Monday, March 21, 2016

RNC chairman ready for convention fight over Donald Trump

‘We’re preparing for that possibility,’ Reince Priebus says

Getty Images
Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally Saturday in Fountain Hills, Arizona.


The head of the Republican National Committee braced the party faithful Sunday for what could be the first contested nominating convention in generations, suggesting increasing odds of a showdown this summer over Donald Trump’s candidacy.
While Trump has a big lead in convention delegates, many party elders and strategists, alarmed over his ascent, are redoubling efforts to deny him the nomination. At the least, they are seeking to force a battle at the July convention in Cleveland. In multiple television interviews Sunday, Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, raised the prospect of a protracted convention fight with multiple rounds of voting needed to determine the winner.
“We’re preparing for that possibility,” Priebus said on ABC. That marks a shift from earlier this month, when Priebus told a gathering of conservatives that a contested convention was “highly, highly unlikely.”


Trump’s Delegates Could Betray Him on Convention Floor
If Donald Trump fails to reach 1,237 delegates, and has to fight for the nomination at a contested convention, he might have a problem: some of his own delegates may be at risk of fleeing and tilting the election. WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports. Photo: Getty
The GOP chairman acknowledged a convention fight could lead to the selection of a nominee who fell well short in the primary voting, but he stressed there is “nothing nefarious” about that. Trump has warned against efforts to deny him the nomination.
Priebus’ efforts to tamp down unease over a convention fight come as the campaign moves into a much slower and more grueling phase. Voters will weigh in Tuesday in Arizona and Utah, and on April 5 in Wisconsin, but then the campaign will wait two weeks until the New York primary.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

4 renovations that could decrease your home’s value

Why more bedrooms are almost always better than bigger ones

 

Think twice before turning your garage into a living space.



Thinking of getting rid of a bedroom to expand another? Make your choice carefully.
Removing a bedroom is one of those home-improvement blunders that can ding a home’s worth, even if it creates a larger bedroom — or other living space — in its place.
The reasoning is simple: The more bedrooms a home has, the higher the price it can usually command.
Listing prices are set by looking at what comparable homes are selling for in the same market, and the number of bedrooms is an important characteristic used to compare two properties. “When you start eliminating bedroom space, you’ve completely changed the comparable value of your home in the neighborhood,” said David Pekel, president of Pekel Construction and Remodeling, in Wauwatosa, Wis.
Reducing the number of bedrooms also means fewer potential buyers interested in your home. “There are people who won’t look at two-bedroom or three-bedroom [homes],” said Brendon DeSimone, a real-estate agent in New York and author of the book “Next Generation Real Estate.” The typical home purchased over the last year was a single-family home with three bedrooms and two baths, and a total of 1,870 square feet, according to the National Association of Realtors’ annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.
There’s a good chance that not even a sprawling master will get them to change their minds.
Big master bedrooms that resemble luxury hotel suites were once a popular home feature, Pekel said. And while there are certainly some buyers who will be wowed by that, the trend is waning, he said. Homeowners with these big bedrooms often find that the extra furniture are places for clothes to collect and they have no desire to work at their bedroom desks, he said. (The exception: families that take in a relative who wants their own private space, removed from the rest of the home.)
Pekel has come into contact with more homeowners who want to break a big bedroom up into two rooms instead of the other way around, he said.
If you’re lucky enough to have a master bedroom on the first floor without having to deal with stairs, you’ll most likely want to keep it intact, said Michele Silverman Bedell, chief executive of Silversons, a residential agency based in Westchester, N.Y. Baby boomers, foreseeing a day when they can’t get up and down stairs as easily, will pay a premium for this feature, Bedell said. She sold a home in White Plains this summer with a first-floor master that was listed for $1.385 million and sold for $1.5 million after 19 days on the market and multiple bids.
All that said, the impact of removing a bedroom will differ depending on how many bedrooms you start out with. If you have a five- or six-bedroom home, you might have a bedroom to spare without too much of a financial impact, Bedell said. If you have several bedrooms but they’re small (say, less than 8 feet by 10 feet), you also might justify combining two, she added. But keep in mind that a lot of buyers typically want separate rooms for their children, along with a guest room, she said.
Of course, if resale value isn’t a concern, none of this matters at all. “Everything is relative to what the homeowner’s long-range intent is,” Pekel said. Those who plan on staying in the house until they die — and there are a growing number of people who intend on aging in place — might not care at all about what the next buyer will want, he added. But if you’re at all concerned about your home’s value, you’ll probably want to discuss the potential financial impact of a renovation with your remodeler or real-estate agent first.
Other improvements that can have a detrimental effect on a home’s value:
Removing closets
Several years ago, Bedell had a client who took the closet out of the master bedroom and made a huge master bath. Big mistake. This change made the home much harder to sell. “People need closets,” she said. “They’ll walk in and count the number of closets per room.”
Turning the garage into living space
Most people have cars they’d like to put a roof over, DeSimone said, so getting rid of a garage makes a home less appealing to a lot of people. This renovation also will remove valuable storage space for many homeowners. While the importance of a garage may vary by location, 74% of recent buyers said that having a garage is extremely or very important, according to a recent survey of 7,500 people throughout the country by Crescent Communities, a real-estate investment and operating firm. Bedell’s advice: If you’re going to turn a garage into a family room, office or extra bedroom, leave the garage doors on the outside. When you go to sell, a buyer can easily turn the space back into a garage without too much trouble.
An overabundance of wallpaper
Yes, wallpaper can be removed, but it can be a difficult endeavor — especially if there’s a lot of it throughout the home, Bedell said. And this goes for overdoing just about any finish. She recalled a home that had an entrance hall covered with mirrors; it would have cost thousands of dollars just to remove them, she said.
All of this isn’t to say you shouldn’t take on any of these improvements. But if you do, if possible, “do it in a way that you can put it back when you go to sell,” DeSimone said.

