Saturday, October 31, 2015

Bullion Price Manipulation Shows Washington’s Corruption

Bullion Price Manipulation Shows Washington’s Corruption
Guest Column by Dave Kranzler

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/blatant-goldsilver-manipulation-reflects-the-complete-corruption-of-the-u-s-system/

Before SEAL Team 6 pulled the trigger, four administration lawyers paved the way to kill Osama bin Laden

 
SPECIAL REPORT
Before SEAL Team 6 pulled the trigger, four administration lawyers paved the way to kill Osama bin Laden

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 12:34 PM EDT


Weeks before President Obama ordered the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011, four administration lawyers hammered out rationales intended to overcome any legal obstacles — and made it all but inevitable that Navy SEALs would kill the fugitive Qaeda leader, not capture him.
Just days before the raid, the lawyers drafted five secret memos so that if pressed later, they could prove they were not inventing after-the-fact reasons for having blessed it.
Read more »

'Happy' Halloween Kids!


Friday, October 30, 2015

Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Boston Tea Party

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/max-mcnabb/everything-know-wrong/
 
What people call history is really myth. History is a tale told by bloody conquerors, failed novelists, and small town football coaches earning their keep in public schools. It’s a system of power. He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. Court historians regard the myth as sacrosanct. They never question its veracity and are quick to deride anyone who voices doubt.

Americans spend their school years struggling to memorize names and dates. In the decades afterward, they take pride in the scattering of facts they manage to retain. So, of course, they get pretty upset when you show them most of those precious facts were lies.
 
But for those with an open mind, those last few willing to question anything and anyone, discovering the truth is exhilarating. Truth is what we’re after. We’ll chase it down whether it sets us free as Jesus said it would, or destroys us like Oedipus. In each installment of Everything You Know Is Wrong, I examine unquestioned facts—historic, scientific, social, and religious—to reveal the truth beneath the myth.

MARTIN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST BLOG POSTS


Did Cycle Theory Begin With The Discovery of a Rhinoceros?

woolly rhinoceros
Global Warming CavemenYou may not realize it, but it was the discovery of a frozen rhinoceros in Siberia that introduced cycle theory and altered everything in science igniting the Age of Enlightenment. Cycle theory is responsible for just about everything in physics and illustrates why the global warming/climate change crowd is simply pursuing an agenda for government to raise taxes. To a great extent, there has always been this clash between people who simply believe in a straight line (I call them the uniformity crowd) and anyone who deviates, whom they see as somehow at fault and abnormal. Then there are the practical people who see catastrophe as part of nature (e.g. the burning of a forest that sparks new growth, as in Australia).
This clash has often been a heated emotional issue. The idea that systems just collapse in a catastrophic manner can be disquieting to say the least. For this reason, uniformitarianism soothes the senses and brings order to the future dominated by uncertainty.
frozen-cave-lion-Academy-of-Sciences-of-Yakutia-
baby-mammoth
A new discovery in Siberia of frozen extinct cave lions brings to mind the origin of cycle theory. These two clashing schools of thought lie at the core of just about everything, from the Big Bang to Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of evolution of change and survival of the fittest (aside from ape to man). This began with a discovery in 1772 near Vilui, Siberia, of an intact frozen woolly Rhinoceros, followed by the more famous discovery of a frozen mammoth in 1787. You may be shocked, but these discoveries of frozen animals with grass still in their stomach set in motion these two schools of thought since the evidence implied you could be eating lunch and suddenly find yourself frozen and only to be discovered by posterity.
George Hoggart Toulmin in his rare 1785 book, The Eternity of the World captured best the sense of the discovery that set cycle theory in motion.
” ••• convulsions and revolutions violent beyond our experience or conception, yet unequal to the destruction of the globe, or the whole of the human species, have both existed and will again exist ••• [terminating] ••• an astonishing succession of ages.”
(Toulmin 1785, 3)
Newton-Haley-Huygens
Yet the catastrophists could claim greater influence in the birth of the field of physics. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) developed his laws of gravity and was inspired by his friend Edmund Halley (1656-1742), who underwrote the project, to publish the work. This was the same Halley who discovered the cyclical nature of comets. Halley believed that the comet that carries his name was the same comet reappearing throughout history at regular intervals recorded by contemporary historians of all ages. Halley saw, hidden within history, the same periodic intervals of a comet. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) discovered that light traveled, not in a uniform motion as a straight line, but in a cyclical pulsating motion of cyclical waves, albeit at a constant speed. Suddenly, there could be a steady uniformity to the speed of light, yet simultaneously, there was a violent swing of extremes within it taking place in a cyclical manner. This was the same pattern that emerged in the ice core samples. There may appear to be uniformity in the macro world, but cyclical violent swings at the micro level that could erupt catastrophically.
The latest discovery of the frozen cave lion illustrates that climate can change abruptly and has been part of a natural cycle long before man started using combustion engines in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the agenda government pays these academics for is to raise taxes. Now, many states where taxes on energy has declined are moving to tax per mile driven and others are preparing to tax your use of the sun with solar panels since they are replacing power usage. They even want to tax electric cigarettes now. It’s always just about the money. They need excuses to pretend otherwise.

