President Trump urges investors to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into American economy

It’s no secret that President Trump’s business skills have put America first which was the overall theme of the President’s Davos speech

DAVOS, Switzerland (INTELLIHUB) — President Donald Trump gave an amazing speech to investors at the World Economic Forum on Friday, and even scooped up a group of ultra-elite who plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into America’s newfound robust economy.

With the DOW Jones Industrial Average sitting at over 26,000, the highest level in history, President Trump has retained full-on bragging rights, after policies his administration implemented are now allowing individuals and businesses to reap the benefits.

INDEXDJX: .DJI

The Commander-In-Chief explained to the Davos crowd how the DOW is up nearly fifty percent from what it was at the time of the election and pointed out that if the opposing party would have won it likely would have been down fifty percent.

“The stock market is up over fifty percent since my election,” he said. “Had the Democrat would have won, I believe that we would have been down fifty percent.”

Featured Image: CNBC/YouTube

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Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook. Subscribe to Shep’s YouTube channel.

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Soros Declares War on Bitcoin

(ANTIMEDIA) Switzerland — Cryptocurrencies were a hot topic at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with the world’s financial elite essentially split on how to view a technology that’s still less than a decade old.

One market player in attendance, however, George Soros — who, as of December 2017, is worth $8 billion — appeared far more confident in his assessment.

“Cryptocurrency is a misnomer and is a typical bubble, which is always based on some kind of misunderstanding,” the 87-year-old Soros said in a speech in Davos on Thursday.

“Bitcoin is not a currency because a currency is supposed to be a stable store of value and the currency that can fluctuate 25 percent in a day can’t be used for instance to pay wages because wages drop by 25 percent in a day,” Soros said. “It’s a speculation. Based on a misunderstanding.”

On the subject of usability, the business magnate claimed that at the present date, cryptocurrencies are primarily a tool of the criminal element:

“Currently it’s used mostly for tax evasion and for people and the rulers and dictatorships to build a nest egg abroad.”

This sentiment echoes that of U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who also spoke on the subject while in Davos.

“In areas like cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, we should be looking at these very seriously,” May said in a television interview with Bloomberg, adding that action on cryptocurrencies may be needed “precisely because of the way they are used, particularly by criminals.”

However, research published earlier this month found only one percent of Bitcoin transactions were actually linked to suspected criminal activity.

Other financial experts, however, appeared less eager to denounce the technology. Speaking at a panel discussion on Thursday, Index Ventures general partner and co-founder Neil Rimer said it’s simply too early to make a judgment call:

“We’re nine years into this experiment. It’s gone well at times and quite poorly. It could fail completely and go to zero, but it has accomplished a number of things I think are remarkable.”

Jennifer Zhu Scott, deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, appeared to agree. She noted that the fact that so many of the world’s financial heavyweights are being forced to address the issue of cryptocurrencies is evidence of the technology’s power:

“The fact that people keep talking today that bitcoin is below 10,000, it’s a disaster, or bitcoin is above 10,000 and that’s crazy. I think the fact that bitcoin is still alive, and attracting so much attention, the fact that we’re talking about bitcoin in Davos with a Nobel Prize winner, a central bank governor and a seasoned investor, I think that’s a powerful tool.”

Robert Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, was also on the panel.

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“There’s Anger Building Out There” – One Man’s Message To Davos Elites

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

One man went to Davos and dared to say what Pepe Escobar thought no one would – that “it’s the inequality, stupid.”

Amid all the back-slapping exuberance of record high global stock markets and record high global net worth, John McDonnell, the U.K. opposition Labour Party’s spokesman on finance, came to the World Economic Forum in Davos with an uncomfortable message for the global elite…

“I just warn the Davos establishment: There’s an anger building out there that you need to recognize and deal with,”

As Bloomberg reports, most delegates in Davos have adopted an upbeat tone this week — reflected in the optimism of top bankers at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG who told Bloomberg they see a continuation in a global boom in dealmaking.

But as McDonnell warns, there’s an “avalanche of discontent” out there among the masses.

But in the Swiss resort, “there’s almost a sense of euphoria, it is extraordinary, and I think there’s a sense of complacency.”

McDonnell’s warning carries weight because he would be chancellor of the exchequer if Labour came to power — something investors are preparing for.

“Out there, beyond the Davos compound, many people — we saw it in the Oxfam report — feel the markets have been rigged against them, not for them,” McDonnell said.

“When they’re told we’re coming out of that recession, growth is returning and they don’t feel they’re participating in the benefits of that growth, that’s when people become really alienated and angry.”

Bloomberg reports that McDonnell then laid out a recipe for regaining the trust of the masses, including:

• Paying workers a “real living wage” and allowing them to share in the profits of the companies they work for.


• Recognizing trade unions and appointing workers to company boards.


• A new “Hippocratic oath” for accountancy firms to tackle tax avoidance rather than encourage it.


• The rich and those in power should publish their income tax returns.


• A “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions that would be used to fund public services and international development programs.

With the support of the far left fringes of Labour, both McDonnell and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn have firmed up their grip over the party, appointing allies to the party’s National Executive Committee in recent months after fending of an attempted coup by moderate lawmakers in 2016.

“There has to be a radical new agenda where people share in the growth, share in the wealth, share in the benefits as the economic cycle turns,” McDonnell said. “I think there’s an avalanche out there of discontent and resentment and alienation if we don’t address these issues.”

Still, as Pepe Escobar previously noted, this year’s Davos theme was “Resilient Dynamism.” As a definition of the current woes of turbo-capitalism, a five-year-old in a favela, or slum, in Rio could come up with something more meaningful. 

But then, Davos is a one-trick pony. “Resilience” remains a euphemism for the ever-expanding markets and low pay for workers syndrome. In a nutshell, globalization driven by huge multinational corporations.

We should scrap “Resilience” as the name of their game is “Inequality.” Davos, of course, does not do “inequality.” 

In a study released by UC Berkeley, the wealth of the top 1% of Americans accrued by 11.6% in 2010, while for the other 99% it was a mere 0.2%. This is what is at the heart of hardcore neoliberalism and capitalist.

Davos should be discussing how a key segment of elites concocted the Wall Street-provoked financial crash. That was only ‘virtual’ business, but it was not ‘virtual’ national governments that had to intervene afterward to pick up the bill and bail out the banks.

No, I am afraid “Resilient Dynamism” will not do for Davos. But it is a good definition of China. While European and American elites accrue their capital to contain Beijing’s advance in Africa and Asia, China’s interventionism is of the business kind. It is a case of building roads, not wars.

Still, the question Davos refuses to ask remains: Why is it easier to imagine the total destruction of mankind, from nuclear war to a climate catastrophe, than to work on changing the system of relations spawned by capitalism? 

Stay tuned for that one.

