Canada’s Liberal Politics Behind Trudeau’s Antagonistic Trade Positions…


Actually, seeing this outlined in Reuters is a very good sign of things to come.  The pending NAFTA trade renegotiation between the U.S. (Trump/Ross) and Canada (Trudeau) correctly viewed through the prism of Canadian politics.  This is exactly the correct perspective.

The larger liberal need is for Trudeau to pander to the constituencies of Quebec, even if it means economic disaster and crushing collapse for the entire country of Canada.  This reality is exactly the ideological zero-sum perspective of the liberal mind and worldview.

Complete economic disaster is what Prime Minister Trudeau will do to Canada if he chooses to continue positioning against the U.S. with President Donald J Trump.

VIA REUTERS – Canada escalated a trade dispute with United States by making threats Washington called inappropriate in part because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under pressure to secure support in a key region ahead of the country’s 2019 elections.

Washington last month slapped tariffs on timber imports, prompting Trudeau to say he was considering a ban on exports of U.S. coal through Pacific ports.

As well as lumber, the administration of President Donald Trump has targeted Canadian dairy farmers, while Boeing Corp (BA.N) launched a trade challenge against Montreal-based planemaker Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO).

All three are vital to the economy of Quebec, Canada’s second most-populous province. And Quebec is seen as vital to Trudeau’s hopes of maintaining a strong grip on power in a national election set for October 2019.

As contentious talks on renegotiating NAFTA draw closer, Trudeau has little choice but to defend dairy farmers and offer help to the lumber industry, even though that is likely to prompt fresh U.S. challenges.

“Quebec is the key,” said one senior Liberal organizer.  (please read full article)

President Trump, Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer will absolutely crush any international trade opponent in direct bilateral trade deals.  It’s really not hard for them to do; we are the biggest market in the world.

Shutting down access to the U.S. ($20+ trillion) market is the ultimate leverage and entire national economies can be forceably wiped out.  In an applied fair market system the end result of any renegotiated trade deal will be vastly more beneficial to U.S. workers and business interests.  Stunningly so.

In addition to the size of our economy, America is profoundly unique in that there is almost no product on the planet that cannot be replicated in the United States.  We are blessed with an abundance of energy, raw material, minerals and rich fertile land that can provide the basis for domestically manufactured/created products.  It is a remarkable point of distinction not found in any other region.

Additionally, our inherent American DNA strain is one of entrepreneurial existence.  We know how to do things, create things, and think completely outside the box on new and innovative ideas for things.   Yes, we are exceptional like that.

Reminder:

  • Florida Power and Light won the prestigious International Edward Demming award for excellence in multi-platform engineering and efficiency superiority. They didn’t blow every global PhD business intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.

Because they lost the award, the Japanese spent 6 months studying FPL and later published a 1,000 page dissertation essentially saying FPL “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky”….. FPL field leadership laughed, took out markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY….

  • When every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein, they said it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart their oil pumping industry. The Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 to 10 months.

We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.

  • When the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground, they said no-one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved everyone of them….

That’s our America.

  • When a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his fourty-seven virgins, began opening fire on a train in France – the Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little Islamic nut with a death wish.

Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us.  That’s just how we roll.

Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival they’d be speaking German in the Louvre.  Yet for the better part of the past decade a group of intellectual something-or-others have been teaching an insufferable storyline that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other.

Enough.

When I hear Donald Trump say “Let’s Make America Great Again”, I also hear the familiar echo “cowboy up” people.

It’s high time we stop being embarrassed about our exceptional nature, and start being proud of it again.   Because when it matters most, when it really counts, when it’s really needed, there’s a whole bunch of people all around this world of ours that are mighty happy when swagger walks in to solve their problems.

Yeah, “let’s make America great again”.  Swagger on !

