Thursday, March 31, 2016

One Muslim Explains What Is More Offensive To Him "Than A Stupid Prophet Mohammad Cartoon"







"We're Going To War" – Oliver Stone Fears The Dangerous Extremism Of Neocon Hillary Clinton

"We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government."


One-Third Of All Americans Don’t Make Enough Money To Even Cover The Basic Necessities

by Michael Snyder, End of the American Dream:

Do you remember the days when it seemed like almost everyone in America was middle class?  Unfortunately, those days are long gone and the grinding down of the middle class in the United States appears to be accelerating.  According to a brand new study that was just released by Pew Charitable Trusts, household spending increased by 14 percent between 2004 and 2014, but median household income decreased by 13 percent during that same time period.  Both of those figures were adjusted for inflation.  What this means is that the cost of living has steadily gone up, but our incomes have gone down.  In fact, as you will see below approximately one-third of all Americans don’t even make enough money to pay for the basic necessities at this point.  The middle class is being squeezed like never before, and very few of our leaders seem to care.
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2016: The End Of The Global Debt Super Cycle

The credit markets are signaling that the debt fueled expansion that began in 2010 is turning to bust. This is the most precarious moment in financial market history because as the world slides into recession global central banks have no ability to soften the oncoming recession with debt creation. The world economy is on the precipice of another Great Depression.



Worst Case Scenario: 73% Down From Here

QE3 ended 17 months ago and shockingly the S&P 500 is exactly where it was 17 months ago. How many bull markets go flat for 17 months? As John Hussman accurately points out, we are experiencing a topping formation in the third and biggest bubble of the last 16 years. It’s a long way down from here.
 

Jade Helm 16 Is Training to Withhold Food From the American People

by Dave Hodges, The Common Sense Show:

Jade Helm is back and it is back and it is back with a vengeance. Jade Helm 15 has morphed into Unconventional Warfare Exercise 16 (UWEX 16).
UWEX 16 is about fighting a civil war against rogue American troops who will, presumably, not go along with the imposition of tyranny under the banner of the UN flag with the complicit support of foreign troops.
There is a new twist to Jade Helm 16 (i.e. UWEX 16).
I have learned from reliable sources that Jade Helm 16 is also about controlling the shipment of all food. If one thinks this sounds outrageous, stay tuned, because the circumstantial evidence clearly points in this direction.
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The Rebellion Will Not Go Away

The Sanders- and Trump-led (for now) political rebellion is not going to go away. Why is this rebellion permanent, at least until conditions improve? Because life in the U.S. is getting worse in a way that can be felt by a critical mass of people, by enough people to disrupt the Establishment machine with their anger. And because that worsening is seen to be permanent. Bottom line, people are reaching the breaking point, and we're watching that play out in the 2016 electoral race.



Did Trump Just Commit A Major Error: Why Renouncing Republican Pledge Could Cost Him 50 Delegates

As of this moment, Donald Trump has 736 delegates and is (mostly) smoothly sailing to the nomination with Ted Cruz almost 273 behind him at 463. However, there is suddenly an all too real chance that 273 difference can melt to as little as 173 with Trump's delegate count dropping by 50 as a result of what happened during this week's CNN townhall meeting when as previously reported, Trump reneged on his pledge to support the GOP candidate. The reason is that by doing so, he may have jeopardized his hold on South Carolina’s 50 delegates.



AsiaPac Data Deluge: China Good, South Korea Bad, Japan Ugly

An avalanche of data from AsiaPac tonighht was a very mixed bag... South Korean trade data fell again and deflation struck; Aussie home price appreciation slowed to its weakest in 2.5 years; Japanese data was a total disastrophe everywhere... and then there was China. Both Manufacturing and Services PMIs bounced (the former back into expansion) which is a major problem for Janet, because if China is back in recovery, then The Fed no longer has to worry about China's economy when deciding on the next rate hike.



