Money Flow Trading Method along with Risk Management

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...ops+to+zero%29


Following more than a week of widespread peaceful protests pockmarked by occasional homicidal violence, arson, assault and looting, activists are hoping to assemble a massive demonstration in Washington DC, with some hoping to draw a million people to the capital just one day after Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed the street leading up to Lafayette Square after 'Black Lives Matter'.


The bright yellow letters spelling out the words 'Black Lives Matter' were put in place for a reason: for what we imagine will be an extremely powerful photo op as police and national guardsmen move to disperse the crowds, revealing the message below as tyrannical Trump gazes out the window, twirls his moustache while cackling loudly.


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Demonstrations against police brutality following George Floyd's death are expected to continue for the 12th night on Saturday.

Though he didn't give a crowd size estimate, the chief of the Washington DC police says he expects Saturday's gathering to be one of the biggest so far.

"We have a lot of public, open source information to suggest that the event on this upcoming Saturday may be one of the largest we’ve ever had in the city,” Washington DC Police Chief Peter Newsham told local media, adding that much of the city center would be closed to traffic from early in the day.

Newsham did not give a crowd estimate. Local media has predicted tens of thousands of attendees.

Demonstrators in the Washington DC area are still sore over the national guard's decision to use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square for a presidential photo-op at St. John's Church, angering the Episcopal Church in the process.

Further south, in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper is ordering all flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Saturday to honor Floyd, who was born in Fayetteville. A televised memorial service will also be held in the city on Saturday, per USAToday.

On Friday, marches and gatherings took place in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, New York and Denver, among other places, while protesters massed again, in the rain, in front of the White House. The night-time protests were largely peaceful but tension remains high even as authorities in several places take steps to reform police procedures. Politicians and judges around the country also announced new restrictions on law enforcement powers and tactics, including a federal judge in Denver, who ordered city police to stop using tear gas, plastic bullets and other "less-than-lethal" devices such as flash grenades, claiming that too many peaceful protesters and journalists have been injured by police.

"These are peaceful demonstrators, journalists, and medics who have been targeted with extreme tactics meant to suppress riots, not to suppress demonstrations,” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote in the ruling.

In Minneapolis, Democratic city leaders voted to end the use of knee restraints and choke-holds, where pressure is applied to the neck.

In California, Gov Gavin Newsom ended state police training of carotid restraints, and ordered officers not to use the tactic.

In New York, Gov Andrew Cuomo said his state should lead the way in passing "Say Their Name" reforms, including making police disciplinary records publicly available, while also banning the chokehold (which we thought had already been banned following the killing of Eric Garner).

"Mr Floyd’s murder was the breaking point," Cuomo said. "People are saying 'enough is enough'."

The cause of the peaceful protesters received a major boost last night from the NFL, which admitted for the first time that it was "wrong" to oppose players who kneeled.


Once again, the demonstrators in the US expect sympathizers from around the world to join in, with more demonstrations at American embassies and consulates in Europe expected.

Already, thousands have gathered in London’s Parliament Square "in solidarity" with their American peers.

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The protest, which has so far proven to be entirely peaceful, according to CNN. At one point, everybody too a knee in unison.

Once again Portland, Ore., roughly 20 adults were arrested and one juvenile was detained last night as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violent street battles into the night, as agitators threw bricks and bottles at cops.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...e/#more-219292

SEE THINGS AS THEY TRULY ARE

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

Anyone who has a desire to see things as they truly are need only apply a few basic skills to the task.

First, you must observe and it should be intentional. What am I seeing? What patterns emerge? What are the physics of the actions? What are the underlying motivations? What systems are in effect and what similarities and exceptions emerge. It is helpful if you start small- the act of swinging a hammer at nails several hundred thousand times will reveal a right way and a wrong way to hold the tool, to capitalize on the momentum, to focus energy, to account for the materials in use and the conditions.

After a million or more swings there will be very few secrets left and little left uncovered in the mystery of driving nails. Knowing what you do it will become next to impossible for someone to fool you into thinking there is a better way to swing a hammer or that it is really best used as a pry bar or demolition tool. You will have the experience and the discernment to know whether the guy next to you is a good carpenter or someone pretending that they know what they’re doing.

Second is the skill of discovering linkage between the observable phenomenon you understand and the outcomes you do not. If you plant a garden every single year, after a time the connections between tilth and soil, water and seed, Sun and seasons will instruct you in the optimal and the failure in managing the natural processes that have existed far longer than human beings have been a species.

Seemingly unrelated bits of chemistry and hydrology will unveil their connections to one another because things will either thrive or fail based on your applications.

Over decades of producing the food that sustains you a pathway will open up before you and all the meaningless chatter and white noise will subside and the truth will present itself; the proper ratio of water and carbon, light and dark, compost and fertilization and the production of the tastiest and most healthful fruits and vegetables for your family’s table.

Understand yourself. Know what your limitations and failings are, sense your impulses and desires and follow their routes back to the instincts and hungers that drive us all. If you can recognize in yourself these undesirable traits and learn to excise them from habituation, it becomes an easy trick to spot it in others. In comedy one of the most commonly used refrains when someone sees a stand-up perform a particularly well written line is, I see what you did there.

The structure of the joke is mechanical, built like a house or an engine. For it to work as it is intended it must satisfy a certain form and the more efficient that is, the better the impact on the audience even if they do not perceive it. Like standing in the presence of a beautiful painting or a symmetrical structure there is an innate appreciation that requires no explanation to understand, only exposure to it. One who understands the nature of its construction sees the hidden elements, the occult meaning concealed inside the laughter of the audience.

The people running things- whether governments or riots, scams or movements- are human beings, no different than you or I. They may have different motives and opposing moralities, but they can only operate through the framework of human nature. If you understand yourself, it becomes easier to understand others.


I can tell almost instantly if someone is lying because I grew up with a parent that was adept at it the way an Olympic athlete is at the balance beam. Rarely in my adult life have I been fooled or taken advantage of because I avoid liars as I would someone infected with leprosy, not because I possess any particular gift for sensing it, but because it is obvious if you recognize all the tells.

What is taking place is a mixture of Natural events associated with complex societies. The more parts in a system, the higher the number of stress points and the more likely the possibility of failure. Our system could hardly be more complex than it is currently structured and hence the abundance of fractures and breakdowns.

It is also predicated upon a huge volume of fictions that simply do not exist outside of the realm of human theory; diversity is a strength, all men (and women and otherkin) are equal, etc.

These platitudes are deliberately fed to us as a palliative in order to placate the masses from justly forming an insurrection against the system that holds them in contempt. Since it is false it only multiplies the blowback experienced when it shows itself as sophistry in times like these.

Of course there is a conspiracy. The Covid hoax was used to throttle the population, to ritually humiliate them, to turn one group against another, to dehumanize us and strip us of our God-given rights to liberty and free expression. It doesn’t matter if it’s just another flu or one custom designed in a laboratory, its purpose was to contain and control the population while the people running things stripped away whatever wasn’t nailed down in the most brazen heist of resources and human rights in the history of our galaxy.

The riots were deliberately engineered, the passions inflamed by a compliant media complex and directed to maximize the discord between mutually hostile populations rather than directed at the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity. All of it is so obvious, so completely feckless in its design that it can only demonstrate the utter contempt that these people feel for humanity in general. And so far it appears to be working because so few people understand the construction of the joke, but I see what they did there and so do most of the people reading these words.

