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“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product
of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”
John Maynard Keynes
"Life is a school of probabilities."
Walter Bagehot
Neoliberal economics (aka casino capitalism) function from one crash to another. Risk is pervasively underpriced under neoliberal system, resulting in bubbles small and large which hit the economy periodically. The problem are not strictly economical or political. They are ideological. Like a country which adopted a certain religion follows a certain path, The USA behaviour after adoption of neoliberalism somewhat correlate with the behaviour of alcoholic who decided to booze himself to death. The difference is that debt is used instead of booze.
Hypertrophied role of financial sector under neoliberalism introduces strong positive feedback look into the economic system making the whole system unstable. Any attempts to put some sand into the wheels in the form of increasing transaction costs or jailing some overzealous bankers or hedge fund managers are blocked by political power of financial oligarchy, which is the actual ruling class under neoliberalism for ordinary investor (who are dragged into stock market by his/her 401K) this in for a very bumpy ride. I managed to observe just two two financial crashed under liberalism (in 2000 and 2008) out of probably four (Savings and loan crisis was probably the first neoliberal crisis). The next crash is given, taking into account that hypertrophied role of financial sector did not changes neither after dot-com crisis of 200-2002 not after 2008 crisis (it is unclear when and if it ended; in any case it was long getting the name of "Great Recession").
Timing of the next crisis is anybody's guess but it might well be closer then we assume. As Mark Twain aptly observed: "A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes" ;-):
This morning that meant a stream of thoughts triggered by Paul Krugman’s most recent op-ed, particularly this:
Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.
Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing.
As most 401K investors are brainwashing into being "over bullish", this page is strongly bearish in "perma-bear" fashion in order to serve as an antidote to "Barrons" style cheerleading. Funny, but this page is accessed mostly during periods of economic uncertainty. At least this was the case during the last two financial crisis(2000 and 2008). No so much during good times: the number of visits drops to below 1K a month.
Still I hope it plays a small but important role: to warn about excessive risk taking by 401K investors in neoliberal economic system. It designed to serve as a warning sign and inject a skeptical note into MSM coverage. There are not many such sites, so a warning about danger of taking excessive risk in 401K accounts under neoliberalism has definite value. The following cartoon from 2008 illustrated this point nicely
As far as I know lot of 401K investors are 100% or almost 100% invested at stocks. Including many of my friends. I came across a very relevant to this situation joke which nicely illustrated the ideas of this page:
Seven habits that help produce the anything-but-efficient markets that rule the world by Paul Krugman in Fortune.
1. Think short term.
2. Be greedy.
3. Believe in the greater fool
4. Run with the herd.
5. Overgeneralize
6. Be trendy
7. Play with other people's money
I would like to stress again that it is very difficult to "guess" when the next wave of crisis stikes us: "A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes".
But mispricing of risk in 401K accounts is systemic for "overbullish" 401 investors, who expect that they will be able to jusp of the train in time, before the crash. Usually such expectations are false. And to sell in the market that can lose 10% in one day is not easy psychologically. I remember my feelings in 2001-2002 and again 2008-2009. That's why many people who planned to "jump" stay put and can temporarily lose 30 to 50% of value of their 401k account in a very short period of time (and if you think that S&P500 can't return to 1000, think again; its all depends on FED). At this point some freak out and sell their holdings making paper losses permanent.
Even for those who weathered the storm and held to their stock holdings, it is important to understand that paper losses were eliminated mostly by Fed money printing. As such risks remains as at one point FED might find itself out of ammunition. The fact that S&P500 recovered very nicely it does not diminish the risk of such behavior. There is no guarantee that the third crisis will behave like previous two.
Next crash will have a new key determinant: the attitude toward the US government (and here I mean the current government of Barack Obama) and Wall Street after 2008 is the lack of trust. That means that you need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Injection on so much money into financial system was a novel experiment which is not ended yet. So how it will end is anybody's guess. We are now in uncharted waters. I think when Putin called Bernanke a hooligan, he meant exactly this. Since Bernanke was printing money out of thin air to buy financial paper, his action were tantamount to shoplifting. In some way this probably is more similar to running meth labs inside Fed building. The system was injected with narcotics. Everybody felt better, but the mechanism behind it was not healthy.
The complexity of modern financial system is tremendous and how all those new financial instruments will behave under a new stress is unknown. At the same time in the Internet age we, the great unwashed masses, can't be keep in complete obscurity like in good old time. Many now know ( or at least suspect ) that the neoliberal "show must goes on" after 2008 is actually going strongly at their expense. And while open rebellion is impossible, that results in lack of trust which represents a problem for financial oligarchy which rules the country. The poor working slobs are told be grateful for Walmart's low (poverty-subsidized) prices. Middle class is told that their declining standard of living is a natural result of their lack of competitiveness in the market place. Classic "bread and circuses" policy still works but for how long it will continue to work it is unclear.
But nothing is really new under the sun. To more and more people it is now clear that today the US is trying to stave off the inevitable decline by resorting to all kinds of financial manipulations like previous empires; yesterday, it was the British Empire and if you go further back, you get the USSR, Hapsburg empire, Imperial Russia, Spanish empire, Venetian empire, Byzantium and Roman empire. The current "Secretary of Imperial Wars" (aka Secretary of Defense) Ashton Baldwin Carter is pretty open about this:
“We already see countries in the region trying to carve up these markets…forging many separate trade agreements in recent years, some based on pressure and special arrangements…. Agreements that…..leave us on the sidelines. That risks America’s access to these growing markets. We must all decide if we are going to let that happen. If we’re going to help boost our exports and our economy…and cement our influence and leadership in the fastest-growing region in the world; or if, instead, we’re going to take ourselves out of the game.”
For the US elite it might be a time to rethink its neocon stance due to which the US is exposing ourselves to the enmity of the rising economic powers, and blowing serious cash to maintain it hegemony via maintaining huge military budget, financing wars and color revolutions in distant countries. In a way the US foreign policy became a financial racket, and racket can't last forever because it incite strong opposition from other countries.
Neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism) as a social system entered the state of decline after 2008. Like communism before it stopped to be attractive to people. But unlike communism it proved to have greater staying power, surviving in zombie state as finanfial institutions preserved political power and in some cases even enhanced it. It is unclear how long it will say in this state. Much depends on the availability of "cheap oil" on which neoliberal globalization is based.
But the plausible hypothesis is that this social system like socialism in xUSSR space before entered down slope and might well be on its way to the cliff. Attempts to neo-colonize other states by the West became less successful and more costly (Compare Ukraine, Libya and Iraq with previous instances of color revolutions). Some became close to XIX century colonial conquests with a lot of bloodshed (from half million to over a million of Iraqis, by different estimates, died ). As always this is mainly the blood of locals, which is cheap.
Libya and Ukraine are two recent examples. Both countries are now destroyed (which might be the plan). In Ukraine population is thrown in object poverty with income of less that $5 a day for the majority of population. And there is no other way to expand markets but to try to "neo-colonize" new countries by putting them into ominous level of debt while exporting goods to the population on credit. That is not a long term strategy as Greece, Bulgaria, and now Spain and Portugal had shown. With shrinking markets stability of capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular might decrease.
Several researchers points to increased importance Central banks now play in maintaining of the stability of the banking system. That's already a reversal of neoliberal dogma about free (read "unregulated") markets. Actually the tale about "free markets", as far as the USA is concerned, actually was from the very beginning mainly the product designed for export (read about Washington consensus).
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Sep 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/17/2018 - 09:34 27 SHARES Authored by Tom Luongo,
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
-- The Empire Strikes BackSince Vladimir Putin brought up Bill Browder's name in Helsinki, events have escalated to a fever pitch. Russia is under extreme attack the U.S./European financial and political establishment.
And part of that push is coming from Browder himself. In July, just a week after Helsinki, Browder opened up a money laundering complaint against Denmark's largest bank, Danske , alleging over $8 billion in money 'laundered' from Russia, Moldova and Azerbaijan through its Estonian Branch.
The details here are important so bear with me.
Danske's report on these allegations are due on Wednesday.
No matter what they say, however, the die has been cast.
Danske is being targeted for termination by the U.S. and possible takeover by the European Central Bank.
There's precedent for this but let me lay out some background first.
The Oldest TrickBrowder's complaint says the money laundered is in connection with the reason why he was thrown out of Russia and the $230 million in stolen tax money which Browder's cause célèbre , the death of accountant Sergei Magnitsky, hangs on.
That crusade got the Magnitsky Act passed not only in the U.S. but all across the West, with versions on the books in Canada, Australia the EU and other places.
Danske's shares have been gutted in the wake of the accusation.
The U.S. is now investigating this complaint and that shouldn't come as much of a shock.
The Treasury Department can issue whatever findings it wants, and then respond by starving Danske of dollars, known as the "Death Blow" option the threat of which was plastered all over the pages of the Wall St. Journal on Friday.
Note this article isn't behind the Journal's pay-wall. They want everyone to see this.
Browder filed complaints both in Demmark and in Estonia, and the Estonian government was only too happy to oblige him.
The Devil PlayedTo see the whole picture I have to go back a littler further.
Back in March, Latvian bank, ABLV, was targeted in a similar manner, accused of laundering money. Within a week the ECB moved in to take control of the bank even though it wasn't in danger of failing.
It was an odd move, where the ECB exercised an extreme response utilizing its broader powers given to it after the 2008 financial crisis, like it did with Spain's Banco Popular in 2017.
Why? The U.S. was looking for ways to cut off Russia from the European banking system. And the ECB did its dirty work.
I wrote about this back in May in relation to the Treasury demanding all U.S. investors divest themselves of Russian debt within thirty days.
It threw the ruble and Russian debt markets into turmoil since Russian companies bought a lot of euro-denominated debt after the Ruble Crisis of 2014, having been shut off from dollars.ABLV was a conduit for many Russian entities to keep access to Europe's banks, having been grandfathered in as clients when the Baltics entered the Euro-zone.
So, now a replay of ABLV's seizure is playing out through Browder's money laundering complaint against Danske.
Was Convincing EveryoneThe goal of this lawsuit is two-fold.
The first is to undermine the faith in the Danish banking system. Dutch giant ING is also facing huge AML fines.
This is a direct attack on the EU banking system to being it under even more stringent government control.
The second goal, however, is far more important. As I said, the U.S. is desperate to cut money flow between the European Union and Russia, not just to stop the construction of Nordstream 2, but to keep Russia's markets weak having to scramble for euros to make coupon payments and create a roll-over nightmare.
Turkey is facing this now, Russia went through it in 2014/15.
In response to the Ruble's sharp drop this year on improving fundamentals, the Bank of Russia finally had to raise rates on Friday .
So, attacking a major bank like Danske for consorting with dirty Russians and using Mr. Human Rights Champion Browder to file the complaint is pure power politics to keep the EU itself from seeking rapprochement with Russia.
Anti-Money Laundering laws are tyrannical and vaguely worded. And with the Magnitsky Act and its follow-up, CAATSA, in place, they help support defining money laundering to include anything the U.S. and the EU deem as supporting 'human rights violations.'
Seeing the trap yet?
Now all of it can be linked through simple accusation regardless of the facts. The bank gets gutted, investors and depositors get nervous, the ECB then steps in and there goes another tendril between Russia and Europe doing business.
And that ties into Browder's minions in the European Parliament, all in the pay of Open Society Foundation, issued a threat of invoking Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty to Cyprus over assisting Russia investigate Browder's financial dealings there.
Why? Violations of Mr. Browder's human rights because, well, Russia!
What's becoming more obvious to me as the days pass is that Browder is an obvious asset of the U.S. financial and political oligarchy, if not U.S. Intelligence. They use his humanitarian bona fides to visit untold misery on millions of people simply to:
He Didn't Exist1) cover up their malfeasance in Russia
2) wage hybrid war on anyone willing to stand up to their machinations.
Because when looking at this situation rationally, how does this guy get to run around accusing banks of anything and mobilize governments into actions which have massive ramifications for the global financial system unless he's intimately connected with the very people that operate the top of that system?
How does this no-name guy in the mid-1990's, fresh 'off the boat' as it were, convince someone to give him $25 million in CASH to go around Russia buying up privatization vouchers at less than pennies on the dollar?
It simply doesn't pass a basic sniff test.
Danske is the biggest bank in Denmark and one of the oldest in Europe. The message should be clear.
If they can be gotten to this way, anyone can.
Just looking at the list of people named in the Magnitsky Act, a list given to Congress by Browder and copied verbatim without investigation, and CAATSA as being 'friends of Vladimir' it's obvious that the target isn't Putin himself for his human rights transgressions but anyone in Russia with enough capital to maintain a business bigger than a chain of laundromats in Rostov-on-Don.
Honestly, even some in the U.S. financial press said it looked like they just went through the Moscow phone book.
But, here the rub. In The Davos Crowd's single-minded drive to destroy Russia, which has been going on now for close to two generations in various ways, they are willing to undermine the very institutions on which a great deal of their power rests.
The more Browder gets defended by people punching far above his weight, the more obvious it is that there is something wrong with his story. Undermining the reputation of the biggest bank in Denmark is a 'playing-for-keeps' moment.
But, it's one that can and will have serious repercussions over time.
It undermines the validity of government institutions, exposing corruption that proves we live in a world ruled by men, not laws. That the U.S. and EU are fundamentally no different in their leadership than banana republics.
And that's bad for currency and debt markets as capital always flows to where it is treated best.
But, it's one that can and will have serious repercussions over time. The seizure of ABLV and 2017's liquidation of Spain's Banco Popular were rightly described by Martin Armstrong as defining moments where no one in their right mind would invest in a European banks if there was the possibility of losing all of your capital due to a change in the political winds overnight.
Using the European Parliament to censure Cyprus via Article 7 over one man's financial privacy, which no one is guaranteed in this world today thanks to these same AML and KYC laws, reeks of cronyism and corruption of the highest degree.
If you want to know what a catalyst for the collapse of the European banking system looks like, it may well be what happens this week if Danske tries to fight the spider's web laid down by Bill Browder and his friends in high places.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z_s5cRp5Ikk
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hanekhw , 1 minute ago
geno-econ , 1 hour agoBrowder, the Clintons, Soros and the EU were made for each other weren't they? They've been screwing us publicly for what, over two generations? And without a condom! We've gotten how many FTDs (financially transmitted diseases) from these people? They never unzip their flys.
hanekhw , 16 minutes agoAccording to Browder, Putin is worth over $100 Billion most of it stashed away in foreign banks through intermediates and relatives. If true, it will bring down Putin and many western banks. Perhaps a Red Swan is about to take off exposing an unsustainable .financial system and corrupt political enterprise on both sides of the divide sur to cause chaos. Ironically, Putin who represents Nationalism in Russia is under attack by Globalists accusing Putin of Capitalistic Greed utilizing western banks Suicidal !
zeroboris , 24 minutes agoBrowder, the Clintons, Soros and the EU were made for each other weren't they? They've been screwing us publicly for what, over two generations? And without a condom! We've gotten how many FTDs (financially transmitted diseases) from these people? They never unzip their flys.
monad , 8 minutes agoThey use his humanitarian bona fides
Browder's bona fides? LOL
Vanilla_ISIS , 18 minutes agoMinion (((Browder))) snitches on his masters. Nowhere to hide.
roadhazard , 14 minutes agoSomeone should just kill this dude. Browder has certainly earned it.
Panic Mode , 15 minutes agoBut what about the money laundering.
pndr4495 , 42 minutes agoYou better run. Your buddy McCain is gone and see who else will fight for you.
markar , 47 minutes agoSomehow - Mnuchkin's desire to sell his Park Ave. apartment fits into this tale of intrigue and bullshit.
TahoeBilly2012 , 1 hour agoSend this guy Browder a polonium cocktail. It's on me.
Clogheen , 37 minutes ago((Browder)) ??
geno-econ , 1 hour agoYes. Did you really need to ask?
Max Cynical , 1 hour agoAccording to Browder, Putin is worth over $100 Billion most of it stashed away in foreign banks through intermediates and relatives. If true, it will bring down Putin and many western banks. Perhaps a Red Swan is about to take off exposing an unsustainable .financial system and corrupt political enterprise on both sides of the divide sur to cause chaos. Ironically, Putin who represents Nationalism in Russia is under attack by Globalists accusing Putin of Capitalistic Greed utilizing western banks Suicidal !
LA_Goldbug , 1 hour agoI watch the banned documentary...The Magnitsky Act - Behind the Scenes.
Here's a link... https://seed02.bitchute.com/40940/lQ3qEwX66pIL.mp4
Browder seems like a real scumbag.
Thaxter , 1 hour agoOnly the slimiest rats get into the club of "Can Do No Wrong" and these types of gigs.
blindfaith , 22 minutes agoThis documentary is first class, a really absorbing look into the mind of the sociopath Browder, a pathological, absolutely shameless liar and a very stupid and weak person. To understand the influence that this insignificant invertebrate yields, look to his father, Earl Russell Browder, who was the leader of the Communist Party in the United States during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s.
Jim in MN , 1 hour agoLook no further than our own political circus to see that mighty hands pull the strings. Like all strings, they will fray and break...eventually.
BandGap , 1 hour agoYes well the Big Question for us now is the degree to which the President is in control of any of this.
Recall, dear ZH fighters, how we worked out a sound strategy for the Trump Administration in the early days. Key aspects were to leave the generals and the bankers alone for a couple of years. This would allow immigration, trade, health care and deregulation including tax reform to form the early core wins, along with Supreme Court nominees of course.
Lo, cometh the Deep State and its frantic attempts to both save and conceal itself.
One key tentacle was to rouse the intelligence community into an active enemy of the POTUS. This partially fouled up the 'leave the generals alone' strategy.
Another is to try to force war with the emergent Eurasian hegemony comprised of China and Russia. This is seen all across the 'hinterland' of Russia.
The USA has no vital strategic interests in Eurasia at this juncture of history. Everyone should be clear on that.
The USA's logical and sane policy stance is to support peace, free and fair trade, and stable democracy, including border controls and the rule of law through LEADING BY EXAMPLE.
So for Trump to continue to allow the financial sector Deep State traitors to operate against a peaceful Eurasia is becoming increasingly intolerable.
Where to from here?
LA_Goldbug , 40 minutes agoKeep opening it up to scrutiny.
This article opened my eyes, I did not fully understand why Russia was all over Browder except the stealing aspect, but bigger yet, why he was being protected by the EU/US.
No wonder Putin wants to work with the Donno. Taking Browder out and exposing this manipulation works for both sides.
I am a Man I am Forty , 1 hour agoIf Browder is a surprise to you then look at Khodorkovsky (there is more of these types from he came from).
Good start is here,
gmak , 1 hour agoThis guy is so shady. He's playing some dangerous games.
TheBigOldDog , 1 hour agoHuh? Could this be written more poorly?
akrainer , 1 hour agoHouston, we have a problem..
LA_Goldbug , 1 hour agoThe twice banned book, "Grand Deception" deconstructing Browder's very dangerous game is here, since Amazon delisted its two previous editions:
JacquesdeMolay , 1 hour ago"He Didn't Exist
Because when looking at this situation rationally, how does this guy get to run around accusing banks of anything and mobilize governments into actions which have massive ramifications for the global financial system unless he's intimately connected with the very people that operate the top of that system?"
Exactly. He was sent by the Anglo-Zionist Tribe otherwise he would be a nobody.
JacquesdeMolay , 2 hours agoAlso, a very good book on the topic: "suppressed and banned by the CIA's supplier, Amazon, The Grand Deception: The Browder Hoax is a highly intelligent, frank and entertaining take-down of one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the US public and the world – The Magnitsky Act. Krainer's study of Bill Browder's book and actions is a riveting, unflinching expose of what might end up being pivotal in revealing one of this decade's big hoaxes."
https://thirdalliance.ch/product/grand-deception-the-browder-hoax/
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Sep 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Amazon has launched an investigation to track down a sophisticated network of employees running a "black market" of confidential information and favors, illegally sold through intermediaries to site merchants in order to give them a competitive advantage over other sellers, reports the Wall Street Journal .
In addition to providing sales metrics, search keywords and reviewers' email addresses, bribed Amazon employees would delete negative feedback for around $300 per review, with middleman brokers typically demanding a five-review minimum from merchants looking to game the system.
Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries , are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.
...
In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000 , brokers for Amazon employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers' email addresses, as well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts , the people said.
...
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes , according to people familiar with the matter. -WSJ
The data brokers primarily operate ion China, as the number of new Amazon sellers in the country has been skyrocketing. The Journal speculates that " Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks. "
Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ' s theory holds water.
The internal probe was launched after a tip over the practice in China was sent to Eric Broussard, an Amazon VP in charge of overseeing global marketplaces. The company has since moved key executives into different positions in China to try and "root out the bribery," reports the Journal .
"We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties," an Amazon spokeswoman said of the situation, confirming that the company is investigating the claims. The same applies to sellers: "We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them ," she said.
Merchant network
A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants, where the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now offer an estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units sold on the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross merchandise volume last year, according to estimates by FactSet.
As such, "Sellers must aggressively compete to get their products noticed on the first page of search results, where customers typically make most of their purchase decisions," notes the Journal .
Evolving manipulations
Merchants have long sought competitive advantages over each other - first gaming Amazon's automated ranking system, by paying people to leave fake reviews and drive traffic to products.
After some time, the black market for internal information emerged, as bribed employees began providing data and access to various benefits, according to a person who has facilitated by brokers.
Brokers are the middlemen between Amazon employees and sellers who want negative reviews deleted or access to internal sales information. Brokers search for Amazon employees on Chinese messaging platform WeChat and send messages asking them if they would like to provide these services in exchange for cash , according to brokers and sellers who say they have been approached by brokers.
The going rate for having an Amazon employee delete negative reviews is about $300 per review , according to people familiar with the practice. Brokers usually demand a five-review minimum, meaning that sellers typically must pay at least $1,500 for the service, the people said. -WSJ
For a lower fee, merchants can pay Amazon employees for the email addresses of verified reviewers, giving them the opportunity to reach out to those who have left negative reviews for the opportunity to persuade them to adjust or delete their comment - sometimes bribing the reviewer with a free or discounted product.
Also offered for sale is proprietary sales information, "such as the keywords customers typically use to search for items on Amazon's site, sales volume and other statistics about buyers' habits, according to the people," enabling Amazon sellers to better craft product descriptions in a manner which will boost their search result rankings.
At a recent conference hosted for sellers -- which wasn't run by Amazon -- a broker pulled up internal keyword results on his laptop. The broker said $80 can buy information on sales data, the number of times users searched for a certain product and clicked on a product page, which sellers are bidding for advertisements and how much those cost, according to the person who viewed the results. -WSJ
One seller in China told the Journal that competition on the website had become so intense that he needs to cheat in order to gain a competitive advantage. " If I don't do bad things I will die ," he said.
If all else fails in rooting out the black market, perhaps Bezos will simply release the hounds:
surf@jm , 9 minutes ago
surf@jm , 9 minutes agoChina's motto......
Who needs Christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
Suicyco , 44 minutes agoChina's motto......
Who needs christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
Last of the Middle Class , 44 minutes agoIf you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
Normal , 44 minutes agoJust like Wal Mart charging by the inch for shelf space. Same game different monkeys.
DoctorFix , 1 hour agoPrime example of how the US is a fascist state: the corporation gets government to enforce law on poor people.
803Mastiff , 1 hour agoWhen Amazon opened the flood gates of corruption and scams by allowing Chinese sellers to compete with Americans on the US site... well, the locals were fucked! Lying, scamming Chinese fuckers don't care who or how they screw you. And Amazon doesn't give a shit so long as it makes money. Fuck Amazon! That's why I cancelled any prime membership and haven't bought a damn thing from them in ages.
richsob , 1 hour agoAnd the Pentagon farmed out their servers to AWS.....What are Amazon employees getting paid for military intel?
cornflakesdisease , 2 minutes agoIf local retailers have a crappy inventory and the stores are staffed with surly Millennials, then why shouldn't I buy stuff on Amazon at a better price? I support local businesses that deserve being supported. The rest of them sound like a bunch of whiny liberals who feel "entitled" to my money.
Cardinal Fang , 1 hour agoEverything on Amazon can be found online somewhere else cheaper. You check out the item on Amazon and then buy it elsewhere. Any seller has to mark up on Amazon to pay Amazon. Logically, then, from his direct website, he would be slightly cheaper.
Being Free , 1 hour agoI'm sorry, did I miss the part where Disgruntled Amazon employees sell access to the CIAs web farms?
just the tip , 44 minutes agoI have a letter from a woman who used to work with Bezos at a McDonalds restaurant when they were both in high school in Miami. She says Bezos walked her home from McDonalds one day after work and sexually attacked her in her home. He tried to rip her clothes off her but she managed to escape his evil clutches. She was and is so distraught over this incident that she is still afraid especially now that he is such a wealthy and powerful man.
JoeTurner , 1 hour agowell played.
ZD1 , 1 hour agoOligarchs bitchez ! it's their country....you just pay the taxes...
abgary1 , 1 hour ago"A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants, where the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now offer an estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units sold on the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross merchandise volume last year, according to estimates by FactSet."
Mostly Chicom sweatshop shit.
Midas , 37 minutes agoGiving away our privacy for convenience sake is inane and insane.
Have we become that lazy and ignorant?
Without privacy and thus freedom we have nothing.
pitz , 1 hour agoGive me convenience or give me death!
--Jello Biafra
bluebird100 , 1 hour agoThat's nothing. Amazon has access to the business data of a large number of businesses that use AWS. The possibilities of abuse there are nearly endless.
ExplodingEntropy , 1 hour agoGet fucked Amazon, that's what you get for doing business in China.
wetwipe , 1 hour agotiny dick chicom down-voted you
http://www.auricmedia.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/the_matrix_deciphered.pdf
mrtoad , 1 hour agoFuckin' sick of people moaning about Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc, yet spending half their life on there and buying shit from them.
Personally I can't stand what Amazon has become and would never spend £1 with them.
Facebook is evil shit designed to re-wire the brain to make you a self conscious narcissist which will ultimately end in misery.
Google are a million miles away from 'do no evil' but TBH they have a very good product however they are evil scumbags.
These companies literally believe they are gods, that they control the world.... just like the big banks did before 2008.
I hope the crash comes soon.
-WetWipe
MARDUKTA , 1 hour agoBanks do control the world
MedicalQuack , 1 hour agoPresident will destroy them soon/CIA.
MARDUKTA , 1 hour agoHeck, this is not just China being solicited, a couple weeks ago I had 4 voicemails, all the same recording stating "making $17.00 to $35.00 an hour posting reviews to Amazon. I didn't answer the calls and saw that they were junk and didn't run upon them until I checked my voicemail for a real message I had missed and there they were.
They all had a different number to call and a different company name, but it was the same recorded message on all 4 of them and this happened in a couple days, 2 on one day, and another 2 the next day. I guess they figured I was not going to respond and took me off attempt #5:)
Why wouldn't folks in the inside go after a scam like this, look at their CEO, a big fat quant from Wall Street..and of course we have all heard and read the stories about how Amazon pays...
This being said, I don't think this scam was just limited to China..if I remember correctly, this was promoted as part time work with posting reviews to Amazon and work as many hours as you like. I deleted all of them so I can't go back and listen again as they were just nuisance calls like others that I just get rid of.
RafterManFMJ , 1 hour agoBezos partnered with some tribal chieftain in Nigeria who is CEO of Scams-R-Us.
Everything's a lie, and the lie is everything
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Sep 16, 2018 | democracyeducationjournal.org
Goodlad, et al. (2002) rightly point out that a culture can either resist or support change. Schein's (2010) model of culture indicates observable behaviors of a culture can be explained by exposing underlying shared values and basic assumptions that give meaning to the performance. Yet culture is many-faceted and complex. So Schein advised a clinical approach to cultural analysis that calls for identifying a problem in order to focus the analysis on relevant values and assumptions. This project starts with two assumptions:
- The erosion of democratic education is a visible overt behavior of the current U.S. macro-culture, and
- This is a problem.
I intend to use this problem of the erosion of democratic education as a basis for a cultural analysis. My essential question is: What are the deeper, collective, competing value commitments and shared basic assumptions that hinder efforts for democratic education? The purpose of this paper is to start a conversation about particular cultural limitations and barriers we are working with as we move toward recapturing the civic mission of education.
... ... ...
Neoliberalism's success in infiltrating the national discourse shuts out alternative discourses and appears to render them irrelevant in everyday American culture (R. Quantz, personal communication, Summer 2006). If we care about the prospects of democratic education, we must take neoliberalism's success seriously, for it is a philosophical framework in which freedom and democratic education are mutually exclusive. Dewey (1993), in all his wisdom, warned:
And let those who are struggling to replace the present economic system by a cooperative one also remember that in struggling for a new system of social restraints and controls they are also struggling for a more equal and equitable balance of powers that will enhance and multiply the effective liberties of the mass of individuals. Let them not be jockeyed into the position of supporting social control at the expense of liberty [emphasis added]. (p. 160)Yet, that is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves today. Democratic education is viewed as a social control policy, as an infringement on the supremacy of the [neoliberal] freedom. We witness a lack of democratic citizenship, moral, and character education in our schools. We see a lack of redistributing resources for equality of educational opportunity. We observe a lack of talk about education's civic mission, roles, and goals. Democratic education is viewed as tangential, secondary, and mutually exclusive from the prioritized value of "liberty." How can we foster alternative notions of freedom, such as Lincoln's republican sense of liberty as collectively inquiring and deciding how we rule ourselves?
