. Fake boobies, fake eyelashes, fake eyebrows, fake nails … ya gotta know what you’re signing up for. But, oh yeah baby — she wants a real man!! One last thing, men don’t fake orgasms.

   

  2)– FAKE NEWS

  

  “News” is nothing more than corporate infotainment. CNN even last year stated they were primarily an “entertainment company”. All news is watered-down garbage, revealed in sixty second soundbites, usually read from the same exact script (regardless of channel) by bimbos and mimbos who really aren’t even qualified to serve french fries at McShits. You will NEVER find things of real significance, nor truly unbiased, nor in-depth coverage of anything important. News executives view you as an IDIOT. Really. Six corporations control the vast majority of “news” in America, and they will slice, dice, select, censor, manipulate, faker-ize, every last sound bite — and you WILL like it! Heck, most American morons will even believe they’re being told the truth.

   

  3)– FAKE JOURNALISM

  Naturally, given Fake News, it logically follows that we are inundated with Fake Journalists. There are zero “investigative journalists” on television today. Please watch at least a couple minutes of the above video. There are only three qualifications required to be a teevee news “reporter”; 1) can you read from a teleprompter?, 2) can you make the appropriate faces – sad, happy, puzzled, etc. — as necessary just seconds apart?, and 3) can you ad-lib amazingly dumb-ass comments at the end of a story …”Yes, Wolfdick, that’s just terrible that 503 Christian babies were roasted alive in Saudi Arabia. So sad.”. Accompanied, of course, by a fake sad face.

   

  4)– FAKE CORPORATE ADVERTISING

  

  Every commercial is born in a lie! Did you know that BP loves the Gulf Coast? That Exxon loves pristine Alaskan waters? That GE brings good things to life? That doctors prefer to smoke Camels? That most dentists brush with Crest? That the beautiful and glowing girl joyfully prancing through a field of flowers with her puppy beside her is so damn happy because she found a cream to cure her acne? (Even though the side effects are getting the shits, leprosy, growing an extra boob, or even death.) And if that’s not bad enough, these Soulless Creatures From Hell now have the same rights of a legal person, but with none of the responsibilities.

  Advertising “works” because advertisers, as depicted in the picture above, think you’re retarded. And you just might be … if you watch commercials. George Carlin said it best; — “Quality. Value. Style, Service. Selection. Convenience. Economy. Savings. Performance. Experience. Hospitality. Low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms, affordable prices, and a money-back guarantee. Free installation, free admission, free appraisal, free alterations, free delivery, free estimates, free home trial, and free parking. No cash? No problem! No kidding! No fuss, no muss. No risk, no obligation, no red tape, no down payment, no entry fee, no hidden charges, no purchase necessary, no one will call on you, no payments or interest till September. ….. ‘Bend over just a little farther so we can stick this big advertising dick up your ass a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, you miserable no-good dumbass fucking consumer!’”.

   

  5)– FAKE ENTERTAINMENT & AMUSEMENT

  

  The word ‘amuse’ can be broken down into two parts; “a” meaning to negate, or not – and ‘muse’ meaning “to think”. Literally then, ‘amuse’ means ‘to not think’. And there is absolutely nothing in this world which encourages not-thinking than teevee and movies. Hollywood is a literal cesspool of fakery and superficiality. Nothing is real, all is an illusion. What you look like counts for far more than who you are. Being on the “A list” is more important than what you know. Gucci bags make a woman, not her integrity. Big fake tits and big puffy Botox lips count for far more than a big heart. Then these whores sell their souls peddling endless useless products like Reverse Mortgages and anti-aging creams … where making a buck at your expense is the new American Dream.

  No longer do the time-honored institutions of home, church, school, and neighborhood provide the framework for society’s values and civility. The Boob Tube (a perfect description) is the New Reality, and whoever is running the joint (some say it’s the Jews) are more than happy to titillate, stimulate, pontificate, and fornicate your mind into submission.

  And all of this is approved lock, stock, and barrel by your government. It only took the Germans until 1935 before they produced their massively successful propaganda piece “Triumph Of The Will”. The Americans caught on a few years later when Frank Capra produced “Why We Fight” in 1942. Joseph Goebbels and Edward Bernays turned bullshitting and lying into a real science. Our own Liar-In-Chief, as all governments do, have no better liar friend than television and film, especially when it comes to making war … praise the Lord, pass the ammo, and make a Patriotic War Commercial.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight

   

  6)– FAKE FOOD

  

  Recipe #1: Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Eggs, Tomatoes, Butter, Wine, Parmesan, Garlic, Onion, Rosemary, Basil, Pepper, Salt.

  Recipe #2: Water, Tomato Paste, Flour, Calcium Phosphate, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Salt, Enzyme Modified Cheddar Cheese, Sugar, Calcium Chloride, Flavorings, Disodium Phosphate, Vegetable Oil, Onion Extract, Thyme Oil, Laurel Leaf Oil, Cottonseed Oil, Vitamin D, Food Colorings, Potassium Chloride.