I imagine that our time of freely discussing what is taking place in our garden is just about over and the people out there swinging hammers without understanding their purpose will commence in earnest, but as I have said in the past, they have a tiger by the tail and should they lose their grasp on it…

Sorry for going on so long but your article really got me to thinking. Another important chapter in the final volume of The Fourth Turning Chronicles.

https://www.facebook.com/yaliberty/v...43756416260536

https://www.facebook.com/DiamondandS...70830963412073

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index3236.htm


June 6, 2020
United Nations Calls Out Democrat Party Plantation Masters For Black Uprising In America
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A compelling new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today discussing the statement signed in Geneva-Switzerland yesterday by 66 experts belonging to the United Nations regarding the crisis in America that says: “The uprising nationally is a protest against systemic racism that produces state-sponsored racial violence, and licenses impunity for this violence…The protests the world is witnessing, are a rejection of the fundamental racial inequality and discrimination that characterize life in the United States for black people, and other people of color”, notes this is the first time in modern history an international body has outright condemned an entire US political party—specifically the socialist Democrat Party, that for decades has maintained an iron grip control on the States and/or Cities where these black uprisings are only occurring in—that most specifically have been branded as Democrat Plantations—wherein virtually enslaved black peoples are tyrannically ruled over by their elite socialist white masters—a fact being railed against by the black American philosopher Cornel West, who has just declared: “We have to tell the truth about the milquetoast cowardly activity too often we see too often in the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party”—as well as by top former black Obama official Van Jones, who is now warning: “It's not the racist white person we have to worry about, it's the white liberal Hillary Clinton supporter”—both of whom were no doubt as shocked as the rest of the world was this past week when its was revealed that of the 44 districts in America having the highest coronavirus death tolls, 41 of them were socialist Democrat Party controlled black citizen districts. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/dpp22.png

According to this report, since it was founded 1776, the United States has had embedded within its political structure a group of wealthy privileged white elites, who for decades denied freedom to whites owning no property, blacks and women—but whom the American Founding Fathers needed the support of to establish their nation—thus creating a divided America that ever since has been trying to bring itself back together under their Declaration of Independence founding ideal that “All Men Are Created Equal”.
By the early 1820’s, this report continues, these wealthy privileged white elites came under increasing pressure from American citizens of all walks of life wanting more freedom—which was when they banded together to create the Democrat Party, whose main creator of was a wealthy slave owning plantation owner named Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1829, served until 1837—but during his rule, waged a Bank War against the very white elites who placed him into power.
During the 23-year period between 1837 and 1860, this report notes, the elite white Democrat Party consolidated its power base in the Southern States of America where they enslaved hundreds-of-thousands of black peoples in large farm operations called plantations—which caused Abraham Lincoln to create the Republican Party that waged total war against the Democrat Party and its Southern State plantations—that’s now known as the American Civil War—the bloodiest conflict in US history costing more lives than all of their wars combined—but did successfully free the black citizens of America.
Since its founding in 1829, this report further notes, the Democratic Party has fought against every major civil rights initiative, has a long history of discrimination, defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950’s and 1960’s—and while doing so, forced a mass migration of black peoples from the Southern States they once controlled, to the Northern States where they established a new base of power—are most accurately described as modern “urban plantations” where black communities are given just enough to get by—are strictly controlled by socialist Democrat Party police forces using wanton terror tactics—in 1994 had slammed against these black community “urban plantations” the fearsome Democrat Party passed “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act” mass incarceration law for black peoples championed by current socialist Democrat Party leader Joe Biden, who infamously said about his nation’s black citizens when this law went into force: “Lock the S.O.B.’s up!”—and to keep the numbers of black peoples living in these “urban plantations” manageable, saw the Democrat Party instituting in them the demonic policy of racist genocidal abortion—which today is the number one killer of black lives in the United States.

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To keep control over the black peoples in America and intimidate any white person aiding them, this report details, the Democrat Party has always used terrorist forces—such as the Ku Klux Klan terrorist force they created in 1865 after Republican Party military forces defeated these Democrats in the American Civil War—and the ANTIFA terrorist force they are using today to destroy “urban plantation” black communities and businesses—a terrorist force being aided by the socialist Democrat Party stronghold State of Minnesota, where the son of its attorney general posted: “I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA”—and whose daughters of its governor and US Congress member were discovered posting messages giving intelligence to ANTIFA terrorists as they destroyed black businesses—all of whom were joined in supporting ANTIFA terrorists by the daughter of the mayor of the socialist Democrat Party stronghold New York City, who was arrested for blocking traffic so police couldn’t respond to these terrorists destroying black businesses there.
Not being amused in the least bit in what these socialist Democrat Party controlled ANTIFA terrorists are doing, this report continues, is the US Federal Appeals Court, who yesterday ordered put back in prison two ANTIFA arson bombing terrorists a leftist judge allowed to go free on bail—and whose now revoked bail was shockingly posted by a former top Obama intelligence official named Salmah Rizvi and other top socialist Democrat Party operatives.
Likewise not being amused by socialist Democrat Party controlled ANTIFA terrorists, this report further notes, are ordinary American white citizens—many of whom are now standing guard over their communities with loaded and ready to use weapons---and in the first few months of this year alone, have bought more guns than at any time in US history—over 2-million more weapons now added to the hundreds-of-millions of guns these white American citizens already own—all of whom have now been grimly alerted to the warning that: “ANTIFA terrorists are traveling with orders to burn farm houses and kill livestock in rural white areas”.

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http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/dpp25.jpg

With it now being said that “these riots effectively are the largest Joe Biden rally on record”, this report continues, socialist Democrat Party leader Joe Biden is now proclaiming that “10 to 15 percent of Americans are not very good people”—percentages that equal up to 40-million citizens living in America—which includes hundreds-of-thousands of its police officers who’ve been gunned down and wounded by the dozens this past week—which explains why all of the top police organizations in the United States have just broken with Joe Biden and won’t support him—and why over 420,000 wealthy white elites have now fled the socialist Democrat Party stronghold of New York City since March—all of whom are now said to be growing worried as young black voters break with Joe Biden, too—a break from these socialist Democrats best explained by one young black man living in the “urban plantation” of Philadelphia, who just told a pollster that his mother and grandfather had voted for Democrats over the years, and “all of them got nothing…so why should I participate in the same process?”.

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Most acutely aware of the horrors that have been visited upon the black peoples of America for decades by socialist Democrat Party “urban plantation” masters, this report concludes, is President Donald Trump—who immediately upon taking office, forced through the US Congress his First Step Act that ended the mass incarceration of black people, set thousands of black citizens free and retrained them for high paying jobs—high paying jobs for black citizens President Trump enabled with his creation of Opportunity Zones in black and minority communities that private companies received massive tax breaks for creating these jobs in—that in three years saw black unemployment hitting historic record lows—record unemployment shattered by the coronavirus pandemic—that is until yesterday when President Trump’s economy posted the largest job gains ever seen in US history since records being kept in 1948—historic job gains whose “best-kept secret about” was the expansion of black employment—that saw the number of black citizens holding jobs expanding to 16,523,000 from 16,240,000 in May, and whose 283,000 rise was more than ten times the rise of the population—thus making it explainable why President Trump’s approval rating among likely black voters has just soared to the staggering level of 41%—which itself is another confirmation of the 2020 Presidential Election prediction made on 27 April by Political Science Professor Helmut Norpoth of Stony Brook University that gives President Trump a 91% chance of beating the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden—a prediction made by the most accurate election predictor in US history, as on 22 February 2016, nine months before the last presidential election, Professor Norpoth predicted Trump had a 97% chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, and whose models tracked backwards, accurately predicted every presidential election in US history, too—though in this coming one, just a few hours ago, the American national hero General Michael Flynn emerged from his long public silence to tell all of his nations citizens: “We Must Dedicate Ourselves to Freedom’s Victory over the Socialist Monster”.

