Monthly Archives: March 2018

Mar 5 2018

NAFTA Watch – Peter Navarro Interview and POTUS Trump Tweets…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on March 5, 2018 by

We are nearing the timeline apex for release of the decision/announcement on a U.S. NAFTA exit. Trade adviser Peter Navarro appears on Fox Business to discuss the pending Steel and Aluminum tariff while President Trump tweets concerns about NAFTA renegotiation; which enters Round #7 this week.

The steel tariffs are targeted toward national economic security; the Wall Street financial class are apoplectic because a firm administration stance on Steel and Aluminum tariffs indicates the larger trade perspective on all bilateral trade deals.

New Twitter Thread on the NAFTA Fatal Flaw – HERE

Mar 5 2018

Mark Levin Interviews Devin Nunes on FISA Court Abuse by DOJ and FBI…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on March 5, 2018 by

Mark Levin interviewed House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes on the overall FISA Court abuse and political investigation by the DOJ and FBI.  In a comprehensive interview Levin walks through a timeline of media reporting.

The hour long interview in three video segments. Part I

.

Part II below.

.

Part III:

.

Mar 5 2018

A Trade War? No, a Coordinated Phase-Two Trade Policy Shift by the Trump Administration…


Re-Posted From The Conservative Tree House on March 4, 2018 by

Ya know, it’s increasingly funny to watch the Wall Street crowd going bananas simply because POTUS Trump does exactly what POTUS Trump said he was going to do.  I mean it’s not like the administration has been hiding the trade policy plans and objectives for the past year; yet, the financial class acts shocked, SHOCKED, when it actually happens.

Cue the audio visual demonstration….. Was anyone paying attention in January at the Davos World Economic Forum when Commerce Secretary Ross said exactly what the administration was going to do in the coming months?  ….Apparently not.

Against the backdrop of current financial and corporate media running around like blindfolded zombies with forks in their eyes – hysterically bumping into walls, it might be worthwhile to revisit Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s purposeful remarks at Davos:

.

Twitter Thread HERE to Expand Full Dynamic

Mar 5 2018

Britain Buried in Snow Thanks to Global Warming & No Food?


Armstrong Economics Blog/BRITAIN

Re-Posted Mar 5, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The British Government forecasters have today issued the first red snow warning for five years as the UK braces for potentially the worst blizzards since 1962. Britain has seen as much snow as the Bizzard of 1962 and of course, they are blaming Global Warming. If it gets hot it is caused by man. When it gets gold, it’s our fault too. To the Global Warming crowd, God just simply does not exist. We are to blame for all things natural or unnatural. We have to respect that the historical record demonstrates that things can freeze very fast.

BritainI have been warning that the greatest danger we face is Global COOLING – not warming, and this is entirely a natural cycle. The heavy snow in Britain does more than keep people in their homes. It also prevents the delivery of food as supermarkets have nothing to sell. It is the cold that fosters disease and leads to pandemics. We will be praying for some heat by 2032. Be wise to stockpile extra food just in case.

I previously warned that the North Pole, which does move, was headed straight to Europe. The poles do MIGRATE and have NEVER been fixed. 2016 was the coldest year Britain has seen in 58 years. Even last winter, Europe was seriously frozen. Looks like 2018 is beating that record. There have been DEEP FREEZE events during 1700s. Britain is moving into an Ice Age and the sooner we respect that, the better off we will be.

The energy output of the Sum is declining toward a Solar Minimum which is the Fastest Decline in almost 10,000 Years. This is highly unusual and it is hard to forecast specific regions. Nevertheless, with the North Pole migrating toward Europe and the energy out of the Sun dropping faster than previously recorded, the end result is hard to predict insofar as how cold is cold.

Our computer correlates everything from economics, climate, to disease and politics. The colder the climate gets, the worse the diseases. We forecast that the winter of 2017/2018 was going to be very cold. This is why we also forecast that this would be the worst season for the Flu. The colder it gets, the greater the danger of a PANDEMIC for the season 2018/2019

Mar 5 2018

GDPR – Are You Ready?


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

Re-Posted Mar 5, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The new so-called “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) of the EU goes into full force on May 25, 2018. GDPR is a serious measure which is really designed to stem any criticism of the EU Commission. The claimed purpose is to stop propaganda pretending this will boost consumer confidence, revive the economy and generate billions of dollars in savings. What this is all about is the plain fact that this regulation will lay the foundation establishing a new layer of bureaucracy pretending to protect citizens but will burden the private sector since there are no specific injuries that are defined in advance leaving the enforcement arbitrary in the hands of bureaucrats at their discretion.