Hong Kong Retail Sales Crash Most Since 1999 As Stocks Soar 14%

The last few weeks have seen Hong Kong's Hang Seng index surge over 14% which - if one believes the mainstream media - must mean renewed confidence in world economic growth and that everything is awesome. However, that narrative just got destroyed as Hong Kong retail sales in February just crashed by the most since 1999 as fewer Chinese tourists visited the city during the Lunar New Year holiday and as one analyst warned, sales will "continue to fall for the rest of 2016 as all the negative factors won’t be solved in the near term."



Olympics In Doubt As Brazil Sports Minister Quits, Rio Governor Says "This Is The Worst Situation I've Ever Seen"

At this juncture, the only thing we can say is that we hope the lawyers for all of the advertising partners who just spent a total of $1 billion with NBC's executive vice president of advertising sales Seth Winter took a good look at the fine print before signing on the dotted line and cutting the checks.



John McCain Linked Nonprofit Received Million Dollar Donation From Saudi Arabia

For just and obvious reasons, it’s illegal under U.S. law for foreign governments to finance individual candidates or political parties. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop them from bribing politicians and bureaucrats using other opaque channels.



China Unveils 'Trumpian' Tariffs On All Foreign Goods

Chinese President Xi appears to have moved on from currency wars to protectionism as WSJ reports China is tightening its grip on cross-border e-commerce, imposing a new tax system on all overseas purchases. While Trumpian tariffs are dismissed as crazy talk by America's establishment, it seems China took first-mover advantage to boost "Made-in-China" products at the expense of the rest of the world.



The Reason Anbang Pulled The Starwood Offer: It Couldn't Prove It Has The Funds

As was announced late this afternoon, Anbang unexpectedly pulled its Starwood offer, and for a very specific reason. According to the FT, an investor consortium led by China’s Anbang Insurance has lost the bidding war for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, after failing to demonstrate that it had the financing in place to back up its latest $14bn offer, according to a person directly involved.



Maybe You're Confused By The Fed – But Wall Street Isn't

There is an inherent, overarching, problem within this now stated “international development” meme that I’m not sure the Fed. has really thought through. And it’s this... If “international developments” (i.e. China) have now taken first position over U.S. data, one can only summarize that the Fed. is now following, as well as, instituting a policy as the self-anointed mop-up team for the sins and/or consequences of spill over of a communist run economy.



Trump Nomination Odds Tumble As 'Brokered Convention' Bets Soar









"There Are No More Hotel Beds At All": Sweden's Tourism Industry Collapses As Resorts Become Refugee Centers

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the toursim industry is being choked off by migrant flows. According to SvD Naringsliv, the Swedish Migration Board's move to transform tourist facilities into asylum centers means they'll be no more room for vacationers - literally.



Copper Continues To Crumble Amid Record China Inventories

Having bounced miraculously off the early January lows - despite no significant fundamental shift - scrambling all the weay up to its 200-day moving-average, copper prices have been tumbling for the last 7 days, the longest losing streak since early Jan. "Worries over Chinese demand is still weighing on the market," warns one analyst and rightly so as, just like the oil complex, copper inventories (in China) just hit a record high.


ROFL! Pharma-controlled press desperately tried to censor this book, but failed… Dr. Kelly Brogan’s takedown of Big Pharma’s SSRI drug lies hits bestseller lists! Download first chapter here…

by Mike Adams, Natural News:
Just like Del Bigtree made a dangerous film called “VAXXED,” Dr. Kelly Brogan wrote a dangerous book. How dangerous? So dangerous that the prescription drug cartel in America — you know, Big Pharma — ordered media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to blackball the book in the hope that no one would read it.
Natural News has learned that all the major media outlets obediently agreed to censor the book and its author. No reviews — not even negative ones — would be published. No interviews with the author, no TV appearances, no debates, nothing. A literal conspiracy against a book was hatched in secret and militantly followed by the entire media.
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Higher Education Is Morally and Financially Bankrupt

by Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds:

