COMMENT: Martin, as an avid follower, I took your advice to heart to try to fix our interest rate for the loan we have on our house. This was the answer I got from our direct advisor: “Have looked at your file, you can still enjoy your low-interest rate until 01/12/2020, in other words refinancing is only recommended at the earliest in November 2020. Your capital will then fall to 37,000 euros outstanding, the interest may already rise to 3 % (then you still benefit in November compared to refinance now!) ? Repocrisis is in the USA, Europe is supported by the ECB, which keeps interest rates low? Or am i wrong?” Isn’t this the perfect example of how well people are informed, even those working at the banks? Or do we already see some intended lingering of banks, trying not to get caught on the wrong side of the risk? Thanks for answering or using this in your private blog as a perfect example…
BL
ANSWER: They may have been instructed from above to keep loans floating because the Repo Crisis is demonstrating that rates are under pressure to rise, not fall!
If you have a mortgage that is floating, lock it in with a fixed rate.
Those looking to buy have a dilemma. On the one hand, real estate prices are high in many regions and you can wait for prices to come down before buying. On the other hand, when prices start to tumble it will be the result of an inability to get long-term fixed loans so prices will fall to where people will be able to get loans or pay cash. The solution may be to buy when you can get a long-term fixed mortgage and then hedge it with eventually shorting rates where there will be a liquid marke
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I am a new reader. I was recommended to look to your site when I was in a climate debate with a friend. They never tell us that the sun has a cycle which beats like your heart as you put it. I also never knew the north pole moved drastically. I am left speechless as to why these climate change people never address anything beyond CO2. Do you think the world will wake up before it is too late to discover these people are just liars?
HM
ANSWER: It has been in Europe which seems destined to collapse because of all the climate change regulations. It is a general consensus now among people I speak to in the German auto industry that they will be driven into bankruptcy before there is any recognition that this is all nonsense.
The North Pole is moving rapidly toward Siberia. The North Pole has always moved, but never at such a rapid pace in modern history. We have historical data from old ships’ logs covering the past 400 years. We know that the north magnetic pole has hung around northern Canada and was very steady. During the 20th century, it moved perhaps tens of several miles (kilometers) oscillating back and forth. It has been only during the last 50 years where the North Pole began to move northward. Then during the last 30 years, it began to accelerate rapidly. Suddenly it began to move about from about 6 miles (five to 10km) in a year to a sharp increase of about 37 miles (50 or 60km) per year.
The North Pole is now moving very rapidly towards Siberia. There has been considerable debate whether the complete disappearance of the woolly mammoths and other animals that thrived during the Ice Age was caused by a “quick-freeze” perhaps due to a pole shift, or some other major mystery of paleontology. There have been several carcasses discovered and the preserved food in specimens’ stomachs raised interesting questions. This is why the “quick freeze” catastrophe appears reasonable. Much of the support centers around the fact that the mammoths were quickly frozen, which explains the state of their food contents still in their stomachs, which has been also the main evidence for a quick freeze.
Actually, Birds Eye Frozen Foods Company ran an experiment based on heat conduction and the state of preservation of the stomach contents. They concluded that the atmospheric temperature had to quickly fall below -150°F (-100°C) (Dillow, J.C., The waters above: Earth’s pre-Flood vapor canopy, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, pp. 383–396, 1981). There have been some who tried to link this with the great flood from the Bible. This does not seems plausible in the least.
All we have are a lot of questions. There may be thousands of woolly mammoth carcasses still buried in the permafrost. Forget trying to fit this into the Bible. From carbon dating, the animals appear to have been frozen about 42,000 years ago. Recently, a 42,000-year-old Lena horse was discovered frozen in Siberian permafrost which contained the oldest liquid blood on record.
Clearly, whatever froze these animals was well beyond the Biblical flood or some 7,000 years ago. The speculation that seems to make the most sense was a polar shift which was perhaps sudden.
The crowd erupts into cheers and chants of “USA, USA” as President Trump and First Lady Melania are introduced during the College Football Championship game between Clemson and LSU in the New Orleans Superdome. WATCH:
Clay Travis
✔@ClayTravis
Deafening roar of applause for Donald Trump and Melania as well as loud USA chants they enter the field for the national anthem before LSU-Clemson.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is a smart, serious and deliberate professional on a very specific and important mission for the United States. In my opinion Lighthizer is the most under-appreciated member of an exceptionally good economic team. Everything about Lighthizer’s approach is based on enforcement.
Ambassador Lighthizer has been consistent over multiple years, on his intention to create enforceable trade reform between the U.S. and China, or, if needed, decouple the two economies if China fails to accept the necessary structural reforms.
