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Latest News Articles – September 15, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From September 2, 2016 to September 15, 2016:

  • Bayer clinches Monsanto with improved $66 billion bid
    German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer clinched a $66 billion takeover of U.S. seeds company Monsanto on Wednesday, ending months of wrangling with a third sweetened offer that marks the largest all-cash deal on record.
  • Italy Funding Panic? Target2 Liabilities Unexpectedly Soar To Record High
    During the peak days of the European credit crisis in 2011 and 2012, one of the unfalsifiable indicators used by market watchers to observe the state of Italy's banking system and regional fund flows (mostly outflows from the periphery, inflows into Germany and northern states), was the monthly Target2 balance. Positions within the Target2 system, which settles cross-border payments in the euro zone, are monitored because in a world where all other market signals are corrupt and distorted by central banks (Spanish 10Y bonds yield less than US bonds), they remain a reliable, concurent indicator of financial stress, for example when banks in a country lose foreign funding.
  • Brace For “VaR Shock” – How The Bank Of Japan May Be About To Unleash A Global Selloff
    As we pointed out recently, Japan has been quietly undergoing a mini bond tantrum as over the past two months, its sovereign debt suffered the worst rout in 13 years, handing investors bigger losses over the past two months than any other government bonds, amid speculation the Bank of Japan plans to change its asset-purchase strategy.
  • The Only Sure Conclusion About the G20 Summit
    The G20 summit in China came and went with the usual pompous statements at the end: “The communiqué reiterates the essential role of structural reforms in boosting productivity and output, as well as in promoting growth in G20 countries. The choice and design of structural reforms are consistent with countries’ specific economic conditions,” the People’s Daily sums up one of the points on the agenda. The other points where the G20 reached some kind of consensus were trade, anti-corruption, financial reform, investment, industrialization, entrepreneurship, climate change, innovative growth, and development.
  • This Will Devastate People All Over The World
    With continued uncertainty in global markets, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, warned King World News about what is going to devastate people all over the world. Egon von Greyerz:  “The autumn of 2016 has for some time looked like a period when dark clouds will move in over the world economy. Therefore, it was not surprising to see the first sign of things to come in the next few months. In one day the Dow erased all the gains since early July with an almost 400 point fall. Since the beginning of the year the Dow is now up a pitiful 2.6%. Almost 8 years of ZERO interest rates have not managed to revive the US economy, nor the world economy…
  • The Bubble Burst You Didn’t See Coming
    In the next great crash, everything will get swept up in the onslaught – with virtually no exceptions. And that goes too for what we eat! The 30-Year Commodity Cycle peaked in mid-2008 and has been the first major bubble to crash and burn. The CRB (Commodity) Index has been down as low as 67%, with the potential for 74% or lower in the next few years. Among individual commodities, oil has been down as much as 82% in early 2016. Iron ore and steel have been down 76% with a potential for 88%.
  • Another Big Central Bank Warns on Housing Bubble, Frets about Risks to Banks, Blows Whistle on Stimulus
    For Chinese households, owning residential property serves as a mix of risk-free savings account (on the premise, valid in the US as well, that “you can’t lose money in real estate”) and highly leveraged speculative betting game. Some people own vacant apartments like Americans own stocks. A report in 2014 showed that 75% of household wealth had been sunk into real estate. Whatever the percentage is today, it’s high, to where major declines in house prices have caused uproars.
  • George Soros Warns Europe: Accept Refugees Or Face Extinction
    The refugee crisis in Europe was already pushing the European Union toward disintegration when, on June 23, it helped drive the British to vote to Brexit the EU. The refugee crisis and the Brexit calamity that it spawned have reinforced xenophobic, nationalist movements that will seek to win a series of upcoming votes – including national elections in France, the Netherlands, and Germany in 2017, a referendum in Hungary on the EU refugee policy on October 2, and a rerun of the Austrian presidential election on the same day.
  • Groupthink Lunacy—-Negative 2% Rates, Cash Bans And Monetary Voodo
    Looking for group think, extrapolation of extreme silliness, linear thinking, and belief in absurd models? Then look no further than Fed presidents, their advisors, and academia loaded charlatan professors. Today’s spotlight is on Marvin Goodfriend, a former economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve’s Bank of Richmond, and Ken Rogoff, a chaired Harvard economics professor, a one-time chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
  • The Signs Of Desperation In A “Twilight Zone Of Ignorance”
    Idiocy and mendacity are a bad combo in the affairs of nations, especially in elections. The present case in the USA displays both qualities to near-perfection: on one side, a boorish pseudo-savior in zero command of ideas; on the other side, a wannabe racketeer-in-chief in full command of her instinctive deceit. Trump offers incoherent rhetoric in opposition to the current dismal order of things; Clinton offers empty, pandering rhetoric in defense of that order. Both represent an epic national drive toward political suicide.
  • Jim Grant Rejects Rogoff's “Curse Of Cash”, Warns “Government Wants To Control Your Money”
    If there is a curse between the covers of this thin, self-satisfied volume, it doesn’t have to do with cash, the title to the contrary notwithstanding. Freedom is rather the subject of the author’s malediction. He’s not against it in principle, only in practice. Ken Rogoff is a chaired Harvard economics professor, a one-time chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and (to boot) a chess grandmaster. He laid out his case against cash in a Saturday essay in this newspaper two weeks ago. By abolishing large-denomination bills, he said there, the government could strike a blow against sin and perfect the Federal Reserve’s control of interest rates.
  • Sorry, You Can't Have Your Gold
    We warn regularly of the risk involved in storing wealth in banks. They’ve made the removal of your deposits increasingly difficult in addition to colluding with governments to allow them to legally freeze or confiscate your money. To add insult to injury, they’re creating reporting requirements with regard to the contents of  safe deposit boxes and restricting what can be stored in them – again, at risk of confiscation.
  • The Coming Crash Will Create An Economic Tsunami, Skyrocketing Gold And Usher In A Whole New World
    With many investors worried about the economic turmoil that has engulfed the globe, the coming crash will create an economic tsunami, skyrocketing gold, and usher in a whole new world. Gold Will Anchor New Monetary System. Stephen Leeb:  “All roads lead to Rome, which is to say there are many ways the Chinese have of effecting a new monetary system that will include gold as an anchor. The new system may evolve gradually, but it is growing more likely that it will be created out of chaos. In the last interview with you, Eric, I spoke of SDR’s as a route. And that is still a high probability. Recall, the SDR route requires the inclusion of the Renminbi in the SDR basket along with the Dollar, Euro, Pound, and Yen…
  • Globalized, Centralized, Compacted: They Cull The Population To Make Us Rely On Government
    With each step forward, the powers-that-be are controlling us more and more, reducing the population and forcing people to rely upon a centralized, collective government. The global agenda to centralize control explained by Aaron Dykes in the video below.
  • Wells Fargo scandal is just the beginning… here’s what else they’re hiding–
    On Thursday, Wells Fargo admitted to secretly creating millions of bank and credit card accounts over the past 5 years without their customers’ knowledge or consent. They would typically create, say, a new savings account for a customer, then transfer funds from his/her existing checking account into the new bogus savings account without ever once asking permission. This is a pretty horrendous practice that tells you everything you need to know about banking.
  • Why Are So Many Conservatives, Preppers And Christians Moving To The Great Northwest?
    Thousands of Americans are flocking to “Big Sky” country, and this movement has become so prominent that it has even caught the attention of the mainstream media. Within the last several weeks, both The Chicago Tribune and The Economist have done major articles on this phenomenon. From all over the country, conservatives, preppers and Bible-believing Christians are moving to Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and the eastern portions of Oregon and Washington. As you will see below, this region has become known as the “American Redoubt”, and for a variety of reasons it is considered by many survivalists to be one of the top “safe zones” for when things really start falling apart in this nation.
  • Tent Cities Full Of Homeless People Are Booming In Cities All Over America As Poverty Spikes
    Just like during the last economic crisis, homeless encampments are popping up all over the nation as poverty grows at a very alarming rate.  According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than half a million people are homeless in America right now, but that figure is increasing by the day.  And it isn’t just adults that we are talking about.  It has been reported that that the number of homeless children in this country has risen by 60 percent since the last recession, and Poverty USA says that a total of 1.6 million children slept either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing at some point last year.  Yes, the stock market may have been experiencing a temporary boom for the last couple of years, but for those on the low end of the economic scale things have just continued to deteriorate.
  • ALERT: Celente Warns This Is About To Rock Global Financial Markets And Gold
    Today the top trends forecaster in the world, Gerald Celente, warned King World News about what is about to rock global financial markets and gold. The Fed Is In A Trap. Gerald Celente:  “You have all of this money that has been borrowed and it went into emerging markets and inflated them artificially.  But if the Fed raises interest rates the dollar gets stronger.  If the dollar gets stronger, the resource-rich currencies get weaker.  And they have to pay back all of this debt in dollars.  So the Fed is in a trap…
  • 12 Survival Skills to Learn and Master for SHTF
    When it comes to survival, having a stockpile of stuff is not enough.  You need to have skills, too.  And yet, when it comes to preparedness skills, there is no hard and fast set of rules.  There are simply too many variables for a one size fits all list of things you must know and things you must learn if living conditions and economic realities become dire.  It is for that reason I often write in generalities.  That way you can pick and chose those skills and those items that fit your lifestyle.
  • The Six Presidents Causing US Bankruptcy
    Since Reagan came to power in 1981, the US has had a total of five presidents who have spent ever increasing amounts of money to hang on to power and buy votes. This has resulted in the most extraordinary money printing venture in history. It is not just central banks that print money. Governments that borrow vast amounts of money are also performing a printing function since money is created out of thin air. And even worse than that, the US government neither has the intention nor the ability to ever repay the debt with real money. Thus the US debt can only vaporise when the country defaults. Since there is no other way of eradicating this debt, a default by the US is guaranteed to take place in coming years. But before that, the Fed and the US government will flood the market with jumbo jet money since helicopter money won’t suffice. The jumbo jet money will create hyperinflation but it will never repay the debt since all it does is to increase the amount of debt outstanding from trillions of dollars to quadrillions.
  • Mexico To Cut More Than US$5 Billion From Pemex Budget
    Mexican finance minister Jose Antonio Meade announced on Thursday that approximately US$5.4 billion in funds for state-run oil firm Pemex will be eliminated from the proposed federal budget in 2017. “Pemex is making the biggest contribution to the cuts,” Meade said about the company that will see an 18 percent reduction in funds and will make up some 41 percent of the US$12.83 billion slashed from the budget.
  • An OPEC Production Freeze Could See Oil Prices Rise To $60
    Russian President Vladimir Putin is keen to reach an agreement with OPEC to freeze oil production in hopes of prices regaining strength. With the U.S. shale boom supplying most of North America, OPEC has increased production to maintain their market share. This has caused massive price reductions, putting many countries at a loss. Two years ago crude oil was priced at around $100/barrel, but in today’s inundated market it rests below $50. Russia is struggling economically, as it leads the world in energy exports and oil comprises 40 percent of its revenue. The country is considering tax reforms on oil companies, potentially hurting the industry further. This could lead to job cuts and shutting down of decade old wells. President Putin is determined to repair his nation’s economy.
  • Employee Pay Slashed by 5 Percent at Baker Hughes
    A new furlough plan is to blame for a 5 percent cut in pay for workers at Baker Hughes. The Houston energy giant’s program was meant to lower costs and the need for job cuts, but current employees are feeling the effect of the plan on their paychecks. Baker Hughes says the cuts aren’t permanent, that they will only occur from the pay period starting September 11 through the last paycheck of 2016. In an internal memo obtained by the Houston Chronicle, Baker Hughes offered holidays in exchange for the loss in pay. The holidays given are for October 10, November 23, December 23, and December 28.
  • Saudi Arabia Said to Weigh Canceling $20 Billion of Projects
    Saudi Arabia is intensifying efforts to shrink the highest budget deficit among the world’s biggest 20 economies, aiming to cancel more than $20 billion of projects and slash ministry budgets by a quarter, people familiar with the matter said. The government is reviewing thousands of projects valued at about 260 billion riyals ($69 billion) and may cancel a third of them, three people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. The measures would impact the budget for several years, according to two of the people.
  • South African economy reaps benefit of weak rand
    The South African economy has reaped the benefits of a weaker rand, with a 6.6 per cent increase on final sales in the second quarter, an 18.1 per cent surge in exports and 5.1 per cent decline in imports, a report from the national statistics agency showed on Tuesday. Final sales are calculated by subtracting the change in inventories from the gross domestic product (GDP), on a quarter-by-quater (q/q) seasonally adjusted annualized (saa) basis.
  • G20 2016: Toward an inclusive global economy
    The G20 summit opens today, attempting to bring back the spotlight on the global economy and strengthening trade ties in a climate that sees the international sphere huddle over security concerns. This year’s summit is hosted by China in the southeastern city of Hangzhou, and many analysts have said that it is Beijing’s chance to host one of the most significant gatherings of world leaders in its history.
  • Rising Rates: Financial Extinction Level Event Coming-Michael Krieger
    Former Wall Street analyst Michael Krieger says the key to predicting this market is to watch interest rates. Krieger explains, “Do I think that there is going to be a huge U.S. currency devaluation next month?  No I don’t, but on the flip side, there is going to be some sort of financial calamity.  What I am looking at personally is interest rates.
  • Iconic Hedge Fund Perry Capital Loses 60% Of AUM As Investors Flee
    The slow-motion trainwreck that is the hedge fund investing world, which as we documented one month ago has failed miserably – if predictably – to compensate LPs for its 2 and 20 model, and generate outsized returns during a regime of central planning, having created zero alpha since 2011…
  • Friday Was Just The Start: Here Are Goldman's 5 Reasons Why The Selling Will Continue
    After 40+ days of the S&P going virtually nowhere on muted volume, cross-asset correlations soaring to all time highs, and quant funds leveraging to record levels, it all just snapped on Friday the “volatility on the sidelines” finally made a grand entrance right back into the market, which tumbled the most since Brexit, and closed below its 2015 highs.
  • Visualizing The (Massive) Size Of The US National Debt
    When numbers get into the billions or trillions, they start to lose context. As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, the U.S. national debt is one of those numbers. It currently sits at $19.5 trillion, which is actually such a large number that it is truly difficult for the average person to comprehend. How big is the U.S. National Debt? The best way to understand these large numbers? We believe it is to represent them visually, by plotting the data with comparable numbers that are easier to grasp.
  • The Disturbing Signs Of Global Conflict Continue To Gather Pace
    The signs are ominous, the rhetoric constant. Whichever way you look at it, the world is slowly descending into an ever greater spiral of conflict. We all know that the current wars raging in the Middle East have the potential to go catastrophically wrong and pull the super-powers into something much bigger.
  • This One Chart Should Drive Investors Into Buying Gold & Silver
    The U.S. financial system is in serious trouble and this one chart confirms it.  Investors who understand the negative consequences of this chart would be buying physical gold and silver hand over fist.  Unfortunately, Americans have been put to sleep by the Mainstream media as they continue to report that “business as usual forever and everything will be okay.” However, the opposite is the case as the U.S. economy and the financial system continue to disintegrate under the forces of massive debt, zero interest rates and a collapsing energy industry.  This is not a situation that will continue for many years or decades.  This will likely collapse much sooner than most Americans realize.
  • The Era of Central Planning is Crumbling… and the Elite Are Terrified
    The biggest issue in financial political power structure today is the End of Centralization. In the post 2008 era, the Globalists made a major push to hold the system together. The multi-billionaire class, particularly those who made fortunes from crony capitalism and bubble economics joined forces with the Keynesian media shills to convince the world that the only way we would survive would be if trillions of Dollars were given to those who were deemed “systemically important.”
  • As The World Economy Is Burning Central Bankers Are Clueless
    The more things change, the more they stay the same. The financial world loves focusing on some future event that they think will change everything. There is always some economic data, an important meeting like G20, the Fed, the ECB or a speech by Yellen or some other central bank head who hasn’t got a clue what is happening or what will happen. So now at the end of August, markets have all been focusing on Yellen’s speech at Jackson Hole Wyoming. Jackson Hole is of course a very befitting name since what the Fed is starring into is a massive black hole into which major parts of the financial system will disappear.
  • One Of Richard Russell’s Last And Most Amazing Predictions Is Now Unfolding
    Late last year, Richard Russell made one of his last and most amazing predictions ever.  Below is what the Godfather of newsletter writers had to say. From legendary Richard Russell:  “Americans are scared to death and befuddled by the news of the day. They are well aware that their own lives and jobs have little to do with the nonsense that the Fed and the government is shoveling out to them.
  • Gerald Celente Issues Updated Trend Forecast For The Rest Of 2016
    With the price of gold and silver surging recently, today top trends forecaster Gerald Celente issued an updated trend forecast for the rest of 2016. Trend Alert: Central Banks Shooting Blanks. Gold Bull Run. Gerald Celente: Go back to the end of August. It was all the business news. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, speaking at a meeting of leading central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, boasted that thanks to Fed policy, the United States economy was on the road to solid recovery and labor-market growth was strong…
  • The Tide is Turning: The Official Story Is Now The Conspiracy Theory — Paul Craig Roberts
    In a few days it will be the 15th anniversary of 9/11, and this November 22 will be the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. These two state crimes against democracy destroyed American democracy, accountable government, and the Constitution’s protections of civil liberty. Years after the damage done by these events, the American people no longer believe the official stories. Neither does the government, but the government will never validate the distrust that Americans now share of the oligarchs’ government by acknowledging the truth.
  • When they say ‘hoarding’ instead of ‘saving’ you know you’re in trouble
    As Mark Twain is purported to have once said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” And with this principle in mind, libertarian Harry Browne advocated a four-factor portfolio to protect investors “no matter what the future brings”. Such a portfolio would have to cater to at least four separate economic outcomes: Prosperity: a period during which living standards are rising and the economy is growing; Inflation: a period during which consumer prices are rising; Recession: a period during which the growth is slowing (or negative); Deflation: a period in which consumer prices are declining. Only four types of investments would cover all these separate bases in Browne’s so-called ‘Permanent Portfolio’.
  • Police seize over 5,000 ounces of silver from man’s home
    Last week in the Australian state of Queensland, federal police confiscated a whopping 5,465 ounces of silver (worth roughly $106,000) from a man’s home. This was part of a larger series of police raids instigated by the Australian Tax Office against individuals suspected of tax evasion.
  • Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States
    Do you remember when our politicians promised to do something about the “too big to fail” banks?  Well, they didn’t, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.  On Thursday, it was announced that one of those “too big to fail” banks, Wells Fargo, has been slapped with 185 million dollars in penalties.  It turns out that for years their employees had been opening millions of bank and credit card accounts for customers without even telling them.  The goal was to meet sales goals, and customers were hit by surprise fees that they never intended to pay.  Some employees actually created false email addresses and false PIN numbers to sign customers up for accounts.  It was fraud on a scale that is hard to imagine, and now Wells Fargo finds itself embroiled in a major crisis.
  • Peter Schiff: History Will Remember These Times as a Great Depression
    For whatever reason (cough, the globalist controlled media trying to use sheer willpower to force a narrative into reality, cough), there have been several articles that have come out lately suggesting gold and silver might getting ready for a potential crash. If you happen to own gold or silver, don't worry, because the vast majority of most economists are long on both metals. Nonetheless, since there have been a fair number of rogue articles suggesting a possible a dip in prices, or even a crash, in the following interview between RT television and Peter Schiff, it's the first topic Peter is asked to comment on.
  • Soros: Western Society Must Fall Before One World Govt Can Be Established
    In the following video, Alex Jones begins by making a general statement in response to a question he’s been asked more times than he cares to count over the course of his professional career. The question always comes from the willfully ignorant, normally in a very condescending tone, and it often sounds something like, “If there really is a big bad secret world government, then where is it, and tell us who runs it.” Alex’s response is perfect. He says it’s really not a secret who runs the TransPacific Partnership. It’s really not a secret who runs the IMF, and the World Bank. It’s also really not secret who runs the United Nations. These days, the globalists are so over the top and in our faces about what they’re doing, sometimes information is learned that can later appear to have been kept secret, but that’s normally more the result of the public’s limited access to programs inside certain institutions, rather than a deliberate effort to conceal information.
  • Bubbles are Everywhere in Franken Markets-Chris Martenson
    Resource analyst and futurist Chris Martenson says “bubbles are everywhere,” and it’s the fault of central banks.  Martenson explains, “Italian 10-year debt is trading with a lower yield than 10-year U.S. debt.  That’s because the European Central Bank (ECB) has created a massive bubble in the bond market. . . . We’ve got housing bubbles all over the globe in Australia, Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, London and you name it.  This is simple because, and there is no mystery about it, the central banks have printed lots and lots of money, trillions and trillions, and people have gone out and bought things with all that money, and it has driven up the prices of things.  That’s what the Fed wanted to accomplish.  The only problem is when the Fed does, this they want to say, hey look, record high stock prices.  Hey look, record high bond prices, as if this is a win for everybody and it’s not.  There’s a lot of losers in that story.”
  • Pre-Collapse More Dangerous Than Actual Collapse-Warren Pollock
    Geopolitical and financial analyst Warren Pollock says danger for all Americans is here right now. Pollock explains, “Where we are is more important than where we will be because right now, we are in sort of a Twilight Zone of transition between stability and instability. I think this is a dangerous time, and for some, it will be more dangerous than the actual collapse. . . .   The entire system we live in today is one large racketeering engine, and we really have to understand that for us to negotiate around this looting that is going to occur.  You cannot eliminate all the looting from your life, but you can go around it to a certain degree.  For example, you might need a pair of eyeglasses and spend several hundred dollars when someone in China can make eyeglasses for $5 or $10 of the same or better quality. . . . There is no competition in the United States.  There is no free election.  There is no free market.  There is not capitalism.  All of these things that you believe to be in place right now are lies. . . . It’s procedural racketeering.  It is the veneer of a functioning economy or a functional system.  This sort of procedural racketeering is also procedural control and procedural information gathering.  It is dystopia of epic proportions.”
  • “Zombie Apocalypse”: The Hanjin Bailout that Didn’t Happen
    South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co., the world’s seventh largest container carrier and a unit of Hanjin Group, Korea’s 10th-largest conglomerate that also controls Korean Air Lines, has been in financial trouble for a long time. Bankruptcy or rather a government bailout, not only for Hanjin, but also of the second largest Korean carrier, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), has been bandied about for as long. HMM was restructured, with creditors taking a big hit, including its main creditor, the state-owned Korean Development Bank which in the process became HMM’s largest shareholder, which boils down to a taxpayer bailout. Pending regulatory approval, the restructured HMM will join 2M carriers Maersk Line and MSC in a new alliance next April.
  • Crude Oil Freight Rates Plunge to Record Lows
    The rates for shipping a tanker-load of crude oil by Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) from Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port for the throughput and storage of crude oil, to Singapore, the world’s largest crude oil transshipment center, have dropped another $200,000 since the last assessment, to $2.25 million, according to S&P Global Platts, the lowest level for that route since Platts started tracking VLCC data in 2006. That’s down by $4.15 million from the $6.4 million price tag in January – a 64% plunge in eight months! Platts blamed the “large supply of available ships” on the Europe to East route.
  • The Great Debt Unwind Beneath the Surface: US Commercial Bankruptcies Soar
    Not that you would have guessed from the stock market, hovering at all-time highs, or from soaring junk bonds, even the riskiest paper: CCC-and-below rated junk bonds skyrocketed since their February 12 low as their average yield plunged from 21.6% to 13.5%. Even the S&P US Distressed High Yield Corporate Bond index has soared 57% since February 12. Those are miracles to behold.
  • Goldman Sachs Just Launched Project Fear in Italy
    Project Fear began two years ago in the run up to Scotland’s national referendum. It then spread to the rest of the UK in the lead up to this summer´s Brexit referendum. But it keeps on moving. Its latest destination is Italy, where the campaign to instill fear and trepidation in the hearts and souls of Italy’s voters was just inaugurated by the world’s most influential investment bank, Goldman Sachs.
  • Dell-EMC to Lay Off 2,000 – 3,000 US Workers after Requesting 5,000 H-1B Visas & Green Cards to Import Foreign Workers
    The ink was barely dry on Dell’s acquisition of EMC, the largest technology deal ever, valued at $67 billion when it was announced in October last year – and already the layoff rumors are oozing from the woodwork. “People familiar with the company’s plans” told Bloomberg that Dell will cut 2,000 to 3,000 jobs. Dell spokesman Dave Farmer refused to comment specifically on the report on Thursday but said instead, as sort of a confirmation: “As is common with deals of this size, there will be some overlaps we will need to manage and where some employee reduction will occur.”
  • Developing Countries Emulate The US, Turn Citizens Into Debt Slaves
    One of the big advantages of being a Latin American or Asian country used to be — somewhat counter-intuitively — the lack of credit available to most citizens. The banking system in, say, Brazil or Thailand simply wasn’t “advanced” enough to offer credit card, auto, or mortgage loans on a scale sufficient to turn the locals into US-style debt slaves. But that, alas, is changing as those countries adopt their rich cousins’ worst habits. Brazil, for instance, was once seen as a Latin American success story and future world power. But then it ramped up government spending and started encouraging its people to become “consumers.” And the rest is familiar, if depressing, history.
  • More Indications of Labor Slowing—-Yellen’s Favorite Index Hits The Skids
    The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) fell to contraction again in August. After rebounding in July for the first positive reading of 2016, the LMCI dropped to -0.7 in the latest update. As usual, revisions have reshaped the levels of indicated problems throughout the past two years, but overall the trend remains. From this view of the labor market, the economy is surely slowing even if taking two years to suggest by how much.
  • The War On Cash Intensifies
    Government campaigns of intimidation — like the wars on drugs, terror, and poverty — have been used to extort the public for decades. Despite the previous failures of institutional “wars,” a new war on cash is being waged that threatens freedom in a more subversive way than ever before. Banks and governments around the world are cracking down on the use of paper money, and in turn, eliminating any anonymity left in the current system. Through strict rules on cash transactions and civil asset forfeiture laws, for example, the system has already instituted penalties for using cash. But as payments evolve into a purely digital network, the consequences of this new paradigm are being brought into the spotlight.
  • The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Beginning To Burst
    Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis?  Well, this time around we are facing asubprime auto loan meltdown.  In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have beenincreasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances.  Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way.  Delinquency rates are up by double digit percentages, and major auto lenders are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of losses.  We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and we are most definitely going to reap what we have sown.
  • WTF Chart Of The Day: US Factory Orders Tumble For Longest Streak In History
    21 Months… US Factory Orders have decline year-over-year every month since October 2014 (the end of QE3). This is the longest period of decline in US history (since 1956) and has always indicated the US economy is in recession… While headlines will crow of 1.9% MoM gain (which missed expectations of a 2.0% rise), the trend is simply ugly – Year-over-year Factory Orders fell 3.5%.
  • Services Economy Crashes To Feb 2010 Lows, Confirming Manufacturing Collapse
    Following last week's disappointing Manufacturing ISM/PMI data, Services PMI printed a six-month-low 50.9 over the weekend “pointing to an annualised GDP growth rate of a mere 1%,” according to Markit. Services jobs fell to their weakest since Dec 2014 but the ISM Services data collapsed to 51.4 – lowest since Feb 2010 with new orders imploding to their weakest since Jan 2014.
  • From An Industrial Economy To A Paper Economy – The Stunning Decline Of Manufacturing In America
    Why does it seem like almost everything is made in China these days?  Yesterday I was looking at some pencils that we had laying around the house and I noticed that they had been manufactured in China.  I remarked to my wife that it was such a shame that they don’t make pencils in the United States anymore.  At another point during the day, I turned over my television remote and I noticed that it also had “Made In China” engraved on it.  It is still Labor Day as I write this article, and so I think that it is quite appropriate to write about our transition from an industrial economy to a paper economy today.  Since the year 2000, the United States has lost five million manufacturing jobs even though our population has grown substantially since that time.  Manufacturing in America is in a state of stunning decline, our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, and our formerly great manufacturing cities are in an advanced state of decay.  We consume far more wealth than we produce, and the only way that we are able to do this is by taking on massive amounts of debt.  But is our debt-based paper economy sustainable in the long run?
  • The Percentage Of Working Age Men That Do Not Have A Job Is Similar To The Great Depression
    Why are so many men in their prime working years unemployed?  The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment is low in this country, but that is not true at all.  In fact, one author quoted by NPR says that “it’s kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940″.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but more men from ages 25 to 54 are “inactive” right now than was the case during the last recession.  We have millions upon millions of strong young men just sitting around doing nothing.  They aren’t employed and they aren’t considered to be looking for employment either, and so they don’t show up in the official unemployment numbers.  But they don’t have jobs, and nothing the Obama administration does can eliminate that fact. According to NPR, “nearly 100 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked” in the 1960s. In those days, just about any dependable, hard working American man could get hired almost immediately.  The economy was growing and the demand for labor was seemingly insatiable.
  • Fed's-Own Jobs Indicator Tumbles (Again)
    For the 7th month of the last 8, The Fed's Labor Market Indicator has dropped. August's 0.7% slump slams the door shut on July's brief bounce which is confirmed by the collapse in ISM Services and Manufacturing employment indices… If The Fed hikes rates into this, then there is far more going on than meets the eye and Janet is in panic “out of ammo” mode.
  • Low College Enrollment Sign of Education Bubble
    Another bad US economic indicator is becoming a focus for economic policy makers. Last month at the economic symposium at Jackson Hole, Janet Yellen said, “As a society, we should explore ways to raise productivity growth … improving our educational system and investing more in worker training.” Yellen is referring here to the production efficiency that occurs when incoming, better-educated college graduates enter the labor force, bring their new knowledge, and create better processes. This is commonly called the “productivity miracle” and has been a reliable economic phenomenon for 50 years.
  • The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Beginning To Burst
    Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis?  Well, this time around we are facing a subprime auto loan meltdown.  In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have been increasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances.  Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way.  Delinquency rates are up by double digit percentages, and major auto lenders are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of losses.  We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and we are most definitely going to reap what we have sown.
  • There Are 9.93 Million More Government Workers Than Manufacturing Workers
    The August jobs report was filled with some interest factoids, like there are now 9.93 million government workers than there are manufacturing workers. That is a ratio of 1.81 government workers for every manufacturing worker. Such was not always the case. But a variety of factors such as labor cost differentials, EPA regulations and taxes had led to manufacturing jobs to be sent overseas. Now a 1.81 government to manufacturing employment ratio is called OVERHEAD. And you wonder why high paying manufacturing jobs are fleeing to other countries?
  • Brzezinski's Ruse: American Empire Is Dead, China and Russia Take Over
    Zbigniew Brzezinski has written an article in The American Interest titled “Towards a Global Realignment” that has received a tremendous amount of attention on the internet, along with much gloating. Brzezinski is an architect of the world’s current military and economic disasters and as such he has plenty of enemies. With this article, they see him recanting his previous arrogance and vision of a worldwide US hegemony. In fact, in the alternative media, many champion his apparent admission as a huge win for the world and a huge defeat for imperialism.
  • Wall Street Week Ahead: Sleepy summer may give way to freaky fall
    The dog days of summer have lived up to their sleepy reputation this year as far as U.S. stocks are concerned, but market gyrations could soon pick up as a traditionally more volatile time of year looms. The S&P 500 index's 1-month realized volatility, a measure of market choppiness over the past 30 days, is stuck near all-time lows, according to Thomson Reuters data. Even the early-summer jolt from the surprise Brexit vote proved short-lived, and the S&P has not seen a 1-percent price move, up or down, on any day since early July. Yet all that could change quickly given the abundance of catalysts that can rattle markets in the weeks ahead, market watchers said.
  • Cuba Turns to Foreign Investors as Cheap Venezuelan Oil Fades
    Nearly two years after presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced a thaw in relations, Cuba’s communist government is turning to foreign investors to boost renewable energy as it faces cutbacks in cheap oil imports from Venezuela. The government formed by Fidel Castro in 1959 and led by his brother, Raul, is pitching large wind and solar projects and biomass plants that run on sugar cane to foreign companies at conferences like one opening Thursday in Havana. The goal: Bring billions of dollars into sectors that until recently were controlled by state-run entities, and lift the amount of electricity produced by renewables to 24 percent by 2030 from 4 percent today.
  • Donald Trump: Champion For Christians
    The following is a list of the political resolves and policy positions Donald Trump has made in support of the Christian faith and the Christian community.
  • Obama's Sneak Attack On U.S. Sovereignty Sets Stage For Climate Regulation
    The regulations, they are a-coming. That's what at least one noted climate skeptic warned, pointing to the very capable pen and phone politicking of President Obama that's allowed him great success in bypassing Congress on various pet agendas – particularly, on those dealing with the environment, and even more particularly, on one provision he signed earlier this year, the Paris Accord. The measure supposedly commits America to abide what the Obama administration described as “the most ambitious climate change agreement in history.”
  • The Coming Bloody Revolution In America
    America IS being intentionally destroyed, says Roy Masters, and he's not talking about Russians. As an Englishman who loves America, the real America, Masters has for 27 years been warning Americans about the disintegration of their country on his syndicated radio program, “How Your Mind Can Keep You Well.” Here for the first time, he is laying out what he sees in store for this country in the years ahead. The American system was founded on an idea so radical and seemingly beyond human nature that, technically speaking, America shouldn't even exist. And the notion that human beings could govern their own lives responsibly, respecting the rights of others, without the need for a king or tyrant, but only for public servants, ran contrary to all other governments in the history of the human race. In just two short centuries, America has shamed the rest of the world with its mind-boggling success, freedom and wealth.
  • 11,700 Petrobras Employees Sign Up To Get Fired
    Over 11,700 Petrobras employees signed up to get fired through the Brazilian energy firm’s voluntary dismissal program, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The government-owned company set up the program to reduce debt and reduce operational costs by $10 billion in the coming years as global oil prices stay low. Petrobras workers had until August 31st to sign up for the voluntary dismissal program, through which they would be eligible for severance benefits. Paying out the benefits for the 12,000 workers the company plans to let go will cost $1.23 billion, an official statement said Friday. The firm’s stock prices rick by 4.5 percent Friday morning – the highest jump since August 11th. Petrobras’ stock prices have doubled over the course of 2016 after sinking to a 17-year low in January. So far, the company has pulled out of major investments and stabilized fuel prices in Brazil in order to keep revenues up as the bear market for oil passes.
  • Are You a Mind-Controlled CIA Stooge? — Paul Craig Roberts
    Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge. The term “conspiracy theory” was invented and put into public discourse by the CIA in 1964 in order to discredit the many skeptics who challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated while in police custody before he could be questioned. The CIA used its friends in the media to launch a campaign to make suspicion of the Warren Commission report a target of ridicule and hostility. This campaign was “one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”
  • Climate pact: After years of talk, focus shifts to action
    Eight months after 195 nations concluded a hard-fought climate rescue pact, pressure is mounting to put its carbon-cutting promises into action as world leaders gather at G20 and UN meetings this month. The historic deal reached in Paris in December has been signed by 180 countries, but will only take effect after 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions have ratified it—making it binding. China—responsible for around 25 percent of global carbon emissions—ratified the pact Saturday, ahead of a meeting of G20 leaders where the United States is also expected to follow suit, considerably boosting efforts. Until Beijing joined the club, only 24 nations emitting just over one percent of the global total had officially acceded, according to the UN climate body overseeing the deal to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
  • Sorry Losers! How the Fed has screwed the many to benefit the few
    By its actions, the Federal Reserve has selected a precious few winners and many, many losers.  Sadly, you are highly likely to be one of the losers. Sorry! I'm one, too, if that helps soften the blow. But we have a lot of company. Other losers include: Savers, Anyone with money in a checking account, Anyone with money in a savings account, Anyone with money in a CD, Anyone depending on bond income, All pensions, Endowments, First time homebuyers, Renters, Those who invest based on fundamentals, Everybody alive in the future, when the bills come due, Anyone on this list has been intentionally pre-selected by the Fed for losing. The Fed has done this deliberately, with full pre-knowledge that it was going to diminish the prospects of the majority in favor of the benefit of an elite few. And to make matters worse, it has no plans to — and no clue how to — reverse the damage it has wrought.
  • Mike Maloney: This Is The Peak To be followed by ‘one hell of a crisis'
    Precious metals dealer and monetary historian Mike Maloney is quite confident the liquidity-driven ‘recovery' created by the world's central banks is now over. In his estimation, the path ahead is one of accelerating descent into inevitable currency destruction.
  • Are You Ready For The End Game? […It’s Coming] — Andy Hoffman 
    Andy Hoffman is back to kick off September by helping us document the collapse. From 6.2 BILLION in PAPER Gold dumped on the futures market in just the past week to BREXIT 2 which Andy predicts is coming in November when Trump beats Hillary, the end game is coming into focus quickly.
  • Prepping 101: The Ultimate Zero to Hero Guide to Prepping
    Forget the Zombie apocalypse. Real zombies are , in fact, starving mobs of people that will beg you for a loaf of bread when disaster strikes and they’ve got nothing to eat. Forget those reality T.V. shows, too. Those are just exaggerations by the media to get increased ratings. Prepping is like an insurance for a number of critical events that could harm you, your family, your home, your town, or your city. You don’t expect to crash your car and die every time you get behind the wheel, do you? Yet you still pay insurance. Think of prepping in the same way. You have to take steps to ensure your long term-survival.
  • What Life Will Be Like After an Economic Collapse
    If you have been waiting for a public announcement or news headline to let you know that an economic collapse has begun, you are in for the surprise of your life. If history in other countries and in Detroit, Michigan is any indication, there won’t be an announcement. An economic collapse tends to sneak up on a city, region, or country gradually over time. In some cases, the arrival of an economic collapse is so gradual that most people living in it aren’t even aware of it at first. Things just get gradually worse, often so gradually that people and families adjust as best they can until one day they actually realize that it’s not just their home or their neighborhood that has been hit so hard financially, it’s everyone. By that time, it’s often too late to take preventative action.
  • The Self-Reliance Manifesto: More Than 300 Resources to Guide You on the Path to Radical Freedom
    Self-Reliance. It’s a revolutionary word these days and I thought it deserved a manifesto. Have you happened to notice that our society is out of balance? The consumers outnumber the producers at such a rapid clip that we can’t possibly continue like this. But who has time to produce when they are indebted and working overtime to finance their current lifestyles in the hopes that they will finally be able to buy “enough” to be happy, fulfilled, and loved? We live in a society made up mostly of rabid consumers.  As soon as the advertising pros on Madison Avenue point them in a given direction, people flock to it like the zombies on The Walking Dead lurch toward a fresh human, completely oblivious to everything else.  They yearn for these things that are produced across the world and then delivered at a cheap price.  They fill up on cheap food that has been government subsidized, making it unrealistically inexpensive.  They are enslaved as they work to pay for it, or in some cases, accept a handout to pay for it. More people are deeply in debt than ever, living a fancy First World Lifestyle that would crumble with one missed paycheck. They are slaves and they don’t even know it.
  • Why Did FEMA Just Put a Rush Order on 5 Million Bottles Of Water?
    Sometimes, we can get a hint of things that are to come by watching what the government is doing to prepare. After all, their intel is way better than ours, and they do have a tendency to keep secrets.  Of special interest to anyone who like to don the tinfoil and try to figure out what may be coming down the pipe are the actions of FEMA, the agency which is in charge of “managing” emergencies here in the US. So when they place a large order for something that they want absolutely immediately, I pay attention. A few days ago, FEMA put out a solicitation for 5 million bottles of water, to be delivered within 2 days. It said they had an “urgent requirement” for this water.
  • Jumping Ship: Two Central Banks Just Printed Billions In Paper Currency… And Immediately Bought Gold Mining Stocks With It
    When former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was questioned by Ron Paul during a 2011 monetary policy report, he famously told the Congressman that gold is not money and the only reason central banks hold it is because of “long-term tradition.” Bernanke’s comments have since been cited by financial pundits as expert advice on why precious metals investments should be considered no different than other traditional investments like equities or bonds. Suggesting they may be a safe haven asset or that there are thousands of years of evidence supporting the claim that gold and silver are money are often laughed at and marginalized. But if gold and silver are not real money and they are not safe haven assets, then why did the central banks of Switzerland and Norway just print $2 billion dollars in currency and immediately move that paper currency into gold mining companies?
  • ALERT: U.S. CDC Giving Itself Unconstitutional POWERS To Round Up And Detain Citizens En Masse Anytime, Anywhere And Throw Away The Key
    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention literally has overstepped its authority in proposing to grant itself powers that obviously negate any rights U.S. citizens thought they had by issuing the Proposed Rule “Control of Communicable Diseases” on August 15, 2016 wherein CDC will self-invest itself with the power to apprehend healthy people en masse and detain them indefinitely with NO process of appeal! That mammoth proposed rule is published in the Federal Register [Federal Register Number: 2016-18103] online at this website.  Before you read it, I suggest taking a very stiff shot of vodka or scotch, because you won’t believe what you read that is being proposed for what is supposed to be a non-communist country and its people, the USA! But, the CDC wants to hear your comments about the proposed rule, as if it really cares.  Citizens should file your comments at this website before October 14, 2016!  Officially, it’s Comment No. CDC-2016-0068-0001.
  • Major Bank Official: Banks Are “Preparing for an Economic Nuclear Winter”
    After years of giveaways to megabanks, marketed to the taxpayers as ‘quantitative easing,’ the crutches shoved under the banker-controlled global stock trade are about to snap. Bankers now say they are preparing for the collapse. In June of 2015, former Congressman Ron Paul predicted that these crutches would fail, and the financial bubbles created by them would send the stock market into a free fall.
  • How Much Will Silver’s Value Increase Compared To Gold During The Next Financial Crash? Check Out These Charts
    Many investors believe the value of silver will surge much higher in percentage terms compared to gold during the next financial and economic crash.  I happen to belong to that savvy group of silver investors, and for good reason.  If we look at the charts below, the data proves that silver bullion is certainly the more undervalued precious metal asset. Thus, it will likely make silver one of the best investment strategies of a lifetime…
  • Economist Warns: “Physical Precious Metals Markets May Freeze Up- In A Buying Frenzy, $5,000 Gold Is A Conservative Estimate”
    Wait until the physical market freezes up.  I saw it once (1980)…I saw what happened with gold and silver when it was a panic buy… Economist David Morgan of The Morgan Report is one of the world’s best known silver investors. In the following interview with Future Money Trends Morgan discusses his personal experiences during the last major run-up in gold, when it hit a price of $850 in early 1980. As Morgan describes it, there was significant panic buying during that time period, and should central banks and governments continue on their current course, we’ll see a similar endgame play out this time around.
  • Russia, China Building Yuan-Based Alliance Against Dollar
    The yuan is nearing to become a true international currency. In October, the Chinese currency will be added by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to its list of reserve financial instruments. A day before the Eastern Economic Forum 2016 started in Russia’s Vladivostok the Russian-Chinese Financial Council held a meeting to discuss boosting ties between Russian and Chinese financial organizations. Currently, the council comprises 27 Russian and 29 Chinese financial institutions. The council is aimed at facilitating transactions in capital markets and promoting payments in national currencies.
  • The enemy is us.
    Your government is on red alert: between 2006 and 2014, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), an agency of the Department of Agriculture, spent nearly $4.8 million to purchase shotguns, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, drones, thermal imaging cameras, and more. APHIS describes itself as “a multi-faceted Agency with a broad mission area that includes protecting and promoting U.S. agricultural health, administering the Animal Welfare Act, and carrying out wildlife damage management activities.” Liquid explosives and shotguns are apparently necessary to carry out its “broad mission.”
  • Bill Holter: Newly Solidified Chinese Superpower Will Replace Dead U.S. Dollar
    Will September 2016 be remembered as the month the dollar died? Yesterday, September 2nd on TRUNEWS, Rick Wiles was joined by financial writer Bill Holter to discuss the very real possibility that September 30th, 2016 might be the actual day the U.S. Dollar finally collapses, and then God help us all. During the interview, Bill Holter explains that Jim Rickards, world famous author of The Death of Money, and Currency Wars has predicted September 30th, 2016 will be the day, and he’s got his prediction narrowed down to the exact hour.
  • US, China jointly ratify Paris climate accord
    The United States has joined China to formally ratify the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, the world's two biggest economies said on Saturday (Sept 3), which could help put the pact into force before the end of the year. US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping submitted their plan to join the agreement to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who is in China to witness the announcement. Senior Obama adviser Brian Deese said the joint declaration should push other countries to formally join the agreement. “The signal of the two large emitters taking this step together and taking it early, far earlier than people had anticipated a year ago, should give confidence to the global communities and to other countries that are working on their climate change plans, that they too can move quickly and will be part of a global effort,” Mr Deese told reporters on Friday.
  • We’ve Reached the “Zero Point” of Debt Creation 
    Forty-five years and counting: We’ve been on a debt spree since the early 1970s when we went off the gold standard, covering every possible angle. Trade deficits, government deficits, unfunded entitlements, private debt – you name it! Our total debt has grown 2.5-times GDP since 1971. How could economists not see this as a problem? How is this the least bit sustainable? It isn’t. We’re hurtling toward a massive financial crisis, and all we have to show for it are financial asset bubbles destined to burst. And when they do, they’ll wipe out the artificial wealth they’ve created for many decades… in just a few years, as they did from late 1929 into late 1932!
  • It Starts: Rents Drop in 10 of the Top 12 US Markets
    The construction boom of apartment and condo buildings around the US, especially in high-priced metro areas on the East Coast and the West Coast, is now colliding with the reality of squeezed household incomes and soaring rents. As a consequence, in many of the hottest markets – including San Francisco, where the explosion in rents is called “The Housing Crisis” – rents have started to drop. Landlords are competing with a surge of new supply from new apartment and condo developments. Incentives, such as one month free rent, a rarity in hot markets like San Francisco, have reappeared. And in some of the neighborhoods with new apartment towers, the “now leasing” banners are everywhere.
  • As 9-to-5 Jobs Vanish, Look Who’s Reinventing the Working World
    Estelle Becker Costanzo has worked in Pittsburgh restaurants since age 15. Now 56, she is a server at The Capital Grille, a position she is proud of. “This is a good job,” she says—relative to the rest of the industry. Still, because her base wage has stayed put at $2.83 per hour for 25 years, she struggles to cover her basic expenses. “Originally, [tips] were supposed to be 50 percent of our income. Now it’s more like 100 percent.”
  • California Just Passed A $1.7 Billion Tax On The Whole Country That No One Noticed
    The California State Assembly recently passed a bill that received minimal recognition by the press, outside of the state, but has substantial negative consequences for basically everyone in the country.  Once signed by Jerry Brown, the bill, known as AB 1066, will make California the only state in the entire country to provide overtime wages to ag workers after 8 hours a day or 40 hours per week.  This change will add about $1.7BN annually to the cost of growing food in California which will ultimately be passed along to consumers.  And since eating isn't really optional, this is effectively a $1.7BN tax that California has decided to levy on the entire country.  Worse yet, increasing food prices is essentially the most regressive form of “tax” possible given the disproportionate share of wages spent on food by low-income families.  And, while you may not know it, California is an agricultural powerhouse that produces roughly 1/3 of all vegetables consumed in this country and 2/3s of the fruits and nuts.
  • Fewest Stocks Traded In 32 Years – The Market Is Disappearing In One Giant Leveraged Buyout
    The number of common stocks traded on major U.S. exchanges are the fewest in three decades. As CNBC reports, “Currently, there are just 3,267 stocks in the University of Chicago's CRSP data, and this is the lowest since 1984,” wrote longtime Jefferies equity strategist Steven DeSanctis.
  • Et Tu Austria – 3rd European Nation Abandons TTIP Trade Deal
    In our coverage on the slow death of TTIP we focused on Germany and France. We are now hearing that the Austrian SPÖ, the majority partner in the governing grand coalition, is also opposed – and not only to TTIP but also to the CETA deal with Canada. Der Standard quotes Chancellor Christian Kern as questioning CETA just after vice-chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner from the ÖVP, the centre right coalition partner, questioned TTIP.
  • Retired Green Beret Warns: “World Governments Are Preparing For Disaster And War”
    As written in previous articles, it is my firm conviction that we will be involved in a World War that will be initiated by an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon detonated over the continental United States. That being said, this piece summarizes recent events that reinforce such a conclusion, a conviction that is shared by world leaders, senior military personnel, and prominent analysts, as well as being a general consensus of opinion worldwide.  As of this writing, the German government has instructed its citizens to prepare for a forthcoming disaster by stockpiling at least 10 days-worth of food and 5 days of water.  In Berlin, they are considering bringing back mandatory conscription (a draft) in view of the influx of Muslim aliens entering Europe. This concern is mirrored by Hungary and the Czech Republic who, in light of an influx of more than a million Muslims entering Europe are calling for an army in Europe representing the EU to be able to deal with this crisis affecting their borders.
  • “Tremendous Ripple Effects” – Retailers Demand Bailout After Hanjin Collapse Paralyzes Trade
    When we first reported about the imminent paralysis of an unknown number of global supply chains and a potential shock in worldwide trade as a result of the historic bankruptcy of Hanjing Shipping, one of the world's largest container shipping companies which handles 8% of Trans-Pacific trade volume for the US market, we concluded that “the global implications from the bankruptcy are unknown: if, as expected, the company's ships remain “frozen” and inaccessible for weeks if not months, the impact on global supply chains will be devastating, potentially resulting in a cascading waterfall effect, whose impact on global economies could be severe as a result of the worldwide logistics chaos. The good news is that both economists and corporations around the globe, both those impacted and others, will now have yet another excuse on which to blame the “unexpected” slowdown in both profits and economic growth in the third quarter.”
  • Physical Gold Delivery Failure By German Banks
    The physical gold delivery failure to clients of Deutsche Bank who own Xetra-Gold, the gold exchange traded commodity, was confirmed yesterday by Deutsche Bourse who said that the inability to deliver gold was not limited to Deutsche Bank and that other German banks were having “problems” delivering gold.
  • One Firm Is Calling For Skyrocketing Gold, Silver & Oil And A Crash In The Dow!
    As we get ready to what should be a very exciting fall, one firm is calling for skyrocketing gold, silver & oil and a 7,000 point plunge in the Dow! “My fear is that because interest rates are suppressed, therefore earnings are inflated. So when rates go up … the hall of mirrors is shattered and we look at each other and see what actually is real rather than what the Fed wants us to believe.” — Jim Grant By Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Incrementum AG Liechtenstein – Value judgments are subjective. Particularly in the valuation of investment assets, expectations about the future play a crucial role. One of the perhaps best known and quite informative ratios is the Dow/gold ratio…
  • Is This About To Radically Change The World Forever?
    As we await the release of the U.S. jobs report on Friday, in order to see which direction it sends markets hurtling, is this new technology about to radically change the world forever? By Gerald Celente, Trends Research Institute. Anyone who’s conversed with Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana has made friends with a chatbot. A chatbot is a form of artificial intelligence that responds in a conversational manner, in print or verbally, to questions or requests from people: “Where’s the nearest McDonald’s?” or “Call Doug.”…
  • Legend Issues Dire Warning About Deutsche Bank’s Failure To Deliver Gold
    The man who, unbelievably, predicted the collapse of the euro against the Swiss franc in 2015, today sent King World News a brief note about Deutsche Bank’s failure to deliver gold and issued a dire warning. Deutsche Bank & Germany To Collapse? Egon von Greyerz:  “The Deutsche Bank situation is not new and I have talked about it many times as you know.  Deutsche Bank is bankrupt, but you must realize that they are an institution, and therefore the German government will not let Deutsche Bank fail before the country fails. Both of these events will of course happen, but not yet.” King World News will have more coverage of the Deutsche Bank situation shortly…
  • Trump Immigration Policy Update, MSM Lies for Hillary, Economic Update
    Donald Trump had a fantastic week that included a surprise trip to Mexico to talk with the President of Mexico. After that, Trump flew to Phoenix to give a 10 point immigration policy speech that went over big.  Of course, if you watch the mainstream media (MSM), Trump was a total disaster, but don’t believe the liars employed by legacy media.  The MSM lies and are freaking out that Trump could pull off a win despite their biased political spin.
  • America You Need To Lose Weight: At Least 1 Out Of Every 5 People Are Obese In All 50 States
    The United States officially has an obesity crisis.  According to a brand new report that was just released by the Trust for America’s Health, at least one out of every five people meet the clinical definition for obesity in all 50 states.  But of course in some states things are far worse than that.  More than 35 percent of all adults are obese in four states, and the obesity rate is between 30 and 35 percent in 21 other states.  And it is important to keep in mind that just needing to lose weight does not mean that you are obese.  According to the CDC, you have got to have a body mass index of at least 30.0 to meet the clinical definition for obesity. Each year, the American people spend 60 billion dollars on weight loss programs and products.  That breaks down to about 188 dollars for every man, woman and child in the country.  We are a nation that is absolutely obsessed with losing weight, and yet obesity levels are hovering near all-time record highs.
  • Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis
    Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession.  During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate.  That was the worst number in seven years, and it was even worse than most analysts were projecting.  This comes at a time when bad news is pouring in from all corners of the global economy.  While things in the United States are still relatively stable for the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the planet.  Canada in particular has been hit very hard by the collapse in oil prices, and the massive wildfire in northern Alberta back in May certainly did not help things.
  • A Timetable for the Dollar’s Demise
    The next five weeks will mark one of the most significant transformations in the international monetary system in over 30 years. Since the dollar is still the lynchpin of this system, the dollar itself will be affected. Whatever affects the dollar affects you, your portfolio and your personal financial security. It is vital to understand the changes underway in order to protect your net worth, and even prosper in the coming transition. Such radical transformations of the international monetary system have happened many times before, including the dual “accords” of the 1980s. These were the Plaza Accord in 1985, and the Louvre Accord in 1987 — named respectively after the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the Louvre Museum in Paris where the key meetings took place.
  • Drudge: ‘HOMELAND SECURITY TO TAKE CHARGE OF ELECTIONS’
    Why does the Department of Homeland Security all of a sudden want to oversee security for the election in November? Just a little while ago I checked the Drudge Report, and I was greeted by the following headline all in red: “HOMELAND SECURITY TO TAKE CHARGE OF ELECTIONS”. I was immediately alarmed, because I had already heard about how local election databases had been hacked, and Donald Trump has expressed concern that the presidential election in November could be rigged somehow. So I immediately clicked on the link and it took me to an article from the Washington Examiner…
  • Canada signals intent to join China-led bank
    Justin Trudeau has officially submitted Canada's application to join a controversial new international infrastructure bank led by China — an initiative the Asian country hopes will help build its economic credibility around the world. China founded the US$100-billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank late last year to provide other countries in the region access to capital for investments in projects in areas such as transportation, power and telecommunications. The Canadian government made the announcement after Trudeau met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday in Beijing, but did not immediately specify how much money it would put into the new bank. The government said in a statement that joining the bank will help Canada further engage in multilateral infrastructure efforts, and help pave the way for Canadian companies looking for new business opportunities. Trudeau hinted on Tuesday that Canada's application had been in the works.
  • Norway Raids Sovereign Wealth Fund To Cover Government Expenses
    Saudi Arabia isn't the only oil-dependent nation struggling to make ends meet in the wake of weak oil prices.  For the first time since its establishment in 1996, the Norwegian government is starting to withdraw money from its sovereign wealth fund to cover government expenses.  In fact, in the first half of 2016 the government has withdrawn $5.4 billion.  Moreover, withdrawals are expected to accelerate in 2H 2016 reaching nearly $20 billion, a run-rate that would have them exceeding the fiscal limits imposed on fund withdrawals of 4% of assets, or $36 billion.  To put those withdrawals into perspective, Norway's economy is roughly $375 billion and federal spending accounts for roughly 60% or $225BN.  Therefore, a $20BN withdrawal in 2H 2016 represents roughly 18% of total government spending.
  • Hoarding Cash – Prelude to the Crash & Burn
    We are monitoring confidence in the banking system as reflected by cash withdrawals. The sale of home safes has exploded in many countries. I previously reported that one in ten currency notes in Switzerland being printed is now the 1000 franc note. In fact, there is some 41.6 billion in Swiss francs now in circulation in 1000 CHF notes exclusively. The ECB is truly brain-dead for they thought by moving with negative interest rates, people would spend their money and that would rekindle inflation. They are correct that people would not want to pay negative interest rates. However, they totally never guessed that they would withdraw their money and hoard it rather than spend it. The trend toward hoarding cash really became in 2011. It started to make the news in 2012. Now the German savers are buying home safes as well and pulling out cash. Of course, they attribute this primarily to negative rates. However, the concerns that Deutsche Bank may be in serious trouble is also helping matters.
  • G20 Summit to tackle rise in anti-globalization
    The G20 Summit is to take place amid weak economic recovery and the lowest rate of global trade growth in three decades. China would like to see G20 leaders resist protectionism and instead, seek economic growth through innovation and reform. CCTV’s reporter spoke to some of China’s brightest business leaders to hear their proposals to G20 leaders. “Globalization is nothing wrong. But we need to perfect it,” said Jack Ma, Alibaba founder & CEO. Alibaba founder Jack Ma is deeply concerned about the rising anti-globalization sentiment around the world.
  • Deutsche Bank Refuses Delivery Of Physical Gold Upon Demand
    While the trading world was focused on the latest news involving Deutsche Bank, namely that the troubled German bank had been contemplating a merger with Germany's other mega-bank, Commerzbank as part of a strategy to sell all or part of a key business to speed up its flagging overhaul, a more troubling report emerged in a German gold analysis website, according to which Deutsche Bank was unable to satisfy a gold delivery request when asked to do so by a client of Germany's Xetra-Gold service. But first, what is Xetra-Gold? According to its website, the publicly traded company “provides investors with an efficient instrument to participate in the performance of the gold market. Xetra-Gold’s combination of features – cost-efficient trading and the right for physical delivery of gold – makes it an attractive product.”
  • Pound jumps as UK manufacturing posts joint biggest rebound in 25 years
    UK manufacturing activity rebounded at the joint-fastest pace in a quarter of a century in August amid a jump in output and new orders as the initial shock of the Brexit vote faded. Sterling rose after Markit's latest survey of the sector showed factories were returning to “business as usual” following a steep downturn in activity immediately after the June 23 poll. Markit said the fall in the value of the pound triggered by the referendum result had helped to push up overseas orders, while domestic output also bounced back and employment rose for the first time this year.
  • 68% of companies paid no corporation tax in 2014
    There have been calls for a rethink on corporation tax policy after official figures show that no corporation tax was collected on almost €17 billion worth of earnings by Irish registered companies over a five year period.
  • Goldman Sachs: Brazil’s Economic Depression Could Take 5+ Years to Correct
    Brazil’s stock market has surged this year, despite spiking unemployment and a several-year-long economic depression. A Goldman Sachs analyst now notes there’s no real improvement in sight.
  • China Sees “Great Difficulties” in Meeting Economic Growth Targets
    Based on a supply-side estimate of potential growth and projections of the main components of demand, Bloomberg’s Chief Economist Tom Orlik notes that China potential growth – the rate at which the economy could expand when firing on all cylinders – will slow to 7.1% in 2016 and 7.0% in 2017 from 7.3% in 2015. The government’s growth target for 2016 is 6.5-7% and – based on the 13th Five Year Plan – a minimum of 6.5% from 2016-2020.
  • Canada’s GDP Plunges 1.6% in Q2, Worst Reading in Seven Years
    From Michael Snyder: Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession. During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate.
  • Could This Earnings Recession Signal 1987-Style Market Crash?
    As earnings go, so goes the market. That’s the way things are supposed to work, anyway. Except that right now, they clearly don’t. Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research argues that even [current tepid earnings forecasts] might be overly optimistic. In a research note to clients Monday, he pointed to data that shows that companies have been consistently cutting their estimates for future earnings as the close of the quarter in question nears.
  • The Central Banks Are Now Ready To Launch Their ‘Brave New World'
    The latest Federal Reserve meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is over and so far it would seem that the general investment world is not too happy about Janet Yellen’s statements as well as those of other Fed officials.  In fact, many people are looking for some simple clarity as to what the central bank is actually planning. Most importantly, investors want to know why the Fed is suddenly so adamant about continued interest rate hikes in 2016.  Only a couple months ago, almost everyone (including alternative economic analysts) was arguing that the Fed would “never dare” to raise rates again so soon, and that there was no chance of a rate hike so close to the presidential elections. Instead, investors have been greeted with surging rate-hike odds as Fed officials openly hint of another boost, probably in September. As I have been saying for years, if you think the Fed’s motivation is to protect or prolong the U.S. economy, then you will never understand why they do the things that they do.  Only when people are willing to accept the reality that the Fed’s job is to undermine the U.S. economy can they grasp central bank behavior.
  • Chris Christie Did The Right Thing By Vetoing a $15 Minimum Wage
    Chris Christie, the Governor of the perennial blue state of NJ, is not someone who normally comes to mind when one thinks of free markets and liberty, but credit must be given when it's due. This week, Christie vetoed a bill pushed by the NJ legislature for a $15 minimum wage. This was a heroic act that should please every poor, low-skilled individual in the Garden State. Their chances of gaining employment have been greatly increased. Now if only the total elimination of the minimum wage were on the table…But alas, that day still lies in the future. For now, the cause of liberty and voluntary contracts can celebrate this token victory. The government has no right to stick its nose in other people's business. Contracts should always be voluntarily made without a third-party bullying its way in and messing everything up.
  • Tractor for Modern Farm Features Everything But the Farmer
    As Detroit car makers and Silicon Valley tech giants vie to bring driverless cars to U.S. roads, one of the world’s largest tractor makers is looking to do the same down on the farm. Case IH, the agricultural-machinery unit of CNH Industrial NV, this week unveiled a sleek, aggressive-looking red-and-black machine at the annual Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa.
  • QE, End of the Private Sector? Japanese Government Now Largest Shareholder of 474 Big Companies
    The Bank of Japan and the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) have been buying stocks to inflate the market, create some kind of “wealth effect,” and bamboozle regular Japanese into pouring once again into stocks, after many of them lost a big chunk of their savings when the prior bubble imploded without ever recovering. In 2014, the GPIF – buckling under the pressure from the Abe administration – decided to plow about 25% (“±9%”) of its assets into Japanese stocks. With assets at the time of still about $1.4 trillion, 25% would amount to about $350 billion. So the fund has been buying a lot! And it has been a disaster!
  • What Rail Freight Volume just Said about China
    The Chinese government is getting nervous about the numbers and is insisting, top-down, on obtaining economic growth of 6.5% to 7% this year, one way or the other. China’s cabinet has sent inspectors fanning out to provinces across the country to “keep economic growth within a reasonable range and ensure the main objectives and tasks of this year’s economic and social development will be completed,” according to Xinhua news agency, cited by Reuters. Because, apparently not all of China was playing along. Some regions and government departments are not coordinating their policies well and some officials are lazy in their work, Xinhua said.
  • Worst Plunge in Canada’s GDP since 2009
    In the second quarter, Canada’s economic activity, as measured by inflation-adjusted GDP, fell 0.4% from the first quarter, or 1.6% annualized, “the largest decline in quarterly GDP since the second quarter of 2009,” as Statistics Canada put it in its data release. It was a brutal reversal of the first quarter, when GDP had jumped an upwardly revised 2.5% annualized. Canada’s economy is to a considerable extent dependent on its resource sector, particularly oil and gas. But since mid-February, prices of crude oil, a crucial export product, soared (with the US benchmark grade WTI up over 80%!). Given the soaring oil prices in the quarter, it’s even more unnerving that exports, which add to GDP, plunged 4.5% (nearly 20% annualized!), the worst plunge since Q2 2009. While exports of services edged up 0.6%, exports of good plunged 5.5%.
  • Prominent European Firm Issues A Nearly $60 Target For The Price Of Silver!
    As we come to the end of what has been a wild summer, this firm has issued a nearly $60 target for the price of silver. By Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Incrementum AG Liechtenstein – Valuations are always subjective. They are in the eye of the beholder and often vary considerably. Objective factors, such as production costs are entirely irrelevant for valuations. The market value of a masterwork painted by Vincent van Gogh is significantly higher than its production costs, and a glass of water will be valued quite differently in the middle of a desert than on the shore of a lake. Last year we decided to set a time horizon of three years – i.e. to June 2018 – for our long term price target of $2,300 to be reached. This is based on the premise that the trend of price inflation is going to turn up…
  • Former Soros Associate Says The ‘Fix’ Is In
    As we get ready to enter September, a former associate of George Soros says the “fix” is in. Victor Sperandeo manages over $3 billion, has been in the business 45 years, and has worked with famous individuals such as Leon Cooperman and George Soros.  Below is what Sperandeo had to say. Eric King:  “Victor, where is the gold market after what has been a powerful up-move so far this year?” Victor Sperandeo:  “Most of the gold and silver mining stocks went straight up.  They performed incredibly well and so they got overbought.  So did gold, but not as much…

