Month: January 2016

HOW HITLER CAME TO POWER

Guest Post by Thinker

Hitler came to power for a number of documented reasons, some of which are rational, others of which are emotional. Either way, the world continues to question how a vicious madman could rise to power in Germany during this time, most of all the German people who, to this day, will do almost anything to prevent another authoritarian movement. Though I believe that is being used today against them as a bigger authoritarian movement gains hold (migrant fundamentalism), the German people seem to be either blind to a new definition of totalitarianism or are so terrified of it happening again in Germany that they are incapable of resisting it.

Following WWI, the following issues remained from the 1920s or were present at the time:

Long-term bitterness

Deep anger about the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles created an underlying bitterness to which Hitler’s viciousness and expansionism appealed, so they gave him support.

Today, we have deep-seated anger at a number of things: government over-reach, the broken rule of law, inequality, crony capitalism, lack of meaningful representation from elected officials, degenerated race relations… we all know the many things that have created the seething undercurrent in this country.

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50 Million Americans Prepare For “Potentially Historic” Winter Storm

The weather weanies have been referencing the January 1996 storm that hit my area. We had just moved into our new house in October 1995. I was 32 years old and in good shape. We had one two year old. I still remember that storm. It snowed and snowed and snowed for 48 hours. We ended up with 31 inches of snow, but the wind blew towards my house and the drifts were four feet. I had one shovel. It took me 8 hours to shovel one side of the driveway. I used to like big snowstorms. I don’t anymore. I hope the forecasts are wrong. I’m not up for shoveling for eight hours again. 

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Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/19/2016 15:07 -0500

With the exception of a handful of one-time events, it had been such a mild winter across most of the U.S. that numerous retailers have been complaining how negatively impacted their topline has been as a result of the warmer weather (clearly having forgotten how they complained about precisely the opposite in prior years).

All that is about to change, and all those warm weather-slammed retailers are about to get just the top line-boosting gift they have been waiting for because according to AccuWeather, the Northeast – from Charleston all the way to Boston – is about to be hit with a major winter storm, with the potential for heavy snow to impact more than 50 million people at the end of the week.

AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Dombek says that “we are just now at the point [of the winter] where the air is cold enough with the ongoing storms to awaken a sleeping giant in terms of a snowstorm.”

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The International War on Cash

The International War on Cash

By Jeff Thomas

Back in 2008, I began warning of increasing capital controls that we would see in the future, as a component in the decline of Western economies (Western in the broad sense, including Japan, Australia, etc.)

Along the way, it occurred to me that, at some point, governments might collectively attempt to eliminate paper currency in favour of an electronic currency – transferred from party to party solely through licensed banks. Sound farfetched? Well, maybe, but what if the U.S. and EU agreed on an overall plan, then suggested it to other governments? On the face of it, this smacks of conspiracy theory, yet certainly, all governments would benefit from this control and would be likely to get on board. In fact, it might prove to be the only way out of their present economic problems.

So, how would it play out? Here’s roughly how I saw Phase I:

  • Link the free movement of cash to terrorism (Create a consciousness that any movement of large sums suggests criminal activity.);
  • Establish upper limits on the amount of money that can be moved without reporting to some government investigatory agency;
  • Periodically lower those limits;
  • Accustom people to making all purchases, however small or large, through a bank card;
  • Create a consciousness that the mere possession of cash is suspect, since it’s no longer “necessary”.

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BILL CLINTON’S LOVING WIFE

Hat tip Jack M

by Dick Morris, former political adviser to President Bill Clinton

If you happen to see the Bill Clinton five minute TV ad for Hillary in which he introduces the commercial by saying that he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary’s background . .
beware.

As I was there for most of their presidency and know them better than just about anyone, I offer a few corrections;

Bill says: “In law school, Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.”

The facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: “Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children’s rights project for poor kids.”

The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

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Is Iran Taking the China Road?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO — a revolutionary in name only?

So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today.

For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to.

Last week, he gave his blessing to the return of 10 U.S. sailors who intruded into Iranian waters within hours of capture. He turned loose four Americans convicted of spying. And he gave final approval to a nuclear deal that is a national humiliation.