We must intentionally challenge the neoliberal notion of the value freedom and the usefulness of its associated philosophical assumptions.
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Sep 16, 2018 | democracyeducationjournal.org
Goodlad, et al. (2002) rightly point out that a culture can either resist or support change. Schein's (2010) model of culture indicates observable behaviors of a culture can be explained by exposing underlying shared values and basic assumptions that give meaning to the performance. Yet culture is many-faceted and complex. So Schein advised a clinical approach to cultural analysis that calls for identifying a problem in order to focus the analysis on relevant values and assumptions. This project starts with two assumptions:
(1) The erosion of democratic education is a visible overt behavior of the current U.S. macro-culture, and
(2) this is a problem.
I intend to use this problem of the erosion of democratic education as a basis for a cultural analysis. My essential question is: What are the deeper, collective, competing value commitments and shared basic assumptions that hinder efforts for democratic education? The purpose of this paper is to start a conversation about particular cultural limitations and barriers we are working with as we move toward recapturing the civic mission of education.
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Sep 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Nellie Ohr will sit for an interview with Congress next week, according to Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX).
Ohr, an expert on Russia who speaks fluent Russian, is a central figure in the nexus between Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm paid by the Clinton campaign to produce the "Steele Dossier " - and the Obama Justice Department - where her husband, Bruce Ohr, was a senior official. Bruce was demoted twice after he was caught lying about his extensive involvement with Fusion's activities surrounding the 2016 US election.
Notably, the Ohrs had extensive contact with Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy who authored the salacious anti-Trump dossier used to justify spying on the Trump campaign during the election, and later to smear Donald Trump right before he took office in 2017. According to emails turned over to Congress and reported in late August, the Ohrs would have breakfast with Steele on July 30 at the downtown D.C. Mayflower hotel - days after Steele had turned in several installments of the infamous dossier to the FBI . The breakfast took place one day before the FBI/DOJ launched operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the codename for the official counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
"Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce," Steele wrote shortly following their breakfast meeting. " Let's keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help," referring to Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.
No stranger to the US intelligence community, Nellie Ohr represented the CIA's "Open Source Works" group in a 2010 " expert working group report on international organized crime" along with Bruce Ohr and Glenn Simpson .
Nayel , 56 minutes ago
thebriang , 1 hour agoI'd bet she gets up there and denies everything, lust like Strozk. And the DOJ does nothing, and even allows the perjury to slide.
Sessions is clearly complicit. Loretta Lynch might as well be still running the show...and perhaps she is...
Seeing as how the Shadow Government seems to be running the "Collusion Investigation" on themselves...
samsara , 1 hour agoIs she going to name the 3 "journalists" that Fusion paid to start pushing the Russia narrative in the MSM?
I want names, goddammit.
Thread by Thread the garment is unraveled for all to see
" Needless to say, Congress will have no shortage of questions to ask Nellie. "
Like why did she get a ham radio? I guess she didn't trust the NSA?
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Sep 16, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Yves here. This article describes how the stigma of struggling to pay student debt is a burden in and of itself. I wish this article had explained how little it take to trigger an escalation into default interest rates and how punitive they are. The piece also stresses the value of activism as a form of psychological relief, by connecting stressed student debt borrowers with people similarly afflicted.But the bigger issue is the way indebtedness is demonized in a society that makes it pretty much impossible to avoid borrowing. One reader recounted how many (as in how few) weeks of after tax wages it took to buy a car in the 1960s versus now. Dealers don't want to talk to buyers who want to pay in full at the time of purchase. And if you don't have installment credit or a mortgage, the consumer credit agencies ding you!
It goes without saying that the sense of shame is harder to endure due to how shallow most people's social networks are, which is another product of neoliberalism.
In keeping, the New York Times today ran an op-ed by one of its editors on how student debtors are also victims of the crisis, reprinted from a longer piece in The Baffler (hat tip Dan K). Key sections :
Because of the loans' disgracefully high interest rates, my family and I have paid more or less the equivalent of my debt itself in the years since I graduated, making monthly payments in good faith -- even in times of unemployment and extreme duress -- to lenders like Citigroup, a bank that was among the largest recipients of federal bailout money in 2008 and that eventually sold off my debt to other lenders. This ruinous struggle has been essentially meaningless: I now owe more than what I started out owing, not unlike my parents with their mortgage .
Many people have and will continue to condemn me personally for my tremendous but unexceptional student debt, and the ways in which it has made the recession's effects linger for my family. I've spent quite a lot of time in the past decade accepting this blame. The recession may have compounded my family's economic insecurity, but I also made the conscious decision to take out loans for a college I couldn't afford in order to become a journalist, a profession with minimal financial returns. The amount of debt I owe in student loans -- about $100,000 -- is more than I make in a given year. I am ashamed and embarrassed by this, but as I grow older, I think it is time that those profiting from this country's broken economic system share some of my guilt
[At my commencement in 2009] Mrs. Clinton then echoed a fantasy of boundless opportunity that had helped guide the country into economic collapse, deceiving many of the parents in attendance, including my own, into borrowing toward a future that they couldn't work hard enough to afford. "There is no problem we face here in America or around the world that will not yield to human effort," she said. "Our challenges are ones that summon the best of us, and we will make the world better tomorrow than it is today." At the time, I wondered if this was accurate. I now know how wrong she was.
By Daniela Senderowicz. Originally published in Yes! Magazine
Activists are building meaningful connections among borrowers to counter the taboo of admitting they can't pay their bills.
Gamblers and reality TV stars can claim bankruptcy protections when in financial trouble, but 44 million student loan borrowers can't. Unemployed, underpaid, destitute, sick, or struggling borrowers simply aren't able to start anew.
With a default rate approaching 40 percent , one would expect armies of distressed borrowers marching in the streets demanding relief from a system that has singled out their financial anguish. Distressed student debtors, however, seem to be terror-struck about coming forward to a society that, they say, ostracizes them for their inability to keep up with their finances.
When we spoke to several student borrowers, almost none were willing to share their names. "I can't tell anyone how much I'm struggling," says a 39-year-old Oregon physician who went into student loan default after his wife's illness drained their finances. He is terrified of losing his patients and reputation if he speaks out about his financial problems.
"If I shared this with anyone they will look down upon me as some kind of fool," explains a North Carolina psychologist who is now beyond retirement age. He explains that his student debt balance soared after losing a well-paying position during the financial crisis, and that he is struggling to pay it back.
Financial shame alienates struggling borrowers. Debtors blame themselves and self-loathe when they can't make their payments, explains Colette Simone, a Michigan psychologist. "There is so much fear of sharing the reality of their financial situation and the devastation it is causing in every facet of their lives," she says. "The consequences of coming forward can result in social pushback and possible job -- related complications, which only deepen their suffering."
Debtors are isolated, anxious, and in the worst cases have taken their own lives . Simone confirms that she has "worked with debtors who were suicidal or had psychological breakdowns requiring psychiatric hospitalization."
With an average debt of just over $37,000 per borrower for the class of 2016 , and given that incomes have been flat since the 1970s , it's not surprising that borrowers are struggling to pay. Student loans have a squeaky-clean reputation, and society tends to view them as a noble symbol of the taxpayers' generosity to the working poor. Fear of facing society's ostracism for failure to pay them back has left borrowers alienated and trapped in a lending system that is engulfing them in debt bondage.
"Alienation impacts mental health issues," says New York mental health counselor Harriet Fraad. "As long as they blame themselves within the system, they're lost."
Student debtors can counter despair by fighting back through activism and political engagement, she says. "Connection is the antidote to alienation, and engaging in activism, along with therapy, is a way to recovery."
Despite the fear of coming forward, some activists are building a social movement in which meaningful connections among borrowers can counter the taboo of openly admitting financial ruin.
Student Loan Justice, a national grassroots lobby group, is attempting to build this movement by pushing for robust legislation to return bankruptcy protections to borrowers. The group has active chapters in almost every state, with members directly lobbying their local representatives to sign on as co-sponsors to HR 2366. Activists are building a supportive community for struggling borrowers through political agitation, local engagement, storytelling, and by spreading a courageous message of hope that may embolden traumatized borrowers to come forward and unite.
Julie Margetaa Morgan , a fellow at The Roosevelt Institute, recently noted that student debt servicers like Navient have a powerful influence on lawmakers. "Student loan borrowers may not have millions to spend on lobbying, but they have something equally, if not more, powerful: millions of voices," she says.
A recent manifesto by activist and recent graduate Eli Campbell calls for radical unity among borrowers. "Young people live in constant fear that they'll never be able to pay off their debt. We're not buying houses or able to afford the hallmarks of the American dream," he explains.
In his call for a unified national boycott of student loan payments, inevitably leading to a mass default on this debt, Campbell hopes to expose this crisis and instigate radical change. In a recent interview he explained that the conditions for borrowers are so bad already that debtors may not join the boycott willingly. Instead, participation may simply happen by default given the lack of proper work opportunities that lead to borrowers' inability to pay.
While a large-scale default may not happen through willful and supportive collective action, ending the secrecy of the crisis through massive national attention may destigmatize the shame of financial defeat and finally bring debtors out of the isolation that causes them so much despair.
Activists are calling for a significant conversation about the commodification of educating our youth, shifting our focus toward investing into the promise of the young and able, rather than the guarantee of their perpetual debt bondage. In calling for collective action they soothe the hurt of so many alienated debtors, breaking the taboos that allow them to say, "Me, too" and admit openly that in this financial climate we all need each other to move forward.
Jane , September 16, 2018 at 4:15 am
JVR , September 16, 2018 at 5:36 amHow much are the interest rates on student loans there in the USA? Here in India its 11.5% if you want to finance studies abroad. 8.5 for some select institutions.
Epistrophy , September 16, 2018 at 6:42 amI wonder if the media's obsession with "millenials" isn't primarily a way to try to divide people with shared interests, above all around the topics of student debt and the job market and to make the problems seem like they have shallower roots than they really do. The individuals mentioned here are older than that 24-37 age cohort, one of them much older.
JTMcPhee , September 16, 2018 at 8:33 amDealers don't want to talk to buyers who want to pay in full at the time of purchase.
Yes Yes. Car manufacturers are actually finance houses selling products manufactured by subcontractors – such is the state of American industry – but their dream is to move to a SaaS model where ownership, of anything, becomes a relic of the past (except for the overlords and oligarchs).
This could not be possible without government corruption and revolving-door regulation. Maybe these PAYG vehicles will contain built-in body scanners too; for our own security, of course.
In his call for a unified national boycott of student loan payments, inevitably leading to a mass default on this debt, Campbell hopes to expose this crisis and instigate radical change.
Default, or radical change, would bring the economy to it's knees. But when there is another economic downturn, this is going to happen anyway. Terrible situation; negative real interest rates destroying the pensions of the elderly, student loan servitude destroying the youth and the middle class being squeezed to oblivion. What can be done to fix it, I ask?
Yet they are doing God's work, are they? Well, this is not a God I choose to worship.
UserFriendly , September 16, 2018 at 6:57 amWell good for you. How many cars, of what age, have you bought, for your anecdote to rate as anything vaguely resembling the wide reality, and how does your personal financial situation let you just write checks for $30 or $70,000?
Do a little research on car selling and you will see the pressures on the dealer sales force to suck the vast majority of buyers into long term debt. Car loans are now five or six years, routinely.
And one wonders what the investment is in trying to impeach the points of this report, wth such an unlikely and atypical claim.
JTMcPhee , September 16, 2018 at 8:39 amNYT ran the same story , interesting they edited out his total debt and major though.
Maybe a little traction, then, for the notion, and increasingly the inescapable reality, of #juststoppaying on those "remember Joe Biden" virtually non-dischargeable, often fraudulently induced, "student loan" debt shackles?
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Sep 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
"The ultimate thing that brings down financial markets is excess leverage So, you look where's the big leverage, and right now I think it's in emerging markets."
Shilling is particularly worried about the $8 trillion in dollar-denominated emerging-market corporate and sovereign debt, especially as the U.S. dollar rises along with interest rates. "The problem is as the dollar increases," he said, "it gets tougher and tougher for them to service [that debt] because it takes more and more of their local currency to do so." Of that, $249 billion must be repaid or refinanced through next year , Bloomberg reported.
... ... ...
That housing-related stocks "saw a parabolic run-up" in 2016-17, but in January his index "peaked and now it's coming down hard." And this spells "bad news on the housing market looking 12 months down the road."Per Howard Gold's interview :
Per Howard Gold:But the biggest danger, Stack told me, is from low-quality corporate debt. Issuance of corporate bonds has "gone from around $700 billion in 2008 to about two and a half times that [today]."
And, he added, more and more of that debt is subprime . Uh-oh.
In 2005, he pointed out, companies issued five times as much high-quality as subprime debt, but last year "we had as much subprime debt, poor quality-debt issued, as quality debt on the corporate level," he said, warning "this is the kind of debt that does get defaulted on dramatically in an economic downturn."
Rajan turned out to be a party pooper, questioning whether "advances" in the financial sector actually increased, rather than reduced, systemic risk . Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called him a Luddite . " I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions ," he wrote. But though delivered in genteel academic lingo, his paper was powerful and prescient.
His predictions pre-2008:
"Managers have greater incentive to take risk because the upside is significant, while the downside is limited."
"Moreover, the linkages between markets, and between markets and institutions, are now more pronounced. While this helps the system diversify across small shocks, it also exposes the system to large systemic shocks "
"The financial risks that are being created by the system are indeed greater [potentially creating] a greater (albeit still small) probability of a catastrophic meltdown."
What he says now:
"There has been a shift of risk from the formal banking system to the shadow financial system." He also told me the post-crisis reforms did not address central banks' role in creating asset bubbles through accommodative monetary policy, which he sees as the financial markets' biggest long-term challenge.
"You get hooked on leverage. It's cheap, it's easy to refinance, so why not take more of it? You get lulled into taking more leverage than perhaps you can handle."
And what might be coming:
What he says now:Rajan also sees potential problems in U.S. corporate debt, particularly as rates rise, and in emerging markets, though he thinks the current problems in Turkey and Argentina are "not full-blown contagion."
"But are there accidents waiting to happen? Yes, there are."
"I think the choice of Europe is going to have to put [all the debt] on the balance sheet of the European Central Bank. If they don't, then the euro zone breaks apart and we're going to get a 50% valuation collapse."
"Greece...is a rounding error. Italy is not . And Brussels and Germany are going to have to allow Italy to overshoot their persistent debt, and the ECB is going to have to buy that debt."
"If it doesn't happen, the debt triggers a crisis in Europe, [and] that triggers the beginning of a global recession" but... "there are so many little dominoes, if they all start falling, one leads to the next."
Comments Howard Gold ,
Mauldin estimates the world has almost "half a quadrillion dollars," or $500 trillion, in debt and unfunded pension and other liabilities, which he views as unsustainable.
But the flashpoint for the next crisis is likely to be in Europe, especially Italy, he maintains.
Fed-up with being Sick and Tired , 3 minutes ago
Iskiab , 21 minutes agoIt is an interesting piece. I do recall seeing A. Gary Shilling speaking back then when I watched mainstream financial news which I no longer do. It would be interesting now to hear what these four would have to see to actually see de-leveraging occur, and a reset put in motion. I am tiring of the shenanigans of Central Bankers who clearly are trying everything to keep this mess propped up.
smacker , 1 hour agoThese guys are all right in their risk assessments but are being cautious on saying how it will play out. Debt is one factor; but protectionism, demographic changes, and dedollarization are the other threats.
The truth is no one knows how things will unfold, but I'm betting stagflation will be in the works for the US for an extended period soon.
Cincinnatuus , 1 hour agoThe 2008 financial crash was fundamentally caused by excessive DEBT.
That excessive debt was in the hands of: government, corporates and private individuals and the banksters were making huge profits out of it, so they had no incentive to rein it in. Clowns like UK Chancellor Gordoom Brown went on record claiming that he'd abolished boom & bust, so the borrow/spend culture went on. ho-ho.
But borrowers eventually got to the point where they simply couldn't take on any more debt, so the economy crashed, given that it was based on rising never-ending debt.
All of the labels given to this debt mountain such as: sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, excessive leverage etc are all valid for analysts to analyse but the common connection between them all was excessive DEBT.
That is what I concluded at the time and it has been confirmed 1,000,000 times since then.
I am on record saying that this huge debt pile would take a generation to work its way thru the economy which implied a long recession or depression.
I also predicted there'd likely be a BIG RESET to speed up the adjustment process. Despite central banks irresponsibly printing vast amounts of fiat to alleviate the consequences for their friends the banksters (but in reality to create new asset price bubbles) and dropping interest rates to near zero to encourage more debt and mal-investment, nothing that has happened has changed my mind.
The situation today, 10 years later, is that debt levels are hugely higher than in 2008 and the solution which existed then remains on the table. It's just that central banks falsely believe their money-printing actions will solve the problem whereas in truth they are in denial.
You cannot solve a debt problem by printing more money and taking on more debt. Central banks and the likes of Krugman think otherwise.
The day of reckoning is on the horizon: either there will be a huge long recession/depression to work debt out of the system with all of its implications to asset values and social cohesion AND/OR a BIG RESET will be enacted. The latter will destroy the wealth of vast numbers of ordinary people with their savings and investments going down the flusher.
Neither solution will be a pretty sight.
Prepare accordingly.
smacker , 1 hour agoI think you are spot on with your assessment of the situation, and it seems a great many other knowledgeable people agree with you. In fact, many market prognosticators are openly talking about a RESET as a result of the dollar value collapsing and a resulting hyper-inflation. Too many people think this.
The Contrarian in me says because everybody is expecting that, it's not going to play out that way. I too, talk about the value of the dollar getting cut in half from here. Instead of a RESET, I expect the collapse of the value of the dollar to usher in a deflationary implosion as all that unpayable debt and financial obligations collapses and gets marked down to zero. Likely the Banksters try some sort of money printing orgy along the way... Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Fed-up with being Sick and Tired , 3 minutes agoThis article from Robert Prechter dating back to 2010 predicted the:
" US economy is heading for systemic collapse into hyperinflation "
Prechter wasn't wrong, he just couldn't predict when it would happen. He understood that the only solution to the huge debt crises was to clear it by letting it work its way thru the economy (a generation or so to do) or by a BIG RESET.
Nothing has changed. Except that in the last 10 years, central banks have taken actions to kick the can down the road because they're in denial and think they know better.
What the central banks never took into account in 2008 was that ((other things)) have changed in the past 10 years, most notably the waning power of the USD as the Global Reserve Currency which can only have negative consequences.
Iskiab , 21 minutes agoIt is an interesting piece. I do recall seeing A. Gary Shilling speaking back then when I watched mainstream financial news which I no longer do. It would be interesting now to hear what these four would have to see to actually see de-leveraging occur, and a reset put in motion. I am tiring of the shenanigans of Central Bankers who clearly are trying everything to keep this mess propped up.
bunkers , 1 hour agoThese guys are all right in their risk assessments but are being cautious on saying how it will play out. Debt is one factor; but protectionism, demographic changes, and dedollarization are the other threats.
The truth is no one knows how things will unfold, but I'm betting stagflation will be in the works for the US for an extended period soon.
turkey george palmer , 1 hour agoGreg Hunter, on YouTube, interviews Catherine Austin Fitts in an early Sunday morning release. It's excellent.
smacker , 1 hour agoHa, good times bad times like the song says
But when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oooh.
U. Sinclair , 1 hour agoThe 2008 financial crash was fundamentally caused by excessive DEBT.
That excessive debt was in the hands of: government, corporates and private individuals and the banksters were making huge profits out of it, so they had no incentive to rein it in. Clowns like UK Chancellor Gordoom Brown went on record claiming that he'd abolished boom & bust, so the borrow/spend culture went on. ho-ho.
But borrowers eventually got to the point where they simply couldn't take on any more debt, so the economy crashed, given that it was based on rising never-ending debt.
All of the labels given to this debt mountain such as: sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, excessive leverage etc are all valid for analysts to analyse but the common connection between them all was excessive DEBT.
That is what I concluded at the time and it has been confirmed 1,000,000 times since then.
I am on record saying that this huge debt pile would take a generation to work its way thru the economy which implied a long recession or depression.
I also predicted there'd likely be a BIG RESET to speed up the adjustment process. Despite central banks irresponsibly printing vast amounts of fiat to alleviate the consequences for their friends the banksters (but in reality to create new asset price bubbles) and dropping interest rates to near zero to encourage more debt and mal-investment, nothing that has happened has changed my mind.
The situation today, 10 years later, is that debt levels are hugely higher than in 2008 and the solution which existed then remains on the table. It's just that central banks falsely believe their money-printing actions will solve the problem whereas in truth they are in denial.
You cannot solve a debt problem by printing more money and taking on more debt. Central banks and the likes of Krugman think otherwise.
The day of reckoning is on the horizon: either there will be a huge long recession/depression to work debt out of the system with all of its implications to asset values and social cohesion AND/OR a BIG RESET will be enacted. The latter will destroy the wealth of vast numbers of ordinary people with their savings and investments going down the flusher.
Neither solution will be a pretty sight.
Prepare accordingly.
Cincinnatuus , 1 hour ago"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results".
smacker , 1 hour agoI think you are spot on with your assessment of the situation, and it seems a great many other knowledgeable people agree with you. In fact, many market prognosticators are openly talking about a RESET as a result of the dollar value collapsing and a resulting hyper-inflation. Too many people think this.
The Contrarian in me says because everybody is expecting that, it's not going to play out that way. I too, talk about the value of the dollar getting cut in half from here. Instead of a RESET, I expect the collapse of the value of the dollar to usher in a deflationary implosion as all that unpayable debt and financial obligations collapses and gets marked down to zero. Likely the Banksters try some sort of money printing orgy along the way... Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Wahooo , 56 minutes agoThis article from Robert Prechter dating back to 2010 predicted the:
" US economy is heading for systemic collapse into hyperinflation "
Prechter wasn't wrong, he just couldn't predict when it would happen. He understood that the only solution to the huge debt crises was to clear it by letting it work its way thru the economy (a generation or so to do) or by a BIG RESET.
Nothing has changed. Except that in the last 10 years, central banks have taken actions to kick the can down the road because they're in denial and think they know better.
What the central banks never took into account in 2008 was that ((other things)) have changed in the past 10 years, most notably the waning power of the USD as the Global Reserve Currency which can only have negative consequences.
smacker , 51 minutes agoGot the collapse right, but not the hyperinflation.
CoCosAB , 16 minutes agoTime will tell... if the huge debt problem is resolved correctly by actions intended to clear it and the USD loses its GRC status, deflation followed by hyperinflation will likely follow as USDs flood back into the US economy.
smacker , 7 minutes agoThe simple solution is - an old fashion I know - a DEBT JUBILEE !
The last time some schmuck tried to make the millennia tradition return he got himself crucified!
There's NO OTHER SOLUTION in the present status of the MONETARY SYSTEM to re-balance it. Of course that the OWNERS of the SYSTEM and the WEALTH (DEBT) don't wont to see their WEALTH disappear in a click of a button...
So, the next Great Transference of Wealth (1st in 2007/8 and so on) its about to start!
The example given above its just a peanut " Paulson, of course, loaded up on CDS's and made $4 billion in what has been called "the greatest trade ever." "We made 15 times our money," Shilling says. "...
Keep it up SLAVES... "WORK, DEBT, CONSUME"
Push , 2 hours agoA "debt jubilee" is equal to a BIG RESET. I believe this will be enacted but for .govs to get away with it, there'll have to create a huge distraction so they can blame it on someone else.
That distraction will almost certainly be WAR or some other major event on a big enough scale to distract attention away from what they're doing.
The Real Tony , 2 hours agoI guess Tyler has never heard of Lyndon LaRouche? He accurately predicted the 2008 crash, and others previously. The fact is that monetary policy is not economics, and when you look at the inter-connectivity of human labor from the perspective of scientific progress it's easy to see where the financial system is heading, for a huge collapse.
If you study what the United States did coming out of the Revolutionary War to build this nation, then the subsequent dismantling of Hamilton's system by Andrew Jackson, the the re-implementation of Hamilton's system by Carey and Clay through Lincoln, you can see that what people today consider "economics" has nothing to do with the productive powers of the labor force. British Free Trade, floating exchange rates, the offshore banking industry, Wall Street, and the City of London are subverting economic fortitude in favor of the consolidation of power in a process to build a new kind of empire.
truthalwayswinsout , 2 hours agoEventually America will run out of lies to tell. This will be the catalyst for the next crises.
Batman11 , 3 hours agoNo reason to listen to any of this or even care. Do not invest in the stock market; it is a scam and will always be a scam.
99% of all people should invest in themselves first. That means having no debt and also having a small company that you only put sweat equity into to make it work starting out as a side business and keeping it as a side business even if it grows bigger. That also means going to college and earning a money making degree that is in demand.
Everyone in our family has no mortgages. Everyone in our family has small companies that because they have no debt churn out cash like ATMs from $6K to $170K per year. And when the markets crash or assets become extremely cheap we buy assets. We bought homes in the last fiasco, did minor fixes, rented them, and sold them all 3 years ago. We made a 220% return in 6 years.
We are going to do it again with homes because they will again fall off dramatically and this time we can pay cash for all the purchases. We will also be looking at unique food companies that are over leveraged that we can buy at 10 cents on the dollar. (One of our family is a chef and makes all kinds of stuff that can be packaged and sold but we have no market access).
Batman11 , 3 hours agoProblem solving involves two steps.
- Understand the problem
- Find a solution
Post 2008 - "It was a black swan". We didn't complete step 1, so we couldn't learn anything. The Chinese have now completed step one and have seen their Minsky moment on the horizon. The indicators of financial crises are over inflated asset prices and the private debt-to-GDP ratio. Debt is being used to inflate asset prices.
- 1929 – US stocks (margin lending)
- 2008 – US real estate (mortgage lending)
They are called Minsky moments. Too late for Australia, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Hong Kong as they've been inflating their real estate markets with mortgage lending. Wall Street leverages up the asset price bubble to make the bust much worse.
"It's nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.
Leverage is just a profit and loss multiplier. The bankers take the bonuses on the way up and taxpayers cover the losses on the way down.
Batman11 , 2 hours agoBankers only have one real product and that's debt. When they are messing about you can see it in the private debt-to-GDP ratio. It's that simple. They are clever and hide what they are doing on the surface, you just look underneath.
It's easy to see when you know where to look. Even the FED should be able to understand it. Well, we can just tell them where to look anyway; Harvard PhDs aren't what they used to be.
Batman11 , 56 minutes agoHow can bankers use their debt products to create real wealth and increase GDP for growth? The UK:
Before 1980 – banks lending into the right places that result in GDP growth. After 1980 – banks lending into the wrong places that don't result in GDP growth. The UK eliminated corset controls on banking in 1979 and the banks invaded the mortgage market and this is where the problem starts.
Richard Werner was in Japan in the 1980s when it went from a very stable economy and turned into a debt fuelled monster. He worked out what happened and had all the clues necessary to point him in the right direction. Bank credit (lending) creates money.
The three types of lending:
- Into business and industry - gives a good return in GDP and doesn't lead to inflation
- To consumers – leads to consumer price inflation
- Into real estate and financial speculation – leads to asset price inflation and gives a poor return in GDP and shows up in the graph of debt-to-GDP
Bank credit has been used for all the wrong things during globalisation.
- 1929 – Inflating the US stock market with debt (margin lending)
- 2008 – Inflating the US real estate market with debt (mortgage lending)
Inflating asset prices with debt (type 3 lending).
- Creating real wealth and increasing GDP (growth) requires type 1 lending.
hillwalker , 3 hours agoEconomic liberalism – the fundamental flaw. Everyone looks to make as much money as possible, doing as little as possible. Asset stripping, activist shareholders being a very good example. Real wealth creation involves making real goods and providing real services, and involves real work.
It doesn't look very attractive; there are easier ways to make money.
Nelbev , 5 hours agoThe Parasites! No mention of the over $600 TRILLION opaque OFF BALANCE SHEET derivatives market!
Md4 , 3 hours agoI think these guys miss the obvious.
1.) There is a housing bubble in London, OZ, Canada in Vancouver and Toronto. US prices have bounced back nominally, but financing better than prior. The banking crisis will start with housing bubble abroad.
2.) US deficits and debts are at a stage where inflation will lead to higher rates. The amount to service the public and private debt load will increase with interest rates. You cannot just print money forever and expect it never to catch up, or excess reserves not to escape the banking system blowing air on the fire. The debt load publicly is dangerously high and will trigger a fiscal crisis when add about $200+ billion a year to fiscal budget.
3.) The EU will disintegrate over next few years, global recession will just accelerate that and be a feedback, could be a bit of a buffer on US with flight to quality. Think about when UK contribution to EU budget drys up in March 2019, will EU raise taxes on rest by 20% to pay for Eurocrats salaries?, and what if Italy has a referendum? EU is mess in making.
4.) Next recession, which could be triggered by stochastic shock of a trade war (err ... gov managing economy always f*cks it up), the monetary authorities have no buffer to lower interest rates due to policy since housing bubble, only more useless QE, little stimulus, just inflation in works.