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – September 1, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From August 26, 2016 to September 1, 2016:

  • Current Global Financial System is Toast-John Rubino
    Financial writer John Rubino says don’t be fooled by the phony economy propped up by central banks. Rubino co-wrote a book a few years ago called “The Money Bubble.” It could have been written this week because almost everything he predicted then is coming to a head now.  Rubino contends, “The money bubble is basically the big bubble that all previous bubbles have been built on.  All the previous bubbles have come and gone, and “The Money Bubble” is about money, government debt and financial instruments, in general.  So, it’s a global bubble that is bigger than anything that has come before.  Part of the reason it has gone on so long is everybody is participating.  Every central bank has a printing press, and that allows them to fool people . . . . It fools people into thinking that the world is basically normal, and it’s not normal. . . . We are creating the conditions for the Mother-of-All financial crises.  It is taking longer to happen than was thought of a few years ago, but it is starting to happen now.  The QE (money printing) programs of the past few years, which were wildly experimental and really shocking to economists and everybody else, turn out not to work. . . . Either the system is getting ready to break down shortly or go on to a new level of experiments that are going to be even more dangerous . . . either way, the current system is toast.”
  • “The Fed Has Mastered Market Manipulation” – Bill Gross Explains Why He Is Not A “Broken Clock”
    One day after Stanley Fischer provided a bizarre justification for why “negative rates seem to work”, saying that “clearly there are different responses to negative rates. If you’re a saver, they’re very difficult to deal with and to accept, although typically they go along with quite decent equity prices”, this morning in his latest monthly investment oulook, Bill Gross takes not only Fischer but the entire Fed to town, and piggybacking on the words of Kevin Warsh, says that “I and others however, have for several years now, suggested that the primary problem lies with zero/negative interest rates; that not only do they fail to provide an “easing cushion” should recession come knocking at the door, but they destroy capitalism’s business models – those dependent on a yield curve spread or an interest rate that permits a legitimate return on saving, as opposed to an incentive for spending. They also keep zombie corporations alive and inhibit Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” which many argue is the hallmark of capitalism. Capitalism, almost commonsensically, cannot function well at the zero bound or with a minus sign as a yield.”
  • Global Supply Chains Paralyzed After World's 7th Largest Container Shipper Files Bankruptcy, Assets Frozen
    … today the largest casualty finally emerged on Wednesday when South Korea's Hanjin Shipping, the country's largest shipping firm and the world's seventh-biggest container carrier, filed for court receivership after losing the support of its banks, leaving its assets frozen as ports from China to Spain denied access to its vessels. As Reuters reports, banks led by state-run Korea Development Bank withdrew backing for the world's seventh-largest container carrier on Tuesday, saying a funding plan by its parent group was inadequate to tackle debt that stood at 5.6 trillion won ($5 billion) at the end of 2015.
  • Are Central Bankers Coming to a Bitter End?
    Central bankers these days are seriously trapped. They cannot now reverse their policies for that means they have to admit that they have failed. This is why the Yellen is not so eager to move to negative rates and has continued to take the view that rates must be normalized (raised). That is far more serious than you might imagine. To even entertain backing down from negative interest rates means they have to admit that Keynesian/Marxist economics has completely failed and therein socialism, which is based upon the very principle that government CAN and is CAPABLE of managing the economy. This is the real question presented in the American presidential elections, yet nobody will articulate it in this manner. Hillary still preaches the same failed socialist agenda as if government can even do anything other than attack people who earn more money as did Emperor Maximinus of Rome, but pretend to give it to those who produce less.
  • War On Cash: Discontinue Professor Rogoff’s Stupid Commentary, Not the $100 Bill
    In a recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff declared that there’s “little debate among law-enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the $100 bill, facilitates crime.” Rogoff would like to discontinue the $100 in order to – try not to laugh – reduce crime. Can the eminent economist really be so naïve as to presume that the disappearance of a piece of paper would prove effective at making the U.S. (and the world) more honest and safe? Apparently he does, while lightly acknowledging what economists refer to as the “substitution effect.”  If $100 Federal Reserve notes prove scarce, then similar euro and Pound bills will do the job, as will 10,000 yen notes. If $100 bills simplify big criminal transactions, wouldn’t little gold coins simplify crime even more?
  • Pierre Lassonde, $10,000 Gold, The BIS And A Desperate Gold Swap Dealer Short Position
    The most interesting thing about the recent trading action was that the government backstops the heavy short positions held by the banks in the gold market because the bullion banks act as agents for the Federal Reserve, but they don’t officially backstop a large swap dealer who is in trouble.  So KWN was particularly interested in seeing if the advance in gold would be brought to a halt and the price driven lower because of a swap dealer’s deeply underwater short positions…
  • Debt, Deficits & Economic Warnings
    While the world has been focused on the Federal Reserve, the markets, and the upcoming election, few have noticed the expansion of the deficit in recent months which is now in excess of $667 billion up from a recent low of $530 billion. During the financial crisis, the deficit ballooned to a record of $1.35 trillion as tax revenue declined as Government spending swelled. Importantly, the Federal Deficit was approaching 10% in 2009, a historical record for the U.S., but still remains at levels associated with weaker economic growth rates and recessions.
  • ALERT: James Turk Issues Dire Warning As Fed To Monetize ‘Everything In Sight’
    Today James Turk issued a U.S. dollar hyperinflation warning.  Turk warned that the Fed is going to “monetize everything in sight.” James Turk:  “There is a very important change taking place in the stock market, Eric. While subtle and little noticed so far, this change is starting to stick out like a sore thumb and can no longer be ignored. Although the Dow Jones Industrials and other major indices are making new highs, the banking sector is glaringly underperforming. This divergence is clear from the following chart showing the NYSE Composite Index of all stocks on that exchange compared to the sub-sector of companies involved in banking and finance, the NYSE Financial Index.
  • The World Is Hurtling Toward A New Global Monetary System
    As we come to the end of what has been a wild summer, the world is hurtling toward a new global monetary system. By Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Incrementum AG Liechtenstein August 28 (King World News): “It is well known that every boom must one day come to an end. The businessman’s situation, however, depends on knowing exactly when and where the break will first appear. No economic barometer can answer these questions. An economic barometer only furnishes data from which conclusions may be drawn. Since it is still possible for the central bank of issue to delay the start of the catastrophe with its discount policy, the situation depends chiefly on making judgments as to the conduct of these authorities. Obviously, all available data fail at this point. But once public opinion is completely dominated by the view that the crisis is imminent and businessmen act on this basis, then it is already too late to derive business profit from this knowledge. Or even merely to avoid losses. For then the panic breaks out. The crisis has come.” — Ludwig von Mises. A new recession is inevitable. As already mentioned above, precise predictions regarding the when or how are not possible. At this juncture we nevertheless want to warn about an economic scenario that we believe to be a realistic possibility, namely stagflation.
  • Can Americans Overthrow The Evil That Rules Them? — Paul Craig Roberts
    Paul Wolfowitz and the lies that he told in the high government positions that he held are responsible for a massive number of deaths and massive destruction in seven countries. Wolfowitz has announced his vote for Hillary Clinton. Does this make you feel reassured? The real surprise would have been Wolfowitz’s announcement in favor of Donald Trump. So why was what was expected news? Trump has said that he doesn’t see any future in the conflict Washington has initiated with Russia, and Trump questions the point of NATO’s continuing existence. These peaceful attitudes make Trump into a “national security risk” according to Wolfowitz. What Wolfowitz means is that a peace candidate is a threat to Wolfowitz’s doctrine of US world hegemony. In the crazed mind of Wolfowitz and the neoconservatives, America is not safe unless it rules the world.
  • Major Cities All Over America Have Become Infested With Opioid Addicts And Extremely Violent Gangs
    Violence and drugs are flooding the streets of our major cities, but those that live in cushy suburban neighborhoods may not have heard much about this because the mainstream media is so obsessed with covering Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. As you will see below, drug overdose deaths involving heroin and prescription opioid pain relievers have soared to unprecedented levels, and in some areas of the country health authorities are finding themselves absolutely overwhelmed by overdose cases this summer. Law enforcement officials are doing what they can to combat this epidemic, but because Barack Obama has left our borders wide open the gangs are able to transport these dangerous drugs into this country with ease. As a result, we are facing a crisis on a level that we haven’t seen since at least the 1980s.
  • Witchcraft, Islam And Humanism Are Filling The Spiritual Void Left By The Dying Church
    A dramatic spiritual paradigm shift is taking place in the western world. At the end of last week, I discussed the fact that more Americans than ever before appear to be turning away from the Christian faith, and this is particularly true among our young people. And while it is undeniable that atheism and agnosticism are both growing rapidly, it is also important to point out that other faiths are on the rise in the western world at the exact same time that Christianity is shrinking. If you are a Christian, what you are about to read should concern you greatly. Let’s start with witchcraft. It has been estimated that Wicca (one very popular form of witchcraft) is now the fastest growing faith in America. Books and movies featuring Harry Potter and others that use “magic” for good have fueled a tremendous amount of interest in the dark arts these days.
  • The Day The Lights Go Out And The Trucks Stop Running
    What would happen if some sort of major national emergency caused a massive transportation disruption that stopped trucks from running?  The next time you talk to a trucker, please thank them for their service, because without their hard work none of our lives would be possible.  In America today, very few of us live a truly independent lifestyle, and that means that we rely on the system to provide what we need.  Most of us take for granted that there will always be plenty of goods at Wal-Mart and at the grocery store whenever we need more “stuff”, and most of us never give a second thought to how all of that “stuff” gets there.  Well, the truth is that most of it is brought in by trucks, and if the trucks stopped running for some reason the entire country would devolve into chaos very rapidly.
  • America The Debt Pig: We Are A ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Society – And ‘Pay Later’ Is Rapidly Approaching
    If you really wanted to live like a millionaire, you could start doing it right now.  All you have to do is to apply for as many credit cards as possible and then begin running up credit card balances like there is no tomorrow.  At this point, I know what most of you are probably thinking.  You are probably thinking that such a lifestyle would not last for long and that a day of reckoning would eventually come, and you would be exactly right.  In fact, anyone that has ever had a tremendous amount of credit card debt knows how painful that day of reckoning can be.  To mindlessly run up credit card debt is exceedingly reckless, but unfortunately that is precisely what we have been doing as a nation as a whole.  We are a “buy now, pay later” society, and our national day of reckoning is approaching very, very quickly. Often we like to focus on our exploding national debt, but household debt is out of control too.  In fact, the total amount of household debt in the United States is now up to a whopping 12.3 trillion dolllars…
  • Clinton Foundation Largest Unprosecuted Charity Fraud in History-Charles Ortel
    Wall Street financial expert Charles Ortel claims the Clinton Foundation is the “largest unprosecuted charity fraud in world history.” He also says this global fraud could not be pulled off without a lot of help.  Ortel explains, “I think this is an example of a vast left-wing conspiracy.  If you go back into the history, the Clintons always like to expose the things that go down for their credit, and they always try to hide the stuff that doesn’t make them look so good.  When you go back into the history of the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, and now Chelsea, have been monetizing government service.  They have been operating as Robin Hood in reverse.  Stealing from the poor to reward their rich cronies. . . . I think what you have here is a case study on the proponents of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, and they tend to be left-leaning, how these people got together and figured out a charity where foreigners can give unlimited amounts of money, and U.S. players can give unlimited amounts of tax deductible money to an entity.  This could be a preferred vehicle for strengthening the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party and Clinton interests around the world.”
  • G-7's Penny-Pinching Ways Clash With Central Bank Stimulus
    One big reason the global economy is spinning its wheels: some of the world's richest governments are being tightwads. Group of Seven governments have been cutting their investment spending since a brief surge as the global financial crisis took hold. As a share of the group's gross domestic product, those expenditures were 3.3 percent in the first quarter, matching the lowest since 2000 and down from 4 percent at the start of 2009, according to numbers crunched by Oxford Economics.
  • Fed’s Fischer Says Negative Rates Seem to Work in Today’s World
    Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said negative interest rates seem to be working in other countries, while reinforcing that they aren’t on the table in the U.S. While the Fed isn’t “planning to do anything in that direction,” the central banks using them “basically think they’re quite successful,” Fischer said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television with Tom Keene in Washington. He reiterated that Fed rate increases will be data dependent without giving a specific timeline.
  • Apple: You can have taxes or you can have jobs but you can't have both
    Apple's official statement on the EU ruling against its Irish tax arrangements tells you all you need to know about what is at stake: You can have taxes, or you can have jobs, but Apple is in no mood to deliver both. After learning this morning that the EU expects Apple to pay €13 billion (£11 billion, $14.5 billion) in back taxes, the company said, “it will have a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe.”
  • German Government Proposes Bill To Confiscate Food Businesses
    In a shocking story from German news the Government is proposing a bill to confiscate company that do business in food. Food stores, grocery warehouses farm fields etc. All this is being suggested as a bill in the event of a War Crises, Terrorism, Blackout, or Pandemic.
  • The US: A Dead Nation Walking — Paul Craig Roberts
    In his article Orlov concludes that the United States is a dead nation, still walking, but no longer a uni-power. I agree with Orlov that US weapon systems are more focused on profits than on effectiveness and that Russia has superior weapons and a superior cause based on protection rather than dominance. However, in his assessment of the possibility of nuclear war, I think that Orlov under-appreciates the commitment of Washington’s Neoconservatives to US world hegemony and the recklessness of the Neoconservatives and Hillary Clinton. Washington is incensed that Russia (and China) dare to stand up to Washington, and this anger crowds out judgment. Orlov, also, I think, under-estimates the weakness in the Russian government provided by the “Atlanticist Integrationists.” These are members of the Russian elite who believe that Russia’s future depends on being integrated with the West. To achieve this integration, they are willing to sacrifice some undetermined amount of Russian sovereignty.
  • The Stunning Roadmap To The Coming Global SDR Currency
    With many investors worried about the economic turmoil that has engulfed the globe, here is stunning the roadmap to the coming global SDR. Stephen Leeb:  “Wake up, America. We have a problem that’s threatening our economy and perhaps even our continued existence as a free society, and no one is paying attention. The problem: we have too much money and too little wealth. Today our money-to-wealth ratio is probably lower than for any other developed country in history. But there’s no indication that policymakers here understand the key distinction between money and wealth or even see the dire implications. The Chinese do. They realize the vastly disproportionate amount of money compared to wealth in the West has made the world’s dollar-denominated monetary system a cancer. The Chinese are scared to death it could spread to contaminate them, and they’re determined to change the system.
  • Don’t Wait For a Reset: When The Economy Crashes There Will Be A Reallocation Of Money – Bix Weir
    Don’t Wait For a Reset – Bix Weir warns that when the US Economy crashes, there will be a reallocation of assets…
  • Jim Rickards: “There Will Be A War On Gold”
    Following a recent keynote presentation at the Sprott Natural Resource Symposium, James G. Rickards, best-selling author and advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Communities, was kind enough to share a few comments with the Sprott’s Thoughts publication. It was a fascinating conversation, as Jim noted the world’s monetary structures resemble, “Two tectonic plates; there’s the natural tectonic plate—deflation—and then…the policy plate of inflation—which is money printing, currency wars, QE, operation twist, negative interest rates, and zero interest rates…” “These [tectonic] forces are not only coming together,” he explained, “[But] they’re getting more powerful and they’re going to snap…When? No one knows… [But] the effect will be dramatic.” That tectonic “snap”, Jim described, will have devastating impact on peoples’ confidence in fiat currencies. “Confidence will be lost very quickly,” he said. And like a coiled spring, “You will have your inflation—all at once.” Even more chilling, was a recent conversation Jim had with banking & government officials, while at the Pentagon.
  • Is Dow Theory Signaling a Market Crash?
    The often-misunderstood Dow Theory is being bandied about in financial media these days, but is it actually flashing a bearish signal or not? The charts below show the Dow Jones Transportation Average (ETF version: SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSE:DIA)) has failed to print a new high above the previous high made in 2015. Given the Dow has made a new high, a Dow Theory non-confirmation remains in effect.
  • World's First Self-Driving Taxis Debut in Singapore
    The world's first self-driving taxis are picking up passengers in Singapore. Select members of the public began hailing free rides Thursday through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it is the first to offer rides to the public. It beat ride-hailing service Uber, which plans to offer rides in autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, by a few weeks. The service is starting small — six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore's congested roads. Eventually, the model could be adopted in cities around the world, nuTonomy says.
  • Uber Loses at Least $1.2 Billion in First Half of 2016
    The ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. is not a public company, but every three months, dozens of shareholders get on a conference call to hear the latest details on its business performance from its head of finance, Gautam Gupta. On Friday, Gupta told investors that Uber's losses mounted in the second quarter. Even in the U.S., where Uber had turned a profit during its first quarter, the company was once again losing money. In the first quarter of this year, Uber lost about $520 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to people familiar with the matter. In the second quarter the losses significantly exceeded $750 million, including a roughly $100 million shortfall in the U.S., those people said. That means Uber's losses in the first half of 2016 totaled at least $1.27 billion.
  • Venezuela's Latest Response to Food Shortages: Ban Lines Outside Bakeries
    The tragedy of Venezuela continues unabated, but that doesn't mean the government of President Nicolás Maduro has stopped trying to fix problems like the devastating scarcity of food which has led to malnutrition, riots, food truck hijackings, vigilante lynchings of petty thieves, and the starvation of zoo animals. No, Maduro hasn't admitted the failure of Chavismo — the brand of Bolivarian socialism imposed on the oil-rich country by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez — instead, Venezuela's embattled leader has launched a war on “anxiety.”
  • Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey Collapses By Most On Record
    Following flash PMI's drop, another early August indicator has collapsed as Richmond Fed's manufacturing survey plunges to -11 (lowest since Jan 2013) missing expectations of +6. The plunge from July's +10 to August's -11 is the largest on record – back to 1993. Biggest drop on record. Weakness was across the board with new orders crashing from +15 to -20, order backlogs and capacity utlization collapsed, and average workweek slumping.
  • Truly, Minimum Wage Rises Cost Jobs – Germany's Minimum Wage Introduction Cost 60,000 Jobs
    Yes, I know, there’re all too many poeple who just flat out insist that a rise in the minimum wage just won’t cost any jobs. This is not, to put it mildly, an assertion backed up by any observations of the real universe that we inhabit. I entirely agree that there are potential and theoretical possibilities which mean that people won’t use less of something becoming more expensive. But as with any such potential and theoretical possibilities we do actually have to go and check, measure against reality, their existence and their size. And there just aren’t studies out there which show that they do exist in the required size. Our latest piece of evidence comes from Germany. For those who don’t know Germany never did have a minimum wage. Further, the country had great success in reforming its labour market by lowering wages under the Hartz IV reforms.
  • US August Flash Services PMI Declines to 6-Month Low
    The Markit US PMI flash services-sector reading declined to 50.9 for August from 51.4 the previous month and the lowest reading since February. The data will maintain a cautious attitude towards the overall outlook, although this data series been relatively downbeat throughout 2016. New work expanded at the slowest pace since May and below historic trends with concerns surrounding political uncertainty having some negative impact. There was, however, a further increase in order backlogs to the fastest rate since April 2015. The increase in employment was at the slowest pace for 20 months with the need to cut costs and subdued demand conditions leading to more cautious hiring plans. According to Markit, the employment reading would be consistent with average monthly employment growth of around 130,000 and the Fed would be uneasy over tightening with employment growth at this pace unless there was clear evidence of rising inflationary pressures.
  • What Does Inflation Really Mean?
    No other economic concept has created as much confusion and in-fighting among economists as the idea of inflation. Along with its antithesis deflation, they have been the boon and bane of many monetary policy makers, detractors, and admirers for decades. But what does inflation really mean? How does it affect the average business owner or the average individual?  More importantly, how do governments and central banks use inflation to justify their own actions? These are essential questions to understand for anyone interested in making informed decisions to protect their wealth.
  • Capital Goods Shipments Collapse Most Since 2009 As Durable Goods Orders Bounce In July (Thanks To Revisions)
    Following June's disappointing relapse in Durable Goods Orders (which was revised lower), July's preliminary headline rose 4.4% (ahead of 3.4% exp) – the biggest MoM gain since Oct 2015. However, due to the revisions durable goods orders fell 6.4% year-over-year – the second big annual drop in a row. Under the hood most of the headline data beat expectations MoM as follows: New durable goods new orders rose 4.4%, vs Exp. 3.3%, New orders ex-trans. rose 1.5% vs Exp. 0.5%, Non-defense capital goods orders ex-aircraft rose 1.6%, Exp. 0.3%, … but we note that Capital Goods Shipments non-defense Ex-Aircraft fell 0.4% MoM… which led to a 9.5% collapse in year-over-year core capex unadjusted orders.
  • “It's Gone” – Why Foreign Demand For US Treasuries Has Disappeared
    Last week's TIC data confirmed something the Fed's Treasury custody account has indicated for the past several months: foreign demand for US government bonds has not only tumbled, but there has been aggressive selling. So much so, in fact, that in the past 12 months foreign central banks have sold a gargantuan $335 billion in US Treasuries (and $242 billion when looking at all foreign transactions including private). But how is this possible: after all the yield differential between US government bonds and the rest of the DM complex is approaching record wides.
  • The unrelenting hunt for yield may end in tears, says James Grant
    Listening to Wall Street pundit James Grant ought to make investors feel uneasy. The prominent author of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer is starting to sound a lot like many permabears roaming this yield-parched world. Grant told Swiss business paper Finanz und Wirtschaft in a Q&A published on Monday that he’s scooping up shares of gold GCZ6, +0.44%  and gold miners GDX, +0.08% because he fears that the world will lose faith in central banks, or as he terms it “monetary management.” That call makes Grant sound a lot like Peter Schiff, chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital, who harbors a low opinion of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and central banks in general, and who has a longstanding love affair with gold.
  • Pemex Collapse Threatens Biggest Banks in Mexico
    These days, the trend is not Pemex’s friend. Mexico’s loss-leading, debt-swamped, state-owned oil giant company announced that in July it had imported 554,000 barrels of oil a day — its highest monthly volume of imports since public records began in 1990. In total, two-thirds of all the oil Mexico consumed in July was imported — a staggering statistic for a country that until not so long ago was home to one of the largest oil fields in the world, the Cantarell. Pemex also acknowledged that its crude production fell a further 5% in July while its natural gas production shrunk 9%. The export figures were just as ugly. In 2011, when the price of Brent crude averaged over $100, Pemex’s export revenues hit a historic peak of $49 billion, a monthly average of $4.11 billion. In the first quarter of 2016 the monthly average was just $893 million. That’s a plunge of 78%.
  • Bank of Japan Prepares for Crash Triggered by Fed Tightening
    No central bank of a developed country equals the Bank of Japan in trying to manipulate the stock market up by buying equities. The BOJ has done this for years. With breath-taking ineffectiveness. So on July 28, the BOJ announced another stock market pump-up scheme: it would nearly double its annual purchases of equity ETFs from about ¥3.3 trillion to ¥6 trillion ($60 billion). Hedge funds and other speculators expected for the BOJ to instantly throw its weight around in the stock market, and hopes were riding high that the Nikkei would surge, or at least rise in a visible manner. Alas, on Friday in Tokyo, the Nikkei dropped to 16,361, down a smidgen from where it had been on July 28.
  • Legend Says Forget The Pullback – Gold Is Headed To $1,600 And Here Is The Big Surprise From China!
    As we approach the end of August in what has been a wild summer of trading in the gold and silver markets, today a legend in the business sent King World News a powerful piece about central banks heading toward trouble as gold is headed to $1,600 but here is the big surprise from China. Gold’s Surge To $1,600. By John Ing, Maison Placements. August 25 (King World News) – In the ultimate reality show, America’s political scene has become a reality drama and to no surprise, reality TV star Donald Trump has capitalized on the public frustration, however his solution, is to build a wall. Ironically, Mr. Trump is viewed as the candidate representing change and Hillary Clinton does not. Despite behind in the polls, Mr. Trump may still win. Although if he can’t build a “coalition of the willing” within his own party, how is he going to unify a divided America?
  • The World Is About To Witness A Terrifying Mega-Bubble Collapse
    With continued uncertainty in global markets, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, warned King World News that the world is about to witness a terrifying mega-bubble collapse. A Massive Black Hole For The Fed & Financial System. Egon von Greyerz:  “The more things change, the more they stay the same. The financial world loves focusing on some future event that they think will change everything. There is always some economic data, an important meeting like G20, the Fed, the ECB or a speech by Yellen or some other central bank head who hasn’t got a clue what is happening or what will happen. So now at the end of August, markets have all been focusing on Yellen’s speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Jackson Hole is of course a very befitting name since what the Fed is staring into is a massive black hole into which major parts of the financial system will disappear…
  • World War 3 Coming Soon? Tanks Roll Across The Border As Turkish Invasion Of Syria Begins
    The invasion of Syria that so many people have been warning about is now happening.  On Wednesday, Turkish tanks rolled across the Syrian border, and they were accompanied by radical Islamic Syrian rebels that want to ultimately overthrow the Assad regime.  This invasion was conducted under the code name “Euphrates Shield”, and it was supported by airstrikes from A-10s and F-16s that are part of the U.S.-led coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in the region.  The mainstream media in the United States has been very quiet about this escalation of the conflict in Syria, but things are much different in the rest of the world.  For example, a major Israeli news source announced the attack this way: “Turkey invades Syria“.  And without a doubt, that is precisely what is taking place.  The Syrian government denounced this move by Turkey as a “blatant breach to its sovereignty”, and the Russians are deeply alarmed.  The farther Turkish forces push into northern Syria, the more likely they will be to encounter Syrian or Russian forces, and one bad move could result in the outbreak of World War 3 in the Middle East.
  • Paul Craig Roberts – The World Is Now At The Edge Of The Great Abyss
    Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, warned that the world is now at the edge of the Great Abyss. (King World News) Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  I use the writings of Orlov and The Saker as checks on my own conclusions. In his article Orlov concludes that the United States is a dead nation, still walking, but no longer a uni-power. I agree with Orlov that US weapon systems are more focused on profits than on effectiveness and that Russia has superior weapons and a superior cause based on protection rather than dominance. However, in his assessment of the possibility of nuclear war, I think that Orlov under-appreciates the commitment of Washington’s Neoconservatives to US world hegemony and the recklessness of the Neoconservatives and Hillary Clinton. Washington is incensed that Russia (and China) dare to stand up to Washington, and this anger crowds out judgment…
  • How to stay optimistic even as terrorists “threaten our existence”
    Earlier this week the German government leaked a frightening 69-page memo entitled “Concept for Civil Defense.” Citing multiple terrorist attacks, cybercrime, and a host of other threats, the report states that Germans should prepare for an event that could “threaten our existence.” Yikes. The report proposes a number of mandatory countermeasures, including that Germans should stockpile food and water. There’s also peculiar language about “civil support for the armed forces” suggesting a possible return to mandatory military service, in addition to potential plans for emergency nationalization of food production and distribution. We’ve received numerous emails from friends and readers in Germany asking if it’s time to “get out”. Let’s be honest– most of the West is in the same boat right now.
  • There Is A Mainstream Media Conspiracy To Hide Hillary Clinton’s Rapidly Failing Health
    Is Hillary Clinton healthy enough to serve as president if she wins the election? Over the past couple of weeks this has become a major issue, and the mainstream media is actively conspiring with the Clinton campaign in a desperate attempt to cover up the truth. For example, the Washington Post, which has essentially become a mouthpiece for the Clinton campaign at this point, has been publishing an article “debunking” claims about Clinton’s health almost every day recently. One of their headlines that really caught my attention was “Don’t believe everything you read about Hillary Clinton’s health on Google“. By the way, there were three Hillary Clinton campaign ads on that one page alone. But CNN took things to an entirely new level this week when it published an article entitled “Clinton’s health is fine, but what about Trump?” I was so flabbergasted by that headline that my wife came into my office to see what all of the commotion was about. No, Hillary Clinton’s health is not “fine”, and we will get to that later in this article.
  • More Americans Than Ever Are Losing Their Religion
    Never before in U.S. history have so many Americans chosen to be unaffiliated with any particular religious group. As you will see below, the percentage of “nones” in this country has absolutely skyrocketed over the past decade. But not all faiths are losing members in the United States. In fact, Islam, Buddhism, Wicca and various New Age organizations have all experienced excellent growth in recent years. Sadly, almost all of the growth for the “nones” has come at the expense of Christianity. Americans are leaving the Christian faith in droves, and this is why many of our churches are less than half full on Sunday mornings. What we are doing right now is clearly not working, and hopefully we can get the church in America to wake up while there is still time to do so.
  • NPR Promotes The Idea Of Carbon Taxing Us For Having Kids Because We're Causing Climate Change
    In a long fearmongering fluff piece titled “Should We Be Having Kids in the Age of Climate Change?” about how the world is overpopulated and too many people = man-made global warming so we’re all gonna die unless we stop procreating, NPR is promoting not only all of that propaganda, but the idea that people in developed nations should be carbon taxed by the government for having children. By 2050, it is estimated that every developed nation on the planet will be facing a population with twice as many elderly people as young people. This is happening all over the place. As the workforce shrinks and older citizens retire, countries like Japan that are suffering what has been dubbed “demographic suicide” are actually trying to pay their younger populace to reproduce. NPR and its current climate change profile darling Travis Rieder, Assistant Director for Education Initiatives at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins, say they should not only stop doing that immediately but should actually tax people for having kids at all.
  • Brewing Collapse of the Western Monetary System? German Government Warns of an Upcoming Catastrophe, Tags Russia as an “Enemy Nation”
    Germany has just warned its citizens of an upcoming catastrophe and urged them to stockpile food, water and money for at least 10 days, to be autonomous and independent until the government has caught up putting the necessary public safety systems in place – in case of a ‘catastrophe’. There was no mention on the type of disaster awaiting them. A war, an economic and or monetary collapse, or both? – The warning was later downplayed as part of a ‘routine exercise’ in Germany’s new defense strategy.
  • Clinton Foundation donors include dozens of media organizations, individuals
    NBC Universal, News Corporation, Turner Broadcasting and Thomson Reuters are among more than a dozen media organizations that have made charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, the foundation's records show. The donations, which range from the low-thousands to the millions, provide a picture of the media industry's ties to the Clinton Foundation at a time when one of its most notable personalities, George Stephanopoulos, is under scrutiny for not disclosing his own $75,000 contribution when reporting on the foundation. The list also includes mass media groups like Comcast, Time Warner and Viacom, as well a few notable individuals, including Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom magnate and largest shareholder of The New York Times Company, and James Murdoch, the chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox. Both Slim and Murdoch have given between $1 million to $5 million, respectively.
  • Thought Volcker Rule Went Too Far? There’s More Coming for Banks
    After years of grappling with the Dodd-Frank Act, banks will soon learn what regulators want to do next to rein in Wall Street’s risky investments. The Federal Reserve and other agencies are poised to issue a long-overdue report required by the law that lays out recommendations beyond the Volcker Rule to prevent financial firms from triggering an economic crisis, said two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named before its release. The document will include plans for restricting banks’ investments in copper and hard-to-value assets, said one of the people. While Congress said the report had to be completed within 18 months of Dodd-Frank’s approval in 2010, foot-dragging by regulators has made the exercise a bit of an afterthought in Washington. One group that has been dreading its release is bankers, who are worried the document might suggest sweeping changes to lenders’ ability to invest in physical commodities and buy direct stakes in companies.
  • World’s Biggest Pension Fund Loses $52 Billion in Stock Rout
    The world’s biggest pension fund posted a $52 billion loss last quarter as stocks tumbled and the yen surged, wiping out all investment gains since it overhauled its strategy by boosting shares and cutting bonds. Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund lost 3.9 percent, or 5.2 trillion yen ($52 billion), in the three months ended June 30, reducing assets to 129.7 trillion yen, it said in Tokyo on Friday. That erases a 4.1 trillion yen investing return for the previous six quarters starting October 2014, the month it decided to put half its assets into equities. The quarterly decline follows a 5.3 trillion yen loss in the fiscal year through March, the worst annual performance since the global financial crisis. After benefiting from a surge in Japanese equities and a weaker yen earlier in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s term, GPIF has posted losses as domestic stocks tumble and gains in the currency reduce the value of overseas assets. Still, for Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank Ltd., that’s no reason to veer from the current approach.
  • Why I Left Canada And Became A Citizen Of The Dominican Republic
    It took nearly ten years but this morning I was sworn in as a citizen of the Dominican Republic. Many might ask, why would a Canadian citizen want to become a citizen of the Dominican Republic? The answer is actually quite long and lengthy. To begin with, as an anarcho-capitalist, I consider governments to be illegitimate and taxation to be theft.  However, the entire world, unfortunately, is covered in statism like a giant skin rash… and so, then, the next best option if you want to live somewhat of a normal life and be able to travel is to become a citizen of the best country that suits your personal needs. I was born in Canada but I would never say I am a “proud Canadian”.  The reason is that you cannot be proud of something you had nothing to do with.  I was just born there… and that made me a Canadian citizen. Apparently, I owed the government about half of whatever I make in my life for that “privilege”.
  • CNN Cancels Dr. Drew's Show One Week After He Voiced “Grave Concern” For Hillary's Health
    One week ago, board-certified medicine specialist, TV personality and CNN employee Dr. Drew Pinsky broke the mold of conformity, when he said that he is “gravely concerned” about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s health, pointing out that treatment she is receiving could be the result of her bizarre behaviors. Appearing on KABC’s McIntyre in the Morning, Pinsky said he and his colleague Dr. Robert Huizenga became “gravely concerned….not just about her health but her health care,” after analyzing what medical records on Hillary had been released. Pinsky pointed out that after Clinton fainted and fell in late 2012, she suffered from a “transverse sinus thrombosis,” an “exceedingly rare clot” that “virtually guarantees somebody has something wrong with their coagulation system.” “What’s wrong with her coagulation system, has that been evaluated?” asked Dr. Drew. Pinsky described the situation as “bizarre,” and said that Hillary’s medical condition was “dangerous” and “concerning”. Dr. Drew also went on to add that it was a sign of “brain damage” when Hillary had to wear prism glasses after her fall.
  • Come 2017, will your name be on this list?
    The White House was completed in 1800. That same year, John Adams became the first president to live there. Every president since has occupied it. In years past, the White House was open to all … For example, Thomas Jefferson began the tradition of a public reception to celebrate the Fourth of July in 1801. Tables pushed against the walls of the State Dining Room were filled with bowls of punch and plates of sweets. Presidents held these receptions until just after the Civil War. President Herbert Hoover started the annual Easter egg roll on the South Lawn in 1929. White House police estimated more than 47,000 people attended that day. The following year, a crowd of 48,000 showed up. Mrs. Hoover used the Rose Garden as a lost-and-found bureau where children could be reunited with their parents.
  • Terminal Economy: “Private Sector Will NEVER Recover…This Time, Replacing Humans Altogether”
    People are already taking the expected financial recession pretty badly. There are literally millions of people in the United States who’ve become deeply entrenched in a struggle to find or hold a good job, while keeping expenses covered on the income they do make. But most people assume they will shielded from the worst of it, that at some point things will pick up. Sadly, the forecast is much darker, and the next financial collapse much deeper than almost anyone has prepared for. The outlook from this global strategist at the Macquarie Group is beyond doom and gloom – it is a literal existential crisis.
  • WAKE UP CALL: Our Entire World is Going To Change — BILL HOLTER
    The cartel hit gold hard again on Wednesday selling $1.5 BILLION is paper gold into the market in ONE MINUTE and as JS Mineset’s Bill Holter notes, “$1.5 Billion of gold is close to 2% of global production and to see that sold in one minute is laughable.” Bill asks, “Who has that amount of gold to sell? And the answer of course is almost no one. And what trader would ever sell in that fashion? And the answer is no one wo would want to keep a job if they were selling for profit. So the sell was obviously to create price, a lower one.” But as the bond market and rising LIBOR rates are telling us, the system is coming apart at the seams and the coming collapse will cause “our entire world to change.”
  • Deutsche Bank CEO Warns Of “Fatal Consequences” For Savers
    Deutsche Bank's war of words with the ECB is not new: it was first unveiled in February when, as we wrote at the time “A Wounded Deutsche Bank Lashed Out At Central Bankers: Stop Easing, You Are Crushing Us.” Europe's largest bank, with the massive derivatives book, then upped the ante several months later in June, when its chief economist Folkerts-Landau launched a shocking anti-ECB rant in which it warned of social unrest and another Great Depression. Ironically, these infamous diatribes hurt more than helped: telegraphing to the market just how hurt DB was as a result of the ECB's monetary policy, the market punished its stock, which has been recently trading within spitting distance of all time lows, in effect making Deutsche Bank's life even harder as it now has to contend not only with its own internal profitability problems, but also has to maintain a market-facing facade that all is well. So far, it has not worked out very well, prompting numerous comparisons to another infamous bank.
  • Demographic HomeMageddon Underway… Will Last Until At Least 2035
    91% of all US home buying is done by those aged 20-69yrs/old, according to NAR data.  In 2015, Millennials (20-35yrs/old) made up 35% of home purchases, Gen X (36-50yr/olds) bought 26%, Boomers (51-70yr/olds) 31%, and the Silent Generation (70+yrs/old) 9%.  I'm no great fan of the NAR, but this makes basic sense as most homebuyers need an income to be homebuyers and most 70+yr/olds are retired and have the lowest average incomes of all the above groups. Here's the very big problem for residential real estate… the chart below shows that over 70% of all the population growth among potential home buyers (20+yrs/old) from 2017–>2030 will be among the 70+yr/olds (chart shows average annual growth for the two groups from 2000–>2016 (left) and 2017–>2030 (right)).  This is simply unprecedented in US history.
  • 5 Factors That Could Turn America Into Another Collapsed Empire
    Nations are just as likely to unravel after periods of prosperity as afte periods of depression. Have you ever met an Ottoman? Or a Habsburg? Neither have I. Like a chopped-up Magritte painting, all that is left of the Habsburgs is a homburg hat. Yet in the 1800s, the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires controlled a huge chunk of the modern world. One in 10 Americans can trace his or her heritage to Habsburg lands, which spanned most of middle Europe from Poland down to Dracula’s castle in Transylvania. Many people have written about poor countries that have fallen apart. But rich nations fall apart, too. In fact, nations are just as likely to unravel after periods of prosperity as after periods of depression. The 2016 presidential campaign appears so bitter precisely because so many Americans worry that the “other” party’s candidate will annihilate the nation.
  • Largest Saudi Bank Crashes To Record Low
    Despite the exuberant rebound in the price of oil – and the hope that this means something other than an over-financialized commodity being short-squeezed by rumors – all is not well across the oil producers of the world. Having noted the record surge in default protection for Saudi Arabia (ahead of its looming debt deal)…
  • On The Bizarre Media Blackout Of Hacked George Soros Documents
    Scandal: Leaked documents released a few days ago provide juicy insider details of how a fabulously rich businessman has been using his money to influence elections in Europe, underwrite an extremist group, target U.S. citizens who disagreed with him, dictate foreign policy, and try to sway a Supreme Court ruling, among other things. Pretty compelling stuff, right? Not if it involves leftist billionaire George Soros. In this case, the mainstream press couldn't care less. On Saturday, a group called DC Leaks posted more than 2,500 documents going back to 2008 that it pilfered from Soros' Open Society Foundations' servers. Since then, the mainstream media have shown zero interest in this gold mine of information. We couldn't find a single story on the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, CBS News or other major news sites that even noted the existence of these leaked documents, let alone reported on what's in them.
  • The Earth’s Crust Will Be Shaken By More Than 100,000 Earthquakes That Humans Can Feel In 2016
    Did you know that our planet will be hit by more than 100,000 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater this year alone?  Earlier today, I came across a report that contained this amazing fact, but it was so incredible that I felt that I had to go and verify it myself.  So I went to the official USGS website, and I found out that this is actually true.  Overall, there are about half a million earthquakes around the globe each year, but it is only when a quake is of about magnitude 3.0 or greater that humans actually feel them.  As the very large earthquakes in Italy and Myanmar within the last 24 hours have demonstrated, the shaking of our planet is getting worse, and this is something that I have written about over and over again.  So why is this happening?  Why does the crust of our planet seemingly become more and more unstable with each passing year?
  • The Blessing of Cash
    Starting today, the Royal Bank of Scotland will become the first bank in the U.K. to impose a negative interest rate on depositors. The negative rate will apply only to corporate customers, including mutual fund managers and pension funds, holding deposits of certain foreign currencies including euros. This means that RBS—in which the U.K. government still maintains a majority ownership stake since its 2008 bailout—will actually charge these customers to “borrow” their deposits. A few weeks ago, RBS notified more than one million small-business customers that they could also be charged for deposits if the Bank of England lowered the target interest rate, which now stands at .25%, into negative territory. Experts are warning that the latest move by RBS would “set alarm bells ringing” among small businesses and ordinary customers. The stage is set for a glorious and long overdue old-fashioned bank run if the BOE ventures to push rates into negative territory.
  • We Are on the Brink of World War III; Americans Totally Clueless – Part II
    If you heard Part I of today’s interview between “End Time Newsman, Rick Wiles” and Dr. Jim Willie titled, Dr. Jim Willie: We Are on the Brink of World War; Americans Are Clueless, then buckle up and get ready for Part II. As always with Dr. Willie, hold on because it’s going to be just as scary to think about, but just as informative! To begin Part II, Rick Wiles asks Dr. Willie what he has to say about America’s manufacturing PMI report that just came out. Dr. Willie responds by saying: “Implosion. Absolute implosion. Absolutely no equivocation whatsoever. Take a look at electricity usage. It’s way down. Look at trucking freight, it’s way down, shipping cars, they’re way down. The port facilities have set a record: In 2015, US ports exported 500,000 containers that were absolutely empty.” Can you imagine? We’ve actually been paying to export giant shipping containers filled with nothing more than stale air. Take a look at manufacturing PMI in the chart below from Zerohedge.com. The numbers are WAY down. Like virtually every major crash before the one that’s coming, all the alleged “experts” from the major banks haven’t even been close in their estimates, and don’t expect that to change.
  • Even Hedge Funds Can’t Understand Today’s Manipulated Markets 
    One of the big surprises of the past few years is the number of brand-name hedge funds reporting terrible results. Why are hedge funds underperforming generic stocks and bonds? Because governments are now manipulating those markets, and doing so indiscriminately. Japan’s central bank, for instance, is now the biggest holder of most domestic ETFs and a lengthening list of individual equities. But its buying isn’t based on actual analysis; it simply acquires a cross section of major securities. This pushes all prices up simultaneously, giving the market a broad-based rally. Since hedge funds get paid to find special situations that will outperform the broad averages (known as “generating alpha”), when government intervention levitates the household names that dominate the broad averages it tends to leave the more obscure special situations and related strategies behind. So hedge funds end up underperforming, and fail to justify their aggressive fees. And customers respond by pulling money out of hedge funds hedge funds in favor of passive instruments like ETFs which seem to nenefit from indiscriminate government buying.
  • John Embry Warns The ‘Deep State’ Shadow Government Is Hard At Work In Financial Markets
    On the heels of continued propaganda from the Federal Reserve, today John Embry told King World News that the “Deep State” shadow government is hard at work in financial markets right now. John Embry:  “Eric, as you know, we are in an extremely quiet period here in late summer, which allows the usual suspects to push markets around. As I said a week or so ago, everything is being done to assure Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the U.S. Presidency, and quiet periods like this make the manipulation of markets by the powers that be that much easier. World Economy Imploding But Propaganda Is Alive & Well. However, in the real world things continue to deteriorate.  In the last few days it has been announced that Apple iphone demand is plunging, Caterpillar has experienced a 20 percent year-over-year revenue decline, Cisco is laying off 20 percent of it s global workforce, etc, etc.
  • Look Who’s In Debt! Big 4 Oil Companies Debt Hits Record $184 Billion
    So what do you do when the commodity you harvest and sell suddenly collapses by 50-60% and slashes your operating profit?  If you said, raise a whole bunch of debt and continue spending on new capital projects to drill for even more supply in a collapsing market then you might be an oil CEO.  The Wall Street Journal this morning pointed out that raising debt to cover cash burn is exactly what the largest oil companies in the world are doing.  In fact, the 4 largest oil companies have doubled their net debt positions since 2014 when the oil selloff started.