 

Macron’s Victory May Be Disaster for Merkel


Angela Merkel was the first phone Emmanuel Macron made after the election.  My point about the election for Macron was the worst possible outcome for the Euro was not just reflected in yesterday’s outside reversal to the downside. Merkel has already made it clear that she will not relax  Eurozone spending rules to help Macron. The defeat of Le Pen has sealed the fate of Europe because there will be no reflection upon how to reform the EU to save Europe.

Only a sublime idiot would now think everything in Europe will be just great. We are looking at a major hard landing for Europe. Keep in mind that local governments even in the USA are doomed for all they can do is raise taxes further crushing their population and destroying their own economy.

Nonetheless, there is a lifetime in politics between the May victory for the establishment in France with Macron who cannot possibly help calm France and the election of Merkel in the fall. The biggest disappointment of Obama was being the first Black President, hopes were so high for a real change. When everyone saw he did the same thing as Bush, this set the stage for the Trump victory. Republic or Democrat offered nothing.

Our computer was correct in forecast the mainstream political parties in France would be defeated. That took place. Now the expectations are so high for Macron to change things, when the French people realize he is the same as what they had under Hollande, the backlash can still come before the German elections. The civil unrest in France is unbelievable. The tension there you can cut in the air with a knife.

Macron will fail and with him, the dream of Brussels.

Emerging Market Debt Expanding Twice the Rate of 2016


The view that BREXIT is a passing phase and Europe will extinguish the swell of populism, has led to more debt in dollars being racked up at a faster pace than ever in US dollars among emerging markets, which stood at about 50% of the US National Debt. The debt in new offering has exploded as bears continue to say the Dow will crash and the dollar with it. This had led to an extraordinary offering of new dollar debt which is close to $160 billion by the 1st of May, 2017. This represents more than twice the dollar value reached by May 1st last year.

The willingness of investors to buy debt securities is rooted in these bearish forecasts. I was recently asked to do an interview because they said they were desperate to find someone who was bullish on the equities market long-term. The vast majority keep touting the dollar will crash with the share market and this is fueling the explosion in new debt along with the expectation that interest rates will rise – not fall.

Investment funds specializing in emerging market bonds reported inflows of $ 1.9 billion, according to data provider EPFR Global. Also, exchange-traded funds from this sector were able to show more than $200 million. Investors from the US and Europe are currently particularly interested in corporate bonds from countries such as Brazil, Indonesia or Argentina, since they yield comparatively high returns and have rather short maturities. This is similar to the Russian bond collapse back in 1998, which took down Long-Term Capital Management.

The bond debt from developing countries is growing exponentially with total commitments reaching around $425 billion+. This crop of bonds have an average maturity of 6.3 years as compared to 10 year maturities for investment grade rated as risk-free.

This is adding to the crisis we see on the horizon and a dollar rally will set off a debt crisis like nobody has ever seen in more than 100 years. Private debt among emerging markets is almost about $1.6 trillion with maturity due to foreign creditors over the next five years. It looks like about 90% of this debt is in US dollars.

“The Crisis Has Become Pandemic” – System To Collect Defaulted Student Loans Is No Longer Functioning


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The system used by the Dept. of Education to collect on defaulted student loans came to a standstill in the last month, leaving an estimated 91,000 accounts in limbo, when the agency ordered debt collectors under contract to stop making collections on accounts.

As Consumerist’s Ashlee Kieler reports, consumers who expected their student loan payments to be deducted from their bank accounts this month have reportedly found the funds untouched, and their calls to the companies unanswered thanks to a Department of Education’s order prohibiting the debt collection companies from working on default accounts in response to two lawsuits against the agency.

The strange turn of events began with a lawsuit filed by two debt collection companies, who claim they were unfairly were fired by the Obama-era Education Department for poor performance. On March 29, the judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevented any new defaulted borrowers from being assigned to debt collectors and put into rehabilitation programs. Instead, the borrowers have piled up inside the department’s system, waiting.

On April 21, the government ordered the debt collectors involved in the suit to stop work altogether on defaulted accounts: no phone calls, no withdrawals from student accounts, nothing.

