Monday, October 24, 2016

The Real WikiLeaks Story

https://wikileaks.org/IMG/arton650.png?1475874848
For sometime many people believed the neocons were all on the right. You should notice in this article the part about the New York Times never meeting a war they didn't support. And you should also know by now that the Times is a huge front runner for Hillary and her gang of thugs.

Th elites are made up of neocons, right, left, over the fence or on the backstairs. That's the ploy. Get the masses to think they have a say, a choice. So they wave a rigged ballot box in front of you, and send you home thinking you've expressed yourself in a meaningful way. Now just line up and follow our know-best-for-the-globe lead.

Have they ever found those WMDs? Has anyone gone to jail or even been prosecuted for that huge lie?  Colin Powell went to the UN, gave a rousing speech about it. We haven't heard from old Colin of late except about some extra-curricular activity of a certain former politician. Now the Russians, so they tell us, have hacked into the DNC emails and so forth. Such a vile, anger-provoking underhanded deed.

Actually, that's the real reason the Russians were hacking into the DNC emails, to steal that ex-politician's secret for dicking all those young chicks. Success breeds envy, make no mistake. It's part of the capitalistic system. Step on my blue suede shoes, nuke my backyard, but don't screw with my barbecue ribs and pussy. That's a pretty risky reason to risk WWIII over, however. So the powers that rule made up the WikiLeaks' Russian hacking story to block Hillary.
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I wish I could say things were improving between the US and Russia but they aren't. They're rapidly worsening.
There’s so much happening right now, I can only provide a summary of a few of the more interesting and worrying developments.
This report builds on those I've released over the past two years and begins with a chilling editorial put out by the NY Times on September 29th, 2016, which further demonized Putin specifically, Russia generally, and openly advocates for military confrontation.
Hey, we’ve been down this path before.  The deeply conflicted NY Times has never met a war in the Middle East it didn’t support, and has never had any trouble repeating war plan talking points (that always neatly align with those put out by neocon think tanks) or even printing obviously fake “intelligence” from unnamed sources such as that used to justify the illegal US attack and invasion of Iraq.
As a reminder for my US readers who many only have read US press sources on the matter, prior to being attacked Iraq had never threatened the US, had no role in 9/11, and had allowed extensive UN access to its country’s military bases none of which ever showed the slightest trace of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. And, even if they had been producing these so-called weapons of mass destruction (weapons which are also owned and maintained in the US, for the record), there was still no legal case for an attack by the US because pre-emptive attacks are not justifiable, ever.
What the NY Times has done, again, I fear, is served as a conduit for neocon talking points and therefore has become a propaganda arm readying the US population for another war, this one with Russia.  This is a very disturbing development.
Here’s the editorial, into which I have inserted comments where appropriate [in brackets].  Remember, propaganda is designed to elicit core emotional responses such as fear, anger, moral indignation, and a sense of threat to one’s very survival.

Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State
Sept 29, 2016
President Vladimir Putin is fast turning Russia into an outlaw nation. As one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, his country shares a special responsibility to uphold international law. Yet, his behavior in Ukraine and Syria violates not only the rules intended to promote peace instead of conflict, but also common human decency.
[Which “rules intended to promote peace” is the NY Times referring to here?  The same sorts of rules that led NATO to bomb Libya back into the stone age?  Or are these the “rules” that allow a country to manufacture fake evidence on Iraq and then attack that country unleashing a decade of bitter sectarian violence?  Also, how does “common human decency fit into that schema?  I’m truly curious.]
This bitter truth was driven home twice on Wednesday. An investigative team led by the Netherlands concluded that the surface-to-air missile system that shot down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine in July 2014, killing 298 on board, was sent from Russia to Russian-backed separatists and returned to Russia the same night.
[The MH-17 disaster is anything but clear-cut and the JIT investigation was heavily compromised from the start.  Nothing like the claim being made here is supported by the actual investigation evidence presented.  This is pure, unsupported speculation at this stage.  More on this at a later date.]

