Chinese Police Will Soon Patrol The Streets Of Paris

Chinese police will be patrolling the streets of Paris this summer alongside their French counterparts to help combat a surge in attacks against high-spending Chinese tourists.

The French authorities are determined to improve security for more than a million Chinese tourists who visit the capital for shopping and sightseeing each year.

Their habit of carrying large amounts of cash has made them a “prime target for muggers and pickpockets”, a police source said.

Chinese visitors to Paris are estimated to spend an average of €1,470 (£1,205) each on shopping, mainly buying designer brands, according to Global Blue, the Swiss-based duty free services company.

An interior ministry official said the number of Chinese police to be deployed in Paris was still being decided. “Their role will be preventive and they will carry out patrols with French police at tourist sites,” the official said.

In an incident that caused alarm in Beijing and received wide media coverage, a group of 23 Chinese visitors were robbed of cash and passports last year as they left a restaurant only a few hours after landing at Charles de Gaulle airport.

“That was the tipping point,” said Tang Lu, the manager of the travel agency Chine Tourisme. “There had always been pickpockets, but last year physical attacks started happening along with the thefts.”

The Chinese are the biggest buyers of duty free goods in Paris. The department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps employ hundreds of bilingual staff to help Chinese customers find their way around, but say they are powerless to protect them as they leave the stores.

“We’ve witnessed a lot of muggings,” said a Chinese saleswoman at a luxury goods store. “The thieves are usually on motorbikes. They ride up on to the pavement and grab the tourists’ bags.”

More Chinese tourists are expected this summer because of a series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and Communist China.

In an indication of the importance Paris attaches to encouraging Chinese visitors, Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, personally welcomed tourists arriving on a flight from Beijing last week.

Credit to Businessinsider.com

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-police-will-soon-patrol-the-streets-of-paris-2014-5#ixzz314FtQazj

PROPHETIC BIRTH PAINS! EARTHQUAKES INCREASE WORLDWIDE January to April 2014

The “Economic Recovery” Continues: Businesses Are Being Destroyed Faster Than They Are Being Created

What would you say about an economy where businesses are shutting down faster than they are opening?  Well, a shocking new study released by the Brookings Institution indicates that this is exactly what is happening in the United States.  We are absolutely killing small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and as you will see below, the number of self-employed Americans has been on a downward trend for a decade even though our population has been steadily growing.  Traditionally, small businesses have been the primary engine of job growth in this nation, so the fact that study after study has found that small business creation is being crippled in the United States is a really bad sign for our economic future.

Personally, I write about our long-term economic decline nearly every day, but even I had no idea that businesses were being destroyed faster than they were being created.  According to the Brookings Institution, this first started happening in 2009...

The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first.

And this mirrors an earlier study conducted by economist Tim Kane.  According to his analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data, the following is how the decline in the number of new business jobs per one thousand Americans breaks down by presidential administration...

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

As you can see, this is a problem that has been building for decades and that has accelerated under the Obama administration.

We are strangling small business creation to death, and as a result the number of Americans that are self-employed just keeps going down.  Just check out this chart...

And keep in mind that throughout this entire time the U.S. population has been growing.  So the numbers in the chart above should be going up steadily as the population grows.  But instead they have just kept going down.

Meanwhile, the "economic recovery" is continuing in the corporate world as well.

On Tuesday, we learned that Office Depot is going to be closing 400 stores.

Why would that happen if the economy was actually getting better?

When this was announced, shares of Office Depot rose about 20 percent.

I can never understand why that happens.  You would think that when a business makes an announcement that essentially says "our business is failing" that it would cause people to dump the stock.

In any event, this comes on the heels of an announcement by Staples back in March that it was going to shut down 225 stores in the United States and Canada.

So where will we buy our pens and paper from now on?

If the economy really was "recovering", you would think that demand for office supplies would actually be on the rise.

But the only places where the economy is "recovering" is in places such as Washington D.C., New York City and San Francisco.

Those at the top of the pyramid are doing well, but almost everyone else in the country is really suffering right now.

When you kill off small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit, it tends to increasingly funnel money to the very top of the food chain.  And this is precisely what is happening in America at this point.  In a recent article, Charles Hugh Smith included a chart that shows how average household net worth in the U.S. breaks down by quartile...

Bottom 25%: $4,600
From 25% to 50%: $21,700
From 50% to 75%: $78,900
From 75% to 90%: $242,800
Top 10%: $1,606,600

As you can see, the bottom 50 percent are really not that much above zero at all.  In the old days, it seemed like almost everyone was "middle class" in America, but now that is rapidly changing.

We can see this increasing divide in the real estate market as well.  According to Bloomberg, sales of million dollar homes are booming, but sales of homes at the low end are plunging...

"Million-dollar homes in the U.S. are selling at double their historical average while middle-class property demand stumbles, showing that the housing recovery is mirroring America’s wealth divide.

Purchases costing $1 million or more rose 7.8 percent in March from a year earlier, according to data released last week by the National Association of Realtors. Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period"

So this explains why it is almost impossible to find an affordable home in San Francisco, but the overall homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in 19 years.

But even in our wealthy enclaves there are signs of deep economic trouble.  For example, in New York City the number of homeless children has soared to a new all-time high...

They're just like other kids except they have a secret. They are homeless.  Children are living hidden lives in plain sight. They are part a growing number of low income families who find themselves with no way out but they are working hard to find a solution.

It's a big issue. And it's growing. More than 23,000 children sleep in homeless shelters every night, an all-time high, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

The only "recovery" being experienced in America is the one that is happening on Wall Street, in boardrooms in Silicon Valley and in the halls of power in Washington.

