Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Corporations Win Again: Senate Passes Obamatrade Fast-Track Bill



Ten days ago it seemed as if America's corporatism would finally be slowed in its tracks after the House unexpectedly killed the fast-tracking of Obamatrade, aka the fast-tracking of the Trade Promotion Authority. Alas, it was not to last, and moments ago, in a "nailbiting" 60-37 vote, the Senate advanced Obama's fast-track tarde bill.


BALTOPS 15: The Mock Invasion of Russia

from NextNewsNetwork:



Ships, planes and hundreds of Marines attacked a beachfront off the Baltic Sea this week, in an impressive show of force. This multinational, maritime excess is a U.S. led, NATO exercise held every year. BALTOPS 2015 has taken place across Poland, Sweden, Germany and throughout the Baltic Sea. The exercise is designed to enhance flexibility and interoperability, as well as demonstrate the resolve of allied and partner forces to defend the Baltic region. A total of 49 ships, 61 aircraft, one submarine from 17 NATO nations and partner nations are participating, including a combined landing force of 700 Swedish, Finnish, UK and US troops.

Warren Buffett: Derivatives Are Still Weapons Of Mass Destruction And ‘Are Likely To Cause Big Trouble’

by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

After all these years, the most famous investor in the world still believes that derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.  And you know what?  He is exactly right.  The next great global financial collapse that so many are warning about is nearly upon us, and when it arrives derivatives are going to play a starring role.  When many people hear the word “derivatives”, they tend to tune out because it is a word that sounds very complicated.  And without a doubt, derivatives can be enormously complex.  But what I try to do is to take complex subjects and break them down into simple terms.  At their core, derivatives represent nothing more than a legalized form of gambling.  A derivative is essentially a bet that something either will or will not happen in the future.  Ultimately, someone will win money and someone will lose money.  There are hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of these bets floating around out there, and one of these days this gigantic time bomb is going to go off and absolutely cripple the entire global financial system.
Back in 2002, legendary investor Warren Buffett shared the following thoughts about derivatives with shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway
Read More @ TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com



Facing "Full Blown Crisis", Bank Of Greece Enlists Security Firm To Ensure ATMs Stay Stocked

The Bank of Greece has been hard at work with securities services firm G4S over the past two weeks coordinating an unprecedented effort to keep the country's ATMs stocked amid billions in withdrawals. Although the situation has become "critical", G4S notes that it hasn't had to enlist military assistance -- yet.





Collapse, Part 2: The Nine Dynamics Of Decay

Rome didn't fall so much as erode away. That's the template for collapse. While collapse may be sudden, the decay that generated the collapse had been rotting away the foundation for years or decades.




IMF Spoils The Party Again: "Disagrees" With Latest Greek Proposal

But it was all looking so great based on the market's all-knowing discounting mechanism of idiot algos. Despite Merkel's comments on "no discussion of restructuring" and Schaeuble's dysphoria over the proposals, a Greek Minister's overconfident "Greece is rescued" comment is about to be crushed by Lagarde's heavy hand:
IMF DISAGREES WITH GREECE ON CORPORATE TAX, VAT AND PENSIONS - EU SOURCES
Yeah - but as they say - apart from that The IMF loved the Greek Proposal!?



White House Lies (Again): Jonathan "Stupidity Of The American People" Gruber Called "Our Hero"

President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” And then there's this:
“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” according to Sept. 9, 2009 email to Mr. Gruber from Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama administration health adviser who worked at HHS and the White House. In a November 2009 email, she called Mr. Gruber “our hero.”





Greece Soars 16% In 2 Days (Just Like It Did Before Collapsing In December, February, & May)

Because hope is a strategy after all...




"The End Of The Road" - Debt-Funded Buyback Boosts Are Finite

The problem for investors is that inorganic measures to boost profitability, like cost-cutting, wage suppression, layoffs, and stock buybacks, are finite in nature. Eventually, these options are exhausted. There are only so many employees that can be terminated, wages can only be suppressed for so long, and there is a finite number of shares that can ultimately be repurchased from shareholders. The question that investors need to be asking is what happens when companies inevitabilty reach "the end of road." Importantly, with the Fed determined to begin hiking interest rates, despite weak economic data, the end may be nearer than most are currently expecting.




Why New Home Sales Remain At Recession Levels, In One Chart

What is the reason for the non-existant rebound? Simple: the following chart comparing total new home sales and the median new home sales price explains it.




Alexis Tsipras - Angel Of Mercy Or "Trusty" Of The Central Bankers' Debt Prison?

