“Russia Did It” and Other Crimes

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin

 

 

 

 

 

We haven’t had a system of capitalism since the Federal Reserve and Woodrow Wilson hijacked the US Treasury and US economy in 1913. Our financial, monetary and economic system has morphed into fascism, corporatism or something more akin to communism/socialism. The way our economy operates today, in 2017 - it is certainly not capitalism.

 

Since 2008, the ruling and banking class haven’t even tried to hide the FACT that our system is about oligarchs and theft – anything but capitalism. The same could be said for Europe and most any Western “developed” nation. We have a program called Quantitative Easing, which is a fancy, made-up way of saying money printing and bond market manipulation. We also have, proven in a court of law, rigged FOREX markets – the global currency market. The LIBOR market (loan interest rate market) is also rigged as proven, once again in a court of law.

 

Look at Greece, Venezuela and Zimbabwe for the second time in less than 20 years. These three nations have seen their economies completely collapse. Greece has been propped up by the European Central Bank because if Greece’s economy were to rot away in the same way as Venezuela and Zimbabwe, then Germany and Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, would collapse. This would trigger a global economic collapse that would make 2008 look like a rounding error. This will not do.

 

Until what is explained above is understood, capitalism will continue to be made out to be the bad guy of our economic problems. As long as capitalism is made the enemy, the ruling and banking class criminals can and will continue their global crime sprees uncontested. One can not compare our current economic system to capitalism when it has almost nothing to do with capitalism. If one compares it to fascism, then the truth is more easily understood. Fascism is all about inequality – haves and have nots, with nothing in-between. What do we hear from the mainstream media over and over – the one thing they actually get right – is there is an attack on middle class incomes and middle class America. This is 100% correct. Until the middle class is completely wiped out, the oligarchs can not truly dictate what the masses will accept.

 

The US government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has concluded.

The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.
Source

If you combine this information with what is happening today with the “Russia did it” narrative then we see how these oligarchs push the mass of people to accept whatever lie they are pushing. If there is information that will prove Hillary is a treasonous criminal who should be investigated and then imprisoned for high crimes, well, simply ignore that information and never, ever present credible information on any mainstream media TV or radio. TV and radio are for entertainment, not real information.

 

No one who is promoting the Russiagate allegations is trying to debate William Binney’s allegations.

Instead, all of the news media are plastered with allegations of ‘Russia’s meddling in American democracy’.

William Binney is the mathematician and Russia-specialist, who quit the NSA in 2001 as its global Technical Director for geopolitical analysis, because of the lying about, and manipulations of, intelligence, that he saw — distortions of intelligence by the George W. Bush Administration — in order to ‘justify’ systematic, massive, and all-encompassing, Government snooping into all Americans’ private electronic communications. His, and some colleagues’, efforts to get the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense to investigate the matter, produced FBI raids into their homes, and seizures of their computers, so as to remove incriminating evidence they might have against higher-ups. According to Binney, NSA’s Director, Michael Hayden, had vetoed in August 2001 a far less intrusive and more effective system of signals-intelligence collection and analysis, which might have enabled the 9/11 attacks to be blocked — a more effective system that would have been less expensive, less intrusive, and not violated Americans’ Constitutional rights. Hayden went on to head the CIA, until the end of George W. Bush’s Presidency. Afterward, Hayden joined the Chertoff Group and other military-industrial-complex contractors of the US federal Government. There were no such rewards for any of the whistleblowers. Source

All of these issues are interconnected. If the economy were capitalistic, we would have real news on TV and radio. If we had real news on TV and radio, we would hear from people like William Binney and

reports like Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens would be reported on as well. This would lead directly to the arrest of people like Prescott Bush, George Bush, Sr, George Bush, Jr, the Clinton Crime Family and Obama. This would then lead to the arrest of every banking president and banking “C” level executive for the past 50+ years. This would then lead to the arrest of the “C” level executives of some of the largest corporations in the world.