In the rest of the country, retail stores are closing at the fastest pace that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, 20 percent of all families do not have a single member that is employed and 49 million Americans are dealing with food insecurity.

There is no way that we are ever going to have a broad-based economic recovery in this nation if we continue to destroy small businesses.  They are the lifeblood of any economy and they are the primary engine of job creation.

Sadly, our politicians seem completely clueless about all of this.  So they will continue to do the same things that they have always been doing and then wonder why the economy never seems to turn around.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Civil War? 'Ukraine govt using military against own citizens'

Coming Global Economic Reset Film

US Media Covers Up Mass Murder in Odessa

Yesterday in Odessa, Ukraine, more than 30 anti-Kiev protesters were burned alive, as a US-backed pro-Kiev mob set fire to the trade union building into which they ran to escape the pro-Kiev crowd. It was the largest loss of life in Ukraine since the US-backed coup in February, and it may well be a turning point in the east versus west struggle that ensued.

The pictures from the scene were ghastly (warning: graphic), as desperate protesters tried to claw their way out of the building as they were burned alive. Also ghastly were the photos of the young girls happily making the molotov cocktails that were thrown into the building.

More ghastly still, was the US media coverage of the savage event. Even when 25 minutes video availableclearly demonstrated what happened in Odessa, clearly demonstrated who was responsible for the incineration of unarmed protesters, the US media all hewed to the State Department line that pointedly refused to pin any blame on the pro-Kiev mob supported by Washington. Said the State Department release:

The events in Odesa that led to the deadly fire in the Trade Union Building dramatically underscore the need for an immediate de-escalation of tensions in Ukraine. The violence and efforts to destabilize the country must end.

Contrast this to US government’s very different position when violence broke out in Kiev in February: even as evidence pointed to much violence committed by the protesters, the US nevertheless blamed the then-Yanukovich government exclusively.

Double standards.

And the US media was not far behind the State Department in its Odessa spin.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Thirty of the victims died of smoke inhalation after a fire was set in the central trade union building, where pro-Russia separatists reportedly had taken up sniper positions to fire on pro-unity demonstrators.

LA Times spins it like burning more than 30 protesters alive was a purely defensive measure. But if they were all snipers, why did they not shoot their way out?

In lock-step with the State Department, the NY Daily News reported that:


…for reasons still unclear, a fire broke out in a trade union building and the death toll started to climb.

This even though their own article features a photo of a pro-Kiev protester tossing a firebomb into the building!

As to be expected, the New York Times followed the State Department line of avoiding any real reportingthat might damage the US-backed regime in Kiev, preferring to present the act of mass murder as some sort of tragic accident:


Violence also erupted Friday in the previously calmer port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, where dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists

There are too many more examples of the US media’s lock-step reporting on this event to cover here.

But even the virulently anti-Russian and pro-Kiev Kyiv Post could get the basic reporting correct:

A mob shouted “Glory to Ukraine” and “Death to enemies” as the building burned with people inside.

That makes it pretty clear who did the torching and who did the dying.

Continued the Kyiv Post:

Photographs circulating on Twitter and Facebook show people – some presumably in their teens – mixing explosive concoctions in discarded beer bottles before lobbing them into the building.

Why did the US media not report any of this? Because they did not want the American public to see any possibility other than the US government official line, which is that the post-coup government in Kiev and its supporters represent the legitimate and democratic will of the people and anyone who protests against that government or its supporters is a Russian agent and a terrorist.

The US mainstream media marches lock-step with the US government, even to the point of covering up a most vile mass murder. It is only alternative sources and networks like RT (and RPI) that dare to cross the State Department line.

No wonder the US State Department has declared war on RT.

Credit to Infowars

And The First Thing Ukraine Will Buy With IMF Money Is...

A month ago, it was alleged, that Ukraine - under cover of night - loaded its gold reserves onto a plane and shipped them off (for safekeeping) in the US, as the potential price of 'liberation'. So how ironic that, given the massive gas debts that Ukraine owes to Russia (and prepayments pending), and sizable bond maturities pending, the first thing that Ukraine's National Bank governor will be buying with his freshly minted loan from the IMF is... buy a billion dollars of gold.

We presume Gazprom still gets its payment and bondholders get paid off - because that seriously impair 'investor confidence' which is, as they note below, is what is crucial to stabilize the nation's economy... but it seems the Central bank has other priorities...

As ITAR-TASS reports,

Kiev will use the first portion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan for augmenting its gold and currency reserves in order to stabilize the financial situation in the country, National Bank Chairman Stepan Kubiv said on Monday, May 5.

“Over $1 billion from the first portion of the loan will go into the gold and currency reserves of Ukraine, which will strengthen the financial system of the country. The remainder will go to the budget to stabilize the macroeconomic and financial situation in Ukraine,” he said.

Kubiv believes that the IMF loan “will send a positive signal to foreign investors and domestic entrepreneurs, improve the investment climate in the country and stabilize the hryvnia”.

On April 30, the IMF Board of Governors approved a two-year standby credit facility of $17 billion for Ukraine. The first portion will amount to around $3.2 billion.

What is odd is that Ukraine's gold reserves have been soaring in recent years - so it's hardly been a confidence-inspiring move for Ukrainian entrepreneurs and foreign investors so far?

So the big question we are left wondering is - whether all the IMF is doing is "giving" Ukraine money so it can buy gold as proxy for the NY Fed...
with that next batch of gold also set to be confiscated by the Fed and shipped off to Germany (and maybe even Switzerland) to cover their growing repatriation demands.

One wonders if this news has anything to do with the fact that since the approval of the IMF "loan" gold has had its best 2 days in 4 months...

CRedit to Zero Hedge