TERRORISTS PLANNING TO ‘PARALYZE EUROPE’ AFTER BREXIT

We Just Witnessed The Greatest One Day Global Stock Market Loss In World History

More stock market wealth was lost on Friday than on any other day in world history.  As you will see below, global investors lost two trillion dollars on the day following the Brexit vote.  And remember, this is on top of the trillions that global investors have already lost over the past 12 months.  It is important to understand that the Brexit vote was not the beginning of a new crisis – it has simply accelerated a global financial crisis that started last year and that was already in the process of unfolding.  As I noted on Friday, we have been waiting for “the next Lehman Brothers moment” that would really unleash fear and panic globally, and now we have it.  The next six months should be absolutely fascinating to watch.

According to CNBC, the total amount of money lost on global stock markets on Friday surpassed anything that we had ever seen before, and that includes the darkest days of the financial crisis of 2008…

Worldwide markets hemorrhaged more than $2 trillion in paper wealth on Friday, according to data from S&P Global, the worst on record. For context, that figure eclipsed the whipsaw trading sessions of the 2008 financial crisis, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.

The prior one day sell-off record was $1.9 trillion back in September of 2008, Silverblatt noted. According to S&P’s Broad Market Index, combined market capitalization is currently worth nearly $42 trillion.

And of course many of the wealthiest individuals on the planet got absolutely hammered.  According to Bloomberg, the 400 richest people in the world lost a total of $127.4 billion dollars on Friday…

The world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday as global equity markets reeled from the news that British voters elected to leave the European Union. The billionaires lost 3.2 percent of their total net worth, bringing the combined sum to $3.9 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest decline belonged to Europe’s richest person, Amancio Ortega, who lost more than $6 billion, while nine others dropped more than $1 billion, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the wealthiest person in the U.K.

Could you imagine losing a billion dollars on a single day?

I am sure that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are not shivering in their boots quite yet, but what if the markets keep on bleeding like they did in 2008?

On the other hand, globalist magnate George Soros made a ton of money on Friday because he had positioned himself for a Brexit ahead of time.  The following comes from the London Independent…

The billionaire who predicted Brexit would bring about “Black Friday” and a crisis for the finances of ordinary people appears to have profited hugely from the UK’s surprise exit from the EU.

George Soros is widely known as the man who “broke” the Bank of England in 1992, when he bet against the pound and made a reported £1.5bn.

Although the exact amount Mr Soros has gained after Brexit is not known, public filings show he doubled his bets earlier this year that stocks would fall.

So what will happen on Monday when the markets reopen?

Personally, I don’t think that it will be as bad as Friday.

But I could be wrong.

In early trading, Dow futures, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures are all down…

Dow futures fell by 90 points in early trading, while S&P 500 futures slipped 11 points, and NASDAQ futures dipped 24 points. Gold futures rose, in a reflection of sustained demand for safe-haven assets.

And at this moment, the British pound is getting absolutely crushed.  It is down to 1.33, and I would expect to see it fall a lot lower in the weeks and months to come.

Why?

Well, the truth is that now that the British people have voted to leave the EU, the globalists have to make it as painful as possible on them in order to send a warning to other nations that may consider leaving.  I think that a recent article by W. Ben Hunt explained this very well…

What’s next? From a game theory perspective, the EU and ECB need to crush the UK. It’s like the Greek debt negotiations … it was never about Greece, it was always about sending a signal that dissent and departure will not be tolerated to the countries that matter to the survival of the Eurozone (France, Italy, maybe Spain). Now they (and by “they” I mean the status quo politicians throughout the EU, not just Germany) are going to send that same signal to the same countries by hurting the UK any way they can, creating a Narrative that it’s economic death to leave the EU, much less the Eurozone. It’s not spite. It’s purely rational. It’s the smart move.

The elite need a crisis now in order to show everyone that globalism is the answer and not the problem.  If the British people were allowed to thrive once they walked away, that would only encourage more countries to go down the exact same path.  This is something that the elite are determined to avoid.

The Brexit vote has barely sunk in, and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are already projecting a recession for the United Kingdom.  Sadly, I believe that this is what we will see happen.

But it won’t just be the British that suffer.

On Friday, European banking stocks had their worst day ever.  In particular, Deutsche Bank fell an astounding 17.49 percent to an all-time record closing low of 14.72.  I have warned repeatedly about the implosion of Deutsche Bank, and this crisis could be the catalyst for it.

