Ben Swann is not a national TV journalist, but he is making a name for himself on his Atlanta, Georgia, station by going against the mainstream media. Here is Swann’s piece on the five problems with the Democrats’ claims that Russia hacked the DNC files and gave them to Wikileaks. Wikileaks outright denied this claim and stated bluntly that their source was a LEAK and not a HACK.

This entire nonsense about Russia hacking the DNC and somehow tipping the election to Trump can be summed up very neatly. If the Democrats were HONEST, then there would not have been anything to report. So they are crying foul and blaming Russia instead of themselves.

Clinton’s fallout is interestingly causing an internal revolution among Hillary’s big donors. At her New York bash to “thank” her big donors of $1 million or more, she took no blame and pointed the finger at Comey and Putin. Her spin did not work and she has lost a lot of credibility according to confidential sources. They were smart enough to realize that even if Russia “hacked” the DNC and Podesta emails, there would be no release if there had been no wrongdoing to begin with.

Now Clinton’s biggest backers want a “campaign autopsy,” which could expose Clinton’s entire operation. The donors are demanding to know where Clinton spent the near $1.5 billion in campaign resources she collected in the closing months. They want the receipts. They are demanding an honest investigation of how Clinton failed to read the mood in swing states and how her Brooklyn operation misread polling data.

The donors are not buying the Russian hack story. Putin isn’t the only explanation for her failure and they are now pointing the finger at Hillary. She never bothered to go to Wisconsin. The story running behind the curtain is that fundraisers are cutting off all donations to the Democratic Party until this honest review is carried out. They do not want to hear about Comey and Putin.

Foreign governments have been cutting off funds to the Clinton Foundation. At last, the money is being cut off. Bill Clinton has lost it, mocking President-elect Donald Trump’s intelligence. “[Trump] doesn’t know much,” Bill Clinton said of Trump. “One thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” Bill is keeping it racist and gender oriented. Obviously, Bill is lashing out because the Clinton money machine came to a screeching halt.

QUESTION #1: Dear Mr Armstrong, you recently wrote that if you are in any bond fund, better get out. Do you also mean corporate short-term/medium-term bonds or are those expected to rise when people realise government debt is the real bubble ?

Kind regards.

WL.

QUESTION #2:  Mr. Armstrong- I enjoyed my first WEC immensely! In the blog and other place’s you warned that you should get out of bond funds. I understand government bonds of all kinds should be sold including date certain and funds. I am curious though about high-quality corporate bond funds. Should one get out of corporate bond funds and move to individual issues? The funds are easier for a working person of course.

Thank you,

KO

ANSWER: We are entering a phase of rising interest rates, so bond funds will do poorly. We are not yet at a stage where U.S. government bonds would default or be swapped. Therefore, my recommendation has only to do with rising rates. What you should do is stay short-term, like 90-day paper or less, be it corporate or government. This is just an interest rate play moving into 2018.

As we move into 2018, we will look at corporate vs government shift. That will become the play, but that will most likely unfold after we begin to see serious problems with government debt outside the United States. In Japan, the ownership of public debt by the private sector is in freefall. Debt to GDP held by the private sector before Abe came to power was 177%, which had collapsed to 100% in 2012, and has continued to decline to about 75%. The Bank of Japan through its quantitative easing now owns more government debt than the private sector. Japan is in VERY SERIOUS trouble and there is no possible way to reverse this nightmare.

The European Central Bank now holds 15% of Germany’s national debt. The central banks have been running out of positive-yielding safe-haven bonds. Yes, the Federal Reserve holds $2.4 trillion is less than 10%. The volume of repo loans using Treasury debt as collateral has collapsed from $2.6 trillion to about $1.8 trillion according to Barclays.

Despite all the complaints that QE has failed, we must ask how deep deflation would be without it. True, QE has not produced inflation. It has not stimulated the economies of Europe or Japan because the confidence of the people is not there. The central banks are trapped and politicians, not hedge fund managers, run government. These people are ignorant at best if not outright deaf, dumb, and stupid. They cannot see how this system of government borrowing will continue if the public no longer buys their debt.

This is by no means going to end nicely. So keep the power dry. We are in for a real crisis come 2018