Of course they are doing this and have been for a while but keep in mind that in the Utah is massive federal complex that has been on line for a while now where EVERYTHING that is electronic has been captured and store on tens of thousands of HD’s and it can be retrieved when needed. So everyone that uses a phone a cell phone or email or now a computer connected to the cloud has had ALL of that collected and stored. The NSA and the CIA can access that when ever they want!
Tag Archives: Radical Islam
Corporate Business, Markets, Analysts, All Missing The New Economic Dimension…
CRAZED NORTH KOREAN DESPOT KIM JONG-UN’S TROOPS BLOW UP US AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND SHOOT DOWN BOMBER IN PROPAGANDA VIDEO
That propaganda video was so crude is was a joke, a HS kid in the US could make a better one; and the companies that produce games wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near that junk.
DHS releases list of police departments defying immigration orders
Its simple cut off federal money and they will comply!
NORTH KOREA’S LITTLE STICK
Reuters Tries Scheduling Hit Job on T-Rex For Not Attending NATO Meeting, Skips Their Own Reporting Days Earlier…
GLOBAL WAR APPROACHES: NORTH KOREA WARNS: “IF A SINGLE BULLET IS FIRED WE WILL NUKE THE UNITED STATES”
We had better take them out before they can actually do it!
Brexit begins: Date Article 50 will be triggered to start process of UK leaving EU now confirmed
The beginning of the end for the EU.
EU Taxpayers Brace As Deepening Banking Crisis Means Euro-TARP Looms
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 20, 2017 5:00 AM
Authored by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com,
If the ECB scales back stimulus, banks face even greater risk of collapse. But now there’s a new solution
Events are moving so fast in Europe these days, it’s almost impossible to keep up. While much of the attention is being hogged by political developments, including the election in the Netherlands, Reuters published a report warning that the European banking sector may face even higher bad loan risks if the ECB begins to scale back its monetary stimulus programs, something it has already begun, albeit extremely tentatively.
The total stock of non-performing loans (NPL) in the EU is estimated at over €1 trillion, or 5.4% of total loans, a ratio three times higher than in other major regions of the world.
On a country-by-country basis, things look even scarier. Currently 10 (out of 28) EU countries have an NPL ratio above 10% (orders of magnitude higher than what is generally considered safe). And among Eurozone countries, where the ECB’s monetary policies have direct impact, there are these NPL stalwarts:
- Ireland: 15.8%
- Italy: 16.6%
- Portugal: 19.2%
- Slovenia: 19.7%
- Greece: 46.6%
- Cyprus: 49%
That bears repeating: in Greece and Cyprus, two of the Eurozone’s most bailed out economies, virtually half of all the bank loans are toxic.
Then there’s Italy, whose €350 billion of NPLs account for roughly a third of Europe’s entire bad debt stock. Italy’s government and financial sector have spent the last year and a half failing spectacularly to come up with a solution to the problem. The two “bad bank” funds they created to help clean up the banks’ toxic balance sheets, Atlante I and Atlante II, are the financial equivalent of bringing a butter knife to a machete fight. So underfunded are they, they even strugggled to hold aloft smaller, regional Italian banks like Veneto Banca and Popolare di Vicenza, which are now pleading for a bailout from Rome, which in turn is pleading for clemency from Brussels.
What little funds Atlante I and Atlante II have left are hemorrhaging value as the “assets” they’ve been used to buy up, invariably at prices that were way too high (often at over 40 cents on the euro), continue to deteriorate. The recent decision of Italy’s two biggest banks, Unicredit and Intesa Sao Paolo, to significantly write down their investment in Atlante is almost certain to discourage the private sector from pumping fresh funds into bailing out weaker banks.
Which means someone else must step in, and soon. And that someone is almost certain to be the European taxpayer.
In February ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio called for the creation of a whole new class of government-backed “bad banks” to help buy some of the €1 trillion of bad loans putrefying on bank balance sheets. Constancio’s idea bore a striking resemblance to a formal proposal put forward by the European Banking Authority (EBA) for the creation of a massive EU-wide bad bank that, in the words of EBA president Andrea Enria, would “make it much easier to achieve critical mass and to create a well functioning market for (impaired) assets.”
Here’s how it would work, according to Enria (emphasis added):
The banks would sell their non-performing loans to the asset management company at a price reflecting the real economic value of the loans, which is likely to be below the book value, but above the market price currently prevailing in illiquid markets. So the banks will likely have to take additional losses.