Opinion: Is Janet Yellen blind to the rebound in inflation?

The Fed believes temporary factors are goosing the inflation rate

Bloomberg
Inflation hawks think Janet Yellen is behind the curve and needs to raise interest rates to keep inflation from boiling over.


The U.S. economy, by all indications, is near full employment, and, according to the inflation hawks, that means inflation rates should start rising again.
In fact, the hawks say, inflation is already bubbling, and, if Janet Yellen doesn’t cool things fast, inflation will be at a full boil. Very soon, the hawks say, the inflation rate will exceed 2%, which is the Federal Reserve’s target rate.
Inflation has been below 2% for four years, which is one reason the Fed is keeping money so easy. Most Fed officials don’t think inflation will get back to 2% on a sustainable basis for two more years.
But the data are troubling. Six months ago, inflation barely had a pulse, rising at just 0.2% year-over-year. But now the personal consumption expenditure price index (the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) is at 1.25%, even as energy prices continue to drop.
Inflation is now rising at a 1.25% rate in the past 12 months.
What’s behind this recent uptick in inflation? One theory is that we have too many jobs. That is, economic theory suggests that when the unemployment rate gets very low, workers gain bargaining power and are able to command higher wages because the demand for labor is higher than the supply. Bosses must raise wages to keep good workers, and then they must raise their selling prices in order to pay those wages.
This relationship is known as the Philips Curve, and it’s been the main theory behind the Fed’s monetary policy for more than 50 years: The Fed tries to keep the unemployment rate just above the level that would fuel inflation. That level is known as the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or NAIRU.
There’s only one problem. Although the theory seems quite reasonable on a chalkboard, the empirical evidence shows that it doesn’t work in the real world. NAIRU seems to change over time. Sometimes it seems that NAIRU is above 6%. But right now, NAIRU seems to be below 5%. It could be below 3%. Recent research cited by the Council of Economic Advisers suggests NAIRU could be zero. No one really knows. And no one has a better theory to explain inflation.
So far, Fed officials are doing what seems most practical: They are letting the economy run. Before they feel obligated to slam on the brakes, they’ll want actual evidence of higher prices and higher wages. They’ll cautiously raise rates away from zero but maintain accommodative policy for a while longer, especially with risks of global contagion rising.
But what about the spike in the PCE price index in the past few months? Surely that indicates that NAIRU has been breached! Isn’t it time to get serious about raising rates?
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen was asked about that at her latest press conference on Wednesday and she said she wasn’t convinced.
“Given that the economy is now close to our maximum employment objective, hopefully inflation is moving up,” Yellen said, before switching to the other hand. “As you mention, recent readings on inflation have moved up. There may be some, you know, I want to warn that there may be some transitory factors that are influencing that.”
Jewelry and watch prices have surged in the past two months.
In other words, just as transitory declines in oil prices and the one-time strengthening of the dollar have pushed the PCE price index far below the Fed’s target, transitory increases in other prices are now pushing the index higher. But Yellen doesn’t think it’ll last, in either case. Oil prices and the dollar will stabilize, and the transitory price increases seen over the past few months will also fade away.