Tonight, as the Chinese delegation arrives, Lighthizer discusses the U.S-China ‘phase-one’ agreement with Lou Dobbs. WATCH:
Earlier today U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced the results of a criminal investigation into the December terrorist attack at Pensacola Naval Air Station. The AG answered press questions at the end of his remarks.
Accompanying AG Bill was FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch. Interestingly, Mr. Bowditch, as SanFran field office head, was the lead investigator of the San Bernadino terrorist attack prior to returning to Washington DC. [Video and Transcript Below]
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[Transcript] – BILL BARR: Good afternoon, and thank you for coming.
We are here to discuss the results of the investigation into the shooting that occurred on Dec. 6, 2019 at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Joining me today are David Bowdich, Deputy Director of the FBI; John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Michael Sherwin, Associate Deputy Attorney General for National Security; Rachel Rojas, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Field Office in Jacksonville, Florida; and Larry Keefe, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida.
I want to thank the FBI and the other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies involved in responding to and investigating the incident for their rapid and excellent work. Many people worked long hours through the holidays, and I am grateful for their diligence and commitment to seeing this through. You will be hearing from Deputy Director Bowdich shortly about the details of the FBI investigative work, which was superb.
In considering this case, we have to remember that there are thousands of allied pilots and other military personnel receiving training on military bases throughout the United States. These military partnerships are critically important to the United States. The Royal Saudi Air Force, which flies American-made aircraft, is an important military partner, and has long had a training relationship with us.
On Dec. 6, 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force, entered a building on the grounds of Pensacola Naval Air Station and killed three U.S. sailors and severely wounded eight other Americans. Alshamrani was killed during the attack.
This was an act of terrorism.
The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology. During the course of the investigation, we learned that the shooter posted a message on social media on Sept. 11 of last year that said: “the countdown has begun.” Over Thanksgiving weekend, he visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. He also posted other anti-American, anti-Israeli, and jihadi messages on social media, and did so two hours before his attack at the naval base.
Early reports indicated that the shooter arrived at the site, accompanied by other Saudi cadets, who took video of the attack as it unfolded. These reports turned out not to be accurate. The shooter arrived by himself. Other Saudi cadets happened to be in the area and, after the attack began, they took some videos of the resulting commotion. They fully cooperated in the investigation, as did the other Saudi cadets who were interviewed by the FBI at Pensacola and at additional bases across the country.
After Alshamrani entered the building and cased the facility, he proceeded to walk around shooting down his unarmed victims in cold blood.
During and after this heinous attack, there were many specific acts of courage, and I want to draw special attention to two U.S. Marines: Gunnery Sgt. Ryan Maisel and Staff Sgt. Samuel Mullins.
They were outside the building when they heard gunfire and, although unarmed, they ran into the building to confront the shooter. Their only weapon was a fire extinguisher that they had pulled off the wall as they ran toward the gunfire. Who but the Marines?
Although they were unable to engage the shooter, they helped save many lives by performing CPR and other medical aid on the victims.
I would also like to mention the heroic acts of Navy Airman Ryan Blackwell. The shooter shot Airman Blackwell five times, yet Ryan still managed to jump on top of a fellow sailor to keep her from being shot. He further assisted other students and helped them escape, all while taking additional fire from the shooter. Airman Blackwell’s heroic acts also saved countless lives that day.
We are grateful as well for the bravery of the base personnel and local law enforcement responders who initially arrived at the scene and engaged the shooter.
I would also like to address the cooperation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave complete and total support for our counter-terrorism investigation, and ordered all Saudi trainees to fully cooperate. This assistance was critical to helping the FBI determine whether anyone assisted the shooter in the attack.
While there was no evidence of assistance or pre-knowledge of the attack by other members of the Saudi military (or any other foreign nationals) who are training in the United States, we did learn of derogatory material possessed by 21 members of the Saudi military who are training here in the United States.
17 had social media containing some jihadi or anti-American content. However, there was no evidence of any affiliation or involvement with any terrorist activity or group. 15 individuals (including some of the 17 just mentioned) had had some kind of contact with child pornography. While one of these individuals had a significant number of such images, all the rest had one or two images, in most cases posted in a chat room by someone else or received over social media.
The relevant U.S. Attorneys offices independently reviewed each of the 21 cases involving derogatory information and determined that none of them would, in the normal course, result in federal prosecution.
However, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia determined that this material demonstrated conduct unbecoming an officer in the Saudi Royal Air Force and Royal Navy and the 21 cadets have been dis-enrolled from their training curriculum in the U.S. military and will be returning to Saudi Arabia (later today).
