Money Flow Trading Method along with Risk Management

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4. Mar 19, 2019 1:13pm

1. loveandpeace
2. Joined Mar 2014 | Status: Member | 509 Posts

Thanks for your prompt reply my Mentor, Mr. Bruce. I wish to be your Life Time Member/student.

Your best Proven method, “ Money Flow Strategy “, has opened a NEW window for me, window of

Success, window to find my goal., of course everyone has the same goal here, how to make money

For the better life. Before I was doing the same like most of the others in forex., 90+% failure. And NOW

I can see myself 5-10% successful persons in this field, in the near future. G-d willing. But presently, still

A lot to go. learning phase NEVER ends. May almighty G-d give you long healthy life, and of course more

Money( do you still need ? ), lol. Amen.

There is a saying, “ the more you have, the more you want “. take care


1

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1. https://cdn-assets.faireconomy.media...ar392875_2.gif BenjaminIs
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Benjamin

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4. Mar 21, 2019 6:11am | Edited at 6:30am

1. https://cdn-assets.faireconomy.media...ar392875_2.gif BenjaminIs
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https://goldswitzerland.com/only-gol...l-catastrophe/

ONLY GOLD STANDS AGAINST THE FINAL CATASTROPHE

March 21, 2019
by Egon von Greyerz

Have the Ides of March been delayed in 2019? Normally the Ides of March just means the date March 15th. Shakespeare made the expression ominous as it was the day that Julius Caesar was murdered. Today in 2019, the 29th of March seems more significant than the 15th. Because on the 29th, we first have the conclusion of Brexit. Or maybe we don’t! Brexit has been a tortuous process that after 3 years has got nowhere. All it has done is to reveal the EU elite’s megalomania as well as their intransigence. It has also revealed the complete incompetence of the UK government as well as Mrs May’s total indecisiveness and her inability to distinguish between activity and achievement.


VALUE OF CASH NO LONGER DOUBLE THE VALUE OF GOLD
March 29th is also very important in the banking world since it is the date when gold is recognized as a Tier 1 asset and thus equal to cash. Until now, gold was only a Tier 3 asset and its value was taken at 50% for the purpose of a bank’s solvency. It is of course totally ridiculous that cash or fiat currencies which we know always go to zero over time, should have been taken at twice the value of gold.


There are people speculating that gold becoming a Tier 1 asset will have major significance for the gold price. Also, some market observers even think that this is the beginning of a new era with gold again resuming the mantle of backing currencies or SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). Obviously this would require a substantial revaluation of gold in relation to the dollar in order to achieve sufficient cover for the debt outstanding.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...019/03/ppl.jpg

So shall we beware of the Ides of March as Shakespeare said and will they be delayed to March 29th in 2019? I doubt that Brexit, which is a mess that won’t end well, will be resolved by March 29. Also, the global debt situation will necessitate a restructuring of the currency system. And sadly, there are no SDRs or no new government crypto currencies that will make the debt just disappear. As the story goes: “All the king’s horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty back together again.”


But even if the Ides of March are not delayed and March 29th 2019 does not have a major influence on the world, it will serve as a warning of things that are likely to happen in the world financial system. Desperate debt laden governments will take desperate decisions. We could easily see a time when the US devalues the dollar significantly or introduces a crypto dollar and backs it with gold at a massively higher price.


HEGEMONY OF DOLLAR SOON TO FINISH
I doubt that the US will succeed in maintaining the hegemony of the dollar in the longer term, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the US is unlikely to be able to prove that they have the 8,000 tonnes of gold that they purport.

Secondly, China and Russia would never accept that the debt infested USA is still in control of the world’s reserve currency. A country with 60 years of real deficits, 45 years of trade deficits and at least $200 trillion of debts and unfunded liabilities does not deserve to have the reserve currency of the world.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...currencies.jpg

UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITIES TO LOSE MONEY
The next few years will give us all unlimited opportunities to lose money. Last week I talked about 3 dozen reasons to buy gold and risks to investors’ assets.

At least 99.5% of investors are oblivious to the risks I outlined which is clearly surprising since they will lead to the biggest asset destruction in history.

But the norm is that maximum bullishness occurs at market peaks. The coming decline in all asset markets, be it stocks, bonds or property will shock investors, as they in real terms will lose at least 75% of their assets and probably more than 90% in most cases. The 3 dozen financial, economic, political and geopolitical risks will see to that.


The problem is that the world is now entering an era when money printing and deficit spending no longer will work. It has been an absolute miracle that the world has survived on fake money and fake promises for such a long time. But we have now reached the point where it will no longer be possible to fool all of the people all of the time.


RETURN TO THE DARK AGES
Throughout history governments have mismanaged the economy and thus destroyed the people’s hard earned money. This is the rule rather than the exception. There are numerous examples of countries collapsing under their own debt but the best analogy to the world’s situation today is the Roman Empire because of its size. During a 500 year period, the Romans dominated an area, both militarily and culturally, which included major parts of Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia.


As with all empires, the Roman one carried the seeds of its own destruction. Interestingly the world is now at a point when virtually all countries carry these destructive seeds. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages lasted for over 500 years. But as opposed to the Roman Empire, the current period of debts, deficits and decay encompasses the whole world and is of a magnitude much greater than 2,000 years ago. Therefore, it is likely that the effects of the coming collapse of the world economy could last a very long time. Just as the term the “Dark Ages” was only invented in the 14th century, future historians will only know afterwards if the world is now entering a period which will be a Return to the Dark Ages.


If that will be the case, there would be a total destruction of both the financial system and the world economy with all its infrastructure. It would also involve wars, civil wars, a breakdown of society and a fall in population by several billion. To most people, this clearly sounds like unrealistic scaremongering and a prophecy of doom and gloom of dramatic proportions.

The intellectual capacity of most human beings doesn’t include these complex issues and longer term projections. Much simpler to talk about Brexit or Trump and his alleged Russia connection.


Clearly we hope that these cataclysmic events will not come to pass. But what we do know is that the risk is greater than ever in history. And just like the Dark Ages, we will only know about it after the event. The older generation living today would see the mere beginning of the fall but that can be dramatic enough. What is certain is that our children and grandchildren are very unlikely to have the prosperous and peaceful life that most of the world has enjoyed since 1945.

It is virtually impossible to prepare for a potential extended downfall but what we can do is to prepare for the short term and protect our investment assets.

CURRENCY DEBASEMENT IS A 2,000 YEAR OLD FRAUD
Governments have many tricks in their bag to steal the citizens’ money.

The easiest way is to debase the currency. And this all governments have done with superb skill throughout history. As the Roman Empire started to crumble the value of the currency, the silver Denarius, fell rapidly. In those days, money printing consisted of reducing the silver content of the coin. So from almost 90% silver in 180 AD, the rulers cheated their people by using less and less silver to coin the Denarius. By 270 AD, around 90 years later, the silver coin was both silver-less and worthless.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten...ver_cont-1.jpg


Gradually, the Roman Empire started to crumble and Rome had all the expected problems of a state that was living above its means including major deficits and debts.

In 180 AD Cassius wrote:
“Our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust as did the affairs of the Romans that day.”
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the world has experienced exactly the same thing as the Romans did 1,800 years earlier. The value of all currencies has declined by 97% to 99% and we will see all the major currencies reaching their intrinsic value of ZERO.
http://goldswitzerland.com/wp-conten.../03/debase.jpg


In 1949 Ludwig von Mises wrote:
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.

The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

Thus, history repeats itself and we are again at the point when “the final catastrophe” is very near. The chart of the Denarius almost 2,000 years ago and the statement of Cassius are almost identical to the currency chart of the 20th century and von Mises’ statement.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.

So this year we should clearly beware of the Ides of March even if they are late. But it is not enough to be aware. We must also take the necessary actions to avoid suffering from “the final catastrophe of the currency system involved.”


Physical gold is the best means to avoid that catastrophe.


Egon von Greyerz
Founder and Managing Partner
Matterhorn Asset Management
Zurich, Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 213 62 45

Matterhorn Asset Management’s global client base strategically stores an important part of their wealth in Switzerland in physical gold and silver outside the banking system. Matterhorn Asset Management is pleased to deliver a unique and exceptional service to our highly esteemed wealth preservation clientele in over 60 countries.

GoldSwitzerland.com

Contact Us

Articles may be republished if full credits are given with a ink to GoldSwitzerland.com.

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4. Mar 22, 2019 6:48am | Edited Mar 22, 7:36am

1. https://cdn-assets.faireconomy.media...ar392875_2.gif BenjaminIs
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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
Note: this article is not and must not be construed as investment advice. It is analysis based purely on economic theory and empirical evidence.
The global economic outlook is deteriorating. Government borrowing in the deficit countries will therefore escalate. US Treasury TIC data confirms foreigners have already begun to liquidate dollar assets, adding to the US Government’s future funding difficulties. The next wave of monetary inflation, required to fund budget deficits and keep banks solvent, will not prevent financial assets suffering a severe bear market, because the scale of monetary dilution will be so large that the purchasing power of the dollar and other currencies will be undermined. Failing fiat currencies suggest the dollar-based financial order is coming to an end. But with few exceptions, investors own nothing but fiat-currency dependent investments. The only portfolio protection from these potential dangers is to embrace sound money - gold.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ages/nextt.jpg


The global economy is at a cross-road, with international trade stalling and undermining domestic economies. Some central banks, notably the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England were still reflating their economies by suppressing interest rates, and the ECB had only stopped quantitative easing in December. The Fed and the Peoples’ Bank of China had been tightening in 2018. The PBOC quickly went into stimulation mode in November, and the Fed has put monetary tightening and interest rates on hold, pending further developments.

