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Sunday, June 5, 2016

Gold World News Flash

Gold World News Flash

Gold: Major Cycle Lows - Gary Christenson

Posted: 05 Jun 2016 12:00 AM PDT

Sprott Money

The ultimate guide to silver

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 10:02 PM PDT

Perth Mint Blog.

Friday May Have Marked A Pivotal Turnaround For Gold And Silver

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 08:30 PM PDT

by Michael Noonan, Gold and Liberty:

More reasons why owning gold and silver should be at the top of everyone's financial survival list, current elite-abused [abandoned] supply/demand considerations aside not being a part of the reasons where reason is utterly absent. Politicians have run amok. The elites are driving world economies harder and faster into the ground. Lies are the current political and financial currency, and the public seem not to mind.

From the Washington Post: 9 charts showing Yes-We-Can-Obama's "recovery." The 1st, 3rd, and 4th charts show debt of the American people [remember the 14th Amendment: the federal debt cannot be challenged – the elites had that written in]; the 2nd shows the 'growth" of those reliant on the public teat, [in large, thanks to the preceding chart and the ones that follow]; the 5th shows Yes-We-Can Obama's force-fed healthcare solution that nobody except him and the elites wanted, and why debt-enslavement is ensured, forcing yet more Americans onto chart 2; charts 6, 8, and 9 show Yes-We-Can-Obama's "healthy economy," if anyone is sufficiently retarded gullible enough to believe his lies. Chart 7 is a mystery. Insert any color vs the federal government, and you would get the same chart, maybe even worse.

Do you know who are relatively impervious to these charts? Owners of physical gold and silver. Well, no one escapes the negative repercussions of an out-of-control-corporate- federal-government, but those who own precious metals are in a much better position to not be swallowed up by the tsunami-proportion of debt burdening the public, world-wide, not just Americans. The wealth preservation effect would be exemplified in owning PMs.

We suspect these charts are interchangeable with the EU, as well. Given how the unelected bureaucrats have buried the EU countries in debt, and now even more costly immigrant issues, EU charts would actually be worse.

Not only should the Brits be rushing toward BREXIT, [the biggest reason being that all of the corrupt politicians are for it], every former sovereign European nation should be doing the same. Otherwise, its is Greece for all! Count on it.

Read More @ Goldandliberty.com

US Government Intentionally Destroys 9/11 Evidence

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 08:10 PM PDT

Judges and lawyers know that – if someone intentionally destroys evidence – he’s probably trying to hide his crime.  American law has long recognized that destruction of evidence raises a presumption of guilt for  the person who destroyed the evidence.

So what does it mean when the US government intentionally destroyed massive amounts of evidence related to 9/11?

Judge and Prosecutor Destroy Evidence

For example, it was revealed last week that the judge overseeing the trial of surviving 9/11 suspects conspired with the prosecution to destroy evidence relevant to a key suspect’s defense. And see this.

(The Defense Department has also farmed out most of the work of both prosecuting and defending the surviving 9/11 suspects to the same private company.  And the heads of the military tribunal prosecuting the 9/11 suspects said that the trials must be rigged so that there are no acquittals.)

Destruction of Videotapes

The CIA videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

And:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

 

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Destruction of Air Traffic Control Tapes

The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times.

Black Boxes

The FBI long ago found and analyzed the “black box” recorders from the airplanes which hit the Twin Towers, but has consistently denied that they were ever found.

Pentagon Fibs

The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements.

Soviet-Style “Minders”

The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

In other words, the minders obstructed witnesses from openly and candidly talking about what they knew.

Undermining Investigation

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney took the rare step of personally requesting that congress limit all 9/11 investigation solely to “intelligence failures.”

The administration also opposed the creation of a 9/11 commission. Once it was forced (by pressure from widows of 9-11 victims) to allow a commission to be formed, the administration appointed as executive director an administration insider, whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of “public myths” thought to be true, even if not actually true, who was involved in pre-9/11 intelligence briefings, and who was one of the key architects of the “pre-emptive war” doctrine. This executive director, who controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission’s inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this and this).

The administration then starved the commission of funds.  The government spent $175 million – over $300 million in today’s dollars – investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster. It spent $152 million on the the Columbia disaster investigation. It spent $30 million investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But the government only authorized $15 million for the 9/11 Commission.

The government also failed to provide crucial documents to the 9/11 investigators. And see this.

The government refused to share much information with the Commission, refused to force high-level officials to testify under oath, and allowed Bush and Cheney to be questioned jointly.

Moreover, as reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The 9-11 Commission took this warning to heart, and refused to examine virtually any evidence which contradicted the administration’s official version of events. As stated by the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism – who was the point man for the U.S. government’s international counterterrorism policy in the first term of the Bush administration – “there were things the [9/11] commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.“

Saudi Role

Investigation into Saudi government aid to 9/11 conspirators was also obstructed.

For example, Philip Shenon – the 20-year New York Times reporter who wrote a book on the 9/11 Commission – reports:

The [911] commissioner said the renewed public debate could force a spotlight on a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials – especially at lower levels of the government – were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis, between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive director, University of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, after leaving the commission. The staff included experienced investigators from the FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA, as well as the congressional staffer who was the principal author of the 28 pages.

 

Zelikow fired a staffer, who had repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being edited out of the report or was being pushed to tiny, barely readable footnotes and endnotes. The staff protests were mostly overruled.

 

***

 

But Kean, Hamilton and Zelikow clearly do not speak for a number of the other commissioners, who have repeatedly suggested they are uncomfortable with the perception that the commission exonerated Saudi Arabia and who have joined in calling for public release of the 28 pages.

Indeed, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

Letting Terrorists Go Free

A former FBI translator who Senators Leahy and Grassley, among others, have claimed is credible, and who the administration has gagged for years without any logical basis — has stated that “this administration knowingly and intentionally let many directly or indirectly involved in that terrorist act [September 11th] go free – untouched and uninvestigated”?

Destruction of Physical Evidence

The former head of fire science and engineering for the agency responsible for finding out why the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 collapsed on 9/11 (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology) – who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering – wrote that evidence necessary to determine the cause of the collapse of the World Trade Centers was being destroyed. And see this.