Now, this may seem like cherry picking the data: Yellen picks which prices matter to her, and disregards the rest. But there is a method to her madness.
Remember, inflation is a general and sustained increase in prices, not just temporary increases or decreases for a few goods and services. What the Fed cares about, what we care about, is the pace of underlying inflation. Transitory spikes or dips aren’t generalized inflation; that’s just the markets working out the ebbs and flows of supply and demand.
Economists have a lot of tools to help them figure out whether the underlying rate of inflation has changed or whether it’s just temporary factors. One method is to use core inflation measures, which automatically ignore volatile food and energy prices. Core inflation does a pretty good job of predicting future inflation rates, but it offends people who think food and energy prices matter in the real world.
Another method has been devised by the Dallas Fed. Its trimmed mean PCE index strips out whatever prices are rising or falling most in a given month, ignoring the outliers on the theory that the biggest price changes are reactions to shocks in individual markets, not part of a general trend.
Researchers at the Dallas Fed point out that the recent spike in the PCE index has been driven by unusually large price increases for goods such as apparel, jewelry, motor vehicles, and drugs, and for services such as air fares, school lunches, tickets for spectator sports and banking fees.
Apparel prices, for instance, are up at a 14% annual rate in the first two months of the year, compared with a 0.9% decrease in 2015. Jewelry and watch prices are up at a 62% annual rate, compared with a 0.7% drop in 2015. Motor vehicle prices are up at a 3.2% rate, compared with a 0.2% rise last year. Drug prices are up at an 11.5% rate, compared with a 1.7% increase last year.
Most likely, the recent spike in the PCE index is due to temporary shocks, not to an acceleration in underlying inflation. There’s no urgency to raise rates on account of hyperinflation lurking right around the corner. In reality, the Fed would be ecstatic if it could get inflation back to 2% any time soon.

Oil prices extend losses after U.S. rig count rises for first time in 13 weeks

Getty 
One more U.S. oil rig went active last week


Crude oil prices fell on Monday, extending a decline seen late last week after the first in the number of number of active U.S. oil-drilling rigs in 13 weeks.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures for April delivery CLJ6, -1.88%  fell 64 cents, or 1.6%, to $38.80 a barrel. The contract, which expires at Monday’s settlement, closed down 1.9% on Friday at $39.44 a barrel, after pushing above $41 during that session. May crude CLK6, -1.58%  dropped 53 cents, or 1.3%, to $40.78 a barrel. Oil still managed a fifth weekly rise last week.
May Brent crude LCOK6, -1.31%  , the global benchmark, dropped 41 cents, or 1%, to $40.79 a barrel.
On Friday, Baker Hughes BHI, +1.35%  reported that the number of active U.S. oil-drilling rigs increased by 1 to 387 — the first in 13 weeks — though total active domestic oil rigs fell by 4 to 476. After that rig data was announced, WTI crude, which had touched lows under $40 ahead of the release, added to losses.
Oil still managed a fifth weekly rise last week, spurred by ongoing hopes that an April 17 meeting in Doha, Qatar between major oil producers could lead to higher prices.

Did central bankers make a secret deal to drive markets? This rumor says yes

Speculation is flourishing about a tacit “Shanghai Accord”

Reuters/Aly Song
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the U.K.'s finance minister George Osborne at the G-20 meeting.


