Lock These Terrorists Up

Snowstorm to Focus From NYC to Boston Saturday Night

Heavy snow will focus on the Northeast Saturday night, as snow diminishes over the Midwest. However, far-reaching travel disruptions will continue.

The snowstorm has already spanned more than 1,000 miles. Snow has reached every major city and rural area from St. Louis to Boston, including Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City. The area encompasses about 110 million people.

Track the storm Live on AccuWeather.com.

Thanks to recent Arctic air making roads and sidewalks much colder compared to previous storms, enough snow to shovel and plow has occurred in Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri and is in store from parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey to much of Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
@Leadership_One tweeted: "Snowstorm to Impact More Than 1,000 Miles From St. Louis to Boston. Looks like Old Man Winter is showing up early"

Not only will the storm make roads and sidewalks slippery, raising the risk for slip-and-fall incidents and auto accidents, but it is likely to cause many flight delays and cancellations. The visibility will be poor, runways will become snow covered and aircraft will need to be de-iced.



The storm could cause shipping delays and force Christmas shoppers to change their plans for the weekend.

The recent cold weather, this storm, and others will translate to plenty of snow on the ski slopes.

In the wake of the storm, areas made wet and slushy from melting during the day on Sunday will freeze on Sunday night, producing patches of black ice.

Midwest

Long stretches of the I-69, I-75, I-80 and I-90 corridors have been hit with heavy snow, falling at the rate of up to an inch per hour in the Midwest.

Even though the snow will wind down Saturday night from west to east in this area, many secondary roads and city streets will remain snow covered.
Credit to Accuweather

Russian Regulator Shuts Three More Banks

Russia’s financial regulator revoked the banking licenses of three mid-sized banks Friday as the authorities expand a banking sector crackdown.

The operations of Investbank, Russia’s 84th largest bank by assets according to finance website allbanks.ru, BPF Bank, the country’s 142nd biggest bank, and Smolensk Bank, the 109th largest bank, were all suspended, according to statements by Bank Rossii, Russia’s central bank.

Insurance payments to clients of the three banks, which will begin on December 27, will total 51 billion rubles ($1.6 billion), Russia’s Deposit Insurance Agency said Friday.

Almost 30 Russian banks have lost their licenses this year as the regulator seeks to tighten oversight of the country’s lenders and rein in shadow banking activity.

The central bank said that Investbank was guilty of false financial reporting and inadequate capital levels, while BPF was a threat to creditors due to its high-risk borrowing.

Smolensk Bank had not observed its obligations to creditors and depositors, while simultaneously “engaging in deals aimed at asset stripping,” according to the central bank.

The central bank’s move did not come out of the blue, with all three banks reportedly under financial pressure in recent days and weeks.

Investbank’s offices temporarily suspended operations in Russia’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad on Thursday after what the bank described in a statement as the “unfounded panic of depositors.”

BPF has had problems honoring obligations since November. Smolensk Bank has also had liquidity problems, and earlier this month requested financial assistance from the central bank.

In November the central bank revoked the license of major Moscow-based lender Master Bank, causing widespread problems with payment transactions across the country. The regulator said that Master Bank had been involved in money laundering and “large-scale suspicious operations.”

Elvira Nabiullina, who was appointed as chairman of Bank Rossii earlier in June, has made a campaign against shadowy banking activity a key part of her agenda for the regulator.

The crackdown has caused widespread unease, and experts have predicted that it could precipitate a flood of new customers for the large state-owned banks that dominate the banking sector.

Following the demise of Master Bank, Nabiullina warned lawmakers it was not the only bank in such a precarious situation and that more license revocations were likely to follow.

President Vladimir Putin expressed his support for the crackdown during his annual State of the Nation address Thursday. “We must continue our principled and firm approach to rescuing our financial-credit system from various money laundering operations,” he told top officials and businessmen.

Outgoing central bank chairman Sergei Ignatyev told Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper in February that Russia lost about $49 billion in illicit capital flight in 2012 that includes tax avoidance, bribes and payments for illegal narcotics.

RIA Novosti

Marc Faber: Dollar Meltdown, Massive Financial Bubble, Economic Collapse

Severe snow storm hits Mideast

Japan sets up amphibious military unit to counter China threat over islands

Japan will set up a new amphibious military unit and deploy unarmed surveillance drones in its south-west, where it faces a row with China over disputed islands, according to drafts of the nation's latest defence plans seen on Wednesday.

The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, ordered the defence policy review after returning to office last December, pledging to strengthen the military and boost Japan's global security role.

The defence guideline and military build-up plan, to be approved by the government next week, follow China's declaration in November of a new air defence identification zone in an area that includes the disputed isles, triggering protests from Tokyo, as well as Washington and Seoul.

The drafts of the two plans were made available at a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic party lawmakers and shown to reporters. Final versions of the guideline, which lays out Japan's policy for the next 10 years, and the build-up plan, called the mid-term defence programme and covering a five-year period, will be unveiled next Tuesday.

Citing Japan's concerns about what it calls Beijing's attempts to change the status quo with force, the guideline says Japan will "respond calmly and resolutely to the rapid expansion and step-up of China's maritime and air activities".

Japan plans to set up an amphibious unit designed to take back the remote islands, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, in case of invasion and boost the number of fighter jet squadrons at its Naha base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa to two from one to maintain air superiority.

One squadron usually consists of 20 fighter jets.

It also plans to procure unmanned surveillance drones and establish a unit of E-2C early warning aircraft at the Naha base, the draft said.

E-2Cs, routinely used to keep watch in the area surrounding the disputed islands are based in northern Japan's Misawa base.

Japan will also bolster its overall capability to respond to missile attacks in the face of improvement in North Korea's ballistic missile technology, the draft guideline said.

