The Daily Bell - 10 Reasons Washington Has War Fever

The Daily Bell - 10 Reasons Washington Has War Fever

By Ron Holland - February 27, 2015

"War is merely the continuation of policy by other means." – Carl von Clausewitz

The political elites, Federal Reserve and special interests that really run the show hiding behind Congress and the president of either party in America's closed two-party monopoly seem to be running scared in many regards. They rightly have many fears for their political future as well as the profits and survival of the major international corporations and banking interests that support the current political leadership and regime.

Never has our nation, corporations and wealthy top 1% faced so many new threats to their efforts to grow their power and wealth around the world. Although there is enough blame and mistakes to go around, many of these threats can not really be blamed on our political or financial leaders but rather result from changes in the fast-paced world we live in today.

Conspiracy theorists prefer to see the world in black and white with no gray areas and keep it simple by criticizing secret groups or powerful interests for every problem but I believe the real situation is far more complicated. But everyone should realize the free America we grew up in has been long dead and buried with only the institutions and slogans remaining to lull the dumbed down public into apathy and acceptance. Our leaders are not omnipotent and certainly do not have all the answers and I suggest they have few answers and are actually making everything up as they go along, hence why I fear they will ultimately choose war as a solution to their problems.

Our America Does Not Exist Any More

Cont... 

BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS « The Burning Platform

BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS « The Burning Platform

Posted on 26th February 2015 by T4C in Economy |Politics |Social Issue

THE GREEK BETRAYAL AND PAN-EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

by JC Collins

It has now become common knowledge that the promises made by the new Greek Syriza government have been broken. The voting population of Greece were fed a steady stream of propaganda on how Syriza was going to stand up to the Troika, or trifecta of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Before the election I had been provided a copy of the Syriza Policy Paper which detailed their proposed negotiating position with the Troika. The paper was segmented into 3 sections:

1. Negotiating Stance with the Troika: Reconstruction of the Banking Sector and Debt Relief

2. A Domestic Action Program

3. The Modest Proposal, with a Pan European Solidarity Program, to be discussed at the first European Summit under the new government

It was very clear in the policy paper that Syriza had no intention of keeping the promises which their political platform had been built around. In fact, the Syriza party was the economic Trojan Horse which was used by the Troika to implement the broader multilateral reforms and restructuring of the Greek banking system.

Cont... 

Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Israel, Gaza, and Energy Wars in the Middle East | TomDispatch

Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Israel, Gaza, and Energy Wars in the Middle East | TomDispatch

Posted by Michael Schwartz at 8:03am, February 26, 2015.

Talk of an oil glut and a potential further price drop seems to be growing. The cost of a barrel of crude now sits at just under $60, only a little more than half what it was at its most recent peak in June 2014. Meanwhile, under a barrel of woes, economies like China's have slowed and in the process demand for oil has sagged globally. And yet, despite the cancellation of some future plans for exploration and drilling for extreme (and so extremely expensive) forms of fossil fuels, startling numbers of barrels of crude are still pouring onto troubled waters.  For this, a thanks should go to the prodigious efforts of "Saudi America" (all that energetic hydraulic fracking, among other things), while the actual Saudis, the original ones, are still pumping away.  We could, in other words, have arrived not at "peak oil" but at "peak oil demand" for at least a significant period of time to come.  At Bloomberg View, columnist A. Gary Shilling has even suggested that the price of crude could ultimately simply collapse under the weight of all that production and a global economic slowdown, settling in at $10-$20 a barrel (a level last seen in the 1990s).

Cont... 

ECONOMIC GROUND ZERO FOR CANADA « The Burning Platform

ECONOMIC GROUND ZERO FOR CANADA « The Burning Platform



Posted on 26th February 2015 by T4C in Economy |Politics |Social Issues |Technology

JC lives in Canada and his life has been centered around mining. He knows of that which he speaks.

ECONOMIC GROUND ZERO FOR CANADA 

(….and how Greece could crash the world.)

 FEBRUARY 25, 2015

by JC Collins

After the collapse of oil prices and home valuations in 1986 the oil sands mining town of Fort McMurray became a semi-desolate place of reduced expectations. One of the two mining operations went on strike and I remember the workers picketing on the highway near the site access.

As a teenager my friends and I would drive around an area we called The Dead Roads. The Dead Roads were a planned subdivision which had been under development when the collapse of 1986 happened. The roads had been built, the sidewalks and curbs set, and the utility services to the lots had been roughed in. But no houses had been built.

The price of oil had crashed from $32 a barrel to $10 a barrel in only a 4 month period. Many people lost their jobs with many of those leaving Fort McMurray and moving back to whatever place in Canada they had come from.

Cont... 

Debt Crash: History and Introduction

Debt Crash: History and Introduction: We go to grade school to get a good knowledge base to go to high school.  When in high school the generally accepted goal is to get in to a...

