Nothing Coincidental About It. Rev.1

In Rev.1 I have added some additional commentary near the end just above my list of questions to ask yourself.   JWM Jr.

This is going to be a longer piece than what I usually post. I hope that you dear readers will take the time to consider it worth of your attention. Thanks as always for stopping by Joe Martin's Ghost.

Over the last few weeks several national central banks, including two of the largest, the Bank of Japan  and the European Central Bank, have openly moved to negative interest rates. This combined with the US Federal Reserve having recently raised its rates by 25 basis points, has led to a virtual flood of cash assets moving into US based bank accounts, Treasury Bills, notes, bonds and other Dollar based instruments.

This has had the effect of making the Dollar stronger. Making imports cheaper and US exports more expensive. The all to predictable result being companies like Carrier Corp. announcing the moving of their manufacturing and distribution operations to Mexico and Donald Trump further cementing his place in the polls.

Now the financial press has dropped the other shoe and it landed with a resounding thud. No I'm not talking specifically about the growing pressure on FED Chairman Yellen to reverse the recent rate hike or even the speculation over whether the Fed has the authority to to impose negative rates. No, that loud heavy shoe is the growing chorus to eliminate both the €500 and $100 bills.

Never mind the absolute insanity of negative interest rates and charging depositors for storing their money (calling them savings accounts would be absurd on its face). Any sane individual will immediately look to find another means of storing/protecting their accumulated wealth. Even stuffing your mattress would be preferable to the slow "death by a thousand cuts" of negative interest rates.

And here in lies the vicious cruelty of this non-coincidence. Make no mistake about it, these near simultaneous moves in the financial arena are nothing more than naked manifestations of greed and growing centralized control over how individuals conduct their lives. In short the destruction of our God given personal liberties. Bailing out the banks in 2008 solved nothing. They are just as if not even more insolvent now than the were then.

Even deeper behind these two moves lay other stories and editorials calling for the elimination of cash transactions entirely! The governments of Norway and Denmark are already laying the groundwork for exactly such systems. The cover story for all this, the big Goebbels like lie, is that these moves are necessary in order to fight organized crime, money laundering and public corruption. All of those things exist of course. There even exists people naïve and or stupid enough to not only believe such absurd lies but would also publicly or editorially defend them.

To properly understand just how perniciously evil this plot is, you first have to understand that of the $1.4 trillion in US currency in circulation, a full $1.1 trillion of it, nearly 80%, is in $100 bills! The percentage for the Euro is even larger once you include the €200 and €100 bills.

Not if, but when the depositors start lining up and demanding their money in cash, to try and prevent their hard earned savings and their children's futures from being destroyed by the slashing jaws of inflation and negative interest rates, they will find themselves turned away by both currency controls limiting how much of their own money they are allowed to have, or by the simple, physical fact that their will not be enough $50s, $20s or $10s to go around.

If the fascist coalition of banks and corrupt government succeed in this deconstructipn of our libertirs, not only will the average working family be trapped in those jaws but they will also be caught, bound up in a system that can virtually track every move you make and every dollar you spend with a few keystrokes on a computer. The likes of Hitler and Stalin could only dream of such power.

The first and foremost lesson here is that just as with Greece, just as with Cyprus, the survival of the corrupt banking system that is choking to death on its own debt creation must come before you, your liberty or even your right to be able to feed your family with the wealth you have created. As far as they are concerned you are nothing more than a cypher, a string of ones and zeros to be used for their benefit and their's alone. As the crisis deepens and the banks illiquidity grows more apparent they will be back with their bloodstains hands out again. This time it won't be money supplied by the printing presses at the FED. This time, with depositors locked in to accounts they can't close or fully access the Treasury will "authorize" the banks to steal DIRECTLY from your accounts. 5%, 20%, 20%, there won't be any limit to what they can and will take. There won't be any legislation "authorizing" it. They will simply steal your money and tell you it was "necessary" to save the system. I.e. keep the deck chairs on the Titanic in proper order.