  Which of the above recipes would you rather eat? Well, you’re not getting #1 because that’s my mom’s basic recipe ingredients for spaghetti and tomato sauce (yes, she makes her own pasta). You’re stuck with crapola recipe #2; Campbell’s Spaghetti-Oh. (I believe the “Oh” part in the name is Campbell’s abbreviation for “Oh My God, we can’t believe mothers will feed this shit to their children!”)

  GMOs, chemical concoctions, carcinogen inducing preservatives, synthetic everything, artificial everything, over-refined, over-processed, over-cooked, sugarized, and denuded of almost all natural vitamins, minerals, and enzymes …. that’s your typical American diet. It produces the Fattest Asses in the history of humanity. And, death. And Americans simply don’t care. Otherwise, companies like Campbell (mm-mm-shit!) and McDonalds (McShits) would go out of business.

   

  7)– FAKE MEDICINE

  

  The fact of the matter is that our entire medical system is based on masking symptoms, “managing” illness, treating us as pin-cushions with all their ineffective shots, and shoving one cure-all pill after pill after pill down our gullets.  Preventing illness is for pussies. This does not constitute true healing. It is fakery, and our bodies are the victim. And don’t even get me started on the billions of psychotropic pills consumed by our depressed asses. When Big Pharma has no idea how or why their make-happy brain pills actually work — then, what you have dear reader, is massive fakery such as the world has never seen.

  Sure, American Medicine does save lives. They gave my mom a new hip, which has made her life immeasurably better. They cured my dad of his colon issues, or he would be dead. Thank you! But, that does change the fact that so very very much of it is Puke Fakery … and, deadly. The statistics are staggeringly depressing; — 106,000 deaths annually from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines, 58,000 deaths from unnecessary procedures, 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals, 98,000 deaths from medical error and on and on. When did going to a hospital become a death sentence?

   

  8)– FAKE SCIENCE

  

  “In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the Dark Ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices transmitted to people who don’t know any better. That’s not a good future for the human race.” ———- Michael Crichton

  It pains me to put science in this list because science ought to be mankind’s refuge for logical reasoning, and even Truth. But, alas, science has been politicized to a point where it is no better than the religions it once replaced as the arbiters of “official” wisdom and knowledge.

  For most of mankind’s recorded history religion dominated all thought. The rare “heretic” aside, pretty much everyone believed what their religious leaders told them to believe. Those who dared to challenge these religious leaders were soon dead …. or, regretted not being dead.   In fact, it was the early scientists who were persecuted as heretics. Earth wasn’t flat. Earth wasn’t the center of the solar system. Earth was vastly ancient. Earth’s landmasses shifted. And these scientists paid a heavy price for telling the Truth. But, eventually mankind made the gradual progression from profound ignorance to a certain degree of enlightenment.

  And then something weird happened. Perhaps it was around 1859 when Darwin published “On The Origin Of Species”. Science, instead of searching for truth, became Truth. Those formerly accused of heresy because Accusers themselves. In the 150 years since Darwin, science has become every bit as entrenched as religion once was, and every bit as belligerent and vindictive against any who dare to question their right to absolute correctness in all that they utter or pronounce.

  And in the forty or so years since the advent of the Internet, while science has not been able to dislodge religion from the masses, it has done everything in its power to silence those voices in whatever manner possible … via ridicule, insults, dismissal, ignoring, and even producing massive instructional seminars to train “skeptics” to ruthlessly “defend the faith” against any and all who challenge them. This cannot go on indefinitely.

  The End Of Science is upon us thanks to the advent of a “person” known as “The Corporation”. Science has been hijacked by corporate junk science, which pretends to be real science but is actually highly fraudulent. Specifically, I’m talking about the near endless amounts of “scientific studies” which are put out by major corporations with a definite agenda in mind – usually establishing a fake scientific basis of “safety” for their products, whether they be vaccines, psychotropic drugs, mobile phones, GMOs, tobacco, fluoride, soda, “sugar is sugar” regardless of its forms, buy a Prius and save the earth from Globull Warming (!!) etc. etc. …. all of it one huge steaming pile of shit. They have a huge arsenal of weaponry including, but not limited to; contaminating tests, alerting treatment plans, misusing statistics, abusing double blind studies, selecting patients or data favorable to their specific agenda, bribing peer-review groups, controlling the publication of results, controlling funding, hiding the funders, and of course, the old stand-by when all else fails, falsifying the data.

  Some of the above may seem obvious. But, wait! There’s more! The most deviously insidious aspect of the decline of science has to do with your children. The brainwashing process that passes for education around the world is controlled by science! Hopefully, you have a plan in place to rescue your children from these un-truth tellers.

   

  9)– FAKE RELIGION

  

  Of course, I’m not talking about your religion! Your religion is … The Truth!

  Now that we have that established, let’s look at this fakeness logically. In terms of monotheistic religions it is abundantly logical (how can it not be?) that only one religion can be correct, and all the other religions are fake. Polytheism isn’t in a better position, as they all have One Big Kahuna. The Greeks have Zeus. The Norse have Odin. The Hindus have Brahma. (Or is it Shiva, or Vishnu?) The point is that they have one god of many which is better than all their other gods, and better than all the gods of other peoples. They can’t all be right. And then of course, you have your animistic religions where god is in everything; in the sky, in the buffalo, in a flower, or in your Fruit Loops cereal. Fruit Loops quickly turn into poop, so is your poop also god?