The dollar has taken a surprisingly big stumble in recent weeks, prompting traders to ask: What’s really driving the selloff? The answer some are coming up with smacks of conspiracy theory.
Rumors are flourishing that global policy makers made a secret deal at the G-20 meeting in Shanghai late last month. This “Shanghai Accord” to weaken the greenback was aimed at calming the financial markets, which had gotten off to an awful start to the new year, according to the chatter.
No foreign-exchange pact was announced at the February meeting of central bankers and policy makers from the 20 largest economies. That hasn’t stopped speculation that a plan of action was whipped up behind closed doors, as its supposed effects are beginning to emerge now: The greenback DXY, +0.20% has shaved off more than 3% since the gathering, sparking a rally in stocks, emerging markets assets and commodities.
TimeU.S. Dollar Index (DXY)11 Jan25 Jan8 Feb22 Feb7 Mar21 Mar
US:DXY
949698100
“To any conspiracy theorists, it’s all become quite clear,” said Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG, in a note Friday. “There is a global coordinated central bank effort to weaken the [dollar] in play, which in turn has led to a massive de-risking in equity and credit markets.”
“A weaker [dollar] has been a key reason why we have seen a 54% rally in U.S. crude CLJ6, -1.95%  and 40% rally in Brent LCOK6, -1.48% ” he noted.
The theorists argue a strong dollar would be bad for the global economy and could spark market volatility — ringing alarm bells with policy makers after the greenback’s strong 2015 rally.
The dollar index jumped almost 10% last year. In December, it reached its highest level in more than a decade on expectations the Federal Reserve would start to increase interest rates.
This 2015 run-up sent ripple effects through financial markets, with emerging markets and U.S. exporters suffering in particular. Oil prices were also hit, although the substantial decline in crude futures was largely due to a persistent supply glut.
Unexpected moves
Another argument is that central bankers have made some unexpected moves recently, taking markets by surprise.
“Since the G20 meeting in Shanghai there have been many red flags,” noted Weston. “Whether it’s the [People’s Bank of China] easing the Reserve Ratio Requirements (RRR) by 50 basis points, the [Reserve Bank of New Zealand] cutting its cash rate by 25 basis points (very much out of consensus), or the ECB moving to a focus on credit markets and going significantly above and beyond expectations.”
Read: A weaker euro isn’t a top priority for Draghi’s ECB
This week the Fed struck a surprisingly dovish tone and hinted it would significantly slow the pace of rate hikes year. The comments sparked a selloff in the dollar, with some market observers seeing it as another evidence of the secret “Shanghai Accord”.
Read: Fed gives gold bulls a reason to cheer, for now
Plus, there is something of a precedent: The Plaza Accord. In 1985, the finance ministers from the U.S., France, West Germany, Japan and the U.K. made a deal to jointly guide the dollar lower against the yen and the German mark.
The action was meant to help jump-start the U.S. economy by reversing an extended run-up by the greenback.
Read: To stave off currency war, is it time for a coordinated response to the Chinese yuan?
Joachim Fels, global economic adviser at bond-trading firm PIMCO, told Bloomberg he also suspects central bankers have coordinated their actions to prevent the dollar from growing stronger.
“There seems to be some kind of tacit Shanghai Accord in place,” he told the news outlet. “The agreement is to roughly stabilize the dollar versus the major currencies through appropriate monetary policy action, not through intervention.”
However, not everyone agrees something is afoot. Esty Dwek, global strategist at Loomis, Sayles & Co., said she’d be surprised by a secret deal and that she hasn’t heard anything about it.
Instead the recent dollar weakness comes down to two other factors, she said.
“First of all, the dollar has had a huge rally over a number of years,” she said. “And second, historically, what we see often is that the dollar actually stops rallying once the Fed starts hiking. It rallies before [rate increases].”

Let’s create a new government

(INTELLIHUB) — The New World Order is no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s a fact. It’s real. And it’s here. As a result we the people are subject to a tyrannous government which has been bought and now owned by those that collectively make up the NWO. Those that do not see this are either in denial or brain dead. For those of us that do understand what is going on then we know we are in the midst of a crisis. So what can we do about it? We can sit around and complain and whine. We can post things on Face Book. We can write our congressman. We can go vote for a Republican and a Democrat. We can do what the Bundy’s did in Nevada.  We can join a militia and scream armed revolution. How well are any of those tactics working? They’re not.