The Education Department and the Justice Department are partly to blame for “unnecessarily” throwing a wrench into the entire defaulted loan system, one attorney with knowledge of the case told BuzzFeed News, because they’ve been unable to come to a resolution that allows the loan system to kick back into gear. “There’s no fix in sight.”

Judge Susan Braden has extended the emergency order [PDF] several times since then, noting that it was made to “preserve the status quo to protect the interests of all parties and to afford the government an opportunity to reach a global solution” to two lawsuits against the Dept. of Education.

The cases, filed separately by several debt collection firms, claim that the Dept. of Education unfairly terminated their contracts with the companies.

More recently, the Dept. of Education ordered servicers to stop work on defaulted accounts. The actions, the companies argued in court filings [PDF], “fundamentally alter the status quo and are not fiscally responsible to the borrowers or to the federal taxpayers.”

“Thus, the well-documented student loan crisis will become a pandemic not because this Court ordered that result, but because [Dept. of Education] thinks that is what this Court expects,” the companies argue.

This week, the Dept. of Education submitted a court filing detailing how the Judge’s order and its subsequent suspension of collection activities has affected consumers, Career Education Review reports.

The Dept. claims that the action “has effectively shut down the Government’s defaulted student loan collection program,” with an estimated 91,000 borrowers now stuck in limbo because their accounts weren’t assigned to a debt collector in April.

Additionally, the Dept. argues that by not assigning borrowers to collectors “tens of thousand of borrowers have been prevented from gaining access to rehabilitation programs” and other benefits.

BuzzFeed News reports that debt collection agencies say that since the Department ordered a stop to collection activities they have been inundated with calls from borrowers.

However, the companies can’t help the customers. This, they claim, has resulted in thousands of messages and complaints from borrowers.

The collectors, BuzzFeed reports, claim that because of this borrowers will re-default and those enrolled in repayment programs could lose their eligibility.

Suzanne Martingale, policy staff attorney for our colleagues at Consumers Union, tells Consumerist that the stop in collections and payments could do “untold damage to borrowers.”

“Meanwhile, they’re going to rack up a ton of charges as more interest accrues on their loans,” she adds.

As the work stoppage drags on, consumer protection advocates are confused about where borrowers stand, especially given a tangle of other lawsuits involving the loan companies and the government. “The whole process has been completely mind-boggling,” said Persis Yu, the director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, who called the standstill “mystifying from a consumer protection standpoint.”

Bill Blain: “Macron Will Prove A Disappointment As Nothing Is Actually Fixed In Europe”


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From Bill Blain’s latest Morning Porridge edition

“To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job..”

The best thing about the French Election is I’ve just won a case of very fine French wine on the result!

The papers and financial blogosphere are full of positivity – France is fixed, therefore the Euro is safe and its all great news. Put yer buying boots on.. And on the back of Friday’s very strong US numbers.. don’t worry that bonds continue to rally in the face of a likely Fed Hike..

Please.. the only thing good about the French vote is the least bad candidate won.

I question the grand expressions of upside the market is calling for. France has dodged a bullet, perhaps, but they aint solved the crisis – which boils to down to being the wrong economy using the wrong currency and absolutely no control of monetary or fiscal policy to fix it.

Macron has a head full of supply side policy cliches about sorting the labour market, and some catchy soundbites on Franco-German European hegemony – including the sacrifice of a fraction of the bloated state payroll. For all the hype, he’s a compromise of compromise candidates.

Lets not forget that fully 12% of the votes were spoilt – meaning a significant minority of Frenchmen made a conscious choice that neither candidate was any good!

I’ll make a grand prediction: Macron will prove a disappointment. His lack of power base from which to actually effect long term change across France means we’ll get one or other of the Le Pens in 5 years time.

Although he will no doubt trade on his youth and popularity – don’t be surprised if the lustre quickly fades. A number of blogs say he’ll quickly build a coalition of the willing.. I doubt it. He’s going to struggle to form any kind of working government in the face of the established parties, and hostility from right and left.