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – August 25, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From August 19, 2016 to August 25, 2016:

  • These Charts Are Flashing Recession Signals
    No one knows how long the current economic expansion will continue. But some seven years after the last recession ended, economists are keeping an eagle eye on the latest data looking for signs that another downturn may be approaching. For now, much of the economic data is pointing to continued, if somewhat weak, growth. Companies are hiring, wages are rising slowly and consumers are spending. But belt-tightening by businesses on investment in new equipment and buildings could be a sign of a deeper slowdown ahead, according to economists at Credit Suisse. “Extended periods of falling real business investment are strongly associated with US recessions,” they wrote in a note to clients. “That’s why the recent three consecutive quarters of contraction are concerning.”
  • What Is Happening In Japan Is Not Good…But Gold & Silver Remain Firm
    What is happening in Japan is not good…but gold  and silver remain firm. A portion of today’s note from Peter Boockvar:  Japan’s index for August was up a touch at 49.6 from 49.3 in July. It’s below 50 now for a 6th straight month which also coincides with the yen move from 120 to 100… With the yen hovering just above 100, the Nikkei cannot get out of its own way EVEN WITH ALL THE ETF BUYING by the BoJ and it closed down by .6%. The 10 yr JGB yield was down by 2 bps at -.08 but still remains 20 bps off its extreme low of four weeks ago. The Topix bank index was down by 1.4%. King World News note:  Below you can see a 30-year chart of Japan’s Nikkei Index.  This is the area where the bulls, in this case primarily the Bank of Japan, need to start the next leg higher.  Because if the Nikkei breaks below that critical support level, it will trade extremely aggressively to the downside.
  • The Biggest American Layoff Queens in 2016 “So Far”
    The most recent company to announce four-digit layoffs was Cisco on Wednesday with 5,500 people on its list. It followed numerous other announcements of mass layoffs this year – particularly in oil-and-gas, brick-and-mortar retail, and tech. Since the oil bust began, there have been 195,000 job cuts in the US alone, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Of those, about 95,000 occurred in 2016. They were concentrated in just a few states, particularly Texas. And it’s not over: there was a “resurgence” of 17,725 job cuts in July. Tech announced about 55,000 layoffs so far this year, including Cisco. The sector is getting clobbered by a sea change in technology, the shift to mobile, and the downward spiral of the entire PC ecosystem. And retail announced nearly 44,000, not including Macy’s still unspecified job cuts associated with shuttering 100 Macy’s stores. So 24/7 Wall St. interviewed John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray. And digging into additional data, it came up with its list of the biggest layoff announcements in 2016 so far – “so far” because the year isn’t over yet.
  • BRICS economies moving away from recession
    The currencies of three BRICS economies have steadily strengthened against the US dollar in recent weeks. Brazil’s real, Russia’s ruble and South Africa’s rand have benefited from a ‘pause’ in the momentum to raise interest rates, particularly in the US. All three countries have battled recession in contrast to BRICS members China and India, which are forecast to grow 6.7 per cent and 7.6 per cent, respectively, in 2016.
  • Business Loan Delinquencies Rock Past Lehman Moment Level
    This afternoon, somewhat obscured by the Fed’s media-savvy and endless flip-flopping about rate hikes, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve released its second quarter delinquencies and charge-off data for all commercial banks. It shows that if the Fed wanted to raise rates before serious signs of trouble emerged, it might have missed the train. Consumer loans are still doing well, though delinquencies have ticked up 10% from a year ago to $26.8 billion. Loans are considered “delinquent” when they’re 30 days or more past due. Credit card loans are also still doing well, though delinquencies have jumped 11% from a year ago to $13.8 billion.
  • James Grant: The Fed is Now Hostage to Wall Street
    James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of a crash in sovereign debt, is puzzled over the actions of the Swiss National Bank and bets on gold. From multi-billion bond buying programs to negative interest rates and probably soon helicopter money: Around the globe, central bankers are experimenting with ever more extreme measures to stimulate the sluggish economy. This will end in tears, believes James Grant. The sharp thinking editor of the iconic Wall Street newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer» is one of the most ardent critics when it comes to super easy monetary policy. Highly proficient in financial history, Mr. Grant warns of today’s reckless hunt for yield and spots one of the biggest risks in government debt. He’s also scratching his head over the massive investments which the Swiss National Bank undertakes in the US stock market.
  • Merkel Prepares For A Deliberate Crisis While White House Plans For A Disastrous Succession
    Europe is convulsed by Islamic immigration, Brexit and a brutal economic state-of-affairs that are making it difficult for the average European citizen to live anything like a normal life or plan for the future. Germany is one place where this sort of fear is being aimed at the population on a daily basis. Angela Merkel’s government has just urged Germans to stockpile enough food and water for ten and five days, respectively “in case of an attack or catastrophe.” Germany is also mulling a return to a military draft. On the surface, Merkel is simply trying to prepare Germans for every eventuality. She is, you see, a caring leader who wants the best for her people.
  • Giant Fraud Economy Crashes Before End of 2016-Gerald Celente
    Trends forecaster Gerald Celente has been predicting a financial panic in 2016. How close are we?  Celente says, “I believe we are very near an inflection point coming up very soon. . . . I would have thought this would have happened back in 2012; however, there has never been such a thing as quantitative easing.  There has never been such a thing as zero interest rate policy and negative interest rate policy.  We make forecasts based on information that used to be, but now we have things that never were.  . . . I was never taught that central banks could take over the economy as it is now.  This is not capitalism.  Capitalism is dead–it’s now bankism.  The only thing that is keeping this up is a giant fraud.  October is usually the killer month. . . . I believe the crash will happen before the end of the year, and it almost happened with Brexit.
  • Four more mega-banks join the anti-dollar alliance
    That was fast. Yesterday I told you how a consortium of 15 Japanese banks had just signed up to implement new financial technology to clear and settle international financial transactions. This is a huge step. Right now, most international financial transactions must pass through the US banking system’s network of correspondent accounts. This gives the US government an incredible amount of power… power they haven’t been shy about using over the last several years. 2014 was one of the first major watershed moments when the Obama administration fined French bank BNP Paribas $9 billion for doing business with countries that the US doesn’t like– namely Cuba and Iran.
  • Barack Obama may have finally destroyed America’s #1 advantage
    In July 1944, just weeks after the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to determine the future of the global financial system. The vision was simple: America would be the center of the universe, and every other nation would revolve around the US. This arrangement ultimately led to the US dollar being the world’s dominant reserve currency which still remains today. Whenever a Brazilian merchant pays a Korean supplier, that deal is negotiated and settled in US dollars. Oil. Coffee. Steel. Aircraft. Countless commodities and products across the planet change hands in US dollars, so nearly every major commercial bank, central bank, multi-national corporation, and sovereign government must hold and be able to transact in US dollars. This system provides a huge incentive for the rest of the world to hold trillions of dollars worth of US assets– typically deposits in the US banking system, or US government bonds.
  • China has taken over Scotland's North Sea oil production
    China has taken over Scotland's oil production and now controls two of the North Sea’s biggest oilfields. According to The Times' analysis of China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC) accounts, a CNOOC-owned company Nexen extracts nearly 200,000 barrels of oil per day across those two fields. This makes it the largest producer in the area.
  • China caught in ‘dead money' trap as central bank plead for fiscal stimulus
    China is at mounting risk of a Japanese-style “liquidity trap” as monetary policy loses traction and the economy approaches credit exhaustion, forcing a shift towards Keynesian fiscal stimulus. Officials at the Chinese People’s Bank (PBOC) have begun to call for a fundamental change in strategy, warning that interest rate cuts have become an increasingly blunt tool. They cannot easily stop companies hoarding cash or halt the slide in private investment. Sheng Songcheng, the PBOC’s head of analysis, set off a storm last month by warning that the economy had “started to show some signs of being caught in a liquidity trap”.
  • Dr. Jim Willie: We Are on the Brink of World War; Americans Totally Clueless
    In the article following the interview below with Dr. Jim Willie, Michael Snyder sums up what is happening in the world right now geopolitically absolutely perfect in his opening line where he says, “War is coming, but unfortunately most Americans are completely oblivious to what is about to happen.” Truthfully, an argument could very easily be made that the world has never been in as much danger from World War III, or from nuclear annihilation as it is right now, and that includes during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Don’t expect to hear that anytime soon coming from the woefully dishonest Obama administration, or from their lackeys in the mainstream media though. If you listen to their lies long enough, you might even start believing that world peace is imminent, or that the economy is in what they refer to as a “robust” recovery.
  • The ultimate breakdown likely to be surprising, sudden, intense, and large
    On January 30, 2000, the 88+ million viewers of Superbowl XXXIV were treated to a commercial featuring a now infamous sock puppet. The advertisement was from a company called Pets.com, founded just two years before in 1998 at the height of the dot-com bubble. Pets.com went public on the NASDAQ just weeks after the Superbowl with the symbol IPET. And just 270 days later it was out of business, its stock price having fallen from $11 to just 19 cents in the interim. The autopsy showed that Pets.com was selling its products at nearly 30% below cost, giving rise to the old mystifying dot-com logic, “We lose money on every sale but make up for it in volume.” Granted, Pets.com did not have the benefit of a printing press, monopoly over the money supply, or worldwide intransigence in the existing financial system, so they couldn’t kick the can down the road too far. But it remains yet another hallmark of one of the most important lessons in financial history: sooner or later, bubbles correct.
  • Gerald Celente Sees Worst Market Crash, New Military Conflict, and Gold Spike to $2,000/oz
    Gerald Celente: The stock market's being propped up. We said this beginning with Quantitative Easing when it began, and we said that this is not a recovery. It's a cover-up. The numbers don’t lie. The liars lie, and the markets are lying. You look at the facts, and here are the facts. You had a stretch of merger and acquisition activity unparalleled in world history because they're borrowing money for nothing and they're buying up companies. Then you look at the other facts, and the facts are that stock buy-backs are at record highs. What was it, like the first 3 months of this year, you looked at about, what, $160 billion worth of stock buy-backs. And all this has done is boosted the equity markets. Again, these are the facts, and I know that the people listening to your show want the facts. Ninety-five percent of the wealth created since 2009 in the United States went to that famous 1%. It's a fact, a fact worldwide. 62 people… everybody knows at least 62 people… imagine the 62 people that you know having more wealth than half the world's population combined.
  • Japanese Corporate Earnings Heading For Worst Decline Since The Earthquake
    After first-quarter earnings in Japan wrapped up this month with the steepest plunge since 2011, the prospect for an increase in annual profits is about to get even dimmer. Expect a round of corporate earnings downgrades in September, said Norihiro Fujito, a strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. Trends that slammed profit in the first quarter — a stronger yen, negative interest rates and slumping China growth — haven’t reversed. At stake is a second straight year of earnings decline that could bury Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for companies to boost capital spending and raise wages to spur economic growth. “A lot of companies may be lowering their forecasts in September,” said Fujito. A slower recovery in the U.S. economy than some had expected is also weakening the outlook for Japan’s carmakers and other exporters, he said.
  • As Predicted, Obamacare Is Absolutely Killing The Middle Class
    The critics of Obamacare have been proven right.  The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down.  Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed.  The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs.  Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs.  As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this.  The Obama administration also promised that the big health insurance companies would love the new Obamacare plans and would eagerly compete with one another to win customers in the new health insurance marketplaces.  Instead, many of the big health insurance companies are now dropping Obamacare plans altogether.
  • Obamacare Is The Welfare State’s Requiem
    In the hymn for the dead for the Catholic Mass, the text of “Dies Irae” starts, “The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes.”For Obamacare, this is that day, and it could portend a future in which the mighty ambitions of the welfare-state shrivel and die. Think of how Obamacare was supposed to be the domestic apotheosis of the whole of the Obama presidency. It was passed at the end of term one, and – just to be safe – it waited to be implemented in term two. It was the culmination of a decade, or really several, of expert opinion on how the national health care industry would be designed. The academics, the opinion makers, the top industry reps all met in endless meetings, hammering out all the details with the D.C. masters of legislation. The power of state would make all things right. At last, there would be fairness and equality. Justice and efficiency too! All the good things about the American system would persist, only it would be much better. There would be falling premiums because the risk would be distributed. Competition would be managed and not chaotic. And all things would be covered for everyone. No one would slip through the cracks.
  • Citigroup Is About To Relive Its 2008 Derivatives Nightmare
    Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) – with its stock now trading at a 30-year low – was recently called the world’s riskiest financial institution by the International Monetary Fund. Better late than never… In a last-ditch effort to save itself, DB is trying to dump a bucket load of credit derivatives – the murky, risky financial instruments that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. You would think no one would buy these weapons of financial mass destruction… but you’d be wrong. In a staggeringly stupid move, the American bank I’m telling you about today has gone on a derivatives shopping spree, eagerly taking credit default swaps off the hands of failing Eurozone banks like DB and Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE ADR: CS). That means, of course, another outsize short opportunity for you to take…
  • Solid Evidence That The Media Is Biased Against Donald Trump
    Once upon a time, the mainstream media worked very hard to maintain the illusion that they were “objective” and “unbiased” when it came to reporting on national elections, but now those days are long gone. Some of the biggest newspapers in the country like the New York Times and the Washington Post are publishing hit piece after hit piece in an all-out attempt to destroy Donald Trump. In fact, if you go to just about any prominent mainstream news website on any particular day, it is inevitable that you will find an anti-Trump story on the main page right near the top, and it is usually accompanied by a pro-Clinton story nearby. Of course the big cable news networks are constantly spewing an endless stream of anti-Trump propaganda as well. In fact, it has been documented that CNN has spent literally half their time on anti-Trump stories on certain days. The elite are desperate to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, and if that means shedding all notions of media objectivity and sicking their attack dogs on Trump day after day, then that is precisely what they are going to do.
  • Detroit Has Gone From Being The Greatest Manufacturing City In The World To A Global Joke
    In 1960, the city of Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen.  Nearly two million people lived there, and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.  That may be hard to believe, because today it actually has one of the lowest per capita incomes of all of our major cities.  Over the decades more than a million people have left the city, and thousands of abandoned homes have been torn down.  But there are still tens of thousands of abandoned dwellings that remain standing, and some have sold for as little as one dollar in recent years.  Once Detroit was the envy of the entire planet, but now it has become a global joke and in other countries they love to do news stories about “the ruins of Detroit” to show how rapidly America is rotting and decaying.  Sadly, Detroit is far from alone, because there are other formerly great manufacturing cities that have declined just as fast as Detroit has.
  • Fed Goons Will Not Raise Rates Until 2017-Craig Hemke
    Financial writer and precious metals expert Craig Hemke says forget about new threats that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in September. Hemke explains, “They are trying to move things by talking, which is their primary policy.  That’s why so many of these Fed goons, not Fed Governors, as we like to say, that’s why they seem to have conflicting messages all the time.  They are always trying to get the markets to do what they want them to do.  Rational human beings are telling you that they are not going to raise rates in September.  Not only are they going to do it right before an election, that never happens, if you look at FOMC minutes, the expectations actually went down. . . . People see through the nonsense, and actually you’ve got to go all the way out to March of next year, seven months from now, before you at least have a 50/50 likelihood of a an interest rate hike.”
  • Can US Citizens Defeat UN Troops On America Soil?
    The establishment is practicing to defeat rogue American units who will fight to defend the people in the coming martial law subjugation enforced by foreign troops from the United Nations in UWEX 16. Troops at Ft. Carson will be working with foreign troops to defeat civilian forces with COMBAT TROOPS. Foreign mercenaries are training in Northern Colorado to defeat Guerrilla forces consisting of American citizens. Denver Internation Airport just conducted a mock Guerrilla raid on the airport. Foreign troops from Poland and Denmark are training for mass incarceration and gun confiscation at Camp Grayling in Michigan. The above stories will be covered in the next release of the Red List News. For now, these stories illustrate that the current Junta running DC is preparing to fight American citizens in a guerrilla war and we are the Viet Cong.
  • Germany to tell people to stockpile food and water in case of attacks
    For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack or catastrophe, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported on Sunday. Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager last month. Berlin announced measures earlier this month to spend considerably more on its police and security forces and to create a special unit to counter cyber crime and terrorism. “The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days,” the newspaper quoted the government's “Concept for Civil Defence” – which has been prepared by the Interior Ministry – as saying. The paper said a parliamentary committee had originally commissioned the civil defence strategy in 2012.
  • Trillionaire Rothschild Warns His Own Central Banking System Is Failing And Buys Gold
    We have been highlighting the wave of billionaires who are all getting out of the stock market this summer and buying gold.  Well, now it’s a trillionaire. Of course, he’s not “officially” on top in the “most wealthy” lists… but that is because the Rothschilds have been experts in hiding their wealth for centuries. When Jacob’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, died in 1812, his will explicitly stated that no public inventory of his estate was to be published and that no legal action was to be taken with regard to the value of the inheritance. It’s also been suggested that the Rothschilds use private, unrecorded, limited partnerships to accumulate wealth (you know, like all the ones in the Panama Papers).
  • The man who accurately predicted 4 market crashes told us 3 more dates to worry about this year
    The man who accurately predicted four market crashes to the exact date each time has told Business Insider about three more dates to worry about. Sandy Jadeja is a technical analyst and chief market strategist at Core Spreads. Technical analysts look at charts to pinpoint patterns in various markets and asset classes. From that, they forecast which direction prices are likely to move. They can't tell you the reasons why there will be a big market movement, only that there is going to be one.
  • The CFR Releases a Promotional Video Trying to Appear Friendly … But it’s NWO Propaganda
    The Council on Foreign Relations tweeted a video promoting its merits using all kinds of celebrities and powerful people. If it tried to appear friendlier to the masses, it failed. It only proved that a select elite truly congregates behind closed doors to push a New World Order agenda.
  • The Road to Stagflation—–The Case Of Norway
    We have all heard the incredible stories of housing riches in commodity producing hotspots such as Western Australia and Canada. People have become millionaires simply by leveraging up and holding on to properties. These are the beneficiaries of a global money-printing spree that pre-dates the financial crisis by decades. The road toward such outsized gains in property is not paved with some global savings glut concocted by theoretical economists, but have rather been a process whereby the US leveraged up its economy-wide asset base allowing the Chinese to print ‘dollars’ with abandon.
  • Memo To Hillbama: $15 Federal Minimum Wage Equals 7 Million Job Losses
    James Sherk, of The Heritage Foundation, recently took a look at what impact a $15 federally-mandated minimum wage might have on employment levels in each of the 50 states.  Unsurprisingly, the study concludes that the impact would be substantial with approximately 7mm jobs lost, or roughly 6% of current full-time jobs in this country.  As we pointed out before, imposing artificial floors on wages really only serves to improve returns on capital investment by businesses resulting in permanent job losses and higher unemployment in the long-term.
  • Big Yellow Update: Caterpillar Retail Orders Suffer Second Biggest Plunge Since Financial Crisis
    While the relentless decline in Caterpillar retail sales has been duly noted here every month for nearly 4 years, now posting 44 consecutive declines, the latest, July data was downright depressionary. According to the company, in the latest month – just when China was supposed to be rebounding and the US recovery getting “stronger” – demand took another sharp leg lower, as follows: North America machine sales down 20% after falling 12% in June, Asia/Pacific sales July down 7% after falling 7% in June, Latam sales July down 43% after falling 38%, EAME (Europe, Africa, Middle East) sales July down 13% after falling 4%, This means that Caterpillar’s rolling 3-month retail machine sales dropped by 19% in July vs the more modest 12% fall in June and May. It also means that, as shown in the chart below, in the past month CAT retail sales just posed the second largest monthly drop since the financial crisis.
  • Gold Is Standing At The Crossroads
    I haven’t written anything about gold here since I noted that one of Paul Tudor Jones’ favorite indicators suggests the bear market in gold is over. While I still believe we have begun a new bull market for the precious metal, the technicals have me concerned about a short-term correction. Gold is now running into a confluence of important resistance. The pair of trend lines on the chart below intersect right here right now. This intersection also lines up with the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the bear market decline from 2011 to 2015.
  • Here Is An Important Update On The War In The Gold & Silver Markets
    What this means is that gold and silver may still head significantly higher, but they remain vulnerable to the possibility of a pullback in the near-term.  It is very difficult to predict how the metals will react to such historic commercial short positions in a secular bull market.  So far it has just meant higher prices for gold and silver followed by consolidation.  We will see what the next few weeks holds as we get ready to enter the seasonally strong period for precious metals in the fall.
  • Another Billionare Goes All In On The “Barbarous Relic” Gold While Mainstream Media Remains Silent
    Billionaire Crispin Odey recently released a management letter to his hedge fund clients praising gold and explaining gold products constituted the next, great investment wave. He is yet another in a wave of billionaires who have all, suddenly, been moving massive portions of their portfolio into gold… with one of the latest being George Soros, who moved a significant amount of his portfolio into gold just a few months ago. It is quite likely that both of these individuals are familiar with TDV’s Shemitah and Jubilee Year analysis. That’s not to say they read TDV (of course they may – and should), but they understand the larger, secretive events associated with these occult timelines. That may be in fact one reason why Soros and other billionaires have been acting this year to realize gold positions. And why Odey, too, has now moved in that direction.
  • What Is Happening Around The World Is Scaring The Hell Out Of People
    Peter Boockvar:  “I’m not surprised because I think a lot of people like us see what’s going on in the world and it scares them.  When you see a German bank a couple of weeks ago saying that they are going to start charging depositors of more than 100,000 euros a fee of up to 40 basis points, which is where the ECB has their negative deposit rate, then that’s scary to people.  So I applaud people who are, from an investment standpoint, buying more gold because that’s their best defense against against this monetary mayhem that we’re living through.  I’m still extraordinarily bullish on gold and silver.  Anybody listening to or reading this (on KWN) knows the reasons why.  I’m convinced that we saw the bottom late last year.  The catalyst this year is the fact that there are multiple signs beginning to buildup that central bankers are losing control…
  • This Historic Event Is About To Shock The World
    With many investors worried about the economic turmoil that has engulfed the globe, this historic event is about to shock the world. Stephen Leeb:  “The world’s monetary system is busted. Unless it is fixed pronto, prospects for worldwide growth are nil, while prospects for worldwide chaos are high. And never forget: in chaos, gold rules supreme. One possible form chaos could take would be galloping commodity prices. An alternative form would be a vicious deflationary cycle in which prices and growth crash and burn. Either way, gold would be the one real shelter. When commodities are soaring, paper money becomes second-class; no one will turn over something with intrinsic value, namely commodities, for mere pieces of paper. As for deflation, over the past 500 years or more whenever deflation emerged, gold gained and sometimes gained big in terms of purchasing power.
  • 10 Things We Know About The Mock Human Sacrifice That Was Just Conducted At CERN
    Have you seen the video of the “mock human sacrifice” that was conducted right outside the entrance of CERN? A spokeswoman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (more commonly known as CERN) has told the public that this ritual happened without their permission and that they are looking into the matter. If this “occult ritual” was indeed some kind of “sick joke”, what was the motivation? This new video continues a long string of bizarre events related to CERN and the Large Hadron Collider that is housed there. Last month, I wrote about strange “portal-shaped clouds” that formed over CERN during recent experiments. And the the director of research at CERN, physicist Sergio Bertolucci, has publicly admitted in the past that the Large Hadron Collider could potentially open up a “door” to “an extra dimension”. There has been so much speculation about what is really going on there, and that makes this latest video that much more creepy.
  • Are Trolls Turning The Internet Into A Festival Of Hate?
    Have you noticed that people say some of the most hateful things imaginable on the Internet?  Earlier today, I came across a Time Magazine article entitled “How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet“, and it made me reflect on my own experience as the publisher of a number of prominent websites.  Over the years, I have often gotten to see what is really going on in some of the darkest hearts in our society.  There are people that come to my websites that somehow think that making crude sexual remarks about the wives and children of people that they have never met is perfectly acceptable behavior.  There are others that say incredibly vile things about people that have a different skin color than they do, and some people have a hatred for Christians and the Christian faith that is absolutely frightening.  I can’t understand why anyone would want to be like that, but apparently this kind of behavior is very widespread.  In fact, one Pew Research Center survey discovered that 70 percent of all 18-to-24-year-olds who use the Internet have experienced harassment at some point.
  • “This Could Kick-Start WW3”
    ‘ISIS' Blueprint For Attacking America (Over 50 Potential Targets). A computer left behind by ISIS fanatics in Syria revealed ISIS eyes over 50 potential targets in USA… What’s curious is that the CIA and FBI chose to focus on one of these 50 targets in particular.'… (This is an interesting video, it turns into a sales letter further on, but it does pose an important question. What happens if the electricity grid gets shut down)…
  • ISIS Has A New Focus: Killing Christians And Bombing Churches Wherever They Can Find Them
    If you are a Christian, ISIS wants to kill you. Our politicians keep telling us that our battle with ISIS is not a “religious war”, but to ISIS it most certainly is. As you will see below, ISIS has a new focus. They are very clear about the fact that they intend to kill as many “citizens of the cross” as they possibly can, and they plan to bomb churches wherever they can find them. In a previous article, I explained how an entire church in the U.S. ended up on an ISIS kill list, and we just saw in France that they are willing to strike anywhere and at any time. Religious targets now appear to be a top priority for ISIS, and that means that every church and every Christian in the western world needs to start thinking differently about security.
  • Will Human Evil Destroy Life On Earth? — Paul Craig Roberts
    The World Wildlife Fund tells us that there are only 3,890 tigers left in the entire world. Due to exploitative capitalism, which destroys the environment in behalf of short-term profits, the habitat for tigers is rapidly disappearing. The environmental destruction, together with hunting or poaching by those who regard it as manly or profitable to kill a magnificent animal, is leading to the rapid extermination of this beautiful animal. Soon tigers will only exist as exhibits in zoos. The same is happening to lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, elephants, bobcats, wolves, bears, birds, butterflies, honey bees. You name it. What we are witnessing is the irresponsibility of the human race, a Satan-cursed form of life that does not belong on the beautiful planet Earth. The cursed humans are even capable of launching a nuclear war which would destroy the livability of Earth.
  • Secret Federal Reserve minutes leaked
    Yesterday the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its July meeting a few weeks ago in which they decided to NOT raise interest rates. These minutes are the official archive of the meeting, providing details about the presentations, debates, and discussions that took place. They contain very formal sounding language, referring to their near-zero interest rates as “accommodation” in the same way that my high school health teacher preferred to use the more clinical term “copulation” instead of “sex”.
  • Which Items Will Disappear First During A Major National Emergency?
    One day in the not too distant future, a major emergency will strike this nation, and that will set off a round of hoarding unlike anything we have ever seen before.  Just think about what happens when a big winter storm or a hurricane is about to hit one of our major cities – inevitably store shelves are stripped bare of bread, milk, snow shovels, etc.  Even though winter storms and hurricanes are just temporary hurdles to overcome, they still cause many people to go into panic mode.  So what is going to happen when we have a real crisis on our hands? We can get some clues about which items will disappear first during a major national emergency by taking a look at where such a scenario is already playing out.  One recent survey found that over 80 percent of all basic foodstuffs are currently unavailable in Venezuela, and about half the country can no longer provide three meals a day for their families.  Thankfully, some stores still have a few things that they are able to offer, but other key items are completely gone.
  • Economic Update, Russian Bombers Fly Out of Iran, MSM Can’t Stop Trump
    So much for the so-called “recovery,” there’s not going to be one. Retail and tech are the latest to signal the economy is tanking. Retail is warning sales are bad. Macy’s is closing 100 stores nationwide. On top of that, tech giant Cisco just fired 20% of its workforce, or about 5,500 employees. Can you believe the Fed is still talking about raising interest rates in September? Fat chance. Russian bombers got clearance to take off from an Iranian airbase to fly missions to attack ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This is a disturbing development because when ISIS is defeated, there is going to be a huge vacuum that Iran will surely fill. Meanwhile, Turkey is warming up to Russia. Things have gotten so bad the U.S. has removed its 50 nuclear weapons from Turkey and repositioned them in Romania. It seems reports show the Middle East is becoming more unstable every week.
  • IMF Confirms Negative Rates Are Slowly Killing Banks
    For the last two years the European Central Bank (ECB) has initiated a zero- or negative rates policy: its key rate fell to zero, and when a bank deposits cash at the ECB, not only does it not yield anything like before, but the bank must pay a yearly 0.4% interest rate. Mario Draghi’s goal is to discourage banks having their cash sitting idle and to lower the cost of credit in Europe in order to revive economic activity. The cost of money has been lowered for sure, but the volume of credit has only grown a little, not enough to get out of zero growth. On the other hand this long-standing monetary policy generates a massive and catastrophic perverse effect: banks are no longer profitable. In other words, this policy pushes them into bankruptcy. This is what no less than the IMF explains in a study from last August 10. This fall in profitability happens differently depending on the banking systems.
  • Hyperinflation Is Nigh So Gold Will Go High
    This coming autumn, we are likely to see the beginning of the hyperinflationary phase of the sovereign debt crisis. Hyperinflation normally hits an economy very quickly and unexpectedly and is the result of the currency collapsing. Hyperinflation does not arise as a result of increasing demand for goods and services. The course of events in a hyperinflationary scenario can be summarised as follows: 1. Chronic government deficits, 2. Debt issuance and money printing escalating rapidly, 3. Bonds falling – interest rates rising fast, 4. Currency collapsing. The above process turns into a vicious circle that accelerates quickly. The more money the government prints, the faster the currency will fall and the faster the currency falls the more money the government must print. Once the hyperinflationary spiral has started, it will feed itself like we have seen in the Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, Argentina and many other places.
  • Bank of Ireland to charge for placing cash on deposit
    Bank of Ireland is set to become the first domestic financial institution to charge customers for placing their money on deposit with the bank. This unprecedented move comes months after the European Central Bank began charging financial institutions for depositing money with it by charging them 0.4 per cent to hold their cash overnight. The Irish Times has learned that Bank of Ireland, which is 14 per cent owned by the State, has informed its large corporate and institutional customers that it plans to charge them for deposits of €10 million or more from October.
  • Monsoon Accessorize restructuring could lead to hundreds of job cuts
    Monsoon Accessorize has decided to close its largest shops as part of a restructuring process led by chief executive, Paul Allen. The move could lead to hundreds of redundancies by the British high street retailer. The London-based company could close about 141 shops that have both the Monsoon and Accessorize brands under the same roof. The closures would come as leases expire over the next five years. While the retailer will try to offset these closures by opening separate Monsoon and Accessorize stores, job losses are possible, according to the Guardian.
  • UN Report Says Small-Scale Organic Farming Only Way to Feed the World
    Even as the United States government continues to push for the use of more chemically-intensive and corporate-dominated farming methods such as GMOs and monoculture-based crops, the United Nations is once against sounding the alarm about the urgent need to return to (and develop) a more sustainable, natural and organic system. That was the key point of a new publication from the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) titled“ Trade and Environment Review 2014: Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,” which included contributions from more than 60 experts around the world. The cover of the report looks like that of a blockbuster documentary or Hollywood movie, and the dramatic nature of the title cannot be understated: The time is now to switch back to our natural farming roots. The New UN Farming Report “Wake Up Before It’s Too Late.”
  • The UK to Normalize Relations with Russia in a Major Policy Shift
    On August 9, Vladimir Putin and Theresa May spoke for the first time since the UK Prime Minister took office and both expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of Russian-British relations. In the phone call, which was initiated by Great Britain, both leaders agreed to develop a dialogue between security agencies on issues related to aviation security, and made plans for a face-to-face meeting in the near future. The Prime Minister noted the importance of the relationship between the UK and Russia, and expressed hope that, despite differences on certain issues, they could communicate in an open and honest way about the issues that mattered most to them. The President of Russia again congratulated Theresa May on her appointment to the highest office. In a further sign of a thaw in relations between Britain and Russia the new British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson telephoned Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on August 12 and apparently called for «normalization» of relations. His call provides definite confirmation that a concerted attempt by Great Britain to improve the relations with Russia is underway. In his articles published by the Daily Telegraph Mr Johnson has made it clear that he stands for the improvement of bilateral ties.
  • IMPORTANT! Pastor Williams just sent me an email to share with you: MY ELITE FRIEND SAID…
    What is Barack up to now? Executive Order — Providing an Order of Succession within the Department of the Treasury: ‘(b) Notwithstanding the provisions of this Executive Order, the President retains discretion, to the extent permitted by the Act, to depart from this Executive Order in designating an acting Secretary.' Is this some pre-planning for a major disruption in our country?
  • Human Freedom Index
    The Human Freedom Index presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom. Human freedom is a social concept that recognizes the dignity of individuals and is defined here as negative liberty or the absence of coercive constraint. Because freedom is inherently valuable and plays a role in human progress, it is worth measuring carefully. The Human Freedom Index is a resource that can help to more objectively observe relationships between freedom and other social and economic phenomena, as well as the ways in which the various dimensions of freedom interact with one another.
  • Brussels plans to impose MORE austerity on Spain unless it forms a government
    BRUSSELS bureaucrats are plotting to impose huge fines and more austerity on battered Spain unless its political parties come together and form a government immediately. According to reports, Europe’s exasperate elite will freeze funding to Madrid, impose further budget cutbacks and rein in regional projects in a bid to bully elected Spanish politicians into cooperating with each other. According to reports in Spanish newspaper La Razon, eurocrats have run out of patience with the country’s MPs as it gears up to hold a third general election in less than a year.
  • This Chart Shows Why Gold Hasn’t Topped Yet 
    I’m starting to see a lot of analysts now calling for gold to drop down into a bottom in October. It’s amazing how these guys can consistently get this wrong over and over again. Gold isn’t topping. Gold has been bouncing around in a range for the last 5 weeks giving the 200 day moving average time to catch up to price. Gold won’t top until the dollar cycle bottoms, and that intermediate cycle isn’t due to bottom until late September or early October. Gold will be making a top in October, not a bottom. But it may have to churn in this range for the rest of August before the next leg up can begin.
  • The world's most and least corrupt countries
    More than six billion people live in a country with a serious corruption problem. From rigged elections to bribery, unethical dealings run rife in some of the world’s most prominent nations. Using the latest data from Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) analyzing public sector corruption – we count down the world’s least and most corrupt places.
  • As Senkaku tensions surge, Japan eyes missiles to protect its islands: report
    The government has decided on a plan to develop land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300 km (186 miles) to protect Japan’s isolated islands, including the Senkakus, a local media report said Sunday, without citing sources. Costs for development will be part of the Defense Ministry’s budget request for the fiscal year ending March 2018, according to the daily Yomiuri Shimbun. The government will aim for deployment around the year ending March 2024, it said. Beijing has been stepping up pressure on Tokyo over the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands, which are claimed as Diaoyu by China and Tiaoyutai by Taiwan.
  • Council on Foreign Relations New PR Video Can’t Undo its NWO One World Government Agenda
    New World Order propaganda rules and shapes the world. And there’s no more powerful propagator of propaganda that rules and shapes US global hegemony, world events and major geopolitical developments than the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). On its own website, the CFR describes itself as “an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher.” Two weeks ago the powerful organization celebrated its 95th anniversary since it’s been the most influential force dictating US foreign policy throughout the 20th century chauvinistically called “the American century” right into the present 21st aptly called the New World Order century. The CFR is financed by highly endowed, tax-exempt Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie foundations.
  • Wall Street Can’t Agree on When to Halt the U.S. Stock Market
    The trading industry can’t find consensus on when to apply the U.S. stock market’s brakes during times of turmoil. On Thursday, the nation’s three major exchange operators upgraded their rules to help prevent a repeat of the chaos seen on Aug. 24, 2015, when many securities suddenly sank. But a major sticking point remains, according to an official who spoke at an event hours after NYSE Group, Nasdaq Inc. and Bats Global Markets Inc. announced their changes.
  • BlackRock Cuts Treasuries Exposure on Hedging Cost as Bonds Fall
    BlackRock Inc. is reducing its exposure to long-dated U.S. Treasuries as increased hedging costs from Japan to Europe make the debt less alluring to some foreign investors. Yields on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes are negative for Japanese buyers and about zero for euro-based investors who pay to eliminate currency fluctuations from their returns, even after yields climbed Monday as regional data showed increases in factory shipments and new orders. That’s caused life insurers and other long-term asset managers to turn to corporate securities or mortgage-backed obligations to lock in higher interest rates.
  • Reality: Opportunities and Threats – Deepcaster
    As The Central Bankers come closer and closer to the point of No Return (and Helicopter Money), the Equities, Inflation, Credit, Housing, Auto and Energy Markets Sectors and Interest Rate and Economic Scene will change DRAMATICALLY… The BLS, GDP and Jobs Numbers recently released, are Frankly Bogus and therefore provide Opportunities for those aware and Threats to those unaware. Consider a couple of Savvy Analysts’ Views of these numbers.
  • Carl Icahn Turns Apocalyptic: “I Am More Hedged Than Ever, A Day Of Reckoning Is Coming”
    We profiled Carl Icahn's notorious bearishness most recently two weeks ago when we showed that for the second quarter in a row, the billionaire's hedge fund, Icahn Enterprises had kept on its record short bias, manifesting in a net -149% market exposure. Unlike other hedge fund managers, however, Icahn does not provide monthly letters explaining his mindset which is why we eagerly watched a expansive, 40 minute interview he gave to Bloomberg's Erik Shatzker, in which in addition to a detailed discussion of Trump and how the Republican presidential candidate would change the US economy, he shared some much needed insights into his gloomy vision of the market.
  • Looking Forward
    Since its inception, International Man has offered prognostications about what the future will bring – economically, politically and socially. The principle writers of the publication have been at this for decades. Each one began by studying world economics and politics in order to make the best choices as to where to live, where to invest, where to store wealth, etc. Over the years, each one got better at researching, better at reading the signs and, ultimately, better at predicting future events. But, today, we’re approaching a worldwide crisis point and the study that we undertook decades ago has become important for literally hundreds of millions of people who, whether they realise it or not, will soon be impacted by events in a major way.
  • The Odds Of A Global Food Crisis Are Rising
    The vulnerability of global food production to extremes of weather is a profound reality that few grasp. Given the current abundance of food globally, confidence in permanent food surpluses and low grain prices is high. Few worry that the present abundance of food could be temporary. But the global food supply is more fragile than we might think, despite historically low grain/agricultural commodity prices. Both corn and wheat have plummeted in price due to current demand/supply. Let's start with one salient fact: there are 7+ billion human mouths to feed now plus hundreds of millions of animals that are being fed grain to supply humanity's insatiable appetite for meat. What few consumers grasp is that the global abundance of food depends on weather extremes remaining rare. If extremes of weather become commonplace, global food surpluses will turn into shortages. In the larger context, the global food supply chain is a real-world system that cannot be “fixed” with financial gimmicks. No amount of money-printing will replace crops lost to weather extremes, replenish depleted fresh-water aquifers, magically rebuild top soil lost to erosion or repair the environmental ravages of industrial pollution.
  • Portuguese Bonds Slump As Last-Investment-Grade-Standing Falters
    The only thing standing between Portugal's insanely decoupled low bond yields and the ugly fundamental reality is a BBB rating from DBRS which enables The ECB to keep buying the nation's bonds. The problem is, pressure is mounting on DBRS (the only 1 of 4 raters to maintain Portugal as investment grade) to drop the hammer… and Portuguese risk is rising. And in response to these concerns, the last 2 days have seen the biggest surge in Portugal sovereign credit risk in 2 months…
  • Morgan Stanley: Oil Prices Will Crash Again Soon
    Morgan Stanley’s chief oil analyst Adam Longson just issued some bearish commentary on oil prices, which he says have been buoyed lately by short covering, but are destined to fall again soon. Morgan Stanley currently has a $35 floor price on oil, which could be tested again in the coming weeks due to the aforementioned short covering, record production and reserves, and weakening demand. The firm concludes that fundamentals in the oil market remain very weak, hence the continued bearish view in the face of a 16% bounce off multiyear lows.
  • The Great Stock Market Swindle
    Finding and filling gaps in the market is one avenue for entrepreneurial success.  Obviously, the first to tap into an unmet consumer demand can unlock massive profits.  But unless there’s some comparative advantage, competition will quickly commoditize the market and profit margins will decline to just above breakeven. Unfortunately, finding and filling gaps in the market is much easier said than done.  Even the most successful serial entrepreneurs fail more often than they succeed.  What’s more, success in one endeavor doesn’t guarantee success in another. Anyone who has ever developed and marketed a new product from concept through sale knows how difficult it is to achieve profitability.  For every good idea there must be a hundred bad ones.  Yet the only way to really know the difference between a profit generating idea and a cash hemorrhaging fiasco is through trial and error.
  • A Stunning Admission From Deutsche Bank Why A Shock Is Needed To Collapse The Market, And Force A Real Panic
    In what may be some of the best, and most lucid, writing on everyone’s favorite topic, namely “what happens next” in the evolution of the financial system, Deutsche Bank’s Dominic Konstam, takes a look at the current dead-end monetary situation, and concludes that in order for the system to transition from the current state of financial repression, which has made a mockery of all asset values due to central bank intervention, to a semi-credible system driven by fiscal stimulus, there will have to be a crash, one which jolts policymakers out of their stupor that all is well simply because stocks are at all time highs.
  • Overwhelmed By Debt, Nearly 1 In 5 Young Adults Live With Their Parents Or Grandparents
    In America today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households.  That number is so large that it may seem difficult to believe, but the truth is that vast numbers of young adults have had to move back in with their parents and grandparents in recent years due to the deteriorating economy.  Millions of our young people cannot find decent jobs once they leave school, and millions of them are absolutely overwhelmed by debt.  Of course some of them are just lazy, but whatever the reason it is undeniable that multi-generational households are on the rise.  According to the Pew Research Center, 12 percent of the U.S. population was living in multi-generational households back in 1980.  Today, that number is up to 19 percent.  That means nearly one out of every five U.S. adults now live with their parents or their grandparents. One of the big culprits, of course, is student loan debt.
  • Most Billionaires Are Bearish on Stocks — Should You Be?
    Many of investing’s elite have made very bearish calls on stocks recently, but their motives and interests aren’t at all aligned with everyday investors’. Stan Druckenmiller. George Soros. Carl Icahn. Jeff Gundlach. Bill Gross. Donald Trump. What do they all have in common? They’ve all made it very clear that they do not like stocks right now. With the exception of Trump, the remaining names in the list above know far more about the markets than the average mom-and-pop investor. But that doesn’t mean we should listen to them.
  • Financial Crash will be Put On Little People-Ellen Brown
    Public banking expert Ellen Brown thinks big banks will be saved from a coming calamity at the expense of the little people. Brown explains, “I think the big banks won’t go down. They are protected by the bail-ins, which we haven’t yet seen in the U.S., but we’ve seen them in Europe starting in Italy. They did them starting last year. There were four small banks that got bailed-in . . . they took deposit accounts where they got some interest, and they were called bond holders. So, they took the bond holders’ money. They were really just ordinary depositors that thought they were making a little interest. There was one man who committed suicide because he lost his whole 100,000 euros. He pinned a sign to his chest and blamed it on his bank. The effect of the bail-ins in Italy was, rather than stabilize the banks, it destabilized the banks. Depositors in Italy were pulling their money out. It seems to me that the way things are playing out, the banks will be kept in place by governments because of this fear of the collapse of this derivatives scheme. Who will be hurt? It will be the little people. So, we will see a crash, but it will be a crash on us. We will lose our deposits or we will have to do a bail-in. The big banks, under the current law, are pretty much safe.”
  • George Soros Places Another Big Bearish Bet Against the S&P 500
    According to his fund’s latest regulatory filing, billionaire investing legend George Soros has gotten very bearish on the S&P 500. As of June 30, Soros now owns put options on about 4 million shares of the S&P 500 index. That’s nearly double the number of SPX puts he owned at the end of March, which counted 2.1 million shares.
  • Three “Red Flags” That The US Housing Slowdown Is Accelerating
    One month ago, we showed three prominent “red flags” that the US housing market was starting to roll over. Among these were a report by real-estate advisory RealtyTrac, which cited by Bloomberg, said that “almost nine years after the housing-market bust helped trigger the most recent recession, RealtyTrac senior vice president Daren Blomquist sees the industry waving a red flag.” He was referring to house flipping by third party investors at auction which was back with a vengeance, and what’s worse, the share of foreclosures snapped up by inexperienced mom-and-pop buyers at auction had hit a record 31% in June. As he said, “this a redux of the same fervent speculation that pushed the housing bubble.”

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – August 18, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From August 12, 2016 to August 18, 2016:

  • The $6 Trillion Public Pension hole that We’re all Going to Have to Pay For
    U.S. state and local employee pension plans are in trouble — and much of it is because of flaws in the actuarial science used to manage their finances. Making it worse, standard actuarial practice masks the true extent of the problem by ignoring the best financial science — which shows the plans are even more underfunded than taxpayers and plan beneficiaries have been told. The bad news is we are facing a gap of $6 trillion in benefits already earned and not yet paid for, several times more than the official tally.
  • Thanks, Barry! Only 37% of Borrowers Are Actually Paying Down Their Student Loans
    In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton exclaimed, “ Bernie Sanders and I will work together to make college tuition-free for the middle class and debt-free for all!” How she intends to do that remains something of a mystery, beyond higher taxes on “Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich.” But it’s hard to imagine the student-loan industry and the burden of student debt getting any worse for taxpayers and borrowers than it is now. A largely overlooked report released in February by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the Obama administration’s policies have exacerbated student debt, which equals nearly a quarter of annual federal borrowing. With only 37% of borrowers actually paying down their loans, the federal student-loan program more closely resembles the payday-lending industry than a benevolent source of funds for college.
  • Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, “Other Banks” Ask Fed to Let them Dodge the Volcker Rule till 2022
    A decade after the first cracks of the Financial Crisis appeared – and six years since the Dodd-Frank law was enacted to prevent another Financial Crisis and to pave the way for resolving too-big-to-fail banks when they fail – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and “some other banks” are still trying to delay implementation of the new rules. These banks are asking the Fed to grant them an additional grace period of five years to comply with the so-called Volcker rule, “people familiar with the matter” told Reuters.
  • Are We Close To Seeing Carnage Unfold?
    With traders around the world awaiting today’s release of the FOMC Minutes, several warnings have just been issued. Gerald Celente: Global equity markets are spiking. Records are being broken… Why? Is it strong Gross Domestic Product increases among the world’s leading economies… the United States, China, Japan and eurozone nations that are driving the frenzy? Is it accelerating commerce that’s sending products and services far and wide across the globe that’s increasing corporate profitability — boosting trade, productivity and personal income that’s driving stock markets higher?
  • US Tax Receipts Have Never Done This Without A Recession
    US Federal Tax Receipts are rising at just 1.2% year-over-year (12-mo rolling), slowing drastically from its 13.4% YoY growth in June 2013. While “it's probably nothing,” we thought readers may be interested to note that the last six times tax receipt growth was at this weak a level, the American economy was in recession… So ignore US Tax receipts (hard data), ignore US productivity (hard data), ignore the bond market (hard data), and ignore GDP expectations… but pay attention to the non-farm payrolls headline data – because that's what you're told to do!!
  • Negative Interest Rates: Bad Policy for European Central Bank
    Several economists for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently expressed concerns about moving interest rates into negative territory. They believe it could backfire on the European Central Bank (ECB), making banks less profitable overall and reducing lending. The IMF promotes international monetary cooperation, facilitates trade, and fosters sustainable economic growth for its member countries. In a recent paper on the ECB’s monetary policy, two IMF economists, Andy Jobst and Huidan Lin, warned member banks of the monetary union were struggling to produce profits because of low-interest rates.
  • US Industrial Production Slumps To Longest Non-Recessionary Contraction Is History
    For the 11th month in a row, US Industrial Production fell YoY (down 0.53%) in July – the longest non-recessionary period of contraction in US history. Month-over-month, IP rose 0.7% (beating an 0.3% expected rise) – the best since Nov 2014 – but June was revised notably lower. Overall, all confirming the plunge in productivity seen last week. The decline since its peak in Nov 2014 (ironically the month after The Fed's QE3 ended) is the biggest drop since September 2008.
  • REPORT: Paul Tudor Jones is slashing jobs at his iconic hedge fund
    Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones is laying off about 15% of the staff at his legendary hedge fund, according to a Bloomberg report. The job cuts are a result of investment losses and investor redemptions from the $11 billion hedge fund, according to Bloomberg's Saijel Kishan. The affected staffers include investment managers and support staff, Bloomberg reported.
  • Cisco Will Cut Up To 5,500 Jobs, 7% Of Staff, Less Than Some Reports
    Cisco Systems (CSCO) said late Wednesday that it would cut up to 5,500 positions, or 7% of staff, as part of a restructuring networking giant reported better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. The cuts, which will begin this quarter, were less than the 9,000-14,000 staff reduction that CRN reported Tuesday was likely. Separately, TechCrunch reported, citing a source that Cisco was aiming for a 15% cost cut that includes layoffs.
  • Withdrawals Plague Once-Mighty Hedge-Fund Firms Brevan Howard and Tudor
    A growing exodus from hedge funds extended to two of the biggest names in the industry Tuesday, Tudor Investment Corp. and Brevan Howard, as disenchanted investors increasingly shun what was once the hottest place to put money. The funds’ problem is clear: They just aren’t performing. Hedge funds and actively managed mutual funds have been underperforming since financial markets began their rebound in early 2009. The average hedge fund is up 3% this year through the end of July, according to researcher HFR Inc., less than half the S&P 500’s rise, including dividends. Funds in the $2.9 trillion hedge-fund sector have now experienced three consecutive quarters of withdrawals for the first time since 2009, according to HFR.
  • Target tumbles 6.4% as sales drop, outlook cut
    Target said Wednesday that its second-quarter earnings fell 9.7% to $680 million and lowered its sales estimate for the rest of the year, citing “a difficult retail environment.” Shares of TGT fell 6.5% for the day, to $70.63. Adjusted earnings per share totaled $1.23, higher than the $1.13 predicted by analysts who were polled by S&P Global Capital Intelligence.
  • U.S. mortgage demand to buy homes hits six-month low: MBA
    Weekly applications for U.S. mortgages to buy homes slipped to a six-month low even as interest rates on fixed-rate home loans fell, according to data from an industry group released on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage activity for home purchases, a leading indicator of housing sales, fell 4 percent in the week ended Aug. 12. It remained 10 percent higher than the comparable week a year earlier. The average rate on “conforming” 30-year home mortgages, or loans with balances of $417,000 or less, dipped to 3.64 percent last week from 3.65 percent, the Washington-based group said.
  • Lowe’s earnings: $1.31 per share, vs. expected EPS of $1.42
    Lowe's on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts' expectations, and lowered its full-year guidance. Shares of Lowe's fell 5 percent in premarket trading following the announcement. Share prices had been down 6 percent. (Get the latest quote here.) The retail home improvement company reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of $1.31 per share on $18.26 billion in revenue. Analysts had expected the retailer to report earnings of about $1.42 a share on $18.44 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
  • Global central banks dump U.S. debt at record pace
    In the first six months of this year, foreign central banks sold a net $192 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds, more than double the pace in the same period last year, when they sold $83 billion. China, Japan, France, Brazil and Colombia led the pack of countries dumping U.S. debt. It's the largest selloff of U.S. debt since at least 1978, according to Treasury Department data. “Net selling of U.S. notes and bonds year to date thru June is historic,” says Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at the Lindsey Group, an investing firm in Virginia.
  • How the Global Warming Scare Began
    A great scientist named Roger Revelle had Al Gore in his class at Harvard and the Global Warming campaign was born. Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate. John Coleman documents the entire story and shows how our tax dollars are perpetuating the Global Warming alarmist campaign even though temperatures have not risen in years and years.
  • The Freest States For Off-Grid Living, Ranked 1-50
    New Yorkers enjoy the least freedom in America, while New Hampshire citizens enjoy the most, according to a new report, Freedom in the 50 States, that examines the best states in which to live. The report by the Cato Institute examines everything from tax laws to gun laws to government regulation to education freedom and found that the five freest states are: New Hampshire, Alaska, Oklahoma, Indiana & South Dakota. The five states with the least freedom are: Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, California & New York.
  • ALERT: Alasdair Mcleod Just Issued A Terrifying Warning
    With continued uncertainty in global markets, Alasdair Mcleod Just Issued a terrifying warning. Fiddling While Rome Burns – Macleod’s Terrifying Warning. Alasdair Macleod:  Technical analysts seem divided on where gold is going in the short-term. Some think it is consolidating before pushing higher to over $1,400, while others are calling for a steep fall into October, before gold resumes its bull market…
  • With Global Gold Reserves Nearly Exhausted, Can Anyone Spell Weimar?
    With global gold reserves nearly exhausted, can anyone spell Weimar? From The Guardian: “With global gold reserves nearly exhausted, and prices up by 360% in the past decade, this massive supply-and-demand imbalance has fuelled organised crime syndicates looking for new sources of revenue, researchers say, with the result that Peru and Colombia – the world’s top cocaine exporters – now earn more from illegal gold exports than cocaine exports.”
  • Soros Hack Reveals Plot Behind Europe's Refugee Crisis; Media Manipulation; Cash For “Social Justice”
    In the two days since the Soros Open Society Foundation hack by the DCLeaks collective, several notable revelations have emerged among the data dump of over 2,500 documents exposing the internal strategy of the organization, which expose some of Soros' tactics to influence and benefit from Europe's refugee crisis, the opportunistic funding and influence of media organizations, providing cash for assorted “pro-democracy” groups including the infamous La Raza, Soros' funding of various “social justice” organizations while paying to track unfavorable media coverage including that of Pamela Geller. One particular leaked memo, profiled earlier by the Daily Caller, argues that Europe’s refugee crisis should be accepted as a “new normal,” and that the refugee crisis means “new opportunities” for Soros’ organization to influence immigration policies on a global scale. OSF program officer Anna Crowley and program specialist Katin Rosin co-authored the May 12 memo, titled “Migration Governance and Enforcement Portfolio Review.”
  • Silver is Kryptonite to Gold Cartel Bankers-Bill Murphy
    Chairman of GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee) Bill Murphy thinks financial markets are way more vulnerable than they appear. Murphy explains, “There are negative interest rates and low interest rates that just keep staying down there, and supposedly things are really good.  Look at our Dow at all-time highs, and yet something is really wrong.  Of course, this fits into the GATA premise on this whole thing.  There’s a lot of quantitative easing (money printing) and propping up of the markets, and it’s on very shaky ground.  The plug could be pulled at any time. . . . With interest rates where they are and debt growing all over the place, the reasons to be in gold are off the charts.”
  • Obama Wants A Third Term And This Is How He Could Make It Happen
    Yes, we are all well aware the Constitution limits the Presidency to two consecutive four-year terms of office.  Then again, if you weigh the track record of the Obama administration, the Constitution is nothing more than a challenge that he bypasses and circumvents with every given opportunity.  Small wonder that he may very well do the same thing with the upcoming presidential elections.  Already a sham, the presidential elections are actually a vehicle he can use to grab that “Third Term” for himself.
  • America: You Will Go Insane Because Of What Your Eyes Will See
    A cloud of madness is descending on America, and most of us are completely unprepared for the chaos that will be unleashed during the months ahead.  This morning, I was reading through Deuteronomy when I came to a phrase that really resonated with me.  In the Modern English Version, this is what Deuteronomy 28:34 says: “You will go insane because of what your eyes will see”.  As I read that, it struck me that this is precisely what America is heading for.  There are going to be people that have vast quantities of food and supplies stored up that are still going to blow their brains out when they see what happens to this country because they don’t have any hope.  Without hope, I don’t know how anyone is going to make it through what is coming.  If you think that the unrest and violence in Milwaukee are disturbing, just wait for a while, because much, much worse is on the way.
  • This Has Been The Worst 12 Months For Floods In U.S. History
    Since last October, the United States has been hit by “historic flood” after “historic flood”, and this latest flooding down in Louisiana that is making headlines all over the world has been caused by a “500 year storm“. Even before some areas of the state received more than 30 inches of rain, this was already the worst 12 months for floods in U.S. history, but without a doubt this has put an exclamation mark on this exceedingly unusual stretch of flooding. There are some rivers down in Louisiana that have crested three to four feet higher than their previous all-time records, and Governor Edwards is using the words “unprecedented” and “historic” to describe these floods. So far, 20,000 people have been rescued by authorities, and Governor Edwards even had to evacuate the Governor’s Mansion due to chest-high water in the basement.
  • Violence Erupts In America’s Heartland As Milwaukee Becomes The Latest U.S. City To Burn
    The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin exploded in violence last night as the wave of chaos and civil unrest that is sweeping across America continues to intensify.  At this point, many of our largest cities have become powder kegs of anger and frustration, and a full-blown riot can be set off with a single bullet.  In this case, an armed suspect was shot and killed by Milwaukee police as he attempted to evade the police, and his death almost instantly set off pandemonium in the heart of the city.  America is being ripped apart, and much more violence is coming.  Decades of social decay and economic decline have fundamentally transformed many of our greatest cities, and tensions that have been simmering for a very long time are now being brought to a boil.  Sadly, it seems quite likely that we will see even more rage, hatred and divisiveness in the months ahead.
  • Rothschild's RIT Capital dumps sterling assets as it braces for the latest monetary ‘experiment'
    Jacob Rothschild’s investment house RIT Capital Partners has dumped assets priced in pounds this year as it nervously awaits the results of “the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world”. RIT, which considered a merger with rival Alliance Trust in May before walking away, said it was being cautious in “uncharted waters” as government bonds sink into negative yields and central banks around the world ramp up economic stimulus programmes. “The six months under review have seen central bankers continuing what is surely the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world,” said Lord Rothschild.
  • Why Doug Casey Thinks We Could See $5,000 Gold
    One of the world’s biggest central banks just swung its “sledgehammer.” On Thursday, the Bank of England (BoE) launched its biggest stimulus package since the 2008–2009 financial crisis. It cut its key interest rate to a record low. It started “printing” money again. And it announced a new “funding scheme.” The BoE launched this massive easy money program to soften the blow of the “Brexit.” As you probably heard, Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU) on June 23. The historic event rattled Britain’s financial system.
  • Another Major Warning Sign for Stocks
    Not since 1999 did all three major U.S. stock market indexes – the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq – hit record levels, as they did yesterday. Of course, 1999 proved to be the worst time to buy stocks in 30 years. After a few more months of lollygagging around, the Nasdaq crashed and the Dow and the S&P 500 sold off hard. Nasdaq investors didn’t get back to breakeven for another 15 years.
  • The New Highs in US Share Market Are they the Prelude to a Crash?
    Finally, the Dow made new highs in the face of constant calls for a crash. This past week, in a horse race we would call it a trifecta where the Dow Jones Industrials,  S&P 500,and  the NASDAQ all made new record highs.  This sent a bunch of analysts to look again and began to proclaim that this was the first time that all three major indices have reached new highs on the same day since 1999. They then look at the charts and pronounce that the 1999 rally lasted only until 2000 and then crashed. Of course that was the DOT.COM Bubble and there was a massive wave of retail investor in the market back then compared to today.
  • Secrets Of The Elite: Why Forbes’s Rich List Doesn’t Include The Wealthiest Families On The Planet
    As Oxfam warns that global wealth inequality is spiraling out of control, we ask why the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are missing from the business magazine's definitive annual guide…with some startling revelations. “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.“ This is a House of Rothschilds maxim, widely attributed to banking tycoon Mayer Amschel Rothschild in 1838 and said to be a founding principle for the highly corrupt banking and political system we have today.  Along with the Rockefellers, the Rothschild dynasty is estimated to be worth well over a trillion dollars. How are these powerful families linked to the ongoing crisis of global wealth inequality, why are so many people unaware of their existence, and why doesn’t Forbes ever mention them in their annual list of the world’s wealthiest people?
  • Under TPP, Corporations Will Replace Nations According to Leaked Document
    An obscure Trans Pacific Partnership provision will serve to threaten the very existence of the nation state and replace governmental authority with the power and the whim of the corporation. This secretive provision promises to supplant all national authority with a “Rollerball” type of world. If you are not familiar, Rollerball was a very popular movie which debuted in 1975 and it depicted the planet as being ruled by six corporations in the place of national governments.
  • Who owns the wind? We do, Wyoming says, and it's taxing those who use it
    Not long after it became clear that the robust winds that blow down from the Rocky Mountains and across the sea of sagebrush here could produce plenty of profit in a world that wants more renewable energy, some of the more expansive minds in the Wyoming Legislature began entertaining a lofty question: Who owns all of that wind? They concluded, quickly and conveniently, that Wyoming did. Then, with great efficiency for a conservative state not traditionally tilted toward burdening the energy industry, they did something no other state has done, before or since: They taxed it.
  • Farmland Bubble Bursts As Ag Credit Conditions Crumble
    Aside from a brief pause during the “great recession” of 2009, Midwest farmland prices have been bubbling up for over a decade with annual price increases of 15%-30% in many years.  Private Equity and low interest rates no doubt played a role in creating the farmland bubble as “excess cash on the sidelines” sought out investments in hard assets (see “Is TIAA-CREF Investing In Farmland A Harbinger Of The Next Asset Bubble?”).  No matter the cause, data continues to indicate that the farmland bubble is bursting. 2Q 2016 agricultural updates from the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis indicate continued income, credit and farmland price deterioration for Midwest farmers.  Lender surveys also suggest that as many as 30% of Midwest farmers are having problems paying loan balances.  Declining asset values and incomes have also caused banks to tighten lending standards which has only served to accelerate the decline.
  • North American Life Insurers “Accidentally” Pile Up Massive Distressed Debt Holdings
    Accommodative monetary policy by the Fed has crushed bond income for insurers.  According to Bloomberg, 2015 investment income at North American insurers dropped below 2011 levels. Unsurprisingly, in their stretch for yield, insurers added to energy bond positions in 2015 to offset the funding gap.  Now, the collapse of oil prices has apparently left North American life insurers in a bit of a pickle with distressed debt holdings having doubled in a matter of 6 months as IG energy bonds turned to junk.
  • Russia Deploys S-400 Missile System To Crimea, As Tensions With Ukraine Soar
    In the latest escalation between the Kremlin and Kiev, yesterday we reported that Ukraine had put its troops near the Russia border on combat alert, following an incident that according to Russia was an attempted terrorist attack. Recall that Russia’s secret service, the Federal Security Service, said on Wednesday that it had foiled “terrorist acts” prepared by Ukrainian military intelligence against infrastructure in the territory, with the aim of disrupting Russia’s parliamentary elections due on 18 September. Kiev denied the allegations. In response to the alleged operation, Putin said he was pulling out of international peace talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He said he was no longer ready to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, and German and French leaders in the so-called Normandy format, which has been used for negotiations.
  • Here It Comes—–Ukraine’s ‘October Surprise’
    When a Russian FSB agent and a Russian soldier were killed by a team of Ukrainian saboteurs, and one of the captured Ukrainians was shown on Russian media in handcuffs, US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt tweeted: “US government has seen nothing so far that corroborates Russians allegations of a ‘Crimea incursion’ & Ukraine has strongly refuted them.” Apparently two dead Russians don’t count for much in Pyatt’s book: perhaps Putin personally killed them, and the whole thing is a set up.
  • Trump’s Tax Plan, Clinton Corruption and Mainstream Media Propaganda
    Little change in the markets on Monday. We are in the middle of vacation season. Who wants to think too much about the stock market? Not us! Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to reform the U.S. tax system. His proposals are nothing new – simplification, fewer brackets, eliminate loopholes for rich people. But he also targeted the “carried interest” exemption. “Carried interest” – or “carry” –  is a term used in the financial industry to refer to what is essentially a performance bonus.
  • Deutsche Bank ist Kaputt
    It looks like Deutsche Bank is heading toward failure. Why might we be concerned? The problem is that Deutsche is too big to fail — more precisely, that the new Basel III bank resolution procedures now in place are unlikely to be adequate if it defaults. Let’s review recent developments. In June 2013 FDIC Vice ChairmanThomas M. Hoenig lambasted Deutsche in a Reuters interview. “Its horrible, I mean they’re horribly undercapitalized,” he said. They have no margin of error.” A little over a year later, it wasrevealed that the New York Fed had issued a stiff letter to Deutsche’s U.S. arm warning that the bank was suffering from a litany of problems that amounted to a “systemic breakdown” in its risk controls and reporting. Deutsche’s operational problems led it to fail the next CCAR — the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review aka the Fed’s stress tests – in March 2015.
  • As Libor Blows Out To Fresh 6 Year Highs, A $28 Trillion Debt Question Emerges
    Two weeks ago, when looking at the recent surge in short-term funding rates in general, and Libor in particular,we said that this is the result of a scramble by various funds to change their asset ahead of an October 14 deadline for money market reform. Recall that “On October 14, 2a-7 money fund reforms will require some prime money market mutual funds (those that invest in non-government issued assets) to float their net asset value (NAV) or, under certain circumstances, to impose redemption gates and liquidity fees on redemptions. Rather than face these regulatory constraints, many investors have started pulling assets from prime funds, and a number of prime funds have converted to government-only funds (which are exempt from these regulations). Since late-2015 alone, prime fund assets have declined by nearly $450 billion, reducing the supply of dollars that funded private sector short-term liabilities.”
  • THE COMING BREAKDOWN OF U.S. & GLOBAL MARKETS EXPLAINED… What Most Analysts Miss
    The U.S. and world are heading toward an accelerated breakdown of their economic and financial markets.  Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of analysts fail to understand the root cause of this impending calamity.  This is also true for the majority of precious metals analysts. The reason for this upcoming systemic collapse of the U.S. and Global markets is quite simple when you understand the information and are able to CONNECT THE DOTS.  While it has taken me years of research to be able to finally put it all together, new information really put it all into perspective.
  • The Coming Global Silver Production Collapse & Skyrocketing Silver Value
    The global economic and financial system is in much worse shape than I originally thought.  New data and information suggest that the collapse will occur much quicker and with more dire results.  This will cause global silver production to literally fall off a cliff within the next decade. Again, this is far worse than anything I imagined before.  As I mentioned, new information and data point to a rapid “Thermodynamic collapse” of the U.S. and Global Energy Industries.  According to Louis Arnoux, from his article, Some Reflections On The Twilight Of The Oil Age:”
  • Negative Rates for the People—– German Bank Surrenders to Draghi’s NIRP
    A small German bank just went negative on RETAIL bank deposit rates as opposed to corporate (business) deposit rates. IMF blog says ECB sub-zero rates work …. but for whom? Seniors, savers? European banks were clobbered during the global financial crisis and have never recovered.  With the ECB throwing everything and the proverbial kitchen sink at the stagnant economies of Europe, THIS is the IMF’s definition of working for the lenders?
  • David Rosenberg: “This Market Makes No Sense”
    We are not sure what happened to the abnormally cheerful, permabullish, mutant variant of David Rosenberg who appeared so abruptly on the scene four years ago calling for higher yields and rising inflation (driven by wages of all things), but we are glad that the skeptical variation has once again taken control, because it is only the latter that was capable of writing such observant, unvarnished and non-sugarcoated pieces like the one posted this afternoon in the National Post, in which Rosenberg joins all other carbon-based traders in admitting that it is now “next to impossible” to make sense of this market.
  • Funny Money Accounting—-Why Social Security Will Be Bankrupt In 10 Years
    Here follows a deconstruction of Rosy Scenario. It underscores why the nation’s entitlement based consumption spending will hit the shoals in the decade ahead. In their most recent report, the so-called “trustees” of the social security system said that the trust fund’s near-term outlook had improved. So the stenographers of the financial press dutifully reported that the day of reckoning when the trust funds run dry has been put off another year—-until 2034. The message was essentially take a breath and kick the can. That’s five Presidential elections away! Except that is not what the report really says. On a cash basis, the OASDI (retirement and disability) funds spent $859 billion during 2014 but took in only $786 billion in tax revenues, thereby generating $73 billion in red ink.
  • 13 Biggest Political And financial Distortions In The World
    I think a lot about history. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, said, “The happiest hours of mankind are recorded on the blank pages of history.” It’s true. Remember studying US history in high school? You learned all about Woodrow Wilson and World War I. Then you learned about FDR and World War II, but you skipped over Harding/Coolidge/Hoover in between. What happened in the 1920s, anyway? Only the biggest economic boom in the history of the US, coupled with massive technological progress and improvements in standard of living. The best time ever. You might think people would want to study the conditions that led to that prosperity, so it can be repeated.
  • The Planned Fracturing Of The EU This Jubilee Year Continues: Greece, Italy and Spain Consider Exiting
    When we started The Dollar Vigilante in 2010 we stated that the worldwide central banking fiat money system would collapse within the decade. It was just math.  Government debt continues to mount and the only way to pay interest on the debt is to print more money.  The US government, alone, has doubled its debt in the last eight years, from under $9 trillion to now well over $19 trillion. Almost every Western government has done similarly and central banks continue to print money to make the dead system seem like it is still alive. Early in 2015 we caught on to an occult (hidden) timeline by which major financial events occur called the Shemitah, and the year after called the Jubilee (or Super Shemitah). On the end day of the once-every-seven-year Shemitah, in 2015, we wrote, “Eurozone Collapses, Borders Erected Across Europe On Shemitah End Day“.
  • US Treasury Yields Go Negative Everywhere But Here
    Negative interest rates are an existential threat for insurance companies, pension funds and other financial entities that need positive investment returns to survive. As rates on government bonds have gone negative in Europe and Japan, the above companies have been big buyers of US Treasury bonds, which still (for some reason) continue to offer positive yields. But according to a Bloomberg analysis published today, Treasuries’ positive yield has recently evaporated when the cost of hedging currency fluctuations is included.
  • Nassim Taleb Warns The Biggest Black Swan Event Of All Is Coming
    We are at an incredible moment in history. US stock markets are at nominal all-time highs. Government bonds are at or near all-time highs. Yet, central banks worldwide sit at 0% interest rates or less because things are too precarious to even raise rates a paltry 0.25% for fear of collapsing the entire system. In “traditional” economics this makes no sense.  But we are far out of “traditional” now… we are in the extreme end-stages of a collapsing system.  When that happens, nothing makes sense from a traditional/normal perspective. In the third quarter of 2015, during the end of the Shemitah year, world stock markets had their worst quarter since the last Shemitah year in 2008… and then they bounced back up.  In January, world stock markets had their worst starting month to the year in history… and then they bounced back up.  And, most recently, the day after Brexit, which was 7 days, 7 weeks, 7 months and 7 years since the Shemitah end day in 2008, world stock markets again had their worst day in history… and then bounced back up.
  • Is The Gold Market Really Manipulated?
    On the heels of gold’s biggest year-to-date surge in 36 years, a question arose: Is the gold market really manipulated? “The illusion of central bank control is in full force.” — Dylan Grice. Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Incrementum AG Liechtenstein: Is The Gold Market Really Manipulated? There is a fine line between intervention (in most cases government, resp. political intervention) and manipulation (with the more negative connotation of “exertion of influence”). The fact that central banks intervene massively in bond markets (e.g. via quantitative easing) and currencies (e.g. the Swiss franc or the renminbi) and that prices are at times steered to the decimal, is officially known and considered legitimate. In many cases, the free price discovery process is therefore little but a myth…
  • Pentagon’s Sloppy Bookkeeping Means $6.5 Trillion Can’t Pass an Audit
    The Defense Department over the years has been notorious for its lax accounting practices. The Pentagon has never completed an audit of how they actually spend the trillions of dollars on wars, equipment, personnel, housing, healthcare and procurements. An increasingly impatient Congress has demanded that the Army achieve “audit readiness” for the first time by Sept. 30, 2017, so that lawmakers can get a better handle on military spending. But Pentagon watchdogs think that may be mission impossible, and for good reason.
  • Memo To The Donald——–10 Great Deals To Save America
    But there is a sliver of hope. If Donald Trump is elected, eschews a law and order crusade and does not capitulate to the destructive policies of the Wall Street/Washington/bicoastal establishment, there is a way forward. The political outlaw who considers himself to be the world’s greatest deal-maker would need to do just that. To wit, a President Trump determined to rid the nation of its mutant regime of Bubble Finance at home and failed interventionism abroad would need to make Ten Great Deals.
  • How Long Can Economic Reality Be Ignored? — Paul Craig Roberts
    Trump and Hitlery have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.” Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media. The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.” They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. This means that the presstitutes like Hitlery’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s. Yesterday I listened to the NPR presstitutes say how Trump pretends to be in favor of free trade but really is against it, because he is against all the free trade agreements such as NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic partnerships. The presstitutes don’t know that these are not trade agreements. NAFTA is a “give away American jobs” agreement, and the so-called partnerships give away the sovereignty of countries in order to award global corporations immunity from laws.
  • *Breaking: China & BIS Negotiating Deal to Settle Global Contracts in GOLD at $5,000/oz! – Jim Willie
    Chinese finance officials and the Basel-based BIS are NEGOTIATING A GLOBAL REFORM OF ALL BILATERAL CONTRACTS.  They strive to alter US Dollar based contracts, and CHANGE THE CONTRACT TERMS TO GOLD SETTLEMENT. THE CHINESE & BIS ARE WORKING ON A GLOBAL CONTRACT AT THE $5000 GOLD PRICE… The big US banks are dead, as in giant hollow reeds. Such has been the Jackass refrain for eight straight years. They are insolvent monsters and destroyers of wealth and capital. They are massive criminal enterprises. Events prove the case well. The Too Big to Fail policy has instead assured the wreckage and destruction of the USEconomy. Save the big banks, but ruin the capital base. The USGovt under the management of the banker cartel since the 9/11 event, which they orchestrated in a bold move, has systematically brought down the macro business sector, permitted the USDollar platforms to decay completely, and rigged the financial markets in every conceivable arena. The central bankers are running scared.
  • Japan to Lend Spy Vessels to Philippines as Tensions Rise in South China Sea
    In a bid to stymie Chinese influence in the region, the Japanese government plans to deliver two patrol vessels to the Philippines, and provide surveillance aircraft. While Tokyo has its own dispute with Beijing over a series of islands in the East China Sea, it will also devote resources to the South China Sea, aiding Manila in its territorial dispute, by providing ships and aircraft. “We are talking about big-sized, 90-meter long vessels,” Masato Ohtaka, deputy foreign press secretary for Japan’s foreign ministry, told reporters.
  • Self-Sufficiency Will Be The Only Way to Survive: “Nothing Will Have Any Value Except Food”
    Here, Charles Hugh Smith argues that the scheme for world order will ultimately lead nowhere, because globalization is will leave everyone hanging. Instead, becoming self-sufficient and providing for food, energy and resources will be the lasting challenge – in the long run. While nations rise and fall, this will remain an important goal for the individual who can attain a certain degree of freedom by securing one’s own survival and needs for food and energy, and in turn providing an engine of wealth for anyone that they can trade or sell with.
  • On The Brink Again: “Huge Housing Bailout Coming” As Fannie/Freddie Seek $126 Billion From Taxpayers
    This could be the trigger event everyone has been waiting for; it certainly was in 2008. Like the conditioned animal, punished with a shock repeatedly, it produces more fear, and adrenaline and stress response during the build-up from the time the bell is rung and the shock is delivered. The actual shock is actually a relief, even though the animal fears the pain. It will all happen again, once the bell rings. Here, we know the crash is coming. The banks have orchestrated it, the Federal Reserve is setting the pace and preparing the bed in which we must all lie. A devastating blow to the economy is building up again. Which one will bring it all crashing down, and which will simply prove once again that we are held captive by a dangerous and failing economy that could soon wipe us all out? This could be 2008 all over again; on the other hand, it could be much worse. Either way, there is every sense that things are just getting started.
  • What Do They Know That We Don’t? World’s Billionaires Are Stockpiling Cash: “Taking Money Off the Table”
    When things risk going wrong, cash is king… and kings have cash. And with enormous fortunes being made – and destroyed – overnight. The world’s billionaires have shifted into stockpiling an average of 22% of their income in cash because they are terrified the economy could crash. Many of these people literally helped to build the system we all now rely upon, and now they are holding cash, gold and other assets our of fear that stocks will crash and digital instruments of wealth could be undermined, compromised or have their balance destroyed.
  • Here’s how the government is stealing more than ever before
    As you’re likely aware, Civil Asset Forfeiture is a legal process that allows the government to seize assets from private citizens without any due process or judicial oversight. People can be deprived of their private property without ever having been even charged with a crime, let alone never having actually committed one. The horror stories of its abuse are endless. People who have never done anything wrong have had their life’s savings, homes, and business assets confiscated without so much as a warrant. This constitutes theft, plain and simple. And like most government initiatives, it started small. Again, the statistics from 1986 show $93.7 million worth of cash and property was seized by the government. By 2014, that figure had grown 4,667% to a whopping $4.5 billion.
  • Kenya Starts Pumping Oil
    The Kenyan government said it has approved a plan for the production of between 2,000 and 4,000 barrels of crude daily. The plan includes an upgrade of road infrastructure to transport the crude to Kenya’s largest port in Mombasa, as well as the construction of a pipeline from the oilfields in northern Kenya to Lamu on the coast. This city is set to become Kenya’s main oil export terminal in the future. Kenya’s oil deposits are located in the northwestern part of the country, most notable among them the South Lokichar field, which is being explored by a joint venture between Tullow Oil, Maersk Oil, and local Africa Oil. Last month the three companies said they were going to restart drilling at the field in the last quarter of this year, planning four wells initially and later possibly expanding the number to eight. By the end of next year, South Lokichar should produce some 2,000 bpd of crude.
  • Nigeria Set to Split if North Strikes Oil, says Nigerian President
    Nigeria’s former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, tweeted on Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari planned to break up Nigeria if oil is found in the north of the country—the north, which the Niger Delta Avengers have claimed are for now, unjustly tapping into the oil wealth of southern Nigeria. Buhari has ordered the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to start drilling for oil in the northeastern part of Nigeria. In late July, the NNPC said in a statement that it was intensifying drilling in the Chad Basin and other parts of the Inland Sedimentary Basin in search of oil.
  • For What It’s Worth: Chevron Will Sell Assets Totaling $5 Billion in Asia
    According to the Wall Street Journal, the second biggest American oil company, Chevron, is to sell properties in Asia that are worth up to $5 billion. On Thursday, the Journal reported that Chevron will begin to sell offshore China assets this month. The California-based giant is hoping to make $10 billion from sales as part of their attempt to slash costs and adjust to cheaper oil prices. The report also stated that Chevron’s stake in an offshore oil field venture with CNOOC Ltd could raise up to $1 billion on its own. CNOOC Ltd is China’s state-owned oil company. Sources claim that this could be an attractive asset to both Chinese energy firms and sovereign funds.
  • America Is ‘Tantalizingly Close’ To Energy Independence, Analysts Say
    America will be “tantalizingly close” to being energy independent by the year 2020, according to analysts at the Raymond James (RJ) investment firm. America imported 65.3 percent of its oil in 2005, according to the RJ analysts, but the U.S. only imported 24.2 percent in 2015. RJ projects the U.S. will import just 11 percent of its daily oil needs by 2020, according to CNN Money. Future oil imports will be met almost entirely by Canada and Mexico.
  • Did OPEC Just Issue A Warning For Oil Prices In 2017?
    OPEC upgraded on Wednesday its 2016 projections for world oil demand growth to 1.22 million barrels a day (mb/d), up by 30,000 b/d from its previous estimate, but warned that there were “lingering concerns” that refiners in the U.S. and Europe may cut processing rates, which could decrease the demand for crude. In its Monthly Oil Market Report that came out on Wednesday, OPEC said that now its latest estimates peg the total oil demand at 94.26 mb/d. For 2017, global oil demand is expected to grow at the same level anticipated last month; that is, going up by 1.15 mb/d from 2016 levels. The total 2017 oil consumption is projected to hit a new record of 95.41 mb/d, OPEC noted.
  • China, Russia must join hands to counter US in Asia: Chinese state media
    Chinese state media on Friday urged Moscow and Beijing to join  hands to offset the growing threat posed by the deployment of a US anti-missile defence system in South Korea and a possible deployment in Japan. “It is only a matter of time before Japan has THAAD on its soil,” an editorial in the Global Times warned. “Washington is ambitious to build a global anti-missile system so missile activities in China and Russia can be put under close surveillance, which will disable China and Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence against the US,” it said. Beijing has said Washington’s decision last month to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would only worsen tensions on the Korean peninsula. Both Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi have criticised the US move.
  • Big Unwind Begins in San Francisco, Miami, New York, Houston: Rents in “Primary Markets” Sunk by Apartment & Condo Glut
    This is how it is happening in Miami: A heroic building boom in Greater Downtown has created a phenomenal condo glut just when federal regulators decided earlier this year to track down money laundering in the real estate sector. It coincided with Brazil and Venezuela – Miami’s largest feeder markets – falling into political turmoil and economic chaos respectively. The “strong” dollar doesn’t help. And buyers from abroad have become scarce. No one was prepared for this. The slowdown started a year ago when the resale inventory began to balloon. According to a new report by Integra Realty Resources for the Miami Downtown Development Authority, in May listings soared 58% from two years ago, to about 3,000 units, while monthly sales plunged 43%. And new supply keeps on coming: In the second quarter, nearly 7,500 condos were under construction, with another 1,550 being marketed for sale.
  • Profits Plunge, Sales Drop at Macy’s. Slashes Jobs, Closes Stores. Stock Jumps 18%
    It’s been a tough quarter for Macy’s. Again. Sales dropped 4% to $5.87 billion in the second quarter, it reported today. It had already closed 41 “underperforming Macy’s stores” in its fiscal year 2015. So among the remaining company-owned stores, comparable sales fell 2.6%. Operating income plunged 73% to $117 million. Net income plummeted 95% to a nearly invisible $11 million, or 3 cents a share. The first quarter, on a year-over-year basis, was even worse. So for the first half, sales dropped 5.7%, operating income 53%, and net income 82%.
  • Negative Rates for the People Arrive as German Bank Gives In
    When the European Central Bank introduced a negative interest rate on lenders’ deposits two years ago, few thought things would ever go this far. This week, a German cooperative savings bank in the Bavarian village of Gmund am Tegernsee — population 5,767 — said it’ll start charging retail customers to hold their cash. From September, for savings in excess of 100,000 euros ($111,710), the community’s Raiffeisen bank will take back 0.4 percent. That’s a direct pass through of the current level of the ECB’s negative deposit rate.
  • When Will the Record Corporate “Debt Binge” Collapse?
    After a historic “debt binge,” leverage levels among the 2,200 largest US corporations, excluding financial institutions, have reached “record highs,” Standard and Poor’s warns. It blamed the Fed-fueled “excessive liquidity and low borrowing costs in the capital markets,” along with declining profits. Now these companies, and “particularly those at the lower end of the credit spectrum,” of which there are more and more, “are as vulnerable to downgrades and defaults as they were in the period leading up to the Great Recession – and perhaps more so.”
  • Ron Paul Rages At The “Phony Job Recovery”
    Last Friday saw the release of a bombshell jobs report, with headlines exclaiming that the US economy added over 250,000 jobs in July, far in excess of any forecasts. The reality was far more grim. Those “jobs” weren't actually created by businesses – they were created by the statisticians who compiled the numbers, through the process of “seasonal adjustment.” That's a bit of statistical magic that the government likes to pull out of its hat when the real data isn't very flattering. It's done with GDP, it's done with job numbers, and similar manipulation is done with government inflation figures to keep them lower than actual price increases. In reality there are a million fewer people with jobs this month than last month, but the magic of seasonal adjustment turns that into a gain of 255,000.
  • China Furious, French Energy Giant Desperate, as UK Stalls $24bn Nuclear Deal
    The UK government’s decision to postpone the signing of a controversial, tripartite $24-billion nuclear energy deal with state-owned companies from China and France could end up having serious ramifications not only for Britain’s relations with the world’s second largest economy, but also for the financial health of one of France’s biggest corporations. In an opinion piece in today’s Financial Times, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said the Hinkley Point deal represents a “crucial historical junction” for relations between the U.K. and China, which has a one-third stake in the nuclear power station that was scheduled to be built by France’s majority state-owned energy giant EDF.
  • European Close Sparks $5 Billion Selling-Panic In Gold Futures
    Someonce decided to wait until Europe closed to dump $5 billion of notional gold into the markets (36k contracts)… makes perfect sense… 22,000 contracts in 10 minutes… 36,000 contracts… And Silver is following the same path…
  • ALERT: BIS Intervenes In The Gold Market To Aid Battered Gold Shorts!
    esterday King World News reported that a major swap dealer, who is heavily upside down on short positions in the gold market, is now in trouble.  KWN then posed the following question: If the price of gold continues to surge, will some of the entities who are over-exposed short the gold market go insolvent?  Or will the price of gold be brought down so the troubled shorts can regroup? And today, all the sudden… Well, some price capping in the gold market has been quite apparent in the last couple of trading sessions, but today it was reported that $5 billion of panicked paper gold futures selling occurred right after the physical market closed in London.  But what really happened?  Was it really panic or something else?
  • Chesapeake Energy exits the Barnett Shale with a whimper
    Chesapeake Energy, once the proud face of the shale gas drilling boom in North Texas, is transferring its 215,000 acres of natural gas assets in the Barnett Shale to a Dallas company backed by a global private equity firm. Chesapeake is not receiving any cash for the assets — which include about 2,800 operating wells — in turning it over to Saddle Barnett Resources LLC, a company backed by First Reserve, an equity and investment firm focused solely on energy assets, Chesapeake announced Wednesday. But by leaving the Barnett, which Chesapeake first entered in 2004 and where it became a major player, the company hopes to boost its operating income between $200 million and $300 million a year through 2019. And the company said it will eliminate about $1.9 billion of future midstream and downstream commitments.
  • Return on UK government bonds turns negative
    The return on some UK government debt turned negative after the Bank of England missed its target in a new bond buying operation. The Bank had offered to buy government bonds, or gilts, as part of its new quantitative easing (QE) programme to stimulate the economy. But the bank fell £52m short of its £1.17bn target when it failed to find enough sellers. That has driven up prices and pushed down the return or yield, to investors. As bond prices rise, yields fall, and vice versa. Buying government bonds is often considered a safe investment but they now offer a tiny, in some case negative, return. On Wednesday morning gilts maturing in 2019 and 2020 were yielding -0.1%.
  • One simple reason why gold can still jump 50%
    Heike Hoffman is a 54-year old fruit merchant in a small town in western Germany. She has no formal training in finance. She’s not running a multi-billion dollar portfolio. And yet, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, “[w]hen Ms. Hoffman heard the ECB was knocking rates below zero in June 2014, she considered it ‘madness’ and promptly cut her spending, set aside more money, and bought gold.” She’s right. It is madness. There’s $13+ trillion worth of bonds in the world right now have negative yields, much of which is issued by bankrupt governments (like Japan). Stock markets around the world are at all-time highs even as corporate profits have been in long-term decline.
  • Europe's Credit Investors Are Seeing Bubbles and Still Adding Risk
    Credit investors are in a bind. Central banks have pushed bond yields to record lows, which has nudged investors into riskier securities in search of higher rates. Meanwhile, central bank stimulus has caused credit markets to rally, thus attracting inflows to the sector, meaning investors have more money to put to work amid ever-diminishing yields. That's the takeaway from a Bank of America Merrill Lynch's survey of 50 investors in European credit. Their biggest fear is that central banks are creating bubbles.
  • El Salvador Downgraded by Moody’s as Government Debt Rises
    El Salvador’s sovereign debt rating was downgraded to B1 from Ba3 by Moody’s Investors Service on Thursday and my be cut further as the government struggles to control a rising debt burden. The country’s debt-to-GDP-ratio will surpass 60 percent by the end of the year, Moody’s said, and economic growth of 2 percent means the government must “implement aggressive fiscal consolidation measures involving both revenues and expenditures” to stabilize debt levels.
  • Hedge Funds Press Banco Popular for Puerto Rico Deposits
    Hedge funds that own Puerto Rico bonds are putting pressure on Banco Popular over commonwealth funds deposited at the bank that they say should go to them. Lawyers representing the Ad Hoc Group of General-Obligation Bondholders sent a letter Thursday to Banco Popular de Puerto Rico in San Juan, notifying the bank of the group’s rights and remedies regarding government funds redirected to meet other obligations. The so-called clawback revenue should be used to help repay general-obligation debt because the island’s constitution says those securities must be repaid before other bills, the group said. The commonwealth defaulted on about $1 billion of principal and interest due July 1, including $780 million for general obligations, the largest payment failure in the $3.7 trillion municipal-bond market.
  • World due for a serious crisis unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime
    Jim Rogers speaks with Michael Covel on troubling trends of crime and violence around the world, Europe, US stocks and the upcoming serious crisis
  • Chelsea Clinton: Now that Scalia’s Gone We Can Enact Gun Control
    While campaigning for her mother recently, Chelsea Clinton admitted that the left is planning to use the Supreme Court to enact greater gun control if a Democrat wins the presidency this fall. Chelsea Clinton said Thursday at an event in Maryland that there is now an opportunity for gun control legislation to pass the Supreme Court since Justice Antonin Scalia passed away. “It matters to me that my mom also recognizes the role the Supreme Court has when it comes to gun control. With Justice Scalia on the bench, one of the few areas where the Court actually had an inconsistent record relates to gun control,” Clinton said. “Sometimes the Court upheld local and state gun control measures as being compliant with the Second Amendment and sometimes the Court struck them down.” Clinton then touted her mother’s record on gun control issues and knowledge that the Supreme Court has an effect on whether many gun control laws stand.
  • ‘We should nationalise German banks' Warning Deutsche Bank teetering on edge of CRISIS
    A TOP economist has warned that Germany's biggest bank is teetering on the edge of crisis and they only way to protect it against future shocks is to nationalise it. Martin Hellwig said stress tests carried out by the European Central Bank revealed the Deutsche Bank would be left in a precarious position in the event of another financial crisis. While it would probably not go bust in a fresh downturn – he predicted the bank which is crucial to the German economy would face serious equity problems. He said: “Putting it short: for a long and serious crisis there simply wouldn't be enough money.”
  • This trend tells you everything you need to know about America’s future
    Long ago in the Land of the Free, if you wanted to start a saloon, you rented a space and started serving booze. You didn’t have to go through years of petitioning a bunch of bureaucrats for permits and licenses. If you weren’t qualified or good enough at your job, your reputation would suffer and you’d go out of business. This is the way it used to be for just about every industry and profession. It wasn’t until 1889 that the US Supreme Court ruled in Dent v. West Virginia that states had the right to impose “reasonable” certifications or licenses for various professions. At first, most states only licensed physicians, dentists, and lawyers. In fact, by 1920, only about 30 occupations in the US required any sort of licensing. By the 1950s, about 5% of US workers required a license to perform his/her job. Today that number has risen to 30%, and climbing.
  • China Expects Worst Ag Output Plunge in 50 Years and Food Inflation as Historic La Nina Arrives
    The 2016 La Nina is set to be bigger than 1998 and that was one of the strongest ever. It was a bad hurricane season in the Southeast United States, and the effects of La Nina lasted for more than 2 years, eventually draining natural gas inventories due to colder than normal winters, sending prices to $10 / MMBtu. China is also concerned due to flooding and the effect on food prices.
  • We Live in Dangerous Times—-Three Flashpoints For War
    We are sitting atop a volcano that could erupt at any moment. Indeed, the only question is not whether it will explode, but when – and where. For this impending seismic event has multiple pathways to the surface, spread across no less than three continents. Europe, North Africa and Middle East.
  • Soaring Debt Has U.S. Companies as Vulnerable to Default as 2008
    U.S. companies have taken on so much debt that they’re at least as vulnerable to defaults and downgrades as they were leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a report by S&P Global Ratings Tuesday. Corporate leverage in the U.S., excluding financial firms, is at the highest level in 10 years, driven by a combination of low interest rates and slowing profits, S&P analysts Jacob Crooks and David Tesher wrote. This has resulted in record leverage ratios across a universe of 2,200 companies, they wrote. Junk-rated firms are particularly at risk because the credit cycle may have peaked and future tightening in interest rates could shut the spigot on new borrowings right when the companies would want to refinance their debt. “With the level of leverage that we’re seeing, some of these more-peripheral stressed sectors are going to experience some challenges to obtain new financing as well as refinancing,” Tesher said in an interview. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – August 11, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From August 5, 2016 to August 11, 2016:

  • EXCLUSIVE: Gerald Celente – Sneak Peek At The Remarkable Top Trends For 2017 & How You Can Profit
    Today the top trends forecaster in the world, Gerald Celente, spoke with King World News about a few of what will be the remarkable top trends for 2017 and how people can profit from them. Eric King:  “Gerald, the top trends for 2017, let’s talk about something that is starting to surface (that is on your list of top trends for 2017) — virtual reality and what the opportunities will be there.” Gerald Celente:  “It’s virtual reality, robotics and artificial intelligence.  The Industrial Age is dead.  This is now the Robotic Age — from industrialization to robotization and artificial intelligence.  So it’s robotization, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.  Let’s start with virtual reality…
  • Back To Square One: Why The Financial System Needs To Reset
    Epoch Times spoke to Paul about what is real money, why debt can never be repaid, and why he sees gold at $15,000 per ounce.
  • The Last Time This Happened, US Equities Crashed
    Something extremely unsusual just happened. The post-Brexit, post-QE collapse in UK Gilt yields has extended the ‘cheapness' of US Treasuries to over 100bps. This is the widest absolute spread since May 2000 but at almost 3x, this is by far the greatest relative differential in history. As gilt yields collapse so the absolute spread spikes, suggesting Treasuries are dramatically cheap…
  • Marc Faber Issues A Stunning Warning That A Gigantic 50 Percent Stock Market Crash Could Be Coming 
    Are we about to witness one of the largest stock market crashes in U.S. history?  Swiss investor Marc Faber is the publisher of the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report”, and he has been a regular guest on CNBC for years.  And even though U.S. stocks have been setting new record high after new record high in recent weeks, he is warning that a massive stock market crash is in our very near future.  According to Faber, we could “easily” see the S&P 500 plunge all the way down to 1,100.  As I sit here writing this article, the S&P 500 is sitting at 2,181.74, so that would be a drop of cataclysmic proportions.
  • Entering Perfect Storm of Every Facet of our Lives-Bill Holter
    Financial writer Bill Holter warns the world faces multiple problems, not just one. Holter explains, “We are entering a perfect storm of every facet of our lives.  This is not just financial.  This is social, and it has to do with the breakdown of the rule of law.  In the U.S. and globally, you can look at this as a breakdown of morals.  Society is breaking down.  You’ve got false economic numbers supported by the press that’s telling the people that all is well.  You are seeing, for lack of a better term, revolt all over the world.  Brexit was a revolt.  Donald Trump running for President is a revolt.  You are seeing people get truly pissed off because they know something is wrong, and it’s a worldwide phenomenon.”
  • China's Marshall Plan
    China's ambition to revive an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to Europe could leave an economic legacy bigger than the Marshall Plan or the European Union's enlargement, according to a new analysis. Dubbed ‘One Belt, One Road,' the plan to build rail, highways and ports will embolden China's soft power status by spreading economic prosperity during a time of heightened  political uncertainty in both the U.S. and EU, according to Stephen L. Jen, the chief executive officer at Eurizon SLJ Capital Ltd., who estimates a value of $1.4 trillion for the project.
  • Bond Market’s Big Illusion Revealed as U.S. Yields Turn Negative 
    For Kaoru Sekiai, getting steady returns for his pension clients in Japan used to be simple: buy U.S. Treasuries. Compared with his low-risk options at home, like Japanese government bonds, Treasuries have long offered the highest yields around. And that’s been the case even after accounting for the cost to hedge against the dollar’s ups and downs — a common practice for institutions that invest internationally. It’s been a “no-brainer since forever,” said Sekiai, a money manager at Tokyo-based DIAM Co., which oversees about $166 billion.
  • Trump is Right About Stocks
    It is not often that you get investment advice from a presidential candidate. It is even rarer that you get good advice. But yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave investors both good advice and good analysis. Bloomberg has the report: Donald Trump on Tuesday said interest rates set by the Federal Reserve are inflating the stock market and recommended 401(k)-holders to get out of equities, just like he did. “I did invest and I got out, and it was actually very good timing,” the Republican presidential nominee said in a phone interview with Fox Business. “But I’ve never been a big investor in the stock market.” “Interest rates are artificially low,” Trump said. “The only reason the stock market is where it is is because you get free money.” Mr. Trump is right on the money. The reason stocks are near their all-time highs is that there is a lot of free money around. Money lent out at interest rates below the rate of inflation is free.
  • Trump Vows To “Jump Start” Economy With “Tax Revolution”; Is Interrupted At Least 14 Times
    In his first comprehensive speech laying out his vision for the US economy, Donald Trump presented a tax-slashing agenda which would seek to cut regulations, while blaming Hillary Clinton for America’s economic woes in a highly touted address Monday at the Detroit Economic Club. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo,” Trump declared, saying his plan represents the “biggest tax revolution” since the Reagan era. “I want to jump-start America,” the GOP presidential nominee added  in another line that brought both applause and boos from the crowd.
  • Investing in Gold in 2016: Global Paradigm Shifts in Politics and Markets
    In the past few months, we have witnessed a series of defining events in modern political history, with Britain’s vote to exit the EU, (several) terror attacks in France and Germany, as well as the recent attempted military coup in Europe’s backyard, Turkey. Uncertainty over Europe’s political stability and the future of the EU keeps growing. These worries are quite valid, as geopolitical developments have the potential to shake markets to the core. The current high-risk environment makes it especially important to take prudent investment decisions in order to protect one’s wealth.
  • US Economy – Something is not Right
    This morning the punters in the casino were cheered up by yet another strong payrolls report, the second in a row. Leaving aside the fact that it will be revised out of all recognition when all is said and done, does it actually mean the economy is strong? As we usually point out at this juncture: apart from the problem that US labor force participation has collapsed (i.e., millions of unemployed people have been defined out of existence), employment is a lagging economic indicator. Nevertheless, payroll data and initial claims usually tend to give some advance warning ahead of recessions. As long as they remain strong, it is fair to conclude that a recession is probably still a few months away at a minimum. Note though that the warning signs from these indicators usually come very late in the game.
  • Will Barack Obama Try To Stay In Office If Donald Trump Wins The Election?
    If Donald Trump wins in November, will Barack Obama leave office and hand over power in an orderly fashion? Normally we would not even have to ask such a question, but these are not normal times. This week, Obama publicly stated that Trump “is unfit to serve as President” and that he is “woefully unprepared to do this job“. In addition, he told the press that Trump “doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world.” If Obama really believes those things are true, would he really just stand aside and hand the keys to the White House to Trump? Never before have I ever heard a sitting president claim that one of the major party candidates could not function as president. But that is what Obama has just done.
  • Now The Markets Themselves Are Too Big To Fail
    The First Rebuttal website has coined a term that gets to the heart of an increasingly dysfunctional system: The too-big-to-fail stock market. The general thesis is that most major countries are over-leveraged to that point of maybe being unable to survive a garden variety equities bear market – and are doing whatever it takes to keep that from happening.
  • The Worst Global Crisis In History Will Be Triggered In The Next Few Months
    With continued uncertainty in global markets, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, warned King World News that the worst global crisis in history will be triggered in the next few months. The Seeds Of The Worst Global Crisis In History. Egon von Greyerz:  “This coming autumn, we are likely to see the beginning of the hyperinflationary phase of the sovereign debt crisis. Hyperinflation normally hits an economy very quickly and unexpectedly and is the result of the currency collapsing. Hyperinflation does not arise as a result of increasing demand for goods and services. The course of events in a hyperinflationary scenario can be summarized as follows: 1. Chronic government deficits; 2. Debt issuance and money printing escalating rapidly; 3. Bonds falling – interest rates rising fast; 4. Currency collapsing. The above process turns into a vicious circle that accelerates quickly…
  • US Oil, Gas Industry Sees 26% Decline in Employment
    US oil and gas producers have cut 142,000 jobs as of May 2016 since its peak employment levels in October 2014 of 538,000, according to a US Energy Information Administration press release on Friday—a 26% drop over that period. The 26% decline in oil and gas employment seems to mirror—although not as drastically—the oil and gas rig count, which stood at 404 rigs in May 2016—down a staggering 77% from the 1800 rigs in action in fall 2014.
  • Why The Jobs Report Is Not Nearly As Strong As You Are Being Told
    Happy days are here again? On Friday, the mainstream media was buzzing with the news that the U.S. economy had added 255,000 jobs during the month of July. But as you will see below, the U.S. economy did not add 255,000 jobs during the month of July. In fact, without an extremely generous “seasonal adjustment”, the number of jobs added during the month of July would not have even kept up with population growth. But the pretend number sounds so much better than the real number, and so the pretend number is what is being promoted for public consumption. Why doesn’t the government ever just tell us the plain facts? Unfortunately, we live at a time when “spin” is everything, and just about everyone in the mainstream media seemed quite pleased with the “good jobs report” on Friday.
  • Bad Economy is Why Trump GOP Nominee-John Williams
    Economist John Williams says don’t believe the hype about the U.S. economy being good—it’s not. Williams explains, “I love America, but we are in a deepening recession.  The economy collapsed into 2009 . . . we never really recovered from that.  We had a few bounces higher, but generally, we went into low level stagnation, and now it’s turning down again.  We just had a revision to the benchmark GDP (1.2%) and the numbers are nonsense.  The numbers are a lot weaker than they appear. There’s no question we are in a recession.”
  • City of London Office Values Plunge 6% in One Month
    In July, a sharp mechanism started working: one of the hottest commercial real estate markets in the world, and one of the most expensive, began to deflate. And the hiss is deafening. Capital values for offices in the City of London – the financial district of London – plunged 6.1% in July, from June, real estate firm CBRE reported today. In its monthly index, “capital value” represents the probable prices that would have been paid at the date of valuation. And it extended beyond London: In the UK office values dropped 4.1% from June. Commercial property values overall – including office, retail, industrial, and other – dropped 3.3%, which chopped year-over-year growth to 0.4%.
  • Buffett Exits Entire Credit Default Swap Exposure, As Citi's Appetite For Derivative Destruction Surges
    It was considered one of the bigger paradoxes for years. Back in 2003, Warren Buffett famously dubbed derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” and yet over the next several years went ahead and entered a number of the contracts, including both equities and credit, ostensibly by selling CDS to collect monthly premiums, although not to the same degree as AIG, which infamously had to be bailed out due to massive losses on its CDS book. The billionaire had argued that agreements he made were attractive because they gave him money up front that he could invest. Berkshire’s derivatives also differed from contracts that brought down other financial institutions during the 2008 credit crisis, because he had less onerous collateral requirements.
  • “Poorer Than Your Parents?” New Study Shows 81% Of Americans Worse Off Than In 2005
    The McKinsey study Poorer than Their Parents? offers a new perspective on income inequality over the period 2005-2014. Based on market income from wages and capital, the study shows 81% of US citizens are worse off now than a decade ago. In France the figure is 63%, Italy 97%, and Sweden 20%. The numbers for the US and France differ radically once transfer mechanisms like food stamps and Obamacare subsidies are taken into consideration.
  • Weak Chinese Trade Data Confirms Global Slowdown, Imports Tumble
    While central banks continue to “print” liquidity, now at a pace of nearly $200 billion per month, they are unable to print trade, perhaps the single best indicator of deteriorating global economic conditions. The latest confirmation came overnight from China, which reported more disappointing trade data for the month of July, as exports and especially imports fell more than expected in July in a rocky start to Q3, suggesting that China's measures have failed to generate a substantial rebound in the economy, and pointing to further and accelerating weakness in global demand, explaining the recent scramble by central banks to unleash even more monetary easing.
  • “Sell Everything”… But Why: What Has The Smartest Investors So Spooked?
    Many of the smartest investors out there hate stocks.  Since May, we’ve heard negative equity calls from Stan Druckenmiller, George Soros, Carl Icahn, Jeff Gundlach and Bill Gross.  Wall Street lore says “Never argue about markets with a guy who is much richer than you”.  So we’ll take the discussion in a different direction: what do they know? Successful investors are always more plugged in than the market as a whole – hence their success.  And while we can only guess at the lynchpins of their negative take on stocks, we do have some idea of how significant they must be.  For example, in 2016 the S&P 500 is up 5.9% on a price basis after 1) the Brexit “Leave” vote, 2) dramatically disappointing Q1 and Q2 U.S. GDP, 3) a correction of 20% in oil prices, 4) a Fed that has incorrectly calibrated its public stance on monetary policy, 5) Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for president, and 6) the U.S. 10 Year Treasury at near record low yields.
  • Voices from the Gasfields : It started with just ONE well
    IMPORTANT! This is the film the UK & Australian Governments do NOT want you to see! Documenting the accounts of families living with the hydrocarbon industry as a neighbour, this hour long documentary is shocking, as it reveals the day to day pollution these people live with – pollution of water, air, light and sound, some of the the basic human requirements needed to survive. The blind eye that the authorities and the hydrocarbon industry turn to these families living conditions, and the complete disregard to the environmental damage done to the bush by this, is truly disgraceful.'…
  • Will you hit the Frackpot? Theresa May's stunning cash payouts to families, with households offered up to £13,000 in the great shale bonanza
    Families will be offered five-figure cash payouts under a radical plan to boost the drive for controversial shale gas fracking. The Lottery-style ‘Frackpot’ windfall scheme, to be unveiled by Theresa May tomorrow, involves paying individual householders cash sums – which could be as high as £13,000 – if they are living in areas where the gas can be extracted. The move marks a further dramatic departure by the new Prime Minister from David Cameron’s blueprint for Britain’s energy needs.
  • Brexit Block: EU Official Says €25bn Debt Means UK Can’t Leave
    Britain will have to pay the European Union a hefty sum if it is to follow through with Brexit, with claims that an estimated €25 billion is owed to the bloc in unpaid bills. An outstanding total of €200 billion (£170 billion, $221 billion) has been shifted around by the EU for years, under what Brussels’ mandarins call the “reste à liquider.” An unnamed senior EU official told German finance website WirtschaftsWoche the British slice of the debt would not be simply written off if Westminster invokes the much debated EU exit clause, Article 50. “A deal with Great Britain is unthinkable until the Brits settle this liability,” said the source.
  • Bayer-Monsanto merger is ‘five-alarm threat’ to food and farms: Legal experts
    A new legal opinion penned by two former Justice Department officials bolsters warnings that the proposed merger between agroindustrial giants Bayer and Monsanto “is a five-alarm threat to our food supply and to farmers around the world.”
  • Society is Being Weaned off Cash
    The central bankers could control everybody by simply eliminating cash and shutting off their atm & credit cards. This is exactly what they are planning. Within the next few decades, it is likely that there will be no more hard cash (coins/notes) left. By this point, the notion of using physical money will be a distant memory tinged with disbelief. “How did we ever manage something so clumsy and backward?” many will say. An increasing number of people are already saying similar things.
  • How the World was Deceived about Global Warming and Climate Change
    Current weather is normal; that is, it is well within the range of all previous weather and climate variations. There are no dramatic increases in temperature, precipitation, hurricanes, tornadoes, or any other severe weather. The climate is changing just as it always has and always will and the rate of change is perfectly normal. Of course, that is not what the government, environmentalists, or the media promote and as a result most of the public believe. The misconception is deliberate and central to the exploitation of global warming and climate change as the vehicle for a political agenda.
  • There’s been a ‘serious and dangerous’ slowdown in productivity
    When the US gross-domestic-product growth was released last Friday, the numbers were disappointing. The US economy grew at an annualized rate of just 1.2% in the second quarter, much weaker than expected. When combined with the results of the first quarter, the economy is growing at about a 1% annual rate,according to The Wall Street Journal — the worst first-half performance since 2011. Many economists think one of the big reasons for this weak expansion is a slowdown in total-factor productivity, a phenomenon that has been occurring in the US — and, to some extent, other developed countries — since 2004.
  • The Outlook For Gold——Global Paradigm Shifts in Politics and Markets
    In the past few months, we have witnessed a series of defining events in modern political history, with Britain’s vote to exit the EU, (several) terror attacks in France and Germany, as well as the recent attempted military coup in Europe’s backyard, Turkey. Uncertainty over Europe’s political stability and the future of the EU keeps growing. These worries are quite valid, as geopolitical developments have the potential to shake markets to the core. The current high-risk environment makes it especially important to take prudent investment decisions in order to protect one’s wealth.
  • July Jobs Report: Trying To Find Meaning In The Meaningless
    The BLS released yet another perfect payroll report for July. It hit on all the major themes, putting further distance to the shocking May number. All the right people have been reassured by all the right parts. “U.S. employment rose at a solid clip in July and wages rebounded after a surprise stall in the prior month, signs of an improving economy that opened the door wider to a Federal Reserve interest rate increase in September… “We view this report as easily clearing the hurdle needed to keep the Fed on track for a September rate hike. The bar for not moving now is much higher,” said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays in New York.” Unfortunately for anyone who still thinks the Establishment Survey contains useful information, the quotes above were written in August 2015, not August 2016, about the July 2015, not July 2016, jobs figures. That happy sentiment last year at this time was derived from the initial estimate of +215k, less than the current July’s +255k. After revisions showed that, at least according to the BLS view of the trend-cycle world, the labor market last summer was supposedly much stronger than first thought, the Establishment Survey now registers an impressive +277k for July 2015.
  • Met Life Profits Collapse, Payrolls To Be Slashed, Blames Fed
    In a poetic poke to the eye of the Fed’s “lower for longer” interest rate policy intended to manage, in part, job creation,MetLife just announced a massive earnings miss and job cuts which the CEO attributed to lower investment income due to, you guessed it, low interest rates.  According to MetLife’s 2Q 2016 earnings release, the company reported operating earnings of $924 million, down 48 percent from the second quarter of 2015, and 47 percent on a constant currency basis. Operating earnings in the Americas decreased 42 percent, and 41 percent on a constant currency basis.  The stock is being punished in today’s trading session and is currently down roughly 9% (a mere $4BN of value destruction).
  • The Warren Buffet Economy: How Central Bank Enabled Financialization Divided America
    I am in the throes of finishing a book on the upheaval represented by the Trump candidacy and movement. It is an exploration of how 30 years of Bubble Finance policies at the Fed, feckless interventions abroad and mushrooming Big government and debt at home have brought America to its current ruinous condition. It also delves into the good and bad of the Trump campaign and platform and outlines a more consistent way forward based on free markets, fiscal rectitude, sound money, constitutional liberty, non-intervention abroad, minimalist government at home and decentralized political rule.
  • Gerald Celente – Biggest Central Bank Gamble In History Fails As Gold Prepares To Skyrocket To $2,000
    Today top trends forecaster Gerald Celente warned one of the biggest central bank gambles in world history failed as the gold market prepares to skyrocket to $2,000. Trend Alert: Central Banks Shooting Blanks. Gold Bull Run. Gerald Celente:  After successfully boosting global equity markets with countless trillions of dollars, euro’s, yuan, yen, etc., but failing to raise incomes among the general population since the Panic of ’08, are central banks finally admitting their policies failed to induce true economic growth?…
  • Rick Rule – I Have Only Seen The Stunning Event That Has Just Taken Place Twice In My Lifetime
    With gold and silver on the move, today one of the wealthiest and most street-smart pros in the business spoke with King World News about a stunning event that has just taken place which he has only seen twice in his lifetime. Eric King:  “Rick, the mining shares have been on a tear.  Silver has also been strong and gold has been holding firm.  But the mining shares, the XAU and the HUI, have hit new highs recently.  There has been relentless buying of the high quality shares.  Michael Belkin, who advises some of the top people on the planet, told King World News that there are many professionals buying the mining stocks and they don’t care that they missed the previous run-up because the stock prices and the market caps were too small before this advance and did not meet their mandates.  Is that what is happening to some degree here as you are seeing institutional fund flows into the sector and it’s relentless?”
  • Legendary Short Seller Says Ignore Today’s Takedown, Gold & Silver Bull Markets In Early Stages
    Today a legendary short seller spoke with King World News about today’s takedown in the gold & silver markets. Eric King:  “Bill, it’s a great day for people to hear from you because we have this hiccup in the mining shares, in gold and silver.” Bill Fleckenstein:  “People cannot worry about what happens on any given day or any given week.  The (mining) stocks have had a huge run, the metals have had a decent move, and they are going to be subject to days when they do poorly.  And then sometimes they are going to go up a whole bunch on news you didn’t think was that big of a deal…
  • Big European Banks Try to Block Contagion from Italian Banking Crisis (Before it Sinks them)
    Europe has plenty of reasons to be worried these days, but none more so than the seemingly terminal decline of the old continent’s banking system. So fragile are Europe’s banks that they can’t even get through an ECB stress test — whose primary purpose is to restore confidence in Europe’s banking system, by ignoring two of the most insolvent national banking sectors (Greece and Portugal) as well as the main source of stress (negative interest rates) — without sparking a panicked sell-off.
  • Whiff of Panic among Australia’s Biggest Banks?
    Australian bank regulators that had for years practically encouraged the big four Australian banks to do whatever it takes to further inflate the housing bubble suddenly fretted publicly in April about the banks’ exposure not only to housing but also to China. And now something strange has happened that set off all kinds of warning sirens. On August 2, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) lowered its target “cash rate” by 25 basis points to 1.50%. And what did the banks do? Something so strange it smelled of panic.
  • China’s Property Bubble Echoes Subprime Crisis
    The menacing fury of economic triggers that began piling up after the Great Recession are only getting larger and we can’t do much but watch it unfold and stay alert. I wrote about this in a letter late last year, but now here we are more than halfway through the year and it’s only getting worse. So much worse that the Chinese property bubble is now the catalyst that will reset markets – and will likely be one large event that cascades across the globe. I’m convinced that what finally puts an end to central banker madness and the incessant stream of QE will be the Chinese real estate bubble. Massive doesn’t even begin to describe the situation with China’s property market, but that’s somewhat expected with a population of 1.4 billion people.
  • Junk Bond Issuance Collapses in the US and Europe
    Standard and Poor’s default rate of US high-yield corporate bonds – the more appealing moniker for junk bonds – jumped to 4.5% in July, the worst since August 2010. But no problem. The S&P Distressed High-Yield Corporate Bond Index – comprised of 470 bond issues so troubled that they’re trading at a yield that is at least 10 percentage points higher than the Treasury yield – has rallied 48% since February 12. This includes the 2.5% swoon on Friday, when some of the hot air was let out.
  • Dems and Media Panic Over Trump, Economy is Tanking, Iran No Deal, Deal Update
    The mainstream media (MSM) and the Democrat Party would like you to think it is the Republicans in full panic mode, but it is their party that’s freaking out. The first tip comes from the MSM that is “going to war against Trump” and acting like the true political hacks they are.  Journalism is dead at the MSM, and they are willing to destroy their businesses to stop the outsider.  Negative stories trashing Trump are not having an effect as Trump is packing rallies by the thousands while voter turnout for Clinton rallies is lackluster.  Meanwhile, major negative stories about Hillary Clinton are being ignored to try to combat her negative image as a liar.  Hillary even lies about what the FBI called lies about her private servers, and the MSM ignores developments such as the IRS opening an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
  • Chemtrails are Greatest Threat to Life on Earth-Dane Wigington
    Last month, CIA Director John Brennan admitted Chemtrails, or as he put it, “Stratospheric Aerosol Injection,” is established geoengineering science used to fight global warming. Geoengineering researcher Dane Wigington says if the government is admitting it, the negative effects of spraying are too big to hide much longer. Wigington explains, “When CIA Director Brennan has to address it publicly, clearly it’s getting very difficult for them to hide this elephant in the room and the damage it has done, not only to the environment, but to us. It is irreparable already, and they know the liability already. They know this. They also know the amount of liability that has been created. That’s why they have been so desperate to hide this. To put this into the nutshell, the amount of destruction these programs have caused environmentally, it’s contaminated the entire web of life. This is, mathematically speaking, the greatest and most immediate threat to the web of life on earth, including human health. It is greater than any other threat short of nuclear cataclysm. That’s a mathematical fact.”
  • The U.S. Has Lost 195,000 Good Paying Energy Industry Jobs
    Not all jobs are created equal.  There is a world of difference between a $100,000 a year energy industry job and a $10 an hour job running a cash register at Wal-Mart.  You can comfortably support a middle class family on $100,000 a year, but there is no way in the world that you can run a middle class household on a part-time job that pays just $10 an hour.  The quality of our jobs matters, and if current long-term trends continue unabated, eventually we are not going to have much of a middle class left.  At this point the middle class has already become a minority in America, and according to the Social Security Administration 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year right now.  We have a desperate need for more higher paying jobs, and that is why what is happening in the energy industry is so deeply alarming.
  • The Economic Collapse In Venezuela Is So Bad That People Are Slaughtering And Eating Zoo Animals
    If you were hungry enough, would you kill and eat zoo animals?  To most of us such a notion sounds absolutely insane, but this is actually happening in Venezuela right now.  This is a country where people are standing in lines for up to 12 hours hoping that there will be food to buy that day, and where rioting and looting have become commonplace.  So even though the U.S. economy is in dreadful shape at this moment, we should be thankful for what we have, because at least we are not experiencing a full-blown economic collapse yet like Venezuela currently is. Black stallions can be some of the most beautiful horses on the entire planet, but things are so desperate down in Venezuela this summer that everything looks like food to some people at this point.  What happened at the Caricuao Zoo on Sunday is so horrible that I actually debated whether or not to share it with you.
  • The End Of A Trend: Oil Prices And Economic Growth
    It used to be that when it came to the world economy, oil prices and economic growth were more like distant cousins who disliked each other rather than a happily married couple always seen nuzzling together in public. The received wisdom was that low oil prices are good for the overall economy even if they are bad for the oil industry and for countries that are heavily dependent on oil for their revenues. That's what many believed when suggesting that even though high oil prices and an attendant oil boom had underpinned economic recovery in the United States after the 2008 financial crash, low oil prices would now somehow on balance deliver even more recovery. And, low prices would also benefit the rest of the world as well.
  • Since 2014 The US Has Added Half A Million Waiters & Bartenders And No Manufacturing Workers: Here's Why
    As part of our monthly tradition showing the gaping disparity in the quality of the US labor market, we present the breakdown between the lowest paid jobs available, those for workers in “food services and drinking places”, also known as waiters and bartenders, and compare them to the number of workers in the traditionally best paid sector, manufacturing. Here is the bottom line: as the chart below shows, there have been half a million waiter and bartender jobs added since 2014, and no manufacturing jobs.
  • 666: The Number Of Rate Cuts Since Lehman
    BofA's Michael Hartnett points out something amusing, not to mention diabolical: following the rate cuts by the BoE & RBA this week, “global central banks have now cut rates 666 times since Lehman.” One would think this attempt by central banks to push everyone into risk assets, certainly the Swiss National Bank which as we showed yesterday has increased its US equity holdings by 50% in the first half of 2016 …
  • Carl Icahn Has Never Been More Short The Market, Is Pressing For A Crash
    Three months ago, when looking at the 10-Q of Carl Icahn's hedge fund vehicle, Icahn Enterprises, L.P. (IEP) we found something striking: Carl Icahn had put his money where his mouth was. Recall that over the past year, Carl Icahn had become one of the most vocal market bears with a series of increasingly escalating forecasts. At first, he was mostly pessimistic about junk bonds, saying last May that “what's even more dangerous than the actual stock market is the high yield market.” As the year progressed his pessimism become more acute and in December he said that the “meltdown in high yield is just beginning.” It culminated in February when he said on CNBC that a “day of reckoning is coming.”
  • Bank of England could ‘absolutely cut rates again' this year
    The Bank of England (BoE) could cut interest rates even further this year if it deems necessary to do so, the Bank's deputy governor, Ben Broadbent, said on Friday (5 August). On Thursday, as was widely expected, Britain's central bank cut interest rates to a historic low of 0.25% in response to worsening survey data following the country's decision to leave the European Union.
  • Iran Is Cheating On The Nuclear Deal, Now What?
    On July 14, 2015, Iran and the six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) reached an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. The deal was intended to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and put a hold on Tehran's nuclear development. President Obama promised that the deal is not based on trust rather anchored in verification. Nevertheless, the following revelations of confidential documents as well as the following breaches of the nuclear agreement by Iran, reveal otherwise. On paper, the nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stipulates a series of regulations, monitoring mechanisms, and restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities. But how can the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) maintain these transparency standards and follow through on the proposed regulations? How can the IAEA be sure to detect all illicit nuclear activities in the 18th largest country in the world?
  • Hillary Says She Will “Raise Taxes On The Middle Class”, Crowd Cheers
    Hillary Clinton can do no wrong in the eyes of her adoring fans. Not when she left four men to die; not even when she deleted classified information from her private server. The fact that Hillary has promised to put coal miners out of work makes her base more enthusiastic than anything. Here’s a crowd cheering for Clinton after she says she’ll ‘raise taxes on the middle class.’
  • TD’s $300-billion man goes maximum gold as volatility mounts
    In a world flush with central bank stimulus and swirling with volatility, Bruce Cooper is pushing for the one asset he says he can count on: gold. TD Asset Management’s chief investment officer is adopting a more conservative approach to focus on capital preservation. Cooper sees gold as the best bet with the global economy stuck in neutral, and as loose central bank policy, the U.K. Brexit vote, and a looming U.S. presidential election stoke demand for havens. The firm, which oversees more than $300 billion, shifted to “maximum overweight” in gold for its portfolios during the second quarter from a “modest overweight” according to Cooper’s latest market outlook report. The U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union is likely to lead to ongoing stress in Europe, Cooper said in an interview after appearing on Bloomberg TV Canada. “We turned more positive on gold at the beginning of the year and then we reinforced that in the second quarter.”
  • Japan Proposes “Wage Controls” As Abenomics' Desperation Measure
    One of the main reasons for the failure of Abenomics is that while Abe has been largely successful in boosting import prices as a result of the collapse in the Yen, his policies have been a failure when it comes to achieving the only thing that truly matters for achieving benign inflationary pressures: pushing wages higher. We first pointed this out all the way back in late 2014 in a post titled “The Abenomics Devastation: Japanese Real Wages Decline For Record 16 Consecutive Months.”
  • The smart stick-on tattoo that can monitor your alcohol levels – and even call police if you're over the limit
    A new smart stick on tattoo will be able to monitor exactly how much a person is drinking. The flexible patch can detect a person's blood-alcohol level from their sweat. It can even message doctors and even police if the wearer drinks too much.
  • Regreening The Desert
    For more than 15 years, cameraman and ecologist John D. Liu has conducted a worldwide, one-man mission: inspire the global community to reclaim deserts and restore biodiversity. It all started in 1995 when Liu began filming on the Loess Plateau in China. He watched as the local population worked to transform an area nearly the same size as the Netherlands from a dry, exhausted wasteland into a massive green oasis. Since that time Liu has traveled all over the world to convince and inspire government leaders, policy-makers, farmers, and others with his films and his knowledge. This program accompanies Liu on his mission in Jordan, where the royal family has invited him to help stop their country’s desertification. Scenes focusing on similar issues in Africa provide additional understanding of Liu’s efforts and his vision that a greener future is possible worldwide.
  • The curse of cash
    More alarming news on two fronts today. First, there is movement on the Japanese front. Bonds have sold off and something big may be in the offing. Then, an intellectual defence for the “phasing out” of cash has been published by an influential Harvard economist. It’s happening even faster than I thought. But first a correction from a note from yesterday. The note said that EU banking laws that went into effect on 1 January (the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, or BRRD) allows “bail-ins” on depositors with more than £100,000. Let me be absolutely clear about what that means. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is the UK’s way of providing deposit insurance to British savers who have accounts with British financial institutions that have a banking licence. In the event of a banking crisis, the new EU banking law covers depositors up to €100,000 (not pounds).
  • Venezuela In Chaos With Work Camps And 1,000% Inflation – Coming Soon To The West?
    We’re keeping track of Venezuela and have written about its deepening disaster numerous times, including  HERE. In fact, I personally visited a few months ago to see the disaster with my own eyes. Every time we look at this poor country, things are getting worse. The rate of price inflation is soaring toward 1,000 percent, with looting and shortages of critical necessities such as medicine and food.  Hyperinflation is well underway. June monthly figures put inflation around 22%, with inflation at 488% for the year but I know from personal experience that the government numbers, as with all governments, are heavily lied about. Now comes a new disaster for Venezuela’s beleaguered citizens: Forced farm work to grow food that Venezuela lacks. That “effectively amounts to forced labor,” according to Amnesty International, which derided the decree.
  • UK heading for new financial crisis ‘on grander scale than 2008' with Bank of England ‘asleep at the wheel', says ASI
    The Bank of England’s annual stress tests of the UK’s banks, designed to ensure Britain’s lenders will not be at the heart of another destructive financial crisis, have been branded “worse than useless”, by a new report. Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University, argues in a paper published today by the Adam Smith Institute that the Bank’s tests, which model various adverse economic scenarios each year such as a major fall in UK house prices or a Chinese property crash, have a series of “fatal flaws” and that the central bank is “asleep at the wheel”. “The purpose of the stress-testing programme should be to highlight the vulnerability of our banking system and the need to rebuild it. Instead, it has achieved the exact opposite, portraying a weak banking system as strong”.
  • Cities – Food Free Zones? The Creation of the Urban Food Desert
    Have you ever wondered why our modern cities are intentionally designed to be food-free? All living things normally live in close proximity to their food sources, it’s a biological fact and a common-sense survival strategy. We often take our surroundings for granted as we go about our busy lives, but if we stop for a moment and critically examine the state of our modern cities, we soon realise a disturbingly unnatural state of affairs – there is nothing edible growing in public spaces! This is rather worrying. What type of society in its right mind would want to compromise food security by intentionally removing all food growing activities from public spaces, and what would possess them to do such a thing? Why would anyone want to create food desert – an area where food is scarce and hard to obtain?
  • Aetna Posts $300 Million Obamacare Loss, Warns May Exit Altogether
    After every other major US health insurance provider already admitted to generating substantial losses on the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamcare, earlier today Aetna became the latest to report that its annual loss on Obamacare plans would be more than $300 million, and said it had scrapped plans to further expand its Obamacare business next year. More ominously, Aetna joined the biggest US health insurer UnitedHealth in reviewing how, if at all, it would continue providing ACA services in the 15 states it's currently in.
  • CARNEY: Get ready for inflation, low growth, and unemployment
    Bank of England governor Mark Carney has bad news: The Brexit vote has so weakened the UK economy that he is predicting a period of low growth, inflation above 2%, and increased unemployment. Alongside the Bank’s new rate cut, it revealed in its quarterly Inflation Report that it is downgrading the UK’s growth forecast for 2017 to just 0.8% from the previous estimate of 2.3%. That is the biggest single quarter-to-quarter downgrade in the Bank’s one-year forecast since it started producing the Inflation Report in 1992.
  • The List Of Establishment Republicans That Say They Are Voting For Hillary Clinton Is Staggering
    Who would have ever believed that so many big names in the Republican Party would publicly pledge to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election?  All throughout the primaries and the caucuses, the Republican establishment expressed tremendous disdain for Donald Trump, but they were unable to derail his march to the nomination.  Now that we have reached the general election, some of the biggest names in the GOP are actually taking the unprecedented step of crossing over to the other side and are publicly announcing their support for Hillary Clinton.  This shows that many of these individuals were only “Republicans in name only” to begin with, and it also demonstrates the lengths that the elite are willing to go to in order to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.
  • Central Bank Ignores President’s Plea, Lifts Colombia Rate
    Colombia’s central bank ignored a last minute plea by President Juan Manuel Santos and raised the benchmark interest rate for an 11th consecutive month as surging food prices pushed inflation to the fastest since 2000. In a split decision, the seven-member board voted to raise the key rate a quarter-point to 7.75 percent, central bank Governor Jose Dario Uribe told reporters in Bogota after the meeting. The decision was forecast by 27 of 34 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, while seven had predicted no change.