The Kingdom has assured me that it will review each of these cases under their code of military justice and criminal code. The Kingdom has also agreed that we will have full access to anyone we want to interview in Saudi Arabia and any documents relevant to our investigation. Indeed, it has already been providing documents. Further, the Kingdom has assured us that, if we later decide to charge any of those being sent back to Saudi Arabia in connection with this counterterrorism investigation, it will return them for trial.
We appreciate Saudi Arabia’s cooperation in this case.
Finally, I want to address an issue regarding the shooter’s phones.
The shooter possessed two Apple iPhones, seen on posters here.
Within one day of the shooting, the FBI sought and received court authorization based on probable cause to search both phones in an effort to run down all leads and figure out with whom the shooter was communicating.
During the gunfight with first responders, the shooter disengaged long enough to place one of the phones on the floor and shoot a single round into the device. It also appears the other phone was damaged.
Our experts at the FBI crime lab were able to fix both damaged phones so they are operational.
However, both phones are engineered to make it virtually impossible to unlock them without the password. It is very important to know with whom and about what the shooter was communicating before he died.
We have asked Apple for their help in unlocking the shooter’s iPhones. So far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance. This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order based on probable cause. We call on Apple and other technology companies to help us find a solution so that we can better protect the lives of Americans and prevent future attacks.
With that, I will turn things over to Deputy Director Bowdich.
Chopper pressers are the best pressers. Earlier today President Trump and First-Lady Melania Trump departed the White House traveling to New Orleans for the NCAA football championship game LSU -vs- Clemson. President Trump delivered brief remarks
[Video and Transcript Below].
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[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: So we’re going to the game. It’ll be a great game. It’ll be something that a lot of people want to see. And we’ll be in New Orleans, and we look forward to it.
The stock market way up. The country is doing really well. And we’ll see you at the game.
Q Mr. President, what did the intelligence show about the threat to the four embassies? What did the intelligence show?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think it’s been totally consistent. But here’s what’s been consistent: We killed Soleimani, the number-one terrorist in the world by every account. Bad person. Killed a lot of Americans, killed a lot of people. We killed him. And when the Democrats try and defend him, it’s a disgrace to our country. They can’t do that. And, let me tell you, it’s not working politically very well for them.
So, we killed the number-one terrorist in the world — Soleimani — and it should have been done 20 years ago.
As you review this story keep in the back of your mind that U.S. DC Attorney Jessie Liu has been recently moved to head the Financial Crimes Division of the Treasury Department.
CTH noted last year when John Fry, an intelligence analyst with the IRS’s law enforcement arm, was arrested that something more was happening in the background of his case and the DOJ case against Natalie Sours-Edwards. Today Ms. Sours-Edwards pleads guilty to downloading & distributing the financial records of people connected to the Trump orbit.
You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department [See Here]. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official [See Here]. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation.
(VIA DOJ) Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards Illegally Repeatedly Transmitted SARs and Other Sensitive Government Information To A Reporter Resulting In Approximately 12 News Articles Over 1-Year Period.
Ms. Sours-Edwards, a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”).
Beginning in approximately October 2017, and lasting until her arrest in October 2018, EDWARDS agreed to and did unlawfully disclose numerous SARs to a reporter (“Reporter-1”), the substance of which were published over the course of approximately 12 articles by a news organization for which Reporter-1 worked (“News Organization-1”).
The illegally disclosed SARs pertained to, among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Maria Butina, and Prevezon Alexander.
EDWARDS had access to each of the pertinent SARs and saved them – along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information – to a flash drive provided to her by FinCEN. She transmitted the SARs to Reporter-1 by means that included taking photographs or images of them and texting the photographs or images to Reporter-1 over an encrypted application.
In addition to disseminating SARs to Reporter-1, EDWARDS sent or described to Reporter-1 internal FinCEN emails or correspondence appearing to relate to SARs or other information protected by the BSA, and FinCEN nonpublic memoranda, including Investigative Memos and Intelligence Assessments published by the FinCEN Intelligence Division, which contained confidential personal information, business information, and/or security threat assessments.
At the time of EDWARDS’s arrest, she was in possession of a flash drive on which she saved the unlawfully disclosed SARs, and a cellphone containing numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information to Reporter-1. (read more)
There is so much sketchy about all of this – it is difficult to know where to begin.
[Sidebar Question: In 2017 how would Mrs. Sours-Edwards know to search and download the financial records of Maria Butina? …I digress]
First, within the current DOJ press release there is no identification of Mrs. Edwards co-conspirator. Mrs. Edwards was a “senior official”; however, within the original indictmentthere was clearly a supervisor who was working with her: [Pg 13]
What happened to the co-conspirator?