  Pick whichever religion suits your belief system. I don’t care. Just realize that you become extremely annoying and arrogant when you claim your religion is the right one because your holy book says so. Don’t you realize that every other person in the world with a different belief says the same exact thing?? Aside from circular reasoning – (meaning, ‘my religion is true because my religious book says so’) – I have yet to meet a human being who can give a reasonable answer as to why their religion is true, and all others are false. Not one. Here’s one thing my sixty years of living has convinced me of; that there are billions of people following any of thousands of religions, and logically all but one (if even that) are full of craptastic fakery. I’m sure some of you will set me straight on what is The One True Religion. To which I say, “AAARRRGGHHHH!”.

   

  10)– FAKE EDUCATION

  

  Let’s take a quick look etymologically at the word ‘education’. It is derived from the Latin words “e” or “ex” meaning “out of”, and “ducare” meaning to lead or draw. So the true meaning of “education” is to draw out the talent inside each of us. The opposite of education is “indoctrination”, which is all about putting into someone’s mind dogma, belief systems or doctrines.

  Our fake education of indoctrination is based on something set up the elite in the early 20th century known as the “Prussian Industrial School Model”. (see above pic)

  Horace Mann, credited as the father of the American public school system, studied a wide variety of educational models before implementing the Prussian system designed by Fredrick the Great. King Frederick created a system that was engineered to teach obedience and solidify his control. Focusing on following directions, basic skills, and conformity, he sought to indoctrinate the nation from an early age. Isolating students in rows and teachers in individual classrooms fashioned a strict hierarchy—intentionally fostering fear and loneliness. Mann chose the Prussian model, with its depersonalized learning and strict hierarchy of power, because it was the cheapest and easiest way to teach literacy on a large scale. Its primary purpose was to construct an industrial schooling model designed to produce millions of workers for America?s factories. He wrote in 1917 – “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life.” 

  The belief was that most of America’s students were destined for a life of menial, industrial labor. So, they created a multi-track educational system meant to sort students from an early age. The best and brightest (the elite) were carefully groomed for leadership positions. The rest of the majority were relegated to a monotonous education system of rote learning and task completion. John D. Rockefeller is widely quoted as saying, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”

  Our educational system today is still locked into the Prussian-industrial framework of fear, isolation, and monotony. For both students and teachers, procedure is emphasized over innovation, uniformity over individual expression, and control over empowerment.

  The bottom line is this; when the USA ranks 24^th in the world in literacy, 35^th in mathematics, and 27^th in science then it is safe to say whatever the hell we’re teaching these grade school students is fake fake fake.

   

  11)– FAKE MONEY

  

  I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Not to mention that I am not all that astute when it comes to financial topics. Not to mention that most people have better things to do than musing whether or not money is fake. Not to mention that we need money, or at least what it represents. Without money, we cannot put food on the table, or pay the rent, or go to the doctor, or invest in our children’s future, and so on and so on.

  None of that changes a few basic facts. Money is a “fiat” currency. The word fiat means “by government decree”. So, in the most simplistic terms, the dollar gets its value simply because the Government says so. We all know dollars have zero intrinsic value … it is simply cotton and ink. (Today most money isn’t even cotton or paper … it’s just electronic bits and bytes.) Just as every government and empire in human history has failed (as will the American empire), so also do all fiat currencies eventually fail.

  Money must be created by someone, somewhere, because money does not exist in nature–except to the extent that a natural item like gold or salt might be assigned the properties of money. Even the Federal Reserve tells us that — “banks actually create money when they lend it“.  In other words, the fractional reserve system essentially creates money out of thin air. 

  And when banks no longer issue credit and create money from nothing they will resort to looting. Looting is the only way left for the Western financial system to make money. In pursuit of short-term profits western corporations, encouraged and coerced by the financial sector, have moved offshore … certainly manufacturing, but even professional skills such as information technology and software engineering. All that remains for the West are highly leveraged derivative bets and looting. Ultimately, the money system is about the control of humanity.

  This rigged money system is worse than fake … it’s a scam. How this system has survived for as long as it has, and how it seems to not only defy death, but is seemingly thriving beyond all rational explanation …well, that’s above my paygrade. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that literally everyone in this game is playing along. Pretending that it’s all legit. Pretending that it can go on forever.

  It’s almost like a Fairy Tale story where everyone lives happily “forever and ever”. But, as Abraham Lincoln said, you can’t fool all the people all the time forever. Here’s my only prediction in this post; someday, probably soon, this game will stop. Someone will have to tell the Emperor he’s not wearing any clothes, and the Four Horsemen will visit America.