Le Pen vs Merkel & Hollande at the European Parliament


Le Pen warns that France is subservient to Germany. She stands for independence and sovereignty, which is the cornerstone of the French Constitution. Hollande argues that they are creating a single Europe because of two wars, but he cannot see that this dictatorship is indeed creating massive discontent, which creates the risk of war. Le Pen states that the massive invasion of refugees is insane.
Hollande & Merkel fail to grasp that a successful Europe does not require one government and one cultural policy nor one currency with one debt. Europe should be the freedom of movement, free trade, but not one government. Even in the USA, there are rumblings of separatism for one policy in Washington that is against the culture of one state. Such dominant central governments have never survived. Even in Germany, Bavaria sees itself as Bavarian first and Germen second. The sovereignty of people should be respected.

Socrates Update

Socrates-IPad

We will be putting on Videos shortly. Because of the Conference and the exceptional amount of people attending since we are only having one in the States and one in Europe, we have delayed the release until the week after the conference simply because the staff are really busy. We intended to release it before the conference, but with the number of people attending, it is best to focus their attention on the Conference and servicing the attendees.
We will be using part of the Socrates Platform at the Conference.


Real Estate Outlook


Real Estate Advertisement 2015
For all those interested in real estate, we have prepared a major report on world real estate. This report will be handed out for the conferences in Princeton and Berlin. After the conferences, the report will be available for sale to the general public.















World Population

World-Pop-Grand-Canyon
QUESTION: Do you think the world is overpopulated and that is the problem?
ANSWER: Anyone who has flown around the world and looked out the window knows that there are vast areas where humankind does not exist. We actually only occupy about 3% of the landmass, and 29% to 40% of that is just wilderness. If you took the 7.2 billion people living on this planet and put them in a pile, it would not even fill the Grand Canyon. Even if we took everyone who ever existed and threw them into the pile (106 billion people) it still would not come close to filling it.

Market Manipulations: The Greatest Scam of All TIME

Manipulation-2
Throughout history, there has NEVER been a market manipulated TO ALTER its long-term trend – PERIOD. If this were remotely true, then communism would not have collapsed since that was the attempt to eliminate the business cycle. The Swiss peg would not have collapsed, nor would Bretton Woods have collapsed, or anything else in history that has attempt to eliminate the business cycle.
Silver-Trade
It is total nonsense that people even dare to entertain the idea that anything can be manipulated to alter its long-term trend. In the movie “The Forecaster”, a former employee said that before he joined the firm he did his due diligence and called the people at Goldman Sachs to ask about me. They said that they “thought” they could “crush” me but I “usually won.”

