Hints of gold returning as sound money as Trump readies new Gold Standard Fed Governor while Congressman submits bill to audit gold supply

9:27 AM audit the fed, bis, central bank, dollar, dollar hegemony, fed, gold, gold audit, gold standard, judy shelton No Comments

With two of President Trump's primary picks to fill vacant slots on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors having dropped out in recent weeks, rumors of his newest pick could very well send shockwaves through the central bank.  And that is because according to Mish Shedlock in an article published on May 12, Trump appears to be readying Gold Standard advocate Judy Shelton as his next nominee.

Economist Judy Shelton, a Trump economic advisor and a gold standard advocate is rumored to be Trump's next Fed pick. 

Bloomberg reports White House Considers Economist Judy Shelton for Fed BoardThe White House is considering conservative economist Judy Shelton to fill one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that President Donald Trump has struggled to fill. 

She’s currently U.S. executive director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and previously worked for the Sound Money Project, which was founded to promote awareness about monetary stability and financial privacy. – Money Mavin

Judy Shelton had been a strong pick early on in President Trump's plans for the Federal Reserve before moving into the role as an adviser and administration financier.

Yet this news of bringing Shelton onto the Fed Board of Governors is not the only gold based news to arrive at the government's doors as just last week, Congressman Alex Mooney submitted a bill before the House to call for a full and complete audit of the nation's gold supply.

U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) introduced legislation this week to provide for the first audit of United States gold reserves since the Eisenhower Administration. 

The Gold Reserve Transparency Act (H.R. 2559) – backed by the Sound Money Defense League and government accountability advocates – directs the Comptroller of the United States to conduct a “full assay, inventory, and audit of all gold reserves, including any gold in ‘deep storage,’ of the United States at the place or places where such reserves are kept.” 

HR 2559 requires more than just a physical assay, inventory, and audit, however. Even if all United States gold can be physically accounted for, it may nevertheless be encumbered with third-party obligations – or otherwise be impaired by bank financialization. – EIN Presswire

With the BIS making the sudden and urgent shift to allow physical gold to become a Tier 1 reserve asset for the central banks, perhaps we should not be surprised that President Trump and his allies in Congress are trying to prepare the way for a return of the Gold Standard in some form, especially as the dollar continues to lose its hegemony on the world stage.

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Central bank validates that the purpose of money printing was to transfer wealth to the rich

9:07 AM central banks, democrats, fed, federal reserve, homeless, money printing, wealth inequality No Comments

While the circus of Democratic Presidential candidates continue to try to outdo themselves in who would tax (steal) from the rich the most, the saddest part in all of this is that they also continue to defend the very entity that helped make them rich.

Because in a new study published by Netherland's central bank in April of this year, researchers concluded that even going back to the 1920s, the end result of any and all money printing by the world's collective of central banks has been to enrich the top 1%.

Authored by Mehdi El Herradi and Aurélien Leroy, (Working Paper No. 632, De Nederlandsche Bank NV), the paper "examines the distributional implications of monetary policy from a long-run perspective with data spanning a century of modern economic history in 12 advanced economies between 1920 and 2015, ...estimating the dynamic responses of the top 1% income share to a monetary policy shock." 

The authors "exploit the implications of the macroeconomic policy trilemma to identify exogenous variations in monetary conditions." Note: the macroeconomic policy trilemma "states that a country cannot simultaneously achieve free capital mobility, a fixed exchange rate and independent monetary policy".Per authors: 

"The central idea that guided this paper’s argument is that the existing literature considers the distributional effects of monetary policy using data on inequality over a short period of time. However, inequalities tend to vary more in the medium-to-long run. We address this shortcoming by studying how changes in monetary policy stance over a century impacted the income distribution while controlling for the determinants of inequality." 

