The Rape of Ukraine: Phase Two Begins

The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.

An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.

His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe.

A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.

But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. Now comes the IMF with severe conditionalities as prerequisite to any Western financial help.

After the famous leaked phone call of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (photo, left) with the US Ambassador in Kiev, where she discussed the details of who she wanted in a new coalition government in Kiev, and where she rejected the EU solutions with her “Fuck the EU” comment,[1] the EU went it alone. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier proposed that he and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, fly to Kiev and try to reach a resolution of the violence before escalation. Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski was asked to join. The talks in Kiev included the EU delegation, Yanukovich, the three opposition leaders and a Russian representative. The USA was not invited.[2]

The EU intervention without Washington was extraordinary and reveals the deeping division between the two in recent months. In effect it was the EU saying to the US State Department, “F*** the US,” we will end this ourselves.

After hard talks, all major parties including the majority of protesters, agreed to new presidential elections in December, return to the 2004 Constitution and release of Julia Tymoshenko from prison. The compromise appeared to end the months long chaos and give a way out for all major players.

The diplomatic compromise lasted less than twelve hours. Then all hell broke loose.

Snipers began shooting into the crowd on February 22 in Maidan or Independence Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in panic according to eyewitnesses. The opposition leaderVitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal, no reason given. Yanukovich fled Kiev.[3]

The question unanswered until now is who deployed the snipers? According to veteran US intelligence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing military organization known as Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Strange Ukraine ‘Nationalists’

The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shkil, ten years ago became an adviser to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, during the US-instigated 2003-2004 “Orange Revolution”, backed pro-NATO candidate Viktor Yushchenko against his pro-Russian opponent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO members provided security for the supporters of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Independence Square in Kiev in 2003-4.[4]

UNA-UNSO is also reported to have close ties to the German National Democratic Party (NDP).[5]

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the crack-para-military UNA-UNSO members have been behind every revolt against Russian influence. The one connecting thread in their violent campaigns is always anti-Russia. The organization, according to veteran US intelligence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” organization, and not a Ukraine nationalist group as portrayed in western media. [6]

According to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (confirmed officially) in the Lithuanian events in the Winter of 1991, the Soviet Coup d’etat in Summer 1991, the war for the Pridnister Republic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abkhazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-organized Kosovo Campaign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Georgia. According to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-military have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war period, always fighting on behalf of NATO. “These people are the dangerous mercenaries used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Russia because this group pretends to be Russian special forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, forget about the window dressing nationalists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist.[7]

If true that UNA-UNSO is not “Ukrainian” opposition, but rather a highly secret NATO force using Ukraine as base, it would suggest that the EU peace compromise with the moderates was likely sabotaged by the one major player excluded from the Kiev 21 February diplomatic talks—Victoria Nuland’s State Department.[8] Both Nuland and right-wing Republican US Senator John McCainhave had contact with the leader of the Ukrainian opposition Svoboda Party, whose leader is openly anti-semitic and defends the deeds of a World War II Ukrainian SS-Galicia Division head.[9] The party was registered in 1995, initially calling itself the “Social National Party of Ukraine” and using a swastika style logo. Svoboda is the electoral front for neo-nazi organizations in Ukraine such as UNA-UNSO.[10]

One further indication that Nuland’s hand is shaping latest Ukraine events is the fact that the new Ukrainian Parliament is expected to nominate Nuland’s choice, Arseny Yatsenyuk, from Tymoshenko’s party, to be interim head of the new Cabinet.

Whatever the final truth, clear is that Washington has prepared a new economic rape of Ukraine using its control over the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IMF plunder of Ukraine Crown Jewels

Now that the “opposition” has driven a duly-elected president into exile somewhere unknown, and dissolved the national riot police, Berkut, Washington has demanded that Ukraine submit to onerous IMF conditionalities.

In negotiations last October, the IMF demanded that Ukraine double prices for gas and electricity to industry and homes, that they lift a ban on private sale of Ukraine’s rich agriculture lands, make a major overhaul of their economic holdings, devalue the currency, slash state funds for school children and the elderly to “balance the budget.” In return Ukraine would get a paltry $4 billion.

Before the ouster of the Moscow-leaning Yanukovich government last week, Moscow was prepared to buy some $15 billion of Ukraine debt and to slash its gas prices by fully one-third. Now, understandably, Russia is unlikely to give that support. The economic cooperation between Ukraine and Moscow was something Washington was determined to sabotage at all costs.

This drama is far from over. The stakes involve the very future of Russia, the EU-Russian relations, and the global power of Washington, or at least that faction in Washington that sees further wars as the prime instrument of policy.

Writer F. William Engdahl is a geopolitical analyst and the author of  .

Endnotes:

[1] F. William Engdahl, US-Außenministerium in flagranti über Regimewechsel in der Ukraine ertappt, Kopp Online.de, February 8, 2014, accessed in http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/enthuellungen/f-william-engdahl/us-aussenministerium-in-flagranti-ueber-regimewechsel-in-der-ukraine-ertappt.html

[2] Bertrand Benoit, Laurence Norman and Stephen Fidler , European Ministers Brokered Ukraine Political Compromise: German, French, Polish Foreign Ministers Flew to Kiev, The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2014, accessed in   http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542.html

[3] Jessica Best, Ukraine protests Snipers firing live rounds at demonstrators as fresh violence erupts despite truce, The Mirror UK, February 20, 2014, accessed inhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-protests-snipers-firing-live-3164828

[4] Aleksandar Vasovic , Far right group flexes during Ukraine revolution, Associated Press,  January 3, 2005, Accessed in http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20050103&slug=ukraine03

[5] Wikipedia, Ukrainian National Assembly  Ukrainian National Self Defence, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, accessed inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Assembly_%E2%80%93_Ukrainian_National_Self_Defence

[6] Source report, Who Has Ukraine Weapons, February 27, 2014, private to author.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Max Blumenthal, Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?, AlterNet February 25, 2014, accessed in

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/

[9] Channel 4 News, Far right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator, 16 December 2013, accessed in

http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests

[10] Ibid

Source: F. William Engdahl | 21st Century Wire

Central Banker Appointed As Prime Minister of Ukraine

Newly appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine and former central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk

A reshuffled Ukrainian Parliament installed following a coup last week has voted to appoint Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the new prime minister of the country. Yats, as Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, called him, is a natural choice. He is a millionaire former banker who served as economy minister, foreign minister and parliamentary speaker before Yanukovych took office in 2010. He is a member of Yulie Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party. Prior to the revolution cooked up by the State Department and executed by ultra-nationalist street thugs, Tymoshenko was incarcerated for embezzlement and other crimes against the people of Ukraine. Now she will be part of the installed government, same as she was after the last orchestrated coup, the Orange Revolution.

Yats will deliver Ukraine to the international bankers. “Ukraine is on the brink of bankruptcy and needs to be saved from collapse — Yatsenyuk has a strong economic background,” Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “Ukraine faces difficult reforms but without them there won’t be a successful future.”

Discussion with the IMF is crucial, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said earlier this week. In order to cinch the deal, the U.S. government will sweeten the pot. Lew talked with the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, about Ukraine as he headed back from a globalist confab, the G-20 meeting in Sydney, Australia.

“Secretary Lew informed Managing Director Lagarde that he had spoken earlier in the day with Ukrainian leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and advised him of the broad support for an international assistance package centered on the IMF, as soon as the transitional Ukrainian government is fully established by the Parliament,” MNI News reported on Monday. “Secretary Lew also noted that he had communicated to Mr. Yatsenyuk the need to quickly begin implementing economic reforms and enter discussions with the IMF following the establishment of the transitional government.”

Ukraine’s story is right out of the IMF playbook. The nation’s corrupt leaders past and present – most notably Tymoshenko, who went to prison for corruption and wholesale thievery – have enriched themselves at the expensive of ordinary Ukrainians.

“Ukraine at the dawn of independence was among the ten most developed countries, and now it drags out a miserable existence,” Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said last year. The nation’s leaders “signed a memorandum with the International Monetary Fund to meet the requirements of the oligarchs, but on the other hand — to timely pay the interest on the IMF loans and to raise the prices for gas and electricity,” Symonenko said.

The Orange Revolution – initiated by NED, IRI, Soros and the CIA – installed a rogue’s gallery of self-seeking sociopaths who further bankrupted a country already seriously debilitated by corruption.

For the IMF and the financial elite, Ukraine is nothing less than a tantalizing bounty. “Its fertile black soil generated more than one-fourth of Soviet agricultural output, and its farms provided substantial quantities of meat, milk, grain, and vegetables to other republics,” notes ABO, a website covering energy resources. “Likewise, its diversified heavy industry supplied the unique equipment (for example, large diameter pipes) and raw materials to industrial and mining sites (vertical drilling apparatus) in other regions of the former USSR.”

After breaking away from the Soviet Union and declaring independence, it was thought the country would “liberalize” its industry and resources, in other words open them up for privatization by transnational corporations and international banks, but this did not happen quickly enough for the financiers and the corporatists.

“The drop in steel prices and Ukraine’s exposure to the global financial crisis due to aggressive foreign borrowing lowered growth in 2008 and the economy contracted more than 15 percent in 2009, among the worst economic performances in the world,” ABO explains. “In August 2010, Ukraine, under the Yanukovych Administration, reached a new agreement with the IMF for a $15.1 billion Stand-By Agreement. Economic growth resumed in 2010 and 2011, buoyed by exports. After initial disbursements, the IMF program stalled in early 2011 due to the Ukrainian Government’s lack of progress in implementing key gas sector reforms, namely gas tariff increases. Economic growth slowed in the second half of 2012 with Ukraine finishing the year in technical recession following two consecutive quarters of negative growth.”

Now that Yanukovych is out of the picture, the banker minion Yats is lording over the Parliament, and thuggish fascists control the streets and guard against a counter revolution that my threaten Wall Street’s coup, the coast is clear for the IMF to pick up where it left off. Ukraine, now one of the poorest countries in Europe thanks to a kleptocracy supported by Washington and Wall Street, is wide open for further looting.

Source: http://www.infowars.com/central-banker-appointed-as-prime-minister-of-ukraine/

Fasten Your Seatbelts: The Coming Global Monetary Reset

The big currency reset. It’s not a case of ‘if’ – it’s a case ofwhen.

Don’t expect your provincial Secretary of Treasury or Chancellor Exchequer to warn you about what is coming around the corner, because they are either too stupid to know, or too busy covering their own backsides.

To understand where we are, it’s very important to understand how we got here (another point which bureaucrats and backers do not want the general populace to know).

A quick history lesson then…

The Opposite of Emerging is Submerging

Lulled and distracted by the antics of developed country central banks and emerging economy central banks – to constantly “pump-up the jam” and flood the economy with paper casino chips from either Fort Knox or Mount Gox, the real tectonic shift of the global economy since 2008 has been more or less ignored by financial gurus and sages. It is taken as “normal” that deflation, ordisinflation is operating in the developed economies, but now we can see that rip-roaring inflation operating in the emerging economies.

Supposedly, this is ‘Muddle Through’, but since 2008 the North-South paradigm has all but dissolved – the developed OECD economies are locked in a death embrace with the Emerging economies. The developed economies are now locked into chronic globalization – exporting monetary inflation while importing cheap industrial goods, services and resources.

Since 2008 the always-promised ‘world shift’ of the economy from west to east, and from north to south has happened, but the net result is a shock. Pretending “we didn’t know” is comforting, but ultimately stupid.

This is an unstable equilibrium, or an interregnum – even a sideshow, because the current global economic context and process is the exact opposite of sustainable. Harm to both North and South is now the main impact of the post-2008 process of overreach and intense fiat paper shuffling. Listing the consequences and causes of this overreach is not easy and always open to argument, but possibly the best summary is to suggest that since 2008, ‘Ricardo’s comparative advantage‘ paradigm has been inverted. Economic and above all monetary globalization is now the path to ruin and poverty. From win-win to lose-lose. The worse it gets, expect the architects of ruin – establishment politicians, central bankers and financial pundits, to retreat into even deeper denial.

The Production Bubble That Triggers the Collapse

Another simple way to argue the global economy has overreached is that industrial and economic production capacity in the Emerging economies (EMs), starting with the BRICs, is now massively over-sized. This means the EMs can and will saturate the post-industrial, deflating North with industrial supply at every stage and opportunity as technology, design and product development throw up a new market openings everywhere. Examples like the car and cellphone, fashion wear and off-shore call center industries are relatively “classic”. All of these are already saturated with capacity – but the EMs are still adding more. Previous historical “classic examples” of this process for example included the ship building industry, but the scale paradigm has been woefully ignored.

Since 2008, the process has intensified, creating an increasingly certain outlook for a forced and fiat end to the willingness of the EMs to accept the fiat currency endlessly printed to finance the deflating, de-industrializing DMs (developed economies).

This will not necessarily be a politicized process, of the type hinted at by India’s central bank governor (see http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/tag/raghuram-rajan/), due to the rapidity and scale of the crisis, but instead trigger the collapse of the current global fiat monetary orderdictated by national economic self-defence and survival in the EMs.

The economic jump start of the Ricardo model, which has run riot for the last quarter-century, and went into over-drived from 2008 – will be abandoned.

Deflation/Inflation: Two Sides of the Same Bitcoin

Ricardo’s original model held sunny Portugual as a producer of cork and sherry, while rainy England could produce wine casks from its oak forests and wool from its sheep flocks. The money used in a basically resource-based exchange using then-rapidly growing maritime transport capabilities was held to be stable and gold-linked (or based). Later on, low-cost labor resources were built into Ricardo’s paradigm called “comparative advantage”. The EMs since the 1980s have played the role of resource providers while the DMs were the solvent market suppliers.

While there was a clear limit on cork, wine, oak casks and woolens supply and demand, this does not really apply to modern global fiat money and modern industrial technology. These are high gain positive feedback processes which only stop when they hit a brick wall.

The Ricardo comparative advantage model does not apply to post-1980′s globalization and super economies – like those of China and India, where industrial technology has raced ahead of infrastructure development. This is simply a bomb waiting to explode, alongside the industrial capacity growth, the EMs engaged massive growth of credit, mushroom growth urbanization, neglect of the agriculture and food sector, and turning a blind eye to rampant or even “structural” corruption. Inflation was the sure and certain result.

The results do not stop there. While inflation took off inside the EMs, with their economies producing more than they can consume, and exporting to the DMs which consume more than they produce, the EMs are also exported deflation to the developed market economies. At the same time, the emerging market economies mined out their capital bases to maintain their breakneck growth of industrial capacity.

On an almost daily basis now, the EMs are all shifting to current account deficit with the inevitable consequences of national currency devaluation, further inflation, and of course – higher interest rates.

Win-Win to Lose-Lose: Global Fiat Currency Crisis

The post-1980′s economic globalization paradigm can be called an initial ‘Win-Win’ model which eventually morphed to Lose-Lose.

The industrial nations of the DMs, which formerly benefited from the resource nations of the EMs under the previous ‘Ricardo-type’ model, are now mired in debt and de-industrialization, making it impossible for them to “grow their way out of crisis”. The EMs on their present industrial expansion path can only grow themselves into rapidly-deepening crisis.

The “money-in-the-middle” especially concerns the US dollar and its subsidiary partner, theeuro, both of which are vastly overvalued fiat currencies – but against what? Almost inevitably, this will feature a big rebound for gold, playing the starring role of in this latest episode of “Canary in the Monetary Coal Mine”. From a personal standpoint, or national (for those who have any), physical gold and silver could end up providing solid protection against the exposure of a monetary reset.

Conversely, commodities are unlikely to profit on an enduring sustained basis, due to economic restructuring, re-centering and contraction being almost certain.

Commenting on the IMF’s latest report on global capital flows since 1980, Reuters on 30 January said that while the IMF estimates net capital inflows to emerging economies as $7 trillion or more only since 2005, this was a “legacy trend” hinged on the EMs running a much higher GDP growth differential above the DMs than present. The IMF report noted that for 2014, economic growth in the BRICs will go on declining, and for Russia and Brazil, they will be less even than the GDP growth of the US and Britain. While the IMF’s economists do not allow themselves to project break-of-series change to the global economy, the process of what Gordon T. Long calls “Global collateral impairment” can easily default as the net result of apparently ‘unrelated and complex’ runaway processes.

This collateral impairment will inevitably trigger multi-national currency protection measures, a situation already clear in countries like Turkey, India, Argentina and other EMs.

For DMs in the North, plans are likely already underway. Will the reset feature a brand new reserve currency, or the introduction a fledgling single global, or virtual currency? If so, what will it be backed by (or maybe it won’t). It’s hard to know right now, but a shift of that magnitude could provide for the introduction of something new in the mix.

It’s a case of problem, reaction, solution, and one can assume that this Hegelian equation has already been mapped out on the back of a napkin in an executive dining floor of the one of the world leading central banks, possibly written using Christine Lagarde’s lip stick.

As a result, sacrificing GDP growth to protect the national money in the EMs will be inevitable. In turn, this will send a severe shock wave North to the DMs ,which have surfed on the latter-day version of the Ricardo paradigm for the last 30 years, and are now left unable to adapt.

The basic conclusion is that a global monetary reset is now overdue.

There will be shock waves, and haircuts too.

Brace yourself for impact, because it’s coming.