5.) Last was housing bubble, next is bond bubble . 30 yr tb at 3.13 - you have to be idiot (or PBC which cannot unload their trill $ portfolio of US toilet paper without depressing prices) to hold and expect inflation next 30 years at less. You think magically a trillion dollar year federal deficit will shrink under DT? It really does not matter what the fed does, stuck in a hard space, print more money to keep ponzi scheme going or neutralize federal with higher rates and try to shrink balance sheet. You cannot keep interest rates low when commodity futures arbitrage during inflation offer an alternate return. Easy money will just fuel fire.
Normalisation of Deviance , 4 hours agoThe Fed can, and does, manipulate some interest rates, and it's balance sheet, all the time.
But, as I see it, (hyper) inflation isn't just a money supply issue.
It's also a vote of confidence...
Ballooning deficits, and rising debt loads are not elements of fundamentally healthy economies.
Rather than disappearing dumped U.S. debt, the Fed may just add it to it's "holdings", and therefore, ensure there's always a "buyer".
Theoretically, perhaps.
But, it can't buy all U.S. debt, lest there be no real "market".
So, that means debt issued won't be free.
It also means there's a real limit to just how much the Fed can manage inflation...
Superlat , 4 hours agoExcellent comment. Reminds me of the good old days when the comments at ZH were more more informative and well written than the articles, (which were also informative and well written).
Also Gold Bitchezz!
The Real Tony, 2 hours agoWhether or not this matters, the housing bubble in Seattle has peaked, if not completely popped. However, it's gone far enough that just about everyone including the media is admitting a downturn is happening. Whether it persists is anyone's guess.
Maybe the next crisis is just cumulative, not one big thing.
The Real Tony , 2 hours agoMore like the Chinese buying up everything in Seattle has peaked.
ZIRPdiggler , 5 hours agoThe Pakis in Brampton and Mississauga Ontario, Canada will throw their last welfare cheque towards housing before losing their home/homes to the bank. It might take longer than you think.
Md4 , 5 hours agoSorry to rain all over your doom porn ZH'ers but I don't think we are going to have an "economic collapse". Also, I just heard a new Lindsay Williams.....he says the Trump election changed everything for the dark cabal's plans lol. Says they're gonna take the DOW over 40,000. Of course, Armstrong has been predicting that for a long long time. So go figure. Maybe cycles are bullet proof, regardless of who's trying to do the manipulation. keep buying that gold though....maybe your great grand children can benefit from it.
Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 3 hours ago"If it doesn't happen, the debt triggers a crisis in Europe, [and] that triggers the beginning of a global recession" but... "there are so many little dominoes, if they all start falling, one leads to the next."
What people don't seem to understand yet, is that this is no longer just an economic or even a debt problem ex parte.
The non-solution of the last ten years have now made this a human quality of life problem.
The loss of so many middle class income opportunities over the now-near 50 years of outsourcing, has not only caused more insurmountable debt loads to form, but the chronic income insufficiency is hammering even first-world social psyches as never before.
After all, rising debt is rising for a reason.
It's a big mistake to automatically assume a financial collapse has to precede a social calamity.
It can easily be the other way around...
Fred box , 6 hours agoYou have to design financial systems for human needs, taking into account human characteristics. There are no "laws" of social sciences that "must" be followed. Physics is the only constraint.
TRN , 6 hours agoBottom line folks,this party is over done.One of many different things can cause at the least a 20% correction(-5000pts) as well as bigger.The TBTF are now To Humungous To Fail.We live in interesting times!
LeftandRightareWrong , 6 hours agoLikely 40% correction.
Normal , 6 hours agoPublic pension systems and unfettered illegal immigration.
Bricker , 7 hours ago$500 trillion, in debt. That means that some kind of system had it to lend. Makes me want to puke and then go start a revolution.
GoldHermit , 7 hours agoAll 3 in common...Debt bomb. 1929 Debt, 2008 Debt, 20?? debt; IMO its student loans wrapped up as commercial paper and bonds.
Someone is going to miss an interest payment after tranches are bet on with student loans
daedon , 7 hours agoWatch the Big Short. Those guys came as close as anyone IMO
Erwin643 , 7 hours agoNo, READ The Big Short.
daedon , 7 hours agoYeah, try making a movie based on a book. You have to take a lot of shortcuts. I think The Big Short was one of the very best films ever made, based on a book. The actors played their real-life counterparts perfectly.
TeethVillage88s , 3 hours agoForget (broken clock) Schiff, I read a great book in 1993, The Great Reckoning: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression. That was 25 years ago, I'm getting impatient. French president Charles de Gaulle saw this shit coming in 1968 and he died waiting for it.
The Roman Empire lasted 500 years, so be patient, Trump's bosses have an armada of think tanks staffed with Aspies that have IQs well above low earth orbit at their disposal, so they could drag this out another 1000 years.
So don't worry, be happy !
Four Horsemen - Feature Documentary - Official Version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU
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Sep 16, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
In addition to the usual (and deserved) remembrances of the September 11 attacks, this week also marks the grim anniversary of a very different but equally significant collapse. Ten years ago on September 15, the financial meltdown began that would usher in the recession of 2008.
It was the single worst financial crisis in the adult lifetime of almost everyone who was alive at the time. Yet you'd never know it from the way our ruling class has behaved ever since. When they weren't using the Great Recession for crude racial and class warfare demagoguery, they were effectively denying that it was really that bad. (Remember Democrats' weak retort to Donald Trump that "America is already great"? Or Republicans tossing off "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem" at the height of unemployment and low aggregate demand?)
Trenchant New Republic columnist Jeet Heer recently noted in a Twitter essay that centered on the funeral of John McCain, "We've had decades of elite failure, elite impunity, elite coddling of racism and also elite tolerance of corruption." He finished by noting that "The failure of the elite to come to terms with its own responsibility vitiates everything [else]." He might as well have been writing an editorial on the meltdown and its aftermath.
... ... ...
September 2008 spelled the beginning of the end of the "giants of industry" that had defined the mid-to-late 20th century American economy. General Motors, Merrill Lynch, Chrysler, Lehman Brothers, Maytag, Polaroid, Kodak, Continental Bakeries, K-Mart/Sears, Mervyns, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Borders, Blockbuster -- all fell like 10-pins in a bowling alley. (Not to mention desiccated coal mines and steel factories and local newsrooms. ) The few that are still alive today are mere shadows of their former selves.The companies that survived and thrived during the Great Recession, and are currently powering today's recovery -- Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Tesla -- were all launched over the last two decades or so by the most fortunate factions of Millennials and Xers. These are people who have no adult memory of the Great Prosperity that their postwar parents and grandparents practically took for granted.
It's also no accident that many of the worst racial excesses in recent years happened after the white middle class finally got a taste of the same zero-tolerance and no-excuses "bootstraps" medicine that liberals have accused conservatives of throwing in minorities' faces. As Jamelle Bouie noted in Slate, "When coupled with the broad decline in incomes and living standards caused by the Great Recession, it seemed to signal the end of a hierarchy that had always placed white Americans at the top." But while African Americans, immigrants, and lower-middle-class whites were now forced into a Hunger Games- like competition for what little scraps were left, the bankers and CEOs and their politician enablers shamelessly rewarded themselves with record-breaking bonuses and benefits. Their attitude was almost as appalling as a spousal abuser asking for thanks because he dropped you off at the ER afterwards.
Who Speaks for the Suffering Upper Middle Class? Goldman Sachs Lobby Art Explains Everything That's Wrong With Our ElitesThis is because, for the most part, the people who were ruling both parties' electoral roosts during the run-up to the 2016 election were people for whom the Great Recession had brought nothing but fame and fortune. The years from 2009 through 2012 meant lucrative book and cable deals, gorgeous jewelry and tailored suits, luxury cars, and upscale new homes for Paul Ryan, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Valerie Jarrett, Reince Priebus, and Robby Mook. The donor classes of both sides were so unbelievably wealthy and privileged that the meltdown never really affected them.
Telly Davidson is the author of a new book, Culture War: How the 90's Made Us Who We Are Today (Like it Or Not) . He has written on culture for ATTN, FrumForum, All About Jazz, FilmStew, and Guitar Player, and worked on the Emmy-nominated PBS series "Pioneers of Television."
Kingston Jersey September 14, 2018 at 6:13 am
"the bankers and CEOs and their politician enablers shamelessly rewarded themselves "This is one of the least remarked aspects of the disaster.
In fact, the bankers and CEOs were able to shamelessly reward themselves because of their politician enablers. And the politician enablers were at least half of the original problem -- they practically forced banks to make bad loans with all their enabling legislation, their veiled threats against businesses that failed to loan to their political clients, and the high-sounding Clintonite crap about "the home ownership society".
Another little-remarked feature is that even foreigners were able to get on or stay on the dole. The Israelis didn't even break stride. They kept wolfing down huge, world-beating helpings of our money, cashing giant welfare checks from the US taxpayer, even as everything in the US itself was being cut back and Americans were told to tighten our belts and lower our life's expectations. Same with other foreign parasites. They kept letting in H1B workers and immigrants of every description.
Incredible and disgusting. But there are some of us, at least, who have not forgotten, will never forget, and will do our damnedest to make them pay.
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.thebalance.com
By Dana Anspach Updated August 17, 2018 When a spouse dies, their Social Security benefits may become available to their current or former marital partner, depending on certain circumstances. A Social Security spouse benefit is called a "spousal benefit" and is available to:
Before applying for spousal benefits, you should understand how your spouse's benefit may be affected if you take your Social Security benefits early, and what happens upon the death of a spouse. Eligibility for a Spousal Benefit Current spouses and ex-spouses (if you were married for over 10 years and did not remarry prior to age 60) both have eligibility for the spousal benefit. You must be age 62 to file for or receive a spousal benefit. You are not eligible to receive a spousal benefit until your spouse files for their own benefit first. Different rules apply to ex-spouses . You can receive a spousal benefit based on an ex-spouse's record even if your ex-partner has not yet filed for his or her own benefits, but your ex must be age 62 or older. Note: Taking a spousal benefit does not reduce or change the amount your current spouse, ex-spouse, or ex-spouse's current spouse may receive. How Much You Get As a spouse, you can claim a Social Security benefit based on your own earnings record, or you can collect a spousal benefit that will provide you 50 percent of the amount of your spouse's Social Security benefit as calculated at their full retirement age (FRA). Check the Social Security website to determine your FRA, as it depends on your year of birth. If you file before you reach your own FRA, your spousal benefit will be reduced because you are filing early. You are automatically entitled to receive either a benefit based on your own earnings or a spousal benefit based on your spouse's or ex-spouse's earnings. Social Security calculates and pays the higher amount. If you were born on or before January 1, 1954, after you reach FRA, you can choose to receive only the spousal benefit by filing a restricted application. By doing this you delay receiving your own retirement benefits based on your earnings record, until a later date. For example, at age 70 you could switch from receiving a spousal benefit to receiving your own potentially higher benefit amount. Due to recent Social Security laws that went into effect Nov. 2, 2015, if you were born on or after Jan. 2, 1954, you will not be able to restrict your application and only receive spousal benefits. For anyone born on or after Jan. 2, 1954, when you file you will automatically be deemed to be filing for all benefits for which you are eligible.
- Current spouses
- Widowed spouses
- Ex-spouses
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May 18, 2016 | www.elderlawanswers.com
If you could receive more from Social Security based on your own earnings record than through the spousal benefit, the Social Security Administration will automatically provide you with the larger benefit.
If you have reached your full retirement age (and turned 62 before January 2, 2016), you may also elect to receive spousal benefits and delay taking your benefits, allowing your own delayed retirement credits to accrue, and switch to your own benefit at a later date.
However, you cannot elect to receive spousal benefits below your retirement age and later switch to your own benefits.
Individuals who turn 62 on or after January 2, 2016, will not be able to choose to take spousal benefits at their full retirement age.
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Jan 29, 2017 | www.fool.com
However, spousal benefits should still be taken into consideration when planning your own retirement strategy.
For example, let's say you and your spouse are both 66 and are still working, so you are considering letting your Social Security benefit grow for another few years. However, if your spouse anticipates collecting a spousal benefit on your work record, you might be better off filing at your full retirement age instead of waiting.
As I mentioned earlier, there are no delayed retirement credits for spousal benefits. And one of the requirements for collecting a spousal benefit is that the primary worker must be collecting his or her own retirement benefit. Therefore, it rarely makes financial sense to delay Social Security beyond your spouse's retirement age, if they expect a spousal benefit.
This is just one example of how a spousal benefit can affect your overall retirement strategy. The bottom line is that Social Security spousal benefits will affect the retirement income of millions of American workers, so it's important to know what they are and how they work.
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Feb 05, 2013 | www.marketwatch.com
Many couples can significantly enhance their lifetime Social Security earnings by having one of the pair claim spousal benefits at 66 years and delay personal benefits until 70 years of age.
This claiming strategy, which we call free spousal benefits , has been discussed here and elsewhere as one of the best ways to avoid the otherwise inevitable trade-off between getting money sooner (early claiming) and a larger benefit later (delayed claiming).
Having drunk the free-spousal-benefit pool-aid, an inquisitive client asked if the claiming strategy would work in the reverse. Instead of claiming spousal benefits first and then switching to personal benefits later, Karen wanted to know if she should claim her modest Social Security retirement benefits early, say at 62 years of age, and then switch to claiming her husband's larger spousal benefits later on. On its face, her idea seems to make sense.
However, let's look at how this actually works for Karen and her husband Burt. They are both 62 and their full retirement age is 66. Karen's full retirement benefit is $400 a month and Burt's is $2,000. Karen's maximum spousal benefit is $1,000 at 66 (that is half of Burt's age 66 retirement benefits). Burt plans to file for retirement benefits at 66, at which point Karen will be eligible to claim spousal benefits. Karen knows that she can claim retirement benefits early at age 62 and get $300/month (75% of the $400 she could get at her full retirement age). She also believes that at 66 she can switch to her spousal benefits and get $1,000.
On this last point Karen is wrong. When getting supplemental spousal benefits at 66, her full retirement age, her benefit will be $900, not $1,000.
The reasons for this are very convoluted. (A more complete description of the issues can be found at socialsecuritychoices.com/blog/?p=391 .) While Karen was hopeful that the reduction in benefits from early claiming will be temporary, confined to benefits during her 62nd to 66th years of age, unfortunately this is not the case.
While claiming at 62 will provide Karen with income sooner, there is a cost. First, claiming at 62 means that she will receive only 75% of her retirement benefit. Secondly, the total benefit she will receive after getting the spousal supplement will be smaller than it would have been if she had waited until full retirement age to claim her retirement benefits. If she opts for this strategy, she will receive this smaller benefit for the rest of her life.
Approach the strategy of taking your own retirement benefits now and a supplemental spousal benefit later with caution. The rules here are especially complicated and Karen's example may not apply in your case.
It would be wise to consult an expert before pursuing such a strategy. The long-term benefit of claiming early might be lower than you expect.
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Sep 15, 2018 7:51:52 PM | link
@ Lochearn who is correcting my genealogical representation of empireYes, you are more correct than I. That said, does it go back even further to the founding of monotheistic religions? We are referring to social control by an elite in my mind more than the Jewish bankers part of your genealogy. I admit to the bankers part but see that bankers group as the encourage/control entity for the other monotheistic religions.
Has that system dynamic changed/evolved seriously since the Roman era? We have usury. We have inheritance. We have banking. The concept of private property evolved along with the mythical moral fig leaf of rule-of-law. We call it the Western form of "civilization".
Jen , Sep 15, 2018 8:01:37 PM | link
Psycho Historian: I have been reading a Great Courses book on the history of the Achaemenid rmpire that ruled Persia and one interesting tidbit from my reading is that temples and their priests made loans to property (though turned did not accept deposits). So religious institutions got into the banking business early.karlof1 , Sep 15, 2018 8:13:22 PM | link
Jen @27--In his talks about his upcoming book, Hudson has said that besides the Palace the Temples were the first sources of credit. But their relation to society then vastly differs from what evolved as both Palace and Temple become corrupted by greed.
jrkrideau , Sep 15, 2018 9:03:58 PM | link
@ 27 JenSo religious institutions got into the banking business early.
Achaemenids? I think this was rather late. IIRC temples in Ur, Sumer and Babylon were in the business long before the Achaemenid period.
However Ur, Sumer and Babylon also seem to have had a general debt amnesty about every 7 years. There was a sound political or economic rationale for this. Something about the idea that one was not supposed to grind the faces of the poor into the gravel, nor destroy the fabric of society.
The temples were the only organizations that had the administrative ability to do this. Temple, at least in Mesopotamia is a bit of a misnomer. As I understand it, the "temple" was the home of the god, the royal palace and the seat of the civil service all rolled into one.
You might find David Graeber's book Debt : The First 5,000 Years interesting. He discusses why the temples were in the money lending business. It's a rather fun read and comes in hard cover and completely free pdf.
https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdfdid not accept deposits
I never thought of it, but yes of course. Given their functions they would not take deposits. They were loaning from state resources and did not need deposits. They would not have even understood the concept.
I am not sure if this applies during the Achaemenid period but it seems likely.
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Harvard Law professor and prominent liberal Alan Dershowitz - who has been shunned by the liberal elite of late for defending President Trump - now says that the White House should be alarmed over Paul Manafort's plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
" Well of course they should be ," replied Dershowitz - though he added the rather large caveat that Mueller is "not a credible witness," and would be at best be a corroborating witness against Trump.
"There's nothing he can testify to that would probably lend weight to impeachment because he didn't have close contact with President Trump while he was president," said Dershowitz. " What they are looking for is self-corroborating information that can be used against Trump if they can make him sing and then there's the possibility of him composing, elaborating on the story ."
Dershowitz added that there is "no doubt" Mueller is trying to flip Manafort against Trump.
" Once he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz. "There's no such thing as partial cooperation."
As for Trump pardoning Manafort? That's now "off the table," and that flipping on the President "opens up a lot of doors that probably haven't been opened before."
It's a "big win" for Mueller, Dershowitz concludes.
That said, many - including Yahoo News's Michael Isikoff (the guy whose article containing info fed to him by Christopher Steele was used by the FBI to obtain Carter Page's FISA warrant) - have pointed to potential targets on the left.Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States, as well as members of the Obama administration . Of course, the thought of Mueller going after "the untouchables" seems a bit far fetched.
quintus.sertorius , 19 minutes ago
radbug , 55 minutes agoThe Tribe plays both sides: Dershowitz the plant in Trump team has the same real loyalty as fellow tribesman Haim Saban or Sheldon Adelson. They want to blackmail Trump into fighting Israel's war in Syria.
ZazzOne , 1 hour agoThe FSB ambition: to choose the least competent Presidential candidate and, unbeknownst to him, smooth his way to the White House. Thus Robert Meuller's inconvenient truth: If Donald Trump were competent enough to be entrusted with collusion, then he would be too competent for the FSB to achieve its ambitions! I bet the FSB people in charge are gobsmacked that The Donald hasn't been impaled on the 25th Amendment yet!
Straddling-the-fence , 2 hours ago"Big Win For Mueller"? Only if he plans on going after the founders of the Red Shoe "Pedo" Club.....John and Tony Podesta! Though I highly doubt he'll ever go down that rabbit hole!!!!!
KekistanisUnite , 3 hours agoOnce he agrees to cooperate, he has to cooperate about everything , said Dershowitz. "There's no such thing as partial cooperation.
That's asinine. There are terms to a plea agreement. Unless those terms encompass what is claimed above, then that is simply false.
Econogeek , 3 hours agoI don't understand Dershowitz here. What could Manafort say that Papadopoulos and Flynn haven't already told Mueller? He was Trump's campaign manager for what three months?
George Papadopoulos I don't know how long he was there but if really has nothing of value to offer then neither would Manafort.
If anyone had something juicy on Trump it'd be Michael Flynn since he was in the Trump administration if just for a short time. This is about keeping this farce of a charade going as long as humanly possible.
ThePhantom , 4 hours agoMy guess -- a guess -- is that Mueller is under a lot of pressure from the Clinton Family including Brennan, Clapper et al to find something, anything, on enough people to make the last 2 years look legit to the Americans who watch CNN.
My guess is that the CF has gone from supporting Mueller to making him scared.
Calvertsbio , 4 hours agoi like to think Mueller is on the plate too, and this is his chance to save his own ass. Greg Craig and Podesta's names are out in all the papers .... they worked with manafort first and foremost....
no idea what dershowitz is talking about.. none.
Yea sure he is, the SPECIAL Counsel running the show to bring down corruption is "ON THE PLATE" yea, ok...
That should work for continuing the Conspiracy theory... It is all the DOJ, FBI, Sessions and now newcomer Manafort trying to BRING Down the POTUS. All of this is happening to such a great guy like Trump... Sad huh...
Doesn't make much difference how much of this BS is posted, no one is buying it anymore... Even FAUX news has basically given up on him... Everyone know that once it all comes out, it will be labelled by HIS SHEEPLE that it is all made up BS to take him down...
Hillary did it... no ! Sessions did it, nope, it was RYAN ? McConnell... lets keep the guessing game going... The Dossier did it...
BigJim, 4 hours ago
"The swamp critters better stop ignoring the Hillary/DNC side of this or the population is going to be marching in with pitchforks and guillotines."
Jesus you Trumptards are delusional. The average American is no more likely to take up arms against his masters than the North Koreans are.
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
At the end of a week in which former Secretary of State John Kerry's unauthorized meetings with top Iranian officials have taken center stage, and in which both President Trump and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have publicly thrashed Kerry's "unheard of" and "illegal meetings" with Iran that "undercut" the White House, Kerry has gone on his own anti-Trump rant .
Appearing on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night, Kerry slammed the president as having "the maturity of an 8-year-old boy with the insecurity of a teenage girl" in remarks that are sure to continue the ongoing war of words. Previously in the week upon news of John Kerry's Wednesday Hugh Hewitt Show radio interview in which he admitted meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif "three or four times" since Donald Trump took office, President Trump slammed the "illegal meetings" as serving to "undercut" White House diplomatic dealings with Iran .
Trump further hinted that Kerry violated the Logan Act by rhetorically asking whether Kerry is officially registered as a foreign agent .
The president tweeted: John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people. He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD!
When asked about the White House's potential threats of legal inquiry into the meetings, Kerry dismissed: "There's nothing unusual about it. The conversation he really ought to be worrying about is Paul Manafort with Mueller.""Unfortunately, we have a president, literally, for whom the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is three different things, and you don't even know what they are," Kerry added.
We can only imagine how Trump is going to respond, whether on Twitter, or perhaps by announcing a legal inquiry over Kerry possibly breaking the Logan Act and failing to register as a foreign agent, as Trump's Thursday evening tweet suggested.
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nmewn ,
FreedomWriter ,All up to their beady little eyeballs in it...
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: Yeah, I was just going to say, if the F.B.I., for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?
CLAPPER: Yes.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: You would be told this?
CLAPPER: I would know that.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: If there was a FISA court order–
CLAPPER: Yes.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: –on something like this.
CLAPPER: Something like this, absolutely.
CHUCK TODD TROTSKY: And at this point, you can't confirm or deny whether that exists?
>>>CLAPPER: I can deny it.<<<
The head of ObaMao's intelligence, the DNI ...(Clapper)...just lied on national TeeeVeee, to the American public, with a straight face, something we all now know to be absolutely, verifiably, true.
Something as blatantly deceptive as this needs something special in return. Like a noose.
nmewn ,Yeah, lying on CNN, apparently you can be arrested for that, it's almost as bad as lying to Congress under oath..... oh wait...
herbivore ,They are twisted, seditious, criminal , lying, bastards.
In a nutshell: Hillary Clinton paid a foreign agent (Christopher Steele, via two entities to wipe her fingerprints, those being Perkins Coie & Fusion GPS) to fabricate the pretext of FISA warrants... which her cronies then dutifully introduced into a secret court ...and were granted FISA warrants (not once but FOUR TIMES) for US government intelligence agencies to spy on her political opponents.
Its unprecedented, a scandal more vast and all encompassing than Watergate.
And...having found NOTHING (again, four times) to charge Carter Page with, they leak to their cronies in the Alinsky Press that US government intelligence agencies do in fact have an active spying operation going on against American citizens to damage the reputations and careers having failed to find any evidence of "Russian collusion" which (again) was the pretext for the FISA warrants.
Now that those among us with a fully functional brain know FOR SURE that there are TWO SETS of laws in this nation we can go about our individual activities and businesses with total disregard to "their laws" without any self imposed moral or ethical trepidation.
There's just one set of laws, but they're selectively enforced, depending on whether you're one of the little people or you're among the elite. Must be nice to be one of the elite, not having to worry about laws and stuff.
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indaknow ,
Dilluminati ,Carter Paige? You mean the guy this time last year was a Russian spy? The guy who hasn't been charged with anything? The guy that the original FISA warrants were issued against in order to spy on the trump campaign? Oh yeah that guy.
Is he connected to the Papadopoulos guy? You know... The guy that got 14 days for lying to meathead?
And now Manafort. Somehow hes bringing Trump down for sure. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with the Trump campaign.
As looney would say... Looney
From my understanding the unmasking of a national security investigation does make liable to suit the press by Carter Page, additionally I'm still amazed that people are seeing this through their preconceptions. How NSL (national security letters) and FISA material made it consistently from the top echelons of government needs people asking some genuine questions. If you have followed this carefully, it is evident that despite the non-related charges brought forth by Mueller that this was a politicized prosecution by the establishment. The questioning of the narrative of this gets people called all types of names.
Talking about establishment behaving badly:
I finally came across an article where the establishment is calling people "Satan" and the article was accurate from the standpoint of an "establishment analysis" but of course left out the actual details of the ongoing criminal racketeering.
I had a person say that they "felt sorry for me" Pity being an expression of disrespect that I no longer attended Church, and I thought to myself that it wasn't worth the reply that saying sorry or asking forgiveness cuts it, or that the decision or another or your belief yourself guarantees you are saved if your repeated heinous crimes boil down to asking "forgiveness" a mistake, bad judgement.
And the abuse was SEVERE again the details are slowly coming out but you see how the Demonization process works. The response in both cases identical.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pennsylvania-grand-jury-report-details-disturbing-abuse-allegations/
And remember that none of this is new.. simply signs of very corrupt people feeling non-accountable to anything. I fully expect the abuse at the Church to continue, I expect the Star Chamber establishment to become more bold.. and in summation I'm predicting very cleanly and accurately this ends badly. No escaping this.. it ends badly
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MuffDiver69 ,
If this insurance policy were actually true, it also could include tactics memorialized in a memo, written in 2009 by a Democratic strategist working at the time for the liberal smear group Media Matters.
>It described how to fight a "well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass" targets. Private eyes would probe into their personal lives, courts would be used for lawsuits. "Massive demonstrations" would be organized, Michael Moore would make a negative documentary and "a team of trackers" would stake out targets at events. "Opposition research" would be collected.
The targets would be attacked on social media, yard signs posted in their neighborhoods, and a "mole" placed inside their organization.
If there really were an insurance policy against Trump, it might include having ex-intel officials getting hired at national news outlets where they'd monitor and influence news organizations, and be invited to give daily spin on controversies surrounding their own actions.
Figures such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Comey aide Josh Campbell and others could get hired by CNN; former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-Mueller/Comey aide Chuck Rosenberg could get hired by NBC and MSNBC.
But all that would never really happen. Or if it did, it's downright silly to think of it as part of an organized insurance policy.
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Albertarocks ,
neidermeyer ,Peter Strzok has single-handedly provided Webster's with an entirely new and upgraded example of "dirty cop".
Strzok never went to "FBI school" ,, just a CIA employee inserted at FBI.
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- Uncovered text messages reveal that FBI agent Peter Strzok wanted to use CNN's "bombshell" report about the infamous "Steele Dossier" to interview witnesses in the Trump-Russia probe
- CNN used leaked knowledge that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier as a trigger to publish
- The FBI knew of CNN's plans to publish, confirming a dialogue between the FBI and CNN
- This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the Trump campaign
Newly revealed text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page reveal that Strzok wanted to use CNN's report on the infamous "Steele Dossier" to justify interviewing people in the Trump-Russia investigation, reports CNN . " Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON more out ," Strzok texted to Page on Jan. 10, 2017, following CNN's report.
"Hey let me know when you can talk. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we use it as a pretext to go interview some people ," Strzok continued.
Recall that CNN used the (leaked) fact that former FBI Director James Comey had briefed then-President-Elect Donald Trump on a two-page summary of the Steele Dossier to justify printing their January report .
This is a troubling development in light of a May report that the FBI knew that CNN was " close to going forward " with the Steele Dossier story, and that " The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed, " clearly indicating active communications between CNN and the FBI.
Weeks later, as the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross notes, the FBI approached former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos "under the guise of interviewing him about his contacts with an alleged source for the dossier."
In short, knowledge of the Comey-Trump briefing was leaked to CNN, CNN printed the story, Strzok wanted to use it as a pretext to interview people in the Trump-Russia investigation, and weeks later George Papadopoulos became ensnared in their investigation.
And when one considers that we learned of an FBI " media leak strategy " this week, it suggests pervasive collusion between Obama-era intelligence agencies and the MSM to defeat, and then smear Donald Trump after he had won the election.
Text messages discussing the "media leak strategy" were revealed Monday by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). The messages, sent the day before and after two damaging articles about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, raise " grave concerns regarding an apparent systematic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations."
