Everything looks like it is falling apart, right?

by Kurt Schlicter via Threadreader

Everything looks like it is falling apart, right?

Wrong.

It is meant to look like that.

They want you to make emotion-driven moves that will help them win.

Don’t - get woke! 

Pulling down statues in leftist cities that refuse to maintain order is an attempt to psyche you into thinking everything is out of control.

It’s not. 

A cpuple hundred people in Frisco? The local cops were ordered to let it happen.

Same with DC.

What is this. 3/

So you think “Why isn’t Trump doing something?”

But it’s a few hundred bums out of 330 million.

And local cities could turn it off in a heartbeat - but refuse to.

Why? 

To convince you, the law and order types, that Trump is allowing mass chaos.

But it’s not mass by any standard.

Nor is it chaos, side the local Democrats are actively facilitating tit and making sure no one is actually getting hurt (except dummies that the statues fall on) 

What would you have Trump do?

Have him do a dirty, violent job the locals refuse to?

Send soldiers in and risk real violence - which plays against him?

It’s infuriating - and it’s meant to be - but Trump’s right not to take the bait. 6/

The answer is to let the left cities have their performance art fun.

Let them trash themselves.

Understand how it’s meant to manipulate you.

If the leave Dem areas, unleash the local cops.

Do not do what the enemy wants! 

Be woke to the enemy’s game plan.

Support the President.

Do not be suckered - he isn’t!

Watch him use the DoJ!

Buy guns and ammunition for legitimate deterrence & lawful self-defense.

Vote GOP down the line - better yet, campaign! 

Here’s a longer discussion of this transparent info operation.

I know it feels like we are losing right now.

We are not.

They want you mad.

Don’t let your emotions control you.

We will win - if we are woke. 

[Thanks for the attention the thread has received]

Ask yourself - have you heard the name “George Floyd” lately, especially in connection with the couple of Dem cities where statues were pulled?

Nope.

Floyd was their cover. It’s gone. And normal people hate pointless chaos 10/

It went from protests people did not think were illegitimate (which the bad actors exploited) to violence with no arguably legitimate cause.

The Dems try to exploit the Antifa types as stormtroopers but their control of the radicals is limited 11/

Remember, Democrats really only want a return to the status quo (minus us normal people having rights and the ability to again disrupt the status quo).

But their radical cat’s paws want revolution.

The Dems are riding a tiger. 

The radicals are over their skis past what normal people consider legitimate protests.

Dems are content with the chaos for now, since it causes us to think Trump is out of control, but they worry the radicals will tire of meaningless Dem city antics and threaten the suburbs. 

The second those whiny white wine women feel themselves or their families physically or economically threatened, they will turn to the strong horse - Trump, and law + order.

Biden is a hapless tool who can’t/won’t protect them.

Their husbands are already there. 

Trump’s Game Plan:

1 Indentify himself with law + order

Avoid using federal force that can turn into Kent State 2 (the Dem dream)

Use the DOJ to prosecute & deter the radicals who were happy to riot knowing Dem prosecutors would give them a pass

Let them overstep 

The Dems win if we panic and capitulate before their radical partners radically overstep.

And being radical is what radicals do.

Don’t panic.

Don’t let the media - which is all in with the left - manipulate you.

Get prepared and get woke. 

Want a quick sanity check?

Look out your window.

Unless you overlook Golden Gate Park in Scat Francisco, the Atlanta Wendy’s or that DC square, there’s no chaos outside.

It’s all a show designed to scare you away from Trump and into the gropey embrace of Puppet Joe! 

Trump Bans Knees as Deadly Assault Weapons!

Liberal Heads Explode!

A satire article (but kinda not)

by The Babblin' Beelieve it!

In the aftermath of a dirty cop kneeing an American citizen in the back of the neck while he slowly died, democrats have taken it upon themselves to commemorate the tragic event by mimicking the same maneuver.

"Am I a joke to you?" - George Floyd probably

Not sure how imitating the offending officer helps the situation, but when have democrats ever made sense? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe these liberal lefty democrats are honoring the rest-in-peace officer for "taking a knee" and doing nothing while a black person lost their life. That would match up with democrat inaction as thousands of black unborn babies are murdered with impunity every year, or how dozens of black people are murdered in Chicago over any given weekend, or how retired officer Capt. David Dorn lost his black life to rioters, or even how ANTIFA toppled a statue onto a black man's head during one of their "block parties", as one democrat mayor calls them. Yeah, if by "block" you mean block someone's consciousness! I haven't seen an induced coma of this otherworldly magnitude since Eileen Galvin! And why limit their indifference to just "African-Americans", as democrats refer to them? Liberals are world citizens after all, amirite? How about all those African-Africans who are kidnapped, forced into slavery both laborious and sexual, or just plain old robbed, beaten, raped, or murdered in the most excruciatingly painful ways possible? Blunt instrument to the head causing brain bleed and convulsions, dismemberment, burning tire around the abdomen, etc., but at least they're not knees held to the neck while the victim has a heart-attack. I mean, how are liberals supposed to seize political power by complaining about those atrocities?

Hence the reason for this article. Liberals tell us, "Don't say ALL lives matter", because that... somehow diminishes black lives?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But the truth is that liberal democrats don't believe all BLACK lives matter either. They believe the only black lives that matter are the ones they can exploit for political gain.

