Tag Archives: Central Planning

Jun 2 2017

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Deconstructs Matt Lauer’s Talking Points…


RE-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on June 2, 2017 by

Earlier today Secretary of Commerce Wilbur “Wilburine” Ross was interviewed by Today host Matt Lauer. Wilburine doesn’t suffer fools especially when they are quoting from oppositional talking points disconnected from facts.

Lauer throws the progressive talking points and Wilburine simply chews through them while reminding Lauer the Paris Treaty was about economics not climate.

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The underlying principle of the Trump Economic Team’s policy is how they plan to effectively grow the economy beyond the current 1-1.5%. Without the insufferable regulation, and with renegotiated trade deals, the baseline for economic growth jumps enormously.

This is the fundamental disconnect most financial and economic followers are missing. All current assumptions for growth are predicated on the burdensome status quo; remove those blocks and the national GDP has no upper limit. Three to four percent (or higher) growth becomes the reality.

Jun 2 2017

Kathy Griffin Press Conference with Attorney Lisa Bloom…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on June 2, 2017 by

Kathy Griffin holds a press conference in California to claim she has been horribly victimized by President Trump and the first family.  Additionally Griffin is claiming a group of “old white men” are trying to destroy her career and she is enduring bullying.

There are several emotional moments where Ms. Griffin breaks down crying as she recounts the strong possibility that her career is financially ruined, and claims 11-year-old Barron Trump is being used as a weapon against her.

There are also snippets of the press conference below.

(December Article Link)

 

Jun 2 2017

Corruption was Crazy during 19th Century


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption

RE-Posted Jun 2, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Marty, is this perhaps the most corrupt period in political history? I find Hillary’s comments outright offensive that she counts on the press to make the people as stupid as possible. Is this the worst of the worst?

Thanks

RG

ANSWER: Hillary is really detestable. But politics was exceptionally corrupt after the Civil War because there was no real effective opposition. The political scandals were just one after the other.

The scandals were so numerous that Puck Magazine ran this cartoon picturing the Grant Administration as just a circus.

The Whiskey Ring was diverting tax money on whiskey to private accounts shared by government officials. Can you imaging you owe $100,000 in taxes and the IRS Agent says here, wire the money to my account and we will call it just $50,000.

There were too many scandals all involving corruption that was off the charts. It was literally one scandal after another. Mark Twain’s book, The Gilded Age, was  a satire of greed and political corruption in post-Civil War era in America history.

I have given up any hope on career politicians. They cannot possibly represent the people for their votes are always for sale. Republics never last because they have always turned into Oligarchies. Hillary is filthy rich, yet she has worked only for government. Nobody asks how!

Jun 2 2017

Sweden Begins Drafting for its Military


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

Re-Posted Jun 2, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The Swedish government has declared that they will begin drafting those born in 1999 for military service. This reintroduction of military conscription is being blamed on Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine. In fact, it also has a lot to do with the Refugee Crisis. The draft will being as of January 1st, 2018. Sweden had military conscription until 2010, but previously only men were drafted. I know of a number of young women in the United States who were against Hillary because she demanded equal rights for women and thus she supported drafting women into the military.

Most of the 28 EU member states have abolished military conscription and that included France and Britain. Germany suspended conscription in 2011, but interestingly enough, Greece has mandatory military service for all of the age of 19 who must serve for 9 months.

Jun 2 2017

New Idea for Political Reform


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

RE-Posted Jun 2, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

The Belgian Historian and author David Van Reybrouck in his book latest book, “Counter-elections”, has made a very interesting suggestion. He too has concluded that career politicians are just hopeless. It is so nice to see I am not alone. Van Reybrouck has proposed that politicians to really cannot represent the people and perhaps the solution is to draft people to be in politics by lottery. This is an interesting proposition. I would ad that anyone who takes up a position should be at the END of their career, not at the beginning or middle. In this way they bring the wisdom of experience with them and to be the Secretary of the Treasury that had to be an international fund manager rather than a domestic banker. The Secretary of War should be only someone who military service. In other words, you have to be qualified for the job.

Our greatest problem is are just lawyers from Obama and Clinton to Nixon and Kennedy. Even Franklin Roosevelt went to Columbia University Law School. He was never a good student with just average grades. He dropped out after two years. Being a lawyer does not qualify you to fill every position in government. Van Reybrouck’s idea of a lottery is very interesting. If we merge that with one-time-in-and-out, all money to run is provided by government and ABSOLUTELY no private donations along with having to have worked in that field, they we just might have a blueprint for after the Crash and Burn.