There is also the likelihood the electorate will come to realise the gifted young game-changer is actually as establishment as they come. Don’t forget he is the protégé of Jacques Attali –  those of us of a certain vintage will remember Attali as the archetypal enarch – squandering billions on titivating the Glistening Bank (The EBRD) with marble lifts and ego-building offices rather than actually lending. Macron’s paid up membership of the discredited French upper class is something a better organised Front Nationale will play to in coming years.

On the upside, the numbers are moving in Macron’s direction. The state isn’t in the same perilous debt position pre ECB intervention. A wee bit inflation will massage the numbers nicely. There are no immediate risks on the horizon. Unemployment is trending down (slowly), and is likely to boost his popularity. Merkel looks a shoe in for the German Election (very strong showing at the weekend in Danish Germany).

But, but and but again..

When Europe looks calm and sorted, its not. Nothing is actually fixed.. For all the happy posts this morning about Euro strength, which stocks to buy on the basis of French recovery, and the rest… I doubt it.

Although there is apparently nothing to worry about in Euroland anymore – we’ve still got the festering pustule that is Italy, episode 47 of the Greek Crisis on our doorsteps, and the who knows what coming from the Brexit negotiations. Europe will continue to amuse, fascinate and frustrate..

I don’t normally spend my Sundays watching the TV wallpaper paste that passes as “political comment” but as I supped my coffee, one soundbite caught my ear: “the aim of Europe is to ensure the economic collapse of the UK to make clear leaving the EU is never an option.”

Oh dear….

Is there a danger the now pointless UKIP decides to establish some convoluted relevance as the force of anti-Europeanism? Sure enough, someone later suggested we should mount a European boycott. If we stop buying French plonk, German cars, Spanish holidays, etc, then that’ll teach ’em.

It so happens an American chum of mine was in Yoorp over the weekend and he popped down for dinner last night. As he is an economist of some renown, and a former Scotsman before he went all Yankee on us, I asked his opinion on Brexit and what America thinks. He was succinct: “We don’t give a fig. As long as you all play nice and don’t break the global economy meaning we’ll have to bail it out, we really don’t care about Europe and the UK.” Nice.. but to the point..

A trade war with Europe and the nihilistic post UKIP politics of aggression would be a very bad idea… If I can’t get good European wine, it will inevitably mean drinking more Argentine Malbec.. Not a bad wine, but it’s impossible to function properly afterward!

“London Bridge Is Down”


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Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The French election, won overnight by Emmanuel Macron, put several segments of the French population opposite one another in a pretty fierce contest. And that contest will continue. Because Macron won’t be able to lift the French economy out of its doldrums any more than Le Pen could have, or than Trump can life the US, and the new president will have the honor of presiding over a further and deepening downturn. The French political dividing line was aptly described by Simon Kuper recently:

The ultra-nationalist writer Charles Maurras believed there were “two Frances”. The one he loved was the “pays réel”, the real country: a rural France of church clocks, traditions and native people fused with their ancestral soil. Maurras loathed the “pays légal”, the legal country: the secular republic, which he thought was run by functionaries conspiring for alien interests.

Maurras was born in 1868 and died in 1952. But if he returned on Sunday to witness the French presidential run-off, he would instantly recognise both candidates. He would cast Emmanuel Macron as the incarnation of the “legal France” and Marine Le Pen as embodying the “real” one.

Maurras may have been a questionable character, but that description is not half bad. Once enough people in the country understand the failure of ‘legal’ France, they will want ‘real’ France back. That will be true in countries all over Europe; to a large extent it already is. Marine Le Pen summed up the key issue really well a few days ago when she said of the country post election: “France will be led by a woman, me or Mrs. Merkel.”