Greece, Europe and the world are being crucified on a cross of Keynesian central banking. The latter’s two-decade long deluge of money printing and ZIRP has generated a fantastic worldwide financial bubble, and one which has accrued to just a tiny slice of mankind. That much is blindingly evident, but there’s more and it’s worse. The present replay of high noon on Greece’s impossible mountain of debt clarifies an even greater evil. Namely, that the central bank printing presses have also utterly destroyed the fundamental requisite of fiscal democracy. To wit, in the modern world of massive, interventionist welfare states, fiscal governance desperately needs an honest bond market.




US Manufacturing PMI Slumps To Weakest Since Oct 2013

Having hovered at its lowest level since January 2014, Markit's US Manufacturing PMI slipped even further to 53.4 (against expectations of 54.1). This is the weakest since October 2013 and the biggest miss since August 2013. Stunned, Markit notes, "while the survey data points to the economy rebounding in the second quarter, the weak PMI number for June raises the possibility that we are seeing a loss of momentum heading into the third quarter;" which is odd because every talking head has been proclaiming everything is awesome, "while a September rise still looks likely, given the ongoing strength of the service sector, any further deterioration in the data are likely to push the first hike into next year."




A New Problem For Greece Emerges: How To Do the Russian "Unpivot" After Capitulating To The Troika

While Greece is collectively scratching its head why Tsipras et al were at loggerheads with Europe for 4 months, during which time the Greek economy entered a recession and saw its banks not only depleted of all cash but become de facto wards of the ECB, just to reach an "agreement" that could have taken place back in February, and attention shifts to just how Tsipras will pass last night's impromptu capitulation through hard-line leftist parliamentarians, Greece now has another problem: how to unpivot the aggressive pivot toward Russia in the past few months, which culminated with the signing of an energy deal last week in St. Petersburg.

A Visual Timeline Of The Endless Greek Crisis Through The Economist's Covers



SEA CHANGE: $140 Billion Bond Fund Goes To CASH As It “Braces For Bond-Market Collapse”

“If you distort markets for long periods of time and then you remove those distortions, you’re subject to unanticipated volatility,” TCW’s Jerry Cudzil tells Bloomberg, adding that the firm is “as defensive as [it’s] been since pre-crisis.”
from Zero Hedge:
Recently, it’s become readily apparent that some of the world’s top money managers are getting concerned about what might happen when a mass exodus from bond funds collides head on with a completely illiquid secondary market for corporate credit.
Indeed, bond market illiquidity is the topic du jour and has almost become something of a cliche among pundits and mainstream financial media outlets years after we first raised the issue in these pages. But just because something has become fashionable to discuss doesn’t mean it’s not worth discussing and indeed, we’re at least pleased to see that the world is suddenly awake to the fact that a primary market supply bonanza catalyzed by rock-bottom borrowing costs and yield-starved investors could spell disaster when paired with shrinking dealer inventories.
Read More @ ZeroHedge.com

Washington Pressures Europe to Act Against Its Best Interests

from Sputnik News:
The extension of economic sanctions against Russia by the European Union announced Monday will not just hurt Moscow, but will result in “severe difficulty to European countries first,” Italian journalist, politician and former MEP leader Giulietto Chiesa told Sputnik.
On Monday, the EU moved to extend its economic sanctions policy against Russia, imposed over the Ukraine conflict that began in early 2014, for an additional six months. The decision did not come as a surprise to Moscow, especially as the EU warned last week that an extension would be implemented.
Giulietto Chiesa, a former member of the European Parliament, was also not surprised by the decision, adding that it was done at the command of the United States and was not in the interest of the member states.
Read More @ Sputniknews.com



More info on False Flag ...

Soros-Funded SPLC Were First to Release Dylann Roof Photo Proving He’s “Racist” – BLATANT PSYOP!

from PressResetEarth:



Charleston Shooting: Evidence of Stagecraft

by Jay Dyer, 21st Century Wire, via Activist Post:
Jay’s Analysis has covered mass shootings in the past, having highlighted key patterns that always emerge in events given major media attention. These are important to analyze because shootings, disappearances, kidnappings occur fairly regularly, yet curiously only certain “stories” are chosen for exclusive media focus for weeks on end. Why might that be? Why is Dylan “Storm Roof” chosen as the media spectacle at the Charleston, SC shooting at the AME Church on June 17th, yet a black man shooting churchgoers is not, nor this black man shooting whites for racial reasons? As Dave McGowan has observed, in the ’70s and ’80s the great fear was the omnipresent serial killer, supposedly always an intelligent, middle-aged white male, and since Kent State or Columbine, the transition has been made to the young, white mass shooter (or Cho-Seung Hui). (Charleston is also the location of the dubious black church burnings of the ’90s).
In regard to our last so-called mass shooting, Elliot Rodger supposedly killed numerous college age girls and, predictably, posted his “manifesto.” I wrote concerning what appears to be a mass media Psy Op, and with Roof all the same signs are seen. This time around, however, the racial component has been added for good measure, fueling the Soros-funded strategy of 2015 as the summer of racial rage. I wrote last year:
Read More @ ActivistPost.com