Source: Andrew McKillop | 21st Century Wire

Illusory Money And The Economic System Construct

The name ‘Rothschild’ first appeared in the 18th century when Mayer Amschel Bauer established his banking empire in Frankfurt, Germany, and changed the family name. The Bauers were a notorious satanic family in Middle Ages Germany and the major Rothschilds remain master black magicians to this day. Mayer Amschel’s father, Moses Amschel Bauer, was a moneylender and proprietor of a counting house.

The Rothschild dynasty is controlled by the family’s satanic black magicians who know how reality works and how they can manipulate energy and human perception. They know that money, like everything else, is energy and they have set up the financial system to exploit this knowledge. People talk about ‘flows of money’, but it is really flows of energy and they have created an energetic construct that ensures that the energy of money flows to them. We call this construct the ‘economic system’ or ‘the economy’ and it appears to consist of banks, financial houses, stock markets and other forms of trading; but all of these entities are just acupuncture points on the meridians of money to ensure that the wealth of the world flows to the bloodline families. It is because of this that the Rothschilds count their wealth in multiples of trillions and more.

The Rothschilds control the global financial system and have accumulated their power by theft and exploitation. Their whole system is based on a gigantic fraud because there is no money, as we perceive it. The paper money and coins are backed by nothing. Their value is only the value that we can be persuaded they have. They are just worthless pieces of paper (a promise-to-pay or promissory note) and pieces of metal that we are tricked into taking seriously. Most ‘money’ is not even something you can hold today; it is only figures on a computer screen. ‘Money’ is brought into circulation through what is called ‘credit’, but this ‘credit’ is a belief-system, that’s all, a belief that it exists. The banks are not lending us anything and people are paying them a fortune to do so.

The bloodline families, particularly the Rothschilds, have controlled governments and banking for centuries and they have been able to dictate the laws of the financial system and introduce what is called ‘fractional reserve lending’. This allows banks to lend at least ten times what they have on deposit. In other words, they are lending ‘money’ they don’t have and that doesn’t exist – called ‘credit’ – and are charging interest on it. When you go to a bank to borrow, say £50,000, you have to provide ‘collateral’ by signing over your house, land, car or business, and this will go to the bank if you don’t meet the repayments. The bank is giving you nothing in return for all this. It types into your account £50,000 and that’s it. The £50,000 doesn’t really exist – it is a line of non-existent ‘credit’. Say you give someone a cheque for £20,000 from the original £50,000 and the recipient deposits the money into another bank. Now this second bank can lend ten times the £20,000 to other people, quite legally, and charge them interest. When you follow the original £50,000 from bank to bank, the amount of ‘credit’ that is created as it circulates the banking system is absolutely fantastic. We are talking here about a single loan that was created out of thin air in the first place.

This is how the Rothschilds have come to own governments and most of the world. Interest on money is the key here. If money was put into circulation interest-free, and there was no interest on money in any form, it would return to its rightful role as a unit of energy exchange that overcomes the limitations of barter. It is when you introduce interest that the trouble starts because then you are making money from money and it no longer serves the people – it enslaves them. The bank credit / interest system means that the unit of exchange for human activity comes into circulation right from the start as a debt.

Governments could create their own money interest-free to pay for public services, but instead they borrow it from the banking system and the population has to pay it back, plus interest. It is the same with individuals and businesses. Governments don’t create their own interest-free money because they are controlled by the families who also control the banks, most notably the Rothschilds. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by the Rothschilds when he began to print interest-free money called ‘greenbacks’ to fund the North in the American Civil War. The Rothschilds were funding both sides in the Civil War, as they do in all the wars they engineer, but Lincoln eventually refused to pay their phenomenal levels of interest. The greenback system worked so well that Lincoln was considering making it the permanent means of government finance. This was the worst nightmare for the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds had Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 and the greenback policy went with him.

There is another vital aspect to understand about interest on money: when you take out a loan, the bank ‘creates’, in the form of ‘credit’, the amount of the ‘loan’. This sounds obvious and straightforward, except for one thing. You are not paying back only the loan; you are paying back the loan, plus interest, and the interest is not created, only the principle figure. This means that there is never even nearly enough ‘money’ in circulation to pay back all the outstanding loans and interest. It is a fatal flaw with regard to human freedom and it has been done purposely to ensure that bankruptcy and loss of property and possessions to the banks is built into the system. It is all part of the Rothschild energy-construct that flows the wealth and energy of the people in their direction. A fantastic amount of the money that people pay in taxes goes straight to the private banks to pay back interest on ‘money’ that the government could create itself, interest free. ‘Privatisation’ is the selling of state assets in response to bank-created debt.

The world’s poorest countries are handing over control of their land and resources to the Rothschild banks when they can’t pay back the loans made specifically to ensnare them in this very situation. ‘Third World Debt’ was manufactured to replace physical occupation of resource-rich or strategically-situated countries with today’s financial occupation. Once a country is indebted to the Rothschild bankers with non-existent credit, it is forced to hand over control of its affairs to the banks, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These then dictate economic and social policy at every level. The World Bank and IMF are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Rothschilds and always have their place-men at the helm. Poor countries with debt they are struggling to repay are forced to cut spending on social programmes, health, education and humanitarian projects to pay the banks the ‘debt’ they owe. The world does not have to be in poverty and conflict. It is manipulated to be that way to serve the bloodline agenda for global dictatorship.

Julian Websdale is an independent researcher in the fields of esoteric science and metaphysics, and a self-initiate of the Western Esoteric Tradition. His interest in these subjects began in 1988. Julian was born in England, received his education as an electronic and computer engineer from the University of Bolton, served in a Vaishnava monastery during 2010, and has travelled to over 21 countries. Julian is also a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Blog: 

Source: Julian Websdale  |  Waking Times

The Final Swindle of Private American Wealth Has Begun

I began writing analysis on the macro-economic situation of the American financial structure back in 2006, and in the eight years since, I have seen an undeniably steady trend of fiscal decline.

I have never had any doubt that the U.S. economy as we know it was headed for total and catastrophic collapse, the only question was when, exactly, the final trigger event would occur. As I have pointed out in the past, economic implosion is a process. It grows over time, like the ice shelf on a mountain developing into a potential avalanche. It is easy to shrug off the danger because the visible destruction is not immediate, it is latent; but when the avalanche finally begins, it is far too late for most people to escape…

If you view the progressive financial breakdown in America as some kind of “comedy of errors” or a trial of unlucky coincidences, then there is not much I can do to educate you on the reasons behind the carnage. If, however, you understand that there is a deliberate motivation behind American collapse, then what I have to say here will not fall on biased ears.

The financial crash of 2008, the same crash which has been ongoing for years, is NOT an accident. It is a concerted and engineered crisis meant to position the U.S. for currency disintegration and the institution of a global basket currency controlled by an unaccountable supranational governing body like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The American populace is being conditioned through economic fear to accept the institutionalization of global financial control and the loss of sovereignty.

Anyone skeptical of this conclusion is welcome to study my numerous past examinations on the issue of globalization; I don’t have the time within this article to re-explain, and frankly, with so much information on deliberate dollar destruction available to the public today I’ve grown tired of anyone with a lack of awareness.

If you continue to believe that the Fed actually exists to “help” stabilize our economy or our currency, then you will never find the logic behind what they do. If you understand that the goal of the Fed and the globalists is to dismantle the dollar and the U.S. economic system to make way for something “new”, then certain recent events and policy initiatives do start to make sense.

The year of 2014 has been looming as a serious concern for me since the final quarter of 2013, and you can read about those concerns and the evidence that supports them in my articleExpect Devastating Global Economic Changes In 2014.

At the end of 2013 we saw at least three major events that could have sent America spiraling into total collapse. The first was the announcement of possible taper measures by the Fed, which have now begun. The second was the possible invasion of Syria which the Obama Administration is still desperate for despite successful efforts by the liberty movement to deny him public support for war. And, the third event was the last debt ceiling debate (or debt ceiling theater depending on how you look at it), which placed the U.S. squarely on the edge of fiscal default.

As we begin 2014, these same threatening issues remain (along with many others), only at greater levels and with more prominence. New developments reinforce my original position that this year will be remembered by historians as the year in which the final breakdown of the U.S. monetary dynamic was set in motion. Here are some of those developments explained…

Taper Of QE3

When I first suggested that a Fed taper was not only possible but probable months ago, I was met with a lot a bit of criticism from some in the alternative economic world. You can read my taper articles here and here.

This was understandable. The Fed uses multiple stimulus outlets besides QE in order to manipulate U.S. markets. Artificially lowering interest rates is very much a form of stimulus in itself, for instance.

However, I think a dangerous blindness to threats beyond money printing has developed within our community of analysts and this must be remedied. People need to realize first that the Fed does NOT care about the continued health of our economy, and they may not care about presenting a facade of health for much longer either. Alternative analysts also need to come to grips with the reality that overt money printing is not the only method at the disposal of globalists when destroying the greenback. A debt default is just as likely to cause loss of world reserve status and devaluation – no printing press required. Blame goes to government and political gridlock while the banks slither away in the midst of the chaos.

The taper of QE3 is not a “head fake”, it is very real, but there are many hidden motivations behind such cuts.

Currently, $20 billion has been trimmed from the $85 billion per month program, and we are already beginning to see what APPEAR to be market effects, including a flight from emerging market currencies from Argentina to Turkey. A couple of years ago investors viewed these markets as among the few places they could exploit to make a positive return, or in other words, one of the few places they could successfully gamble. The Fed taper, though, seems to be shifting the flow of capital away from emerging markets.

The mainstream argument is that stimulus was flowing into such markets, giving them liquidity support, and the taper is drying up that liquidity. Whether this is actually true is hard to say, given that without a full audit we have no idea how much fiat the Federal Reserve has actually created and how much of it they send out into foreign markets.

I stand more on the position that the Fed taper was actually begun in preparation for a slowdown in global markets that was already in progress. In fact, I believe central bankers have been well aware that a decline in every sector was coming, and are moving to insulate themselves.

Is it just a “coincidence” that the central bankers have initiated their taper of QE right when global manufacturing numbers begin to plummet?

http://www.agweb.com/article/us_stocks_drop_as_manufacturing_gauge_falls_more_than_forecast_BLMG/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-01/china-manufacturing-gauge-falls-to-six-month-low.html

Is it just “coincidence” the taper was started right when the Baltic Dry Index, a global indicator of shipping demand, has lost over 50% of its value in the past few weeks?

http://investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index.htm

Is it just “coincidence” that the taper is running tandem with dismal retail sales growth reports from across the globe coming in from the final quarter of 2013?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-02-04/euro-is-near-10-week-low-before-retail-sales-data-ecb-meeting

http://www.scmp.com/business/economy/article/1421025/no-christmas-cheer-hong-kongs-retailers

http://business.time.com/2013/11/14/walmart-sales-dip-as-low-income-americans-close-wallets/

And, is it just a “coincidence” that the Fed taper is a accelerating right as the next debt ceiling debate begins in March, and when reports are being released by the Congressional Budget Office that over 2 million jobs (in work hours) may be lost due to Obamacare?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/04/us-usa-fiscal-obamacare-idUSBREA131B120140204

No, I do not think any of this is coincidence.  Most if not all of these negative indicators needed months to generate, so they could not have been caused by the taper itself.  The only explanation beyond “coincidence” is that the Federal Reserve WANTED to launch the taper program and protect itself before these signals began to reach the public.

Look at it this way – The taper program distances the bankers from responsibility for crisis in our financial framework, at least in the eyes of the general public. If a market calamity takes place WHILE stimulus measures are still at full speed, this makes the banks look rather guilty, or at least incompetent. People would begin to question the validity of central bank methods, and they might even question the validity of the central bank’s existence. The Fed is creating space between itself and the economy because they know that a trigger event is coming. They want to ensure that they are not blamed and that stimulus itself is not seen as ineffective, or seen as the cause.

We all know that the claims of recovery are utter nonsense. Beyond the numerous warning signs listed above, one need only look at true unemployment numbers, household wage decline, and record low personal savings of the average American. The taper is not in response to an improving economic environment. Rather, the taper is a signal for the next stage of collapse.

Stocks are beginning to plummet around the world and all mainstream pundits are pointing fingers at a reduction in stimulus which has very little to do with anything. What is the message they want us to digest? That we “can’t live” without the aid and oversight of central banks.

The real reason stocks and other indicators are stumbling is because the effectiveness of stimulus manipulation has a shelf life, and that shelf life is over for the Federal Reserve. I suspect they will continue cutting QE every month for the next year as stocks decline.  Will the Fed restart QE?  If they do, it will probably not occur until after a substantial breakdown has ensued and the public is sufficiently shell-shocked.  The possibility also exists that the Fed will never return to stimulus measures (if debt default is the plan), and QE stimulus will eventually be replaced by IMF “aid”.

Government Controlled Investment

Last month, just as taper measures were being implemented, the White House launched an investment program called MyRA; a retirement IRA program in which middle class and low wage Americans can invest part of their paycheck in government bonds.

That’s right, if you wanted to know where the money was going to come from to support U.S. debt if the Fed cuts QE, guess what, the money is going to come from YOU.

For a decade or so China was the primary buyer and crutch for U.S. debt spending. After the derivatives crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve became the largest purchaser of Treasury bonds. With the decline of foreign interest in long term U.S. debt, and the taper in full effect, it only makes sense that the government would seek out an alternative source of capital to continue the debt cycle. The MyRA program turns the general American public into a new cash stream, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye…

I find it rather suspicious that a government-controlled retirement program is suddenly introduced just as the Fed has begun to taper, as stocks are beginning to fall, and as questions arise over the U.S. debt ceiling. I have three major concerns:

First, is it possible that like the Fed, the government is also aware that a crash in stocks is coming? And, are they offering the MyRA program as an easy outlet (or trap) for people to pour in what little savings they have as panic over declining equities accelerates?  Bonds do tend to look appetizing to uninformed investors during an equities route.

Second, the program is currently voluntary, but what if the plan is to make it mandatory? Obama has already signed mandatory health insurance “taxation” into law, which is meant to steal a portion of every paycheck. Why not steal an even larger portion from every paycheck in order to support U.S. debt? It’s for the “greater good,” after all.

Third, is this a deliberate strategy to corral the last vestiges of private American wealth into the corner of U.S. bonds, so that this wealth can be confiscated or annihilated? What happens if there is indeed an eventual debt default, as I believe there will be? Will Americans be herded into bonds by a crisis in stocks only to have bonds implode as well? Will they be conned into bond investment out of a “patriotic duty” to save the nation from default? Or, will the government just take their money through legislative wrangling, as was done in Cyprus not long ago?

The Final Swindle

Again, the next debt ceiling debate is slated for the end of this month. If the government decides to kick the can down the road for another quarter, I believe this will be the last time. The most recent actions of the Fed and the government signal preparations for a stock implosion and ultimate debt calamity. Default would have immediate effects in foreign markets, but the appearance of U.S. stability could drag on for a time, giving the globalists ample opportunity to siphon every ounce of financial blood from the public.

It is difficult to say how the next year will play out, but one thing is certain; something very strange and ugly is afoot. The goal of the globalists is to engineer desperation. To create a catastrophe and then force the masses to beg for help. How many hands of “friendship” will be offered in the wake of a U.S. wealth and currency crisis? What offers for “aid” will come from the IMF? How much of our country and how many of our people will be collateralized to secure that aid? And, how many Americans will go along with the swindle because they were not prepared in advance?

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Putin Scores A New Victory In The Ukraine

What really happened in the Ukrainian crisis?

It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden domes on the banks of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian civilisation and the most charming of East European capitals. It is a comfortable and rather prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy restaurants, neat streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The girls are pretty and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than Moscow, and easier on the wallet. Though statistics say the Ukraine is broke and its people should be as poor as Africans, in reality they aren’t doing too badly, thanks to their fiscal imprudence. The government borrowed and spent freely, heavily subsidised housing and heating, and they brazenly avoided devaluation of the national currency and the austerity program prescribed by the IMF. This living on credit can go only so far: the Ukraine was doomed to default on its debts next month or sooner, and this is one of the reasons for the present commotion.

A tug-of-war between the East and the West for the future of Ukraine lasted over a month, and has ended for all practical purposes in a resounding victory for Vladimir Putin, adding to his previous successes in Syria and Iran. The trouble began when the administration of President Yanukovich went looking for credits to reschedule its loans and avoid default. There were no offers. They turned to the EC for help; the EC, chiefly Poland and Germany, seeing that the Ukrainian administration was desperate, prepared an association agreement of unusual severity.

The EC is quite hard on its new East European members, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria et al.: these countries had their industry and agriculture decimated, their young people working menial jobs in Western Europe, their population drop exceeded that of the WWII.

But the association agreement offered to the Ukraine was even worse. It would turn the Ukraine into an impoverished colony of the EC without giving it even the dubious advantages of membership (such as freedom of work and travel in the EC). In desperation, Yanukovich agreed to sign on the dotted line, in vain hopes of getting a large enough loan to avoid collapse. But the EC has no money to spare – it has to provide for Greece, Italy, Spain. Now Russia entered the picture. At the time, relations of the Ukraine and Russia were far from good. Russians had become snotty with their oil money, the Ukrainians blamed their troubles on Russians, but Russia was still the biggest market for Ukrainian products.