 

It all begins, as we have stated time and again, with a corrupt currency. Once a currency becomes corrupt, the entire system is forced into a life of corruption and crime to cover up the lies the currency is telling. The currency we have in our wallets is a criminal, corrupt liar. Until we attack this criminal and correct the lies, we will continue to be slaves to the oligarchs.

 

 

 

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“Russia Did It” and Other Crimes

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin

 

 

 

Check out these other articles by our contributors:

 

John Rubino - Gold vs. Bitcoin: The Pro-Gold Argument Takes Shape

Peter Diekmeyer - The 2.4 Trillion Hidden Fed Tax

Ed Steer - Gold and Silver Digest

Eric Sprott"s Weekly Wrap-Up

 

The ECB's Target2 Lies - Exposing The Real Capital Flight From Italy & Spain

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The ECB claims that Target2 does not represent capital flight. Evidence says the ECB is wrong, especially for Italy and Spain.

I have discussed this previously, but let’s recap Target2 before taking a look at new charts.

Project Syndicate writer, Hans-Werner Sinn, explains why the ECB’s asset purchases and Target2 imbalances constitute “Europe’s Secret Bailout”.

Under the ECB’s QE program, which started in March 2015, eurozone members’ central banks buy private market securities for €1.74 trillion ($1.84 trillion), with more than €1.4 trillion to be used to purchase their own countries’ government debt.

The QE program seems to be symmetrical because each central bank repurchases its own government debt in proportion to the size of the country. But it does not have a symmetrical effect, because government debt from southern European countries, where the debt binges and current-account deficits of the past occurred, are mostly repurchased abroad.

For example, the Banco de España repurchases Spanish government bonds from all over the world, thereby deleveraging the country vis-à-vis private creditors. To this end, it asks other eurozone members’ central banks, particularly the German Bundesbank and, in some cases, the Dutch central bank, to credit the payment orders to the German and Dutch bond sellers. Frequently, if the sellers of Spanish government bonds are outside the eurozone, it will ask the ECB to credit the payment orders.

In the latter case, this often results in triangular transactions, with the sellers transferring the money to Germany or the Netherlands to invest it in fixed-interest securities, companies, or company shares. Thus, the German Bundesbank and the Dutch central bank must credit not only the direct payment orders from Spain but also the indirect orders resulting from the Banca de España’s repurchases in third countries.

The payment order credits granted by the Bundesbank and the Dutch central bank are recorded as Target claims against the euro system.

For the GIPS countries [Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain], these transactions are a splendid deal. They can exchange interest-bearing government debt with fixed maturities held by private investors for the (currently) non-interest-bearing and never-payable Target book debt of their central banks – institutions that the Maastricht Treaty defines as limited liability companies because member states do not have to recapitalize them when they are over-indebted.

If a crash occurs and those countries leave the euro, their national central banks are likely to go bankrupt because much of their debt is denominated in euro, whereas their claims against the respective states and the banks will be converted to the new depreciating currency. The Target claims of the remaining euro system will then vanish into thin air, and the Bundesbank and the Dutch central bank will only be able to hope that other surviving central banks participate in their losses. At that time, German and Dutch asset sellers who now hold central bank money will notice that their stocks are claims against their central banks that are no longer covered.

Target2 Liabilities

A quick perusal of Target2 Balances for January shows capital flight has largely stabilized but the imbalance in Spain hit a new record.

ECB’s Story on Target2 Doesn’t Add Up

Financial Times Alphaville guest writer Marcello Minenna makes a case in pictures for what I have long stated.

It’s interesting to note that Minenna is the head of Quantitative Analysis and Financial Innovation at Consob, the Italian securities regulator.

Minenna says the ECB’s Story on Target2 Doesn’t Add Up

Mienna compares France with its stable Target2 balance to Italy and Spain.

France Target2 Over Time

The red line with dots represents the imbalance. As of July France had a Target2 liability of 12.2 billion. France shows no correlation to ECB asset purchases.

Germany Target2 Surplus

Italy Target2 Liability

Spain Target2 Liability

Mienna goes over what various colored bars represents and concludes “For Italy and Spain, the QE programme has facilitated capital outflows by domestic investors. Elsewhere, it has not.”