   

  12)– FAKE FREE MARKETS

  

  Everybody (corporations, you, and government) loves the free market! It goes like this. When the government interferes to dictate what market participants can or cannot do, resources cannot flow to their most efficient use. If people cannot do the things that they find most profitable, they lose the incentive to invest and innovate. True competition will reign with corporations battling it out to provide their goods and services to rational, all knowing consumers. Corporations who provided a good or service which was not wanted (due to price, demand, quality, etc.) would simply fail and those who met consumer wants would win. Too bad that’s all a load of crap.

  Corporations HATE free markets! A truly free market is a perfectly competitive market … which means that whatever you have to sell in that market, so does your competition … which means price war … which means your price gets driven down … which means little or no profit. OOPS!

  Corporations, as a “natural” plan of action will flee perfectly competitive markets like the plague. Corporations crave monopoly, and will fight tooth and nail to get it. The corporation has no reason to apply any kind of ethics whatsoever. Adidas employs child and sweatshop labor in the Far East because it is cheaper than employing people on a living wage, with decent terms and condition. The supposed servant of the people, your government, should be the maker and enforcer of rules necessary to restrain these corporations from such egregious behaviors. Unfortunately, corporations use their vast wealth to buy maximum influence in government. The largest fifty corporations spend more in one year on lobbying government than they spend on taxes.

  YOU don’t really believe in free markets either … at least when it comes to your career. Are you paid more than the minimum wage? If so, why? It’s probably because you have some skill that others don’t have, or is in limited supply. Therefore, you don’t have to bid against every unemployed person in your area to hold your job. In a free market with too many just like you, you are nothing but a commodity worthy of minimum wage, or less. Suddenly, you don’t like free markets! On the other hand, you as a buyer, are every seller’s nightmare. You don’t want there to be just one seller of Christmas trees this holiday season. You want dozens of them … buying a tree for five bucks is your goal. Now you love free markets, but the seller hates them. Here’s the bottom line; people believe in free markets when it’s in their interest, but not when it’s the other way around. Here’s why that matters. The political players in America today who claim to support free markets, don’t. They pick winners and losers. Everything pertaining to “the market” is highly politicized, and the highest bidder wins.

  Government today is involved in “crony capitalism” – whereby government and business are in a predatory partnership that extracts wealth to its own benefit. If you take into account companies and other organizations that are directly or indirectly controlled by the government, it becomes crystal clear that almost all of our economy is in the ‘public’ sphere. The most glaring example of this predatory partnership between government and business is the financial collapse of 2008. Massive government subsidies to prop up failing banks and investment houses were required lest the entire economy be destroyed. A few become enormously wealthy, and the rest of us were flushed down the crapper. A more recent example is how the government willingly destroyed free markets around healthcare (thanks, Obamacare) and vaccines to the benefit its Big Pharma masters, while simultaneously refusing to protect the public against the dangers it was created to guard against.

  Government fools the people into believing they are free market champions with their endless “free trade” agreements –NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, TTIP and TISA – to name just a few of these vomit inducing laws, for Make Benefit Glorious Nation ‘Murika! These agreements are Orwellian doublespeak for restricted trade agreements — restricted to anyone except giant corporations and whores with a lot of money. Meanwhile, you can spread your ass-cheeks and enjoy your BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) Agreement as your jobs continue to be outsourced, your wages decrease, more censorship, you go to jail for bizarre copyright infringement laws, and get hauled into private corporate courts which supplant national sovereignty. You people who believe free markets exist, do you also believe in Unicorn farts?

   

  13)– FAKE WAR ON TERROR

  

  Nothing may be more utterly fake than the fake War On Terror. You can’t have a war on something which is a consequence of war. Wars are fought against countries, but you won’t find on a map a country called Terror. Not to mention that America’s other wars against concepts – the war on poverty, war on drugs, etc. – have been abysmal failures of epic proportions.

  I wish they would just be honest and call it the War On American Freedoms. Terrorism is one of the most deceptive and effective tools of the elite warmongering class to trick people into allowing centralization of control, and allowing Government to pass laws, and encroaching upon rights and grabbing power when it otherwise would not have been able to do so. Look no further than the Patriot Act – a horrendous piece of legislation which gutted the Bill of Rights. It was passed by scared politicians who didn’t read it, and was approved by a scared population who preferred security over liberty … even though Benjamin Franklin said people who succumb to such foolishness deserves neither.

  There is no better example that America isn’t serious about waging a War On Terror than the current conflict in the Middle East with ISIS. ISIS has no Navy, no Air Force, no country, no economy (except the oil they steal) to sustain a war, no ability to manufacture weapons, and their “Army” is a bunch of ragtag goat-fornicators dressed in nightgowns and driving Toyotas. America has a trillion dollar military defense budget and has the most formidable weaponry ever invented by mankind yet we can’t defeat them?? Wait! It’s even worse than that! The USA has been bombing ISIS for the past year, and … and … territory gained by ISIS has increased! If you can’t smell the rotting stench of bull-shittery, then you ought to get your nose checked. Meanwhile, Russia in their first week of bombing destroyed more ISIS equipment, facilities, and personnel than the United States did in the entire previous year. This does not mean that the U.S. military is weaker or less competent than Russia’s. What it does mean, unequivocally without question, is that the USA!USA!USA! simply is not serious about fighting this so-called War On Terror.