Second, based on the information from 2018 CTH was able to identify that at least one part of Ms. Sours-Edwards leaking was a series of financial records identical to those sent to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
[May 2018] Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told reporters Thursday that his committee also had gotten the Treasury Department data. (read more)
Which begs the question: Was Ms. Edwards alone in leaking the financial records, or did both the SSCI and Ms. Edwards leak that material to the media?
Why is this question important?…. Because it will determine what happens with her plea. There is a decent likelihood, perhaps even a strong likelihood, Ms. Edwards will benefit from the same issue that protected SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.
Watch the plea process closely. If my hunch is correct, the DOJ will touch Ms Edwards very lightly in their sentencing recommendation as they did with James Wolfe.
Thirdly, along the lines of the SSCI and the DOJ sentencing, it does not go unnoticed that former FBI Director James Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, is the SDNY prosecutor in this case.
…”This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Public Corruption Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kimberly J. Ravener, Daniel C. Richenthal, and Maurene R. Comey are in charge of the prosecution.”… (link)
Lastly, few things shock me upon follow-up review; however, this statement:
…”The illegally disclosed SARs pertained to, among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Mariia Butina, and Prevezon Alexander. EDWARDS had access to each of the pertinent SARs and saved them – along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information“…
I find the “thousands of other files” to be particularly noteworthy.
I would not be surprised to discover those files would include President Trump’s tax records; and/or the records of his business and family interests.
What exactly did Ms. Edwards extract, download and leak?
Perhaps that’s why U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu was moved into the Treasury Dept (?).
As we noted last year, it is highly likely Ms. Edwards was the Treasury Department source for a myriad of resistance articles written by multiple journalists. Some of the more transparently obvious examples come from Buzzfeed via Jason Leopold, in addition to Ronan Farrow:
October 6th, 2017 – The Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been illegally rifling through and filing away the private financial records of US citizens, Treasury employees alleged. “This is such an invasion of privacy,” said one official. (read more)
October 29th, 2017 – BuzzFeed News has learned of a series of wire transfers, made by companies linked to Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, that federal officials deemed suspicious. Many of the wires went from offshore companies controlled by Manafort to American businesses. (read more)
May 16th, 2018 – Ronan Farrow […] there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation. (read more)
Keep an eye on the sentencing phase for Ms. Sours-Edwards. I suspect we have not seen the end of this story….
…unfortunately, as with James Wolfe, I also suspect it won’t be the DOJ to tell it.
The transparency of specific media injecting themselves into political races has been obvious for years; the latest example comes from CNN publishing an insider hit piece against Bernie Sanders on behalf of the gender woke community & Elizabeth Warren.
On the eve of another democrat presidential debate; and with diminished support for her presidential ambitions; team Warren plays the gender card as her campaign, together with woke advocate CNN, claim Bernie Sanders said a woman can never be president.
Using the backdrop of a “private meeting” between the two candidates CNN uses four anonymous sources to frame the gender narrative:
(Via CNN) [Warren and Sanders] discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.
The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.
That evening, Sanders expressed frustration at what he saw as a growing focus among Democrats on identity politics, according to one of the people familiar with the conversation. Warren told Sanders she disagreed with his assessment that a woman could not win, three of the four sources said.
Sanders denied the characterization of the meeting in a statement to CNN.
“It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win,” Sanders said. “It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.” (read more)
CNN is attempting to hold themselves up as the torch-bearer for the gender “woke” community, this is their target audience. The gender-divide effort by the mean-girls clique at CNN is transparent…. However, factions within factions is how the Democrats are breaking down their campaign races.
DOJ-NSD lawyer David Kris has been a defender of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and Lawfare critic of Devin Nunes’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses. Sketchy Mr. Kris was recently picked by FISC presiding judge James Boasberg, to serve as the court’s amicus curiae — a position that is supposed to provide impartial advice to the court.
Mr. Kris will oversee the implementation of “FISA reforms” following the IG report on serious abuses found in the DOJ and FBI’s political efforts to conduct surveillance on U.S. person Carter Page. However, representative Devin Nunes shares his doubts & concerns:
New Jersey Senator Corey Booker has announced he is dropping his presidential ambitions and will exit the democrat primary race. Booker is broke and did not qualify for Tuesday’s debate in Iowa; it would have been the second straight debate he’s missed.
IOWA – Sen. Cory Booker announced Monday he is dropping out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
In an email to his supporters, Booker cited a number of reasons: most notably, a lack of money to continue.
“Our campaign has reached the point where we need more money to scale up and continue building a campaign that can win — money we don’t have, and money that is harder to raise because I won’t be on the next debate stage and because the urgent business of impeachment will rightly be keeping me in Washington,” Booker wrote. (read more)
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 