Predictive Programming? Soros Warns of War with North Korea, Veils Indirect Threat to the President

George Soros (formerly Georgiy Schwarz) has been one of the most destructive individual forces in the past three decades throughout the world. He broke the Bank of England in the 1990s, is responsible for currency collapses in places such as Malaysia, has been listed as wanted by several nations, and is meddling in the illegal alien Muslim floodgate introduced into the countries of Europe. He is directly responsible for the troubles in Eastern Ukraine.

Soros attempted to institute a “land grab” of lands in Donetsk and Lugansk (“coincidentally” the same provinces attempting to secede from Ukraine) to take their natural resources: trillions of ores and minerals, for the mere pittance of $50 million. He directly sponsored and created Maidan and the lie of Ukrainian revolution…, a coup d’état against the Ukrainian Constitution’s legally elected representative, Viktor Yanukovych that forced him to flee to Russia. Soros pulled strings attached to Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, and invisibly “tethered” politico-puppets Hillary Clinton (then Secretary of State) and Victoria Nuland.

Now Soros has made prognostications of a coming nuclear war between the United States and North Korea. CNBC released this excerpt on 1/26/18 of the oligarch’s forecasts:

“The fact of nuclear war is so horrendous that we are trying to ignore it, but it is real. Indeed, the United States is set on a course towards nuclear war by refusing to accept that [North] Korea has become a nuclear power. This creates a strong incentive for North Korea to develop its nuclear capacity with all possible speed, which in turn may induce the United States to use its nuclear superiority pre-emptively, in effect to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war, obviously a self-contradictory strategy.” – Soros’ speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Soros didn’t stop there. He also said this:

“Soros said Trump is trying to establish a “mafia state” in the U.S. but has failed so far.

The progressive activist said he sees the president’s place in the world as “temporary” and likely to “disappear in 2020 or even sooner.”

These words shouldn’t be taken lightly. Soros has hidden billions in his NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and has stepped up the role of destabilizing nations through political rabble-rousing (labeled “organization” or “activism” in the Alinsky-progressive manner) of the youth to overthrow existing governments. This has been complemented by the relentless push to control legislation in The Hague courts to force sovereign European nations to allow Muslims to enter their countries.

Destabilization is not confined to Europe. Soros has been actively destabilizing the United States for many years, as well. Half of the Democratic Party either answers to or is allied to him. For the basics (and basis) read the work “Shadow Party” that chronicles his activities. In that light, a Democratic Senator, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois completed a trip to South Korea to assess the situation and U.S. troops in the region. Duckworth is not your run-of-the-mill Democrat: She is a former chopper pilot who lost both of her legs after being shot down in Iraq, and she attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The following is an excerpt from a December 7, 2017 interview with Zack Beauchamp in an article entitled US senator on North Korea: “Most Americans don’t realize how close we are to this war. Here is an excerpt from that interview:

“I’m extremely worried — not just based on what I’m hearing out of the White House but also what I’m hearing out of the defense community. We are far closer to actual conflict over North Korea than the American people realize.

In August, we had a meeting between Defense Secretary [James] Mattis and his counterparts in South Korea to discuss the use of US nuclear first strike. In the same time frame, we permanently moored a nuclear submarine in South Korea. Everything we’re doing shows a military that, in my personal opinion, has turned the corner from “we need to try to prevent this from happening” to a military that’s saying the president is likely to make this decision [to attack] and we need to be ready.

But a preventive first strike from us will result in a massive response from the North Koreans. We know this because a high-ranking defector from North Korea testified in front of Congress last month; one of the things that would happen is a preemptive first strike from the United States or South Korea would result in an automatic massive response.”

As you may have deduced, the direction we are heading in is toward a war. The last excerpted paragraph contains a statement by a North Korean defector stating that North Korea will retaliate should we strike first. Although the defector did not go into much detail, know that the policy of North Korea’s military also enables it to strike first…if they believe an attack is imminent or in motion against them.  In this case, an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon is central to their nuclear strategy, as demonstrated by the (now defunct and defunded) Commission to Assess the EMP Threat Against the U.S. for more than a decade.

We will, of course, have to wait and see. As with history, however, when these oligarchs and politicians make public statements such as these about imminent warfare, common sense dictates the statements merit attention. This especially regarding the links to Congress and the U.S. State Department, both currently still infested with Obama-administration holdouts. These “leftovers” have in no way changed their viewpoints or actions.

In my opinion, Soros’ second statement is a veiled, indirect threat made to the President of the United States. The President’s “place in the world to disappear by 2020 or sooner,” he said? If that does not constitute a threat, then nothing does. He should be arrested immediately and investigated. But of course, that’s not how the game is played, is it? The problem with our Constitution is that it protects the rights of those who act to overthrow it. The bigger problem is that such protections are in place for them…and they (the ones who would overthrow our Constitution) bypass the laws…to buy further influence and immunity…from the very politicians who have sworn to stomp out such actions.

Former Secret Service Agent Threatens To Reveal Details About Bill Clinton And Epstein"s "Lolita Express"

In a furious twitter exchange with a Clinton aide on Friday, former secret service agent Dan Bongino threatened to reveal new details about Bill Clinton’s 26 documented trips aboard notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express."

Bongino and former Hillary Clinton aide Nick Merrill started feuding after Merrill challenged Bongino’s claim that Clinton was the most “manipulative political person in a position of power [he had] ever met in my entire life,” as Paul Watson pointed out.

Merrill fired back that Hillary “has enormous respect for the Secret Service & a great relationship with the agents on her detail.” He also alleged that Bongino was never on the Clintons’ detail – a claim that Bongino almost immediately disproved by supplying a photo of him sitting behind Hillary Clinton back in 2001.

This pic is from NY Newsday’s inside cover taken at the US Open in 2001. It’s one of literally hundreds of operations I conducted with Hillary documented throughly by official US govt paperwork of which I still have copies. You’re welcome to stop by & review the paperwork.Thanks. pic.twitter.com/C0lmJRlrDm

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) November 24, 2017

After accusing Merrill of being a “fraud”, Bongino dropped a ominous-sounding threat: “Be careful Nick, people know things not yet released publicly about your messiah Hillary. Don’t poke the bear loser, you may not like the results. #Epstein #EmailGate,” tweeted Bongino.

Be careful Nick, people know things not yet released publicly about your messiah Hillary. Don’t poke the bear loser, you may not like the results. #Epstein #EmailGate

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) November 24, 2017

He then taunted Merrill by asking: “Dear Nick, are you guys sure you know everyone on the Epstein planes?"

Dear Nick, are you sure you destroyed ALL of the Blackberries. Was there govt property in the bunch? #PeopleKnow

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) November 24, 2017

For those who are unfamiliar with his story, Jeffrey Epstein is a New York City financier who pled guilty in 2008 to a single count of soliciting sex from an underage girl. He eventually spent 13 months in prison and was forced to register as a level three sex offender (considered the highest risk of re-offending) though stories of his lust for girls as young of 12 have spread like wildfire in recent years.

Epstein allegedly installed beds in his custom jet, and also purportedly filmed powerful men during romps with underage girls to obtain materials for blackmail.