  On the other hand, there is one positive note about this War on Terror. And that is that it positively causes absolute terror to sovereign nations across the globe. God help those pitiful nations who come into our cross-hairs under the guise of “national security” — which is nothing more justification by the elite to act under the cloak of secrecy, and engaging in unbridled aggression while invading other sovereign nations. But, national security has absolutely nothing to do with making you more secure.

  As just one example, did you feel more secure when we literally destroyed the sovereign nation of Libya? I didn’t think so. What it does is make the elite more secure (by fattening their bank accounts with enormously lucrative military contracts) and you more insecure (because you give up rights and liberties, and because annihilating countries actually does create more terrorists.) Sleep well in your secure bed tonight. Just try to not have nightmares about all the freedoms you willingly surrendered.

   

  14)– FAKE DEMOCRACY

  

  The United States was meant to be a Republic, not a Democracy.  

  A democracy runs on majority opinion. In other words, a majority can vote to impose its rule on the minority. A republic contains protections of individual and minority rights, so that no matter who is in power, these basic rights can never be infringed.

  Aside from the above technical definitions, in a broader sense people use “democracy” ” to mean a system where the common people have a fair say in public affairs. Representation! Voting! Even if it means voting for your particular choice for dictator. All this is pure unadulterated bovine excrement.

  Do you vote for endless wars? Do you vote for ever increasing taxes so other people can have free shit? Do you vote to have your privacy violated at every turn in this surveillance state? Do you vote to have your local police militarized? Do you vote for the dumbing of your children, aka Common Core? Do you vote to have your speech restricted to “free speech zones”? Do you vote for 100,000 Syrian Muslims to invade immigrate to your neighborhood?

  Do you get the general picture yet? Your voice means absolutely nothing. They don’t care about you and your trifling needs or wants. Complain too much and they’ll put you on a terrorist watch list. NO ONE IS LISTENING TO YOU. The US has been deliberately turned from a constitutional republic into a corporate democracy, and unless there’s a full blown revolution there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. BOHICA.

   

  15)– FAKE RIGHTS

  

  Do you know how to make a cop or politician laugh their fat asses off? Tell them you believe you have certain unalienable, God-given, inherent human rights according to the Constitution. They love that joke. You may be born free, but you’ll die in the land of the fleeced and the home of the slave at the rate we’re going. Almost every liberty guaranteed in the first ten amendments (Bill Of Rights) is being eroded before your very eyes. Let’s just take a quick glance at three of those amendments.

  1– The 1st Amendment protects speech, religion, assembly and the press. I could easily write another 5,000 word post showing how we’re losing this right. However, let’s just focus on one area; the many things you do which indicate you are a terrorist according to the government. Being labeled a terrorist for exercising your First Amendment rights would certainly be a violation of the First Amendment. Right? Each and every one of the following items have appeared in a news article. You might be a terrorist if;

  — you take steps to protect your privacy, look like a hippy, complain about the taste of your tap water, act like a kid, use social media, reporting or doing journalism (and here and here), have “strange odors” or “bright colored stains on clothes”, speak out against government policies, protesting anything (such as participating in the “Occupy” or “Tea Party” movements), question war, criticize the government’s targeting of innocent civilians with drones, ask questions about pollution, pay cash at an Internet café, ask questions about Wall Street shenanigans, holding gold, stocking up on more than 7 days of food, having bumper stickers saying things like “Know Your Rights Or Lose Them”, investigate factory farming, infringing a copyright, taking pictures or videos, talking to police officers, wear a hoodie, drive a van, writing on a piece of paper, being frustrated with “mainstream ideologies” being a libertarian, liking the Founding Fathers, being a Christian, being anti-tax, anti-regulation or for the gold standard, being “reverent of individual liberty”, being anti-nuclear, believing in “conspiracy theories”, believing that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack, being anti-abortion, being anti-global, being suspicious of centralized federal authority, survivalism, opposing genetically engineered food, opposing surveillance.

  2– The 2^nd Amendment states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” How is it possible that those simple FOURTEEN WORDS can be so misconstrued by the libtard gun haters? It couldn’t be any clearer if the Founding Fathers wrote – “Guns for people? Fuck Yeah!!”.  

  Just hours after the Umpqua Community College shootings last month Obama said this; — “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.” In other words while not coming out and saying “ban guns”, he wants to make it almost impossible for American citizens to exercise their 2^nd Amendment right. There is no need to debate this issue. There are two kinds of people in America; those who support gun ownership, and those who want them taken away. May the latter group be stricken with pus and boils and itchy groins forever.

  3.– The 4th Amendment prevents unlawful search and seizure: — “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,”.  This one is very simple. When the government SPIES ON EVERYTHING YOU DO … then the 4^th Amendment has been effectively nullified.

  “The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.  If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. he could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”

  ——- Sen. Frank Church who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the above about the NSA …….. way back in 1975!