Silver 04-03-97 1st Try to Manipulate Silver
All the banks lined up to manipulate silver to the upside in March of 1997. My models clearly showed silver would decline, and their attempt to run it up would fail. I stood my ground and took on the whole group. Their attempt to manipulate the market failed. I believe this is when PhiBro ran to Warren Buffet and convinced him to hand them $1 billion to try to manipulate silver up.
PhiBro walked across the ring in September, and this time showed me their orders for Buffet to try to convince me to join them. My models showed that a pop was possible at that time. I did not join, and instead, stepped away. I warned our clients that the target was $7 by January. Their manipulation succeeded, but it forced Buffet to come out and admit he put in $1 billion to buy silver and then quietly sold out afterwards.
The evidence that was a SHORT-TERM manipulation that still could not alter the long-term trend is demonstrated by the charts below. Yes, silver rallied, but gold declined. Claims that silver is manipulated today because it has declined more than many other commodities are nonsense. Evidence of a manipulation must be a counter-trend move. Even the Japanese government lost $1.3 trillion trying to support the Nikkei. They failed. The Chinese government has tried to support their stock market. It has failed.
The amount of capital that will trade against anything that moves against its long-term trend is endless. If you really believe all this nonsense, then you better trade a different market. Why buy something that is manipulated and can never rally? It makes no sense.
There is no secret plot to keep gold down to pretend inflation is lower. Gold has NEVER correlated with inflation and it is such a tiny market that it has no relevance to concerns of inflation when we are in a massive deflationary mode. Just look at all commodities.
Get over it if you really want to survive the years ahead. If you do not invest on reality, you will never exit and will hold on to losing positions because people are swearing they are right; it’s someone else that makes the market decline. This is not the way to survive.
Gold-Silv-1998

Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria

http://nsnbc.me/2013/10/07/top-us-and-saudi-officials-responsible-for-chemical-weapons-in-syria/

The Red Line and the Rat Line Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, ErdoÄŸan and the Syrian rebels

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Seymour Hersh’s News Report Banned in U.S., Is Finally Confirmed in Turkey

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/seymour-hershs-news-report-banned-in-u-s-is-finally-confirmed-in-turkey.html

The question being investigated here was who caused the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, on 21 August 2013, that killed over a thousand victims, and that U.S. President Barack Obama has used as his basis for going to war to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?

 All of the evidence indicates that U.S. President Obama and Turkey’s President ErdoÄŸan were working together to create a case for America to bomb Syria until Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad would be gone, so that Assad’s government could then be replaced by a Sunni Islamist regime (like ErdoÄŸan wants), which would be hostile to Russia and which would thus enable in Syria the construction of pipelines so that gas from U.S.-allied Sunni Qatar and oil from U.S.-allied Sunni Saudi Arabia might take the place of Russia’s oil and gas in the world’s biggest energy-market: Europe.

 Obama, Erdogan, Saudi King Abdullah, and Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, worked together in their joint effort to grab Europe’s oil-and-gas markets from Russia. For the Sunni Islamists it would be directly an economic benefit to the Sunni aristocrats who would be raking in extra billions, some of which would then fund yet more Sunni jihadists and clerics, to spread the Wahhabist Sunni faith yet further and thus satisfy the Sunni clerics and not only the national Sunni aristocracy; but, to Obama, this would mainly be just another way to cripple the Russian economy, to bring it down, which America’s aristocrats want to do.

Putin Makes Obama an Offer He Can’t Refuse

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/29/putin-makes-obama-an-offer-he-cant-refuse/

Russia has been methodically wiping out Washington’s mercenaries on the ground while recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists.  That, in turn, has strengthened Assad’s position in Damascus and left the administration’s policy in tatters.

The Oligarch Recovery – U.S. Military Veterans are Selling Their Pensions in Order to Pay the Bills

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/10/28/the-oligarch-recovery-u-s-military-veterans-are-selling-their-pensions-in-order-to-pay-the-bills/

Welcome to the oligarch recovery. An economic rebound so robust that an ever increasing number of Americans are being forced to borrow money at usurious rates just to pay the bills.

FRED REED: Wimp Nation: Poised to Fall

http://fredoneverything.org/wimp-nation-poised-to-fall/

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Paul Craig Roberts: US On Road To Third World

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/10/29/us-on-road-to-third-world-paul-craig-roberts/