In addition, the official investigators themselves were largely denied access to the site and the evidence contained there, or even access to such basic information as the blueprints for the World Trade Center.

The government has also refused to release the computer models showing how the trade centers fell, making it impossible for anyone to double-check its assumptions.

Whether you believe the Twin Towers and World Trade Center building 7 were brought down with explosives or by airplanes and fires, destroying evidence prevented engineers and scientists from figuring out what went wrong … to prevent skyscrapers from collapsing in the future.

9/11 Commissioners Disgusted … and Call For a New Investigation

The 9/11 Commissioners publicly expressed anger at cover ups and obstructions of justice by the government into a real 9/11 investigation:

  • The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”

How Americans Came To Die In The Middle East

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 07:20 PM PDT

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

This is a guest post, sent to me this week, by reader Craig Cantoni, a former military officer whose father is in a veteran’s cemetery.

Cantoni presents a historical picture on many levels as to what has happened and is still going on in the Middle East.

How Americans Came to Die in the Middle East by Craig Cantoni

The writing of this historical synopsis began last Monday, Memorial Day. It is an attempt by this former artillery officer with a father buried in a veteran’s cemetery to understand why brave Americans were sent to their death in the Middle East and are still dying there.

The hope is that we finally can learn from history and not keep repeating the same mistakes.

It’s important to stick to the facts, since the history of the Middle East already has been grossly distorted by partisan finger-pointing and by denial and cognitive dissonance among the politicians, foreign policy experts (in their own minds), and media blowhards and literati on the left and right, who now claim that they had nothing to do with grievous policy mistakes that they had once endorsed.

The key question, as in all history, is where to begin the history lesson.

We could go all the way back to religious myths, especially the ones about Moses and the Ten Commandments and about Mohammed and his flying horse. Or on a related note, we could go back to the schism that took place between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the seventh century. Such history is relevant, because American soldiers have been foolishly inserted in the middle of the competing myths and irreconcilable schism, but without the inserters acknowledging the religious minefields and steering clear of them.

We also could go back to the First World War and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, when France and Britain carved up the Middle East into unnatural client states, when Arabs were given false promises of self-determination, when American geologists masqueraded as archeologists as they surreptitiously surveyed for oil, and when the United States joined Saudi Arabia at the hip through the joint oil venture of Aramco.

Another starting point could be 1948, when the United States, under the lead of President Truman, supported the formal establishment of the Jewish State of Israel, thus reversing the longstanding opposition to Zionism by many (most?) American and European Jews and non-Jews. One can endlessly debate the plusses and minuses of our alliance with Israel, as well as the morality of Israel’s violent founding and the violent Palestinian resistance. But it’s undeniable that the alliance has led many Muslims to put a target on Uncle Sam’s back.

Still another starting point could be the 1953 coup d’état against the democratically-elected Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh, orchestrated by the CIA in conjunction with the Brits. The coup was triggered when Mosaddegh demanded an auditing of the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a British company known today as BP. He threatened nationalization when the British refused to allow the audit. He was replaced by the Shah of Iran, who was seen by many Iranians and Arabs as a puppet of the United States. (Ironically, during the Second World War, Great Britain and the Soviet Union had occupied Iran and deposed an earlier shah.)

It’s considered unpatriotic to ask how my fellow Americans would feel if the tables had been turned and Iranians had deposed an American president and replaced him with their lackey. Therefore, I won’t ask.

It also would be unpatriotic to ask how we’d feel if Iranians had shot down one of our passenger jets, as we had shot down one of theirs in 1988 as it was crossing the Persian Gulf to Dubai from Tehran. Again, I’m not asking.

Anyway, let’s return to the Shah. Starting with President Nixon and continuing with President Carter, the USA sold weapons to the Shah worth billions of dollars. There was even an agreement to sell nuclear reactors to him. Those weapons would later be used by Iran against the U.S. in the Persian Gulf after we had sided with Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.

At a state dinner in Tehran on December 31, 1977, the Shah toasted President Carter. Carter responded effusively, saying that Iran was “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” He went on to say: This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.”

Actually, most Iranians hated the Shah. Two years later, on January 16, 1979, the unpopular Shah fled into exile after losing control of the country to Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Iranian Revolution.

Then in October of that year, Carter allowed the Shah to come to the USA for medical treatment. Responding with rage, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took embassy personnel hostage, in a hostage drama that would last 444 days, including a failed attempt to rescue the hostages that left dead American soldiers and burnt helicopters in Iran. The drama ended on the day that Carter left office.

But none of the above events is where our history of American lives lost in the Middle East should begin. It should begin in the summer of 1979, with a report written by a low-level Defense Department official by the name of Paul Wolfowitz. His “Limited Contingency Study” assessed the political, geopolitical, sectarian, ethnic, and military situation in the Middle East and recommended a more active American involvement in the region, including possible military intervention to blunt the Soviet Union’s influence, protect our access to oil, and thwart the ambitions of Iraq under its dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Wolfowitz would later become a deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the presidency of George W. Bush.

Note that Wolfowitz’s paper was written long before 9/11 and long before the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the Second Gulf War after he was accused of having weapons of mass destruction.

Until the Wolfowitz report, the USA had taken a rather passive and indirect role in the Middle East, placing it secondary to other geopolitical matters and using proxies and intelligence “spooks” to protect its interests in the region. Of course this low-level interference in the affairs of other nations was not seen as low level by the targets of the actions. To use common vernacular, it pissed them off, just as it would have pissed us off if the roles had been reversed. But again, it’s unpatriotic to consider the feelings of others, especially if they are seen as the enemy, or backwards, or religious zealots.

Strategic and tactical thinking began to change with the Wolfowitz paper. Plans started to be developed for military action to replace more benign approaches. Eventually, the plans indeed resulted in military actions, ranging from full-scale war to bombing from the air to drone warfare, in such places as Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia (the locale of “Blackhawk Down”), with side actions outside of the Middle East in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In each case the American military performed admirably and often exceptionally, but less so for Defense Department analysts, for Congress and the White House, for the press on the left and right, or for the public at large—most of whom got caught up in the passions of the moment and didn’t understand the cultures they were dealing with and didn’t think through the unintended consequences of military actions in lands where Western concepts of justice, fairness, equality, tolerance, pluralism, religious freedom, diversity, and multiculturalism were as foreign and out of place as an American tourist wearing flipflops and shorts in a mosque.