They find that "loose monetary conditions strongly increase the top one percent’s income and vice versa. In fact, following an expansionary monetary policy shock, the share of national income held by the richest 1 percent increases by approximately 1 to 6 percentage points, according to estimates from the Panel VAR and Local Projections (LP). - Zerohedge

Yet besides ultra wealthy individuals like JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs becoming billionaires following the Fed's introduction of QE money printing after 2008, a recent article even shows that the central banks themselves were transferring wealth to themselves as seen by the fact that the Bank of Japan itself holds so many assets derived from money printing that they are now considered a Top 10 Shareholder in 50% of all public companies.

Sadly, most Americans are ignorant of the warnings given to them by our Founding Fathers, who in the case of Thomas Jefferson foreshadowed this over 250 years ago.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies,"  Jefferson wrote. "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

And judging by how many homeless live in wealthy cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, perhaps if the Democrats wanted to actually do something about poverty and wealthy inequality they would simply look inward and realize that it was their legislation passed in 1913 that is the root of this calamity.

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While Democratic Presidential candidates push for trillion dollar universal free college, here are five ways it can be done on the cheap

7:58 AM democrats, education, free education, healthcare, online university, presidential candidates, solutions, student loans No Comments

In the race to 2020, Presidential candidates on the Democratic side are falling all over themselves in a rush to see who can promise the most free stuff to a voter base who no longer questions the fact that their politicians never actually fulfill these promises.  And one of the primary focuses they are pushing is that of free education for all, and dissolution of student loan debts.

However it is beyond a proven fact that whenever the government gets involved in a particular industry, both costs and prices tend to skyrocket to the point where consumers can no longer afford them.  And this has been particularly true starting in 1965 when the introduction of Medicare came into the healthcare system, and later for education when in 2010 President Obama nationalized the student loan industry.

Healthcare costs:

As you can see by this chart, prior to the advent of the Great Society and the government's move into backstopping healthcare, costs were relatively stable as market competition and the lack of inflation led to affordable prices.  However as with any industry when you add in additional liquidity primarily due to monetary expansion (increased US debt), it causes prices to rise as the natural order of markets becomes manipulated.

Similarly, here is what has happened to the cost of education both for K-12, and at the University level when the government chose to subsidize the industry first in 1979, then again in 2010.

K-12 per student costs - 1979 (when Dept. of Education was formed) - 2018

Costs of education at University level 2010 - 2018 after government nationalized student loans

The kicker in all of this of course is that despite the fact that costs have increased between 20 and 200% in some cases, the value of education has not as seen by nationwide literacy charts.

So anyone with two brain cells can easily deduce that more money thrown at the problem won't both improve service, or cut costs... which leads us to ask the question then of what will accomplish both?

Even going back to the Dark Ages, rulers have understood the potential benefits to their nations and empires if even the most common individual had some semblance of an education.  However today's rigid and closed education system has lost its original mission of expanding minds and training tomorrow's workers to instead be more of an assembly line where diplomas are given out to whomever was willing to pay the exorbitant costs no matter if they actually learn anything of substance.

So with this in mind I wanted to throw out my two cents on the topic and provide new ideas on how the U.S. could deal with the viable issues of student loan debt along with providing an inexpensive way to open up higher education to all.  And below are five ideas on the subject.

1.  A nationwide online University system

Since the government is subsidizing the University industry with hundreds of billions of dollars both through student loans and outright grants, it is time to instead take this money and build an open and online curriculum system that covers virtually all Degree level courses at minimal cost.  And what is perhaps the most significant thing about this system is that study by individuals can be done at their own leisure, and not under the time constraints demanded of them by colleges.  So for those who are slower learners, or who either have a family or work long hours, they can take as much time as they need to absorb the information necessary to be able to pass a test which would give them the credits applicable towards their Degree.

Additionally, those who already have a working knowledge of a given class subject can choose to accelerate through the coursework, and then take the test whenever they choose.

Which of course brings us to the question of testing.  Since the government would be in control over the online system, they would hire Proctors and have them placed in every major population center and region.  And each Proctor would have access to a series of tests (perhaps 10 completely different ones for each course), and evaluate the student in a live environment to determine if they have passed the course.  And should the student fail in their testing, they would not be penalized with a 'grade' but simply informed they need to go back and study further before retaking the test.