In addition, I have repeatedly warned about the slow-motion meltdown that is happening in Japan.  On Friday, Japanese stocks lost 1286 points, and the yen surged in the exact opposite direction that the government is trying to send it…

Tokyo, we have a problem.

Last week, market tumult stemming from the U.K.’s vote to quit the European Union drove the British pound to its weakest levels in three decades.

Yet it also sent investors flocking to traditional safe haven assets like the U.S. dollar, gold and the yen, the latter surging against every major currency as the results of Brexit became clear: Dollar/yen spiked from a Thursday high near 107 to a two-year low near 99.

Just like in 2008, there will be days when global markets will be green.  When that happens, it will not mean that the crisis is over.

If you follow my work closely, then you know that it is imperative to look at the bigger picture.  Over the past 12 months, there have been some very nice market rallies around the world, but investors have still lost trillions of dollars overall.

What happens on any one particular day is not the story.  Rather, the key is to focus on the long-term trends.

And without a doubt, this Brexit vote could be “the tipping point” that greatly accelerates our ongoing woes…

“Brexit is the biggest global monetary shock since 2008,” said David Beckworth, a scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a blog post on Friday. “This could be the tipping point that turns the existing global slowdown of 2016 into a global recession.”

We were already dealing with a new global economic crisis without the Brexit vote.  But what this does is it introduces an element of panic and fear that had been missing up until this current time.

And markets do not like panic and fear very much.  In general, markets tend to go up when things are calm and predictable, and they tend to go down when chaos reigns.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are going to see quite a bit more chaos for the rest of 2016, and the trillions that were lost on Friday may turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Dr. Jim Willie: Brexit Result Could Detonate Deutsche Bank!

Another Sexual Assault Gets Refugees Banned From Pools In Austria

Earlier this year we reported that a town in Germany had banned adult male asylum seekers from the public pool after receiving complaints that some women were sexually harassed. As a result, Germany created a leaflet that it handed out to "sexually frustrated" immigrants at local swimming pools to teach them proper poolside etiquette.

The leaflet shows that among other things, it is not acceptable to do the following: touch the behind of an unsuspecting female swimmer (#12), drown others (#4), push women into the pool (#3), or jump onto a screaming blonde (#7).



A similar flyer was created by Switzerland which detailed acceptable behaviors in order to prevent refugee sex attacks. The flyer was a modified version of one that was created in Austria during the initial influx of refugees.



For those that chuckle at the effort, there does appear to be a real problem with sexual assaults, and it is widespread. In the latest sexual assault case, a "dark-skinned" man assaulted a 13 year old girl at a pool in the town of Mistelbach, Austria on Wednesday. As RT reports, the man followed the girl into the women's changing room and tried to force the girl to perform oral sex. Thankfully the attacker fled after the girl began shouting.

More from RT

Authorities in the Austrian town of Mistelbach issued a temporary pool ban for refugees following a sexual assault by a “dark-skinned’ man on a 13-year-old girl.

"This news was a shock," said the town’s mayor, Alfred Pohl, as quoted by the Heute media outlet.

According to Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, the attack happened on Wednesday afternoon.

The girl was first followed by a young man into the women’s changing room. Once there, he forced her to perform oral sex. The girl however fiercely resisted and started shouting, forcing the attacker to flee.

Police are now investigating the incident and are searching for the suspect.

According to eyewitnesses and the victim herself the man was a “foreigner.”

There are currently eight facilities housing refugees around Mistelbach. Police are now checking the camps, Heute news outlet reports. There is however no confirmation on whether an asylum seeker is behind the attack.

Following the incident the mayor temporarily banned all refugees from attending the swimming pool. The authorities put a poster next the pool entrance reading “Today no entry for refugees,” and two guards were hired to patrol the premises.

“This decision was not easy, and I take responsibility for it,” the mayor said. “The ban on asylum seekers from the swimming pool is temporary, until the security is in place,” he added.

* * *
These types of occurrences are what makes the immigration issue in Europe an extremely difficult one for the politicians who have to answer for these types of things. The violence and sexual assaults are what has given rise to Germany's anti-immigrant AfD party as of late, and sadly this trend does not look like it is going to cease any time soon, despite all of the flyers being printed and handed out.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Pope: Gays and others marginalized deserve an apology

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) -- Pope Francis says gays — and all the other people the church has marginalized, such as the poor and the exploited — deserve an apology.