Re-writing The Climate History of Iceland | Energy Matters

Re-writing The Climate History of Iceland | Energy Matters

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Euan Mearns

This post follows up on the hornet’s nest stirred by Paul Homewood and Christopher Booker and my recent post on Temperature Adjustments in Australia comparing raw temperature records (GHCN V2) with homogenised (adjusted) temperature records (GHCN v3.1). The latter is currently used by NASA GISS and NOAA in global temperature reconstructions.

In this post I examine the records of eight climate stations on Iceland and find the following:

• There is wholesale over writing and adjustment of raw temperature records, especially pre-1970 with an overwhelming tendency to cool the past that makes the present appear to be anomalously warm.
• In the 1960s, Iceland (and the whole N Atlantic) experienced a run of very cold years caused by extreme atmospheric pressure differentials linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Many of these cold records appear to have been systematically deleted in V3.1 with the effect of all but removing this well-documented event from Icelandic climate history.
• Following the end of the Little Ice Age, Iceland experienced rapid warming in the 1920s reaching near “record warmth” in 1939. This near record warmth has also been written out of Icelandic climatic history by adjusting the temperature records down, leaving the false impression that 2003 was an anomalously warm year.
• In addition to wide-spread deletion of records, large amounts of temperature data that does not exist in V2 appears to have been created in V3.1. It is difficult to understand why this should be done since it is quite straight forward to manipulate data without apparently having to make it up.

Cont... 

The Archdruid Report: The Externality Trap, or, How Progress Commits Sui...

The Archdruid Report: The Externality Trap, or, How Progress Commits Sui...: I've commented more than once in these essays about the cooperative dimension of writing:   the way that even the most solitary of wri...

After Six Years In Office, Has Obama Seen "The Great Light"? | Zero Hedge

After Six Years In Office, Has Obama Seen "The Great Light"? | Zero Hedge

Authored by Ben Tanosborn,

On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus (Christianity’s Saint Paul), the Jew-Roman persecutor of Jesus’ early disciples, saw a “great light” which blinded him and threw him off his horse.  A light which transfigured his life, and made him perhaps the most important personage in the Apostolic Age (First Century); a fundamental figure in Old Christianity.

And just as the resurrected Christ had appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, could a resurrected Paul have appeared to Barack Obama, unfolding his eyes to some obvious reality that he’s been prevented from seeing while prisoner of the American Ruling Elite presiding over the White House?

To the eternal optimist some happenings this past week might indicate that the great hoped-for miracle is finally happening; that the humanoid mini-messiah much of the world had hoped for when Obama was first elected to occupy the White House back in 2008 is finally here with a message that can unite people of goodwill throughout the world; a message without political shades, or subterfuge, or deceit; a message with clarity that we can all understand and rally around.

However, that was not the message scripted as the three-day White House conference on violent extremism came to an end on Thursday! Not by a long shot!  Although the conference might have been purposeful and well-intentioned, it did not provide its convener, Mr. Obama, with the right forum; or an appropriate participative audience; or the genuinely required universal support needed to combat and eventually eradicate “violent extremism.”

Cont... 

Epsilon Theory - Salient Partners | Viewing Capital Markets through the Lenses of Game Theory and History

Epsilon Theory - Salient Partners | Viewing Capital Markets through the Lenses of Game Theory and History

February 24. 2015 Ben Hunt

Ace Rothstein:	Four reels, sevens across on three $15,000 jackpots. Do you have any idea what the odds are?
Don Ward:	Shoot, it's gotta be in the millions, maybe more.
Ace Rothstein:	Three effin' jackpots in 20 minutes? Why didn't you pull the machines? Why didn't you call me?
Don Ward:	Well, it happened so quick, 3 guys won; I didn't have a chance ...
Ace Rothstein:	[interrupts] You didn't see the scam? You didn't see what was going on?
Don Ward:	Well, there's no way to determine that ...
Ace Rothstein:	Yes there is! An infallible way, they won!

"Casino" (1995)

There’s only one question that matters in the Golden Age of the Central Banker: why isn’t QE working? Why hasn’t the largest monetary stimulus in the history of man – trillions of dollars of liquidity with trillions more euros and yen to come – sparked a self-sustaining recovery in the global economy?

If you’re a true-believer in modern economic orthodoxy or a central bank apparatchik the answer is simple: something must be getting in the way of our elegant theories of Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP), so if $4 trillion isn’t enough to break through to the Promised Land we better do $4 trillion more. 

If you see the world through the lens of behavioral economics, however, you come to a very different conclusion. Something IS blocking the effectiveness of QE, but that something is human nature.Behavioral economics suggests that a little QE can change human behavior at the margins, but no amount of QE is enough to change human nature at its core.