When this very thing happened in Greece and Cyprus, these very same forces all told us "these are small countries and far away, nothing like this could ever happen here." Well we better open our eyes because they are getting ready to shove it down our throats. They might even say that because of "criminal activity" it is necessary to issue all new currency. Any old currency must be exchanged by a set date or it will be declared void and worthless. Of course when you attempt to redeam your old bills you will be told their are limits to how much you are allowed to exchange and anything over that amount will be seized. You will also be subject to being treated as a criminal and investigated for simply saving your money outside the direct control of government systems. Again make no mistake, the big banks are part and parcel of government and they are both desperate to get their hands on your cash, IRAs, money markets, mutual funds or any fungible asset you have.

Already today, even before this corrupt engine is fully in place, if you go into your local bank and try to make a large cash withdrawal you will be told that they "don't have that amount on hand" or if they do, giving you your own money would "interfere with their ability to conduct their daily operations." Nope these banks aren't illiquid not one bit. If your local bank branch is threatened by a $10,000.00 withdrawal they have some serious problems that go a lot deeper than your little $10,000.00.

This just a new twist or FDR's seizing everyone gold back in the thirties. Yeah they gave you $26 or $27 an ounce for it then after they ha DC their grubby little hands on it they turned around and reset the value to $32 an oz. Bingo! They stole 20% from the holders of gold with the stroke of a pen. What makes you think they won't do the same thing with your hard earned savings again? Do you think the government or the banks are possessed of any morals or conscience?

If you have any doubts about the veracity of of any of this, ask yourself; Why are banks required to report any patterns of cash deposits or withdrawals to the enforcement arm of the Treasury Department, the IRS? Ask yourself; Why is it any of the governments business what you do with your own money on a day by day basis? Ask yourself; Why are local governmentd going to such absurd measures as requiring your 8 year old daughter or grand daughter purchase a $500 vending permit to sell a 50¢ glass of lemonade in front of your own house on a hot summer afternoon? Ask yourself; Why did the police in Staten Island NYC feel it was justified in violently confronting and killing no less, a man who was committing the heinous crime of selling single cigarettes? Do the state and city of New York not collect enough taxes on them already?

What's going to be next? Are they going to send the cops out on patrol and make sure your 13 year old son is not mowing your neighbor's lawn for $15 without getting a business license?  Never mind that working at the Quick Mart after 10:00PM can turn into a death sentence in 3 seconds flat over $50 in the cash drawer and a carton of Kool cigarettes, little Julie and her neighbor Johnny might have $30 in untaxed income! Oh wait does Julie have a crush on Johnny and gave him a free glass of lemonade when he finished mowing the grass? Did he declare that as income on his 1040? Did Julie give him a 1099? Or did Julie's daddy include that 50¢ as added compensation on the 1099 he gave Johnny?

I know that for the vast majority of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, this is not the kind of world we want to live in and it sure isn't the kind of state we want to leave to our children and grandchildren. So what are we going to do about it? Are we just going to let these dropped shoes turn into boots on ours and our children's throats? Are we all just going to change are names to Winston Smith and wonder home much of our private conversations our "smart TV" and our I phones are listening to and reporting to gof only knows what government agency? Do we even still possess enough collective spine to even resist?

Justice Scalia's Untimely Death, Advantage Trump.

I think Scalia's untimely death will help Trump. All those "anybody but Trump" Republicans (RINOs) will now be all but forced to the polls, hold their nose and vote for Trump. Forced there by the now certainty that a Clinton or Sanders presidency will scrap all that remains of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself.

The Donald needs to respectfully wait until the memorial and funeral services are complete and then come out and boldly declare that he will indeed have a "litmus test" for any Supreme Court nominees and that it is the absolute sanctity of the 2nd Amendment.

No respectful person likes playing another person's tragic death for political advantage. That's why the Democrats do it all the time. But politics is indeed a dirty game and sadly this is no time for niceties.

And So It Begins, Part Two. The Propaganda Front.

In spite of the admitted evidence of Turkish shelling of Aleppo and Turkish ground forces inside Syria, the lead story on CBS News was an accusation that Russian aircraft were responsible for strikes on "schools and hospitals" in Aleppo.  Attacks on "schools and hospitals" has become the favored vehicle for the Obama administration's false flag propaganda.

