Free Republic

At the risk of being crass, we've said on several occasions that the Paris attacks, the San Bernardino massacre, and the wave of sexual assaults that have swept Western Europe are the best things that ever happened to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. It seems exceedingly likely that Trump had very little conception of what was going on in the Balkans when he stormed onto the political scene last summer with inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants. As luck would have it, just two months later, Europe's migrant crisis reached a critical tipping point when Hungarian PM Viktor Orban built a 100-mile...

BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision: •*BLACKROCK SAYS ISSUANCE OF GOLD TRUST SHARES SUSPENDED• *BLACKROCK SAYS SUSPENSION DUE TO DEMAND FOR GOLD ... It appears the huge demand for physical gold (and lack of supply) is finally catching up with the manipulation of paper prices. If this is anything other than a brief technical suspension, it could well unleash panic-buying as we already pointed out - there...

Tyler Durden March 3, 2016One month ago, when looking at the latest Canadian official international reserves, we noticed something strange: Canada had sold nearly half of its gold reserves in one month. According to the February data, total Canadian gold reserves stood at 1.7 tonnes. That was just 0.1 per cent of the country’s total reserves, which also include foreign currency deposits and bonds. As we noted, the decision to sell came from Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office. “Canada’s gold reserves belong to the Government of Canada, and are held under the name of the Minister of Finance,” explained a...

And so, just like that, with a sweeping victory in South Carolina, Sanders' Socialism crawls back into its cage and crony capitalism is alive and well. As Edward Snowden so perfectly sums up... . 

Dale Dorsey isn't happy.After working 33 years, he's facing a 55% cut to his pension benefits, a blow which he says will "cripple" his family and imperil the livelihood of his two children, one of whom is in the fourth grade and one of whom is just entering high school.Dorsey attended a town hall meeting in Kansas City on Tuesday where retirees turned out for a discussion on "massive" pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, and which will almost certainly go broke within the next decade."A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension...

Roughly 2 1/2 years ago ; readers were introduced to a paradigm of crime, corruption, and control which they now know as "the One Bank". First they were presented with a definition and description of this crime syndicate. That definition came via a massive computer model constructed by a trio of Swiss academics, and cited with favor by Forbes magazine . The computer model was based upon data involving more than 10 million "economic actors", both individuals and corporations, and the conclusions which that model produced were nothing less than shocking. The One Bank is "a super-entity" comprised of 144...

The question of how the Islamic State funds its sprawling caliphate has been discussed in the past: we first broke down the primary driver of ISIS revenue well over a year ago, in September 2014, when we explained that "ISIS uses oil wealth to help finance its terror operations." ... We wonder how long until someone finally asks the all important question regarding the Islamic State: who is the commodity trader breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various "western alliance" governments, and why is it that these governments...

One of the most surprising comments this year came from a closed session on fintech where I sat next to someone in policy circles who argued that we should move quickly to a cashless economy so that we could introduce negative rates well below 1% – as they were concerned that Larry Summers' secular stagnation was indeed playing out and we would be stuck with negative rates for a decade in Europe. They felt below (1.5)% depositors would start to hoard notes, leading to yet further complexities for monetary policy.

Back in October, we previewed the “promised” battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city prior to the war. By the time Russia began constructing an air base at Latakia, the city - which is immensely important both from a strategic and psychological perspective - was controlled by a hodgepodge of rebels and militants including al-Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, and ISIS. As we noted four months ago, if Russia and Hezbollah manage to recapture the city, it would effectively restore the Assad government in Syria even if the east of the country is still controlled by Islamic State. In many ways,...

Tyler DurdenFebruary 1, 2016 Willem Middlekoop, author of The Big Reset – The War On Gold And The Financial Endgame, believes the current international monetary system has entered its last term and is up for a reset. Having predicted the collapse of the real estate market in 2006, (while Ben Bernanke didn't), Middlekoop asks (rhetorically) -can the global credit expansion 'experiment' from 2002 – 2008, which Bernanke completely underestimated, be compared to the global QE 'experiment' from 2008 – present? - the answer is worrisome. In the following must-see interview with Grant Williams, he shares his thoughts on the future...