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – August 4, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From July 29, 2016 to August 4, 2016:

  • The Stock Market Has Predicted The Outcome Of Presidential Elections With 86 Percent Accuracy
    If you want Donald Trump to win the election, then you should be rooting for a stock market crash between now and November.  As you will see below, if stocks go up during the last three months before an election, the incumbent party almost always keeps the White House.  But if stocks go down during the last three months before an election, the incumbent party almost always loses.  Earlier today, Trump warned Americans to get out of the stock market, and if his warning turns out to be correct it will likely benefit him politically as well.  When the general population believes that things are going well, Americans tend to stick with current leadership, but when the general population believes that we have hit rocky times they are usually ready for a change.
  • Are Those Safe Haven Assets Safe Anymore?
    Michael Sonnenfeldt doesn't mince words: “There is no safety in safety,” the founder of Tiger 21, a network of “ultra-high-net-worth” investors, said. “All of the historical places you could get safe income from—dividend-paying stocks, bonds—they've all been bid up because of quantitative easing to the point where it's just trash.” Assets that include Treasury notes, high-quality dividend stocks, and low-volatility mutual funds have all seen spooked investors rush into their supposedly safe embrace. Sonnenfeldt and others argue that has transformed them. “When you overpay for what used to be safe assets,” he said, “they now have a lot of risk in them.” Whether they're “trash” is debatable. But the concern that the prices of these assets may now be propped up more by fear than by economic fundamentals is legitimate. Here's a look at how some “safe” assets that investors have raced into over the past year or so are holding up. For a backdrop, take a look at how the S&P 500 has performed since last August's deep dive.
  • Donald Trump Warns Americans To Get Out Of The Stock Market As The Dow Falls For A 7th Day In A Row
    One thing that you have to appreciate about Donald Trump is that unlike most politicians, he actually says what is on his mind.  On Tuesday, Trump told Fox Business that he had already gotten out of the stock market, and that he foresees “very scary scenarios” ahead for investors.  And of course things have already started to get a bit ominous for those holding stocks over the last week and a half.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has now closed down for seven days in a row, and that is the longest losing streak that we have seen since the panic of last August.  Over the past 12 months we have seen virtually every other major global stock market experience at least one major crash.  Could the U.S. markets be next?
  • The new political divide
    AS POLITICAL theatre, America’s party conventions have no parallel. Activists from right and left converge to choose their nominees and celebrate conservatism (Republicans) and progressivism (Democrats). But this year was different, and not just because Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party. The conventions highlighted a new political faultline: not between left and right, but between open and closed (see article). Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, summed up one side of this divide with his usual pithiness. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he declared. His anti-trade tirades were echoed by the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
  • The Price Of Oil Is Crashing Again, And That Is Very, Very Bad News For The U.S. Economy
    This wasn’t supposed to happen.  The price of oil was supposed to start going back up, and this would have brought much needed relief to economically-depressed areas of North America that are heavily dependent on the energy industry.  Instead, the price of oil is crashing again, and that is really bad news for a U.S. economy that is already mired in the worst “recovery” since 1949.  On Monday, U.S. oil was down almost four percent, and for a brief time it actually fell below 40 dollars a barrel.  Overall, the price of oil has fallen a staggering 21 percent since June 8th.  In less than two months, the “oil rally” that so many were pinning their hopes on has been totally wiped out, and if the price of oil continues to stay this low it is going to have very seriously implications for our economy moving forward.
  • Insuring Against a Market Selloff Just Keeps Getting Cheaper
    In a world of overpriced assets there's one thing that keeps going on sale: volatility. The cost of protecting against a fall in the S&P 500 has dipped to a one-year low, according to equity derivatives strategists at Credit Suisse Group AG. It couldn't be better timing given that analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are sounding the alarm bell of a drop in stocks over the next three months, laying out a laundry list of investor worries, including stretched valuations, that could knock the recent rally.
  • Painful To Watch: This Is The Weakest U.S. Economic ‘Recovery’ Since 1949
    Most of us have never witnessed an economic “recovery” this bad.  As you will see below, the average rate of economic growth since the last recession has been the lowest for any “recovery” in at least 67 years.  And unfortunately, the economy appears to be slowing down even more here in 2016.  On Friday, I talked about how the U.S. economy grew at a painfully slow rate of just 1.2 percent in the second quarter after only growing 0.8 percent during the first quarter.  And last week we also learned that the homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level ever.  This is not what a recovery looks like.  Instead, it very much appears that a new economic downturn has already begun.
  • Foreign Appetite For U.S. Securities Has Taken a Drubbing
    It wasn't supposed to be this way. When the Federal Reserve hiked benchmark rates in December, the initial jump in the short-end of the nominal U.S. yield curve raised expectations that foreign buyers would snap up the country's assets, thanks to their yield relative to those of other developed markets ravaged by low policy rates. In fact, net foreign flows to the U.S. have been decidedly weak this year, thanks to an exodus by foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds, who've been dumping U.S. securities in order to raise cash to put to work at home. In May, official institutions abroad raced out of U.S. stocks and bonds with $26 billion of outflows. Private buyers abroad were, by contrast, net buyers of U.S. securities, but that wasn't enough to keep the total positive: foreign flows out of U.S. securities totaled $11 billion, according to the most recently available data in May, sharply reversing April's $80.4 billion of inflows.
  • The Democratic Party No Longer Exists
    The Democratic Party that once was concerned with workers’ rights, the elderly, civil rights, and the constitutional protections of America liberty no longer exists. As the just completed Democratic presidential primaries and the Democratic presidential convention have clearly demonstrated, the United States now has two Republican parties in service to the One Percent. The organized Democrats–the Democratic National Committee–have shown themselves to be even more venal and corrupt than the Republicans. Leaked emails document that the Democratic National Committee conspired with the Hillary campaign in order to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. It is clear that Sanders was the choice of Democratic Party voters for president, but the nomination was stolen from him by vote fraud and dirty tricks. The DNC and the media whores have tried to discredit the incriminating emails by alleging that the leaked emails resulted from a plot by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in behalf of “Putin’s American agent,” Donald Trump. “A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin,” as the presstitute scum put it.
  • Bank of England cuts interest rates to 0.25% amid biggest ever GDP downgrade in modern history
    Interest rates have been slashed to a new historic low of 0.25 per cent and the Bank of England has pushed the button on another £170 billion of monetary stimulus to stop the economy sliding back into recession in the wake of the UK’s Brexit vote. Unveiling its most drastic set of GDP growth forecast downgrades in its modern history, the Bank said the UK economy will virtually grind to a halt in the wake of the Brexit vote – coming perilously close to another recession. The Bank’s forecasts include the positive impact of today’s stimulus package, implying the UK economy would otherwise have returned to recession this year for the first time since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Instead, the Bank is now expecting quarterly GDP growth to slump to just 0.1 per cent in the third quarter of the year – and to eke out roughly the same meagre output in the final quarter.
  • America is Doomed Without Restoring the Rule of Law-Karl Denninger
    Trader and entrepreneur Karl Denninger has a dire warning. He basically says if there is lawlessness at the top of society, there will be lawlessness at the bottom.  Denninger, who is so distraught he has suspended writing on his popular website, explains, “It is illegal for any entity with market power or anybody else to price fix.  It is illegal to price commodities of like, mind and quantity in the market place.  That is a federal law, and violations of these laws are not civil affairs, they’re felonies. . . . The only deterrents for corporations against bad behavior is people go to jail or the firm has its charter revoked because it runs out of money.  The reason that is the case is as long as I can pay a fine and shift the cost onto the customers or shareholders or both, there is not deterrent—at all. . . . When does a CEO ever get indicted?  When do members of the board ever get indicted?  The answer is never.”
  • Buy Gold… Some More
    I spent the entirety of last week in one of my favorite cities in the world: Vancouver, British Columbia. This jewel of the Pacific Northwest has long been the heart of the world’s junior mining industry. It’s not that any mines are actually located here, but the city boasts more mining head offices than any other. So with the big gold and silver rally of the last few months, Vancouver is abuzz once again. High-end restaurants are packed, Bentleys are the ride of choice and real estate prices are going crazy. The occasion for my trip to Vancouver was the annual Sprott Natural Resource Symposium. I was invited to speak at the conference by my good friend and uber mining analyst Rick Rule. I spoke amongst the giants of the resources world: Bob Friedland, Ross Beaty, Rob McEwen, Doug Casey and, of course, Rick himself. This year’s event was a lovefest for gold and gold-mining stocks… bordering on a Woodstock experience!
  • The Dollar Will Be Removed From Int’l Trade,Which Will Send Shock Waves Throughout The US: Jim Willie
    Neocons, CIA and the “deep state” in the U.S.. NATO in Europe. Who else is being aggressive in our world towards other nations? Who else is continually poking Russia and China to provoke a war? What actions have Russia or China demonstrated that makes a thinking person say “Why are they being aggressive?” Not one time is this the case. The U.S. has a military budget that is more than double the rest of the world combined! Who is the real aggressor?
  • The £1 trillion pension crisis facing 11m (and they're the lucky ones)
    Pressure is mounting on the Government to oversee a root-and-branch overhaul of Britain’s company pension schemes in which more than 11  million workers have savings. It comes as these “final salary” schemes are registering their biggest ever funding shortfall, now at almost £1 trillion (£1,000bn). This sum is the gap between the investments these pension schemes own and the likely eventual cost of the pensions they have already promised to pay.
  • President Obama Signed This GMO Labeling Bill
    Soon all food packages sold in the U.S. will have to have the proper labeling. On Friday President Obama signed bill S. 764 that puts into place a federal standard for foods that have been made with genetically modified organisms, ABC News reports. This move comes just about two weeks after Congress passed legislation to necessitate labeling on all food packages that indicates whether or not they contain GMO ingredients. “This measure will provide new opportunities for consumers to have access to information about their food,” Katie Hill, White House spokesperson, told the news outlet. This didn’t win over all food-labeling advocates, however. One criticism is that the bill allowed companies to use QR codes or 1-800 numbers as a form of GMO labeling, forcing consumers to scan the code or make a call to get more information. That’s why some opponents are calling the bill the DARK Act, short for “Denying Americans the Right to Know,” and argue these alternative labels discriminate against low-income consumers who lack the technology to access off-label info. Others have criticized the bill because it isn’t as stringent as a piece of Vermont legislation that will now be superseded by the federal law. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was among the federal bill’s critics, and urged his Twitter followers to contact their senators about the bill earlier this month.
  • BREXIT BOOST Britain’s economy growing twice the speed of Eurozone as 27 countries seek to cut a trade deal with UK
    BRITAIN’S economy is growing at twice the speed of the ailing Eurozone, Brexit-boosting figures revealed yesterday. The UK’s national output increased by 0.6 per cent between April and June, while 19-country single currency bloc grew by just 0.3 per cent. Eurozone growth halved from the 0.6 per cent growth it saw in the first three months of the year as France’s economy flatlined. Overall the EU grew by only 0.4 per cent between April and June, Eurostat figures showed. MPs hailed it as further proof that the UK is right to cut ties with Brussels.
  • A “Terrorist” Strike on the US which will make 9-11 look like a Summer Picnic: Why a Nuclear Attack on the US Mainland is Inevitable, and probably Imminent.
    I wondered long and hard about how to pitch this post (actually, whether to even write it!). It’s not exactly going to make me a lot of friends. But, fortunately, I don’t give two shits about that. I’m pretty sure US citizens waking up to the likelihood of, and reasons for, this event, is just a bit more important. An atomic bomb destroying central Manhattan. Or Washington DC. Or Los Angeles. Or wherever. It only happens in the movies, right? It will make 9-11 pale into relative insignificance (except of course, for later historians, interested in the context of how the well-planned over-reaction to 9-11, almost certainly led to the nuclear attack!).
  • Central Banks Will Create A Historical Gold Rush
    The central banks are leading the world into a black hole and have no idea what a disaster they have created. What initially seemed like a nice money spinner for the private bankers in 1913 when the Fed was set up has resulted in a $2 quadrillion (at least) monster that is now totally out of control. Banks and central banks are experts at forging money. During the last hundred years, the Ponzi scheme seemed to work beautifully under the guise of Keynesianism. So whenever there was a problem in any economy in the world, all that was needed was some stimulus in the form of credit or forged money creation. And there are so many ways to forge money.Through the unlimited flexibility of the fractional banking system, money printing became the most perfect perpetual motion system whereby the more credit that was created the more credit and paper money could be issued by the banks. There is absolutely no limit to how much money could be printed. So banks and central banks have been in collusion to print or forge paper money which has no value and no asset banking. Any private individual doing the same would spend the rest of his days in jail. But when the bankers do it, it creates massive wealth and respectability for them since they have the full backing of governments. What a rotten world!
  • 12 Times Pope Francis Has Openly Promoted A One World Religion Or A New World Order
    On Sunday, Pope Francis told hundreds of thousands of young people gathered for World Youth Day in Poland that they need to “believe in a new humanity” and that they should refuse “to see borders as barriers”.  Every two or three years, Catholics from all over the planet converge for one of these giant conferences, and as you will see below the Pope has not been shy about using historic occasions to promote his agenda.  Unfortunately, it has become exceedingly clear that his agenda includes moving humanity toward a one world religion and a new world order.  Of course Pope Francis is not going to use those exact phrases, but at this point it is very obvious what he is trying to do.  If you don’t believe me now, perhaps you will see things differently after you have viewed the evidence that I have compiled in the rest of this article.
  • Six Major Events That Will Change History
    Investors globally have never faced risk of the magnitude that the we are now exposed to. But sadly very few are aware of the unprecedented risks the world is facing. For the ones who understand risk and take the right decisions, it will “lead to fortune”. Only very few will choose that route. Instead most investors will continue to live in the hope that current trends will go on forever but sadly these people will end up “in shallows and in miseries”. Risk is now staring us all right in our face but very few people can actually see it. 1. No Sovereign state will ever repay their debt, 2. No bank will ever give depositors their money back, 3. Stock markets will fall 90% or more, 4. Property markets will collapse, 5. Currencies will go to ZERO, 6. Geopolitical risk, terrorism and social unrest.
  • EU death knell: Eurozone growth HALVES as French economy grinds to a halt
    EUROPE's economic growth plunged by half in the second quarter of 2016, raising fears the outlook for the bloc is worsening. Across the eurozone, gross domestic product (GDP) increased by just 0.3 per cent, falling from 0.6 per cent in the previous quarter, figures from Eurostat showed. Unemployment was also revealed to be standing at a worrying 10.1 per cent last month. France shocked onlookers as its economy ground to a complete halt in the three months between between April and June. Household spending in the eurozone's second largest economy plunged in the second quarter.
  • Revealed: the High Street names that used benefits claimants as free labour
    The names of major companies who used a benefits scheme to employ people without paying them have been revealed after the government lost a four-year legal battle to protect their identities. Nando's, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, WH Smith, Poundstretcher, Cash Converters, Boots, DHL and Superdrug were among more than 500 companies, councils and charities found to have been using the free labour of benefit claimants, who were forced to take unpaid work under rules brought in by David Cameron's Coalition government. The Court of Appeal has overturned the Department for Work and Pension's attempt to keep the names a secret at an estimated cost of tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees. Debbie Abrahams, Labour's shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said the scheme demonstrated the Conservative government's “skewed view of the world”.
  • Global Deflation Alert: World Trade Growth Has Ground To A Halt
    Falling rates of global trade growth have attracted much comment by analysts and officials, giving rise to a literature on the ‘global trade slowdown’ (Hoekman 2015, Constantinescu et al. 2016). The term ‘slowdown’ gives the impression of world trade losing momentum, but growing nonetheless. The sense of the global pie getting larger has the soothing implication that one nation’s export gains don’t come at the expense of another’s. But are we right to be so sanguine?
  • Over Past 50 Years This Big Of Earnings Recession Has Always Triggered A Bear Market
    It’s earnings season once again and it looks as if, as a group, corporate America still can’t find the end of its earnings decline since profits peaked over a year ago. What’s more analysts, renowned for their Pollyannish expectations, can’t seem to find it, either. So I thought it might be interesting to look at what the stock market has done in the past during earnings recessions comparable to the current one. And it’s pretty eye-opening. Over the past half-century, we have never seen a decline in earnings of this magnitude without at least a 20% fall in stock prices, a hurdle many use to define a bear market.
  • Weekend Reading: Global Instability is Now the Fed’s Perma-Excuse
    This week, the headlines have been dominated by the Democratic National Convention pushing Janet Yellen’s latest FOMC non-action to “page 6.” Of course, it was not surprising to hear yesterday Janet Yellen has once again “flip-flopped” on hiking rates. This tweet from HedgEye sums it up nicely.
  • Here’s What Happens When the World Overdoses on Debt
    Bonds are no longer assets. They’re liabilities. You might find this hard to believe. After all, most folks think of bonds as a safe way to grow their money. For decades, you could make a decent return of 5% or more in government- and investment-grade bonds without risking big losses. Not anymore. These days, most bonds pay next to nothing. Some have negative interest rates, which means owners must pay interest on the bond instead of earning interest. If you own a bond that pays a negative interest rate, you’re guaranteed to lose money if you hold the bond to maturity. And yet, folks are lining up to buy these bonds.
  • Bo Polny Predicts Historic Crash By Jubilee End-Day, October 2
    I recently interviewed Bo Polny of Gold2020 Forecast. Polny is famous for his numerical dissection of investments and markets  and we discussed Shemitah market cycles, the timing of Brexit, 9/11 and the Jubilee end-date in early October among other issues. Polny is blunt about what is about to take place: A tremendous market crash of historical proportions that will leave most investors stunned and broke. He believes the time to get out of the stock market is growing short and that one ought to take profits and place them in gold and silver while it is still possible. Here at TDV, Senior Analyst Ed Bugos, like myself, has long anticipated such  moves and as a result, the TDV portfolio is up 200% in the last year. Polny has predicted that the Dow will eventually move down to the 5,000 level and not recover – and he makes similar points in this interview. Silver, he has predicted, is going over $50 per ounce while gold is going over $2,000 per ounce in the near term. In fact, if gold doubles in price, then silver could quadruple. This Jubilee Year of 2016 is what Polny calls the “year of judgement.” He’s in agreement with us on this, of course. And in past interviews, he has pointed out conditions begin to mimic the chaos of 1764, especially in the US where 250 years ago, society suffered from poverty, hunger, social chaos and finally war.
  • If Everything Is So Great, Then Why Do Two-Thirds Of Americans Say The Country Is On The Wrong Track?
    Americans appear to be increasingly pessimistic about the future of America.  According to a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, 68.9 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track, and only 23.1 percent of Americans believe that we are headed in the right direction.  But if you have been listening to the endless parade of political speeches at the Democratic and Republican National conventions, you would be tempted to think that the greatest days for the United States are right around the corner.  The politicians keep promising us that better times are coming if we will just make the “correct” choices on election day, but no matter who we send to Washington D.C. things just seem to keep getting worse and worse.  Let’s take a look at just a few of the signs that indicate that our country is going in the wrong direction…
  • Brexit post-mortem
    It is a month after Britain’s surprise vote to leave the EU. A new Conservative Prime Minister and Chancellor are in place, both David Cameron and George Osborne having fallen on their swords. The third man in the losing triumvirate, Mark Carney, is still in office. Having taken a political stance in the pre-referendum debate, there can be little doubt the post-referendum fall in sterling was considerably greater than if he had kept on the side-lines. This article takes to task the Treasury’s estimates of the effect of Brexit on the British economy and Mr Carney’s role in the affair, then assesses the actual consequences.
  • A Bull Market For The Ages As The Price Of Gold Heads To A Jaw-Dropping $20,000
    After such a significant move in the gold, silver and mining share markets, today King World News thought it was a good idea to take a step back and look at the big picture of the war between gold and the Federal Reserve.  This led to a remarkable question:  Is the price of gold headed to nearly $20,000? MacroTrends:  The chart shows the ratio of the gold price to the St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base back to 1918. The monetary base roughly matches the size of the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which indicates the level of new money creation required to prevent debt deflation. Previous gold bull markets ended when this ratio crossed over the 4.8 level.
  • Deutsche Bank to close almost 200 branches, axe 3000 jobs
    Germany’s largest lender is set to shut over a quarter of its branches across the country as the company goes through a major restructuring process. The closures are set to take place over the next few months, with 188 of Deutsche Bank’s 723 branches nationwide due to close their doors. On Sunday, Deutsche Bank published a list of the affected branches. North Rhine-Westphalia is to be hit hardest, with 51 branches in Germany’s most populous state listed for the chopping board. In Bavaria eleven will close, eight of which are in Munich.
  • FMC Axes 1,000 Jobs, Prepares for Merger
    The Houston-based energy equipment manufacturer, FMC Technologies, has slashed 1,000 jobs from its workforce as it preps to merge with Technip, a French firm. Due to dropping revenue in U.S. shale production, FMC’s profit during the second quarter sank to $2.2 million, or 1 cent for each share. This number is a major dip from the $108 million amassed during the same period in 2015.
  • U.S. Economy Runs At Stall Speed For Third Straight Quarter
    The U.S. economy expanded at a 1.2% annual rate in the second quarter, barely improving from Q1's downwardly revised 0.8% advance, the Commerce Department said Friday. Wall Street had expected a 2.6% pace. Consumer spending was very strong  — up 4.2% — but housing and business investment declined, the latter for a third straight quarter. It's also the third straight quarter of anemic overall growth. In addition to Q2's 1.2% and Q1's revised 0.8%, Q4 2015 GDP growth was cut to 0.9%. On a per capita basis, the U.S. economy is essentially flat.
  • Top Advisor To Sovereign Wealth Funds Says Gold & Silver Headed Into The Stratosphere Along With The Shares
    With the gold and silver mining shares on a tear as the XAU and HUI Indexes hit new highs, today a top advisor to the most prominent sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and institutional funds in the world, told King World News that gold and silver are headed into the stratosphere along with the mining shares.
  • Here’s the key factor pushing oil prices to $35 a barrel
    After enjoying a stellar run-up, crude futures are headed south again, treading into bear-market territory. However, the fundamentals of supply and demand may not be the key reason behind the recent bout of weakness in crude futures. U.S. benchmark oil, West Texas Intermediate trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange CLU6, -0.12% has lost nearly 15% of its value so far in July, as of Thursday. Back on June 8, WTI had nearly doubled its value closing at a 2016 high of $51.23 a barrel after reaching a low of $26.21 on Feb. 11. On Friday, crude slipped more than 20% below its June peak, below $41 a barrel, officially pushing it into a fresh bear market—defined as a decline of at least 20% from a recent high. What a difference seven weeks can make!
  • Is Bank of Japan signaling that it’s running out of ammo
    The Bank of Japan on Friday disappointed investors by offering up a much smaller-than-expected round of additional stimulus while also announcing a review of its current policy measures, leading some observers to wonder whether policy makers fear they are running out of tools to stoke the Japanese economy. “The message the BOJ is sending is not so much ‘whatever it takes’ as ‘monetary policy’s pretty much played out,’” said Kit Juckes, global macro strategist at Société Générale, in a note. The Bank of Japan under Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda has been an aggressive buyers of bonds and equities. Its decision to implement negative rates earlier this year caught investors off-guard, but the move was seen backfiring as the Japanese yen failed to weaken. The market’s reaction to those earlier moves began to prompt concern that aggressive easing efforts by global central banks were losing their effectiveness or potentially becoming counterproductive.
  • Get ready for America’s new $29 trillion debt
    Only when a crisis erupts does the society demand action. And of course, at that point, it’s too late. Such was the case of France in the late 1700s– a situation so desperate that the finance minister resorted to all-out lies in order to conceal their true condition. Most of the West is in this position today– summed up by Jean-Claude Junker’s (former President of the European Council) explanation of the Greek debt crisis in 2011: “When it gets serious, you have to lie.” Over in the United States, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published its own projections for America’s grim public finances. Bear in mind that US debt is already $19+ trillion and climbing. The CBO sees at least another $10 trillion in debt in the coming years, and projects that the US budget deficit will increase every single year. The evidence is already so clear. Military retirement spending rose by 8.7% last year. Medicare costs were up 10%. Certain government employee benefit programs rose by 17%. Overall mandatory outlays rose on average by 6.6%, three times faster than US GDP. So essentially the US government’s spending growth is far outpacing US economic growth. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how dangerous this is.
  • Peter Schiff: Expect An Economic Crisis Infinitely Worse Than 2008
    Want to understand why people MUST begin to prepare for the worst economic crash in global history. Here it is as plainly as it can be put, with tons of supporting links at the bottom. In the following video, AMTV interviews Peter Schiff after yesterday's Fed meeting, and as an enormous fan of Peter’s for over a decade, as well as a client of his, I can’t help but laugh when only :18 into the interview Peter gives his first eye roll. Frankly, I don’t know how the man keeps his eyes in their sockets without them rolling right out. He’s always swimming upstream against the mainstream media outlets, and it has to be tiring.
  • Hillary Won’t Win Presidency, DNC and Clinton Exposed for Rigging Democratic Primary, Economic Update and Global War Heating Up
    It’s now been totally exposed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigged the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. This is a turning point that says no way Clinton can be elected without nearly half the Democrat voters that supported Bernie Sanders.  A WikiLeaks email dump at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia showed clear evidence the DNC committed fraud and collusion against all candidates and rigged the Primary in favor of Hillary Clinton.  Outraged and disenfranchised Sanders voters are protesting by the thousands, and yet, the mainstream media, by and large, will not cover the protests taking place outside the DNC convention.  These are mostly young people who voted or worked diligently for the Sander’s campaign.  Greg Hunter says Clinton will get only a small percentage of Sander’s voters, and the rest will vote for Donald Trump, another candidate or simply say home.  Hillary is toast and will not become the President of the United States.
  • Central Bankers are Driving Us All Into the Dirt – The Great Unwind has started.
    One of the major triggers I’ve been warning about is already happening, even before we understand and/or admit that we are in a recession. Global corporate debt now sits at a record $51 trillion and is poised to hit $75 trillion by 2020 – just four years away. If interest rates rise and the economy slows, it will be very hard for companies to roll these bonds over – and then we get what S&P Global Ratings is calling “Crexit.” The bond markets dry up for corporate lending, especially higher-yield junk bonds. This would set off a chain of corporate defaults and bankruptcies that would cause central banks to start to lose control of the economy, as they did in 2008 forward.
  • Another Retailer Leveraged Buyout Bites the Dust
    Claire Stores – “the latest trends in jewelry & accessories for girls, teens, & tweens” with “must-have hair accessories, stylish beauty products, & more” as it says – has decided to start twisting the arms of its creditors, and has hired law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius to help in those endeavors, “sources” told Reuters. Creditors can see the big gun pointed at their heads: if they don’t agree to a debt restructuring deal entailing a big haircut for them, the company will file for bankruptcy, which might entail an even bigger haircut. To cut costs, the company already shuttered 150 stores over the past four quarters, and is now down to 2,831 stores in the US and Europe, as per its earnings report for the quarter ended April 30. Revenues dropped 6.4% to $300 million, generating a net loss of $38.8 million. It’s buckling under $2.35 billion in long-term debt. Interest expense amounted to $55.1 million, or 18.3% of revenues! As so often in these basket cases, there’s a private equity angle to it.
  • The American Dream Plunges to Record Low – Consequence of turning “home” into a financialized “asset class.”
    Something happened on the way when the concept of “home” transmogrified to a financialized “asset class” whose price the government, the Fed, and the industry conspire to inflate into the blue sky, no matter what the consequences. And here are the consequences. The Census Bureau, which has been tracking homeownership rates in its data series going back to 1965 on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, just reported that in the second quarter 2016, the homeownership rate dropped to 62.9%, the lowest point on record. It matches the low point in Q1 and Q2 of 1965 when the data series began. At no time in between did it ever fall this low. And it was down half a percentage point from 63.4% a year ago.
  • US Government Mucks up Money-Laundering in Real Estate, Puts Luxury Housing Bubbles at Risk
    Manhattan and Miami already get mauled. Now expanding to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Southern California, even Texas! Cash sales of homes – mostly the domain of foreign and affluent buyers – fell to 32% of total home sales in April, down 2.8 percentage points from a year ago, according to a new report from CoreLogic. For the first four months, cash sales dropped to 34%, the lowest since 2008. In Florida, the number one destination for foreign homebuyers, cash sales accounted for 46% of sales, and in New York, for 44%, both decreasing as well. The “strong dollar” and “global uncertainty” were blamed. In Manhattan and Miami, the luxury condo markets are already getting mauled. For example, we reported that in Manhattan, condo prices plunged 14% in just three months.
  • Bye Bye Middle Class: The Rate Of Homeownership In The United States Has Hit The Lowest Level Ever
    The percentage of Americans that own a home has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded.  During the second quarter of 2016, the non-seasonally adjusted homeownership rate fell to just 62.9 percent, which was exactly where it was at when the U.S. Census began publishing this measurement back in 1965.  This is not what a “recovery” looks like.  All throughout the Obama years, the percentage of Americans that own a home has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.  The reason for this, of course, is that the middle class in America is dying.  Last year, we learned that middle class Americans now make up a minority of the population for the first time ever.  In order to have a high rate of homeownership, you need a thriving middle class, and you can’t have a thriving middle class without good paying middle class jobs.  This is why I write about the evisceration of the middle class so extensively, because the U.S. economy is systematically being hollowed out and most Americans don’t understand what is happening.
  • ExxonMobil Tumbles To 2-Month Lows After Earnings Miss Worst Analyst Expectation
    But, but, but the dividend yield, the oil recovery? ExxonMobil is down almost 3% in the pre-market to 2-month lows as it misses earnings expectations drastically (+41c vs 64c exp.. below the lowest expectation of +55c). Production levels also missed expectations as it appears the oil glut has trickled down to motor fuels, dragging refinery margins notably lower.
  • Why Social Fragmentation Suits The Powers That Be
    The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power. Ours is an Age of Fracture (the 2011 book by Daniel Rodgers) in which “earlier notions of history and society that stressed solidity, collective institutions, and social circumstances gave way to a more individualized human nature that emphasized choice, agency, performance, and desire.” A society that is fragmenting into cultural groups that are themselves fracturing into smaller units of temporary and highly contingent solidarity is ideal for Elites bent on maintaining political and financial control. A society that has fragmented into a media-fed cultural war of hot-button identity-gender-religious politics is a society that is incapable of resisting concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
  • Oil Surges After OPEC Production Hits Record High: Here's Why
    Now that the narrative of rising gasoline demand and a “strong summer driving season” is finally over, courtesy of gasoline stocks that just refuse to drop and a glut in PADD1 that has never been greater defenders of the “bull” crude oil thesis are stumped. “Doubts are rife as to whether the oil supply imbalance is indeed slowly drawing to an end,” Stephen Brennock of oil brokerage PVM, said. So with no fallback “story” both WTI and Brent are down 20% since their last peak in June, as another bear market for oil has arrived.
  • Peter Schiff Slams The Fed's ‘Loud Talk, No Stick' Policy
    Theodore Roosevelt’s famous mantra “speak softly and carry a big stick” suggested that the United States should seek to avoid creating controversies and expectations through loose or rash pronouncements, but be prepared to act decisively, with the most powerful weaponry, when the time came. More than a century later, the Federal Reserve has stood Teddy’s maxim on its head. As far as Janet Yellen and her colleagues at the Fed are concerned, the Fed should speak as loudly, frequently, and as circularly as possible to conceal that they are holding no stick whatsoever. Roosevelt's “stick” was America’s military might, which in his day largely boiled down to the U.S. Navy, which he had enlarged and modernized. To demonstrate to a potential adversary that he was prepared to use these weapons, Roosevelt sent the fleet around the world in a massive show of force. However, he took care to couch the expedition in soothing rhetoric. He even ordered the battleships to be painted white to create the impression that they were angels of mercy rather than instruments of power. The combination proved effective. America’s global influence increased dramatically during his presidency even though few shots were fired.
  • Trump Unloads On Hillary Speech Attacking His “Dark” Vision For America
    In her climactic, nomination acceptance speech concluding the Democratic National Convention, as expected Hillary Clinton delivered remarks (which according to some were upstaged by previous speeches by Michelle Obama and the president) that focused on themes of “optimism” and “unity”, while ripping her challenger, Donald Trump, and emphasizing his “dark” vision of America. Much of Clinton’s address focused on the choice voters face between the former secretary of State and Trump, who Clinton said threatened to take the country from “morning in America to midnight in America.” “Bonds of trust and respect are fraying,” she said. “We have to decide whether we will all work together so we can all rise together.”
  • The Fed Is Preparing For Negative Rates – Here's The Sign Everyone Missed
    I think it’s possible that the Fed will push rates below zero when the next recession arrives. In that regard, something important happened recently. And not many people noticed. I’ll do a quick review to explain. In Congressional testimony last February, a member of Congress asked Janet Yellen if the Fed had legal authority to use negative interest rates. Her answer was this: “In the spirit of prudent planning we always try to look at what options we would have available to us, either if we needed to tighten policy more rapidly than we expect or the opposite. So we would take a look at [negative rates]. The legal issues I'm not prepared to tell you have been thoroughly examined at this point. I am not aware of anything that would prevent [the Fed from taking interest rates into negative territory]. But I am saying we have not fully investigated the legal issues.” So as of then, Yellen had no firm answer either way. A few weeks later, she sent a letter to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA). He had asked what the Fed intended to do in the next recession and whether it had authority to implement negative rates.
  • Why the EU stress test is a farce and the Eurozone is set to IMPLODE, writes Paolo Barnard
    “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”. After the results of the European banks’ stress test I want to cry: “A Brexit passport! a Brexit passport! My house for a Brexit passport!” And I’m not joking. The much expected results of the 2016 EBA’s stress test of the main EU lenders is a farce, and it’s not funny, because the lives of millions could be jeopardised by it. The desperate EU regulators rigged the test to the point of ridicule: first it did not examine lenders from Greece or Portugal, where banks’ balance sheets are akin to a warzone. Second, the test lacked a pass/fail mark. Then EU regulators pretended that the catastrophic NIRP factor (negative interest rates set mainly by the ECB) didn’t exist.
  • Monte Paschi Fails European “Stress Test” Meant To Restore Confidence In Europe's Struggling Banks
    Moments ago, the European Banking Authority published the 2016 bank stress test results, whose purpose – as every other year –  is to inspire confidence in Europe's struggling banks; it differs from a market-based assessment of bank stress – that particular “test” can be seen by observing the stock prices of such giant banks as Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, both of which recently hit all time lows. As previewed yesterday, Italy's 3rd largest, and most insolvent bank, Banca Monte di Siena was the worst performer in European regulators’ stress tests, and the only lender to have its capital wiped out in the exam.  According to Bloomberg, Monte Paschi’s common equity tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure balance sheet strength, would to a negative 2.2% in an adverse economic scenario, the test revealed, which put lenders through a simulation of a severe recession over three years. Another Italian bank, UniCredit, would see its ratio fall to 7.1% , the second-worst result of the five Italian lenders being examined. Needless, to say, the test – as structured – was a farce from the beginning as it did not account for negative interest rates, something Europe has trillions of, nor did it test for Brexit. Finally, the test did not include any banks from Greece of Portugal, where virtually all banks are currently insolvent.
  • Gundlach: “Sell Everything, Nothing Here Looks Good”
    Two weeks ago, an already bearish Jeff Gundlach appeared to hit the “glass floor” of negative sentiment, and smash right through it. On July 13, the new bond king said that there is “big money” to be made on the “short side.” Gundlach added that he has been selectively betting against shares in the Standard & Poor's 500 index and continues to favor emerging market bonds over high-yield “junk” debt. Gundlach was just as skeptical about bonds, warning that the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at around 1.38% to 1.39% “is a terrible trade location. It is the worst trade location in the history of the 10-year Treasury.” His caution seemed prophetic: it was followed by the biggest two-day spike in 10Y yields in 5 years.  However, just like Gross' infamous “Bund Spike” last May, the selling in TSYs now appears to be over, and following a series of lousy data reports yields are once again sliding.
  • EU approves imports of genetically modified Monsanto soybeans
    The European Commission has approved the import and processing of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans, after debates over glyphosate herbicide’s safety delayed the introduction of genetically modified soybean variety for months. “Today the Commission authorized three GMOs for food/feed uses (soybean MON 87708 x MON 89788, soybean MON 87705 x MON 89788 and soybean FG 72), all of which have gone through a comprehensive authorization procedure, including a favorable scientific assessment by EFSA,” the European Commission said in a statement Friday.
  • Chinese & Russian navies to hold drills in South China Sea in September
    China and Russia will hold naval drills in the South China Sea in September, the Chinese Defense Ministry told a news conference on Thursday, adding they are designed to strengthen cooperation between the two countries and were not aimed at raising tensions. “This is a routine exercise between the two armed forces, aimed at strengthening the developing China-Russia strategic cooperative partnership,” China's Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a news conference, as cited by Reuters. He also added that the exercise is “not directed against third parties.”
  • IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro, apologises for the immolation of Greece
    The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory. This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the Fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions. It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis,  and traces a shocking break-down in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation.
  • ‘Unprecedented': European govts sold $1.3bn in arms to Middle East, some ended up with ISIS – report 
    Governments of Central and Eastern European countries have been selling an “unprecedented” amount of weapons and ammunition to the Middle East in recent years, fueling armed conflicts in the troubled region, a new report claims. According to the findings by a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a group of European countries led by Croatia and the Czech Republic have been channeling their arms to the region since 2012. Since then, they have gained over US$1 billion from such sales, despite some of the weapons ending up in the hands of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists, according to the report, which was published earlier on Wednesday.
  • Paul Craig Roberts – We Are About To Witness The End Of The World As We Know It
    Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, just warned that we are about to witness the end of the world as we know it. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  “World War II resulted in Europe being conquered, not by Berlin but by Washington. The conquest was certain but not all at once. Washington’s conquest of Europe resulted from the Marshall Plan, from fears of Stalin’s Red Army that caused Europe to rely on Washington’s protection and to subordinate Europe’s militaries to Washington in NATO, from the replacement of the British pound as world reserve currency with the US dollar, and from the long process of the subordination of the sovereignty of individual European countries to the European Union, a CIA initiative implemented by Washington in order to control all of Europe by controlling only one unaccountable government. With few exceptions, principally the UK, membership in the EU also meant loss of financial independence. As only the European Central Bank, an EU institution, can create euros, those countries so foolish as to accept the euro as their currency no longer have the power to create their own money in order to finance budget deficits.
  • Hemlock Moment Coming for Financial Markets-Gregory Mannarino
    Trader/analyst Gregory Mannarino says don’t be fooled by a stock market near all-time highs. Mannarino explains, “The reason we took out the last all-time high is the speculation that the world central banks are going to continue to stimulate and suppress interest rates and go deeper into negative territory.  This is what caused this recent run-up here, but what you are not going to hear on mainstream media, and this is huge, this run-up we have seen, record high, record high, record high is on no volume.  What does that mean?  There is no conviction to this.  We have seen this before at every single market top. . . . This can only go on so long.  These stock buyback programs, these stimulus programs, at some point the medicine is going to turn to poison.  It can only go so far. . . . It’s going to be a hemlock moment. To put a timeline on this is almost impossible because world central banks have become very resourceful.  Nobody would have ever imagined the central banks would have done what they have done for so long.  They have flipped the system upside down.  They are so desperate now to keep the market propped up.”
  • BREXIT BOOM: UK business deals up by 800 PER CENT in month following EU Referendum
    BRITISH companies have raked in tens of billions in new deals, with an eight-fold increase in the space of one month, in a business bonanza since the UK voted to leave the European Union. Some 60 deals have been done in the month since Brexit, worth £26.3billion. This is in contrast to deals done in the month before the EU referendum which were worth just £3.2bn in total. One of the biggest deals has been the acquisition of chip designer ARM Holdings by Japan’s SoftBank for £24.4bn – in a clear signal that major countries remain committed to doing business with Britain. The news has been welcomed by the government, with Prime Minister Theresa May declaring Britain “open for business.”
  • Corrupt Or Just Stupid? Markets Hand Corporations An Unlimited Credit Card
    In the sound money community it’s generally understood that abandoning the last vestige of the gold standard in 1971 gave major countries effectively-unlimited credit cards – which corrupted them irredeemably. Now – with government bonds yielding either next to or less than nothing – that corruption has begun to spread to corporations, whose bonds are being snapped up by yield-deprived investors.
  • Still Waiting for a Precious Metals “Correction”? Get Off the Dime and Buy Some Silver Ones…
    Over time, charts for a bull market tend to print higher highs and higher lows on the way to the primary top. Two steps forward, one step back, creating a visual stair-step effect. This chart “picture” has been in evidence for gold, silver, and the miners since January. So far, waiting hasn't been a good strategy. Yes, there were a couple of times in April, and a month later in late May where you might have been able to buy and save some money. But things can get in the way of that plan. And for a number of people I've talked to, things apparently did. The first obstacle is Timing: Away from your computer, on a trip, sick, or depressed? Whoops, you missed the “correction.”
  • Why A “Dollar” Should Only Be A Name For A Unit Of Gold
    Prior to 1933, the name “dollar” was used to refer to a unit of gold that had a weight of 23.22 grains. Since there are 480 grains in one ounce, this means that the name dollar also stood for 0.048 ounce of gold. This in turn, means that one ounce of gold referred to $20.67. Now, $20.67 is not the price of one ounce of gold in terms of dollars as popular thinking has it, for there is no such entity as a dollar. Dollar is just a name for 0.048 ounce of gold. On this Rothbard wrote: “No one prints dollars on the purely free market because there are, in fact, no dollars; there are only commodities, such as wheat, cars, and gold.” Likewise, the names of other currencies stood for a fixed amount of gold. The habit of regarding these names as a separate entity from gold emerged with the enforcement of the paper standard. Over time, as paper money assumed a life of its own, it became acceptable to set the price of gold in terms of dollars, francs, pounds, etc. (the absurdity of all this reached new heights with the introduction of the floating currency system). In a free market, currencies do not float against each other. They are exchanged in accordance with a fixed definition.
  • Goldman Raises September Rate Hike Odds To 30%, Sees 70% Probability Of Another Hike in 2016
    In the absence of Jon Hilsenrath, whose “post-Fed-Mortem” is strangely missing today from the WSJ (although we haven't checked the ultra exclusive WSJ Pro), here is Goldman's assessment, which considering who makes NY Fed policy, is even more appropriate. According to Goldman, after parsing the Fed statement, September odds have risen to 30% (from 25%), while December incremental rate odds are 40%, “implying a roughly 70% probability of at least one rate increase this year.”
  • Oil Stocks Still Treading 30-Year “Line In The Sand”
    A key index of oil stocks continues to hold above its reclaimed 30-year old Up trendline; however, it’s been unable to mount any bounce off of it. A lot of our very recent commentary has focused on the historically tight trading ranges in the major averages over the past few weeks. Whether they are digesting recent breakouts or merely reflecting the market’s “dog days of summer”, there has been precious little movement among the indices. One area that has taken that tight range to an extreme is the oil & gas sector. Since displaying a bit of a pop in mid-April, the sector has essentially gone nowhere for the past 3 months. Specifically, as measured by the NYSE ARCA Oil & Gas Index, or XOI, the sector has traded within a 9% range over the past 13 weeks (i.e., a full quarter). If that doesn’t seem that tight, consider that in the previous 3 quarters, the XOI averaged nearly a 7% range per week. Now besides the dearth of action in the XOI, the other interesting aspect of the recent range is in its location. We have pointed out a few times (most recently in April) that the index’s lifetime Up trendline, stemming back to the lows in 1986, was still seemingly being respected by prices. Furthermore, this 30-year old trendline (which connects the lows in 2003 and late 2015) has appeared to delineate the safe periods in the sector from the “risk off” ones during 2016.
  • Durable Goods Orders Crash Most In 2 Years – Longest Non-Recessionary Streak Of Declines In US History
    Despite the longest winning streak for US macro data in US history, Durable Goods Orders collapsed in June. The 4% MoM plunge (vs -1.4% exp) is the biggest drop since Aug 2014. This represents a 6.6% YoY crash – the biggest drop since July 2015.
  • A Fully Automated Stock Market Blow-Off?
    About one month ago we read that risk parity and volatility targeting funds had record exposure to US equities. It seems unlikely that this has changed – what is likely though is that the exposure of CTAs has in the meantime increased as well, as the recent breakout in the SPX and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to new highs should be delivering the required technical signals. All these strategies are more or less automated (they may be tweaked from time to time, but essentially they are simply quantitative and/or technical strategies relying on inter-market correlations, volatility measures, and/or momentum). Active fund managers by contrast are said to be skeptical of the market rally, but it should be stressed that the evidence for this is purely anecdotal. The vast bulk of trading is nowadays automated. We recently read that in 2015, 23% of the entire year’s equity trading volume was accounted for by the top 100 ETFs (h/t to Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital). These are passive investments – in other words, they are brainless.
  • Unsound Money Has Destroyed the Middle Class
    When you start thinking about what money is and how it works, you face isolation, shunning, and possible incarceration. The subject is so slippery – like a bead of mercury on a granite countertop – you become frustrated… and then… maniacal. You begin talking to yourself, because no one else will listen to you. If you are not careful, you may be locked up among the criminally insane. We’ve been thinking about money for the last couple of months. It has become our favorite subject. That is why people edge away from us at parties. Our family finds novel ways to change the subject. “Whoa… sorry to interrupt, Dad… but isn’t that a flying saucer?” Undaunted, we press on. We think we’re onto something important. We have come so far; we might as well go the whole way.