A review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get information to the press that would potentially be "harmful to President Trump's administration." Those leaks pertained to information regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant used to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Carter Page.
The letter lists several examples:
- April 10, 2017: (former FBI Special Agent) Peter Strzok contacts (former FBI Attorney) Lisa Page to discuss a "media leak strategy." Specifically, the text says: "I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go."
- April 12, 2017: Peter Strzok congratulates Lisa Page on a job well done while referring to two derogatory articles about Carter Page. In the text, Strzok warns Page two articles are coming out, one which is "worse" than the other about Lisa's "namesake"." Strzok added: "Well done, Page." - Sara Carter
Recall that Strzok's boss, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was fired for authorizing self-serving leaks to the press.
Also recall that text messages released in January reveal that Lisa Page was on the phone with Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett , then with the New York Times , when the reopening of the Clinton Foundation investigation hit the news cycle - just one example in a series of text messages matching up with MSM reports relying on leaked information, as reported by the Conservative Treehouse .
♦Page: 5:19pm "Still on the phone with Devlin . Mike's phone is ON FIRE."
♥Strzok: 5:29pm "You might wanna tell Devlin he should turn on CNN, there's news on."
♦Page: 5:30pm "He knows. He just got handed a note."
♥Strzok: 5:33pm "Ha. He asking about it now?"
♦Page: 5:34pm "Yeah. It was pretty funny. Coming now."
At 5:36pm Devlin Barrett tweets:
Meadows says that the texts show " a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump's administration. "
Revisiting the FBI-CNN connection
Going back to the internal FBI emails revealed in May by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), we find that McCabe had advance knowledge of CNN's plans to publish the Steele Dossier report.
In an email to top FBI officials with the subject "Flood is coming," McCabe wrote: " CNN is close to going forward with the sensitive story ... The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment." McCabe does not reveal how he knew CNN's "trigger" was Comey's briefing to Trump.
McCabe shot off a second email shortly thereafter to then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates along with her deputy, Matthew Alexrod, with the subject line "News."
" Just as an FYI, and as expected ," McCabe wrote , " it seems CNN is close to running a story about the sensitive reporting. " Again, how McCabe knew this is unclear and begs investigation.
Johnson also wanted to know when FBI officials " first learned that media outlets, including CNN, may have possessed the Steele dossier. "
As The Federalist noted in May, "To date, there is no public evidence that the FBI ever investigated the leaks to media about the briefing between Trump and Comey. When asked in a recent interview by Fox News Channel's Bret Baier , Comey scoffed at the idea that the FBI would even need to investigate the leak of a secret briefing with the incoming president."
" Did you or your subordinates leak that? " Baier asked .
" No ," Comey responded. " I don't know who leaked it. "
" Did you ever try to find out? " Baier asked.
" Who leaked an unclassified public document? " Comey said, even though Baier's question was about leaking details of a briefing of the incoming president, not the dossier. " No ," Comey said.
And now it looks like we have an answer for why the FBI never investigated the leak...
k3g ,
herbivore ,Tell me again how Watergate was impeachable and this - Obamagate, Spygate, Framegate, ReverseCollusionGate, whatever ya wanna call it - is not .
Watergate was nothing next to this. And Obama's prints are all over it. The guy used govt resources - FBI, US intel, foreign partner intel - to try to destroy a candidate in order to throw a US POTUS election, and upon failing continued to try to take the guy out. Methinks that's why Obama's been looking so gaunt and wan of late. The guy looks terminal.
BendGuyhere ,There is only one agency in the U.S. government that can put people in prison and it's called the DOJ. Not only that, there are only a handful of people at the top of the DOJ who can decide who and who not to prosecute. Therefore, if you're the Clinton/Obama crime family, you only need a few loyalists at the top of the DOJ and you can get away with pretty much anything. Clearly, the Clinton/Obama crime family had and STILL have those loyalists on their side. Trump has done a pathetic job of changing that.
Anunnaki ,The good news, if you noticed, is the big swamp creatures (Comey, McCabe, Brennan, et al), that were SO loud and proud just a few months ago seem to have gotten really quiet lately.
This could mean that SHIT IS GETTING REAL and their lawyers are telling them to STFU.
So maybe the keebler elf grandpa Sessions is in fact orchestrating a legal checkmate on all these fuckers as the drip=drip becomes a deluge.
The deep state may try to manufacture a distraction-any ideas?
urhotdogs ,Since 9/11 the Permanent government is immune from legal responsibility and accountability
if we lived by the same Laws we used against Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Assange and the rest Obama, Hellary, Huma, Lynch. Comey, Mueller, Yates, Rice, Jarrett, McCabe, the Ohrs, Strzok and Page, Glenn Simpson would all get serious jail time
CNN should lose their broadcast license over this
Alas, Rip Van Sessions continues to do nothing and all the Crying Cheetolini can do is bitch tweet like a eunuch
G-R-U-N-T ,Obama must be panicking. He is all of a sudden "out of retirement" and campaigning to get Dems elected to take back the house and the Senate. If that happens, all the corruption from his Administration can be swept back under the rug and Trump impeached and his ass saved.
StarGate ,The ObamaSpy ring to frame Trump, his family, his campaign and the American people is a hell of a lot more extensive than most people think. The web not only extends domestically but internationally, the FVEY's, mainly Great Britain and Australia would appear to have their hand in this as well.
Yes, treason and espionage, all for a few pieces of silver and the illusion of power. All the 'gas lighting' propaganda and contempt with NO evidence was and is all a set-up by those nefarious forces that used to run the cesspool.
'They never thought she would lose' , like Hilary allegedly said: "If that fucking bastard wins we all hang from nooses", do tell, do tell.
We elected Trump to take back our country and I believe that's exactly what he's doing!
Dan'l ,Fact that Obama used Britain's GHCQ to spy on the Republican candidate he was trying to prevent win as Prez - recall Obama said emphatically "Trump will never be President" - so now we know WHY Obama was so certain;
And fact that UK/ Aussie Ambassador Downer coordinated with FBI conspirators against the Republican candidate; (recall that the Aussie Prez call with Trump was made public probably by Aussie Prez Turnbull himself)...
And fact that Obama RENEWED the British GHCQ spy op against Trump as he was Prez; puts the FBI British spy Dossier caper and all the FBI agents into the TREASON category because they were working AGAINST USA interests WITH foreign countries - Britain and Australia.
thinkmoretalkless ,So much for the highly anticipated internal FBI investigation by that clown Horowitz, the Inspector General who said there was "no evidence" of political influence by the FBI investigators. He said that with a straight face.
Marketing Consultant ,Politics is the only thing forestalling swift justice in this sordid mess. The media has exposed itself as ridiculously complicit in a seditious conspiracy by a group of narcissistic elite establishment underlings. I am as impatient as anyone else who see the blatant corruption and little in the way of prosecutorial response, but if this is as some portend a sophisticated attempt to drain the swamp then there is some hope a significant and honest reckoning awaits. I don't blame those not optimistic, but personally I'm trying Trumps power of positive thinking.
MK ULTRA Alpha ,What a bunch of bad people.
True swamp rats that don't deserve a position in government.
Another angle we must consider, the CIA was deeply involved. I believe it was the CIA managing the coup, the FBI was taking orders from the CIA who was planning and leading the overthrow of Trump.
Brennan and his WH coordinator Clapper are guilty. The FBI is just an attack dog of what the CIA set up with help from MI6. Clapper contacted MI6 for electronic intercept, the WH couldn't use NSA, there would have been a paper trail. And NSA would have told. Clapper is the one who contacted and used UK MI6 assets. (Steele a former MI6 agent? No, Steele is working for MI6.)
Everything leads back to Brennan and Clapper from the beginning. Brennan was deep into the election and re-election of Obama supplying intelligence data during the campaign.
It was Brennan who set up the game plan for the coup. Even his statements from the beginning indicated this. Will Brennan fall on his sword for Obama? Will Clapper fall on his sword for Obama? Brennan is a hard core communist, he may take the bullet for Obama, but not Clapper.
We don't get MSM stating this, is it fear of the CIA. Or is it fear there will be no more anonymous sources. Remember FBI agents were taking bribes for leaking data to the MSM. I doubt they're still working for the FBI. There has been a secret purge at the top. It was stated on MSM several FBI have left the FBI.
Interesting CNN has a former homosexual CIA officer who stated the CIA would kill Trump. He's a regular CNN employee. It was CNN, the FBI used to leak data to set Trump up.
Should CNN be sued? Should the NYT be sued? It's better to hit them in the pocket book.
Another point, remember General Flynn? I believe the CIA wanted to take him out. It was said he didn't lie by the FBI who did the interview, later higher ups, Comey and the like said he lied.
I believe the CIA wanted to pay him back for exposing Brennan's unlawful operations in Syria.
Also, remember the Las Vegas hit on Trump kind of supporters, could this have been a message by the CIA to the WH to expect a hit if Brennan was exposed. Just saying, we have to review every angle to the equation because the level of corruption in the government is beyond the belief of the average American. These players are above the law, perhaps this was a reminder.
Is the FBI going to accept their fate of being the fall guy for the CIA?
freedommusic ,
1970SSNova396 ,GCHQ had back door into NSA...
chrbur ,The head of GCHQ resigned days before The Don took the keys to the white house so he could spend more time with the children. The Don knows the deal. Get the new guy on the SC and then shit will hit the fan. Trump has zero to lose going forward and he is going to rock the house.
StarGate ,The Mueller Investigation is a international embarrassment. The search for a Trump/Russia connection by Inspector Clouseau is turning up over do jaywalking tickets while the glaringly obvious crimes of the Clinton Crime Family, aka, the Democrat party are ignored. I have to tell everyone that I am Canadian and I voted for Justin Trudeau.....hey.....it is less shameful.....
1970SSNova396 ,Those who set up the Mueller Special Counsel (Rosenstein who used to perhaps still does, work for Hillary) did so, not only to create a false impeachment process against Trump but also to undermine any of his efforts to take America back for Americans.
Are they succeeding? Yes and No.
Trump already stopped the TTP, Paris nonAccord, Iran nuclear delay, set ups. Trump began the world Peace engine with outreach to North Korea and Russia. He began an adjustment to the tax system and regulatory small business chokers. He has made inroads to curb corruption at the FBI;
But without a Congress that is on the side of America, he has not been able to stop the not-legal alien criminal inflow and "sanctuary-mafia" protection system - as yet.
urhotdogs ,Trump is up against the NWO/Globalist/Jewish Bankers/Jewish MSM Cabal 24/7/365. He has cost them billions in his two years. Trump has few friends in congress because they're owned by the above as well.
There is no doubt Trump has /is bringing everybody out onto the stage and you can see just how fuking corrupt this country is and has been for 40 years. This is the last chance.
Thom Paine ,Ryan, McConnell and many Rinos complicit in all of this. Notice they've never come out and condemn the FBI or DOJ involvement in all this. Only a few Republicans keeping this going
ALSO those given immunity by Meuller may not have immunity , and could have it reversed, if it can be shown the only reason immunity was given them was to protect them against future prosecution.
Immunity requires that the person have important evidence for a trial and that they could be implicating themselves in a criminal act by providing that evidence, ie they were somehow involved in the commission of the crime, in some relate-able way. Immunity gives them protection against being prosecuted for related crimes.
You cannot give somebody immunity against Tax Fraud prosecution when they are providing evidence of a car accident they saw.
Providing immunity for all unrelated crimes is the same power as the POTUS power of pardon.
SO the DOJ could at some future time challenge the immunity given by Mueller on the basis that is given only to protect them, and in exchange for nothing tangible. i.e. a fraud.
Which may mean Mueller could be prosecuted for prevision of justice.
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- Uncovered text messages reveal that FBI agent Peter Strzok wanted to use CNN's "bombshell" report about the infamous "Steele Dossier" to interview witnesses in the Trump-Russia probe
- CNN used leaked knowledge that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier as a trigger to publish
- The FBI knew of CNN's plans to publish, confirming a dialogue between the FBI and CNN
- This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the Trump campaign
Newly revealed text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page reveal that Strzok wanted to use CNN's report on the infamous "Steele Dossier" to justify interviewing people in the Trump-Russia investigation, reports CNN .
911bodysnatchers322 ,
BGO ,So now CNN is complicit in illegal leaking, (dis)information laundering, citizen targetting, conspiracy against rights, subversion, sedition and treason?
No wonder it's a nonstop Trump hate fest. They aren't just trying to get Trump impeached in the court of public opinion, they're desperate to get rid of him before he 100% destroys him
Well it's too late. Impeach away. But we'll still hold CNN for treason. The two things aren't related. You can't steal from a store just because Trump set the one next to it on fire
J Mahoney ,Fatigue is setting in with this charade. Soon the (((pundits))) will respond with the obligatory ***yawn*** troll to all future allegations.
If Trump cannot or is unable to respond to this non-sense in the harshest terms possible, he should not be president. It's amazing no one in this drama has met their maker Hitlery style. If that cunt was in charge and dealing with this shit, bodies would have already hit the floor.
apocalypticbrother ,This whole situation has to piss off anyone that is even 10% objective. How could any elected representative or senator still spew shit like "Leave Mueller Alone"
BOTTOM LINE -- If we do not get to work quickly to elect non establishment republicans in the midterms NOTHING will EVER be done and Trump may be forced out if Dems make gains
squid ,All old news. No one in jail except Manafort. It really seems like Trump is powerless against agencys. He must hate being a powerless president.
Save_America1st ,If, and I do mean IF, the GOP holds onto both houses of congress.....
Everyone of these fucks has to be indited with sedition, PERIOD.
its slam dunk. And, if the elected houses ever wants to get hold of the CIA, FBI and NSA and gain some control over those rogue agencies 20-50 agents from each will have to go down to spend the rest of their lives in Leavenworth.
These uncollected asshats have tried to change the government of the United States.
The only person on the left that appears to understand this is Glen Greenwald.
Squid
the problem is that in my opinion the majority of the GOP is also so fucking corrupt that I don't think most of them actually want to hold control of the House. They never even wanted Trump to win in the first place. On top of that, I would say many of those treasonous scumbags probably actually wanted Hitlery to win the fucking thing even if Trump wasn't going to be her opponent!
Look at all the resignations. Never seen before in history. Why? Two reasons...Trump is using the evidence to push many of them out or they end up in Guantanamo for life. And others in the beginning were quitting in order to give up part of the majority in order to flip the House to the even more evil, treasonous Demoscums so that it would restrict Trump's full majority.
Just look how "No Name" McStain acted when voting down against repealing O-Fuck-You-Care, right???
He was a traitor, plain and fucking simple. We all know it. Fuck their bullshit funeral. That was a cathedral full of traitors to this country. Psychopaths and sociopaths. Except for General Kelly and General Mattis keeping a close eye on that room full of demons.
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William Dorritt ,
Shemp 4 Victory ,"Strzok CERTAINLY wasn't the only one... Obozo, Hitlery, Lynch, Comey, Rice, Kerry, DOJ, FBI, CIA, MSM, et alia!" McCain, Shummer, Pelosi, Ryan, McConnell and lots of other are co-conspirators in the overthrow of the elected Govt.
And a large portion, if not the Majority, of the Oligarchs including the Owners of the 5 Media Companies and Big Tech which may have the same exact owners as the Media Companies.
Creative_Destruct ,This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the Trump campaign
Collusion of big government and big media? That's textbook fascism. (Of course, nobody reads textbooks, so...)
"Hey let me know when you can talk. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we use it as a pretext to go interview some people," Strzok continued.
"Because any pretext that provides even the flimsiest plausibility means we can play our little power games and ride the gravy train to easy money instead of pretending to do the work that taxpayers think they are paying us to do."
Above the law, like they all are.
"...pervasive collusion between Obama-era intelligence agencies and the MSM to defeat, and then smear Donald Trump after he had won the election. "
Yes, it was (and is) a concerted effort at collusion to politically assassinate Trump. But remember, this is a rigged game. The campaign's (non) "collusion" will be crammed into whatever "legitimate", "legal" mold it will fit; the conspiracy to "find a crime" for Trump within the Deep/In-You-Face State is simply "oversight" and "investigation."
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Thom Paine ,
StarGate ,The Mueller investigation has been going on for a very long time - if he had found anything of any real value it would be out there already, trying to reduce Trump popularity and hit the GOP mid-terms.
The Mid Terms are very important to Deep State. The Dems must at least get the House back in order to stop Trump.
That Mueller and Co have virtually have found nothing to put out there to stop Trump and the GOP means they have fuck all, and are now clutching at Straws.
They are going to have to go the Bullshit path....start inventing. OH and all sorts of False Flags between now and Mid Terms are guaranteed. ALSO will the neocons dupe Trump into a Syria mistake that causes the death of many US soldiers? We know Deep State don't care who or how many they kill, so long as they get what they want.
One wonders if the Censoring of Conservative media, and Political Sites is because Deep State are planning to Assassinate President Trump , as is stated on Alex Jone's site.
BANNED VIDEOS – PENTAGON INTEL SAYS GLOBALISTS WANT TRUMP DEAD BY MARCH 2019
Watch the clips censored by over one hundred websites
https://www.infowars.com/banned-videos-pentagon-intel-says-globalists-want-trump-dead-by-march-2019/
Thom Paine ,There have probably been several Trump assassination attempts since he was elected. Knowing what happened to Lincoln when he vetoed the National Bank / Fed Reserve of his time;
And what happened to JFK when he stated he would shut down the CIA;
Trump is fully aware he performs a death defying act daily. There may be others out there willing to make the Trump-JFK-Lincoln sacrifice, to take back America, but not Pence, not Sanders, not any current Democrat prez wanna be.
StarGate ,It would be impossible, or an exercise in suicide by the GOP and or Democrats if they actually impeached Trump.
- Two thirds of the Senate is required for Impeachment, meaning the GOP would have to vote with the Dems and that would mean total devastation of the GOP at the following elections.
- If the Dems tried impeachment, they would be only signaling to their hardcore base, but there would be a significant voter backlash against them. It would be a self defeating act.
- If the GOP and Dems voted to impeach Trump in the Senate, Trump can appeal to the Supreme Court.
- The Supreme Court would deny the Impeachment - unless there was proper legal cause.
There has to be a legally provable breach of Federal law outside the POTUS exercise of powers. Extraordinary prosecution requires extraordinary evidence.
You cannot remove a President elected by 62 million people on flimsy hearsay, or 'he said she said' evidence, or pure circumstantial evidence. It would also set a precedence where Presidents could be impeached on the drop of a hat.
At the moment the Dems and Deep State want to impeach Trump because he beat Clinton and fucked up the last step in their plan to own America.
If Trump beat Sanders not many would be whining right now, they wouldn't care.
j0nx ,Your premise legally appears to be accurate, that the Supreme Court is a failsafe against a retaliatory political impeachment, based primarily on fact Hillary lost.
However, that means the Supreme Court would have to been beyond corruption and Trump would have to bring a case.
Withdrawn Sanction ,No. All the Dems and deep state need to know is that a lot of the deplorable would riot like mofos if they tried. No dem would be safe. You think they don't know that? Sociology 101.
Saying the deplorables wouldn't riot is like saying Obama's minions wouldn't have if the shoe were reversed 7 years ago and there was an open coup against him like there is Trump.
Sorry to nit pick, but there are 2 steps here: the first is impeachment by the House. Akin to an indictment. Then there is a trial in the Senate which is presided over by the Chief Justice of the SC. THEN a 2/3s affirmative vote is required for conviction and removal from office.
An impeachment just like an indictment is meaningless w/o a conviction. You see how much "damage" an impeachment did to Slick Willy. Didn't skip a beat
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hooligan2009 ,
sedition =
"Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both...."
or sedition = this
" A review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get information to the press that would potentially be "harmful to President Trump's administration. "
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
MK ULTRA Alpha ,
missionshk ,There is one small point everyone seems to be over looking. It was Rosenstein's official recommendation to Trump to terminated Comey because Rosenstein was trying to install Mueller as FBI director, a professional "yes man" and cover up specialist. So when Trump wouldn't make Mueller FBI director, then Rosenstein had to destroy Trump to cover up. He appointed Mueller to special council.
The cover ups go all the way back to 9/11.
missed that they are all tied to 911 conspirators, brennan, mueller, comey
missed the satanists dems.drinking the blood of children, weiners laptop, and pakistani spies
missed the clinton bribery foundation, and failed one world government
and missed continued demonization of russia, the social paid antifa soros treason
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.bloomberg.com
One of the most intriguing aspects of the 2007-09 financial crisis is how little understanding there is of what actually occurred. Some of this has to do with the complexities of the event, as well as how hard it is to identify forces lurking below the surface that had built up over the years.
Even a decade later, many people still cling to false ideas about the underlying causes (there wasn't just one, folks!) of the crisis. What follows are my 10 favorite flawed memes, misunderstandings and just outright falsehoods about the financial crisis and its aftermath:
No. 1. Lehman's collapse caused the crisis : "If only we had saved Lehman Brothers, we could have avoided the crisis," goes a popular lament. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the scale of the dislocations. To accept this premise -- former Lehman employees are some of the loudest apostles of this theory -- then one has to pretend an entire universe of other issues didn't exist.
Lehman, like Bear Stearns before it, suffered from many of the same issues that afflicted most of the U.S.'s other big banks and brokers: too much junk paper, too much leverage, too little capital and deficient risk controls. Lehman was simply among the most overleveraged and undercapitalized of the lot.
No. 2. If not for X, we would have been OK: Take your pick of things to insert here, but it's important to understand that this was not a single event , but rather the result of many factors that came together over time. These include: the Federal Reserve's ultralow interest rates, a fundamentally weak recovery from the dot-com collapse, the housing boom and bust, huge amounts of financial leverage, securitization of mortgages, the embrace of derivatives and reckless deregulation of the financial industry that enabled much of the above, and more. I depicted these elements via this graphic in " Bailout Nation ."
No. 3. Repeal of Glass-Steagall : The argument is that in the decades after Glass-Steagall was enacted during the Great Depression, Wall Street crises were confined to Wall Street and didn't spill onto Main Street. See as examples the 1987 stock-market crash or the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. But the causative issue we run into to is the but-for test. Would we have had a crisis if Glass-Steagall were still in place? I don't see how we can make that claim. Perhaps had Glass-Steagall not been repealed, the crisis might have been smaller, but it is very hard to say it wouldn't have occurred anyway.
No. 4. Bailouts were the only option : There were many other options, but they would have been very painful and required considerable foresight. I believed then (and still believe) that the best course of action would have been prepackaged bankruptcies for all the insolvent institutions instead of bailouts. I would have had the federal government provide debtor-in-possession financing, allowed qualified private institutional investors to bid on the assets thereby letting markets set the valuations, with the government picking up the rest. It would have been more difficult in the short term, but the economy would have rebounded much sooner.
No. 5. Taxpayers were repaid in full and even made a profit : There are two major issues with this claim: The first is that the Troubled Asset Relief Program and most other loans and bailouts were all (or almost all) repaid. But to make that happen, the federal government in a move questioned by tax experts allowed failed American International Group to carry forward the net operating losses for use to offset future earnings; this was a stealth bailout worth tens of billions of dollars that didn't appear to "cost" anything. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve kept rates at zero for almost a decade. This resulted in a huge transfer from savers to bailed-out lenders.
The federal government also took a huge amount of risk during a period when financial markets tripled. And that is before we account for all of the collateral losses and moral hazards we created.
https://cdn.iframe.ly/le122fY?app=1
No. 6. No one went to jail because stupidity isn't a crime : This one is laugher, from the behavior of the executives at Lehman Brothers to all of the foreclosure fraud that took place. Jesse Eisinger, author of " The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives ," explained how the white-collar defense bar successfully lobbied and undercut the Department of Justice during the years before the crisis. You can't convict a criminal if you don't have the personnel, intellectual firepower or stomach to prosecute in the first place.
No. 7. Borrowers were as blameworthy as lenders : First, we know that for huge swaths of the banking industry, the basis for lending changed in the run-up to the crisis. For most of financial history, credit was granted based on the borrower's ability to repay . In the years before the crisis, the incentive to lend shifted: It was based not on the likelihood of repayment but on whether a loan could be sold to someone else, often a securities firm, which would repackage the loan with other loans to create a mortgage-backed security. Selling 30-year mortgages with a 90-day warranty changes the calculus for who qualifies: just find a warm body that will make the first three payments; after that it's someone else's problem.
Second, we know that if you offer people free money, they will take it. This is among the reasons we have banking regulations in the first place. We expect the banking professionals to understand risk better than the unwashed masses.
No. 8. Poor people caused the crisis : This is another intellectually dishonest claim. If any U.S. legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act was the actual cause of the crisis, then the boom and bust wouldn't have been global. Second, if poor people and these policies were the cause, then the crisis would have been centered in South Philadelphia; Harlem, New York; Oakland, California; and Atlanta instead of the burgeoning suburbs of Las Vegas, Southern California, Florida and Arizona. The folks making this argument seem to have questionable motivations.
No. 9. The Fed made a mistake by stepping in when Congress refused: Congress is the governmental entity that should have done more in response to the crisis. But it didn't, and all of those members who opposed efforts to repair the economy and financial system should have been thrown out of office. The Fed gave cover to Congress, creating congressional moral hazard and allowing it to shirk its responsibilities . We don't know how the world would have looked if that hadn't happened, but I imagine it would be significantly different than it does today -- and not necessarily better.
No. 10. Lehman could have been saved : This is perhaps the most delusional of all the claims. Lehman was insolvent . We know this from an accounting sleight-of-hand it performed called Repo 105, in which it which "sold" $50 billion in holdings to an entity it owned, booked a profit just before quarterly earnings, then repurchased the holdings. The sleuthing done by hedge-fund manager David Einhorn reached the same conclusion about Lehman's solvency long before the collapse ; the Fed itself also made clear that it couldn't take on Lehman's losses.
When people stubbornly refuse to acknowledge facts, when they insist on staying married to their own faulty belief system, it becomes very challenging to respond with sound policies. As a society, the sooner we reckon with reality, the sooner we can begin to avoid disasters like the financial crisis.
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Sep 15, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
It seems fatuous to argue, especially in a healthy economy, that the upper middle class faces overwhelming financial insecurities. After all, U.S. stocks have entered the longest bull market ever recorded, the labor force has markedly improved, and small business optimism is at a level unseen since the early 1980s. It appears that happy days are here again. But this halcyon period -- marked by invigorating statistics -- still hasn't prevented even upper-middle-class Americans from feeling discontent. For countless families, especially in thriving metro regions, a six-figure salary fails to deliver economic security. Their sense of vulnerability is real, not imagined.
What defines the upper middle class? According to the Pew Research Center, middle-class households, as of 2010, had incomes ranging from $35,294 to $105,881. In 2016, U.S. Census Bureau data showed that the median household income was $59,039. Based on Census findings from that year, the highest earning households -- before the top 5 percent ($224,251 and upward) -- ranged from $74,878 to $121,018. Reviewing these findings, a household income ranging anywhere from $75,000 to $200,000 could fall under the upper-middle class.
A six-figure income should bring long-term stability. But members of the upper-middle class find themselves prisoners of voluntary yet inescapable costs. A multi-generational phenomenon has unfolded, its roots traceable to the economic slowdown of the early 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession. There is a feeling of anxiety among Baby Boomers who cannot retire, Gen. Xers saddled with expensive mortgages and child care costs, and Millennials paralyzed by insurmountable student debt. Data cannot measure emotion. The sense of unease is palpable despite the economy's booming conditions.
A helpful cultural reference point is HBO's Divorce , which concluded its second season earlier this year. The comedy-drama focuses on the angst and dysfunction of a middle-aged divorced couple in Hastings-on-Hudson, an idyllic town in New York's prosperous Westchester County. Frances DuFresne, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, quits her day job in the city to open an art gallery. Her ex-husband, played by Thomas Hayden Church, is a former Wall Street executive now struggling as a contractor. The estranged couple, raising two children, are undeniably upper-middle class. Their professional background, cultural tastes, and suburban lifestyle personify affluence. But their financial insecurity, mainly the result of career choices, remains a theme throughout the series. The DuFresnes' social circles remind them that their economic position, while favorable, is vulnerable compared to the higher earners inhabiting their bucolic suburb.
The characters portrayed in Divorce exemplify a modern reality: many upper-middle-class households are high earning but asset poor. In 2015, Quartz's Allison Schrager illustrated how "America's upper middle class have almost no emergency cushion and are woefully unprepared for retirement." Reviewing Federal Reserve data, Schrager showed the precarious financial position of upper-middle-class individuals aged 40 to 55 with household incomes ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. The data indicated that this income bracket had fewer assets than ever (assets exclude a house, car, or business, but include retirement funds). As Schrager noted, even a high earner who worked for many years typically had only $70,000 in financial assets. Approximately 25 percent of upper-middle-class 40- to 55-year-olds, meanwhile, had less than $17,500 in financial assets.
Such findings suggest that seemingly high earners are living paycheck-to-paycheck. While Federal Reserve data has since found that median family income grew 10 percent between 2013 and 2016, a disproportionate number of upper-income Americans still cannot retire. In addition to their own financial woes, they must support their elderly parents, which involves innumerable costs. Overwhelming debt has become a vicious trap.
