NC Renegades

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

Have you ever noticed that nearly all the world’s surplus rests on Wall Street… or maybe in the City of London? I think this is something we should pay attention to.

So, let’s face it directly for a moment: All the big investment markets are owned and controlled by the Western aristocracy: by politicians, high officials, mega-corps and deep-state operators. These people are fully in control of the markets; they can close them anytime they like.

And in fact stock and bond markets are closed, and fairly often. NASDAQ has closed repetitively for technical reasons, all the New York markets closed for Hurricane Sandy, and nearly every market was closed after 9/11. The markets reopened each time of course, but only because it was in the best interest of the aristocracy. They didn’t have to reopen them. These people were – and are – in control.

This being the case, I’d like to familiarize you with two words that you have rarely heard but which are likely to be heard far and wide some day: Systemic Risk. Wikipedia defines systemic risk as “the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system….”

My point is this: Your most serious risk is not from the failure of a single stock or even a group of stocks, but a closure of the market itself.

“They’d Never Do That!”

Of course they would… and of course they have.

Don’t we remember what they did to Cyprus, just a few years ago? Haven’t we seen their current campaign to ban cash? Didn’t we see them save the institutions they owned in 2008, selling average folks down the river? And there’s more, including the US Treasury holding meetings on taking control of IRAs and 401(k)s and the IFM discussing “financial repression.”

The truth is that the Western aristocracy does what’s best for the Western aristocracy. If that means keeping the status quo going, that’s what they’ll do. If it means turning the status quo off, they’ll do that. Shutting it down would be a big and risky step for them of course, but if they face a near-certain loss of control otherwise, you can bet that they’ll do just that. Continue reading →

So Google is a “Proud supporter of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia“. An appropriate reaction:

David DeGerolamo

You are about to see a chart that is undeniable evidence that we have already entered a major economic slowdown.  In the “real economy”, stuff is bought and sold and shipped around the country by trucks, railroads and planes.  When more stuff is being bought and sold and shipped around the country, the “real economy” is growing, and when less stuff is being bought and sold and shipped around the country, the “real economy” is shrinking.  I know that might sound really basic, but I want everyone to be on the same page as we proceed in this article.  Just because stock prices are artificially high right now does not mean that the U.S. economy is in good shape.  In fact, there was a stock rally at this exact time of the year in 2008 even though the underlying economic fundamentals were rapidly deteriorating.  We all remember what happened later that year, so we should not exactly be rejoicing that precisely the same pattern that we witnessed in 2008 is happening again right in front of our eyes.

During the month of April, the Cass Transportation Index was down 4.9 percent on a year over year basis.  What this means is that a lot less stuff was bought and sold and shipped around the country in April 2016 when compared to April 2015.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

Freight shipments by truck and rail in the US fell 4.9% in April from the beaten-down levels of April 2015, according to the Cass Transportation Index, released on Friday. It was the worst April since 2010, which followed the worst March since 2010. In fact, shipment volume over the four months this year was the worst since 2010.

This is no longer statistical “noise” that can easily be brushed off.

Of course this was not just a one month fluke.  The reality is that we have now seen the Cass Shipping Index decline on a year over year basis for 14 consecutive months.  Here is more commentary and a chart from Wolf Richter…

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Another nudge. The title of this article comes from Fred on Everything. Fred explains his reasoning for leaving the United States and moving to Mexico. But he echoed a sentiment that I have had over the past week: “I didn’t leave my country, my country left me”.

Not good enough. My country did not leave me any more that my God left me. My country has been stolen by an evil government. My options are simple:

1. Submit
2. Fight
3. Leave

Did I miss any of your options?

David DeGerolamo

h/t WRSA

from Tony C

This will happen and it will impact the United States. What passes for free speech in this country as a right protected by the 1st Amendment is little more than a government cover to gather information against the people. The illegal spying on the people exposed by Edward Snowden is still operational.

You cannot dictate “free speech” any more than a government can dictate which bathroom our children use. For today. What the government can dictate are decrees under tyranny clocked using terminology from George Orwell’s 1984. The “Ministry of Truth” dictates morality – newspeak for depravity. Debate is for haters: there is only one truth and that is how the Obama administration will transform our culture.

You have to decide if you are willing to accept their lies and deny your faith.

David DeGerolamo

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UN Plots War on Free Speech to Stop “Extremism” Online

The United Nations Security Council wants a global “framework” for censoring the Internet, as well as for using government propaganda to “counter” what its apparatchiks call “online propaganda,” “hateful ideologies,” and “digital terrorism.” To that end, the UN Security Council this week ordered the UN “Counter-Terrorism Committee” — yes, that is a real bureaucracy — to draw up a plan by next year.From the Obama administration to the brutal Communist Chinese regime, everybody agreed that it was time for a UN-led crackdown on freedom of speech and thought online — all under the guise of fighting the transparently bogus terror war.