Cont... 

ClubOrlov: The Amherst Cauldron

ClubOrlov: The Amherst Cauldron: Finishing school for Nazis [This is a guest post by Albert .] We have been fortunate to be outside the United States for these past t...

The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya | Liberty Blitzkrieg

The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya | Liberty Blitzkrieg

Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Feb 23, 2015 at 1:30 pm

In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately after taking power, the rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings, in addition to torturing, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of suspected Qaddafi supporters. The rebels also expelled 30,000 mostly black residents from the town of Tawergha and burned or looted their homes and shops, on the grounds that some of them supposedly had been mercenaries. Six months after the war, Human Rights Watch declared that the abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.”


Cont... 

How Goes the War? | KUNSTLER

How Goes the War? | KUNSTLER

Oh, you didn’t notice that World War Three is underway, actually has been for more than year? Well, that’s because most of it has been taking place in the banking sector, which for most people is just an alternative universe of math. The catch, which many people either miss or don’t care about, is that the math doesn’t add up.

For instance, the runaway choo-choo train of linked European sovereign bond obligations with its overloaded caboose of interest rate swaps and other janky derivatives of mass destruction. That train left the station in Athens a few weeks ago bound for Frankfurt. Ever since, the German government and its cohorts in the EU, the ECB, and the IMF have been issuing reassurances that the choo choo train will not blow up when it reaches its destination.

Few people grok that Greece is an entity with an economy not much bigger than North Carolina’s, yet it is burdened with roughly $350 billion of old debt that will never be paid back. The only thing at issue is how it will not be paid back, that is, what mode of pretense will be employed to disguise the inability to pay back this debt. The mode du jour has been the crude one of lending Greece more money to pay back the interest on the old debt. A seven-year-old ought to be able to understand where that leads.

Cont... 

Interventionism Kills: Post-Coup Ukraine One Year Later « The Burning Platform

Interventionism Kills: Post-Coup Ukraine One Year Later « The Burning Platform

Posted on 23rd February 2015 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

Guest Post by Ron Paul

It was one year ago last weekend that a violent coup overthrew the legally elected government of Ukraine. That coup was not only supported by US and EU governments — much of it was actually planned by them. Looking back at the events that led to the overthrow it is clear that without foreign intervention Ukraine would not be in its current, seemingly hopeless situation.By the end of 2013, Ukraine’s economy was in ruins. The government was desperate for an economic bailout and then-president Yanukovych first looked west to the US and EU before deciding to accept an offer of help from Russia. Residents of south and east Ukraine, who largely speak Russian and trade extensively with Russia were pleased with the decision. West Ukrainians who identify with Poland and Europe began to protest. Ukraine is a deeply divided country and the president came from the eastern region.At this point the conflict was just another chapter in Ukraine’s difficult post-Soviet history. There was bound to be some discontent over the decision, but if there had been no foreign intervention in support of the protests you would likely not be reading this column today. The problem may well have solved itself in due time rather than escalated into a full-out civil war. But the interventionists in the US and EU won out again, and their interventionist project has been a disaster.

Cont... 

War & Petroleum Reserves | philosophyofmetrics

War & Petroleum Reserves | philosophyofmetrics

By JC Collins

In the interest of analytical balance, we would do well to consider the possibility of war strategies when it comes to the global stockpiling of petroleum reserves.  In the years leading up to the German invasion of Poland, the world witnessed dramatic decreases in the price of oil as well as massive increases in petroleum inventories, especially as the Texas fields began to produce.

These shifts in the global oil markets ran parallel to the deflation which had begun in October, 1929, and as such, we can see the same pattern repeating today as oil prices collapse, inventories are growing, and world wide deflation is deepening.

The United States and China are both increasing their Global Strategic Petroleum Reserves, with stockpiling taking place in Cushing, Oklahoma, and in provinces throughout China.  The promoted script is that America is seeking energy independence and China is taking advantage of low oil prices to increase stockpiles, as they are an energy importer.

Cont... 

Why Does Fiat Money Seemingly Work? |

Why Does Fiat Money Seemingly Work? |

February 21, 2015 | Author Pater Tenebrarum

Introducing Money

Imagine three men living on a small island. Toni is mining the local salt mine, and apart from him there are Pete the fisherman and Tom the apple grower and their families. They have a barter trading system set up: Toni exchanges his salt for Pete’s fishes and Tom’s apples, who in turn exchange fishes and apples between each other.

One day Pete says: “I have an idea. Instead of fish, I will from now on give you pieces of papyrus with numbers marked on them”. Papyrus grows in great quantities nearby, but has so far not been of practical use to any of the islanders. Pete continues: “One papyrus mark will represent 1 fish or 5 apples or 2 bags of salt (equivalent to current barter exchange rates). This will make it easier for us to trade among ourselves. We won’t have to lug fishes, apples and salt around all the time. Instead, we can simply present the pieces of papyrus to each other for exchange on demand.”

