Chuck Missler: Genetically Modified food

Are Millions Of Americans Preparing For Doomsday?

All over America, there are millions of Americans that are quietly preparing for doomsday.  They are turning spare rooms into long-term food storage pantries, they are planting survival gardens, they are converting their homes over to alternative sources of energy, they are taking self-defense courses and they are stocking up on just about anything you can imagine.  They are called "preppers", and their numbers have absolutely exploded in recent years.  In fact, you might be living next door to one and never even realize it.  According to a recent Daily Mail article, there are approximately 3 million preppers in the United States today.  Others believe that the true number is significantly higher than that.  This movement has become so popular that there are now even television shows being done about preppers.  The most popular is probably "Doomsday Preppers" on the National Geographic Channel.  This movement is still growing and is not going to go away any time soon.  In fact, as the world continues to become even more unstable it is likely that a lot more Americans will find themselves becoming preppers in the years ahead.

So what exactly are all these people so concerned about?  Exactly why are there millions of Americans that are feverishly preparing for doomsday?

Well, the truth is that you will never find two preppers that are exactly alike.  Some are deeply concerned about the potential for natural disasters and believe that we are now entering into a time when there will be catastrophic earth changes.  Other preppers believe that terrorism is the most significant threat to our way of life.  Killer pandemics, an EMP attack, World War III, martial law, solar megastorms, asteroid strikes and societal chaos are some of the other things that some preppers are worried about.

Of course an economic collapse is one of the biggest concerns for preppers, and without a doubt the U.S. economy is deeply troubled.  A collapse of the financial system would change all of our lives permanently.

But it isn't just preppers that are concerned about these things.

A recent survey conducted by National Geographic asked Americans the following question....

"Which of the following, if any, do you think might happen in the United States in the next 25 years? Please choose all that apply."

These were the results....

Significant Earthquake 64%
Significant Hurricane 63%
Terrorist Attack 55%
Financial Collapse 51%
Significant Blackout 37%
Pandemic, Such as From a Super-Virus 29%
Nuclear Fallout 14%
None of These 13%

Obviously there are a whole lot of people out there that feel as though we are heading for some really bad stuff.

So if hard times are coming, why not prepare for them?

After all, none of us want to end up like the poor people of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Large numbers of people were herded into the Superdome and food and water ran out really fast.  There was rampant looting of stores and people were shooting each other in the streets.  It was mass chaos.

The following is what one Australian blogger experienced while staying in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina....

Last night was horrendous. I heard shouting, and drinks machines being smashed. There’s no sanitation and it’s so smelly. My hair is greasy and I feel a wreck. There are crack alleys among the maze of corridors. The lights are broken in the loos which, as well as being disgusting, have become dangerous, so we now only go as a big group.

More people are arriving, and the dome is like a refugee camp. I see two soldiers carrying a corpse and we hear there are more dead in the basement.

As an article in the New York Times from that time period detailed, food and water were in very short supply and those cramped into the Superdome were rapidly becoming impatient....

Desperation was in the air. Danielle Shelby tugged at a reporter's arm. "I have a handicapped daughter," she said. "She's over there with her wheelchair. She's hot. We don't have any water. I'm afraid she's going to have a seizure."

Others crowded around. "I've been in the food line twice, and every time I get to the front they tell me they don't have any left," said Juanita McFerrin, 80.

Later on in that same article, we are told that there were fights, rapes and at least one suicide in the Superdome during that time....

It got worse. Ms. Rousell recalled hearing a loud bang Tuesday afternoon as the body of a man slapped the concrete at the edge of the football field in a fatal suicidal plunge, after he apparently learned that his home had been destroyed. Others told of fights that broke out in food lines, and of a husband and wife who slugged each other in a wild argument.

Several residents said they had heard of children being raped, though it was not clear whether anyone reported such incidents to the authorities, and no officials could be found who could confirm the accounts.

To get an even better idea of what life in New Orleans was like in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, just check out this video.

Within just a few days food, water and supplies started pouring into New Orleans and things started slowly getting back to normal, but imagine what things would look like in this country if we had to deal with a national disaster that stretched on for months or even years?

Many preppers are not taking any chances.  Many are absolutely determined to be able to take care of their families and friends no matter what the years ahead may bring.

ABC News recently profiled one prepper named Tim Ralston....

Tim Ralston, a married father of two from Arizona, is one such "prepper."

"There's a lot of different things that could happen," Ralston said. "For me, I look at prepping as kind of like insurance. You have car insurance, health insurance, life insurance."

Call it Apocalypse insurance. Ralston turned his family's two-car garage into a staging area. Inside is a trailer, which he keeps packed and ready to go at all times, stockpiles of freeze-dried food, including cartons of canned chicken with a shelf life of 15 years, survival gear, such as a system for purifying polluted water, first aid kits and lots of weapons and ammunition. His son has his own AK-47.

Some preppers are going to the extreme and are spending huge amounts of money on their prepping.

CNN recently profiled one Australian prepper that has spent about $350,000preparing for doomsday....

Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that's a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his "safe spot" in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000.

He's also spent $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.

But the truth is that prepping does not have to be expensive.