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June 6, 2020 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Global Battlefields Littered With Coronavirus Dead—But Who’s Winning War?
All That's Left Now Is War—What Kind And How Long Are The Questions To Ask

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https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2...35-38_4544.pdf

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00640021-7.pdf

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...t/#more-219294

MAD DOG OR MUTT

Guest Post by Southern Sage
The blather spewing from the mouth of the so-called “Mad Dog”, retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, should reveal to the American public just how putrid our most esteemed institutions have become under the leadership of worthless men (and, worse, far worse, bull dyke women). Secretary of Defense Esper, Secretary of the Army McCarthy and some clown who runs the National Guard have also made fools of themselves, proven themselves disloyal, and betrayed their oaths with their bizarre statements criticizing Trump’s threat to use the U.S. armed forces to restore order in the country. If Trump had a hair on his ass all of them would have been frog-marched out of their offices by close of business.

Let’s look at Mattis first. He is just the sort of person Obama would have chosen for high rank, and that is hardly a compliment. I was a contemporary of Mattis in the USMC and can speak with some authority on how a guy like him would have been viewed by most of my fellow Marine officers.

Mattis was known for his “intellectualism” (I cringed when I read that he brags about a 7,000 book library – I have as many but do not feel compelled to talk about it), for his alleged devout Catholic faith (says he prayed with another general, something I would like to see), for viewing himself as a “warrior monk”, and for the fact that he never married. The fact that the three wars he served in reflected little credit on any but the actual fighting soldier or Marine is irrelevant – plenty of good generals have had such bad luck.


First, while the Marine Corps has something of a tradition of oddball officers who devoted themselves to things intellectual, it is certainly not the default image of a Marine officer. Nothing wrong with being religious, but wearing it on your sleeve would be seen as weird, at best. As for never marrying, well……..There is a saying in Latin America, “Forty and single, queer for sure”. I am not saying old Mad Dog has a bung hole like a horse collar but that is the way to bet. His Wikipedia page says he proposed to a woman once and she turned him down because she did not want to stunt his career. Sure. I know women pretty well and their “gaydar” is pretty damn good. I can imagine the real reason she turned him down.


Mattis and the other bureaucrats named above hastened to put distance between themselves and Trump when the president suggested that at some point he might use the army to keep organized criminal mobs from burning down the country. True to form, Trump didn’t actually do anything. He just blustered about it. That was enough to set off the pearl-clutchers, pantywaists, and cowards in the Department of Defense, to say nothing of the mainstream media and the Democrats.


How dare Trump threaten to use the military to actually protect actual Americans and their property, when there are so many Somalis, Nigerians, Iraqis, Syrians and what not to protect! Why, it is unconstitutional as hell! You can’t use the army against “American citizens”!


So much for Mattis the alleged intellectual and “warrior monk”. I won’t even mention such tailless lizards as Secretary of Defense Esper, a grown-up version of Greg Marmelade of Animal House fame. And a defense industry lobbyist to boot! I try to support and feel sympathetic to Trump but then I see what kind of turncoat human garbage he appoints to high office and I can feel nothing but contempt. Trump has tens of millions of decent, patriotic Americans to choose and he dips his hand in an unflushed toilet and come up with an Esper!


Let me ‘splain a few things to the Philosopher General Mattis and the morons from DOD.

The oath they took upon entering office included protecting the country from all enemies foreign and domestic. Full stop. The president and the president alone has the power to decide what constitutes a domestic enemy and what to do about them, just as he has full control of foreign policy and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

When the Constitution was adopted, the framers were thinking about the Tories of the American Revolution when they spoke of domestic enemies, though the Indians were also on their minds (and the slaves were surely on the minds of the Southern delegates).

These men had just gone through a bloody war for independence that was a civil war at the same time. They knew exactly what the term domestic enemy was – any person or group within the country that was attacking the established government and represented a threat to the life, liberty and property of law-abiding citizens.

Nine Tory militia leaders hanging from an oak tree after the Battle of Kings Mountain showed how they felt such people should be dealt with.

They also feared a professional military, which is why they took pains to ensure that the population at large would be armed, so some erratic colonel or general could never seize power without facing an uprising of the citizens. Oliver Cromwell’s career was part of their intellectual baggage. They knew we needed an army and navy but they did not want it turned on the citizens except as a last resort; they knew that the day might come when that step might have to be taken, however.

The U.S. military has been used countless times to preserve order in the country. Trump’s threat was entirely unexceptional. From the Whisky Rebellion to the Mormon War to the Boston police strike to the use of the military to integrate schools to the 1968 riots, the U.S. military was used to enforce the law WHEN LOCAL OFFICIALS COULD NOT OR WOULD NOT DO IT. That is the key to this whole issue.


At the time of the Civil War, a U.S. Army general (a Southerner himself) reminded his fellow Southerners in the army ranks that governments raise and maintain armies for defense against enemies both foreign and domestic. He urged them to stand by the oath they had taken upon entering the service, though he sympathized with their feelings of anger at what they saw as a new administration determined to oppress their own states. Most of the Southern officers ignored him, resigned their comjmissions, and went South. We all know how that turned out.


Our country is now under attack by a fairly sophisticated enemy compoosed of Antifa, extreme elements in the Democrat Party, and the criminal class, using as an excuse a tragic incident of police brutality.


From my knowledge of foreign-backed subversion in this country I believe Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and the Soros organization (linked to all of the above) are involved in this. They have spent years building up a network of violent radicals, infiltrating our universities, Congress, and local and state governments, and financing treasonous elements in the media and elsewhere.


The real objective of the violence is preventing the re-election of Trump. It has nothing to do with poor George Floyd, as most people now understand.

A disloyal and incompetent FBI and CIA have failed miserably to detect and counter radical domestic groups and their foreign backers. I know this for a fact. I raised the alarm on several occasions and was dismissed with a sneer.


Now the chickens have come home to roost, as Malcom X once said in a different context.

Trump should have moved forcefully against this wave of violence, with or without the consent of Democrat governors or mayors, and he should have forcefuly deposed them for failing to uphold their oaths, letting the chips fall wherever the hell they would.

It was once said that God protects drunks, fools and the USA. He may also protect Trump. I predict that Trump will be re-elected by a large margin, largely due to the posture adopted by the Democrats during this disaster. People see them for what they really are, at last. Let us pray that I am right.

For those of you who say voting counts for nothing, see you in January 2021 if the Democrats win. You might want to buy your airline ticket to the Fiji Islands now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...207_story.html

National Security
Pentagon disarms National Guard activated in D.C., sends active-duty forces home

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...HTV5U.jpg&w=32

Members of the National Guard gather outside the D.C. Armory on June 4 as protests continued in Washington and other cities. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
By
Paul Sonne,
Fenit Nirappil and
Josh Dawsey

June 5, 2020 at 6:09 p.m. EDT
The Pentagon has told National Guardsmen deployed to the nation’s capital not to use firearms or ammunition, and has issued orders to send home active-duty troops that the Trump administration amassed outside the city in recent days, a sign of de-escalation in the federal response to protests in the city.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper made the decision to disarm the guard without consulting the White House, after President Trump ordered a militarized show of force on the streets of Washington to quell demonstrations that were punctured by an episode of looting Sunday, two senior administration officials said. Trump had encouraged the National Guard to be armed.


Initially, a small group of guardsmen deployed in the city had been carrying guns while standing outside monuments, but the bulk of the forces, such as those working with federal park police at Lafayette Square in front of the White House, didn’t carry firearms out of caution. Now, all of the roughly 5,000 guardsmen deployed to Washington from the District of Columbia and 11 states have been told not to use weapons or ammunition.