In one Brookings Institution study , researchers reported that nearly one quarter of households earning $100,000 to $150,000 a year claim to be unable to pull together $2,000 in a month to pay bills. Sustained economic growth has not repaired this cycle of debt. According to Deutsche Bank economist Torsten Slok, Americans have more debt than cash than at any time since 1962. The 2018 Northwestern Mutual Planning and Progress Study found that the average American's personal debt (independent of home mortgages) now exceeds $38,000. Stock market growth and rising home prices have not altered this trend.
In a Washington Post report last year, Todd C. Frankel demonstrated how modern life adds up for an upper-middle class family. Frankel reported on a couple in suburban Atlanta with a combined income of $180,000, an indisputably high earning level. But financial uncertainty rises from a mortgage, three children, day care costs, and the prospect of college tuition. "I don't feel wealthy," the wife, a tax manager, told Frankel. "I don't have a bunch of money stashed away anywhere." While the 2017 tax reform bill brought relief for many Americans, limits on state and local tax deductions have further engendered economic unease.
Scrapping Economics and Starting Over Homeownership Does Not Guarantee Middle Class ProsperityIn her new book Squeezed , Alissa Quart captures how middle-class American families are struggling to attain the standard of living once enjoyed by their parents. And in an important chapter on the upper middle class, she profiles "life at the bottom of the top." Quart argues that higher earners, like most Americans, contend with income disparity and the extreme wealth enveloping metro regions. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, upper-middle-class families go broke hiring tutors and maintaining lifestyles that permit their children to compete with their wealthiest peers. The parents, working professionals, are emotionally ravaged by endless costs. They discover few perks in geographical serendipity, graduate degrees, or traditionally high-earning professions like law.
Quart reveals how the legal profession has induced economic stress since the 2008 recession. In the past decade, law firms and corporations have hired fewer lawyers. Yet for lawyers just entering the profession, student debt is a crippling part of their lives. As Quart notes, student debt at the average law school increased from $95,000 to about $112,000 in 2014. It is difficult to fathom how simple steps in life -- getting married, buying a home, starting a family -- are financially possible with such debt levels. But the struggle transcends age. Quart profiles a 59-year-old Mississippi lawyer who, following health setbacks, was ultimately "pushed out" by her employer. Life continued at its indifferent pace. The mother still had to pay for her son's college tuition during her initial medical leave. "This is a vastly different life from what I expected to be having at this age," she told Quart. "The six-figure salaries and benefits are long gone."
The upper middle class's discontent also transcends political ideology. A seemingly high-earning Republican household in suburban Cleveland confronts expenses similar to a high-earning Democratic household in suburban Philadelphia. These are people who tune out the minute-by-minute plot twists of the Trump presidency. If anything, they are streaming Netflix or watching HGTV for a nurturing distraction. Their daily focus is on remaining financially viable.
Aspirations prove costly regardless of geography. A four-year degree at a public college, for example, costs nearly twice as much as it did in 1996. Exorbitant college debt now dictates the financial future of Baby Boomers, Gen. Xers, and Millennials. Boomers, at the peak of their earnings, postpone retirement and support children with student loans. Gen. Xers, nearing the height of their careers, remain broke due to years of paying off higher education debt. Millennials, still young in their professional lives, primarily work to pay off monthly federal and private student loan bills. Credit cards are a necessary prescription for each generation's economic survival. In 2017, the nation's total credit card debt was over $1 trillion.
Economic insecurity is not limited to higher education. The cost of health care has also doubled since the 1990s. Obamacare only accelerated the costs incurred by households. The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported studies suggesting that the consolidation of medical practices actually "drives up costs." Obamacare hastened the swallowing of regional hospitals by larger health care systems. This merger frenzy has empowered hospital systems to negotiate with insurance companies. But the mergers have increased costs, eliminated competition, and created barriers to care. The upper middle class, like so many others, are absorbing the costs of this transformed landscape. Rising premiums only add to their financial burden.
Of course, the upper middle class is in a better position than most Americans. In Dream Hoarders , Richard V. Reeves correctly unveiled how they are collectively removed from the socio-economics of the nation's majority. Their economic outcomes remain favorable compared to the struggles of countless working-class Americans. But a sizable number of higher earning households are not "opportunity hoarding." There is a cost to working parents ensuring their children have better lives than their own. In the booming 2010s, this segment of the population thought they would be in a better place than what they'd anticipated during the booming 1990s. Yet their diplomas did not translate into liquid cash. Upper-middle-class families, while affluent and well connected, have been met with empty pockets and unfulfilled dreams in this brave new economy.
Charles F. McElwee III is a writer based in northeastern Pennsylvania. He's written for The American Conservative , City Journal, The Atlantic , National Review , and the Weekly Standard , among others.
Intelliwriter September 13, 2018 at 3:07 pm
At the end of the day, it's math. If you spend more than you take in, you'll be broke. I have always thought of myself as "New England Frugal," and I wear it like a badge of honor. We could've sent our kids to private school, but they went to public (as did my husband and I). We could've driven Mercedes, but I like Toyota. We could've lived in a big fancy home, but stayed in our more modest home.Thrice A Viking , says: September 13, 2018 at 6:05 pmThe good news is that we were able to pay our kids' college bills (paying now for our daughter's master's degree). We finally bought a couple of nicer cars. Still in our house though.
We have never really cared what others have. We are both savers and that's what we did. Recent promotions mean more money coming in and we can spend a little more, but if either one of us gets laid off, the other can pay the bills. Math.
Law and orderly made the point that they should move out of overpriced cities. I think that rings true. I just read an article – about the number of millionaires in each state – that Manhattan in NYC has a cost-of-living that's 138% above the national average, or 238% of that average. That means that a household has to make $71,400 just to be the same as $30,000 gets them in Everytown, USA. (I believe that the actual median in Manhattan is a bit over $80,000, which puts them at about 34 grand.) That ironically makes this high-rolling borough below average in effective income. I would highly advise many of them to get out, and live with the Apple Knockers or the rest of us hicks.Lord Karth , says: September 13, 2018 at 6:48 pmLet's not forget taxes. "Upper middle class" Americans pay far more in taxes than they did in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the self-employed.Fred Bowman , says: September 13, 2018 at 7:44 pmFICA can be a stone b!tch.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
The article itself seemed like on big whine. The comment section OTOH seem to have a lot of common sense advice attached to it. I live a more modest lifestyle nowadays and to tell the truth I seem to be happier and less stressed. To tell the truth it took a long time for me to live within my means.
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Sep 13, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Pft , Sep 13, 2018 2:38:42 AM | link
Interesting article on and comments by Thomas Frank, touching on the cognitive elite as a unified class and war on the middle class (my words not his)
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/09/read-book-itll-make-radical-conversation-thomas-frank.html
".....the ongoing dissolving and crumblingand sinking -- all his metaphors -- of our society. And with such metaphors Frank describes the "one essential story" he is telling in Rendezvous with Oblivion: "This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling. And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate" "
And this
"Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care providers, all of them out for themselves . Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its new constituents' technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of toil but of the 'knowledge economy' and, specifically, of the knowledge economy's winners: the Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans who gave so much to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign . They are a 'learning class' that truly gets the power of education......."
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Sep 12, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Wed, 09/12/2018 - 16:45 1.2K SHARES
Days after Google was exposed trying to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election, a leaked "internal only" video published by Breitbart Senior Tech correspondent Allum Bokhari reveals a panel of Google executives who are absolutely beside themselves following Hillary Clinton's historic loss.
The video is a full recording of Google's first all-hands meeting following the 2016 election (these weekly meetings are known inside the company as "TGIF" or "Thank God It's Friday" meetings). Sent to Breitbart News by an anonymous source, it features co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, VPs Kent Walker and Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and CEO Sundar Pichai . - Breitbart
In the video, Brin can be heard comparing Trump supporters to fascists and extremists - arguing that like other extremists, Trump voters suffered from "boredom" which has, he claims, historically led to fascism and communism.
He then asks his company what they can do to ensure a "better quality of governance and decision-making."
And according to Kent Walker, VP for Global Affairs, those who support populist causes like the MAGA movement are motivated by "fear, xenophobia, hatred and a desire for answers that may or may not be there."
He later says that Google needs to fight to ensure that populist movements around the world are merely a "blip" and a "hiccup" in the arc of history that "bends towards progress."
The video can be seen below, however scroll down for a list of timestamped segments to note, courtesy of Breitbart .
https://content.jwplatform.com/players/TYgVGuSC-o73dHpYz.html
- (00:00:00 – 00:01:12) Google co-founder Sergey Brin states that the weekly meeting is "probably not the most joyous we've had" and that "most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad."
- (00:00:24) Brin contrasts the disappointment of Trump's election with his excitement at the legalization of cannabis in California, triggering laughs and applause from the audience of Google employees.
- (00:01:12) Returning to seriousness, Brin says he is "deeply offen[ded]" by the election of Trump, and that the election "conflicts with many of [Google's] values."
- (00:09:10) Trying to explain the motivations of Trump supporters, Senior VP for Global Affairs, Kent Walker concludes: "fear, not just in the United States, but around the world is fueling concerns, xenophobia, hatred, and a desire for answers that may or may not be there."
- (00:09:35) Walker goes on to describe the Trump phenomenon as a sign of "tribalism that's self-destructive [in] the long-term."
- (00:09:55) Striking an optimistic tone, Walker assures Google employees that despite the election, "history is on our side" and that the "moral arc of history bends towards progress."
- (00:10:45) Walker approvingly quotes former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's comparison between "the world of the wall" with its "isolation and defensiveness" and the "world of the square, the piazza, the marketplace, where people come together into a community and enrich each other's lives."
- (00:13:10) CFO Ruth Porat appears to break down in tears when discussing the election result.
- (00:15:20) Porat promises that Google will "use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values."
- (00:16:50) Stating "we all need a hug," she then instructs the audience of Google employees to hug the person closest to them.
- (00:20:24) Eileen Noughton, VP of People Operations, promises that Google's policy team in DC is "all over" the immigration issue and that the company will "keep a close watch on it."
- (00:21:26) Noughton jokes about Google employees asking, ' Can I move to Canada? ' after the election. She goes on to seriously discuss the options available to Google employees who wish to leave the country.
- (00:23:12) Noughton does acknowledge "diversity of opinion and political persuasion" and notes that s he has heard from conservative Google employees who say they "haven't felt entirely comfortable revealing who [they] are." and urged "tolerance." (Several months later, the company would fire James Damore allegedly for disagreeing with progressive narratives.)
- (00:27:00) Responding to a question about "filter bubbles," Sundar Pichai promises to work towards "correcting" Google's role in them
- (00:27:30) Sergey Brin praises an audience member's suggestion of increasing matched Google employee donations to progressive groups.
- (00:34:40) Brin compares Trump voters to "extremists," arguing for a correlation between the economic background of Trump supporters and the kinds of voters who back extremist movements. Brin says that "voting is not a rational act" and that not all of Trump's support can be attributed to "income disparity." He suggests that Trump voters might have been motivated by boredom rather than legitimate concerns.
- (00:49:10) An employee asks if Google is willing to "invest in grassroots, hyper-local efforts to bring tools and services and understanding of Google products and knowledge" so that people can "make informed decisions that are best for themselves." Pichai's response: Google will ensure its "educational products" reach "segments of the population [they] are not [currently] fully reaching."
- (00:54:33) An employee asks what Google is going to do about "misinformation" and "fake news" shared by "low-information voters." Pichai responds by stating that "investments in machine learning and AI" are a "big opportunity" to fix the problem.
- (00:56:12) Responding to an audience member, Walker says Google must ensure the rise of populism doesn't turn into "a world war or something catastrophic and instead is a blip, a hiccup."
- (00:58:22) Brin compares Trump voters to supporters of fascism and communism, linking the former movement to "boredom," which Brin previously linked to Trump voters. "It sort of sneaks up sometimes, really bad things" says Brin.
- (01:01:15) A Google employee states: "speaking to white men, there's an opportunity for you right now to understand your privilege" and urges employees to "go through the bias-busting training, read about privilege, read about the real history of oppression in our country." He urges employees to "discuss the issues you are passionate about during Thanksgiving dinner and don't back down and laugh it off when you hear the voice of oppression speak through metaphors." Every executive on stage – the CEO, CFO, two VPs and the two Co-founders – applaud the employee.
- (01:01:57) An audience member asks if the executives see "anything positive from this election result." The audience of Google employees, and the executives on stage, burst into laughter. "Boy, that's a really tough one right now" says Brin.
outofnowhere ,
DeadFred ,
Google and it's execs seem to be a collective of Dr. Frankenstein's whose creation unknowingly or knowingly practices evil against innocence.
Little Girl Scene from 1931 Frankenstein and 1974 Young Frankenstein
We saw the scene in 1931 Frankenstein where the creature meets a young girl. Although a little afraid, she accepts him and plays games with him. After they throw all the petals from a flower into the lake, he looks around for something else to throw. He picks her up and throws her in. Until recently, the actual toss was cut from presentations of the film, because it is just too painful.
uhland62 ,I have a friend who was there that night with the election coverage crew. He's a secret conservative trying not to lose his good paying job so I won't give details. But he described a scene to me that would be comical if it wasn't so pathetic. It was pretty much how it is described here and he had to just grit his teeth and try to keep from laughing or crying. "Just keep repeating, $190,000 per year"
Thebighouse ,When the Emperor (google) doesn't like his people he must go and find himself another people.
bobdog54 ,SOMEHOW GOOGLE FACEBOOK TWITTER NEED TO PAY US FOR USING OUR PERSONAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITHOUT
"REAL" CONSENT.
Ever gone googling? They need to pay you for selling you information. It is blatant theft. You are ENTITLED TO YOUR MONEY.
I got that word entitled from Warren and obummers micky and barry. Oh and sharpton too.
First, they may have a reasonably good, not high, IQ but it's clear the stark reality of the real world and its people are completely unknown to them or they have little to no integrity.
Second, maybe they are completely brain dead to support a clear criminal over 4 decades or they themselves are essentially of the criminal mind.
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Sep 12, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
ThunderStruck ,
alfbell ,I don't give a fuck about the next new iPhones that will not deliver any improvements in technology. Bigger is just bigger, not better. How about Apple fix the problems that really irritate people; 1) Siri sucks, fix the fucking thing, 2) Speech to text sucks, fix the fucking thing, 3) Apple has never been able to maintain a reliable Bluetooth connection to a headset, fix the fucking thing. That's just a the beginning. Stop blowing it out about your wonderful amazing new OLED screens, it's already old technology, Samsung phones have had OLED screens for years. How about Apple do what Jobs did and come up with products that change the way people do things. The iPhone changed the way people communicate. The iPod changed the way people listened to and purchased music. Invent something we haven't seen before and don't even know we need it until it's introduced. Or...., just shut the fuck up...
TalkToLind ,The new iPhone allows the CIA and NSA to keep better track of you and your activities. Don't worry though, this is for your safety and protection.
Dr. Winston O'boogie ,I only buy inexpensive, unlocked phones with removable batteries and I pay cash for them.
AnonymousCitizen ,I prefer to keep my Galaxy S8. It is more than enough for my liking. I also have managed to be perfectly satisfied with my 10 year old pc (with a few minor upgrades). The only Apple product I use is my trusty, old Ipod.
This continued obsession with the masses to get their hands on the latest Apple product is ridiculous.
Faster, thinner, more pixels, better camera. Okay, got it.
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Sep 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Remember a few editions ago when I wrote in celebration of the cross-aisle cooperation between Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Donald Trump with respect to the re-engineering of the equity complex? After all, it was only a month ago. However, for those who fail this recall test, the gist of it was as follows. Senator Warren introduced a bill to regulate large corporations in a manner that de-emphasizes profits as a corporate objective, and the President sought to soften the blow by suggesting a reduction in the frequency at which company chieftains would be required to announce the certain-to-be bad news to the investing public.
At the time, I was deeply touched by the prospect of narrowing the gap between two schools of economic thought -- so deeply at odds with one another, to such deep annoyance and detriment to the well-being of the masses. However, I feared it was a "one-off".
So it brings me great pleasure to report upon the happy news that the divide continues to close. As my readers are probably aware, everyone's favorite Socialist Senior Citizen Senator: Bernie Sanders, took to the airwaves this past week to denounce the evils of what by many accounts is everyone's favorite publicly traded corporation. In live television interviews, and, of course, on Twitter, Bro Bernie entered into a full-throated denouncement of Amazon, going so far as to include a series of ad-hominem attacks on its fabulously infallible founder: one Jeff Bezos.
In doing so, Sen. Sanders joins a critical chorus led by the President, who for months has been throwing shade at the erstwhile bookseller that would take over the world. Bernie is passionately (if questionably) upset about the unfair treatment of Amazon workers. Trump is presumably most peeved at the temerity of Bezos at having taken ownership/control over the Washington Post. But both agree on one thing: the great unwashed are getting a raw deal with respect to the business arrangement between the Company and the
U.S. Postal Service.
I've looked into these matters, and objectively as I can determine, this is not an open and shut case against Amazon. Yes, they're getting a government (and therefore a taxpayer) subsidy, but they are arguably performing services that would be difficult and more expensive for the post office to undertake without them – rain, sleet, snow and gloom of night notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, to their everlasting credit, both Amazon and its shareholders reacted to the rhetorical pummeling with characteristic equanimity:
It's not as though they didn't feel the sting a bit, and here, the sentimental can be forgiven if they lament the timing. Sharp-eyed observers will note a slight down-tick in the price at the more immediate, right end portion of the graph. This reversal is all the more unfortunate because on Tuesday, the day after our traditional holiday celebrating the working class, the Company's valuation joined that of Apple's as the only business enterprise ever to surpass the lofty and heretofore unimaginable $1T threshold.
But that was then; as of Friday's close, Amazon's market capitalization fell to the beggarly-by- comparison level of $952B.
It says here that Amzonians of every stripe should keep that stiff upper lip demeanor at the ready, as I suspect they may face a string of challenges before the inevitable happens, and the Company achieves full global hegemony.
Because, while the following edict did not make the cut on my "10 Commandments of Risk Management", it probably should have: any enterprise that has found itself in the cross-hairs of both Trump and Bernie has reason to worry.
And if Amazon is staring into the face of a political spit storm, so, too, perhaps, are those other lovable Tech Titans whose stock performance have so deeply enriched us in the post-crash era. Consider, if you will, the recent pricing action of a couple of other tech darlings: Facebook and Twitter, linked not only by the social media stranglehold they collectively command, but also by the fact that each company sent one of their gods down from their heavenly Silicon Valley Olympus, to earthly Washington, where each faced full-on Capitol Hill roasting:
Facebook Defacing:
Twitter De-Tweeting:
Now, this is a Dickensian Tale of Two Stocks if ever there was one. With Zuck presumably hiding under his desk, Sheryl Sandberg taking the Congressional heat this round. In the wake of all that, Facebook managed to breach the lows registered after its historic July tanking of earnings, and is knocking on the door of breaking the bottoms recorded when Zuck had to explain away to hostile legislatures the pimping out of user data to sketchy organizations like Cambridge Analytica. By contrast, the long-besieged Twitter, which had been on an improbable profit upswing of late, managed to give back all and then-some in the wake of Jack Dorsey's Capitol Hill Star Chamber Inquisition.
Anybody notice a pattern here? Well, for me, what we're witnessing is the early innings of what I expect to be a slowly unfolding, populist/political undermining of the flower of the American Tech industry. Now, I don't expect anything overly nasty to transpire in the short term; more likely than not, the garroting of Silicon Valley high-flyers will be a multi-year proposition. Rather, I suspect that the TMT/big dogs of the NDX will more than likely reach new highs – perhaps material ones – before they face the prospect of careening, Icarus-like, to terra firma.
But if the prevailing tone – taking place as it is under a presumably business-friendly political paradigm -- is any indication, I shudder to think about what happens when the progressive elements re-assert their mojo and take hold of the control panel. And trust me, they will: if not immediately then eventually.
Of course, one cannot help but admire the way that West Coast Tech monsters – from San Diego to Seattle – have anticipated this, and attempted, and with some success, to brand themselves as torch carriers for the progressive mindset. I believe is that this will work for a while, but not into perpetuity. Eventually, they will be unmasked and vilified as the filthy, profit-seeking capitalists that they are.
And here, perhaps, is the main (if most obvious) point: as Tech goes, so goes the stock market. I don't have the exact figures handy, but I can assure you that if you review index gains over the last, say, five years, and remove the contribution of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google from the equation, you're looking at a chart that, best case, is flat as a pancake. As such, I don't think that the unfolding Madam Defarge (villainess of Tale of Two Cities, known most prominently for knitting at the guillotine) dynamic that I fear may be emerging in Tech-land is much cause for celebration.
The shortened week brought a small taste of the look and feel of the new-age vibe that awaits us. Equity indices retreated, but only modestly, and in manner that failed to capture the carnage that lies beneath. I may be connecting dots too far flung to merit they're linkage, but it is not lost on me that all of the above transpired against the backdrop of a deteriorating geopolitical sneaker fire (Nike?). I won't waste much space here, but between the editorial stylings of Anonymous, the absolute (if unsuccessful) effort to turn the Kavanaugh hearings into a pig circus, the breathless anticipation of another Bob Woodward political workover, and the unfortunate ramping up of trade skirmishes, it's hard not to look at the world with a glaze in one's eyes and a growing pit in one's stomach.
But of course and as always the news by no means all bad. The Jobs Report pretty much checks every bling box, so much so that slumbering holders of longer-term U.S. debt, and sold down some of their holdings. Factset is projecting another boffo quarter at about ~+20%.
Equities, though, remain a quandary nonetheless (as do Commodities), but my hunch is that the indices will gather themselves a bit over the next few sessions, before breaking everyone's heart – yet again -- later in the month. Moreover, if the months-long pattern holds (Trump offsetting domestic political bludgeons with accretive policy actions), I would expect some happy noise from the front of the trade wars over the next several days. There'd better be, because the long knives are out against the current administration, and the only defensive weapon at their disposal is one that involves playing offense on the economy.
I'm more than willing to do my share, so, as I sign off, know that I'm logging into my Amazon Prime account to purchase a holy document called "The Art of the Deal", along with "Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In", written by one Bernie Sanders, and released on November 15, 2016, exactly one week after the author of the former book, against all odds, won the presidential election.
Who knows? Maybe Donnie and Bernie have more common ground than they realize, and if I find anything of this sort, I'll be sure to pass it along – to them, and, of course, to you.
TIMSHEL
This post is brought to you by General Risk Advisors, a full service risk solutions group. For more information, visit genriskadvisors.com .
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Sep 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
At this point there's not even so much as feigning surprise or suspense in the now sadly all-too-familiar Syria script out of Washington.The Wall Street Journal has just published a bombshell on Sunday evening as Russian and Syrian warplanes continue bombing raids over al-Qaeda held Idlib, citing unnamed US officials who claim " President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has approved the use of chlorine gas in an offensive against the country's last major rebel stronghold."
And perhaps more alarming is that the report details that Trump is undecided over whether new retaliatory strikes could entail expanding the attack to hit Assad allies Russia and Iran this time around .
That's right, unnamed US officials are now claiming to be in possession of intelligence which they say shows Assad has already given the order in an absolutely unprecedented level of "pre-crime" telegraphing of events on the battlefield .
And supposedly these officials have even identified the type of chemical weapon to be used: chlorine gas .
The anonymous officials told the WSJ of "new U.S. intelligence" in what appears an eerily familiar repeat of precisely how the 2003 invasion of Iraq was sold to the American public (namely, "anonymous officials" and vague assurances of unseen intelligence) -- albeit posturing over Idlib is now unfolding at an intensely more rapid pace :
Fears of a massacre have been fueled by new U.S. intelligence indicating Mr. Assad has cleared the way for the military to use chlorine gas in any offensive, U.S. officials said . It wasn't clear from the latest intelligence if Mr. Assad also had given the military permission to use sarin gas , the deadly nerve agent used several times in previous regime attacks on rebel-held areas. It is banned under international law.
It appears Washington is now saying an American attack on Syrian government forces and locations is all but inevitable .
And according to the report, President Trump may actually give the order to attack even if there's no claim of a chemical attack, per the WSJ:
In a recent discussion about Syria, people familiar with the exchange said, President Trump threatened to conduct a massive attack against Mr. Assad if he carries out a massacre in Idlib , the northwestern province that has become the last refuge for more than three million people and as many as 70,000 opposition fighters that the regime considers to be terrorists.
And further :
The Pentagon is crafting military options , but Mr. Trump hasn't decided what exactly would trigger a military response or whether the U.S. would target Russian or Iranian military forces aiding Mr. Assad in Syria , U.S. officials said.
Crucially, this is the first such indication of the possibility that White House and defense officials are mulling over hitting "Russian or Iranian military forces" in what would be a monumental escalation that would take the world to the brink of World War 3.
The WSJ report cites White House discussions of a third strike -- in reference to US attacks on Syria during the last two Aprils after chemical allegations were made against Damascus -- while indicating it would "likely would be more expansive than the first two" and could include targeting Russia and Iran .
The incredibly alarming report continues :
During the debate this year over how to respond to the second attack, Mr. Trump's national-security team weighed the idea of hitting Russian or Iranian targets in Syria , people familiar with the discussions said. But the Pentagon pushed for a more measured response, U.S. officials said, and the idea was eventually rejected as too risky.
A third U.S. strike likely would be more expansive than the first two, and Mr. Trump would again have to consider whether or not to hit targets like Russian air defenses in an effort to deliver a more punishing blow to Mr. Assad's military.
Last week the French ambassador, whose country also vowed to strike Syria if what it deems credible chemical allegations emerge, said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Idlib : "Syria is once again at the edge of an abyss."
With Russia and Iran now in the West's cross hairs over Idlib, indeed the entire world is again at the edge of the abyss.
developing...
Jack Oliver ,
Zero Point ,You must read this - Bolton is definitely FUCKING insane !
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/usa/438023-icc-dead-war-crimes-bolton/amp/
Bokkenrijder ,LOL Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources again. Anyone that gives this more than 0.0003 seconds worth of attention is a barely functional retard. Haha, looking at the comments below, we have a bunch of Charley Brown's running up to kick a football held by Lucy. Fuckin moron cunts.
Citium ,Trump has already written and signed the order for the attack, the only thing that needs to be added is the appropriate date for when Israel gives the green light
Wake up Trumptards!
Ok after all those thumbs down when I called Trump part of the swamp? You guys still agree that he wants to help the American people?
Get a grip. Y'all are getting Hoodwinked like Obama's first term. Increasing debt, increasing military expansion to police the globe, stimulus in he form of tax cuts to corporations who barely pay taxes, his inability to control Jeff sessions, his increase in deficits, expanded the surveillance state and takes credit for the Federal reserve all time high fake market.
Are you guys fucking delusional? Q is mossad, Alex Jones is mossad. Wake up. Both parties hate you and this is all Kabuki theater.
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Sep 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Responding to an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times detailing an active resistance within the Trump White House, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Reuters that President Trump is facing a "coup" the likes of which haven't been seen since the American Civil War.
... ... ...
" This is a crisis . The country has only ever had such a crisis in the summer of 1862 when General McClellan and the senior generals, all Democrats in the Union Army, deemed that Abraham Lincoln was not fit and not competent to be commander in chief ," said Bannon - whose departure from the White House was in large part over a fallout with Trump's "establishment" advisers. Bannon said at the time that the "Republican establishment" sought to nullify the results of the 2016 election and effectively neuter Trump."There is a cabal of Republic establishment figures who believe Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. This is a crisis," Bannon said in Rome.
Anonymous IX ,
thebigunit ,The naivete of so many astounds me. Do you really think that Trump cannot get the name of the person who wrote the op-ed? In the old days, you sent your operatives to break into the Watergate. With today's computers and backdoors everywhere into any computer system [open your reading horizons... https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437895-privacy-five-eyes-encryption/ ], anyone can obtain this information if they so desire. Why is Trump being portrayed as a poor "rich guy" who only wants the best for the country while valiantly fighting a nefarious coup...whose members, by the way, are so clever and clandestine that they write an op-ed in the friggin' New York Times! Sorry...don't have much time to continue discussing op-eds in the NYT, gotta go re-insert ourselves into an independent sovereign nation, called Syria, where our 1%-ers have deemed we need to go!
I like Trump's bravado and I like his partner, Melania. Designers should definitely bring back slits in skirts! Scroll down. Here's a lady with class and style. She doesn't have to show you her entire bosom for you to get the idea that she's hot! https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/09/03/melania-trump-labor-day-looks/
buenoshun ,Silicon Valley comes full circle:
Apple's famous "1984" ad.
How ironic.
The guy on the TV screen is Tim Cook. He's saying "WE MUST SUPPRESS ALEX JONES!"
Moe Howard ,The anonymous leaker might not exist. Maybe the oped was written by someone at the new york times. The reason for lying such might be to make Trump start hunting for his own subordinates, that could turn some of his subordinates against him who then become an actual leaker. I think this is their plan.
DEDA CVETKO ,Of course it is a coup in progress. So obvious it is beyond a question.
The fake op-ed was just the latest shot.
Seems to me that we need to break up and destroy these MSM and interweb monopolies.
No more dual national control over media outlets.
God is The Son ,Yes, Steve Bannon. This is a coup. And it is a bad, bad, bad nazi-style, beer-putsch kind of coup, the night of long knives and all.