Francis was asked Sunday en route home from Armenia if he agreed with one of his top advisers, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who told a conference in Dublin in the days after the deadly Orlando gay club attack that the church owes an apology to gays for having marginalized them.

Francis responded with a variation of his famous "Who am I to judge?" comment and a repetition of church teaching that gays must not be discriminated against but treated with respect.

He said some politicized behaviors of the homosexual community can be condemned for being "a bit offensive for others." But he said: "Someone who has this condition, who has good will and is searching for God, who are we to judge?"

"We must accompany them," Francis said.

"I think the church must not only apologize ... to a gay person it offended, but we must apologize to the poor, to women who have been exploited, to children forced into labor, apologize for having blessed so many weapons" and for having failed to accompany families who faced divorces or experienced other problems.

Francis uttered his "Who am I to judge?" comment during his first airborne press conference in 2013, signaling a new era of acceptance and welcome for gays in the church. Francis followed up by meeting with gay and transgender faithful, and most significantly, by responding to claims that he met with anti-gay marriage campaigner Kim Davis during his U.S. visit. He said the only personal meeting he held in Washington was with his gay former student and his partner.

Despite such overtures, however, many gay Catholics are still waiting for progress after a two-year consultation of the church on family issues failed to chart concrete, new pastoral avenues for them.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters after Francis' press conference that the pope wasn't referring to a medical "condition" when he spoke of gays, but rather a lifestyle situation.

Yahoo News

George Soros: "Brexit Makes EU Disintegration Irreversible"

Just four days ago, the "big guns" when George Soros wrote a Guardian op-ed titled  "The Brexit crash will make all of you poorer – be warned" in which he said that "as opinion polls on the referendum result fluctuate, I want to offer a clear set of facts, based on my six decades of experience in financial markets, to help voters understand the very real consequences of a vote to leave the EU." We promptly countered that Soros' set of "facts" may be clouded by his far greater equity stake in interests around Europe, and the globe, which would be drastically impacted by not only a Brexit, but by a European Union which is suddenly on the rocks.  That's precisely what happened when, as we wrote earlier, the world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday following the Brexit vote.

Soros was among them.

However, seemingly unhappy that his generously altruistic warning was so roundly ignored by the peasants, not to mention his sudden concern about the future of the European Union whose collapse would also destroy the premise behind Soros' Open Society globalization initiative, the 85-year-old billionaire has decided to follow up with a case of sour grapes and go all in, making another forecast - since his first one was so clearly rejected - and in what may end up roiling markets even more, moments ago Soros said in his second op-ed of the week that the "catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible. Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short to medium term. The pound plunged to its lowest level in more than three decades immediately after the vote, and financial markets worldwide are likely to remain in turmoil as the long, complicated process of political and economic divorce from the EU is negotiated. The consequences for the real economy will be comparable only to the financial crisis of 2007-2008."

But while Soros is lukewarm on the UK, his forecast about Europe is far more dire.

But the implications for Europe could be far worse. Tensions among member states have reached a breaking point, not only over refugees, but also as a result of exceptional strains between creditor and debtor countries within the eurozone. At the same time, weakened leaders in France and Germany are now squarely focused on domestic problems. In Italy, a 10% fall in the stock market following the Brexit vote clearly signals the country’s vulnerability to a full-blown banking crisis – which could well bring the populist Five Star Movement, which has just won the mayoralty in Rome, to power as early as next year.

Which, incidentally, is what we warned earlier today when saying that "it appears that the trade now is not to sell Sterling, at least not anymore: one should have done that at 1.50 when everyone was wrong about the Brexit outcome based on manipulated polls as we explained ahead of the event. If anything, sterling will rebound following the positive boost to the UK economy following the devaluation. It's the long EUR trade we would be far more concerned about here."

One can be absolutely confident that Soros, who as revealed earlier this month is short the markets, is very, very short the Euro.

This is what else he said in his Project Syndicate Op-Ed, excerpted:

Brexit and the Future of Europe

Britain, I believe, had the best of all possible deals with the European Union, being a member of the common market without belonging to the euro and having secured a number of other opt-outs from EU rules. And yet that was not enough to stop the United Kingdom’s electorate from voting to leave. Why?

