As China's Belt and Road forum kicks off this week, Arab nation attendance provides a strong confirmation to end of Petrodollar

7:47 PM belt and road, china, dollar, petrodollar, reserve currency, rmb, silk road, trade, yuan 2 Comments

With China's Belt and Road confab set to kick off this coming week in Beijing, an astounding number of Middle Eastern nations are expected to attend.

And with representatives from 17 Arab countries confirmed to be participating in the new Silk Road project, it all but validates that the long-standing Petrodollar system is at an end.

Beijing has inked cooperation deals on its multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with 17 Arab countries, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the results of a joint Sino-Arab forum. 

The second China-Arab Forum on Reform and Development, which was held in Shanghai on Tuesday, attracted more than a hundred businessmen, politicians, and academics from China and Arab states, including Egypt, Lebanon, Djibouti, and Oman. This year’s meeting, dubbed ‘Build the Belt and Road, Share Development and Prosperity’, was dedicated to boosting the project. - Russia Today

 All in all, representatives from 37 countries will be attending this forum between April 22-25.  And what makes this trade project a real threat to the U.S. and dollar hegemony is that much of it will be done bilaterally, and in currencies that are outside the global reserve.

Chinese currency renminbi (RMB), or the yuan, has gained a bigger popularity overseas, especially in countries along the Belt and Road as the B&R construction advances smoothly. The use of Chinese currency sees a huge development potential in the B&R countries with further rise of cross-border trade, which can be settled in RMB since 2009. 

According to data released by China’s central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), 3.71 trillion yuan worth of cross-border trade was settled in RMB in the first three quarters of 2018, and a growing number of countries and regions have accepted the settlement of cross-border transactions in RMB. 

International demand for RMB is increasing. The thirst for RMB may be found in the booming currency swap between China and foreign countries and hot selling of Panda bonds in B&R countries. - yidaiyilu.gov

While President Trump continues to try to break apart global trade through the use of tariffs and economic sanctions, China appears to be focusing on new markets where competitive advantages are being tied to the strength of each nation's own money, and not within the restrictions formed on them through the Petrodollar.

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Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will continue to be relevant since 2.5 billion people still function in black market economies

7:30 PM banks, bitcoin, black market, cryptocurrencies, jobs, oecd No Comments

With the OECD reporting that nearly two and half billion people, or a good 50% of all those eligible to be part of the global labor pool, work in jobs that aren't readily regulated by various governments, it would not come as a shock that one day soon cryptocurrencies could play a much greater role in the financial system.

Nearly two billion people work in it. And it accounts for perhaps 20% of the world’s total economic activity. 

“It” is the black market, or System D, a slang phrase adapted from the French word débrouillard. A débrouillard is a resourceful and self-reliant person. A débrouillard figures out how to get what they need regardless of the obstacles. The obstacles are usually the laws or price controls put in place by the state. 

There are a lot of débrouillards in the world. In 2009, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), estimated that around 1.8 billion people – at the time, half the world’s working age people — had unofficial jobs that weren’t registered, regulated, or (in many cases) taxed. The OECD estimated that by 2020, two-thirds of the world’s workforce would be part of System D. 

The OECD considers anyone between the ages of 15 and 64 to be “working age.” As of mid-2018, about 65% of the world’s 7.7 billion people were working age; that’s about 5 billion people. If half of them rely on System D to support themselves and their families, that comes to 2.5 billion people. – International Man

 Additionally, the World Bank reported back in 2017 that approximately 1.7 billion people do not conduct business using a banking institution.

What this means of course is that as the internet grows to connect the entire globe together, those needing to, or even simply wishing to stay off the radar will have to find some form of payment system which will allow them to function financially as everything eventually becomes digital.  And these systems appear likely to include Bitcoin or another of the myriad of cryptocurrencies available now, or coming in the future.

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Bernie Sanders is very much like Karl Marx in their getting rich through Capitalism while espousing everyone else should live under Socialism

7:55 AM bernie sanders, capitalism, communism, karl marx, marxism, rich, socialism No Comments

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why Bernie Sanders is such a staunch advocate for Socialism and Communism is that his own life appears to mirror that of the very philosopher who created those economic models.

Both Karl Marx and Bernie Sanders were indifferent students at college and dedicated much of their time towards radical activism.