More: peakprosperity.com/blog/102294/do-we-really-want-war-russia






























Rigged CPI

Rigged is a term that's getting tossed around a lot these days whether its about election results or whatever. Yet one of the biggest violators of rigging is the Bureau Labor Statistics and by proxy the Federal Reserve Bank. They routinely give out bogus numbers to stem the tides of chaos.

Chaos is the appellation they give to the nearly worthless paper they toss around called money. Do you want to own dollars here? Of course. As it goes higher you can afford to buy more worthless Chinese junk at Wal Mart, just what they want you to do, so down the road in the next turn down you can hold your next garage sale to help pay your mortgage.

The chart below shows just some of the effects of rising health care costs, in this case insurance premiums for Obama's Affordable health care cost. Now one thing you learn from politicians of all stripes is they underestimate the cost of new projects--See just two recent California examples, the proposed Bullet train and a new bridge--and overestimate the revenue of higher taxes.

So with Fed Chair Janet Yellen's new favorite buzz term, "high pressure economy," you can look for what they've been trying to conjure for a longtime, inflation. In this case, slow growth and inflation. Some feel the deflationary effects of low oil prices are long in this market. A higher CPI however gerrymandered, will lead to the perception of higher inflation if nothing else. It's perception not old men that rules.

Despite Mario Draghi's well-rehearsed lines, central bankers are as broke as the countries they centralize over. So for your investing needs TIPS might get more interesting and, despite the stronger dollar that rate hikes will bring and the outcries of those anti-gold banshees, metals and commodities might deserve another look, too. This is counter intuitive to be sure.

What's the difference between a manufacturing versus services-based economy--inflation. Get ready the old fashioned way. Skip the MSM hype.

http://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/Obamacare%20Premium%20Hikes_1476899273.png

Sunday, October 23, 2016

More Podestra

If you want to live under the directive of a bureaucratic morass like the UN then keep burying your head in the sand. Here's more on John Podestra the man behind Hillary, the woman who says she dreams of open borders.
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQDes5mJp05fGhmZ7UgasmryJ_BSBlCQ1KopzsmQ081_QLipr_2
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Wood notes that, in America, that would mean exactly what John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, has already said — that anyone with a driver’s license should be allowed to vote.
“This is the way I read it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re legal or illegal, wanted or unwanted, jihadists or non-jihadists, sick or healthy. If they show up in your country, they must participate in the affairs of that country immediately, whatever country they find themselves in.”

The preamble to the New Urban Agenda says cities are the “key to tackling global challenges.”
“So these people are viewing cities as the key ingredient right now to implementing sustainable development, and they say this battle for sustainability will be won or lost in the cities.”
And the U.N. document goes on to state that this agenda is “the first step for operationalizing sustainable development in an integrated and coordinated way at the global, national, subnational, and local levels.”

In essence, it’s a roadmap to global governance where American cities will no longer get their direction from elected officials representing them on the city council, or even the state legislature, but the United Nations itself. The local councils will likely not even know that the rules they are following in order to qualify for federal grants are tied to United Nations’ standards for sustainability.
More:
wnd.com/2016/10/u-n-goes-all-in-for-unlimited-migration

Overnight

Monday morning trading in Asia opened mixed, Reuters reported.

Markets in Asia were mixed on Monday morning, as Japanese shares held steady despite data showing the country's exports fell less than expected in September on the back of a relatively stronger yen.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 traded flat at 17,183.45, while the Japanese yen strengthened from levels near 103.90 before the release to a session high of 103.78. As of 9:05 a.m. HK/SIN, the dollar/yen traded at 103.87.
Government data showed September exports fell 6.9 percent on-year, slower than a Reuters forecast for a 10.4 percent drop. Export volume was up 4.7 percent on-year, while imports fell 16.3 percent on-year, in line with market expectations, reported Reuters.
Other data were more positive, with Japan's preliminary Markit/Nikkei October manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) rising to 51.7 from 50.4 in September, the fastest expansion in nine months, Reuters reported. Readings over 50 indicate expansion, while levels below indicate contraction.
Across the Korean Strait, the Kospi was up 0.47 percent.
Australia's ASX 200 was down 0.67 percent in late morning trade, with all sectors trading lower. The heavily-weighted financial sector was down 0.40 percent, with the Big Four banks seeing early losses.
Shares in ANZ were down 0.27 percent, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was 0.55 percent lower, Westpac lost 0.16 percent and the National Australia Bank was down 0.47 percent. 


