In The News: EU Defense, U.S. Demise, Israel's Borders

If you have followed prophetic related developments in the world for any length of time, then you will know that one of the favorite topics involves the question of "what happens to America?". The basis for this question is centered on the fact that the U.S. isn't referenced anywhere in our "end times prophecy". This includes no reference to the U.S. in any way in Revelation 6-18 where great detail is given to the world powers at the time of the Tribulation. The omission is glaring. 

For years (at least before the past 4-5 years), speculation ranged from such ideas that the "gathering up" of the church would disproportionally affect the U.S., to the idea that the U.S. could simply be folded up by the EU's inevitable expansion into the "10 kings" phase. Both could still be true and could contribute to the demise of the U.S.

However, we are watching the implosion taking place and we are watching in real time. The factors given above may not be necessary. 

Additionally, it is of great interest that if the U.S. collapses economically, and the dollar collapses - then such events could easily lead to a worldwide central currency and a similar government put in place in order to manage this new world currency. 

The Dollar Collapse: Not Whether, But When

Uncle Sam is bankrupt. Serious financial commentators are now predicting riots in the streets and even, perhaps, outright economic collapse.

The U.S. dollar, the world’s reserve currency for almost half a century, is its reserve currency no more. Each dollar bill the administration prints is just as much a forgery as that bogus Hawaiian birth certificate.

Every two months, the administration prints or borrows more money than the combined annual profits of the 100 biggest publicly traded companies in America.

Every second, the U.S. government spends $64,000 it doesn’t have. The $64,000 Question is not whether but when the collapse will come. The crash of 2008 was a walk in the park. This is the big one. And the frankly communist outlook of the current administration means it is temperamentally disinclined to take any of the steps that are now essential to save America.

Trouble is, the GOP have little or nothing to say about this. For 10 successive suspicious weeks, U.S. federal debt has remained at just under $17 trillion, just under the debt ceiling set by your elected representatives in Congress.

Yeah, right. Dream on. The Treasury is fiddling the books. Fraudulently. According to my calculations, federal debt has risen not by zero but by $400 billion in those 70 days.

Today the U.S. has more government debt than any country in the history of the world. More debt than every country in the European Union – combined.

To minimize the interest on all that debt, the Fed has lowered its benchmark interest rate 10 times since August 2007, from 5.25 percent to somewhere between 0 and 0.25 percent. But it can’t go on doing that, because worldwide no one believes in the dollar. So interest rates are going to have to go up.

Porter Stansberry, an investment expert based in Baltimore, explains what will happen then: “What if the average real interest rate ends up being just 4 percent and we pay it off over 30 years, like a mortgage? We’ll spend $34.3 trillion just to repay what we owe right now. If the rate ends up being 6 percent, we’ll spend $43.1 trillion.”

The crunch will come when Uncle Sam’s creditors either completely stop accepting dollars in repayment or greatly discount the value of these new dollars.

The New York Post puts it this way: “The U.S. dollar is getting perilously close to losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. Should it cross the line, the 2008 financial crisis could look like a summer storm.” The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal have said the same.

The Chinese, via the official Xinhua news agency, have said: “International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert catastrophe caused by any single country.”

James Rickards, the author of “Currency Wars,” says this: “If the currency collapses, everything else goes with it: Stocks, bonds, commodities, derivatives and other investments are all priced in a nation’s currency. If you destroy the currency, you destroy all markets – and the nation.”

The Stock Market Could Plunge In A 3-Day Period

Market skeptic Bill Fleckenstein has long warned that the Fed's ultra-easy monetary policy would lead to implosion. 

Now he's saying a stockmarket collapse could materialize in only three days.

At some point thebond markets are going to say, ‘We are not comfortable with these policies.’  Obviously you can’t print money forever or no emerging country would ever have gone broke.  So the bond market starts to back up and the economy gets worse than it is now because rates are rising.  So the Fed says, ‘We can’t have this,’ and they decide to print more (money) and the bond market backs up (even more).

All of the sudden it becomes clear that money printing not only isn’t the solution, but it’s the problem.  Well, with rates going from where they are to 3%+ on the 10-Year, one of these days the S&P futures are going to get destroyed.  And if the computers ever get loose on the downside the market could break 25% in three days. 