When doing a business plan we have to ask three questions: Where were we? Where are we now? Where are we going?
We know where we’ve been. We had a constitution and a republic with unalienable rights and economic freedoms. If nothing is done then we’re heading to a one world government where those of us that are not card carrying members of the NWO are in for a lot of misery and grief; maybe extermination. For those that laugh at me go read about Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Or read about the FEMA camps, the PATRIOT Act, the constitution free zone, the NSA surveillance.  If you aren’t alarmed then you are brain dead and you should go cower under your bed and let us people who do know take control of this.
The question of where we are is of utmost importance. Let’s look at our citizens. We have those that are members of the democrat and republican parties who profit off of the current system. We have imports like the Pakistanis and Indians who think that no matter how corrupt things are it’s better than where they came from. We have the brain dead who don’t have a clue. We have those with no backbones who are afraid to do anything. We have those that are lazy who say good luck in changing things and are for it as long as they can lie on their couch and watch television. These people will not march on Washington, take to the streets or join a rebellion to thwart what is coming our way. What then will these people do? They’ll vote. Vote for what? A new government. How? Read on.
Back in the colonial days the people elected a continental congress. The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies which became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution. It worked then. It will work now. In a nutshell we get people who will represent every congressional district in the country. We then have a political party which has the capacity to occupy every seat in congress. All we have to do is get them elected. Why would the people vote for us?
In business the first rule of marketing is give the customer what they want. That’s precisely what we’ll do. We’ll hit every hot button they have. If the people vote us in we’ll have control of the legislative and administrative branches of the government. We will promise the people and deliver on the first day in office to do the following:
We will make it so that their representatives will never be bought off again by making lobbying illegal. We will tighten up all the loop holes like giving money to a spouse or relative of an elected official. This law will be so tight that there is no way money can be given to a representative. It’s the biggest hot button with the people and we will exploit it to not only get elected but to rid ourselves of our government being bought off. It’s a slam dunk.
We will make government corruption the same as treason. Anyone involved in any government whether it be city, state, county or federal who is found guilty of corruption or the above law will be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Slam dunk number two.
This idea can be debated but I would propose that every congressman will have a computerized tally board. A proposed law or decision of the government will be put to the people over a website. Those that are legal citizens of this country will be able to read the proposal and will be able to vote by phone or computer. The congressman will see the results of the vote and then be mandated to vote as the people wish. This would truly be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We could put the following questions to the people. Should we repeal the PATRIOT Act? Should we withdraw our military from here or there? Should we put tariffs on goods manufactured over seas? Should we repeal the trade agreements? And so on and so forth. This way our representatives cannot make any bad decisions or go against the people’s will. This too I think would be a slam dunk.
In conclusion we’ll be creating a political party that will be a new government the way the founders envisioned it; a nation ruled by the constitution that serves the people. This is doable within a few years in time for the next elections. Once we have the people in place and the word spreads we’ll be able to get the money needed to finance this. I think this is the only way to win over the people. In parting here is an idea that may warm your cockles.  Maybe before we repeal the PATRIOT Act we use it against those that have corrupted our government and economic system. As the act gives us the right to take their assets we can take all of their ill gotten gains and use it to make Social Security solvent.  Think of that.
Image: Frank Vest/Flickr

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Fear In The Economy Reaches An All Time High

 Consumer confidence tumbles to 5 month lows. More retail stores reporting declining sales.Caterpillar sales decline and the companies revenue declines at the same time. Fear indicator surges to record highs. The economy is collapsing and investor are nervous. US rebound in manufacturing is an illusion, the economy is not improving. Baltic Dry Index is around 395. Bernanke says the economy is fine and tells everyone to stop worrying about negative rates. The free trade agreement do not add jobs to the economy.

Why the Rise of Trump, Cruz and Sanders Is the Logical Result of the 1% Not Paying Taxes

You reap what you sow.