Jun 1 2017

Pickles and The Vast Russian Planetary Conspiracy Theorem…


RE-Posted from The Conservative Tree house on June 1, 2017 by

It was August 25th 2016, three months before the November election, when candidate Hillary Clinton first accused a massive global network of nationalist-minded planetary frog memes, and alt-right Russian co-conspirators, of conspiring with Vladimir Putin to upend her presidential campaign.

Hillary still had not visited Michigan or Wisconsin, and she took off almost the entire month of August 2016, and she never held a single rally with Tim Kaine (after the nomination) until September, but somehow she gave a public speech claiming that Vladimir Putin was using mind-control to manipulate nationalist inhabitants of planet earth in a grand conspiracy against her campaign.  It was bizarre to say the least.

However, if you think that August speech was bizarre the explanation she gave yesterday, to an actual live audience with a straight face, was somewhere so far past crazy-world the light from where crazy-speak emanates couldn’t catch her for a year.   Watch:

Now she’s blaming the vast planetary Macedonians and the Russians… But wait, it gets worse:

She’s also blaming the DNC.

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It’s the DNC, the Macedonians, the Russians, the frog memes, some mysterious group called the alt-right, a guy named Pepe, Breitbart Media, Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer and some British data-mining operation, Cambridge Analytica.

Them.

Weaponized cads.

Good Grief.

Jun 1 2017

Hillary Clinton Now Says Trump Aided the Russians


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Jun 1, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

Hillary Clinton now is joining the movement to overthrow Trump claiming, with absolutely no proof, that the misinformation about her was “fake news” spread over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign which was “guided” by the campaign of President Donald Trump.   Clinton now points to compromised intelligence agencies, released in January, headed by Clapper which claimed Russia sought to “influence” and “undermine” the election. She actually had the audacity to say: “The Russians, in my opinion … could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they have been guided … by Americans.”

Hillary is counting on the Intelligence Community (Deep State) that is leaking illegally everything they possibly can to the Washington Post on a daily basis to overthrow Trump. We have John Boehner coming out against Trump and how Hillary. Well Hillary has been blaming everyone except herself. Previously, she was blaming her second loss for the Presidency on men. She said: “[C]ertainly, misogyny played a role. … I think in this election there was a very real struggle between what is viewed as change that is welcomed and exciting to so many Americans, and change which is worrisome and threatening,” she said, before adding, “And you layer on the first woman president over that[.]”

As every one knows, I was friends with Maggie Thatcher. I have met plenty of women politicians around the world. NEVER have I ever heard any such campaign to vote for them because they were a woman. Hillary is still trapped in the 1960s and I hope she never leaves. The dynamic duo of Hillary and Boehner demonstrates when it comes to money, career politicians are all the same regardless of their party banne

Jun 1 2017

The Proposed Euro Bond Issue to Bailout ECB


Arstrong Economics Blog/Euro €

RE-Posted Jun 1, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Well Mr. Armstrong, perhaps you are wrong at last. It looks like your meetings in Brussels that quite a few people noted you shuffling around town did have an impact. Looks like your constant warning about the structure of the euro’s failure is being corrected. Looks like you did make a difference. So congratulations on being wrong I suppose.

WH

ANSWER: Perhaps. But it has taken 20 years to make this point. Granted, the recent proposal to create a debt for the Eurozone is a compromise, but it is still not a consolidation of the national debts of Europe. This new compromise proposal from the EU Commission shows that they are listening at last but not for the reason I have been warning about. However, I would not say I am wrong. What I have always said is only when the collapse becomes eminent do we see the political change. My point is no change comes without the pain and typically only with the crash and burn. People who want to pretend they are advisors to government are usually bullshit artists. Government will NEVER listen to anyone if you try to get them to act without pain. Now this maneuver is not what it appears. It’s a bailout for the ECB.

The EU Commission intends to issue securities that “bundle” the entire Eurozone debt. So in other words, these will be the CDO instruments for Europe. Instead of bundling mortgages and assuming that the collective process will somehow be worth more than the individual parts, that is the compromise here. The securities are to be launched on the market as a “European Safe Asset” in order to attract the euro government bonds to investors. This is not quite what I had proposed from the outset. My proposal was they should have consolidated all the debt at the beginning, thereafter each member state would issue its own state debt as in the USA. But they were trying to sell the idea that a single currency would produce a single interest rate for all. That is what I warned them would NEVER HAPPEN.