In the end this would solve three major problems... first, a way to provide inexpensive education at the University level to every American.  Secondly, it would spawn price competition within the legacy college system where they would need to adapt their prices to compete with the government.  And third it would end up providing a massive benefit to the nation as a whole by having a larger portion of its citizens being educated and skilled.

2.  End Federal subsidizing of Universities

It is high time to end the subsidizing of Universities, both at the student loan level and at the grant level.  Many Universities, especially those in the Ivy League, already have endowments in the amount of billions of dollars and can very easily pay for their own research and then profit from the results of that work.

3.  End Professor tenures.

Most professors achieve tenure NOT based upon their ability to teach, but on their abilities to publish and acquire grants from the government.  In fact in many instances, tenured professors no longer even teach courses in the Department they are assigned to but instead pawn off their responsibilities to grad students or other instructors.

4.  Incentivize needed career fields

It is the right of any student to study in the career field of their choice, but rarely does a Degree held in 'Gender Studies' serve society beyond that of perhaps an HR Department.  And with the government desperately in need of STEM workers and researchers in order to keep up with the rest of the world, incentivizing these career fields for students would go a long way in solving the problem of shortages.

5.  Bring back a form of the 'Peace Corps' to help Americans pay off their student loans

Every psychologist and criminologist knows that condoning bad behavior only leads to more of it.  So the idea of dissolving or allowing the default of one's student loans means the taxpayer absolves them of their bad choices and responsibilities without a consequence.  So in order to provide a beneficial solution to all in regards to the crisis that is student loan debt, I am proposing a return to a concept that worked during the 1960s and 70s, but instead of going out and serving the world through a few years of charitable work, students willing would fill positions in the government, military, or other parts of society where they would replace retiring workers in public service on a temporary basis, and have 20-50% of their paychecks garnished towards the paying off of their loans.

For those willing to do this, yes it could mean 5-10 years of their lives relegated to a limited choice of lifestyles, however since most of the money is owed to the government anyway, it would provide a benefit to both while in the end also providing experience to the worker they might not have gotten it in the normal economy.

While it is not in my nature to go to the government for solutions that the free market could in the past have easily provided, unfortunately we are in a place where the government is already involved in nearly every aspect of society.  So for now it is best to try to adopt solutions to industries like education using the tools and systems we already have in place while at the same time trying to minimize costs as much as possible since we already know that throwing MORE money at a problem has rarely solved anything.

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Rabobank fears that Fed policies are headed towards the US losing control over the dollar as the global reserve currency

6:38 AM central bank, confidence, debt, dollar, fed, interest rates, ioer, reserve currency No Comments

As dollar shortages and an underlying global liquidity crisis spurred on the central bank to lower IOER rates during the Fed's recent mid-point FOMC meeting, analysts from one particular bank are suddenly questioning whether Powell and his Board of Governors have lost control over monetary policy.

Additionally, if this assessment should prove accurate could it also be the final death knell for the dollar's place as the world's reserve currency?

One week later, and following the Fed's admission that even it was surprised by how quickly the overnight funding market plumbing had gotten clogged up, others are starting to ask the very question we posed a week ago. 

In a note published overnight by Rabobank's Phillip Marey, the US strategist - just like us - asks "Is the Fed losing control of the policy rate system?" Needless to say, the answer could have profound implications not only for the future of US monetary policy, but whether or not the dollar can remain as the world's reserve currency in a world in which the US central bank loses the ability to set the price of money. - Zerohedge

 Below are more details from Rabobank.

What to make of the lack of a formal warning? In the first place, it means that the recent rise in the federal funds rate took the Fed by surprise. In the second place, it means the Fed thought it could not afford to wait for another six weeks. This shows that the Fed’s current framework for monetary policy implementation is not working. It has difficulty keeping the effective federal funds rate close to the midpoint of the target range announced by the FOMC. Moreover, the changes in the IOER rate present a challenge to the Fed’s communication to the public: the central bank is tweaking one of its policy rates now and then, but this supposedly has nothing to do with its monetary policy stance? What’s more, this time the Fed could not even afford to  give a formal warning to the markets. Today’s decision proves the failure of the current policy rate system. 