MARTIN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST BLOG POSTS

Market Talk – October 29, 2015

Trading Community
A mixed session out of Asia with not one market providing a clear sense of direction! The Nikkei and Shanghai spent the day flip-flopping between red and black whilst the Hang Seng saw selling throughout the day. All core European Indices returned negative performances today with declines between -0.2% and 0.6%. The U.S. opened weaker after yesterday afternoon’s bounce with some profit-taking ahead of PMI and Sentiment tomorrow in what has been a reasonably heavy stats week. Worth mentioning here is that tomorrow we also see Eurozone inflation where expectations are for a 0 (zero) print with previous being -0.1%.
Commodities had a fairly dull day today with oil only marginally firmer at $46.10 (TWI). Gold, on the other hand, was not the flavor of the day, rejecting all attempts to rally earlier in the day and was last seen trading $1146.
Bonds on both sides of the Atlantic were weak with U.S. 10s losing 8bp and bunds 9bp. US 10s have had problems with the psychological 2% barrier for a while now and still remains on elusive ground. The spread TY/RX closed this evening at +160bp. The curve steepened in the sell-off with 2/10 closing +143bp and 10/30’s at +80bp (that puts 30’s around the 2.95%).
The euro recovered a little of yesterday’s loss (last seen at 1.0978), as did GBP. These gains managed to turn the DXY negative on the day -0.5% at 97.35.
We heard a lot of talk today of the Philips Curve (measuring employment with inflation) and whether the Fed is actually looking at domestic or indeed international matters. One dealer concerned with the Fed has been referring more to markets more than domestic data!

Nigel Farage Compares EU to Former USSR

According to Nigel, Portugal’s refusal to allow a democratically elected party to take office because of their anti-euro views is the “final straw” for the failed European project. Brussels has turned the EU into a dictatorship because they reject any process that disagrees with them. Like all dictators, they argue that they know better and that the people just do not understand what is good for them.

Indonesia’s Peat Fires Exceed Emissions from the Entire U.S. Economy

Indonesia-Peak-Fires
GlobalGHGEmissionsBySourceGreenhouse gas emissions that are coming out of the peat fires in Borneo and Sumatra have now exceeded all the emissions from the entire U.S. economy. This is the latest report from the University of Amsterdam. The greenhouse issue is not as simple as cars. They also say that those arising from livestock are 14% and also exceed those created by cars, which is 13%.

Britain Uses Terrorist Law to Seize BBC Journalist’s Laptop

newsnight-2-bbc
The Terrorism Act in Britain has been used to seize the laptop of a BBC journalist who  produced a series of reports on British-born jihadis. As always, police never have any restraint in what they do. They are brain-dead and do not grasp that if they go down this road of grabbing journalists’ computers to see who their contacts are, nobody will ever talk to one again. They are destroying important conduits of information because they cannot see beyond their nose.

MYSTERY BABYLON BY BILL COOPER

https://www.youtube.com/user/OccultAgenda/videos

THESE HOUR LONG PROGRAMS (OVER 40 HOURS) ARE COPIES OF BROADCASTS ON SHORT WAVE AND SATELLITE DONE BY BILL COOPER IN THE 1990s.

THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE I CAN FIND THEM. I BOUGHT THEM ON CASSETTE TAPE WHILE BILL WAS STILL ALIVE.

BILL WAS STALKED, SET UP AND MURDERED AT HIS HOME IN EAGER ARIZONA IN 2001 BY THE LOCAL POLICE.

BILL WAS A HARD NOSED TRUTH TELLER AND MANY COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS TELLING US, BUT TIME HAS PROVEN HIM CORRECT TO AN AMAZING DEGREE GIVEN THAT WHAT HE WAS TELLING US OVER 15 YEARS AGO IS NOW COMING TRUE.

AND REMEMBER, BILL DID ALL THIS BEFORE THE INTERNET.

YOU SHOULD WATCH EACH EPISODE ONE AT A TIME, ONE EACH DAY STARTING WITH 'THE DAWN OF MAN - HOUR ONE, TO KEEP THE STORY CURRENT IN YOUR MIND. 

IT IS A FASCINATING HISTORY OF HOW WE CAME TO BELIEVE WHAT WE BELIEVE STARTING AS FAR BACK AS EGYPTIAN TIMES.

FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE ON BILL COOPER, WATCH THIS VIDEO:

The Legacy of Bill Cooper - About his Life & Death. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m93yuLkCIrM

THE VIDEO IS SHAKY, SO IF IT BOTHERS YOU, JUST LISTEN TO WHAT HE IS SAYING.

I HAVE POSTED THE LINKS TO THESE VIDEOS IN THE RIGHT COLUMN OF THIS BLOG

SO YOU CAN FIND THEM EACH DAY. 