This comprise proposal is ​​consolidating government bonds into asset backed securities (ABS). This is intended to pack the national government bonds into securities in order to ensure the financing of the states even after the end of the ECB’s buying-up program. Draghi has created a huge problem buying 40% of the government bonds. Who will buy when the ECB stops?

This is the crash and burn. The EU officials hope and pray that this scheme will increase the demand for governments’ debts of the weaker economies within the Eurozone. They also hope that this will secure the reserves of the European banks where right now a good stiff wind will blow them over. This, they hope and pray, will better diversify bank risks by diversifying their portfolios and ignoring political problems emerging in the south.

This is still a half-hearted measure to move toward federalization of Europe without consolidating the debts, which they fear will still be rejected by the North v the South. Wolfgang Schäuble had said that he no longer opposes a transferunion in principle and this ABS market has dropped sharply post-2007 because it was a subprime crisis. So here the same idea behind the mortgage crisis is being applied to the European debt. What is dangerous here is that the opposite of the original idea behind a single currency will unfold. Originally, they pitched that a single currency would create a single interest rate look at the United States. I warned that was only federally and you had to pick up the rug to see that the 50 states were subject to their own credit rating. Under this scheme, the idea of creating an ABS instead of consolidating the debt runs the risk that countries like Germany will find themselves (1) no longer the target for a capital flight among Eurozone states, and (2) that the overall interest rate will rise because of the lower quality being included. Therefore, you will not achieve the lowest rate for all as initially proposed back in the ’90s, but rates will rise to reflect the risks in Southern Europe.

While this EU initiative is designed to prepare for the time when the ECB stops its Quantitative Easing that has trapped the ECB and Draghi is pleading for help Behind the Curtain. They are hoping and praying that this is the solution to defuse the ECB risk of its absurd policies. Like the worst trader who buys and never defines where he is wrong, Draghi has made that same mistake. There is a major risk that the ECB itself can collapse.

The EU officials are still shaking in their boots with regard to Italy and the Movementso Cinque Stelli (Five Star Movement). If Italy pulls out of the Euro, the ECB can collapse. The EU feels comfortable about Merkel winning the Bundestag election in Germany. They are still concerned about Italy, Greece, and a split in Spain. One goes, and then all will go.

This compromise proposal to create an ABS  is being put forth because of the German resistance to Eurobonds. The crisis is coming to a head for when the ECB quantitative easing ends, the interest rates will be substantially higher and the budgets of member states will explode beyond set limits. They are beginning to see that the ECB will soon face difficulties for as rates rise, the value of their bond holdings will drop like a stone. I have warned that the ECB is the one central bank that can collapse thanks to Draghi.

The EU Commission is also working on a proposal to establish a joint budget for the Eurozone, which is the end game of federalization. The aim was to cement the monetary union in place and thereby prevent any more BREXIT nonsense from their view. This has risen to the top of considerations with the French presidential election and the victory of Macron. But France is in trouble. There is no money to fund what Macron promised. This becomes another patch to try to keep a failed system together.

This is why I am holding the July 22nd, 2017 seminar just on the Eurozone at the end of July. The details and tickets will go up for sale this week. This will be reasonable for it is only a half-day. The price of a seat will be $350

Jun 1 2017

People’s Bank of China Moves Against Shorts


Armstrong Economics Blog/Central Banks

RE-Posted Jun 1, 2017 by Martin Armstrong

It was only last week that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) was rumoured to be competing in the currency market, which was coincidentally followed by a Moody’s downgrade. The action demonstrated signs that positions have been cut at a loss for anyone who attempted to short the Yuan. The O/N (overnight) and T/N (Tom-next) rates ballooned today which makes running currency short positions extremely expensive to finance. The currency traded from 6.85 down to below 6.77 (off-shore) as dealers scrambled to cover short positions as everyone chased for financing. The rates market moved from around 5.25% to over 21% to cover short-term (o/n and t/n) positions.
This is a popular move often undertaken by central banks if they fear the market is challenging them. The Bank of England when the GBP was forced out of the ERM raised rates to over 15% from then 11%. However, it is interesting that the options markets has (so far) seen this as a temporary move and has priced longer dated trades with only minimal impact. Many are speculating, given the new fixed approach China has taken against the USD, whether this is a friendly move to help a new President address his concerns over currency manipulation and assist a weaker USD
May 31 2017