One Person Dead, a Tragedy; A Million Dead, a Statistic

from Ron Paul Institute:



Recent police killings of unarmed individuals and the recent tragedy in South Carolina are horrific and they result in obsessive 24/7 media coverage. Isn’t it strange that the thousands killed and maimed as a result of our aggressive foreign policy worldwide do not get nearly the same level of scrutiny? Is Stalin correct that mass killing is easier to ignore than a handful of individual cases? Or was Secretary of State Madeline Albright correct when she said that 500,000 dead Iraqis from US sanctions was “worth it” — in other words just collateral damage or a mere statistic in the move to be rid of Saddam? Today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report takes a look at these difficult questions:


UK BIG BROTHER: GCHQ Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, ONLINE PROPAGANDA & “Psych Research”

by Glenn Greenwald & Andrew Fishman,, The Intercept:
The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counter-terrorism operations.
Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud, and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks, and generally warping discourse online.
Read More @ FirstLook.org

SGE Gold Withdrawals Surge Again

by Lawrence Williams, MineWeb.com:
After a couple of weeks with SGE gold withdrawals at the 30 tonne plus level, the latest week has seen a sharp pickup to 46 tonnes.
Perhaps the recent falls in the Chinese stock market may have had something to do with it, but the latest gold withdrawals figure from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) at just over 46 tonnes for the week ending June 14 is a particularly strong figure for this time of year when seasonality tends to depress withdrawal levels. Thus Chinese gold demand, despite numerous media headlines to the contrary, appears to be alive and well – and still booming!
As we pointed out a couple of weeks’ ago, half year Chinese gold demand as represented by SGE withdrawals, is comfortably heading for a new record at well over 1,100 tonnes or more. With two weeks’ withdrawals to go before the half year end, SGE gold withdrawals have thus already reached 1,061 tonnes – this is well ahead of the half year figures for the 2013 record year when full year SGE withdrawals totalled around 2,200 tonnes and last year when they reached a little over 2,100 tonnes.
Read More @ MineWeb.com

State Department To Release Overdue Human Rights Reports Thursday, June 25

by Brittany M. Hughes, CNSnews:
Rear Admiral (Ret.) John Kirby, a spokesperson for the State Department, announced Monday the department will publish its 2014 Human Right Reports on Thursday, June 25 – five days before the June 30 deadline for the Obama administration to wrap up negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal, and 120 days past its federally mandated Feb. 25 deadline for publication.
June 25 is also the day after Secretary of State John Kerry concludes his meetings with Chinese leaders who will be visiting Washington, D.C., June 23-24. During the meetings, Kerry and the Chinese will discuss “cyber security” and “human rights,” Kirby said at a press briefing Monday. At Tuesday’s briefing, Kirby told reporters, “Thursday the 25th, we will release our annual Human Rights Report. Although I don’t have the specific time and details of how that’s all going to unfold, we’re working on that today. I expect that we’ll have a more detailed advisory note out to you guys later today with more specifics. But I did want you to know that that is going to happen on Thursday.”
If the report is released on Thursday, it will be published 120 days past the federally mandated Feb. 25 deadline. The department has already missed one scheduled release date set for April 20, announcing without explanation on April 16 that the reports’ release had been delayed.
Read More @ CNSnews.com

Greece Given 48 Hours to Reach Deal as EU Leaders Weigh Debt!

from MoneyGPS:



Will Seizure of Russian Assets Hasten Dollar Decline?

by Ron Paul, Ron Paul Institute:
While much of the world focused last week on whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates, or whether the Greek debt crisis would bring Europe to a crisis, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded a $50 billion judgment to shareholders of the former oil company Yukos in their case against the Russian government. The governments of Belgium and France moved immediately to freeze Russian state assets in their countries, naturally provoking the anger of the Russian government.
The timing of these actions is quite curious, coming as the Greek crisis in the EU seems to be reaching a tipping point and Greece, having perhaps abandoned the possibility of rapprochement with Europe, has been making overtures to Russia to help bail it out of its mess. And with the IMF’s recent statement pledging its full and unconditional support to Ukraine, it has become even more clear that the IMF and other major multilateral institutions are not blindly technical organizations, but rather are totally subservient lackeys to the foreign policy agenda emanating from Washington. Toe the DC party line and the internationalists will bail you out regardless of how badly you mess up, but if you even think about talking to Russia you will face serious consequences.
Read More @ Ronpaulinstitute.org






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