According to Fox News, Epstein allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on Epstein’s “Orgy Island,” an estate on Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein now lives permanently in the US Virgin Islands.

Clinton chose to continue his association with Epstein even after the lurid trial, according to the Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, “everyone within his inner circles knew was a pedophile." Speculation that Clinton was involved with Epstein was noted in "Bill Clinton Was Here": The Elite One-Percent’s "Orgy Island" Exposed." An article by the now defunct Gawker titled "Flight Logs Put Clinton, Dershowitz on Pedophile Billionaire’s Sex Jet" added to speculation about Clinton"s troubling relationship with the convicted sex offender.

Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the " Lolita Express"—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein"s address book under an entry for "massages," according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time. The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a "potential co-conspirator" in his crimes.

 

* * *

 

Epstein"s predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who"s Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a "sex slave" at the age of 15 and "sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people," including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim "on private planes"; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)

 

* * *

 

Two female associates of Epstein—the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein"s former assistant Sarah Kellen—have been repeatedly accused in court filings of acting as pimps for him, recruiting and grooming young girls into their network of child sex workers, and frequently participating in sex acts with them. Kellen in particular was believed by detectives in the Palm Beach Police Department, which was the first to start unraveling the operation, to be so deeply involved in the enterprise that they prepared a warrant for her arrest as an accessory to molestation and sex with minors. In the end, she was never arrested or charged, and federal prosecutors granted her immunity in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement that described her as a "potential co-conspirator" in sex trafficking.

 

Maxwell, the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, has been accused by Roberts of photographing Epstein"s victims "in sexually explicit poses and [keeping] the child pornography on her computer," and "engag[ing] in lesbian sex with the underage females she procured for Epstein." She has denied the allegations in the past.

 

Clinton shared Epstein"s plane with Kellen and Maxwell on at least 11 flights in 2002 and 2003—before any of the allegations against them became public—according to the pilots" logbooks, which have surfaced in civil litigation surrounding Epstein"s crimes. In January 2002, for instance, Clinton, his aide Doug Band, and Clinton"s Secret Service detail are listed on a flight from Japan to Hong Kong with Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and two women described only as "Janice" and "Jessica." One month later, records show, Clinton hopped a ride from Miami to Westchester on a flight that also included Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman described only as "one female."

In 2002, as New York reported previously, Clinton recruited Epstein to make his plane available for a week-long anti-poverty and anti-AIDS tour of Africa with Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, billionaire creep Ron Burkle, Clinton confidant Gayle Smith (who now serves on Barack Obama"s National Security Council), and others. The logs from that trip show that Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman named Chauntae Davis joined the entourage for five days.

That last name, Chauntae Davies, emerged elsewhere in papers unearthed by the various investigations into Epstein"s sex ring: his little black book. Davies is one of 27 women listed in the book under an entry for "Massage- California," one of six lists of massage girls Epstein kept in various locales, with a total of 160 names around the globe, many of them underage victims.

Today, Davies is an actress with credits including HBO"s Enlightened. In 2002, she was 23. According to her IMDB profile, in addition to her apparent massage work for Epstein, she landed a role that year as a "lingerie model" in Exposed, a movie produced by a softcore porn company called MRG Entertainment. (Other MRG films include Deviant Desires and Carnal Confessions; the company has since been purchased by Larry Flynt. Exposed, appropriately enough, was directed by a pseudonymous auteur who went by the name of Clinton J. Williams.) Davies"s role in Clinton"s flying AIDS-prevention circus isn"t clear, and though her LinkedIn page claims a certificate in Swedish massage, there is no evidence that she ever actually treated Epstein to one. Reached via e-mail, she said only, "I really am not interested in being slandered in the media for having known this person a time ago. Some of the things being said are not things I have information on."

Full flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein"s "Lolita Express"

The End Of "The End Of History" - US Mid-East Policy"s Fork In The Road

Authored by Tom Luongo,

In 1989 Francis Fukayama declared that we had reached “The End of History.”  Democracy as a form of government would, in fact, be the end of the evolution of human interaction.  The West had triumphed and that the rest was ‘just a chase scene,’ to borrow a phrase from Neal Stephenson’s brilliant dystopian novel “Snow Crash.”

But, this past week’s events in the Middle East tell me that autocracy has replaced democracy and the trans-national parliamentary system of the European Union that Fukayama championed in his 2007 article in The Guardian.

The EU no longer practices representative Democracy today.  Diktats come down from unelected technocrats in Brussels. They are wholly-owned by stateless rent-seeking oligarchs (i.e. George Soros). Everyone in and around the EU is expected to obey or face tanks in the streets (Spain) or endless legal entanglements from captured international courts (Poland).

If you circumvent the rules, the EU will change them to suit its masters’ needs.  Just look at any proposed Russian pipeline into Europe over the past five years.

In the U.S. we have been subjected to the worst form of operant conditioning by an unelected Deep State and its quisling media for a year. They created the mass delusion that President Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent.

The goal was to overturn a democratic election, which itself the people had to overcome systemic voter fraud to win.

When, in fact, everyone who is involved in creating this mass delusion are covering up their collusion with Russia in ways that are espionage and treason.

So, consider me unimpressed with Fukayama’s assessment of history.  History is one of the praxeological disciplines.  Economics is another.  Any historical analysis bereft of economic imperatives is worthless.

And Fukayama’s end of history argument is the height of worthless history because it doesn’t ask the basic question “Cui Bono?”  Who benefits?

The End of Saudi Arabia as We Know it

Saudi Arabia has simply replaced one group of autocrats with another, Crown Prince (and soon to be King) Mohammed bin Salman.  There is not one democratic impulse in his body.  But he is the tip of the spear that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are wielding to remake the landscape in the Middle East.

Bin Salman’s moves have been stunning in their severity and swiftness.  But, if you are going to move against the most powerful people in the world, act fast or be destroyed.

There is a full-court press on to bring to light the extensive corruption of our political class from Washington to Tel Aviv, Brussels to Beirut.  And while barred from openly coordinating policy or even talk with each other, Putin and Trump are supporting each other’s moves while looking like they aren’t.

The status quo in Saudi Arabia is over.  It’s bin Salman’s country now.  Thank Putin and Trump for this.  The old alliances between it and Israel are now out in the open, creating cognitive dissonance in a whole new class of people.  It’s reach into governments around the world has been severed.

Hundreds of billions in assets frozen.  Dozens of family members jailed, many major donors to the corrupt-to-the-bone Democratic National Committee.

A major pillar of U.S. control atomized with the arrest of Prince Alaweed.

The coincidence cannot be ignored.  Everything happens in politics for a reason.

And for every pundit confused by what is happening, worried that this is a prelude to regional war I remind you that there are always multiple interpretations of the same events.  Such is the grist for history’s mill.

For example, that missile fired from Yemen at the Saudi capital conveniently had ‘proof’ of its Iranian origin.  Was this bin Salman’s false flag or someone else’s?