America’s involvement in Afghanistan is instructive.

Our interest in the godforsaken country began with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion that was triggered by Soviet concern that the instability of the country would spread to the nearby Soviet Union.

Trapped in a cold war time warp, the USA mistakenly thought that the invasion might be a precursor to the Soviets advancing through Iran to capture oil fields in the Persian Gulf. Both the conservative and liberal press advanced this notion and accused President Carter of being weak. It was a variant of the domino theory that had led to the Vietnam War, and it grossly overestimated the military and economic prowess of the Soviet Union—a myth that continues today with ludicrous concerns that enfeebled Russia will use the North Caucus region as a springboard to conquer Europe.

The outcry over the invasion of Afghanistan led Carter to issue the Carter Doctrine, which essentially made the Middle East a protectorate of the United States. Arrangements began to be coordinated with allies in the region to build American military bases in the Persian Gulf and increase arms sales and foreign aid.

Countervailing views were ignored, including the opinion of Hermann Eilts, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and a negotiator who had helped to broker the Egypt-Israel peace agreement. He warned that American military action in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere would be viewed as “blatant imperialism” and feed anti-Americanism.

In any event, instead of sweeping through Iran and into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the Soviets became mired in the land of poppy seeds, goats, and tribal hatreds, just as we would later follow suit and where we remain mired to this day. The costs of the Soviet war in Afghanistan was a factor in Perestroika and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union—events that probably would have happened on their own without President Reagan’s efforts to bankrupt the Soviet Union through an arms race and proxy wars.

Speaking of Reagan, there is a famous photo of him meeting in the White House in 1983 with Afghan jihadists in their beards and traditional robes and turbans. At the time, the USA was arming its future enemies in Afghanistan, at a total cost of over $4 billion. Conservative talk-radio hosts would be apoplectic if there were such a meeting between President Obama and jihadists, but they have conveniently forgotten the photo of Reagan.

Also forgotten is the Reagan administration referring to the mujahedin as “noble savages” who were fighting “for an abstract idea of freedom.” Afghanistan Day was added to the official state calendar as a way of showing support for the “freedom fighters” who were defending the “principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability,” including “the right to practice religion according to the dictates of conscience.” Reagan even dedicated an upcoming flight of the space shuttle Columbia to Afghans who demonstrated “man’s highest aspirations for freedom” by resisting the Soviet occupation.

After the Soviets departed from Afghanistan, Americans on the left and right celebrated what supposedly had been done by America to speed the departure. Even Hollywood got into the act with the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War.” But as Andrew J. Bacevich writes in America’s War for the Middle East, “A raging bout of victory disease had made them [American policymakers] stupid.” (Parts of this commentary are based on the superb book.)

Afghanistan wasn’t the first or last time that the USA would arm terrorists, despots, and future enemies.

Another time was the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan administration unlawfully funneled arms to Iran.

Still another was the arming of Saddam Hussein in his long war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. While we were arming Hussein, our ally Israel was selling U.S. arms and spare parts to the Khomeini regime.

Yet another time was the arming of Saudi Arabia and the expansion of an American military presence in the kingdom, especially after Saddam attacked Kuwait in 1990 and President George H. W. Bush responded with the First Gulf War. A wealthy Saudi took exception to the American presence in his country and America’s interference in what he saw as a matter between Arabs. His name was Osama bin Laden.

It didn’t matter to the USA then, and doesn’t seem to matter now, that Saudi Arabia was a major exporter of terrorism and the home of the radical sect of Islam known as Wahhaism, or Salafism. Later, of course, 15 of the 19 terrorists involved with the 9/11 terrorist attack would be Saudis. Yet Saddam Hussein and Iraq were to be blamed as the haven of al Qaeda.

Notably, once the Iraqi army was defeated in the First Gulf War, the senior Bush did not go on to occupy Iraq and depose Saddam. Having once headed the CIA, Bush no doubt understood that doing so would remove the Sunni counterbalance to Shiite Iran. His son, George W. Bush, apparently had no such qualms in 2003 at the start of the Second Gulf War, which not only resulted in the occupation of Iraq but also removed the Sunni counterbalance to Shiite Iran, as well as creating a power vacuum in which ISIS (aka ISIL) took root in Iraq and Syria.

Most of the American media also had no qualms about the Second Gulf War. Max Boot, the former editorial editor of the Wall Street Journal, was typical. He wrote in the Weekly Standard that historians would see the invasion of Iraq as “the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better.”

An acquaintance of mine, Charles Goyette, saw things differently. A talk-radio host on conservative KFYI in Phoenix, Goyette was learned in history and understood the folly of the invasion, which was such blasphemy in talk-radio circles that he was replaced by a true believer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s return to President Reagan, and in particular, his foray into Lebanon in 1982, a foray that followed Wolfowitz’s script for projecting U.S. power.

At first, the insertion of Marines into the middle of the Lebanon civil war seemed to be a success. Reagan and the media celebrated, just like George W. Bush and the media would later celebrate the American victory in the Second Gulf War, until the blowback from the victory rained on the celebrations.

There were two blowbacks to the intervention in Lebanon.

The first was Israel standing by and doing nothing as Christian Phalangists massacred Palestinians in a refugee camp. The massacre would lead to the establishment of Hezbollah and to Reagan angrily denouncing Israel. By comparison, President Obama’s later snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would look like a children’s game of friendly patty cake.

 

The second blowback was the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 service personnel.

To his credit, Reagan withdrew American troops from Lebanon after the bombing. Tellingly, he wasn’t excoriated by the conservative press for doing so, unlike the outrage that would have occurred if President Obama had been the one turning tail.

Then there was Reagan’s hatred of the nut job and Libyan dictator Muammar Ghaddafi. Reagan thought that killing the head of Libya would stop the country from financing and exporting terrorism and would enable the blossoming of democracy. Reagan didn’t succeed in killing Ghaddafi, but if had succeeded, no doubt the outcome wouldn’t have been much different from when Obama would later be encouraged to come to the aid of Libyan rebels as part of the so-called Arab Spring.