At a news conference Friday, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that some guardsmen in the District had been carrying arms on Monday, but he noted that they did not have magazines of ammunition in their firearms. Beginning Tuesday, the Trump administration de-escalated further, he said, by removing firearms from the equation altogether.


Here’s how to identify law enforcement officers and National Guard units
Here’s how to identify the law enforcement officers and military personnel who have been mobilized in response to protests around the death of George Floyd. (Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)

“It was clear that there were enough federal law enforcement that had descended on the city, and that would be their principal responsibility,” McCarthy said.

The White House was not involved in the decision to disarm the Guard, said the two senior officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The order from the Pentagon comes as federal and district officials prepare for an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 protesters in Washington on Saturday and as the Pentagon looks to dial back the militarization of the response.


Because the District is a special federal jurisdiction without the status of a state, the D.C. National Guard is controlled by the president, who delegated his authority over the forces to McCarthy. The District’s mayor can request the deployment of the D.C. Guard but doesn’t have the power to deploy guardsmen herself or control them once deployed. Governors control the Guard in other states.


Esper says he does not support invoking Insurrection Act


Defense Secretary Mark Esper said June 3 that he does not support invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy active duty forces to quell civil unrest. (Reuters)


A senior U.S. defense official said Esper communicated the order to disarm to the D.C. Guard and other guardsmen earlier in the week through McCarthy and Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, the head of the National Guard. The order affected only about 10 guardsmen who had been out on patrol with firearms that weren’t loaded but who had ammunition in their packs, the senior defense official said.


D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) had requested that the federal government deploy the D.C. Guard, initially to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, but has since criticized the Trump administration’s response in the city, which critics have described as an overreaction designed to boost the president politically with Americans outside the nation’s capital watching on television.


Trump’s response has included not only deploying D.C. guardsmen, as the mayor requested, but also calling up guardsmen from other states, sending active-duty forces to sites outside the capital for possible operations and bringing in other federal law enforcement officials from agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons and Customs and Border Protection to patrol the streets. Bowser has decried the fact that some of those federal agents have not been wearing identifying uniforms or badges.


The situation grew particularly tense after two helicopters from the D.C. Guard began hovering over demonstrators, who are protesting the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, blasting them with gusty rotor wash from the aircraft. All helicopter flight operations in the D.C. Guard have been suspended until an investigation of the incident ordered by Esper is complete, said Air Force Lt. Col. Brooke Davis, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Guard.



Trump’s insistence on a militarized response in the nation’s capital has led to strains with Esper, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a former Army officer who took over as defense secretary last year. Esper announced publicly Wednesday that he wasn’t in favor of using the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops, even as the president threatened to invoke it.


Esper also said he was sending home some of the 1,600 active-duty troops amassed outside Washington but later stood down on that decision after a heated meeting with Trump.


On Thursday, the administration said some of those troops would indeed be leaving, and by Friday, McCarthy announced at the Pentagon that all active-duty forces would return to their bases. The last group to leave will be the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, the “Old Guard” that is permanently based just outside Washington at Fort Myer in Virginia, he said. As of Friday, all had been ordered to return but not all had departed.


Trump has battled with Esper about the military this week, with the president viewing the strong uniformed force in Washington as a deterrent to unrest. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has worried about the militarization of a response that defense officials believe must be led by law enforcement.


A senior administration official with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking said he has been frustrated with Esper this week and has at times considered replacing him, but has been warned against doing so. Trump and his aides were angry about what they consider a public repudiation of the president by Esper, who doesn’t have a close personal relationship with Trump, and a reluctance to take aggressive military steps that Trump thought were needed.


It wasn’t clear whether the Pentagon was responding to pressure from the D.C. municipal government in its decision to disarm the guardsmen and send active-duty troops home. Bowser has been calling publicly for the guardsmen to be disarmed but has also pushed for disarming them in private conversations with federal officials, said an official familiar with the matter.


McCarthy said he had been “trying to communicate with the mayor,” who had expressed frustration about the size of the military response in D.C. and the little information she had received about it in advance. McCarthy said he has been communicating extensively with the metropolitan police chief, meeting five or six times per day on city street corners.

“We’re doing everything possible to tighten the coordination,” McCarthy said, acknowledging that effectively commanding the guardsmen and communicating have been “challenging.”


“This has been a very, very challenging time for us,” he said.
In a letter sent to Trump on Thursday, Bowser informed the president that she had ended the city’s state of emergency and requested that he withdraw all extraordinary federal agents and military assets from the nation’s capital, explaining that the city was equipped to handle “large demonstrations and First Amendment activities.” She expressed particular concern about the federal agents who were not from the Defense Department and had been brought into the city.

“I continue to be concerned that unidentified federal personnel patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C. pose both safety and national security risks,” the mayor wrote. “The deployment of federal law enforcement personnel and equipment are inflaming demonstrators and adding to the grievances of those who, by and large, are peacefully protesting for change and for reforms to the racist and broken systems that are killing Black Americans.”


Bowser posted a copy of the letter on Twitter on Friday and wrote: “I request that @realDonaldTrump withdraw all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence from our city.”

But federal officials criticized her administration for resisting the presence of the National Guard units from other states.

Shortly after midnight, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) blamed Bowser for pushing the Utah National Guard and others out of D.C. hotels. On Friday afternoon, Trump accused her of “fighting with the National Guard,” without elaborating, in his first tweet directly criticizing her by name.


The mayor said she did not object to guardsmen staying in D.C. hotels but opposed their stay at the Marriott Marquis, where city government reserved rooms for coronavirus responders. The Utah Guard said it found a different hotel for its 200 service members.


Bowser underscored that the city should not pay for their accommodations. “Those out-of-state troops would be covered either by the Army or their home states, not by D.C. residents,” she said.


D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) has opened an inquiry into whether the federal government had the legal authority to call National Guard troops from other states into the District.

The mayor has repeatedly said she did not request assistance from other states. But Trump has called up about 3,900 guardsmen from Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah to the city, in addition to the roughly 1,200 already activated in the D.C. National Guard. New Jersey’s governor said Friday that its guardsmen were going home Saturday. The total number of guardsmen is about equivalent to the number of U.S. forces currently deployed to Iraq. The district’s population is about 700,000.


Military leaders at the Pentagon are aware of the risks of armed guardsmen stepping in to a role traditionally played by police in an American city. In 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard who were called in to help control Vietnam War protests at Kent State University opened fire on demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others. The situation prompted outrage nationwide and precipitated a crisis for the American military and its standing with the public.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/an...ops+to+zero%29


There were clear problems with Friday's "incredible" - as Trump put it - jobs report.


First and foremost the BLS' own admission there was a "survey error" which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the "birth/death" model, the curious case of millions of "jobs" resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today's jobs report may offer a "false ray of light" because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).

But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but "incredible" as described by the president.
Start with Trump's "incredible" V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed - this number was 6 million just two months ago.



https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...20jobs%201.jpg

Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don't even want a job.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...0force%202.jpg

Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%20reasons.jpg

Adding insult to injury, the only jobs created in May according to Deutsche Bank were for highly-skilled, highly-paid workers as low and medium wage jobs continue to shed millions of workers - mostly young, recent graduates - as employers shift to zoom-ing or outsourcing.


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%20benefit.jpg

That said, we find the above chart unlikely since a breakdown of actual jobs added by industry shows that the low-paying leisure and hospitality, education and health, and retail trade made up 3 of the top 4 sectors.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%20leisure.jpg

In any case, the unemployment rate for those without a college education is around 16% (and 20% for those who never finished high school), which is why with young, unemployed people already protesting almost daily, it is shaping up as a summer of teenage/young adult discontent and violence for the ages.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...ent%20rate.jpg

It's not just teenagers: millennials, already facing dire labor prospects as a result of the zombie post-GFC economy, just saw their employment rate plummet to recession levels.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...employment.jpg
The core, prime-aged segment of the workforce, those 25-54 just saw a historic collapse in their job prospects.


