Friday, July 24, 2015

Kerry: Israeli Action Against Iran Would Be 'Huge Mistake', The War On Cash






U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday it would be a huge mistake if Israeldecided to take unilateral military action against Iran over its nuclear program in the future.
Kerry was asked in an NBC "Today" show interview if the nuclear deal reached last week between would make it more likely that Israel might attempt a military or cyber attack on Tehran.
"That'd be an enormous mistake, a huge mistake with grave consequences for Israel and for the region, and I don't think it's necessary," Kerry said.







More and more institutions are trying to make it harder for you to move your money into cash.
Globally, over $5 trillion in debt currently have negative yields in nominal terms, meaning the bond literally has a negative yield when it trades. In the simplest of terms this means that investors are PAYING to own these bonds.
Bonds are not unique in this regard. Switzerland, Denmark and other countries are now charging deposits at their banks. In France and Italy, you are not allowed to make cash transactions above €1,000.
This sounds laughable to most people, but it is a reality in Europe… and in the US, in some regions. Louisiana has made it illegal to purchase second hand goods using cash.
This is just the beginning. The War on Cash will be spreading in the coming weeks.
The reasoning is simple. Most large financial entities are insolvent. As a result, if a significant amount of digital money is converted into actual physical cash, the firm would very quickly implode.

This is precisely what happened in 2008…
When the 2008 Crisis hit, one of the biggest problems for the Central Banks was to stop investors from fleeing digital wealth for the comfort of physical cash. Indeed, the actual “thing” that almost caused the financial system to collapse was when depositors attempted to pull $500 billion out of money market funds.
A money market fund takes investors’ cash and plunks it into short-term highly liquid debt and credit securities. These funds are meant to offer investors a return on their cash, while being extremely liquid (meaning investors can pull their money at any time).
This works great in theory… but when $500 billion in money was being pulled (roughly 24% of the entire market) in the span of four weeks, the truth of the financial system was quickly laid bare: that digital money is not in fact safe.

When all of this happened, the global Central Banks realized that their worst nightmare could in fact become a reality: that if a significant percentage of investors/ depositors ever tried to convert their “wealth” into cash (particularly physical cash) the whole system would implode.

European banks as a whole are leveraged at 26 to 1. In simple terms, this means they have just €1 in capital for every €26 in assets (bought via borrowed money).
This is why whenever things get messy in Europe, the ECB and EU begin implementing capital controls.

Consider what recently happened in Greece. Depositors began to flee the banks in droves, so they declared a bank holiday. This holiday included safe deposit boxes… so all the bullion or physical cash Greeks had stashed there remained locked up… just like the “digital” money in their savings accounts.
Again, it was impossible to get cash out of the banks… even cash that technically wasn’t “in the system” anymore but sitting in safe deposit banks.
The US financial system isn’t any better. Indeed, the vast majority of it is in digital money. Actual currency is just a little over $1.36 trillion. Bank accounts are $10 trillion. Stocks are $20 trillion and Bonds are $38 trillion.
And at the top of the heap are the derivatives markets, which are over $220 TRILLION.
If you think the banks aren’t terrified of what this market could do to them, consider that JP Morgan managed to get Congress to put the US taxpayer on the hook for it derivatives trades.










File this one away in the "when populism backfires" folder. 


A little over a month after announcing that the Zimbabwean dollar - which, you’re reminded, was phased out in 2009 after inflation rose modestly to 500 billion percent - would be demonetized and exchanged at a generous rate of $5 for every 175 quadrillion, Zimbabwe will for the first time rethink the sweeping land grabs which began in 2000 and subsequently crippled the country’s economy.


Thousands of small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe fear they will be going hungry this winter after abandoning traditional staples like maize, sorghum and groundnuts for tobacco, a cash crop known locally in this southern African nation as "green gold".

For 15 years after Zimbabwe's agriculture sector collapsed in the face of President Robert Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks, the tobacco industry has been booming, with farmers funded by private firms to grow tobacco.

But this switch, coupled with the worst regional drought in nearly a decade, has left Zimbabwe in a precarious food situation. Many farmers have complained of low prices as the season ends while buyers argue the quality of the crop was poor.


But the returns were often uncertain and many farmers have been left disappointed.

Industry figures showed that at the end of the selling season this month farmers sold 188.5 million kgs worth $555 million, down 8.5 percent from a year ago when the crop was worth $654 million.

"It was a disaster," said David Muyambo, 35, a father of four, who earned $74 from tobacco sales this season after investing $1,200 in his crop. "I need to buy food for my family and I have no money."



Against this rather dreary backdrop, the government is beginning to reconsider its stance towards white farmers and will, according to The Telegraph, "give official permission for some whites to stay on their land."



Zimbabwe’s government has for the first time suggested it may give official permission for some white farmers to stay on their land, 15 years after it sanctioned widespread land grabs that plummeted the country into an economic crisis.


Today fewer than 300 white farmers remain on portions of their original land holdings in Zimbabwe and many of the seized farms lie fallow, meaning the former Breadbasket of Africa has to import food to feed its population.



And so once again we see that necessity (a food shortage) breeds invention (rethinking populist land grabs), but lest anyone should believe that Mugabe has done a complete 180, we'll close with the following advice given to supporters at a recent Patriotic Front rally:
"Don't be too kind to white farmers. They can own industries and companies, or stay in apartments in our towns but they cannot own land. They must leave the land to blacks.” 