It is very likely this new downturn will be substantial. The coincidence of the top of the credit cycle with trade protectionism last occurred in 1929, and the subsequent depression was devastating.The reason we should be worried today is stalling trade disrupts the capital flows that fund budget deficits, particularly in America where savers do not have the free capital to invest in government bonds. Worse still, foreigners are now not only no longer investing in dollars and dollar-denominated debt, but they are suddenly withdrawing funds. According to the most recent US Treasury TIC data, in December and January these outflows totalled $257.2bn. At this rate, not only will the US Treasury need to fund a deficit likely to exceed a trillion dollars in fiscal 2019, but the US markets will need to absorb substantial sales from foreigners as well.

In short, America is going to face a funding crisis. To have this funding problem coinciding with the ending of credit expansion at the top of the credit cycle is a lethal combination, as yet unrecognized as the most important factor behind both American and global economic prospects. The problem is bound to emerge in coming months.

While today’s trade protectionism is less vicious than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, America’s drawn-out trade threats today are similarly destabilizing. The top of the credit cycle in 1929 was orthodox; its principal effect had been to fuel a speculative stock market frenzy in 1927-29.

This time, the credit bubble is proportionately far larger, and its implosion threatens to be even more violent. Governments everywhere are up to their necks in debt, as are consumers. Personal savings in America, the UK and in some EU nations are practically non-existent. The potential for a credit, economic and systemic crisis is therefore considerably greater today than it was ninety years ago.

Bearing in mind the Dow fell just under 90% from its 1929 peak, the comparison with these empirical facts suggests we might experience no less than a virtual collapse in financial asset values. However, there is an important difference between then and now: during the Wall Street crash, the dollar was on a gold standard. In other words, the price-effect of the depression was reflected in the rising purchasing power of gold. This time, no fiat currency is gold-backed, so a major credit, economic and systemic crisis will be reflected in a falling purchasing power of fiat currencies.

The finances of any government whose unbacked currency is the national pricing medium are central to determining future general price levels. Just taking the US dollar for example, the government’s debt to GDP ratio is over 100% (in 1929 it was less than 40%). At the peak of the cycle, the government should have a revenue surplus reflecting underlying full employment and the peak of tax revenues. In 1929, the surplus was 0.7% of estimated GDP; today it is a deficit of 5.5% of GDP. In 1929, the government had minimal legislated welfare commitments, the net present value of which was therefore trivial. The deficits that arose in the 1930s were due to falling tax revenues and voluntary government schemes enacted by Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt. Today, the present value of future welfare commitments is staggering, and estimates for the US alone range up to $220 trillion, before adjusting for future currency debasement.

Other countries are in a potentially worse position, particularly in Europe. A global economic slump on any scale, let alone that approaching the 1930s depression, will have a drastic impact on all national finances. Tax revenues will collapse while welfare obligations escalate. Some governments are more exposed than others, but the US, UK, Japan and EU governments will see their finances spin out of control. Furthermore, their ability to cut spending is limited to that not mandated by law. Even assuming responsible stewardship by politicians, the expansion of budget deficits can only be financed through monetary inflation.

That is the debt trap, and it has already sprung shut on minimal interest rates. For a temporary solution, governments can only turn to central banks to fund runaway government deficits by inflationary means. The inflation of money and credit is the central banker’s cure-all for everything. Inflation is not only used to finance governments but to provide the commercial banks with the wherewithal to stimulate an economy. An acceleration of monetary inflation is therefore guaranteed by a global economic slowdown, so the purchasing power of fiat currencies will take another lurch downwards as the dilution is absorbed. That is the message we must take on board when debating physical gold, which is the only form of money free of all liabilities.

Gold can only give an approximation of the loss of purchasing power in a fiat currency during a slump, because gold’s own purchasing power will be rising at the same time. Between 1930 and 1933 the wholesale price index in America fell 31.6% and consumer prices by 17.8%. These price changes reflected the increasing purchasing power of gold, because of its fixed convertibility with the dollar at that time.

Therefore, the change in purchasing power of a fiat currency is only part of the story. However, the comparison between purchasing powers for gold and fiat currency is the most practical expression of the change in purchasing power of a fiat currency, because the choice for economic actors for whom gold has a monetary role is to prefer one over the other.

It is an ongoing process, about to accelerate. Chart 1 shows how four major currencies have declined measured in gold over the last fifty years. The yen has lost 92.4%, the dollar 97.42%, sterling 98.5%, and the euro 98.2% (prior to 2001 the euro price is calculated on the basis of its constituents).

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ges/next_1.png

The ultimate bankruptcy of currency-issuing governments, likely to be exposed by the forthcoming slump, will be reflected in another lurch downwards in currency purchasing powers.

Technical and market analysis of gold’s position
It should become apparent as time progresses that the price of gold in fiat currencies will continue to rise. The reasons are not yet clear to the consensus of portfolio investors and speculators, but it is likely that the more prescient among them will begin to realize that in the event of a significant recession, slump or depression, the dollar price of gold will rise substantially.

For the moment, they are likely to concentrate on timing, using technical analysis, rather than thinking through economic concepts. Chart 2 illustrates the current technical position.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ges/Next_2.png

Following its peak in September 2011, gold found a bottom at $1047 in December 2015. That was followed by a 31% rally to $1375 in July 2016, since when gold has established a triangular consolidation pattern. Last August, the price sold off to $1160, becoming oversold to record levels. That established the second point of a rising trend, marked by the lower solid line.

In February the gold price mounted a challenge to the upper parameter of the consolidation range before retreating to test established support at $1280-$1305, shown by the pecked lines.

There is a good chance that another attempt to break through the $1350 level will take place soon, and that it will succeed. The following bullet points sum up this positive case:

 

1. The current rally commenced from a record oversold condition on Comex. The selloff was consistent with extreme selling exhaustion, indicating a major turning point.
2. The net managed-money position on Comex indicates the gold contract is still moderately oversold. However, the April contract is running off the board, which means that some 200,000 expiring contracts are still to be sold, stand for delivery or rolled forward by the end of this month (March). This suggests a little more consolidation may be needed before gold advances to attempt a challenge on the $1350 level.
3. The 55-day and 200-day moving averages recently completed a bullish golden cross, with the price above both signalling a bullish trend. A retest of the 55-day MA occurred at the beginning of this month and is normal.
4. If, as the chart suggests, a triangle pattern is emerging, it is an ascending triangle, which is bullish. An ascending triangle has a flat top and a rising base. Admittedly, the top line declines slightly but not enough to put it in the class of symmetrical triangles, where the eventual break-out direction is less certain.
5. It is possible for the gold price to trade another down leg within the confines of the triangle before making its final breakout to the upside. In which case, the gold price might decline towards the low $1200s before making its upwards break.

The possibility that the ascending triangle might need longer to play out leads to the common technical recommendation to wait until gold breaks through the $1350-$1365 level before buying for the next leg of the bull market.

Chart 3 gives a longer-term perspective of gold’s valuation. It is of the gold price adjusted by mine supply and for changes in the fiat money quantity. Simply put, FMQ is the sum of cash, bank deposits and savings accounts, and also bank reserves held at the Fed. It is the total amount of fiat money both in circulation and available for circulation.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ges/Next_3.png

In 1934-dollars, deflated by the increase in the fiat money quantity, gold has returned to the extreme lows seen on only two previous occasions. The first was when the London gold pool failed in the 1960s followed by the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971. At that time the decline in the FMQ-adjusted price of gold since 1934 was fueled by monetary expansion until a point was reached which could go no further. This led to an explosive recovery taking the price of gold in adjusted terms back to 1934 levels.

The realization that the dollar faced the prospect of uncontrolled price inflation forced the Fed to raise interest rates so that the banks’ prime rate exceeded 21% in December 1980. This was sufficient to prevent the gold price from further rises, and physical gold then became the collateral of choice for a developing carry trade. Central bank sales were designed to signal the demonetization of gold and deter buyers. They leased significant quantities of bullion for the carry trade, which increased supply synthetically and drove the gold price back to the same extreme valuation lows seen in the 1960s. This was 2000-2002.

After rallying from these extreme lows to a nominal high in September 2011, an increase in derivative supply coupled with the banking and investment establishment retaining an increasingly rosy view of fiat currencies have been instrumental in returning gold to the valuation lows of the 1960s and 2000 – 2002.

It is in this context that the outcome predicted in Chart 2 should be considered. If, as argued earlier in this article, America and the rest of the world faces a global slump, a premium for physical gold is likely to arise relative to the systemic risks of holding gold substitutes, such as derivatives and even physically-backed ETFs. In that event, a return to the 1934 price level for gold in FMQ-adjusted terms before any further monetary dilution implies a nominal gold price of about $24,000.

