Archive - Mar 10, 2015

Today, the founders of Wikipeia announced they are filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency "to protect the rights of the 500 million people who use Wikipedia every month. We’re doing so because a fundamental pillar of democracy is at stake: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas.  Our lawsuit says that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance of Internet traffic on American soil — often called “upstream” surveillance — violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008."

"Buying" versus "selling" volume has diverged dramatically in the last few weeks as AAPL-buyback-driven exuberance has lifted US stocks to record-er highs (amid record selling from insiders). We've seen this pattern before but that time The Fed was neck deep in QE3 and Janet was proclaiming everything was awesome (with a dovish reassurance that they'd keep pumping)...

Perhaps because the soap-opera factor of the puppet proxy civil war in east Ukraine is dying down, it is time for another geopolitical diversion, and it appears that the administration's attention this time has fallen on Venezuela. Yesterday Obama issued and signed the executive order which declared Venezuela a national security threat and ordered sanctions against seven officials. Maduro had a prompt response: "President Barack Obama, representing the US imperialist elite, has personally decided to take on the task of defeating my government and intervening in Venezuela to control it,”and "I have put together a special law that gives me special powers to preserve the peace, the integrity and the sovereignty of the country before any situation that presents itself due to this imperialist aggression.”

Neocon She Wolf of the NWO

• Dollar at 12-year peak versus euro, emerging markets spooked (Reuters)
• CIA sought to hack Apple iPhones from earliest days (Reuters)
• Draghi Urged Greece to Allow Troika Back Before It’s Late (BBG)
• Brent crude dips below $58 on strong dollar and supply (Reuters)
• Credit Suisse replaces CEO Dougan with Prudential's Thiam (Reuters)
• More "distressed" energy M&A: Verisk buys Wood Mackenzie for £1.85bn (FT)
• Prepare for a surge in defaults: Investors Are Buying Stocks and Bonds From Energy Producers Amid Oil Price Drop (WSJ)
• Private equity executive ordered to pay £72m to ex-wife (FT)
• Democratic donors unfazed by Hillary Clinton's use of private email (Reuters)
• Expensive Hepatitis C Medications Drive Prescription-Drug Spending (WSJ)
• 'ISIS Hackers' Almost Certainly Not ISIS Hackers (NBC)

As noted earlier, starting early with the overnight session there was already some serious fireworks in Asia, when first the USDJPY soared then tumbled, pushing the Nikkei lower some 0.7% with it, driven entirely by the surge in Dollar which rose to a fresh 12 year high overnight after gaining as much as 0.59%, in an extension of Friday’s post-NFP gains. Additionally, the EUR/USD slipped below 1.0800 to touch its lowest level since Sept’03 while USD/JPY rose above 122.00 for the first time since Jul’07, after breaching long-term resistance at 121.85. However, in recent trade the pair has seen a straight line sell-off which in turn has sent US equity futures sliding, and the ES down about 14 points as of this moment. Meanwhile, the frontrunning of the ECB continues, with German 10 Year yields sliding -3bps to 0.281%, the lowest in series history. Also touching fresh record lows were Austrian, Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, Irish, Italian, Spanish 10 Year rates.

Last month the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Japan’s Naoyuki Shinohara, openly stated that emerging markets in Asia should begin the process of de-dollarisation “to mitigate against external shocks and constraining the central bank’s ability as lender of last resort.”

Most Canadian readers (in particular) will be aware by now of an extremely important trial currently taking place, a lawsuit by a citizens’ action group against the Bank of Canada: COMER vs Bank of Canada. It is extremely important, both in specific and symbolic terms, which is precisely why the Corporate media has totally censored any/all coverage of this legal challenge, which goes to the very heart of the corruption of our current monetary system.