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – July 28, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From July 22, 2016 to July 28, 2016:

  • The U.S. Presidential Election is a Mess – Thank Goodness!
    Let's put in bluntly: the United States Presidential election campaign is a complete and utter mess. We are looking a country that is deeply divided on key and fundamental differences. We are looking at two potential leaders that stand in stark difference to one another and are attracting very different supporters because of this. Thank God! Finally, we are seeing a campaign that is different. Finally, we are seeing an election cycle that your vote will make a difference. In the past, any Presidential candidate you voted for was typically controlled by the same financial elite pulling their strings. They have been the puppet masters behind the scenes for decades. Arguably, we have not seen a real President of the United States since the era of Reagan, and even he was made to step in line after his botched assassination attempt.
  • Stocks Were Already Crashing the Last Two Times this Happened. So What Gives?
    Over the last 20 years, margin debt – when investors buy stocks with borrowed money – went through three multi-year run-ups, each topped off with a spike, followed by a reversal and decline: during the final throes of the bubbles in 2000 and 2007, each followed by an epic stock market crash – and now. That pattern of jointly soaring and then declining margin debt and stocks even occurred during the run-up and near-20% swoon in 2011.
  • Contagion from Italy’s Bank Meltdown Spreads
    Without a taxpayer-funded bailout that directly contravenes the Eurozone’s new bail-in rules, the world’s oldest surviving bank, Monte Dei Paschi, could soon be out of business. Shares of the decrepit financial entity have long been reduced to a penny stock. So far this year, they’ve lost 78% to close on Tuesday at an inconsequential €0.28. The closer it comes to its end, the louder the calls for its rescue. Last week saw two out of three of the members of the institutional triad formerly known as the Troika — the ECB and the IMF — lend their support to a taxpayer funded bailout of Italy’s banking system. So, too, did the biggest U.S. bank by assets, JP Morgan Chase.
  • Armageddon Approaches — Paul Craig Roberts
    The Western public doesn’t know it, but Washington and its European vassals are convincing Russia that they are preparing to attack. Eric Zuesse reports on a German newspaper leak of a Bundeswehr decision to declare Russia to be an enemy nation of Germany. This is the interpretation that some Russian politicians themselves have put on the NATO military bases that Washington is establishing on Russia’s borders. Washington might intend the military buildup as pressure on President Putin to reduce Russian opposition to Washington’s unilateralism. However, it reminds some outspoken Russians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Hitler’s troops on Russia’s border in 1941.
  • Deutsche Bank Profit Plunges 98% And The Worst Is Yet To Come
    The latest confirmation that Germany's troubled banking giant Deutsche Bank is unable to navigate the troubled waters of NIRP came on Wednesday when the bank announced that its second-quarter net income fell 98% from a year earlier, hurt by weaker performances in trading, investment banking and other core areas. The lender said net income tumbled to €20 million ($22 million) from €818 million a year earlier, modestly better than the €22mm loss expected, while net revenue dropped 20% to €7.4 billion. After rebounding modestly on the beat, the bank’s shares fell tumbled 5% on Wednesday morning, their lower level in 2 weeks; today's decline has dragged DB stock 45% lower in 2016, making it one of Europe's worst performers YTD (the Stoxx 600 is down 27% in 2016).
  • Gold Price Set To Skyrocket To $2,300 In 22 Months!
    With continued volatility in key global markets, the gold price is set to skyrocket to $2,300 in 22 months! There is also a remarkable chart included in this fantastic piece. Gold Is Back! The instability of growth induced by credit expansion, which we routinely criticize, is impressively illustrated by the following chart. Since 1959, “total credit market debt” – the broadest debt aggregate in the US – has increased by 9,100%, its annualized growth rate amounts to 8.26%. In every decade, outstanding debt has at least doubled. In order to get credit-induced GDP growth to restart again after the volume of total outstanding debt dipped slightly for the first time in 2009, the Fed implemented a series of never before seen monetary policy measures.
  • You’re Likely Committing a Crime Right Now
    Do you own a dog? You could face six months in federal prison If you walk it on federal lands on a leash longer than six feet in length. Do you have a bank account? If you deposit or withdraw more than $10,000 in cash over multiple transactions, you could be imprisoned for up to five years. You could also lose every penny in the account, under the theory it “facilitated” your crime. Do you have foreign investments? If you neglect to tell Uncle Sam about them, you could face draconian penalties. Forget to file just one form? You could face a $10,000 penalty per account per year. There’s no requirement that you know any of these crimes exist for you to be found guilty of violating them. After all, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
  • Halliburton Reports A Negative Income
    On Wednesday, Halliburton released their earnings reports, revealing a $3.21 billion loss. That amounts to a $3.73 per share loss. The firm also announced that they cut another 5,000 jobs in the second quarter. During the same period last year, Halliburton managed to turn a $54 million profit. Much of the Halliburton loss was due to the $3.5 billion payment to Baker Hughes after the failed merger earlier this year. The combination of the two companies faced opposition from multiple international antitrust organizations.
  • Terror Attacks And Mass Killings Are Becoming A Daily Event
    Terror attacks and mass killings are happening so rapidly now that it is really difficult to keep up with them all.  In fact, as you will see below, so far there have been several this week alone.  This latest attack in France during which radical Islamic terrorists slit the throat of a Catholic priest was particularly disturbing.  Just a few days ago I warned that churches in the western world would be targeted, and now it is happening.  According to thereligionofpeace.com, there have been 1274 Islamic terror attacks in 2016.  These attacks have been spread across 50 different nations, and as a result of these attacks more than 11,000 people have been killed and more than 14,000 people have been injured.  When are we going to finally wake up and understand how serious this threat really is? Very few people would have imagined that a sleepy Catholic church in France would be the target of an Islamic terror attack on Tuesday morning, but that is precisely what happened.
  • Questionable Libyan Oil Deal Could Further Escalate Oil War
    Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation of Libya (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla has protested to the U.N. envoy to Libya Martin Kobler over a deal struck with militia strongman and Petrol Facilities Guards (PFG) head Ibrahim Jadran to resume Libyan oil exports through the key terminals of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina. In a letter obtained by Oilprice.com, Sanalla describes the deal as a big mistake that essentially rewards Jadran for his blockade of Libyan oil exports for three years, which resulted in US$100 billion in losses to the Libyan government. UN envoy Kobler flew to Ras Lanuf on 21 July to meet with the controversial PFG leader, after which the two announced in a joint press conference that oil exports would now be resumed through the ports.
  • Study: NC Green Energy Law Will Destroy 50,000 Jobs
    North Carolina’s green energy mandate will end 50,000 mostly manufacturing jobs and cost $7 billion by the end of the decade, according to a new study by a scientist from the University of Wyoming. The study found that the North Carolina Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires 12.5 percent of the state’s power comes from green energy by 2020, will increase electricity prices by 42 percent. The rate hike will cost the state billions, and destroy 50,000 jobs, mostly in the manufacturing and services sectors.
  • What Will Happen To Turkey’s Energy Security Following The Failed Coup?
    On July 15, 2016, a new chapter opened in Turkish political history. A group of military officers attempted a coup to overthrow the Erdogan regime in Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected as President of Turkey in August 2014, and since then Turkish politics has been experiencing turbulence. The most common criticisms of the Erdogan regime include allegations of corruption, restrictions of freedom, and foreign policy crises, such as with Syria and Russia. It is expected that the post-coup attempt period will also be unsteady. According to some experts, Erdogan may take advantage of the coup attempt to set up a more authoritarian system. As a matter of fact, experts consider it likely that there will be another coup in the months or years to come. The question is, while Turkish politics is in upheaval, what will happen to Turkey’s energy security?
  • Erdogan shuts down 1,000+ private schools, 1,200+ charities, 15 universities
    Turkey’s purge of Gulen supporters continued on Saturday with the closure of hundreds of private schools, charities and other institutions suspects of links with the US-based cleric. Ankara declared a state of emergency after a failed military coup. The decree issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is his first since the state of emergency was declared on Wednesday. He has ordered the closure of 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 trade unions, 15 universities and 35 medical institutions, state news agency Anadolu reported on Saturday. The organizations slated to be shut down are suspected of links with US-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan, who turned into his fierce opponent. The Turkish government accused Gulen of having a hand behind the last week’s coup attempt as well as earlier attacks on it.
  • Italy Races To Arrange €5 Billion Bailout For Monte Paschi Before Friday's Stress Test 
    As we noted over the weekend, Italy's bank stress test the result of which is due out on Friday, is a “near-term stress event”, and one which Italy's most troubled bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, is expected to fail. It is Monte Paschi's massive non-performing debt load that is also the reason why over the past month Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has been desperately spinning Brexit as a catalyst event which would get Germany's blessing to enact a taxpayer-funded, public, bailout of not just the world's oldest, and Italy's third largest, bank but also of the entire Italian banking sector. Alas that has not panned out as expected, and Italy never got Germany's – or Dijsselbloem's – permission to launch another TARP. Which explains why moments ago the FT reported that Italy was last night “racing to secure a privately backed bailout of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the most exposed of the country’s troubled lenders, including a plan to raise €5 billion of fresh capital so as to avert nationalisation, according to bankers and European officials.”
  • These Are The Best And Worst U.S. Cities To Own A House
    Earlier today, in its latest update looking at March home prices, Case Shiller pointed out that “home prices continue to appreciate across the country”, at just over 5%, a pace that has held since early 2015. Actually that is an understatement: in 16 of 20 of the tracked metro areas, the pace of home appreciation over the past year was 5% or higher, or equivalent to more than twice the pace of core inflation. And with rents continuing to soar across the country, in many cases at a double digit clip, not to mention exploding healthcare costs, one wonders just what the BLS “measures” with its monthly CPI update.
  • Nigeria Says “Don't Panic, Banks Are Fine” Amid Currency Collapse, Inflation Spike Concerns
    A month ago we warned of the looming hyperinflation coming to Nigeria (as well as much of Africa). It appears, following the central banks' rate hike to a record 14% (reach for yield anyone) in an attempt to stall the ongoing currency collapse, that Emefiele is worried, warning of “concern over headline inflation spike.” Perhaps most worrying though, amid the chaos, Emefiele advised depositors in banks “to go about your business,” adding that there was “no need to panic or worry.” Hhhmm… The rate hike is not working, Spot Naira is tumbling on the day to record lows, and forward rates are signaling much more to come… but don't let that stop Emefiele from jawboning… *NIGERIA'S EMEFIELE:`SO FAR, SO GOOD' ON NEW FX REGIME
  • One Analyst's Surprising Indicator Why Recession Is Coming In Early 2017
    Stifel analyst Paul Westra downgraded the restaurant industry in a note released today, slashing estimates and ratings on 11 stocks in the sector, while warning that a slowdown in the restaurant industry is a harbinger for an overall economic recession. The report warns that the restaurant industry is facing a perfect storm of slowing demand, rising minimum wage mandates across the country and minimal opportunity for commodity cost declines. This fits with the thesis laid out by KeyBanc analysts last week, suggested last week when upgrading Papa John's Pizza on the expectations that the recent surge in political unrest and terrorism fears would prompt more Americans to stay at home and order food instead of eating out.
  • New Legislation Proposes To “Bail-In' Social Security
    It was only a few weeks ago that I told you about the government’s annual report on Social Security. It was a veritable death sentence for the program. The Board of Trustees for Social Security (which includes the US Treasury Secretary) wrote that major parts of the program have already run out of money, and the rest of Social Security will run out of money in the next decade. Amazing. Even Social Security knows that they’re bankrupt and unable to keep their promises to taxpayers.
  • Zimbabwe government asks workers to work for free as government is broke
    SPEAKER of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda on Friday called on workers to work overtime and expect not to be paid extra remuneration. Mudenda said this would steer productivity and ensure companies remain afloat than for them to retrench workers because of low production. He was speaking at the Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe (IPMZ) convention in Victoria Falls, where he also advocated for empathy among workers and directors. The convention which ended Saturday was being held under the theme “Igniting human resources in the changing environs-evolve, transform and add value” and was attended by human resources managers and directors from private and public companies countrywide. Mudenda told the managers that they should strive to create an environment that would compel workers to provide labour for no extra-pay.
  • RBS Customers May Face Negative Interest Rates
    The RBS banking group has warned 1.3 million customers they could be charged negative interest rates if the Bank of England cuts base rates below zero. The group, which includes NatWest, wrote to its business and commercial account holders about the potential changes, which mean they could lose money even when they are in credit. The letter said: “Global interest rates remain at very low levels and in some markets are currently negative. “Dependent on future market conditions, this could result in us charging on credit balances.”
  • More Abenomics Failing—-Japan’s June Exports Down 7.4% Y/Y, Ninth Consecutive Monthly Drop
    Japan’s exports dropped again in June, with shipments down for a ninth consecutive month, underscoring the continuing challenge of reviving the nation’s economy. Key Points: Overseas shipments declined 7.4 percent in June from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday. This was better than the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, which pointed to an 11.3 percent drop. Imports slid 18.8 percent, leaving a trade surplus of 692.8 billion yen ($6.5 billion). Japan had a trade surplus of 1.81 trillion yen in the January-June period, the first surplus since the second half-year of 2010.
  • Morgan Stanley Predicts Plummeting Oil Prices – $35 Likely
    The price of oil will likely continue to falter in the latter half of this year amid an oversupply of gasoline, according to a Morgan Stanley study published last Sunday. The Morgan Stanley analysts predicted numerous “worrisome trends” for the supply and demand of oil, chief of which is an excessive production of gasoline by refineries. The study’s authors believe that faced with the need to cut back on capacity utilization to protect profit margins, these refineries will cut back on crude oil purchases and drag prices lower in an attempt to protect profit margins. “Crude oil demand is trending below refined product demand for the first time in three years…Given the oversupply in the refined product markets, fading refinery margins, and economic run cuts, we expect crude oil demand to deteriorate further over the coming months,” the report detailed.
  • Trump Forsees A Grim Future For The US Economy…
    Trump Got It Right Again. However, the mainstream media isn't saying a word about it! What are they really trying to cover up? Are we really entering the final phase of the financial system? Trump knows that this may be the final bubble.
  • Oil Bulls Headed Over Demand Cliff as Refinery Shutdowns Loom
    Beware, oil bulls: Just as U.S. oil production sinks low enough to drain supplies, demand is about to fall off a cliff. American gasoline consumption typically ebbs in August and September as vacationers return home, and refiners use that dip to shut for seasonal maintenance. Over the past five years, refiners’ thirst for oil has dropped an average of 1.2 million barrels a day from July to October.
  • G-20 Meeting Ends With Rising Discord Between China And US
    Over the weekend, the Group of 20 convened in yet another meeting in Chengdu, China, where they reiterated a long-running pledge to use all policy tools to help boost confidence and growth, but instead of emphasizing monetary policy the group said they would focus on fiscal and structural measures. Then again, since incremental fiscal stimulus would likely result in additional central bank monetization in order to avoid a steep selloff in government bonds and risk a yield spike, what the G-20 really did is set the stage for even more central bank-funded deficit spending, aka soft helicopter money.
  • Hong Kong On The Edge—–Debt And Property bubble fixing to Burst
    Hong Kong’s economy can’t hold on for much longer. For one thing, the territory is in the midst of two large bubbles. One is a credit bubble, similar to the one in China. Since 2008, the ratio of private nonfinancial credit to GDP has surged to 281% in Hong Kong. The other is Hong Kong’s infamous property bubble. Since 2008, property prices have risen 105%. Prices peaked in August of last year, and have been declining since — a correction of 14% that has put the property market in “free fall” and contributed to a growth slowdown — but remain higher than they were in 1997, when the last bubble burst.
  • Goldman Warns Of A Sharp Plunge In Stocks In “Next Few Months”
    That Goldman's David Kostin has been warning about the possibility of a sudden, sharp drawdown in the market, is not new: we first reported on that in early May when we presented “Six Reasons Why Goldman Is Suddenly Warning About A “Large Drop” In The Market” in which we cited the head Goldman equity strategist who said that “unbalanced distribution of upside/downside risks suggests “sell in May” or buy protection.” He adds that “we continue to expect S&P 500 will end 2016 at 2100, roughly 3% above the current level even as “a shift in investor perception of various risks could easily trigger a drawdown.”
  • Donald Trump is Right About Globalization: It’s a Broken System
    While seemingly elegant in theory, globalization suffers in practice. That is the lesson of Brexit and of the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. And it also underpins the increasingly virulent anti-China backlash now sweeping the world. Those who worship at the altar of free trade, including me, must come to grips with this glaring disconnect. Truth be known, there is no rigorous theory of globalization. The best that economists can offer is David Ricardo’s early-19th century framework: If a country simply produces in accordance with its comparative advantage (in terms of resource endowments and workers’ skills), presto, it will gain through increased cross-border trade. Trade liberalization — the elixir of globalization — promises benefits for all.
  • The Last Two Times P/E Multiples Expanded This Much, The Result Was A Historic Crash
    It’s not just former Fed economists who are getting worried. So is Goldman. As we wrote last weekend, “With “Stock Valuations At Extremes” Goldman’s Clients Are Asking Just One Question“, namely how much longer can the rally continue.  This followed another Goldman warning from two weeks ago, where as we noted before, “Goldman Warns Of A Sharp Plunge In Stocks In “Next Few Months.” Who knows: maybe Goldman will be right and the market will plunge – it certainly isn’t trading at all time highs and 25x GAAP multiples on fundamentals. But for now those who heeded Goldman’s warning and traded ahead of a 10% “pullback” have gotten crushed.
  • John Pilger: Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump
    The following is an edited version of an address given by John Pilger at the University of Sydney, entitled ‘A World War Has Begun’. I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.” Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island.
  • Japan government planning at least 20 trillion yen to support economy: Kyodo
    The Japanese government is planning to compile a stimulus package of at least 20 trillion yen ($186.60 billion) to help the economy emerge from deflation and fend off possible adverse effects of Brexit, Kyodo reported on Thursday, citing sources close to the matter. The stimulus package is likely to be double the 10 trillion-plus yen that was previously expected, as it will now include projects for fiscal 2017 and beyond and increase “zaito” low-interest government loans by 6 trillion yen, Kyodo reported, citing the sources.
  • Reserve Bank hints at rate cuts, dollar falls 
    The Reserve Bank is set to cut its cash rate next month to a record low and may deliver further cuts later in the year, to counter risks to economic growth, low inflation and a high dollar. The central bank this morning gave a clear signal of lower interest rates, which knocked the New Zealand dollar almost 1 percent lower. “At this stage it seems likely that further policy easing will be required to ensure that future average inflation settles near the middle of the target range,” Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler said in an unscheduled economic update.
  • Philly Fed Slumps To 6-Month Lows As National Activity Index Jumps To 6-Month Highs
    In the first wave of macro data today, initial claims beat expectations, dropping to 253k near record lows (but remains wildly divergent from tumbling consumer confidence). Following June's rebound in Philly Fed, July missed expectations tumbling to six-month lows, back to a contractionary -2.9 (against expectations of a flat print of +4.5). Finally, Chicago Fed's National Activity Index surged unexpectedly to six-month highs (+0.16 vs -0.20 exp) but the smoother 3-month avg remains in contraction for its 17th straight month. If the jobs market is so awesome, judging by initial claims near historic lows, then why is US consumer's economic confidence collapsing?
  • Plan to Solve Puerto Rican Debt Crisis Already Off the Rails
    Efforts to solve the Puerto Rican debt crisis have already run off the rails. Late last month, Congress passed a bill allowing Puerto Rico to restructure its debt. Under the plan, the US territory essentially declared bankruptcy. The US government won’t expend funds to bail out Puerto Rico, but will allow the island’s government to pay back debtors at less than 100%. Although the bill doesn’t say so explicitly, for all practical purposes it created a bankruptcy process for the island.
  • Two-year Brexit ‘shadow' looms over global economy concedes Philip Hammond
    The result of the EU referendum will “hang over the world economic outlook” until at least 2018, Philip Hammond has said on the sidelines of the G20 finance ministers' meeting in Chengdu, China. While the chancellor conceded that a two-year Brexit “shadow” looms, he said it is “just one of many sources of uncertainty that the world's economic governance mechanisms have to deal with.” Speaking to Sky News, Hammond said: “It [the EU referendum result] was a shock to the economic system. It was not something that markets or businesses were expecting. “So obviously there was going to be a reaction, a response to that,” he added. “And because there will now be a fairly lengthy negotiating period, there is going to be uncertainty about the outcome hanging over the world economic outlook for perhaps the next couple of years.”
  • After NATO, the WTO: Trump ready to rip up post-war order
    Toughening immigration checks for the French and Germans, questioning NATO obligations and hinting at an exit from the World Trade Organization: Donald Trump cast further doubt Sunday on US alliances and commitments around the world. In his first wide-ranging interview since he was crowned the Republican Party's White House nominee, the billionaire and political novice spelled out his stance on a slew of foreign policy, international trade and national security issues. If he wins in November, he told NBC's “Meet the Press,” France and other nations hit by recent terror attacks would be subjected to “extreme” immigration checks as a deterrent to attacks on US soil.
  • Central Bank Wonderland is Complete and Now Open for Business — The Epocalypse Has Fully Begun
    Summer vacation is here, and the whole global family has arrived at Central-Bank Wonderland, the upside-down, inside-out world that banksters and their puppet politicians call “recovery.” Everyone is talking about it as wizened traders puzzle over how stocks and bonds soared, hand-in-hand, in face of the following list of economic thrills.
  • DAVID MORGAN: After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how it might have been saved.
    Phil interviews the silver guru David Morgan to discuss the recent momentum and long-term upside in the silver market. Phil and John cover Brexit and some of the action in the precious metals market since the June 23rd vote.
  • Oliver Stone: Pokemon Go is a New Stage in “Totalitarism” and “Surveillance Capitalism” 
    Film director Oliver Stone believes that Pokemon Go is a tool capable of collecting massive amounts of data about its users and represents a step towards “robot society”. The director of Platoon, Wallstreet and JFK was at Comic-Con 2016 in San Diego to discuss his new movie Snowden. Considering the topic of the movie, the panel were discussing the NSA, online privacy and government surveillance. A question from a fan lead Oliver Stone to lash out against today’s newest worldwide phenomenon: Pokemon Go.
  • Kmart workers believe all the stores are going to be imminently shut down
    Kmart employees believe the company is nearing bankruptcy and is in the process of shutting down all its stores. The chain has closed one-third of its stores in the last decade, and sales have been cut in half in the same time period. Store-level employees who spoke to Business Insider said many of the remaining 941 Kmart stores now appear to be in the midst of liquidation. Stores are being entered into numbered phases — such as Phase 1 and Phase 2 — employees said.
  • Hammond Seeks Brexit Business Boost In China
    The Chancellor has arrived in China to promote Britain as a destination for “new opportunities” in the wake of the Brexit vote. It is Philip Hammond's first trade trip since his appointment – with the significance of the destination underlined by the Treasury which said the UK was currently home to more Chinese investment that any EU country. It said this would be the first of several such visits to key economic partners following the referendum.
  • Zimbabwe Misses Own Deadline to Pay $1.8 Billion; Pays None
    Zimbabwe failed to repay $1.8 billion to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and African Development Bank by its own June 30 deadline. “Right now, we’ve not paid anything,” John Mangudya, Zimbabwe’s central bank governor, said by phone from the capital, Harare, on Thursday. “That is why we have this re-engagement process with international financial institutions.” Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said earlier the country would repay at least $1.8 billion by the end of June to be able to resume borrowing in a bid to revive an economy that’s half the size it was in 2000. Zimbabwe owes $110 million to the IMF, $1.1 billion to the World Bank and $601 million to the African Development Bank, Mangudya said in an e-mailed response to questions on Thursday.
  • Sinking Yields Drag Investment Income to 12-Year Low at Insurers
    U.S. property-casualty insurers’ quarterly investment income dropped to the lowest since 2004 as falling bond yields pressured the industry. The figure fell to $10.9 billion in the three months ended March 31 from $11.7 billion a year earlier, according to a report Thursday from the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America and ISO, a unit of Verisk Analytics Inc. The annualized yield on the industry’s portfolio fell to 2.9 percent from 3.1 percent. That compares with an average of 3.8 percent over the past decade and peaks of more than 8 percent in 1984 and 1985.
  • Spanish Slapdown Shows Timing Matters When Breaking EU Rules
    Spain might justifiably claim to be the victim of unfortunate timing and an arbitrary application of rules. Under European Union principles, countries should keep their budget deficits below 3 percent of gross domestic product.  This matters now more than ever, because persistent infringements of the EU’s rules on budgets have helped erode confidence in the bloc and its currency, the euro. What the euro area needs now more than anything is confidence that it will survive. Spain has breached the measure every year since 2008 — a total of eight times. With neighboring Portugal falling short 15 times, it can't come as a total surprise that the two are about to become the first EU nations to be slapped with a fine for running an excessive deficit.
  • China Fuels Speculation Debt-for-Equity Swaps Starting Soon
    China’s cabinet fueled speculation that the nation is pressing ahead with debt-to-equity swaps that would give lenders stakes in some companies as part of tackling a build-up in corporate leverage and bad loans. A brief reference in a statement on Monday to letting financial institutions hold stakes in companies in a trial indicated that the swaps are coming soon, according to China Merchants Securities Co. analyst Ma Kunpeng. Caixin magazine reported that the State Council was signaling the start of the program, citing an unidentified person close to the authorities.
  • Bank of America second quarter profits fall 19%
    Bank of America reported a 19% slide in profit in the second quarter, as persistently low interest rates hurt the bank's loan business. The bank made just $3.89bn (£2.93bn) in profit during the period between April and June, down from $4.8bn last year. The results still beat analysts expectations, and Bank of America's shares rose 1.8%. Profits across US banks have been hit by the Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy.
  • Obamacare company shutdown leaves customers in a lurch, facing higher costs
    Ken Sullivan bought health insurance for his family this year from Land of Lincoln Health, a small, nonprofit company in Chicago. The 52-year-old Chicagoan knew the purchase was a risk because the three-year-old insurer was struggling financially. But he said he didn't have much choice after Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois eliminated his plan last year and its alternative didn't include any of his family's doctors and hospitals. Now his worst fears have come true. The Illinois Insurance Department moved Tuesday to shut down Land of Lincoln because of its unstable financial health, leaving about 49,000 policyholders in a lurch. They will lose coverage in the coming months, but neither regulators nor the company have said exactly when.
  • Singapore Seeks U.S. Chapter 11 Prowess in Bankruptcy Reform
    Singapore is seeking to enhance its position as a center for debt restructuring by giving its insolvency law some of the powers of the U.S. bankruptcy code’s Chapter 11, just as companies worldwide default on bonds at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis. The government has “broadly accepted” 17 recommendations submitted by a committee after a yearlong review, the Ministry of Law said in a statement. Those include offering automatic stay of legal and enforcement actions for debtors, creating a bench of specialist judges for its bankruptcy court and increasing rescue-financing capital by enticing distressed-debt funds and private equity firms to set up shop in the city-state.
  • India introduces first bankruptcy law
    India is the world's fastest-growing major economy, but just five years ago it was a very different story. Growth had slowed and many businesses could not repay money they had borrowed. That hit the country's banks hard – and some are still swamped with bad debts. Now India has put in place its first bankruptcy laws – designed to try and help lenders.
  • Puerto Rico Sued for Diverting Cash After Federal Law Passed
    A group of hedge funds sued Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla, claiming the island government is using a default on its debt to shirk its responsibility to pay bondholders. Puerto Rico defaulted on almost $1 billion of principal and interest on July 1 as Garcia Padilla said the commonwealth was unable to pay creditors and continue essential services. It happened one day after President Barack Obama enacted a law, called Promesa, creating a federal control board to oversee the restructuring of the commonwealth’s $70 billion of debt. The law also shields Puerto Rico from creditor lawsuits seeking repayment.
  • 19.4 Trillion Dollars In Debt – We Have Added 1.1 Trillion Dollars A Year To The National Debt Under Obama
    In 2006, U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s voice thundered across the Senate floor as he boldly declared that “increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”  That was one of the truest things that he ever said, but just a couple of years later he won the 2008 election and he turned his back on those principles.  As I write this article, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $19,402,361,890,929.46.  But when Barack Obama first entered the White House, our federal government was only 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  That means that we have added an average of 1.1 trillion dollars a year to the national debt under Obama, and we still have about six more months to go.
  • A U.S. Junk-Bond Sale Gets Pulled as Investors Show Their Limits
    Bond investors globally are clamoring for yield, but they’ll only take so much risk to get it. Case in point: U.S. Xpress Enterprises Inc. scrapped its $320 million bond offering late Wednesday after investors, concerned that growth is slowing in the trucking industry, pushed for higher yields on the securities. It was the first pulled deal in the junk-bond market in two months.
  • Prominent Gold Skeptic Willem Buiter Says “Gold Looks Pretty Good”
    Back in November 2014, Willem Buiter, who has so far been wrong in his recent gloomier forecasts about the fallout from the Eurozone mess, or his predictions about a global economy, decided to become a commodity expert and announced that “Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble.” The irony is that while virtually every other asset class in the span of these 6,000 years has risen, risen more, in many cases indeed formed a bubble, burst, fallen, and ultimately turned to dust and forgotten, gold remains and furthermore has seen its value in recent years soar.
  • India Moves Nearly One Hundred Tanks, Troops to Chinese Border
    With tensions rising between China and India, New Delhi has deployed nearly 100 tanks to its eastern border. The mountainous region of Ladakh, in northern India, lies in a tense location between disputed Kashmir and Tibet. In an effort to boost its military presence in the area, the Indian military has sent Russian-made T-72 tanks to Ladakh’s Chinese border. “The vast flat valleys along the mountain ranges allow for armored movement; besides, there has been an increase in the force levels across the border,” an unnamed military official told NDTV.
  • Have we learned nothing from 2008? It’s clear we’re heading into recession
    This week the International Monetary Fund and the European commission slashed their forecasts for UK growth. The referendum result had “thrown a spanner in the works” of the global recovery, the IMF said. It now expects the UK economy to grow by 1.3% in 2017, compared with its 2.2% prediction in April. The commission’s projections were, at best, 1.1% growth next year and worst case, a 0.3% contraction. Both sets of forecasts look optimistic. It seems almost inevitable that the UK is heading for recession. The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, had clearly signalled that his monetary policy committee (MPC) would cut rates at its July meeting, but it didn’t. Hopefully, its members will make up for this big mistake at their next meeting in August.
  • Potential Crisis Triggers Continue To Pile Up In 2016
    We are a little over half way through 2016 and, at the current rate, it will be a miracle if the year finishes without outright catastrophe in half the nations of the world. Some might call these events “Black Swans,” some might call them completely engineered threats, others might call it all a simple “coincidence” or a tragedy of errors. I stand strictly by the position that most of the dangers we see today have been deliberately escalated, if not strategically implemented. Here is the problem; international financiers and globalist nut-jobs are clearly operating on a timeline with the end goal of creating enough general chaos to convince the masses that complete centralized authority over every aspect of our lives is preferable to constant fear.
  • REVEALED: EU subsidises the CHINESE steel which is decimating British industry
    BRITISH taxpayers have been forced to subsidise the very Chinese steel companies that are threatening 40,000 UK jobs, critics say. It comes after revelations that the European Investment Bank has given so-called “soft loans” to China of £80million as part of a climate policy intended to lower emissions. The astonishing figures include a loan of £40million to one of the world’s worst “steel dumping” culprits, the Wuhan Iron & Steel Corporation. To add insult to injury Wuhun, the world’s eighth largest steel producer, boasts the Chinese state as its main shareholder. Wuhun is such a prolific steel dumper that it has now been especially targeted by the European Commission, which wants to slap it with 36.6 per cent tariffs.
  • Russian warplanes reportedly bombed US base in Syria
    Russian warplanes reportedly bombed a secret military base in Syria used by elite American and British forces last month. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Russian strike on the CIA-linked site was part of a campaign by Russia to pressure the White House to agree to closer cooperation in the Syrian skies, U.S. military and intelligence officials said. Despite the fact that some forces could have been killed and the bombing dampened relations between Russia and the Pentagon and CIA, the White House and State Department still persued a compromise.
  • EU TRADE DISASTER: Deal with Canada on the brink as German party SUES Brussels over CETA
    THE European Union’s flagship trade deal with Canada was on the brink of collapse today after a Germany political party sued Brussels over its implementation. Centre-left Die Linke has launched legal action to block the controversial Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) pact, saying it is unconstitutional under German law. The party’s attempt to torpedo the hated deal is just the latest in a series of devastating trade blows for the EU, which is unravelling following the Brexit vote.
  • Japanese Turning to Gold as Their Economy Spirals into Central Bank Oblivion
    The Japanese economy is sliding into oblivion pulled along by central bank policy. In response, the Japanese people are buying gold. Economic growth has languished in Japan for nearly two decades despite extraordinary monetary policy including negative interest rates and round after round of stimulus. The government even flirted with the idea of helicopter money, although that appears to be off the table, at least for the time being. Factory output is down and stocks are slumping. The Japanese government just cut its GDP estimate from 1.7% to 0.4%, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged more central bank intervention. He called for coordinated stimulus from the government and the central bank in yet another attempt to revive the ailing economy.
  • Silver Up 44.7% in First Half of 2016
    While investors have primarily focused on gold’s bull run, silver has quietly outperformed the yellow metal. Between Jan. 1 and July 11, the price of silver increased 44.7%, according to the Silver Institute. The price of gold increased 27.7% in that same time period. The Silver Institute said the surge in the price of silver was “fueled by increased investor interest in silver as a safe haven asset and as leveraged exposure to gold’s price rally.”
  • Government Student Loan Policies Have Perverse Incentives
    Millions of Americans are saddled with student loan payments. And that’s just considering those who can actually repay their debt. Data released in March revealed that 46% of student loans are not currently being repaid. But despite the squeeze student loan repayment puts on American budgets, few choose to refinance their debt at lower interest rates.
  • Business Inventories At Highest Level To Sales Since The Crisis
    Autos and buidling materials are at their highest levels of inventories relative to sales since the financial crisis leaving overall business inventories-to-sales ratio hovering near cycle highs at 1.40x. A 0.2% rise in inventories (bigger than expected) matched the 0.2% rise in sales MoM but YoY it's a different picture with sales down 0.3% and inventories up 0.9% (with retailers seeing inventories surging 6.1%).
  • Inside Draghi’s Corporate Bond Frenzy—–$10 Billion/ Month, 440 Different Issues, Heavy BBB and BB Risk
    Yesterday for the first time, the various central banks of the Eurosystem disclosed which bonds the ECB had bought under its CSPP program. Specifically, we broke down the purchases of the Bundesbank, which revealed some of the most prominent public company debt issuers in Europe. However, we were curious to get a more detailed look at what Mario Draghi’s trading desk was spending their time BWICing all day. For that we went to the undisputed master when it comes to tracking what the ECB does in the bond realm (because the ECB is not buying equities just yet), BofA’s Barnaby Martin. Here is the big picture as revealed in his report today titled “CSPP: Buying Frenzy” – “in just over a month of the Corporate Sector Purchase Programme, the ECB have bought 458 bonds, with virtually no stone left unturned.With the monthly run-rate of buying hovering around the €8.5bn mark, our conclusion for CSPP is, bluntly, that it is too big, too powerful and ultimately too bullish for spreads.” But the best part was Martin’s answer to the key question: “So what did they buy?” His answer: “In short, almost everything.”
  • The Bond Market: Beware of Junkyard Dogs
    Having spent a chunk of his youth “shopping” them, Jim Croce came to know a thing or two about junkyards. In those youthful days, should his clunker de jour be missing some vital part or parts, a trolling expedition through South Philly’s scrap heaps was always the enterprising Croce’s preferred method of procurement. Amid all of Croce’s parts foraging, it was a universal joint for a ‘57 Chevy and a ‘51 Dodge transmission, two must have and must-be-cheap or, better yet, free, parts that the legendary folk singer still recalled. He also reminisced that junkyards could and would provide a no frills, but highly motivated and easy way to get in some cardio, as in running for your life.
  • Destination Mars – Asset Price Levitation
    One of the more preposterous deeds of modern central banking involves creating digital monetary credits from nothing and then using the faux money to purchase stocks.  If you’re unfamiliar with this erudite form of monetary policy this may sound rather fantastical.  But, in certain economies, this is now standard operating procedure. For example, in Japan this explicit intervention into the stock market is being performed with the composed tedium of a dairy farmer milking his cows.  The activity is more art than science.  Similarly, if you stop – even for a day – pain swells in certain sensitive areas. In late April, a Bloomberg study found that the Bank of Japan (BOJ), through its purchases of ETFs, had become a top 10 shareholder in about 90 percent of companies that comprise the Nikkei 225.
  • IMF Called “Clowns” After Admitting They Fabricated Brexit Doom And Gloom
    “The IMF has serious credibility problems. It has been seriously wrong for years. I hope that one of the things that the new government does is push to have some credible people running this institution… rather than the clowns currently running it,” exclaimed UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, pointing out Lagarde's legion of fools flip-flop that the British economy will grow faster than Germany and France in the next two years – only weeks after its doom-laden warnings about Brexit. As The Daily Mail reports, after saying that leaving the European Union could trigger a UK recession, the International Monetary Fund now expects the British economy to grow by 1.7 per cent this year and 1.3 per cent next year. That is weaker than the 1.9 and 2.2 per cent growth forecasts before the referendum, but the UK is still set to be the second-fastest growing economy in the Group of Seven industrialised nations this year – behind the United States – and third-fastest next year, behind the US and Canada.
  • Legend Jeremy Grantham Just Issued A Dire Warning To The World
    With the U.S. dollar continuing its surge as gold and silver pull back, legend Jeremy Grantham has issued a dire warning to the world. A portion of today’s note from Art Cashin:  “You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat! – As you hopefully remember, that’s the famous line from the movie, “Jaws”, uttered when the authorities realize that the problem (the shark) is much, much larger than they first assumed. When it comes to immigration, maybe the line should be – you’re gonna need a bigger wall – and we’re not talking Donald Trump here. We’re referring to Britain, the EU and what fear might have helped pushed the Brexit vote through. Jeremy Grantham touched on the potentially explosive possibilities of immigration pressures in a recent discussion of Brexit.

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – July 21, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From July 15, 2016 to July 21, 2016:

  • David Stockman On The Coming Global Collapse As One Short Seller Warns “I Have No Idea How Long They Can Keep Pretending”
    With continued uncertainty in global markets, David Stockman weighed in on the coming global collapse and one short seller warned, “I have no idea how long they can keep pretending.” – Overnight equity markets were slightly lower, with bonds markets slightly higher in uneventful trading. As for our equity market, Netflix provided some fireworks, as it lost badly at the game of beat-the-number and the stock price was hammered for 14%. IBM, however, managed to win at Wall Street’s favorite game by making enough acquisitions to make the estimates. For those keeping score at home, revenues were down about 3%, making this the seventeenth quarter in a row for that feat. Debt now stands at $42 billion and book value is minus $27…
  • Governments To Christians: Don’t You Dare Speak Out Against The Sexual Sin In Society
    In our upside down world, evil has become good and good has become evil.  Once upon a time, everyone in society generally knew what was “right” and what was “wrong” even if they didn’t always abide by the rules.  But now the rules have been totally flipped on their head.  If you choose to live a lifestyle that is morally wrong, you are celebrated by society, and if you choose to speak out against the sexual sin that is exploding everywhere around us then you are considered to be a “hater” and a “bigot”.  In fact, governments all over the world are now passing “hate speech” laws that are making it a crime to speak out against sexual sin.  With each passing year it gets even worse, and those pushing this agenda forward are never going to be satisfied until those standing up for Biblical truth are locked away in prison.
  • Jim Rickards: Dynamics in Place for $10,000 Gold
    Jim Rickards has been predicting $10,000 gold. Recently, he appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box and stuck to that prediction, saying the dynamics are in place for gold to reach that $10,000 mark. Rickards said he thinks we are at the beginning of an extended gold bull market, possibly similar to the late 1990s when the price of the yellow metal went up 615% over a 12-year period. He conceded gold can be volatile, so he doesn’t pay as much attention to short-term fluctuations in price. But he did note an interesting fact in the wake of the recent price jumps after some major world events.
  • To The Mattress: Fund Manager Cash Levels Highest In 15 Years
    Despite the post-Brexit market rally, fund managers have gotten even more wary of taking risks. The S&P 500 has jumped about 8.5 percent since the lows hit in the days after Britain’s move to leave the European Union, but that hasn’t assuaged professional investors. Cash levels are now at 5.8 percent of portfolios, up a notch from June and at the highest levels since November 2001, according to the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey. In addition to putting money under the mattress, investors also are looking for protection, with equity hedging at its highest level in the survey’s history.
  • The financial system is breaking down at an unimaginable pace
    Now it’s $13 trillion. That’s the total amount of government bonds in the world that have negative yields, according to calculations published last week by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Given that there were almost zero negative-yielding bonds just two years ago, the rise to $13 trillion is incredible. In February 2015, the total amount of negative-yielding debt in the world was ‘only’ $3.6 trillion. A year later in February 2016 it had nearly doubled to $7 trillion. Now, just five months later, it has nearly doubled again to $13 trillion, up from $11.7 trillion just over two weeks ago.
  • Bubble Finance At Work——65%-70% Of Households Have Lower Real Incomes Than In 2005
    A new study from McKinsey looks at the cross-generational distribution of income as a form of new ‘inequality’, in words of the authors: “an aspect of inequality that has received relatively little attention, perhaps because prior to the 2008 financial crisis less than 2 percent of households in advanced economies were worse off than similar households in previous years. That has now changed: two-thirds of households in the United States and Western Europe were in segments of the income distribution whose real market incomes in 2014 were flat or had fallen compared with 2005.”In other words, McKinsey folks are looking at the “proportion of households in advanced economies with flat or falling incomes” – the generational cohorts that are no better than their predecessors.
  • Erdogan’s Staged Coup Has Resulted In A Purge Of 50,000 Teachers, Judges, Soldiers And Government Officials
    Barack Obama’s “friend” in Turkey is a deeply corrupt radical Islamist dictator that has just staged a coup to consolidate his grip on power.  As I have reported previously, 1,845 “journalists, writers and critics” have been arrested for “insulting” President Erdogan over just the past two years, and a couple of years ago he had a monstrous 1,100 room presidential palace built for himself that is 30 times larger than the White House.  With each passing day, more evidence emerges which seems to indicate that the recent “coup” was a staged event meant to enable Erdogan and his allies to eliminate their enemies and solidify their stranglehold over the nation.  At this point the number of victims of “Erdogan’s purge” has hit 50,000, but the final number will not be known for quite some time.
  • The man who accurately predicted 4 market crashes told us the dates when oil prices will fall again
    The man who accurately predicted four market crashes to the exact date recently told Business Insider about his calendar prediction for when oil prices would start to significantly slump again. Sandy Jadeja is a technical analyst and chief market strategist at Core Spreads. Technical analysts look at charts to pinpoint patterns in various markets and asset classes. From that they forecast which direction prices are likely to move. They can't tell you why there will be a big market movement, only that there will be one. He says there is a specific time period to watch out for.
  • Financial System Held Together with Bailing Wire & Chewing Gum-Craig Hemke
    Financial and precious metals expert Craig Hemke contends profits in the stock market, in the past few years, came with extreme hidden risk. Hemke explains, “I know why I own precious metal and am continuing to buy it, and that is what I am telling people to do.  I mean the price has fallen for totally uneconomic reasons, manipulation being one . . . but anyway, I have used that weakness the last three or four years to keep buying.  So, now with this recovery, all of my metal on a cost basis is less than what the current price is.  That’s worked out quite well.  I am not going to argue with anybody that says you should have sold all your gold in 2011, with the benefit of hindsight, and you should have bought the S&P.  You would have made 100%, and hey, knock yourself out.  The reason I didn’t attempt to do that is knowing full well anytime between 2011 and today I could have woken up and the whole system could have blown up. That’s how fragile it is.  It’s all held together with bailing wire and chewing gum.”
  • The Entire Market is Being Driven by a “Once in History” Asset Bubble About to Burst 
    Since QE 3 ended in October 2014, stocks have traded in a large range between roughly 2,130 and 1800 on the S&P 500. During this time, whenever stocks began to breakdown in a serious way, a clear intervention was staged in which someone manipulated the markets higher. Regardless of whether you are a bull or a bear, none of those rallies felt normal or sane in any way. No one panic buys every single day at the exact same time for days on end. Which brings us to today. Stocks have broken out of the trading range to the upside hitting new all-time highs.
  • We’re witnessing a complete breakdown in western values
    Two months ago I was with the former President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, at his home outside of Medellin. He was telling me some hilarious stories about his interactions in the early 2000s with Hugo Chavez, who had recently seized power in Venezuela. Chavez was a fanatic socialist. He believed so strongly in the idea of redistributing wealth from rich to poor. Yet even when it was clear his policies weren’t working and Venezuela was rapidly sliding into economic chaos, Chavez’s only solution was to double down and redistribute even MORE wealth. It was the classic definition of insanity. Chavez failed to understand what Uribe told me so succinctly: “If there’s no wealth creation, there’s nothing left to redistribute.”
  • Axe-Wielding Terrorist Attacks Train Passengers In Germany And A Police Car Is Firebombed In Florida
    Crazy people committing random acts of senseless violence is rapidly becoming the “new normal” in the western world.  On Monday, a police vehicle was firebombed in Daytona, Florida by someone that was enraged by the recent shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.  And over in Europe, an axe-wielding Islamic terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he started wildly attacking passengers on a train in southern Germany.  Authorities say that the young man was originally from Afghanistan, and according to the Mirror he was shot dead before he could flee the scene of the attack…
  • Baton Rouge, Nice, Dallas, Orlando – A Dark And Distressing Time Has Descended Upon The Civilized World
    Does it not seem as though events are starting to accelerate significantly?  Since I warned that something “had shifted” and that things had “suddenly become more serious“, we have seen the worst mass shooting in U.S. history in Orlando, we have seen the massacre of five police officers in Dallas, we have seen the horrifying terror rampage in Nice, and now we have seen the brutal murder of three police officers in Baton Rouge.  On Sunday morning, the peace and quiet in Baton Rouge were shattered when “dozens of shots” erupted less than one mile from police headquarters.  By the end of it, 29-year-old Gavin Eugene Long had killed three officers and seriously wounded three others.  It was a crime fueled by pure hatred, and Long specifically waited for his 29th birthday to launch the attack…
  • End of an Era: The Rise and Fall of the Petrodollar System
    The intricate relationship between energy markets and our global financial system, can be traced back to the emergence of the petrodollar system in the 1970s, which was mainly driven by the rise of the United States as an economic and political superpower. For almost twenty years, the U.S. was the world’s only exporter of petroleum. Its relative energy independence helped support its economy and its currency. Until around 1970, the U.S. enjoyed a positive trade balance. Oil expert and author of the book “The Trace of Oil”, Bertram Brökelmann, explains a dramatic change took place in the U.S. economy, as it experienced several transitions: First, it transitioned from being an oil exporter to an oil importer, then a goods importer and finally a money importer. This disastrous downward spiral began gradually, but it ultimately affected the global economy. A petrodollar is defined as a US dollar that is received by an oil producing country in exchange for selling oil. As is shown in the chart below, the gap between US oil consumption and production began to expand in the late 1960s, making the U.S. dependent on oil imports.
  • The Helicopter Has Already Been Tested – And It Failed Spectacularly
    Most of what passes for modern monetary policy is nothing more than one assumption piled upon another (and then another, and so on). Taken for granted for so long, rarely are these unproven precepts ever challenged to justify themselves to the minimal standard of internal consistency, let alone prove discrete validity by parts. The latest is “helicopter money”, another sham in a long line of them proffered by at least one central bank today because it knows, as the others, nothing they have done has worked. The fact that the world is even discussing the helicopter option should instill great skepticism as a first impulse, not more rabid faith. The way this latest scheme is being described is exactly the same as quantitative easing was really not that long ago. Clearly the expectation for it is rising, as Bloomberg reported today that, “Nearly one-third of clients and colleagues surveyed by Citigroup Inc. think that so-called helicopter money could be on its way within a fortnight.” Forty-three percent in the same survey believed that the “market” was expecting it.
  • The entire financial system is exposed to this junk bond market
    Japan got there first. 15 years ago, we met a Japanese equity manager who made an astonishing prediction: “Japan was the dress rehearsal. The rest of the world will be the main event.” That seemed an extraordinary suggestion 15 years ago. Today, not so much. In the aftermath of the late 1980s real estate and stock market bubble, and its subsequent banking crisis, Japan became a giant laboratory experiment for novel insane monetary policies. In 2001 the Bank of Japan tried Quantitative Easing. It was a policy that Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute described as the “greatest monetary non-event”. It turned out, not for the first time, that academic economists had it all wrong.
  • “The World's Central Banks Are Making A Big Mistake”
    While everyone was talking about Brexit last month, the Bank for International Settlements released its 86th annual report. Based in Basel, Switzerland, the BIS functions as a master hub for all the world’s central banks. It settles transactions among central banks and other international organizations. It doesn’t serve private individuals, businesses, or national governments. Because it is relatively free from political considerations, the BIS can speak about economic issues more directly than its member central banks can. And its candor has grown steadily in recent years. When central bankers like Janet Yellen or Mario Draghi speak, we have to discount their statements because they have policy agendas to promote. While the BIS has an agenda, too, the bank isn’t tied to any particular economy or government. Its analysts are paying attention to how the world functions in toto.
  • Unexpected Gasoline Inventory Build, Production Rise Spark Crude Chaos
    Following last week's surprise Distillates build (and bounce in production) and API's overnight surprise Gasoline build, DOE data this morning was mixed confirming the 2.3mm draw in overall crude inventories (9th weekin a row) but surpringly large builds in both Cushing and Gasoline inventories (expectations were for draws). Oil prices were chaotic – running stops high and low – as algos noted crude production also rose (for the 2nd week in a row).
  • Another Bad Month For Truck Shipping
    Truck shipments were up in June from May. So were expenditures. That sounds pretty good, but it really isn’t. Shipments are normally up in June and the Cass Freight Index report from which I get numbers is not seasonally adjusted. The best way to compare June is to prior years, and that picture isn’t pretty.
  • Brexit: UK economy yet to suffer slowdown following EU vote, says Bank of England
    The Bank of England is yet to see any clear evidence of an economic downturn due to Britain's decision to vote in favour of leaving the European Union, although hiring and investments were being put on hold. Business uncertainty has “risen markedly” in the four weeks following the EU referendum, but there was no evidence that consumers had reined in their spending, the BoE's regional agents said on Wednesday (20 July). “A majority of firms spoken with did not expect a near-term impact from the result on their investment or staff-hiring plans,” Britain's central bank said in a statement.
  • Why Growing Food is The Single Most Impactful Thing You Can Do in a Rigged Political System
    The most effective change-makers in our society aren’t waiting around for a new president to make their lives better, they’re planting seeds, quite literally, and through the revolutionary act of gardening, they’re rebuilding their communities while growing their own independence. Every four years when the big election comes around, millions of people put their passion for creating a better world into an increasingly corrupt and absurd political contest. What if that energy was instead invested in something worthwhile, something that directly and immediately improved life, community, and the world at large? The simple act of growing our own food directly challenges the control matrix in many authentic ways, which is why some of the most forward-thinking and strongest-willed people are picking up shovels and defiantly starting gardens. It has become much more of a meaningful political statement than supporting political parties and candidates.
  • Japan, Helicopter Money, Cold Fusion And The Disastrous Endgame
    With continued wild trading this summer in global markets, it’s all about Japan, helicopter money, cold fusion and the disastrous endgame. Overnight markets were all higher and the world was once again a-twitter over the concept of “helicopter money.” But once again, the pundits and the press are getting the descriptions wrong. Just like they talk about minimal inflation rates as “deflation” because they are scared of a depression, which is what they think deflation means, or refer to a 20% move as a bull or bear market, they are now mindlessly labeling the next step in monetary debasement as helicopter money…
  • Renewable Energy Investment Drops By Nearly A Quarter
    As the cost of installing solar panels waned and China pressed pause on its spending, global investment in renewable energy sunk 23 percent in the first half of 2016. According to London-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance, solar, wind, and other clean-energy industries engrossed $116.4 billion in the first two-quarters of the year 2016. This included $61.5 in the second quarter. The research company said it also reviewed up 2015’s total by practically $20 billion to a record of $348.5 billion.
  • How & by How Much Big Pharma Fools Investors
    Yesterday, we were bashing big pharmaceutical companies for jacking up prices of patent-protected drugs at obscene rates. Those double-digit price increases were largely responsible for the sales increases these companies reported. Drugs have become the largest wholesale category, at $54.3 billion in May, or 12.2% of total wholesales. This boom is based on price increases at a great cost to US consumers and taxpayers. It’s cannibalizing the rest of the economy. But it’s made possible by the abuse of the patent system, the increasingly monopolistic structures in the industry after a tsunami of mergers funded by cheap credit and a soaring stock market – as planned by the Fed – along with legislators and regulators that have been compromised by the big money and the revolving door.
  • Spain’s Banks are Suddenly “Too Broke To Fine”
    After eight years of chronic crisis mismanagement, moral hazard and perverse incentives have infected just about every part of the financial system. Earlier this week, the U.S. Congress published the findings of a three-year investigation into why the Department of Justice chose not to punish HSBC and its executives for their violations of US anti-money laundering laws and related offenses – because doing so would have had “serious adverse consequences” for the financial system – the “Too Big To Jail” phenomenon, a perfect, all-purpose, real-world Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. But now there’s “Too Broke to Fine.” Today over a dozen Spanish banks were given a life-line by the EU’s advocate general, Paolo Mengozzi, that could be worth billions of euros in savings for the banks. For millions of Spanish mortgage holders, it could mean billions of euros in lost compensation.
  • Is Pokemon Go Evil, Dangerous Or Demonic?
    One week ago, a game called Pokemon Go was launched, and over the last seven days it has become an international phenomenon. It is the first mass market video game to successfully blend the real world and the digital world together in a way that the public truly embraces, and it is making headlines all over the planet. At this point it has almost as many daily active users as Twitter does, and Nintendo’s stock price is going crazy as a result. On Monday it shot up 25 percent, and on Tuesday it surged another 13 percent. In other words, Nintendo is now worth billions of dollars more than it used to be. But is there a dark side to Pokemon Go? Is it potentially evil, dangerous or demonic?
  • 2067: The end of the oil age
    The fear of losing a market share makes the oil countries play the oil price wars, glut the market while the low prices reducing investments in the new oil reserves exploration for the second year. The world proved oil reserves increased by only 2.5 times up to 1.7 trillion barrels during active crude oil production for the past 35 years. It seems that the major crude oil producing countries, which are so keen on a price war, forgot that in reality the oil runs out very quickly. For better understanding: 1.7 trillion barrels of oil with a production of 90 million barrels per day are approximately as the Indian Ocean from which two Gulfs of Mexico are scooped out every year. According to the simplest calculations, it seems the current world’s oil proved reserves at a current production level will suffice for 50 years. By that time it will be possible to find industrial raw commodity to replace the oil in the cycle of production of goods, find and widely implement a cost-effective energy analogue. But in reality it is not so smooth.
  • The Energy “Death List”: Who’s On It and Who’s Next?
    In June, Warren Resources filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Houston-based company was just another one added to the group of 150 North American industry filings over the last year and a half since the oil decline started. Warren Resources could also be found in the 2015 publication of an “oil company death list” put out by Oxford Club investors’ network out of Baltimore. 19 companies were accused of “toxic” debt-to-equity ratios on the list. Since it was published, eight of the companies on the list have filed for protection, another was purchased at a low price, and few still are trying to keep their head above water.
  • EU Looks To Break Baltic Dependence on Russian Energy
    After EU-member states agreed on a Commission proposal, the EU will invest €263 million in key gas and electricity projects across the Union with primary focus on the Baltic Sea region. The European Commission announced on Friday (15 July) in a press release that the 28 member states agreed to invest €263 million in trans-European energy infrastructure projects. The biggest share of the support will be destined to the Baltic Sea region to help the expansion of the gas infrastructure, meanwhile the other part of the investment will support the electricity sector across the European Union.
  • The Global Oil Glut Gets Uglier – Forget the Recovery and “Rebalancing” Hype
    Deal makers in the oil patch of the US and Canada are smelling the fees, and they’re firing up the machinery. In the first half of the year, there were 52 pending and completed acquisitions of oil & gas exploration & production companies valued at $100 million or more, for a total of $30 billion, Fitch Ratings reported today: “The rise in transaction volume seems to be largely due to the improvement in hydrocarbon prices, including the tightening of bid/ask spreads, and access to capital markets.” The global oil market is “rebalancing” with production falling and demand rising, the meme goes. In anticipation, prices have bounced off the lows in February, with WTI soaring from $26.19 a barrel to $51.23 by June 8. So this would be the great oil price recovery.
  • Great American Oil Bust Rages on; Defaults, Bankruptcies Soar – How much worse is 2016 than 2015?
    Junk bonds, trading like stocks since February, have skyrocketed and yields have plunged. But that doesn’t mean the bloodletting is over. The trailing 12-month US high-yield bond default rate jumped to 4.9% at the end of June, the highest since May 2010 as the Financial Crisis was winding down, Fitch Ratings reported today. The first-half total of $50.2 billion of defaults already exceeds the $48.3 billion for the entire year 2015. Energy companies accounted for 56% of those defaults. The energy sector default rate shot up to 15%. Within it, the default rate of the Exploration & Production (E&P) sub-sector soared to 29%! And the default party isn’t over: “Despite the run-up in prices since the February trough, there will be additional sector defaults, with Halcon Resources expected to file imminently,” Fitch reported.
  • Stocks Will Crash – and Crush (California’s) Pension Funds & Taxpayers: Report
    The California Policy Center published an interesting study – “interesting” in all kinds of ways, including its outline of the doom-and-gloom future of California’s state and local pension plans if stocks turn down sharply, preceded by its prediction that stocks will turn down sharply because valuations are totally unsustainable. The huge, simultaneous, Fed-engineered rallies in stocks, bonds, and real estate – typically the three biggest holdings of state and local pension funds in the US – have inflated the balance sheets of these funds, thus elegantly, if only partially, papering over their fundamental problems. Most of these funds have a similar doom-and-gloom future when the asset bubbles get pulled out from under them. Plenty of pension funds don’t even need a market correction: they’re already in serious trouble despite the asset bubbles.
  • China Is About To Shock The World And The Global Financial System
    On the heels of the Dow hitting new all-time highs and the U.S. dollar surging, China is about to shock the world and the global financial system. Stephen Leeb:  “Global turmoil keeps ratcheting up. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. The attempted military coup in Turkey is the latest eruption, following on the heels of yet another massacre in France. Syria remains an ongoing nightmare while terrorist bombings in Iraq are so commonplace they barely register…
  • End Time Persecution Is Here: Russia Just Banned Evangelism And China Has Torn Down 1000s Of Crosses
    We always knew that this was coming.  For years, the horrifying persecution of Christians in the Middle East has made headlines all over the globe, but now we are seeing very disturbing examples of government-sanctioned persecution literally all over the planet.  As you will read about below, Russia just banned virtually all types of evangelism outside of a church or religious site.  And China has been tearing down thousands of crosses and has been demolishing dozens of churches in a renewed crackdown on the growth of Christianity in that nation.  Overall, there are 53 countries that now have laws that restrict the Christian faith according to one recent report.  When are we going to wake up and realize what is happening?
  • America Wastes About HALF The Food That It Produces While Hunger Runs Rampant Around The Globe
    Is the United States the most wasteful nation on the entire planet?  We are all certainly guilty of wasting food.  Whether it is that little bit that you don’t want to eat at the end of a meal, or that produce that you forgot about in the back of the refrigerator that went moldy, the truth is that we could all do better at making sure that good food does not get wasted.  It can be tempting to think that wasting food is not a big deal because we have so much of it, but an increasing number of people around the world are really hurting these days.  In fact, it has been estimated that there are more than a billion hungry people around the globe right now.  So as a society we need to figure out how to waste a whole lot less food and how to get it into the mouths of those that really need it.
  • US & Clinton Beyond the Law-Catherine Austin Fitts
    Financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts, says the U.S. government’s actions with Hillary Clinton means it is more lawless than ever. Fitts explains, “The entire country now looks like Arkansas . . . we’ve all turned into Mena, Arkansas, now. It’s pretty tragic. I have watched for two decades while 80% of the federal budget and federal credit has been run outside the Constitution and the laws related to financial management. I have never seen anything as blatant and outrageous as Loretta Lynch, prior to Hillary Clinton’s interview with the FBI, meeting with her disbarred husband, who is either the husband of or the target of a criminal investigation, and basically briefing him, I am assuming and what I believe on what Hillary needs to know, so she can skate the (FBI) interview. What the President, Lynch and Comey don’t want is the investigative team recommending to indict. . . . If you know anything about civil or criminal procedures, this is so beyond the law. This is so over the top that I have never seen anything more outrageous. It’s beginning to look like Mena, Arkansas, during the Mena drug running.”
  • Those That Wanted To Get Prepared Have Already Gotten Prepared By Now
    Is the time for warning people to prepare for what is ahead coming to an end?  For years, bold men and women all over America have been sounding the alarm and warning people to get prepared physically, financially, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the great storm that is rapidly approaching.  Personally, I have written more than 2,500 articles on my primary two websites combined, and so nobody can accuse me of not blowing the trumpet.  It has gotten to the point that sometimes I am even tired of listening to myself warn the people.  But now we are shifting into a new phase.
  • The Dow And The S&P 500 Soar To Brand New All-Time Record Highs – How Is This Possible?
    The Dow and the S&P 500 both closed at all-time record highs on Tuesday, and that is very good news.  You might think that is an odd statement coming from the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, but the truth is that I am not at all eager to see the financial system crash and burn.  We all saw what took place when it happened in 2008 – millions of people lost their jobs, millions of people lost their homes, and economic suffering was off the charts.  So no, I don’t want to see that happen again any time soon.  All of our lives will be a lot more comfortable if the financial markets are stable and stocks continue to go up.  If the Dow and the S&P 500 can keep on soaring, that will suit me just fine.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that is going to be what happens.
  • More Islamic Terror in France, Black Lives Matter is False Narrative, Phony Stock Market Highs
    France has been hit once again by Islamic terror–this time in Nice. The French Riviera town was struck during Bastille Day celebrations by a terrorist who used a truck to mow down dozens of people.  French media says ISIS is claiming responsibility for the heinous crime. The USA Today keeps propelling false narratives with the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement and helping out the Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton with what can only be described as biased one-sided reporting. “Black Lives Matter” has been described as “racist” by former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.   This week, the USA Today staff put a picture on the front page with a BLM protester that read “Killer cops make cop Killers.”  BLM basically claims white police officers are hunting down black men and murdering them on purpose.  This is a total lie, and is refuted by a brand new study from Harvard. USA Today would not comment on the editorial decision of the newspaper to put forth a totally false narrative.
  • War Is Coming And The Global Financial Situation Is A Lot Worse Than You May Think
    On the surface, things seem pretty quiet in mid-July 2016.  The biggest news stories are about the speculation surrounding Donald Trump’s choice of running mate, the stock market in the U.S. keeps setting new all-time record highs, and the media seems completely obsessed with Taylor Swift’s love life.  But underneath the surface, it is a very different story.  As you will see below, the conditions for a “perfect storm” are coming together very rapidly, and the rest of 2016 promises to be much more chaotic than what we have seen so far.
  • Defence giant says UK could be more attractive to invest post-Brexit vote
    One of the world’s largest defence contractors has said that the UK could become a more attractive place to invest, after Brits voted to leave the European Union. Marillyn Hewson, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, told the Sunday Times that the weaker pound could make exporting from Britain more lucrative. Lockheed builds gun turrets for the UK’s Ajax and Warrior tanks at its factory in Bedfordshire, which it hopes to export to other countries. It’s also the main contractor for Britain’s plans to buy 138 F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. Hewson added that the UK’s attractiveness as a place to invest post-Brexit vote would depend “”on the government and the policies its puts in place”.
  • Why Italy's banking crisis will shake the eurozone to its core
    They call them le sofferenze – the suffering. The imagery is striking, the thousands of sofferenze across Italy, unwanted and ignored, a problem unsolved. But despite the emotional name, these are not people. They are loans. Bad debts, draining banks of profits and undermining economic growth. The name is less clinical than the English term “non-performing loans”, a reflection of the Italian authorities’ emotional rather than business-like approach to the problem. None the less, the loans are indeed causing real suffering. The €360bn (£300bn) of sofferenze from Italian banks show borrowers are weighed down with debts they cannot afford, while the banks are struggling to offer new credit to the households and firms that need them.
  • UK Opens ‘Very Fruitful’ Trade Talks With Canada
    Britain opened “very fruitful” trade talks with Canada on Friday, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the Sunday Times newspaper as he prepares to renegotiate Britain's commercial ties following its vote last month to leave the European Union. In limited extracts of his interview, Fox said he would soon travel to the United States to ensure that Britain was not at the back of the queue in trade talks as President Barack Obama had suggested before the June 23 vote. He said was “scoping” about a dozen free trade deals outside the EU to be ready for when Britain leaves, some with countries that had indicated they wanted a quick deal and others with some of the world's major economies.
  • Middle East: The Rest of the Story
    Want to know what is really happening in the Middle East? Pastor Lindsey Williams created a 3-DVD set entitled “Middle East: The rest of the Story” and it includes topics: “Future Price of Crude Oil”, “Future Price of Gasoline and Diesel”, “Future Grocery Prices”, “Explosive Growth to US Crude Production”, “China and the US”, “The Future of Islam”, “Riots in the Middle East”. This 3-DVD set is very important if you want to know what is happening right now in the Middle East.
  • “This Is Going To Get Very Ugly” – Former Top CIA Officer Says “Obama Has Lost Control Of The Middle East”
    With Thursday's tragic mass killing by a resclusive, truck-driving Tunisian maniac in Nice having been violently drowned out by the frentic late Friday news of a failed (and perhaps staged) coup in Turkey, the news cycle has once again shifted its attention away from a far greater threat to the global economy than whether Erdogan can concentrate even more power in his grasp. Namely, both lone-wolf and organized terrorism in Europe (and elsewhere). And according to at least one CIA field commander, Gary Bernsten, it is all Obama's fault. As the Hill reports, the decorated former CIA career officer who served in the Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005, said on Friday that Obama has lost control of the Middle East following attacks in France that left at least 84 dead.  “This is going to get very, very ugly,” Gary Bernsten said on Fox & Friends Friday.
  • Turkish Central Bank Pledges “Unlimited Liquidity” On Bank Run Fears: Wall Street's Take
    Late on Friday afternoon, just as the market was closing and news of the Turkish coup spread, Turkish ETFs tumbled and the Lira dropped the most in 8 years on investor concerns about the future of the country, and a spike in social media reports that local depositors were – understandably – pulling their money from banks, potentially sparking a bank run. The Turkish Lira losses added to its woes after having slid 20% last year; the currency has now lost more than 40% of its value since the end of 2012. And while the (allegedly staged) coup has been put down, questions remained about the stability of the Turkish financial system. Which is why early today, Turkey’s central bank held an extraordinary meeting with bank executives to discuss ways to minimize the market impact of the coup attempt. The bank convened members of the Banks Association of Turkey, and shortly after announced a series of steps which, comparable to the post-Brexit reaction, sought to stabilize risk assets.
  • Morgan Stanley: “To Make Up For A 10% Drop In The S&P, Treasury Yields Would Need To Go… Negative”
    With both the S&P500 and Treasury prices hitting record highs as recently as one week ago, many have been confused (perhaps none more so than Goldman's clients as we reported yesterday), although the conventional fallback explanation that has again emerged, is a reversion back to the “Fed Model” according to which the lower yields go, the highest equity multiples should (and may) rise. As a bearish Goldman explained, “bullish investors argue that sustained low rates will support P/E multiples of 20x or more. The Fed Model relates the earnings yield (5.7%) to the Treasury yield (1.5%). The current 420 bp yield gap is near the 10-year average. Exhibit 2 shows the sensitivity of this model. Assuming a steady bond yield, reversion to the 35-year average gap of 250 bp implies a S&P 500 year-end level of 3075 while the 5-year average gap implies 1900.”  For the record, Goldman is not a fan of a 3,000+ S&P target, and instead expects the market to drop in the coming months.
  • “The Credit Ponzi Is Dead” – Brexit Or Not, The Pound Will Crash
    Status quo, as our generation know it, established in 1945 has plodded along ever since. It is true that it have had near death experiences several times, especially in August 1971 when the world almost lost faith in the global reserve currency and in 2008 when the fractional reserve Ponzi nearly consumed itself. While the recent Brexit vote seem to be just another near death experience we believe it says something more fundamental about the world. When the 1945 new world order came into existence, its architects built it on a shaky foundation based on statists Keynesian principles. It was clearly unsustainable from the get-go, but as long as living standards rose, no one seemed to notice or care. The global elite managed to resurrect a dying system in the 1970s by giving its people something for nothing. Debt accumulation collateralized by rising asset values became a substitute for productivity and wage increases. While people could no longer afford to pay for their health care, education, house or car through savings they kept on voting for the incumbents (no, there is no difference between center left and right) since friendly bankers were more than willing to make up the difference.
  • Why the Gold Price is Rising, and Why it will Continue to do so
    Do you remember last year, when an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal referred to gold as nothing more than a ‘pet rock’? At the time, gold was trading for around US$1,130 an ounce. A year later, gold is trading around US$1,350 an ounce (up around 20%), while the S&P 500 is up only a few percent, despite closing at another record high today, at 2137 points. The author of that article, Jason Zweig, returned last week in his regular Intelligent Investor column to defend his pet rock call. While he acknowledged some important reasons for gold’s enduring allure, he trotted out some pretty lame reasons for sticking with his 2015 call that gold is basically just a rock.
  • Gold Has Important Place in Investment Portfolio as Paper Currency Wanes
    On Tuesday we got not especially coherent statements from three Federal Reserve bank Presidents. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard was dismissive of the impact of the UK referendum on the U.S. and yes, directly, the UK doesn’t matter that much. What will matter will be the impact on the U.S. of slowing growth in the Eurozone. According to the IMF, growth will slow down as a consequence of the Referendum to 1.6 percent this year and 1.4 percent in 2017. Both years were revised down from 1.7 percent.
  • New Stock Market Highs Correlate to $57 Trillion in Printed Global Currency Units
    When people use the term “money,” it usually refers to a unit of currency used in the transacting of business and commerce. A woman works cleaning houses for a week and gets paid in a number of currency units and then goes to the supermarket and exchanges those units for food or diapers or medicine. What is left over at the end of the pay period is called “savings,” which are allowed to accumulate receiving a modest rate of interest. Around the globe this weekend, a vast number of banks are offering negative returns on savings, such that keeping one's accumulated units of currency in the bank is penalized. The objective of this monetary experiment is to combat the global problem of deflation. Despite $57 trillion of new currency units having been printed since the 2009 financial crisis, global growth has been tepid at best because the velocity of “money” has remained moribund and since all collateral underpinning this massive global debt must not be allowed to depreciate, the central banks have been allowed to engage in a massive, coordinated reflation designed to jumpstart “money” velocity.
  • Ignore Pullbacks As Top Analyst Says Gold To Hit New All-Time Highs, Plus A Shocking Chart
    With continued wild trading in global markets, one of the top analysts in the world says ignore pullbacks as price of gold to smash through all-time highs. There is also a shocking chart included in this fantastic piece. “Markets say the ECB is done, their box is empty… But we are magic people. Each time we take something and give to the markets – a rabbit out of the hat.” — Vitas Vasiliasukas, member of the ECB’s Governing Council. Today King World News is featuring a piece by a man whose recently released masterpiece has been praised around the world, and also recognized as some of the most unique work in the gold market.  Below is the latest exclusive KWN piece by Ronald-Peter Stoeferle of Incrementum AG out of Liechtenstein.
  • Gold Price of $1,400 is just the Start – Vaneck
    Although gold prices are down from last week’s two-year high, one investment firm sees $1,400 an ounce as just the start as the market remains in a new bull uptrend. In a report released Tuesday, Joe Foster, gold strategist at VanEck, said that the firm is expecting gold prices to reach $1,400 an ounce in the second half of the year, adding “and we do not believe it will end there.” Tuesday, August gold futures have seen renewed selling pressure with prices last trading at $1,336.50 an ounce, down almost 1.5% on the day. What is the driving the next leg of the renewed secular bull market is the fact that investors are being more proactive, he said. He added that inflows into gold-backed exchange-traded products are at their highest level since 2009, when investors sought out safe-haven assets during the sub-prime credit crisis.
  • The IRS wants a Piece of Your Gold and Silver Profits: Here's what You Need to Tell Them… And What You Don't
    With gold and silver gaining popularity as safe haven assets during economic crisis there is a strong possibility that we’ll see prices go to all-time highs in the future. With those price increases will come windfall profits for investors. And, as you already know, where there’s profit, there’s a government with its hands in your pocket trying to get a piece of the action.
  • Did Citi Just Confiscate $1 Billion In Venezuela Gold
    Just over a year ago, cash-strapped Venezuela quietly conducted a little-noticed gold-for-cash swap with Citigroup as part of which Maduro converted part of his nation's gold reserves into at least $1 billion in cash through a swap with Citibank. As Reuters reported then, the deal would make more foreign currency available to President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government as the OPEC nation struggles with soaring consumer prices, chronic shortages and a shrinking economy worsened by low oil prices. Needless to say, the socialist country's economic situation is orders of magnitude worse now. According to El Nacional, “the deal was for $1 billion and was struck with Citibank, which is owned by Citigroup.”
  • Venezuela army deployed to control food production and distribution
    Venezuela's military has taken control of five ports in an effort to guarantee supplies of food and medicine. In a decree, President Nicolas Maduro has ordered the army to monitor food processing plants, and co-ordinate the production and distribution of items. Venezuela is going through a deep economic crisis despite having the world's largest oil reserves. Basic products are increasingly hard to find and many say they struggle to feed their families. The Venezuelan Bishops Conference said the rise of the military is a “threat to tranquillity and peace”. Mr Maduro says the measure is to fight the “economic war” he claims is being waged against his government by political foes and businessmen, with US backing. But the opposition says the government has mismanaged the economy, and has called for a referendum to oust the president.
  • Energy Failures Push U.S. High-Yield Default Rate to 6-Year High
    U.S. high-yield bonds in default reached the highest levels in at least six years as more energy companies buckled under pressure from stagnant oil prices. Speculative-grade U.S. defaults spiked to 5.1 percent of the total outstanding in the second quarter from 4.4 percent in the first, according to a July 12 report from Moody’s Investors Service. The global high-yield default rate could finish the year at 4.9 percent, with the U.S. as much as 6.4 percent, Moody’s said.
  • There’s a war on its way, and it will make Iraq look like child’s play
    War is on many people’s minds at the moment. But whilst most of the public are focused on wars of the past after the release of the Chilcot report, our leaders are plotting one for the future. And, if their rhetoric is anything to go by, it’s going to be on a scale we have never seen before. So, where’s the media flurry? Or the political fire being shot across the Commons over the issue? It’s nowhere to be seen. And that glaring oversight, or purposeful omission, could be what lets us sleepwalk into World War III.
  • Theresa May’s husband is a senior executive at a $1.4tn investment fund that profits from tax avoiding companies
    The relatively unknown investment fund where Theresa May’s husband Philip works as a senior executive is one of the world’s largest and most powerful financial institutions, controlling $1.4 trillion in assets. Its portfolio also includes $20 billion of shares in Amazon and Starbucks, both of which were cited by the Prime Minister-designate in her pledge to crack down on tax avoidance yesterday. Latest filings to US authorities show that Los Angeles based Capital Group owns huge stakes in a variety of companies, including investment bank JP Morgan Chase, defence giant Lockheed Martin, tobacco company Philip Morris International, the pharmaceutical sector’s Merck & Co, and also Ryanair.
  • Russian leader sacks EVERY commander in his Baltic fleet after ‘they refused to confront Western ships’
    RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has taken a page out of Joseph Stalin’s book — and sacked every commander in his Baltic fleet. As many as 50 senior officers including a Vice Admiral have been purged by Vladimir Putin amid reports they refused to confront Western ships. Other Russian news sites also speculated that attempts to cover up a crash between a Russian sub and a Polish boat may have been behind the bloodletting. But given the endemic nature of corruption and incompetence across the Russian military, Western analysts are scratching their heads as to the real reason behind the purge.
  • Gestapo America — Paul Craig Roberts
    FBI Director James Comey got Hillary off the hook but wants to put you on it. He is pushing hard for warrantless access to all of your Internet activity. Comey, who would have fit in perfectly with Hitler’s Gestapo, tells Congress that the United States is not safe unless the FBI knows when every American goes online, to whom they are sending emails and from whom they are receiving emails, and knows every website visited by every American. In other words, Comey wants to render null and void the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and completely destroy your privacy rights. The reason Washington wants to know everything about everyone is so that Washington can embarrass, blackmail, and frame on felony charges patriots who stand up in defense of the US Constitution and the rule of law, and dissidents who criticize Washington’s illegal wars, reckless foreign policies, and oppression of American citizens.
  • Millions Wiped Off Commercial Property Market
    The scale of damage to Britain's commercial property market by Brexit has been laid bare by new figures showing prices have fallen and millions of pounds of deals have collapsed. According to industry insiders, one in three major property investment deals has fallen through in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the EU. Prices across Britain's commercial property market, which includes office blocks, shopping centres and workplaces, are estimated to have fallen by 10-15% in the days after the vote. And an estimated £500m worth of so-called “Brexit clauses” have been triggered, meaning ongoing deals to buy and sell buildings have been cancelled or renegotiated.
  • Some disturbing figures about the upcoming banking crisis
    In early 1870, the Kingdom of Prussia and French Empire were about to go to war. It was one of countless conflicts between the dozens of European kingdoms and empires throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and this one was over before it even started. Prussia’s military might was legendary. They had recently beaten the pants off of Austria and Denmark, and they’d go on to neutralize or capture over 80% of French soldiers within a matter of months, while losing just 2% of their own. Very few wars have been so one-sided. And yet despite its nearly unparalleled military successes and clear dominance in European politics, Prussia lacked something critical: financial power.
  • Russia passes ‘Big Brother' anti-terror laws
    Russia’s parliament has passed harsh anti-terrorism measures that human rights campaigners including the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden say will roll back personal freedoms and privacy. The lower house of parliament voted 325 to 1 on Friday to adopt the “Yarovaya law”, a package of amendments authored by the ruling United Russia party member Irina Yarovaya, who is known for previous legislative crackdowns on protesters and non-governmental organisations. Snowden, who has lived in Russia since receiving asylum in 2013, tweeted on Saturday that the “Big Brother law” was an “unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights” that would “take money and liberty from every Russian without improving safety”.
  • Robots will replace a quarter of business services workers by 2035, says Deloitte
    A quarter of jobs in Britain’s business services sector are at “high risk” of automation within the next two decades, according to a new report. Accountancy firm Deloitte warned that robots could replace a fifth of jobs in administrative roles such as telecoms and IT by 2035 as falling technology costs and rising wages make automation increasingly attractive. Deloitte said that around 3.3 million jobs could be classified as business services roles, and that of those, there was a “high chance” that 800,000 to one million jobs would no longer be performed by humans over the period.
  • 90% Of June Job Gains Went To Workers 55 And Older
    While the algos have long forgotten about today's job report whose headline was good enough to unleash an epic buying spree which has pushed the S&P to the highest level since July 2015, a quick read between the lines reveals a continuation of some recent troubling trends, namely that all job gains in recent years have gone exclusively to the oldest segment of the population, those 55 and older. First, as the chart below shows, when breaking down the job additions by age group as per the Household Survey, of the 180K jobs added in this particular survey, 259,000 were in the 55 and over age group, while only 28,000 were added in the critical 25-54 age group. Young workers, those under 24, lost a collective 107,000 in June. In other words, 90% of all job gains in the month went to workers 55 and over.
  • NRA: Restaurant performance weakens in May
    Restaurant sales softened in May, along with operator expectations, as the industry continued its choppy 2016, according to the latest Restaurant Performance Index from the National Restaurant Association. The monthly indication of the health of the industry fell 0.9 percent to 100.6 in May, from 101.6 in April. The NRA considers the industry to be in expansion mode if the index is above 100. “The RPI continued along a choppy trend line in May, with the index bouncing between moderate gains and losses in recent months,” Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the NRA, said in a statement.
  • Bill Gates And Other Billionaires Backing A Nuclear Renaissance
    Let’s for a second imagine a world without nuclear energy. That’s a tough one but let’s try. No nuclear bombs, of course, no Chernobyl and Fukushima, no worries about Iran and North Korea. A wonderful world, maybe? Probably not, because without nuclear energy we would have burned millions more tons of coal and billions more barrels of oil. This would have brought about climate change of such proportions that what we have today would have seemed negligible. Nuclear energy and uranium, which feeds it, are controversial enough even without any actual accident happening. Radioactivity is dangerous. Nobody is arguing against it. When an accident does take place, the public backlash is understandably huge. What many opponents of uranium forget to mention, however, are the benefits of nuclear energy and the fact that the statistical probability of serious accidents is pretty low. They focus on the “What if?” and neglect the other side of the coin. But let’s try to see both sides of the issue.
  • Malls Push Out Department Stores
    At the Florida Mall in Orlando, Nordstrom was torn down and replaced with a Dick’s Sporting Goods store and a crayon-based family attraction called the Crayola Experience. The Saks Fifth Avenue was demolished, too, to make way for a dining pavilion with 23 restaurants. And Lord & Taylor was carved into space for American Girl, H&M, Forever 21 and Zara. Once the linchpin of American shopping malls, department stores are being displaced by newer types of retailers that do a better job of driving shoppers to the centers and lifting overall mall sales. Landlords are nudging out the once-coveted big box chains in favor of sporting-goods retailers, fast-fashion chains, supermarkets, gyms, restaurants, movies theaters and other types of entertainment as they seek to keep their properties relevant in an age increasingly dominated by online shopping.
  • Who’s Most Afraid of Contagion from Italy’s Bank Meltdown? French and German banks
    Contagion is the reason Italy’s banking crisis is all of a sudden Europe’s biggest existential threat. Greece’s intractable problems are out of sight, out of mind; Brexit momentarily spooked investors and bankers; but Italy’s banking woes have the potential to wipe out investors and undo over 60 years of supranational state-building in Europe. The last few days have seen growing calls for taxpayer-funded state intervention, a practice that was supposed to have been consigned to the annals of history by Europe’s enactment of new bail-in rules on Jan 1, 2016. The idea behind the new legislation was simple: never again would taxpayers be left exclusively holding the tab for European banks’ insolvency issues while bondholders were getting bailed out. But even before the new rules have been tried out, they are about to be broken, or at least bent beyond all recognition.
  • Congress: “Too Big to Jail: Inside the Obama Justice Department’s Decision Not to Hold Wall Street Accountable”
    The US House of Representatives today released the results of its three-year investigation – hampered along the way by the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury – into why HSBC and its executives weren’t prosecuted. Empirical evidence has told us for years that in the US a bank and its executives cannot be prosecuted if the bank is big enough. We’ve come to call this type of bank “Too Big to Jail.” Empirical evidence has also told us that a bank can do essentially whatever it wants to, given that, if caught, it may have to pay a fine that then becomes just part of the cost of doing business. Wall Street doesn’t care about fines. They’re “extraordinary items” that banks and analysts systematically exclude from their “ex-items” per-share earnings. Fines matter under GAAP reporting. But they don’t matter in the rosy picture that Wall Street paints of the banks. And so they don’t matter.
  • Merchants Of War: U.S. Arms Export Reaches All-Time High At $47 Billion in FY 2015
    International demand for U.S. weapons systems is expected to continue growing in coming years, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Sunday, citing strong interest in unmanned systems, munitions and fighter jets. “The appetite just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” U.S. Air Force Deputy Undersecretary Heidi Grant told Reuters in an interview on the eve of the Farnborough International Airshow. U.S. arms sales approved by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency rose 36 percent to $46.6 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2015, and are likely to remain strong this year, Grant said. Grant, the Air Force’s top international arms sales official, said she was working with many countries in eastern Europe and others that wanted to increase their defenses following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine, but faced tough budget constraints.