But it stopped short of a call to acquire the capability to strike enemy targets – a controversial and costly step that would further stretch what Japan dubs its "purely defensive" posture allowed under decades-old interpretations of its post-second world war pacifist constitution.

"North Korea has repeated conduct that heightens regional tensions … Its nuclear and missile development, along with provocative words and deeds against us, represent a grave and imminent threat to our country's security," the draft said.

Japan's concerns over China and the unpredictability of North Korea were also echoed in the country's new national security strategy, a draft of which was also made available.

In a move likely to raise red flags among Abe's critics, who say the hawkish leader is a nationalist ideologue, the draft strategy document calls for "cultivating love of country" and expanding "security education" in institutions of higher learning. Putting more patriotism in school curricula was the aim of a revision of a law on education enacted during Abe's first term in 2006-07, which ended when he abruptly quit in the face of a parliamentary deadlock and ill health.

As expected, the security strategy draft also said Japan will review its self-imposed ban on weapons exports, a move that could reinvigorate Japan's struggling defence industry.

Japan in 1967 drew up "three principles" on arms exports – banning sales to countries with communist governments, those involved in international conflicts or those subject to United Nations sanctions.

The rules eventually became almost a blanket ban on arms exports and on the development and production of weapons, stifling Japanese defence contractors and making it difficult for them to keep up with cutting-edge arms technology. Recent governments have made some exceptions including for joint development with the US.

The Gurdian

Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014?

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core.  Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time.  So they have a track record of being right.  Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014?  Of course not.  In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next.  But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous.  The following are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in 2014 and beyond...

-Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead: "Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at the latest."

-Marc Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: "You have to say that we are again in a massive financial bubble in bonds, in equities, in [other] asset prices that have gone up dramatically."

-Gerald Celente: "Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get.

And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.

That’s our forecast.

We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out."

-Mike Maloney, host of Hidden Secrets of Money: "I think the crash of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event…the consequences are gonna be horrific… the rest of the decade will bring us the greatest financial calamity in history."

-Jim Rogers: "You saw what happened in 2008-2009, which was worse than the previous economic setback because the debt was so much higher. Well now the debt is staggeringly much higher, and so the next economic problem, whenever it happens and whatever causes it, is going to be worse than in the past, because we have these unbelievable levels of debt, and unbelievable levels of money printing all over the world. Be worried and get prepared. Now it [a collapse] may not happen until 2016 or something, I have no idea when it’s going to happen, but when it comes, be careful."

-Lindsey Williams: "There is going to be a global currency reset."

-CLSA's Russell Napier: "We are on the eve of a deflationary shock which will likely reduce equity valuations from very high to very low levels."

-Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks: "Certainly risk tolerance has been increasing of late; high returns on risky assets have encouraged more of the same; and the markets are becoming more heated. The bottom line varies from sector to sector, but I have no doubt that markets are riskier than at any other time since the depths of the crisis in late 2008 (for credit) or early 2009 (for equities), and they are becoming more so."

-Financial editor Jeff Berwick: "If they allow interest rates to rise, it will effectively make the U.S. government bankrupt and insolvent, and it would make the U.S. government collapse. . . . They are preparing for a major societal collapse.  It is obvious and it will happen, and it will be very scary and very dangerous."

-Michael Pento, founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies: "Disappointingly, it is much more probable that the government has brought us out of the Great Recession, only to set us up for the Greater Depression, which lies just on the other side of interest rate normalization."

-Boston University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff:"Eventually somebody recognizes this and starts dumping the bonds, and interest rates go up, and inflation takes off, and were off to the races."

-Mexican Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price: "I think we are going to see a series of bankruptcies.  I think the rise in interest rates is the fatal sign which is going to ignite a derivatives crisis.   This is going to bring down the derivatives system (and the financial system).

There are (over) one quadrillion dollars of derivatives and most of them are related to interest rates.  The spiking of interest rates in the United States may set that off.  What is going to happen in the world is eventually we are going to come to a moment where there is going to be massive bankruptcies around the globe."

-Robert Shiller, one of the winners of the 2013 Nobel prize for economics: "I'm not sounding the alarm yet.  But in many countries the stock price levels are high, and in many real estate markets prices have risen sharply...that could end badly."

-David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan: "We have a massive bubble everywhere, from Japan, to China, Europe, to the UK.  As a result of this, I think world financial markets are extremely dangerous, unstable, and subject to serious trouble and dislocation in the future."

And certainly there are already signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down as we head into the final weeks of 2013.  For example, on Thursday we learned that the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 68,000 last week to a disturbingly high total of368,000.  That was the largest increase that we have seen in more than a year.

In addition, as I wrote about the other day, rail traffic is way down right now.  In fact, for the week ending November 30th, U.S. rail traffic was down 16.3 percent from the same week one year earlier.  That is a very important indicator that economic activity is getting slower.

And we continue to get more evidence that the middle class is being steadily eroded and that poverty in America is rapidly growing.  For example, a survey that was just released found that requests for food assistance and the level of homelessness have both risen significantly in major U.S. cities over the past year...

A survey of 25 American cities, including many of the nation's largest, showed yearly increases in food aid and homelessness.

The cities, located throughout 18 states, saw requests for emergency food aid rise by an average of seven percent compared with the previous period a year earlier, according to the US Conference of Mayors study, published Wednesday.

All but four cities reported an increase in demand for assistance between the period of September 2012 through August 2013.

Unfortunately, if the economic experts quoted above are correct, this is just the beginning of our problems.

The next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and things are going to get much worse than this.

So what do you think?

Which of the individuals quoted above do you think are right on the money and which ones do you think are way off base?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

Credit to Economic Collapse