There is only one reason the French people would ever tolerate Germany having an outsized influence in their politics and economics: that they feel they benefit from it financially. And yes, if you put it that way, it’s already quite something that they haven’t revolted more and earlier.

The generous unemployment benefits are undoubtedly part of that. But those can’t last. And since the Germans owe their influence in Paris to the EU, it’s obvious how the French will feel they can stop that influence. And then the EU will turn out to be not a peacemaker, but the opposite.

Still, as much as France is divided, and as serious as that division is, the country is a shining beacon of unity compared to the UK, where the dividing lines are as manifold as they are laced with toxins. The snap election PM Theresa May called, in just over a month, can do nothing to resolve any of it. That means the EU can do what they want in the Brexit negotiations. Which will therefore be an unparalleled disaster for May and the UK.

The EU can and will ‘have its way’ with the UK for one simple reason: the United Kingdom is anything but United. It makes no difference what the EU does to the UK, the British won’t blame them for it. They will blame each other instead. No matter what happens these days, the British always know in advance who’s to blame, and it’s never themselves; it’s always another group of Brits.

The Tories are deeply divided between pro- and anti-Brexit forces. Labour is divided along those same lines, and adds pro- and anti-Corbyn sentiments for good measure. Other parties don’t really matter much, but they have similar dividing lines as well.

Anti-Corbyn Labour MPs have convinced themselves they know better than pro-Corbyn party members. They’ve kept claiming for so long that Corbyn is unelectable it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They’ll be lucky not to face the fate of their former brethren in François Hollande’s Parti Socialiste, who ended up with just 6% of the vote in the 1st round of the French elections.

PM Theresa May called the snap election for June 8 to hide some of the divisions behind, to make them appear less relevant, or even to profit from them and grab more power. But the very fact that Brexit was voted in, already makes the election nigh irrelevant.

Whoever wins, and it looks certain to be May herself. will open themselves to being scapegoated in a big way. Which won’t keep them from seeking victory, because the loser can expect the same fate. The trenches have been dug, and deeply. Governable? Don’t count on it. It feels more like 40 years later we’re back to Johnny Rotten ‘singing’ Anarchy in the UK.

If May threatens to leave the EU ‘cold’ and trigger a ‘Hard Brexit’, she will simultaneously trigger a whole lot more, and much wider, divisions in the country (or is that countries?!), and that’s even without mentioning an entire minefield of legal, and potentially constitutional, issues. The latter especially because Britain doesn’t have an actual -written- constitution.

For Brussels, it’s easy pickings, and pick they will. This week, they casually raised the UK’s cost of leaving the EU to €100 billion, from estimates varying from €40 billion to €60 billion before. Paddy Power and its equally powerful bookie ilk soon won’t be taking any bets below, say, €150 billion. In that regard, and many others, the EU will do to the UK what it is doing to Greece.

The only way to stand up against that is to show a common front. But there will be no such thing in the Divided Kingdom, not for a long time. Everyone has their favorite scapegoat, for some it’s Nigel Farage, for others David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair, Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May. And nobody is going to leave their blame trenches. They’re the only places they feel somewhat comfortable, less scared, in.

Theresa May, if the polls are to be believed -and given the divisions we might for once-, will have to sit down and negotiate with the multi-headed Hydra that is the EU, ‘strengthened’ by a major election victory, but she will find it the ultimate Pyrrhic victory, because Brussels will have a ball playing her divided ‘nation’.

Scotland can probably easily be seduced with the carrot of EU membership, but more importantly, Juncker and his people can cast doubt on the entire Brexit vote, and they will have many interested takers.

The Brexit negotiations will take at least 2 years. But it could be 3 or 4 years, who knows? May has no power over that durationm unless she walks. She won’t. And as things are drawn out, Juncker et al have all the time and opportunities they want to tell both May and the British public that Brussels has no intention of punishing them, but will have to do so anyway.

After all, Brexit is a threat to the entire European project, and all the leaders of the 27 remaining nations, as well as the vast majority of their domestic opposition parties, are behind that project, no questions asked. And the many thousands of people working their very well-paid jobs in Brussels and Strasbourg are not too critical either.