The answer could be seen in opinion polls in the months leading up to the “Brexit” referendum. The European migration crisis and the Brexit debate fed on each other. The “Leave” campaign exploited the deteriorating refugee situation – symbolized by frightening images of thousands of asylum-seekers concentrating in Calais, desperate to enter Britain by any means necessary – to stoke fear of “uncontrolled” immigration from other EU member states. And the European authorities delayed important decisions on refugee policy in order to avoid a negative effect on the British referendum vote, thereby perpetuating scenes of chaos like the one in Calais.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open her country’s doors wide to refugees was an inspiring gesture, but it was not properly thought out, because it ignored the pull factor. A sudden influx of asylum-seekers disrupted people in their everyday lives across the EU.

The lack of adequate controls, moreover, created panic, affecting everyone: the local population, the authorities in charge of public safety, and the refugees themselves. It has also paved the way for the rapid rise of xenophobic anti-European parties – such as the UK Independence Party, which spearheaded the Leave campaign – as national governments and European institutions seem incapable of handling the crisis.

Now the catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible. Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short to medium term. The pound plunged to its lowest level in more than three decades immediately after the vote, and financial markets worldwide are likely to remain in turmoil as the long, complicated process of political and economic divorce from the EU is negotiated. The consequences for the real economy will be comparable only to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

That process is sure to be fraught with further uncertainty and political risk, because what is at stake was never only some real or imaginary advantage for Britain, but the very survival of the European project. Brexit will open the floodgates for other anti-European forces within the Union. Indeed, no sooner was the referendum’s outcome announced than France’s National Front issued a call for “Frexit,” while Dutch populist Geert Wilders promoted “Nexit.”

Moreover, the UK itself may not survive. Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, can be expected to make another attempt to gain its independence, and some officials in Northern Ireland, where voters also backed Remain, have already called for unification with the Republic of Ireland.

The EU’s response to Brexit could well prove to be another pitfall. European leaders, eager to deter other member states from following suit, may be in no mood to offer the UK terms – particularly concerning access to Europe’s single market – that would soften the pain of leaving. With the EU accounting for half of British trade turnover, the impact on exporters could be devastating (despite a more competitive exchange rate). And, with financial institutions relocating their operations and staff to eurozone hubs in the coming years, the City of London (and London’s housing market) will not be spared the pain.

But the implications for Europe could be far worse. Tensions among member states have reached a breaking point, not only over refugees, but also as a result of exceptional strains between creditor and debtor countries within the eurozone. At the same time, weakened leaders in France and Germany are now squarely focused on domestic problems. In Italy, a 10% fall in the stock market following the Brexit vote clearly signals the country’s vulnerability to a full-blown banking crisis – which could well bring the populist Five Star Movement, which has just won the mayoralty in Rome, to power as early as next year. 

That is where we are today. All of Europe, including Britain, would suffer from the loss of the common market and the loss of common values that the EU was designed to protect. Yet the EU truly has broken down and ceased to satisfy its citizens’ needs and aspirations. It is heading for a disorderly disintegration that will leave Europe worse off than where it would have been had the EU not been brought into existence.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Is Brexit The First Of Many Dominoes? A Few Charts

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist



Is Brexit the First of Many Dominoes?

Markets have been turned upside down by a surprise Brexit result and the resignation of David Cameron. While there is looming uncertainty around how this will affect the United Kingdom and Europe from an economic perspective, it might be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of long-run consequences.

A Brexit opens the door for future events that would be previously unfathomable by popular opinion, and it gives vital ammunition to groups that are seeking their own referendums for independence.

Unwilling Passengers?

While England and Wales voted to “Leave” with 53.4% and 52.5% respectively, Scotland and Northern Ireland were both firmly in “Remain” territory. Scotland, which previously held its own independence referendum in 2014, voted overwhelmingly to have the UK remain in the EU with a 62% vote. Northern Ireland had a similar sentiment with 55.8% voting “Remain”.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said today that a second independence referendum for Scotland is “highly likely”. She feels Scotland was taken out of the EU against its own will, and that Scottish independence is worth revisiting.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland has echoed these calls, instead potentially looking at voting on a united Ireland. Northern Ireland is the only country in the UK that shares a land border with a country in the EU.

Others Dominoes


The Brexit result has energized other populist movements across the European Union. Anti-immigration leaders such as Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen have ratcheted up cries for their own independence votes:



Meanwhile, over 40% of Swedes, Poles, and Belgians are in the same boat.

Now that Brexit is a thing, will these numbers trend higher? What will be the next domino to fall?


Credit to Zero Hedge