A system that piles debt on students in exchange for a marginal or even zero-return on their investment is morally and financially bankrupt. 
Every once in a while you run across an insider’s narrative of a corrupt, morally bankrupt sector that absolutely nails the sector’s terminal rot. Here is that nails-it narrative for higher education: Pass, Fail: An inside look at the retail scam known as the modern university.
Here are excerpts of the article, which was published in Canada but is equally applicable to higher education in the U.S.:
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Charting America’s Descent Into Peasantry

by Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg:

Earlier today, I published a post titled Americans Have Been Turned Into Peasants – It’s Time to Fight Back. In the hours since, I came across an article in the Washington Post which offers some additional details and graphics on the subject.
Here are a few excerpts from the piece titled, 2015 Was a Terrible Year for the Common Working Man:
By at least one measure, inequality among working men has grown for decades. But, in 2015, it accelerated: The wage gap among men saw its largest single-year increase on record.
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Robert Kiyosaki And Harry Dent Warn That Financial Armageddon Is Imminent


by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

Financial experts Robert Kiyosaki and Harry Dent are both warning that the next major economic crash is in our very near future.  Dent is projecting that the Dow will fall to “5,500 to 6,000 by late 2017″, and Kiyosaki actually originally projected that a great crash was coming in 2016 all the way back in 2002.  Of course we don’t exactly have to wait for things to get bad.  The truth is that things are not really very good at the moment by any stretch of the imagination.  Approximately one-third of all Americans don’t make enough money to even cover the basic necessities, 23 percent of adults in their prime working years are not employed, and corporate debt defaults have exploded to the highest level that we have seen since the last financial crisis.  But if Kiyosaki and Dent are correct, economic conditions in this country will soon get much, much worse than this.
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Rand Paul Says He Has A "Major Announcement To Make Tomorrow"


 

Trump Nomination Odds Tumble As 'Brokered Convention' Bets Soar









Charting America's Descent Into Peasantry

This isn’t the outcome of a fairly regulated free market economy. It’s what you get in a rigged economy. The American public is being used like a cheap suit by the status quo. When will enough be enough?

White House To Syrians: Don’t Dare Vote For Assad! – Daniel McAdams

by Daniel McAdams, The News Doctors:

US backing for the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was supposed to be all about democracy. As Washington tells it, the people took to the street demanding democratic reforms and Assad did not listen, so he lost his legitimacy and needed to be overthrown. The US helped facilitate that overthrow by shipping in tons of weapons (much of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda and ISIS).
What Syrians were supposed to get in Assad’s place was a bright new future where they could vote for whoever they pleased to lead their government. That is what Washington told us was the noble goal of its regime change operation in Syria.
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Should You Load Up On Brazilian Stocks? Lessons From Nixon And Watergate



 

One Trader's Advice: "Listen To Yellen, Ignore Fundamentals"


 


The Battle To Keep The Establishment In Power

It looks as if it will be much more difficult for Trump to nail down enough delegates to beat the Republicans at their own corrupt rules. We are likely heading toward a rigged convention and this is playing into the hands of the precise thing the Republicans better not do. They are sacrificing the nation for personal perks. It is not that Trump is the savior, hardly, but at least he would be a check against these people.



"Wrong Way Gartman" Strikes Again...

Gartman Throws In The Bearish Towel: "Don't Fight The Fed"

"We may think Dr. Yellen’s actions are irrational; we may see them in the end as being disastrous; we may fully expect them to come to naught and very probably they shall, but taking positions in opposition them and to her shall cause us to lose both mental and real capital. It is a fight we may win eventually, but eventually can be a very, very, very long while off into the future.... We have no actual net long or short position in equities, however." - Dennis Gartman




Turkey's President Speaks At Brookings As His Bodyguards Attack Journalists, Protesters

In a few moments, Turkey's president Recep Erdogan will address the Brookings center with a speech titled "Global challenges and Turkey's goals for the year 2023."  However, the major news is not Erdogan's speech, but what is taking place just before it, and how it puts any treatment of a Trump protest to shame after one journalist was physically removed from the event site by Turkish security personnel, another kicked by a guard, and a third — a woman — thrown to the sidewalk in front of a Washington think tank where he was to speak.