  For further info on how The Bill Of Rights are being eradicated please read the very excellent article titled—“Americans Have Lost virtually all of Our Constitutional Rights”;

  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/americans-have-lost-virtually-all-of-our-constitutional-rights.html

   

  16)– REAL FAMILIES

  

  I want to close on a positive note. In a world of turmoil, despair, uncertainty, and fakeness it is more important than ever to make our families the center of our lives and the top of our priorities. Note that I did not include “friends”. Friends come and go … family, for better or worse, is forever.

  We need to make our homes a place of refuge from the storm, which is increasing in intensity all about us. It is the one place in all the world, perhaps the only place, where fakery can be shelved, and total acceptance of who we are put in its place. Love is eternal so, your highest calling in your life ought to be your family.

  To those who don’t have people in their life right now to love … get a dog.

  

   

  In closing, let me say “thank you” for reading this long article. Lastly, let me ask you to reflect on this question; — “Are you being fake with your family, or real?”

  

  

  

  

  

• Tech Dreck

  Via NorthmanTrader.com,

  It has been said that pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Nothing has been more awe inspiring during 2015 than the massive gains that have been observed in several key tech stocks. With seeming daily record highs in stocks such as $AMZN, $FB and others it is easy to get excited about further tech gains. They never go down after all, or the so the impression goes.

  Yet I urge everyone, bullish or bearish inclined, to have a look at several key charts here as the context paints a very different picture. In recent weeks we’ve pointed to the ever increasing negative divergences in the market (see also technical charts). That goes without saying.

  But it’s more than that. Have a look at the daily $NDX chart:

  

  Not only do we have plenty of negative divergences, but we also just saw the recent rally fail at a key broken trend line going back to 2012.

  Now put this in context of the monthly chart:

  

  Here we find a broken wedge pattern going back to 2007 with recent highs having been made on ever lower participation as evidenced by the $BPCOMPQ. It is notable that this lack of follow through is observed at the levels of the 2000 highs.

  This type of narrowing participation is not new of course and it is precisely the 2000 highs that came with similar negative divergences and weakening participation:

  

  If you recall it was a narrow band of hyper valued and extended stocks that brought about the final highs in March of 2000, hence the negative divergences.

  Well what do we have now? Check the following examples in context of their stretch on the charts:

  

  All of them are either massively extended and/or show negative divergences in their own right. And these are the winners!

  Now none of this means that a crash is imminent or that we can’t make new highs even into year end, however it points to a very diminished risk/reward to the long side as even new highs would print further negative divergences. What would change this picture is if new highs were to be made with a broadening participation of component stocks.

  But if all these divergences mean something, and when they do, investors may find that we haven’t really seen a real correction yet. A look at some basic Fib levels could suggest a very rocky 2016:

  

  Bottom line: Bulls need new highs with broadening participation.

  

  

  

  

  

• Apple Accounted For 20% Of All U.S. Margin Expansion Since 2010 – Why This Matters

  Earlier we explained why Goldman believes that in 2016 the market, which is now about 1% higher than where it closed in 2014, will also go exactly nowhere.

  The reason for this pessimism can be summarized in three bullet points:

  i) bifurcated thematic returns. Goldman thinks that due to divergent monetary policies (Fed tightening vs. ECB and BoJ easing) the USD will strengthen and benefit some stocks and harm others. Some of those impacted the most will be multi-nationals and luxury retail companies (see Tiffany earnings today). Overall, the biggest headwind cited by companies in Q3 has been the strong dollar – expect this to continue and to further depress revenues, and thus earnings.

  ii) higher rates. According to Goldman, “when fund managers eventually realize the tightening process will be more sustained than originally anticipated the P/E multiple will contract and offset the otherwise positive impact of 10% earnings growth.”

  iii) margin expansion stories. If companies can’t rely on top line growth, and multiple expansion is not available, there is just one source of growth: margin expansion.

  It is bullet iii) that is the most important, because here the divergence between Wall Street’s hopium-driven margin euphoria is most visible.

  

  According to Goldman, “tech accounted for 50% of the overall S&P 500 expansion during the past five years (Apple is responsible for 20% of rise). Tech sector now has margins (18%) that are twice the overall market.”

  That tremendous tech, but mostly AAPL-driven, margin growth has now ended.

  So can this torrid surge in tech margins continue? Goldman’s answer is a resounding no.

  Many of the drivers of margin expansion during the past few decades appear to be behind us including lower interest rates, outsourcing, and technology. S&P 500 net margins have been essentially flat for five years at just below 9%. We forecast margins will remain flat in 2016 and 2017 at 9.1%. Information Technology has been a notable exception with margins rising in recent years to 18%, or 2x the overall market. However, roughly 40% of the 847 bp leap in Tech margins since 2009 is attributable to Apple (AAPL) alone. Given rising labor and health care costs, firms in most industries will struggle to simply maintain margins. Investors will reward firms able to demonstrate a path to higher sales and margins.

  But perhaps the one chart that confirms that one can’t have their wage rising cake and eat corporate profits too is the following:

  

  In other words, if the Fed is hiking “because it sees something about the economy” that few others do – i.e., rising wages – then by definition that means that profit margins will contract as growing wages take out ever bigger chunks of the corporate bottom line.