Ghaddafi would be captured and killed by rebels in 2011, after a convoy he was riding in was bombed by a French fighter jet as part of NATO’s military actions in the country, led by the United States. Libya soon descended into chaos, civil war, and anarchy. Those who had encouraged Obama to take action in Libya would quickly forget their own complicity and blame Obama for not doing enough to stop the resultant bloodshed. Once again, it was believed that removing a strong man would magically enable the flourishing of Western-style liberty in Muslim lands.

To summarize, from when Wolfowitz wrote his paper in 1979 to the present, the following military campaigns and operations have taken place:

  • Iraq: Desert Storm, Southern Watch, Desert Strike, Northern Watch, Desert Fox, Iraqi Freedom, New Dawn, Inherent Resolve
  • Iran: Eagle Claw
  • Afghanistan: Cyclone, Infinite Reach, Enduring Freedom, Freedom’s Sentinel
  • Pakistan: Neptune Spear
  • Persian Gulf: Earnest Will, Nimble Archer, Praying Mantis
  • Syria: Inherent Resolve
  • Saudi Arabia: Desert Shield, Desert Focus
  • Yemen: Determined Response
  • Somalia: Restore Hope, Gothic Serpent
  • Bosnia: Deny Flight, Joint Endeavor
  • Kosovo: Allied Force, Joint Guardian
  • Lebanon: Multinational Force
  • Libya: El Dorado Canyon, Odyssey Dawn
  • Egypt: Bright Star
  • Sudan: Infinite Reach

Source: America’s War for the Greater Middle East

The cost of the foregoing campaigns and operations were 7,421 Americans killed, 52,278 Americans wounded, trillions of dollars spent, and Veteran’s hospitals overflowing with veterans with physical and psychological wounds. Yet with few exceptions in the Middle East, terrorism still thrives and democracy and liberal values have not. Maybe it’s time to question our assumptions and premises regarding the use of military power.

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have begun my history lesson with the Wolfowitz paper. Maybe I should’ve started over one hundred thousand years ago, when Homo sapiens stood upright, walked into the African savannah, and organized into clans and tribes to fight other clans and tribes over resources. Those with bones through their nose became the enemy of those with bones through their lip, just as today’s Crips and Bloods are enemies, just as Sunnis and Shiites are enemies, just as Israelis and Palestinians are enemies, and just as Islamists and American infidels are enemies.

Maybe humans are hardwired to fight other tribes. Maybe the reason that so many Americans have died in the Middle East is as simple and discouraging as that.

Massive Gains Expected for Those Buying Gold, Silver & Mining Now at Bottom

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 07:00 PM PDT

What Would Happen If Humans Vanished From The Planet?

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 06:10 PM PDT

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

fallout1

After the crisis, there could be nothing left of human populations.

There is no doubt that a disaster big enough to wipe out humanity exists – the threat of an EMP, a plague-level outbreak event, a total nuclear war, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Even if there were survivors, the larger forces at work will undo the artificial forms that now dot the landscape and define our culture.

How long would it take for nature to reclaim the vestiges and ruins of civilization that would be left on the planet after a mass extinction event in which humans no longer existed on earth?

These events would be catastrophic at magnitudes truly unimaginable in today’s society, and yet the danger is real, however unlikely they may seem.

This is a stunning look at how fragile our world really is, and how close we are to the brink of a drastic “reset” on a truly global scale.

The late Michael Ruppert warned of the coming collapse on a scale not expressed by many others who see what is coming:

We’re at the zero point of systemic collapse. That’s really the point at which it becomes clear that we are experiencing living through a system’s failure of human industrial civilization.

 

[…]

 

I would argue that it’s already begun, especially with the crime wave that’s now coming, not just against police officers. But, I’m also tracking violent crime and the predators who understand that there’s a much lessened law enforcement presence out there. They’re feeding on this energy of collapse, are coming out aggressively looking for victims. It’s very important that you learn how not to be one.

 

We also have climate collapse, mass extinction, the Gulf of Mexico – it’s absolutely clear that the Gulf of Mexico is dead – and the people who have been exposed to that are very sick and dying. That’s not coming back. [Editor’s Note: Add to that the impact of Fukushima and other disasters.]

 

There is nothing we can do to prevent it [collapse]. No matter what we do…The last three words that I spoke at the biggest lecture I ever had at the University of Washington Seattle in 2005 – the last three words were Prepare, Prepare, Prepare.

When Will The Recession Start: Deutsche Bank's Disturbing Answer

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 05:41 PM PDT

Just yesterday, when looking at the latest sudden drop in the US employment, JPM warned that as a result of the dramatic downshifting in the US economy, the bank's recession indicator had just hit a new cycle high of 36%.

This is what JPM said: "This morning's employment report also raised the recession probabilities, although for counterintuitive reasons. We do not include the payrolls number in the recession model because it is subject to larger revisions than other labor market data. But the unemployment rate enters the model in two ways. As a near-term indicator, we watch for increases in the unemployment rate that occur near the beginning of recessions. So this morning's move down in the unemployment rate lowered the recession probability in our near-term model. But we also find the level of the unemployment rate to be one of the most useful indicators ofmedium-term recession risk. So the move down in unemployment raises the model's view of the risk of economic overheating in the medium run and raises the "background risk" of recession."

So we have unemployment. However, a far bigger risk to the US economy is a topic we have flagged since last fall: peak, and now sliding, profits.

Because as DB's Dominic Konstam notes something every high school econ student knows, companies cutting headcount in rising numbers, while beneficial for profits at least in the short run, has negative impacts for long-run aggregate demand, to wit:

If aggregate demand is steady, then slower employment growth could well stabilize or improve productivity. However, the rub as always is that workers are also consumers, so as fewer jobs are created (or jobs are cut), then aggregate demand tends to decline.

As such, declining profits and a slowing work force (as the exodus from the labor force returns) is the worst possible feedback loop for an economy; it is the one that the US finds itself in now, ironically just as the Fed hopes to telegraph the all clear by continuing to hike rates and in doing so confirming just how misplaced the Fed's optimism has been all along.