Across all of Europe, nobody understands exactly what is allowed and what is forbidden, who has to take what action, but the penalties of up to €20 million or 4% of your annual turnover are shocking. If you violate these uncertain rules when using personal data who can find yourself charged for simply doing normal business. This new EU regulation provides for a major threat to all companies in every field without exception. It appears to be clandestinely intended to be a revenue-raising tool that is just undefined. This regulation could be the straw that breaks the back of public patience and economic development in Europe. So far, such actions were always directed against individual industries such as the banks, which everyone else ignored since it was not their pocket being hit. This submissiveness unfolded more like the famous saying of Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) how the Nazi came for each group one at a time and nobody said anything until it was their turn and there was nobody left to ask for help.

Nobody knows if it is even okay to congratulate a customer on a birthday. If you can only send one e-mail to people who have expressly agreed in advance, can you send any sort of greeting even for Christmas? You are not allowed to send these persons any suitable e-mail or ask them for authorization by phone. A letter with a request for permission to send an e-mail is permitted. Lawyers cannot interpret exceptions in the vague formulations for even that will be just opinions that vary from one lawyer to the next. Everyone wants, everyone needs clarity but it does not exist!

This legislation is akin to the Writs of Assistance entered by King George III, which sparked the American Revolution. The defending lawyer against the King’s Writs of Assistance was James Otis (1725-1783) who pronounced these writs were “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.” Otis warned that the king placed discretion in the hands of every agent to act as he desired. Nothing has changed for the government can do whatever it desires today and it is always the burden of the citizen to prove he has any rights whatsoever.

The EU has created the very same type of act. Allowing penalties to be imposed at the discretion of government agents without any clearly defined law is extremely arbitrary. The only thing truly defined are the penalties which can be up to €20 million Euros or 4% of the gross turnover of any business. Government agencies such as the judiciary, the police, the financial and intelligence services enjoy a special status, naturally.

Lawyers cannot even agree on whether the sending of an email by a company to a person is allowed or not for a birthday or holiday. Does there have to be prior consent to receiving an email? Some lawyers have warned that you may not be able to even send an email to ask for permission to send one. A company who sends unwanted emails commits a punishable violation of the regulation. Simply requiring to have an “unsubscribe” feature fails to comply with the law.

There are the countless emails we all get from Nigeria promising you are now a multi-millionaire just send your personal details so they can clean out your account. Just how is an EU regulation going to be applied overseas? Can a company that bombards people with emails constantly every day just because they look at their site but did not buy anything could be charged in Europe even if they are sending them from the USA. There is such a thing as territorial jurisdiction, but then again there is also extradition agreements. It appears that legitimate businesses will be hunted and fined for just doing commerce. The pretend emails that are criminally intended to grab your money or hold your computer for ransom will never be caught in the process.

The entire basis of Microsoft Windows is to push advertising and to take your surfing the net without any warning they are doing it. The latest Windows version was interesting. We turned off auto-update and two separate computers crashed at the same time and forced a reboot and then took 30 minutes to install updates. This seems that you cannot even opt-out even if you pay for the Pro Version. The vagueness of this law could actually call into question Windows when it is up to the discretion of an agent.

BTW – we do not sell anyone’s names, we do not send endless solicitations every day, anything we send as to notices of posts you must subscribe to for free.

Mar 5 2018

Germany Gets a Grand Coalition


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

Re-Posted Mar 5, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The SPD members voted by a two-thirds majority for their party’s entry into a renewed grand coalition. The acting Social Democrats (SPD) party leader Olaf Scholz came out and said: “We now have clarity: The SPD will enter the next federal government.” The SPD had no choice. The polls showed if they returned and put it to an election, they would lose to the rising right-wing. Germany will move into a grand coalition but it truly lacks the majority support of the German people. This means that political unrest in Germany will continue to rise.

Chancellor Angela Merkel finally reached a deal this past Wednesday to form a new German grand coalition government by handing the powerful finance ministry to the country’s main center-left party SPD in an agreement aimed at ending months of political gridlock. Both the CDU and SPD realized that if they failed, both would lose seats to the rising AfD. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union, and the center-left SPD agreed to a 177-page deal that leads off with the promise of “a new awakening for Europe.”

