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Central banks are buying gold at the fastest pace in six years
Central banks are buying gold at the fastest pace in six years
Earlier this month the World Gold Council published its quarterly report– and it shows that central banks and foreign governments from around the world are buying up gold at their fastest pace in six years.
This is pretty big news, and it says a LOT about the future of the dollar.
Remember, central banks and foreign governments hold literally TRILLIONS of dollars of reserves… and traditionally they do this by buying US government debt.
It sounds strange, but to big institutions, banks, etc., US government debt is equivalent to cash. They use it as a form of money.
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More importantly, they hold US dollars because that’s the global standard: the US dollar has been the world’s primary international reserve currency for seventy five years.
So US debt is extremely liquid. In fact, the $22 trillion US debt market is the biggest and most liquid market in the world.
But foreign governments have started breaking with the tradition of buying treasuries.
As the World Gold Council’s report showed us, foreign governments and central banks have been buying a LOT more gold than in previous years.
Net gold purchases in Q1/2019 among foreign governments and central banks was nearly 70% greater than Q1/2018… and the highest rate of first quarter purchases in six years.
The Chinese in particular, have been stockpiling gold faster than ever, while at the same time, Chinese ownership of US treasuries as a percentage of total holdings has been gradually declining over the past years.
And it’s not just China.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Global Government and Mass Surveillance May Be Needed to Save Humanity, Expert Says
Global Government and Mass Surveillance May Be Needed to Save Humanity, Expert Says
A prominent Oxford philosopher who is known for making terrifying predictions about humanity has a new theory about our future, and it isn’t pretty.
Over 15 years ago, Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, made the case that we are all living in a Matrix-like computer simulation run by another civilization.
Here’s a summary of that theory, explained by Vox:
In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1) All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2) if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3) advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones. (source)
Will humanity eventually be destroyed by one of its own creations?
If you find the idea of living in a computer simulation that is run by unknown beings troubling, wait until you hear Bostrom’s latest theory.
Last Wednesday, Bostrom took the stage at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, to share some of the insights from his latest work, “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis.”
While speaking to head of the conference, Chris Anderson, Bostrom argued that mass surveillance could be one of the only ways to save humanity – from a technology of our own creation.
His theory starts with a metaphor of humans standing in front of a giant urn filled with balls that represent ideas. There are white balls (beneficial ideas), grey balls (moderately harmful ideas), and black balls (ideas that destroy civilization). The creation of the atomic bomb, for instance, was akin to a grey ball — a dangerous idea that didn’t result in our demise.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
From Jesus Christ to Julian Assange: When Dissidents Become Enemies of the State
From Jesus Christ to Julian Assange: When Dissidents Become Enemies of the State
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell
When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.
In the current governmental climate, where laws that run counter to the dictates of the Constitution are made in secret, passed without debate, and upheld by secret courts that operate behind closed doors, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can render you an “enemy of the state.”
That list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is merely the latest victim of the police state’s assault on dissidents and whistleblowers.
On April 11, 2019, police arrested Assange for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Included among the leaked materials was gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while American air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.
There is nothing defensible about crimes such as these perpetrated by the government.
When any government becomes almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting—whether that evil takes the form of war, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity—that government has lost its claim to legitimacy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Both Notley and Kenney Hiding from a $260-Billion Cleanup Problem
Both Notley and Kenney Hiding from a $260-Billion Cleanup Problem
The Alberta government may well leave taxpayers to clean up the oil and gas industry’s mess.
The main thing Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley have in common, other than their affinity for pipelines, is their joint fear of the possible $260-billion cleanup bill for the province’s aging oil and gas fields.
Neither Kenney, the United Conservative Party leader, nor NDP Premier Notley have said much on the hustings about this astounding liability, which includes tens of thousands of inactive wells, abandoned gas plants, oil sands tailing ponds and 400,000 kilometres of pipelines.
The mountainous size of the cleanup costs dwarfs the puny pile of security deposits the province has collected from industry to pay for the cleanup — $1.5 billion.