As Zerohedge pointed out this morning:

The narrative is familiar: just as European terrorists conveniently commit suicide and always dutifully bring along their passports so they can be identified, so Iran always makes sure it leaves identifying marks when it illegally sells its weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Lingering Questions

What if bin Salman’s purge was a reaction to a false-flag to gin up a war with Iran?

Israeli and U.S. Deep State forces have motive.  They are on the verge of losing everything? Certainly it’s as plausible as it being the opening act of bin Salman’s next foreign intervention.

Why was Donald Trump greeted by China’s leadership in a way that no foreign leader in the past 60 years was ever treated?

Could it be that despite his ham-fisted rhetoric, Premier Xi Jinping knows that Trump is, in fact, sincere in dismantling that portion of the U.S. Empire that no longer serves anyone’s interests except the very favored few who meet in Davos and Jackson Hole every year?

And that Trump will come to embrace China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative as good for the U.S. as well as the rest of the world?

Trump went out of his way to greet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam at the beginning of APEC, despite intense pressure for him not to do so.  Again, why?

Is this the behavior of a man about to go to war? Be impeached?

Multiple Ways to Drain a Swamp

The path to draining the swamp is a circuitous one but, in my mind, it’s hard to argue where things are headed.  They are not headed towards confrontation with Iran but actually the opposite.

The most rabidly anti-Iranian segment of the Saudi Royal house is impoverished and imprisoned.

CNN will be sold and go out of business to allow for the Time-Warner/AT&T merger.  Jeff Zucker is out. Add another scalp to Steve Bannon’s belt along with Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and so many to come.

Will the vestiges of the neoconservative establishment in the U.S. and Israel continue to sabre-rattle and try to undermine what is happening?  Yes.

They’ve been doing that since the day Trump was elected just over a year ago, but it hasn’t stopped the momentum.  Why?  Because Putin was on the job outmaneuvering them at every turn.

Trump made a deal with the neocons back in August to cede them control of foreign policy and, in effect, outsourced cleaning up the Middle East to Putin. But, predictably they also didn’t follow through with their end of the bargain.

Trump learned, like Putin did, the John McCain’s of the world don’t keep to their deals.  They are ‘not agreement capable.’  And, as such, since the last failure to repeal Obamacare Trump has gone after every pillar of support these people had.

It will end with Hillary Clinton’s indictment.  But in the meantime it will look like the world is on the brink of world war.

And History’s Just Fine

Eventually, Saudi Arabia looked at the game board and saw that it was alone.  King Abdallah saw the changes that had to be made.  He met with Putin, they agreed on slightly-higher oil prices.  China offered to buy an Aramco stake but that would mean cutting ties completely with the U.S.

I believe that offer was a bluff.  It was meant to send bin Salman to Trump who agreed to get the Aramco IPO done in New York but he had to take control and end the royal family’s support of evil around the world.

Pat Buchanan’s latest column laments that no one listens when the U.S. barks anymore.  But, at the same time, what the U.S. is barking hasn’t been worth the air it disturbed in more than twenty years since the End of History.

This is what happens when you ‘Cry Wolf’ too many times. 

Benjamin Netanyahu is finally going to learn that lesson in the coming weeks.

The extent of bin Salman’s purge and its effects on not just the Middle East but the U.S. and the EU can only be assessed in hindsight by historians.  A future Fukayama will come along and see this and declare another end to history.

*  *  *

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Xi"s Roadmap To The Chinese Dream

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

China"s Belt and Road Initiative - the New Silk Road - will spark the country"s development and turn the dream into reality...

It all starts with Hong Kong as a major BRI financing hub.

Now that President Xi Jinping has been duly elevated to the Chinese Communist Party pantheon in the rarified company of Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, the world will have plenty of time to digest the meaning of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

Xi himself, in his 3½-hour speech at the start of the 19th Party Congress, pointed to a rather simplified “socialist democracy” – extolling its virtues as the only counter-model to Western liberal democracy. Economically, the debate remains open on whether this walks and talks more like “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics”.

All the milestones for China in the immediate future have been set.

• “Moderately prosperous society” by 2020.


• Basically modernized nation by 2035.


• Rich and powerful socialist nation by 2050.

Xi himself, since 2013, has encapsulated the process in one mantra; the “Chinese dream”. The dream must become reality in a little over three decades. The inexorable modernization drive unleashed by Deng’s reforms has lasted a little less than four decades. Recent history tell us there’s no reason to believe phase 2 of this seismic Sino-Renaissance won’t be fulfilled.

Xi emphasized, “the dreams of the Chinese people and those of other peoples around the world are closely linked. The realization of the Chinese dream will not be possible without a peaceful international environment and a stable international order.”

He mentioned only briefly the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as having “created a favorable environment for the country’s overall development”. He didn’t dwell on BRI’s ambition and extraordinary scope, as he does in every major international summit as well as in Davos earlier this year.

But still it was implicit that to arrive at what Xi defines as a “community of common destiny for mankind”, BRI is China’s ultimate tool. BRI, a geopolitical/geoeconomic game-changer, is in fact Xi’s – and China’s – organizing foreign policy concept and driver up to 2050.

Xi has clearly understood that global leadership implies being a top provider, mostly to the global South, of connectivity, infrastructure financing, comprehensive technical assistance, construction hardware and myriad other trappings of “modernization”.

It does not hurt that this trade/commerce/investment onslaught helps to internationalize the yuan.

It’s easy to forget that BRI, an unparalleled multinational connectivity drive set to economically link all points Asia to Europe and Africa, was announced only three years ago, in Astana (Central Asia) and Jakarta (Southeast Asia).

What was originally known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road were endorsed by the Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee in November 2013. Only after the release of an official document, “Visions and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Roads”, in March 2015, the whole project was finally named BRI.

According to the official Chinese timeline, we’re only at the start of phase 2. Phase 1, from 2013 to 2016, was “mobilization”. “Planning”, from 2016 to 2021, is barely on (and that explains why few major projects are online). “Implementation” is supposed to start in 2021, one year before Xi’s new term expires, and go all the way to 2049.

The horizon thus is 2050, coinciding with Xi’s “rich and powerful socialist nation” dream. There’s simply no other comprehensive, inclusive, far-reaching, financially solid development program on the global market. Certainly not India’s Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC).

Have BRI, will travel

It starts with Hong Kong. When Xi said, “We will continue to support Hong Kong and Macau in integrating their own development into the overall development of the country”, he meant Hong Kong configured as a major BRI financing hub – its new role after a recent past of business facilitator between China and the West.

Hong Kong’s got what it takes; convertible currency; total capital mobility; rule of law; no tax on interest, dividends and capital gains; total access to China’s capital market/savings; and last but not least, Beijing’s support.

Enter the dream of myriad financing packages (public-private; equity-debt; short-long term bonds). Hong Kong’s BRI role will be of the Total Package international financial center (venture capital; private equity; flotation of stocks and bonds; investment banking; mergers and acquisitions; reinsurance) interlinked with the Greater Bay Area – the 11 cities (including Guangzhou and Shenzhen) of the Pearl River Delta (light/heavy manufacturing; hi-tech venture capitalists, start-ups, investors; top research universities).