I posted in a WND comments section that the offending officer, Chauvin, is guilty of something far worse than racism. He's guilty of a cold and callous disregard for a fellow human life. He simply didn't care. I also added that the rioters who destroy, hurt, loot, and kill, are just like him.

They don't care about George Floyd or his memory. They don't care about bringing Chauvin to justice either. America was united in condemning what happened to Floyd at the knees of Chauvin. The local and federal governments moved quickly to fire, arrest, and prosecute Chauvin. The justice system is playing out exactly as it should. So what are the riots about? Nothing to do with what happened. Rather this is an attempt to besmirch and control American citizens, and to bring us all to kn-heel.

White liberals everywhere, bleating like sheep, ashamed of the color of their skin because they lack content of character. Prostrating themselves before the mob in much the same position that contributed to George Floyd's death. Apologizing for systemic racism, which has apparently always existed in American society… er, except during the years Obama was president for some mysterious reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fortunately for us patriots, we have a champion to stand up against the thugs.

President Trump has spoken out against these communistic tactics of publicly shaming and coercing people into hating themselves and their country.

Aaaaaand in another stroke of 4D Chess Galaxy-Brain Genius, President Trump has issued an executive order banning the practice of taking a knee as a deadly assault weapon!

The position that led to George Floyd's death will no longer be allowed in America!

Liberals should rejoice at this as well. They're all about banning things, right?

And right now the deadliest position this country could hold is to take a knee against our history, heritage, ideals, or any of our various skin colors.

Don't be bullied into submission by the communists and actual racists.

Be a winner. Support America. See your neighbors not by their skin colors, but as your fellow Americans.

Let's unite in greatness.

Our President stands with us!



 
Do not kneel.

STAND UP! JOIN US!

(Turn on CC and take in these words)

(Endeavor, having just destroyed an ANTIFA thug. Oh, um… spoilers BTW)

Believe it!

The Crisis Goes Up A Gear: Is This The Beginning Of The End For The Dollar?

 

Article by Alasdair Macleod in "ZeroHedge":

Dollar-denominated financial markets appeared to suffer a dramatic change on or about the 23 March. This article examines the possibility that it marks the beginning of the end for the Fed’s dollar.

At this stage of an evolving economic and financial crisis, such thoughts are necessarily speculative. But an imminent banking crisis is now a near certainty, with most global systemically important banks in a weaker position than at the time of the Lehman crisis. US markets appear oblivious to this risk, though the ratings of G-SIBs in other jurisdictions do reflect specific banking risks rather than a systemic one at this stage.


A banking collapse will be a game-changer for financial markets, and we should then worry that the Fed has bound the dollar’s future to their fortunes.

Introduction

The most important mistake economists and financial watchers make is to assume events and prices tomorrow are simply projections of those of today. It is the basis of all economic and financial modelling. Yet despite the hard lessons of experience economic forecasters persist with their misleading models.

Nowhere is the failure of linear projection from the past more important than in the lifeblood common to everything. While knowing that state-issued currencies change in their utility over time, almost no one expects their demise, other perhaps at some point in the far distant future. But what if this generally linear expectation is as wrong as all other forecasting models? What if the response to the current economic crisis is a more rapid depreciation of currencies? And what happens if they die altogether? And what are the consequences for the ordinary person?

This article explores these what-ifs. It examines the conditions that could lead to this outcome. History gives us a guide, not through extrapolation, but by telling us that every recorded currency collapse has occurred to fiat currencies unbacked by gold or silver. So, we know it will happen — eventually. Less understood is that the pattern is always the same: a prolonged period of falling purchasing power, followed by a sudden collapse when a currency’s users finally reject it. In terms of time the latter phase usually lasts approximately six months.

Assessing the turning point

The early morning of Monday, 23 March was a significant time, marking the top of the dollar’s trade-weighted index. At the same time, gold, silver and copper prices, having fallen in the weeks before turned sharply higher. And while oil initially followed, it was a month before it resumed its uptrend — delayed by the delivery hiatus in the futures markets which briefly drove the price negative. The S&P 500 rallied the following day, ending a near 30% decline before recovering all of it, and then some.



Something had changed. Either markets decided that economic growth, both in the US and the rest of the world was going to continue following lockdowns, and growing demand for key commodities was going to be resumed. Or, as the decline in the dollar’s TWI indicated, the purchasing power of the dollar was going to decline, and commodity prices were reflecting an accelerating downtrend for the dollar’s purchasing power.

The performance of the S&P 500 since 23 March, being unhinged from any business conditions, gives us a clue: the flood of money emanating from the Fed is fuelling stock prices. It is also fuelling prices of all other financial assets.

The turnaround in silver is a more subtle story, shown in the chart as the reciprocal of the more usual gold/silver ratio. Silver had been ignored, classed solely as an industrial metal. Gold was seen by the financial community as the only metallic hedge against uncertainty in the financial system. That changed on 23 March when the gold/silver ratio peaked at 125 on the previous business day. It is now beginning to outperform gold with the gold/silver ratio currently down to 98. We might look back and pinpoint this time as marking the beginning of a return to some moneyness in silver.