Regan Boychuk, a 41-year-old Calgary roofer, independent researcher and a driving member of the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, understands why Kenney and Notley don’t want to talk about such embarrassing math.
“I think this issue is too big and too scary for both government and industry to face. It is a can of worms,” said Boychuk in a Tyee interview.
But if not corrected, the scale of the problem could affect the province’s credit rating, bankrupt hundreds of smaller oil and gas firms and leave Canadian taxpayers with the mother of all cleanup bills.
This has happened before.
Decades ago, Canada’s mining industry grossly underestimated what it needed for cleaning up acidic tailings and set aside paltry deposits for the job, just like the oil patch is doing today.
As soon as the mines stopped producing money, corporate Canada walked away from an estimated 10,000 abandoned or orphaned mines throughout the country, arguing they had run out of cash.
Taxpayers still need to spend billions on rehabilitating these mining sites.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance
Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance
Between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia: Overview of the book by Paul L. Williams
On the hot summer morning of Aug. 2, 1980 a massive explosion ripped apart the main waiting room of the Bologna railway station. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds more injured. Though at first blamed on Italy’s legendary urban guerrillas, The Red Brigades, it soon emerged that the attack had, in fact, originated from within the ‘deep state’ of the Italian government itself.
The full nature of this secret parallel state would only come to light a decade later when the Italian premier, Giulio Andreotti, under questioning from a special commission of inquiry, revealed the existence of arms caches stashed all around the country and which were at the disposal of an organization which later came to be identified as ‘Gladio’.
The members of this group turned out to include not only hundreds of far-right figures in the intelligence, military, government, media, Church and corporate sectors, but a motley assortment of unreconstructed WW2 fascists, psychopaths and criminal underworld types to boot. And despite Andreotti’s attempts to airbrush the group as ‘patriots’ it appeared evident to much of the rest of the Italian polity that these seemed rather more like pretty bad folk indeed. Little did they know. Follow-up research by the likes of Daniele Ganser, Claudio Celani, Jurgen Roth and Henrik Kruger traced connections to similar groups spread throughout Europe of which all were found to be deep state terrorist organizations, and all of which were found, ultimately, to be subservient unto the highest levels of the CIA and NATO command structures.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Throwing Money at Media Won’t Fix Canada’s News Deficit
Throwing Money at Media Won’t Fix Canada’s News Deficit
We need to reform government so citizens have a reason to care, and slash secrecy that prevents journalists from doing their jobs.
But as one of this country’s digital journalism pioneers (I founded a popular online investigative news site called Public Eye before such ventures became fashionable), I believe those woes may have as much to do with whether Canadians actually want news about their own country, and whether newsrooms have not just the resources, but also the willingness, to produce such stories.
And unless we treat those afflictions, no amount of money will turn our news industry around.
In fairness to the politicians and bureaucrats who decided to dole out $595 million over five years to support Canadian journalism, many of their potential beneficiaries are also convinced that the bottom line in solving the country’s news media crisis can be found in their own bottom lines.
For example, two years ago, Public Policy Forum president Edward Greenspon, the former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, released a government-contracted study called The Shattered Mirror.
It stated that “journalism’s economic model has collapsed, profoundly and structurally.” As a result, it recommended government measures to “strengthen the economic sustainability” of the news media and “promote civic-function journalism and digital innovations.”
That’s fine, as far as it goes.
But there often seems to be an assumption that Canadians actually want public interest news about our country, in other words news about economic, environmental, health, political and social issues taking place within its borders.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
America’s “Debt Crisis Is Coming Soon”
America’s “Debt Crisis Is Coming Soon”
– America’s “debt crisis is coming soon” warns economist Martin Feldstein
– To avoid economic distress, the government has to reduce future entitlement spending
– The most dangerous domestic problem facing America’s federal government is the rapid growth of its budget deficit and national debt
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit this year will be $900 billion, more than 4% of gross domestic product. It will surpass $1 trillion in 2022.