This is what I concluded long ago. For discussion, please see Target2 and Secret Bailouts: Will Germany be Forced Into a Fiscal Union with Rest of Eurozone?

Vault Containing $70 Billion In German Gold To Be Evacuated As Frankfurt Defuses Massive Bomb

Approximately 60,000 residents of Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt, will be ordered to evacuate their homes on Sunday as the city"s emergency service staff will attempt to defuse a massive World War Two bomb, discovered recently at a local building site. The 1.4-tonne HC 4000 bomb dropped by the British air force during World War Two was uncovered on a building site on Wismarer Strasse in Frankfurt’s leafy Westend where many wealthy bankers live.

“We have never defused a bomb of this size,” bomb disposal expert Rene Bennert told Reuters, adding that it had been damaged on impact when it was dropped between 1943 and 1945.

Bomb disposal experts who examined it said the massive evacuation could wait until the weekend. “We are still working on the modalities of the evacuation plan,” a spokeswoman for Frankfurt police said on Wednesday.

As a result, ahead of Sunday"s planned evacuation, more than 100 hospital patients, including premature infants and those in intensive care, were evacuated from two Frankfurt hospitals on Saturday, city councillor Markus Frank told Reuters television. 

Every year more than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are still found in Germany, even under buildings. In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys. During World War II, Germany was pummeled by 1.5 million tonnes of bombs from British and American warplanes that killed 600,000 people. German officials estimate 15% of the bombs failed to explode, some burrowing six meters (yards) deep.

And while local residents have been eager to comply with the unprecedented evacuation, the biggest since the war, Frankfurt fire and police chiefs said they would use force and incarceration if necessary to clear the area of residents, warning that an uncontrolled explosion of the bomb would be big enough to flatten a city block.

Frankfurt’s residents have to clear the area by 8 a.m. on Sunday and police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb.

Where this otherwise trivial evacuation takes on a more sinister, "Die Harder" spin, is when looking at what other structures are impacted by the 1.5 km evacuation radius: these include Frankfurt’s Goethe University, police headquarters, two hospitals, transport systems... oh and the Bundesbank headquarters, which as a reminder ten days ago completed the accelerated repatriation of 674 tonnes of gold - some three years ahead of schedule - from New York and Paris to its vault deep underground.

According to Reuters, the Bundesbank vault which stores 1,710 tonnes of gold deep underground - approximately half the country’s reserves - is located less than 600 meters from the location of the bomb. Well, that particular vault which now holds $70 billion in gold (including $28 billion in freshly repatriated physical) and everything around it, is about to be evacuated. All that"s missing are several dozen dump trucks to take advantage of the massive evacuation that will leave thousands of gold bars without security for 1.5 kilometers in any direction.

While airspace for 1.5 kilometers around the bomb site will be closed, we doubt that will prove a major hurdle to anyone eager to take a stab at a real-life reincarnation of the second Die Hard movie.

Still, to prevent anyone from getting any ideas of following in Simon Gruber"s footsteps, a spokesman for the German Bundesbank said, that "the usual security arrangements" would remain in place while experts worked to disarm the bomb.

The fate of half of Germany"s gold aside, bomb disposal experts said they will make use of a “Rocket Wrench” to try and unscrew the fuses attached to the HC 4,000 bomb. If that fails, a water jet will be used to cut the fuses away from the bomb, Bennert told Reuters. The most dangerous part of the exercise will be applying the wrench, Bennert said.

Roads and transport systems, including the underground, will be closed during the work and for at least two hours after the bomb is defused, to allow patients to be transported back to hospitals without traffic. It is not unusual for unexploded bombs from World War Two air raids to be found in German cities, but rarely are they so large and in such a sensitive position.

Meanwhile, Frankfurters can spend the day at shelters set up at the trade fair and the Jahrhunderthalle convention center. Most museums are offering residents free entry on Sunday, and a few of them will open their doors earlier in the morning than usual.