This conclusion does no more than indicate an upper target for the price of gold adjusted for historic monetary inflation. If, as seems likely, a developing credit crisis occurs as a consequence of today’s events, the quantity of fiat money in issue will rise significantly from current levels as government debt is monetized. Therefore, given the extreme undervaluation of gold suggested by Chart 3, it is hard to see how the price of gold, measured in dollars, can go much lower.

Defining the gold market and vanishing liquidity
The gold market has three basic elements to it.
There is an underlying stock of approximately 170,000 tonnes, increasing at about 3,000 tonnes a year. It is impossible to define how much of the total above-ground stock is monetary gold, not least because jewelry in Asia is bought as a store of monetary wealth and is used as collateral against loans.

However, if we are to classify Asian jewelry as non-monetary gold, then monetary gold in the form of bars and coin is thought by many experts to represent between thirty and forty per cent of the total. Assuming a median estimate of 35%, this is 60,000 tonnes, of which 33,760 tonnes is stated to be in national reserves. This leaves an estimated 26,240 tonnes of investment gold in public hands, worth $1.1 trillion. Much of this can be regarded as being in long-term storage. For market purposes, the physical market on its own is relatively illiquid.

Secondly, there are regulated futures and options markets, the most important of which is America’s Comex. Currently, there are about 520,000 Comex contracts of 100 oz each outstanding, which are worth a total of $68bn. Options on futures total a further 220,000 contracts, which are impossible to notionally value, being puts and calls at varying strike prices.

Third, there are unregulated OTC derivatives, mostly forward contracts in London. The last Bank of International Settlements statistics estimated total gold forwards and swaps were valued at $419bn, over six times the size of Comex. In addition, there were $149bn of OTC options.

The liquidity is broadly confined to Comex, London forwards and other OTC media. These are all derivatives, with minimal physical settlement taking place. Consequently, the price of physical gold is not determined by the marginal supply and demand for bullion, but almost entirely reflects financial factors in the banking system. If financial market conditions return to an approximation of the 1929-32 period for the reasons described earlier in this article, there is likely to be a banking crisis, or at the very least a serious dislocation of financial markets. Therefore, it is possible that at the same time investment funds and private individuals seek to gain portfolio exposure to the gold price, they will be doing so while the means of doing so are contracting, or even disappearing altogether.

An outcome of this sort hinges on the depth and pace of economic deterioration. Time will tell as to whether the current rapid deterioration in the economic outlook goes on to replicate the 1929-32 precedent, but it is getting increasingly difficult to argue against it happening. In which case, the gold price could rise rapidly due to its current undervaluation, a shortage of monetary gold outside central bank reserves, systemic disruption of paper markets and a renewed pace of monetary inflation before the fiat-money investment community realizes what is happening.

Portfolio switching from fiat to gold
If the combination of both a developing credit and trade crises leads to a modern version of the 1929-32 global economic slump, financial asset values will fall heavily. But this time, there is the additional factor of a renewed acceleration of monetary inflation, which at some point might offer some support to stock prices, at least in nominal currency terms. In every hyperinflation, an index of stock prices can perform well on this basis, but adjusted for the currency’s loss of purchasing power, stock prices actually suffer substantial losses.

That assumes, of course, the rest of the world’s economy is broadly stable, which is almost certainly not going to be the case in our scenario.
Additionally, the inflationary conditions of a fiat currency’s twilight moments involve the market imposing increasing levels of time-preference on everything, including bond prices. Therefore, the discount between market prices and final redemption values widens dramatically. Governments and other borrowers face a near-impossible funding task, unless they are prepared to pay increasingly higher interest coupons. Unlike the experience of the great depression when interest rates reflected those of gold, this time bond yields paid in fiat currencies will rise and continue rising.

This leads towards a different progression of notable developments compared with 1929-32. An approximate sequence of how these might evolve is described as follows:
1. Evidence of a looming recession becomes increasingly apparent. Central banks respond in their time-honored way, by easing monetary policy and replacing stalling credit creation with extra base money. Government bond prices rise as they are seen to be the least risky investment in an uncertain economic outlook, and equities rally after an initial sell-off. At the same time, lending bankers observe increasing risk in commercial lending and respond by quietly withdrawing loan facilities from all but the largest manufacturers of goods and producers of services. This appears to approximate to the current situation.

2. With unsold inventory increasing, industrial production is reduced, and rising numbers of workers are laid off. Analysts revise their forecasts for corporate profits downwards, and the number of corporate failures increases. Bond dealers adjust their expectations of government borrowing, and quantitative easing is reintroduced by central banks to ensure government bonds can be issued at suppressed interest rates. At this stage, investors face a worrying combination of falling equity prices reflecting a deteriorating economic outlook, combined with unexpected monetary inflation in the form of QE.

3. Foreigners liquidate US investments in order to sell dollars (the reserve currency – this appears to have started early) and repatriate funds to support their base operations. Bond dealers facing a glut of government bond issues expect bond yields to continue to rise. Stock markets slide, and with it is a growing realization that the recession is turning into a wealth-destroying slump.

4. As the markets’ demands for increased time-preference undermine all debtors’ finances, investors increasingly avoid bonds and equities, abandoning hope of any recovery in financial asset prices. Hedging into gold mines and gold ETFs gathers pace, and the purchasing power of gold continues to rise measured against both fiat currencies and against the commodity and energy complex.

5. Having fallen behind the time-preference demanded by markets, central banks are reluctantly forced to raise overnight interest rates to protect the currency and bring price inflation under control. They have no choice, but this is seen as capitulation by investors. Residential mortgage costs increase sharply, driving consumers into negative equity as property prices suffer from forced selling. In countries where the home has become the middle class’s principal asset, the effect on consumer spending is devastating. Governments end up bailing-out or bailing-in lenders while trying to moderate mortgage interest costs.

6. By now, the gold price measured in unbacked currency is beginning to discount a continuing acceleration in monetary inflation. The gold price will be at multiples of current levels in all currencies, including the dollar.

7. The sense of crisis escalates and mounting bad debts at the banks raise the prospect of a systemic banking crisis. Despite depositor protection schemes, depositors begin to take steps to reduce their bank balances. With the facility to encash bank deposits being strictly limited, alternatives to deposits in insolvent banks will be in high demand. These will be gold, silver and other perceived stores of value. Cryptocurrencies could come into their own as an escape route from holding deposits in the banking system.

8. Those who attempt to escape systemic risk by exchanging bank balances for alternatives are simply passing bank deposits to the vendors. This is fine, so long as vendors are happy to accept the systemic risk. If not, then prices of alternative stores of value must rise to compensate. A classic flight out of money into anything else develops and is made more urgent by the lack of a cash alternative.

9. The currency rapidly loses purchasing power, and it will be moving into its end-of-life. Government bonds will have lost nearly all their value, measured in gold, and governments will still be accelerating inflationary financing, because bond financing without the central bank buying them will not be possible.
During this process, with few exceptions financial assets will face annihilation. A further problem is failing banks are the custodians of stock entitlements, with few being directly registered in the beneficial owners’ names. At best, this leads to a temporary loss of ownership. At worst, it provides the means for confiscation.


An intense bear market destroys wealth. At some stage, investors will begin to realize their portfolios are almost totally exposed to fiat currency risk.The belief that inflation hedges, such as overweight equities and underweight bonds, offer protection against extreme monetary inflation will be disproved. Investors will need a radical new approach, using sound money as their performance criteria. This is cannot be an inflation index, which is likely to become increasingly manipulated by statistical method. It has to be gold, instead of rapidly depreciating fiat currency.

The problem investors will then face is mathematical. There are probably less than 30,000 tonnes of monetary gold, excluding Asian jewelry, in private hands, today worth about $1.1 trillion.According to The Boston Consulting Group, in 2015 there were $71.4 trillion of portfolio assets, of which $36.1 trillion were in US dollars. With the monetary gold held outside government reserves being about 1.5% of portfolio assets, how do you replace non-performing fiat-currency dependent assets with a portfolio designed with sound money in mind?

This is why the return to sound money will destroy the West’s financial system, driving the purchasing power of gold higher, measured against commodities, goods and services, while that of paper fiat moves towards worthlessness. The destruction of financial wealth could easily compare with 1929-32, and if it wipes out fiat currencies will be even worse.

The removal of cash as an effective escape route for investors fleeing systemic risk turns systemic risk directly into a collapsing preference for money relative to goods, gold, cryptocurrencies and the rest. Once it starts, it could happen quite quickly.

Comments from Benjamin: As of April 1, 2019 Basel III will allow GOLD to be held on the balance sheets of all corporate and Government entities as 100% collateral. Prior to April 1, 2019 it was only at 50%. It is a Tier 1 Asset. This will be a major change and as the Comex which is only a leveraged paper market finds itself caught in a short squeeze then the price of GOLD will find it's proper value based on Supply and Demand.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=LY4e264-

by Tyler Durden

Sun, 03/24/2019 - 10:40

Authored by Matt Taibbi, excerpted from his serial book Hate Inc.,
The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it...

Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation is complete, I’m releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top.

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Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief’s independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no “presidency-wrecking” conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman’s definition of “collusion” with Russia.

With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times:
A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller.

Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller’s reputation, noting Trump’s Attorney General William Barr’s reaction was an “endorsement” of the fineness of Mueller’s work:
In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia “contacts,” inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:
It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”


The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like themselves made a galactic error by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.


Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt.”

Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller’s final report might leave audiences “disappointed,” as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.

Openly using such language has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you’d have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn’t prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters!There’s an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and…

Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.


The betrayal narrative was not reported at first as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”


In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump’s campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have “leverages of pressure” on Trump.

CNN told us Trump officials had been in “constant contact” with “Russians known to U.S. intelligence,” and the former director of the CIA, who’d helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller’s probe, said the President was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” committing acts “nothing short of treasonous.”

Hillary Clinton insisted Russians “could not have known how to weaponize” political ads unless they’d been “guided” by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, “It’s pretty hard not to.” Harry Reid similarly said he had “no doubt” that the Trump campaign was “in on the deal” to help Russians with the leak.

None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the “overwhelming and bipartisan” standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn’t. If he isn’t, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC’s Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a “reckoning for the media.”


Of course, there won’t be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can’t confirm.

#Russiagate debuted as a media phenomenon in mid-summer, 2016. The roots of the actual story, i.e. when the multi-national investigation began, go back much further, to the previous year at least. Oddly, that origin tale has not been nailed down yet, and blue-state audiences don’t seem terribly interested in it, either.
By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.


The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions.

Some early stories, like a July 4, 2016 piece by Franklin Foer in Slate called “Putin’s Puppet,” outlined future Steele themes in “circumstantial” form. But the actual dossier, while it influenced a number of pre-election Trump-Russia news stories (notably one by Michael Isiskoff of Yahoo! that would be used in a FISA warrant application), didn’t make it into print for a while.

Though it was shopped to at least nine news organizations during the summer and fall of 2016, no one bit, for the good reason that news organizations couldn’t verify its “revelations.”

The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers.”

Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump “deriling” [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by “employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show.”

This was too good of a story not to do. By hook or crook, it had to come out. The first salvo was by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31, 2016: “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.”

The piece didn’t have pee, Prague, or Page in it, but it did say Russian intelligence had material that could “blackmail” Trump. It was technically kosher to print because Corn wasn’t publishing the allegations themselves, merely that the FBI had taken possession of them.

A bigger pretext was needed to get the other details out. This took place just after the election, when four intelligence officials presented copies of the dossier to both President-Elect Trump and outgoing President Obama.

From his own memos, we know FBI Director James Comey, ostensibly evincing concern for Trump’s welfare, told the new President he was just warning him about what was out there, as possible blackmail material:
I wasn’t saying [the Steele report] was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold [sic].

Comey’s generous warning to Trump about not providing a “news hook,” along with a promise to keep it all “close-held,” took place on January 6, 2017. Within four days, basically the entire Washington news media somehow knew all about this top-secret meeting and had the very hook they needed to go public. Nobody in the mainstream press thought this was weird or warranted comment.


Even Donald Trump was probably smart enough to catch the hint when, of all outlets, it was CNN that first broke the story of “Classified documents presented last week to Trump” on January 10.

At the same time, Buzzfeed made the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.


Comey was right. We couldn’t have reported this story without a “hook.” Therefore the reports surrounding Steele technically weren’t about the allegations themselves, but rather the journey of those allegations, from one set of official hands to another. Handing the report to Trump created a perfect pretext.

This trick has been used before, both in Washington and on Wall Street, to publicize unconfirmed private research. A short seller might hire a consulting firm to prepare a report on a company he or she has bet against. When the report is completed, the investor then tries to get the SEC or the FBI to take possession. If they do, news leaks the company is “under investigation,” the stock dives, and everyone wins.

This same trick is found in politics. A similar trajectory drove negative headlines in the scandal surrounding New Jersey’s Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was said to be under investigation by the FBI for underage sex crimes (although some were skeptical). The initial story didn’t hold up, but led to other investigations.

Same with the so-called “Arkansas project,” in which millions of Republican-friendly private research dollars produced enough noise about the Whitewater scandal to create years of headlines about the Clintons. Swiftboating was another example. Private oppo isn’t inherently bad. In fact it has led to some incredible scoops, including Enron. But reporters usually know to be skeptical of private info, and figure the motives of its patrons into the story.


The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know, from his own testimony, that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom exactly was contacted, and when).


Why would real security officials help litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world’s most powerful investigative agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing an private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual issues? It made no sense at the time, and makes less now.

In January of 2017, Steele’s pile of allegations became public, read by millions. “It is not just unconfirmed,” Buzzfeed admitted. “It includes some clear errors.”

Buzzfeed’s decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt. Although a few media ethicists wondered at it, this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still proud of his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true.

When I read the report, I was in shock. I thought it read like fourth-rate suspense fiction (I should know: I write fourth-rate suspense fiction). Moreover it seemed edited both for public consumption and to please Steele’s DNC patrons.

Steele wrote of Russians having a file of “compromising information” on Hillary Clinton, only this file supposedly lacked “details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior” or “embarrassing conduct.”

We were meant to believe the Russians, across decades of dirt-digging, had an empty kompromatfile on Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of human tabloid headline Bill Clinton? This point was made more than once in the reports, as if being emphasized for the reading public.

There were other curious lines, including the bit about Russians having “moles” in the DNC, plus some linguistic details that made me wonder at the nationality of the report author.

Still, who knew? It could be true. But even the most cursory review showed the report had issues and would need a lot of confirming. This made it more amazing that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, held hearings on March 20, 2017 that blithely read out Steele report details as if they were fact. From Schiff’s opening statement:
According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin (SEH-CHIN), CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft… Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company.

I was stunned watching this. It’s generally understood that members of congress, like reporters, make an effort to vet at least their prepared remarks before making them public.


But here was Schiff, telling the world Trump aide Carter Page had been offered huge fees on a 19% stake in Rosneft – a company with a $63 billion market capitalization – in a secret meeting with a Russian oligarch who was also said to be “a KGB agent and close friend of Putin’s.”

(Schiff meant “FSB agent.” The inability of #Russiagaters to remember Russia is not the Soviet Union became increasingly maddening over time. Donna Brazile still hasn’t deleted her tweet about how “The Communists are now dictating the terms of the debate.” )

Schiff’s speech raised questions. Do we no longer have to worry about getting accusations right if the subject is tied to Russiagate? What if Page hadn’t done any of these things? To date, he hasn’t been charged with anything. Shouldn’t a member of congress worry about this?

A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission, Steele said his information was “raw” and “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.” He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report “with the intention that it be republished to the world at large.”

That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele’s British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times.

I contacted Schiff’s office to ask if the congressman if he knew about Steele’s admission that his report needed verifying, and if that changed his view of it at all. The response (emphasis mine):
The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and which was leaked publicly several months ago contains information that may be pertinent to our investigation. This is true regardless of whether it was ever intended for public dissemination. Accordingly, the Committee hopes to speak with Mr. Steele in order to help substantiate or refute each of the allegations contained in the dossier.


Schiff had not spoken to Steele before the hearing, and read out the allegations knowing they were unsubstantiated.

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele’s results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.


For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele’s revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, “literally spent weeks and months trying to run down” the Cohen story.

“We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,” he said, “and came away empty.”

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen’s name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn’t get a mention in Miller’s own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he’d published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.”

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink”in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story, but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review, Fox, The Daily Caller. The Washington Post’s response was to run an editorial sneering at “How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen’s testimony.”

Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff’s September 23, 2016 Yahoo!story, “U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with “high ranking sanctioned officials” in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called “stove-piping,” i.e. officials using the press to “confirm” information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous “fact check” in the Post.) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn’t serious among other things because Steele was not the “foundation” of Isikoff’s piece.

Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones, who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette, including a rumination on the “pee” episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be “mostly false.”


Once again, this only came out via a podcast, John Ziegler’s “Free Speech Broadcasting” show. Here’s a transcript of the relevant section:
Isikoff: When you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, you know, we have not seen the evidence to support them. And in fact there is good grounds to think some of the more sensational allegations will never be proven, and are likely false.

Ziegler: That’s...

Isikoff: I think it’s a mixed record at best at this point, things could change, Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes this calculation. But based on the public record at this point I have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been borne out.

Ziegler: That’s interesting to hear you say that, Michael because as I’m sure you know, your book was kind of used to validate the pee tape, for lack of a better term.

Isikoff: Yeah. I think we had some evidence in there of an event that may have inspired the pee tape and that was the visit that Trump made with a number of characters who later showed up in Moscow, specifically Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone to this raunchy Las Vegas nightclub where one of the regular acts was a skit called “Hot For Teacher” in which dancers posing as college Co-Ed’s urinated – or simulated urinating on their professor. Which struck me as an odd coincidence at best. I think, you know, it is not implausible that event may have inspired...

Ziegler: An urban legend?

Isikoff: ...allegations that appeared in the Steele dossier.

Isikoff delivered this story with a laughing tone. He seamlessly transitioned to what he then called the “real” point, i.e. “the irony is Steele may be right, but it wasn’t the Kremlin that had sexual kompromat on Donald Trump, it was the National Enquirer.”