Therefore, the Fed’s debate about effective monetary policy implementation is likely to continue. While the current system has two floors, the interest on excess reserves (IOER) and the overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) as we discussed back in 2015, it is lacking a ceiling. At the press conference, Powell said that the FOMC will be looking at a repo facility as a possible tool in an upcoming meeting, think about it for a while, and then make a decision. 

We take the inversion of the yield curve more seriously and we continue to expect the economy to fall into recession in 2020H2. Consequently, we think that the Fed will be forced to start cutting rates in 2020.

Sadly, printing more dollars has been the central bank's 'only solution' to every perceived problem over the past 10 years. And with the end result being that debt levels have reached untenable heights at every level of the economy (sovereign, corporate, consumer), it is beginning to appear that even the banks are fearing that the Fed has taken things to the point where they have lost control over the system, and could lead to the rest of the world to losing all remaining confidence in the dollar.

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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 1 Comment

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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Britain is now the new Sick Man of Europe as they cannot even get Brexit nor new porn laws implemented

5:34 PM bexit, britain, eu, healthcare, porn, sick man of europe, uk No Comments

There was once a time not too long ago where the British ruled over an empire where the 'sun never set'.  However those days are long gone and in more recent times the United Kingdom has turned into the 21st century version of the 'sick man of Europe'.

Sadly for these once proud peoples it is not a single thing such as the 'shitshow' that has taken place in the UK's attempt to leave the European Union via Brexit.  No, the last straw perhaps has come in the State's failed attempts to implement restrictions on porn viewership which has been in the making for over a year.

Frustrated Brits are getting jerked around by the ham-handed rollout of the UK's new porn blocks, which would ban anyone from watching porn until they verify that they're an adult, according to the Independent.  

The new ban has been in the works for over a year, however internal confusion over how it should be implemented has resulted in confusion and delay.  

Rumours had swirled in recent weeks that the blocks could be imminent, after a series of newspapers suggested that the ban would be introduced on 1 April. But that date had never been confirmed, and appears to have emerged amid complete confusion about when they would actually be introduced. -Independent

Unfortunately for Britons, their bureaucratic incompetence hasn't been limited to just Brexit or porn access as over the past few years tens of thousands of citizens have died waiting for physicians to see them under their nationalized healthcare system.

An unprecedented increase in “excess deaths” in England and Wales could be linked to underfunding in the NHS and social care system, new research suggests. 

“Relentless cuts” to the health service could be behind 30,000 deaths in 2015, argued researchers in two articles published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. - Independent

With these and many other failures both behind and in front of the British government, perhaps it is the EU who would benefit the most if the Sick Man of Europe simply slipped quietly out of the continental union.

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Russia appears ready to ditch the petrodollar completely in global oil sales

1:58 PM gazprom, oil, oil sales, opec, opec + 1, petrodollar, russia No Comments

On March 26, the Deputy Chairman for Russia's Gazprom energy company announced that they are ready to begin settling oil sale account in currencies other than the dollar, making them one of the first primary oil company (outside of sovereign determination) to sell their products in a currency other than the dollar.

Energy giant Gazprom could become the first Russian company to exclude the US dollar from its foreign trade operations. It aims to switch to Russian rubles and other national currencies in payments for energy supplies. 

Gazprom’s Deputy Chairman Andrey Kruglov told reporters that one of the world’s largest gas companies is already settling contracts in national currencies, namely in rubles and yuan, when supplies are exported to China. – Russia Today

While there have been other oil producers (such as Iran and Iraq) that have switched to selling energy outside the Petrodollar, Gazprom would be the first major oil companies to do so.