The federal debt is now 78% of GDP. By 2028, it is projected to be nearly 100% of GDP and still rising.
All this will have very serious economic consequences, and the CBO understates the problem. It has to base its projections on current law—in this case, the levels of spending and the future tax rules and rates that appear in law today.
Those levels don’t match realistic predictions.
Current law projects that defense spending will decline as a share of GDP, from a very low 3.1% now to about 2.5% over the next 10 years. None of the military and civilian defense experts with whom I’ve spoken believe that will happen, given America’s global responsibilities and the need to modernize U.S. military equipment. It is likelier that defense spending will stay around 3% of GDP or even increase in the coming decade. And if the outlook for defense spending is increased, the Democratic House majority will insist that the non-defense discretionary spending should rise to match its trajectory.
If defense and other discretionary spending stays steady as a share of GDP, the annual deficit will increase by nearly 1% of GDP—from 4.2% of GDP now to about 5% of GDP 10 years from now. At the same time, the tax increases in current law that the CBO assumes will occur during the next decade as some of the recent cuts are phased out probably won’t happen. Congress will face strong political pressure to avoid a functional tax increase.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Spectacular Violence as a Weapon of War Against the Yellow Vests
Spectacular Violence as a Weapon of War Against the Yellow Vests
Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
Violence is a spectacular weapon deployed by the ruling class to discredit movements from below and justify their repression. It is spectacular in the sense of being a great and powerful political tool for governing the masses, and keeping them in their place. In order to do this, however, the weapon of violence is spectacularin a second sense: it creates a carefully orchestrated mise en scène that seeks to render ruling class violence invisible, while simultaneously transforming acts of resistance into prodigious spectacles of criminal violence.
This is how Act 18 of the Yellow Vests is currently being presented by the mass media: at the precise moment at which the government was concluding its democratic consultation of the people via Emmanuel Macron’s “Grand Débat,” the Yellow Vests have unleashed an inordinate amount of violence that now needs to be repressed in the strongest possible terms. The president of the Champs-Elysées Committee, Jean-Noël Reinhardt, declared in an interview in which he is surrounded by the microphones of many of the major press outlets, that the movement is no longer one of the Yellow Vests, but rather of Black Vests that simply “express hatred and the will to destroy.” Proclaiming that this situation cannot be allowed to continue because of its impact on commercial and tourist activity, as well as its defamation of the global symbol of the Champs-Élysées, his statement bleeds seamlessly into the declaration made by the Prime Minster, Édouard Philippe: new measures will be put in place to prohibit protests in certain locations and allow for even more aggressive police crackdowns.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here
Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here
There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.
Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.
The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Censorship Tightens As Governments Lose Control
Censorship Tightens As Governments Lose Control
Governments have lost control of the narrative that they are in control of events. Everyday I wake up to another instance of outrageous censorship from some ‘social media’ company blocking or banning someone for no apparent reason.
The latest outrage is Twitter banning the account of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange’s mother, Christine.
Australian and New Zealand ISPs have gone bonkers IP blocking sites in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Sites like Zerohedge have been targeted in the past two weeks for publishing narratives orthogonal to what the governments in the West are comfortable with people consuming.
First it was Facebook, blocking and then unblocking Zerohedge with no apparent reasoning behind it. Now its ISP’s over-reacting to an emotional event ensuring that a good crisis never goes to waste.
And these ISPs are going much farther than just avoiding any potential legal liabilities. They are now openly calling for the platforms themselves — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — be regulated by governments to stop ‘dangerous information’ from reaching the eyeballs of consumers.
And another mask is ripped off revealing the ugly totalitarians underneath.
It begins with legitimizing de-platforming people like Alex Jones and social media companies like Gab. Because some speech is too free. These are people supposedly too fringe to be suffered.
So it’s easy to whip up some public support for censorship of them alongside a one-sided media bombardment of justify their silencing to a large swath of people.
Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been…?
It’s especially easy to do this after having whipped everyone up into two camps of highly polarized and radicalized camps across multiple political vectors.