Toss in that Sec. of State Lurch, err Kerry, admitting that the flood of immigrants now represented an "existential threat" to Europe. So then the 100,000 or so that the DoS have admitted into the US don't? Yeah right.

These people are so incompetent that they could stumble the entire globe into World War III in order to convince themselves that they aren't the biggest fools since 1914.

I'd ask God to spare us from such political fool's but I fear it may already be too late.

And So It Begins...

Turkish troops moving across the border into Syria. Saudi planes arrive in Turkey.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-14/road-world-war-iii-turkey-shells-syria-second-day-saudi-warplanes-arrive

Playing Politics In The Face Of Disaster.

Saturday night's debate was, as advertised, ugly. Not just sharp elbows ugly but viciously and personally ugly. Sadly throughout all the personal vilifications and name calling there was scant mention of the twin impending disasters in Syria and the global financial markets.

With the military situation deteriorating for anti Assad forces in and around Allepo, Syria's second largest citevents Turks have started shelling Shia forces laying siege to the city. Saudi Arabia has moved air craft to Incilk air base in Turkey and has stated they are prepared to move in ground forces at any moment. If there developed a confrontation between Turkish/Saudi air or ground forces and Russian military forces things could well spin out of control. Add in the Obama administration's proven fecklessness and incompetence and we could be faced with either the trigger for a much wider conflict or Obama's capitulation to a Shia hegemony stretching from Iran, across northern Iraq and into Syria and Lebenon.

On the financial front instability and volatility have been the hallmark of day to day events not just on Wall Street but across the globe. As I mentioned in a previous post, Monday may well prove to be a pivitol day. Not just for financial markets but for the Middle East political situation as well.

Handing The Election To Donald Trump.

It's long been said that corporations have no moral accountability. After yesterday it appears they have little common sense either. Or do they.

I don't know the exact circumstances at Carrier Corp. that led to their announcement that they are closing their Indiana facility and moving manufacturing operations to Mexico. Neither do I know the political perspectives or leanings of the majority of the Board of directors that voted to make this move. From a purely political perspective it is either a purely bottom line calculation or it's an act of political genius.

Only the completely oblivious would think that the timing and substance of this announcement is not going to become political fodder. With Donald Trump campaigning strongly on how just such actions are destroying the American middle class, this hands him a glaring example of just what he has been saying, not to mention how many thousands of more votes it will put in his column going forward.

When Indiana holds its primary was just made irrelevant. You can bet the farm that Trump will wave this like a bloodied flag at the next debate. You can also bet that he has staff working overtime to ascertain just exactly who Carrier Corp. and it's board members have been sending contributions to.

Bottomline being, either Carrier's board are heartless or they fully intended this move to accelerate Trumps campaign and the reform of trade policy he is focusing on. Either way that is what they have achieved.

Why The Democrats Are Destined To Lose This Election.

There can be no doubt that this election cycle is one unlike anyone has seen in living memory.

The Republican field was all set to be a staged pseudo contest designed to anoint Jeb Bush. Same thing for the Democrats who were all set to coronate Hillary Clinton.

Ben Carson, Martin O'Malley and Carly Fiorina were supposed to be window dressing outsiders intended to do little more than make it appear interesting but not to be taken terribly seriously. Such is how it has panned out for them.

On the Democrat side Joe Biden was put forth as a possible alternative to Hillary but chickened out after contemplating the Clintons ability to be the dirt slingers they have always been. Weighing that against the pile of graft he has accumulated he decided that the cash and retirement looked a whole lot better.

But then entered Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. No one in either the political class or the corporate 4th estate took them seriously. The airwaves and newspapers were filled with little but predictions of their immanent demise. According to the pundits and self anointed "experts" neither needed to be taken seriously and were to be regarded as having little more than "entertainment value".

But if there has been a single common thread this election season its been that the talking heads have completely misread the public's contempt for the political establishment and their corporate media mouthpieces, both left and right.

The more Trump talked, dismissed the establishment, the news media, political correctness and directly addressed those issues people were seriously concerned with, the more they listened and the higher his poll numbers went. It was like someone threw open the windows to a breath of cold fresh air that cleared the room of the stagnant, fettid stench of politics as usual. The rank and file raised a proud and defiant middle finger to the Republican establishment and the media. Almost as if saying in unison "Yeah Trump might be an egotistical jerk, but he's not one of you!"