The key is to start by focusing on the five basics....

1) Food

2) Water

3) Shelter

4) Energy

5) Self-Defense

There are some practical things that just about anyone can do even if you don't have a lot of money.

For example, when you go to the store try to pick up a few extra items that are on sale and add them to your supplies.  If you rotate your food supplies, they won't go bad.

In addition, just about anyone can plant a garden.  Often fruits and vegetables are some of the most expensive items at the grocery store, and so growing a garden can end up saving you a lot of money.

Get educated.  There are dozens of prepper websites out there where you can get an education in prepping for free.  The following are a few examples of some of the excellent prepper websites that are out there today....

*Survival Blog

*American Preppers Network

*The Survival Mom

*SHTFPlan.com

*Prepper Website

*Survival 4 Christians

*Backdoor Survival

*Off Grid Survival

The truth is that our world is becoming increasingly unstable in a whole bunch of different ways and we all need to learn how to prepare for the difficult years ahead.

As the economy continues to fall apart, America is going to become a veryheartless place.  You don't want to be caught in the middle of societal chaos without a plan.

None of us should be relying on the government to save us when things hit the fan.  We all saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina.  Those that were depending on the government were deeply disappointed.

We should all try to become as independent of the system as we can, because the system is failing.  In the years ahead there might not be anybody to help you and your family, so you need to be working hard right now to ensure that you and your family will be taken care of.

Yes, as you may have guessed by now, I am a prepper too.  My wife and I moved to an entirely different state and totally changed our lifestyle to prepare for what is coming.

Hopefully this article will inspire many more Americans to prepare for what is coming.  A great economic collapse is on the horizon and time is rapidly running out.

Ex-Goldman On How A "Toxic And Destructive" Goldman "Rips Its Clients Off"

Stop us when this confession from Greg Smith, a now former executive director and head of the Goldman's United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, sounds exactly like everything we have said about the firm over the past 3+ years (and why we just can't wait for the next trading "recommendation" from Tom Stolper).

Excerpts from the NYT. Highlights ours.

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money;this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

...

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

...

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

....

And so on - the picture is more or less clear to anyone who has read our endless rants against the tentacular financial monopolist of scale. Also, maybe it is time for all those media "critics" to offer an apology to Matt Taibbi?

While this comes nowehere close to redeeming the massive ills the firms and its peers have inflicted upon society, this kind of self-reflection is critical, not only at Goldman, but everywhere else, if the world has some chance of stopping before it slides right over the edge.

We leave readers with some appropriate sketches on this now closed matter courtesy of the inhouse artistic genius, William Banzai.

Zero Hedge

Forget 'economic spring' - Greek outlook is stormy

A couple of weeks ago, I sat on the speakers' podium during the opening panel of the Euromoney Bond Investors' Congress in London. Together with leading industry experts, including senior ratings agencies' officials, we engaged in a detailed discussion of the contentious aspects of the Greek debt debacle and the fate of the eurozone.

The audience was "top drawer; the room packed with 500 of the world's biggest bond market participants; the combined assets under management measured in the trillions of dollars.

"Who thinks the upcoming Greek bail-out will be the last, drawing a line under the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis?" asked the senior Euromoney staffer chairing the panel. "Put your hands up".

Delivered with a serious demeanour, this was exactly the right question. So deadly was the inquiry, and so germane, that the mood in the room grew uneasy, barely camouflaged by an outbreak of coughing. Scanning this ultra-influential audience, I saw rows of delegates cowed, keeping their eyes locked forwards but staring down slightly, not daring to look elsewhere.

Not a single hand was raised. Not a single hand among hundreds of the world's leading bond market practitioners was stirred to support a debt swap now presented as the key to the world economy shaking off the post sub-prime torpor and taking us into the sun-lit uplands of sustainable global growth.

On Friday, Greece pressed ahead with the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history. By "securing adequate participation" from the private sector, Athens avoided a big, disorderly default in late March. Holders of €172bn (£143bn) of the €206bn of eligible bonds agreed to take part in the write-down, or 83.5pc. Participation has since risen to 95.7pc after the Greek government triggered retrospective "collective action clauses", forcing objecting investors to play ball.

This deal was "voluntary", in the words of one market wag, "in the same way confessions were voluntary during the Spanish Inquisition". In other words, unless this deal was agreed, bond-holders faced ending-up with nothing at all. Under the current terms, investors swap their bonds for new ones worth 53.5pc less and with easier repayment terms for Greece.

In the aftermath of Friday's deal, French President Nicolas Sarkozy remarked "how happy I am that a solution to the Greek crisis, which has weighed on the economic and financial situation in Europe and the world for months, has been found. Today the problem is solved".

Christine Lagarde, International Monetary Fund supremo and Sarkozy's former Finance Minister observed that "economic spring is in the air".

While this debt swap was obviously important, there is still a very real danger of Greece needing yet another bail-out quite soon and eventually leaving the euro – probably of its own volition or, if not, under pressure from Germany, Finland and the other eurozone "nominally solvents".

In May 2010, a €110bn EU/IMF package proved inadequate to contain the spiralling Greek debt problem. This new bail-out, of around €170bn, is also unlikely to be the end of this saga.