Dozens Arrested, Tear Gas Deployed As French Labor Reform Protests Turn Violent

Police have used tear gas to disperse activists in Paris who are protesting new labor reforms. In Paris demonstrators threw bottles with flammable liquid and stones at police officers.  In the city of Nantes demonstrators tried to storm the town hall and smash windows.



Impatient Banks: A Real Red Flag For The Oil Patch

“This has the makings of a gigantic funding crisis..."



"The Buttonwood SPV": The Striking Details Of How China's Central Bank Is Directly Buying Stocks

As of this moment, the three main government bodies - including  the People's Bank of China - that run China's economy, the financial system or regulate the market all have a direct stake in the market, literally.



Turkey Arrests Shooter Of Parachuting Russian Pilot

Alparslan Celik, the man suspected of shooting a Russian pilot as he parachuted from a downed jet over Syria, has finally been arrested by Turkish police in the city of Izmir and is being questioned, Hurriyet newspaper reports. According to Bloomberg, Celik was detained while at a restaurant in the city on Turkey’s Aegean coast; 14 others also detained.



Assad Ready For Snap Elections As Kremlin Denies Report Of Russia-US Plan To Help Him Flee Syria

"This depends on the Syrian people’s stance, on whether there is a popular will to hold early presidential elections. If there is such a will, this is not a problem for me. It is natural to respond to the will of the people and not to that of certain opposition forces. This issue concerns every Syrian citizen because every citizen votes for the president.”

The Rich Are Hiding This From You

by Jimmy Mengel, Outsider Club:

A few years back, a friend of mine had an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a very promising investment…
He was poised to invest $25,000 in Chess.com, a website that teaches players “the game of kings” — and churns out some serious coin while doing so. A $25,000 investment would have netted him $500,000 — an unbelievable return by any measure.
Alas, accredited investor laws prevented him from taking advantage of the private placement, and he was left to watch helplessly as the super-wealthy bought in and cashed out.
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ISIS In California? 17 "Arabs In Turbans" Fired Guns And Chanted Allahu Akbar In Middle Of The Desert





Dear Janet, You Have A Problem - The Fed Policy 'Death Cross'

"Stock whisperer" Janet Yellen has a major problem. Despite the world's central banks' coordinated easing-driven surge in stocks off the mid-Feb lows, consumer comfort in America has collapsed to its lowest since Dec 2015. The "wealth creation" engine is not transmitting to animal spirits and exuberance among average joes... despite Jim Cramer's exposition that "Yellen is speaking for the common person."



Higher Education Is Morally & Financially Bankrupt

What-flation: +137% in 15 years - A system that piles debt on students in exchange for a marginal or even zero-return on their investment is morally and financially bankrupt.

Obama Assumes No Blame For US Sponsored Genocide In Libya

from The Sleuth Journal:

Obama and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state bear full responsibility for raping and destroying Libyan sovereign independence – including the deaths of many tens of thousands from war, related violence, preventable or untreated diseases, deprivation and continued chaos.
They committed Nuremberg-level high crimes against peace, violating international and constitutional law.
US-led terror-bombing ravaged Libya from February through late October 2011. Calling naked aggression civil war mocks premeditated mass slaughter, devastation, human misery, continued violence and turmoil.
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Chicago Fed's Evans Goes From Hawkish To Dovish And Back To Hawkish Again In Under 2 Weeks

EVANS: GREATER RISKS SUPPORTED SHALLOWER PATH AT MAR FOMC MTG
EVANS: STILL COMFORTABLE WITH TWO RATE HIKES THIS YEAR
EVANS: SEES ONE RATE HIKE IN MID-YEAR, ONE LATER IN YEAR
EVANS: WANT TO AVOID SITUATION WHERE NEGATIVE RATES NEEDED



Complete Crude Chaos

Presented with little comment aside to say... fundamentals...