Cont... 

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Snow (Hey Oh) (Official Music Video)

USGS Confirms Oklahoma Quakes Are Due To Fracking | Zero Hedge

USGS Confirms Oklahoma Quakes Are Due To Fracking | Zero Hedge



Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/21/2015 16:30 -0500

The debate about the cause of the exponential rise in the frequency of earthquakes in Oklahoma has really heated up in the last year, butas KFOR4 reports, The United States Geological Survey (USGS) appears to have put any doubt firmly to rest. In a strongly-worded press release, the USGS states, "...Large areas of the United States that used to experience few or no earthquakes have, in recent years, experienced a remarkable increase in earthquake activity.. This rise in seismic activity, especially in the central United States, is not the result of natural processes... Instead, the increased seismicity is due to fluid injection associated with new technologies that enable the extraction of oil and gas from previously unproductive reservoirs." For some, that could end the debate; but Kim Hatfield, with the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, is not so sure, "I don’t think it’s particularly helpful because basically, it says we’ve come to a conclusion, but we don’t have the science to back it up."

Cont... 

RECOVERY SELFIE « The Burning Platform

RECOVERY SELFIE « The Burning Platform

Posted on 21st February 2015 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

“We are now in the sixth year of The Recovery™.

There really is no recovery for most people, with over half of all public school students in the US now living at the poverty level. One of the great obstacles to the recovery is that the financial elite in the US has absolutely no rational idea of the depths of the problems and issues with which they are dealing. And at the end of the day, they do not care.

They are taking selfies in the mouth of the abyss.”

The Chilling Thing Devon Energy Just Said About the US Oil Glut « The Burning Platform

The Chilling Thing Devon Energy Just Said About the US Oil Glut « The Burning Platform



Posted on 19th February 2015 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

Wolf Richter   www.wolfstreet.com   www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter

The oil-price plunge hit the industry when it was drunk on its own exuberance and awash in money. At the time, over-indebted junk-rated drillers had no trouble borrowing even more to drill more, efficiently or not. Dreadful IPOs flew off the shelf. Misbegotten spin-offs made Wall Street a ton of money. But in July, everything started to go awry. By October, it was clear that the oil-price plunge wasn’t a blip. By November, oil was in free fall.

Soaring production in the US, reaching 9.2 million barrels per day in January, and lackluster demand have caused US inventories to balloon. The “oil glut” was born.

So the industry adjusted by announcing waves of layoffs, whittling down operating costs, renegotiating prices with suppliers, and slashing capital expenditures. The number of rigs actively drilling for oil – a weekly gauge that indicates what’s going on in the oil field – has plummeted by 553 rigs, or 34%, since the peak in October. Never before has it plummeted this fast this far [The Fracking Bust Hits Home].

The crashing rig count was supposed to curtail production, and lower production would bring supply and demand into balance and allow the price of oil to recover. But the opposite is happening. And Devon Energy Corp. just told us why.

Cont.... 

The Archdruid Report: What Progress Means

The Archdruid Report: What Progress Means: Last week’s post here on The Archdruid Report appears to have hit a nerve. That didn’t come as any sort of a surprise, admittedly.   It’s ...

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Catastrophic Costs of Extend-and-Pretend Are About to Crush Europe

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Catastrophic Costs of Extend-and-Pretend Are About to Crush Europe

Like a star which has expanded and now cannot maintain its grand state, Europe's extend-and-pretend economy is now poised to experience a supernova implosion.

The costs of ill-conceived policies are always paid by someone--usually those with the least political power. In ill-conceived wars, the costs are paid by the soldiers on the ground and their families, and the civilians who suffer collateral damage.

The costs of ill-conceived financial policies end up being paid by taxpayers, savers, borrowers and those who lose their jobs in the inevitable bust. Those who conjured up the disastrous policies slink away to plush villas or defend their stubborn addiction to failed ideologies in the media (see Keynesian Cargo Cult and Paul Krugman).

The most ill-conceived financial policy of all is extend-and-pretend: extend-and-pretend means if a debtor is bankrupt, then extend him more loans to maintain the illusion of solvency.

Here's how extend-and-pretend works in the real world:

-- If a homebuyer has defaulted, give him new loans, or shift his loan off the books into zombie mortgage status.

-- If a student defaults on student loans, shift the loans into forbearance, i.e. mask the default by putting the defaulted debt into zombie mode.

-- If a bank is insolvent, give it unlimited access to unlimited lines of central bank credit and lower interest rates to zero so the bank doesn't have to pay interest on deposits.

-- If a nation is bankrupt, extend it new loans.

Cont...