All in all, the British need to wake up and smell the roses as long as there are any left, and before they have been replaced with less savory odors. Or they will have to seriously wonder whether the Kingdom, united or not, can outlive the Queen, aka the London Bridge.

*  *  *

“London Bridge is Down” was recently revealed as the secret UK government code for the moment the Queen dies.

The Dollar Remains King


QUESTION:  Hi, I’ve read your blog for a couple of months now and it clearly opened my eyes. But I’m wondering if I’m getting crazy now.. I can see a pattern between rising Chinese yields (despite weaker growth), parked Chinese money in the Canadian & Australian housing bubble, plunging commodities (very bad for Australian and Canadian people who have to pay of their massive mortgages) and why all this will lead to a rising dollar. Am I looking in the right direction?

A.S.

ANSWER: Yes. The only way to reach the economic crisis that forces political change is to put on the maximum amount of pressure. It does not even require that what people BELIEVE will happen, happens. Human nature is such that we all act in anticipation of events. Sure the Euro has bounced on belief that BREXIT is a passing phase. But the election of Macron was the worst possible outcome as it should have been for it now seals the fate of Europe. The Euro that will crumble as Brussels now tries to federalize everything to secure its own survival against the people of Europe to defeat this populist movement by political decree.

The dollar rose between 1980 and 1985 on the fears that the USA would default creating a two-tier monetary system with red dollars externally and green dollars internally. The US national debt hit $907.7 billion in 1980 and the Eurodollar market was about the same. The Europeans were convinced that the US would default by adopting a two-tier dollar. Consequently, between 1980 and 1985, Eurodollar deposits fell by about 50% and the Europeans moved their accounts to the USA where they thought they would get green dollars. That was the number one question I would get at seminars and conferences in Europe between 1980 and 1985. It never happened. Yet the “belief” it might moved capital to USA and that sent even the British pound to $1.03 in 1985.

Only the dollar moving to all time record highs in 1985 sparked the Plaza Accord. However, that is where the whole idea of the Euro was born. Jim Baker saw THE PROBLEM AS THERE WAS NO CURRENCY TO COMPLETE AGAINST THE DOLLAR. Baker urged Europe to create a single currency to prevent the dollar from rising, which then reduced US exports.

The national debt continued to rise reaching $2.125 trillion by 1986 and $3.2 trillion by 1990 and now we are at $20 trillion by 2017. The Dow Jones Industrial average was 1,000 in 1980. So exactly how is 21,000 on the Dow today out of like from just the expansion in debt?

You can see the correlation below. Our number remains 23,000 on the Dow where things begin to get interesting. So far, it is just keeping pace with international value. The first opportunity for a major dollar high is 2018 and after that comes 2020/2021.

1980-1990

Why Central Banks & Buying Equities


QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Why is the Swiss Central Bank buying American equities? On the one hand you would think it is manipulation, but on the other, why manipulate the US share market?

Any clue since you have met with them directly?

LW

ANSWER: I wrote about that explaining that the central banks have been buying equities since 2014. The Swiss National Bank posted its latest 13-F holdings showing it has been buying equities at a stepped up pace during the first quarter 2017. Their total equity holdings have now reached $80.4 billion, up $17 billion from the $63.4 billion at the end of 2016.

The central banks are trapped. Lowering interest rates to virtually zero reduced their yield on reserves and they cannot sell off government securities. The only viable hedge is US treasuries in the bond world against the chaos of the Eurozone. That offers no diversification just more government debt. The ECB owns 40% of European government debt. The Swiss are buying US equities as a hedge against the Euro and political unrest. This is not manipulation. They lost a fortune trying to maintain the peg the franc with the Euro. They cannot use pegs, so the only alternative to just buying US Treasuries is private equities.