Over on the Democrat side the Revolution of '16 is being driven by superficially similar factors but completely different ones as well. There is an underlying dissatisfaction with the party establishment but it seems more focused on the Clintons in particular and Hillary's fundamental untrustworthiness and personal unlikability.

Add to this the legions of poorly educated youth who have never learned to either define communism or recognise a communist parasite when the see one. With Sanders the only other available candidate his seemingly endless Marxist tirades have an hypnotic appeal to the dull witted. Throw in the anybody but Hillary crowd and you get the virtual tie in Iowa and the 22% "schlonging" Hillary got in New Hampshire.

So what happens from here? On the Republican side the also rans continue to bash each other for second or third place finishes while Trump continues to carry 30-40% in the polls and vote tally. Trump won't make the mistake of not having a ground game going forward like he did in Iowa. He learns from his mistakes and quickly.

On the Democrat side a lot is riding, for both Hillary and Sanders, on the outcome in South Carolina. So far the "conventional wisdom" is that the Clintons have the minority vote all but locked up and that a resounding double digit victory there will signal the end of Sanders moving forward. I'm not so sure. If Sanders is adept at anything, it is promising the gimmedats more stuff that they haven't earned. If there is anything that has broad appeal to the welfare class it is promises of more free stuff. If Hillary finishes in South Carolina with only a narrow margin she could be in for a serious uphill battle going forward.

So how does any of this guarantee a Republican victory in November? Nothing is as simple as it may seem. If Hillary's campaign stumbles badly and she staggers into the convention bloodied and wounded but victorious via "Super Delegates" it could get complicated.

The Sanders voters could well feel that "we was robbed" and stay home or worse flock to a Bloomberg candidacy. Doom for the Democrats. Biden could again be put forward at the convention as a "unifying" candidate. The party would then go into November in total disarray and division. Votes for Bloomberg, doom for the Democrats.

If Sanders does somehow secure the Democrat's nomination his full blown Marxist rhetoric, both past and present, will be exposed. His relations with numerous failed communist experiments in South and Central America will be exposed. The picture of the empty supermarket shelves in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba will fill the TV screens with the words that "This is what a vote for Sanders will get you." And "He can promise you anything, but there will be nothing to deliver." Doom for the Democrats.

Hillary could indeed get the needed wide margin victory in South Carolina and come out of the convention nominated by acclimation. But even that does not discount the increasing heavy baggage of both "Servergate" and the débâcle in Libya. Trump or any other Republican for that matter will paint her problems as Nixonian in proportion and rightfully say that the legal entanglement will interfere with needed concentration of energy on foreign relations and the continuing deterioration of the economy and we could end up with another Clinton impeachment scandal. The Photoshop artists no doubt have their comparitive storyboards in the works. Doom for the Democrats.

All these possibilities are out there and could come true and in any one of numerous scenarios. Looming large over all of this is the aforementioned economic deterioration. So far Trump is the only candidate who has dared say "I hope it isn't true but the markets are looking like they are in a huge bubble." Truth is that they are. This time it's not just mortgage derivatives that are imploding but global sovereign debt derivatives that have all but wiped out market and bank liquidity.

The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have both entered into negative interest rate programs. Openly punishing those who dare try to save for their futures or their children's future. Deutche Bank is so illiquid that not only are they calling for even deeper negative interest rates and punishing fees to be levied against cash withdrawals but banning cash all together! How dare you conduct private commerce in a way that the banks and government can't take a piece of the action!

With this kind of insanity on full display and global equity markets and international trade in contraction we will be lucky to get to the conventions never mind the general election before we fall into a massive deflation. Doom for the Democrats because eight years of the "It's George Bush's fault" mantra won't fly anymore.

Mark my words carefully. Chinese markets are closed all this week for New Year's Celebrations. If, when they reopen next Monday and continue their sharp decline, and I don't see how they can avoid it but momentarily, another blackest of "Black Mondays" is on the cards and all the negative interest rates and quantitative easing in the world will not stop it.