For now, Friday's "deal" paves the way for further payments of official aid to Greece, to be formally agreed on Monday. That will allow Athens to meet its obligations under a bond redemption later this month. But there are still two serious and wide-ranging sets of problems not captured in the Sarkozy-Lagarde analysis.

The first concerns economics. This debt write-down, together with continued adherence to a brutal austerity program, is supposed to slash €100bn from Athens' €350bn outstanding sovereign debt pile, moving the Greek government away from its current 160pc debt-to-GDP ratio and reaching its EU-mandated ratio of 120pc by 2020.

That's all very well on paper yet, under the cover of Friday's announcement, the Greek national statistical authority said that the recession during the last quarter of 2011 was deeper than initially forecast, amounting to a staggering 7.5pc GDP drop. The Greek economy will likely shrink for a fifth straight year in 2012, stagnate in 2013, modestly expand only the year after. Even this grim trajectory assumes a relatively steady and robust global economic recovery.

If Greece meets all the economic conditions demanded of it over the coming years then, under the terms of this latest deal, it is guaranteed aid, ensuring its debt financing needs until the end of 2014.

Yet Greek adherence is a heroic assumption. The country's business and consumer sentiment are on the floor. Private sector credit is extremely scarce, which can only add to the economic malaise. Unemployment is meanwhile soaring, pushing 20pc, with around half of young Greeks out of work.

In a bid to make their numbers add up, the "troika" of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission has allowed itself to inhabit a parallel universe where Greece is "almost" out of recession. When that is proved to be wrong, as it will, the Greek debt predicament will turn out to be much worse than anticipated.

These economic realities suggest the political backdrop to this debt-swap is also likely to deteriorate.

Please don't shoot the messenger – I am simply conveying what strikes me as basic common sense. Greek elections are due in April or May. No agreement has been secured from opposition politicians that they won't attempt to renegotiate the terms of the "austerity program". That could obviously lead to the funding package being withdrawn. As the screw turns, and the Greek economy remains locked in stagnation, the potential for ever more serious social unrest will obviously escalate. Very real questions could be asked, surely, about the future of Greek democracy.

Then we must consider the political realities across the rest of the eurozone, too. Last week's debt swap, for all the rhetoric about "hammering" the private sector, effectively shifts the bulk of Greece's remaining sovereign debt into public hands - namely taxpayers in the eurozone and IMF members contributing to the bail-out. Try as it might, the "troika" has been unable to generate quite enough economic fog to prevent that fundamental truth becoming widely known among the broader European electorate. That's why, leading backers of this desperate effort to maintain the euro in its current form could find their support politically impossible to sustain.

Sarkozy, for instance, is in line to win 27pc of the vote in the first round of the French election on 22nd April, according to the latest polls, just 2 percentage points behind Francois Hollande. In a straight second-round battle between these two front-runners, though, Sarkozy is seriously lagging, polling just 45pc, compared with Hollande's 55pc. Hollande, of course, is far from committed to further support for Greece. That, in fact, is one of his major pitches to the French electorate. So the possibility of a Hollande victory, and an unravelling of this package, simply cannot be ignored.

The on-going support of Germany too, funding the lion's share of the deal, cannot be taken for granted. Last week saw the outbreak of open diplomatic warfare between Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann and ECB boss Mario Draghi over the multi-trillion euro expansion of the central bank's balance sheet – in other words, "eurozone QE".

Within a few years, if we get that far, Draghi and Weidmann will need to agree how to roll-over the ECB's so-called long-term refinancing operations. And continued high yields on Portuguese sovereign debt suggest bondholders don't trust bigger eurozone economies not to follow the Greeks towards default.

Far from being the end of this eurozone debt crisis, or even the beginning of the end, Friday's debt-swap was probably just the end of the beginning.




The Telegraph

The Giant, Underestimated Earthquake Threat to North America

Just over one year ago, a magnitude-9 earthquake hit the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan, triggering one of the most destructive tsunamis in a thousand years. The Japanese—the most earthquake-prepared, seismically savvy people on the planet—were caught off-guard by the Tohoku quake’s savage power. Over 15,000 people died.

Now scientists are calling attention to a dangerous area on the opposite side of the Ring of Fire, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a fault that runs parallel to the Pacific coast of North America, from northern California to Vancouver Island. This tectonic time bomb is alarmingly similar to Tohoku, capable of generating a megathrust earthquake at or above magnitude 9, and about as close to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver as the Tohoku fault is to Japan’s coast. Decades of geological sleuthing recently established that although it appears quiet, this fault has ripped open again and again, sending vast earthquakes throughout the Pacific Northwest and tsunamis that reach across the Pacific.

What happened in Japan will probably happen in North America. The big question is when.

On a foggy spring morning just before sunrise, 27 miles northwest of Cape Mendocino, California, a pimple of rock roughly a dozen miles below the ocean floor finally reaches its breaking point. Two slabs of the Earth’s crust begin to slip and shudder and snap apart.