Once Gazprom commences energy trading outside the dollar, it could very quickly begin a domino affect across the rest of the world (including OPEC) since Russia for all intent and purposes now controls the long-standing cartel via their inclusion into the OPEC +1 coalition last year.

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Following Italy's joining of China's Silk Road project, Germany is now calling for all of Europe to sign onto the Belt and Road initiative

1:48 PM belt and road, china, eu, europe, germany, italy, nordstream 2, russia, silk road 2 No Comments

As Europe inches more and more away from the United States when it comes to energy and trade, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on March 26 called for the whole of Europe to follow in Italy's footsteps and sign up for China's Belt and Road initiative.

Also known as the Silk Road 2.0, the Belt and Road initiative is a program intended to forge a direct trade route across Asia, Eurasia, and Europe, and connect the continents from Korea to the UK.

The Chinese “Belt and Road” initiative is an important project, which European states would be glad to join, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stressed that cooperation should be based on reciprocity from Beijing. 

“We, as Europeans, want to play an active part and that must lead to certain reciprocity and we are still wrangling over that a bit,” Merkel said, as quoted by Reuters.
The comment comes shortly after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is currently paying a state visit to France. 

The Chinese president came to France after his three-day visit to Italy. On Saturday, Rome and Beijing signed the memorandum of understanding on Italy’s joining of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The move had not been received well by European nations, particularly France and Germany. French President Emmanuel Macron had called for a more consolidated approach toward China among European allies, at the same time as Paris was signing multi-billion-euro contracts with Beijing. – Russia Today

Besides ignoring Washington's push to have Europe devoted squarely to U.S. hegemony when it comes to the Belt and Road project, Germany's Chancellor is also defying American policy by standing firm on Russia's Nordstream 2 pipeline project.

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Is Lavar Ball Michael Avenatti's 'AAU basketball client' at the heart of $1.5 million extortion?

4:30 PM big baller brand, extortion, lavar ball, lawsuit, michael avenatti, nike No Comments

On Friday March 22, ESPN reported that the Big Baller basketball brand was suddenly scuttled following allegations that Lavar Ball's business partner and co-founder Alan Foster embezzled $1.5 million from the business.  Now just three days later on March 25, infamous 'creepy porn lawyer' Michael Avenatti has been hit with extortion charges stemming from an 'AAU basketball client' whom he is seeking $1.5 million for.

(Screenshot courtesy of ESPN youtube channel)

The SDNY has laid out its allegations of extortion against Avenatti - namely, that he tried to extort Nike - during an afternoon press conference.  

After claiming to be working on behalf of an amateur basketball team in the AAU that had recently lost a Nike contract worth some $70,000 a year, Avenatti used "illegal and extortionate threats" to try and secure millions of dollars for himself from Nike. The coach from the team told Avenatti that payments had been made by Nike to high school basketball players. Avenatti threatened to make these allegations public if the company didn't meet his demands - paying his client $1.5 million, while awarding Avenatti and a co-conspirator a multi-million dollar contract to conduct an internal investigation. - Zerohedge

Lavar Ball runs a Chino Hills, CA AAU basketball team under the name of Big Ballers, and would easily have access to information regarding thousands of high school and college athletes in the industry.

Yet while there has been no official mention of who is Michael Avenatti's AAU co-conspirator is, seeing that Lavar Ball is an official competitor to the NIKE brand and the basketball shoe industry as a whole, it would not be beyond the scope of interest to wonder if Ball is the one working with Avenatti, especially in light of the fact that the amount of cash being sought through the alleged extortion of NIKE is the very same amount allegedly embezzled in a different event from the Big Baller company.

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Housing bubble 2.0 beginning to burst at an accelerating rate

9:53 AM dot come bubble, fed, financial crisis, housing, housing bubble, housing prices No Comments

When the Federal Reserve chose to create a Housing Bubble in the first decade of the 21st century following the wasteland it created from the Dot Come bubble, it would eventually lead to one of the largest financial crises in our nation's history.  And despite the fact that the central bank failed to learn their lesson in propping up a particular asset class (housing) and instead went all in by propping up the Everything Bubble, the end result appears to be the same as Housing Bubble 2.0 has reached its pinnacle.