The weeks before had seen the Fed ease monetary policy. On 3 March, the Fed cut its funds rate from 1 ½% to 1%. In the accompanying announcement the Fed said that the fundamentals of the economy remained strong, but the coronavirus posed evolving risks to the economy.

On 15 March, the Fed cut its funds rate again, this time to zero, but the statement now said the coronavirus had harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the US. On a twelve-month basis, overall price inflation and price increases for other than food and energy were running at below 2%. The Fed announced renewed quantitative easing of at least $500bn of Treasury purchases and $200bn of mortgage-backed securities “in the coming months”.  It was “prepared to use its full range of tools to support the flow of credit to households and businesses and thereby promote its maximum employment and price stability goals.”

That day the Fed made two other announcements. The first detailed arrangements for the encouragement of credit expansion to support both consumers and businesses, including the reduction of reserve ratios for all banks to zero. The second concerned the reduction of costs in drawing down USD swap lines at the other major central banks. They were followed over the course of the week by a series of announcements facilitating the availability of credit.

Clearly, the Fed was engaging the ultimate in aggressive monetary policies. And taking a phrase from the last head of the ECB, the Fed had signalled it was prepared to do whatever it takes without limitation. But the response in the markets took a week to develop into an inflection point, a normal pause before a new direction is found.

Central bank inflation and bank credit difficulties

Since the Fed is one step removed from the non-financial economy it relies on commercial banks to implement its monetary policy. But commercial banks will only act as the Fed’s agents if they are confident the rewards are greater than the risks involved. If the current crisis is simply a matter of the coronavirus being contained before everything returns to normal, then bankers might be prepared to take a punt on an increase of bank lending.

But as time passes, the losses mount. Business and consumer defaults are increasing, and the prospects for a rapid recovery appear to be receding. Furthermore, liquidity strains in the banking system are resurfacing, despite the massive injections of QE by the Fed. After subsiding from the panicky days of last September, overnight repos are on the increase again totalling anything between $20—$100bn daily.

It has been generally forgotten that the global economy was already facing a recession before the virus lockdowns. Trade wars between America and China and bank credit expansion having run for a decade were a repeat of the conditions that led to the Wall Street Crash in 1929, when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act following the roaring twenties was enacted, bank credit imploded, and the 1930s depression followed. Similarly, banks are now highly leveraged on their balance sheets and fear of bad debts has taken over from lending greed. The global banking cohort is increasingly desperate to reduce balance sheet commitments at the same time as the Fed and other central banks are frantic to see them expanded.

It is no wonder that the Fed’s expansion has remained bottled up in financial markets, driving financial assets even further into dangerous overvaluation territory. Consequently, without liquidity flowing more freely into the non-financial economy, bad debts can only deteriorate further, with loan risk rapidly increasing for commercial banks.

Systemic issues are being ignored

When the coronavirus first became an economic issue, there were mounting concerns over payment failures in supply chains. In the US, these payments are effectively the equivalent of gross output, which at the end of last year was running at $38 trillion. While we regard gross output as the value of products as they flow through their production stages, the payments flow the other way, back down the chains. Therefore, the $38 trillion figure can be taken as proxy for the sum of all supply chain payments in the US, to which must be added the dollar equivalents of supply chain payments outside the US for semi-manufactured imports.

Not all supply chains have been completely disrupted, so the good news is payment disruptions onshore should be significantly less than $38 trillion but could easily be half that. But there is likely to be additional disruption from abroad, a point addressed by the Fed when it increased the number of central banks (but not China) having access to its swap lines.

The risks to commercial banks are not so much from the largest corporations, likely to be bailed out if in trouble, but from lower tiers of borrowers. This affects banks with exposure to collateralised loan obligations, which are bundled loans to companies often unable to raise funds any other way — today’s version of the collateralised debt obligations that blew up the banking system in 2008. Additionally, banks have direct loans and revolving capital exposure on their balance sheets with all businesses in the $38 trillion of onshore supply chains.

The market capitalisation of the US’s G-SIBs — global systemically important banks — is less than a trillion dollars. Yet the supply chain failures that they are expected to backstop are many trillions — multiple times their market capitalisation, and even of their balance sheet equity.



It seems hardly possible that the US banking system will survive the current supply chain disruption without help. The added bad news is that the US G-SIBs are rated much more highly in stock markets than their Chinese, Japanese, Eurozone, Swiss and UK competitors, shown in Figure 1 above. It indicates that a systemic failure in dollar-denominated financial markets is not widely expected, given the generally higher market ratings afforded to US G-SIBs than for those in other jurisdictions. This probably explains why this topic is not yet a significant issue for dollar investors, though individual bank failures are more obviously an issue in other jurisdictions, where some G-SIB price to book ratios are below 30% while those of US G-SIBs average 93%.

The next significant event therefore will almost certainly be the failure of a G-SIB, if not in America, then elsewhere. Given the sheer scale of the problems in supply chains in all currencies and the accumulating bad debts attributable to lockdowns it could happen in a matter of weeks. Presumably, failing banks will be taken into public ownership with the Fed backstopping it with yet more inflationary finance. The impact on the Fed’s balance sheet, which has already grown to over $7 trillion will probably be several times its current size. But that, on its own, may not be enough to destroy the dollar.