Hyperinflation Coming



While CNBC may want to pooh-pooh the probability of something similar happening in our country, we all know that creating massive amounts of currency out of thin air always results in the currency collapsing, or at the very least being revalued in a way that most of us will suffer from. A prudent investor (particularly one on either side of the cusp of retirement) would do well to take out some insurance. That is generally done by investing in metal, farm land, and other forms of hard assets.

In the fall of 2011, I attended the Casey Summit, which featured three speakers who had lived through hyperinflation in their home countries. They shared their personal experiences with us and I shared some of this in an article earlier this summer.

All three speakers went through very similar cycles. All said inflation was rising and then it spiked to astronomical proportions.

The following are a couple of slides used by the speaker from the former Yugoslavia. Note the last line that indicated that during its hyperinflation, prices doubled on average every 1.4 days.

The presenter showed a 500-billion denominated bill, which had the same purchasing power a 500 bill had just 24 months earlier. His slides documented the hyperinflation, starting at 5.00 and building up to 500 billion.

Can this happen in the United States? Are we immune from the natural laws of economics?

We see inflation on the rise in the US and know our government is not telling us the truth about it. We have discussed the record debt and Federal Reserve spending until we are blue in the face. And we know that very few of our elected officials are serious about significant cuts to federal spending to rein in debt and borrowing.

I have yet to see anyone present any logical economic premise that concludes that our country will not eventually see a currency collapse.





'Insane People Don't Realize They're Insane'

While we know that the Fed will be forced to taper in the short-term as it desperately avoids the 'appearance' of outright monetization that a falling deficit will create, Marc Faber sums up the endgame perfectly in this clip: "I don’t think they will come to their senses for the simple reason that insane people don't realize that they are insane." Faber adds, "they think they’re doing a great job," and in fact they believe - in general - that "if anything, we need to do more, not less." The 'forced-taper-to-plunge-to-untaper' progression means it's going to get worse; as Faber notes, QE/printing will continued indefinitely "until the system breaks down." Having printed this much money with such dismal results, Faber concludes, "the Fed is completely clueless."

Faber covers a wide-range of topics in this excellent interview - from Fed insanity and cluelessness to Gold confiscation and from China's dishonesty to the destabilizing reality of Stability-hoping Keynesianism...

Life In The Twilight

The interest in this next article should be obvious:

France And Germany Seek To Revive EU Defense Policy

The EU needs to do more for international security France and Germany have said as they call for improved battlegroups and the use of drones in civilian airspace.

In a joint letter and ideas paper, dated Friday (26 July), the foreign ministers of both countries say that amid "asymmetrical threats" the EU needs to "assume increased responsibility for international peace and security."

They add that they are committed to making a planned EU defence summit in December a "success" with "tangible results."

Among the results they are hoping for is agreement on improved "operational effectiveness" of EU battle groups, clusters of 1,500 soldiers meant to be deployed rapidly.

The paper also calls for an upgrade in cyber security systems, an EU-level "clearing house" to help regional allies to prevent or manage military crises; better border management and a maritime strategy that outlines how the EU should safeguard its "strategic interests."

The Franco-German initiative comes after France earlier this year found itself alone in putting soldiers on the ground in Mali to fight jihadists, with other EU countries reluctant to help out.

Israel's Borders

When you look at a map of the Middle East, one of the smallest nations is Israel. With the exception of Jordan, it is surrounded by enemies with Lebanon and Syria to the north and Egypt to the south.

The Gaza strip, controlled by Hamas, has been a staging ground for rockets and the disputed West Bank, known in ancient times as Judea and Samaria, has both Israeli settlementsand is home to Fatah, the other Palestinian faction.

Across its border with Egypt, specifically the Sinai, a military coup has overthrown the Muslim Brotherhood president and the new leadership is getting ready to address the lawless Sinai Peninsula with an operation ironically called “Desert Storm.” A refuge for Islamic extremists, the clear loser thus far has been the Brotherhood. Six of their leaders have fled to Gaza to prepare for another uprising.
Despite the U.S. State Department’s squishy wish that the new government in Egypt include the Brotherhood, Middle East expert, Daniel Pipes, succinctly says that breaking the Brotherhood’s neck “is good for Egypt, the region, and not least ourselves.”

Obsessed With Settlements

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are obstacles galore in the path toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown flexibility and readiness for compromise, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remains intransigent as ever.

Spitting in the eyes of diplomacy, Abbas continues to glorify terrorist killers and to teach Palestinian children that "Palestine" will swallow all of Israel -- the Jewish state will be gone. And, he adds, "not a single Israeli" will be permitted to set foot on a Palestinian state.