  So with sales declines set posied to accelerate due to the soaring dollar, central bank liquidity-driven multiple expansion no longer feasible and corporate margin growth set to resume its contractionary path again, we wonder where will the next leg higher in stocks come from. Unless, of course, the whole “the Fed is hiking because the S&P500 has topped out economy is recovering” was just the latest economist consensus mirage.

  

  

  

  

  

• Stocks, Bonds, & Bullion Bid As Geopolitical Risk Soars Most In 62 years

  Ok – where to start…

  1) GDP met improved expectations thanks to a huge inventory build (which we know from sales since remains at cycle extremes)

   

  2) Richmond Fed weak for 3rd month in a row (signalled last 2 recessions)

   

  3) Consumer Confidence collapsed (worst in 14 months)

   

  4) Americans have given up hope for more employment opportunities

   

  

   

   

  5) Another terrorist attack (this time in Tunisia)

   

  oh yeah and 6) Turkey shot down a bloody Russian fighter jet (in what is the closest we have come to WW3 proxy wars yet – the first NATO nation to fire at a Russian plane since 1953)

  And so… "investors" bought stocks…

   

  As soon as Europe closed… (because when Obama, Hollande, and NATO speak, stocks must rally to confirm the confident good news)…But ended the day below the pre-Doomsday levels…

  

   

  Small Caps once again outperformed amid yet another short squeeze… and trannies were worst despite the ramp in energy stocks and oil…

  

   

  S&P is unch, "Most Shorted" is up 3% this week!!!

  

   

  As energy stocks soared over 2%…

  

   

  Everything happened when Europe closed…

  

   

  And VIX was hammered to get the momo going…

  

   

  Is the squeeze over in KaleBios? Down 50% today…

  

   

   

  FX Carry and Treasuries were not buying it…

  

   

  as stocks ramped to catch up with crude…

  

   

  Credit markets were not bouncing with stocks…

  

   

  Treasury yields tumbled on safety bids after the Russian fighter jet was shot down… then traded in a very narrow range for the rest of the day…

  

   

  The USDollar was notably weaker on the day as EUR and JPY strengthened…

  

   

  Commodities were volatile today with oil backing everything but early jumps in PMs were quickly sold into…

  

   

   

   

  Charts: Bloomberg

  

  

  

  

• The Good Ol' Days: When Tax Rates Were 90 Percent

  Submitted by Andrew Syrios via The Mises Institute,

  It’s quite interesting indeed when both progressives and conservatives seem to be nostalgic for those good ol’ days in the 1950s, for different reasons, of course. Conservatives want to go back to the nuclear Leave It to Beaver family and what not while liberals like to talk about those 90-percent tax rates that we owe our prosperity to. Or something like that. We’ll focus on the latter for the time being.

  Bernie Sanders noted that “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.” Paul Krugman said the same thing as did Michael Moore in his film Capitalism: A Love Story and you’ll see this factoid repeated on countless memes floating around the Internet.

  However, what a tax rate is and what is actually paid are two very different things. Indeed, in 1955, the only people paying 90 percent (actually 91 percent) were those making over $3,425,766 when adjusted for inflation. And these are marginal rates, so they only paid that on any earnings above that threshold.

  Tax law has changed a lot over the years. As you can see by looking at the top marginal rate versus the inflation-adjusted top income bracket for those filing jointly from 1950 until 2013:

  

  Source: Tax Foundation.

  Today, there are seven tax brackets. In 1989, there were only two. In 1955, there were an utterly ridiculous twenty-four different tax brackets.

  Regardless, one should ask how much the rich were actually paying. It should be noteworthy that back in the 1950s, the government wasn’t actually collecting any more in tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. There’s something called Hauser’s Law, which basically states there is a maximum threshold on how much the government can tax out of its population. I think this “law” is no such thing. If the government really wanted to expropriate more, it could do so. But Hauser’s Law based on the fact that in pretty much every year since 1950, the government has collected between 17 to 20 percent of GDP in taxes. Here are the government tax receipts compared to the top marginal tax rate:

  

  Sources: Tax Foundation and Tax Policy Center.

  As you can see, no matter what the rate has been, the tax receipts have pretty much been the same. Whether or not you can raise the amount collected is really immaterial here, the only thing that matters is what has happened (particularly when tax rates were over 90 percent) and it’s pretty much always been the same.

  Of course, there are a lot of other taxes than personal income taxes. Still, tax receipts from personal income taxes have consistently been between 7 and 9 percent. In 2014, they were 8.1 percent. Furthermore, as you can see, the chart looks pretty much the same when looking at personal income tax receipts and the top marginal tax rate.

  

  Source: Tax Foundation.

  But who is paying these taxes a liberal might retort? Has the burden fallen more on the middle and lower classes? Well, no. In fact, the percentage of taxes paid by the highest quintile of income earners has steadily gone up since 1980. In 1980, the top 20 percent paid about 55 percent of all income taxes. Today, it’s just shy of 70 percent. The same goes for the top 1 percent, which went from about 15 percent in 1980 to just shy of 30 percent today.