A more direct danger is posed from monetary policies aimed at supporting financial asset values. In common with other major central banks the Fed has become reliant on a policy of ultra-low interest rates to fund its government’s deficit. At the same time, there has been a longstanding belief, particularly in America, that rising prices for financial assets, chiefly stocks, have been vital to generate a wealth effect and therefore maintain public confidence in the economic outlook. In current markets, this overvaluation policy has been taken to extremes with even teenagers reportedly buying fractionalised stocks through aggregating platforms, such as Robinhood, as if it is a just another computer game.

The dollar’s inevitable descent

In more normal times the excessive speculation in the markets seen today would encourage the Fed to inject some caution into monetary policy; but the Fed cannot backtrack for fear of triggering a catastrophic collapse. Consequently, the future of the dollar has become firmly tied to that of confidence in financial markets.

With a rapidly escalating budget deficit the US Government has a growing funding requirement, the cost of which already absorbs $400bn in interest charges annually. The Trump administration had increased its deficit to record levels in the good times when tax revenue was buoyant. And now the crisis has hit, higher interest rates will expose the US Government to a debt trap. This is a weapon the Fed cannot use.

As noted above, the next market shock is likely to be a systemic failure in the banking system. It matters not where that occurs, but when it does it makes bank depositors autarkic. Not only do they withdraw funds from banks they deem to be at risk thereby increasing their problems, but they also reduce cross-border currency exposure. The dollar is most exposed of all currencies to the latter risk: on last known figures foreigners owned about $25 trillion in securities, short-term paper and bank deposits, while Americans held roughly half that invested mainly in illiquid production facilities abroad, limited portfolio exposure to listed securities and with very little liquid foreign currency exposure.

In our headline chart we noted that the dollar’s turning point was 23 March and its subsequent downturn was part of a bigger commodity picture with gold, silver, copper and — belatedly — oil prices rising. In March, US TIC data showed that foreigners reduced their dollar exposure by $227.9bn, only offset by US residents’ net sales of foreign securities of $133.3bn.[ii] Here is the evidence that in troubled times money heads for home.

Additionally, that month saw a trade deficit of $44.4bn suggesting total foreign-related dollar selling amounted to $177.7bn. This is only part of a bigger dollar picture, but it does appear foreigners were reducing their dollar exposure at the time that the dollar’s TWI peaked on 23 March.

This is important, because there are two market factors that have always led to a fiat currency collapse. The first is selling by foreigners, which appears to have commenced, and in this respect the dollar is particularly exposed. With some $25 trillion invested in US securities etc., the potential destruction to the dollar’s purchasing power from this source is significant. As global trade shrinks further, not only will foreigners be driven by the need to redeploy dollars into their currencies of origin, but they will stop funding the US Government, choosing to sell down their US Treasury holdings, a process which has already started. If the Fed is to successfully fund the growing budget deficit it must absorb foreign sales of US Treasuries as well as maintain sufficient levels of QE to fund a rapidly increasing budget deficit.

Just imagine the consequences of a systemic failure. The spell cast over financial assets will be broken. First, investors and speculators are likely to turn their attention to equities, being obviously the most overvalued financial assets at a time of intensifying crisis. Foreign investors will join, selling down their portfolio exposure, repatriating some, if not all of the proceeds by selling dollars as well. Next, with a falling dollar and a growing sensitivity to the political aspect of the crisis, market participants will reassess the US Government’s funding requirements and question the yield suppression policy of the Fed. Dollar selling seems bound to intensify.

It will then become obvious to everyone that the Fed is sacrificing the dollar in order to fund the government, keep the banking system going and to support the economy by attempting to provide the liquidity to defray supply chain failures. It will already be demonstrably failing to support financial asset prices, which has become the visible manifestation of a successful monetary policy. It would be a miracle if this failure, in Trump’s election year with a socialistic president being lined up by the Democrats, does not lead to a full-blown financial and dollar crisis.

Unless the Fed can raise interest rates to the point where it is too expensive for speculators to short the dollar (which we can rule out), it will enter the second phase of its collapse, driven by US residents realising the dollar is losing purchasing power, rather than prices rising. The purchasing power of any money depends on the balance between money and goods maintained by its users. If they collectively reject the money in favour of goods, then money’s purchasing power declines, potentially to zero. Following foreign selling, this is the second phase of the destruction of a fiat currency, which in past examples have taken roughly six months for it to become worthless.

There are three factors that could shorten this timescale even further: the replacement of cash and cheques by digital payments, modern communications leading to the rapid spread of information, and as a consequence of the development of cryptocurrencies, wider public foreknowledge of the weaknesses of unbacked fiat currencies.

The case for fiat currency survival beyond 2020

The circumstantial evidence that the dollar will collapse before the year-end is mounting. Cassandra opened her casket, the evils escaped, and only hope remains trapped.

Or so it seems. We cannot divine the future. We can only sift the evidence, be aware of common fallacies and avoid the temptation to wrongly extrapolate from yesterday into the future. While our method may be better than the macroeconomic forecasting beloved of the establishment, a predicted outcome is never reality. And it is possible the US Treasury might attempt a reset, perhaps using Treasury dollars, otherwise known as greenbacks, which were last issued in 1971. But without axing government welfare commitments to the American public, returning to balanced budgets and abandoning Fed dollar denominated debt this sort of legerdemain is unconvincing. Furthermore, the dollar’s reserve role for other currencies would have to be abandoned because of the monetary inflation involved in Triffin’s dilemma. And other currencies tied to the Fed’s dollar held in their reserves would still face their own collapse.