In the year 1971 Lindsey Williams went to the state of Alaska to become an aviation missionary. Shortly after arriving in Alaska, Mr. Williams heard the oil companies were going to build the Trans-Alaska Oil pipeline and that 25,000 pipeliners were going to converge on the state to build it. Mr. Williams consequently volunteered his services as chaplain on the pipeline. Shortly after becoming chaplain, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company offered him executive status and invited him to sit in on their board meetings in an advisory capacity to help the relationship between management and labor. What he heard over the next three years time would change his life. He learned that OPEC had nothing to do with the price of oil but that the elite of the world controlled it. Mr. Williams knew he had to put into print what he saw and heard in order to inform the American people. His story is documented in The Energy Non Crisis.

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Latest News Articles – July 14, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From July 8, 2016 to July 14, 2016:

  • Global Economy Critical Condition Code Blue-Rob Kirby
    Macroeconomic analyst Rob Kirby says don’t trust the stock market’s rise to new all-time highs. The global economy is in terminal trouble, and Kirby explains, “My view of the financial system as it sits today is we are in an intensive care unit, and we have a lot of tubes and wires connected to us right now.  The question you are asking me is how long is a person in critical condition in an intensive care unit going to live?  I don’t really know the answer to it other than we could get a code blue any day. We could get a code blue tomorrow . . . code blue is when somebody has passed.”
  • Gold has ‘unlimited upside' because the Fed is ‘confused' on policy: Trader
    Gold just posted its longest weekly winning streak since July 2011, but if investors missed out on the recent rally, fear not. One trader says the commodity has “unlimited upside,” and investors have the Federal Reserve to thank for it. On CNBC's “Futures Now” this week, Tom Colvin said that gold will remain in a bull market that will only come to an end “when central banks take their hands out of the cookie jar.” The Federal Reserve is unlikely to hike rates in the foreseeable future, despite a blockbuster June employment report on Friday.
  • Peter Schiff Warns of the “Worst Economic Downturn Including the Great Depression”
    The Federal Reserve’s monetary policies have manufactured a “super bubble” that “…may give us the worst economic downturn including the Great Depression,” economist Peter Schiff declared during an interview with Accuracy in Media. Schiff is the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, and a guest commentator on CNBC. He explained that low interest rates prop up the government’s feckless fiscal policies and generate “…really systemic structural problems in the economy…” that “manifest themselves in bubbles that then burst. …the Fed’s policy does not work and has not solved our problems, it has simply exacerbated our problems, and…we’re gonna have a currency crisis, we’re gonna have a sovereign debt crisis and it’ll make the financial crisis of ’08 really look like the Sunday school picnic,” he said.
  • “The World Is Walking From Crisis To Crisis” – Why BofA Sees $1,500 Gold And $30 Silver
    With both stocks and US Treasury prices at all time highs the market is sensing that something has to give, and that something may just be more QE, which likely explains the move higher in gold to coincide with both risk and risk-haven assets. As of moments ago, gold rose above $1,370, and was back to levels not seen since 2014. Curiously, the move higher is taking place after Friday's “stellar” jobs report, suggesting that someone does not believe the seasonally-adjusted numbers goalseeked by the BLS. And while we reported last week that one way investors are rushing into the anti-QE safety of gold is by buying paper gold derivatves such as ETFs, which rose above 2,000 tons for the first time since 2013, many others have bypassed paper claims on gold such as GLD entirely, and are rushing into physical.
  • 2016: The Big Shift
    As we close 2015 and begin a new year, the markets generally closed flat to neutral with a warning that as we approach the political year from hell (2017) that this is by no means going to be a walk through the park. We are more likely than not going to see some trends conclude in 2016 and others perform a false move to scare the hell out of everyone. Nevertheless, the stars may not be aligning, but the markets appear to be setting the stage to align for the BIG SHIFT. What does the BIG SHIFT mean? It means that as we face a meltdown in socialism, which has taken hold of western governments and destroyed our underlying democratic foundations, ALL assets must prepare for the HEDGE against government.
  • The Federal Reserve's Grand Scheme Exposed (In 1 Simple Chart)
    For 138 years, consumer prices in America slightly declined. After The Federal Reserve was created, things changed… The ascent of the non-1% peaked when the Deep State forced Nixon to depart from the gold standard's constraint on largesse. Which should also clarify just why to the “1%”, including their protectors in the “developed market” central banking system, their tenured economist lackeys, their purchased politicians and their captured media outlets, the topic of a return to a gold standard is the biggest threat conceivable.
  • Pension horror – as retirees get an eighth of what was predicted
    Pension savers, who opened with-profits policies in the 1990s, could receive a fraction of the cash they were told they'd get when they started saving. A report has revealed that some people who would told they could expect around £29,000 a year in retirement could in fact get just £3,774. Money Mail has published the figures, which have been caused by two crushing forces: with-profits disasters, and annuity pain.
  • S&P 500 near record highs? Treasury yields at lows? Something’s gotta give
    It’s a tug of war between stocks and bonds, at least, it feels that way. The S&P 500 were on pace to surpass a record closing high of 2,130.82 on Monday as Treasury yields held at record lows. The sharp swing higher for stocks was sparked by a June jobs report that showed that the U.S. created 287,000 new jobs in June, quelling some of the nagging fears that the labor market was beginning to sputter after the May report showed a measly 38,000 jobs (later cut to 11,000) were added.
  • Obama Pretty Much Shuts Down Offshore Drilling In Alaska
    The Obama administration announced new safety regulations Thursday that would place extremely strict limits on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of Alaska. The New York Times reported the regulations, finalized by the Department of the Interior, are seen as intended to reduce investment and harm energy production in the region. The New York Times stated that the rules are “the latest in a series of Obama administration rules designed to slow the extraction of fossil fuels from American public lands and waters.”
  • Lessons from the worst banking crisis in history
    It’s ironic that some of the most honest words to come out of a politician’s mouth were, “When it becomes serious you have to lie.” That was a quote from Jean-Claude Juncker, former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and President of the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) in 2011 when asked about Greece’s financial crisis. Greece was on the ropes and the entire system about to collapse, so, of course they lied. Then they lied about lying. This raises a very reliable rule of thumb to keep in mind during (and before) a banking crisis: don’t trust anyone in the establishment, especially a politician. It’s good advice these days.
  • The U.S. Government Is Targeting Your Retirement Savings… Here’s What You Can Do
    Even before the Obama Administration introduced the new myRA program last year, there were whispers that the U.S. government would “assume some risk” for U.S. retirement accounts. That makes for a nice sound bite, but it’s really code for forcing American savers to buy government bonds. Here’s how it works. There’s no minimum balance to open a myRA account. And the accounts don’t incur fees. However, your myRA can only invest in U.S. Treasuries, which probably won’t even come close to keeping up with the real rate of inflation. In other words, what myRAs really offer is “return-free risk.”
  • Are You Planning Your Retirement? Forget About It. You Won’t Survive To Experience It.
    The Israeli agents who comprise the Neoconservatives, a collection of war criminals that control US foreign policy, have already handed you your death certificate. The neoconservatives have far more power than they have intelligence or humanity. At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Conference, President Putin excoriated Western Journalists for endlessly repeating Washington’s lies that are driving the world to nuclear war. He asked Washington’s bought-and-paid-for-whores, the scum who comprise the Western news media: “How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction toward nuclear war?” Yes, indeed, how is it possible for the Western media to be totally blind? The answer to this question is that Americans live in the system of lies that comprise The Matrix, and media are paid to support the system of lies. The determining questions are: Can Americans escape their captivity in time to save life on earth? Do Americans have what it takes, or are Americans already a proven failed people who cower in ignorance under the threat of implausible “foreign threats”?
  • A Drone Was Used to Blow up a US Citizen Without Trial Yesterday. Let That Sink In
    The Dallas shootings have ushered in a very new world for U.S. citizens. For the very first time, a drone has been used on U.S. soil to kill an American without trial or charges.
    The suspected shooter in yesterday’s tragic killings, U.S. Army veteran Micah Xavier Johnson, was, according to police and press reports, holed up in a parking garage and would not give himself up. After hours of what police claimed were fruitless negotiations with Johnson, a weaponized robot was sent to where he was hiding and blown up, taking Johnson with it.
  • Massive Stockpile Means Oil Rebound Is Over
    A massive global stockpile of oil could mean trouble ahead for the global crude market, according to Barclays. Crude oil prices dropped to a two month low on Thursday, after the Energy Information Administration reported a smaller-than-expected decrease in oil stockpiles. That may be a canary in the coalmine, a top energy market watcher explained. “For the last 6 quarters there’s been this discrepancy between global supply and global demand,” Michael Cohen, head of energy commodities research at Barclays, said last week on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”
  • Japanese savers flood into gold fearing the endgame is close
    For all the talk about the surging yen as the biggest threat to Japan’s embattled economy, the truth is that there is another soaring currency (and asset) that is far more troubling for Shinzo Abe. Gold. While in past decades, the natural instinct of Japanese savers when faced with financial uncertainty has been to rush into the “safety” of cash (after all why allocate funds to government bonds that yield almost, or less, than nothing) as we recently showed in Safes Sell Out In Japan and Demand For Big Bills Soars As Japan Stuffs Safes With 10,000-Yen Notes, now something has changed. That something is increasing loss of faith in Japan’s currency.
  • Keep an Eye on the Dollar: It’s More Important than Ever. Global demand is the main concern right now
    I have, on many occasions in the past in these pages, touched on the relationship between oil and the U.S. Dollar. The basics of that relationship are obvious: oil is priced in dollars on the global market, so from a logical perspective a strong dollar must put pressure on oil prices and vice versa. If the currency is worth more generally then anything priced in it is, relatively speaking, worth less…the price of that commodity goes down. This is not a tick for tick relationship, but over time and when broader trends emerge it generally holds true. That is reason enough for those who trade and invest in the energy sector to keep an eye on the dollar, but right now it may be even more important than ever.
  • 2 Signs the government is planning to confiscate your retirement funds
    We’ve warned that bankrupt governments will be eyeing the multi-trillions of dollars in “un-taxed” retirement funds when they get desperate enough. Total funds currently held in private IRA and 401K accounts in the US are estimated to be in the neighborhood of $10 trillion. As we dance on the brink of a massive collapse, the government’s already empty coffers will be even further decimated as the economy contracts massively and tax receipts plummet. In that moment, rather than reducing expenditures and doing massive layoffs and closures of departments, like any regular business would do, politicians will nationalize retirement funds for the “good of the country”.
  • Black Hole of Negative Rates Is Dragging Down Yields Everywhere
    The free fall in yields on developed-world government debt is dragging down rates on global bonds broadly, from sovereign debt in Taiwan and Lithuania to corporate bonds in the U.S., as investors fan out further in search of income. The ever-widening rush for yield could create problems if interest rates snap back, which would cause losses on investors’ low-yielding portfolios, or if credit quality falls. And the global yield grab is raising questions about whether rates can prove reliable economic indicators. Yields in the U.S., Europe and Japan have been plummeting as investors pile into government debt in the face of tepid growth, low inflation and high uncertainty, and as central banks cut rates into negative territory in many countries.
  • Repeat Of 70s Pattern Shows That A $675 Silver Price Is Realistic
    In my previous silver article, I highlighted a very bullish pattern/fractal on the 100-year silver chart. It was a very big picture view of silver, which is really difficult to perceive within our current reality. However, at some point in time, it will catch up with our current reality. This will likely happen when the monetary system collapses. Silver, even more than gold, is the opposite of what is considered a monetary asset (debt, like a federal reserve note), today. This is mainly because silver has been completely demonetized, whereas gold is still a part of the current system (think central banks gold reserves). When the illusion of money (value) is exposed for what it is (worthless paper or digits), then people will demand real money (value) like silver and gold.
  • Everything we love to eat is a scam
    Among the many things New Yorkers pride ourselves on is food: making it, selling it and consuming only the best, from single-slice pizza to four-star sushi. We have fish markets, Shake Shacks and, as of this year, 74 Michelin-starred restaurants. Yet most everything we eat is fraudulent. In his new book, “Real Food Fake Food,” author Larry Olmsted exposes the breadth of counterfeit foods we’re unknowingly eating. After reading it, you’ll want to be fed intravenously for the rest of your life.
  • George Soros predicts riots, police state and civil war for America
    Billionaire investor George Soros has a new prediction for America. While it might be as dire as it gets for the financial wiz, this bet concerns more than just the value of the buck. According to Soros, there’s about to be an all-out class war. Soros, who is 81, previously bet against the British pound in the early 90s and made $1 billion off its collapse. In the years since, he’s remained active in investing, but also in advocacy. He’s helped keep Wikipedia afloat thanks to impressive contributions and through donations to the Tides Center, has indirectly funded Adbusters, the Canadian anti-capitalist magazine that put Occupy Wall Street on the map. Speaking to Newsweek recently, Soros neglected to acknowledge his past successes, but instead offered a word of warning: a period of “evil” is coming to the western world.
  • How to destroy America in eight easy steps
    Just over eleven years ago, in June of 2005, an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, was held to review issues of immigration. It was filled to capacity by many of America ‘s finest minds and leaders.  Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado (D) gave an eye-opening speech. A brilliant college professor by the name of Victor Davis Hanson  talked about his latest book, ‘Mexifornia,' explaining how immigration – both legal and illegal was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream.  Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States.
  • WTF Chart Of The Day – Factory Orders Collapse To Longest Streak In US History 
    For the 19th month in a row, US Factory Orders decline YoY (-1.2% for May) with a 1% drop MoM. Simply put, in 60 years of historical data, the US economy has never, ever suffered a 19 month stretch of consecutive annual declines. And yet we are supposed to believe there is no recession?
  • AG Lynch Announces Global Police Force Partnership With UN
    During her speech at the United Nations, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Department of Justice is launching a global police force in order to combat “violent extremism” in the United States. A proposal such as this, with all of its various implications of an overreach of power, should be front-page news everywhere, but unfortunately, not many noticed. And that’s a concern to constitutional attorney KrisAnne Hall who released a video to make the rallying call.
  • G20 trade ministers discuss protectionism, global recovery in Shanghai
    Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng has welcomed the adoption of the G20 trade growth strategy on Sunday. Trade Ministers from the group of 20 nations wrapped up a two-day meeting in Shanghai on Sunday. “This meeting was held in a positive atmosphere, expected results were achieved, and it was a complete success. The meeting became a good training ground at the trade and economic front for the G20 summit which will be held in September this year,” Gao told reporters.
  • Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan Returns to Gold. After a misbegotten credit bubble and $60 trillion more of debt.
    Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. […] The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit — Alan Greenspan, 1966. That old rascal! Before joining the feds, former Fed chief Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan was a strong proponent of gold and the gold standard. He wrote clearly and forcefully about how it was necessary to restrain the Deep State and protect individual freedom. Then he went to Washington and faced a fork in the tongue. In one direction, lay honesty and integrity. In the other, lay power and glory.
  • DANGER: The World Is Now On The Verge Of The Largest Destruction Of Wealth In History
    With the price of gold and silver surging once again, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, warned King World News that we are now on the verge of the largest destruction of wealth the world has ever seen. Egon von Greyerz:  “Investors worldwide have never faced risk of the magnitude that the world is now exposed to. But sadly, very few are aware of this unprecedented risk. For the ones who understand risk and take the right decisions, it will “lead to fortune.” Only very few will choose that route. Instead, most investors will continue to live in the hope that current trends will go on forever, but sadly these people will end up “in shallows and in miseries.”…
  • May trade deficit jumps 10% as U.S. consumers snap up more imports
    Stronger demand for imports such as cell phones, sneakers and home furnishings boost the U.S. trade deficit by 10% in May, but the rebound in consumer demand suggests the economy regained momentum after a slow start to the year. The nation’s trade gap climbed $41.1 billion — a three-month high — from a revised $37.4 billion in April, the government said Wednesday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected the trade gap of $40.2 billion.
  • War On The Streets Of America: Protesters Attack Police Officers In Major Cities All Over The Nation
    This is what a nation looks like when it starts melting down from within.  A series of very disturbing incidents of police brutality against young black males has caused a firestorm to erupt all across the country.  You would have thought that the massacre of police in Dallas would have caused everyone to step back and reflect on what is really causing this cycle of violence, but instead the nationwide protests have gotten even bigger and more intense.  Over the weekend, protesters attacked police with rocks, bricks, bottles, fireworks, chunks of concrete, Molotov cocktails and rebar from a construction site.  In return, police fired pepper spray, smoke bombs and tear gas at protesters.  As I write this, more than 200 protesters have been arrested over the weekend so far, and authorities are bracing for what the coming night will bring.
  • Debt Is Dragging Down American Consumers
    In May, we reported on the rising level of credit card debt in the US after the Wall Street Journal reported that credit card balances are on track to hit $1 trillion this year. Now we have evidence it might be even bleaker. A study released in June by CardHub reveals US consumers did worse than expected in the first quarter of 2016. And the study confirms that at this pace, by year-end, Americans will have accumulated more than $1 trillion in credit card debt. According to the study, Americans paid off $26.8 billion in credit card charges through the first quarter. That represents just 38% of the $71 billion in debt added during 2015. It was the smallest Q1 debt reduction since 2008, falling almost 25% below the post-recession average.
  • The Dallas Massacre: This Is The Kind Of Civil Unrest That I Have Been Warning Is Coming To America
    Today is a day to mourn and pray for America. In Dallas, Texas last night, a hate-filled gunman ruthlessly started gunning down police officers. A total of 12 officers were shot, and five of them are now dead. If we do not learn to love one another, there is no hope for us as a nation. Unfortunately, the love of most people has grown cold, and today messages of hate and division from people on all sides of the debate are being posted all over social media. The massacre in Dallas represented the deadliest day for law enforcement officers in the United States since 9/11, and this is the kind of civil unrest that I have been repeatedly warning is coming to America. I have warned about this in my books, on radio and on television. But of course I am best known for my articles, and the following are just a handful where I warned about what we would soon see…
  • The EU is breaking up politically and financially
    When David Cameron decided to let the British people vote on Brexit, he did not realise that he would open a real can of worms. Before the referendum I declared that Brexit would not be the reason for a collapse of the world economy but that it could be the catalyst for such a collapse. We have only seen a few days’ reaction with heavy intervention from central banks around the world but judging by the massive volatility we have seen so far, there is now a very high likelihood that a major secular decline in the world economy will now start to unravel. The next few weeks and months are likely to be a lot worse than the 2007-9 crisis.
  • Separate Laws for Political Nobility & Economic Elite-Gerald Celente
    Trends researcher Gerald Celente says Hillary Clinton not being charged by the FBI for having a private unprotected email server is just a small part of an ongoing major trend. Celente explains, “It’s bigger than Clinton.  It’s a trend, and anybody can see it if they open their minds and add up the facts.  What we have now is a neo-feudal society.  It’s all connected.  It’s, as we call it, ‘global-nomic.’  Since Obama became President, and these are the facts, 95% of the wealth since 2009 has gone to the 1%.  Now, let’s take a trip around the world.  62 people have more dough than half of the world’s population combined.  In the United States, 400 people are worth $2.5 trillion.  What I am saying is the word ‘justice’ is being misspelled.  It’s J U S T U S—Just Us. . . . You have separate laws for the political nobility and the economic elite.”
  • Americans And Canadians Face Silver Shortages As The Investment Deficit Surges
    Americans and Canadians will likely face silver shortages in the future as investment demand continues to surge higher.  This will come at time as the silver price skyrockets, thus making it even harder for investors to acquire physical metal. The U.S. and Royal Canadian Mints produce most of the Official Silver coins in the world.  In 2015, the combined total of Silver Eagles and Maples sales equaled 81.3 million ounces (Moz).
  • The Bears Are Back – Oil Slides On Negative Sentiment
    After oil prices rallied more than 80 percent between February and June, WTI and Brent have fallen back more recently, dropping from above $50 to just $45 per barrel. Oil traders are searching for more clarity on what to expect next, but the cacophony of data pointing in different directions is leading to confusion for analysts and speculators. On the bullish side for oil prices is Citigroup, which published a research note on Monday saying that it is “especially bullish” on commodities in 2017. Citi says that the oil markets continue to balance, and the concerns over global economic growth are not as important as the demand trajectory. Moreover, the crash in oil prices has forced the industry to make cuts that will only sow the seeds of the next boom. “The oil market is treading water for now, but the oil price overshot to the downside earlier this year and this is clearly setting the stage for a bullish end to the decade,” Citi analysts, led by Ed Morse, said.
  • Jubilee Jolt: Pre-Planned and Leaked ‘Summer of Chaos' Begins in Dallas
    It was only two days ago that we focused on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) leaked documents showing they were planning, in concert with the Obama Regime, a “Summer of Chaos.” Two days later, on 7/7 (the magic number 7!), the opening shots were fired in Dallas, Texas. Just as we predicted. During an evening rally of Black Lives Matter to protest two deadly police shootings, a sniper or snipers took aim from rooftops and killed or wounded numerous government law enforcers. Following all the trappings of past false flag attacks, the supposed sniper was killed… blown up in fact… before we could gain any information from him. But, as we said earlier, two top Black Lives Matter activists had their email and Twitter accounts hacked last month and it showed their plans, in concert with US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, to cause massive riots and unrest in what they termed the “Summer of Chaos.”
  • Global Investment to Plunge, Trade to Languish, on “Depressed” Demand: G-20 Trade Ministers
    Facing “depressed market demand” and plunging global cross-border investment, the trade ministers of the G-20 countries along with folks from the IMF, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Trade Organization, among others, met in Shanghai this weekend to hash out a plan. As at all these meetings, they reached an agreement, of sorts. The G-20 countries account for about 85% of global trade and 70% of global investment, so they matter.
  • The Anatomy of a False Flag Event
    This are article examines three critical aspects of a false flag event and then applies what is known, and typical of a false flag event to the murder of five Dallas police officers earlier in the week. By the way, the above picture strongly suggests that there is a lot more to the official narrative than the public is being told. The three areas of concern are: Rehearsal of certain aspects of the event by either First Responser, LEO, or both. If the false flag event consists of an assassination(s), the narrative includes acting alone, the “discovery” of a diary or a mainfesto which states the murderous intentions of the “patsy”, and the labeling of the so-called perpetrator as being insane so the act can be referred to as a random act of insane violence so the subject of a conspiracy never enters the discussion by the media and the authorities investigating the crime. Disguise the purpose of the event.
  • Fear, Loathing & Record Money-Making in Government Bonds
    US Treasuries set new records on Friday: The 10-year note rose to a new high, with the yield dropping to a new low of 1.366%. The 30-year Treasury bond also hit a new high, with the yield dropping to 2.11%, a record low. If 2.11% sounds like a miserably low return for tying up your money for three decades of hell and high water, it’s practically bond nirvana for whatever else is out there.
  • Andy Hoffman: The End Game has Arrived – Protect Yourself, and Do It Now!
    Andy is short for words. This is the latest produced through SilverFarm, the best source for podcast and on-the-go info you seek. Give Andy a good listen as he provides us with his take on unfolding economic collapse. As most of you know our economy is in serious trouble. We should all take time each day to focus on our personal economy and think of improvements that could be made. Small changes in ones personal economic habits make a huge difference at the end of the day, week, month and year.
  • Bernanke’s Black Helicopters
    Ben Bernanke is one of the most dangerous men walking the planet. In this age of central bank domination of economic life he is surely the pied piper of monetary ruin. At least since 2002 he has been talking about “helicopter money” as if a notion which is pure economic quackery actually had some legitimate basis. But strip away the pseudo scientific jargon, and it amounts to monetization of the public debt—–the very oldest form of something for nothing economics. Back then, of course, Ben’s jabbering about helicopter money was taken to be some sort of theoretical metaphor about the ultimate powers of central bankers, and especially their ability to forestall the boogey-man of “deflation”.
  • Is The BIS Setting Up The World For Another Meltdown?
    On the heels of another wild trading week, is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) setting up the world for another meltdown? Stephen Leeb:  “In 2013, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), one of the most powerful institutions you may never have heard of – blew it. It snubbed gold. I’ll explain how in a moment – contributing to gold sinking from $1,800 an ounce in October 2012 to below $1,200 by the end of June 2013, a massive 35 percent plunge in a mere eight months. The downtrend continued until the end of last year when gold briefly traded below $1,050…
  • The ECB’s Bank Stress Test Shows Fatal Errors
    The United States have learned from their bad experiences during the Global Financial Crisis wherein almost its entire financial system was going down in flames. Stress tests to find out how banks would be able to deal with economic adverse scenarios became mandatory, and the European Union followed suit with its stress tests in 2011, followed by a series of check-ups later on. Almost a decade has passed since the GFC, and half a decade since the European stress tests, but the volatility and unrest in the financial world has never been this high. You would think that five years of ECB-supported lending would have helped these banks (as even though the net interest spreads did decrease, the access to the ultra-cheap lending facilities of the ECB allowed the banks to continue to generate positive results), nothing has changed, and more than 5 years after the term ‘PIIGS’ became one of the most well-known words to describe the economic mess in the weaker European, one of the I’s is now once again in serious economic trouble.
  • Deutsche Bank's Chief Economist Calls For €150 Billion Bailout Of European Banks
    The cards have been tipped, and it appears Italy's Prime Minister may have been right. In the aftermath of Brexit, much of the investing public's attention has turned to Italian banks which are in desperate need of a bailout as a result of €360 billion in bad loans growing worse by the day (and not a bail-in, as European regulations mandate, as that would lead to an immediate bank run) to avoid a freeze and/or collapse of Italy's banking sector. This has pushed stock prices – and default risk – on Italian banks to record levels. So far Italy's bailout requests have mostly fallen on deaf ears, as Germany's political leaders have resisted Renzi's recurring pleas for a taxpayer funded rescue. However, as we have alleged, and as the Italian Prime Minister admitted last week, the core risk for Europe is not just the Italian banking sector but the biggest bank of all in Europe: Deutsche Bank.
  • Charting The Epic Collapse Of The World’s Most Systemically Dangerous Bank
    Now the REAL question: what happens to Deutsche Bank’s derivative book, which has a notional value of €52 trillion, if the bank is insolvent? It’s been almost 10 years in the making, but the fate of one of Europe’s most important financial institutions appears to be sealed. After a hard-hitting sequence of scandals, poor decisions, and unfortunate events,Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank shares are now down -48% on the year to $12.60, which is a record-setting low. Even more stunning is the long-term view of the German institution’s downward spiral. With a modest $15.8 billion in market capitalization, shares of the 147-year-old company now trade for a paltry 8% of its peak price in May 2007.
  • DEAD PULSE: The Morgue is the Next Stop For the Financial System – Jim Willie
    The Gold price will find its true value and price over $10,000 per ounce. The Silver price will find its true value and price over $300 per ounce. In reaching these levels, the ratio will return to the 30-1 range. The ruling bankers realize no remedy is possible. They are just trying to steal as many assets and accumulate as much gold as possible before the main bust event.
  • They Know It’s Coming: Insurance Company Risk Experts Have Started Hoarding Physical Gold and Cash Ahead Of Crisis
    How do you know when the world’s economic, financial and monetary systems are in trouble? Answer: When re-insurance companies, whose sole purpose is to insure other insurance companies, start to panic into gold and begin hoarding cash it’s probably a reliable signal that things aren’t going as well as our central bankers’ best laid plans imply. That’s exactly what’s happening right now: A real paradigm shift is taking place in the markets…  Even one of the world’s second largest re-insurers is now buying physical gold… They’re even adding physical cash… This is the insurance industry’s insurance company… They are the risk experts and they now are buying physical gold bullion and storing physical cash… The importance of this move is possibly the most significant flow of capital that you will see in your lifetime…
  • The Great Market Tide Has Now Shifted
    In the conventional investment perspective, risk-on assets (i.e. investments with higher risks and higher potential returns) such as stocks are on a see-saw with risk-off assets (investments with lower returns and lower risk, such as Treasury bonds). When risk appetites are high, institutional managers and speculators move money into stocks and high-yield junk bonds, and move money out of safe-haven assets such as gold and U.S. Treasuries. But recently, markets are no longer following this convention. Safe haven assets such as precious metals and Treasuries are soaring at the same time that stock markets bounced strongly off the post-Brexit lows. Risk-on assets (stocks) rising at the same time as safe-haven assets is akin to dogs marrying cats and living happily ever after.
  • IMF says EU on brink of collapse and ‘untenable' Euro may have to be SCRAPPED 
    THE FUTURE of euro currency and the entire EU project looks unsustainable without major change, according to a damning review by the International Monetary Fund and renowned economists. IMF chiefs warned the UK’s decision to leave the EU would seriously hamper growth prospects in the region. Before the Brexit vote, the IMF forecast a 1.7 per cent expansion for the eurozone. However, post Brexit the organisation revised that down to 1.6 per cent this year and 1.4 per cent next year.
  • Markets are showing one of the same signs they did in 2007
    We may still be in a bull market, but it really doesn't feel like one. And at least one indicator suggests we could be heading for a slide. Since the beginning of this year, the S&P 500 (.SPX) is being driven by sectors traditionally considered to be safe investments, such as utilities (.5SP5510), telecom (.5SP5010) and consumer staples (.5SP30). The stock index is hovering less than a percent off its own 52-week high as of Friday morning. Generally, when the broader market is lifted by these “defensive” sectors, it means investors are looking for safe havens where they can weather a future storm. That could be a precursor to an economic slowdown. In fact, one of the last times we saw defensive sectors outperform riskier ones was in 2007, just before the onset of the financial crisis.
  • Financial Analyst Warns: “Millions Will Die” When Financial System Collapses
    Trillions of dollars of currency are being moved or rushing towards the debt market that is squeezing bond yields to historic lows. We are making history in the United States for the second week in a row, and I am talking about the bond market. Both gold and silver, since the beginning of this year, have taken off like rockets, and they are not going to stop. This environment is on the edge…
  • U.S. Economy Improving: How When 70% of Americans Don’t Have $1,000?
    Truth be told, there isn’t any economic growth in the U.S. economy and that’s because the average American is struggling to the extreme. In fact, according to a poll done by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs, about 70% of Americans would have trouble coming up with $1,000 to cover an emergency! In the same survey, 46% of Americans said their wages have remained stagnant in the past five years, while 16% said their salaries have actually seen cuts.
  • Rickards: $10,000 – $50,000 Gold!
    “People around the world are losing confidence in central bank money,” Jim Rickards said in a recent interview. “When you lose confidence in central bank money, you look for other forms of money and gold is the best.” Despite all of our talk about cryptocurrencies over the past couple of weeks, we must point out, one more time, that investing in the cryptosphere — even Bitcoin — is a gamble. Yes, they are exciting. And, yes, some of them will be immensely disruptive. But there are a number of things that, in our shaky global environment, works against them. If the lights go out, for example, your stash of Bitcoin, Siacoin and Synereo aren’t going to get you very far.
  • How Gold Bears End——Eerie 1974-1976 Pattern Repetition Revisited
    Gold Continues to Mimic the 1970s. Ask and ye shall receive… we promised we would update the comparison chart we last showed in late November in an article that kind of insinuated that it might be a good time to buy gold and gold stocks (see: “Gold and Gold Stocks – It Gets Even More Interesting” for the details). We are hereby delivering on that promise. It is actually interesting to revisit both past articles speculating about a potential gold bottom that turned out to be correct (those would be the many articles we penned on the topic from August 2015 onward) as well as those that turned out to be incorrect (which would e.g. include a number of articles written in late 2014. Although they managed to catch a playable rally in timely fashion, it ultimately turned out to be a bear market rally).
  • No Charges for Clinton Proves Two Tier Legal System, Global Crash is Certain, Buy Gold and Silver
    You’ve heard by now, Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton will not be charged over her unprotected email servers she used while at the State Department. Even though FBI Director James Comey pointed out multiple lies Ms. Clinton told, he decided not to recommend charges and said he “could not prove intent.”   He also explained his decision to Congress this week but would not comment when asked about other investigations into the Clinton Foundation.  Comey revealed that he did not personally interview Ms. Clinton last Saturday or even attend the deposition.  He also revealed that Clinton did not testify under oath.  Democrats in the hearing said Republicans were grilling Comey just to score points against their presidential candidate.  Now, leaders in the House of Representatives are preparing a recommendation to the FBI to look into allegations Clinton lied to Congress in the Benghazi hearings.
  • Gerald Celente – The Last Great Opportunity To Buy Gold & Silver
    Today top trends forecaster Gerald Celente spoke with King World News about the action in gold and silver and what KWN readers around the world should expect next. Gerald Celente:  “$10.7 trillion of negative yields — that is what is driving the gold market, along with the turmoil in the currency markets. The British pound just plunged over 20 percent in a matter of days. So these are the catalysts for the bid in the gold market…
  • This is what gold's top tipster is saying about prices
    Gold’s top forecaster, who in February abandoned her bearish outlook to correctly call bullion’s surge, sees more gains in store before prices taper off by year-end. The metal will climb to $1,425 an ounce by the end of September, 4.4% higher than now, before dipping in the following six months amid prospects for higher U.S. interest rates, said  Georgette Boele, a currency and commodity analyst at ABN Amro Bank NV. The 43-year old was rated by Bloomberg as the most accurate forecaster. Boele has been right on the way up and also the way down. At the start of 2013, she was among the most bearish analysts before gold capped its first annual drop in 13 years. She called for lower prices until just a few months after bullion touched a five-year low in December. With Brexit-related concerns over the global economy’s strength and U.S. interest rates not expected to rise anytime soon, gold’s now near a two-year high.
  • Gold & Silver To Be Last Currencies Standing – Peter Boockvar
    The pervasive bullish sentiment towards gold continues as prices maintain solid gains and has one Wall Streeter saying the secular bull market is back in full force. “After rallying for 12 straight years and peaking in September 2011 at around $1,900 per troy ounce, gold fell into a very lengthy bear market that I believe ended in December 2015 at $1,050,” said Peter Boockvar, the chief market analyst for the Lindsey Group, in a CNBC post Thursday.
  • Privately Minted Silver Coins Were Legitimate Money in the 1800s
    In the early 1830s, an eastern Kentucky man named Josiah Sprinkle started minting his own coins and circulating them around the area. Eventually, government officials got wind of Sprinkle’s operation and arrested him. But he was ultimately found not-guilty in court. How did a man minting his own coins escape the long arm of the law? Because his coins were pure silver. They were equal in value to the silver dollars minted by the US government. In fact, they were worth slightly more.
  • U.S. GMO food labeling bill passes Senate
    The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would for the first time require food to carry labels listing genetically-modified ingredients, which labeling supporters say could create loopholes for some U.S. crops. The Senate voted 63-30 for the bill that would display GMO contents with words, pictures or a bar code that can be scanned with smartphones. The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) would decide which ingredients would be considered genetically modified. The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass.
  • Signs the Government is Planning to Confiscate Your Retirement Funds
    We’ve warned that bankrupt governments will be eyeing the multi-trillions of dollars in “un-taxed” retirement funds when they get desperate enough. It is an incredibly common occurrence.  It has happened in numerous countries in just recent memory.  Poland, Hungary and Bolivia are a few in the last years where retirement funds have been seized. Total funds currently held in private IRA and 401K accounts in the US are estimated to be in the neighborhood of $10 trillion.  That number looks awfully enticing to the US government which is currently indebted to the tune of $19 trillion and holding liabilities of over $100 trillion. As we dance on the brink of a massive collapse, the government’s already empty coffers will be even further decimated as the economy contracts massively and tax receipts plummet.
  • Fear factor behind property fund withdrawals, say experts
    The fear factor is causing investors to withdraw money from commercial property funds, according to one of the City's senior fund managers. Philip Nell, a fund director at Hermes, said there had been “a massive over-reaction to what's been going on over the last two weeks”. Mr Nell used to run the Aviva property fund that closed its doors along with five other funds this week. Henderson, Canada Life and Threadneedle became the latest on Wednesday.
  • IMF Sees Pakistan’s Currency Overvalued as Loan Program Near End
    Pakistan’s currency is overvalued by as much as 20 percent and is contributing to the country’s declining exports, along with low commodity prices, power outages and security concerns, according to the International Monetary Fund. A December study from the Washington-based lender found the exchange rate was “broadly” overvalued by 5 percent to 20 percent, Harald Finger, the IMF’s mission chief for Pakistan, said in a Tuesday phone interview from Washington. “More or less that’s still our assessment.” The rupee and Pakistan’s stocks have been among Asia’s best performers since 2013, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — who’s in London recovering from open-heart surgery — took a $6.6 billion loan from the IMF to avert a balance-of-payments crisis. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar reiterated last month that Pakistan doesn’t need another IMF program with the current one due to finish at the end of September.
  • Populist Politicians Take On Italy’s Massive Debt Pile
    The Rome Olympics of 1960 marked the rebound of the Italian capital after years of war and reconstruction, an affirmation of the country’s renaissance and the city’s emergence as a symbol of dolce vita insouciance. Rome is still paying the bill, and the new mayor, Virginia Raggi, is sick of it. The city has roughly €13.6 billion ($15.2 billion) in debt and more than 12,000 creditors—though the pile is so complex no one really knows how much is owed to whom. Rome faces outstanding bills for operating its 61-year-old metro system, hauling trash, and running a network of unprofitable pharmacies that compete with private shops. The courts are grappling with hundreds of lawsuits over unpaid debts going back 50 years for land expropriated to build hospitals, streets, and other city projects—including some debts connected to the 1960 games, former Mayor Ignazio Marino has said. The average interest rate: 5 percent, at a time when the Italian government is issuing 10-year bonds at 1.5 percent annually. “We can’t keep paying such high interest just because nobody bothered to renegotiate the debt,” Raggi, who was elected on June 19, told the RAI television network.
  • Gross Calls Sovereign Bonds Too Risky With U.S. Yields Near Lows
    Bill Gross said sovereign bond yields at record lows aren’t worth the risk. “The sovereign bonds are not up my alley,” Gross, who built the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. and is now at Denver-based Janus Capital Group Inc., said on Bloomberg Television Wednesday. “It’s too risky.” Low yields mean bonds are especially vulnerable because a small increase can bring a large decline in price, he said. Yields in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia pushed to all-time lows Wednesday, while those in Germany and Japan dropped to unprecedented levels below zero. The average yield on the bonds in Bank of America Corp.’s World Sovereign Bond Index this week dropped below 1 percent for the first time, based on data going back to 2006, while almost $10 trillion of securities in the Bloomberg Global Developed Sovereign Bond Index yield less than zero.
  • What a difference in two weeks! Project Fear mastermind Osborne joins US banking giants to insist City will continue to THRIVE following historic Brexit vote
    George Osborne and the Wall Street banking giants which helped bankroll the Remain campaign yesterday issued a resounding vote of confidence in the City of London. In a joint statement with the Chancellor, investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan pledged to ensure the City of London remains the world’s dominant financial centre when it leaves the EU. The firms said that while Brexit ‘clearly presents economic challenges’, they would strive to ensure Britain ‘remains one of the most attractive places in the world to do business’.
  • Britain readies for showdown with Putin as it stations troops throughout Eastern Europe
    HUNDREDS of British troops are set to be scrambled to countries bordering Russia as a show of strength to Vladimir Putin. David Cameron will announce the deployment of a 500-strong battalion to Estonia with a further company of 150 troops to be stationed in Poland “on an enduring basis”. The move comes amid continuing concerns from the Western alliance regarding the intentions of Vladimir Putin following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
  • Property funds worth £18bn suspend trading in biggest seize-up since financial crisis
    Property funds worth £18 billion have stopped trading after Brexit sent a chill through the commercial property market. The number of funds that have suspended trading has risen to seven since Standard Life stopped investors from taking out funds worth £2.9 billion on Monday, ten days after the Brexit vote. The fear was that too many property investors would try to take their money out at once, forcing fund managers to sell properties at a loss. More than half the funds in commercial property funds are on lockdown. The cooling of the construction industry has fuelled concerns that property prices and rental values could start to fall, leading investors to believe their that their money might be safer elsewhere.
  • Business minister Sajid Javid opens preliminary trade talks with India
    The business minister is to launch trade talks with India, marking the start of a world tour aimed at drawing up a blueprint for Britain’s role in the global economy outside the European Union. Sajid Javid will hold preliminary talks with Indian government ministers in Delhi on Friday, marking the start of what is expected to be years of negotiations to establish new trade deals with individual countries. These bilateral deals will replace agreements the EU has with more than 50 countries.
  • Must Listen: It's Over: Bill Holter
    On this edition of X22Report Spotlight, posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2016, returning guest Bill Holter of Jim Sinclair's Mineset discussed how the insolvency of the major European banks such as Deutsche Bank currently make them the leading candidates for a domino effect of collapse that will leave no bank in the world untouched. Bill briefly touched on Ben Bernanke's meeting next week in Japan with Kuroda and Abe, and how the likely topic of their discussion is helicopter money. He also pointed out that central bankers need a fall guy for their failed policies, and in this case, they will probably blame the global collapse on Brexit, with the war card also being played as a sufficient distraction.
  • Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
    Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
  • Domestic Trade Is Disintegrating: Heavy Truck Orders Plunge To Lowest Since 2010
    Who says you need trade and logistics to maintain the S&P within 2% of its all time high? Not the Fed, that's who, and it's a wonderful thing because the state of US heavy trucking – the backbone of domestic trade infrastructure and logistical supply chains – suggests the US economy is in a far more dire state than the Fed would ever admit. According to the latest data from ACT Research released today, June orders for new heavy-duty, or Class 8, trucks plunged to just 13,100, the lowest number since 2010 according to the WSJ (and since 2012 according to Bloomberg, but no need to split hairs here) indicating that trucking companies – the forward-looking bedrock of any viable recovery along with rails – expect little relief from a weak freight market and sluggish economic growth. This month’s order activity was the lowest monthly total since July 2012 and the worst June since 2009.
  • Our Future Is (Literally) Crumbling Before Our Eyes
    The sorts of predicaments the world faces — ranging from over $200 trillion in debt, to our unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels, to our over-stressed ecosystems — all require that we get deadly serious about confronting them ASAP, and make difficult decisions and trade-offs. However, our global leaders always seem to opt to kick the can down the road if at all possible. Short-term thinking and near-term priorities dependably get precedence over doing the right thing for the future. Tomorrow’s generations are thrown under the bus by selfishly motivated actors today. As I’ve put forth over and over again: we’re simply not going to make it unless we get much more serious about our efforts than we have been to date. Yes, it’s a wonderful thing that Elon Musk is building sexy electric cars; but even a single minute spent with a pencil, paper and the aggregate energy statistics on transportation will reveal that there’s an enormous gap between where we currently are and where we need to be.
  • A Furious Italian Prime Minister Slams Deutsche Bank As Europe's Most Insolvent Bank
    Several years ago, we were the first to point out the true “elephant in the room”, namely Deutsche Bank's $75 trillion in derivatives which as we said at the time was about 20 times bigger than Germany's GDP, and 5 times bigger than the entire economic output of the Eurozone.” This was largely ignored by the “experts” because why bring attention to something which is fundamentally a devastating break in the narrative that “Europe is fine” and the financial crisis is now contained. Fast forward to today when Europe is once again not fine, only this time one can't blame Europe's problems on Greece (instead the same “experts” are trying to blame everything in Brexit), when in a surprising admission of reality, none other than Italy's prime minister Matteo Renzi, “went there” and slammed Deutsche Bank as the true “derivative problem” facing Europe.
  • Gerald Celente – A Devastating Crisis Is About To Be Unleashed On The World
    Today top trends forecaster Gerald Celente warned that a devastating crisis is about to be unleashed on the world. Gerald Celente:  From geopolitics to socioeconomics, from environmental to technology, be it the body politic or personal health, as trend forecasters it is essential to have a clear understanding of where we are and the knowledge of how we got here to see where we are going…
  • So What’s Going on with Inflation in Argentina?
    When Argentine President Mauricio Macri took power, his economic team began to dismantle his predecessor’s heavy-handed policies — a process that had painful recessionary consequences for the Argentine population. Macri and his team repeatedly promised that by the second half of 2016, the pain would be worth it, the economy would recover and we would see some results. In a press conference yesterday, Macri announced that his policies have successfully put the country’s economy back on track.
  • Investor Fears Spike as Italy (and the EU) Inch Closer to Doomsday Scenario
    Just how low can Italian bank shares go? That’s the question plaguing the minds of European investors, policy makers, bankers and central bankers. Today the shares of the country’s third largest publicly traded bank, Monte Dei Paschi, plunged 14% to €0.33, their lowest point ever. Two years ago, they ran between €5 and €9. The reason for the latest plunge was news that the ECB had sent the bank a letter urging it to draw up a plan for tackling its bad-loan burden. The lender is being asked to reduce its load of curdled debt by €10 billion to €14.6 billion by 2018. That’s a big ask even in the best of times, and these are certainly not the best of times for Monte Dei Paschi. According to Bloomberg, its loan loss provisions would represent over 95% of its operating profits.
  • The Big Unravel: US Commercial Bankruptcies Skyrocket
    This year through June, there have been 91 corporate defaults globally, the highest first-half total since 2009, according to Standard and Poor’s. Of them, 60 occurred in the US. Some of them are going to end up in bankruptcy. Others are restructuring their debts outside of bankruptcy court by holding the bankruptcy gun to creditors’ heads. In the process, stockholders will often get wiped out. These are credit fiascos at larger corporations – those that pay Standard and Poor’s to rate their credit so that they can sell bonds in the credit markets. But in the vast universe of 19 million American businesses, there are only about 3,025 companies, or 0.02% of the total, with annual revenues over $1 billion; they’re big enough to pay Standard & Poor’s for a credit rating.
  • Venezuela Refuses to Default. Few People Seem to Understand Why
    It’s been almost two years now since the renowned Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann caused a stir in his native Venezuela by posing an uncomfortable question. Why does a country that’s so starved for cash keep honoring its foreign debts? In other words, how does it justify shelling out precious hard currency to wealthy bondholders in New York when it can’t pay for basic food and medicine imports desperately needed by millions of impoverished citizens? “I find the moral choice odd,” Hausmann concluded.
  • There’s a $3 Trillion Pool of Money Set to Extend Treasury Surge
    Bank of America Corp. sees the $3 trillion U.S. corporate pension industry throwing its interest-rate assumptions out the window. And that means the retirement plans will probably throw more money into Treasuries. Even with yields at record lows, Shyam Rajan, head of U.S. rates strategy at the primary dealer, says pensions are likely to embrace the lower-for-longer mantra and bolster the $13.4 trillion Treasuries market. With only 6 percent of assets in Treasuries, half the peak seen in the 1980s, the retirement funds are primed to join buyers looking for a selloff to pounce. That demand waiting in the wings may depress yields further. Bank of America forecasts yields on 10-year notes will fall to 1.25 percent by the end of September, from about 1.39 percent as of 12:10 p.m. in New York on Wednesday.
  • Obama's Medicare ‘reform' blocking seniors from accessing important services including knee replacements; hospitals rewarded for spending less per patient
    Remember when the liberal left accused us all of being paranoid racists for reading senior citizen death panels between the lines of Obamacare? It turns out that these hysterical Democrats were wrong once again, as new Medicare reforms issued by the Obama administration are reportedly stripping aging Americans of their coverage and leaving them to fend for themselves. According to the New York Post, Obama is completely “dismantling” Medicare, “dooming seniors to needless pain and disability and shortening their lives.” It might sound a bit hyperbolic, but it's true; the new rules apparently scrap Medicare coverage for things like hip and knee replacements, cataract operations and heart surgeries – you know, the things seniors need to actually keep on living.
  • Central Banker Who Slayed ‘Zombie Banks’ Meets Too Big to Fail
    In two years as governor of Ukraine’s central bank, Valeriya Gontareva has shut down nearly half the country’s lenders, a financial purge with few modern precedents. But at a private dinner this spring with George Soros, she worried that it won’t be enough to banish permanently from Ukraine what she calls “oligarch banking.” “What concerns us both is the dominant position of one particular bank,” the billionaire investor recounted in a recent interview. It “has more than half the banking business and is in the hands of an oligarch who is very powerful.”
  • U.K. Property Fund Suspensions Send a Warning to the Junk Bond World
    Investors in U.K. commercial real estate just touched a nerve. In pulling their money out of property funds at such a rapid pace four asset managers froze withdrawals this week, the investors showed how the cost of Brexit is spreading. They also tapped into one of the biggest fears of bond market observers: a mismatch between the liquidity of investment funds and their assets. The real estate funds are designed to allow investors to withdraw their money on a daily basis, while the properties backing them could take months to sell. That's similar to many mutual and exchange-traded funds that buy junk bonds — securities that can take weeks to sell — and offer daily redemptions. Yet while the property funds have grabbed the headlines and spooked markets, the bigger threat may be posed by bond funds.