So while the BLS was finally forced to admit the truth about the US labor market yesterday, here is a reminder from DB's most unexpected "bear", Joe Lavorna, that "profit margins have likely peaked":

The broadest measure of operating profits is pre-tax corporate profits with inventory valuation (IVA) and capital consumption adjustments (CCAdj). As the first chart below indicates, this series shows substantial compression of corporate margins.

 

 

As illustrated in the above charts, profits per worker have generally trended higher over time. This is a function of productivity gains and inflation. Notice that our ratio is measured in nominal dollars. In the current business cycle, margins peaked at $18,403 per worker in Q3 2014. This compares to a current ratio of $15,615 per worker as of Q1 2016. Margins have fallen because corporate profit growth has declined while private sector job growth over the intervening period has been very steady, running at around a 2.3% annualized rate.

 

Within corporate profits, the majority of the decline has been in domestic rather than overseas profits. This means that recent margin compression has had less to do with the strengthening dollar, and perhaps more to do with weak domestic demand. From Q3 2014, when profit margins peaked, to Q1 2016, domestic profits have declined by a little over -$175 billion. As we can see in the charts below, this is nearly double the -$88 billion decline in profits from outside the US. Not surprisingly, the decline in profit growth has occurred alongside a deceleration in domestic demand. In fact, the year-over-year growth rate of real final sales to private domestic purchasers, our favorite indicator of underlying demand, peaked at 3.6% in Q4 2014 and has since slowed to 2.6% as of last quarter.

 

 

If it were only jobs and profits, maybe the Fed would have some degree of control, even if it is reflexive. Normally tightening happens after companies start competing for scarce labor resources, generating cost inflation at which point the Fed raises rates to ease inflation pressures and un-compress cost pressures; only this time the Fed is putting the cart in front of the horse and is hoping that by tightening it will somehow prompt wage inflation which has been the biggest variable missing from the US economy. By way of reference, the last time the unemployment rate was 4.7% in November 2007, average hourly earnings were growing 3.1% Y/Y without a raise in the minimum wage; now wages are rising at 2.5% mostly thanks to the boost for the lowest-paid workers.

However, what is very different this time, is that companies have taken on debt in the current business cycle. Make that lots of debt.  As DB calculates, nonfinancial corporate debt has increased by $2 trillion from its trough in Q4 2010 through Q4 2015. And here things get interesting because as shown in the chart below, the ratio of nonfinancial corporate debt to nominal GDP is at its highest level since Q2 2009, when the economy was still in recession and nominal output was substantially depressed. As LaVorgna puts it, "this is one reason why the Fed needs to be very cautious with respect to the pace of policy normalization."

While unnecessary, the following observation is mostly for the benefit of the Fed which continues to shock analysts with its level of cluelessness:

An over-tightening of credit conditions would be problematic for a highly-levered corporate sector, especially if final demand were to remain weak. If capital costs were rising in an environment of declining margins, employers would at minimum slow the pace of hiring, and perhaps even cut labor outright. This may already be occurring, given the broad-based weakness of the May employment report.

Which brings us to the question at hand: when will the next recession strike (if it hasn't done so already because according to most manufacturing indicators including factory orders, core capital goods orders, CapEx spending both macro and micro, manufacturing PMI and manufacturing employment, the US manufacturing sector has already been contracting for over a year).

Here is DB's answer:

Profit margins always peak in advance of recession. Indeed, there has not been one business cycle in the post-WWII era where this  has not been the case. The reason margins are a leading indicator is simple:When corporate profitability declines, a pullback in spending and hiring eventually ensues. Normally, margins compress because of cost pressures— namely the labor share of income rises relative to the corporate share of income. Put another way, when companies compete for scarce labor resources, worker pay is bid up. In turn, inflation pressures often surface. This typically induces a monetary policy response—the Fed begins raising interest rates to dampen inflation.

As a reminder, profit margins peaked in Q3 2014. With that in mind, the historical data reveals that the average and median lead times between the peak in margins and the onset of recession are nine and eight quarters, respectively, which as DB concludees "would imply that the economy could enter recession as soon as the second half of this year."

Oops.

To be sure, Deutsche Bank tries to mitigate its disturbing conclusion somewhat - after all the last thing Germany's most "troubled" bank wants is to infurate the Fed even more:

"as we can see in the table on the following page, the time period between the peak in profit margins and the beginning of recession varies substantially across business cycles. Margins can sometimes peak well in advance of the onset of recession, as they did in the 1960s and 1990s business cycles. In the former period, the peak in margins occurred 16 quarters before recession. In the latter episode, the peak occurred 15 quarters ahead of the economy's entering recession. Conceivably, such a scenario could unfold now."

But... there is always a but... 

"However, the current business cycle is already the fourth longest in the post- WWII period, and the corporate debt-to-GDP ratio suggests that imbalances are building."

So, Janet, about that July (or September, or December) rate hike.

Saudi Authorities Panic - Ban Speculation On Riyal Devaluation Amid Banking Crisis

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 05:00 PM PDT

With Saudi Riyal forwards plunging back above 3.81, dramatically weaker than the current peg, Bloomberg reports that Saudi authorities are cracking down on currency traders as speculation mounts that the world’s biggest oil exporter won’t be able to maintain the riyal’s peg to the dollar as revenue plunges.

Saudi Arabia ordered banks in the kingdom to stop selling some products that allow speculators to bet against its currency peg just days after demanding information from lenders on the offerings, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

 

he Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency sent a circular to banks this week saying that dollar-riyal forward structured contracts are banned with immediate effect, said the people, asking not to be identified because they are not authorized to comment publicly. Forward foreign-currency transactions backed by actual goods and services will still be allowed, the people said.

 

The regulator, also known as SAMA, has asked lenders for details on derivative deals dating to January, saying they hadn’t informed the central bank about some products. An e-mailed request for comment to the agency outside of normal office hours on Friday wasn’t immediately returned.

"The directive shows the continuing disconnect between the Saudi foreign-exchange policy and market expectations," Raza Agha, VTB Capital’s chief economist for the Middle East and Africa, said by e-mail. "SAMA appears committed to the exchange-rate peg despite the cost to foreign-exchange reserves, large fiscal deficits and consensus forecasts that see only a very gradual rise in oil prices."