A reset abandoning the Fed’s dollar in favour of greenbacks is possible. But history has shown that the introduction of a replacement currency for one that has collapsed fails unless government financing by monetary expansion is demonstrably abandoned. Only time will tell whether in a presidential election year the US Government musters the clarity of purpose to implement a new lasting dollar regime.

The US Treasury says it still has over 8,000 tonnes of gold. If it is willing to drop its neo-Keynesian economics and its long-standing denial of gold’s monetary function, America could reintroduce gold convertibility for the greenbacks. This would probably be a last resort. It reneges on the Fed’s balance sheet note — which in these conditions would be its only significant asset, involves the abandonment of the welfare state and America’s longstanding geopolitical aims, and it allows China to gain potential advantage by displacing the dollar with a more convincing gold convertibility of its own.

China has deliberately cornered the gold bullion market in plans that go back to the time of Deng. Almost certainly, following the introduction of its Regulations on the Control of Gold and Silver (1983), the Chinese state accumulated sufficient gold for its strategic purposes by the time it then permitted its citizens to buy gold with the opening of the Shanghai Gold Exchange in 2002. The gold acquired by the state at that time is not declared as monetary gold and the quantity is unknown, but after examining inward investment flows net of trade deficits in the 1980s and growing export surpluses subsequently, a ten per cent allocation of foreign exchange gained into gold at contemporary prices suggests a position of some 20,000 tonnes of bullion was likely to have been accumulated by 2002.

There is no way of establishing the facts, and therefore statements about the Chinese state’s ownership of bullion are necessarily speculative. But additional evidence is compelling:

• China is now the largest gold mining nation by far, extracting an estimated 4,200 tonnes since 2010, more than any other nation. This has been driven by government policy.
  
• The state controls all Chinese gold and silver refining, taking in doré from abroad to add to Chinese stocks. At the same time, virtually no Chinese refined gold kilo bars are permitted to leave the country.
  
• In 2002, when the Shanghai Gold Exchange was set up by the Peoples’ Bank of China the Chinese government encouraged its nationals to acquire physical gold, even advertising its attractions in state media. Since 2010 alone, 17,200 tonnes have been delivered into public hands by the SGE. These figures were achieved by importing bullion from the West in enormous quantities.
  
• Its allies in Asia, principally members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, have also been acquiring gold. Russia has been particularly aggressive in dumping dollars for gold.
  
• China now dominates physical gold markets and can be said to control them.
  
  

Given all these verifiable facts, it seems unlikely that a state which centrally plans would not have acquired for its own use substantial quantities of bullion ahead of the establishment of the SGE. America knows it and continues to resist gold having a monetary role. If America’s anti-gold policy changed, it would restrict the dollar’s circulation abroad. It would mark the end of dollar hegemony and a gold-backed yuan would become the foreign currency of choice throughout Asia, eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Conclusions and consequences

A banking crisis in the coming weeks is an increasingly likely event, given the scale of disruption to supply chains. The escalation of bankruptcies and of non-performing loans worldwide will almost certainly take the banking system down. It will be a watershed, a wake-up call to all those who expect a return to normality after the coronavirus passes.

For the moment, central banks are throwing money at the problem; money which remains stuck in financial assets, inflating them even further, and not being transmitted to the non-financial economy by banks already over-leveraged to failing borrowers.

We can be certain central bankers and government treasury departments are only now grasping the enormity of these problems, but they are still behaving as if chucking money at them is a viable solution. They will only destroy their unbacked fiat currencies, and that destruction, starting with the dollar, is already in progress. The clock is ticking from 23 March. While there may be attempts at a fiat money reset, without clear legal commitments from central banks and treasury departments to end inflationary financing, any reset will only delay currency destruction by a matter of months.

The consequences of such an outcome are always devastating, the more so because all major westernised central banks are committed to the same inflationary policies at the same time. The political consequences do not bear thinking about.

At some stage, hopefully sooner rather than later, metallic money will regain circulation. And when prices are set in gold or silver, perhaps through fully backed substitutes, the stability they bring will end the trappings of fiat currencies. All this destruction is measured in current terms, nearly all from statistics collected by the Bank for International Settlements.

Gone will be worldwide fiat currency debt, amounting to some $250—$300 trillion. Gone will be all OTC derivatives which settle in fiat, amounting to a further $560 trillion. Gone will be listed derivatives, a further $33 trillion. Gone will be options, a further $65 trillion. All these, totalling over $900 trillion, are only part of the destruction.

Global deposits held as bank balances totalling $60 trillion will evaporate. Worldwide equity markets denominated in fiat are a further $70 trillion; anything that does not migrate from fiat pricing disappears, including most, if not all ETFs. Goodbye to hedge funds. Goodbye to offshore financial centres. Goodbye to onshore financial centres. Goodbye to $100 trillion of fiat money.

Life will be very different, and those not prepared for it, principally by retaining a store of non-fiat, sound money, which can only be physical gold and silver until credible substitutes arise, will face impoverishment. Measured in real money, the value of non-financial physical assets will collapse due to the preponderance of desperate sellers to whom survival is most important, even though priced in worthless fiat their prices will have risen. The experience of inflationary collapses in Germany and Austria in the early 1920s showed the way, when country estates went for almost nothing in gold-back dollars and $100 would buy a mansion in Berlin.