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-31/bloomberg-op-ed-calls-end-cash So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2016 In a moment of curious serendipity, a little over 90 minutes after we showed what a dystopian, centrally-planned, cashless society unleashed in a negative interest rate world would look like ("by forcing people and companies to convert their paper money into bank deposits, the hope is that they can be persuaded (coerced?) to spend that money rather than save it because those deposits will carry considerable costs"), and briefly after we...

As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico "it's the end of the beginning... and the beginning of the end," as he explained "Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece." However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted. But, as JPMorgan details, Muni risk is on the rise for US states, but broad generalizations do not apply (in other words, these five states are 'screwed')... The direct indebtedness of US states (excluding...

Bulletin Headline Summary From Bloomberg and RanSquawk Amid the fresh downturn in risk sentiment, there is one standout move to highlight this morning; the USD/CAD ramp through 1.4400 and 1.4500 WTI and Brent are below USD 30/bbl, with analysts noting that the UN are expected to approve the removal of Iranian trade sanctions as soon as Monday Highlights today include US retail sales, PPI final demand, empire manufacturing, industrial production, business inventories and University of Michigan sentiment as well as Fed's Dudley, Williams and Kaplan Treasuries gain as global stocks plunge led by China, crude at 12-year low; 10Y has...

Widespread corruption destroys empires. By way of example, corruption was one of the main causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire: The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder [and see this]. The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership. The Ottoman Empire started its decline when the sale of...

<p>As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico "it's the end of the beginning... and the beginning of the end," as he explained "Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece." However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted.</p>

Over the weekend, a series of dramatic events stemming from Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr plunged the Mid-East further into chaos. The torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran prompted Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties with the Iranians and on Monday, Bahrain quickly followed while the UAE recalled its ambassador. Now, the stage is set for a full blown sectarian showdown complete with protests by oppressed Shiites in the Gulf states, anti-Sunni sentiment in Iran and Iraq, and, in a worst case scenario, a direct (as opposed to a proxy) conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians....

Following the initial halt in CSI-300 Futures at the 5% limit down level, the afternoon session opened to more carnage and amid the worst 'first day of the year' in at least 15 years, Chinese stocks collapsed further to a 7% crash. At 1334 local time, stock trading was halted for the rest of the day across all exchanges (at least two hours early). [Snip] Dow futures are now down over 150 points from NYE close, Gold and Treasuries are bid, and offshore Yuan has plunged most since the August devaluation.

Swiss army chief Andre Blattmann warned, in a Swiss newspaper article on Sunday, the risks of social unrest in Europe are soaring. Recalling the experience of 1939/1945, Blattman fears the increasing aggression in public discourse is an explosively hazardous situation, and advises the Swiss people to arm themselves and warns that the basis for Swiss prosperity is "being called into question."

Outraged by what Donald Trump says? You are not alone. No high-polling presidential candidate in the modern era has so intrepidly drawn the ire of so many within the American electorate. And there remains no end in sight. Yet in rendering one voting bloc utterly apoplectic, he has appealed viscerally to another. The balance of middle ground politics is not, shall we say, Mr Trump’s bailiwick. But America is no longer a middle ground country. We are already scared by our division — and it is getting worse. The simple truth is, the more provocative his language, the deeper and...

In American politics the nation of Russia, especially as personified in its leader Vladimir Putin, becomes all things to all men.To American leftists, Russia is a neo-fascist, violently nationalist country that ruthlessly suppressed minority groups, especially homosexuals. To the American Right, Putin is the second coming of Stalin who is working to subvert good old-fashioned American values around the world.In line with the latter narrative, a certain Christian Gomez recently published an article on The New American website, the flagship of the John Birch Society, supposedly revealing that the Russian government is the real power behind the ISIS terrorist group,...