Germany has already broken its post-World War II record for the longest time in its latest election on Sept. 24 to the swearing-in of a new government. That is still at least several weeks away. Merkel has been leading a caretaker government, which has not been in any position to play any significant role in the debate on the fate of the EU going forward. That spotlight has been taken by France’s President Emmanuel Macron who seems to enjoy his newfound power.

Schulz’s has taken a course in recent months that simply undermined his authority. On election night, Schulz vowed to take the party into opposition against the CDU. He reversed course in November after Merkel’s efforts to build a coalition with two smaller parties collapsed. Merkel needed only the approval of a party congress of her CDU which seems to do whatever she tells them to do. The Social Democrats are set to get the foreign, labor and finance ministries to run. The finance ministry is the major prize, for it was held by Merkel’s CDU for the past eight years. This has been a major influential position given Germany’s status as the eurozone’s biggest economy. The interior ministry, also held by the CDU, would go to Bavaria’s CSU, which has pushed hard to curb the number of migrants entering Germany.

Mar 5 2018

Sunday Talks: Secretary Wilbur Ross vs George Stephanopoulos…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on March 4, 2018 by

I always find it amusing that ABC News never publishes the excerpts of interviews (on their YouTube channel) that run counter to their political ideology.   I digress…

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appears on ABC to talk trade with George Stephanopoulos.  Secretary Ross highlights a key point in the discussion about how post-World-War-II trade tariff policies were intentionally constructed to lift Germany, Japan and economically devastated nations after the war.  This was the origin of the progressive trade association that became the WTO.

[Ross’s segment begins at 40:58 of the video below – prompted, just hit play]

Mar 5 2018

WALKING INTO MORDOR


Oikophobia — fear and hatred of one’s own culture and people. It has brought down civilizations since there have been civilizations. And now we’re infected, too.

Mar 5 2018

UK Prime Minister Theresa May Has “Deep Concern” Over POTUS Trump’s Steel Tariffs, While Forgetting Her Own Steel Tariffs in 2016…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on March 4, 2018 by

Oh, how the European hypocrisy is in overdrive on the tariff issue.  According to BBC U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump had a phone call where the British leader expressed “deep concern” over the Trump administration’s pending tariff’s on Steel and Aluminum.

Theresa May has told Donald Trump of her “deep concern” at his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the US.

Amid an escalating war of words between Washington and the European Union, the Prime Minister told the US President that “multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapacity in all parties’ interests”, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.  (read more)

Mrs. May must think Americans are unambiguously stupid because it was less than two years ago when the U.K. urgently applied tariffs against Chinese steel in an effort to stave off the losses within their own steel industry:

APRIL 2017,  – BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties on steel products from China to stop them flooding Europe’s struggling steel market.

The Commission said Thursday that an investigation has confirmed that Chinese hot-rolled flat steel has been sold in Europe at dumping prices. The Chinese exports will now be taxed with duties ranging from 18.1 percent to 35.9 percent.  (read more)

Hypocrisy much?

President Trump is entirely correct in his prior tweet:

The $20 trillion U.S. economy is the market, the customer, that all European countries want/need access to.  We are the customers in the equation.  We can crush them in any trade conflict.  Apply a 20% tariff to imported Audi’s, or simply apply a reciprocal trade tariff toward their auto’s identical to those they apply on ours…. wait and see just how long Germany chooses to play stupid.

Pro-tip, they wouldn’t last a day without our business.

President Trump has the highest approval rating compared to the leaders of largest economic countries in Europe.  However, this shouldn’t come as a surprise because it was evident in Germany’s recent election that Merkel -in victory- had less support in Germany than President Trump holds in the U.S.  Go figure…

Mar 5 2018

Senator Joe Manchin Praises Trump Trade Initiatives and Policies…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House  on March 4, 2018 by

Senator Joe Manchin appears on Face the Nation and highlights his support for the Trump trade initiatives.  The cross-party MAGAnomic support highlights an aspect to President Trump policy that is unique to this administration. [ DEEP DIVE HERE ]

Within the aggregate MAGAnomic policy of President Trump there are two central components: taxes and trade.  With the ‘tax element’ completed, the administration will likely jettison some of the Wall Street crowd as they focus on the trade issues that specifically benefit Main Street.

.

The application of “economic nationalism” as a policy is adverse to the interests of multinational corporations. The multinationals have been purchasing U.S. policy through DC politicians for decades. However, the last 30+ years have seen exceptionally high increases. (read more)