Enjoy the cheap gas while you can because all the storage facilities are 98% full and there is no place to put any more and the price will soon hit a point where its not worth pumping out of the ground. When panic comes it's not because of broken markets or risk factors, it comes because there sets in a loss of confidence in governments and regulations. In such situations voters always, always, always vote out the incumbent party resident in the White House. Doom for the Democrats.

Emperess Hillary.

Whatever my problems with NR's hit pieces on Donald Trump this piece on our would be emperess is spot on.

Mrs. Clinton's Ode To Serfdom.

by Kevin D. Williamson (first published in the National Review)

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not qualified to be president of the United States of America, because she doesn’t know what the United States of America are. Terry Shumaker, former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad (I wonder what that gig cost him) and current abject minion in the service of Mrs. Clinton, quotes Herself telling an audience in New Hampshire: “Service is the rent we pay for living in this great country.” 

There is a very old English word for people who are required to perform service as a rent for their existence, and that word is serf. Serfdom is a form of bondage. Americans are not serfs. We are not sharecroppers on Herself’s farm or in vassalage to that smear of thieving nincompoopery in Washington that purports to rule us. We don’t owe you any damned rent. 

The American proposition is precisely the opposite of what Herself imagines: The U.S. government exists at our sufferance, not the other way around. We have governments because there are some things that we as individuals have a hard time doing through private enterprise, and we have a federal government because there are things that the several states cannot manage separately, such as national defense and border security. (And, bang-up job on the latter, Washington.) A president isn’t a prince, and a citizen isn’t a serf. Herself’s invocation of serfdom is the logical extension of “You Didn’t Build That”-ism, the backward philosophy under which the free citizen is obliged to justify his life and his prosperity to the state, in order to satisfy the economic self-interest, status-seeking, and power-lust of such lamentable specimens as Elizabeth Warren, a ridiculous little scold who has never done a single useful thing in her entire public life.

The American model is precisely the opposite: Government has to justify itself to us. The states created the federal government, not the other way around, and the citizens created the states, not the other way around. We don’t owe these jackasses any service. They owe us service: services they routinely fail to perform. We’ve got jihadis shooting up California while the government doesn’t even bother to track visa overstays or properly scan entrants from Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia (because what could possibly go wrong in that scenario?) in spite of being legally obliged to do so. Instead, the powers that be in Washington are literally masturbating the day away when they aren’t busy poisoning veterans to death with dope.

These people—these people—are going to lecture us on citizenship? How about you skip the homilies and do your damned jobs? Of course Americans perform service: in our families, in our churches, in civic organizations, through charity. We serve because we believe in it, not because we have to justify our consumption of O2 to some despicable low-rent Lady Macbeth who is so keenly aware of her own profiteering and corruption that she violated a stack of federal statutes to keep her work correspondence away from proper oversight. 

We may be called to justify ourselves before God one day, but not before that. Herself imagines the United States of America to be a nation of serfs. Whom do you think she imagines as their overlord? And that is why any sane and self-respecting country would have kept this woman far away from any public office, much less let her flirt with the presidency.

Bridge For Sale In Brooklyn...

President Obama commented today that the announced unemployment rate of 4.9% was "bad news" for Republicans. Really Mr. President? Except the only people who give any credibility to the BLS number are Democrats and hack journalists. But then that's a redundancy isn't it? Not a word out of his lying, shit filled mouth about the still horrendous labor participation rate. Not a word about the continuing contraction of global markets. Not a word about how the Baltic Dry Index is at is lowest level ever. Not a word about declining U.S. exports. Not a word about how the only growing job market is in bartenders and wait staff.

Tell us, you lying sack of shit, how any of those are indicators of a healthy economy? Where are all the manufacturing jobs you were going to create? Oh that's right they all went China and India. To bad that didn't work out because you have so devastated the domestic economy that fewer and fewer Americans have the necessary disposable income anymore even to buy the cheap crap from China or India. Maybe you should invest in a first grade elementary arithmetic text book. You might actually learn something you miserable piece of trash.