1 Trillion Dollar Lawsuit Filed Against MSM For Staging ‘Sandy Hook’



This story came out about a year ago and I'm not sure how I missed it, as I was certainly looking for new developments in the Sandy Hook story. 
In early December 2014, filmmaker and author William Brandon Shanley launched several lawsuits against Big Media totaling over $1 Trillion over their "coverage" of the Sandy Hook "Massacre".
In his statement, Shanley says:
“After exhaustive research, the good news is that overwhelming evidence reveals that no children or teachers died at Sandy Hook two years ago. For relief, I have filed lawsuits against the media in US District Court in New Haven for Fraud and Terrorism.
Part of his abundant evidence includes "Exhibit D": The Connecticut State Police dash cams record no evacuation of children from the school at critical moments, which he calls "Smoking Gun evidence no children died at Sandy Hook.”
Shanley’s Complaint continues:
"Defendants entered in a multi-year conspiracy, meeting in groups separately and together, to commit fraud and terrorism, i.e., to brainwash the public into thinking a lone gunman drill, known as the “Sandy Hook Massacre” was real, when in fact it was a staged FEMA National Level Exercise Event that redirected government resources to terrorize the public. These crimes were undertaken with the intent of subverting the US Constitution and to affect national, state and local laws.
"This fraud involved lying to the public, faking news, publishing one-sided news reports, censoring reality, suppressing facts, and deliberately skewing the news to shift public perceptions.
"The true costs of this breach of integrity and trust to society are unfathomable. Instead of fulfilling their Constitutional Role as the People’s Surrogates and being honest brokers of information, the Plaintiff will show how the men and women who dominate the TV news industry in the United States broke laws, besmirched the First Amendment, their Constitutional role as government watchdogs, and forfeited the right to report the news, and thereby profit from news production and distribution.
"The sine qua non of journalism is the search for truth. Our Fourth Estate chose a different path. Punitive damages of one year’s annual revenue from each Defendant are being sought to establish a News Trust, that will free journalism and restore trust and integrity to our communications sources. A democracy cannot survive this tyranny over human consciousness.
In a separate Complaint, The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Hartford Courant, and the Newtown Bee are being sued for 10 billion USD in punitive damages. Both cases were filed pro se, without an attorney. Here are the details of the two cases filed, for those able to obtain login credentials:
Case Name: Shanley v. Smith et al. Case Number: 3:14-cv-01881-JAM Filer: William Brandon Shanley
Case Name: Shanley v. O’Prey et al. Case Number: 3:14-cv-01929-JAM Filer: William Brandon Shanley
On December 17, 2014 the US District Court of Connecticut dismissed the latter case, according to this site, which is dedicated to defending the truth of the official Sandy Hook story and to destroying th reputations of anyone who dares question it.
On December 30, 2014, scrawny, 64-year-old Shanley got himself assaulted by two police officers and somehow ended up drugged with Haldol and hospitalized, then jailed for 43 days. Let that be a lesson to anyone who wants to get "cute" about Sandy Hook.
Intelligent and sometimes humorous speculation about the whole affair can be found on this Reddit subdomain.

Government statistics are notoriously unreliable.

I’d say looking at SEC filings and other corporate data is more useful.
I was recently looking at official corporate data from China and my reaction was “My God, are we already so down the rabbit hole?”.
COFCO is a giant Chinese State-owned corporation which mostly focuses on food products, from cooking oil to sweets. It present debt to EBITDA ratio is a headache inducing 52x. It means for every yuan it earns (before inflation, ammortization etc) it has 52 yuan in debt.
I find it telling the central planners in Beijing saw no need to embellish COFCO’s balance sheets despite the power to do so.
But one can always say “COFCO is State-owned, it has no need to be careful with money because Beijing will always bail it out”.
So let’s look at Fosun, a privately owned Shanghai-based conglomerate which reminds me more and more of the Korean chaebol in the Park era.
Fosun has a debt to EBITDA ratio of 55x, worse than COFCO. It’s literally an empire built upon a mountain of debt.
I find these statistics telling and a perfect explanation of the reason why so many people feel the 2008 depression has never ended despite rosey government statistics: savers, who invariably belong to the so called Main Street, are being punished to reward big spenders, who invariably reside in the local equivalent of Wall Street.
Without the stealth taxation of savings, there’d be no way even China could sustain those debt to EBITDA ratios.
No savings mean no capital accumulation, meaning the small guy will have to work twice as hard just to stay in the same place.
Of course we are daily told there’s no need for savings because, thanks to the “heroic” monetary policies implemented by the ECB, the BOJ and the PBOC credit will flow like a river. Each time the ECB cut rates (and trust me on this: we haven’t seen anything yet), the propaganda machine gets into high gear and hammers home banks will open the spigots and bring about a new age of prosperity.
They’ve been doing this for seven years and counting and the only thing they managed to is reversing the household deleveraging trends we had across Europe after 2008, with that new debt going in just two sectors: cars and housing. Neither are capital assets and neither can generate wealth. In fact cars can be considered consumer goods, as their value plummets the instant a registration plate is riveted onto them or the new model hits the market.
In short that freshly printed money which trickles down into Main Street goes into buying non-productive assets whose value is completely at the mercy of a million factors (houses) and rapidly depreciating consumer goods (cars).