Weird Things Are Happening With Gold

Authored by James Rickards

Last week featured two unusual stories on gold - one strange and the other truly weird. These stories explain why gold is not just money but is the most politicized form of money.

They show that while politicians publicly disparage gold, they quietly pay close attention to it.

The first strange gold story involves Germany…

The Deutsche Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany, announced that it had completed the repatriation of gold to Frankfurt from foreign vaults.

The German story is the completion of a process that began in 2013. That’s when the Deutsche Bundesbank first requested a return of some of the German gold from vaults in Paris, in London and at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Those gold transfers have now been completed.

This is a topic I first raised in the introduction to Currency Wars in 2011. I suggested that in extremis, the U.S. might freeze or confiscate foreign gold stored on U.S. soil using powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Trading With the Enemy Act or the USA Patriot Act.

This then became a political issue in Europe with agitation for repatriation in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Europeans wanted to get gold out of the U.S. and safely back to their own national vaults. The German transfer was completed ahead of schedule; the original completion date was 2020.

But the German central bank does not actually want the gold back because there is no well-developed gold-leasing market in Frankfurt and no experience leasing gold under German law.

German gold in New York or London was available for leasing under New York or U.K. law as part of global price-manipulation schemes. Moving gold to Frankfurt reduces the floating supply available for leasing, making it more difficult to keep the manipulation going.

Why did Germany do it?

The driving force both in 2013 (date of announcement) and 2017 (date of completion) is that both years are election years in Germany. Angela Merkel’s position as chancellor of Germany is up for a vote on Sept. 24, 2017. She may need a coalition to stay in power, and there’s a small nationalist party in Germany that agitates for gold repatriation.

Merkel stage-managed this gold repatriation with the Deutsche Bundesbank both in 2013 and this week to appease that small nationalist party and keep them in the coalition. That’s why the repatriation was completed three years early. She needs the votes now.

The truly weird gold story comes from the United States…

Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just paid a visit to Fort Knox to see the U.S. gold supply. Mnuchin is only the third Treasury secretary in history ever to visit Fort Knox and this was the first official visit from Washington, D.C., since 1974.

The U.S. government likes to ignore gold and not draw attention to it. Official visits to Fort Knox give gold some monetary credence that central banks would prefer it does not have.

Why an impromptu visit by Mnuchin and McConnell? Why now?

The answer may lie in the fact that the Treasury is running out of cash and could be broke by Sept. 29 if Congress does not increase the debt ceiling by then.

But the Treasury could get $355 billion in cash from thin air without increasing the debt simply by revaluing U.S. gold to a market price. (U.S. gold is currently officially valued at $42.22 per ounce on the Treasury’s books versus a market price of $1,285 per ounce.)

Once the Treasury revalues the gold, the Treasury can issue new “gold certificates” to the Fed and demand newly printed money in the Treasury’s account under the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. Since this money comes from gold revaluation, it does not increase the national debt and no debt ceiling legislation is required.

This would be a way around the debt ceiling if Congress cannot increase it in a timely way. This weird gold trick was actually done by the Eisenhower administration in 1953.

Maybe Mnuchin and McConnell just wanted to make sure the gold was there before they revalue it and issue new certificates.

Whatever the reason, this much official attention to gold is just one more psychological lift to the price along with Fed ease, scarce supply and continued voracious buying by Russia and China.

Who Knew? German Central Bank Has Been Selling Gold For More Than A Decade

Authored by Louis Cammarosano via Smaulgld.com,

Deutsche Bundesbank gold reserves shrink 45 tons over the past ten years.

• German Central Bank holdings fall From 3,420.6 tons at the end of Q2 2007 to 3375.6 tons, a drop of 1,446,783 ounces.


• German gold reserves have decreased 1.3% over ten years.

Bring the Gold Home & Sell Some

Deutsche Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany, has gained a high profile for its insistence on repatriating a good portion of its gold from vaults at the New York Fed, the Bank of England of London and the Bank of France in Paris. We have been covering the German gold repatriation story since they made their request in 2013 here, here, here and here.