That ties up with Xi’s emphasis on innovation; “We will strengthen basic research in applied sciences, launch major national science and technology projects, and prioritize innovation in key generic technologies, cutting-edge frontier technologies, modern engineering technologies, and disruptive technologies.”

The integration of the Greater Bay Area is bound to inspire, fuel, and in some cases even mould some of BRI’s key projects. The Eurasian Land Bridge from Xinjiang to Western Russia (China and Kazakhstan are actively turbo-charging their joint free trade zone at Khorgos). The China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. The connection of the Central Asian “stans” to West Asia – Iran and Turkey. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from Xinjiang all the way to Gwadar in the Arabian Sea – capable of sparking an “economic revolution” according to Islamabad. The China-Indochina corridor from Kunming to Singapore. The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor (assuming India does not boycott it). The Maritime Silk Road from coastal southeast China all the way to the Mediterranean, from Piraeus to Venice.

Yiwu-London freight trains, Shanghai-Tehran freight trains, the Turkmenistan to Xinjiang gas pipeline – these are all facts on the ground. Along the way, the technologies and tools of infrastructure connectivity – applied to high-speed rail networks, power plants, solar farms, motorways, bridges, ports, pipelines – will be closely linked with financing by the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the security-economic cooperation imperatives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to build the new Eurasia from Shanghai to Rotterdam. Or, to evoke Vladimir Putin’s original vision, even before BRI was launched, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.

Xi did not spell it out, but Beijing will do everything to stay as independent as possible from the Western Central Bank system, with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) to be avoided in as many trade deals as possible to the benefit of yuan-based transactions or outright barter. The petrodollar will be increasingly bypassed (it’s already happening between China and Iran, and Beijing sooner rather than later will demand it from Saudi Arabia.)

The end result, by 2050, will be, barring inevitable, complex glitches, an integrated market of 4.5 billion people mostly using local currencies for bilateral and multilateral trade, or a basket of currencies (yuan-ruble-rial-yen-rupee).

Xi has laid China’s cards – as well as the road map – on the table. As far as the Chinese Dream is concerned, it’s now clear; Have BRI, Will Travel.

Betrayal! The Pervasive & Defining Crime Of Our Age

Let me apologize in advance for what may be an upsetting piece of writing for some of you. If you"re in a state of shock or exhaustion from recent events, perhaps you should skip this one.

I don"t offer this analysis in order to further distress anyone -- but until you understand what is happening and how that influences your psychological state, you"ll remain the emotional equivalent of a rag doll shaken to-and-fro by events.

Such understanding may not bring you to a place of calm acceptance. But it will set you free.

Betrayal

The recent acts of violence in the US, especially the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, are not arising out of a vacuum. Nor are the Brexit vote, the election of Trump, or the recent Catalonian vote for secession, random unconnected acts.

These -- and future similarly disruptive events sure to come -- are all arising out of the fact that we all have been betrayed.

For the purposes of this article, let"s define betrayal as:

the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions of a trusted person or institution. The emotional impacts of betrayal may include shock, a sense of loss, grief, damaged self-esteem, humiliation, self-doubt, shame, and anger.

We"re betrayed every time our trust is violated, in small ways or large. An example of a small betrayal might be hiding a frivolous purchase from your partner when you"ve both agreed to stick to a shared budget. A larger betrayal would be infidelity.

But betrayals aren"t limited to relationships between individuals. They can be perpetrated across groups, even nations. Like the enormous betrayal of trust committed when the US sent its military into Iraq on the basis of falsified ‘intelligence".

No matter the perpetrator, size and scope of a betrayal, the parties involved are only able to heal the damage done if there"s an open and honest dialog where the betrayer admits to their violations and atones openly and honestly. As discussed in much more detail in our excellent podcast with an experienced cognitive therapist, the betrayer must fully atone for their actions, face all consequences, and openly answer every question posed to them by the aggrieved.

If none of that happens, then then the animosity festers and is never ‘gotten over.’ Time does not heal that wound. It only offers a swampy breeding ground for a swarm of resentments.

In other words, if you find yourself increasingly distressed or angry (as I am) about the rampant violations of public trust in today"s world, it’s because you"re paying attention. It means you"re not crazy; you"re normal.

Betrayal Of The Public Trust

In the US, politicians deservedly enjoy a very low approval rating. Their words so rarely match their actions that it’s a too rare delight to find someone of character and conscience in DC.

Instead, we regularly see dirt bags like this:

This congressman is why people hate politics

Oct 4, 2017

Washington (CNN)

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy has had one hell of a last month.

In early September, the Republican House member admitted to an extramarital affair with a "personal friend"following the unsealing of divorce records that showed he had been involved in a relationship with Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist.

It got much, much worse on Tuesday when the Post-Gazette reported on a text message exchange between Edwards and Murphy in which she alleges he urged her to have an abortion.

Murphy"s personal foibles are not the point here. What is the point is that he is someone who has been an outspoken critic of abortion rights in his public life even while apparently being much more willing to consider it when it impacts him personally.

Murphy was a co-sponsor of legislation --passed in the House on Tuesday night-- that would make it illegal for women to abort a baby after the 20-week mark.

He has a perfect 100% score with National Right to Life, having voted with the organization on five key pieces of legislation, including the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act." As my former Washington Post colleague Aaron Blake expertly documents, Murphy was also touting his anti-abortion stance even as he was reportedly urging his mistress to seek an abortion.

(Source)

A sordid tale indeed. The essence of which is a powerful politician saying one thing but doing another. He loudly espoused strong family values and a staunch right-to-life voting record -- all while conducting an extra-marital affair and pressuring his mistress to get an abortion.

For the constituents who believed in this man, his deeds offer a profound betrayal. 

Tim Murphy represents the credo that the politicians in The Swamp live by: Do as we say, not as we do.

There are so many examples of prominent politicians and religious leaders saying one thing but doing nearly the exact opposite that one hardly knows how to begin listing them all. 

Heck, even "America"s Dad", Bill Cosby, has turned out to be a serial rapist.

All these betrayals have led to a rule I now live by: The more someone proclaims a strong moral position, the more I suspect them of secretly doing the opposite.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Institutionally Betrayed

But the scope of our victimization goes far beyond that conducted by individuals. The very institutions, both public and private, that we rely on are often fleecing us more than serving us.

The betrayals of the Catholic Church in covering up thousands of sexual assaults and tens of thousands of child victims are absolutely devastating.

Pharmaceutical companies quietly fund opposition to medical marijuana ballot initiatives because the data shows that the use of safe and effective marijuana seriously cuts into the extremely profitable sales of highly addictive and deadly opiates.

Car insurance companies rob their most loyal customers by slowly ratcheting up premiums in a scheme called “price optimization” in the industry. (This happened to me because I had not taken the time to shop around recently. I was horrified when I did. I wasn’t as badly screwed as some customers who paying up to 800% more than they should, but it still hurt.)