But this is the coup you and your party (as well as your technical adversaries, but friends in real life - the "democrats" - have been preparing for decades . This is the coup you have been paving the way for with bombbombbomb Iran, with "export of democracy" to Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Russia (and pretty much everywhere else); with weaponization of dollar and global finance and militarization of media and the police, with colored and rosey and khaki revolutions, with vulture hedge funds as the primary instrument of the foreign policy and with 1% distribution of the 99% of national wealth.
Yes. Steve Bannon. These are all proud accomplishments of the Republican and Democratic party.
This is the coup your party (as well as the other one) has been funding for almost three decades by voting for $1 trillion-per-year war budgets and never-ending wars across the globe and by vigorously bankrolling the nazi merchants of death a/k/a/ military-industrial-financial-academic-media complex. And now you are shocked to learn that nazis have fondness for putcshes? No kiddin', Sherlock!
This is the coup your party ideologically, theologically and morally justified in terms of divine national exceptionalism, messianic narcissism, arrogant group-think and never-ending pursuit of national might-makes-right and peace-through-strength.
Yes, Steve Bannon, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was right when he said that the chickens are coming home to roost, er...roast. But this time, they are not coming home as McDonalds' Chikken McNuggets or Kentucky Fried Chicken Shit. This time they are returning as chicken guts'n'bones for the gigantic globalist chicken soup called New World Order.
You and your party should be rejoicing, not bemoaning. For, after all, this is your proudest achievement and your finest hour.
Peter41 ,Bannon is a retard, Trump is a retard, both Zionists. The only hope is Mattias to a Order Coup De Ta. Military General needs to recognize that how Israel, Jews, Rothschilds have taken over Banking Politics and Media in US and have hijacked US and are looting it. He also needs to realize that they run the Left and the Right of Politics's. Arrest Trump, Alex Jones, Zionists, ABC, FOX, Re-Investigate 9/11 findings will probably come to that the CIA and Zionists did it, and that JFK killing was also CIA and Zionists. The CIA gets destroyed into Thousand pieces and Israeli influence is removed entirely from all parts of American Society. Federal Reserve, gets taken and turned into Public Central Bank of America under eye of US Military. Rothschilds then told to leave or Arrested.
Griffin ,Well, correct up to a point. The established world order elites "saved" the system in 2007-08, by propping up the moribund banks (Citibank, JP Morgan, and others) by massive injections of liquidity. Rather than removing this liquidity after the debacle, the Fed kept the accelerator to the floor with continued "quantitative easing." Now presiding over a $4Trillion balance sheet, the Fed is in the famous "liquidity trap" which Lord Keynes avoided describing a solution for, by opining, "in the long run we are all dead."
Well, the elites are now in the position of watching the whole shitteree come unglued as the Fed's policies framed by the elites will soon come unwound. Then, the elites will be exposed as powerless.
Abraxas ,The old world order was not so organised, and the main ideology the ruling elites had in common was transfer of wealth and wealth control,.
Using ideas like privatisation to get control of strategic assets like natural resources, energy etc.
Using scams like pump and dump to suck wealth out of economies and then investing outside the economy or planting it in a tax haven.
In Iceland there was roughly a 5 year interval between crashes. I called it the bubble crash machine.
The msm and bank analysts were a important tool for politicians to keep this scam running, but its dead now.
The new world order was supposed to be far more advanced and more organised, a tool to eliminate all kinds of problems for large corporations, like the sovereign rights of states for instance.
This was supposed to be a fusion between the superstate in Europe, where Merkel was at the helm, and the liberal globalist friendly USA where Hillary was supposed to lead.
The TTIP was one of key elements in this plan.
If this would have materialised it would have enabled multinational corporations to sue nation states for imposing inconvenient laws that could suppress hopes of future profits for instance, giving the corporations a indirect control over state politics, overriding democracy and constitutions.
shortonoil ,Coup, my ass. These guys turn everything upside-down. What a bunch of hyaenas.
Just look, these are the people that will drag us all down to the depths of hell with them, telling us how nice and prosperous ride we'll have getting there. Stop this train, I want to get off!
Herdee ,Having worked around DC I can tell you that the place collects nutcases, screwballs, and sociopaths like fresh dog fresh shit collects flies. The Deep State is not the problem, the problem is the DC State! DC is the epicenter of power hungry, greedy, self centered, self serving, backstabbing, backbiting lunatics, and every one of them is looking for a gimmick to advance their own personal agenda. The welfare of the nation is number 101 on their list of 100. Too much money, in too small a place with too many people trying to climb the same ladder at the same time leads to anarchy. Give the power to collect money, and regulate back to the States where it belongs, and let DC sink back into the swamp it was built on. The Federal Government is out of control. The States have the Constitutional power, and responsibility to regulate, and control the Federal government, and they had better start using it before this dog and pony show breaks down into a lynching party.
DingleBarryObummer ,U.S. under Trump interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. The CIA goes around the world overthrowing governments. American hypocrisy is so phony, especially their Washington NeoCon/NeoNazi politicians:
https://www.rt.com/usa/437978-us-democracy-venezuela-coup-plotters/
MuffDiver69 ,Trump gives CIA authority to conduct drone strikes: WSJ | Reuters
DingleBarryObummer ,These uniparty hacks are the same who claim Trump has disemboweled the Obama agenda, which he has. Some nutcase... doing what he ran on. The only things he can't get done are because of the career uniparty hacks.The op-ed was nothing more then carryover from the McCain funeral. It's all transparent and meaningless, but a useful tool for Trump now.
chumbawamba ,"To some people the notion of consciously playing power games-no matter how indirect-seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power. They utilize strategies that cleverly disguise the nature of the manipulation involved. These types, for example, will often display their weakness and lack of power as a kind of moral virtue. But true powerlessness, without any motive of self-interest, would not publicize its weakness to gain sympathy or respect. Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power" -Robert Greene '48 Laws of Power'
Dilluminati ,What results though? So far, the results are in and the swamp is still pretty full.
As Dinglebutt pondered: deception, but for what purpose? Have you considered that you might be being lulled into a safe landing right into the heart of totalitarianism?
Don't think for one moment Trump isn't capable of selling you out for his own interests.
-chumblez.
notfeelinthebern ,correction demonic coup (re-posted) but the Pizza gate it seems to be real, all the fake news for generatons and the one story the globalists couldn't get to uncovering ~~~ YOU MUST DECIDE!!
Sweden tonight.. Europe tomorrow. The left lives in fantasy land. Where Kapernick is some NFL hero and the guy sucked at QB, I mean looking at the record, he sucked, he didn't win anything. He ran like Mike Vick and that is about that.. and like Mike he suddenly realized that EVERYBODY runs fast in the NFL unlike college. Then there is IMMIGRATION notice how the globalists love three things above all others: profits for the 1%, paying no taxes, and they love them some open borders and immigrant cheap labor. Take for example the imaginary op-ed fake news from the NYT, or the CNN fake news story with leftist Lanny Davis, or lets drag that whore Stormy out on stage for another trailer park runway dollar bill, or how about the hearings on SCOTUS and Spartacus? Pocahontas? Abolishing Ice to fight crime, getting rid of the 2nd amendment to make us safer, Or more gun legislation in Chicago or Baltimore doubling down on stupid.. And now the ghouls who run the Democratic party have to go and try and sell the Obama myth, talk about fantasy.. what the fuck was Obamacare? Where was the $ saved and could people keep their doctor if they wanted? Each and every idea the Democrats and left have come up with is proof that what the left doesn't fuck up it shits upon instead, and now.. after being globally discredited the GLOBALISTS cocksuckers are done. Name a single promise that the Globalists kept to any but the 1% the cocksuckers!
But turn on any globalist media, the NFL, ESPN, CNN, and of the Globalist monopoly news or media outlets, the same lies are told. These Globalist cocksuckers cannot stop telling these lies so instead they need to be removed by ballot, laws, and if need be FORCE!
The rudeness and desperation of the 1% is astonishing, but their boldness is like that of the Pedophile Catholic Church! They get up on stage and do their empty virtue signalling and then rape their communities cynically and with methodical efficiency, yes they are the 1% and they do not care, yes they are the 1% and there is now no laws to confront them. There is only the ballot. They intend to run to New Zealand as they know their days are numbered, they skip the hearings like Google when called to account by Congress, and still you turn on the media and see:
https://www.thewrap.com/miss-america-contestant-slams-trump-division-madeline-collins-west-virginia/
I'm sure Madeline has brokered some deal to service some 1% benefactor somewhere. But again the rudeness, they come into your home under the guise of sports, under the guise of a legitimate news source, and then they spread their LIES and distortions.
Watch Brexit and Google pissing in the face of Congress.. they do not respect the ballot though they clamor about democracy, they but care about the 1% like the Pedophile Catholic Church and do not care about your laws, they want to abolish Ice, they want to disarm you so that they can more efficiently abuse you. That is your globalists not some loser on a Nike ad, who has less of a career than say Tim Tebow (who could run) but wasn't the apologist and hate America first Cunt stooge of the globalists. Watch Brexit and Google as they piss in the face of democracy and remember.
When asked if he would accept the result of the upcoming presidential election if he lost , Republican nominee Donald Trump told the audience in Las Vegas and the millions watching at home: "I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense."
This brief comment became the biggest headline news to come out of the third debate, as many saw it as Mr Trump threatening to shatter a 240-year-old electoral tradition, one of the cornerstones of US democracy: the losing candidate must always concede defeat, regardless of the result.
Presidential rival Hillary Clinton called his stance "horrifying", saying it "was not the way our democracy works".
Barack Obama labelled Trump's comments as "dangerous", and damaging to democracy.
You see how that works? The left is like the Pedophile Catholic Church all worked up about the plastic in the ocean, one set of laws and democracy for you, and another for them..
The lies, the globalist lies.. vote for your freedom.. What does the NFL and the Pedophile Catholic Church have in common? NEITHER PAYS TAXES! Them globalists them silly globalists: love three things above all others: profits for the 1%, paying no taxes, and they love them some open borders and immigrant cheap labor.
The real PIZZA GATE my friends is the Globalists. The 1% with their laws, unaccountable to ours which they twist against us.
I'm watching Bob Woodward being pimped by the Globalists media this morning, and I have to think that in this guy's lifetime the largest scandal in the Church, the global abuse and coverup, never warranted an op-ed. Need I say more? When you look at the fabled globalist Bob Woodward, remember that he missed the abuse, the cover-up, the complete and orchestrated abuse of power globally, he missed that story!
It took the state of Pennsylvania and a Grand Jury to tell that story that the globalist and Bob Woodward would not, instead he peddled rumors, similar to Stormy trotted out for a dollar bill on the trailer park runway.
iinthesky ,Been nothing but a coup since before day one even.
Jim in MN ,Started right after the Trump stepped off the escalator
iinthesky ,If the globalist elite neolibcon blackmail files ever see the light of day a lot of folks are going to swing from nooses...where have I heard that phrase before....
This is still our last peaceful chance for change.
I think most historically competent folks quickly come to the conclusion that ''Kompramat" as the Russians call it is without a doubt how the government governs itself.. hence an 'outsider' is rarely ever seen and never allowed to govern
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Sep 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
A Diabolic False Flag Empire: Is The American Trajectory Divine Or Demonic?
by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/10/2018 - 02:00 25 SHARES Authored by Edward Curtin via EdwardCurtin.com,
The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping . The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves.
We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on "a vast tapestry of lies" that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.
But, as Pinter said,
"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory."
No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.
In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been "more malign that benign, more demonic than divine." He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World , Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11th, while in this one -- a prequel -- he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a "false flag empire."
The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States' ongoing murderous campaigns termed "the war on terror" that have brought death to millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.
As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society's need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life's myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God's "chosen nation" and Americans as God's "chosen people" have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God's people, who are always battling el diabalo.
He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington's first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of "the Invisible Hand" and "Providential agency" guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being." In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that "Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number" and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America's divine mission as "manifest destiny." The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned "God's New Israel" or the "Redeemer Nation."
At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread "democracy" and "freedom" throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that "we are great because we are good," and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, "Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom." Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made "free" by America's violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.
Having established the fact of America's claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.
"American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines were the main prizes," he begins. "What was new at this time, however, was only that America took control of countries beyond the North American continent."
The "divine right" to seize others' lands and kill them started long before, and although no seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans long preceded 1898. So too did the "manifest destiny" that impelled war with Mexico and the seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific. This period of empire building depended heavily on the "other great crime against humanity" that was the slave trade, wherein it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery itself. "No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes," writes Griffin. And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America's overseas imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced "the haughty Japanese" to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.
Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has been called "The Spanish-American War" that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines and the annexing of Hawaii. Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed "the wars to take Spanish colonies." His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were being slaughtered, Griffin writes, "Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's declaration that 'we don't do empire,' [President] McKinley said that imperialism is 'foreign to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.'"
Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines:
We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine; wherever freedom and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying. In the Far East the "Open Door" policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.
But all this was just the beginning. Griffin shows how Woodrow Wilson, the quintessentially devious and treacherous liberal Democrat, who claimed he wanted to keep America out of WW I, did just the opposite to make sure the U.S. would come to dominate the foreign markets his capitalist masters demanded. Thus Griffin explores how Wilson conspired with Winston Churchill to use the sinking of the Lusitania as a casus belli and how the Treaty of Versailles's harsh treatment of Germany set the stage for WW II.
He tells us how in the intervening years between the world wars the demonization of Russia and the new Soviet Union was started. This deprecation of Russia, which is roaring at full-throttle today, is a theme that recurs throughout The American Trajectory. Its importance cannot be overemphasized. Wilson called the Bolshevik government "a government by terror," and in 1918 "sent thousands of troops into northern and eastern Russia, leaving them there until 1920."
That the U. S. invaded Russia is a fact rarely mentioned and even barely known to Americans. Perhaps awareness of it and the century-long demonizing of the U.S.S.R./Russia would enlighten those who buy the current anti-Russia propaganda called "Russiagate."
To match that "divine" act of imperial intervention abroad, Wilson fomented the Red Scare at home, which, as Griffin says, had lasting and incalculable importance because it created the American fear of radical thought and revolution that exists to this very day and serves as a justification for supporting brutal dictators around the world and crackdowns on freedom at home (as is happening today).
He gives us brief summaries of some dictators the U.S has supported, and reminds us of the saying of that other liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said of the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, that "he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch." And thus Somoza would terrorize his own people for 43 years. The same took place in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc. The U.S. also supported Mussolini, did nothing to prevent Franco's fascist toppling of the Spanish Republic, and supported the right-wing government of Chiang-Kai Shek in its efforts to dominate China.
It is a very dark and ugly history that confirms the demonic nature of American actions around the world.
Then Griffin explodes the many myths about the so-called "Good War" -- WW II. He explains the lies told about the Japanese "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor; how Roosevelt wished to get the U.S. into the war, both in the Pacific and in Europe; and how much American economic self-interest lay behind it. He critiques the myth that America selflessly wished to defend freedom loving people in their battles with brutal, fascist regimes. That, he tells us, is but a small part of the story:
This, however, is not an accurate picture of American policies during the Second World War. Many people were, to be sure, liberated from terrible tyrannies by the Allied victories. But the fact that these people benefited was an incidental outcome, not a motive of American policies. These policies, as [Andrew] Bacevich discovered, were based on 'unflagging self-interest.'
Then there are the conventional and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing could be more demonic, as Griffin shows. If these cold-blooded mass massacres of civilians and the lies told to justify them don't convince a reader that there has long been something radically evil at the heart of American history, nothing will. Griffin shows how Truman and his advisers and top generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff, knew the dropping of the atomic bombs were unnecessary to end the war, but they did so anyway.
He reminds us of Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright's response to the question whether she thought the deaths of more than 500, 000 Iraqi children as a result of Clinton's crippling economic sanctions were worth it: "But, yes, we think the price is worth it." (Notice the "is," the ongoing nature of these war crimes, as she spoke.) But this is the woman who also said, "We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall "
Griffin devotes other chapters to the creation of the Cold War, American imperialism during the Cold War, Post-Cold War interventions, the Vietnam War, the drive for global dominance, and false flag operations, among other topics.
As for false flag operations, he says, "Indeed, the trajectory of the American Empire has relied so heavily on these types of attacks that one could describe it as a false flag empire." In the false flag chapter and throughout the book, he discusses many of the false flags the U.S. has engaged in, including Operation Gladio, the U.S./NATO terrorist operation throughout Europe that Swiss historian Daniele Ganser has extensively documented, an operation meant to discredit communists and socialists. Such operations were directly connected to the OSS, the CIA and its director Allen Dulles, his henchman James Jesus Angleton, and their Nazi accomplices, such as General Reinhard Gehlen. In one such attack in 1980 at the Bologna, Italy railway station, these U.S. terrorists killed 85 people and wounded 20 others. As with the bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia today on Yemeni school children, the explosive used was made for the U.S. military. About these documented U.S. atrocities, Griffin says:
These revelations show the falsity of an assumption widely held by Americans. While recognizing that the US military sometimes does terrible things to their enemies, most Americans have assumed that US military leaders would not order the killing of innocent civilians in allied countries for political purposes. Operation Gladio showed this assumption to be false.
He is right, but I would add that the leaders behind this were civilian, as much as, or more than military.
In the case of "Operation Northwoods," it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who presented to President Kennedy this false flag proposal that would provide justification for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. It would have involved the killing of American citizens on American soil, bombings, plane hijacking, etc. President Kennedy considered such people and such plans insane, and he rejected it as such. His doing so tells us much, for many other presidents would have approved it. And again, how many Americans are aware of this depraved proposal that is documented and easily available? How many even want to contemplate it? For the need to remain in denial of the facts of history and believe in the essential goodness of America's rulers is a very hard nut to crack. Griffin has written a dozen books about 11 September 2001, trying to do exactly that.
If one is willing to embrace historical facts, however, then this outstanding book will open one's eyes to the long-standing demonic nature of the actions of America's rulers. A reader cannot come away from its lucidly presented history unaffected, unless one lives in a self-imposed fantasy world. The record is clear, and Griffin lays it out in all its graphic horror. Which is not to say that the U.S. has not "done both good and bad things, so it could not sensibly be called purely divine or purely demonic." Questions of purity are meant to obfuscate basic truths. And the question he asks in his subtitle -- Divine or Demonic? -- is really a rhetorical question, and when it comes to the "trajectory" of American history, the demonic wins hands down.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out one place where Griffin fails the reader. In his long chapter on Vietnam, which is replete with excellent facts and analyses, he makes a crucial mistake, which is unusual for him. This mistake appears in a four page section on President Kennedy's policies on Vietnam. In those pages, Griffin relies on Noam Chomsky's terrible book -- Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (1993), a book wherein Chomsky shows no regard for evidence or facts -- to paint Kennedy as being in accord with his advisers, the CIA, and the military regarding Vietnam. This is factually false. Griffin should have been more careful and have understood this. The truth is that Kennedy was besieged and surrounded by these demonic people, who were intent on isolating him, disregarding his instructions, and murdering him to achieve their goals in Vietnam. In the last year of his life, JFK had taken a radical turn toward peace-making, not only in Vietnam, but with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and around the globe. Such a turn was anathema to the war lovers. Thus he had to die. Contrary to Chomsky's deceptions, motivated by his hatred of Kennedy and perhaps something more sinister (he also backs the Warren Commission, thinks JFK's assassination was no big deal, and accepts the patently false official version of the attacks of 11 September 2001), Griffin should have emphatically asserted that Kennedy had issued NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963 calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and that after he was assassinated a month later, Lyndon Johnson reversed that withdrawal order with NSAM 273. Chomsky notwithstanding, all the best scholarship and documentary evidence proves this. And for Griffin, a wonderful scholar, to write that with the change from Kennedy to Johnson that "this change of presidents would bring no basic change in policy" is so shockingly wrong that I imagine Griffin, a man passionate about truth, simply slipped up and got sloppy here. For nothing could be further from the truth.
Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of American history from its demonic course.
It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country's continuing foreign policy. Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward nuclear oblivion, if continued.
If -- a fantastic wish! -- The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic ? were required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to change our devils into angels, the arc of America's future moral universe
CHX13 ,
Adolfsteinbergovitch ,For many decades, the US has been preying upon the ROTW via the petro-$. The late $trength will prove it$ ultimate downfall, IMHO. The world is imploding as we speak. Too much bad debt all over, tens if not hundred of trillions in the US and the ROTW combined. US debt 21T plus (21T that is unaccounted for) plus 100+ T unfunded liabilities and a totally pension system on the verge of collapse etc etc etc and this is the "good ol' U S(S) of A... No need to pull China or Europe through the meat grinder, there's plenty of unsolved (read "unsolvable") problems at home already. No finger pointing needed, the US is a wolf in sheepskin, that's for sure. There's a lot of good-natured folk in the US though that simply have no clue whatsoever about what is about to be going down. I feel sorry for them, they really believe in "their duty for the country", in "liberty and justice for all" et al. Things that once made the US indeed great, but that was lost many many many moons ago. So I'd say divinely diabolic. #So sad.
khnum ,A country is exceptional, until it isn't any longer.
The matrix has u ,Reuters has just run a story International criminal court judges at the Hague will face heavy sanctions if they investigate American war crimes in Afghanistan,lawlessness next stop perdition.
That would be right. Americunt "Exceptionalism" still at work.
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Sep 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
milo_hoffman,
Brazen Heist II ,My new theory.
1) The NYT OpEd was actually written by one of the people who were fired during the very EARLY days of the Trump administration because they turned out to not be so good (like Bannon, Preibus, Walsh, Yates, Comey, Spicer, Gorka, Tillerson, McMaster, etc). This also makes sense because they are describing (very exaggerated) the early days of the Trump admin which were known to be somewhat chaotic before Trump got a good chief of staff (because Preibus was useless)
2) The NYT has been holding onto the letter for almost two years as a weapon to use during the mid-term elections
3) Looking for them inside the current administration is useless, because they are already long gone
4) The NYT is probably stretching the truth about them being "senior" official which they have a history of stretching the truth on for sources
5) It is also the exact same person as the (primary/only) source for all the accusations in Woodward's book
Assuming this was written recently is a HUGE tactical oversight and might be just what the NYT wants the Trump Whitehouse to waste time on.
FreeEarCandy ,It could very well be a trap. In fact, the timing almost guarantees it. The other alternative is that the NYT is very desperate and the Deep State in dire straights.
Kreditanstalt ,"Issue Of National Security" and "looking into legal action".
If its a "REAL" issue of national security looking into legal action is non sequitur. You raid the NYT and send all the usual suspects to Guantanamo Bay for a little water boarding.
This whole stunt is pure political mind fuckery. Since when does the justice department determine if we can legally defend our national security?
Dangerclose ,Trump, like the rest of the Deep State elite, detests and is enraged more by "disloyalty" among fellow elitists than by the opposition!
benb ,I don't think the op-ed piece came from anyone in the WH. It's fake but rest assured Trump can still use it to his advantage. I'll bet he gets EVERYONE to show a little more support and less resistance. Hmmmmmm?
The "op-ed" was likely either a set-up fabrication / amalgam from the CIA Toilet Paper of Record or some deluded over ambitious piece of shit like Nikki Haley.
In any event it doesn't matter. It's all about subversion. The Communist Party USA (Democrats) and Deep State know they are about to get their asses handed to them in November.
They're are a bunch of desperate assholes at this point. Heads up. Be ready for anything from here on out.
Trump needs to de-classify the FISA Docs NOW!!!
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Sep 07, 2018 | news.slashdot.org
recently ruled that under some circumstances employers can link their 401(k) matching contributions to the amount of an employee's student loan repayments -- making it easier for recent graduates to take advantage of this employer benefit. But that's one spot of good news in a sea of bad, according to one anonymous Slashdot reader: Two new articles criticize America's student loan policies (under both the Obama and Trump administrations). CNBC cites reports that within six years, more than 15% of student borrowers had officially defaulted , while 10% more had stopped making payments and another 4.8% were at least 90 days late. And for-profit colleges fared even worse, where nearly 25% of graduates defaulted, and a total of 44% faced "some form of loan distress."
These trends were masked by Department of Education reports which stopped tracking repayment rates after just three years (reporting defaults rates of just 10%), according to Ben Miller, senior director for post-secondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "Official statistics present a relatively rosy picture of student debt. But looking at outcomes over more time and in greater detail shows that hundreds of thousands more borrowers from each cohort face troubles repaying."
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Sep 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
If any evidence existed to be found that Donald Trump had illegally colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, that evidence would have been picked up by the sprawling surveillance networks of the US and its allies and leaked to the Washington Post before Obama left office.
Russiagate is like a mirage. From a distance it looks like a solid, tangible thing, but when you actually move in to examine it critically you find nothing but gaping plot holes, insinuation, innuendo, conflicting narratives, bizarre mental contortions to avoid acknowledging contradictory information, a few arrests for corruption and process crimes, and a lot of hot air. The whole thing has been held together by nothing but the confident-sounding assertions of pundits and politicians and sheer, mindless repetition. And, as we approach the two year mark since this president's election, we have not seen one iota of movement toward removing him from office. The whole thing's a lie, and the smart movers and shakers behind it are aware that it is a lie.
And yet they keep beating on it. Day after day after day after day it's been Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Instead of attacking this president for his many, many real problems in a way that will do actual damage, they attack this fake blow-up doll standing next to him in a way that never goes anywhere and never will, like a pro wrestler theatrically stomping on the canvass next to his downed foe.
What's up with that?
... ... ....
As you doubtless already know by now, the New York Times has made the wildly controversial decision to publish an anonymous op-ed reportedly authored by "a senior official in the Trump administration." The op-ed's author claims to be part of a secret coalition of patriots who dislike Trump and are "working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." These "worst inclinations" according to the author include trying to make peace with Moscow and Pyongyang, being rude to longtime US allies, saying mean things about the media, being "anti-trade", and being "erratic". The possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment is briefly mentioned but dismissed. The final paragraphs are spent gushing about John McCain for no apparent reason.
I strongly encourage you to read the piece in its entirety, because for all the talk and drama it's generating, it doesn't actually make any sense. While you are reading it, I encourage you to keep the following question in mind: what could anyone possibly gain by authoring this and giving it to the New York Times ?
Seriously, what could be gained? The op-ed says essentially nothing, other than to tell readers to relax and trust in anonymous administration insiders who are working against the bad guys on behalf of the people (which is interestingly the exact same message of the right-wing 8chan conspiracy phenomenon QAnon, just with the white hats and black hats reversed). Why would any senior official risk everything to publish something so utterly pointless? Why risk getting fired (or risk losing all political currency in the party if NYTAnon is Mike Pence, as has been theorized ) just to communicate something to the public that doesn't change or accomplish anything? Why publicly announce your undercover conspiracy to undermine the president in a major news outlet at all?
What are the results of this viral op-ed everyone's talking about? So far it's a bunch of Democratic partisans making a lot of excited whooping noises, and Trump loyalists feeling completely vindicated in the belief that all of their conspiracy theories have been proven correct. Many rank-and-file Trump haters are feeling a little more relaxed and complacent knowing that there are a bunch of McCain-loving "adults in the room" taking care of everything, and many rank-and-file Trump supporters are more convinced than ever that Donald Trump is a brave populist hero leading a covert 4-D chess insurgency against the Deep State. In other words, everyone's been herded into their respective partisan stables and trusting the narratives that they are being fed there.
And, well, I just think that's odd.
Did you know that Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame ? He was inducted in 2013, and he's been enthusiastically involved in pro wrestling for many years, both as a fan and as a performer . He's made more of a study on how to draw a crowd in to the theatrics of a choreographed fight scene than anyone this side of the McMahon family (a member of whom happens to be part of the Trump administration currently).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZBl6cL9GYs0
You don't have to get into any deep conspiratorial rabbit hole to consider the possibility that all this drama and conflict is staged from top to bottom. Commentators on all sides routinely crack jokes about how the mainstream media pretends to attack Trump but secretly loves him because he brings them amazing ratings. Anyone with their eyes even part way open already knows that America's two mainstream parties feign intense hatred for one another while working together to pace their respective bases into accepting more and more neoliberal exploitation at home and more and more neoconservative bloodshed abroad. They spit and snarl and shake their fists at each other, then cuddle up and share candy when it's time for a public gathering. Why should this administration be any different?
I believe that a senior Trump administration official probably did write that anonymous op-ed. I do not believe that they were moved to write it out of compassion for the poor Americans who are feeling emotionally stressed about the president. I believe it was written and published for the same reason many other things are written and published in mainstream media: because we are all being played.
The more I study US politics, the less useful I find it to think of it in political terms. The two-headed one party system exists to give Americans the illusion of choice while advancing the agendas of the plutocratic class which owns and operates both parties, yes, but even more importantly it's a mechanism of narrative control. If you can separate the masses into two groups based on extremely broad ideological characteristics, you can then funnel streamlined "us vs them" narratives into each of the two stables, with the white hats and black hats reversed in each case. Now you've got Republicans cheering for the president and Democrats cheering for the CIA, for the FBI, and now for a platoon of covert John McCains alleged to be operating on the inside of Trump's own administration. Everyone's cheering for one aspect of the US power establishment or another.