None of this is expected. It may not happen, but the chances of it happening  appear to have increased significantly from 23 March.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/crisis-goes-gear-beginning-end-dollar 

The Anti-Police Rioters Finally Got Me To Buy My First Gun

With weak mayors and powerless police, we have little choice but to take our safety into our own hands.

written by Greg Jones at The Federalist

I bought a gun last weekend. It’s not a purchase I wanted to make, and I pray I never have to use it, but with mayhem recently engulfing cities across the United States, I and many others are biting the bullet and purchasing firearms.

Mine is a Springfield 9mm — something small enough to fit in my nightstand or under my driver’s seat should I have to visit one of America’s many war-torn cities. But it’s powerful enough to do the job.

I’ve pondered the purchase for years but always found a reason to put it off. The carnage that has rocked the country over the last couple of weeks, however, sealed the deal. After all, I have a duty to protect my family as best I can, and when the government’s protections begin to break down, a firearm becomes my only option.

It’s not that I have anything against guns — quite the opposite. I’m a big believer in the Second Amendment and have defended Americans’ right to bear arms in writing. But guns were such a fixture of my youth that, like a kid forced by overzealous parents to play baseball year after year, I walked away at my first opportunity.

My father was an independent gun dealer who had me shooting my Chipmunk rifle at four years old, and my mom’s second husband was an avid hunter and gun collector. By the time I was 17, I had shot nearly every gun imaginable, from derringer and Desert Eagle pistols to SKS rifles.

I suppose I enjoyed it all at one point, but it’s been 20 years since I fired a live round. I will be heading to the range this week to correct that error.

I Can’t Count on Anyone Else to Protect Me

I seriously doubt I will get the same trigger rush as my gun-loving friends, but I’m not in this for the thrills. Knowing that if someone kicks in my door I have a fighting chance of defending my home is well worth an arduous hour or so at the range. In fact, I have come to view it as my civic responsibility as I witness, in real time, the unraveling of the societal structures that are supposed to ensure our safety.

For years, liberal politicians and their public relations officers in the mainstream media have attempted to repeal the constitutional right to bear arms protected by the Bill of Rights. We were told our juvenile fantasies of protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government were laughable, given the advanced technology of the U.S. military. You know, all that “What good is a rifle against a fighter jet?” nonsense.

But that’s an absurd framing of the issue, done purposely to deflect from the real reason gun owners so passionately cling to their Second Amendment rights: the gross incompetence of their respective local governments.

That incompetence has been abetted by liberal politicians and pundits who, while trying to strip Americans of their right to protect themselves, also demonized American law enforcement by obsessing over and flooding the media with extremely rare incidents of police brutality. They also, of course, ignored the heroic stories of cops risking their lives to save others.

The tragic combination of these two efforts is now playing itself out on the national stage as cities across the country grant license to mobs of looters and rioters, grifting on the heels of the horrific murder of George Floyd and wreaking havoc on minority communities. The predictable result: cities full of sitting ducks in the throes of national turmoil. Thus far, my town has remained immune from such insanity, but the way this madness is spreading, I fear it’s only a matter of time.

As Police Presence Goes Down, Gun Sales Go Up

The nation’s most iconic newspaper is publishing op-eds calling for the dismantling of police departments across the country. While such thinking was previously confined to America’s most liberal enclaves, it has gained footholds in mid-America cities such as Denver and Nashville.

All the while, violence goes unchecked because America’s police forces either have been ordered to stand down or are paralyzed by the fear that if they do their jobs, the media will ruin their lives. Whatever the reason, I can no longer rely on the government for my safety, and every bad guy in America knows it. Sadly, the left’s concerted campaign against America’s cops is dangerously close to taking them down.

But there’s a silver lining: As America’s cities continue spiraling out of control, millions of Americans like me are exercising their rights and purchasing firearms, thus undoing decades of work by the left to restrict the gun rights of Americans. According to Business Insider:

Federal background checks increased 75% in May compared with 2019, a further acceleration from April’s 69% gain over the previous year, according to Cowen research. Handguns, in particular, were up 94%. Background checks are largely considered a proxy for gun purchases in the absence of more granular sales data.

With weak mayors and powerless police, 

we have little choice but to take our safety into our own hands.

Former Bolton Chief Of Staff Reveals What He Thinks ‘Disproves the Whole Book’

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

Folks on the left are pushing the book of former National Security Advisor John Bolton because it is filled with criticisms of President Donald Trump.

But the criticisms and claims are so ridiculous, it’s hard to believe that anyone would believe them. For example, Bolton claims that Trump had a discussion with Chinese president Xi Jinping about the concentration camps for Uighurs and that Trump told him he should keep building them. There was even the ridiculous claim that Trump asked China for election help.

Not only is that completely inconsistent with Trump’s position on China, which has been critical of them on mutiple levels including over the coronavirus, but he’s also been very supportive of the rights of both the Uighurs and the Hong Kong protesters, warning China against further action against protesters. More than that, Xi doesn’t admit to the concentrations camps so he surely wouldn’t be admitting them to Trump when it could then be used against him.