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...20to%20pop.jpg

Yet while millennials are fired by the millions, so are older Americans: the ratio of employment of those 65 and older to the overall population just plunged to crisis levels as well.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...laid%20off.jpg

And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...vs%20women.jpg

What is one to do with these data? Why buy stocks of course, what else. It is "Jay's market", where an economic depression means +∞ for the S&P.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...ops+to+zero%29


Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police spurred widespread protests which have been followed by looting in dozens of American cities. CNN’s Don Lemon compared looters who plundered Neiman Marcus and other upscale stores to those at the Boston Tea Party. But far more Americans likely agreed with Quinta Caylor, a black North Carolina nurse on Twitter, who denounced the looters who “THUGGED OUT in 1 day” businesses that owners had worked long and hard to build.

There are not yet any solid estimates of the total damage from the looting and burning that has occurred in many cities across the nation. Total losses may range in the tens of millions of dollars or perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The pillaging has been especially ruinous to many small family-owned businesses, some of whom may not have insurance to cover their losses.

Many cities have responded to violent rampages by imposing curfews and other severe restrictions on movement.



https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%20%281%29.jpg

Many such edicts are remarkably similar to the “shelter-in-place” COVID dictates imposed by many state governments. While the city curfews are a reflexive response to rioting, the unprecedented state-wide quarantines appear to have had scant impact in curbing the contagion.

In Portland, Oregon, “rioters have broken into Portland’s main mall in downtown and began looting the Louis Vuitton. Youths ran out with designer bags. They shouted about expropriation,” as Andy Ngo tweeted.

But that state suffered far more from Gov. Kate Brown’s edict that banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions, and also banned all recreational travel, even though much of the state had few if any COVID cases. Almost 400,000 Oregonians have lost their jobs after Brown’s shutdown.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, looters pillaged a shoe store and many other businesses.

But the damage they inflicted was not even pocket change compared to the wreckage produced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Whitmer severely restricted what stores could sell; she prohibited purchasing seeds for spring planting in stores after she decreed that a “nonessential” activity (unlike buying state lottery tickets). Though COVID infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, Whitmer shut down the entire state – including northern counties with near-zero infections and zero fatalities, boosting unemployment to 24% statewide.
In Louisville, Kentucky, looters attacked the Omni Louisville Hotel and many other businesses.

But that isn’t why the Bluegrass State has the nation’s highest unemployment rate – 33%. That is thanks to Gov. Andy Beshear’s shutdown order that paralyzed the state even though COVID’s impact in Kentucky “has not been worse than an average flu season,” according to Sen. Rand Paul.

In the District of Columbia, looters pillaged an Apple Store. “I bet this is about the [COVID] contact tracing in the latest upgrade,” quipped one wag on Twitter.
But Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has inflicted vastly more damage on the city with a lockdown order that helped destroy almost 100,000 jobs.

In Richmond, Virginia, looters pillaged many black-owned small businesses as well as torching the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Local damage is far outweighed by Gov. Ralph Northam shutting down the state economy for more than two months– including vast swaths of the Old Dominion that had few if any COVID cases, helping destroy more than half a million jobs.

In Rochester, New York, looters ransacked the Villa shoe store and many other businesses and brutally beat a female store owner seeking to defend her small business. New York City also saw widespread looting.

But more than two million New Yorkers have lost their jobs since Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively put almost 20 million people under house arrest – a drastic step that he said would be justified if it “saves just one life.” Most counties had only a smattering of COVID cases before Cuomo caused profound upheaval in the lives of vast numbers of his subjects. Also, unlike for Cuomo, there is no evidence tying the looters to 5,000+ deaths in nursing homes.

In Minneapolis, looters plundered stores and restaurants in East Lake Street, a well-known haven for Black and Latino-owned businesses, as well as burning down the nation’s oldest independent science fiction bookstore.A black former firefighter was left in tears after looters ravaged the sports bar he was planning to open.


Timothy Walz’s statewide shutdown decree helped destroy almost 400,000 jobs, including that of George Floyd, who lost his gig as a bouncer after the governor’s order shut down the restaurant where he worked.

Most of the media coverage, reciting the official narrative that shutdowns were vital and justified, has ignored the human carnage of the COVID shutdowns.


Almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 per year have someone who lost their job in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve. Politicians destroyed much of the economy in the name of “risk reduction.” Unprecedented restrictions on personal and economic freedom were justified in part by federal Centers for Disease Control fatality forecasts that turned out to be wildly exaggerated.



Some leftists on Twitter urged the looters to go after national chain stores such as Target and avoid small family-owned businesses. Politicians issuing COVID shutdown decrees followed the opposite standard, effectively padlocking small businesses while Walmart and other large stores easily received the “essential” bureaucratic holy water and Amazon practically won the lottery. The recent riots may have destroyed hundreds of businesses. But forecasts predict that millions of businesses could be forced to close or file bankruptcy because of the pandemic disruptions.

The people who pillaged stores in recent days deserve vigorous prosecution, and the deluge of Twitter plundering-in-progress videos could make it easier to identify culprits. It remains to be seen whether mayors will have the gumption to throw the book at the thieves. But it is even less likely that the politicians and other government officials who inflicted far greater damage on the economy will ever be held liable.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...m/#more-219297


On Racism


Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

If white people are racist, how was Obama twice elected president of the United States? That such questions do not occur to those shouting “white racism” indicates weak minds, the presence of anti-whites out to make mischief, and people who speak on the basis of an unexamined assumption that has been drilled into their heads.

The unexamined question is: Are white people racist by nature? Those who say whites are racist by nature simultaneously claim that hundreds of thousands of Lincoln’s soldiers died in order to free black people from slavery and that white people in the North carried on a relentless long war against white people in the South for the benefit of black people.

It is these same racist white people who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act 56 years ago and permitted the establishment of racial quotas and contract set-asides for blacks that gave blacks rights and privileges that white people do not have.

If white people are so racist, how can it be that many of them are upset about George Floyd’s death from police violence and some joined the protests? Either white people are racist by nature or they aren’t racist by nature. If whites are not racist by nature, how can it be that the New York Times is leading the rewriting of American history with its 1619 Project that explains the United States as a country founded on the racism of white people?

Such questions do not occur to Anthony DiMaggio who writes for CounterPunch —Revolution, Not Riots—https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06...-covid-19-era/ .

DiMaggio repeats the propagandistic mantra that Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis—thank God not Southern—police is another sign of the structural violence against people of color. So what is police violence against white people? Are white people murdered and brutalized by police because of their skin color? Is this structural violence against white people?
You think police don’t use violence against white people? How uninformed you are! In 2017 police shot to death more than twice as many white people as black people. In 2018 police shot to death almost twice as many white people as black people. In 2019 57% more white people than black people were shot to death. So far in 2020, 35% more white people than black people have been shot to death by police. https://www.statista.com/statistics/...olice-by-race/

Neither black nor white people know this for reasons I explain here—https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/202...lice-violence/

A multicultural racially diverse society, which the United States has become as a result of illegal immigration and the change in immigration law in 1965, cannot survive if race hatred is a feature of the society. In the US, white liberals have been teaching black Americans to hate white Americans for decades. Black people have been indoctrinated into believing that every unpleasant feature of their existance is due to white racism. In many white people, this indoctrination has engendered guilt that causes them to excuse and make excuses for black violence. The effect over time is to make blacks more angry and whites less willing to resist violent acts of anger and to blame themselves instead. The survival of such a society is problematical. Watching Washington foment conflict with more unified societies, such as Russia and China, is scary.