  The first of many reasons that this was the case is that we need to look at the effective tax rate, not the top marginal tax rate. So for example, if I make $20,000, I owe 10 percent under today’s tax code, but only on any income over $18,450 (filing jointly). So I only owe 10 percent of $1550, or $155. Yes, my marginal tax rate may be 10 percent, but my effective tax rate is 0.78 percent.

  A study from the Congressional Research Service concludes that the effective tax rate for the top 0.01 percent of income earners during the period of 91-percent income taxes was actually 45 percent. Given that the top bracket is so much lower today ($3,425,766 in 1955 vs. $413,200 in 2015), the 39.6 percent top marginal rate probably yields something pretty close.

  Some of this was because corporate rates have always been lower than 50 percent. And as Alan Reynolds noted, when the personal income tax rates were reduced, it “… induced thousands of businesses to switch from filing under the corporate tax system to filing under the individual tax system.” In other words, many rich people kept their money in corporate entities when personal tax rates were higher.

  Another major factor was the myriad of deductions and loop holes that used to be available. Many of these were eliminated by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which by no coincidence coincided with the biggest rate deductions. For one, interest had previously been deductible on all loans. After the act, it has only been deductible on home mortgages.

  But what was probably the biggest lost deduction for wealthy individuals was the elimination of deductions on passive investment losses on real estate. Before 1986, wealthy individuals would often buy real estate with no hopes at all of it cash flowing. That wasn’t the point. The point was that real estate is depreciated every year in the eyes of the IRS. Even though in the long run, properties usually go up in value, the IRS assumes that every twenty-seven-and-a-half years a property’s value will depreciate to zero.

  This “loss” can be written off. So, for example, say a man earning $100,000 a year buys a property worth $275,000. He rents out the property and breaks even on it. The tax code allows that person to write off $10,000 as a loss which he can count against his income for that year. So now he only has to pay taxes on $90,000. If he owned ten such properties, his income would be zero, at least according to the IRS.

  That deduction is now gone for everyone but “active” real estate investors, or those who invest in real estate as a career.

  Indeed, one former tax accountant even made the case that there were so many deductions, loop holes and the like in the pre-1986 tax code that “… there was a massive amount of tax fraud at all income levels under the old code. It was so bad and so common that most people took pride in telling others how they cheated on their taxes.”

  I’ll leave how true that statement is to the reader, but from what I’ve heard, it sounds about right.

  Regardless, the simple fact is that the rich never paid 90 percent of their income in taxes or anything even remotely close to that. Unfortunately though, some memes die hard.

   

  

  

  

  

  

• "Your Debt Bubble Is Here" – The Updated Leverage Cycle Map

  As we head into December and the market anxiously awaits an FOMC decision which, if the Fed were truly “data dependent”, should tell us something about what the PhD economist cabal thinks about the state of the US economy, the market is bracing for a significant monetary policy divergence between the US and the rest of the developed world. 

  According to the standard and oft-repeated narrative, the US is the so-called “cleanest dirty shirt.” Growth is abysmal, especially in a historical context, but at least America didn’t just enter its fifth recession in as many years (like Japan).

  Similarly, inflation expectations may not be where Janet Yellen wants them to be (understated rent inflation and $170 million Modiglianis notwithstanding), but hey, at least the US isn’t sinking into deflation (like Japan and Europe). 

  Of course it’s not just about the US vs. Europe and Japan. The world’s emerging economies are at another point in the cycle entirely and are in many cases (e.g. Brazil and China) facing an outright meltdown. 

  For those looking to make sense of it all, SocGen is out with an updated “leverage clock” which shows where the world’s economies are in the “deleveraging-no bubble-leverage-bubble burst” cycle.

  As you’ll see below, the cycle begins after a burst bubble with asset price stabilization. As the private sector stops deleveraging and confidence comes back, debt growth accelerates anew and monetary policy “fails to curb” excess leverage. Ultimately, the music stops, “asset prices decline triggering balance sheet destruction,” and central planners resort to QE. Once QE bumps up against the law of diminishing returns, governments make the switch to fiscal stimulus and the cycle starts again.

  Obviously this is an oversimplification and one wonders whether, given the myriad idiosyncratic factors at play across individual markets, it’s even possible to categorize all of the world’s economies based on the cycle as described above.

  In any event, here is SocGen’s “leverage clock”:

  

  From SocGen:

  Our SG Leverage Clock summarises our current view on the positioning of each economy in the cycle. As seen, the advanced economies span the full spectrum of recovery. Most advanced is the US entering the more mature phases of the cycle, but with further life left in the current cycle. Turning to the emerging economies, these tend to group at the top half of the clock, with the notable exception of the CEE region which groups closer to the US. China is turning over and we expect the cycle to bottom out soon, but this against the backdrop of a structurally slower economy.

  For brevity’s sake, we’ll save you our country-by-country analysis and simply ask the following: “Why the hell is everyone other than Brazil, Canada, and India parked in one of the three ‘no bubble’ zones when at least 9 countries have debt/GDP above 300%, and a whopping 39% countries have debt-to-GDP of over 100%?”

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  

  

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