Archive - Feb 21, 2015 - Story

Some Greeks wondered what the government had achieved. "We went through two months of agony, emptied the banks, to realize we are still a debt colony," 54-year-old electrician Dimitris Kanakis told Reuters. "The paymasters call the shots."... Pensioner Paradisanos Rigas siad: "It looks to me that nothing has changed. Later on they'll throw us some bones and say everything is fine. Syriza will be saying we put up a fight, while the other side will be saying you did nothing. And I think that it will be the same, just more of the same."

We would do well to consider the possibility of war strategies when it comes to the global stockpiling of petroleum reserves. In the years leading up to the German invasion of Poland, the world witnessed dramatic decreases in the price of oil as well as massive increases in petroleum inventories, especially as the Texas fields began to produce. These shifts in the global oil markets ran parallel to the deflation which had begun in October, 1929, and as such, we can see the same pattern repeating today as oil prices collapse, inventories are growing, and world wide deflation is deepening.

A BRICS Bank - as an IMF alternative and to enable nations to become less dependent on the global reserve currency - was originally discussed at The BRICS Summit in 2012. Then at the 2014 BRICS Summit, the framework for The BRICS Bank was approved as "a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decisions made by the United States and their allies." Headquartered in Shanghai and chaired by Russia, this week saw what appears to be the final step in the creation of BRICS New Deverlopment Bank as RT reports, The Russian State Duma has ratified the $100 billion BRICS bank that’ll serve as a pool of money for infrastructure projects in Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa. It is expected to start fully functioning by the end of 2015. Isolated?

"We don't want to scare everybody, but we are preparing for full-scale war," warns Vadym Prystaiko - Ukraine's deputy foreign minister - telling CBC during a stunning interview that "what we expect from the world is that the world will stiffen up in the spine a little." Prystaiko concludes, "we would like [The West] to send lethal weapons to Ukraine... weapons to allow us to defend ourselves."

Three years after the Tohoku earthquake in Japan, citizens and the international community are left wondering if Japan really does have the situation in Fukushima under control... "TEPCO's own engineers are clueless... nobody knows how much [radiation] is washing into the ocean."

A quick recap of the key implications of Friday’s Greek “deal”, and what it means for the future of the Eurozone, the common currency and capital markets.

"...those companies were among the many that gave to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation, ...Mrs. Clinton’s connections to the companies don’t end there. As secretary of state, she created 15 public-private partnerships coordinated by the State Department, and at least 25 companies contributed to those partnerships."

"Our media is not run by the government, and nor does it engage in widespread censorship. Instead, the media is run by a tiny group of politically motivated moguls, themselves in league with other private interests through advertising or personal networks....Rather than being a means to hold the powerful to account and fairly report issues, the media is the ultimate political lobbyist for our elite.  We desperately need more opponents of the status quo in the mainstream media. The reason we don’t have any is because – in our deeply compromised democracy – the media is so often there to serve the interests of the rich."
And if for some reason the "elite" don't get their way with media propaganda, there is always plan B. What is Plan B? For the answer see "German Journalist Blows Whistle On How The CIA Controls The Media."

"... should interest rates rise later this year, some households and corporations may find themselves overleveraged as interest rates and borrowing costs rise. When looking at interest rate sensitivity by loan product, we see that auto loans rates are the most sensitive to changes in the fed funds target rate. In addition, we can see that for each one-percentage point rise in the fed funds rate, the interest rate on a 48-month new car loan rises 0.61 percentage points."

Government mandated fiat currency simply does not work in the long run. We have empirical evidence galore – every fiat currency system in history has failed, except the current one, which has not failed yet. The modern fiat money system is more ingeniously designed than its historical predecessors and has a far greater amount of accumulated real wealth to draw sustenance from, so it seems likely that it will be relatively long-lived as far as fiat money systems go. In a truly free market, fiat money would never come into existence though. Greenspan was wrong – government bureaucrats cannot create something “as good as gold” by decree.

“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”  
- Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince July 9, 2007

"Depressingly, our instinct is that those new forecasts are more likely too conservative than too aggressive. Longer-term, sweet dreams really aren't made of this."
- Citigroup Strategist Hans Lorenzen February 20, 2015

"Are the playing cat and mouse?" Or, "Is this some form of brilliant display of game theory that we mere mortals can’t understand?" If it is borne out to be true that what is being reported throughout many media channels is the fact that Greece has indeed nearly forfeited all its positions in-turn for some changes in language as to appear they have indeed stood up to their nemesis “and won” will not only be disappointing, in our opinion it will embolden central bankers and Keynesian devotees everywhere to view the monetary world with even more self-aggrandized thoughts and actions.

"...Large areas of the United States that used to experience few or no earthquakes have, in recent years, experienced a remarkable increase in earthquake activity.. This rise in seismic activity, especially in the central United States, is not the result of natural processes... Instead, the increased seismicity is due to fluid injection associated with new technologies that enable the extraction of oil and gas from previously unproductive reservoirs."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is seriously considering a run for the White House in 2016, said Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program that collects bulk telephone records was “hugely important,” throwing his support behind the practice as Congress debates whether to reauthorize or limit it. At an event on foreign policy hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Mr. Bush, a Republican, said, “For the life of me, I don’t understand the debate” over the metadata program.

An Egyptian student living in Milan, who walked around the city for five hours dressed as an imam, has released a video showing how he was insulted along the way. Dressed in an imam’s robe and carrying a copy of the Koran, Hamdy Mahisen made the video below, published by La Repubblica, as part of a social experiment to see how tolerant people in Milan are of Muslims. Along the way, he attracted odd stares and insults such as "Taliban shit!". One onlooker said, "Shit, have you seen the Isis?" while another remarked, "Imagine if he has a gun under his tunic".