Home price declines in all major cities and regions:

Accelerating price declines are normally the final measure in determining whether a market has reached a peak, and is on its way downward.  And despite the fact that today's existing home sales saw a pop, the previous 10 months had all been in decline meaning that the trend has been set for U.S. housing.

(New February Numbers for Existing Home Sales in the chart below denote anomaly and outlier)



source: tradingeconomics.com

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Fed's nightmare comes to fruition as inverted yield curve validates the U.S. and the world are now in recession

9:24 AM 10 year, 3 month, fed, inverted yield curve, jay powell, recession, wall street No Comments

It was little more than a week ago when Wall Street and the equity markets roared from the rafters following the Fed's dovish announcement that Quantitative Tightening for all intents and purposes was coming to an end.  However what these scramblers for nickels and dimes failed to realize is that Chairman Jay Powell was signalling between the lines that all was not well.

Let’s be very clear what yesterday’s full frontal capitulation by the Fed means: It’s coming. The next recession that is. It’s just a matter of the how and the when. Now mind you the Fed will never, ever overtly tell you a recession is coming. They can’t. Their underlying primary mission is to keep confidence up. A Fed predicting a recession would cause all kinds of havoc in capital markets and almost certainly bring about a recession. So they won’t tell you, but their actions speak loud and clear. 

Yesterday’s capitulation was so complete and even more dovish than markets had expected. How scared is the Fed? How scared should markets be? What are they seeing that forces them to not only halt the balance sheet roll-off, but to only project a token rate hike for 2020 in effect ending the rate hike cycle? – Northman Trader

Fast forward a week and that prognostication has come to bear as on March 22 the 10 year and 3 month Treasury Bonds inverted for the first time since the start of the Financial Crisis, and there is no doubt that both the U.S. and the rest of the world are fully into recession.

In fact here is a validation that when the 10 year and 3 month yields invert, a recession has occurred every time over the past 50 years.

Besides the bursting of Housing Bubble 2.0, equity markets failing to breakthrough all-time highs reached just a few months ago, the Atlanta Fed announcing GDP could be absolutely flat for Q1, and Germany already a couple quarters into recession, the cake is in the oven so to speak, and everyone needs to prepare for the next Great Recession.

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Genocide by fraud science: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is today's Rachel Carson

12:14 PM alexandria ocasio cortez, aoc, ddt, genocide, green new deal, rachel carson, silent spring 2 Comments

When you look throughout history at individuals who were considered to be the biggest mass murders of all time, most people would say the obvious ones in Ghengis Khan, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung.  And while these men are certainly high up on the list, there is one person rarely spoken of who's ideas helped her become the biggest killer of human life on record.

Of course the individual we are talking about is none other than Rachel Carson and her now debunked theories regarding DDT that were published in her book Silent Spring.  And thanks to her fraudulent claims that DDT was one of the primary causes in the killing of wildlife around the world, its official banning by the United Nations and world governments eventually led to the ongoing deaths of between 50 and 90 million people due to the return of malaria and other diseases.

The crusade against DDT began with Carson’s antipesticide diatribe Silent Spring, published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide antimalaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence — Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson’s book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT’s crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use. 

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation — alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day. 

Abundant scientific evidence supporting the safety and importance of DDT was presented during seven months of testimony before the newly formed EPA in 1971. The presiding judge ruled unequivocally against a ban. But the public furor against DDT — fueled by Silent Spring and the growing environmental movement — was so great that a ban was imposed anyway. The EPA administrator, who hadn’t even bothered to attend the hearings, overruled his own judge and imposed the ban in defiance of the facts and evidence. And the 1972 ban in the United States led to an effective worldwide ban, as countries dependent on U.S.-funded aid agencies curtailed their DDT use to comply with those agencies’ demands. 