Whom does this dynamic serve? Not you.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yw0qkvvSE7s
If you belonged to a ruling class, obviously your goal would be to ensure your subjects' continued support for you. In a corporatist oligarchy, the rulers are secret and the subjects don't know they're ruled, and power is held in place with manipulation and with money. As such a ruler your goal would be to find a way to manipulate the masses into supporting your agendas, and, since people are different, you'd need to use different narratives to manipulate them. You'd have to divide them, tell them different stories, turn them against each other, play them off one another, suck them in to the tales you are spinning with the theater of enmity and heroism.
As a result of the New York Times op-ed, if this administration engages in yet another of its many, many establishment capitulations (let's say by attacking the Syrian government again ), Trump's supporters won't see it as his fault; it will be blamed on the deep state insiders in his administration who have been working to thwart his agendas of peace and harmony. Meanwhile those who see Trump as a heel won't experience any cognitive dissonance if any of the establishment agendas they support are carried out, because they can give the credit to the secret hero squad in the White House.
Would a billionaire WWE Hall of Famer and United States President understand the theater of staged conflict for the advancement of plutocratic interests, and willingly participate in it? I'm going to say probably.
* * *
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , checking out my podcast , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Federal prosecutors have been using a grand jury over the last several months to investigate former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, reports the Washington Post , citing two people familiar with the matter.
What's more, the grand jury has summoned at least two witnesses, and the case is ongoing according to WaPo 's sources.The presence of the grand jury shows prosecutors are treating the matter seriously, locking in the accounts of witnesses who might later have to testify at a trial. But such panels are sometimes used only as investigative tools, and it remains unclear if McCabe will ultimately be charged. - Washington Post
McCabe was fired on March 16 after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a criminal referral following a months-long probe, which found that McCabe lied four times, including twice under oath, about authorizing a self-serving leak to the press. Horowitz found that McCabe " had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor - including under oath - on multiple occasions. "
Specifically, McCabe was fired for lying about authorizing an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal - just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation, at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton
proxypal, Terry McAuliffe.In order to deal with his legal woes, McCabe set up a GoFundMe "legal defense fund" which stopped accepting donations, after support for the fired bureaucrat took in over half a million dollars - roughly $100,000 more than his wife's campaign took from McAuliffe as McCabe's office was investigating Clinton and her infamous charities. Who's lying?
In May , federal investigators from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office interviewed former FBI director James Comey as part of an ongoing probe into whether McCabe broke the law when he lied to federal agents, reports the Washington Post .
Investigators from the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office recently interviewed former FBI director James B. Comey as part of a probe into whether his deputy, Andrew McCabe, broke the law by lying to federal agents -- an indication the office is seriously considering whether McCabe should be charged with a crime, a person familiar with the matter said. - Washington Po st
Of particular interest is that Comey and McCabe have given conflicting reports over the events leading up to McCabe's firing, with Comey calling his former deputy a liar in an April appearance on The View, where he claimed to have actually "ordered the [IG] report" which found McCabe guilty.
Comey was asked by host Megan McCain how he thought the public was supposed to have "confidence" in the FBI amid revelations that McCabe lied about the leak.
" It's not okay. The McCabe case illustrates what an organization committed to the truth looks like ," Comey said. " I ordered that investigation. "
Comey then appeared to try and frame McCabe as a "good person" despite all the lying.
"Good people lie. I think I'm a good person, where I have lied," Comey said. " I still believe Andrew McCabe is a good person but the inspector general found he lied , " noting that there are "severe consequences" within the DOJ for doing so.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jyCnIdYZMz8?start=243
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Lumberjack -> chunga Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:31 Permalink
nmewn -> Lumberjack Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:54 PermalinkHistory repeats. Be ready.
UmbilicalMosqu -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:03 PermalinkYeah I was thinking the same thing as chunga.
Now that ridiculously juvenile NYT's "op-ed" starts to make sense...they were given a heads up on the GJ proceedings against this "stellar public servant" and wanted to knock it off the front page.
chunga -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:28 Permalink..."stellar public serpent"
nmewn -> chunga Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:45 PermalinkWhat's in my head is declassifying a bunch of nasty shit.
Either way, if NYT made up fake news pretending to be a senior white house official, OR, there really is somebody in his inner circle anonymously stabbing POTUS in the back, it is very bad news and there should be serious hell to pay. I do not like nor trust a single one of his appointees so I'm guessing it's somebody. It would be suicide for NYT getting caught making this all up, that would be risky business IMO.
This isn't a complicated timeline of he said, she said over this piss dossier that glosses people's eyes over. This is very simple stuff people can understand and Trump could make a very rational case that the swamp is so damn deep he can't even put together a staff without it being infiltrated and say "here look" and declassify shit that would encompass ALL the recent scandals and ensnare the fake news experts colluding to make this happen.
That would light a big fire in DC that would be very hard to put out.
chunga -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:51 PermalinkWell personally I don't believe for one second that the "op-ed" was anything other than Fake Nuuuz.
As far as ordering the release/declassification of everything the DoJ & FBI has on the Hillary Dossier I believe it's getting close but it's a hardball kind of swamp, it would be before the midterms for maximum effect I would think.
I think he has to do it ASAP because the NYT editorial looks like an act of desperation and I expect Mueller to pile on soon, so beat them to the punch and put them on their heels for a change. No doubt, this is hardball.
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
As was no doubt their intent, the mainstream media has succeeded in overshadowing the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing with a flurry of stories about a mutiny allegedly brewing inside the West Wing that has set more than a few tongues wagging about the possibility of Trump's cabinet invoking the 25th amendment (an eventuality that was once reportedly discussed by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon ). But while White House officials have already vehemently denied the quotes gathered by Bob Woodward in the strategically leaked (to his own newspaper) excerpts from the Watergate reporter's upcoming book, speculation is shifting to who might be the mystery author of a scathing NYT op-ed reportedly penned by a "senior administration official" that portrays Trump as unfit for office.
Fortunately for Trump, several voices of moderation have come forward to condemn the attacks (amid speculation that the Times' "senior" source may not be so senior after all). But this incipient backlash didn't deter Axios (a media org that, like the Times, is notoriously critical of Trump) from piling on with a story about President Trump's intensifying distrust of those in his inner circle. Trump, Axios claims, is "deeply suspicious of much of the government he oversees" from federal agency grunts all the way up to those privileged few with unfettered access to the Oval Office. The piece even goes so far as to quote yet another anonymous "senior administration official" as saying that "a lot of us are wishing we'd been the writer."
"I find the reaction to the NYT op-ed fascinating - that people seem so shocked that there is a resistance from the inside," one senior official said. "A lot of us [were] wishing we'd been the writer, I suspect ... I hope he [Trump] knows - maybe he does? - that there are dozens and dozens of us."
And in case you couldn't figure out why this is important, allow Axios to elaborate:
Why it matters: Several senior White House officials have described their roles to us as saving America and the world from this president.
A good number of current White House officials have privately admitted to us they consider Trump unstable, and at times dangerously slow.
But the really deep concern and contempt, from our experience, has been at the agencies -- and particularly in the foreign policy arena.
In what was perhaps the most bombastic claim included in the piece, Trump reportedly once carried around with him a list of suspected leakers. "The snakes are everywhere but we're getting rid of them," he reportedly told Axios.
For some time last year, Trump even carried with him a handwritten list of people suspected to be leakers undermining his agenda.
"He would basically be like, 'We've gotta get rid of them. The snakes are everywhere but we're getting rid of them,'" said a source close to Trump.
Trump would often ask staff whom they thought could be trusted. He often asks the people who work for him what they think about their colleagues, which can be not only be uncomfortable but confusing to Trump: Rival staffers shoot at each other and Trump is left not knowing who to believe.
And just in case you haven't read enough about Trump's purported obsession with "snakes" - here's some more.
"When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the 'snakes' in the White House," said a source who has discussed administration leakers with the president.
"Especially early on, when we would be in Roosevelt Room meetings, he would sit down at the table, and get to talking, then turn around to see who was sitting along the walls behind him."
"One day, after one of those meetings, he said, 'Everything that just happened is going to leak. I don't know any of those people in the room.' ... He was very paranoid about this."
All of this reinforces the idea that Trump truly believes that there is an organized "deep state" conspiracy to take him down. Of course, what Axios neglects to say, is that he's not wrong.
Adolfsteinbergovitch Thu, 09/06/2018 - 11:55 Permalink
css1971 -> Adolfsteinbergovitch Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:17 PermalinkIdiots giving the stick to get beaten.
Epic Darwin moment.
Now is an excellent time to re-watch the Caine mutiny. Very inspiring.
ardent -> css1971 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:17 PermalinkFree to quit at any time.
IridiumRebel -> ardent Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:18 Permalink
Snakes or Patriots?
toady -> IridiumRebel Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:18 PermalinkSedition
wee-weed up -> toady Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:23 PermalinkThey say it publicly? Mass firings dead ahead!
Otherwise, they're a bunch of backstabbing cowards.
Hopefully this is a major step in the "drain the swamp" meme. Gotta make sure to include a "never work in/for the government again" clause.
cheoll -> wee-weed up Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:31 Permalink"Wish We Had Written NYT Op-Ed"
Brave talk whilst hiding behind anonymity...
But none have the balls to tell that to Trump to his face!
Shitonya Serfs -> cheoll Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:36 Permalink
"Trump flopped as an owner of a professional football team, effectively killing not only his own franchise but the league as a whole... He bankrupted his casinos five times over the course of nearly 20 years. His eponymous airline existed for less than three years and ended up almost a quarter of a billion dollars in debt. And he has slapped his surname on a practically never-ending sequence of duds and scams (Trump Ice bottled water, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump University -- for which he settled a class-action fraud lawsuit earlier this year for $25 million)."
And Kruse didn't even mention The Donald's sixth bankruptcy, the one he filed for the debt-ridden Plaza Hotel in 1992.
So, people, what do you think Trump, the bankrupter-in-chief, is gonna do to the good old US of A?
toady -> Shitonya Serfs Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:41 PermalinkIf he bankrupts us out of the debt we owe to the (((FED))), I would accept that.
JimmyJones -> toady Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:43 PermalinkThat's one of my major hopes for this presidency. That Trump can get us through the coming bankruptcy without a large scale war/depression breaking out.
He has the experience after all....
HopefulCynical -> JimmyJones Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:46 PermalinkSo more anonymous sources....
"one senior official said"... oh really, why should I believe that? When something is obvious BS, repeating it just makes you look foolish, it doesn't make it true, Hitlers propaganda play book is dated and no longer functions in the age of the internet. At least we know that Operation Mocking Bird is alive and well.
Slaytheist -> HopefulCynical Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:24 PermalinkIt wasn't his playbook.
It was his description of the playbook of those seeking to destroy Germany.
The same ones currently seeking to destroy (what's left of) America.
Stan522 -> Slaytheist Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:43 Permalink^Underrated post^
Oldwood -> Stan522 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:49 PermalinkThis just shows us how they keep recycling the same shit bureaucrat's over and over again and they become an animal that lives within and outside of whomever is POTUS.
Perhaps it's time to burn the whole thing down and start over again.....
King of Ruperts Land -> Oldwood Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:04 PermalinkThey love and expouse democracy until it yields the incorrect result. Like everything else, just another useful tool
swmnguy -> King of Ruperts Land Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:57 PermalinkMutiny is a hanging offence.
King of Ruperts Land -> swmnguy Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:13 PermalinkOn a Navy ship at sea, sure. But flipping off your boss; not so much. Even going upside your boss's head with a 2"x4" is just assault.
We don't live in a Monarchy.
Not Goldman Sachs -> King of Ruperts Land Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:42 PermalinkWe the People are not so schooled in the finer points. We have rope and can see treason with our own eyes, and figure to do our part, be civic minded for the greater good and all.
dirty fingernails -> Oldwood Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:27 PermalinkSame swamp, different snakes.
wadolt -> dirty fingernails Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:53 PermalinkThat is our gov in a nutshell!
JRobby -> JimmyJones Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:48 PermalinkSPAMMER IN CONVERSATION WITH HIMSELF
Cheoli / King Rupert
Adolfsteinbergovitch/ HopefulCynical
>>> VIRUS ALERT - VIRUS ALERT <<<
(above) Biblicism SPAMMER (above)
==ardent -- LOOP -- bobcatz ==
=== inosent ===
>>> VIRUS ALERT - VIRUS ALERT <<<
!!! !!! --Do Not CLICK on his LINKS-- !!! !!!
Raymond K Hessel -> JRobby Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:04 PermalinkLong pink paper
Get rid of all of them
MrSteve -> JRobby Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:16 PermalinkA senior Clinton official has reported to me that he likey to sticky his wicky where it don't belicky often.
chunga -> JRobby Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:53 PermalinkCan't do that , who would be serving the butterscotch pudding in the cafeteria???
dirty fingernails -> chunga Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:10 PermalinkIf he has the power to do it, the time is right to declassify some major bombs on the swamp.
It sounds sensational but it's also a step in the right direction to move the capital out of DC. It really is the nerve center of raunch, deceit, fraud and an irredeemable shit hole.
Albertarocks -> JRobby Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:10 PermalinkAgreed, but moving won't help. The problem is the concentration of money and power. You could move the capitol every day and the swamp would follow like remoras follow a shark
spqrusa -> JimmyJones Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:29 PermalinkLong 'rope'.
Get rid of all of them properly .
Not Goldman Sachs -> spqrusa Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:45 PermalinkTrump knew from the get-go that firing everyone in the Deep State (they knew most of the players) would not accomplish his long-term objective.
The Dopes needed to stay in office so all their traffic could be lawfully monitored. The take down is getting close.
Kayman -> toady Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:25 PermalinkApologist.
Nuttin gonna happen. Dick Tater too busy twattering.
Creative_Destruct -> Shitonya Serfs Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:43 PermalinkThe only way to deal with the Debt, is to grow the economy and shrink it on a relative basis. So much of the past debt was incurred on non-productive expenditures that yield no returns.
Trump knows that. Amazing what he gets done with all the snipers outside and all the cockroaches inside. A lesser man would have said fuck it a long time ago.
JimmyJones -> Creative_Destruct Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:46 Permalink"Trump, Axios claims, is 'deeply suspicious of much of the government he oversees' "
And that's supposed to be a criticism?
Never One Roach -> JimmyJones Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:55 PermalinkIts as if they think the people actually support the Deep State Establishment and don't loath them. Please tell me how I should really love John McCain again now that he's dead.
hardmedicine -> Never One Roach Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:46 PermalinkWhen Trump picked Sessons and Wray, he had to be aware they were anti-Trumpsters.
So part of this is his own fault.
He should have fired Comey on Day#1 for example.
He should never have met with all those journalists in an attempt top "be nice" or "make peace."
They are all toxic slime balls who need to be fired and/or arrested.
just the tip -> Never One Roach Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:06 Permalink"Trump, Axios claims, is 'deeply suspicious of much of the government he oversees' "
Again, if people believed the corporate media Trump wouldn't be president right now, HIllary would be, so that fight is pretty much over.
Also, just because you are paranoid and think they are all out to get you doesn't mean it isn't true!. Of course the deep state hates Trump. It's all just a circus and a show until it's not. I really don't know what Trump is waiting for. Call Bill Binney in and get your heads together and take down all the deep state.
PUT THEM ALL IN PRISON.
Yes, it will wipe out the whole government as we know it.... but that is why Trump was elected in the first place.
dirty fingernails -> just the tip Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:14 PermalinkSo part of this is his own fault.
a very big part. rub is, i don't think he knew. i think wray came in on a "if you don't appoint him, the FIB is going to be without a director" sort of threat. i think sessions totally ass raped trump.
as for the remainder of his administration, if you turn the white house into goldman south, what exactly do you expect for an economic plan.
as for the pre-election dumbfucks saying trump is an executive, he will appoint good people, and let them do their jobs. i haven't seen one good appointment yet out of trump. out of all of his appointments, scott pruitt was the best and trump should have backed him up, but didn't. he was sacrificed to the environmentalists.
holee shit!!!!!
have i got an off topic comment to make.
i clicked on the globalintelhub link at the top of the page about the possible source of the op-ed.
what i found about one fourth of the way into the article stopped me dead in my tracks. this is the comment that did it:
But what is news in this disclosure are the newly released emails between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf.
you see it? do you see it? MARIE HARF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
does that name ring a bell? it damn well should. she was a long time spokeshole in the HNIC state department. she is the one who uttered the phrase:
We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's a lack of opportunity for jobs,
jobs for jihadists!!!! and this whore still has a job in gov't? as a CIA spokeshole? RUFKM
my fucking gawd get rid of these fucking people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kayman -> JimmyJones Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:27 PermalinkSo if they go 25th Amendment on him will Trump supporters chimp out or wait for the proof to be presented and evaluate if his staff have a vaild point?
Edit: I mostly agree with your post and thats why I have been so critical. What I saw early on, and since, has been one big clusterfuck of "you keep making decisions that in no way reflect a person who is as awesome as you promised."
east of eden -> Shitonya Serfs Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:54 PermalinkMob funeral. Watching Huma hug Lynnsey Graham was a sight to behold.
847328_3527 -> east of eden Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:11 PermalinkFigures. When you are blocked from pillaging foreign nations, you of course turn to the idea of bankruptcy. You people just don't seem to understand that you are not kings and queens, but common folk and you should pay your debts, and tighten your belts. It would be relatively short term pain for long term gain.
That, more than anything else, speaks to the absence of any character in the American make up.
By the way, hate your fucking handle, prick.
DaiRR -> 847328_3527 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:30 PermalinkI'll not believe it until Woof Shitzer and/or Rachel Madcow confirm these rumors.
Radical Left Plagiarist Farheed Diarrhea has evidently been preoccupied by being dumped by his wife after 21 years of hardship so we won't be hearing his inane comments bashing Trump for awhile.
Zakaria was suspended for a week in August 2012 while Time and CNN investigated an allegation of plagiarism [46] involving an August 20 column on gun control with similarities to a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore . In a statement Zakaria apologized, saying that he had made "a terrible mistake."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareed_Zakaria
Wife of CNN 'GPS' host Fareed Zakaria suing for divorce; dumps him after 21 years of marriage
https://heightline.com/paula-throckmorton-family-bio-facts/
spqrusa -> 847328_3527 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:32 PermalinkWhat do you expect when 80+ percent of the D.C. area federal workers are DemoRats ?
just the tip -> east of eden Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:08 Permalink"Paula Throckmorton is of white descent". WOW - White isn't a Race - morons.
Kayman -> east of eden Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:42 Permalinkgo fuck yourself you dickheaded motherfucker.
you wouldn't know character if it ass raped you everyday.
and as a canadian, you would enjoy it.
thank you sir may i have another?
thank you sir may i have another?
QuantumEasing -> Shitonya Serfs Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:04 PermalinkGo back to Chinese Tire and buy some "made in Canada" crap. Tell me again how the "Canadians" co-opted the British in 1812 . Watch some more Franz Kafka on the CBC, the Chinese Broadcasting Corporation and explain to the CAW in southern Ontario how Justine Twinklesocks traded auto worker jobs for the Quebec Milk Quota.
There are Canadians with character, but you ain't one of them.
LadyAtZero -> Shitonya Serfs Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:58 PermalinkThe US went into receivership in 1933, so I guess "make it bankruptier?"
I have no problem with this, since it's going to be interesting to see how the debtors (The US and its employees) are going to pay the creditors (that would be the Citizens) back for the $17 trillion they owe us.
Going to have to be one helluva bake sale.
But my guess is they will just throw another woar and kill off another generation of Creditors like they have done for the past century. (And collect the insurance premiums, since Social Security Insurance pays out to the primary beneficiary first..and that would be...The US GOv).
What? You thought Social Security was for YOUR benefit?! Hahah, silly wabbits.
hooligan2009 -> cheoll Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:42 PermalinkThese are (probably) all federal employees.
If they are so miserable working in the Trump administration, why don't they simply apply for transfers into a farther corner of the government?
How difficult can this really be?
Calvertsbio -> hooligan2009 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 13:58 Permalinknow now diddums - you lost because of the incompetence and corruption of clinton and her supporters, that are just like you.
so, "suck it up, pussy".
we know that you just want someone to say "Trump is gonna fuck people up like you".
so, when you eat shit, before you die, know it's from a deplorable's bowels.
Juggernaut x2 -> Calvertsbio Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:08 PermalinkLOL @ Trumpturds.... Never ends, I actually love watching the weak and feeble cover for the weak and feeble..
847328_3527 -> Juggernaut x2 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:12 PermalinkTrumptards in denial.
youshallnotkill -> 847328_3527 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:49 PermalinkDems don't like him 'cause he's not a pedophile or rapist.
Kayman -> Juggernaut x2 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:46 PermalinkActually, he is right up there with his former golf buddy Clinton.
D-tards, so bright they get a participation ribbon for polishing Hillary's turds.
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Is Vice President Mike Pence trying to pull off a "House of Cards"-style scheme to undermine Trump and increase his own chances of assuming the presidency?Apparently, more than a few journalists believe that might be the case. According to the Huffington Post, some believe that the use of a single word - "lodestar" - is a crucial tell pointing toward Pence as the op-ed's author. During the op-ed's final paragraphs the mystery author refers to John McCain as "a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue."
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example - a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
Pence has, of course, categorically denied these allegations and affirmed his loyalty to the president.
Still, one video circulating on twitter shows Pence using the word in eight different speeches dating back to 2001, when he was a Congressman from Indiana.
Others pointed out that the op-ed's praise for McCain would rule out Trump hardliners like Stephen Miller as the author.
At the very least, there's some evidence to suggest that the author is a man. As Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs pointed out yesterday, the Times' official Twitter feed may have inadvertently revealed their gender.
Though Jacobs also reported that several officials have told her that they suspect the author's "seniority" isn't as ironclad as the Times implied.
For those who aren't familiar with the word, Merriam-Webster defines "lodestar" as "a star that leads or guides" or a person who "serves as an inspiration, model, or guide."
To be sure, the Pence theory isn't without its holes. Trump staffers have said previously that they pay attention to the idioms employed by others as a defense mechanism when speaking to the press under the guise of anonymity.
"To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers' idioms and use that in my background quotes. That throws the scent off me," one White House official told Axios .
But online betting markets have put Pence at the top of the list of suspects, with MyBookie currently reflecting 2-to-3 odds on Pence as the culprit, per the New York Post . The favorite right now, at 1-3 odds, is "the field" - i.e. someone not listed among the 18 most likely senior admin officials, according to the Costa-Rica-based betting operation.
Still, at first brush, the theory makes a degree of sense: As first in line for the throne, Pence undoubtedly has the most to gain from the collapse of the Trump presidency. But it's equally likely that a more junior official could've intentionally included these cues to sow discord in the ranks.
As the Trump administration has proved time and time again, anything is possible in the West Wing.
Took Red Pill -> thereasonablei Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:30 Permalink
Pandelis -> Took Red Pill Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:31 PermalinkBased on one word? Someone else could have used that word to throw them off to think it was Pence or someone who works for Pence.
Cognitive Dissonance -> Pandelis Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:32 Permalinkone thing is for sure ... pency has been groomed for this job ... a small minded person who follows instructions ... carefully selected
Pandelis -> Cognitive Dissonance Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:34 PermalinkOne must admire, or at least respect the power of, such a brilliant divide and conquer psyops.
Almost as good as 'QAnon'.
Delving Eye -> pods Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:22 Permalinknot sure pence is entirely a team member ... he has been told to wait for more ... being around the trump tower, you can see why pence would believe it besides the fact that he must have been talking to real players that he knows they are real players ...
having said all that, 100% this is coordinated ... it is no coincidence it comes out at the same time with Bob Woodwards book, Theresa May verdict on assailant of the failed attempt to kill in salisbury soil, big offensive in Idlib (where trimp is doing a 180 degrees and being a team member again ... to name just a few ... it is the end of the line ... that economist magazine "prediction" from 1988 on 30 years later comes to mind ... time for the US to come down hard i suppose ...
PrivetHedge -> The First Rule Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:13 PermalinkNo way is the op-ed writer VP Pence. It doesn't have his boring Midwestern tone. It seems much more likely that the letterbomb was written by a group -- not in the administration. Rather, a group of Deep State crybabies who aren't getting their way and have devised this lame, transparent effort akin to Valley girls passing notes in homeroom ... "like, I mean, um, whatever" ... because they're too dumb to do anything else. And the NYTimes ate it up.
Grandad Grumps -> The First Rule Thu, 09/06/2018 - 10:10 Permalink
But he's not a Moron
But he IS a moron. All the war mongering pharisees are morons.
Pence is a pro war psychopath who is very much disconnected from his tortured soul and is a simple biological robot devoid of higher levels of thought.
Pence is literally a moron. Only humans have souls and access to imagination, inspiration, intuition, empathy: pharisees DO NOT. They are all robotic machines: morons.
GeezerGeek -> Pandelis Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:52 PermalinkCircuses for the masses.
Solomonpal -> Cognitive Dissonance Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:38 PermalinkThere being so many convoluted theories floating around, here's mine. Trump, Pence and friends arranged this whole editorial/reaction incident. As you point out, many other stories were suddenly demoted to by-the-way status. This gives Trump another reason to urge his supporters to be enraged. It also could provide courage for purges within the administration, someqthing it has long needed. Diverse elements of the MSM are even attacking each other. Ultimately, ask yourselves: cui bono? Who benefits?
It is all too confusing. I'm getting a headache. Back to munching on dark chocolate and watching cat videos.
nmewn -> Solomonpal Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:42 PermalinkDeep state
Future Jim -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:43 Permalinklol...what a "lode" of horseshit...now they're trying to take out Pence based on what very well be a completely fabricated op-ed run in the NYT's.
#Desperation ;-)
divingengineer -> Took Red Pill Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:41 PermalinkMillions were beginning to think that that Trump wasn't really leading the charge against the NWO and that he was really part of the NWO himself --just like the NYT and the person who wrote the op-ed, but by attacking Trump, these NWO stooges proved Trump is leading the charge against the NWO, and proved (after the Sarah Jeong scandal ) to just as many others that the NYT really is the most trustworthy institution in America ... just when both the NYT and Trump needed some street cred the most ... and there's no way we are getting played ... and there's no way this could be just theater ... or a psyop ... oh wait ...
LaugherNYC -> thereasonablei Thu, 09/06/2018 - 10:26 PermalinkWasn't there a ZH article a few weeks ago about an algorithm that could predict the author of a text, to a very high 90's percentile, based on speech patterns?
I say we try it out and root out this "saboteur".
However, I think we'd find that they are a fake.
Something about it feels contrived, why would a deep spate functionary expose the apparatus that controls power regardless of who is elected? What is the first rule of Fight Club?
I have a suspicion it is a plant, in an effort to convince the masses that the deep state does exist. They are preaching to the choir here at ZH, but 98% of the country has absolutely no idea what the fuck Deep State even means. This makes it real for the common man, In that respect, I guess it's a good thing. It just feels fake though.
rgraf -> Adolfsteinbergovitch Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:59 PermalinkThis whole year is playing out like the script from "House of Cards." Now the MSM is calling for Trump to be removed as "unfit to hold office." Liberals have hated Donald Trump since he first appeared on the scene oil the 1970s as a loudmouth trust fund developer. They fought every project he undertook and mocked him. Famously, "Spy" Magazine belittled him as a "short-fingered vulgarian and Queens-born casino operator" every time they mentioned his name, which was often. The magazine's editor, Graydon Carter, despised Trump. Trump predicted the magazine would fail within a year. So Carter put a calendar in the back of the magazine, tearing off the days to prove Trump wrong. Alas, Trump was right, and Spy shuttered before the year was out. It was a shame, because the magazine was terrific and funny, but it had that typical liberal New York Ivy League snottiness and superiority.
As embarrassing as Trump may be, and he is certainly that, he is not insane, nor unable to do the job. You may hate the job he is doing, but this country has laws. If Mueller proves Trump committed real crimes that mandate his indictment and removal, then so be it. But until then, just because he runs a chaotic ship doesn't mean he can simply be taken out.
Trump is just another bankster stooge. Like Pence, Shillary, McCain, Sessions, Obama, etc. Grow up.
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Trump Saboteur Op-Ed Backfires: LA Times Calls "A Coward"; Greenwald: "Unelected Cabal"
by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/06/2018 - 07:45 672 SHARES
An op-ed written in the New York Times by an anonymous "senior official in the Trump administration" has drawn harsh rebuke from both sides of the aisle and beyond - after everyone from President Trump to Glenn Greenwald to the Los Angeles Times chimed in with various criticisms.
The author, who claims to be actively working against Trump in collusion with other senior officials in what they call a "resistance inside the Trump administration," has now been labeled everything from a coward, to treasonous, to nonexistent.
Trump, as expected, lashed out at the "failing" New York Times - before questioning whether the the mystery official really exists, and that if they do, the New York Times should reveal the author's identity as a matter of national security.
Trump supporters, also as expected, slammed the op-ed as either pure fiction or treason - a suggestion Trump made earlier Wednesday.
What we don't imagine the anonymous author or the Times saw coming was the onslaught of criticism coming from the center and left - those who stand to benefit the most from Trump's fall from grace, or at least probably wouldn't mind it.
In an op-ed which appeared hours after the NYT piece, Jessica Roy of the Los Angeles Times writes: " No, anonymous Trump official, you're not 'part of the resistance.' You're a coward " for not going far enough to stop Trump and in fact enabling him.
If they really believe there's a need to subvert the president to protect the country, they should be getting this person out of the White House. But they're too cowardly and afraid of the possible implications . They hand-wave the notion thusly:
"Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis."
How is it that utilizing the 25th Amendment of the Constitution would cause a crisis, but admitting to subverting a democratically elected leader wouldn't?