For Russia, the EC agreement meant trouble: currently the Ukraine sells its output in Russia with very little customs protection; the borders are porous; people move freely across the border, without even a passport. If the EC association agreement were signed, the EC products would flood Russia through the Ukrainian window of opportunity. So Putin spelled out the rules to Yanukovich: if you sign with the EC, Russian tariffs will rise. This would put some 400,000 Ukrainians out of work right away. Yanukovich balked and refused to sign the EC agreement at the last minute. (I predicted this in my report from Kiev full three weeks before it happened, when nobody believed it – a source of pride).

The EC, and the US standing behind it, were quite upset. Besides the loss of potential economic profit, they had another important reason: they wanted to keep Russia farther away from Europe, and they wanted to keep Russia weak. Russia is not the Soviet Union, but some of the Soviet disobedience to Western imperial designs still lingers in Moscow: be it in Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the Empire can’t have its way while the Russian bear is relatively strong. Russia without the Ukraine can’t be really powerful: it would be like the US with its Mid-western and Pacific states chopped away. The West does not want the Ukraine to prosper, or to become a stable and strong state either, so it cannot join Russia and make it stronger. A weak, poor and destabilised Ukraine in semi-colonial dependence to the West with some NATO bases is the best future for the country, as perceived by Washington or Brussels.

Angered by this last-moment-escape of Yanukovich, the West activated its supporters. For over a month, Kiev has been besieged by huge crowds bussed from all over the Ukraine, bearing a local strain of the Arab Spring in the far north. Less violent than Tahrir, their Maidan Square became a symbol of struggle for the European strategic future of the country. The Ukraine was turned into the latest battle ground between the US-led alliance and a rising Russia. Would it be a revanche for Obama’s Syria debacle, or another heavy strike at fading American hegemony?

The simple division into “pro-East” and “pro-West” has been complicated by the heterogeneity of the Ukraine. The loosely knit country of differing regions is quite similar in its makeup to the Yugoslavia of old. It is another post-Versailles hotchpotch of a country made up after the First World War of bits and pieces, and made independent after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Some parts of this “Ukraine” were incorporated by Russia 500 years ago, the Ukraine proper (a much smaller parcel of land, bearing this name) joined Russia 350 years ago, whilst the Western Ukraine (called the “Eastern Regions”) was acquired by Stalin in 1939, and the Crimea was incorporated in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Khrushchev in 1954.

The Ukraine is as Russian as the South-of-France is French and as Texas and California are American. Yes, some hundreds years ago, Provence was independent from Paris, – it had its own language and art; while Nice and Savoy became French rather recently. Yes, California and Texas joined the Union rather late too. Still, we understand that they are – by now – parts of those larger countries, ifs and buts notwithstanding. But if they were forced to secede, they would probably evolve a new historic narrative stressing the French ill treatment of the South in the Cathar Crusade, or dispossession of Spanish and Russian residents of California.

Accordingly, since the Ukraine’s independence, the authorities have been busy nation-building, enforcing a single official language and creating a new national myth for its 45 million inhabitants. The crowds milling about the Maidan were predominantly (though not exclusively) arrivals from Galicia, a mountainous county bordering with Poland and Hungary, 500 km (300 miles) away from Kiev, and natives of the capital refer to the Maidan gathering as a “Galician occupation”.

Like the fiery Bretons, the Galicians are fierce nationalists, bearers of a true Ukrainian spirit (whatever that means). Under Polish and Austrian rule for centuries, whilst the Jews were economically powerful, they are a strongly anti-Jewish and anti-Polish lot, and their modern identity centred around their support for Hitler during the WWII, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of their Polish and Jewish neighbours. After the WWII, the remainder of pro-Hitler Galician SS fighters were adopted by US Intelligence, re-armed and turned into a guerrilla force against the Soviets. They added an anti-Russian line to their two ancient hatreds and kept fighting the “forest war” until 1956, and these ties between the Cold Warriors have survived the thaw.

After 1991, when the independent Ukraine was created, in the void of state-building traditions, the Galicians were lauded as ‘true Ukrainians’, as they were the only Ukrainians who ever wanted independence. Their language was used as the basis of a new national state language, their traditions became enshrined on the state level. Memorials of Galician Nazi collaborators and mass murderers Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych peppered the land, often provoking the indignation of other Ukrainians. The Galicians played an important part in the 2004 Orange Revolution as well, when the results of presidential elections were declared void and the pro-Western candidate Mr Yuschenko got the upper hand in the re-run.

However, in 2004, many Kievans also supported Yuschenko, hoping for the Western alliance and a bright new future. Now, in 2013, the city’s support for the Maidan was quite low, and the people of Kiev complained loudly about the mess created by the invading throngs: felled trees, burned benches, despoiled buildings and a lot of biological waste. Still, Kiev is home to many NGOs; city intellectuals receive generous help from the US and EC. The old comprador spirit is always strongest in the capitals.

For the East and Southeast of the Ukraine, the populous and heavily industrialised regions, the proposal of association with the EC is a no-go, with no ifs, ands or buts. They produce coal, steel, machinery, cars, missiles, tanks and aircraft. Western imports would erase Ukrainian industry right off the map, as the EC officials freely admit. Even the Poles, hardly a paragon of industrial development, had the audacity to say to the Ukraine: we’ll do the technical stuff, you’d better invest in agriculture. This is easier to say than to do: the EC has a lot of regulations that make Ukrainian products unfit for sale and consumption in Europe. Ukrainian experts estimated their expected losses for entering into association with the EC at anything from 20 to 150 billion euros.

For Galicians, the association would work fine. Their speaker at the Maidan called on the youth to ‘go where you can get money’ and do not give a damn for industry. They make their income in two ways: providing bed-and breakfast rooms for Western tourists and working in Poland and Germany as maids and menials. They hoped they would get visa-free access to Europe and make a decent income for themselves. Meanwhile, nobody offered them a visa-waiver arrangement. The Brits mull over leaving the EC, because of the Poles who flooded their country; the Ukrainians would be too much for London. Only the Americans, always generous at somebody’s else expense, demanded the EC drop its visa requirement for them.

While the Maidan was boiling, the West sent its emissaries, ministers and members of parliament to cheer the Maidan crowd, to call for President Yanukovich to resign and for a revolution to install pro-Western rule. Senator McCain went there and made a few firebrand speeches. The EC declared Yanukovich “illegitimate” because so many of his citizens demonstrated against him. But when millions of French citizens demonstrated against their president, when Occupy Wall Street was violently dispersed, nobody thought the government of France or the US president had lost legitimacy…

Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, shared her biscuits with the demonstrators, and demanded from the oligarchs support for the “European cause” or their businesses would suffer. The Ukrainian oligarchs are very wealthy, and they prefer the Ukraine as it is, sitting on the fence between the East and the West. They are afraid that the Russian companies will strip their assets should the Ukraine join the Customs Union, and they know that they are not competitive enough to compete with the EC. Pushed now by Nuland, they were close to falling on the EC side.

Yanukovich was in big trouble. The default was rapidly approaching. He annoyed the pro-Western populace, and he irritated his own supporters, the people of the East and Southeast. The Ukraine had a real chance of collapsing into anarchy. A far-right nationalist party, Svoboda (Liberty), probably the nearest thing to the Nazi party to arise in Europe since 1945, made a bid for power. The EC politicians accused Russia of pressurising the Ukraine; Russian missiles suddenly emerged in the western-most tip of Russia, a few minutes flight from Berlin. The Russian armed forces discussed the US strategy of a “disarming first strike”. The tension was very high.

Edward Lucas, the Economist’s international editor and author of , is a hawk of the Churchill and Reagan variety. For him, Russia is an enemy, whether ruled by Tsar, by Stalin or by Putin. He wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the [Ukraine] determines the long-term future of the entire former Soviet Union. If Ukraine adopts a Euro-Atlantic orientation, then the Putin regime and its satrapies are finished… But if Ukraine falls into Russia’s grip, then the outlook is bleak and dangerous… Europe’s own security will also be endangered. NATO is already struggling to protect the Baltic states and Poland from the integrated and increasingly impressive military forces of Russia and Belarus. Add Ukraine to that alliance, and a headache turns into a nightmare.”

In this cliff-hanging situation, Putin made his pre-emptive strike. At a meeting in the Kremlin, he agreed to buy fifteen billion euros worth of Ukrainian Eurobonds and cut the natural gas price by a third. This meant there would be no default; no massive unemployment; no happy hunting ground for the neo-Nazi thugs of Svoboda; no cheap and plentiful Ukrainian prostitutes and menials for the Germans and Poles; and Ukrainian homes will be warm this Christmas. Better yet, the presidents agreed to reforge their industrial cooperation. When Russia and Ukraine formed a single country, they built spaceships; apart, they can hardly launch a naval ship. Though unification isn’t on the map yet, it would make sense for both partners. This artificially divided country can be united, and it would do a lot of good for both of their populaces, and for all people seeking freedom from US hegemony.

There are a lot of difficulties ahead: Putin and Yanukovich are not friends, Ukrainian leaders are prone to renege, the US and the EC have a lot of resources. But meanwhile, it is a victory to celebrate this Christmas tide. Such victories keep Iran safe from US bombardment, inspire the Japanese to demand removal of Okinawa base, encourage those seeking closure of Guantanamo jail, cheer up Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, frighten the NSA and CIA and allow French Catholics to march against Hollande’s child-trade laws.

***

What is the secret of Putin’s success? Edward Lucas said, in an interview to the pro-Western Ekho Moskvy radio: “Putin had a great year – Snowden, Syria, Ukraine. He checkmated Europe. He is a great player: he notices our weaknesses and turns them into his victories. He is good in diplomatic bluff, and in the game of Divide and Rule. He makes the Europeans think that the US is weak, and he convinced the US that Europeans are useless”.

I would offer an alternative explanation. The winds and hidden currents of history respond to those who feel their way. Putin is no less likely a roguish leader of global resistance than Princess Leia or Captain Solo were in Star Wars. Just the time for such a man is ripe.

Unlike Solo, he is not an adventurer. He is a prudent man. He does not try his luck, he waits, even procrastinates. He did not try to change regime in Tbilisi in 2008, when his troops were already on the outskirts of the city. He did not try his luck in Kiev, either. He has spent many hours in many meetings with Yanukovich whom he supposedly personally dislikes.

Like Captain Solo, Putin is a man who is ready to pay his way, full price, and such politicians are rare. “Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s mouth?”, asked a James Joyce character, and answered: “His proudest boast is I paid my way.” Those were Englishmen of another era, long before the likes of Blair, et al.

While McCain and Nuland, Merkel and Bildt speak of the European choice for the Ukraine, none of them is ready to pay for it. Only Russia is ready to pay her way, in the Joycean sense, whether in cash, as now, or in blood, as in WWII.

Putin is also a magnanimous man. He celebrated his Ukrainian victory and forthcoming Christmas by forgiving his personal and political enemies and setting them free: the Pussy Riot punks, Khodorkovsky the murderous oligarch, rioters… And his last press conference he carried out in Captain Solo self-deprecating mode, and this, for a man in his position, is a very good sign.

Gerald Celente: Top Ten Trends 2014

In 33 years of forecasting trends, the Trends Research Institute has never seen a new year that will witness severe economic hardship and social unrest on one hand, and deep philosophic enlightenment and personal enrichment on the other. A series of dynamic socioeconomic and transformative geopolitical trend points are aligning in 2014 to ring in the worst and best of times.

Ready or not, here they come.

March Economic Madness: One of the most difficult aspects of trend forecasting is getting the timing right. And when it comes to economics, there are many wildcards that can stall or detour any on-rushing trend. We called the Crash of ’87, the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis and the Panic of ’08 (we even established the domain name in 2007) right on the button. But we missed the mark with our Crash of 2010 prediction.

Why? The Federal Reserve and central banks around the world were secretly pumping tens of trillions of dollars into a failing financial system. These were, at the time, unimagined schemes for nations that pride themselves on capitalism. And while we are not naïve to the dirty dealings of the financial industry, rigging the daily multi-trillion dollar LIBOR and FOREX markets was not on our radar. Thus, what we believed to be economic truths and hard facts were, in fact, cover-ups and lies….

Such unforeseeable factors aside, we forecast that around March, or by the end of the second quarter of 2014, an economic shock wave will rattle the world equity markets. What will cause this econo-shock? How can you prepare for it? It’s a Top Trend of 2014. Read about it in the Winter Trends Journal.

Global Chinatowns: Name the continent or pick a country, every one contains its own brand of Chinatown. The Chinese global buying binge, now in its early growth stage, will noticeably accelerate in 2014. From coal mines in Zambia, to Borscht Belt resorts in New York, to factories in Italy, and to farmlands in Ukraine, a seemingly endless variety of Chinese development projects are being incubated around the world. If there is a deal to be had and a need to be filled, Chinese players are increasingly at the front of the line.

Wealthy investors, college graduates without jobs, skilled and unskilled laborers will be migrating out of their overpopulated, congested and highly polluted nation to foreign shores. Where are the new growth areas? What actions will be taken to stop or control the trend? Who will benefit? Who will lose? And what are the dangers and opportunities? You’ll find the answers in the Winter Trends Journal.

Wake Up Call: Last year we forecast the Great Awakening 2.0, a period reminiscent of the first Great Awakening that provided the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual ammunition that ignited the American Revolution. The “Awakening” has begun. Throughout 2014, and beyond, you will hear the Wake Up Call. It will be loud and distinct.

In 2013, the White House and Congress proved their extreme incompetence with a series of public failures. From closing down the government, to the debt ceiling debacle, to the aborted attack on Syria and, ultimately, to the disastrous launch of Obamacare, the ineptness of our political leaders was overwhelming. As polls show, a majority of citizens registered levels of scorn and ridicule unparalleled in modern America.

But this phenomenon is not limited to America. Around the world, citizen distrust has turned into universal disdain for entrenched political parties whose draconian austerity measures and punishing economic policies have thrown millions into poverty and pushed millions of protesters into the streets. Civil wars, civil unrest, revolts and revolutions will be just some of the cards dealt by an angry public that has lost everything and has nothing left to lose.

Will those in power hear the Wake Up Call? Or will they attempt to stamp it down and drown it out? Hear it or not, the movement is unstoppable. It will be a battle of the classes. What will it mean? Where will it take the biggest toll? Can the protests and disturbances of tomorrow bring peace and enlightenment that will lead to the Great Awakening 2.0? It’s all in the Top Trends 2014 Winter Trends Journal.

Seniors Own Social Media: Seniors now comprise the fastest-growing user segment of the social media world, and the year ahead will see the retail, business, political, health and entertainment industries evolve aggressive strategies to realize the robust economic potential in engaging seniors.

The gamut of possibilities is so grand that we forecast technological and product advances that impact everything from nursing home life to political campaigns and causes. Read the Winter Trends Journal to pinpoint how this trend will unfold and affect you and your interests.

Populism: Regardless of how professional politicians deride it or how the traditional media describe it, “populism” is a megatrend sweeping Europe, and it will soon spread across the globe. Mired in prolonged recession, disgusted with corrupt political parties, and forced to follow EU, ECB and IMF austerity dictates, populist movements are seeking to regain national identity and break free from the euro and Brussels domination. These movements are positioned to bring down ruling parties and build up new ones.

The discontent of the one-size-fits-all Euro Union formula is so deep that populists are expected to gain some 25 percent of the European Parliament seats in next year’s elections. “We have the big risk to have the most ‘anti-European’ European Parliament ever,” cried Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. “The rise of populism is today the main European social and political issue,” Mr. Letta added. “To fight against populism, in my view, is a mission today – in Italy and in the other countries.”

Already, some nations, such as Spain, have passed new laws restricting public demonstrations while imposing police-state measures to stamp out dissent. What is the future of populism? How far will it spread? Will it lead to the formation of new parties, or lead to civil wars? Read about it in the Trends Journal’s Top Trends 2014 edition.

Trouble in Slavelandia: Even as total US personal wealth soars above a record high of $77 trillion, fueled by the stock market’s own record highs, life for the growing number of have-nots in Slavelandia has become more desperate. In today’s Plantation Economy – driven by the bottom line needs of multinationals and flailing austerity-prone governments – low-paying service jobs and reduced hours engineered to evade corporate responsibility to provide benefits, are making it tough for the working poor, a group that now includes debt-burdened and underemployed college graduates and seniors as well as the traditional underclass.

Nearly half of the requests for emergency assistance to stave off hunger or homelessness comes from people with full-time jobs. As government safety nets are pulled out from under them – as they will continue to be for the foreseeable future – the citizens of Slavelandia will have no recourse but action. The fast-food worker strikes of 2013, seeking a higher minimum wage, were just a mild taste of what is to come. Learn more in the WinterTrends Journal.

The New Altruism: Several burgeoning trends identified for 2014 will coalesce in a welcome trend toward selfless concern for the wellbeing of others and an interest in the common good. Across the age divide, from people in their youth to those of advanced years, the search for meaning will intensify and become more widespread in response to waning resources, want, and an over-commodified culture. As despair quietly takes more prisoners, Doing Good will be recognized as the key to escape.

Ironically, the Internet that has been much maligned for currying narcissism will make the donation of money, time and talents so easy that people will be able to enact their better natures without resistance. Be they Boomers in renaissance or populists in revolt, people will discover and expand the humanist side of globalism and act accordingly. See why in the Top Trends of 2014 Winter edition of the Trends Journal.