Of course hospitals with their captive hostage billing rackets are among the worst of the worst. So are private for-profit prisons, indecipherable 48-page phone bills, and Monsanto ghost writing “research” to obscure the probable cancer causing nature of Round Up while certain EPA staffers looked the other way.

In short, it’s difficult to have any sort of optimism about any large US corporations at this point. All of them are busy betraying us in ways large and small, every day, ranging from being evasive about the degree to which they snoop into our private affairs, to the ways in which they limit our access to the free flow of information by altering the results of popular online search algorithms.

In such an environment of pervasive betrayal, it’s difficult to maintain any sense of trust.

It turns out the best strategy is to trust nobody. Especially not a corporation with a large enough staff to segment their actions into enough ‘silos of deniability’, where no one person feels directly culpable for placing profits over people. “Hey Bill, as an exercise, why don’t you run an analysis that shows how many customers we might lose if we steadily increase their insurance rates, and then I’ll run it by legal and accounting…”

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Sovereign Betrayal

The behavior of nations is no better on this front.

For example, in response to the highly-democratic Catalan referendum for independence, the EU bureaucracy has been busy betraying any commitments it had to protecting and advancing democracy. The EU Commission First Vice President said this:

STRASBOURG —The Spanish government’s “proportionate use of force” in Catalonia was necessary to uphold the rule of law, the European Commission declared on Wednesday.

As the European Parliament opened a debate on the Catalonia crisis, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans sided unequivocally with the Madrid government.

“None of us want to see violence in our societies,” Timmermans went on. “However it is a duty for any government to uphold the law, and this sometimes does require the proportionate use of force.”

(Source)

"Proportionate use of force?"

Wow. That"s an amazing perversion of language. Most of you have seen the pictures of peaceful people being ruthlessly clubbed by Spanish police -- simply because they exercised their right to vote. Here"s a graphic video of a woman"s fingers being methodically and cruelly broken as she lay on her back barely resisting (only watch it if you have a strong stomach).

Police broke my fingers one by one and touched my breasts

A woman dragged out of a polling station in Barcelona by police broke down in tears today as she claimed they had broken her fingers "one by one" and sexually assaulted her while they laughed.

Marta Torrecillas was filmed being violently removed from a school in the city"s upmarket Eixample area as Catalonia voted for independence yesterday.

The clip, captured at Paul Claris School, showed her being manhandled as she tried to walk past officers in full body armour on a day when footage of police brutality sparked outrage around the world.

Her dress was forced up around her thighs - leaving her exposed and humiliated - as she was dragged down towards the exit.She later claimed officers had touched her breasts and broken her fingers "deliberately, one by one".

(Source)

Her crime? Thinking she had the right to peacefully cast a vote. For that she was brutally assaulted, as were hundreds of other people. To which the EU VP merely said “it is a duty of any government to uphold the law.” 

Remember, it was the EU that voted to sanction and then bomb Libya because of concerns that Qaddafi was persecuting civilians (despite virtually no evidence this was the case) .

When your own government protects other people (as a pretext for violent regime change) but persecutes you, it is nothing short of a massive betrayal. Remember, anger, resentment, and humiliation are extremely difficult to ‘get over.’

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Betrayal By The Elites

Here in October 2017, the stock and bond markets are in melt-up mode. This is a gigantic theft -- a deliberate transfer of wealth to those who already hold financial assets. The 1% is getting richer and richer while everybody without an already-significant pile of financial assets to their name languishes.

The central banks know exactly what they are doing and why. Stoking a massive boom in financial assets is benefiting their member banks, the ruling classes, the industry titans who fete them at swanky events like Davos, and the rich members of Congress.

Of course, this unfair wealth transfer is a massive betrayal of everybody who needs to save their hard-earned income for the future.

The central banks have vastly reduced the purchasing power of newly-earned money, making assets twice (or more) as expensive as they were just five years ago.  Anyone looking to buy a home, invest in a stock, or purchase a car, clearly can see this.

That’s inflation in every sense of the word. Inflation destroys wealth; it doesn"t grow it.

Here are a few simple questions to frame things.

• Would you rather receive 2% on a ten-year bond or 6%?


• Would you rather get 1 share of a given stock or 2 for the same amount of money?


• Would you rather get a dividend yield of 1.5% or 3%?

Obviously, you’d rather get more than less in every case. You’d take two instead of one for the same money whenever you could.

But the Federal Reserve has decided, using deeply flawed reasoning and no historical perspective, that simply jamming up the value of financial assets for those who already hold them is the best course of action.

Are you one of those who needs to save up for retirement? Tough luck. The Fed has decided you"re the loser in this story. You"ve been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

Generational Betrayal

One of the very worst forms of betrayal is that levied against an entire generation.

Today, we"re saddling young people with poor job prospects, high student debts, impossibly expensive housing stock, and a crumbling national infrastructure. All while asking them to shoulder the costs of the older generations underfunded entitlement and pension programs.

The statement to young people is clear: “We don’t care about you. We only care about us.”

It"s reprehensible. But that’s what massive betrayals are.

To just focus on housing in the US (and let’s be clear, housing is just as bad a situation in London, Stockholm, and a hundred other cities across the globe), the Federal Reserve has made higher home prices a specific policy goal. Its truly idiotic theory was that higher home prices make people feel richer, and that such people will borrow against the equity in their homes to spend more.

The reason this is idiotic is that a house that costs twice as much isn’t twice as valuable. As the market price goes up, the square footage and amenities remain exactly the same. The only real difference is that your property taxes and insurance costs have climbed, too. So in actuality,  it"s an even larger money drain than before.

Because assets generate cash flow and liabilities consume cash flow, it’s best to think of your primary residence as a liability and not an asset. But few people do that during a housing bubble like the one we"re in now. Just remember that all gains are speculative -- they only matter if you"re able to sell the house and invest the profits elsewhere. Otherwise, your "gains" can easily evaporate with the next market downturn.

The charts below show the astronomical prices homebuyer are faced with today. Here"s the national price index, which has propelled above it"s previous bubble high (remember: the bubble the triggered the Great Financial Crisis?):

(Source)

The view from a regional level often looks even more grim. Here"s what homebuyers in Dallas are experiencing:

Ouch!

Sorry next generation, the boomers driving the Federal Reserve"s policy have decided that you are expendable pawns. To protect their advantage, the older generation has decided to eat its young.

In other words, you’ve been betrayed.

It’s time to refuse to put up with this any longer.

*  *  *

In Part 2: Fighting Back -- A Call To Action, we detail the agency that we as individuals have in this story, to throw off the shackles of our victimhood and secure a prosperous future as protected as possible from the clutches of the betrayers. The betrayals will only come more fast and furious from here. This is expected. Dying systems with failing narratives are always messy and become increasingly desperate in their actions. Start taking steps to seize your future freedom now. Click here to read the report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

Chris Hedges On The End Of Empire: "The Death Spiral Appears Unstoppable"

The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S. treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa to do its bidding. Add to this the mounting destruction caused by climate change and you have a recipe for an emerging dystopia. Overseeing this descent at the highest levels of the federal and state governments is a motley collection of imbeciles, con artists, thieves, opportunists and warmongering generals. And to be clear, I am speaking about Democrats, too.