Marx -  Karl's dad got him into a number of fine schools. He wasn't a very good student so the family connections came in handy (more exposure to how unfair the system was).  His father wanted him to get into law, but Marx preferred philosophy and history.

Sanders - Sanders studied at Brooklyn College for a year in 1959–60 before transferring to the University of Chicago and graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in political science n 1964. He has described himself as a mediocre college student because the classroom was "boring and irrelevant," while the community provided his most significant learning.

Then early in life both Marx and Sanders chose to get married but were unwilling and unable to support their wives or their children.  In the case of Sanders he had a child out of wedlock after his first wife left him and the child and mother often lived in squalor.  Meanwhile, Marx allowed three of his progeny to die of starvation.

Bernie shacked up with Susan after splitting with first wife Deborah, sources said. 

The pair raised Levi in an “informal arrangement,” according to an insider, with the boy calling his dad “Bernard.” Levi sometimes went hungry, and lived in the dark in their rental apartment. “The electricity was turned off a lot,” recalled a pal, Nancy Barnett. 

“He (Bernie) couldn’t pay his bills.” - National Enquirer

Since neither Marx nor Sanders had the internal fortitude to make a living by their own labor, they learned to game the system.  In the case of Marx, he used his charm to coax money from banks and from a rich benefactor named Fredrich Engles while Sanders often lived on welfare until friends encouraged him to carpet bag to the state of Vermont where he slipped into politics.

Now decades later Bernie Sanders is still preaching the ideals of socialism and Marxism but is doing so as one of the bourgeoisie.  In fact in recent tax filings produced to the public by Sanders as he tries once again to run for the Presidency it shows that not only is he one of the 5% of top wealthy Americans, he did so through the very Capitalist system he claims to abhor.

When confronted as being among those he has long villainized, Sanders became defensive: 

“I wrote a best-selling book,” he declared. “If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” 

Translation: "I made my money fair and square, so quit hassling me about it." - Mises.org

The fact of the matter is neither Karl Marx, nor Bernie Sanders wanted to live under Socialism, but whew their inner loathings of themselves evolved into where they now seek to project their miseries onto the rest of the world through authoritarian philosophies.  And this is why radical Marxists like Sanders don't really believe in the rhetoric they spew since what they really want is to be just like those they claim to hate and will try to accomplish that by any means necessary.

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With young males already on the precipice of collapse, is the next step for Western society to simply abort boy babies?

7:26 AM abortion, boys, china, collapse, females, men, toxic masculinity No Comments

In perhaps one of the most important 'Tales of Two Cities' in modern day history, the West, and in particular the United States, is going out of its way to destroy the future of the male species.  And the reason why we denote two cities here is that for centuries China did just the opposite as they were at the forefront of culling females in their society.

Female infanticide has existed in China for a long time, and although the One Child per Family policy has added to the problem, it didn't cause it. 

The One Child Policy was introduced by the Chinese Government in 1979 with the intention of keeping the population within sustainable limits even in the face of natural disasters and poor harvests, and improving the quality of life for the Chinese population as a whole. 

Under the policy, parents who have more than one child may have their wages reduced and be denied some social services. 

Despite the egalitarian nature of Chinese society, many parents believe that having a son is a vital element of providing for their old age. Therefore in extreme cases, a baby is killed if it is not of the preferred sex, because of the pressure not to have more than one child. - BBC

America is now at its own crisis as feminism, political correctness, fatherless households, and a dedicated disdain towards anything masculine is threatening to change the landscape of the country completely since there are very few willing to stand up for the needs of both men and boys as they suffer through mental, emotional, and psychological disintegration.

It is a crisis of education. Worldwide, 60% of the students who achieve less than the baseline level of proficiency in any of the three core subjects of the Program for the International Assessment are boys. Even boys’ IQs are dropping. 

It is a crisis of mental health. Boys’ suicide rate goes from only slightly more than girls before age 14 to three times that of girls’ between 15 and 19, to 4 1/2 times that of girls between 20 and 24. Mass shooters, prisoners and Islamic State terrorism recruits are at least 90% male. 

It is a crisis of physical health. American men’s life expectancy has decreased two-tenths of a year even as American women’s has remained the same. Boys and men are dying earlier in 14 out of 15 of the leading causes of death. – End of the American Dream

And with even the media going out of their way to promote women while at the same time degrading men, one wonders if society will one day soon follow the China model since newly passed abortion laws in several states will allow mothers to actually choose who they kill and who they might want to keep, even if that choice is dependent upon the child's sex.