Private Health Goes Public: While the world focused on the blockbuster NSA surveillance revelations and other cyber-snooping episodes of 2013, another powerful trend line was firmly planted: Your health data has been progressively mined, assembled and made accessible to a widening group of interested parties.

While signing up for the Affordable Care Act brought some attention to this developing trend, around the globe, data on individuals’ health status, behaviors, prescriptions and even their genetic indicators have been funneled to a wide range of databases. Those databases have many purposes and a growing number of hands on them.

The positive and negative implications of this trend are equally powerful. Individuals and their health care providers can more easily tie vital physical data with worldwide medical databases to anticipate and potentially prevent disease. But, in the wrong hands, the data can be used to exploit, damage and take advantage of individuals and their families. Security concerns will rise in equal importance with the potential benefits of this critical trend line.

What does this mean for you, your family, or your business? The Winter Trends Journal will provide the answers.

Boomer Renaissance Arrives: Distinct and strengthening economic, lifestyle and societal determinants are building a creative foundation for the older population as it discovers new approaches to work and finds long-elusive contentment in the process.

You already know that older workers, seeing their retirement plans shattered, have to work beyond traditional retirement years. You also know that those same economic dynamics are forcing aging Boomers to entirely rethink retirement. And, of course, you know that as Boomers are living longer, traditional thinking about retirement has been stood on its head. What you might not realize is how these factors are compelling Boomers to unearth potent creative energies not only to survive, but to realize potential that evaded them in traditional work roles.

In 2014, we will see growing evidence of this Boomer Renaissance, accentuated by waves of self-guided entrepreneurism that alchemizes commerce, survival and self-actualization into a new world and self view. The Winter Trends Journal will explore this compelling 2014 trend in depth.

Digital Learning Explodes: Fears that online educational platforms fall short of providing depth and effectiveness in the learning experience will all but disappear. Across the entire educational spectrum, online learning will expand to include not only course instruction, but also a wealth of real-life learning experience, with considerable participation by the skills-hungry business community.

For individuals, educational institutions, industries, small businesses and up-and-coming entrepreneurs, the implications are enormous. From traditional degree-based education to very specific micro skills-based learning, this trend line explodes. The Trends Research Institute will break down the implications for individuals, business professionals and a range of industries in its Winter Trends Journal.

Source: Gerald Celente  |  The Trends Journal via LewRockwell.com

Federal Reserve 100 Years of Failure

Researching economic publications on the first century of the Federal Reserve System provides a wealth of financial information that attempts to explain the way the central bank works. Rarely will the academic studies and official reports address the raw nature of a money creation by a private banking monopoly. The common practice of disparaging sources outside government or corporatist business circles, attempts to avoid addressing, much less confronting the plutocracy that controls the debt created money system.

One such source list of the ownership of the Federal Reserve, compiled by Thomas D. Schauf appears on The Federal Reserve Scam! However, before getting to the particulars of the actual families behind the central banking cabal, it is important to go directly to the source of the primary chronicler who investigated and exposed the scheme. The late, , video reveals the entire sordid background.

Now review 25 Fast Facts About The Federal Reserve You Need To Know, from ETF Daily News that advises investors. The way these items play into the central banking model practiced by all 187 nations that belong to the IMF, demonstrates that banksters of the most select rank, are behind continued debt bubbles that are strangling the world.

On the Left Hook site by Dean Henderson, a five part series on the Federal Reserve provides added documentation. Mr. Henderson cites from Part 1 in this series, The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families, “They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.”

 

Finally, watch the video by . Mr. Griffin explains the broad picture in simple and clear terms.

With such definitive information available and widely known within financial circles, why is the public so content to remain in the dark? They live under the aftermaths of the Federal Reserve is a Cache of Stolen Assets, but resign themselves to the oblivion of lost expectations and the burden of diminished opportunities.

“Think about who really owns the land, the buildings and the resources in our country. In order to really understand the scope and extent of the economy, the differential between actual Main Street enterprise, that feeds, clothes and shelters the population, is minuscule when compared to the financial assets, both liquid and real property, that is under the command and control of the central bank.”

The political class and the business establishment simply refuse to buck the controllers of the currency. Attempts for a Jackals of Jekyll Island – Federal Reserve Audit, are pushed aside because any accountability for the Fed would ripple throughout the entire world fiat paper banking system. “The FED’s grip on the global moneychangers’ racket is based upon maintaining the U.S. Federal Reserve funny money, as the reserve currency for the planet. The value and worth of Treasury Bills and Bonds are on the path to have the value of

Reichsbank marks. Recognize the enemy that is destroying the country and world economy.”The Cato Institute provides a working paper, Has the Fed Been a Failure?, that traces the history, avowed mission and actual results of the Federal Reserve System. This scholarly approach acknowledges that other financial frameworks are “relatively easy to identify viable alternatives to the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.”

“However, recent work suggests that there has been no substantial overall improvement in the volatility of real output since the end of World War II compared to before World War I . . . the Fed cannot be credited with having reduced the frequency of banking panics or with having wielded its last-resort lending powers responsibly. In short, the Federal Reserve System, as presently constituted, is no more worthy of being regarded as the last word in monetary management than the National Currency System it replaced almost a century ago.”

Lastly, the essay, Who Owns The Federal Reserve?, by Ellen Brown, substantiates that the “Fed is privately owned, and its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.”

Since the adoption of a private banking, money creation venture, the dollar has lost virtually its entire store of value. The currency has lost its universal acceptance, as multiple alternatives circulate to replace its reserve status.

The Federal Reserve’s First 100 Years: A Dismal Record by Dan Ferris, identifies the ultimate consequence of the stewardship under a central bank. “The century prior to the Fed, despite setbacks, was a century of improvement in the dollar’s value. The century after it, despite enormous gains in productivity, was a century of rampant Federal Reserve destruction of the dollar’s value.”This failure to maintain and preserve the integrity of the dollar is no accident. The actual purpose of the architects of the Federal Reserve System has never changed. Consolidate the control of money into a concealed cartel of banking houses that ultimately decide economic and political policy.

Dispensing of credit to corporatist projects, owned or run by reliable operatives of the cabal is the objective. The only beneficiaries are the original stockholders.

“Under the terms of the Federal Reserve Act, public stock was only to be sold in the event the sale of stock to member banks did not raise the minimum of $4 million of initial capital for each Federal Reserve Bank when they were organized in 1913 (12 USCA 281). Each Bank was able to raise the necessary amount through member stock sales, and no public stock was ever sold to the non-bank public.”

For the rest of Americans, the Federal Reserve conspiracy is an ongoing theft syndicate. It only takes the will to admit the undeniable. Without the courage to abolish this usury monster, the next century will witness the total destruction of the country.

Expect Devastating Global Economic Changes In 2014

By any reasonable measure, I think it is safe to say that the last quarter of 2013 has been an insane game of economic Russian Roulette.  Even more unsettling is the fact that most of the American population still has little to no clue that the U.S. was on the verge of a catastrophic catalyst event at least three times in the past three months alone, and that we face an even greater acceleration next year.

The first near miss was the Federal Reserve’s announcement of a possible “taper” of QE stimulus in early fall, which sent shivers through stock markets and proved what we have been saying all along – that the entire recovery is a facade built on an ever thinning balloon of fiat money.  Today, markets function entirely on the expectation that the Fed will continue stimulus forever.  If the Fed does cut QE in any way, the frail psychology of the markets will shatter, and the country will come crashing down with it.

The second near miss was the possible unilateral invasion of Syria demanded by the Obama Administration.  As we have discussed here at Alt-Market for years, any invasion of Syria or Iran will bring detrimental consequences to the U.S. economy and energy markets, not to mention draw heavy opposition from Russia and China.  Though the naïve shrug it off as a minor foreign policy bungle, Syria could have easily become WWIII, and I believe the only reason the establishment has not yet followed through with a strike in the region is because the alternative media has been so effective in warning the masses.  The elites need a certain percentage of support from the general public and the military for any war action to be effective, which they did not receive.  After all, no one wants to fight and die in support of CIA funded Al Qaeda terrorist cells on the other side of the world.  The establishment tried to hide who the rebels were, and failed.

The third near miss was, of course, the debt ceiling debate, which has been extended to next spring.  America came within a razor’s edge of debt default, which many people rightly fear.  What some do not yet grasp, though, is that debt default of the U.S. was NOT avoided last month, it is INEVITABLE.  Debt default will ultimately result in the death of the dollar as the world reserve currency, and the petro-currency.  This final gasp will lead to hyperstagflation within our financial system, and third world status for most of the citizenry.  It is only a matter of time, and timing.

“Timing” is truly what we are all concerned about.  Those of us in the field of alternative media and economics understand well that the U.S. is on a collision course with disaster; it is a mathematical certainty.  We no longer think in terms of “if” it happens – we only question “when” it will happen.  Our fiscal structure now hangs by the thinnest of threads, a thread which for all we know could be cut at a moments notice.  However, economic and political storms appear to be brewing with the year 2014 as a target.

Globalists have been openly seeking the destabilization of U.S. sovereignty, and they have openly admitted that the destruction of the dollar and our economic foundations will aid them in their goal.  It is important to never forget that international financiers WANT to absorb America into a new global economic structure, and that the U.S. must be debased before this can be accomplished.   Here are a few reasons why I believe 2014 may be the year they make their final move…

Debt Debate On Steroids

Nothing concrete was decided during the highly publicized “battle” between Democrats and the GOP on what would be done to solve the U.S. debt addiction.  Some people might assume that the fight will go on indefinitely, and that the “can” will be kicked down the road for years to come.  This assumption is a dangerous one.  If you thought the last debt debate was hair raising, the next is likely to give you a coronary.  Think of 2013 as a practice run, a warm up to the main event in 2014.  Why will next year be different?  Because the motivations behind a debt ceiling freeze (and thus debt default) are now supported by the obvious failure of Obamacare.

Funding for Obamacare was the underlying issue that gave strength to the push for new debt ceiling extensions.  The U.S. government has overreached financially in ever way imaginable.  We have long running entitlement programs that have been technically bankrupt for years.  But, Obamacare was so pervasive during the debt debate that we heard nothing of these existing liabilities.  Ultimately, Obamacare is the primary reason why so many Americans on the “left” want unlimited spending and inflation, and why so many Americans on the “right” are actually seeking debt default.

We all know that at the top of the pyramid the debt debate itself is false left/right theater, but it is still theater with a purpose.

In my articles ‘The Socialization Of America Is Economically Impossible’ and ‘Obamacare: Is It A Divide And Conquer Distraction’, I discussed why universal healthcare could not be implemented in America, and I predicted in advance that Obamacare was actually a farce that was designed to fail.  The program’s only purpose is to provide a vehicle by which divisions between the fake left and the fake right could be solidified in the minds of the common populace.  A lot of cynicism was directed at the notion that the government might create a socialized healthcare initiative and then allow it to fail.  Of course, we now know that is exactly what they had in mind.

During the last debt debate, Obamacare was just a policy waiting to be implemented; next debate, that policy will be rightly labeled a train wreck.  Obamacare is falling apart at it’s very inception, and evidence makes clear that the White House KNEW in advance that this would occur.  In the days before it’s launch, performance tests on the Obamacare website showed conclusively that the system could not handle more than 500 users.

Obama promised that preexisting healthcare plans would be retained by Americans and that the Affordable Care Act would not do damage to established insurance models.  He made this promise knowing full well that he could not or would not keep it.  This dishonesty has resulted in rebellion by Democrats who have sided with Republicans to pass a bill which obstructs the erasure of existing health coverage.

States once disturbingly loyal to the White House are now moving to limit the application of the Obamacare structure.

The White House had foreknowledge that the program was nowhere near ready, yet, they moved forward anyway.  Why wouldn’t they stall?  Why would Obama knowingly unleash his “opus” before it was finished?  He had it in the bag, right?  He won, right?  All he had to do was build a functioning website and keep his promises at least long enough to sucker the majority of Americans into the system.  Instead, he throws the fight and hits the canvas before he’s even punched?  Why?

It all sounds rather insane if you aren’t aware of the bigger picture, and I’m sure the average Democrat out there is wide-eyed and bewildered.  Some might blame it on “ego”, or “hubris”, but this makes little sense.  Obamacare is an American socialist’s dream.  With a simple working public interaction model, Obama would be worshiped by leftists for decades to come as the next Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Hubris should have ENSURED that the White House launch of Obamacare would be flawless.

Once you realize that this is not about Obama, and that Obama is nothing but a middle-man for the globalists, and that the actual implementation of Obamacare never mattered to the establishment, the fog begins to clear.

With Obamacare in shambles, the dynamic of the debt debate theater changes completely.  Some Democrats may well show support for a hold on the debt ceiling, for, what reason do they have to champion more spending?  Obama has already made fools of them all, and the Obamacare motivator is essentially out of the picture.  The GOP will be energized and more unified than the last debate, giving more momentum to a debt ceiling lock.  The argument will be made that a resulting debt default will not be harmful, and that the U.S. can carry the weight of existing liabilities until the budget is balanced.
This is certainly a lie, but it is a fashionable lie that Americans will want to hear.

Americans do not want to hear that our economy is too far gone and that any motion, to spend, or to cut, will have the same result – currency collapse and fiscal implosion.  They do not want to hear that pain must be suffered before a realistic solution can be applied.  They do not want to hear the the system will have to be brought down before it can be rebuilt.  And, they definitely do not want to hear that the system will be deliberately brought down and replaced with something even worse.

Will the next debt debate in Spring 2014 end in debt default and the collapse that globalists desire so much?  It’s hard to say, but many insiders appear to be preparing for just such a scenario…

The Fed’s Buzz Kill 

No one, and I mean no one, believes the private Federal Reserve will ever commit to a taper of fiat stimulus.  Hell, I barely believe it’s possible, and I’m open to just about any scenario.  That said, I have to ask a question which few analysts seem to be asking – why does the Fed keep pre-injecting the concept of taper into the mainstream if they never intend to implement it?  When has the Fed ever pre-injected a plan into the MSM which it did not eventually implement?

The banksters have the markets in the palm of their hand, or at least they seem to.  Stocks now rise and fall according to whatever meaningless press release the central bank happens to put out on any given morning.  What do they have to gain by consistently shaking the confidence of investors around the world by suggesting that the fiat party they created will abruptly end?

The impending approval by the Senate of Janet Yellen, a champion of the printing press, would suggest to many that QE-infinity is assured.  We know that the black hole generated by the derivatives implosion cannot be filled (debts still exist in the quadrillions of dollars), and that the Fed will have to print endlessly in order to slow the deterioration of the the banking sector.  We know that none of the currency flows created by the Fed are trickling down to main street, which is why credit remains mostly frozen,  real unemployment counting U-6 measurements remains at around 25%, food stamp recipients have risen to around 50 million, and the only sales boosts to property markets are those caused by big banks buying bankrupt houses and then reissuing them as rentals.

We know that it makes sense for the central bank to continue QE, if only to continue pumping up banks and the stock market and hide the truly dismal state of the overall system.  But let’s forget about what we think “makes sense” for just a moment…

What if the Fed no longer WANTS to hide the true state of the system anymore?  What if QE is now giving back diminishing returns, and will soon be no longer effective at hiding economic weakness?Central bankers surely don’t want to take the blame for a collapse, but what if the perfect patsy is already lined up?  A patsy so hated and despised that no one would think twice about their guilt?  I am, of course, talking about the Federal Government itself.

Think about it; the failure of Obamacare promises a debt debate in the Spring of 2014 that will rock the very foundations of the global economy.  Both sides, Democrat and Republican, are ready to blame the other fully for any disastrous outcome, though “Tea Party” conservatives have been painted by the mainstream media as the lead culprits behind a financial catastrophe that began before the Tea Party was born.  The idea of “gridlock” leading to impasse and calamity is already built into the country’s consciousness.  The general public’s opinion of all areas of government has recently hit all time lows.  In fact, our opinion of government could scarcely go any lower than it already has.  Everyone HATES what government is, or what they think it is.  Most Americans would be happy to place the brunt of the blame for an economic disaster on the shoulders of Washington DC.

The genius of it is, they deserve a large part of the blame.  They helped to make possible all of the horrors the citizenry will face in the coming years.  The problem is, the public may become so blinded with rage over the failure of the political system, that they may completely forget about the role of international and central banks and turn on each other instead.

Why is the Fed now discussing, just before the possible confirmation of Janet Yellen, a stimulus dove, the need for taper measures by 2014? 

Is it just coincidence that the taper discussion is taking place parallel to the debt ceiling battle, or are these two things related?  What if the Fed plans to apply QE cuts during or after the renewed debt debate in order to make the market effects even more negative?  What if the Fed is timing the taper to give energy to a debt default?  What if the Fed wants to reduce support, so that later, when all hell breaks loose, we’ll come begging them for support?

Whether you believe a debt default will be deliberately induced or not, certain foreign investors have been preparing for such a U.S. breakdown for years, and once again, the apex investor, China, has made plans for dramatic economic policy changes to take place in 2014…

China Is Ready To File For Divorce 

The economic marriage between China and the U.S. has been touted Ad nauseum as an invincible relationship chained in eternity by unassailable interdependency.  I’ve just never bought this fanciful tale.  For years I’ve written about the likelihood that China will decouple from the American dollar apparatus, and so far, most of my warnings have come to pass.

China has pushed forward with massive physical gold purchases despite all arguments by skeptics that gold is no longer necessary or prudent as a safe haven investment.  Apparently, the Chinese know something they do not.  China is on pace to become the largest holder of gold in the world as early as 2014.