Trump vs. Liberals in the U.S.
Remainers vs. Leavers in the U.K.
Open borders vs. Immigration control across the West
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Changes in Government Deposits and Money Supply
CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT DEPOSITS AND MONEY SUPPLY
The US debt ceiling suspension, signed in February 2018, expires at the beginning of March this year. Some commentators are of the view that the US Treasury must carry out special measures if it expects a delay in raising the debt ceiling in March.
The Treasury would have to draw down its deposits at the Fed and deposit the cash in various government department accounts at commercial banks, for future use to pay government salaries and contractors’ fees.
These commentators are of the view that the Treasury deposit withdrawals act like QE (quantitative easing) and the Treasury deposit build-ups like QT (quantitative tightening). However, is it the case?
If in an economy people hold $10,000 in cash, we would say that the money supply in this economy is $10,000. If some individuals then decided to place $2,000 of their money in demand deposits, the total money supply will still remain $10,000, comprising of $8,000 cash and $2,000 in demand deposits.
Now, if government taxes people by $1,000, this amount of money is then transferred from individual’s demand deposits to the government’s deposits. Conventional thinking would view this as if the money supply fell by $1,000. In reality, however, the $1,000 is now available for government expenditure meaning that money supply is still $10,000, comprising of $8,000 in cash, $1000 in individuals demand deposits and $1,000 in government deposits.
If the government were to withdraw $1000 from its deposit with the Fed and buy goods from individuals then the amount of money will be still $10,000 comprising of $8,000 in cash and $2,000 in individuals demand deposits.
From this we can conclude that a large withdrawal of money from the government deposit account with the Fed is not going to strengthen the money supply as suggested by popular thinking.
What are the sources for money expansion?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Weekly Commentary: No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works
Weekly Commentary: No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works
My interest was piqued by a Friday Bloomberg article (Ben Holland), “The Era of Cheap Money Shows No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works.” “Monetary policy is supposed to work like this: cut interest rates, and you’ll encourage businesses and households to borrow, invest and spend. It’s not really playing out that way. In the cheap-money era, now into its second decade in most of the developed world (and third in Japan), there’s been plenty of borrowing. But it’s been governments doing it.”
I remember when the Fed didn’t even announce changes in rate policy. Our central bank would adjust interest rates by measured bank reserve additions/subtractions that would impact the interbank lending market. Seventies inflation forced Paul Volcker to push short-term interest-rates as high as 20% in early-1980 to squeeze inflation out of the system.
Federal Reserve policymaking changed profoundly under the authority of Alan Greenspan. Policy rates had already dropped down to 6.75% by the time Greenspan took charge in August 1987. Ending 1979 at 13.3%, y-o-y CPI inflation had dropped below 2% by the end of 1986. Treasury bond yields were as high as 13.8% in May 1984. But by August 1986 – yields were down to 6.9% – having dropped almost 700 bps in 27 months.
Lower market yields and economic recovery were absolute boon for equities. The S&P500 returned 22.6% in 1983, 5.2% in 1984, 31.5% in 1985, 22% in 1986 – and another 41.5% for 1987 through August 25th. Markets had evolved into a speculative bubble.
One could pinpointing the start of the great Credit Bubble back with the 70’s inflation. For my purposes, I date its inception at the 1987 stock market crash. At the time, many were drawing parallels between the 1987 and 1929 market crashes – including dire warnings of deflation risk – warnings that have continued off and on for more than three decades.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Government Control Is Overrated
Why Government Control Is Overrated
There is much confusion from Republicans and Democrats about what’s torturing the American landscape. Middle American red state towns have slipped into a self-induced opioid coma. Wealthy blue state cities along the east and west coasts are rotting from the inside out.
Both parties, nonetheless, are committed to big government, and big deficit spending, to bring about the new paradise. But do the President and Congress believe that more of the problem – big government – is somehow the solution to the nation’s ails?