The asset manager would then have three years to sell those assets to private investors. There would be a guarantee from the member state of each bank transferring assets to the asset management company, underpinned by warrants on each bank’s equity. This would protect the asset management company from future losses if the final sale price is below the initial transfer price.
One of the biggest advantages of launching an EU-wide bad bank is that it would avoid the sort of public “resistance” that would occur if it was done at a national level, says Enria. Italian lenders would presumably be able to continuing pricing bad loans at or around 40 cents on the euro on average, even though their real value — i.e. the current value priced by the market — is often much lower. The difference between the market price, if any, and the price the banks end up receiving for their bad debt will be covered by Europe’s taxpayers.
If given the green light, the scheme would pave the way to the biggest one-off bail out of European banks in history. It would be Euro-TARP on angel dust, with even fewer checks and balances and much less likelihood of ever recovering taxpayer funds. According to a banker source cited by Reuters, while Germany has not yet endorsed the EBA plan, the EU documents describe the development of a secondary market for NPLs as a priority. According to Enria, the EBA hopes to finalize matters “at the European level” in the Spring.
The documents also include proposals for a wider “restructuring of banking sectors” as states address the NPLs problem. This “could lead to mergers among EU banks after they offload their bad loans,” a banking industry official said.
In other words, EU taxpayers would have to spend potentially hundreds of billions of euros saving yet more banks from the consequences of their own acts and bail out their bondholders and potentially their stockholders too, with funds desperately needed in other areas. Those banks, once saved and their balance sheets cleansed, would then be handed on a platter to much bigger banks. In return, taxpayers would end up with an even more concentrated, consolidated, interconnected financial system that is even more prone to abuse, corruption, and excess.
The ECB’s policy isn’t about creating inflation but about keeping a financial system and a currency union from collapsing upon each other. Read… ECB Trapped in its Own “Doom Loop” as Inflation Surges
Budget Director Mulvaney Admits No Hope “To Balance The Budget This Year”
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted from ZERO HEDGE Mar 20, 2017 4:15 AM
Appearing on Meet the Press earlier this morning with the always condescending, well at least if he’s interviewing a Republican guest, Chuck Todd, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, said there’s no hope of achieving a balanced budget this year. Of course, that should hardly come as a surprise to almost anyone other than the suddenly fiscally conservative Chuck Todd.
“No, we won’t be able to balance the budget this year, but we’re working on trying to get it to balance within the ten-year budget window, which is what Republicans in the House and the Senate have traditionally done the last couple of years.”
A smirking Chuck Todd also pressed Mulvaney regarding his thoughts on raising the debt ceiling with a series of ‘gotcha’ questions:
Todd: “Debt ceiling. We hit it on Friday. Extraordinary measures by the Treasury Secretary will mean a couple more months. You were a tough nut to crack on the debt ceiling when you were Congressman Mulvaney. Why should people who were like minded with you who basically said ‘hey look, I’ll give you that debt ceiling but I want real cuts, I want real deficit reduction, I want a real plan.’ I think at one point you said I’ll raise the debt ceiling in exchange for a balanced budget. You’re not going to be making that ask this time, are you?”
Mulvaney: “I have voted to raise the debt ceiling before as most people in Congress have. Traditionally, you go back to the 1920’s and 1930’s, the debt ceiling debate has been used to try and step back and say ‘why do we have a deficit problem, why do we have a debt problem and how can we fix it.’ So we’ll be coming forward with ideas to raise the debt ceiling but at the same time try to address some of those long-term reasons that we have the debt in the first place.”
Meanwhile, Mulvaney took a shot of his own saying that Trump’s vision for the budget is consistent with his comments on the presidential campaign trail and that “He’s trying to do something that politicians are not very famous for, which is actually following through on his promises.” For those who missed it, here is our previous summary of Trump initial “skinny budget” proposal:
Today at 7am, Trump released his “skinny budget”, his administration’s first federal budget blueprint revealing the President’s plan to dramatically reduce the size of the government. As previewed last night, the document calls for deep cuts at departments and agencies that would eliminate entire programs and slash the size of the federal workforce. It also proposes a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which the White House says will be offset by the other cuts.
“This is the ‘America First’ budget,” said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who made a name for himself as a spending hawk before Trump plucked him for his Cabinet, adding that “if he said it in the campaign, it’s in the budget.”