Boiling Frogs Post Roundtable: Pedophiles Run the Government & No One Gives a Damn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1MtaSIePk


The Hastert Scandal: What the Media Isn't Telling You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urz-79upuLg


100 CEOs Have as Much in Retirement Assets as 41% of American Families

http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/29/100-ceos-have-as-much-in-retirement-assets-as-41-of-american-families/

 “The CEOs’ extraordinary nest eggs are not the result of extraordinary performance,” says Scott Klinger, director of Revenue and Spending Policies at the Center for Effective Government, in a statement. “They are the result of rules intentionally tipped to reward those already on the highest rungs of the ladder.”

U.S. Inequality Is More than 69 Times Higher than What Most Americans Think It SHOULD Be … and More Than 13 Times What Americans Assume It ACTUALLY Is

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/u-s-inequality-is-more-than-69-times-higher-than-what-most-americans-think-it-should-be-and-more-than-13-times-what-americans-assume-it-actually-is.html

Everything We Think We Know About Addiction Is Wrong

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/everything-we-think-we-know-about-addiction-is-wrong.html

SHORT VIDEO...VERY ENLIGHTENING!

SIMON BLACK

October 29, 2015
Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile
 
It wasn’t that long ago that you could travel from one corner of the world to another with nothing but your good looks.
 
There are people still alive today, in fact, who were born into a world where passports were not widely used for international travel.
 
The passport itself is a relatively recent invention, an unfortunate consequence of World War I. And they didn’t really become ubiquitous until the late 20th century.
Now, in many respects you can’t leave your own country without one, especially if you hail from the Land of the Free.
 
Americans are so ‘free’, in fact, that they can’t even go to Canada without forking over $165 to the government of the United States just to ‘apply’ for a little booklet that gives you the right to leave the country.
 
Passports are nothing more than a form of control-- a way to obtain oodles of personal information and to restrict one of the most basic freedoms of humanity-- the freedom to move.
 
Edward Snowden has been waylaid in Russia for more than two years because the US government rescinded his passport, effectively terminating his ability to travel anywhere.
I remember being in Africa a couple of years ago watching a herd of elephants in the wild continually cross the border in and out of Zambia and Zimbabwe near Victoria Falls.
While the elephants roam freely, we humans obstruct ourselves with imaginary barriers and demands for a bunch of silly paperwork, passports, and visas. Not exactly the pinnacle of civilization.
 
So you can imagine how excited I was when I read about Australia’s government announcing a program to eliminate passports. Incredible.
 
Then I saw the punch line-- the idea is to eliminate physical passports. So instead of giving everyone these little colored booklets, they want to move passports ‘into the cloud.’
Hey, it worked for Microsoft.
 
The ‘cloud’, of course, is the technological Neverland where unicorns play, tech titans rake in record profits, and millions of gigabytes of data are stored.
 
The cloud is what makes it possible for you to store files on remote servers and access them across multiple devices (phone, tablet, laptop) over the Internet.
 
You might use Dropbox or iCloud, for example, both of which are popular cloud-based storage platforms. (Though I’d suggest switching to a more secure platform like SpiderOak or Tresorit.)
 
So now Australia’s government proposes moving citizens’ personal information into the cloud, with a pilot program to test travel between Australia and New Zealand with cloud-based passports.
 
It remains to be seen how it would even work once you arrive. Do you give a secret handshake? PIN code? Or do you get to bypass the immigration line altogether?
Probably not. Cloud-based passports would likely be loaded with all sorts of biometric data, facial recognition, etc.
 
And all of this data would be placed online in government databases. I mean, they might as well paint a bulls-eye on the server farm and hang a sign on it that says “Please Hack Me.”
In the black market, that kind of data is worth billions. And governments don’t exactly have a sterling track record of tip-top network security.
 
The Australian Government’s Cyber Security Centre released a report just a few months ago stating that government networks are attacked every day, and that cyber security incidents are up over 300% from 2011 to 2014.
 
Over the summer the US government embarrassingly admitted to a data breach that exposed over 20 million Americans, up from an initial estimate of 4 million.
 
If the thought of submitting to the indignity of biometric data and RFID chips on physical passports weren’t bad enough, the prospect of pushing all of that data online to be ‘safeguarded’ by government bureaucrats is simply agonizing.
 
Who knows if there’s any nefarious intent behind this. My guess is that a bunch of politicians are desperate to look smart and innovative, so they spout off some poorly thought-out idea that is even more poorly executed.
 
Small businesses that consistently fail with such bad ideas eventually go bankrupt.
Governments, on the other hand, get to paper over the consequences of their incompetence by printing money and indebting future generations.
 