China has now issued Yuan denominated bonds and other assets around the globe, and its central bank has expanded its total balance sheet to at least $24 Trillion, outmatching the reported increased balance sheets of all other central banks:

Now, some feel that this Chinese liquidity should be considered a massive bubble on the verge of exploding, and that it will be Chinese instability, not U.S. instability, that triggers renewed crisis.  I would like to offer an alternative view…

I am not shocked at all by this incredible spike in Yuan circulation.  In fact, I expected it.  The fall back argument against China dumping the dollar as the world reserve has always been that there is no alternative currency that boasts as much liquidity as the dollar.  Well, as we now know, China has been raining Yuan down on every continent.  International banks like JP Morgan have been HELPING them do it.

China is not desperately attempting to prop up its own markets like we are in the U.S.  China is DELIBERATELY generating massive liquidity because they seek to aid the IMF in its longtime plan to replace the greenback as the world reserve currency.  These are not the activities of an investor that wants to stick with the U.S. or the dollar.  These are not the activities of a nation that wishes to continue its limited role as a source of cheap industrial labor.

China, being the largest importer of petroleum surpassing the U.S., is now planning to price its crude oil futures in Yuan, instead of the dollar.

And, the Chinese central bank has announced that it now plans to stop all purchases of U.S. dollars for its reserves.

These decisions are part of a precision strategy, a formula which was finalized during a little discussed and very secretive economic policy meeting which took place in China this past month.

While much of the media was focused on China’s call for softer restrictions on its one-child policy, they ignored the thrust of the meeting, which was to establish Chinese consumption over exports, and internationalize the Yuan.  All that is left is for China to “float” the Yuan’s value on the open market, which is an action the head of the PBOC, Zhou Xiaochuan, says he plans to expedite.

All of the reforms discussed at China’s Third Plenum meeting are supposed to begin taking shape in…that’s right…2014.

A Storm Of Septic Proportions

As I have always pointed out, economic collapse is not necessarily an event, it is a process.  The most frightening elements of this process usually do not become visible until it is too late for common people to react in a productive way.  All of the dangers covered in this article could very well set fires tomorrow, that is how close our nation is to the edge.  However, the culmination of events so far seems to be setting the stage for something, an important something, in 2014.  If the worst is possible, assume the worst is probable.  The next leg down, or the next economic carpet bombing.  Maybe slightly painful, maybe mortal.  Sadly, as long as Americans continue to remain dependent on the existing corrupt system, global bankers can pull the plug at their leisure, and determine the depth of the wound with scientific precision.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

America Held Hostage On The Edge Of Constant Crisis

Torture, or what our government calls “enhanced interrogation”, is not a tactic so much as a darkly artistic process.  The subject of this process has something that the torturer wants; it might be information, or a forced confession to a crime the subject did not commit, but most often, torture is designed to gain nothing more than psychological compliance.

The goal is to manipulate the subject into believing that submission is the only possible future, and that such submission is inevitable regardless of the will of the victim.  The torturer often builds himself up as a kind of parent figure for the subject – becoming the only entity that can supply shelter, water, food, and comfort.  The torturer is taskmaster and abuser, but also caregiver in the twisted relationship dynamic.  A schizophrenic balance is struck in which the subject longs for the outside world and a return to the pleasures of the past (making him desperate and malleable), but he also partially accepts his prison walls as home (giving him a false faith that compliance will lead to a safer and more predictable tomorrow).

Until this compliance is achieved, the subject is exposed to endless and erratic crisis events in which his body is damaged, his mind is deprived of sense, perception, and sleep, and his life is overtly threatened.  He may receive brief moments of rest, but these are designed only to make the next torture session even more raw and painful.  If the subject does not understand how the process works, or if he doesn’t have a strong sense of his own identity, then he will quickly lose track of reality.  Every moment becomes a waking nightmare, a warped and gruesome carnival, and life becomes nothing more than an absurd and obscure experiment barely worth living.

It is my belief based on substantial evidence that America, as a nation and a culture, is now being held hostage and tortured into submission on a grand scale using economic terror by the elitist establishment which dominates BOTH major political parties.  The goal?  To push our society to conform completely with the concepts of globalization, bureaucratic micro-management, and greatly reduced living standards.  We are being conditioned to accept defeat and failure, and like children, to cry out for a parental authority to save us in our state of helplessness and fear, even if that authority was the cause of our fear from the very beginning.

The Thin Thread Of The American Economic Fantasy

In the past three months the U.S. has flirted with total fiscal collapse three times.  The first event came in August with market rumors that the Federal Reserve was nearing a “consensus” on plans to cut QE stimulus measures, causing panic amongst investors who now realize that the ONLY pillar still holding our fiscal edifice together is endless fiat currency creation by the Fed.  Markets began a paradigm which is now the “new normal”; plummeting whenever good economic news hits the mainstream on the fear that the central bank will tighten policy, and skyrocketing when bad economic news hits the mainstream on the assumption that the Fed will continue printing.  It is official – lackluster employment reports are something to cheer, and overall systemic crisis is good for stocks:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-usa-economy-idUSBRE99L04G20131022

The possibility of a Fed taper has shown us clearly that any action by the private bank to reduce or remove quantitative easing will result in a market panic and implosion.  If the globalists within the Fed apparatus decide one day soon that they want to bring the U.S. to its knees, destroy the dollar, and introduce a new world reserve currency, they can do it with little more than a word proclaiming QE over, or unsuccessful.  So far, they keep the life support machine running…

The second event came with the drive by the Obama Administration to turn their covert war in Syria into a full blown invasion.  Despite presumptions by many naysayers that Russia and China wouldn’t lift a finger to aid the Assad regime, both nations staunchly opposed action by the U.S. in the region and tensions neared critical mass.  Make no mistake, a WWIII level event could have easily erupted, and some Americans seem to remain oblivious to the danger.

China and Russia maintain vast influence in global markets.  The EU, for instance, is utterly dependent on Russian natural gas exports for their energy needs.  The U.S. economy could be annihilated within weeks by an announcement by China to dump their treasury holdings or the dollar as the world reserve currency.  This is just a taste of the financial risks associated with a new war in the Middle East, and military risks add even more potential calamity.  Anyone who believes that Chinese or Russian views on American political or military behavior “do not matter” is living in a deluded cartoon-land.

The third event came with the recent debt ceiling debate and government shutdown.  One-third of the U.S. population is disturbingly dependent on scraps from the government’s table, and any mention of cuts to entitlement programs (or social security, which government treats exactly like an entitlement program) causes immediate and militant finger pointing.  Democrats have been especially vicious in their accusations and rhetoric, consistently referring to Constitutional conservatives and “Tea Party” legislators as “extremists”, “traitors”, and even “domestic enemies”:

I happen to take a slightly different view to a majority of independent analysts in that I believe the establishment is just as likely to push America into deliberate default as it is to push America into infinite debt and inflationary collapse.  The end result will be exactly the same regardless of the path taken, and we have yet another opportunity to dance on the edge of oblivion coming in three to four months when the debt debate starts all over again.

The point is, our financial system has become so unbalanced and internally diseased that if ANY event follows through to culmination, whether political, economic, or international, the economy WILL shatter.  The past three month are a resounding testament to this fact.

The “De-Americanization’ Of The Global Economy

In my article ‘How The Dollar Will Be Replaced’, published in 2012, I summarized the Catch-22 nature of America’s debt problem which I have been warning about since 2006, and how this will eventually end in the abandonment of the dollar as the world reserve currency.  To this day, and in the face of overwhelming evidence that the dollar is doomed, some people still refuse to grasp reality.

In the midst of the latest debt debate China has made clear it’s intentions through state run media to end its relationship with the greenback, not just to form a Chinese-centric reserve currency system, but a global currency system centered on a “new world order”:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-10/13/c_132794246.htm

Last year China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest importer and exporter, making its currency, the Yuan, more desirable than the greenback as a reserve in the long term.  Since 2010, China has been quietly but quickly establishing multiple bilateral trade agreements with numerous countries dropping the dollar as the primary purchasing mechanism.  China has accumulated massive gold stores and is set to become the world’s largest holder of gold in the next two years.  In the past year, China has also surpassed the U.S. as the number one importer of oil, making it a more valued market for the Middle East and causing many to question the dollar’s relevance as the petro-currency:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/China-is-Now-the-Worlds-Largest-Importer-of-OilWhat-Next.html

Saudi Arabia, America’s primary ally and foothold in the global oil market, is now openly calling for an end to traditional agreements and a separation from the U.S. because of the lack of military action in Syria.  This too does not bode well for the dollar’s petro-status.  Like a chess maneuver, it would seem we have been cornered by the globalists on oil.  If we invade Syria or Iran we risk losing petro-status.  If we do not invade Syria or Iran, we still risk losing petro-status:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-saudi-usa-idUSBRE99L0K120131022 

In response to the dismal debt ceiling extension and the uncertainty underlying the new debate coming in the next few months, China’s ratings agency, Dagong, has downgraded U.S. treasury bonds yet again:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/17/news/economy/debt-ceiling-deal-china/

U.S. Treasuries are now witnessing the lowest foreign demand since 2001:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-20/treasuries-losing-cachet-with-weakest-foreign-demand-since-2001.html?cmpid=yhoo

Three near-crisis events in only three months have signaled a severe acceleration in what the Chinese call the “de-Americanization” of the global economy.  All of the financial shifts taking place since the derivatives implosion of 2008, as well as those rushing like white-water rapids through the global system in the wake of the debt ceiling debate, are gravitating towards ONE outcome – the destruction of the dollar, and the introduction of a new global currency (the SDR) controlled the the IMF.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the dollar:

http://archive.is/SJhB

China has called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the dollar:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7168919

Elitists within the U.S. have called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the Dollar:

Hell, even the Vatican has called for a global currency run by a “global public authority” to replace the dollar:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pontifical-council-for-justice-and-peace-on-the-global-economy

There is a world-wide strategy in motion to end the dollar, and with it, America as we know it today. The only question is, how many more near-disasters will we have to experience before the trigger event takes place?

The Torture Continues

With so many near misses culminating so close together, it may be wise to consider what could happen in the the next three months while we wait for debt debate theater part duex.  Like a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, America is trapped, waiting for the next humiliation, the next degradation, or the next session of pain.  Are we merely being acclimated to the idea of incessant crisis?  Are we learning to become apathetic at the edge of the chasm?  Or, are we being driven to madness, mass-madness, by a concert of  elitist interrogators seeking our acquiescence?

Again, the central purpose of torture is to acquire consent.  Not just extorted consent, but voluntary consent.  It is not enough for the torturer to force the subject to obey, he wants the subject to EMBRACE his servitude.  To gladly abandon all hope.  To see his captor as his only salvation.

The globalist establishment wants us to beg them to save us from the tortures they create.  If we never give them this, they will never win.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

IMF Pushes Plan To Plunder Global Wealth

A controversial report released this month by the International Monetary Fund outlines schemes to have big-spending governments with out-of-control debts plunder humanity’s wealth using a mix of much higher taxes and outright confiscation. The goal: Prop up Big Government. Because people and their assets are generally mobile, the radical IMF document, dubbed “Taxing Times,” also proposes measures to prevent them from escaping before they can be fleeced. Of course, the real problems — debt-based fiat currency, lawless bank bailouts, and a cartel-run monetary system — are virtually ignored.

Pointing to absurd and rising levels of government debt, as well as increasing income inequality, the IMF document suggests there are few remaining options for desperate policymakers to explore. Two that are mentioned include “repudiating public debt” — in other words, defaulting on government bonds — or “inflating it away” by having privately owned central banks conjure even more gargantuan amounts of fiat currency into existence at interest. Both of those plots, of course, would still represent a massive transfer of wealth.

However, even though it hides behind the passive voice, the IMF preference for dealing with the debt problems appears to be simply confiscating the wealth more directly. “The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a capital levy, a one-off tax on private wealth, as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability,” the report claims. “The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible, and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair).”

Reducing government debt ratios to “pre-crisis levels” seen at the end of 2007 — before the multi-trillion-dollar banker bailouts and ramping up of the lawless currency printing at central banks — will require “sizeable” tax rates, the IMF continues. Citing a sample of 15 euro-area nations, the report claims that all households with positive net wealth — anyone with more assets than debt, in essence — would have to surrender about 10 percent of it. Because many people who lived responsibly and saved would try to avoid the looting of their wealth, drastic measures must be considered to stop them.

“There is a surprisingly large amount of experience to draw on, as such levies were widely adopted in Europe after World War I and in Germany and Japan after World War II,” the IMF report notes. “This experience suggests that more notable than any loss of credibility was a simple failure to achieve debt reduction, largely because the delay in introduction gave space for extensive avoidance and capital flight, in turn spurring inflation [sic].”

By proposing the outright confiscation of middle-class wealth, analysts say the IMF is essentially acknowledging that simply looting “the rich” will not be enough to even restore government debt to “sustainable” levels. Still, the non-establishment “rich” would face by far the most ferocious assaults on their assets under the schemes outlined in the radical IMF report, which was promptly celebrated by Big Government-supporting politicians.

Noting that financial wealth and people are mobile, the document suggests that there “may be a case” for confiscating varying amounts of wealth using various means — all depending on how easy it would be for people to protect the assets in question from legalized looting. “Substantial progress likely requires enhanced international cooperation to make it harder for the very well-off to evade taxation by placing funds elsewhere,” the report says matter-of-factly.

Taxes on the “rich” of around 60 percent to 70 percent, according to the IMF, would likely be the rate at which the most plunder could be extracted for desperate governments. “A revenue-maximizing approach to taxing the rich effectively puts a weight of zero on their well-being,” the report explains, calling that notion “contentious.” “If one attaches less weight to those with the highest incomes, the vote would be to increase the top marginal rate.”

Private companies that try to reduce their already-crushing tax burdens using “tax planning schemes,” as the report calls them, are also in the IMF crosshairs for increased wealth confiscation. In a section headlined “Tricks of the Trade,” for example, the document blasts business efforts to provide services directly from “low-tax jurisdictions” as “abusive.”

In essence, the IMF and other taxpayer-funded international institutions hope to see a stronger global regulatory regime to ensure maximum wealth extraction via corporate taxation, too. “The chance to review international tax architecture seems to come about once a century; the fundamental issues should not be ducked,” the report argues.

The devastating consequences of squandering ever-greater amounts of productive capital on government programs, of course, are largely overlooked. Meanwhile, the unspoken assumption underpinning the radical ideas is essentially that companies exist to produce wealth for governments to spend — rather than value for shareholders and consumers as has traditionally been the case.

Looking past the bureaucratic language, the IMF caveats, its effort to hide behind the passive voice, and the thinly disguised attempt to make the heist sound palatable to the public because not everyone would be fleeced just yet, the message becomes clear. What the IMF is really saying is that the proposed massive confiscation of wealth must be adopted quickly and quietly — before people have a chance escape it.

Among other schemes discussed in the report is “harmonizing” taxes across jurisdictions, a longtime globalist goal pushed by more than a few establishment-run international institutions. To ensure that governments can extract as much wealth as possible from the productive sector of the economy, more cooperation between them is supposedly needed to eliminate tax competitionamong jurisdictions. After all, if one government sets lower tax rates to attract businesses and capital, other regimes are being deprived of what the IMF appears to believe is rightfully theirs to seize.

While the report has largely escaped the attention of the establishment media, analysts who dug into it were shocked. “It may all sound far-fetched to you now, and most people will still cling on to the idea that ‘they wouldn’t do such a thing’,” noted Raul Meijer in an analysis posted on Market Oracle, suggesting that the Cyprus heist would likely serve as a “blueprint” for future looting — as EU officials promised. “But that the IMF proposes it at all, and so openly, suggests that they might, if only they can figure out how.”

Writing in Forbes, meanwhile, Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow Bill Frezza highlighted three major takeaways from the report. The first point is that IMF economists understand that even if 100 percent of assets belonging to the “1 percent” were expropriated, there would not be enough to fund today’s governments. “That means that all households with positive net wealth — everyone with retirement savings or home equity — would have their assets plundered under the IMF’s formulation,” Frezza explained.

The second major takeaway, he continued, is that such a “repudiation of private property” would still not be enough to pay off the debts of Western governments or to fund their budgets going forward. Instead, it would merely “restore debt sustainability,” as the IMF put it, allowing governments to keep borrowing until the next crisis strikes — “for which stronger measures will be required, of course.”

Lastly, Frezza explained, if the political class fails to “muster the courage to engage in this kind of wholesale robbery,” the only alternatives offered by the IMF were debt repudiation or hyperinflation. “Structural reform proposals for the Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs that are bankrupting us are nowhere to be seen,” he added.

Concluding, Frezza painted a dire picture of what the future may hold if the would-be looters are not restrained. “Yes, this is where the bankruptcy of the modern entitlement state is taking us — capital controls and exit restrictions so the proverbial four wolves and a lamb can vote on what’s for dinner,” he wrote. “That’s the only way to keep citizens worried about ending up on the menu from voting with their feet.”