SAMA ordered banks to stop selling options contracts on riyal forwards at a meeting in Riyadh on Jan 18., people with knowledge of the matter said at the time, which explains the surge in the chart at that time, but it appears funds have found another vehicle to implement their bets.

It makes sense, since as Bawerk.net's Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk explains, the Saudis have two tough choices:

1) maintain the peg, control price inflation through continued deflation of the money supply and get a full-blown banking crisis; or

 

2) alternatively, reflate the money supply, increase speculation in riyal forwards, devalue and get massive price inflation through the extremely important import channel.

During the reign of the mighty petro-dollar standard, it was necessary for major oil exporters to recycle their dollar holdings back into the dollar-based financial system to maintain their self-imposed exchange rate pegs. US government bonds are the very centrepiece of this elaborate system and it is thus no surprise to see the dollar price correlate well with overall OPEC TSY holdings. In other words, when oil prices were high, oil exporters amassed a capital surplus that were channelled into, among other things, US treasury bonds. When oil prices fell, oil exporters had to liquidate TSY holdings to cover capital shortfalls.

 Oil Price vs OPEC TSY Holdings

It is interesting to note that the more money and credit issued in the US the more foreign goods could be purchased by Americans and by extension the more foreign demand for US TSYs rose. The savings glut proposed by Bernanke was, and still is, nothing more than exported dollar inflation. There were no savings glut, but rather an indirect form of QE long before QE became an official policy. Home equity withdrawal lines through commercial banks, based on phony asset appreciation promoted by an accommodative Federal Reserve policy stance, increased Americans purchasing power, which inevitably leaked into global markets. Growing financial imbalances were exacerbated by the fact that there were no functioning pricing mechanisms to correct these flows.

With dollars flowing into oil exporting countries it would be natural for the recipient exchange rate to appreciate whilst the dollar depreciate. However, many oil exporters have pegged their exchange rate to the dollar so no such effect took place. Instead, local monetary authorities bought up dollars by inflating their own local currency to maintain the pre-set price. As the chart below shows, in a fixed exchange rate system pegged to a freely floating, and thus rapidly inflating and deflating, currency the LCU will have to inflate and deflate accordingly. With no price effect to soften the impact, any change in demand will be borne by supply. Compared to a flexible exchange rate regime, the inflation and deflation of the LCU will have to be larger with a fixed price of the LCU in relation to the dollar.

    Fixed and flexible FX regime

In the boom time it is easy to adjust as the monetary authorities can inflate the LCU to buy up dollars and create the consequent phony boom in the domestic economy. Local businesses thrive, credit is plentiful and asset prices rises. Very few complain.

However, as the dollar deflation takes hold the very opposite effect must by necessity occur. To maintain the exchange rate peg monetary authorities must buy up LCU through sales of previously accumulated dollars.

The key metric to watch for dollar dependent economies with exchange rate pegs is the value of domestic money supply (at the fixed dollar price) relative to FX reserves. If domestic claim to dollars, id est money supply, exceed FX reserves it is highly likely that the monetary authorities will be forced to devalue in order to realign the two metrics. If we look at an economy like Saudi Arabia, where there have been a lot of talk about devaluation, we find that there are more than enough FX reserves to cover the outstanding money supply. Since there will be no positive effect from a devaluation, there are no immediate devaluation threat.

SA FX vs M2

However, at current trends the FX reserves will drop below M2 by late 2017 or early 2018. Current trends does not lead to very pleasant outcomes for the Saudi economy because the domestic money supply is and will continue to deflate. This will expose internal malinvestements, which will show up as increasing NPLs in the banking sector, which in turn will lead to further deflation.

It is thus tempting for the Saudi government to reflate their economy by pushing more Riyals into the system; but this runs the risk of exacerbating the possibility of devaluation as the money supply will soon exceed falling FX reserves.

As most of the rest of the world, also the Saudis have become path dependent; 1) maintain the peg, control price inflation through continued deflation of the money supply and get a full-blown banking crisis; or 2) alternatively, reflate the money supply, increase speculation in riyal forwards, devalue and get massive price inflation through the extremely important import channel.

This obviously begs the question; at what oil price can the Saudi’s mange to muddle through without ending up in either 1 nor 2.  At today’s price of around USD50 / bbl Saudi Arabia will burn through USD90bn worth of reserves per year.Change in FX reserves vs oil price

This means under a mild deflationary scenario FX reserves will fall below M2 already by early 2018; even with a 10 per cent cost reduction. At 60 dollar and only 2 per cent reduction in cost Saudi Arabia will probably not have to worry about severing the peg. FX vs M2 under different scnearios

Unless prices continue upwards, it will be interesting see what route, and which risks, the Saudi government is willing to take on. For now it appear route 1 is the preferred one, but as the banking crisis escalates we expect a gradual movement toward route 2. Unless oil prices spikes back to USD60 /bbl plus, and save the day. We doubt it!

*  *  *

Finally, given the ban on FX products - and the seemingly inevitable de-pegging discussed above - one potential way to play the devaluation is via CDS...

 

In fact, as the FX ban comes into play, it's clear CDS is starting to become more active and more indicative of Saudi stress that forwards.

Why The Fed Is Trapped: A 1% Increase In Rates Would Result In Up To $2.4 Trillion Of Losses

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 04:53 PM PDT

A funny thing happened as every central bank around the world rushed to stimulate their economy by devaluing their currency in a global FX war that is now 7 years old and getting more violent by the day: with bond yields plunging, and over $10 trillion in global debt now having a negative yield, every fixed income investor starved for yield was pushed into the long end of the bond curve where whatever yield is left in the world of "safe" bonds is to be found. As long as interest rates never go up, this strategy is relatively safe. However, a major risk emerges when central banks start tightening.

To be sure, banks have been eager to front-run any concerns about the Fed's rate hike by cheering higher rates as precisely what they need to be more profitable, and the market has so far believed and rewarded bank stocks the higher rate hike odds rose. Just this Thursday, speaking at an investor conference James Dimon said that if short-term and long-term rates were to move up by 1 percentage point simultaneously, 70% of the benefit would come from the move in short-term rates. The reason for this is that even if long-term rates remain under pressure, and the curve flattens further, an increase in short-term rates provides an immediate boost to bank profits. That is because many loans are automatically priced against short-term benchmarks like LIBOR and Prime.