Global markets are bracing for a slew of data this week including consumer prices data from Japan and some euro zone countries, third quarter U.S. GDP and a number of purchasing managers' index (PMI) data from developed economies.
In currencies, the dollar index .DXY was steady at 98.657, not far from 98.813, its highest since Feb. 3 struck on Friday.
The U.S. currency received a boost last week as the euro slid after the European Central Bank doused talk it was contemplating tapering its monetary easing.
The dollar was also supported by hawkish comments from Fed officials including New York Fed President William Dudley and higher expectations that Hillary Clinton will win the U.S. presidential election, which have increased bets that the Fed will raise rates in December.
The dollar was flat at 103.890 yen JPY=. The euro was nearly unchanged at $1.0883 EUR= after falling on Friday to $1.0859, its lowest since March 10.
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Gold prices were stable early Monday, after locking in their first weekly gain in four last week, with markets waiting for further clues on the timing of any interest rate hike. Spot gold traded up 0.05 percent at $1,266.86 an ounce after closing almost flat at $1,266.25 in the previous session.




 

The Real Russian Connection


The way you spell the real Russian connection is not WikiLeaks, but John Podestra, the dirty face behind the Clinton's in general and Hillary's election campaign in specifics. His is the The Face Of Dirt.
http://nation.foxnews.com/sites/nation.foxnews.com/files/styles/style592x333/public/Podesta121813.jpg
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Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta has responded to the WikiLeaks publication of his private emails by suggesting they were stolen by the Russians to elect Donald Trump. What he doesn’t like to talk about is the business he’s done with a Kremlin-backed investment firm and the lengths he’s gone to avoid scrutiny of this relationship.

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer and the Trump campaign have been urging the media to pay attention to Mr. Podesta’s Russian connection and perhaps they should. The story begins in 2011 when the solar energy startup Joule Unlimited announced that Mr. Podesta had been elected to its board of directors. In a company press release, Joule’s CEO at the time lauded Mr. Podesta’s “extensive experience within the US government and internationally as well.” No one claimed Mr. Podesta was a scientific expert, but the company’s founder expressed the hope that their new associate “can help Joule build the lasting relationships needed for long-term success.”

A former White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, Mr. Podesta at the time was running the Center for American Progress, which supported the Obama administration’s “Russian reset.” Mr. Podesta personally lauded the effort to “build a more constructive relationship” with Russia at a 2009 event hosted by his think tank.

It’s not illegal to invest alongside a Kremlin-backed investment vehicle tasked with developing and acquiring valuable technology to benefit Russia. Nor, as far as we know, is it illegal to do so while simultaneously serving as an outside adviser to the U.S. secretary of state.
But Mr. Podesta may have been concerned about the attention this association might draw when he went back into government in early 2014 to serve as a counselor to President Obama. That’s when Mr. Podesta declared on his federal financial disclosure form that he had divested himself of his Joule holdings.

This is where the story gets a little more complicated. The emails published on WikiLeaks show that around the time he was returning to the White House, Mr. Podesta wrote to Joule requesting the transfer of his shares to an entity called Leonidio Holdings, LLC, which had been created just weeks earlier.

Leonidio shares an address with Mr. Podesta’s daughter Megan Rouse, a financial planner who lives in California. When reached by telephone on Tuesday, Ms. Rouse told us that she did not have time to discuss the issue, thanked us for the call, and then hung up.

On Wednesday a Clinton campaign spokesman told us that Mr. Podesta cut his ties with Joule when he returned to the White House in 2014, “transferred the entirety of his holdings to his adult children” and “recused himself from all matters pertaining to Joule for the duration of his time at the White House.”