In another devastating analysis of the latest IMF report, which was released in mid-October, Ryan Bourne, head of economic research at the Centre for Policy Studies, blasted it for being filled with “left wing” ideas. “The IMF is playing with fire by giving intellectual backing to punitive taxation,” he said. “Underlying these policies is an ideological assumption that wealth is a collective resource, with governments the benevolent seekers of the common good, whose ability to provide services is undermined by an eroding tax base…. These policies should be anathema to anyone valuing individual freedom, growth and long-term fiscal responsibility.”

For IMF boss Christine Lagarde, however, what the would-be global wealth confiscators are demanding is simply part of formulating a “just” fiscal policy. “It’s clearly something finance ministers are interested in, it’s something that is necessary for the right balance of public finances,” the former French finance boss was quoted as saying during a panel discussion this month. “There are lot[s] of wasted opportunities.”

Of course, the IMF report glosses over the fact that the overwhelming majority of policy changes among advanced economies in recent years went in the direction of tax increases. It also ignored the screaming gorilla in the room: the flawed monetary system and the ludicrous government spending spree at the root of the financial crisis and the ongoing economic problems plaguing the world.

There may be good explanations for that. Despite receiving generous taxpayer-funded salaries and perks, for example, IMF bureaucrats do not pay the exorbitant income taxes they are demanding for everyone else. Meanwhile, the controversial global institution has already been playing a key role in recent heists — with the confiscation of people’s savings in Cyprus among the most stunning examples.

Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that the IMF is being openly groomed to serve as a global central bank in charge of aplanetary currency. It already issues the proto-global currency known as Special Drawing Rights, but the establishment has much bigger plans in mind, as The New American magazine has documented extensively. If liberty, prosperity, and national sovereignty are to be preserved, the radical looting schemes advanced by the IMF and other planetary institutions must be resisted in favor of real reforms.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at.

Source: The New American

The Possible Outcomes Of The Shutdown Theater

Only a week ago, the consensus among most mainstream economic analysts and even some alternative analysts was that a government shutdown was not going to happen. The Republicans would fold in the shadow of President Barack Obama’s overwhelming drive for socialization, spending would continue to grow unabated, and the debt ceiling would be vaulted yet again to feed the bureaucratic machine with more fiat. Today, there is no consensus, very few people continue to be so blithely self-assured and even the mainstream is beginning to wonder if a much bigger game is afoot here.

As I discussed before the shutdown in a recent article, it is important to take all facets of this situation seriously, or risk being bitten by hidden dangers while entranced in one’s own arrogant cynicism.

One rule I try to follow whenever possible is to always be open to possibilities beyond the expected and never assume that today’s dynamic will be the same as tomorrow’s dynamic. Even the Liberty Movement can at times be susceptible to group think.  In a world of staggering political and economic manipulation, one has to grasp hold of certain fundamental truths in order to survive. In my time working within the liberty movement and outside of the mainstream, these are a few of the cold, hard truths that have served me well.

It’s Always About Globalization

Every action the elites within our government take pushes the U.S. closer to globalism and away from sovereignty. We may not always see the bigger picture in the heat of the moment, but a look back tells us much. Seemingly simple changes in financial legislation render devastating fiscal shifts a decade later (as with the progressive erasure of Glass-Steagall). Shocking disaster events that appear random suddenly open doors for totalitarian legislation that had been prepared years in advance. Wars end with further calls for world “unification.” Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens within government that does not revolve around the desire of establishment oligarchy to achieve total global economic, political and social control.

The Bankers Did It

Central banks and international banks are the bedrock of globalization, and all greater political decisions eventually stand on this bedrock. One need only examine the cabinets of the past four U.S. Presidents; there you will find a regular carnival freak show of banking elites who would go on to revolve in and out of government and back into the international financial sector. Private central banks like the Federal Reserve dominate the very currency (and thus the economy) of most nations on the planet. Most wars and man-made disasters of the past several centuries have served only to further enrich and empower the merchant class, and the same holds true today. If you want to understand why a certain calamity has occurred, first look to who benefited most. Invariably, you will find the banker class smiling when all is said and done.

America’s Two-Party System Is Actually A One-Party System

If you do not yet understand that the elite of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party share the same foundational philosophy of globalism, then you will NEVER understand why our government does what it does. Public battles of words and legislation are nothing but rhetorical cinema. Ultimately, the goals of neocons and neolibs revolve around the centralization of power. All legislation is used either to further centralization or as a smokescreen to confuse the public while centralization is taking place. When has the leadership of either party, for instance, ever demanded a full audit of the Federal Reserve? When has the leadership of either party ever attempted to dismantle the Patriot Act or the despotic provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act or the President’s openly admitted assassination list? They may seem to disagree violently at times, but do not be fooled. The disagreement is likely just another means to gain more dominance.

The Goal Is To Destroy The American Economy

What you believe to be political blunders are often actually calculated and engineered events. What you believe to be chaotic disasters of coincidence are often actually deliberate acts of attrition warfare against the common people disguised as random catastrophe. Those you believe to be heroes are actually villains in friendly masks. Those you are told to be villains are actually good men and women who refused to be enslaved by the system. That which you see and hear is never exactly as it appears.

Nearly every concrete action our government and central bank have taken in the past several decades has led to the further erosion of the American economy. If this is all just the consequence of “stupidity” or “childish greed,” you would think our so-called leadership would have at least made a few good decisions by mistake; but they are incredibly adept at choosing all the wrong paths.

The reality is that collapses on the scale we are now witnessing in America rarely happen by accident.

The destruction of Glass-Steagall was a carefully crafted coup. The Federal Reserve deliberately and artificially lowered interest rates in order to allow banks to generate massive toxic debt through the derivatives markets. The Securities and Exchange Commission did little to nothing to stop the spread of cancerous mortgage instruments and ignored numerous calls for investigation. Ratings agencies like Moody’s and Fitch examined all of these toxic assets, knowing exactly what they were, and rated them AAA anyway. And banks like Goldman Sachs, knowing that the market was a sham, sold these bad assets around the world and then secretly bet AGAINST them later. Either this is economic warfare implemented with precision, or it’s all a string of coincidental blunders. I don’t believe in such coincidences.

America is being destroyed by design to make way for a  administered by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as a new global currency tied to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.

If you are able to accept this, the confusion surrounding events like the government shutdown and debt ceiling debate withers, and everything becomes clear. With that clarity in mind, we can now examine the possible outcomes of the shutdown theater.

Republicans Surrender At The Last Minute

Of course, since both parties are essentially one party, the idea of “brinksmanship” on the part of either is absurd. The GOP will surrender, or “stand fast,” because its serves the interests of the globalist establishment. There is no political battle here, only the empty chest-beating of a staged wrestling match.

Bets on a last-minute Republican reversal were in the majority for the past week of the shutdown, but that is slowly changing — and for good reason. Obama has stated that the Affordable Care Act is off the table in negotiations, while Republicans like  and  are now stating with surprising candor that debt default is on the table if Obama refuses to compromise.

Gee, it would seem we are at an impasse.

In the meantime, the GOP is also moving to wrap the debt ceiling debate into the shutdown fight, making a “diplomatic compromise” even less likely to make sense to the public. (Those who argued that the shutdown and the debt ceiling were two entirely separate issued should accept this reality and move on.)

If I were writing this bit of fiction, I would say I was writing myself into a corner and that a last-minute Republican white flag would be illogical to my audience. That said, not all stories are well-written stories, so a Republican rollover remains an option for the time being. The primary reason I can see for the establishment to instruct the GOP to retreat would be to set the stage for a new stimulus event, like a war, which still leaves the U.S. dollar on track to lose its world reserve status — just not as fast a track.

Default Occurs By Winter

This plot twist makes far more sense to me given the way our story has progressed so far. Why? Because it provides perfect cover for an economic collapse that was going to occur anyway, except in this version the banking elite avoid all blame.

Just look at all the angry rhetoric being thrown around in the mainstream media; red team versus blue team has returned as the pervasive American sitcom.

Conservatives blame liberals and Obama. Liberals blame conservatives and the Tea Party. We’re all too happy to blame each other. Certainly, both elements of our government share responsibility for any debt default or subsequent collapse. But who started this avalanche to begin with? What about the Federal Reserve? What about Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, etc.? What about the globalists?

Debt default is no small matter. Such a disaster would indeed fuel a flight from U.S. Treasuries by foreign investors and eventually lead to the complete abandonment of the greenback as the world reserve standard. Austerity measures would be implemented at break-neck speed. Cuts to entitlement programs, pensions, State funding, etc. will hit the American people like a freight train.

The way in which the MSM is already painting “Tea Party” conservative as saboteurs should a default occur is actually a very practical strategy. Not only do the elites get their economic collapse, but they manipulate the general public to believe that Constitutional conservatives, their mortal enemies, were the CAUSE of the pain, rather than the banks.

Order From Chaos

Should the establishment decide this is the moment to pull the plug on our financial structure, expect some rather insane-sounding solutions to be presented as rational alternatives. When Obama was asked by reporters if he considered the 14^th Amendment as an option to end the debt ceiling debate, Obama did not rule out the idea.

This should raise some eyebrows. By the 14^th Amendment I can only surmise that they mean Section 4, which states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Some people, including CNBC’s Jim Cramer, think that this gives the President the power to raise the debt ceiling regardless of what Congress decides.

And Obama doesn’t appear to be dismissing the notion either. However, Section 5 of the 14^thAmendment says:

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Nowhere in Section 5 does it say that the President has the power to enforce the provisions of the 14^th Amendment, but this may not stop the White House from twisting the law to insinuate more expansive controls.

Beyond the 14^th Amendment, there are numerous executive orders and continuity of government programs that the White House could cite as authority to implement national emergency standards. This would probably start as a kind of “soft” martial law, and then grow from there. Each action will be rationalized as necessary for the greater good of the country, but will serve only the interests of the establishment oligarchy.

On the Republican side, there is another disturbing development that may be presented as a solution in the face of crisis — namely, the idea of instituting a Constitutional convention.

A Constitutional convention is essentially a complete rewriting of the document (which they call “amending”) in the name of rebooting a government that has strayed too far from the wishes of the people. The concept is being promoted avidly by certain neocon talking heads and scholars, even on the FOX News circuit.

It sounds very noble on the surface, and neocons use very pretty language to candy coat the idea for legitimate Constitutionalists; but it is truly the most foolish action our country could take, opening the door to a complete erasure of Bill of Rights protections while offering no assurances that any meaningful provisions will be respected or afforded by the Federal government.  The people are given the illusion of potential redress when in reality a Con-Con produces only more centralized theater for the masses. If the liberty movement is suckered into a Constitutional convention, we will have been lured into writing our own destruction.

Another scenario could involve the Federal Reserve moving to take what they often call “extraordinary measures”.  The Fed, being a private bank, may use the shutdown as an opportunity to paint itself as an economic “hero” (as unbelievable as that may sound), by instituting stimulus measures to the Federal Government regardless of Congressional or presidential impasse.  Given enough public desperation in the midst of default, the Fed may attempt to assert unprecedented financial authority in the name of “saving the country from it’s own government”.  The bankers then establish their role as the wise saviors and high priests of the fiscal universe, and cement private dominance over American political decisions as “acceptable” in the minds of the citizenry.

The most dangerous solution that will inevitably be paraded for the public will be a petition for aid from the IMF. The IMF has a long history of loansharking to indebted nations and then subsuming them and their natural resources in the process. The ignorant illusion that the United States is the sole power behind the IMF will be exposed all too late when a defaulting American Treasury is told to collateralize infrastructure to pay off creditors, while the dollar is bled completely dry and absorbed by the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket currency.

Whether default occurs or is avoided, watch vigilantly over the next few weeks. Do not blink. Do not be conned, and do not let fear or bias blind you to the bigger picture. The shutdown could amount to nothing immediate, or it could amount to everything we have warned about for the past five years. I personally believe the month of October may be a major turning point in America’s history. Whether it be for good or ill depends on how mentally and physically prepared we are.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Has America Been Set Up As History’s Ultimate Bumbling Villain?

The high priests of academic and “official” history love a good villain for two reasons:  First, because good official villains make the struggles and accomplishments of good official heroes even more awe-inspiring.  And, second, because nothing teaches (or propagandizes) the masses more thoroughly than the social or political lessons inherent in the documented rise and fall of the world’s most despicable inhabitants.  We get shivers of fear and excitement when we discuss the evils and the follies of ancient monsters like Nero, Attila the Hun, Caligula, etc, or more modern monsters, like Mussolini, Stalin Hitler, Goebbels, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and so on.  We take solace in the idea that “we are nothing like them”, and our nation has “moved beyond” such animalistic behavior.

But even more fascinating popcorn-style history is found not in the destruction of tyrants, but the destruction of empires.

When an entire culture steps off the edge of the abyss into the realm of societal psychosis, the world often changes forever and in ways that, at least on the surface, seem to bring humanity a little closer together.  The fall of Rome led to the eventual rise of a dominant Catholic theocracy and the rulership of royal blood lineage that lasted for centuries in Europe.  The flames of World War I and the destabilization of the Kaiser’s Germany led to the formation of the League Of Nations; a first attempt at a global governing authority designed to “maintain world peace”.  World War II and the fall of the Third Reich resulted in considerable horrors, which the establishment of the United Nations was supposedly meant to prevent from ever occurring again.  The decline of the British Empire saw the implosion of cultural colonialism, and the rise of corporate colonialism, which centralized immense power into the hands of the banking class as the new official oligarchs of our modern era.  The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the abandonment of the Soviet Union was lauded by then U.S. President George Bush as the beginnings of a “New World Order” – an ideological concept which heralds the final deterioration of the idea of economic and political sovereignty as a mainstay of human civilization.

When examining the approved version of historical conflict, one gets the overwhelming impression that the villains of our past, through their hubris, their greed, and their insanity, seem to inspire a sudden surge of unification as their ashes are cleared from the air.  One might even come to believe that the “natural progression” of conflict is leading us towards a future in which the only solution is the dissolution of all boundaries and the adoption of a one world narrative.  Wouldn’t it be glorious if the deaths of these malevolent tyrants and societies finally inspired the birth of a single human system in which no conflict is possible because we are all on the same side?

Perhaps it would be glorious, if you have adopted the childish notions of history common to the mainstream.  For those who have not, the story, and the ultimate solutions to the ills of mankind, become a little more complicated…

America’s Villainous Mustache 

Mainstream history tends to follow the motions of a play or film, in that archetypes and symbolic figures are consistently created in order to satisfy the natural flow of a particular fiction.  The bad guy wears a mustache (not always, but it is strange and disturbing to see how often this archetype materializes in the mainstream world view.  Just look at Hitler, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, etc.  We love mustached villains).  His criminal successes make him imposing and frightening.  He acts without conscience, or, he wrongly believes his terrible actions are justified in the name of the “greater good”.  His inevitable mistakes make his final failure ironic and satisfying in the face of the iconic hero, who defeats the enemy while the citizenry stands back and watches in awe and wonder as helpless spectators.

The villain is indeed evil, and deserves to be dethroned, but the assumption many people make is that the other side is diametrically good.  This is not always the case…

America is used to playing the role of the hero in the epic tale of modern Earth.  Our nation began with an act of defiance and victory so unexpected and so poetic, it cemented our cultural identity as freedom fighters for centuries to come.  Over time, our government, turning progressively corrupt, has exploited this cultural identity in order to lure Americans into committing atrocities in the name of our traditional sense of “heroism”.  We have, in fact, become the very antagonists we thought we were fighting against (there’s the delicious irony needed to round out our fairytale).

Our government’s actions surrounding Syria, for instance, have made America appear not just bloodthirsty, but also ridiculous.  The Obama Administration has taken us to the brink of World War III and left us there to stare out over the chasm.  The slightest breeze could send us plummeting.  All to generate military support for Al-Qaeda, the same organization designated by the establishment as our mortal enemy.

In the meantime, our economic system now survives solely on the whims of the Federal Reserve, a private central bank that answers to NO ONE, and writes fiscal policy without oversight.  The government is not only seeking to trigger world war, it also wants to pay for that war with money we do not have, riding debts we cannot pay, to foreign creditors we will piss off in the process of unleashing our unfunded laser guided hell.

Never has the U.S. been slathered in so much absurdity all at once.  Now, we wear the mustache…

Most of us in the Liberty Movement would agree that our country is being poisoned from within, and that our government for many decades has become an enemy of all free peoples.  But there is a very important question that we seem to have overlooked:

If America has been written as the villain, then who is meant to be the hero?

Putin Is Not Your Buddy

Lets step back from the global stage for a moment and examine the situation from a different perspective.  What if the U.S. is not just a product of corruption for corruption’s sake?  What if our new identity as the next historical evil-doer is part of a greater script, and America’s fall from grace is meant to be used to foment the success of fantastic (but fake) protagonists in an engineered fight for a “better and more centralized world”?

How many of us in the Liberty Movement cheered the diplomatic and strategic prowess of Vladimir Putin, for example, in the days leading to Obama’s “red line” attack on Syria?  We cheered because his position was correct, and his demeanor made our government look homicidal by comparison.  We cheered his letter to TIME Magazine because we are tired of being the only people pointing out the vicious parasite our political body has become, and it was exciting to be vindicated by an outside source.  We cheered his protection of Edward Snowden, a truly courageous whistle blower that exposed the terrifying Orwellian nature of the NSA.  We watch video reports from Russia Today (RT) because they give a far more accurate accounting of the facts in the U.S. than all American media entities combined.  It is easy for us to get caught up in the idea that since the West has become the bad guy, the East must now be the good guy.