What Dimon did not discuss is the P&L impact from the higher yields and dropping bond prices in the long end of the yield curve. And it is here, in the unprecedented duration exposure that central banks have forced everyone into, that the true risk resides.

How big is the risk? According to an analysis by Goldman's Charles Himmelberg, if rates rise by the Jamie Dimon-referenced 1 percentage point, the market value loss would be between $1 and $2.4 trillion! Putting this loss in context, even the smaller $1trn loss would be over 50% larger than the market value lost in the 1994 bond market selloff in inflation-adjusted terms, and larger than the cumulative credit losses experienced to date in the non-agency residential mortgage backed securities market. And this is only only as a result of a 1% interest rate increase: assuming full normalization of rates to their historical level of 3.5%, and the level of mark-to-market losses climbs to a staggering $3 trillion.

The culprit? The Fed, the same Fed which does not to grasp that by "renormalizing" into the biggest bond bubble in history is assuring massive losses for the financial sector.

The problem is simple: having inflated a gargantuan bond bubble, letting the air out would by definition lead to dramatic consequences not just for bonds but for all other asset classes.

As Goldman shows in the chart below, the growth in total debt outstanding, in constant 2015 dollars, has been unprecedented. The total face value of all US bonds, including Treasuries, Federal agency debt, mortgages, corporates, municipals and ABS, is $40 trillion (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association). The Barclays US aggregate is a smaller number, $17 trillion, as the index excludes some categories of debt, such as money markets, with low duration. To end up with a more palatable number, Goldman uses the Barclays measure of debt outstanding, although it admits this may lead to an understatement of the total loss potential. Using either measure, total debt outstanding has grown by over 60% in real Dollars since 2000.

 

It is not just the notional amount of debt that has been relentlessly rising: as Exhibit 3 shows, the aggregate interest rate duration across the bond market has also increased over the past several years, up over 20% vs. the 1995-2005 average level. Longer durations are largely driven by lengthening maturities on the bonds outstanding, as issuers have elected to term out their debt structures. Exhibit 4 shows that the average maturity of corporate bonds issued in 2015 and 2016 is over 16 years,  vs. an average of 8.6 years during 1995-2005. The US Treasury has also chosen to lengthen its debt maturity structure, with more use of long duration bonds.

The secular decline in nominal interest rates has also contributed to the drift upward in bond duration.

In 1994, the average yield on the bond index was 5.6%, vs. 2.2% currently. Lower bond coupons means that proportionately more of the bond cashflows now comes from principal, which tends to be distributed towards the end of the bond lifetime.

Here is the math of how a 1% increase in rates would lead to trillions in losses.

Combining a duration estimate of 5.6 years with a total notional exposure of $17trn, and current Dollar price of bonds of $105.6, indicates that, to first order, a 100bp shock to interest rates would translate into a $1trn market value loss. That is using the more conservative estimate of the bond market. Using the broader bond market sizing of $40trn, the market value loss estimate would be $2.4 trillion. While Goldman believes that using the larger number "would likely be an overstatement, as much of the extra debt in the broader universe is either short maturity or floating rate", even the smaller $1 trillion loss estimate is large: over 50% larger than the market value lost in the 1994 bond market selloff in inflation-adjusted terms, and larger than the cumulative credit losses experienced to date in the non-agency residential mortgage backed securities market.

As Goldman concludes, "even if there is not a large net social loss from a rise in rates, the $1 trillion gross loss estimate suggests that some investor entities would likely experience significant distress. In the 1994 bond market decline, for example, losses on a mortgage derivative portfolio were a major factor contributing to the Orange County, California bankruptcy event. All in, the increase in total gross debt exposure, combined with lengthening bond durations and an arguably expensive bond market, suggest that rising yields should be on the short list of scenarios to be monitored by risk managers.

This ignores the losses that would also impact the Fed's own holdings of rates instruments: at last check the Fed's balance sheet had a DV01 of about $2.5 billion, or a $250 billion hit for every 1% increase in rates.

As Bloomberg adds, analysts and regulators have warned for months that rising rates will be painful for investors and lenders, but bond yields remain stubbornly low. Perhaps the reason for this is that "investors and lenders" realize that it is only a matter of time before the Fed understands it is trapped and as a result of these gargantuan losses that would be imposed on the financial industry, it simply can not hike rates. Alternatively, if there is indeed as much as $2.4 trillion in losses coming, then while bonds will be slammed, it is the equity that will be wiped out. And, as this market has demonstrated all too well, when equity selloffs start, the proceeds usually go right into bonds, making the bubble even bigger.

On the other hand, if the Fed - which has demonstated it is painfully clueless in these past few years - intends to push on with a rate hike despite a raging profits recession and a global economy that is one snowstorm away from contraction, then the trade is simple: take advantage of the algos' stupidity and short financials. Because far from "beneficiaries" of the Fed's tightening on the short end, as much as Jamie Dimon would disagree, it is the long end where the market's unprecedented duration risk is about to rear its ugly head if and when the Fed does try to "normalize."

RACE BAITING MICHELLE OBAMA: “I WAKE UP EACH DAY IN A HOUSE BUILT BY SLAVES”

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 04:00 PM PDT

by Melissa Dykes, The Daily Sheeple:

At a commencement address at City College of New York on Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama once again brought race to the forefront, proclaiming that she wakes up every day in a house built by slaves.

Interesting that she's lived there for what, eight years now? And it hasn't really seemed to bother her much. Then again, how ironic a comment coming from someone who has earned the nickname "Mooch" as we the American people are now the slaves paying for her rent, utilities, and lavish quarter-of-a-million-dollar vacations.

Even more interesting is how some people in the response thread can even act like this is just a simple statement of fact and not a completely loaded, race baiting comment coming from the First Lady on a highly promoted podium propagating these points for the express purpose of creating more division among the people. That's something she has been very good at during her husband's entire presidency. For more on that, see also White House Shamelessly Uses Michelle Photo Op to Play Race Card regarding the agenda-driven photo shown above.