Source: Mr.Fish

The empire will limp along, steadily losing influence until the dollar is dropped as the world’s reserve currency, plunging the United States into a crippling depression and instantly forcing a massive contraction of its military machine.

Short of a sudden and widespread popular revolt, which does not seem likely, the death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two. The global vacuum we leave behind will be filled by China, already establishing itself as an economic and military juggernaut, or perhaps there will be a multipolar world carved up among Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and a few other states. Or maybe the void will be filled, as the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power,” by “a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral military forces like NATO, and an international financial leadership self-selected at Davos and Bilderberg” that will “forge a supranational nexus to supersede any nation or empire.”

Under every measurement, from financial growth and infrastructure investment to advanced technology, including supercomputers, space weaponry and cyberwarfare, we are being rapidly overtaken by the Chinese. “In April 2015 the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that the American economy would grow by nearly 50 percent over the next 15 years, while China’s would triple and come close to surpassing America’s in 2030,” McCoy noted. China became the world’s second largest economy in 2010, the same year it became the world’s leading manufacturing nation, pushing aside a United States that had dominated the world’s manufacturing for a century. The Department of Defense issued a sober report titled “At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World.” It found that the U.S. military “no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” and “it no longer can … automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.” McCoy predicts the collapse will come by 2030.

Empires in decay embrace an almost willful suicide. Blinded by their hubris and unable to face the reality of their diminishing power, they retreat into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war.

This collective self-delusion saw the United States make the greatest strategic blunder in its history, one that sounded the death knell of the empire - the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The architects of the war in the George W. Bush White House, and the array of useful idiots in the press and academia who were cheerleaders for it, knew very little about the countries being invaded, were stunningly naive about the effects of industrial warfare and were blindsided by the ferocious blowback. They stated, and probably believed, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although they had no valid evidence to support this claim. They insisted that democracy would be implanted in Baghdad and spread across the Middle East. They assured the public that U.S. troops would be greeted by grateful Iraqis and Afghans as liberators. They promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of reconstruction. They insisted that the bold and quick military strike—“shock and awe”—would restore American hegemony in the region and dominance in the world. It did the opposite. As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted, this “unilateral war of choice against Iraq precipitated a widespread delegitimation of U.S. foreign policy.”

Historians of empire call these military fiascos, a feature of all late empires, examples of “micro-militarism.” The Athenians engaged in micro-militarism when during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) they invaded Sicily, suffering the loss of 200 ships and thousands of soldiers and triggering revolts throughout the empire. Britain did so in 1956 when it attacked Egypt in a dispute over the nationalization of the Suez Canal and then quickly had to withdraw in humiliation, empowering a string of Arab nationalist leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and dooming British rule over the nation’s few remaining colonies. Neither of these empires recovered.

“While rising empires are often judicious, even rational in their application of armed force for conquest and control of overseas dominions, fading empires are inclined to ill-considered displays of power, dreaming of bold military masterstrokes that would somehow recoup lost prestige and power,” McCoy writes.

“Often irrational even from an imperial point of view, these micromilitary operations can yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the process already under way.”

Empires need more than force to dominate other nations. They need a mystique. This mystique—a mask for imperial plunder, repression and exploitation—seduces some native elites, who become willing to do the bidding of the imperial power or at least remain passive. And it provides a patina of civility and even nobility to justify to those at home the costs in blood and money needed to maintain empire. The parliamentary system of government that Britain replicated in appearance in the colonies, and the introduction of British sports such as polo, cricket and horse racing, along with elaborately uniformed viceroys and the pageantry of royalty, were buttressed by what the colonialists said was the invincibility of their navy and army. England was able to hold its empire together from 1815 to 1914 before being forced into a steady retreat. America’s high-blown rhetoric about democracy, liberty and equality, along with basketball, baseball and Hollywood, as well as our own deification of the military, entranced and cowed much of the globe in the wake of World War II. Behind the scenes, of course, the CIA used its bag of dirty tricks to orchestrate coups, fix elections and carry out assassinations, black propaganda campaigns, bribery, blackmail, intimidation and torture. But none of this works anymore.

The loss of the mystique is crippling. It makes it hard to find pliant surrogates to administer the empire, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photographs of physical abuse and sexual humiliation imposed on Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib inflamed the Muslim world and fed al-Qaida and later Islamic State with new recruits. The assassination of Osama bin Laden and a host of other jihadist leaders, including the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, openly mocked the concept of the rule of law. The hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees fleeing our debacles in the Middle East, along with the near-constant threat from militarized aerial drones, exposed us as state terrorists. We have exercised in the Middle East the U.S. military’s penchant for widespread atrocities, indiscriminate violence, lies and blundering miscalculations, actions that led to our defeat in Vietnam.

The brutality abroad is matched by a growing brutality at home. Militarized police gun down mostly unarmed, poor people of color and fill a system of penitentiaries and jails that hold a staggering 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although Americans represent only 5 percent of global population. Many of our cities are in ruins. Our public transportation system is a shambles. Our educational system is in steep decline and being privatized. Opioid addiction, suicide, mass shootings, depression and morbid obesity plague a population that has fallen into profound despair. The deep disillusionment and anger that led to Donald Trump’s election - a reaction to the corporate coup d’état and the poverty afflicting at least half of the country - have destroyed the myth of a functioning democracy. Presidential tweets and rhetoric celebrate hate, racism and bigotry and taunt the weak and the vulnerable. The president in an address before the United Nations threatened to obliterate another nation in an act of genocide. We are worldwide objects of ridicule and hatred. The foreboding for the future is expressed in the rash of dystopian films, motion pictures that no longer perpetuate American virtue and exceptionalism or the myth of human progress.

“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” McCoy writes. “Despite the aura of omnipotence empires often project, most are surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent strength of even a modest nation-state. Indeed, a glance at their history should remind us that the greatest of them are susceptible to collapse from diverse causes, with fiscal pressures usually a prime factor. For the better part of two centuries, the security and prosperity of the homeland has been the main objective for most stable states, making foreign or imperial adventures an expendable option, usually allocated no more than 5 percent of the domestic budget. Without the financing that arises almost organically inside a sovereign nation, empires are famously predatory in their relentless hunt for plunder or profit—witness the Atlantic slave trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, British India’s opium commerce, the Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the Soviet exploitation of Eastern Europe.”

When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.”

“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, eleven years for the Ottomans, seventeen for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just twenty-seven years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the U.S. invaded Iraq],” he writes.

Many of the estimated 69 empires that have existed throughout history lacked competent leadership in their decline, having ceded power to monstrosities such as the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero. In the United States, the reins of authority may be in the grasp of the first in a line of depraved demagogues.