The central bankers understand what our model is warning about. As confidence continues to decline in governments, the central banks can go bankrupt UNLESS they too diversify out of government bonds.

Granted, nobody wants to talk about this yet in public. This is NOT manipulation – this is cover your ass time. We have been recommending this trade to institutions for the past 5 years

The French Elections – What Now?


Macron won about 65% to Le Pen 35%. Even Obama came out in support of Macron which obviously confirms Macron is the supporter of the establishment – not change. The bias of the global press is clear in their labels. They label Emmanuel Macron as the “independent centrist” and Marine Le Pen as the “far-right” as applied by CNN – and we all know they are always for the establishment and against the people. Indeed, CNN seems to play the roll of Marie Antoinette who journalists reported she said “Let them eat cake” or in French “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” upon learning that the peasants had no bread to eat, which back then was enriched with eggs and butter. Mainstream media has no regard for the people and only attempt to manipulate the people to maintain the status quo. Mainstream media do not want to rock the boat any more than the bankers. They want to keep everything as is and are distinctly part of the problem why we are in this economic mess. The mere fact Le Pen beat all the mainstream parties since World War II distinctly illustrates that all is not well in the land of Oz these people live in. Le Pen’s showing that about one-third of the population are fed-up with the status quo forewarns this is not over yet.

Still in France, that status quo is an economic storm of giant proportions that the Socialist Hollande has created destroying the French economy with every decree he introduced. France is a country that is bitterly divided and at great risk itself of yet another French Revolution. France is suffering from tremendous high unemployment, little to zero potential job growth, cursed by stagflation, and security worries that are the greatest among the European states. The unilateral act of Merkel accepting refugees supposedly from Syria that ended up being a wholesale invitation for anyone from all Islamic countries has devastated France who was never asked by Merkel in advance to accept these refugees. But Merkel’s unilateral act to save her own polls during her hardline position against Greece, demonstrated why the EU is a total failure. You have heads of states who can make independent decisions and the whole of Europe must suffer.

The French government has struggled to cope with immigration and integration crisis set in motion by Merkel, which is undermining both the French economy and French security. France has suffered terrorist attacks from the very people embraced by Merkel’s policy It is only a question of when will the next French Revolution unfold. Civil Unrest is also rising in France and this may lead to a much broader revolutionary movement. The terrorists who attacked Paris were then linked to the terrorist attack in Brussels.

History repeats because the passion of man never change. We are looking at France in the same strange position as when Louis XVI ascended to the throne. Then too the country was in the middle of a financial crisis and France was on the verge of bankruptcy. This was due in part to France’s costly involvements in the Seven Years’ War. In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after failing to enact reforms to correct the crisis.

On August 8th, 1788, the royal treasury was declared empty, and the Parlement of Paris, which was an assembly of nobles, refused to reform the tax system or loan the Crown any more money. To win their support for fiscal reforms, the Minister of Finance, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727 – 1794) , declared May 5th, 1789 for a meeting of the Estates General, which was an assembly of the nobility, clergy and commoners (called The third Estate), which had not met since 1614. Then on August 16th, 1788, the treasury suspended all payments on government debts going into default. Finally, on August 25th, Brienne resigned as Minister of Finance. He was replaced by Jacques Necker, a foreigner who was a Swiss banker. Necker was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance but could not be made an “official minister” because he was a Protestant.  Nevertheless, Necker was very popular with the common people.

On September 23rd, 1788, Necker reassured French bankers and businessmen should agree to loan the state 75 million livers, on the condition that the Estates General will have full powers to reform the system. The political turmoil was unleashed. On December 27th, 1788, over the opposition of the nobles, Necker announced that the representation of the Third Estate will be doubled, and that nobles and clergymen will be eligible to sit with the Third Estate.

The financial crisis was astute. Necker realized that the country’s tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden and was extremely regressive, simultaneously, numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy. Necker warned that the country could not be taxed higher. He further argued that the tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy had to be reduced. He also proposed that the government borrow more money to solve the country’s fiscal shortages.