None of those screaming racism are interested in stopping police violence. Police violence against members of the public is a product of police training, not of racism. Those screaming racism don’t want the violence corrected by reforming the way police are trained. They want the violence to continue as it is useful for their agenda of using white racism to create white guilt and black anger. This is the way to revolution. In Marxism, there was only class warfare between workers and capitalist—the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie—but in Cultural Marxism or Identity Politics there is racial oppresson, gender oppression, homosexual oppression, and oppression against the disabled and elderly. All of these oppressed people become alienated from society and potential supporters for revolution.


However, Cultural Marxism could also brew counterrevolution. Some whites might see where this is heading and the realization could create opposition to the attack on white people. Some regard Trump’s election as president as an indication that white Americans realize that they have been abandoned by the Democrat Party. Unless you are a well-to-do white liberal on the east or west coasts, the Democrat Party has written you off. White people, including the working class that formerly was represented by the Democrat Party, have been defined by Hillary Clinton as “the Trump deplorables.” Whites are already second-class citizens, especially if they are straight males, and they are being set up for worse to come. Politicians, except for Trump, are too scared of media attacks to confront the propaganda with the truth.
Of course there are racists, but the assumption that these animosities exist only between skin colors is problematic. In modern times the most extreme manifestitions of racial violence are tribal between blacks themselves, such as the Rwandan genocide, the mass slaughter of Tutsi by the Hutu.

Indeed, the black slave trade is the product of blacks themselves and has its origin in 1600 in the slave wars fought by the black Kingdom of Dahomey. Dahomey’s use of black slaves for economic production predates the cotton planations in the US south. One would think that these well known and totally documented facts would be a part of black studies in universities, but such facts are unacceptable to the ruling ideology. Karl Polanyi’s history of Dahomey and the Slave Trade has simply disappeared. It is as if it never was written. It has gone down Big Brother’s Memory Hole even before the digital revolution created Big Brother.

Whites, of course, have committed far more violence against one another than they have against people of color. Think of the war of the American north against the South, of all the wars between Europeans, the two wars between the US and Great Britain, capped off by World War I and World War II. White people have killed far more white people than people of color.

Even white language is said to be racist. The banned n-word is said to be symbolic of white racism. But every white ethnicity has been called names that are slurs— dago, polack, frog, limey. The Irish are bog-trotters.There is a range of slurs for Germans—kraut, boche, hun. Blacks have plenty of pejorative names for whites. For example, “Miss Ann” or “Ann” is a derisive reference to white women and to any black woman who is regarded as acting as if she is white. Blacks also use pejoratives for blacks. An oreo is a black person who is regarded as acting like a white person. Aunt Jemima is a black woman who is friendly to, or kisses up to, white people. A black man who does the same is Uncle Tom. American whites have pejoratives for one another—cracker, hillbilly, redneck. People in the south of England call those in the north northern monkeys. There are pejoratives for every ethnicity. Jews call gentiles goy. Latin Americans call North Americans gringo. Ukrainians call Russians moskals. If slurs are an indication of racism, then the entire population of the world is racist.

For decades the FBI has had a department that monitors white supremacists. The scarcity of white supremacists has encouraged the FBI to create, or to encourage the creation of, such groups, just as the FBI was organizing “terrorist plots” that they could break up in the aftermath of 9/11. A budget needs a reason.

Where do we see evidence of white supremacists? Are statues of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan being pulled down? Is the Lincoln Memorial covered in graffiti? Are white supremacists rewriting American history in the universities and at the New York Times? Where are their magazines and newspapers? Who are their representatives in government and media? What is the power of such an invisible group?
In contrast, Antifa is a terrorist organization associated with organized violence. Yet it is white supremacists who are being blamed for the pre-delivery of convenient stockpiles of bricks in the protest areas of the cities where blacks are protesting George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. How did white supremacists know which cities and which locations in the cities protests would take place? When the point is to blame white people such questions do not matter to those doing the blaming.

But the questions do matter to a racially diverse multicultural society. Such a society cannot survive the cultivation of racial enmity. When the goal is revolution, not reform, racial enmity is the weapon.

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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...ops+to+zero%29


Via InternationalMan.com,
In the over 30 years I’ve known him, my respect—and liking—for Frank Giustra has only grown. Not just because he’s a world-class businessman, having built Yorkton Securities into a powerhouse, and then founding Lionsgate Entertainment. More relevant to this interview, he’s a first-rate judge of the markets—one of the best I’ve ever met at seeing turning points and understanding trends.


He’s one of the few financiers in the “Master of the Universe” class that understands gold and economics. Frank knows what he’s talking about. I suggest you read this closely.


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



International Man:

Last time around, the Fed was able to paper over the crisis and create a ten-year bull market in stocks. Is the Fed out of ammo this time?

Frank Giustra:

They are, but that won’t stop them, and they’ll call it something else—helicopter money or Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

In the last cycle, it was QE. It wasn’t printing money; it was QE because it sounded better. It was much more calming and elegant to call it that. It almost rolled off your tongue.

They will never call it money printing.

The new and popular handle is Modern Monetary Theory. But it’s the same old Ponzi scheme. It’s still plain old money printing.

MMT is designed to create demand through money printing, with the idea that you can tax that later as you reach full capacity. But it makes some very naive assumptions about the way politicians operate. It would never work, and the money printing will leave you on the same path as previous disaster stories. Math is math. It’s impervious to bullshit.


If you’re printing too much money, it’s going to influence inflation. We’ve already seen it with asset inflation over the last ten years. Inflation didn’t go into the CPI but went into various asset classes instead.

As you know, Doug Casey has been writing about this topic for 40 years. I started writing about it 20 years ago. It’s become a fascination for me.
Let’s look at how things evolved.

It all started with Alan Greenspan. He was the one who ushered in the era of pleasing markets with free money or easy money.

He was the first to bail out markets at every crisis and the markets cheered him on.

Greenspan was the one that set the stage for the 2008 crisis. Ben Bernanke set the stage for what we’re facing now.
All they’ve done is encourage debt and speculation. And to a great extent, the markets still believe the Fed can continue to fix the mess they created.
I am absolutely stunned gold is still trading at these levels. Don’t people realize where we are heading?

International Man:

Do you think negative nominal interest rates are coming to the U.S.? If so, what do you think the effects will be?

Frank Giustra:

So far, the Fed has been very reluctant to talk about introducing negative rates.

As hopeless as they are, I think they understand what that would mean if the U.S. went into negative rate territory.

But Trump is a bully. If he sees the economy still floundering between now and November, he’s going to push and bully.

He will likely get his way because the Fed is not truly independent. That idea went out the window long ago. It all started with Greenspan. It was gradual in the beginning, but eventually, it became clear that the separation between church and state was gone. Fiscal and monetary policy work in tandem. It’s one big happy gravy train for the markets.

I believe if the economy does what I think it will do, Trump might get his way.

International Man:

Negative interest rates incentivize bad behavior. Savers will be decimated, and borrowers will be rewarded.

What do you think the effects of that would be?

Frank Giustra:

It’s true what you say about the savers. Unfortunately for them, they are not the ones that influence policy. Wall Street alone has that power.

Savers will certainly get screwed in the end and eventually the speculators will also. They think this party will never end, but they are delusional. It will end.
Delusion is firmly engrained in the investor psyche.

Wall Street pushes for this continued bad behavior. They throw a hissy fit when they don’t see enough easy credit, and they always seem to get what they want.

International Man:

What do you think the role of gold will be as the international monetary system evolves?