Multinational Banks and Corporations Trigger Immediate Angst Over Trump Withdrawal From Paris Treaty…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on May 31, 2017 by

Every word we read, every corporate broadcast, every espoused punditry opinion, every angle that’s visible, everything surrounding the Paris Climate “Treaty”, All.Of.It., is driven by multinational banks and corporations who have a vested financial interest.

The Paris Climate Treaty has nothing to do with “climate” and everything possible to do with economics, globalism and the controlled redistribution of economic wealth as constructed through decades of advanced policies of multinational financial interests.

There are factually TRILLIONS of dollars at stake.

When you consider the pontificating pearl-clutching from the financial and industrial elites, ask yourself this very basic question:

If Elon Musk (Tesla), Tim Cook (Apple), Larry Page (google), Mark Zuckerberg (facebook), or any of the myriad of multinational executives really cared about “climate change”, then why are they doing business in China?

The primary concern for every affiliated entity surrounds economics, not climate.  “Climate” issues are the Trojan horse, the false ruse, the talking point, the scheme to get economic systems in place -yes, political systems- to control the distributive flow of larger economic wealth within all nations.  Period.

What ObamaCare was to your loss of healthcare individualism, so too is the Paris Treaty a political tool to deconstruct national economic individualism.  FULL-STOP.

To understand the larger objectives of the global and financial elite it is important to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect. Global financial exploitation of national markets:

♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

The ‘America First’ Trump-Trade Doctrine upsets the entire construct of this multinational export/control dynamic.  Team Trump focuses exclusively on bilateral trade deals with specific policy only looking out for the national interests of the United States.

Under President Trump’s Trade positions exfiltration of U.S. national wealth is essentially stopped.  This puts the multinational corporations, globalists who previously took a stake-hold in the U.S. economy with intention to export the wealth, in a position of holding interest of an asset they cannot exploit.

If you can see the ramifications, and can grasp the inherent anger, you can begin to understand the severity of the opposition to President Trump.

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, behavior and activity, through a market-based trade vehicle (Paris Agreement), which they exclusively control; and which subverts the national economic interests of sovereign nations.

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.  (read more)

Again, as we have done in the past, we draw attention to the secret meeting in Sea Island Georgia in 2016 when the billionaire vested participants gathered with the political class to discuss how they could stop candidate Donald J Trump.

2016 -Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering.

The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. (The meeting was not planned to be a strategy session on how to stop the GOP front-runner, but rather evolved into one, as a subsequently obtained agenda makes clear.)

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he “cannot support Donald Trump.”

Along with Ryan, the House was represented by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.), Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas) and almost-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), sources said, along with leadership figure Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Diane Black (Tenn.).

Philip Anschutz, the billionaire GOP donor whose company owns a stake in Sea Island, was also there, along with Democratic Rep. John Delaney, who represents Maryland. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was there, too, a Times spokeswoman confirmed.

“A specter was haunting the World Forum—the specter of Donald Trump,”  (read more)

Pay attention to the voices rising up in opposition to President Trump withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty and you will identify the same oppositional voices who assembled in all economic matters prior to this moment in 2017.  Their vested interests center around the economics, not “the climate”.

President Trump is very smart about the long-term ramifications to this ‘treaty’.  If the heavily influenced industrialized nations commit themselves to this agreement they will be anchoring their economic manufacturing base within a tiered system of ridiculously burdensome regulations and agreements.

The strategic benefit to the United States will stem from not participating in the regulatory stranglehold that accompanies the agreement.  Obviously all nations that compete with the U.S on international trade agreements would, for once, be at a disadvantage; and our American manufacturing and industrial base would be able to take strategic advantage.

In larger terms Trump’s refocused policy objectives remove the political benefit from Wall Street and places it back with Main Street, reversing a three decade long shift.  This approach is adverse to the interests of the globalists.

President Trump’s economic team are well aware of the strategic advantage is walking away from the Paris Climate Treaty.  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and their entire economic team know what is needed to reverse the decades long construct and defeat the interests of the global elites.