Even more ridiculous was the claim Trump would ask Xi for election help after the whole Russia collusion hoax.

It’s literally a string of sensationalist claims that beggar common sense and are against Trump’s actions and positions.

Here’s another one: Bolton claiming that Vladimir Putin convinced Trump to support Nicholas Maduro.

But in fact, Trump risked a lot to support and is still supporting Juan Guaido, Maduro’s opponent, who the U.S. recognizes as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

As many have observed, Bolton refused to testify voluntarily during the impeachment trial, allowing people to bandy about what he “claimed” yet not holding any of his claims to being under oath.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer directly disputed the China claims. “Absolutely untrue, never happened. I was there, I have no recollection of that ever happening. I don’t believe it’s true, I don’t believe it ever happened,” Lighthizer said Wednesday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

There’s literally no support for Bolton’s claims.

So why would he say such things?

Former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz, laid out what he believes the “turning point” was as to why his former boss Bolton might have flipped, that Fleitz believe “disproves his whole book.”

From Daily Caller: 

Fleitz said during “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that he had called for Bolton to “withdraw the book” in January because he doesn’t believe someone in that position “should be revealing internal candid discussions with the president.”

“The president has to be able to know that whatever he says in those discussions won’t be made public,” he said. “If he thinks they are going to be made public, a president won’t consult with experts and I think that is a dangerous prospect for national security.”

Bolton is literally breaking all normal tradition of not writing about a president he served while the president is still in office.

But the turning point according to Fleitz was when Trump decided not to bomb Iran as Bolton wanted.

Recalling when Trump decided not to attack Iran after a U.S. drone was shot down because “we would have killed 100-200 people,” Fleitz called it a “principled decision.”

“This was not to win votes,” he said. “This wasn’t to promote the president domestically. It reflected the presidents’s principle not to get America into additional wars. And it was an act of leadership, because he bucked all of his national security advisors, Pompeo, the Secretary of Defense, so when we hear that the president does not have principles, he’s not qualified to lead, this incident that Bolton puts forward as the turning point for his relationship with President Trump in my mind it disproves the whole book.”

He said Bolton couldn’t figure out to work with the president and that the job of an adviser is to implement the president’s policies, not his own policies.

It’s all about sensationalism for his book. It’s long since time that people stop being played.

The Cultural Consequences When Fathers Abandon Children

 
 Article by Mark Alexander in "Patriot Post":

“The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. … In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years.” —John Adams (1778)


Most people who have observed the urban protests and riots of the last three weeks, ostensibly in response to the manufactured assertion of “systemic racism,” have seen masses of discontented young people who are emotionally moved by their feelings about injustice. After dark, they’ve seen this group give way to hordes of BLM (burn, loot, and murder) opportunists of all ages raging through the streets.

But I’ve seen something else in those masses and hordes, something that actually evokes a sense of compassion — though certainly not for the violence. What I see is mostly people, regardless of color or creed, who have been deprived of a sufficient level of stability in their formative years, and the courage required to not become emotionally incontinent pawns of leftist politicians, their Leftmedia echo-chambers, and the agitators who incite insurrection.

What I see are large numbers of people across the nation who have something in common beyond their congregational cause du jour: They did not have the stability of the healthy and functional family that all children deserve — most likely due to the lack of a father or an effective father in their home. Rarely is the lack of fatherhood more evident than during this social entropy of urban civil unrest.

Even in the most stable of families, life can be difficult. Young people struggle and sometimes take paths that are self-destructive.  Fortunately, many have family members who will toss them a lifeline and bring them back into the fold. But if the lives of young people who had the benefit of stable families are sometimes difficult, many (not all) young people who grow up in broken families face almost insurmountable obstacles — psychologically, emotionally, and socially. If they’re fortunate, they’ll cross paths with a guardian angel who will endeavor to lead them onto the path of personal responsibility required for a productive life. Many, though, won’t be so fortunate.

Annually, on Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June, millions of Americans of all ages are reminded that they grew up in homes without fathers. Many also recognize that this absence has had a significant influence on their lives.

For much of history, it was not uncommon for children to have one parent — having lost the other to childbirth, disease, war, or occupations that took them far away from the home. But those families typically lived near other family members who could stand in the gap. Unfortunately, the United States today ranks high among nations with children growing up in single-parent homes without the benefit of extended family. In the vast majority of these cases, the single parent is the mother, and the absent parent is the biological father who elected to abandon them.

This elective rejection by fathers, the result of divorce or of dissociating from the mother, is an epidemic. And the consequence of this epidemic on children, and the future of Liberty, is dire.

For all but the recent “enlightened generation,” the vital role of fathers has been extolled in virtually every religion and culture. In 295 BC, Mencius wrote, “The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.” In 50 BC, the great Roman Republican orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote, “The first principle of society consists in the marriage tie, the next in children, the next in a family within one roof, where everything is in common. This society gives rise to the city, and is, as it were, the nursery of the commonwealth.” The principles of marriage and family have been central to Judeo-Christian teachings for thousands of years.

Founder James Wilson wrote: “That important and respectable, though small and sometimes neglected establishment, which is denominated a family … [is] the principle of the community; it is that seminary, on which the commonwealth … must ultimately depend. … It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.”

Constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wisely observed: “Marriage is in its origin a contract of natural law. It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.”