They make egregious mistakes with people’s lives and livelihoods, in this case putting the private (even biometric) information of millions of citizens at risk.
 
And they’re never held accountable. Ever. Leaving them free to move on to the next bad idea.
 
Perhaps next time it will be implantable chips.
 
Until tomorrow,
Signature
Simon Black
Founder, SovereignMan.com
 

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Embracing The Dark Side: A Short History Of The Pathological Neocon Quest For Empire

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-28/embracing-dark-side-short-history-pathological-neocon-quest-empire

Nearly all empires end due to over-extension. If brave people from Ottawa to Baghdad simply say “enough” within a brief space of time, hopefully this empire can dissolve relatively peacefully like the Soviet Empire did, leaving its host civilization intact, instead of dragging that civilization into oblivion along with it like the Roman Empire did. But beware, the imperial war party will not go quietly into the night, unless we in their domestic tax base insist that there is no other way. Russia’s entry into Syria has thrown all of the neocons’ schemes into disarray, as even Jordan, that favorite proxy force in Israel’s dreams of regional dominance, has begun coordinating with Russia, in spite of its billion dollars a year of annual aid from Washington. Et tu Jordan?!

MARTIN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST BLOG POSTS

Market Talk October 28, 2015

Trading Community
The Nikkei did see a solid performance today closing up +0.67% but, the guess is – large players remain on the side-lines until after the BOJ at the end of the week. Shanghai and HS were heavy and even dragged the ASX (Australian Index) lower in late trading as talk returned to a slowing global economy and the ever increasing US Dollar strength. Europe recouped earlier losses as energy prices rebounded but all trading was light ahead of the FED announcement. Early trade in the US saw positive price action across all Indices. The DOW, S+P and NASDAQ were showing solid gains of around 1% each just as the headlines hit dealers screens. The markets had already talked themselves into zero movement and no clear guidance; what they received opens the door for December rate rise. The sentence that dealers are referring too is the last part of the report that they changed! “In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting.…”! The street thought this meant the brakes are coming off in December. Upon the announcement all stocks turned negative but within minutes were back setting new daily highs. Eventually, we saw day gains for all with DOW +160pts (+0.9%), S+P +24pts (+1.18%) and NASDAQ +65pts (+1,3%).
The Oil market has taken this that the economy has “turned” and stops were triggered. Closing on TWI was $45.96 (+6.39% and on Brent at $49.08 (+4.85%) both up around $2.50 on the day. Gold turned lower having set an intraday high of $1182 and was last seen down $9 at $1156 (-0.8%).
Obviously, another big mover was the US Dollar and its core. The DXY was last seen +0.75 at 97.75 and improvement of +0.8% on the day. As the announcement was late for European trade the bids were few and far between and we saw a decline of around 1.10%. Also in late trade the Russian Rouble benefited as oil gapped up and was last seen trading at 63.81 (+2.35%) better on the day.
The markets are very jumpy and today demonstrates just how much that is! Difficult to play with moves of such magnitude and still with so much to play for with Central Banks and heavy economic data still to come.

Hawkish Fed Statement Sends Dec Rate Hike Odds Surging; Stocks, Commodities Sold

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-28/hawkish-fed-statement-sparks-selling-frenzy-stocks-commodities-rate-hike-odds-surge

 All major US equity indices have tumbled on the Fed statement, moving into the red for the week. Dec rate-hike odds have risen from 34% to 47% and The USDollar is surging (led by a plunging EUR) and commodities are broadly weaker. The bond complex is mixed with 2Y yields notably higher and 30Y yields unchanged...

MARTIN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST BLOG POSTS

Barcelona to Issue Its Own Electronic Currency

Barcelona
Barcelona plans to release its own currency in the coming spring. The money will initially exist only in digital form and support the regional economy according to the incumbent mayor. The value of the currency will be pegged to the Euro and will begin to reflect the desired independence aspirations of Catalonia which our computer has been projecting will be the outcome.
Ferdinand-Isabella-AU

For those who are not familiar with the separatist movement there the issue goes back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Isabella was of Castille, or Spain proper, and  Ferdinand II was of Aragon, which was Catalonia. The indigenous languages of Catalonia are Catalan and Aranese whereas Spanish was indigenous to Castille.
Barcelona is perhaps the most beautiful city in all of Europe.