Necker actually published his report to support this claim showing the accounting of the crisis. He actually underestimated the deficit by more than 36 million livres or 6 million silver Ecu. Necker proposed restricting the power of the Parlement to protect the nobility. Necker also argued to be made a minister giving him the power to push through reforms. The King refused and Necker was dismissed.

We have reached that crossroads of economics/civil unrest that runs throughout history. We are on the verge of a serious Sovereign Debt Crisis once again. Here too we have governments seeking to track every penny and to eliminate cash to begin to just seize money from people’s accounts while cancelling passports to prevent anyone from leaving a country if the government believe you have money they can tax.

Mix in the same factors, regardless of the century, and you end up with the same result. Only a fool ignores the past and says this is the 21st century. That is how history repeats because those people never look back and ask – if we do this, what will happen? There have been 21+ civil uprisings in France since 1229. That is in line with the 8.6 year frequency  (8.615 * 4.307) = 37.104. This does not bode well for the future as suspected.

With Obama’s endorsement, Macron appears to be in line with out model that forewarns of a real economic crisis in Euro as we head into 2018.

Multinational Financial Interests Demand Trump Adhere To Paris Climate Accord…


Behind the social justice interventionism of the Birkenstock wearing Brangelina Peacenik useful-idiot-crowd, there’s the group of multinational financial interests who play the strings on the idiots.

Multinational corporations and billionaire financiers use climate change as a tool toward furtherance of collected global wealth.  Their strategy is quite simple, and has been played out for several cycles.  Create an institutional trade instrument (housing financial bubble example), control it, drive the pricing to an apex and reap the financial rewards.

Their expressed holy grail for human control is a global tax on all people more commonly known as a “carbon-trading tax”.  A planetary tax on personage.  Various religious groups have a financial method to purchase entry to heaven called ‘indulgences’.  Hence the comparison of Climate Change to a religion is exponentially accurate.

The “Carbon Trading” fundamental financial instrument is the foundational block of the financial interests behind modern climate change.  The latest exhibition of a decades long series of international construct was the Paris Climate Change agreement.

REUTERS – Investors with more than $15 trillion of assets under management urged governments led by the United States to implement the Paris climate accord to fight climate change despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to pull out.

“As long-term institutional investors, we believe that the mitigation of climate change is essential for the safeguarding of our investments,” according to the letter signed by 214 institutional investors and published on Monday.

“We urge all nations to stand by their commitments to the Agreement,” it said. Signatories of the letter included the California Public Employees Retirement System and other pension funds from Sweden to Australia.

The letter was addressed to governments of the Group of Seven, before a summit in Italy on May 25-26, and to leaders of the Group of 20 who will meet in Germany in July.

Trump is due to announce in coming days whether he will carry out a campaign threat to “cancel” the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit a rise in temperatures by phasing out use of fossil fuels.

The European Union has been scrambling to persuade Trump, who wants to bolster the U.S. coal industry, to stick with the accord. His advisers have warned of legal problem if Washington stays but waters down its climate commitments. (read more).

It’s never about “climate”, or “planetary climate control” that’s a ridiculously silly exposition to even discuss amid any intellectual person unconnected to the payoff at the end of the climate rainbow.  The real motive here is “control”… over people.

The climate changes.  Go see the Grand Canyon, or dig up a dinosaur bone to see the reality of it.   The state of Florida is sand and phosphate because it used to be completely under water.  However, humans have no impact on the planets’ ability to change.

Human evolution changes as the planet changes, not vice-versa – see skin colors etc.

The 2010 Icelandic Volcanic Eruption contributed as much CO2 to the atmosphere as over 100 years of industrial human activity; in less than 30 minutes of natural volcanic output.

Climate change is real, it has always been thus.  Man-made climate change is a complete and utter fraud, just ask the Wooly Mammoth.

The goal of the Climate Change religion is this:

CONTROL