Frank Giustra:

It is tough to say.

I don’t think we’ll ever go back to a a strict gold standard. That’s just not going to happen.

I believe one of two things may happen. The replacement of the U.S. dollar might end up being some kind of trading unit, a combination of a number of currencies, perhaps with some commodity basket as backing.

Or, we may end up with regional currency units that represent trading blocks. Perhaps, Asia as one and the West as another. It’s hard to say.
However this plays out, it will be messy. We live in a fractured world. There is no leadership or common ground. In this environment, it’s hard to see how there will be any consensus to replace the dollar. But, it will happen somehow, however messy. I just hope it’s peaceful.

International Man:

The point you made about trading blocks in interesting.

Countries like China and Russia are buying substantial amounts of gold.
In a world where fiat currencies aren’t trusted by anybody, do you think that gold will play a role in building trust between countries?

Frank Giustra:

It’s already playing a role.

They are worried about the weaponization of the U.S. dollar. This concerns not only adversaries like China and Russia, but traditional allies like Europe as well.

Their central banks have been buyers of gold for a very long time. I think they’re buying it because they have to de-dollarize. They’re worried about having too many dollars, especially China.

Gold is the only currency that’s not paper. It’s trusted globally by central banks. The mere fact that central banks hold it as part of their reserves and that many continue to buy it on a regular basis has to tell you something about its value.

Wall Street has mostly ignored gold in the past as an important component of investment portfolios. I say, watch what they do not what they say. Look at central bank behaviour.

Follow the money.

International Man:

Recently, we’ve seen gold break through to multi-year highs. What do you think comes next in this gold bull market, and where do you think it’s ultimately going?

Frank Giustra:

I’ve never made a prediction on the gold price. I will always say it’s going higher if I believe it’s going higher.

I think that this time, it is going a lot higher, and I will say that much. Where it goes is anybody’s guess.

But I’ll tell you one thing—and I’ve been saying this for the last 12 months.

This phase of the gold bull market—which started last year—is the third and final wave of the bull market that started in 2001, and this one’s going to be a tsunami.

This time, gold will really break out and go to a number that most investors can’t begin to imagine.

The eventual gold price is also a function of how long it will take for high or hyperinflation to kick in and what happens in the period before it does.
Will we see currency wars? A depression? We are entering scary times.

And I mean the real stuff when it comes to gold. Personally, I don’t trust gold ETFs

When the proverbial poop hits the fan, I believe governments will go to any length to protect their currency. They won’t let you find a place to hide. They will freeze bank accounts and prevent you from exchanging your dollars into other currencies or gold.

We have seen this many times before in other countries and even in the U.S.; in 1933, it became illegal for American citizens to own gold, and that law remained in place for almost 40 years. And and these type of protective measures will happen again, in some shape or form.

In essence, they will prevent you from trying to protect your savings. Sounds horrible, but it happens over and over again. That’s why you need to own some physical gold.

Again, I can’t tell you exactly how this plays out and how high gold will run. I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do have history books.

International Man:

How do average people manage their risk in an environment like this?

Frank Giustra:

It’s tough. I think about this question a lot.

Until the dust settles, I’d say stick with cash and gold.
Unless it’s gold stocks, I’m not in the market. I think the market is still ridiculously overpriced, given what’s happening in the real economy.
The only reason the stock market is still overpriced is because the Fed continues to print free money, which allows speculation to continue at a feverish pace.

I just don’t see where the earnings are going to come from. I think that reality is going to set in—probably in the fall or next year.

Cash is always useful to buy things; invest because there is no way to know when exactly hyperinflation will set in and you need cash to buy things if they get really cheap. Timing is everything.

I try to keep things simple.

You will never outsmart the market in the short term, but the probability that things will get very bad is pretty high up on the bell curve. Buy gold, and keep your powder dry and pray.

* * *

(You can find Frank’s writing and insights at http://frankgiustra.com/.)

The ripple effects of the government lockdown are only stating to take shape. That’s not to mention the unprecedented amount of money the that is being pumped into every corner of the economy by the Federal Reserve. That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey just released an urgent new PDF titled Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse. It explains what’s to come and exactly what you should do to protect yourself. Click here to get it now.

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/qua...ops+to+zero%29


As the economy slips into recession, driven by high unemployment, not seen since the 1930s, a quarter of Americans have skipped meals or relied on charity or government food programs since February, according to Kaiser Family Foundation's May Tracking Poll survey of over 1,100 US adults (conducted between May 13-18).

"One in four Americans (26%) say they or a member of their household have skipped meals or relied on charity or government food programs since February, including 14% who say they have reduced the size of meals or skipped meals because there wasn't enough money for food, 13% who have visited a food bank or pantry for meals, and 13% who have applied for or received SNAP benefits," the survey said.

Figure 7: One-Fourth Say They Have Skipped Meals, Visited A Food Bank, Or Have Applied For Or Received SNAP Benefits Since February



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One in six (16%) Americans said skipping meals or relying on charity or government for food was due to the devastating impacts from months of lockdowns that left them financially paralyzed. With very little savings and insurmountable debts, the economic hardships of the downturn are already starting to be realized. Many folks fell into instant poverty and will be financially ruined for the next several years; hence, why universal basic income is coming. A further 10% of respondents said food security issues developed well before the pandemic.

Figure 8: One In Six Say They Have Skipped Meals, Visited A Food Bank, Or Applied For Or Received SNAP Due To Impacts Of Coronavirus

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A third (34%) of Americans said they or their spouse experienced a job loss or reduced hours, resulting in declining income, making it harder for them to feed their families. Among this group, 38% said they skipped meals or relied on charity or government food programs since February.

Racial groups and economic status played a huge part in who went hungry. Large shares of blacks, Hispanics, and lower-income households were hit the hardest:

"Black and Latino adults and those with lower incomes appear to be harder hit. About four in ten Black adults (45%) and Latinos (39%) say they have skipped meals or relied on charity or government food programs since February, including three in ten Black adults and about a quarter (26%) of Hispanics who say their experiences were directly related to the financial impact of coronavirus. Among those in households with an annual income under $40,000, nearly half (48%) say they have skipped meals or relied on charity or government food programs, including one-quarter who attribute this to coronavirus and a similar share (23%) who say they were already skipping meals or relying on food programs before the pandemic hit," the survey said.

Figure 9: Large Shares Of Blacks, Hispanics, And Lower-Income Households Report Skipping Meals, Relying On Charity Due To The Coronavirus

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In a separate report, we noted as many as 33% of those who filed for unemployment benefits as a result of virus-related job losses, have still not been paid out.


Recall, policymakers responded to the virus outbreak by offering $600 per week more in unemployment than usual. The goal was to keep food on tables and prevent social unrest.

Broke and hungry, millions of Americans flooded flood banks across the country in the last several months, in some cases, overburdening the entire food bank system:

1. Food-Banks Warn They'll Soon Run Out Of Food As Economic Suffering Explodes All Over America
2. Las Vegas Transforms Casino Into Food Bank As Working Poor Line Up For Miles
3. National Guard Deployed At Nation's Food Banks To Ensure Stability During Unprecedented Times

We also said this on April 8: "A perfect storm is brewing deep in America, one where overwhelmed food bank networks could see supply chain disruptions that could trigger food shortages in various low-income regions, that would undoubtedly leave many people hangry – and possibly incite social unrest."
A nation, where its working-poor is entirely broke and hungry, and even some of these folks are on the streets rioting across the country, certainly doesn't bode well for those who believe a V-shaped recovery in the economy can be seen in the second half.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/mi...ops+to+zero%29


Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,
America (and the world at large) are in the midst of an entirely predictable demographically-driven crisis, between an economic/financial system requiring infinite growth and a very finite human/physical world. This mismatch will only become more acute for decades to come. As the growth of demand is decelerating, central banks are using interest rate policy cuts to encourage higher consumption via greater leverage/debt. Federal debt is soaring absent the economic (and tax revenue) growth to accompany this deluge of debt. I will show that the primary purchasing sources of that debt have turned to net sellers...and that into this breach, the Fed has thrust itself as the buyer (counterfeiter) of last resort.