MC

China May Have Over 4,000 Tons of Hidden Gold Reserves — Jeff Nielson

 TOPICS IN THIS INTERVIEW:
02:00 Gold/Silver Price Manipulation Currently
05:25 Long-Term Cycle Ending
07:25 Massive Gold/Silver Manipulation by Banks
09:20 China Covertly Hoarding Gold
12:45 Invevitable Massive World Crash from Fiat Currency
16:20 Hyperinflation Coming
18:20 Will there be New Gold/Silver Price Lows? How will Mining Companies Fair
21:10 Will More Investors Jump into Mining Company Shares?

George Soros’ Anti-Trump Campaign

Stephen Lendman
Soros represents pure evil, one of the world’s most infamous figures.
He’s a notorious international con man, known for profiting from human misery, supporting color revolutions and wars to serve his interests.
Moscow’s Prosecutor General calls his Open Society Institute and Open Society Institute Assistance Foundations “threat(s) to Russian national security and constitutional order.”
His groups are subversive, undermining fundamental freedoms, listed as undesirable foreign organizations in Russia for good reason. They’re prohibited from supporting political parties, free to engage in other activities.
Soros menaces democratic freedoms worldwide. He supports war goddess, Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton for president, pouring millions of dollars into her campaign.
At the same time, he’s militantly anti-Trump. His ruffians disrupted his March 11 Chicago rally, stoking violence, causing it to be cancelled for security reasons.
They’ve been disruptive at other Trump events, using dirty tactics to turn voters against him - not for his racist and other extremist views, for concern about power brokers not being able to control him.
Soros plans days of anti-Trump protests in April. His anti-democratic “Democracy Spring” campaign is scheduled from April 2 -18.
He claims it’s about saving US democracy he deplores, actively working against its values worldwide. They conflict with his predatory interests.
He aims for “the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation (on the phony pretext of) saving our democracy.” It’s in “crisis,” he says - “dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.”
As of mid-March 2016, Forbes estimates his net worth at $24.9 billion, Trump at $4.5 billion, largely self-funding his campaign, spending relatively little compared to Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and the failed campaigns of other high-profile Republican aspirants.
Soros spends billions of dollars for disruptive activities serving his interests worldwide. His April scheme intends mobilizing thousands of anti-Trump hooligans, training them to be disruptive, intending mob actions.
Beginning at Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, he plans marches storming Washington’s Capitol Hill - supported by Soros financed MoveOn.org, corrupt labor bosses and other dubious elements.
He wants democracy subverted, not saved - Hillary Clinton and other candidates he controls elected to high office.
His agenda is pure evil. He once said “(w)e need a global sherif.” Perhaps he has himself in mind.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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"Russia: The diplomatic and economic error of France"

"The economic sanctions against Russia and the Russian countermeasures are a disaster for the French economy"

Lectures Françaises, March 17, 2016
Translated from French by Tom Winter March 18, 2016

What the experts were saying has actually happened: The economic sanctions against Russia, followed by Russian countermeasures -- that Jean-Pierre Chevènement characterized as a "spiral of insanity" -- are a disaster for the French economy.

The numbers are out: for 2014 the figures for franco-russian commerce dropped 17.6%. For 2015, they are down more than 45%. The investments we were expecting, the economic projects -- down the drain.