So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today’s malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year. – Aynrand.org

Fast forward to today (2019)...

Sadly, hysterical claims and demands for environmental change did not stop here in the 21st century, as seen by the extraordinary efforts and agendas to change the world under the guise of 'Man-made global warming'.  And ironically we may have just encountered the next Rachel Carson in one Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who following her election to Congress issued a new mandate that some estimate could see the deaths of over 2.3 billion people, if not the entire human race..

The “Green New Deal” proposed by congressional Democrats is a “recipe for mass suicide” and the “most ridiculous scenario I ever heard,” Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore (shown) warned in an exclusive interview with The New American. In fact, Dr. Moore warned that if the “completely preposterous” prescriptions in the scheme were actually implemented, Americans could be forced to turn to cannibalism to avoid starvation — and they still would not survive. Other experts such as Craig Rucker, the executive director of the environmental group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), also sounded the alarm about the “green” proposal in Congress, comparing it to Soviet five-year plans and calling it a “prescription for disaster.”  - New American

Judging by how the world is now actually cooling versus heating up thanks to solar cycles, a bonafide pole shift, and changes to the electromagnetic spectrum, we are once again on the threshold of a push for a fake crisis created by fraud science that has the potential if implemented to eradicate most human life on the planet.  And perhaps today we might remember the failed lessons of Rachel Carson some 50 years ago, and ignore the consensus and instead seek real scientific solutions to what are true legitimate problems.  

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Just like in many places within the EU, American legal and illegal immigrants are the largest recipients of welfare per capita

10:00 AM democrats, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, migrants, welfare No Comments

With the Democrats today wanting to not only eliminate the office of ICE, but open our borders to any and all immigrants from across the world, a new study out on March 12 shows that a large portion of the current legal and illegal immigrants living in the U.S. are on the welfare dole.

In fact according to the report, legal and illegal immigrants use welfare nearly twice as much as regular citizens do, meaning that per capita any increase in these numbers would blow up a system that currently costs taxpayers more than $1 trillion per year at the Federal level alone.

New research has discovered that foreign noncitizens use nearly two times the amount of welfare as native-born Americans. Both legal and illegal aliens fall into the category of foreigners who take from the welfare system. 

According to a report by Breitbart, in recently released research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), analysts discovered that about 63 percent of noncitizen households, those who live legally and illegally in the U.S., use some form of public welfare while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare. – SHTF Plan

The U.S. is not the only country or region where vast migration has threatened to destroy current welfare systems.  In Europe, where the European Commission has embarked on a massive migration scheme, Northern European country's such as Denmark and Finland are on the cusp of economic and political collapse due to influx of immigrants who rarely work, but receive thousands in free benefits.

There is a reason in history why certain nations and regions prospered and achieved while others simply languished in what we now call 'third world status'.  And bringing in peoples from cultures not known for growth and innovation rarely changes their paradigms, especially when they can simply take from those who have a background and tradition of hard work and success.

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Bernie Sanders' Socialist utopia's collapsing as Denmark and Finland stand on cusp of economic and political failures

9:28 AM bernie sanders, Denmark, economic collapse, eu, finland, migrants, socialism, sweden, welfare No Comments

Independent/Democrat/Independent/ to once again Democrat is running for the Presidency of the United States in 2020 under the banner of Making America Socialist.  However perhaps the most disconcerting thing for both him and his growing base of Americans desiring to usher in an authoritarian system is that more and more of Sanders' socialist utopias are failing across the world.

In a couple of new reports out recently on both Denmark and Finland, the long-standing Socialist enclaves in Northern Europe appear on the brink of economic and political collapse due to a failure in their welfare and economic systems, and in their schemes to admit hundreds of thousands of unskilled foreign migrants to supplement it.

Finland:

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila stepped down just weeks before a general election after failing to push through parliament plans to overhaul health services and social care in the face of an aging population. - Fortune

In addition, Finland's scheme to bring in tens to hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants to prop up their welfare system has not only seen their system taxed even more, but actual skilled workers are leaving the country in droves.