Recapping: the reporter who introduced Steele to the world (his September 23, 2016 story was the first to reference him as a source), who wrote a book that even he concedes was seen as “validating” the pee tape story, suddenly backtracks and says the whole thing may have been based on a Las Vegas strip act, but it doesn’t matter because Stormy Daniels, etc.

Another story of this type involved a court case in which Webzilla and parent company XBT sued Steele and Buzzfeed over the mention their firm in one of the memos. It came out in court testimony that Steele had culled information about XBT/Webzilla from a 2009 post on CNN’s "iReports” page.

Asked if he understood these posts came from random users and not CNN journalists who’d been fact-checked, Steele replied, “I do not.”

This comical detail was similar to news that the second British Mi6 dossier released just before the Iraq invasion had been plagiarized in part from a thirteen year-old student thesis from California State University, not even by intelligence people, but by mid-level functionaries in Tony Blair’s press office.

There were so many profiles of Steele as an “astoundingly diligent” spymaster straight out of LeCarre: he was routinely described like a LeCarre-ian grinder like the legendary George Smiley, a man in the shadows whose bookish intensity was belied by his “average,” “neutral,” “quiet,” demeanor, being “more low-key than Smiley.”

One would think it might have rated a mention that our “Smiley” was cutting and pasting text like a community college freshman. But the story barely made news.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout #Russiagate. Step one: salacious headline. Step two, days or weeks later: news emerges the story is shakier than first believed. Step three (in the best case) involves the story being walked back or retracted by the same publication.

That’s been rare. More often, when explosive #Russiagate headlines go sideways, the original outlets simply ignore the new development, leaving the “retraction” process to conservative outlets that don’t reach the original audiences.

This is a major structural flaw of the new fully-divided media landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither “side” feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly.

This has been the main difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick’s post-invasion protestations that “nobody got [WMD] completely right,” the Iraq war was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get it right, and protested on the streets. There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there was political space for protest.


Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a complicated proposition.

Early in the scandal, I appeared on To The Point, a California-based public radio show hosted by Warren Olney, with Corn of Mother Jones. I knew David a little and had been friendly with him. He once hosted a book event for me in Washington. In the program, however, the subject of getting facts right came up and Corn said this was not a time for reporters to be picking nits:
So Democrats getting overeager, overenthusiastic, stating things that may not be [unintelligible] true…? Well, tell me a political issue where that doesn’t happen. I think that’s looking at the wrong end of the telescope.

I wrote him later and suggested that since we’re in the press, and not really about anything except avoiding “things that may not be true,” maybe we had different responsibilities than “Democrats”? He wrote back:
Feel free to police the Trump opposition. But on the list of shit that needs to be covered these days, that's just not high on my personal list.

Other reporters spoke of an internal struggle. When the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency was met with exultation in the media, New Yorker writer Adrian Chen, who broke the original IRA story, was hesitant to come forward with some mild qualms about the way the story was being reported:
“Either I could stay silent and allow the conversation to be dominated by those pumping up the Russian threat,” he said, “or I could risk giving fodder to Trump and his allies.”

After writing, “Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic,” poor Blake Hounsell of Politicotook such a beating on social media, he ended up denouncing himself a year later.
“What I meant to write is, I wasn’t skeptical,” he said.

Years ago, in the midst of the WMD affair, Times public editor Daniel Okrent noted the paper’s standard had moved from “Don’t get it first, get it right” to “Get it first and get it right.” From there, Okrent wrote, “the next devolution was an obvious one.”

We’re at that next devolution: first and wrong. The Russiagate era has so degraded journalism that even once “reputable” outlets are now only about as right as politicians, which is to say barely ever, and then only by accident.

Early on, I was so amazed by the sheer quantity of Russia “bombshells” being walked back, I started to keep a list. It’s well above 50 stories now. As has been noted by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and others, if the mistakes were random, you’d expect them in both directions, but Russiagate errors uniformly go the same way.

In some cases the stories are only partly wrong, as in the case of the famed “17 intelligence agencies said Russia was behind the hacking” story (it was actually four: the Director of National Intelligence “hand-picking” a team from the FBI, CIA, and NSA).

In other cases the stories were blunt false starts, resulting in ugly sets of matching headlines:
“Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility”
Washington Post, December 31, 2016.

“Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility”
Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2017.

“Trump Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence,” published by the Times on Valentine’s Day, 2017, was an important, narrative-driving “bombshell” that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn’t say whether the contact was witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts supposedly were at all.

Normally a reporter would want to know what the deal is before he or she runs a story accusing people of having dealings with foreign spies. “Witting” or “Unwitting” ought to be a huge distinction, for instance. It soon after came out that people like former CIA chief John Brennan don’t think this is the case. “Frequently, people who are on a treasonous path do not know they’re on a treasonous path,” he said, speaking of Trump’s circle.

This seemed a dangerous argument, the kind of thing that led to trouble in the McCarthy years. But let’s say the contacts were serious. From a reporting point of view, you’d still need to know exactly what the nature of such contacts were before you run that story, because the headline implication is grave. Moreover you’d need to know it well enough to report it, i.e. it’s not enough to be told a convincing story off-the-record, you need to be able to share with readers enough so that they can characterize the news themselves.

Not to the Times, which ran the article without the specifics. Months later, Comey blew up this “contacts” story in public, saying, “in the main, it was not true.“

As was the case with the “17 agencies” error, which only got fixed when Clapper testified in congress and was forced to make the correction under oath, the “repeated contacts” story was only disputed when Comey testified in congress, this time before the Senate Intelligence Committee. How many other errors of this type are waiting to be disclosed?

Even the mistakes caught were astounding. On December 1, 2017, ABC reporter Brian Ross claimed Trump “as a candidate” instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russia. The news caused the Dow to plummet 350 points. The story was retracted almost immediately and Ross was suspended.


Bloomberg reported Mueller subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank accounts; the subpoenas turned out to be of other individuals’ records. Fortune said C-SPAN was hacked after Russia Today programming briefly interrupted coverage of a Maxine Waters floor address. The New York Times also ran the story, and it’s still up, despite C-SPAN insisting its own “internal routing error” likely caused the feed to appear in place of its own broadcast.


CNN has its own separate sub-list of wrecks. Three of the network’s journalists resigned after a story purporting to tie Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund was retracted. Four more CNN reporters (Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus) were bylined in a story that claimed Comey was expected to refute Trump’s claims he was told he wasn’t the target of an investigation. Comey blew that one up, too.


In another CNN scoop gone awry, “Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents,” the network’s reporters were off by ten days in a “bombshell” that supposedly proved the Trump campaign had foreknowledge of Wikileaks dumps. “It’s, uh, perhaps not as significant as what we know now,” offered CNN’s Manu Raju in a painful on-air retraction.

The worst stories were the ones never corrected. A particularly bad example is “After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced,”from the New York Times on Feb 18, 2018. The piece claimed Russians were trying to divide Americans on social media after a mass shooting using Twitter hashtags like #guncontrolnow, #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting.

The Times ran this quote high up:
“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.”

About a year after this story came out, Times reporters Scott Shane and Ann Blinder reported that the same outfit, New Knowledge, and in particular that same Jonathon Morgan, had participated in a cockamamie scheme to fake Russian troll activity in an Alabama Senate race. The idea was to try to convince voters Russia preferred the Republican.

The Times quoted a New Knowledge internal report about the idiotic Alabama scheme:
We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet…


The Parkland story was iffy enough when it came out, as Twitter disputed it, and another of the main sources for the initial report, former intelligence official Clint Watts, subsequently said he was “not convinced” on the whole “bot thing.”

But when one of your top sources turns out to have faked exactly the kind of activity described in your article, you should at least take the quote out, or put an update online. No luck: the story remains up on the Times site, without disclaimers.


Russiagate institutionalized one of the worst ethical loopholes in journalism, which used to be limited mainly to local crime reporting. It’s always been a problem that we publish mugshots and names of people merely arrested but not yet found guilty. Those stories live forever online and even the acquitted end up permanently unable to get jobs, smeared as thieves, wife-beaters, drunk drivers, etc.


With Russiagate the national press abandoned any pretense that there’s a difference between indictment and conviction. The most disturbing story involved Maria Butina. Here authorities and the press shared responsibility. Thanks to an indictment that initially said the Russian traded sex for favors, the Times and other outlets flooded the news cycle with breathless stories about a redheaded slut-temptress come to undermine democracy, a “real-life Red Sparrow,” as ABC put it.

But a judge threw out the sex charge after “five minutes” when it turned out to be based on a single joke text to a friend who had taken Butina’s car for inspection.

It’s pretty hard to undo public perception you’re a prostitute once it’s been in a headline, and, worse, the headlines are still out there. You can still find stories like “Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan” online in the New York Times.

Here a reporter might protest: how would I know? Prosecutors said she traded sex for money. Why shouldn’t I believe them?

How about because, authorities have been lying their faces off to reporters since before electricity! It doesn’t take much investigation to realize the main institutional sources in the Russiagate mess – the security services, mainly – have extensive records of deceiving the media.