Divided we definitely fall… and they definitely know it. Let's fight amongst ourselves so we don't unite over what the elite like her and her husband have done to this country… and to us all.

Michelle seems to forget (or, more likely, purposefully ignore) how much the country has progressed since the time of slavery, considering America just elected a black president for not one, but two terms.

The responses to Michelle fell into two distinct categories: the camp where it has to be pointed out for the millionth time how racist everyone is simply because Michelle used the trigger word "slaves," and everyone else who failed to feel all that sorry for her.

Read More @ TheDailySheeple.com

Anonymous Declares War On Mainstream Media, Attacks Fox, CNN, NBC And More

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 03:00 PM PDT

Anonymous Declares War On Mainstream Media, Attacks Fox, CNN, NBC And More by Nick Bernabe June 4, 2016 The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and...

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RELIGION ISN'T THE CAUSE OF WARS , IT'S JUST THE EXCUSE | Sheikh Imran Hosein 2016

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 02:41 PM PDT

Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein is an Islamic scholar, author and philosopher specializing in Islamic eschatology, world politics, economics, and modern socio-economic/political issues. He is the author of Jerusalem in the Qur'an. The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and...

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Andy Hoffman: AUDIOBLOG #149 – THE MAY NFP JOBS REPORT – FANTASY AND NIGHTMARE!

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 01:30 PM PDT

by Andy Hoffman, Miles Franklin AudioBlog:

Miles Franklin is anything but an ordinary gold and silver coin company. Our approach provides a creative strategy for diversifying one's assets with precious metals. This strategy has been yielding positive results for clients nationwide since 1989. Miles Franklin was founded by David and Andrew Schectman. Our vision was to offer a wide variety of bullion and numismatic products, extensive

Gold Charts R' Us - Free For All

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 01:24 PM PDT

Worst Jobs Report In Nearly 6 Years – 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have Jobs

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 01:00 PM PDT

by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

This is exactly what we have been expecting to happen. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy only added 38,000 jobs in May. This was way below the 158,000 jobs that analysts were projecting, and it is also way below what is needed just to keep up with population growth. In addition, the number of jobs created in April was revised down by 37,000 and the number of jobs created in March was revised down by 22,000. This was the worst jobs report in almost six years, and the consensus on Wall Street is that it was an unmitigated disaster.

The funny thing is that the Obama administration says that the unemployment rate actually went down last month. Almost every month since Obama has been in the White House, large numbers of Americans that have been unemployed for a very long time are shifted from the "unemployment" category to the "not in the labor force" category. This has resulted in a steadily falling "unemployment rate" even though the percentage of the population that is actually working has not changed very much at all since the depths of the last recession.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the number of Americans "not in the labor force" increased by 664,000 from April to May. If you believe that, I have a giant bridge on the west coast that I would like to sell you. The labor force participation rate is now down to 62.6, and it is hovering just above a 38 year low.

When you add the number of working age Americans that are "officially unemployed" (7.4 million) to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be "not in the labor force" (an all-time record high of 94.7 million), you get a grand total of 102.1 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

This is not a game.

So far in 2016, three members of my own extended family have lost their jobs.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoffs at major firms are running 24 percent higher up to this point in 2016 than they were during the same time period in 2015.

It was only a matter of time before those layoffs started showing up in the official employment numbers, and I fully expect that this trend will accelerate in the months ahead.

Read More @ TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com

SAUDI ARABIA, RUSSIA dump the DOLLAR More hidden questions!!!

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 11:00 AM PDT

SAUDI ARABIA, RUSSIA dump the DOLLAR More hidden questions!!! The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

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A Glimpse Into The Future Of What The Economic Collapse Might Look like

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 08:26 AM PDT

Eurozone crisis continues, 16 million people are in poverty or on the edge. Auto sales decline, this is being blamed on the weather, shorten months or any other excuse the US government & corporate media can come up with. Construction spending collapses, but new construction according to the...

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Gold And Silver – Friday May Have Marked A Pivotal Turnaround

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 07:21 AM PDT

More reasons why owning gold and silver should be at the top of everyone’s financial survival list, current elite-abused [abandoned] supply/demand considerations aside not being a part of the reasons where reason is utterly absent. Politicians have run amok. The elites are driving world economies harder and faster into the ground. Lies are the current political and financial currency, and the public seem not to mind. From the Washington Post: 9 charts showing Yes-We-Can-Obama’s “recovery.” The 1st, 3rd, and 4th charts show debt of the American people [remember the 14th Amendment: the federal debt cannot be challenged – the elites had that written in]; the 2nd shows the ‘growth” of those reliant on the public teat, [in large, thanks to the preceding chart and the ones that follow]; the 5th shows Yes-We-Can Obama’s force-fed healthcare solution that nobody except him and the elites wanted, and why debt-enslavement is ensured, forcing yet more Americans onto chart 2; charts 6, 8, and 9 show Yes-We-Can-Obama’s “healthy economy,” if anyone is sufficiently retarded gullible enough to believe his lies. Chart 7 is a mystery. Insert any color vs the federal government, and you would get the same chart, maybe even worse.

Bonds, Stocks, Gold and Silver ‘Inflation Trade’ Alive and Well

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 07:10 AM PDT

I don’t write the title because the precious metals took off today on the bad jobs report.  Far from it.  That is what gold is supposed to do under such circumstances as its fundamentals got a boost and the perceptions of a hawkish Fed got repelled. I write the title despite the fact that the inflation barometer, TIP/TLT, tanked and commodities were moderate, post-jobs.  Yesterday we noted:  Inflation Expectations Sagging, including a declining TIP/TLT and a bullish looking TLT (each a form of non-inflationary signaling).  Today they got bearisher and bullisher, respectively.

Breaking News And Best Of The Web

Posted: 04 Jun 2016 12:00 AM PDT

US jobs report misses big, stocks decline, gold soars, odds of interest rate hike fall. Car sales, oil prices, mortgage applications, US construction spending, China and Japan manufacturing all fall hard. Alhambra Partners on why apathy is a bigger risk than stupidity. Charles Hugh Smith on why pension funds (that is, your retirement) are doomed. […]

The post Breaking News And Best Of The Web appeared first on DollarCollapse.com.
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