Young Finnish professionals are attracted to major European capitals. They move to Stockholm, Berlin and Amsterdam, as well as farther away. The sun shines in Dubai; the world’s top organizations and institutes are in New York and Washington. The occupations of these migrants are manifold: bankers, graphic designers, computer engineers, photographers and researchers, to name only a few. 

They leave Finland because of poor employment opportunities and future prospects. This has been happening for a long time. Finns were moving to North America 100 years ago and to Sweden after World War II–in both cases because growing economies needed factory workers. 

The difference with today’s migrants is they are better educated and leaving a welfare state that ranks as one of the best places to live in the world according to most indices. The likelihood of them returning has nevertheless fallen sharply. - QZ

Denmark:

Meanwhile, Denmark has found that the recent mass immigration imposed upon them by the EU has led to a huge drain on their welfare system, with the majority of these migrants not working, and cashing in on a virtually free lifestyle.

According to a 2017 report by Statistics Denmark, only about half of non-Western immigrants between the ages of 16 and 64 are employed (53% of men and 45% of women). When broken down into countries of origin, however, major differences among migrants were revealed -- with the employment rate being particularly low among those hailing from Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Syria. 

Analyzing Statistics Denmark data, the Danish Employers Confederation revealed that in 2016, 41.5% of non-Western immigrants were on welfare, while only 17.5% of ethnic Danes were supported by the same benefits. In 2017, a third of all the people provided for by Denmark's basic social-welfare system were immigrants, which constitutes a rise of 82% in a mere seven years. 

These figures show that the public expenses connected to immigration will, in the long run, bring the welfare state to an end. - Gatestone Institute

One of the primary reasons this is so important is because Sanders, along with most Democratic Socialists, want open borders, mass immigration, and a full blown welfare state supporting citizens and non-citizens alike.

Of course we cannot leave this topic without looking in on Sweden which is one of the huge talking points Bernie Sanders uses in pushing for America to join in his Socialist revolution.  However the irony of course is that Sweden found that public control over much of the economy was a failure, and over time has privatized their welfare system contrary to the Socialist model.

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New bombshell indictments show the entire American education system from Kindergarten through college is one big scam

1:18 PM bribery, college, education, fraud, scandal No Comments

As the American people start to digest several recent education fraud scandals across the country that involved elementary and preparatory students being given grades and diplomas they didn't actually achieve, a new bombshell scandal announced in March 12 is about to encompass the University system as well.  And rather than this one being school districts in Atlanta or Baltimore pushing through minority students who weren't eligible to graduate, this one involves wealthy elites buying their way into prestigious colleges when their scores didn't merit their acceptance.

Federal prosecutors announced that they were charging dozens of people, including famous actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in an alleged scheme to help students get admitted to colleges under false pretenses on Tuesday. They are being charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. 38 people have reportedly been arrested thus far.  

Prosecutors are alleging that the individuals charged tried to bribe college entrance exam officials in order to cheat on admissions tests and that some conspired to bribe coaches and administrators to label their children as "recruited athletes". Athletes can sometimes get preferential treatment.  

Among the colleges involved were Georgetown University, Yale University, Stanford University and University of California Los Angeles, according to a WSJ writeup. Charitable organizations were used as fronts for the bribery payments, according to authorities. A Newport Beach college counseling business, the Edge College & Career Network LLC, was named as the main facilitator of the bribes.  

More than $6 million in bribes were paid, according to The Daily Mail, who also reported that "[Lori] Loughlin and her husband 'agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team'". Loughlin's husband Mossimo Giannulli has also been charged. It was also reported that Huffman paid a $15,000 charitable contribution. Her and her husband William H. Macy had planned to do the same for a younger daughter of theirs later this month, according to reports. - Zerohedge

It appears that education is no longer about learning the necessary skills to be able to choose a vocation which will help you through your adult life, but rather a scheme where getting the right name of a school on your diploma is what is now vital at all costs... legal or illegal.

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