In a proposal with many losers, the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department stand out as targets for the biggest spending reductions. Funding would disappear altogether for 19 independent bodies that count on federal money for public broadcasting, the arts and regional issues from Alaska to Appalachia. Trump’s budget outline is a bare-bones plan covering just “discretionary” spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. It is the first volley in what is expected to be an intense battle over spending in coming months in Congress, which holds the federal purse strings and seldom approves presidents’ budget plans.
Trump wants to spend $54 billion more on defense, put a down payment on his border wall, and breathe life into a few other campaign promises. His initial budget outline does not incorporate his promise to pour $1 trillion into roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects. The budget directs several agencies to shift resources toward fighting terrorism and cybercrime, enforcing sanctions, cracking down on illegal immigration and preventing government waste.
The White House has said the infrastructure plan is still to come.
That said, Congress controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, is likely to reject some or many of his proposed cuts with some republicans calling the budget “dead on arrival.” Some of the proposed changes, which Democrats will broadly oppose, have been targeted for decades by conservative Republicans. Moderate Republicans have already expressed unease with potential cuts to popular domestic programs such as home-heating subsidies, clean-water projects and job training.
Trump is willing to discuss priorities, said Mulvaney. “The president wants to spend more money on defense, more money securing the border, more money enforcing the laws, and more money on school choice, without adding to the deficit,” Mulvaney told a small group of reporters during a preview on Wednesday. “If they have a different way to accomplish that, we are more than interested in talking to them,” Mulvaney said.
The defense increases are matched by cuts to other programs so as to not increase the $488 billion federal deficit. Mulvaney acknowledged the proposal would likely result in significant cuts to the federal workforce. “You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said.
A visual summary of the proposed budget changes is shown below, courtesy of Reuters:
The biggest losers:
Trump asked Congress to slash the EPA by $2.6 billion or more than 31 percent, and the State Department by more than 28 percent or $10.9 billion. Mulvaney said the “core functions” of those agencies would be preserved. Hit hard would be foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies like the World Bank and climate change programs at the United Nations.
Trump wants to get rid of more than 50 EPA programs, end funding for former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and cut renewable energy research programs at the Energy Department. Regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would be sent to the chopping block.
Community development grants at the Housing Department – around since 1974 – were cut in Trump’s budget, along with more than 20 Education Department programs, including some funding program for before- and after- school programs. Anti-poverty grants and a program that helps poor people pay their energy bills would be slashed, as well as a Labor Department program that helps low-income seniors find work.
Long reviled by conservatives, the Internal Revenue Service would get a $239 million cut, despite Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s request for more funding. The Education Department would receive $1.4 billion to invest in public charter schools and private schools, even as its overall budget is cut by 14 percent. But other numbers appear to contradict some of Trump’s top priorities. One of his campaign pledges was to work to cure diseases, but the National Institutes of Health will reportedly see $5.8 billion slashed from its budget.
Trump calls for a 13 percent cut to the Transportation Department, which would ostensibly play a big role in Trump’s promised infrastructure overhaul. That includes $500 million from the TIGER grant program, which provides funding for road and bridge projects.
Trump’s rural base did not escape cuts. The White House proposed a 21 percent reduction to the Agriculture Department, cutting loans and grants for wastewater, reducing staff in county offices and ending a popular program that helps U.S. farmers donate crops for overseas food aid.
And the winners
White House officials looked at Trump’s campaign speeches and “America First” pledges as they crunched the numbers, Mulvaney said. “We turned those policies into numbers,” he said, explaining how the document mirrored pledges to spend more on the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, veterans’ health care, the FBI, and Justice Department efforts to fight drug dealers and violent crime.
The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants. Trump wants Congress to shell out $1.5 billion for the border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year – enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it – and a further $2.6 billion in fiscal 2018, Mulvaney said.
The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years. Trump has vowed Mexico will pay for the border wall, which the Mexican government has flatly said it will not do. The White House has said recently that funding would be kick-started in the United States.
The voluminous budget document will include economic forecasts and Trump’s views on “mandatory entitlements” – big-ticket programs like Social Security and Medicare, which Trump vowed to protect on the campaign trail.
“There is no question this is a hard-power budget,” said Mulvaney. “It is not a soft-power budget.”
The budget requests $1.5 billion to detain and remove undocumented immigrants, and $314 million to hire 500 new Border Patrol officers and 1,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Centinel2012 