The first jolt of stress coming out of the rocks sends a shock wave hurtling into Northern California and southern Oregon like a thunderbolt. For a few stunned drivers on the back roads in the predawn gloom, the pulse of energy that tears through the ground looks dimly like a 20-mile wrinkle moving through a carpet of pastures and into thick stands of redwoods.

Telephone poles whip back and forth as if caught in a hurricane. Power lines rip loose in a shower of blue and yellow sparks, falling to the ground where they writhe like snakes, snapping and biting. Lights go out and the telephone system goes down.

Cornices fall, brick walls crack, plate glass shatters. Pavement buckles, cars and trucks veer into ditches and into each other. A bridge across the Eel River is jerked off its foundations, taking a busload of farm workers with it. With computers crashing and cell towers dropping offline, all of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties in California are instantly cut off from the outside world, so nobody beyond the immediate area knows how bad it is here or how widespread the damage.

At the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) lab in Menlo Park, seismometers peg the quake at magnitude 8.1, and the tsunami detection centers in Alaska and Hawaii begin waking up the alarm system with standby alerts all around the Pacific Rim. Early morning commuters emerging from a BART station in San Francisco feel the ground sway beneath their feet and immediately hit the sidewalk in a variety of awkward crouches, a familiar fear chilling their guts.

Then another little rough spot on the bottom of the continent snaps off.

The fault unzips some more.

The outer edge of California snaps free like a steel spring in a juddering lurch—nine feet to the west. The continental shelf heaves upward, lifting a mountain of seawater.

The fault continues to rip all the way to Newport, Oregon, halfway up the state. The magnitude suddenly jumps to 8.6. A power surge blows a breaker somewhere east of town and feeds back through the system, throwing other breakers in a cascade that quickly crashes the entire grid in Oregon, Washington, and parts of California, Idaho, and Nevada. A brownout begins in six more western states. The wire line phone systems crash in lockstep.

Then another fragment of rock deep underneath Newport shears away. The fault unzips the rest of the way to Vancouver Island. The quake now pins seismic needles at magnitude 9.2. High-rise towers in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria begin to undulate. The shock wave hammers through sandy soil, soft rock, and landfill like the deepest notes on a big string bass. The mushy ground sings harmony and tall buildings hum like so many tuning forks.

On I-5, the main north-south interstate highway, 37 bridges between Sacramento and Bellingham, Washington, collapse or are knocked off their pins. Five more go down between the Canada–United States border and downtown Vancouver. Nineteen railway bridges along the north-south coastal mainline of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway are wrecked as well. The runways of every major coastal airport from Northern California to Vancouver are buckled, cracked, and no longer flyable.

After 50 cycles of harmonic vibration—skyscrapers swaying rhythmically from side to side in giddy wobbles—dozens of tall buildings have shed most of their glass. In some downtown intersections the cascade of broken shards has piled up three feet deep.

Shock waves have been pummeling the Pacific Northwest for four minutes and thirty-five seconds now, and it still isn’t over. After 64 cycles, enough welds have cracked, enough concrete has spalled, enough shear walls have come unstuck that some towers begin to pancake. The same death spiral everyone saw in New York on 9/11 happens all over again. Smaller buildings, but more of them. Dozens of towers go down in the four northernmost of the affected cities.

In the five major urban areas along the fault, tens of thousands of people have been seriously injured. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are dead. More than a third of the oncoming shift of police, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, and doctors do not show up for work. They are either stranded by collapsed buildings, bridges, and roadways, injured or dead themselves, or have decided to stick close to home to make sure their own families are OK before going to work. People who survive the collapses must do their own search and rescue for family members, friends, and neighbors still trapped in the rubble. Help will come eventually, but who knows when?

People in the United States and Canada, if they think at all about earthquake disasters, probably conjure up the San Andreas fault in the worst-case scenario. In California, as they wait for “the Big One,” people wonder which city the San Andreas will wreck next—San Francisco or Los Angeles? But if by the Big One they mean the earthquake that will wreak havoc over the widest geographic area, that could destroy the most critical infrastructure, that could send a train of tsunamis across the Pacific causing economic mayhem that would probably last a decade or more—then the seismic demon to blame could not possibly be the San Andreas. It would have to be Cascadia’s fault.

One year after Japan’s devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, scientists are still trying to figure out how the world’s most organized and earthquake-ready nation could have been taken so much by surprise. They were hit by an earthquake roughly 
25 times more powerful than experts thought 
possible in that part of the country. How could the forecast have been so wrong? The short answer is they didn’t look far enough back in geologic time to see that quakes and tsunamis just this big had indeed occurred there before. If they had prepared themselves for a much larger quake and wave, the outcome might have been entirely different.


Discover Magazine

Russia: we're happy to sell arms to Assad

Russia insisted yesterday that it would not halt arms shipments to Syria even as evidence mounts that the regime is committing crimes against humanity, with a rights group today releasing a sickening dossier of the torture inflicted on those who oppose President Bashar al-Assad.


The comments by Russia's Deputy Defence Minister, Anatoly Antonov, that existing contracts will be adhered to despite reports of up to 8,000 dead, come as activists prepare to mark a grim year since their call for reform descended into bloodshed. Mr Assad's tanks continued to roll into dissident areas, with the army reported to have recaptured the rebel stronghold of Idlib near the Turkish border, until now held by army defectors fighting for the Free Syrian Army. Activists said dozens of people had been killed in the assault, their bodies dumped in local mosques.

