NC Renegades

h/t Kathie P

by Bill Gertz

Defense Secretary Ash Carter disclosed last week that the Pentagon’s new high-technology weapons to deal with threats from China and Russia will include ultra-high speed missiles.

Carter revealed during a speech in California that part of the $71.8 billion for weapons research and development this year will fund “new hypersonic missiles that can fly over five times the speed of sound.”

Days earlier, the general in charge of Air Force weapons research, Maj. Gen. Thomas Masiello, revealed that two technology prototypes of hypersonic strike weapons, a scramjet powered cruise missile and a hypersonic glider, could be ready in four years.

“We’re looking for more singles, base hits, versus trying to go for a home run,” Masiello said of hypersonic missile development during a conference Feb. 26. The effort will build on several tests in recent years of a Boeing X-51 scramjet hypersonic missile.

The X-51 had one successful flight out of three tests and reached speeds of over Mach 5, or 3,836 miles per hour.

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Maybe it’s been the four years since the last presidential primaries that have dulled my memory somewhat, or maybe it’s a mild selective amnesia that takes the edge off highly unpleasant thoughts, but I don’t remember any past presidential primaries where I’ve been as disgusted with the debates, the rhetoric and the degree of malice and vitriol as this one.

The media has taken great delight in turning the debates into juvenile mudslinging contests with the “respond if your name is mentioned” format designed to extend the noxious back and forth ad nauseam and in essence circumventing the important issues the voters so desperately want to know.

The point is that, at least in my opinion, America never really gets to know a candidate, it’s as if we, the voting public are supposed to take the word of the pundits and talking heads who come at us from both sides of the political spectrum, more interested in personalities, anecdotes and any breath of scandal or disgrace, no matter how ancient or trivial.

America never got to know Barack Obama before electing him, not really.

Were the depths of his desire for fundamentally changing America, his disdain for what America is and his commitment to transforming it into a Socialist nation really revealed?

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There are two sides in the global war against cash. On one side are many of the world’s governments, central banks, fintech firms, banks, credit card companies, telecommunication behemoths, financial institutions, large retailers, etc. According to them, the days of physical currency are numbered, so why not pull the plug already, beginning with the largest denomination bills such as the $100-note and particularly the €500-note?

On the other side are people who like to use cash – most of whom, according to the dominant official narrative, are either criminals or terrorists. After all, they must have something to hide; otherwise, why would they use a private, untraceable (not to mention archaic, dirty, dangerous and unhygienic) form of payment like cash?

The powers that want to kill off cash already have vital technological and generational trends firmly on their side, along with widespread public ignorance, apathy, and disinterest. But in recent weeks the unlikeliest of defenders of physical money has emerged: the national central bank of Europe’s biggest economy, the German Bundesbank.

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Officials investigating the death of Robert Finicum are ready to release results.

Police fatally shot Finicum during a Jan. 26 traffic stop while trying to arrest the rancher and others involved in the takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge.

The FBI said Finicum was shot after reaching for a gun and the agency released aerial footage to support that assertion. Backers of the takeover have said the shooting wasn’t justified.

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The Italian banking system is a “leaning tower” that truly could completely collapse at literally any moment.  And as Italy’s banks begin to go down like dominoes, it is going to set off financial panic all over Europe unlike anything we have ever seen before.  I wrote about the troubles in Italy back in January, but since that time the crisis has escalated.  At this point, Italian banking stocks have declined a whopping 28 percent since the beginning of 2016, and when you look at some of the biggest Italian banks the numbers become even more frightening.  On Monday, shares of Monte dei Paschi were down 4.7 percent, and they have now plummeted 56 percent since the start of the year.  Shares of Carige were down 8 percent, and they have now plunged a total of 58 percent since the start of the year.  This is what a financial crisis looks like, and just like we are seeing in South America, the problems in Italy appear to be significantly accelerating.

So what makes Italy so important?

Well, we all saw how difficult it was for the rest of Europe to come up with a plan to rescue Greece.  But Greece is relatively small – they only have the 44th largest economy in the world.

The Italian economy is far larger.  Italy has the 8th largest economy in the world, and their government debt to GDP ratio is currently sitting at about 132 percent.

There is no way that Europe has the resources or the ability to handle a full meltdown of the Italian financial system.  Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening.  Italian banks are absolutely drowning in non-performing loans, and as Jeffrey Moore has noted, this potentially represents “the greatest threat to the world’s already burdened financial system”…

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Reports indicate that some of the stolen funds were traced to the Philippines, but given what we know about the “Cyber Axis of Evil,” we can only suspect it was Iranians, Chinese, or the criminal/military mastermind Kim Jong-Un who was behind the scam, but whatever the case, someone, somewhere, hacked into Bangladesh’s central bank on February 5.

According to Reuters, “some of the funds” have been recovered, but the bank didn’t initially say how much or how much was initially stolen. We suppose that theoretically it could have been a rather large sum, as the country has around $26 billion in FX reserves on hand:

But just moments ago we learned from the AFP that the amount lost was around $100 million. “Some of the money was then illegally transferred online to the Philippines and Sri Lanka, a central bank official told AFP on condition of anonymity.”

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