But WikiLeaks also shows Mr. Podesta receiving a bill for legal expenses related to Leonidio’s incorporation in Delaware. We wonder how often people pay the bills to create corporations in which they have no interest.

Mr. Podesta left the White House around February of 2015. He later received a bill from the law firm Steptoe and Johnson for legal work related to Joule performed in April of 2015. This also was published on WikiLeaks, and it says a Steptoe attorney spent half an hour working on “Joule request for consent to appointment of Mr. Akhanov.” Dmitry Akhanov, who runs Rusnano’s U.S. office, is now listed as a member of Joule’s board of directors. It would be highly unusual for a company to seek approval on a board appointment from someone who no longer has any ties to the business. Did Mr. Podesta resume his formal relationship with Joule and the Russian government’s investment fund right after leaving the White House and just before joining the Clinton campaign?

Mr. Schweizer says he detects in all this a clever attempt to dodge government disclosure rules: “America’s disclosure laws are designed to allow citizens to see what conflicts of interests our senior government officials might have. That is especially the case when they or their families are financially linked to adversarial foreign governments.”

The Clinton campaign did not make Mr. Podesta available for an interview. Perhaps he figures that with Mrs. Clinton leading in the polls he can avoid the topic through Election Day and then declare it all old news. Meantime, voters can be forgiven for discounting his protests about the Kremlin and Donald Trump.

wsj.com/articles/john-podesta-and-the-russians 

This Poll Stinks

Here's further evidence about how you rig polls. the first thing to notice is the poll was  done for ABC/Washington Post. The next time these two members of the MSM thuggery reports any honest, objective polling results will be their first time.

The second thing you need to know is the firm that did the  study is a left wing, Hillary with ties to a left-wing Chicago think tank, The Smell In The Air, that masquerades itself as a local problem solver all the while it's pushing its global agenda with both hands.

If you like enslavement and losing your freedom of choice you'll love these people.
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Earlier this morning we wrote about the obvious sampling bias in the latest ABC / Washington Post poll that showed a 12-point national advantage for Hillary.  Like many of the recent polls from Reuters, ABC and The Washington Post, this latest poll included a 9-point sampling bias toward registered democrats
"METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats - Republicans - Independents."
Of course, while democrats may enjoy a slight registration advantage of a couple of points, it is nowhere near the 9 points reflected in this latest poll. 
Meanwhile, we also pointed out that with huge variances in preference across demographics one can easily "rig" a poll by over indexing to one group vs. another.  As a quick example, the ABC / WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters.  Therefore, even a small "oversample" of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points.  Moreover, the pollsters don't provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to "fact check" the bias...convenient.

More: zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-23/new-podesta-email-exposes-dem-playbook-rigging-polls-through-oversamples

Election Tampering?

Forget the mark of Zoro . It's the hand Soros you need to worry about if you want any semblance of a fair, unrigged election.

The question needs to be asked: why a Soros connection and why these 16 states?

reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/57ghat/george_soros_key_man_runs_smartmatic_an_elections/?st

Your Call

Long term, yes. If you have some reasonable definition of long term. Banking there, probably not. We don't own the stock, but like others we like bargains when we can find them.You might want to read this before you go to Wells Fargo bank the next time. The more things change the more they stay the same.

This isn't to suggest as some have that Wells Fargo isn't a good contrarian play here. Just this weekend's edition of Barron's article, "The Art of  Successful Investing Participants," one  guru touted WFC, saying individual customers didn't "suffer significant damage. The average fee charged accounts was $25 and all the money was refunded." So one guesses it's okay if one commits fraud and then gives a refund nobody goes to jail.

                                            https://qjubs3y9ggo1neukf3sc81r19vv-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/stagecoach11.png
He went onto explain why he and his firm held on to their shares is the individuals and their actions responsible were stopped."What Wells did was wrong, but it has corrected the problem." Now we're again not saying the bank won't be or even isn't a decent investment, but we've seen some glaciers that move faster than banks, especially big ones.