The UN, ridiculed by American critics as the “dictators club,” will reportedly be partnering with some of the world’s largest Internet and technology companies in the plot. Among the firms involved in the scheme is Microsoft, which, in a speech before the Security Council on May 11, called for “public-private partnerships” between Big Business and Big Government to battle online propaganda. As this magazine has documented, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other top tech giants have all publicly embraced the UN and its agenda for humanity. Many of the more than 70 speakers also said it was past time to censor the Internet, with help from the “private sector.”

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h/t Brandon Smith

by Robert Gore

Economic depressions unfold slowly, which obscures their analysis, although they are simple to understand. Governments and central banks turn recessions into depressions, which are preceded by unsustainable expansions of debt untethered from the real economy. The reduction and resolution of excess debt takes time, and governments and central banks usually act counterproductively, retarding necessary adjustments and lengthening the adjustment, and consequently, the depression.

If one dates the beginning of a depression from the beginning of the unsustainable expansion of debt that preceded it, then the current depression began in 1987. Newly installed chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan quelled a stock market crash, flooding the financial system with fiat liquidity. It was a well from which he and his successors would draw repeatedly. Throughout the 1990s he would pump whenever it appeared the market and the US economy were about to dump. In 1999, he pumped because the Y2K computer transition might adversely affect the economy and financial system (it didn’t).

If one dates the beginning of a depression from the time when the benefits of debt are, in the aggregate, outweighed by its burdens, the depression began in 2000, with the implosion of the fiat-credit fueled, high-tech and Internet stock market bubble. Unsustainable debt and artificially low interest rates lower the rate of return on productive investment and saving, increasing the relative attractiveness of speculation. Central bankers and their minions refer to this as “forcing investors out on the risk curve,” crawling way out on a limb for fruitful returns. They have no term for when markets saw off the branch, as they did in 2000 and again in 2008.

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The battle on May 6 in the village of Khan Touman, located southwest of Aleppo near Route 5, the main highway leading to Damascus, will go down in the annals of the Syrian war as the biggest defeat suffered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hizballah, as well as the battle that changed the face of the war.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that an Iranian force consisting of IRGC troops and Hizballah was ambushed by fighters from the Jaysh al Fath organization, part of the Nusra Front.

Until this battle took place, Iranian and Hizballah commanders in Syria did not know that the rebels had received a shipment of MILAN antitank missiles provided by Turkey and funded by Saudi Arabia.

The encounter with the advanced weapon system brought the IRGC and Hizballah to rout.

The Iranians admitted that 17 of their fighters fell in the battle, including 13 from the IRGC’s “Karbala” Division that is usually based in Iran, and 22 were wounded. Among the dead were two Iranian brigadier generals. At least ten IRGC troops were taken prisoner by the rebels. Five or seven Iranian troops were executed immediately, and an unknown number were taken from the area to an undisclosed location.

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So the stakes in the proxy war between the United States and Russia keeps escalating. Who wins?

David DeGerolamo

by Bill Gertz

China’s aggressive cyber espionage and military reconnaissance operations against both U.S. government and private networks show no sign of abating under the Obama administration’s policy of holding talks and threatening but not taking punitive action.

Typical of the administration’s approach has been the seemingly endless series of high-level meetings with Chinese officials, such as talks held last week in Washington to discuss “norms” of behavior in cyberspace.

For at least the past five years, President Obama and the White House have ignored appeals from security and military officials, as well as from Congress and the private sector, to show greater resolve and take some type of action against the Chinese, lest the country’s technology wealth be drained empty.

The meeting on May 11 included officials of the Senior Experts Group on International Norms and Related Issues. Christopher Painter, State Department coordinator for cyber issues, led the U.S. side, and the Chinese delegation was headed by Wang Qun, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of arms control.

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Amid the unprecedented rise in foiled terrorist attacks in the United States, a recent report found at least 75 “homegrown violent extremists” were operating across the U.S. in 2015. Of those extremists, nearly half tried to travel overseas – presumably to join terror groups – but only four percent succeeded.

Close to one third were found to be plotting terrorist attacks in the United States and were caught either before or after executing the attack.

Figures issued by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness show that 65 of these extremist were affiliated with the Islamic State, while the rest were linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Nusra Front, or other Islamic extremist groups and ideologies.

In addition, the New Jersey agency reported radicalized extremists were able to enter, operate and thrive in the U.S.

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