Coffee The Brain Food

2015 ECM Cup-r
Here is the design for this year’s Conference Cup for those who have a collection. Everyone always seems to be surprised that I drink coffee all day – 4 Starbucks Venti is a normal day and sometimes I go up to 6. Everyone has been shocked at how much coffee I drink. But that is way it was growing up in the trading days. You did not go to lunch. You ate once a day like a dog.
Well I am vindicated. It turns out coffee is brain food and you get more antioxidants from coffee than vegetables. So drink up. We will have coffee at the Conference, also water, but I prefer my water to be purified with coffee or occasionally scotch.

Why Taxes MUST be eliminated

Bug-Stops-Here-DonkeyHotey
The Guardian has obtained documents showing that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is now listening to people’s phone calls and this is showing it has to do with money – not terrorism. The IRS is now also has sophisticated cellphone dragnet equipment known as Stingray, where without search warrants, they are targeting people to get them hiding money..

Bankers Killing Highway Bill

Highway-r
A bipartisan group of House members is teaming up with banks in an 11th-hour effort to kill a provision that would raise $17 billion to help pay for a six-year highway bill by lowering the Federal Reserve dividend rate paid to banks on certain deposits.
Dropping the Senate-approved offset would intensify pressure on lawmakers to shorten the duration of the highway authorization measure.

Market Talk – October 27th, 2015

Trading Community
Nikkei closed down almost 1% whilst the rest of Asian Equities mopped around
unchanged. Not too much again to write about but people are talking about the possible BOJ action at the end of the week and still about the PBoC decision last week. A couple of dealers mentioned the JPY weakness and the markets negative view but away from that Asia remained uninspiring. Hence, Europe opened with little or no direction and so we decided to follow the Oil market lower. The DAX, FTSE and CAC closed in negative territory as dealers listen to all the Central Bank involvement and start to question why! With the FED and BOJ due this week does this recent recovery in equity markets stand on solid ground, given so much vocal intervention. In the US this evening indices are struggling to make positive gains but with so much at stake heading into year end, market participants question every move.

The Oil market continues to drift lower as market participants in both the West and the East express concerns over inventory levels. The gap between TWI and Brent currently trades around $3.5 with closes this evening at $43.20 and $46.80 both around 1.75% declines today.

The Bond markets continued yesterday’s move with the US 10yr flirting with the 2% level yet again. Now that the ECB has brought the yield curve trading back into play it is possible to discuss it again. So, the belly saw the best performance with 5’s better by 4bp. The wings (5’s and 10’s) did not perform so well and were lower by just 2bp each. The long bonds lagged behind closing just 1bp better at 2.85%. The spread TY/RX was last seen this evening at around +156bp.

The DXY (US Dollar Index) was last seen this evening over 97.00 as ground was made against GBP, Euro and the JPY. Understandably, the Russian Rouble lost heavily in todays trading with losses of over 3% recorded. It will all depend on the FED and Oil Inventories (published tomorrow in the States) to see if this negative Rouble trend is likely to turn anytime soon.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Washington Accuses Putin. Russian Airstrikes are Targeting “Our Guys” in Syria: CIA Operatives, Military Advisers, Mercenaries, Special Forces, … Instead of ISIS Terrorists

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/washington-accuses-putin-russian-airstrikes-are-targeting-our-guys-in-syria-cia-operatives-military-advisers-mercenaries-special-forces-instead-of-isis-terrorists.html
 
The Western media quoting US officials has reported that the Russian Air Force is not really targeting ISIS terrorists.
They are targeting CIA sponsored operatives inside Syria.

Noam Chomsky & Abby Martin: Electing The President Of An Empire

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43262.htm

http://videos.telesurtv.net/en/video/460623/the-empire-files-460623

Paul Craig Roberts: Bring Back Jimmy Carter!