As noted before, from World War I-era tales of striking union workers being German agents to the “missile gap” that wasn’t (the “gap” was leaked to the press before the Soviets had even one operational ICBM) to the Gulf of Tonkin mess to all the smears of people like Martin Luther King, it’s a wonder newspapers listen to whispers from government sources at all.


In the Reagan years National Security Adviser John Poindexter spread false stories about Libyan terrorist plots to The Wall Street Journal and other papers. In the Bush years, Dick Cheney et al were selling manure by the truckload about various connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, infamously including a story that bomber Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague.


The New York Times ran a story that Atta was in Prague in late October of 2001, even giving a date of the meeting with Iraqis, April 8, or “just five months before the terrorist attacks.” The Prague story was another example of a tale that seemed shaky because American officials were putting the sourcing first on foreign intelligence, then on reporters themselves. Cheney cited the Prague report in subsequent TV appearances, one of many instances of feeding reporters tidbits and then selling reports as independent confirmation.

It wasn’t until three years later, in 2004, that Times reporter James Risen definitively killed the Atta-in-Prague canard (why is it always Prague?) in a story entitled “No evidence of meeting with Iraqi.” By then, of course, it was too late. The Times also held a major dissenting piece by Risen about the WMD case, “C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports,” until days after war started. This is what happens when you start thumbing the scale.


This failure to demand specifics has been epidemic in Russiagate, even when good reporters have been involved. One of the biggest “revelations” of this era involved a story that was broken first by a terrible reporter (the Guardian’s Luke Harding) and followed up by a good one (Jane Mayer of the New Yorker). The key detail involved the elusive origin story of Russiagate.

Mayer’s piece, the March 12, 2018 “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind The Trump Dossier” in the New Yorker, impacted the public mainly by seeming to bolster the credentials of the dossier author. But it contained an explosive nugget far down. Mayer reported Robert Hannigan, then-head of the GCHQ (the British analog to the NSA) intercepted a “stream of illicit communications” between “Trump’s team and Moscow” at some point prior to August 2016. Hannigan flew to the U.S. and briefed CIA director John Brennan about these communications. Brennan later testified this inspired the original FBI investigation.


When I read that, a million questions came to mind, but first: what did “illicit” mean?

If something “illicit” had been captured by GCHQ, and this led to the FBI investigation (one of several conflicting public explanations for the start of the FBI probe, incidentally), this would go a long way toward clearing up the nature of the collusion charge. If they had something, why couldn’t they tell us what it was? Why didn’t we deserve to know?

I asked the Guardian: “Was any attempt made to find out what those communications were? How was the existence of these communications confirmed? Did anyone from the Guardian see or hear these intercepts, or transcripts?”

Their one-sentence reply:
The Guardian has strict and rigorous procedures when dealing with source material.

That’s the kind of answer you’d expect from a transnational bank, or the army, not a newspaper.

I asked Mayer the same questions. She was more forthright, noting that, of course, the story had originally been broken by Harding, whose own report said “the precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public.”

She added that “afterwards I independently confirmed aspects of [Harding’s piece] with several well-informed sources,” and “spent months on the Steele story [and] traveled to the UK twice for it.” But, she wrote, “the Russiagate story, like all reporting on sensitive national security issues, is difficult.”

I can only infer she couldn’t find out what “illicit” meant despite proper effort. The detail was published anyway. It may not have seemed like a big deal, but I think it was.

To be clear, I don’t necessarily disbelieve the idea that there were “illicit” contacts between Trump and Russians in early 2015 or before. But if there were such contacts, I can’t think of any legitimate reason why their nature should be withheld from the public.

If authorities can share reasons for concern with foreign countries like Israel, why should American voters not be so entitled? Moreover the idea that we need to keep things secret to protect sources and methods and “tradecraft” (half the press corps became expert in goofy spy language over the last few years, using terms like “SIGINT” like they’ve known them their whole lives), why are we leaking news of our ability to hear Russian officials cheering Trump’s win?

Failure to ask follow-up questions happened constantly with this story. One of the first reports that went sideways involved a similar dynamic: the contention that some leaked DNC emails were forgeries.

MSNBC’s “Intelligence commentator” Malcolm Nance, perhaps the most enthusiastic source of questionable #Russiagate news this side of Twitter conspiracist Louise Mensch, tweeted on October 11, 2016: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.”

As noted in The Intercept and elsewhere, this was re-reported by the likes of David Frum (a key member of the club that has now contributed to both the WMD and Russiagate panics) and MSNBC host Joy Reid. The reports didn’t stop until roughly October of 2016, among other things because the Clinton campaign kept suggesting to reporters the emails were fake.

This could have been stopped sooner if examples of a forgery had been demanded from the Clinton campaign earlier.

Another painful practice that became common was failing to confront your own sources when news dispositive to what they’ve told you pops up. The omnipresent Clapper told Chuck Todd on March 5, 2017, without equivocation, that there had been no FISA application involving Trump or his campaign. “I can deny it,” he said.

It soon after came out this wasn’t true. The FBI had a FISA warrant on Carter Page. This was not a small misstatement by Clapper, because his appearance came a day after Trump claimed in a tweet he’d had his “wires tapped.” Trump was widely ridiculed for this claim, perhaps appropriately so, but in addition to the Page news, it later came out there had been a FISA warrant of Paul Manafort as well, during which time Trump may have been the subject of “incidental” surveillance.


Whether or not this was meaningful, or whether these warrants were justified, are separate questions. The important thing is, Clapper either lied to Todd, or else he somehow didn’t know the FBI had obtained these warrants. The latter seems absurd and unlikely. Either way, Todd ought to been peeved and demanded an explanation. Instead, he had Clapper back on again within months and gave him the usual softball routine, never confronting him about the issue.

Reporters repeatedly got burned and didn’t squawk about it. Where are the outraged stories about all the scads of anonymous “people familiar with the matter” who put reporters in awkward spots in the last years? Why isn’t McClatchy demanding the heads of whatever “four people with knowledge” convinced them to double down on the Cohen-in-Prague story?


Why isn’t every reporter who used “New Knowledge” as a source about salacious Russian troll stories out for their heads (or the heads of the congressional sources who passed this stuff on), after reports they faked Russian trolling? How is it possible NBC and other outlets continued to use New Knowledge as a source in stories identifying antiwar Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian-backed candidate?

How do the Guardian’s editors not already have Harding’s head in a vice for hanging them out to dry on the most dubious un-retracted story in modern history – the tale that the most watched human on earth, Julian Assange, had somehow been visited in the Ecuadorian embassy by Paul Manafort without leaving any record?

I’d be dragging Harding’s “well placed source” into the office and beating him with a hose until he handed them something that would pass for corroborating evidence.

The lack of blowback over episodes in which reporters were put in public compromised situations speaks to the overly cozy relationships outlets had with official sources. Too often, it felt like a team effort, where reporters seemed to think it was their duty to take the weight if sources pushed them to overreach. They had absolutely no sense of institutional self-esteem about this.

Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump. Why bother having a press corps at all if you’re going to go that route?

This posture all been couched as anti-Trump solidarity, but really, did former CIA chief John Brennan – the same Brennan who should himself have faced charges for lying to congress about hacking the computers of Senate staff – need the press to whine on his behalf when Trump yanked his security clearance? Did we need the press to hum Aretha Franklin tunes, as ABC did, and chide Trump for lacking R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the CIA? We don’t have better things to do than that “work”?

This catalogue of factual errors and slavish stenography will stand out when future analysts look back at why the “MSM” became a joke during this period, but they were only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue was a radical change in approach.


A lot of #Russiagate coverage became straight-up conspiracy theory, what Baker politely called “connecting the dots.” This was allowed because the press committed to a collusion narrative from the start, giving everyone cover to indulge in behaviors that would never be permitted in normal times.

Such was the case with Jonathan Chait’s #Russiagate opus, “PRUMP TUTIN: Will Trump be Meeting With his Counterpart – or his Handler?” The story was also pitched as “What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987,” which recalls the joke from The Wire: “Yo, Herc, what if your mother and father never met?” What if isn’t a good place to be in this business.

This cover story (!) in New York magazine was released in advance of a planned “face-to-face” summit between Trump and Putin, and posited Trump had been under Russian control for decades. Chait noted Trump visited the Soviet Union in 1987 and came back “fired up with political ambition.” He offered the possibility that this was a coincidence, but added:
Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can’t be dismissed completely.

I searched the Chait article up and down for reporting that would justify the suggestion Trump had been a Russian agent dating back to the late eighties, when, not that it matters, Russia was a different country called the Soviet Union.

Only two facts in the piece could conceivably have been used to support the thesis: Trump met with a visiting Soviet official in 1986, and visited the Soviet Union in 1987. That’s it. That’s your cover story.

Worse, Chait’s theory was first espoused in Lyndon Larouche’s “Elephants and Donkeys” newsletter in 1987, under a headline, “Do Russians have a Trump card?” This is barrel-scraping writ large.

It’s a mania. Putin is literally in our underpants. Maybe, if we’re lucky, New York might someday admit its report claiming Russians set up an anti-masturbation hotline to trap and blackmail random Americans is suspicious, not just because it seems absurd on its face, but because its source is the same “New Knowledge” group that admitted to faking Russian influence operations in Alabama.