Perhaps most presciently, John Adams warned, “How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the Sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers?”

Today, that timeless advice has been largely discarded — at an enormous price to families and society.




  
For me, “fatherhood” first invokes the family position that I’m so blessed to hold with my own children — now young adults and successfully making their way in the world. That role was irrevocably shaped by my relationship with my own “Old Man,” who died back in 2015. My dad was always there for my mom and their five kids. He was a “Type A” fighter pilot, a fiercely competitive entrepreneur and athlete, and a real man in every sense of the word.

He passed to me that “Type A” gene, and consequently we butted heads for most of my formative years.

When recalling my early trials with my father, I’m reminded of a great quote attributed to that sagacious humorist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain): “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Like Twain, it took me a few years to figure out that my old man was a good father and a good mentor to boot.

Today, I’m so grateful for the steadfast example he set and the love we shared for each other until the day he died, once we reconciled our relationship. We both realized that some of the struggles we had were generational — the way he learned it from his father.

I recognized before my oldest son’s birth that I wanted to make “new and improved mistakes” with my kids — not just repeat the same old generational mistakes that can be hard on families. Indeed, I made lots of new mistakes, but I made them while present, steadfast, and loving my children unconditionally.

Moreover, “fatherhood” also invokes gratitude for all that is provided by our Heavenly Father, as it does for the legacy of Liberty bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers.

These four contexts for “father” — God the Father, my own earthly father, my role as father to my children, and the legacy of our forefathers — combine to create a rich and abiding sense of what fatherhood really means, how it should look and feel in practice, and how essential it is to the welfare of families, communities and our nation.

But for tens of millions of American children growing up in fatherless homes, the consequences of that void are enormous. Here’s the hard data on the number of American children without fathers in their homes:

Between 2014-18, the share of families headed by single parents was 75% among African American families, 58% among Hispanic families, 37% among white families, and 21% among Asian families.

According to the latest Census Bureau data, 19.7 million children, more than one in four, live without a father in the home. Consequently, there is a fatherless factor in nearly all social ills facing America today.

According to additional Census Bureau data, among children who were part of the “post-war generation,” 87.7% grew up with two biological parents who were married to each other. Today, only 68.1% will spend their entire childhood in an intact family. Based on the number of premarital births and high divorce rate, the proportion of children living with just one parent rose from 9.1% in 1960 to more than 25% today.

As Thomas Sowell observed: “Many successful political careers have been built on giving blacks ‘favors’ that look good on the surface but do lasting damage in the long run. One of these ‘favors’ was the welfare state. A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression.”

The consequences of growing up without a father in the home are staggering, as noted in this graphic:

 


Notably, absent or ineffective fathering is also associated with gender disorientation and other pathologies that the Left endeavors to normalize.

In 1996, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton published a treatise on raising children, It Takes a Village, which, of course, was an instant New York Times bestseller. Clinton and her uncredited ghostwriter adapted the title from an old African proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.” The proverb implies that children have a better chance to become healthy adults if raising children is communal. That’s certainly true in some respects, as long as those communal resources support, first and foremost, the family. But that’s not what the author had in mind.

Clinton asserted that social-service organizations could meet the needs of children from broken homes and that government has an obligation to meet those needs. Part of Clinton’s thesis was correct in that millions of children are victimized when their parents fail to fulfill their parental obligations. Unfortunately, the rest of her thesis suggests that parenthood can be outsourced.

But clearly, the Left’s “village” approach has failed to accomplish anything beyond perpetuating misery, especially in our nation’s urban poverty plantations, as have the failed policies of the so-called “Great Society” for the last 50-plus years. Those policies have, in effect, institutionalized poverty and destroyed urban families.

Ironically, two of our most notable fatherless presidents have propagated those policies: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. These Democrat Party protagonists, and those in power today, continue to undermine the third pillar of Liberty, which is marriage and family.

On this Father’s Day, let us pay tribute to the irreplaceable and inseparable institutions of marriage and fatherhood — and to the importance of a father’s love, discipline, provision, and protection for his family. Every day of the year, let those of us who are fathers encourage other fathers to be accountable for their marriage and their children.

In my 30 years of involvement with inner-city churches, ministries, and youth organizations, I know firsthand, relationally, the suffering of children who’ve been abandoned by fathers.

For those young people who lack such fathers or mentors, we must help bridge the fatherless gap, both in service to them and in opposition to those who would perpetuate statist policies that have eroded our nation’s family fabric. Let us seek to mentor the fatherless by volunteering leadership through our places of worship, youth groups, scouting, coaching, tutoring, or working through inner-city ministries with high-risk kids, to name just a few.

With this in mind, I encourage you to support these fine organizations for strengthening marriages and families:

First Things First is an outstanding organization under the leadership of my friend Julie Baumgardner. There are other fine fathering resources at the National Fatherhood Initiative, the National Center for Fathering, Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and a great mentoring organization like the one founded by my friends John Smithbaker and Scott MacNaughton, Fathers in the Field. Tony Dungy, the former professional football player and Super Bowl-winning coach, has devoted much of his post-football years to coaching fathers. His All Pro Dad fatherhood mentoring organization provides great resources. I also recommend reading “Father’s Day: Ten Things to Ask From Your Kids.”

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/71475?mailing_id=5125&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5125&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body