...
If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward. - LA Times
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald - the Pulitzer Prize Winning co-founder of The Intercept, also called the author of the op-ed a "coward" whose ideological issues "voters didn't ratify."
Greenwald continues; "The irony in the op-ed from the NYT's anonymous WH coward is glaring and massive: s/he accuses Trump of being "anti-democratic" while boasting of membership in an unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability, mandate or transparency. "
So who is the "coward" in the White House?
While the author remains anonymous, there are a couple of clues in the case. For starters, Bloomberg White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs points out that the New York Times revealed that a man wrote the op-ed, which rules out Kellyanne Conway, Nikki Haley, Ivanka and Melania (the latter two being CNN's suggestions ).
A second clue comes from the language used in the op-ed, and in particular " Lodestar " - a rare word used by Mike Pence in at least one speech. Then again, someone trying to make one think it's pence would also use that word (which was oddly Merriam-Webster's word of the day last Tuesday).
A pence-theory hashtag has already emerged to support this theory; #VeepThroat
Given the Op-Ed's praise of the late Senator John McCain, never-Trumper and Iraq War sabre-rattler Bill Kristol tweeted that it was Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Of course, Kristol and whoever wrote the op-ed are ideologically aligned, so one might question why he would voluntarily work against this person.
So while we don't know who wrote the op-ed, it appears to be backfiring spectacularly on its author(s) amid wild theories and harsh rebuke from all sides of the aisle.
We're sure Carlos Slim - the largest owner of the New York Times and once the richest man on earth, is having a good laugh at Trump's expense either way... for now.
Perhaps Trump can push the "fabrication" angle longer than NYT can retain the moral high ground - especially after they hired, then refused to fire, Sarah Jeong - a new addition to the NYT editorial board who was revealed in old tweets to be an openly bigoted, with a particularly deep hatred of "old white men."
The New York Times stood by Jeong - claiming she was simply responding to people harassing her for being an Asian lesbian - only to have their absurd theory shredded within hours . Jeong in fact has a multi-year history of unprovoked and random comments expressing hatred towards white men.
And now she's right on the front lines of perhaps the greatest attempt to smear Trump yet. Not exactly a good look for the Times at a time when MSM credibility has already taken a hit. How many broke bread with the Clinton campaign leading up to the 2016 election? Vote up! 158 Vote down! 2
mtl4 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 07:47 Permalink
RAT005 -> Keyser Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:12 PermalinkCoup d'etat, in every sense of the word.......Constitution? What's that? Roaches aren't even scurrying when you turn the lights on anymore. Trying to overthrow an elected standing government is the very definition of treason.
Super Sleuth -> RAT005 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:21 PermalinkMy vote/guess is the author is nonexistent.
Super Sleuth -> RAT005 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:21 PermalinkHeadlines across Alt Media now look like this:
TREASON : The New York Times Conspires with Deep State to Galvanize the Coup Against Trump
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=103270
This seditious op-ed by the NYT is really great news as it will produce all sorts of unintended consequences.
It's now official: "The Gray Lady commits T R E A S O N in broad daylight!"
Cursive -> Freeze These Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:17 PermalinkHeadlines across Alt Media now look like this:
TREASON : The New York Times Conspires with Deep State to Galvanize the Coup Against Trump
http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=103270
This seditious op-ed by the NYT is really great news as it will produce all sorts of unintended consequences.
It's now official: "The Gray Lady commits T R E A S O N in broad daylight!"
Government nee -> Cursive Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:48 PermalinkEver heard the term "Teflon Don"? Honestly, the take on this should be that the Trump team leaked it to the dumbasses at the NYT. Sun Tzu is laughing.
Ha. Ha. I see IridiumRebel has heard the term.
Squid-puppets -> Government nee Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:03 PermalinkThat is an interesting angle. . . Trump creating his own narratives by using agents to leak to the blatently bias NYT. Jeebus, but the trouble that strategy could cause. Millions out there are wound tight across Amerika. Wouldnt take much of a spark to get a good fire going. .
Raymond K Hessel -> Squid-puppets Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:23 Permalinkeither Trump himself or the Q anon team setting the NYT up for entrapment to show how easily they fall for & promote fake news
BennyBoy -> Government nee Thu, 09/06/2018 - 10:03 PermalinkBush did a similar thing with WMDs and the WSJ
seryanhoj -> Cursive Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:41 PermalinkTreason?: What state secrets did the asshole writer reveal. What lives endangered? What enemies were helped, besides dems?
shemite -> Freeze These Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:20 PermalinkHard to see Trump doing something clandestine and subtle like that.
pods -> shemite Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:39 PermalinkThese are all staged irrelevances designed to distract people...the few remaining people who are not addicted to their screens. Remember - all media, all members of both parties, all white house employees and especially Trump work for the same cabal. No one can step out of line and stay alive. The cabal knows everything.
Cloud9.5 -> Freeze These Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:37 PermalinkIf people yell loud and often enough, many will actually forget that they are now knee deep in ice-cold saltwater.
#Titanic
Let's focus on the important things, like a scripted reality show fight, versus, idk, the fact that we are again on the precipice of yet another meltdown, only this time the Fed is fucked cause nobody can borrow anymore $$, interest rates are still way too low, and we are on our way to a Maunder Minimum.
I could go on and on with REAL issues, but it seems we just don't talk about them anymore. No need to see how medical is bankrupting us, pensions are fucked, "students" are quickly on their way to being skullfucked with no way out.
We are setup for a calamity that will be 10x worse than 2008, and the only thing I hear is the ever increasing volume of "Everything is Awesome."
Pollygotacracker -> FireBrander Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:47 PermalinkMy dear, you don't really quite realize what you have given the Trump Administration. What the Times have done is assured their readers that there is a counter coup currently underway to bring down this sitting President. Back up and let that reality marinate. Understand that now any failings or short comings that come out of this administration can be laid at the feet of the saboteurs working to bring down the government. So if the economy rolls over and dies, it's the saboteur's fault. If gas prices spike, it's the senator's fault. If a nuke goes off in an American city, it's the saboteur's fault. If the President is impeached, it is the saboteur's fault. Any opposition to this President from this point on is the result of a concerted effort on the part of a gang of saboteurs to bring down the government.
Merry Christmas, you have just added the raison d'eter for a purge of all Obama appointees in every executive agency.
rgraf -> Cloud9.5 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:50 PermalinkPresident Trump thought that he could 'go along to get along'. He is a slow learner. Taking credit for a ginormous stock market bubble created by cheap credit and buybacks, no real effort to build a wall, massive tax cuts to millionaires/billionaires, kissing Israel's ass, the list goes on and on. The man hasn't done much of anything to really help the middle class. And, he hasn't done enough to even protect himself. The op-ed is a hit piece. So what. But, Trump better get up to speed sooner rather than later.
Killtruck -> BaBaBouy Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:12 PermalinkAre you really this stupid? The Trump administration is owned by the banksters, every bit as much as the 'saboteur'. You really don't understand the game at all.
Cloud9.5 -> FireBrander Thu, 09/06/2018 - 10:21 PermalinkNo "anonymous" source.
CIA hit piece to discredit Trump and sow division in the cabinet shortly before midterms.
If Trump fires half of his cabinet, or locks everyone down hunting for the mole - "Seee?! We told you he was tyrannical!" If he doesn't react or address it, it hangs out there, continuing to make everyone believe he's an unstable bumbling moron. And as he's stated previously, he's a "very stable genius".
Either way, what may have been a clever ploy is a ham-fisted CIA plot that misjudged it's audience (like they've never done THAT before) and will continue to backfire. People are so sick of the virtue signalling horseshit (Nike and Kuntpaernik come to mind) that it's almost a guaranteed backfire when you try to do it.
Cloud9.5 -> rgraf Thu, 09/06/2018 - 10:36 PermalinkImagine for a moment that you win the lottery and are appointed the director of the CIA. Do you have any idea what the CIA does? Do you have any inkling beyond what you have read in the media and the alternate media of what agendas are afoot? Do you have any idea of what's at stake? Do you have a clue about who you can trust? Are the lower echelons for you or against you? Who do you talk to just to find out what is going on? Once you are informed can you trust the information? Are the options you are offered real options or are the serving someone's private agenda?
Now imagine that you are President of the United States and half the electorate wants to remove you from office. Who do you tap on the shoulder to initiate the purge? How do you know they won't purge you?
Governing is easy out here in the peanut gallery.
Killtruck -> BaBaBouy Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:12 PermalinkI never said I was smart but I worked for one of the most corrupt bureaucracies in the world for about a decade, and I learned a few things about political tools and how to manipulate the narrative. What the Times has done is publicly assert that there are saboteurs working in the Trump administration who are actively attempting to bring down this President. The Resistance i.e. the Democratic Party through its mouth piece has openly stated that they are participating in an ongoing coup to bring down the government. Do you not realize what kind of club that has just been handed to Trump to beat down his opposition? Any opposition is now aiding and abetting the attempted coup.
As for government, the banks lent the money to purchase it in 1913. The banks running the show is old news.
just the tip -> BabaLooey Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:37 PermalinkNo "anonymous" source.
CIA hit piece to discredit Trump and sow division in the cabinet shortly before midterms.
If Trump fires half of his cabinet, or locks everyone down hunting for the mole - "Seee?! We told you he was tyrannical!" If he doesn't react or address it, it hangs out there, continuing to make everyone believe he's an unstable bumbling moron. And as he's stated previously, he's a "very stable genius".
Either way, what may have been a clever ploy is a ham-fisted CIA plot that misjudged it's audience (like they've never done THAT before) and will continue to backfire. People are so sick of the virtue signalling horseshit (Nike and Kuntpaernik come to mind) that it's almost a guaranteed backfire when you try to do it.
seryanhoj -> just the tip Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:52 Permalinksyria had a legitimately elected government too, and look what's gone on for the last seven years there.
you think these fuckers at CIA see any difference between what they are able to do there and here in the US?
over there they drop pallets of weapons from the sky. over here they drop what passes for information from their mockingbird operations. same difference.
most america haters here at ZH are laughing because they think this is the US getting their comeuppance. the comeuppance we are getting is for challenging those who have been doing this to others for all these years. it's not other nations turning around and doing this to the US. it is those who have done this to others, are now doing it to the citizens of the US. those america haters better hope we citizens win, if not, that hell trump said would be unleashed on iran, will be unleashed on the world. and all the hyperweapons invented or dreamed of will not be able to stop it.
upvoted you for calling it what it is. sedition.
thereasonablei -> cankles' server Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:01 PermalinkGovernment , its representatives and its agencies are unscrupulous and immoral beyond the imagination of a normal person.
Northwoods, Iraq WMD, Vietnam chemical weapon campaign, The Lusitania, Grenada, Tonkin, kennedy assassinations.
The amazing thing is how people swallow all that and trot off to the polls and never ask for any murderous corrupt bastard to be held to account.
Meanwhile we lost the free press so now no lone voice questions the moves of the real powers. The waste their voice on partisan bickering over people who are only puppets leaving real power to play its global killing games un remarked.
blindfaith -> thereasonablei Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:11 PermalinkTREASON!
Chupacabra-322 -> blindfaith Thu, 09/06/2018 - 08:27 PermalinkThe New York Times is OWNED BY A MEXICAN. Carlos Simms, big bed buddy with Hillery.
Koba the Dread -> blindfaith Thu, 09/06/2018 - 09:27 PermalinkThus, Operation Presstitute Mocking Bird.
No, it's owned by Jewish Zionist interests. Carlos Slim just has an interest in it.
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Sep 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Dickweed Wang -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:12 Permalink
Dancing Disraeli -> Lumberjack Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:59 PermalinkFor anyone that hasn't seen this yet check out this video of McStain's "funeral" where Mattis and Kelly give Lindsey Graham the stare down after he gives hugs to Huma Abedine.
Graham refuses to look at General Kelly and when he finally does Kelly points to his right eye like "We're watching you punk". Graham definitely looks like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar as both Mattis and Kelly stare him down. It's classic.
Kayman -> Dickweed Wang Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:33 PermalinkDuring the embrace, Miss Lindsey and Huma touch hands. I assumed something small was being handed off between them, and Kelly's gesture indicated that he had witnessed the transfer. Mattis appeared to be touching an earpiece, as though he were concentrating on something being said.
Kissinger looked like a toad.
JRobby -> Dickweed Wang Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:27 PermalinkMob funeral. "Remember Michael, the guy that comes to you from the Senate, and promises you that you will be safe on his territory... that's the traitor."
Graham, "Mueller must continue the investigation."
Hugs from Huma.
carbonmutant -> nmewn Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:41 PermalinkAhhh Yes, Huma Abedine, the middle eastern spy / goddess (not) married to an Ashkenazi Weiner.
Anthony Weiner and Ashkenazi CHUTZPAH
Most normal people would be thankful that after dealing with what Anthony Weiner has been through over the past few years that they were still breathing.
His original "sexting" scandal would have crushed lesser human beings.
But the intrepid and moronic recidivist Weiner is still at it!
Weiner represents Ashkenazi Jewish hubris at its most egregious.
It is clear that he has no shame, and continues to believe that there are no rules for his truly deplorable behavior. It is a sense of Jewish entitlement that is based on a "Da'as Torah" mentality that allows Jewish leaders and prominent figures like politicians to think that they are above the Law.
It is truly a stunning development that is sure to plague the Clinton presidential campaign.
In a 2010 Politico article written by current MSNBC host Steve Kornacki we see clearly how Weiner gradually became unmoored from his patron Senator Charles Schumer, also an Ashkenazi Jew, and aggressively upped his public profile:
Sinophile Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:14 PermalinkMcCabe is the gateway to bigger fish...
cankles' server -> Sinophile Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:30 PermalinkHow come Gen. Flynn didn't have a GoFundMe deal working for him? I know he is a man of integrity, but I would have contributed had I known of such a fund.
swamp -> Sinophile Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:40 PermalinkGen Flynn volunteered to take a rubber bullet - Q
This was done to distract the MSM like a laser pointer does a cat.
Did it work? Has he been sentenced?
This is the week for the unredacted FISA release. Everything rests on that. We're now at ~51k sealed federal court documents.
MissCellany -> Sinophile Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:22 PermalinkJerome Corsi is coordinating a fund for General Flynn
jack duk -> Sinophile Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:59 PermalinkHe does have one. https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/
quadraspleen Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:15 Permalink847328_3527 -> quadraspleen Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:24 Permalinkone can only hope he's been thrown under the bus. If he's taking one for the team it'll be a slap on the wrist, maybe a year in an open prison or so and a directorship once he's beern "rehabilitated". If he's ben shat on, expect fireworks and much ass-covering by means of singing. /popcorn
apocalypticbrother -> quadraspleen Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:26 PermalinkThe DNC, ACLU and soros are chipping in for his defense.
11b40 -> quadraspleen Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:53 PermalinkAs long as mcabe gives up all his bosses he will be free. It is going to be a party when Comey goez to jail.
JoeTurner Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:16 PermalinkTrump will pardon Flynn if he is sentenced.
Krink26 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:16 Permalinkits scary how close this country came to total catastrophe by electing Hillary Gambino Clinton
FreedomWriter -> Krink26 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:37 PermalinkOne can only hope the 50,000+ sealed indictments are what they are purported to be.
UmbilicalMosqu -> FreedomWriter Thu, 09/06/2018 - 16:20 PermalinkThe swamp is a diverse and rich ecosystem. 50000 indictments is probably just the start.
Heroic Couplet Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:22 PermalinkBolsheviks are like rat turds...a never-ending trail of shit!
apocalypticbrother -> Heroic Couplet Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:28 PermalinkTrump has seven members of his campaign team under indictment. Between Faux News and the Republican National Committee, and their attorneys, who should have been vetting Donald Trump's choices? Clearly, no attorney at Faux or the RNC took time to do background checks. The two fossils, McConnell and Giuliani didn't foresee any problems with Trump's campaign team, nor did Adelson, the Koch Brothers, or Rupert Murdoch.
So how is McCabe any different from Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulous, or Mike Flynn? and come 24 Sept, I want to hear Trump talk at length and in detail about Mike Flynn: where did Flynn learn money laundering? did he pass techniques on to anyone else? Why is he giving speeches to the Ukraine? the United States military got its ass kicked in Viet Nam because of Russia and Communist China, and the Ukraine is a direct line to Russian oligarchs. Robert Mueller is doing the vetting job that someone in the Republican Party should have done as Trump assembled his team.
SDShack Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:23 PermalinkHeroic Cutout. Maybe you are mike pence?
847328_3527 -> SDShack Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:25 PermalinkCNN: "Wolf Blitzer here, now let's join John Brennan and James Clapper for their analysis on today's news."
Chupacabra-322 Thu, 09/06/2018 - 15:24 Permalink"Followed by a guest editorial by star editor of the New York Times, Sarah Jeong."
The day after Trump's surprising win on Nov. 9, 2016, the FBI counterintelligence team engaged in a new mission, bluntly described in another string of emails prompted by another news leak.
"We need ALL of their names to scrub, and we should give them ours for the same purpose," Strzok emailed Page on Nov. 10, 2016, citing a Daily Beast article about some of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's allegedly unsavory ties overseas.
"Andy didn't get any others," Page wrote back, apparently indicating McCabe didn't have names to add to the "scrub."
"That's what Bill said," Strzok wrote back, apparently referring to then-FBI chief of counterintelligence William Priestap. "I suggested we need to exchange our entire lists as we each have potential derogatory CI info the other doesn't." CI is short for confidential informants.
It's an extraordinary exchange, if for no other reason than this: The very day after Trump wins the presidency, some top FBI officials are involved in the sort of gum-shoeing normally reserved for field agents, and their goal is to find derogatory information about someone who had worked for the president-elect.
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Sep 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
And so the sun seems to stand still this last day before the resumption of business-as-usual, and whatever remains of labor in this sclerotic republic takes its ease in the ominous late summer heat, and the people across this land marinate in anxious uncertainty.
What can be done?
Some kind of epic national restructuring is in the works. It will either happen consciously and deliberately or it will be forced on us by circumstance. One side wants to magically reenact the 1950s; the other wants a Gnostic transhuman utopia. Neither of these is a plausible outcome.
Most of the arguments ranging around them are what Jordan Peterson calls "pseudo issues." Let's try to take stock of what the real issues might be.
EnergyThe shale oil "miracle" was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest rates, i.e. Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday ( The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground ).
For all that, the shale oil producers still couldn't make money at it. If interest rates go up, the industry will choke on the debt it has already accumulated and lose access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course - say, to rescue the stock and bond markets - then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more years before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we're out of tricks. It will affect everything.
The perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity produced by other means than fossil fuels , so-called alt energy. This will only happen on the most limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the question of the decrepit electric grid itself.) What's required is a political conversation about how we inhabit the landscape, how we do business, and what kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling suburbia -- or at least moving out of it -- is evidently unthinkable. But it's going to happen whether we make plans and policies, or we're dragged kicking and screaming away from it.
Corporate tyrannyThe nation is groaning under despotic corporate rule. The fragility of these operations is moving toward criticality. As with shale oil, they depend largely on dishonest financial legerdemain. They are also threatened by the crack-up of globalism, and its 12,000-mile supply lines, now well underway. Get ready for business at a much smaller scale.
Hard as this sounds, it presents great opportunities for making Americans useful again, that is, giving them something to do, a meaningful place in society, and livelihoods.
The implosion of national chain retail is already underway. Amazon is not the answer, because each Amazon sales item requires a separate truck trip to its destination, and that just doesn't square with our energy predicament. We've got to rebuild main street economies and the layers of local and regional distribution that support them. That's where many jobs and careers are.
Climate change is most immediately affecting farming. 2018 will be a year of bad harvests in many parts of the world. Agri-biz style farming, based on oil-and-gas plus bank loans is a ruinous practice, and will not continue in any case. Can we make choices and policies to promote a return to smaller scale farming with intelligent methods rather than just brute industrial force plus debt? If we don't, a lot of people will starve to death. By the way, here is the useful work for a large number of citizens currently regarded as unemployable for one reason or another.
Pervasive racketeering rules because we allow it to, especially in education and medicine. Both are self-destructing under the weight of their own money-grubbing schemes. Both are destined to be severely downscaled.
A lot of colleges will go out of business. Most college loans will never be paid back (and the derivatives based on them will blow up).
We need millions of small farmers more than we need millions of communications majors with a public relations minor. It may be too late for a single-payer medical system. A collapsing oil-based industrial economy means a lack of capital, and fiscal hocus-pocus is just another form of racketeering. Medicine will have to get smaller and less complex and that means local clinic-based health care. Lots of careers there, and that is where things are going, so get ready.
Government over-reachThe leviathan state is too large, too reckless, and too corrupt. Insolvency will eventually reduce its scope and scale. Most immediately, the giant matrix of domestic spying agencies has turned on American citizens.
It will resist at all costs being dismantled or even reined in. One task at hand is to prosecute the people in the Department of Justice and the FBI who ran illegal political operations in and around the 2016 election. These are agencies which use their considerable power to destroy the lives of individual citizens. Their officers must answer to grand juries.
As with everything else on the table for debate, the reach and scope of US imperial arrangements has to be reduced. It's happening already, whether we like it or not, as geopolitical relations shift drastically and the other nations on the planet scramble for survival in a post-industrial world that will be a good deal harsher than the robotic paradise of digitally "creative" economies that the credulous expect.
This country has enough to do within its own boundaries to prepare for survival without making extra trouble for itself and other people around the world. As a practical matter, this means close as many overseas bases as possible, as soon as possible.
As we get back to business tomorrow, ask yourself where you stand in the blather-storm of false issues and foolish ideas, in contrast to the things that actually matter.
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Sep 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Most of the arguments ranging around them are what Jordan Peterson calls "pseudo issues." Let's try to take stock of what the real issues might be.
EnergyThe shale oil "miracle" was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest rates, i.e. Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday ( The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground ). For all that, the shale oil producers still couldn't make money at it. If interest rates go up, the industry will choke on the debt it has already accumulated and lose access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course - say, to rescue the stock and bond markets - then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more years before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we're out of tricks. It will affect everything.
The perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity produced by other means than fossil fuels , so-called alt energy. This will only happen on the most limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the question of the decrepit electric grid itself.) What's required is a political conversation about how we inhabit the landscape, how we do business, and what kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling suburbia -- or at least moving out of it -- is evidently unthinkable. But it's going to happen whether we make plans and policies, or we're dragged kicking and screaming away from it.
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Sep 03, 2018 | www.unz.com
Agent76 , says: Next New Comment September 3, 2018 at 2:20 pm GMT
soviet crash , says: Next New Comment September 3, 2018 at 2:28 pm GMTMay 21, 2013 Why the whole banking system is a scam
Godfrey Bloom MEP • European Parliament, Strasbourg, 21 May 2013 • Speaker: Godfrey Bloom MEP, UKIP (Yorkshire & Lincolnshire).
The Federal Reserve Explained In 7 Minutes
TG , says: Next New Comment September 3, 2018 at 2:29 pm GMThttps://www.sott.net/article/390915-Grand-Deception-The-1990s-Raid-on-Russia
Agent76 , says: Next New Comment September 3, 2018 at 2:30 pm GMTIndeed. Especial kudos for mentioning that the bailout cost way way more than the "Tarp" program. Some additional thoughts though.
1. Our financial economy is now so subsidized and rigged, I wonder if it is even possible to have a traditional financial-style collapse? I mean, the stock market is high only because the companies are borrowing like crazy to boost their stock prices, and the Federal Reserve will manufacture unlimited money to boost and bail out financial firms. However, on its own this won't cause hyperinflation, because this money is mostly not making it back onto Main Street, it's just money chasing money in the the clouds. I suggest that perhaps the next collapse will be triggered by physical matters, as massive immigration fuels continued population growth, and the real economy is starved of the massive physical investment needed to deal with this and our own industrial base is gutted by free trade agreements. A physical collapse cannot be papered over by financial manipulation
2. There will be no revolution, sorry. Look at Barack Obama, for eight years he was as corrupt a whore to big money as any US politician, and the man is still treated as a secular saint. The Democrats are for Wall Street bailouts and eternal pointless wars etc.etc. but people will keep voting for them because Trump is a fascist, a racist, "literally Hitler." I mean, CNN told them so, so it must be true. Meanwhile, even though it looked like the Republicans for a moment were going to deal with reality, they too have mostly been co-opted into mindlessly supporting Trump because the Democrats are "socialists" (hah! Lenin would have had a good laugh at that one) and Nancy Pelosi is weird.
We're doomed.
Wizard of Oz , says: September 3, 2018 at 3:01 pm GMTMar 20, 2017 US Debt of $20 Trillion Visualized in Stacks of Physical Cash
Showing stacks of physical cash in following sequence: $100, $10,000, $1 Million, $2 Billion, $1 Trillion, $20 Trillion
@MiggleI think you'll find what common sense might predict, namely, that deaths by shooting have declined in per capita terms. Maybe people still manage to commit suicide as reliably by other means but there can have been no substitute for accidental shootings.
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Sep 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Ten years ago, there was panic in Washington, DC, New York City and financial centers around the world as the United States was in the midst of an economic collapse. The crash became the focus of the presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain and was followed by protests that created a popular movement, which continues to this day.
Banks: Bailed Out; The People: Sold Out
On the campaign trail, in March 2008, Obama blamed mismanagement of the economy on both Democrats and Republicans for rewarding financial manipulation rather than economic productivity. He called for funds to protect homeowners from foreclosure and to stabilize local governments and urged a 21st Century regulation of the financial system. John McCain opposed federal intervention, saying the country should not bail out banks or homeowners who knowingly took financial risks.
By September 2008, McCain and Obama met with President George W. Bush and together they called for a $700 billion bailout of the banks, not the people. Obama and McCain issued a joint statement that called the bank bailout plan "flawed," but said, "the effort to protect the American economy must not fail." Obama expressed "outrage" at the "crisis," which was "a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years."
By October 2008, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), or bank bailout, had recapitalized the banks, the Treasury had stabilized money market mutual funds and the FDIC had guaranteed the bank debts. The Federal Reserve began flowing money to banks, which would ultimately total almost twice the $16 trillion claimed in a federal audit. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that the Federal Reserve gave over $29 trillion to the banks.
This did not stop the loss of nine million jobs , more than four million foreclosures and the deep reduction in wealth among the poor, working and middle classes. A complete banking collapse was averted, but a deep recession for most people was not.
The New Yorker described the 2008 crash as years in the making, writing:
" the crisis took years to emerge. It was caused by reckless lending practices, Wall Street greed, outright fraud, lax government oversight in the George W. Bush years, and deregulation of the financial sector in the Bill Clinton years. The deepest source, going back decades, was rising inequality. In good times and bad, no matter which party held power, the squeezed middle class sank ever further into debt."
Before his inauguration, Obama proposed an economic stimulus plan, but, as Paul Krugman wrote, "Obama's prescription doesn't live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he's offering isn't as strong as his language about the economic threat."
In the end, the stimulus was even smaller than what Obama proposed. Economist Dean Baker explained that it may have created 2 million jobs, but we needed 12 million. It was $300 billion in 2009, about the same in 2010, and the remaining $100 billion followed over several years -- too small to offset the $1.4 trillion in annual lost spending.
New York Magazine reports the stimulus was "a spending stimulus bigger without being required to admit guilt or having their cases referred for prosecution. The fines were paid by shareholders , not the perpetrators.
Protest near Union Square in New York, April, 2010. Popular Resistance
Still at Risk
Many of the root causes of the crisis remain today, making another economic downturn or collapse possible. The New Yorker reports that little has changed since 2008, with Wall Street banks returning to risky behavior and the inadequate regulation of Dodd-Frank being weakened. Big finance is more concentrated and dominant than it was before the crash. Inequality and debt have expanded, and despite the capital class getting wealthier in a record stock market with corporate profits soaring, real wages are stuck at pre-crisis levels .
People are economically insecure in the US and live with growing despair, as measured by reports on well-being . The Federal Reserve reported in 2017 that "two in five Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense." Further, "more than one in five said they weren't able to pay the current month's bills in full, and more than one in four said they skipped necessary medical care last year because they couldn't afford it."
Positive Money writes: "Ten years on, big banks are still behaving in reckless, unfair and neglectful ways . The structural problems with our money and banking system still haven't been fixed. And many experts fear that if we don't change things soon, we're going to sleepwalk into another crash ."
William Cohen, a former mergers and acquisitions banker on Wall Street, writes that the fundamentals of US economy are still flawed. The Economist describes the current situation: "The patient is in remission, not cured."
The Response Of the Popular Movement
Larry Eliott wrote in the Guardian , "Capitalism's near-death experience with the banking crisis was a golden opportunity for progressives." But the movement in the United States was not yet in a position to take advantage of it.
There were immediate protests. Democratic Party-aligned groups such as USAction, True Majority and others organized nationwide actions . Over 1,000 people demonstrated on Wall Street and phones in Congress were ringing wildly. While there was opposition to the bailout, there was a lack of national consensus over what to do.
Protests continued to grow. In late 2009, a "Move Your Money" campaign was started that urged people to take their money out of the big banks and put it in community banks and credit unions. The most visible anti-establishment rage in response to the bailout arose later in the Tea Party and Occupy movements . Both groups shared a consensus that we live in a rigged economy created by a corrupt political establishment. It was evident that the US is an oligarchy, which serves the interests of the wealthy while ignoring the necessities of the people.
The anti-establishment consensus co