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/10/27/bring-back-jimmy-carter-paul-craig-roberts/

SIMON BLACK

October 27, 2015
Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile
1,426. That’s the number of Americans who renounced their US citizenship last quarter according to the US government’s report released just this morning.
That’s a record high for a single quarter, easily beating the last record high set earlier this year, which beat the previous record high set in 2013.
http://www.sovereignman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Renouncing-citizenship.png
This is clearly a trend on the rise, and it certainly raises the question: why?
What is it about the United States that drives so many citizens to leave?
Two main reasons:
The first group consists of people who just can’t take it anymore. Constant warfare, intimidation, and the steady erosion of freedom have pushed them to their breaking points.
They look around and think, “This is NOT the country that I grew up in.” And they renounce their citizenship in protest of a government they no longer want to be associated with.
But that’s a small percentage of former citizens.
For the vast majority of people who renounce their US citizenship, it ultimately comes down to a single issue: taxes.
And there are three categories of tax-motivated renunciants.
The first is wealthy Americans who want to end Uncle Sam’s claim on their income once and for all.
Some famous people in this category who renounced US citizenship include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and singer Tina Turner.
It’s an expensive decision for this group, as the US government levies a nasty exit tax on their entire estate before they leave.
Now, this group is often held up as the villainous “tax traitor” who leaves America. But not everyone who renounces is a moustache-twirling billionaire.
There are far more people in the second group, what I call ‘Accidental Americans’.
These are people who, in many cases, have never lived in the US or potentially even never set foot in the US.
But simply by having, say, a US citizen mother or father, or being born in a place like the Panama Canal Zone, they became US citizens at birth.
There are countless people in this situation who lived their entire lives in peace. And then one day they received a letter from the US government demanding back taxes.
You see, the Land of the Free is almost unique in the entire world in that it has citizenship-based taxation.
In most civilized countries, the governments tax their citizens based on residency.
If you live in Canada, you pay taxes in Canada. But if you’re a Canadian citizen living in the Cayman Islands, you no longer pay taxes to Canada. Simple.
Not so in the United States. US citizens are obliged to file taxes wherever they go in the world.
And aside from an exclusion on the first $100,800 ($101,300 for 2016) of ‘earned income’, US citizens are also subject to pay tax on their worldwide income, regardless of where they live.
(Note ‘earned income’ does not include investment income. So if you trade stocks or FOREX, you generally pay taxes on all of your gains.)
So imagine you’re a Panamanian citizen who was born and raised in Panama, who just happens to have a father who’s a US citizen. That makes you a US citizen.
You trade stocks for a living, primarily on the London Stock Exchange.
The UK has no withholding tax on stock trading, so you pay no tax there. Panama is a territorial tax system, so you owe no tax there either.
But simply because your dad was a US citizen, the US government has its hand out for its ‘fair share’ of your worldwide earnings.
This has clearly propelled a LOT of people to renounce their US citizenship.
But what’s really obscene is that before they let anyone renounce, the US government forces them to settle the tax bill. Only then are they ‘allowed’ to renounce.
The third category of people is Americans living overseas who have been hit by a barrage of offshore compliance laws.
72-year old Donna-Lane Nelson is a great example.
Ms. Nelson was forced into renouncing her citizenship after her local bank threatened to close her account back in 2011 because of her US citizenship.
She felt she had no choice. And the bank had no choice.
Back then Barack Obama had just signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, into law, pushing banks to dump all their American customers.
Ms. Nelson was one of them. And faced with the prospect of having to live without a bank account, she made a difficult choice and renounced.
As she explained to CNN, “After I did it, I was so emotional that I threw up outside the embassy.”
These people aren’t multi-billionaires. Many of them are retirees or expats living on modest incomes.
And in many respects they’re not even people who want to renounce. They’ve been pushed out by their own government.
According to the US State Department there are 7.6 million Americans living overseas.
Altogether they would comprise the 14th most populous state in the union, just behind Washington and ahead of Massachusetts.
They receive almost zero benefit from the US government. They don’t drive on US federal highways, and they aren’t ‘protected’ by Homeland Security.
Yet they still have to pay for it.
Even if they don’t owe any taxes, they have to file a bunch of silly disclosure forms each year to the Treasury Department, sometimes having to spend a lot of money on accountants to file the forms.
Or, like Ms. Nelson, they get penalized for being American.
It’s understandable, though sickening, that these people are renouncing their citizenship; US citizenship has simply become too expensive to maintain.
Nearly 14,000 Americans have renounced their citizenship since FATCA was passed.
This is a number on the rise.
And it’s a sad reminder of the depths that governments sink to when they go broke, even to the point of chasing out their own citizens.
Until tomorrow,
Signature
Simon Black
Founder, SovereignMan.com