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Goldman Sachs validates that the only thing propping up stocks are share buybacks and Dovish Fed policies

8:43 AM fed, goldman sachs, qe, share buybacks, stock buybacks, stock markets, stocks No Comments

For anyone with a technical chart and two brain cells to rub together, they know that the primary thing that has helped the stock markets recover from their 60% decline from a decade ago was monetary intervention from the central banks.

But when the Fed decided they needed to slow down their monetary expansion due to the yield curve threatening to invert and the advent of real inflation reaching above 10% in late 2016, something was necessary to replace the Fed put and keep stocks artificially propped up.  And that something of course was an increase in share buybacks.

Ironically, the December/January crash of stock prices entering into 2019 appears to have been intrinsically tied to the Q4 earnings period where the SEC placed a blackout for share buybacks during this time.  And of all things, on April 5 Goldman Sachs stepped up to validate this as Congress begins to discuss whether companies buying back their stock should be further regulated.

Goldman's valiant effort to halt regulatory and legislative focus on buybacks - which also included Goldman’s ex-CEO Lloyd Blankfein issuing a rebuttal defending the practice on Twitter, saying the money “gets reinvested in higher growth businesses that boost the economy and jobs" did little however to stem the tide and as a result buybacks have been getting increasing scrutiny in the wake of the tax reforms in late 2017, when companies used money saved from the lower taxes as well as repatriated cash to return money to shareholders in record amounts, with total announced buybacks surpassing $1 trillion for the first time in 2018. 

As a result, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida released a plan last month that would curb buyback incentives. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen of Maryland may propose legislation curbing executive share sales after repurchase announcements. The culmination - so far - was the US Senate convening hearings and introducing legislation to prohibit public companies from repurchasing their shares on the open market. 

This was too much for Goldman, which realized that the carrot approach is not working, and late on Friday went all "stick", when one month after his first report exposing buyback "misconception", Goldman's David Kostin doubled down, effectively warning that a ban on buybacks would likely result in a market crash, as "eliminating buybacks would immediately force firms to shift corporate cash spending priorities, impact stock market fundamentals, and alter the supply/demand balance for shares." - Zerohedge

When you couple in the fact that the Fed announced they were halting the raising of interest rates during their January FOMC meeting, and even hinted towards returning to an interventionalist policy in markets, it should be no surprise that the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all saw a massive recovery from their December swoon, and it confirms to the world that the only thing propping up stocks are share buybacks and central bank credit infusions.

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Forget capital gains, Democrats now want to steal a portion of your wealth portfolio at the end of each year

12:55 PM billionaires, capital gains, congress, democrats, socialists, tax, theft, wealth No Comments

It's high time we stop calling what the Socialists and Democrats want to do taxes, and instead call it what it really is... theft from those who have.  Because it appears that this is the case when the latest scheme concocted from Congressional Democrats is to force you to pay them a tribute on any wealth you might hold in paper assets.

Even before you have sold them or not.

The top Democrat on the Senate’s tax-writing committee has proposed taxing unrealized gains in investment assets every year at the same rates as other income, offering not only an idea that would transform how the U.S. taxes the wealthiest people, but a solid reason for those same people to get the hell out of America. 

The proposal from Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is the latest berserker plan from Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates for boosting taxes on the wealthy to address economic inequality and provide funding for their policy agenda. And while this specific proposal has little chance of becoming law soon - or, one hopes, ever - such ideas could quickly gain momentum if the party succeeds in next year’s elections. 

What is especially insane is that this proposal is effectively the polar opposite of that other bananas proposal putched by AOC and various other Democrats, namely MMT, or money printing, because why bother taxing anyone, rich, poor or otherwise, if you can just print all the money you need. We are confident we won't get a satisfactory answer, ever. 

Going back to Wyden’s suggestions, capital gains would be taxed annually based on how much assets have gained in value. - Zerohedge

So in essence this proposal would destroy investors, savers, retirement plans, but most importantly, anyone who owns a public company.  Ie... Unless someone like Jeff Bezos has billions in liquid cash, he would be forced to sell enough shares each year to cover the cost of this new tax, and in a short amount of time would end up being a minority shareholder in the company he created and founded.