As far as we can tell, this is the wrong question to ask. The real question is a question of control. That is the government’s desire to attain complete control over people, places, and things. To have complete control over your life, your property, your wealth, and your future earnings. That’s what they’re after; much more than MAGA. Their track record proves it.
At best, control is about eliminating uncertainty. That, somehow, perfect order can be delivered to the world through some sort of advanced social engineering and planning. That with perfect order, equal results, regardless of inequal effort or inequal merit, will be heaped upon the populace.
That a world without risk, with perfect certainty, with equal benefits for all, will be a better world. That roaming about in a world of complete control, where outcomes are predetermined, and lethargy’s rewarded, is a privilege to be bestowed by politicians and agency officials. Here at the Economic Prism we have some reservations…
An Unthinkable Alternative
Complete control and the elimination of uncertainty is a desirable objective when managing an aquaculture system. With some experience and diligence, system outputs can be forecasted with greater than 95 percent accuracy. But when it comes to managing an economy, complete control and the elimination of uncertainty is an utter disaster.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Government to Facebook Pipeline Reveals a Corrupt Mix of Social Media and the State
Government to Facebook Pipeline Reveals a Corrupt Mix of Social Media and the State
The next time someone tells you that “Facebook is a private company” ask them if they know about the dozens of government employees who fill its ranks.
As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, the phrase “Facebook is a private company” is not accurate as they have formed a partnership with an insidious neoconservative “think tank” known as the Atlantic Council which is directly funded and made up of groups tied to the pharmaceutical industry, the military industrial complex, and even government itself. The Atlantic Council dictates to Facebook who is allowed on the platform and who is purged.
Because the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the United States government—and they are making decisions for Facebook—this negates the claim that the company is private.
Since our six million followers and years of hard work were wiped off the platform during the October purge, TFTP has consistently reported on the Atlantic Council and their ties to the social media giant. This week, however, we’ve discovered something just as ominous—the government to Facebook pipeline and revolving door.
It is a telltale sign of a corrupt industry or company when they create a revolving door between themselves and the state. Just like Monsanto has former employees on the Supreme Court and Pharmaceutical industry insiders move back and fourth from the FDA to their companies, we found that Facebook is doing the same thing.
Below are just a few of corrupt connections we’ve discovered while digging through the list of current and former employees within Facebook.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Global Warming A “Hoax And Scam” Pushed By Greedy Government Scientists: Greenpeace Co-Founder
Global Warming A “Hoax And Scam” Pushed By Greedy Government Scientists: Greenpeace Co-Founder
The co-founder and former president of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, says that climate change is a “complete hoax and scam,” which has been “taking over science with superstition and a kind of toxic combination of religion and political ideology.”
Moore, who recently made headlines for calling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “pompous little twit” and “garden-variety hypocrite” on climate change, sat down with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
The Greenpeace co-founder’s message echoes that of John Coleman, the late Weather Channel founder who called global warming “the greatest scam in history.”
Moore told Breitbart how fear and guilt are driving the climate change argument, reports Breitbart News.
Fear has been used all through history to gain control of people’s minds and wallets and all else, and the climate catastrophe is strictly a fear campaign — well, fear and guilt — you’re afraid you’re killing your children because you’re driving them in your SUV and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and you feel guilty for doing that. There’s no stronger motivation than those two.
LISTEN:
According to Moore, the climate change movement has co-opted and corrupted politicans and bureaucracies in order to exert further control over people, Moore explained – noting that “green” companies only exist on the back of taxpayers.
And so you’ve got the green movement creating stories that instill fear in the public. You’ve got the media echo chamber — fake news — repeating it over and over and over again to everybody that they’re killing their children, and then you’ve got the green politicians who are buying scientists with government money to produce fear for them in the form of scientific-looking materials, and then you’ve got the green businesses, the rent-seekers and the crony capitalists who are taking advantage of massive subsidies, huge tax write-offs, and government mandates requiring their technologies to make a fortune on this, and then of course you’ve got the scientists who are willingly, they’re basically hooked on government grants.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