But what retraction is possible for the Washington Post headline, “How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again)?” How to reverse Rachel Maddow’s spiel about Russia perhaps shutting down heat across America during a cold wave? There’s no correction for McCarthyism and fear mongering.

This ultimately will be the endgame of the Russia charade. They will almost certainly never find anything like the wild charges and Manchurian Candidate theories elucidated in the Steele report. But the years of panic over the events of 2016 will lead to radical changes in everything from press regulation to foreign policy, just as the WMD canard led to torture, warrantless surveillance, rendition, drone assassination, secret budgets and open-ended, undeclared wars from Somalia to Niger to Syria. The screw-ups will be forgotten, but accelerated vigilance will remain.


It’s hard to know what policy changes are appropriate because the reporting on everything involving the Russian threat in the last two to three years has been so unreliable.

I didn’t really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece of the story seemed “solid,” but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an “assessment” by the intelligence services that always had issues, including the use of things like RT’s “anti-American” coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government didn’t even examine the DNC’s server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.

We won’t know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors. That means being open to asking what went wrong with this story, in addition to focusing so much energy on Trump and Russia.

The WMD mess had massive real-world negative impact, leading to over a hundred thousand deaths and trillions in lost taxpayer dollars. Unless Russiagate leads to a nuclear conflict, we’re unlikely to ever see that level of consequence.


Still, Russiagate has led to unprecedented cooperation between the government and Internet platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all of which are censoring pages on the left, right, and in between in the name of preventing the “sowing of discord.” The story also had a profound impact on the situation in places like Syria, where Russian and American troops have sat across the Euphrates River from one another, two amped-up nuclear powers at a crossroads.


As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.


We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don’t turn things around, this story will destroy it.

COMMENTS FROM BENJAMIN: A Most Incredible and Well Researched Article. Congratulations Matt.


COMMENTS FROM BENJAMINIS: I wrote the following on April 1, 2003 SO , I consider myself a trained and experienced expert.


Good Morning
I can certify that this research source has been extraordinary in it's accuracy. Sometimes leading publication of it's information by days before it is confirmed by many sources both on the internet and in the main street mainly fake media.


I have had personal experience in the fraud by the USA and Britain concerning WMD.


Please read my letter of April 1, 2003

Email of April 1, 2003:
Yesterday to my great sadness and I am sure to the American soldiers who accidentally killed those women and children by shooting at them when they didn't stop.

The American soldiers thought they were another wave of suicide Iraq combatants.

Sadly their deaths and all those who have needlessly died for no good reason other than the immoral and bankrupt policies of the US Government. Tony Blair and George Walker Bush bear the responsibilities of their actions. G-D will judge them as the Pope stated before this tragic and unnecessary war started.

All of us reading this email in our respective lots in life, have a responsibility to act as best we can to stop the killing of innocent women, men and children. Let us not forget that the brave and loyal soldiers of the United States Of America and Great Britain are also victims of this historic tragedy. They just are doing their duty.

America for the first time in their glorious 227 years as a great empire since they were created by the founding fathers in 1776, has now attacked another nation without justification and pre-emptively. The first time in their long history that they have done so.

For Canadians reading this we can discuss some issues in public through the Canadian House Of Commons. For me I would like to see the NDP Party of Canada ask the Canadian Government as represented by the Liberal Party Of Canada and Prime Minister Jean Chretien, answer a question about the chemical agent, VX, one of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

From the research that I have read in the attached files, as Dr Glen Rangwala has so clearly pointed out.You can refer to VX for yourself by clicking on it in the Index of Dr Glen Rangwala's research file attached in the forwarded email with hot links to the material, I conclude that whatever VX that the Iraq Government had was produced prior to 1991,with the assistance of the US and UK Government. The VX produced was estimated to be about 4 tons maximum but it could have been much less than that. Iraq never publicly disclosed how much of the VX was used against Iran during their conflict for political reasons. The accepted quantity of VX that may be left at present time is 1.5 tons as is often mentioned by the US and UK Governments.

In the research of Dr Glen Rangwala, he states based on the information contained in the public records of UNSCOM, IAEA and IISS that VX degrades. So in all likelihood even if Iraq still holds some VX, sincethe best scientific minds say that after 12 years at the most, any VX left would have lost it's potency. It is quite clear to me that since Iraq produced it's VX prior to the first Gulf war in 1991, that 12 years and more have passed since the Iran-Iraq war, that
when the American and British Government talk to the world about the great danger Iraq poses to the world with it's 1.5 tons of unaccounted for, VX that they are not being truthful. Surely the CIA most also know this.

For Americans reading this, I would like to see someone ask US Senator Jay Rockerfellow of West Virginia,to ask the FBI to also ask President Bush and his administration, are they aware of the VX potency after 12 years issue. Since Senator Rockerfellow has already asked the FBI to investigate why President George Walker Bush used information concerning Iraq's nuclear capability that was obtained from Nigeria. Fortunately the world learned through the UN inspectors report of March 7, 2003 that the information used by President Bush in his State Of The Union speech of January 2003 was not valid in that the documents used as background was forged. George Tenet of the CIA decided that these documents were questionable, however President Bush still choose to use this misinformation in his State Of The Union Address.

Maybe Helen Thomas, a great and courageous US citizen and White House reporter might like to ask Ari Fleisher during the daily press briefing at the White House how long does VX gas retain it's potency ?

I won't feel responsible for the next child murdered in Iraq because I know that since March 7, 2003 at 11:52 PM when I started this research and information project with my two good American writer friends, that I have given my all to try to prevent the war.

Unfortunately I have failed in that task. However I am not willing to stand idly by and watch more Iraq children and their mothers and fathers including American and
British soldiers lose their life for reasons that are only truly known to the American and British Government of President George Walker Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

May G-D bless us all and give us added strength and wisdom to find a way to stop this unjust and unauthorized war.


The UN failed to stop the war.


Will we also fail ? I hope not because if we do, their will be another victim. The great nation of The United States Of America, a friend to Canada and Canadians as Canada has been and still is to America.

America is now in grave danger of losing their position in the world, as holder of the world's only reserve currency, the US dollar.

The Euro is starting to take over that position as nations such as Iraq and North Korea already use the Euro as their reserve currency.

Iran is thinking about converting to the Euro from the US dollar.

Russia in the last six months has reduced their holding of American dollars from 70% to 50% , replacing the 20% with the Euro and putting 10% of their reserves in gold. It should be noted that since 1971 when President Nixon untied the US dollar to gold, for the first time in American history.

The Clinton administration had a strong US dollar policy that was directly responsible for the stock market bubble through the assistance of the Federal Reserve led by Alan Greenspan. When President Bush took power in January 2001, American interest rates were 6%.

They now are 1.25%. The Fed is in a jam now. If they raise interest rates now, the massive American housing debt bubble crashes. If he lowers the rates it will exacerbate the decline of the US dollar. If the US dollar falls to 85 cents to the Euro as many world economists have predicted, inflation will reign again as never seen before. Since gold is the only thermometer of inflation, since 1971 America has had no instrument to alert American's to the reality of inflation. If the great debt bubble of the American Government and it's citizens collapses then there is deflation. So the US Government as stated by Fed Governor Bernake during a November 2002 speech, "The US Government has a secret weapon, it is called a printing press"

That is the real reason that the US dollar has declined from $1.08 to the Euro in December 2000 to the point where today positions are reversed and it is now
$1.08 to the US dollar in favor of the Euro. The US dollar is in great danger of going the way of the German mark during their war when they hyper inflated away their mark currency. The US Government needs the help of the world each day to the tune of 1.5 Billion dollars each day to support their dollar.

If the world decides to start switching over to the Euro as it seems to be doing now, the US dollar will collapse and the unfortunate end of the United States as a world power will begin to happen.

You may ask yourself why am I telling you all this ?

I will now answer you. The real reason for this Iraq war in my honest opinion is not Iraq oil per say. However by getting control of Iraq's oil wells, the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world, the US Government will be able to lower the price of oil, reduce Opec's influence on higher oil prices. Allow the US and Japan to have cheaper oil for their economies, Russia as a oil exporter, has a cost of oil to produce of about $18.00 dollars a barrel. Cheap oil is bad for their economy. Also by lowering the price of oil to levels of $12.00 or so, the Opec nations receive less revenue due to the effecttive breaking of the Opec Cartel. In conclusion this war is not about oil. It is about the dismantling of Opec and thus lower oil costs for the American economy. It is about who controls the world's reserve currency, The US or Europe.


It is about PNAC as stated by members of the US Government. This is public information. People such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary Of State, Donald Rumsfeld and Mr Pearle have convinced President Bush of the correctness of the PNAC "Pact For A New American Century"



History and G-D will be the judge of our actions.

Sincerely yours
Benjaminis Israel

April 13, 2018 9:09 AM

We can CLEARLY see HISTORY is repeating itself 15 years later. May G-D help US ALL !!!

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29


Trump "Totally Exonerated", Calls For Investigation Into "Illegal Takedown That Failed"


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=LY4e264-
by Tyler Durden


Sun, 03/24/2019 - 17:22


Update 145pmET: President Trump has called for an investigation into the "illegal takedown that failed" - after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia in the 2016 US election.



https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...0collusion.jpg

"It was just announced, there was no collusion with Russia. The most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction. None whatsoever. It was a complete and total exoneration," Trump told reporters.