The result is likely to be a Minsky Melt-Up...and then the fall that typically follows.
First, by year end 2020 (estimated below), federal debt will almost surely cross $28 trillion while GDP will collapse in Q2 with likely recovery through Q3/Q4. The outcome will be a debt to GDP ratio likely around 140%...smashing the WWII previous high water mark. Noteworthy also in the chart below are the new standards of ZIRP and reliance on the Federal Reserve balance sheet (QE) to maintain zero percent interest rates.


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Since 2008, public (marketable) federal debt has nearly quadrupled, up by $14.7 trillion. Social Security and like Intragovernmental trust fund holdings have risen $1.8 trillion. The Federal Reserve balance sheet has increased by 8x's, up by $6.3 trillion. In fact, most simply, it is the Federal Reserve using it's balance sheet as the substitute for the demographically decelerating IG purchasing. As the IG holdings will only continue to decline due to the unfunded liabilities (and with it the primary source of Treasury buying for decades turns to a decade of Treasury selling), the Fed's balance sheet will rise inversely to avoid an interest rate Armageddon.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2816%29_9.png

To underscore the Fed's role as buyer of last resort, below are the four classes of Treasury buyers/holders. I split the change in holdings by group, per period:

1. 2009 through '14...the QE years (everybody buys...especially Fed, Foreigners)
2. 2015 through '19...the QT years (IG and especially domestic sources do the buying, Fed sells, foreigners pass)
3. January through May, 2020...the p(l)andemic 5 months (IG sells, foreigners pass, Fed goes wild w/ a domestic assist (unfortunately, Treasury Bulletin for 2020 won't be available for a while to detail who exactly those domestic buyers of 0.6% yielding 10 year and 1.2% yielding 30 year bonds were))

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2817%29_7.png

While the Federal Reserve has decreed the Federal Funds rate to be zero and undertaken QE to distort rates, Congress has understood this zero interest rate policy to mean "free" money since the interest rates are so low. The Federal Reserve's actions have destroyed Congress' primary role of compromise, striking a balance between spending and taxation. For those that wonder why "fiscal conservatism" died, it was the Federal Reserve that killed it.
Ok, let's focus on the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed is presently slamming on the brakes on it's QE Corona-virus operation, from a peak purchase of $585 billion weekly to "just" $68 billion this week. And the Fed is communicating they will continue to slow their purchasing. Chart below shows the Fed balance sheet (red line) and weekly change (black columns) since 2008. I assume the Fed will continue tapering their purchases through year end 2020, ending the year with a balance sheet of something like $8.3 trillion (adding about $4.5 trillion since QT ended in September 2019, or a 220% increase of it's balance sheet in 15 months time).

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2818%29_6.png

The Fed truly distorted the interest rates of Treasuries with it's massive purchases in such a short period. Given the duration and laddering of bonds, only a relatively small percentage is available at any certain time so the size and suddenness of the Fed purchases overwhelmed the Treasury market.

T-Bills
During QE Corona-Virus, the Fed has thus far purchased $587 billion in T-Bills...in fact even this week, the Fed did most of its ongoing buying here, adding an additional $33 billion in T-Bills (effectively further steeping the curve between short and long duration rates).

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2819%29_6.png

The nearly $600 billion in freshly conjured demand collapsed the short end of the curve (3 month T-Bill shown below) to zero. But despite the enormous Fed purchasing, the natural rate is likely significantly higher than 0.2%...and without ongoing Fed subjugation, rates will continue to rise.

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Notes (1yr-5yr Duration)
From the completion of QT to present, the Fed has purchased $750 billion in shorter duration Notes...but the buying has ceased, as the holdings have stalled for nearly a month now.

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Again, the Fed has distorted the free market setting of rates with it's conjured money but rates are turning upward and as the supply of new and rollover Notes continues, the absence of demand typically results in rising rates.

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Notes (5yr to 10yr Duration)
Below, longer duration Fed held Notes. The $470 billion rise in Fed holdings since the end of QT is hard to miss...but equally important is the decelerating purchasing of more debt and the Fed signaling it will only continue at low levels of purchasing.

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2823%29_4.png

Since the overwhelming flood of Fed purchasing has subsided, the all important 10 year Treasury rate is suddenly rising...like an inflatable held down underwater. The Fed has temporarily distorted the free market rates of Notes with it's conjured money. However, rates are turning upward and as the supply of new and rollover Notes continues, the absence of demand typically results in rising rates...as we are now seeing. The impact of a fast rising 10 year (the foundation of the 30 year mortgage rate) would rapidly push mortgage rates on primary and commercial real estate to significantly higher levels...and crush a housing led "v-shaped" recovery meme?!?

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Bonds
The Fed purchased $312 billion of Treasury Bonds since QT was abandoned. Given the much smaller quantity outstanding of long bonds, this represented more than 10% of all marketable long bonds in just a few months time, increasing the Fed's total long bond holdings to nearly 35% of marketable.

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The Fed's action of plunging the 30 year rate to nearly 1% was a deformation of incredible proportion...but just as incredible would be the rate counter reaction upward absent the Fed's ongoing bid.

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Excess Reserves vs. Monetization
Is the Fed about to back off and let the "free-market" determine Treasury interest rates? Not likely, the Fed no longer (if ever) believes in free market price discovery. So, best to check the Fed's balance sheet split between the portion held in large banks as excess reserves and the portion moving directly into the economy/financial system (monetization). When the Fed began QE, Ben Bernanke then stated the Fed would not monetize the debt and that the Fed conjured dollars would be held essentially inert as excess reserves...and then subsequently be removed via quantitative tightening. This was a bald faced lie then and is even more laughable now. During the initial stages of QE, about 2/3rds of the Federal Reserve newly created dollars were held as excess reserves (+$2.7 T) while (+$1.2 T) moved into the financial system.

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And the impact of monetization on asset prices (showing Wilshire 5000, representing all publicly held US equities).

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Focusing on monetization since QE ended in late 2014 through the present...a strong correlation should be noted between the rising quantity of monetization (post QE) and asset valuations.

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During the last cycle (post QE) the Fed raised IOER's alongside the FFR%, essentially paying banks not to loan money, paying them for taking no risk. This time, the Fed is offering essentially no payment on the excess reserves, encouraging banks to employ those reserves...and that is exactly what I anticipate we will see. The chart below details the IOER's (interest paid on excess reserves, held at the largest of banks) versus the excess reserves and monetization. The Fed continuing QE alongside declining excess reserves, will push the quantity of monetization into orbit.

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If the excess reserves decline and the correlations hold (both as expected)...all those freshly conjured dollars will be in frantic search for a leveraged home via loans and/or asset purchase...and look out as assets explode higher on a wave of "legal" counterfeit Fed cash. Perhaps there will be some sort of quid pro quo, by which the largest banks maintain the Treasury bid while simultaneously leveraging up...or perhaps the Fed will double down it's Treasury purchasing, otherwise rates will soar alongside equities?

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...%2831%29_2.png

And just so we are clear, this surge in asset prices will benefit a small minority of Americans and actively harm the vast majority via costs of living surging versus significant unemployment and flat wages. Wonder how that will go over as 2020 is likely to only get a whole lot more "interesting"!?!