The tens of thousands trying to flee the country face the added danger of landmines that Human Rights Watch says have been laid along Syria's borders with Turkey and Lebanon.

Carroll Bogert, a deputy executive director of the New York-based watchdog, told The Independent that these mines were Russian-made.

Despite this growing evidence that the arms it sells the regime are being used against civilians, Russia remains defiant. "Russia enjoys good and strong military technical co-operation with Syria, and we see no reason today to reconsider it," Mr Antonov said yesterday. "Russian-Syrian military co-operation is perfectly legitimate," he added. Mr Antonov admitted that Russia has military instructors on the ground in Syria training the Syrian army.

"It's part of our contractual obligations," said the minister. "When we supply weapons, we have to provide training." He denied that Russia had sent special forces to assist in military planning.

Russia has vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on Mr Assad to withdraw tanks from cities and cede power to a deputy.

Russian's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, reiterated the Kremlin's position that any call to end violence needs to encompass the armed opposition as well as the Syrian government, and said that regime troops will not withdraw from their positions until the rebel forces first lay down their arms.

Moscow insists that its arms trade with Damascus does not contradict international law. The European Union, United States and some Arab countries have enforced economic sanctions against Syria, but Russia is not party to any of them. The links between the two countries go back decades. Russia maintains its only naval base outside the former Soviet Union at Tartus in Syria.

A Western diplomat said Russia's business interests in Syria were a huge factor in its foreign policy, and said the Kremlin's determination to continue arms sales went against recent comments that it was dedicated to finding a political solution.

"If Russia genuinely wants a solution to the crisis in Syria, why is it providing arms and refusing to put pressure on the Assad regime?" the diplomat asked.

An Amnesty International report released today details 31 separate methods of torture used on people during the uprising.


The Independent

Handicapping the Collapse...worth to read

Scattered diverse and almost uniformly unfavorable and dangerous events are unfolding, as the global economy and financial structure undergoes the equivalent of endless earthquakes and bombardment of solar emissions. Reporting is difficult, since information is distorted toward the sunny side. Events are moving fast, as quickly as the danger level is rising. As conditions worsen, the hype and spin has risen almost out of control. The political machine, tied at the hip to the banking apparatus, has ramped up the growth story even as the strain on the information spin has become more visible and subject to heavy criticism. A re-election year is always fraught with risk of unmasked falsehoods making headlines. For some reason the Mayans have been lifted in prominence despite their cultural vanishing act. Like calling the dodo bird the epitome of future evolution in the aviary world of ornithology. The Jackass prefers the eagle, hawk, and falcon. Nonetheless, the list of acts on stage is replete with stories of collapse. A review is useful. Keep in mind that whatever happens to Greece will serve as vivid preview of what is to come in Italy, Spain, and perhaps France. Much more ruin comes. Witness the great unraveling. The only winners will be tangibles, like gold, silver, crude oil, and farmland.

Greek Tragedy Turns Into Con Game Farce

Notice the debt solution to the debt problem handed to Greece, shoved down their throats. More specifically, observe the austerity budget requirements that assure economic deterioration. No exception has been offered, yet the same prescription is applied that results in job cuts, project termination, and greater deficits. Observe the bond swaps of new faulty bonds for old impaired ruined bonds. No solution there. Observe the strongarm methods of powerful coercion to enable the bond holders a cooperative role in the process. Observe the asset grabs and seizures tied to collateral in previous debt agreements. Observe the vacuum effect of money fleeing the Greek banking system. Observe the profound economic recession, far worse than reported. Observe the chaos in the streets, as the people are angry that decisions are made without their participation, acknowledgement, or approval. As the Greek debt default continues down the road, with delays and distortions to its view, the only assurance is the end point. The banks resist a liquidation or exit from the Euro currency, since it would spell sudden death failure for many large European banks. The nation must exit the Euro currency in order to write down its debt more effectively (rather than trade it), in order to be in a position to devalue it for a true stimulus, in order for a fresh start out from under the banker thumb. Let's watch the details of the Credit Default Swap, whether a default event is ordered. Be sure to know that the claimed $3.2 billion in net CDS payouts is a grand lie. If $200 billion is offset by $196.8 billion between Group A versus Group B (guessed hypothetical numbers), then know clearly that Group A is deader than dead, while Group B will never by paid by the dead counter-party. The CDS sham reveals mutually dead financial entities, not offsetting calculus.