"It's a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest it's a shame that your president had to go through this for - before I even got elected, it began. And it began illegally. And hopefully somebody is gonna look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side."


https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_t...jpg&name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...Wn6_normal.pngPOLITICO

✔@politico





President Donald Trump said the attorney general's summary of Mueller's investigation provides "complete exoneration" and "no collusion, no obstruction" https://politi.co/2HRVsZZ


95
5:00 PM - Mar 24, 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I-w_normal.jpgPaul Sperry@paulsperry_

President Trump called the investigation of him and his advisers "illegal." That is not hyperbole. What the Obama FBI and DOJ pulled was worse than Watergate. AG Barr must now hold the dirty agents to account by impaneling a grand jury investigation of the investigators. #Spygate


3,896
5:15 PM - Mar 24, 2019







1,839 people are talking about this














Recall that Hillary Clinton's campaign paid an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS - who paid a former UK spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled a bogus dossier using Kremlin sources, which was then used against Trump both at the federal level and in court of public opinion.

Also recall that Maltese professor (and self-admitted Clinton foundation member) Joseph Mifsud seeded Trump aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos would later drunkenly pass this information to Australian diplomat (and Clinton ally) Alexander Downer, whose report reached the FBI and launched operation crossfire hurricane.

The FBI would then employ at least one spy to "infiltrate" (spy on) the Trump campaign.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...a2b_normal.pngSean Davis

✔@seanmdav





The only 2016 campaign that colluded with a foreign spy, Russian oligarchs, and Kremlin officials to interfere in the U.S. election was that of Hillary Clinton. http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/25/top-10-things-to-know-about-dossier/ …


864
5:00 PM - Mar 24, 2019


https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/11085...g&name=600x314


10 Things Reporters Need To Understand About The Steele Dossier

There's a lot of misinformation swirling about the shoddy dossier on Trump/Russia compiled by Christopher Steele. Here's what's been reported on the matter.
thefederalist.com










377 people are talking about this

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I-w_normal.jpgPaul Sperry@paulsperry_

After Special Counsel Mueller issued 2,800 subpoenas & 500 search warrants, the facts & truth are now clear: Trump & his campaign did not conspire or coordinate with Russia. So why did Comey, McCabe & Strzok launch the investigation in first place? Only 1 answer: TO SET TRUMP UP


1,199
5:01 PM - Mar 24, 2019
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616 people are talking about this






Will a second special counsel be created to investigate "the other side" - now that the 'plot' has been exposed and Trump vindicated of collusion?

* * *

Update 130pmET: Less than hour after the release of the summary and the DoJ's clearance of obstruction allegations, top Democrat, and chair of the House Judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, has decided to call AG Barr for testimony...

"In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before the House Judiciary Committee..."

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...7d_normal.jpeg(((Rep. Nadler)))

✔@RepJerryNadler





In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before @HouseJudiciary in the near future.


26.6K
4:21 PM - Mar 24, 2019




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Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump's lawyer, said:

"It's a complete exoneration of the president. It's quite clear - no collusion -which kind of raises the question why did this all start in the first place? "

* * *

As we detailed earlier, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have received a four-page letter from Attorney General William Barr which concludes that "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 Presidential election."

Of course, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) - who chairs the House Judiciary Committee (and has already fired up the post-Mueller "witch hunt") notes that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...7d_normal.jpeg(((Rep. Nadler)))

✔@RepJerryNadler

· 2h



Replying to @RepJerryNadler
The Department of Justice “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgement.”

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...7d_normal.jpeg(((Rep. Nadler)))

✔@RepJerryNadler



“The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”


16.8K
3:38 PM - Mar 24, 2019







12.3K people are talking about this










As far as Obstruction - Mueller has left it to the Attorney General to "determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime."

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...41Y_normal.jpgShannon Pettypiece

✔@spettypi





ON obstruction Mueller leave it to the Attorney General to "determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime" This opens the door to Dems to pursue


93
3:41 PM - Mar 24, 2019
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47 people are talking about this










Except - Barr sees no obstruction - writing in conjunction with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that they "concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense."
Mueller's team of approximately 40 FBI agents issued over 2,800 subpoenas, executed "nearly 500 search warrants," and "obtained over 230 orders for communication records. They also issued 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...ler_normal.jpgzerohedge@zerohedge

McCarthyism 2.0 ends with a whimper after:

-40 agents
-2,800 subpoenas
-500 search warrants
-500 witnesses
-230 communication records

... found zero evidence of "collusion" and AG says the "report identifies no actions that in our judgement constitutes obstructive conduct."


775
3:57 PM - Mar 24, 2019
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Needless to say, conservatives are considering this a yuge win.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2cze0qW...g&name=900x900

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...qdk_normal.jpgJennifer Jacobs

✔@JenniferJJacobs





Don Jr in a statement to @business says the summary of the Mueller report proves “zero collusion with Russia.”


28
4:18 PM - Mar 24, 2019






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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images..._g__normal.jpgKatrina Pierson

✔@KatrinaPierson





CNN is really struggling right now. Happy No Collusion Day!


2,469
4:08 PM - Mar 24, 2019






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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...Nkh_normal.jpgRobby Starbuck

✔@robbystarbuck




Replying to @robbystarbuck

The summary of Mueller’s report released by Barr is a stunning rebuke of propaganda that the Democratic Party pushed for the past two years with their media friends at @CNN @nytimes @MSNBC & @washingtonpost.

President @realDonaldTrump was right all along, there was NO COLLUSION!


160
3:54 PM - Mar 24, 2019
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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...dyN_normal.jpgthebradfordfile™@thebradfordfile

I guess it's time for Hillary Clinton to accept her defeat. She didn't lose because Donald Trump was a secret agent of Vladimir Putin. She lost because she has the likability of moldy bread. And...

Trump is a genius.


1,637
4:20 PM - Mar 24, 2019
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While the full report could include damaging elements which don't rise to the level of criminal charges, Trump is certainly projecting the "all clear," tweeting on Sunday "Good Morning, Have A Great Day" - after hitting the links with musician Kid Rock on Saturday at Trump International Golf Club.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...00m_normal.jpgDonald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump





Good Morning, Have A Great Day!


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8:01 AM - Mar 24, 2019
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https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ZoW0AAYIBq.jpg
Both Democrats and Republicans have called for the full public release of the long-awaited report, which notably did not include any new indictments - sending Democrats into fits over the weekend as Republicans celebrated what appears to be a big win.
On Saturday, 18 state attorneys general joined together to urge the Justice Department to publicly release the final report.
"As the top law officers in states across the country, we strongly urge United States Attorney General Barr to immediately make public the findings of the Mueller investigation," reads the statement. "The American people deserve to know the truth."
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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...Qou_normal.jpgNY AG James

✔@NewYorkStateAG





17 AGs have joined our call to urge US Attorney General William Barr to release the Mueller report to the public.

Our joint statement:


9,792
9:34 PM - Mar 22, 2019






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It's likely that Democrats want to see the entire report in order to pick up on any wrongdoing that may have occurred, yet did not rise to the level of a chargeable offense.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I0m_normal.pngByron York

✔@ByronYork





Reason for Republicans not to celebrate: Mueller report could include evidence that many voters would find damning but still conclude it was unlikely prosecutors could convince a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, no further action.


633
7:15 PM - Mar 22, 2019
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While Mueller apparently did not find anything else that rose to the level of a prosecutable crime (or has handed off aspects of the investigation to federal prosecutors), journalist Paul Sperry notes that the Special Counsel investigation also failed to yield any indictments on the left.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I-w_normal.jpgPaul Sperry@paulsperry_

Mueller found no fire to all the smoke collectively created by McCabe, Comey, Yates, Ohr, Page, Strzok, Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Warner, Simpson, Steele, Jones, Winer, Shearer, Blumenthal, Sussman,Elias, Mook, Palmieri, Podesta & most of all, Hillary, who now must own her defeat


2,411
7:42 PM - Mar 22, 2019
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Democrats, meanwhile, are still holding out for the "fat lady" to sing based on the notion that aspects of the investigation were handed over to New York prosecutors.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I0m_normal.pngByron York

✔@ByronYork





Not just anyone--former Clinton campaign and Justice Department spokesman.https://twitter.com/gpurcell/status/1109423984955801600 …
George Purcell@gpurcell

Replying to @ByronYork


I saw one person on Twitter holding out hope for the "Sovereign" District of New York, which I thought was kinda cute in its naivety.





304
8:00 AM - Mar 23, 2019






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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...I0m_normal.pngByron York

✔@ByronYork





Even without knowing what's in Mueller report, some on left are discounting it--Mueller was never main attraction, real action is Southern District of New York. But will they look at unprecedented SDNY action and ask, is this how things should be done? http://ow.ly/akjC30oa28S


629
7:54 AM - Mar 23, 2019






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The only question - where will the left move the goal posts when this is all said and done?





Trump "Totally Exonerated", Calls For Investigation Into "Illegal Takedown That Failed"


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=LY4e264-
by Tyler Durden

Sun, 03/24/2019 - 17:22