Ordered by the U.S. and Security Council to prove Iran was not lying when it said it had no nuclear weapons program — an assertion supported by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies “with high confidence” in 2007 — the ayatollah had to submit to the following demands:

Decommission 12,000 Iranian centrifuges, including all the advanced ones at Fordow, ship out of the country 98 percent of its enriched uranium, remove the core of its heavy-water reactor in Arak and fill it with concrete, and allow U.N. inspectors to crawl all over Iran’s nuclear facilities for years to come.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.”

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation


Stucky Q.O.T.D. — Hey, Trump-eteers! Does THIS make a difference?

This what the HIGHLY REVERED (here on TBP) Ron Paul had to say about Da Trump a couple days ago;

“I think he’s is a dangerous person, and a lot of people find him sort of funny, and love him, even Libertarian types. They like him because he’s so disruptive to the party system, and I enjoy that too. But I think he’s a man that if conditions deteriorate, which they can — see I work on the assumption that the world is no more stable than Greece, and if those conditions come, people want to be told what to do: ‘And I know what the answer is, and I’ll do this, and I am the man to this’. And Mr. Trump comes across this very well, and people listen to him, and I believe he may be raising white horses someplace and he’s going to ride in, because he is almost the opposite of a Libertarian, because it’s not like ‘I want to give you your freedom and your liberty to run your life as you choose. Your civil liberties are absolutely yours, you can’t hurt anybody, it’s your own money you can spend it any way you want.’ But he sounds like the person, ‘I know the answers and I’m going to do this and I’ve done this, I’ve done this, this and this.’” He’s an authoritarian and that’s the way he claims he made all his money. So I see that as dangerous.”

Question: —  To all of you Trump-eteers, especially you so-called Libertarians and Anarchists,  does the warning from the great Ron Paul change your opinion?  Or, are you all just part-time Libertarians?

(Warning: If you vote for Trump, you will likely live to regret it.)


The Fed Responds To Zero Hedge: Here Are Some Follow Up Questions

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Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/18/2016 13:06 -0500

Over the weekend, we gave the Dallas Fed a chance to respond to a Zero Hedge story corroborated by at least two independent sources, in which we reported that Federal Reserve members had met with bank lenders with distressed loan exposure to the US oil and gas sector and, after parsing through the complete bank books, had advised banks to i) not urge creditor counterparties into default, ii) urge asset sales instead, and iii) ultimately suspend mark to market in various instances.

Moments ago the Dallas Fed, whose president since September 2015 is Robert Steven Kaplan, a former Goldman Sachs career banker who after 22 years at the bank rose to the rank of vice chairman of its investment bank group – an odd background for a regional Fed president – took the time away from its holiday schedule to respond to Zero Hedge.

This is what it said.

Dallas Fed

✔ @DallasFed

No truth to this @zerohedge story. The Dallas Fed does not issue such guidance to banks. https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/688441021986959361 …

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The Astonishing Gift Of The Money Printers—–The World’s Richest 1% Now Have More Wealth Than The Rest Of Humanity

Via Contra Corner

The richest 1 percent is now wealthier than the rest of humanity combined, according to Oxfam, which called on governments to intensify efforts to reduce such inequality.

In a report published on the eve of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the anti-poverty charity cited data from Credit Suisse Group AG in declaring the most affluent controlled most of the world’s wealth in 2015. That’s a year earlier than it had anticipated.

Source: Oxfam America
Source: Oxfam America

Oxfam also calculated that 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.5 billion people, the bottom half of the global population, compared with 388 individuals five years earlier. The wealth of the most affluent rose 44 percent since 2010 to $1.76 trillion, while the wealth of the bottom half fell 41 percent or just over $1 trillion.

The charity used the statistics to argue that growing inequality poses a threat to economic expansion and social cohesion. Those risks have already been noted in countries from the U.S. to Spain, where voters are increasingly backing populist political candidates, while it’s sown tensions on the streets of Latin America and the Middle East.

“It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus,” said Winnie Byanima, executive director of Oxfam International. “World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action.”

Oxfam said governments should take steps to reduce the polarization, estimating tax havens help the rich to hide $7.6 trillion. Politicians should agree on a global approach to ending the practice of using offshore accounts, it said.

Full Report: An Economy for the 1%