“For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness,” McCoy writes. The loss of the dollar as the global reserve currency will see the U.S. unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds, which will be drastically devalued at that point. There will be a massive rise in the cost of imports. Unemployment will explode. Domestic clashes over what McCoy calls “insubstantial issues” will fuel a dangerous hypernationalism that could morph into an American fascism.

A discredited elite, suspicious and even paranoid in an age of decline, will see enemies everywhere. The array of instruments created for global dominance—wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties, sophisticated torture techniques, militarized police, the massive prison system, the thousands of militarized drones and satellites—will be employed in the homeland. The empire will collapse and the nation will consume itself within our lifetimes if we do not wrest power from those who rule the corporate state.

"Dear President Trump: America Is In For A Rude Awakening In January"

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

Dear President Trump,

Over the last couple of years I’ve been all over TV… from Fox News to CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg. I’ve been telling our fellow Americans that the financial global elite was planning to issue their own globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs.

And that those elites would use this new currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.

I’ve even written about this extensively in my best-selling booksThe Road to Ruin and The New Case for Gold.

I’m sure some people in the mainstream media thought I was out of line — but the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have both confirmed this plan to replace the U.S. dollar is real. I’ve made this warning many times, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. That’s why I’m writing directly to you.

Here’s the proof that the U.S. dollar is under attack, right in front of our eyes:

The UN said we need “a new global reserve system… that no longer relies on the United States dollar as the single major reserve currency.”

And the IMF admitted they want to make “the special drawing right (SDR) the principal reserve asset in the [International Monetary System].”

More recently, the IMF advanced their plan by helping private institutions, such as the UK’s Standard Chartered Bank, issue bonds in SDRs.

Although our mainstream media ignored this major event, the UK media reported:

This is all happening. And on January 1st, 2018, this trend to replace the U.S. dollar will accelerate. That’s when the global elite will implement a major change to the plumbing of our financial system.

It’s a brand-new worldwide banking system called Distributed Ledger Technology. And it will have a huge impact on seniors who are now preparing for retirement.

When this system goes live, many nations will be able to dump the U.S. dollar for SDRs.

For now, the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. Other nations have to hold and use the U.S. dollar for international trade, instead of their own currencies.

This creates a virtually unlimited demand for U.S. dollars, which allows us to print trillions of dollars each year to pay for wars, debt and anything we want. It keeps our country operating.

Now, we can see that the global elites are working to unseat the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.

Here are the three key pieces of information that prove this will happen.

Fact #1 — The IMF issues a globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs.

Fact #2 — The IMF has confirmed they want to replace the U.S. dollar with SDRs.

Fact #3 — The IMF has confirmed Distributed Ledgers can be used for “currency substitution”… and they’ve even set up a special task force to speed up implementation.

The IMF is using this technology to create an SDR payment system, because that’s the currency they issue.

As you know, Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, is the woman in the middle.

When asked about the task force, she said:

“As I see it, all this amounts to a brave new world for the financial sector.”

Yes, a brave new world where the dollar is no longer the world reserve currency.

Barbara C. Matthews, a former US Treasury Department attaché to the European Union, has reached the same conclusion.

She said the link between the globalists’ currency and Distributed Ledgers “is impossible to avoid.”

And that “the IMF seems to be exploring the possibility of permitting a broader use of [their globalist currency] beyond internal transactions among member central banks.”

Make no mistake, if the IMF is planning to use Distributed Ledgers to replace the U.S. dollar with SDRs. And just to be clear, when SDRs take over, the American people will be left with devalued dollars.

Once other nations start accumulating the globalist currency through Distributed Ledgers, they will no longer need to hold dollars. Once Distributed Ledgers go live, other nations will no longer need to buy Treasury bonds.

And that means our government — your government — will no longer be able to finance its normal operations, including welfare programs like Social Security. For those who have their retirement account parked in stocks, they could watch it evaporate in a matter of days. The weakest companies in the stock market could collapse once this plan goes live.

Just look what happened the last time we had a big change in our global financial system. In 1971, Nixon announced the U.S. would no longer officially trade dollars for gold. That created a lot of uncertainties, turning that decade into a nightmare for stock investors.

Take a look… the Dow Jones, an index of “stable” blue chip stocks (the kind most retirees like to hold), was cut in half. Stock investors bailed out of the market and, for the most part, didn’t come back for a decade.

I expect something similar once Distributed Ledgers go live.

The transition from a U.S. dollar system to a new system dominated by SDRs will be messy. Stocks will collapse… and will stay down. There will be no recovery this time, because the U.S. government won’t be able to come to the rescue like they did in 2008.

You won’t even have funding for normal operations, let alone enough funds to save stock investors.

I know that governments have been patiently watching Distributed Ledger (often referred to as blockchain) technology develop and grow outside their control for the past eight years. Libertarian supporters of Distributed Ledgers celebrate this lack of government control.

Yet, their celebration is premature, and their belief in the sustainability of powerful systems outside government control is naïve. Governments don’t like competition especially when it comes to money.

You probably know that you, or any government, cannot stop Distributed Ledger technology — in fact you probably don’t want to. Governments and monetary elites want to control it using powers of regulation, taxation, and investigation.

An elite U.S. legal institution called the Uniform Law Commission, which proposes model laws intended for adoption in all fifty states, has released its latest proposal called the “Uniform Regulation of Virtual Currency Businesses Act.”

This new law will not only provide a regulatory scheme for state regulators, but will also be a platform for litigation by private plaintiffs and class action lawyers seeking recourse against real or imagined abuses by digital coin exchanges and facilities.

We know the U.S. government will want to use this technology for its benefit. One step toward government control just occurred a few weeks ago.

On August 1, 2017, the SEC announced “Guidance on Regulation of Initial Coin Offerings,” the first step toward requiring fundraising through Distributed Ledger, or blockchain-based tokens to register with the government.

But consider the following additional developments:

• On August 1, 2017, the World Economic Forum, host body to the Davos conference of global super-elites, published a paper entitled “Four reasons to question the hype around blockchain.”


• On August 7, 2017, China announced they will begin using Distributed Ledger technology to collect taxes and issue “electronic invoices” to citizens there.

Perhaps most portentously, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has weighed in.

In a special report dated June 2017, the IMF had this to say about Distributed Ledgers: The IMF favors control by a “pre-selected group of participants” or “one organization,” rather than allowing “anyone” to participate.

This paper should be viewed as the first step in the IMF’s plan to migrate its existing form of world money, the SDR, onto a DLT platform controlled by the IMF.

They’re telling you exactly what their plan is. It would be foolish to ignore them, or assume the U.S. dollar will remain the global reserve currency much longer once this plan is implemented, as early as January 1, 2018.

You know the global elites’ aren’t your biggest fan. You know the U.S. dollar has been under attack.

This is the global financial elites’ plan to remove the U.S. dollar from its position of power and to attack your administration all at once.

Who do you think American’s will blame when the stock market crashes, or Social Security runs out? We can hear the talking heads already.

Best,