Read and decide for yourself about certain activities having been stopped.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-23/i-went-wells-fargo-branch-and-what-happened-next

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Out Of Control

Trump gives his Gettysburg address. We have discussed the lobbyist situation before man times and the term-limits is long overdue in the eyes of many. Federal regulations are more out of control than Trump's hairdo. But then Washington's been out of control for a long, long time.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTV4XJKRQQxSo6oONdAvJrIhbziqsufKEHAKrBCHbCkkrpkUu5c                                                           
In terms of actual political measures that Trump would propose and/or enact, he listed the following six:
  1. "A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress."
  2. "A hiring freeze on all federal employees."
  3. "A requirement that for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated."
  4. "A 5-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government."
  5. "A lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government."
  6. "A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections."

Friday, October 21, 2016

Grease Our Palms

The more the people of Great Britain hear Brussels' bureaucrats like European Council President Donald Tusk say, "...the UK could still turn away from Brexit even after the EU's Article50 exit clause is triggered," the more you know leaving is exactly the correct thing to do.


The Hollande-Merkel tough palaver is still another sign. Merkel's tenure has been a schizophrenic  disaster and Hollande is presiding over the loss of his own country. These are the two elitist countries of the EU. Every one else take your place in the EU welfare line.

So the elites want an official letter. Give them one and shut their mouths. Financial Times columnist Phillip Stephens, "A hard Brexit heralds a closed Britain,"writes:

The surprising thing about the falling value of the sterling is that it hasn't been more precipitous. Britain is shuffling towards an outright rupture with the EU and an immigration clampdown that would weaken engagement with the world beyond. The government has yet to grasp a simple fact of globalization: nations cannot declare themselves open for business and hen close the doors to foreigners.

And we thought all the horror movie scriptwriters resided in Hollywood. What Mr. Phillips and his kind have yet to grasp is that the government has grasped, as have many of the people, the simplest fact about globalization. It makes an already less than level playing field even less level. And on the contrary, Brexit will make Britain's engagement with the world beyond stronger not weaker. If you don't give in to the EU's bureaucratic dictates, it's a hard Brexit. But playing by their rules it's a soft one. We can't decided whether that's a not-so-veiled threat or a request for bribery. Or both with the mention of "the EU now wants a €20 billion divorce settlement as the UK’s “fair share” of inane projects the UK agreed to as part of the EU."

https://mishgea.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/more-eu-demands.png?w=529&h=343

mishtalk.com/2016/10/13/eu-seeks-e20-billion-divorce-settlement

Mr. Stephens is worried about closing out foreigners. Well, here's how the kingpin of the EU, Germany, welcomes foreigners.

After 18 months of study, $2,200 in tuition and three exams, Ewa Feix is now permitted by German law to bake two variations of cupcakes.
“Not pretzels, not Black Forest gâteau, not bread,” said Ms. Feix, a Canadian who moved to Germany in 2009. Becoming a professional bread baker entails a three-year apprenticeship and more exams.
Germany’s thicket of rules and standards shields roughly 150 professions from competition, from ski instructors to well-diggers. Stiff fines await uncertified practitioners. German authorities conduct thousands of enforcement raids each year.
Now, the system—rooted in medieval guilds—is under attack.
Many praise Germany’s rigorous apprenticeship model for funneling high-school dropouts into solid middle-income jobs. But economists warn the rigid rules are holding back growth and investment in the services sector, and contributing to the nation’s vast current-account surpluses, long a bone of contention with trading partners.
Crucially, German resistance has also helped stymie efforts to deregulate the vast European Union services market, which accounts for more than 70% of the region’s output but only around one-fifth of internal trade, according to Open Europe, a think tank. Since more productive companies are restricted from moving between countries to take market share, productivity suffers.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-apprenticeship-system-comes-under-attack-1476642363

The author makes a lot of picayune points like the level of infighting in Whitehall. It there weren't such there would never have been a Brexit in the first place. He then finishes his scaremongering diatribe with this little ditty. The reaction of overseas investors in marking down the value of the pound has been entirely rational. It is no more or less than a dispassionate judgment on Britain's future economic prospects if it continues its present course.

The different between hard and soft: Greasing the old palms.