Physical Gold Drainage Backfire

Amazing what can be done when 22 million paper gold ounces is dropped on the market on a single day, the Leap Year Day of all days. Witness the leap downward in paper gold price and perceived market integrity. No need for an honest market. The CFTC remains asleep at the wheel, or with eyes firmly fixed on their master clubhouse on Wall Street, the chain tugged hard. The end result, as described by the notorious London Trader on King World News, is that a magnificent amount of physical gold is leaving the COMEX and LBMA.The United States remains transfixed on the paper gold price. The real action lies in the physical London gold market, where Asians are fast draining the London gold supply. Once again, a powerful dichotomy exists. The Boyz can control the paper gold price, but they are therefore gifting the Asian buyers with a hefty discount that results in truckloads of gold bullion rolling out the ramps in delivery. As desperation rises to ambush with naked gold sales devoid of metal, enabled by USGovt and UKGovt watchful eyes, the gold inventory is fast vanishing. The divergence will continue to play out, as the paper gold price might decline but the physical gold price will rise. The COMEX will become an irrelevant arena empty of inventory, even as London rots hollow. The gold price on the real physical honest side must continue upward, since supply is fast doing a vanishing act. It is going from West to East and will not return in our generation, along with true power. The recent episode of vast paper gold sales without benefit of collateral metal cannot keep the gold price down. It is recovering. The rally to $2000 was not permitted. The event has merely marked the road with a support level. Nothing can keep gold down, nothing. It is real money in an era when paper masquerading as money is being revealed for its faulty makeup, subject to acid drips.

$ Trillion USGovt Deficit Locks 0% Rate

Few analyst seem to report a basic factor. The USGovt cannot afford a higher rate on borrowing costs than 0%, not now and not ever. So it will become permanent. This is the New Normal with ugly warts. There can be no Exit Strategy, since the government finances dictate no change. A normal borrowing cost would mean the debt finance cost would rival the defense budget in cost, and overshadow the Medicare cost. The USGovt deficit thus locks the 0% rate and puts the USFed in a monetary straitjacket. They refuse to discuss it, but instead wiggle around with feeble explanations of its continued policy. Notice the extension into 2014 of the accomodative 0% rate. What a farce! What a tragedy! What a pathetic excuse of a central bank! A vicious cycle is underway where the gargantuan federal deficits require continued 0% costs to finance them, but the 0% cost of money has its own heavy effect and damaging toll. The biggest insurance policy to the gold bull market is the USGovt and its runaway deficits.

Destructive Damage of 0% Money

The Jackass message has been steady and relentless. The 0% cost of money makes for a grotesque distortion in asset prices, all of them. Nothing is properly priced. The free money results in rising cost of everything rising. All categories rise inexorably within the cost structure. Wages do not, thanks to the forfeit of industry to Asia, in particular to China. So the squeeze on capital continues unabated and with ferocity. Capital is killed. By that is meant that marginal businesses and segments of business units within larger corporations will gradually respond to higher costs (equipment, materials, fuel, shipping) by closing the businesses. Workers are cut, but more importantly capital is retired, equipment is turned off, and capital is liquidated. A truck or machine or computer or telephone system might be sold off. The rising costs and more rigid final product prices dictate business shutdowns, since the profit margin is squeezed, then goes negative, forcing business decisions. The destructive effect on working capital from 0% money remains the singlemost blind spot of American and Western economists. They call it stimulative, when it is the exact opposite. They are badly educated. They are compromised by their paychecks. They are dead wrong, blind to the death of capital beneath their arrogant noses. Gold will benefit from the free money provisions, and head north of the $2000 price with ease. Gold will serve as capital sanctuary under attack.

Heavy Reliance on Monetary Inflation

As foreign continue to shed USTreasury Bonds, the USGovt is left with a growing and near total dependence creditors upon the US Federal Reserve to purchase its debt. It has no choice but to rely upon the inflation machinery apparatus to buy the USTBonds. Few bond dealers wish to continue, but their hope is not to be stuck with inventory, should the USFed stop buying. The dealers are acting as middlemen and nothing more. China continues to unload USTBonds, the latest month showing more of the same recent pattern. As Valery Giscard d'Estaing called it, the US benefits from the "Exhorbitant Privilege" of abusing the global reserve currency to finance its own debt in an unaccountable manner. Worse, the United States though the powerful forces of the Competing Currency War, has forced all major central banks to participate in the heretical 0% money policy. Nations that opt not to play the game will suffer from a rising currency exchange rate and damaged export industry.The major central banks are collusive in their policy, the effect being a Western world capital destruction slow burn. See the Global QE as it involves the US, Britain, Europe, and Japan not only in setting interest rates absurdly low, but in vast bond purchases wrapped in monetization schemes. Once upon a time 20 to 30 years ago, such schemes were called highly destructive and extremely unwise. Today they are normal tools. Gold will benefit from such powerful monetary inflation and debasement of money itself.

Collapse of Sovereign Debt Foundation

The con game is impressive. They call debt money. The entire foundation of the current monetary system is a complex array of paper currencies backed by sovereign debt. The problem for its managers is that the sovereign debt is crumbling. The degradation process began in late 2009 when Greece showed its first visible wide cracks in the debt facade. The preliminary event was the Dubai debt breakdown; call it the fuse. So the financial press, banking leaders, and political marionettes insist on calling this chapter a global financial crisis. It is more like a global monetary system collapse, if truth be told. But in today's age the truth is a dangerous commodity, kept down in value by a cooperative subservient press, devoted fully to the syndicate and its dark motives. Holding like pillars the debt-based monetary system are the major banks. Their profound insolvency serves as proof positive of the broken structures of the monetary system itself. This is so plain to see. A mere FASB paper mache glued onto a rotten pillar does not permit it to bear weight. The legitimate matter behind the pillars is surely being siphoned as mass to other locations, while the farce of patch solutions continues with each passing month. The inescapable fact is that the world requires a new monetary system. To put it into place requires the liquidation of the old banks and sovereign bonds, which would mean making paupers and vassals out of the elite masters. So the game goes on.