In the end anyone, be it politician or business owner, who calls for government to siphon more wealth from the producer, is doing it so that they, nor their so-called constituents, can reap the benefits of other people hard work and money.  Because all one has to do is look throughout history at the rulers who gained power promising socialism and you would find that nearly all of them... from Hugo Chavez, to Fidel Castro, Mao Tse Tung, and the former Soviet Polit Bureau, were all millionaires and billionaires who gained their wealth by advocating it be taken away from those who actually earned it.

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While consumers may not be buying gold bullion en masse in the West, gold jewelry sales are expected to reach a four year high

11:51 AM central banks, demand, gold, gold jewlery, gold price, gold supply, peak gold No Comments

Contrary to Wall Street's long-standing propaganda that gold holds no function in one's wealth portfolio, it is interesting and even quite hypocritical that central banks have been purchasing the metal at their highest levels since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard.

Likewise while the gold price has remained depressed thanks to manipulation on the part of the paper gold markets, a new report out shows that despite the fact that consumers may not purchasing gold bullion en masse, they certainly are buying tons of gold in jewelry form.

Increased consumption by jewelers is expected to boost global demand for gold to its highest level in four years, an annual report by Metals Focus reveals. 

One of the world’s leading precious metals consultancies expects the global consumption of gold to reach 4,370 tons in 2019 – the highest since 2015. The projected quantity is slightly up from 4,364 tons consumed last year. 

Global gold supply is projected to see a modest increase of one percent to 4,707 tons in 2019. Growing production of the precious metal in West Africa, Canada and Russia will be reportedly offset by lower production volumes in South Africa, China and Indonesia.
Consumption of the precious metal for jewelry is forecast to rise by three percent to 2,351 tons, boosted by increases of seven percent in India and three percent in China. The world’s two biggest gold consumers will reportedly offset lower demand in the Middle East. 

The report titled Gold Focus 2019 notes that gold purchases by central banks, which saw enormous growth of 75 percent last year, will drop nine percent to 600 tons in 2019, while physical investment demand will remain mostly unchanged at 1,082 tons. – Russia Today

Perhaps what stands out as well in this consumer push for the precious metal is the fact that gold exploration and production have begun to fall through the floor since 2017, and there are real signs that Peak Gold has emerged, making this report another canary in the coal mine that demand for gold will continue to outpace supply.

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Congress ready to vote on new 401K bill that would help prop up stock markets and bail out student loans but do nothing to address dollar devaluation

10:25 AM 401k, congress, dollar, dollar devaluation, retirement, stock markets, student loans No Comments

On April 2 the House Ways and Means committee voted unanimously to push forward a bill that would modify the 401K retirement program for the first time since 2006.  But rather than simply helping to provide more tax deferred options for people to save for their retirements are the underlying effects that the bill has in both propping up stock markets, but not addressing the fact that the devaluing currency by which these 401K plans are denominated in will do nothing to aid Americans in retiring better.

The most comprehensive changes to private retirement plans in more than a decade are gaining momentum in Congress. 

A key House committee on Tuesday passed a bill intended to increase the flexibility of 401k plans and improve access to the accounts, particularly for small businesses and their employees. 

The proposal, known as the Secure Act, was backed by the top Democrat and Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means committee.
It was approved unanimously. 

“Americans currently face a retirement income crisis, with too many people in danger of not having enough in retirement to maintain their standard of living and avoid sliding into poverty,” committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.
The bill is one of the few proposals with a significant chance of becoming law amid a bitterly divided Congress. Elements of the bill have been debated among members for years and enjoy wide support among both industry groups and advocacy organizations. 

On Tuesday, Neal called the legislation “a major bipartisan accomplishment.” 

“The Ways and Means committee is where we find solutions and get things done for the American people,” he said. 

The bill includes a host of provisions aimed at encouraging small businesses to provide private retirement benefits to their workers. It allows them to band together to offer 401ks and creates a new tax credit of up to $500 for companies that set up plans with automatic enrollment. Businesses with long-term, part-time workers must also allow them to become eligible for retirement benefits. 