The German repatriation requests aimed to rebalance the Deutsche Bundesbank’s gold holdings from nearly 70% held abroad to 50% held within Germany’s borders. The German Central Bank announced earlier this year that it has nearly completed its plan to repatriate its gold.

Jens Weidman, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank once famously said:

“Indeed, the fact that central banks can create money out of thin air, so to speak, is something that many observers are likely to find surprising and strange, perhaps mystical and dreamlike, too – or even nightmarish.”

In this video from the Deutsche Bundesbank, German nationals, Deutsche Bundesbank representatives and Herr Weidman explain the importance of gold to Germany.

Given the Deutsche Bundesbank’s statements and the accelerated German gold repatriation schedule, we are surprised to see that the Deutsche Bundesbank has been a steady seller of its gold over the past ten years.

German Gold Reserves 2007 – 2017

The Duetsche Bundesbank gold reserves fell 45 tons from June 30 2007 to May 31, 2017.

The Central Bank of Germany holds the second largest gold reserves of any central bank.

Currently, with the People’s Bank of China halting its gold purchases since October 2016, only the Central Banks of Russia, Kazakhstan and recently Turkey are steady buyers of gold.

How Central Banks Intend To Fight CryptoCurrencies

Submitted by Louis Cammarosano of Smaulgld

* * *

Based on remarks to Bundesbank Policy Symposium in a Speech “Frontiers in Central Banking – Past, Present and Future” contain clues of the battleplan. What if they fail?

As cryptocurrencies, which trade outside the banking system attract more capital, governments and central banks are devising ways to try and stop and or control their rise.

In “Cryptocurrencies Fiat Killers or Strengtheners” we noted how some Ethereum projects aim to make blockchain assets spendable through the banking system via connecting them to Visa and Mastercard.

In “Bill Would Require a Declaration of Digital Currency Holdings at the Border” we noted that the US Congress has tasked the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to devise a plan to stop the flows of cryptocurrencies into the country.

Last week, at the Bundesbank Policy Symposium, in a speech entitled “Frontiers in Central Banking – Past, Present and Future” Dr Jens Weidmann, President of the Deutsche Bundesbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements gave a speech outlining some ideas on how to best address the challenges that cyrptocurrencies pose to central banks.

The Plan

After explaining that central banks are creatures born of crisis in that they are designed to come to the rescue when there are financial crisis, Dr. Weidman, noted that market interventions by central banks often provide financial stability, but not with out creating additional risks.

Towards the end of his speech, Dr. Weidman remarked that policy intervention may be required, not to address a crisis, but to address technology. Digitalization has the potential to provide financial benefits to the economy, with the risk, however, of disintermediating central banks. As such, the ability of central banks to conduct monetary policy diminishes proportionally to the increase of digitalization.

Dr. Weidman dismisses the notion that privately issued digital currencies may eliminate central bank currencies, reasoning that “central banks are better able to deliver price stability than a rigid monetary rule or an algorithm.”

Therefore, one consideration might be that the central banks themselves would issue their own digital currencies- something that the central banks of Russia and China are considering. If central banks created digital currencies it would make those holding their liquid assets in the form of central bank digital currencies, the public would have greater protection because “central banks cannot become insolvent.”

Dr. Weidman notes that in times of crisis, money holders would withdraw their bank deposits and transfer them into the official digital currency, thereby rapidly withdrawing liquidity from the private banking sector in a digital bank run.

Without deposits, Dr. Weidman observes, banks could not make loans.

Weidman’s Conclusion

“My personal take on this is that central banks should strive to make existing payment systems more efficient and still faster than they already are – instant payment is the buzzword here. I am pretty confident that this will reduce most citizens’ interest in digital currencies.”

Discussion

1. Will “instant payment systems” run by central banks render public interest in private cryptocurrencies irrelevant or keep them at the fringe?

2. What if the central banks create instant payment systems, but the public interest in cryptocurrencies does not abate?

3. Will central banks instead create their own digital currencies and in effect kill off the private banking sector and become the banking system in their respective countries with the abilities to create loans, make credit decisions, issue credit and track all transactions?