Chicago PMI Bounces Back But Remains Below January Highs (Thanks To Warm Weather)

Following its demise into contraction in February, Chicago PMI jumped back to 53.6 (expansion) in March which is better than expected but remains below January's 55.5 highs. The last 12 months have seen quite unprecedented noise in this economic barometer and MNI reports respondents saying the recovery is "slow and steady... fuelled by warmer weather."



Russian Energy Tycoon Spends $1 Billion On Son's Wedding; Locals Dub It "Feast In A Time Of Plague"

The son of Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev got married this past weekend in what Russian media has been calling, "the most expensive wedding ever", but not everyonewas impressed by the gaudy spectacle: the wedding was branded ‘a feast in a time of plague’. Commenter Marina Baryshnikova complained: ‘It would have been better if they helped those in need, the country is collapsing, there are no jobs, people are poor. This is a feast at a time of plague.’



Jobless Claims Surge Most In 2 Years As Challenger Warns Of "Significant" Jump In Retail, Computer Layoffs

With both ISM Manufacturing and Services employment indices collapsing, endless headlines of layoffs, Challenger-Grey noting Q1 as the worst since 2009, and NFIB small business hiring weak, it is no surprise that initial jobless claims is finally waking up. For the 3rd week in a row - the longest streak since July 2015. The lasty 3 weeks have seen a 9.1% surge in jobless claims - the biggest such rise since April 2014.



Europe Remains Stuck In Deflation For Second Month

The last time Europe had at least two consecutive months of deflation was in late 2014/early 2015 when the ECB launched its sovereign QE, and when prices staged a modest rebound into the rest of the year. One year later, it's more of the same, and as Eurostat revealed earlier today, after a headline price drop of -0.2% in February, March prices declined once more, this time by -0.1% in line with expectations, driven by a -8.7% plunge in energy prices.



China Sees First Offshore Default By State-Owned Firm In Two Decades

A Hong Kong unit of Guosen Securities is in technical default on a dim sum bond issued in 2014, marking the first offshore default by a Chinese SOE since the collapse of Guangdong International Trust and Investment in 1999. The subsidiary says reports that it has violated a keepweel with its parent are "exaggerated."



S&P Revises China's Credit Outlook To Negative On Growth, Debt Concerns - Full Text

Ripley's believe it or not world continues. Earlier today, Hong Kong's Hang Seng market entered a bull market, rising 20% from its February lows, just as Hong Kong retail sales plunged 20.6%, the bigest drop since 1999 and then moments ago, in a move that pushed the Chinese Yuan stronger at least initially, S&P revised its Chinese outlook to negative, saying the economic rebalancing is likely to proceed more slowly than had expected over next 5 years and warning about China's debt load.

Could fracking be causing cancer? This experiment’s results say YES… and quite rapidly, too!

by L.J. Devon, Natural News:
While the According to statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas now powers about 33 percent of the US electrical grid, but the technique that’s used to extract oil from the ground today is much different from the drilling methods of the past. To speed up the process, a high-tech method was invented called high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. While we still call the end product “natural gas” there really is nothing natural about hydraulic fracturing.
Fracking uses high pressure, water, sand and a myriad of chemicals to fracture the rock up to 1,000 feet away from the the well, according to a study titled “Malignant human cell transformation of Marcellus Shale gas drilling flow back water.”
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BANKERS ORCHESTRATE A RAID

by Harvey Organ, HarveyOrganblog:
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gold: $1,226.90 down $8.90 (comex closing time)
Silver 15.21 down 9 cents
In the access market 5:15 pm
Gold $1224.50
silver: 15.23
Yesterday, I promised you that the bankers would attack today in both gold and silver. My boys did not disappoint me with their antics.
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