Precious Metals Are The Only Lifeboat! I have persistently WARNED you what was happening in the gold market and why you needed to convert your paper assets to physical gold and silver by the middle of September 2015. You need to hedge against the financial instability with physical gold and silver. Call the experts to help you convert your IRA or 401k into Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals. Call GoldCo NOW before it's too late! Call Toll-Free 1-877-414-1385.

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Latest News Articles – July 7, 2016

From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Lindsey Williams - Latest News Articles

Latest News From July 1, 2016 to July 7, 2016:

  • Collapse of Empires is Upon Us-Gregory Mannarino
    Trader and analyst Gregory Mannarino says what is going on today with the FBI refusing to indict Hillary Clinton is nothing new when considering the “fall of empires.” Mannarino explains, “This is a cycle, and we are seeing several pieces fall into place regarding the political system and the financial system that we have seen over and over again.  There is a lifespan of an empire . . . at the top of every empire . . . there is an issue of the financial system, and there is an issue with the political system that becomes absolutely corrupt.  This is why this announcement (FBI not indicting Clinton) came.  Again, this is political corruption.  It’s not just here in the United States, but globally it is flashing red across the sky. . . . I think they are well aware that the whole system is going down. The collapse of empires is upon us. . . . We are in an environment that globally we have never seen before.  With what we are seeing in the United States with the corruption in politics, we’ve seen that before.  Every great empire, right at the top, the two key elements that appear are financial system on the edge and political corruption trying to patch it all together.  That is something we see over and over again throughout history.”
  • Market turmoil to persist: Follow the money, follow gold
    From geopolitics to socioeconomics, from environmental to technology, be it the body politic or personal health, as trend forecasters it is essential to have a clear understanding of where we are and the knowledge of how we got here to see where we are going. Global equity markets are in turmoil. However, the business media’s view of market mayhem is a snapshot in time dating to the June 23 “Brexit” when the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union. Indeed, while Brexit triggered the current turmoil, our trends-eye view identifies the current market volatility in a Globalnomic® context far bigger than Brexit. For example, just one year ago, Chinese equity markets were in crash mode. The Shanghai Index, up 150 percent in a year, plummeted some 40 percent by mid-July 2015. In just one day, it had its second-biggest fall in its history. Following a summer that plunged Chinese markets into bear territory, global equity markets had their worst quarterly showing since 2011. It got worse.
  • These six former Goldman Sachs bankers want to destroy your savings
    Rule #1 in central banking: Never go full Draghi. Mario Draghi, of course, is the President of the European Central Bank (ECB) who pledged to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. Or was it save the world? We forget. Anyhow, Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, just went full Draghi, pledging to do, effectively, whatever it takes… even if that means destroy the British pound or economy. Future historians will no doubt look back at this period in amazement, wondering, given the stunning and murderous failures of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, how central planning ever managed to find a last hold-out amongst the world’s central banks. Yes, Britain may have finally escaped from the EU lunatic asylum.
  • State pension scrapped for under 30s?
    One in five 18 to 30 year olds don’t believe there will be a state pension for them when they eventually retire. When asked about the new flat rate state pension , more than half admitted they hadn’t a clue how much it paid out, according to research from workplace pension provider NOW:Pensions. Once they knew the amount, currently £155.65 a week, two in five said that wasn’t enough to retire on. This come on the back of previous research from NOW:Pensions with 100 cross party MPs where almost one in six didn’t expect the state pension to be around 30 years time, or if there still is one it will be at a much lower level.
  • Property market turmoil has eerie echoes of start of financial crisis
    The name “Bear Stearns” is enough to send a shudder down the spine of any investor who survived the financial crisis. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 is generally regarded as the moment when the entire financial system almost came crashing down. But it is often forgotten that the glue that held it together had started to come unstuck more than a year earlier. The first sign that things were unravelling was when American investment bank Bear Stearns prevented investors taking money out of two mortgage-related hedge funds in the summer of 2007. Eventually, both were liquidated.
  • Globalists Are Now Openly Demanding New World Order Centralization
    I have said it many times in the past — when elitist criminals start openly admitting to their schemes it means that they are ready to pull the plug on the current system. They simply don’t care anymore who knows their plans because they think that victory is inevitable. There have been more subtle and less prominently published calls for a “new world order” in the past, to be sure.  However, at no other time have I seen international financiers and their puppet political mouthpieces so brazen about calling for global centralization than in the wake of the successful Brexit referendum. It is as if the Brexit flipped a switch in the existing narrative and set loose a flood of new propaganda, all aimed at convincing the general public that central banks must combine forces and act as one institution in order to combat an economic crisis that isn’t even visible to laymen yet.
  • FBI's Hillary decision all part of jubilee plan towards greater chaos
    Many people in the US were shocked that Killary Clinton was not indicted by the FBI today. Those people clearly have no idea what is going on.  Since when has the government ever investigated itself (or its top figureheads and power players) and found itself guilty?  You just have to look at the complete sham of the “9/11 Commission Report” to know that. Hillary has been selected (there are no real Presidential elections in the US) as the next President.  Five of her close network attended Bilderberg this year where they have a record of selecting the next President. It matters not that she literally speaks in front of crowds that can be counted using your fingers while people like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump speak in front of football stadiums. If people in the US don’t realize they are enslaved under a heinously criminal organization then the fluoride in the water, mainstream media programming and 12 years of government indoctrination camps have done their job. But, this goes far deeper than most realize.
  • Here We Go Again – Stockman Warns Of August 2007 Redux
    Nearly everywhere on the planet the giant financial bubbles created by the central banks during the last two decades are fracturing. The latest examples are the crashing bank stocks in Italy and elsewhere in Europe and the sudden trading suspensions by four UK commercial property funds. If this is beginning to sound like August 2007 that’s because it is. And the denials from the casino operators are coming in just as thick and fast. Back then, the perma-bulls were out in full force peddling what can be called the “one-off” bromide. That is, evidence of a brewing storm was spun as just a few isolated mistakes that had no bearing on the broad market trends because the “goldilocks” economy was purportedly rock solid. Thus, the unexpected collapse of Countrywide Financial was blamed on the empire building excesses of the Orange Man (Angelo Mozillo)  and the collapse of the Bear Stearns mortgage funds was purportedly owing to a lapse in supervision.
  • Economic crisis bares hunger problem in Venezuela
    Kelly Vega says she lost 30 pounds in three months as she focused on feeding her 6-year-old daughter rather than herself. “We are eating two meals a day. If we eat breakfast, there's no lunch. If we have lunch, there's no dinner,” she said. This socialist country is suffering from severe food shortages that are making it hard to get enough to eat, even though Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Government officials blame the shortfalls on right-wing business owners hoarding products to sow chaos, while their detractors say it's the result of chronic economic mismanagement.
  • The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Evaporating All Over The Globe
    Have you noticed that the world seems to be going a little bit more crazy with each passing month?  Here we are halfway through 2016, and the rot and decay that are eating at the foundations of civilized society seem to be rapidly gaining momentum.  Every single day, all of us take certain things for granted as we go through our normal routines.  For example, as you walk down the street you probably take it for granted that someone is not going to pull out a gun and try to shoot you.  As members of a civilized society, we have come to expect that our fellow citizens will behave in a certain way.  Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we have all come to rely upon is steadily evaporating all over the globe, and chaos, crime and violence are all on the rise.
  • Legend warns this will totally devastate the world and the window to safe yourself is closing
    With the price of gold and silver surging once again, even with the July 4th holiday in the United States, today the man who has become legendary for his predictions on QE, historic moves in currencies, and major global events, warned King World News that what is coming will totally devastate the world and the window for investors to save themselves is closing.
  • Greeks See Wages and Pensions Slashed as New Round of Austerity Begins
    The summer of 2016 turns out to be another summer of discontent for Greek pensioners and wage earners who see their incomes slashed, as a new round of austerity begins after the imposition of the new bailout program measures. It was exactly the same time last year (June 28) when Greeks found that the banks were closed and capital controls were imposed, continuing through today. This year, the end of June found wage earners and pensioners fuming or despairing in front of the ATM when they saw that their bank balances where lower than anticipated. And for hundreds of thousands of pensioners, the amounts were significantly less, even 48 percent lower in some cases.
  • America Has Become A Lawless Nation – Hillary Clinton Magically Cleared By The FBI
    It is hard to be proud to be an American today after watching FBI director James Comey magically clear Hillary Clinton of all wrongdoing.  Sadly, Comey is likely to go down in history as the man that struck the final death blow to the rule of law in America.  During his address to the media, Comey admitted that Clinton sent or received 110 emails in 52 email chains that contained classified material at the time they were sent.  But of course there were probably many more.  Comey told the press that it was “likely that there are other work-related emails that they did not produce … that are now gone because they deleted all emails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices.”  So basically Clinton turned over to the FBI whatever she felt like turning over, and then she destroyed the rest of the evidence.  As a former lawyer, this infuriates me, but it doesn’t surprise me.
  • Sweden begins ball rolling to try to cut off gold acquisition by the masses as price begins to soar
    One of the major reasons why the bullion banks have been able to keep the price of gold and silver down over the past four years is because only 1% of Americans and Europeans actually own the physical metals, or have not changed their investing paradigms to seek intrinsic safe havens rather than trust in paper assets.  But since the beginning of the year, and with last week's ‘shot heard round the world' in the UK over their Brexit vote, central banks along with sovereign governments are now deathly afraid the people will finally wake up and rush to the door to get their hands on precious metals. And following the past two trading days of extreme movements upward in both gold and silver, one nation announced a sudden bank policy in which they will no longer allow bank deposits to be used to purchase gold or silver in an attempt to keep the masses from moving out of negative yield bonds and into real wealth protection.
  • Gundlach: “When Deutsche Bank Goes To Single Digits People Will Start To Panic”
    Following today's Fed minutes release, Jeff Gundlach had a far less “uncertain” message: “Things are shaky and feeling dangerous,” Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview. It's not just stocks that Gundlach was not too excited about, he also had some choice words about buying Treasuries here. “You're seeing people who hated the ‘2 percent' 10-year suddenly loving it at a 1.38-1.39 percent revisit of the all-time low closing yield,” Gundlach said. “If you buy 10-year Treasuries now, I would say, it is a terrible trade location. In fact, it is the worst trade location in the history of the 10-year Treasury.”
  • Italy Faces Fight to Shield Bank Investors in Rescue, Fitch Says
    Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi faces a battle to win European Union approval for a bank-rescue plan that protects investors from taking losses, according to Fitch Ratings. “We believe it will be difficult to reach the political consensus necessary to inject public funds as equity,” Fitch analysts Francesca Vasciminno and Cynthia Chan wrote in a note on Monday. EU state-aid rules, which normally require shareholders and junior creditors to share losses, can be waived in “exceptional circumstances” under the bloc’s treaties. Such an exemption requires unanimous approval by EU member states. Failing that, any injection of public funds under the bloc’s bank-failure law would be subject to state-aid rules.
  • Post-Brexit turmoil: Osborne promises to cut corporate tax to less than 15%
    UK Chancellor George Osborne has outlined an ambitious plan to build a “super competitive economy” as Britain exits the European Union. His plan, among others, includes slashing the corporate tax to one of the lowest in any major economy. In an interview with Financial Times, Osborne stuck to his earlier warnings that a Brexit could tip the UK into a recession, but instead of dwelling on it, he said that he wanted a leading role in shaping the country's new economy path. He said Britain should “get on with it” to prove to investors that the country was still “open for business.” Prior to the EU referendum vote, the Chancellor, was tipped to be moving next door to 10 Downing Street. However, post-Brexit, he has made it clear that although he will not be seeking to take over Prime Minister David Cameron's role, he intended to steer the economy in a post-Brexit era.
  • Jetoil: Another Greek Company Files for Bankruptcy
    Greek family business, Mamidoil Jetoil, is the latest in a chain of companies filing for bankruptcy according to article 99 of the Bankruptcy Code. The company dealing in storage, transport and trade of petroleum-based products in Greece and the Balkans was founded at the end of the Sixties by three brothers – Kyriakos, George and Nick Mamidakis. The company is following the same line adopted by Marinopoulos supermarket chain and filing for bankruptcy so as to receive temporary protection from its creditors. Recently, the company dealt with cash flow problems that caused it to streamline its operation and close down a number of its service stations due to an inability to pay suppliers.
  • LEAKED: Japan’s Mega-Pension Fund Plows into Stocks, Eats $50Bn Loss, Tries to Hide it till after Election
    Abenomics is facing elections on July 10 for the less powerful Upper House. But Abenomics hasn’t fared very well. It engaged in the biggest (relative to the economy) money-printing and bond buying extravaganza the world has ever seen. The securities the Bank of Japan has bought, now at ¥426 trillion ($4.15 trillion), amount to 85% of GDP. About $8 trillion in Japanese Government Bonds sport negative yields. Even the 30-year yield is just about zero. The JGB market, once the second largest government bond market in the world, has frozen. The BOJ’s primary dealers are in revolt. Some have already pulled out. Savers are scared. Sales of safes to be installed at home have soared. There have been no structural reforms to speak of. Japan Inc. has benefited enormously, through various tax benefits and special stimulus packages, including foreign aid that is channeled back to Japanese companies. Government deficits are gigantic, providing additional stimulus for Japan Inc. And yet, the economy is languishing.
  • Something Huge Is Coming From Japan
    Pretend, for a minute, that your country responds to the bursting of a credit bubble by borrowing unprecedented amounts of money and using it to prop up banks and construction companies. This doesn’t work, so you create record amounts of new money and push interest rates into negative territory in an attempt to devalue your currency. But this — amazingly — doesn’t work either. Your currency soars and the inflation you’d hoped to generate never materializes. Now what? Is there even anything left to try, or is it simply time to stand back and let the current system melt down? Those are the questions facing Japan, and the answers are not obvious. Here, for instance, is its inflation rate two years into the largest major-country money creation binge since Wiemar Germany.
  • June Auto Sales Down 4.6%, Much Worse Than Expected
    Earlier today domestic auto sales came in a bit weaker than expected. Total numbers are now out. And they are much worse than expected. The Bloomberg Econoday consensus estimate for total vehicle sales in June was 17.3 million at a Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR). The actual report shows 16.7 million SAAR sales.
  • Price Discovery, R.I.P.
    That was quick. With nearly 85% of the Brexit loss recovered in three days and the market now up for the quarter and the year, what’s not to like? After all, the central banks are purportedly at the ready, and, in the case of the ECB and BOE, are already swinging into action according to their shills in the MSM.
  • All the Oil We’ll Never Pump Out
    How many times have you read this line? Too many to count?  While it’s plainly true, it’s also deeply misleading. It ignores a glaring fact about the gobs of oil under our soil: most of it will never see the light of day. I’m about to take you through the numbers, so buckle up: Let’s assume that in 2016 Venezuela produces 2.4 million barrels of oil per day (these are round numbers, deal with it.)  Of these 2.4 million barrels, some 600 thousand barrels go to Chevy Caprices from 1980, (i.e., domestic consumption). That leaves 1.8 million barrels per day for exports, which is roughly $26 billion per year at $40/barrel – assuming we get paid in cash for oil exports!
  • The Fed’s Final Bullet
    The Fed has no more maneuvers other than to jawbone the dollar lower. Because for a variety of reasons a strong dollar, in the current market environment, is akin to tighter monetary policy. And right now, in the wake of Brexit, tighter monetary policy is clearly not an option. Plus, a stronger dollar (by virtue of the “peg”) strengthens the Chinese Yuan and the Saudi Riyal… something neither country will tolerate. A monthly chart of USD-SAR – since the Riyal is pegged, this is essentially a straight line…but not always. Palpitations usually set in when a crisis is underway and oil prices are coming under pressure. The dollar’s whip-saw in 2016 has The Fed’s fingerprints all over it. The sequence is:  Flawed forward guidance of 4 rate hikes (US dollar ramp), followed by a slowing US economy (US dollar softens)… and now the Brexit/ global economic fears (US dollar rallies in “flight to quality”).
  • When Government Controls All Wealth
    Stock markets continued their rebound on Wednesday. The Dow rose 284 points… or just over 1.5%. London’s FTSE 100 Index was up 3.6%. And Europe’s equivalent of the Dow, the Euro Stoxx 50, was up 2.7%. Investors have realized Brexit isn’t the end of the world. First, because they think it won’t really happen. After all, elites can fix elections, buy politicians, and control public policy… surely, they can fix this! A letter in the Financial Times reminds us that Swedish voters cast their ballots against nuclear power in 1980. The government just ignored them, doubling nuclear power generation over the next 36 years. Second, because investors see the panic over Brexit leading to more spirited intervention by central banks! The EZ money floodgates – already wide open – are to be opened wider. The U.S. has its QE program on hold, but Europe’s scheme is gushing like Niagara. Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank buys $90 billion a month in bonds. And he’s not only buying government bonds; he’s buying corporates, too.
  • If the UK Economy Tanks, Don’t Blame Brexit
    Last Thursday, the people of Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union (EU). Most commentators view Britain’s exit (“Brexit”) from the European Union as bad news for economic growth in the UK and the euro zone. As a result, it is argued, the growth rate in the rest of the world will be also badly affected. t is more likely that, whether the pace of real economic growth over time will weaken or strengthen is going to be set by the pace of expansion in the pool of real wealth. A strengthening in the pace of economic growth implies a strengthening in the rate of growth of the pool of real wealth. Conversely, a weakening in the pace of economic growth implies a weakening in the rate of growth of the pool of real wealth.
  • “You want to own gold” Mark Faber warns “Brexit is the excuse for QE4”
    “If Brexit is used as an excuse, the central banks will print more money, QE4 in the U.S. is on the way and the depreciation in the purchasing power of currencies will continue,” warned a vociferous Marc Faber said in a Bloomberg TV interview today from Hong Kong. “In that situation, you want to own some gold,” he explained, carefully noting that central planners will be forced into this move because, despite all their extreme experimentation, “global growth has contracted, in other words, growth rates have been reduced and many countries are in recession already.” This has nothing to do with Brexit, stated the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report editor, “Brexit is actually not about an end of globalization. On the contrary, it’s about people that rebel against the arrogant elite in the financial centers.”
  • The subprime bubble grew by $1.4 trillion in just one month
    Now, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between 2008’s subprime home loan borrowers, versus 2016’s subprime government borrowers. Neither borrower has the financial means to repay its debts. Back in 2008 the banks loaned money to subprime borrowers under the false premise that ‘home prices always go up.’ Today investors buy the bonds of subprime governments based on the false premise that ‘governments always pay their debts.’ Both assumptions are completely absurd and defy even the most cursory lessons of financial history.
  • Brexit will impact eurozone recovery: ECB board member
    The uncertainty sparked by the British vote to leave European Union will “inevitably” harm economic recovery in the euro area, European Central Bank executive board member Benoit Coeure said in a newspaper interview Friday. The pick-up in the eurozone economy “will inevitably suffer from the ‘uncertainty shock' that the British referendum has triggered, even if the impact is difficult to quantify at the moment,” Coeure told the French daily Le Monde. The effect would be all the more damaging because “the recovery in the euro area is already there. It's healthy and driven by domestic demand and by investment,” even it was being “kept down by high unemployment levels and debt,” he argued. The victory of the Leave vote in Britain last week has already led to severe turbulence on the financial markets.
  • Scathing new report shows just how bankrupt Social Security really is
    Last week, a group of analysts published an astonishing report about the future of Social Security in the United States, and their remarks were nothing short of damning. According to their calculations, for example, these analysts claim that Social Security is already running a huge deficit to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each year. In fact, this Social Security funding deficit has been taking place for several years now, and it’s actually accelerating. So the problem worsens each year. According to the analysis, the astounding rise in Social Security recipients vastly outpaces any growth in tax revenue received into the program. And this trend will continue for decades. The report goes on to describe Social Security’s two main trust funds, OASI (for ‘Old Age Survivors Insurance’) and DI (‘Disability Insurance’). They tell us that DI actually went bust several months ago.
  • What’s behind Venezuela’s economic crisis?
    Tomorrow in Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro will end electricity rationing that begun in April, following a drought that affected water levels at the hydroelectric dam that provides most of the country’s power.  The rationing has cut off electricity to much of the country for fours a day. Still, Venezuelans are struggling with shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, with increasing finger pointing at Maduro’s leadership. For more on these challenges, “New York Times” reporter Nicholas Casey joins me via Skype from the nation’s capital, Caracas. Nicholas, the pictures and the stories that we’ve seen have been really tragic.  I mean, we’re talking about people rioting for food.  Has that basic need got any closer to being met?
  • The Collapse of Western Democracy — Paul Craig Roberts
    There is controversy around the statement attributed to Martin Schulz, president of the EU parliament: “The British have broken the rules. It is not the philosophy of the EU that the crowd
    can determine its fate.” This statement attributed to Schulz comes from a German language magazine. Here is the statement in German: “Die Briten verstoßen gegen die EU-Rahmenbedingungen, da es nicht in der Philosophie der EU liegt, dass der Mob über Aufstieg und Untergang der EU entscheiden darf.” This does translate to the English above. However, it appears that the statement was from a satire, whether of Schulz or the EU I do not know. I also do not know whether Schulz’s views justify the satirical jab or whether the words were assigned to him because of his position. Nevertheless, the fact that apparantly it was satire was lost in the transmission chain.
  • Russia & China Met Twice Last Week to Propose Monetary Reset – Willem Middelkoop
    Russia and Chinese leaders met twice during last week and called (again) for an end to the current (dollar) system.From my contacts with Chinese insiders I know they really understand our problems well and are clearly preparing for The Next Phase (a monetary and geopolitical reset…
  • Gerald Celente – This Is Bigger Than Brexit
    Although stocks bounced back on “Turnaround Tuesday” on the belief that contagion has been contained following the rout that wiped out $3.6 trillion from equity markets following Great Britain’s referendum last Thursday to “Brexit” the European Union… we disagree. It’s bigger than Brexit… Despite many of the world’s largest hedge funds betting billions on a “Remain” victory and British bookies putting the chances of “Leave” at barely 10 percent, in my June 15 KWN interview I said, “Should the ‘Leave’ vote win, we forecast the US dollar and gold prices will spike while equity markets, particularly those currently under downward pressure, will sink deeply lower.” Since then, gold hit two-year highs, the British pound fell to 31-year lows and currencies around the world hit new lows against the US dollar – or tested old ones – as investors sought safe-haven assets such as the dollar and Japanese yen.
  • SILVER JUST TOOK OUT $20: “We are at a flashpoint in history” — Andy Hoffman
    Silver just took out $20 in Sunday night Globex trading, but that’s not all, silver briefly pierced $21 Sunday night before settling back to the mid $20’s. Andy Hoffman from Miles Franklin joins me for a Sunday update and warns, “We are at a flashpoint in history… there is literally a tiny, tiny window left for people to protect themselves before all hell breaks loose.”
  • Could This Rumor About China Be True? Plus The Latest On Gold, Silver, Brexit, Soros And More
    With global markets continuing to experience wild trading in the aftermath of the historic Brexit vote, here is a quick update on the war in the gold and silver markets, the latest end of quarter rumors, plus gold, silver, Brexit and more.
  • Can This Be True? Is The Price Of Silver Really Headed To A Jaw-Dropping $690?
    With the price of silver surging near $19 and the gold market holding recent gains at $1,320, the following was sent to King World News from analyst David P. out of Europe.  The work below is not David’s and we are not sure if it comes from a colleague or not but it is worth featuring because of the astonishing price target that it sets for the price of silver.
  • Heal Yourself 101 – Learn to live the way you were designed
    Everything you need to know on how to dramatically change your life and never get sick again. Many people who have done this have had dramatic results with everything from impotence to brain cancer. This isn’t a trendy fad diet, it’s an understanding on how to live the way we were designed. Explained in simple-to-understand language, this book gets straight to the point. You can change your life with simple things that cost almost nothing, right in your own home, starting immediately. This book was shared in the ‘10 Steps To Avoid The Crash‘ guide. Heal Yourself 101 was available for $29.97 and for a short period of time it is available in PDF format for free.
  • Doug Casey Debunks the Common Excuses for Staying In One Country
    Tell a person that it's a big beautiful world, full of fresh opportunities and a sense of freedom that is just not available by staying put and you will inevitably be treated to a litany of reasons why expanding your life into more than one country just isn't practical. Let's consider some of those commonly stated reasons, and why they might be unjustified. While largely directed at Americans, these are also applicable to pretty much anyone from any country.
  • Warning: This Could Be the Start of a Global Banking Crisis 
    Europe’s banking system is collapsing. Over the past year, shares of Deutsche Bank (DB), Germany’s biggest bank, have plunged 56%. Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse (CS) is down 62% over the same period. Yesterday, both stocks hit record lows. Dozens of other European bank stocks have also crashed. The Euro STOXX Banks, which tracks 48 of Europe’s largest banks, is down 48% over the past year. This is a major issue. That's because banks are the cornerstone of the financial system. They keep money flowing through the economy. If they’re struggling, it often means the economy is having major problems. Right now, European banks are flashing bright warning signs. That’s not just bad news for Europe—it’s also a serious threat to the rest of the world.
  • What does the Brexit mean for the global oil market?
    The voters’ decision to leave the EU has created a global ripple effect. The global oil market is now getting ready for a longer delay in investments and pricing suppression, an economic slowdown not needed at the time. Immediately, the value of a pound dropped to a thirty-year low of $1.34, the price of Brent fell 5%, and the world’s stock exchanges experienced a plunge.
  • Do emerging markets like Brexit?
    Who’s afraid of a big bad Brexit? Not emerging markets who have been through days of strong growth, including having currencies buoyed against the US dollar since Britain voted to leave the European Union last week. In Brazil, the currency real opened 2.16 per cent stronger against the US dollar on Wednesday, reaching its highest level in 2016. It was a similar picture for the Mexican, Chilean and Colombian pesos. Meanwhile, the Russian ruble appeared to have regained considerable ground reaching its strongest against the US dollar since October last year. The benchmark Russian exchange MICEX continued its second day of gains, growing 1.3 per cent in similar fashion to markets in other emerging economies. Overall, while most global markets roiled as Brexit caused $3 trillion in investments to be shaved off exchanges around the world, emerging economies fared better.
  • Oil Crashes on Brexit, Oil Imports at a 42 Month High, Record Gasoline Output and Usage 
    Oil prices crashed along with global financial markets on Friday following the British vote on Thursday to exit the European Union (typically referred to as “Brexit”), which is widely expected to precipitate a period of political instability in Europe.  Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for remaining in the EU, submitted his resignation; British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn also faces a no-confidence vote, as both major parties had campaigned to remain in the EU.  In response to the British vote, populist parties on the left and right across Europe are calling for referendums in their own countries, with speculation that France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Hungary might also vote to leave the EU, effectively rebalkanizing the continent.
  • Brexit BOOM: FTSE 100 leaps to HIGHEST level since 2015 just a week after EU referendum
    BRITAIN's top stock market has surged to its highest level in almost a year, just one week after the vote to leave the European Union (EU). The FTSE 100 jumped again in Friday trading to sit at around 6,577 – its highest level since August 2015. The index has been climbing since Tuesday as confidence recovered from the initial shock over the outcome of the referendum. Despite experiencing one of the most volatile weeks since the 2008 financial crisis, the FTSE posted its best week since December 2, 2011, making gains of 7.15 per cent.
  • NIRP Absurdity Soars after Brexit, Hits $11.7 Trillion
    The amount of government bonds that sport negative yields – an all-too-real absurdity where bondholders in effect are shanghaied into paying the government for the privilege of lending it money – has soared 12.5% after the Brexit vote, from $10.4 trillion at the end of May to $11.7 trillion as June 27, Fitch Ratings reported today. The action was in longer-dated bonds, with maturities of 7 years and over. Those with negative yields soared to $2.635 trillion, up 62% from the end of May and up 93% from the end of April, having nearly doubled in two months! The German 10-year yield fell below zero during the period, now at -0.124%. Japanese yields are below zero all the way out to 17 years. And “virtually all” of the Swiss sovereign debt luxuriates in negative yields.
  • Cryptocurrency Crash
    One of the more profitable trades this year was in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. For those unfamiliar, Bitcoin is a digital asset and payment system — a virtual currency. It’s considered a cryptocurrency because it doesn’t require a central bank to handle its transactions. It’s all self-contained through technology that encrypts and records a ledger over a distributed computer system. This technology is called the blockchain. The benefit of blockchain technology comes from its transparency. Everyone can see every transaction. The whole system is also decentralized. There’s no single institution or bank that controls the transferring of assets back and forth. This (advocates claim) removes the possibility of corruption, theft, and a whole host of other common problems that come with your standard financial system.
  • It Gets Real: Manhattan Apartment Sales Plunge
    Real estate is local. And so housing bubbles are local. When enough of them happen, they coagulate into a national phenomenon. This has already happened. In March 2013, we started calling this phenomenon Housing Bubble 2, and we’ve watched in awe how it bloomed, nurtured by ultra-low mortgage rates, government subsidies, the Fed that is relentlessly “healing” the housing market, yield-desperate investors, private equity firms, Wall Street, a surge of foreign buyers who want to get their money – however they’d obtained it – out of harm’s way, and a million other factors. All of it has been accompanied by a national boom in hype. Now there are signs that our awe-inspiring Housing Bubble 2, like all housing bubbles, is beginning to unravel. This too is local, here and there, while still booming in other places. It shows up in some key markets. Then it spreads. When it spreads far enough, the unraveling of Housing Bubble 2 becomes a national phenomenon.
  • How Can We Celebrate Our Independence When Most Americans Are Willingly Enslaved To The Matrix?
    Did you know that the average U.S. adult consumes 10 hours and 39 minutes of media a day?  Nielsen has just released brand new numbers on the media consumption patterns of Americans, and they are absolutely staggering.  According to Nielsen, the amount of media that we consume per day has increased by an hour just since the first quarter of 2015.  This is the time of the year when we celebrate our independence, but how in the world can we ever be truly independent when most of us are willingly plugging ourselves into “the Matrix” for more than 10 hours a day?  If you feed anything into your mind for hours every day, it is going to change the way that you think, the way that you feel about things, and the way that you view the world.  This endless barrage of “news” and “entertainment” has fundamentally altered the belief systems of tens of millions of Americans, and this has very serious implications for our society moving forward.
  • Rio 2016: ‘Welcome to Hell' warn police
    There was a nasty surprise awaiting passengers in the arrivals hall at Rio de Janeiro's Galeao International Airport on Monday. Along with the relatives carrying flowers and taxi drivers waiting with name boards there were lines of off-duty police with banners that had a far more ominous message: “Welcome to Hell”. “Police and firefighters don't get paid,” the banners, in English and Portuguese, went on. “Whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe”. Photos of the protest have been widely shared on social media and in the Brazilian press. The image above was posted on the photo sharing site Imgur, where it was viewed more than three million times in less than a day.
  • Puerto Rico Says It Will Default Even With Congressional Aid
    Two days before a potential historical default, Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made it clear that the commonwealth won’t pay bondholders even as Congress votes on a bill allowing the island to restructure its $70 billion in debt. “On July 1, 2016, Puerto Rico will default on more than $1 billion in general obligation bonds, the island’s senior credits protected by a constitutional lien on revenues,” Garcia Padilla wrote in a editorial posted on a CNBC website. The lapse will mark the first time the U.S. territory has failed to pay what it owes on general-obligation debt, a $13 billion swath that its constitution says has the top claim to the government’s funds. Garcia Padilla previously said the commonwealth couldn’t raise enough to cover what’s owed to bondholders even if he shut down the government. The island has about $2 billion in principal and interest payments due Friday.
  • Millennials Are Pretty Cocky About Their Investing Skills
    One of the great things about young people is their optimism, the confidence that everything is going to work out. Sometimes, though, that can get them into trouble, like behind the wheel of a car. Or as an investor. A new survey found millennials were more positive about the future than their parents when it came to investments. They also think themselves far more knowledgeable about how to manage money, which, as anyone will tell you, might translate into behavior that leads to bad financial outcomes.
  • World-Check terrorism database exposed online
    A financial crime database used by banks has been “leaked” on to the net. World-Check Risk Screening contains details about people and organisations suspected of being involved in terrorism, organised crime and money laundering, among other offences. Access is supposed to be restricted under European privacy laws. The database's creator, Thomson Reuters, has confirmed an unnamed third-party exposed an “out of date” version online. But it says the material has since been removed. Security researcher Chris Vickery said he discovered the leak. He notified the Register, which reported that it contained more than two million records and was two years old.
  • Repo Rates Surge to Post-Crisis High as Bank Dealers Pare Back
    The rate for borrowing and lending government debt surged Thursday to the highest since the financial crisis as banks reined in collateral lending to shore up balance sheets ahead of the quarter-end. With fewer dealers borrowing cash and posting government debt as collateral, money funds — the key lenders of cash in the repurchase agreement market — gravitated to buying Treasury bills and parking cash with the Fed via their RRPs during quarter-end, driving overnight rates higher.
  • Richmond Fed Dead-Cat-Bounce Crashes To 3-Year Lows
    With the biggest miss in two years, Richmond Fed collapsed to -7 (lowest since Jan 2013) from March's 22 print (six year highs). The farcical flip-flop leaves the average workweek plunging into contraction, number of employees dropping, New Order volume crashing, and worse still, future expectations of hisring and work week is plunging. Best in 6 years to worst in over 3 years…
  • Forget December. Forget Next Year. The Fed's Done Hiking Until 2018
    Circle Jan. 31, 2018, on the calendar. That’s the soonest the Federal Reserve hikes next. At least if money market derivatives are to be believed. Traders, who have consistently been better at projecting the path of interest rates than the Fed itself, are now pricing in a greater probability that policy makers will cut rates in upcoming meetings than raise them. They don’t assign more than a 50 percent chance of an increase until the beginning of 2018, and don’t price in a full rate hike until the final quarter of the year.
  • The Recent Rise in Delinquency Rates on Bank Loans Is Shocking (Is a New Banking Crisis Imminent?)
    The delinquency rate on loans is key in understanding banking. It answers one question: what percentage of loans is overdue for payment? The delinquency rate is by far the most useful indicator for “credit stress.” It seems, however, as if delinquency no longer counts. Few are paying attention to the quick and sudden rise of the delinquency rate. What does it tell us and is a new banking crisis imminent? This Is What Happened after Janet Yellen Hiked the Fed Funds Rate in December. I have said it many times over and I will repeat it here: the last time around, it took Fed-chairman Alan Greenspan over two years and seventeen rate hikes to bring the Fed funds rate from a then all-time-low of 1% to 5.25%, before the U.S. economy suffered the worst recession since the 1930s. We are not so lucky this time.
  • April Spending Exuberance Plunges Back To Earth In May As Income Growth Slows
    After an exuberant April, spiking hope that everything was awesome with a surge in spending, May has dragged US consumers back down to earth. The 1.1% (revised) jump in spending in April (highest since Aug 09) is over as May's 0.4% gain is back in the land of ‘normal' once again. Income rose just 0.2% MoM (less than expected) slowing dramatically from last month to near the weakest YoY growth since March 2014. The savings rate fell once again on the back of this (down 0.1%) to 5.3%. With YoY Income growth almost the weakest since March 2014 and spending fading…
  • Pending home sales down 3.7%, marking first annual drop in two years
    The final push of the spring housing season turned out weaker than expected. Signed contracts to buy existing homes fell 3.7 percent in May compared to April, according to the National Association of Realtors. April's reading was revised down. These so-called pending home sales were 0.2 percent lower than May of 2015, the first annual drop since August of 2014. “With demand holding firm this spring and homes selling even faster than a year ago, the notable increase in closings in recent months took a dent out of what was available for sale in May and ultimately dragged down contract activity,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors. “Realtors are acknowledging with increasing frequency lately that buyers continue to be frustrated by the tense competition and lack of affordable homes for sale in their market.”
  • API Claims A 3.9 Million Barrel Draw 
    The latest inventory report by the American Petroleum Institute injected some optimism into crude oil markets, suggesting that U.S. stockpiles fell by as much as 3.9 million barrels in the week to June 24. This is significantly more than the 2.4 million barrels seen by analysts polled by Reuters and the sixth consecutive week of inventory draws, should the API information be confirmed by the official figures that will be released later today by the Energy Information Administration. Last week, the API said inventories had plummeted by 5.2 million barrels in the week to June 17, but EIA data revealed that the draw was much more moderate, at less than a million barrels.
  • East Coast Ports Hit By Import Decline
    Imports slumped at some of the East Coast’s busiest ports in May, as high business inventories and shifting trade patterns that favor the West Coast curbed volumes. On Tuesday the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reported that May loaded imports fell to 268,861 twenty-foot equivalent units – a common measure of shipping container volume – down 4.7% from the same month last year. The total volume of containers passing through the port fell by 6.1% in May.
  • Chiacgo PMI Spikes To 18-Month High – 7 Standard-Deviation Beat – As Employment Crashes?!
    Seriously!! Chicago PMI spiked to 56.8 in June (from 49.3) – higher than the highest estimate and seven standard deviations above expectations. This is the highest since Jan 2015. Simply put, the number is beyond any credibility, as despite higher orders and output, demand for labor fell as employment contracted at the fastest pace since November 2009.
  • Carney prepares for ‘economic post-traumatic stress’
    The Bank of England is preparing to unleash another round of monetary stimulus as it battles to contain the economic fallout of The UK’s decision to leave EU. In a stark warning to politicians, governor Mark Carney said a downturn was on its way and Britain was already suffering from “economic post-traumatic stress disorder”. He said the central bank would take “whatever action is needed to support growth”, which probably included “some monetary policy easing” in the next few months, in an attempt to reassure the markets and the general public. But Mr Carney also said that central bankers could do only a limited amount to mitigate the pain.
  • “You Want To Own Gold” Marc Faber Warns “Brexit Is The Excuse For QE4”
    “If Brexit is used as an excuse, the central banks will print more money, QE4 in the U.S. is on the way and the depreciation in the purchasing power of currencies will continue,” warned a vociferous Marc Faber said in a Bloomberg TV interview today from Hong Kong. “In that situation, you want to own some gold,” he explained, carefully noting that central planners will be forced into this move because, despite all their extreme experimentation, “global growth has contracted, in other words, growth rates have been reduced and many countries are in recession already.” This has nothing to do with Brexit, stated the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report editor, “Brexit is actually not about an end of globalization. On the contrary, it’s about people that rebel against the arrogant elite in the financial centers.”
  • What are my choices?
    Pastor Williams has asked me to share with you this information from an unknown source regarding your choice in the upcoming November presidential election. Please share it with everyone you can. If I were not already convinced this message would have convinced me. It is also a good read as it makes its points!
  • Hillary Clinton says American 401(k)s lost $100 billion after Brexit vote
    In a speech attacking her opponent, Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump cheered while the economy reeled in the aftermath of Britain’s shocking vote to leave the European Union. “On Friday, when Britain voted to leave the European Union, he crowed from his golf course about how the disruption could end up creating higher profits for that golf course, even though, within 24 hours, Americans lost $100 billion from our 401(k)s,” Clinton said in Ohio June 27. “He tried to turn a global economics challenge into an infomercial.” Trump did say last week that Brexit would benefit Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland, because a weaker pound would bring more tourists. We wondered, though, about the other part of Clinton’s claim: that Brexit caused 50 million Americans with 401(k) retirement savings accounts to lose $100 billion in just 24 hours.
  • ‘The end is coming,' says Ron Paul
    The historic U.K. vote to leave the European Union is a sign of a major global meltdown, not just a watershed that marks the end of a unified continent, former Rep. Ron Paul says. “I think [the EU] will become nonfunctional,” Paul told CNBC's ” Futures Now ” on Tuesday. “It really is coming to an end. It doesn't mean tomorrow or the next day, but people are going to be really unhappy. The end is coming, but it isn't coming because of the breakup,” he added. Paul attributed the fallout to “bad fiscal policies” around the globe. He said that as long as interest rates remain low, the markets will remain in bubble territory.
  • Brexit will allow insurers to escape ‘absolutely dreadful' EU regulation, claims former civil service chief
    British-based insurers may be better off outside the EU because capital rules have damaged competitiveness and constrained the sector's ability to expand, according to the former head of the civil service. Lord Turnbull, who served as a non-executive director at Prudential for almost a decade, described the regulatory framework, known as Solvency II, as “absolutely dreadful”. Solvency II has drawn widespread criticism from the industry and UK regulators, which have warned that the high costs of implementing the framework have so far failed to level the playing field in the sector. Lord Turnbull said the UK's decision to leave the EU could benefit the industry.
  • This economist thinks China is headed for a 1929-style depression
    Andy Xie isn’t known for tepid opinions. The provocative Xie, who was a top economist at the World Bank and Morgan Stanley, found notoriety a decade ago when he left the Wall Street bank after a controversial internal report went public. Today, he is among the loudest voices warning of an inevitable implosion in China, the world’s second-largest economy. Xie, now working independently and based in Shanghai, says the coming collapse won’t be like the Asian currency crisis of 1997 or the U.S. financial meltdown of 2008. In a recent interview with MarketWatch, Xie said China’s trajectory instead resembles the one that led to the Great Depression, when the expansion of credit, loose monetary policy and a widespread belief that asset prices would never fall contributed to rampant speculation that ended with a crippling market crash.
  • UK faith leaders unite in condemning post-referendum rise in xenophobic abuse
    Leaders of Britain’s main faith communities have united in condemning intolerance amid mounting reports of xenophobic and racist abuse in the wake of the EU referendum result. The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, the chief rabbi and senior imams have all spoken out against division and expressions of hatred. In Brussels, the United Nations human rights chief said he was deeply concerned about reports of attacks on minority communities and foreigners. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein urged the UK authorities to prosecute those responsible, saying racism and xenophobia were “completely, totally and utterly unacceptable in any circumstances”. Police recorded a 57% increase in hate crime complaints in the four days following the referendum, in which immigration was a key plank of the leave campaign. Justin Welby, the leader of the Church of England, said people of “evil will” were using the referendum result as an excuse to vent their hatred.
  • Another Case For Exit——-America Should Get Out Of NATO
    In its reporting on Brexit, the New York Times asks an interesting question: “Is the post-1945 order imposed on the world by the United States and its allies unraveling, too?” Hopefully, it will mean the unraveling of two of the most powerful and destructive governmental apparatuses that came out of the postwar era: NATO and the U.S. national-security state. In fact, although the mainstream media and the political establishment elites will never acknowledge it, the irony is that it is these two apparatuses that ultimately led to the Brexit vote.
  • 16 Reasons to Celebrate Brexit’s Win
    Watching the Brexit campaign generated mixed feelings: it was a little like the man who saw his mother-in-law drive his new Mercedes off a cliff. In the United Kingdom, some people who hated free trade, immigration and market innovation challenged the officious, wannabe superstate headquartered in Brussels. Who to cheer for? We should cheer for the Brexiteers, who deserve at least a couple of hurrahs. The European Union created a common market throughout the continent, an undoubted good, but since then has focused on becoming a meddling Leviathan like Washington, DC. For Britain, the virtues of remaining appeared to pale in comparison to the likely costs of continued subservience to Brussels. In a variety of imperfect ways, Brexit promoted liberty, community, democracy and the rule of law. In short, the good guys won.

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