U.S. Economy Moribund Without Income

The concept of a jobless recovery is a bad joke. Such a concept does not appear in economics textbooks or its legitimate lexicon. The expectation of recovery without vast income machinery is a fantasy. The decision to ship US industry to Asia in the 1980 decade saw a climax in the 2000 decade with the advent of China. In doing so, the USEconomy lost its legitimate income sources and turned to inflating assets to power the national economy. It was the singlemost destructive trend in modern United States history on a financial basis. Income was replaced by debt, and the rest is history, where economists should be forced to inscribe the epitaphs. Stimulus programs at the USGovt level are mere plugs for state deficits. Infrastructure projects turn out to be funnels for Chinese contracts. As Kurt Richebacher told me in August 2003, as best recalled, "A nation that lacks industry is doomed, as it must at least dominate in transportation and steel, but the United States does not anymore." The financial press and banking leaders curiously serve up endless nonsense in viewpoints, that the US consumer is the engine. It is not. The engine is industry, and the USEconomy sorely lacks it. Unless and until the USEconomy brings back industry, factories, and all the supply chain encoutrements, the nation will remain moribund and without adequate income. The latest data, the December trade gap, shows a record setting $52.5 billion monthly deficit. This is not an economy in recovery. The rising energy prices are yet another crippling factor. A loud echo can be heard in Japan, where the nation is shocked by the reality of steady trade deficits, never seen in recent history. The power structure is to be turned on its head.

Housing Market Ruined

As China took a giant bite out of the US industrial sector, the world gave acclaim. Cheap stuff appears a good thing until the reality of lost income hits. The lower costs forced the US housing & mortgage bubbles toward their heights. The dependence by the USEconomy upon the housing & mortgage sectors became acute. The broken asset bubbles of homes and linked bonds spelled ruin for the USEconomy. A vicious cycle has developed, that even ultra-low mortgage rates cannot solve. The banks are becoming prominent owners of vast home inventory. They cannot dump their inventory. The big Fannie Mae presence is very much in play, a sign of corruption dominating since the agency covers up the mortgage bond fraud that reaches into $trillions. Each year, clownish voices proclaim a turnaround in the important housing sector. Each year the home prices go lower, precisely as the Jackass has forecasted. Imagine a nation so stupid as to depend not on industry and factories for legitimate income in value added enterprise, but instead on rising prices of home and property assets. Incredible! The next shoe soon to drop is the commercial sector finally, which has been protected and carried along for over three years. The dumping process has already begun. More bank balance sheet damage is to come. Neither the housing market can be liquidated, nor the bank sector can be liquidated, tied at the hip. The economy that depends upon both is surely halfway to the morgue. The collapse in progress should result in a different power structure.

Big Bank Liability Deals

The parade of legal deals to limit the vast bank liability is a travesty to watch. Any reasonable analysis puts the liability risk at $2 trillion or more. Yet the cap on managed risk will be set at a mere $25 billion in widespread alleged mortgage fraud abuse. Each deal that comes up has the final figure a mere fraction of the true fraud. That makes for a favorable bank outcome. It reminds one of the Wachovia money laundering deal struck in 2009, no guilt admitted, the case kicked under the rug. The big bank was caught with hundreds of $billions in laundered funds from the Mexican drug cartel. The ultimate fine turned out to be about 0.03 of one penny per dollar laundered. The cost of the mortgage fraud and bond fraud abuse will be similar, much less than 1% of the amount involved. The goal is not only to limit liability, but to move on to new structural arrangements that erase the past bond fraud. A new contract over-writes the old in a merger of contracts, technically speaking. What the big banks cannot shovel into the Fannie Mae outhouse under USGovt aegis, they will protect with ring fences built from court settlements that are vastly out of proportion to the crimes involved. Nothing new here.

Goldman Sachs Revealed

The GSax brand is being tarnished. To be sure, they remain a fixture in the USGovt finance ministry. Its diminutive leader Geithner makes absurd moronic pronouncements from time to time. A couple weeks ago, he claimed the crude oil price was rising from a strong USEconomy and its growth path. Nevermind the war drums over Iran. Nevermind the vast USFed monetary printing project. Nevermind the anti-US$ movement within the oil world. Geithner more recently proclaimed that more commonly seen Chinese Yuan bond issuance and loan grants would have a muted effect on the USDollar. He lives in a fantasy world indeed. In 2008, an important event occurred when a Russian fellow escaped with a proprietary GSax unix box complete with software, which enabled insider trading that peeked at the order flow. The FBI covered it up quickly and dutifully, in true Fascist Business Model fashion. But GSax has taken major blows. They have been caught concealing the Greek Govt debt condition, as it entered the Euro Monetary Union over ten years ago. Widespread investigations are ongoing within Europe, and the venerable firm cannot solicit protective help on the continent. Matt Taibbi would be pleased. The most recent case close to home involved Overstock.com, which was preyed upon by Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, as the Wall Street firms engaged in naked shorting of its stock. But isn't Wall Street exempt from naked shorting statutes on the legal books? The court decision made the case known to the public, more details to come. A wise veteran once shared that to become a GSax vice president, one major fraud must reside on the professional resume, which was not prosecuted. He was not joking. It is a criminal enterprise. The Greek bond situation might still result in tremendous GSax loss if not censure. Let's see if the GSax preppy Monti remains in unelected office in Italy.