Instead of trying to erase Southern history there a millions of us who would very much like to erase you and what you have done to our country from or memory and history. Your lies and corruption make Boss Tweed and Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scouts. I look forward to teaching my grandchildren what an evil, contemptable, spawn of Satan himself you are. May you fry in hell.

A Message For Bernie Sanders.

With Hillary Clinton's continuing and growing problems with Servergate, her general lack of credibility, and young voters flocking to Sanders, the possibility of her getting the rug of inevitability jerked out from under her once again is becoming very real.

Not that I won't be among the legions who will shed not a single tear over the (hopefully) final demise of her political career but I won't be joining the crowds of witless morons cheering on Bernie Sanders and his delusional dreams of an American socialist utopia.

Before anyone thinks that Bernie has or may inherit any inevitability they had best cast a careful examining eye across the Caribbean Sea to that other socialist utopia of the Americas, namely Venezuela.  It has not been a great secret that Venezuela's economy was heading into the dumper long before the former President Chavez succumbed to his appropriately diagnosed asshole cancer.

Startling shortages of basic commodities such as toilet paper, coffee and butter have many on edge and angry. Mix in collapsing prices for domesticly produced commodities like oil and copper and the means of obtaining the hard currency needed to purchace the everyday suppies of any functioning economy become even more strained.

Last year alone Venezuela suffered some 275% inflation and for 2016 the painful number is projected to rise to something in excess of 720%.

Another event in recent, but little noted Venezuelan history was the repatriation of its national gold reserves from storage vaults in Germany. At the time there was speculation as to what the government was going to do with some 58 tons of gold bullion. Rather than create even limited amounts of gold backed currency, they apparently had it earmarked for something more nefarious. One has to wonder how much of it was squandered on the contracting of some thirty seven Boing 747 carco plane loads hired to bring in, quite literally, hundreds of tons of freshly printed Venezuelan bank notes.

History has frequently shown massive hyperinflation often leads to social unrest and political/military coups. Somehow I don't think Muduro and his communist cabal are going to sit around waiting for that to happen anytime soon.

With the Venezuelan military having already declared their political loyalty to the communist/socialist presidential regime rather than to the National Constitution and the duely elected opposition controlled legislature, a defacto military dictatorship has been created.

Somehow I don't see Muduro and company using any of this newly printed currency to alleviate the public's pain and suffering. I can much more easily envision them following the Zimbabwe model. Keep the military well fed, well paid and loyal to El Presidenti. That way he can protect his back and step up the demonization of his enemies and his demands for the nationalization of any and all successful private business for "the good of the people".

It won't work of course because those bank notes will grow increasing worthless for any foreign exchange and their won't be any gold left to buy any more worthless paper. When the army stops getting paid then the real fun begins.

It looks like the communists in Caracas are in a race to see how quickly they can convert a mineral and oil rich nation into just another failed and impoverished state that will measure right up there with Bolivia.

Don't expect any of the current poorly educated college students supporting their new idol to see any relevance to this. Well at least not until Sanders's promises turn to the tast of bitter ashes in their mouths. Maybe not even then.

New Politicians Same As The Old Politicians, Or Hijinks And Pandering in Iowa.

As could have been predicted, Donald Trump's failure to win the Iowa caucuses Monday night has brought out a fresh set knives aimed at Donald Trump. The primary narrative being presented is that Trump having declined to participate in the last debate created a groundswell of resentment against him that produced the result we saw. But I have my doubts that such a simple explanation is what is at work here. Never mind that there have been some questions raised about Microsoft's magnanimously offered tabulating software. (Microsoft being a major contributor to Rubio should raise a few eyebrows.) It should also be considered that there is also some old fashioned political dirty tricks and naked pandering behind Cruz's victory.

Reports have surfaced that Cruz operatives were telling caucus goers that Dr. Carson already had plans to drop out of the race after Iowa so they might as well consider voting for another candidate, namely Cruz. Combine this with his last minute decision to endorse calls to increase the amount ethanol in gasoline and you get two factors that could have swayed enough voters to give Cruz his narrow victory.

Once one considers these two factors it demonstrates something else. Rather than being a political outsider and principled conservative, Cruz is just another underhanded, do anything to win an election politician.  Gee who could have possible thought that?