 


Washington and its allies use military maneuvers to force Russia to soften its position on the Ukrainian crisis, but they will be disappointed and it is likely they will receive a similar response from Moscow, says the researcher for China’s International Research (CIIS).


Military exercises in the framework of NATO operations Rapid Trident-2015 in the Western Ukraine, as well as the policy of sanctions against Moscow is a political instrument of putting pressure on Russia, says an employee of China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) Xia Yishan, reports Global Times of China.


“In the West it is believed that the joint exercises will force Kremlin to soften its position towards the Ukrainian crisis. However, Washington and its allies will be disappointed,” says the researcher.

Yishan notes that Moscow has already warned the alliance about the potential “explosive consequences” of the US military activity in Ukraine.

If NATO is to continue expanding scale of their operations, it is likely that Russia would be forced to respond similarly to constraining measures.



It is clear that the exercise Rapid Trident-2015 will only lead to a result which diametrically opposes the stated goals of NATO, adds the analyst. Military activity in the region will only increase; therefore, the probability of a direct clash will be higher than ever.


The researcher is sure that it is impossible to achieve security and stability in Eastern Europe, which is gradually becoming a hot spot, by conducting a multinational military exercises. Moreover, these maneuvers on part of the western alliance would undermine the credibility of NATO countries in the eyes of Moscow.











Even as exotic new diseases and nearly eradicated old ones keep popping up across the nation, the Obama administration is unconcerned, or some would say, recklessly indifferent, to the public health threat that Third World illegal aliens pose to the American public.

This isn’t an observation from would-be GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump or some wild-eyed rube—it’s a devastating criticism that comes from two public health experts at the government’s own Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It comes as deadly diseases surface or make a comeback in the U.S. Among those ailments are tuberculosis, pneumonia, paralysis-causing acute flaccid myelitis, dengue fever, swine flu, and enterovirus D68.


The two patriotic U.S. government employees, CDC Logistics Management Specialist George Roark and CDC Public Health Advisor William Adams were revealed to have complained in a series of emails June 9 last year about Obama rolling out a very long red carpet for people who have no right to be here and no desire to obey America’s laws. This was around the time the Obama administration was trying to cover up the concentration camp-like facilities in which it was detaining Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs).


Their comments were contained in an email exchange obtained by good-government group Judicial Watch in which the two officials rightly trashed President Obama for allowing a flood of sick young illegals into the United States.



Contrary to what left-wingers say, it is not nutty or racist to be concerned about foreigners importing diseases; population movement is how diseases spread. Aliens and even some citizens may unwittingly bring in pathogens for which Americans have not developed immunity. Sometimes these maladies cause death on an epic scale. Centuries ago Europeans brought pathogens like the smallpox virus on their persons to the new world. Indigenous Indian communities were wiped out because they had never encountered it before.


Quite apart from the crushing burden that sick illegal aliens place on the U.S. healthcare system, federal lawmakers are worried about the health-related dangers of the mostly Mexican ongoing invasion.

“I don’t think there is any health care professional who has examined the fact, who can honestly say that Americans have not died because of the diseases brought into America by illegal aliens who are not properly healthcare-screened as lawful immigrants are,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), said on the Matt Murphy radio show earlier this year.

Former Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) wrote a letter last year to the head of the CDC stating that the multitudes of minors entering the country illegally carry with them deadly diseases put the American public and Border Patrol agents in jeopardy. Among those maladies are dengue fever, swine flu, and possibly Ebola virus and tuberculosis, said Gingrey, a medical doctor who specializes in obstetrics.


The Daily Mail (UK) reported a fortnight ago that over the last year upwards of 100 children in 34 U.S. states have been afflicted with a mysterious paralysis called acute flaccid myelitis. A suddenly paralyzed 6-year-old tested positive for enterovirus C105, a newly-discovered virus that is related to polio. It is possible these two ailments entered the U.S. piggybacking on immigrants, illegal or otherwise.


Pneumonia and swine flu broke out last year at a housing facility for almost 600 young illegal aliens at Naval Base Ventura County, outside Los Angeles.


Multi-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, an ancient disease considered to have been more or less eradicated in the United States, have been reported in populous California, Florida, Texas, and New York, all of which have large concentrations of illegal aliens.


On its website, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), a branch of the increasingly useless Department of Homeland Security, acknowledges how dangerous TB is, offering a brief refresher course in the deadly malady that used to be called the White Plague:

Tuberculosis (TB) ... bacteria usually attack the lungs. But TB bacteria can attack any part of the body, such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. ... TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs, sneezes, speaks, or sings. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected. ... In the early 1900s, TB disease killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe. ...
TB continues to be a problem. For example, while the number of TB cases is still declining, the speed of decline has slowed since 2003. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) remains a concern, and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR TB) has become an important issue. Finally, racial and ethnic minority populations and foreign-born individuals continue to account for a large number of TB cases in the United States. This is why the initial screening for TB and the appropriate treatment of TB for individuals coming to the United States and living here permanently is an important tool to help eradicate the disease in the United States and worldwide.

Lawful immigrants are screened for tuberculosis but obviously illegal aliens who do not come into contact with authorities are not.





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