The problem is, we are being played yet again.

Putin has long called for the end of the dollar’s world reserve status and the creation of a new “global structure” and a “global currency” revolving around the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/at-g20-kremlin-to-pitch-new-currency/375364.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/4376315/Russian-prime-minister-Vladimir-Putin-calls-for-end-of-dollar-stranglehold.html

Is it just coincidence that Putin wants the same centralized global economy and global governance that the IMF and multiple banking elites have been calling for for years?  The same elites who created the debt crisis and currency crisis we now face in America?  Is it just coincidence that Eastern economic and political dominance over issues like Syria perfectly benefits the IMF plan for an financial shift to the BRICS nations and away from the U.S. greenback?  The same plan promoted by many American financial moguls?

Russia is a model for despotic socialized society posing as “civilized society”, and yet, our government has made America so ugly that Russia looks noble by comparison.  Putin is placed on the cover of TIME magazine everywhere in the world except the U.S., and the Washington Times responds by stating that such behavior is a sign of “America’s downward spiral in the global community”, as if we are about to be shunned from the world at large:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/conscience-realist/2013/sep/18/time-puts-vladimir-putin-its-front-cover-everywher/

While RT produces fantastic journalistic pieces that are critical of American government, rarely if ever do they turn a discerning eye to Russia, and this is not just oversight.

Look carefully at the narrative that is being constructed here.  Putin is NOT our buddy.  He represents exactly what our own government now represents; globalism and naked centralized government aggression against the individual.  However, as mainstream history is being written, the story will be told that it was nations like Russia and China, and organizations like the IMF, that tried to hold back the tide of catastrophe while America, the last empire, steamrolled into thick-skulled oblivion surfing on a shockwave of fiat money and brute military vanity.

The Washington Aristocracy Is Scum, But Don’t Let That Fool You…

Most people with an extensive Liberty Movement education are well aware that false paradigms are used in politics by establishment elites in order to control social discussion and to divide the population against each other.  The Left/Right debate has been and always will be a farce, being that the leadership on both sides of the aisle have identical goals when it comes to the most important aspects of the American structure.  The elites of the Democratic and Republican parties, regardless of rhetoric, will BOTH strive for greater government power, less individual liberty, the erasure of economic sovereignty and free markets, and a dependent and enslaved public.  On these pursuits, they completely agree.

In one week, our faux leadership is to decide once AGAIN on the possibility of a debt ceiling increase that will bring us ever closer to a debt and currency avalanche event.  During past debates, much fanfare is given to the supposed conflict between the interests of the Democrats and the GOP, up until the last moment when the GOP caves in completely and allows the debt ceiling to be vaulted.  Will the same happen again in this case?  It depends on how quickly the establishment wants to bring entire roof down on our heads.

A freeze of the debt ceiling would eventually mean default on our Treasury Bonds, since our government must take on exponential debt in order to receive the benefits of the Federal Reserve’s printing press, as well as pay off our foreign creditors.

A government shutdown could slow the growth of some liabilities, but it does not account for the liabilities already in circulation, thus, we can still default.  Not to mention, our debt and currency standing could easily come into question, resulting in a bond dump or loss of reserve status.

The only option that does not result in a fast moving firestorm through our financial system is a debt ceiling increase, and how much longer can we get away with kicking the can down the road?  In any case, America is about to change for the worse, and the decision on when this is to happen was made a long time ago.  The Washington aristocracy is blatantly guilty in the instigation of our current dilemma, and my theory is, they want you to know they are the culprit, as long as you continue believing they are the ONLY culprit.  They want you to forget all about the IMF, the corporate elites, and Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the larger plan.  They want you to cheer when international banks and what’s left of the G20 rescue us after years of fiscal disaster and institute centralized global economic governance.  They want to be the only authors of this story, and what author doesn’t want to see himself placed in the role of the champion?

Just as there are false political paradigms, there are also false international paradigms.  The Liberty Movement is the wild card; an unknown quantity.  We aren’t fighting for one side or the other – we are fighting for particular principles and beliefs.  The establishment’s best strategy is to co-opt our momentum by convincing us to focus on alternative opposition, or place our trust in fabricated advocates.  No matter how epically monstrous our government becomes, and no matter how satisfying their ultimate demise will be, our battle does not end with them.  It only begins with them.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

The World’s Most Evil Corporation Issues A Dire Warning

Goldman Sachs is the epitome of the word “evil.” If one wants to know what the evil central bankers are up to, one only needs to pay attention to the actions of Goldman Sachs. The power elite residing inside of this country does not begin and end with the Federal Reserve, that privilege is reserved for the interrelationship between Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the corrupt World Bank and the IMF. And now, Goldman Sachs is running the European financial system into the ground as another Goldman Sachs boy, “Super” Mario Monti, has taken over Italy to finish off what is left of the Italian financial system. Monti is also the head of the European Trilateral Commission as well as a Bilderberg member. And yet another Goldman Sachs boy is finishing off the job in Greece. It is the mission of Goldman Sachs to implode the global economy with massive debt arising from the failed derivatives market, in which the debt totals 16 times the total GDP of the planet and that debt has been passed on to the governments of the world. There is no way that any country will ever pay off this debt. The world’s financial system will be collapsed and then reorganized under the Bank of International Settlement. Goldman Sachs is merely the grim reaper in this unholy process.

The Goals of Goldman Sachs

The purpose of this article is to expose the three pronged attack, directed at the American people, by Goldman Sachs, and its partners at the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury Department, the IMF and the World Bank. These central banker controlled institutions are engaged in a plot which is designed to accomplish the following:

• The destruction of America’s domestic economy through the introduction of derivative debt which is 16 times greater than the world’s GDP. This goal has been accomplished as evidenced by the fact that America now has more workers on welfare (101 million) as opposed to actual full time workers (97 million).
• Setting the chessboard in such a way that WWIII is a foregone conclusion. This is near completion as the US and Israel are poised to go to war with China and Russia, over Syria and Iran, in order to preserve the Petrodollar.
• Initiating a false flag event which will culminate in martial law and the elimination to all opposition to both the coming WWIII and the imposition of a tyrannical world government as well as a one world economic system.

It is no secret that Goldman Sachs runs Wall Street. After the first bail out, Goldman Sachs cut the head off of Shearson Lehman and several other Wall Street competitors when they used their undue influence to determine winners and losers after the first round of TARP. Even Ray Charles could see that Goldman Sachs is in near complete control of our government as evidenced by the former Goldman Sachs gangsters who have run our economy into the ground (e.g., Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury Goldman Sachs’ Rubin, Bush’s Secretary of Treasury Goldman Sachs’ “too big to fail” Hank Paulson, etc.). Make no mistake about it, the introduction of the massive derivatives debt was a power consolidation move designed to collapse the economy and hand over essential control to Goldman Sachs and its partners.

History Repeats Itself

Today’s events parallel the imperialists of the early 2oth Century which resulted in World War I. The Wall Street led depression of the 1930’s led to the rise of political extremism and ultimately to World War II. Today, Goldman Sachs and their fellow Wall Street cronies are currently running, or dare I say ruining the global economy and the consequences are going to result in the culmination of World War III from which these same gangster bankster’s will profit from the buildup, the death and destruction of billions of innocent people as well as profiting from the lucrative clean up which follows every war.

The ultimate prize for the coming war will be the ruination of the planet in order that the power structure of the earth can be reinvented in a manner that not even George Orwell could imagine. Remember, as the globalists like to say in reference to their favorite Hegelian Dialectic quote, “Out of chaos comes order.” Of course, it won’t be Goldman Sachs’ money that pays for the destruction of humanity in the coming world war. This coming war and its subsequent blood money will be your money and my money. It goes without saying that it won’t be the executives of Goldman Sachs children who are pressed into military service and will be eventually sacrificed on the battlefields of WWIII. It will be your children and my children who will be sacrificed in the name of furthering the bottom line of the Goldman Sachs Mafia and their masters at the Bank of International Settlement. Meanwhile, the Goldman Sachs children who will be safely tucked away as the world’s final chapter plays out as we know it.

 Goldman Sachs Destroying the American Middle Class

This swath of international destruction being promulgated by Goldman Sachs is also being visited upon the daily lives of the American public here at home. Courtesy of the Goldman Sachs gangsters, there are no more safe financial havens for American citizens. Your bank account, your pension fund, your investment accounts and your home mortgages are no longer safe. These collective funds are not in jeopardy because of the risk of falling victim to the failing economy as much as these funds are subject to confiscation by Goldman Sachs and its shell corporations along with the complicit support of the federal government. Most of these public officials are former Goldman Sachs employees. A clear case in point lies in what happened with MF Global.

MF Global, a shell corporation beholding to Goldman Sachs, was led to the slaughter by the former Goldman Sachs executive and former New Jersey Governor and senator, John Corzine. Corzine’s criminal actions directly victimized 150,000 Americans by stealing an estimated $900 million dollars of his clients’ money from their supposedly secure private accounts. There is also another $600 million missing dollars from MF Global which is still unaccounted for today.  Meanwhile, Corzine avoids sharing a prison cell with Bernie Madoff by purchasing a “get-out-of-jail card” through the sponsorship of a $35,000 per plate fundraiser for that great Wall Street puppet, Barack Hussein Obama. And what are the government watch dogs doing to protect our money from this new generation of robber barons? The short answer is that key federal officials are actually partners with Goldman Sachs in this monumental violation of the public trust. Take Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive partner, who like so many other Goldman Sachs gangsters, have been placed into key governmental oversight positions in order to protect the Goldman Sachs co-conspirators from prosecution as they continue their reign of terror upon the global economy.

…but a Goldman Sachs cop on the take.

Gary “the gangster” Gensler is the former Undersecretary of the Treasury(1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) and the current director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In his position at the time of the MF Global debacle, Gensler had the authority to go after Corzine for his role in the MF Global theft of customer funds and order restitution. However, Gensler has decided to protect a fellow member of the Goldman Sachs Mafia by not looking into the massive fraud and theft by Corzine and his cronies. Your tax dollars, paying the salary of federal officials, are overseeing the most massive illegal private transfer of wealth in the history of the planet. And this debt is payable to Goldman Sachs and their criminal enterprise partners.

You may not be one of the current 150,000 Goldman Sachs/MF Global victims. However, this Robin Hood-in-reverse-scenario, in which the rich are plundering what’s left of the middle class, will soon be visited upon your bank account, your home mortgages and your pensions. Whether it is the MERS mortgage fraud or the theft being perpetrated upon Federal employee retirement accounts, these criminal banksters are in the process of stealing it all and what are you going to do about it? Our nation of entrenched sheep will do nothing. The American citizens are going to lie down and take their beating in the face of the largest unfolding criminal syndicate in human history.

While you and the rest of America are trying to collectively remove your “deer in the headlight” glaze, you, as an American, have far more serious issues to concern yourself with and you are not going to have to wait long to have your worst fears to be born out.

 Something Wicked This Way Comes

Some, who have heard my expressed sense of outrage, have asked me if I favor a violent overthrow the United States Government. To that question, I answer in the negative. However, show me a way to be involved in the overthrow of the gangsters who have hijacked my country’s government, and I will be the first in line. However, before that day arrives, we have some very formidable obstacles to face with regard to what is looming just around the corner.

Goldman Sachs Is the Financial Kingpin of False Flag Attacks

If one wants to predict the next false flag attack, one merely has to watch the actions and the money movements of Goldman Sachs.

In the days leading up to the attacks on 9/11, Goldman Sachs “shorted” the sale of airline stocks which plummeted in the aftermath of the attacks. Just a coincidence you say?

In the days leading up to the housing bubble, Goldman Sachs shorted housing stocks which ignited the bubble. The Federal government fined Goldman Sachs, but in typical fashion, nobody went to jail. Just another coincidence you say?

As I documented in my seven part series, The Great Gulf Coast Holocaust, Goldman Sachs executed a “put option” for preferred insiders invested in Transocean stock, thus protecting the profits of these preferred insiders on the morning of the explosion. Transocean was the owner of the ill-fated oil rig. Goldman Sachs also sold the lion’s share of its stock less than two weeks before that fateful day on April 20, 2010. Nalco was the subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and BP at the time of the explosion. Who is Nalco? Nalco was the exclusive manufacturer of the deadly oil dispersant, Corexit. Corexit has done more to wreck the ecology of the Gulf as well as the health of the Gulf Coast residents than the oil spill itself. Again, this is all documented in my seven part series. By the way, I count another three coincidences in this paragraph alone and if you are keeping score, we are looking at a total of five amazing coincidences. But wait, there is more!

The moral of this story is clear, if there is to be a significant false flag event, the financial actions of Goldman Sachs will prove to be the key. And Goldman Sachs’ actions have signaled yet another oncoming false flag. As I reported on in April, Goldman Sachs instructed its brokers to sell short on gold stocks. And then after the bulk of the gold market panicked and the price of gold plummeted in a massive sell off, the Goldman Sachs boys did it again. The Goldman Sachs brokers began to purchase gold in massive amounts, for its elite clients, at a greatly depressed price. By the way, Goldman Sachs employed the EXACT same strategy with regard to the Gulf Oil tragedy. When Goldman Sachs sold off BP stock in the days before the explosion, they purchased massive amounts of BP stock at a greatly reduced price in June of 2010. The coincidence meter is now up to seven.

Why Goldman Sachs Cornered the Gold Market

The global elite would only want massive amounts of gold because something bad is about to happen to the dollar. When the dollar collapses, the elite, courtesy of the Goldman Sachs brokers will be sitting in a great position in which they hold the only sustainable medium of exchange following the collapse. But when will the collapse come? What form will it take?

As I reported, less than two weeks ago, the Bank of International Settlement ordered the central banks, including the Federal Reserve, to greatly decrease loans as a protection to the coming bad financial times. So, now we are getting warned and the narrowing down of where this is leading, is getting easier to predict.

It is important to remember that Goldman Sachs and the rest of the international banking community desperately want to wage war in Syria and eventually Iran over the demise of the Petrodollar caused by Iran in which they are selling oil for gold to India, China and Russia. There is also big money to be made by the banks in an upcoming global conflict. More importantly, and just as the world witnessed in the aftermath of WWII, consolidation of power can be achieved following a major war. Additionally, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the international bankers are not about to let China and Russia thumb their noses at the prevailing economic system. Gold will not be allowed to be used as a medium of exchange for nation states, because a nation on the gold standard, is a nation that controls its debt levels and financial security. This is unacceptable to the central bankers who kill national leaders, such as Gadaffi and Sadam Hussein, for daring to break from the plan and achieve financial independence. What the globalists also need is a game changing event which will destroy all opposition to the coming war. And the financial intentions of Goldman Sachs clearly speaks to the fact that a false flag attack is imminent which will implicate Syria and Iran and provide the pretext for the US and Israel to attack.

The Nature of the Coming False Flag Attack

The coming false flag attack which will plunge America into martial law, for our own protection of course, will result in WWIII. The false flag event could take two forms. It was reported two weeks ago, that the US was missing a nuclear weapon from a military base in Texas. This prompted Senator Lindsay Graham to state that the harbor in Charleston, SC. would be nuked if the US did not attack Syria. This is the first scenario.

The other scenario, and the far more likely one, has the power grid going down on November 13th. The Grid Ex II drill being conducted by DHS, FEMA, 150 corporations and the 50 governors, will simulate a power grid take down by terrorists on that same date. How many times have we witnessed a drill which turns into a false flag attack? This happened with 9/11, the 7/7 bombings and the Boston Marathon. There is a good chance it is going to happen here

In this scenario, once the grid is taken down, a banking collapse can be instituted and most will not notice because by the third day of a blackout, total chaos will ensue and nobody will be paying attention to the banks. Martial law will be imposed and Syria and Iran will be blamed.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs, Llloyd Blankfein, is on the record stating that an economic collapse is imminent. Need I say more?

Conclusion

Regardless of the form that an upcoming false flag event will follow, Goldman Sachs has tipped their false flag hand. A false flag event is coming and it is a safe bet that it will culminate in martial law. This would certainly explain DHS’ collecting of 2.6 billion rounds of ammunition and 2700 armored personnel carriers. There is also going to be a resulting third world war. The globalists know humanity is waking up. They are running out time and they are desperate. This could all be over in a few months. Do you not feel the collective sense of dreaded anticipation that has overtaken the country? At the unconscious level, we all know what is coming.

The November power grid drill is worth watching and I predict in the upcoming weeks, there will be many articles written about how to survive the coming events. I would advise all to pay attention, but most of all, I would advise people to get their spiritual affairs in order. We come into the world with nothing and all we leave with is the sum total of our spiritual experiences. It is time to attend to that detail in the present time frame.

Source: The Common Sense Show

Get Ready For The Death Of The Petrodollar

Even after seven years of writing macroeconomic analysis for the liberty movement and bearing witness to astonishing displays of financial and political stupidity by more “skeptics” than I can count, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of blind faith average Americans place in the strength of the U.S. dollar. One could explain in vast categorical detail the history of fiat currencies, the inevitable destruction caused by inflationary printing and the conundrum caused when any country decides to monetize its own debt just to stay afloat — often, to no avail.