End of Equilibrium Market Forces

Even USFed members notice that financial markets are being rigged. The phenomenon is obvious to anyone with an above average financial IQ. To point a finger at regular 10am and 3pm stock market recoveries should include a mention of the Working Group for Financial Market. It never does in the media reports. The USEconomy is stuck in the worst and most destructive recession in modern history, yet PE ratios remain robust. The bond market is the toy of the USFed itself, propped by $trillions in purchases. The USFed purchases at least 75% to 80% of all USTreasury offerings. The Operation Twist has been stripped of its fig leafs. The Dollar Swap Facilities are mere QE programs with a beard. The fact that the bond market has few if any buyers should be the main story. Sadly, the USGovt requires a weak economy in order to create more bond demand. Another vicious cycle is at work. The market mavens tend to cheer for interventions, even though the integrity of the markets themselves is fast draining into the sewer pipes. The mavens cheer at USFed bond purchases for its liquidity infusion, without much awareness of the absence of legitimate money. The USFed has become the quasi banking system, ever since the subprime mortgage mess hit, ever since the commercial paper market dried up. Yet it is failing. The indirect consequence of 0% money is distorted asset prices and extreme distortion of financial markets, all of them. The stock market is intervened upon. The bond market is directly controlled. The currency market is managed by the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which never receives press attention. The crude oil market is a vast playground, like when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is released, or when the Gulf of Mexico is shut down, or the Keystone Pipeline is rejected. The Brent versus West Texas oil price spread has gone to $18 again. The grain market is twisted by wrong US silo inventory data. No end in sight to muddy financial markets. The housing market is one of the most difficult to doctor, but even it has a vast hidden inventory held by banks.

Teetering Petro-Dollar Standard

The Iran sanctions have undercut the USDollar more than any other single item. The Petro-Dollar is at risk. Many times in my articles, a warning has been scribed that the Dollar Kill Switch is ready on the wall, fully constructed, awaiting word to flip the switch. Someday in the not too distant future, the Saudis will announce acceptance of non-US$ payments. They have already made the supporting decisions toward this highly important step, related to Persian Gulf security enforcement. The numerous bilateral oil trade deals with Iran have become an epidemic that infects the USDollar in its unilateral dominance for trade settlement. One big reason Saddam Hussein was removed was his decision to accept Euro payments for crude oil. Another was to steal his gold, just like what happened in Libya. Another was to abrogate oil contracts made between Iraq and Russia as well as between Iraq and China. So as the many bilateral deals are struck with Iran, the USDollar foundation in trade settlement is crumbling, in parallel to the sovereign debt crumbling (see PIGS debt), in parallel to the USTreasury Bonds crumbling (see foreign creditor departures). The bunker busters might drop, but the real damage is to the stable catbird seat for the USDollar itself in trade settlement. Such trade is conducted less and less in US$ terms. Asia and the Middle East are leading the movement away from the USDollar.

Global USDollar Revolt

The developing nations of the world are in revolt against the USDollar. They see no future in holding US$-based bonds in reserve. They see no future in accepting US$ payments for their raw commodities and finished products. The secondary central banks of the world are increasingly stocking up on gold bullion and less on USTBonds. Some are actively converting from paper reserves to gold assets, like China and Russia. Many other nations are following their important lead. A more recent development has the BRIC nations blocking the IMF. They are cooperating less in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The concept of the Chinese Yuan is being pushed, like in compromise, which includes a greater voice of the East and a smaller voice of the West, in particular the United States. The gold price will continue to benefit as long as the global revolt continues against the USDollar.

Barter System Coming

The current system must be replaced. Watch for signs of a vast comprehensive barter system with wide participation. It will involve deals between nations at the highest levels. It will involve deals between corporations at the middle levels. It will involve deals with individuals at the lower retail levels. It will be more fair. It will relegate banks to utilities, a much more useful function. It will lock up deadbeat nations that attempt to take in valuable products in return for toilet paper that accumulates in a rancid pile subject to acidic decay. The new barter system must have a financial core in order to handle the short-term transactions and payments required. That core will be gold based. The United States will not be at the center of this new system. In fact, the US risks being shut out if it does begin soon to join the movement. Being an outsider nation looking in will result in high price inflation and more rampant shortages. Demand for gold will rise as the new system falls into place. The system has been endorsed and put into the implementation stage by Germany, Russia, China, and the Persian Gulf. The trigger for launching the barter system, so told to the Jackass by one of its participating architects and engineers, is the broad perception that the current system has collapsed. That day is nigh.

Financial Sense