The results have been observed by all of our fellow citizens, what with the drastic drop in French exports to Russia, especially in the case of agricultural products. Hence the recent demonstrations of French farm folk, progressively more and more desperate. We have all seen the banners giving vent to farm exasperation, neglected, even scorned by our Ministers. They've all called for the lifting of the sanctions and the renewal of exporting farm products to Russia.

But it's all too plain that Russia will not forget the snubs it has endured of our backing out of the Mistrals, nor the diplomatic alignment of our country backing the United States.

As Guillaume Faye explained it in Polemia (12/1/2016) the russophobia of certain French political figures does not arise from their hostility to "Tsar" Putin (they always been most courteous with the Castro brothers and other communist regimes. They scramble to vacation in Cuba or Viet Nam, exemplary democracies that they are), nor does it stem from any Russian "menace," which doesn't actually exist.

Their current hostility to Russia is ideological.

They cannot endure a regime that, in fact, is putting in place a "conservative revolution." By encouraging birth, patriotism, defense of religious tradition, historic tradition, the pride of independence, the efforts to equip itself with a modern army... The danger for the western socio-liberal alignments is that these principles that they denounce as populist might just take hold in Europe [!]

It is by no means sure that vague promises of lifting the sanctions in the summer will be enough to redress the situation of the farm people, or to calm down the repeated uproars from farm and small-scale businessmen.

Shocking CVS Earnings Drop

80% of all newly created Jobs going to illegal Immigrants…. Hillary Clinton faces challenge: Black voters in Rust Belt… FLASHBACK: Donald Trump says unemployment is actually 40%

Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama are immigrants, both legal and illegal, according to an analysis that suggests immigration has soaked up a large portion of what little job growth there has been over the past three years.
THE FURNACE
Shock report: All new jobs going to immigrants, not U.S.-born workers
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/06/27/shock-report-all-new-jobs-going-to-immigrants-not-u-s-born-workers/
Two-thirds of jobs go to immigrants during Obama’s four years
Researchers say legals and illegals are more mobile than natives in America
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/31/two-thirds-of-jobs-go-to-immigrants/?page=all
As depressing as the statistic sounds, the jobless rate was a lot higher in the 1970s.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is not predicated on the candidate’s mastery of or allegiance to facts.
His views on things like immigration or international trade are just not supported by any relevant statistics. So when The Donald called into CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday and claimed that Americans are living in a “false economy,” where the unemployment rate is actually 40% rather than the 5.1% as reported by the Labor Department, you’d be forgiven for believing this was just another Trumpian whopper.
But actually, this view can be supported by actual statistics. If you use the broadest definition of unemployment, the ratio of people over the age of 16 with jobs to the overall 16-and-over population, the Labor Department says that 40.6% of the population is unemployed.
http://fortune.com/2015/09/14/donald-trump-unemployment-rate-jobs/
Hillary Clinton faces challenge: Black voters in Rust Belt
MILWAUKEE (AP) — This month has brought a new challenge for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign: Black voters in Rust Belt states aren’t as solidly behind her as they’ve been in the South.
It led to the Democratic front-runner’s surprise loss in Michigan, where about a third of black voters supported Bernie Sanders, and it nearly cost her Missouri, where African-Americans voted more like their counterparts across the Midwest than in the South. Now it could foreshadow vulnerability for Clinton in Wisconsin, the next Northern battleground primary.
What’s behind the trend? Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research reveal a possible answer:
Black voters up North have appeared more likely than black voters down South to say race relations in the U.S. have recently gotten worse. And while large majorities of African-Americans in both regions trust Clinton to handle the issue, those in the Midwest have been much more likely to say they trust Sanders.
Rust Belt blacks live closer to some of the major racial conflicts of recent years — the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; the police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; and the tainted water crisis in heavily black Flint, Michigan. And they are well positioned to turn out and express their dismay at the polls.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5c20d2de6f7f4695860574a82f83c778/hillary-clinton-faces-new-challenge-black-rust-belt-voters
 

Video: Richard Murphy on Budget 2016: The Big Lie: Osborne will never balance the books

 

Relax! ... "Creeping Sharia Law" Is A Myth