Bank bailouts, mortgage company bailouts, Treasury bond bailouts, stock market bailouts, bailouts of foreign institutions: None of this seems to faze the gibbering bobbleheaded followers of the Federal Reserve cult.  Logic and reason and wisdom bounce like whiffle balls off their thick skulls. They simply parrot one of two painfully predictable arguments:

• Argument No. 1: There is no way foreign countries will ever dump the U.S. dollar because they are so dependent on American consumers to buy their export goods.
• Argument No. 2: There is no way the dollar’s value will ever collapse because it is the dominant petro-currency, and the entire world needs dollars to purchase oil.

I have written literally hundreds of articles over the years dismantling the first argument, pointing out undeniable signals that include:

• China’s subtle dumping of the dollar — using bilateral trade agreements with other developing nations and, more recently, major economic powers like Germany and Japan
• The massive gold-buying spree undertaken by China and Russia — even in the face of extreme market manipulation by JPMorgan Chase and Co. and CME Group Inc.
• The dumping of long-term U.S. Treasuries by foreign creditors in exchange for short-term Treasuries that can be liquidated at a moment’s notice.
• The fact that bonds now are supported almost entirely by Fed stimulus. When the stimulus ends, America’s ability to honor foreign debts will end and faith in the dollar will crumble.
• Blatant statements by the International Monetary Fund calling for the end of the dollar’s world reserve status and the institution of special drawing rights (SDRs) as a replacement.

The second argument held weight for a short time, only because the political trends in the Mideast had not yet caught up to the financial reality already underway. Today, this is quickly changing. The petrodollar’s status is dependent on a great number of factors remaining in perfect alignment, socially, politically and economically. If a single element were to fall out of place, oil markets would explode with inflation in prices, influencing the rest of the world to abandon the greenback. Here are just a few of the primary catalysts and why they are an early warning of the inevitable death of the petrodollar.

Egyptian Civil War

I was recently contacted by a reader in reference to an article I wrote concerning the likelihood ofcivil war in Egypt, a civil war which erupted only weeks later.

She asked why I had waited until this year to make the prediction and why I had not called for such an event after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, as many mainstream pundits had. The question bears merit. Why didn’t Egypt ignite with violent widespread internal conflict after Mubarak was deposed? It seemed perfectly plausible, yet the mainstream got the timing (and the reasons) horribly wrong.

My response was simple: The Mideast is being manipulated by elitist organizations towards instability, and this instability is a process. The engineered Arab Spring, I believe, is not so much about the Mideast as it is about the structure of the global economy. An energy crisis would be an effective tool in changing this structure. Collapse in the Mideast would provide perfect opportunity and cover for a grand shift in the global paradigm. However, each political step requires aid from a correct economic atmosphere, and vice versa.

If you want to identify a possible trend within a society, you have to take outside manipulation into account. You have to look at how economic events work in tandem with political events and at how these events benefit globalization as a whole. The time was not right after Mubarak’s overthrow. The mainstream media jumped the gun. If the target is the U.S. dollar and Egypt is the distraction, this year presented perfect opportunity with the now obvious failure of quantitative easing stimulus being exposed.

As the situation stands, the Egyptian military regime that overthrew Mohammed Morsi has completely cut the Muslim Brotherhood out of the political process and murdered at least 450 protesters, including prisoners already in custody.

Morsi supporters have responded by torching government buildings and shooting police personnel. But the real fighting will likely begin soon, as the current government calls for a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood itself. Simultaneously, hatred for the United States and its continued support of the Egyptian power base — regardless of who sits on the throne — is growing to a fever pitch throughout the region.  This is not healthy for the life of the petrodollar in the long run.

It is important for Americans to understand when examining Egypt that this is not about taking sides. The issue here is that circumstances are nearly perfect for war and that such a war will spread and will greatly damage oil markets. The Suez Canal accounts for nearly 8 percent of the world’s ocean trade, and 4.5 million barrels of oil per day travel the corridor. Already, oil prices have surged due to the mere threat of disruption of the Suez (as I predicted). And this time, the nation is not going to recover. A drawn-out conflict is certain, given the nature of the military coup in place and the adamant opposition of the Muslim population.

Strangely, there are still some in the mainstream arguing that the Suez will “never close” because “it is too important to the Egyptian economy,” The importance of the Suez to the Egyptian government is irrelevant in the midst of all-out revolution. The Suez will close exactly because there will be no structure left to keep the canal open. In the meantime, oil prices will continue to rise and distrust of the United States will continue to fester.

Saudi Arabia Next?

The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is at once symbiotic and parasitic, depending on how one looks at the situation. The very first oil exploration and extraction deal in Saudi Arabia was sought by the vast international oil cartels of Royal Dutch Shell, Near East Development Company, Anglo-Persian, etc., but eventually fell into the hands of none other than the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. The dark history of Standard Oil aside, this meant that Saudi business would be handled primarily by American interests. And the Western thirst for oil, especially after World War I, would etch our relationship with the reigning monarchy in stone.

A founding member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia was one of the few primary oil-producing nations that maintained an oil pipeline that expedited processing and bypassed the Suez Canal. (The pipeline was shut down, however, in 1983). This allowed Standard Oil and the United States to tiptoe around the internal instability of Egypt, which had experienced ongoing conflict which finally culminated in the civil war of 1952. Considered puppets of the British Empire at the time, the ruling elites of Egypt were toppled by the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to the eventual demise of the British pound sterling as the top petro-currency and the world reserve. The British economy faltered and has never since returned to its former glory.

On the surface, Saudi Arabia seems to have avoided the effects of the Arab Spring climate, but all is not as it seems. The defection of Saudi Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud has brought up startling questions as to the true state of the oil producing giant.

I believe this defection is only the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s troubles and that America’s largest oil partner is soon to witness domestic turmoil that will disrupt oil shipments around the world. America’s support for a monarchy that is so brutal to its population will only hasten the end of the dollar’s use in global oil trade, especially if these puppet regimes are toppled.

For those who doubt that Saudi Arabia is in line for social breakdown, I would ask why the nation felt it necessary to pump billions of dollars into the new Egyptian military junta.

While the country is surely being used in some cases as a proxy by the West, the Saudi government itself is fearful that success of dissenting elements will spread to its own borders. Little do they understand that this is part of the globalist game plan. Without control over Saudi petroleum, the United States loses its last influential foothold in the oil market, and there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the dollar will fall as the petro-currency soon after. The desperation caused by such an energy crisis will make international markets beg for a solution, which global banking cartels led by the IMF are more than happy to give.

Iranian Wild Card

The U.S. government’s outright creation of the Syrian insurgency and its funding and armament of al-Qaida agents have understandably angered numerous Mideast nations, including Iran. Iran sits on the most vital oil shipping lane in the world: the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of the world’s annual oil exports are shipped through Hormuz, and the narrow inlet is incredibly easy to block using nothing but deliberately sunken freighters. In fact, this tactic is exactly what Iran has been training for in order to frustrate a U.S./Israeli invasion.

A U.S. or NATO presence on the ground or in the air above Syria, Egypt or Iran will most likely result in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, causing sharp rises in gasoline costs that Americans cannot afford.

Russia/China Oil Deal

Finally, just as most bilateral trade deals removing the dollar as world reserve have gone ignored by the mainstream media, so has the latest sizable oil deal between Russia and China. Russia has been contracted by the Chinese to supply 25 years of petroleum, and this deal follows previously established bilateral guidelines — meaning the dollar will not be used by the Chinese to purchase this oil.

I expect that this is just the beginning of a chain reaction of oil deals shunning the dollar as the primary trade mechanism. These deals will accelerate as the Mideast sees more internal strife and as the popular distaste for the United States becomes a liability for anyone in power.

The Dollar Is A Paper Tiger

Some might argue that oil discoveries in the Midwestern U.S. could be used to counter the disruption of oil pipelines in the Middle East, and certainly, there is much untapped oil in America.  However, to claim that this oil would somehow negate a crisis is naive, primarily because oil supply is not the ultimate issue; the dollar’s petro-status IS the ultimate issue.  That status is dangerously reliant on the continued stability of Western friendly regimes in the East.  We can produce all the oil we want within our own borders, but if the dollar loses global standing as the world reserve, we will STILL see a massive debasement of our currency’s value, we will still see collapse, and I guarantee, most of our domestic oil will end up being exported as payment to foreign creditors just to satisfy outstanding debts.

The dollar is no more invincible than any other fiat currency in history. In some ways, it is actually far weaker than any that came before. The dollar is entirely reliant on its own world reserve status in order to hold its value on the global market. As is evident, countries like China are already dumping the greenback in trade with particular nations. It is utterly foolish to assume this trend is somehow “random” rather than deliberate. Foreign countries would not be initiating the process of a dollar dump today if they did not mean to follow through with it tomorrow. All that is left is for a cover crisis to be conjured.  Existing tensions in the Mideast signal a pervasive crisis, most likely an energy crisis, in the near term.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Gold Markets Get Strange – Is Economic Danger Near?

Traditionally, metals markets are supposed to be a solid fundamental signal of the physical and psychological health of our overall economy. Steady but uneventful commodities trade meant a generally healthy industrial base and consumption base. An extreme devaluation was a signal of deflation in consumer demand and a flight to currencies. Extreme price hikes meant a flight from normal assets and currencies in the wake of possible hyperinflation. This is how gold and silver markets were originally designed to function – however, I welcome you to the wacky world of 2013, where bad financial news is met with the cheers of investors who believe stimulus will last forever, where foreign investors dump the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade while mainstream dupes argue that the Greenback is invincible, and where everyone and their uncle seems to be buying precious metals yet the official market value continues to plunge.

Is this weird? As Bill Murray would say: “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria…!”

The reason our entire fiscal system now operates in a backwards manner is due to one simple truth – every major indicator of our economy today is manipulated by our central bank, which uses its printing press to prop up everything from equities to treasuries to municipal bonds. They openly admit to it. They are proud of the fact. They swagger about as if they are the heroes of the day. They act as if we should be thankful. But what is reality here?

First, let’s lay out some very straightforward undeniable facts about our economic situation that no one with any intelligence could argue against:

Fact #1: Our Economy Is Supported By Federal Reserve Stimulus

For the past few years, the Fed has created dollars out of thin air to fill the debt void in corporate banks, in U.S. Treasury Bonds, in city and state municipal bonds, in stocks, and even in foreign banks in the EU. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and current branch head Richard Fisher have both admitted in mainstream interviews that stock markets are essentially sustained by the central bank, and that this has been done to give people the psychological illusion of economic health. This stimulus has been relatively constant in one form or another, from TARP bailouts to QE1 to QE3. Fed interest rates on bank lending have been artificially reduced to near zero, meaning international banks can borrow money from the Fed (which it creates from thin air) at almost no extra cost. The fiat is flowing nonstop.

Fact#2: Our Economy Is Addicted To Stimulus

Anytime the Fed suggests it might end or “taper” stimulus measures, the stock market takes a dive. Anytime there is a semblance of good economic news, the stock market takes a dive. Anytime conscientious government representatives (what few there are) suggest that uncontrolled Fed printing is dangerous and should be stopped, Fed or Treasury officials claim that without such stimulus measures, everything will collapse.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/breaking-news/no-rate-rise-on-horizon-bernanke/story-fnihsevj-1226681221841

Anytime there is detrimental economic news in the mainstream, the stock market rises as investors take bets that the Fed will continue stimulus for just a little longer. I think it is safe to say that it is a fact that our financial culture has become utterly addicted to money printing from the Fed.

Fact #3: Stimulus Has Done Little Or Nothing To Improve Our Economic Situation Since 2008

Where are the tangible benefits of the Fed printing bonanza? Yes, our debt crisis has been stretched out for a few extra years, but has it been solved? Of all the trillions in national debt accrued through government spending, where has the money actually gone?

Have lending standards been relaxed, and are private loans (not corporate loans) anywhere close to pre-2008 levels?

Have real jobs with sustainable incomes actually been created? Or, have millions of full time high paying jobs been replaced with low hour low pay wage slave jobs? Is the Labor Department counting temp-jobs with three month turnovers created by big box retailers like Walmart as real jobs? (Hint: The answer is yes.)

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/07/12/walmarts-fear-of-commitment/

Has the housing market actually improved, or, are private owners disappearing as big banks and corporate investors swoop in to snatch up insolvent properties for pennies on the dollar and then putting them back on the market as rentals? (Hint: The answer is an emphatic “yes”)

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/behind-the-rise-in-house-prices-wall-street-buyers/?_r=0

Is the stock market really on solid footing, or, if stimulus stops, will it completely implode?

What has stimulus actually accomplished other than sacrificing the stability of our currency for the sake of five years of financial doldrums?

Fact #4: Stimulus Cannot Continue Forever

This is one fact the average mainstream financial analyst does not seem to grasp. I hear the argument that foreign exporters need the U.S. and the dollar, and that they will “never” dump the greenback. I’m sorry to have to break it to those folks, but they are ALREADY dumping the dollar in bilateral trade with each other. China, the second largest economy in the world, the largest exporter/importer in the world, and the largest foreign investor in U.S. dollars and treasuries, has been slowly but surely removing the dollar as the reserve currency in most of its international trading:

With Russia…

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-russia-to-drop-dollar-in-bilateral-trade-2010-11-23

With Germany…

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/germany-china-yuan-idUSB4E7JG00D20120830

With Japan…

With Australia…

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/pm-set-to-sign-china-currency-deal-in-boost-to-exporters/story-fn59nm2j-1226609244139

With Brazil…

http://thebricspost.com/brazil-china-sign-deal-to-trade-in-own-currency/#.Uf9VW23J7af

I could go on and on and on. The latest news announces that China has just signed a new deal with Russia supplying china with 25 years worth of petroleum, and this oil will NOT be purchased in dollars, meaning the Greenback’s status as the petrodollar is being openly challenged:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/russia-inks-big-china-oil-deal/?partner=yahootix

Foreign investors are moving away from the dollar. This is a fact, and it will inevitably lead to the end of the dollar’s world reserve status, and thus, the end of the dollar as we know it. Stimulus, at that point, would be useless, as our currency’s overall value crumbles and the Fed is forced to hyperinflate just to pay the bills. Stimulus will end, one way or another, and when it does the results will be the same; moderate to severe collapse followed by skyrocketing prices on all goods. The longevity of the event will depend on how it is handled.

Gold And Silver Go Three Dimensional

As I pointed out earlier, metals markets are supposed to reflect certain fundamental trends in our fiscal system. However, as has been thoroughly documented, international banks like JP Morgan and companies like the CME have gone far out of their way to manipulate PM markets. JP Morgan has been caught red handed using coordinated short positions to force silver down. Gold and silver certificates (otherwise known as ETF’s) have been issued by banks for literally tons of metals that don’t exist. There is no vault where these metals are held. JP Morgan’s physical holdings are limited, and when they finally run out, the scam will be exposed, and the ETF market will go down like the Hindenburg.

Official market prices for gold and silver have seen a heartbreaking drop in the past few months, yet, foreign central banks around the world are buying like they know something average Americans do not. China is set to become the largest holder of Gold reserves in the next two years:

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/2/21_China_Will_Have_Worlds_Largest_Gold_Reserves_In_2_To_3_Years.html

Russia continues to stockpile gold every month for the past nine months:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/cbank-gold-imf-idUSL1N0FW0TC20130726

Sales of U.S. Mint gold and silver coins are hitting record highs in 2013:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/u-s-mint-gold-silver-coins-sales-may-rise-to-record-this-year.html

So, if demand is high, and purchases are high, then why is the market price on metals going down. I believe this conundrum has much to do with something I warned about years ago as a sure signal of coming economic breakdown; namely, the decoupling of Paper Metals from Physical Metals.

Investors are beginning to shun ETF’s and fake gold and are beginning to buy only physical holdings. The official market value is based almost entirely on the flow of ETF’s. People stop buying paper metals, and paper metals go down. But, this is absolutely no reflection of the real value of physical coins and bars on the street. This trend is dangerous for the manipulation game headed by giants like JP Morgan. The more physical gold investors buy, the less they have to back their fake ETF’s. Eventually, they will be exposed, and metals trade will break through the 2 dimensional world of paper trading into 3 dimensional physical supply and demand.

This is probably why JP Morgan has suddenly announced that the bank will be leaving commodities trading entirely:

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/commodities/jpm-exits-commodities-what-next-for-wall-street-refiners_927342.html

The news come conveniently as multiple large banks including JP Morgan come under scrutiny by regulators for everything from energy price manipulation to shadily run “metals warehouses”:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/us-supervision-hearing-congress-idUSBRE96T0WA20130730

Both China and Russia have begun discussing a new Bretton Woods-style agreement which would back the Yuan with gold and change the very fabric of the international monetary system. This concept falls right in line the developing nations’ demand for a replacement of the U.S. dollar, and, the IMF’s new Special Drawing Rights currency, which is partially valued in gold, and backed by the IMF’s unaudited gold horde:

http://rbth.asia/business/2013/07/17/china_reportedly_planning_to_back_the_yuan_with_gold_47997.html

JP Morgan fleeing commodities markets? Paper gold decoupling from physical gold? China and Russia suggesting a new Bretton Woods? Is this a signal for something monolithic on the horizon for the global economy? If there is a sudden shift by developing nations away from the dollar and towards a basket currency system partially valuated in gold, this would be disastrous for the American fiscal structure. I have been tracking the slow dump of the greenback since 2006, and I have to say, I’ve never seen escalation like I have seen in the past year. If foreign central banks are planning to drop the dollar as the world reserve, their behavior in metals markets suggests they may be ready to act soon.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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