In addition, the bill includes several measures that would affect other types of savings. It repeals the maximum age for IRA contributions and raises the age for required mandatory distributions from 70 ½ to 72. It also expands the use of 529s, from only college-related expenses to include private schools, home schools and student loans. - CNBC

Thanks to real inflation and the fact that the dollar has lost over 97% of its purchasing power over the last 100 years, here is how much one would need to retire comfortably in the decades from 1950 to today.

1950 - $27,991.60

1960 - $40,071.20

1970 - $61,862.40

1980 - $125,134.60  (a 100% increase from a decade earlier)

1990 - $210,279.80

2000 - $321,548.20

2010 - $416,738.30

2018 - $500,000+

And since wages have not kept up with inflation or currency devaluation, for someone to begin saving at say age 25 until they retire (around age 70), it is not only unlikely they would have enough spare money out of their current paychecks to put towards a 401K plan to make their nest egg meaningful, but the value of their returns in most markets would end up being a loss since having more wealth means little if the cost of what you purchase increases at a greater rate.

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Chinese Yuan now on the cusp of giving the dollar a run for its money as the sole reserve currency

8:26 AM bonds, china, dollar, dollar hegemony, imf, reserve currency, sdr, wall street, yuan No Comments

As of today, China has the world's largest banking system and for all intents and purposes is the world's largest production economy.  And after a near decade of solidifying its currency to go international, the Asian power stands on the cusp of giving the dollar a run for its money, and offering nations an alternative to dollar hegemony.

Yuan-denominated Chinese bonds were included in the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate index on Monday. The move is expected to attract trillions in foreign inflows into China and the reshaping of global capital markets. 

Over the next 20 months, the index will add 364 bonds issued by the Chinese government and the so-called “policy banks”(lenders set up to support the government’s development plans and policies). 

Analysts estimate the full inclusion will attract around US$150 billion of foreign inflows into China’s bond market, which is the third-largest in the world after the US and Japan.
“Today marks an important milestone as China’s capital markets continue to find their place in the global investment mainstream,” said Justin Chan, HSBC’s co-head of global markets in Asia Pacific. 

China’s weight in the index will increase to around six percent and the Chinese yuan will become the fourth-largest currency component, Bloomberg estimates. – Russia Today

In addition to Wall Street now making a market for Chinese bonds, central banks over the past few years have been in the process of replacing dollars in their reserves with the Yuan.

The dollar’s share of global central-bank reserves slumped to the lowest level since 2013 while holdings of the Chinese yuan rose for the fifth quarter in the past six, IMF data showed Friday. 

The U.S. currency accounted for 61.7% of global allocated foreign-exchange reserves in the fourth quarter, down from 61.9% and the tenth decline in the past 12 quarters according to the IMF's Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) for Q4 2018 report. The drop occurred despite a 1% jump in the value of the dollar in the fourth quarter. The euro, yen and yuan each gained as a share of allocated reserves. While modest at just 1.9%, reserve allocation to the Chinese Yuan has been increasing rapidly and is now almost double where it was two years ago. - Zerohedge

When you add in the fact that the IMF chose China over the U.S. to internationalize the SDR, it is clear that the dollar no longer carries the same gravitas that it once did, and this indicates another step in preparing for its removal as the unipolar reserve currency.

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Russia continues its de-dollarization as several banks join the Chinese CIPS system and they dump more treasuries for gold

5:53 PM bi-lateral trade, china, cips, de-dollarization, dollars, gold, russia, swift No Comments

Perhaps there is a very good reason why Russia was nominated as this year's best growing emerging market, and it has to do with their ongoing policy of weaning themselves off the dollar system.

On March 31, a senior official for Russia's central bank reported that several of their nation's financial institutions have signed on and connected to Chinese version of SWIFT, the CIPS.  Additionally, Russia announced that they had accumulated another 31 tons of gold in the month of February, bringing their 'offical' total to over 2100 tons.

Several Russian banks have joined the China International Payments System (CIPS), to ease operations between the two countries, according to a senior official at the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). 

“As for the cooperation on payment systems, a range of banks are already connected to CIPS, allowing to facilitate payments routing procedure,” Vladimir Shapovalov, who heads a division dealing with foreign regulators at the CBR’s international cooperation department, said earlier this week during the international Russian-Chinese forum. – Russia Today

Maybe all it took to 'Make Russia Great Again' simply required the world power to divest itself of dollar hegemony and lead the way in returning markets back to bi-lateral trade.

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