Beyond all this, it's fair to ask who really speaks for the Palestinians? Abbas rules only in the West Bank. Hamas rules Gaza and denounces Abbas and the peace negotiations. Abbas himself brings dubious credentials to the negotiating table. His presidential term expired several years ago.

Yet, most mainstream media turn a blind eye to built-in Palestinian handicaps in reaching for a peace deal and instead point a finger at Israel as supposedly the toughest nut to crack. As witness, a top of the front-page article in the July 30 edition of the Washington Post by William Booth and Anne Gearan that tags Jewish settlements as supposedly by far the greatest obstacle to U.S.-brokered negotiations.

Here's the headline:

"In Mideast talks an old challenge -- JEWISH SETTLEMENTS POSE MAJOR TEST (all caps) -- As dialogue starts, Kerry acknowledges difficulties."

And here's the bogus assertion by Booth and Gearan:

"The growth of the settlements presents a particularly thorny challenge. About 340,000 to 360,000 people live in Jewishsettlements in the West Bank. An additional 300,000 Jews live in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as their future capital."

This may accord with Palestinian propaganda. But there are multiple reasons why it doesn't accord with history and reality.

The Post article also fails to take into account generous Israeli peace initiatives by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 and by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. The former was rejected by Yasser Arafat; the latter by Abbas. It was Palestinian rejectionism -- not settlements -- that blocked the path to a peace agreement.

Actual Israeli compromises indicate a proven willingness to withdraw from about 95 percent of the West Bank. The most populated settlements are on the remaining 5 percent. Even Booth and Gearan are forced, albeit reluctantly, to point this out -- but as an aside way down in the 14th paragraph of their article.

In sum, notwithstanding the Post headline and the utterly flawed piece by Booth and Gearan, history clearly shows that it's Abbas -- not settlements -- who represents the "thorniest challenge" in the latest round of negotiations.

Factual, evenhanded journalism eludes the Washington Post.

Report From Egypt: Violence Against Morsi Supporters Is A Response To Bombing, Kidnapping, Torture And Killing

These are pictures taken from the protests that were called upon by General El-sisi to support the army in their fight against terrorism. The general El -Sisi called upon these protests after the escalating violence of the brotherhood and their supporting Islamic terrorist groups who have been terrifying the Egyptian people since the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi on the 3rd July, 2013.   The acts of violence include bombing, kidnapping, torture, armed attacks on police forces and the army this is in addition to wide heavy armed attacks in North of Sinai. People are fed up with these acts and the hands of the armed forces and police forces are tied due to the international pressure which supports the Muslim brotherhood.

…Due to an unremitting international pressure on Egyptian interim government, especially by American Ambassador in Cairo Ann Patterson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to release detained ousted President Mohamed Morsi and Muslim brotherhood leaders, the army chief General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has urged Egyptians to go down to all squares of Egypt on Friday 26^th July, 2013 to support and to mandate the Egyptian armed forces and the police forces to confront violence and terrorism. General El-Sisi asked Morsi supporters to refrain from violence in their protests.

…The people of Egypt in their awareness of the dangerous attempts of the Islamist parties to drag Egypt into a civil war have taken to the streets by the millions. The people took to the streets to protest against the violence, torture to opposition, bombing and killing practiced by the Muslim brotherhood in the streets of Egypt.

Huda reports that the actions of the Obama administration are alienating Egypt and driving Egypt into the orbit of Moscow:

President Obama in a sign of disapproval of the call of General El-Sisi halted the 4 F-16 fighter jets deal to the Egyptian Air Forces. “Trying to break the neck of the Brotherhood is not going to be good for Egypt or for the region,” said a White House official. While Angela Merkel said:  “The Egyptian authorities must release immediately Mohamed Morsi and all political detainees.” And “Egypt must not exclude the Muslim Brotherhood from the new political roadmap.”

…People during the protests demonstrated that Mrs. Ann Patterson is a persona non grata in Egypt. They carried pictures of President Obama in the form of Bin Laden crossed with a red X. Contrary to that they carried pictures of President Putin high together with General El-Sisi.  

 The key reason why the United States and Germany support the Muslim Brotherhood is the false belief that it is a moderate Islamic group and the repression of such groups creates more radical Jihadists movements. …USA and German governments tend to forget that the Muslim Brotherhood is the grandfather of every Jihadist and Islamic-fundamentalist movement in the Middle East and that their decree is violence.