Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors says it expects to post a net loss of $1.4 billion for the current financial year. …read more
Source: Fuel scandal drives Mitsubishi to first loss in 8 years
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,
The same hatred as from Nazis is coming from Islamists and their politically correct allies. We do not even have a vague idea of how much Western culture we have surrendered to Islam.
Democracies are, or at least should be, custodians of a perishable treasury: freedom of expression. This is the biggest difference between Paris and Havana, London and Riyadh, Berlin and Tehran, Rome and Beirut. Freedom of expression is what gives us the best of the Western culture.
It is self-defeating to quibble about the beauty of cartoons, poems or paintings. In the West, we have paid a high price for the freedom to do so. We should all therefore protest when a German judge bans “offensive” verses of a poem, when a French publisher fires an “Islamophobic” editor or when a music festival bans a politically incorrect band.
It all occurred in the same week. A German judge banned a comedian, Jan Böhmermann, from repeating “obscene” verses of his famous poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A Danish theater apparently cancelled “The Satanic Verses” from its season, due to fear of “reprisals.” Two French music festivals dropped Eagles of Death Metal — the U.S. band that was performing at the Bataclan theater in Paris when the attack by ISIS terrorists (89 people murdered), took place there — because of “Islamophobic” comments by Jesse Hughes, its lead singer. Hughes suggested that Muslims be subjected to greater scrutiny, saying “It's okay to be discerning when it comes to Muslims in this day and age,” later adding:
“They know there's a whole group of white kids out there who are stupid and blind. You have these affluent white kids who have grown up in a liberal curriculum from the time they were in kindergarten, inundated with these lofty notions that are just hot air.”
As Brendan O'Neill wrote, “Western liberals are doing their dirty work for them; they're silencing the people Isis judged to be blasphemous; they're completing Isis's act of terror.”
A few weeks earlier, France's most important publishing house, Gallimard, fired its most famous editor, Richard Millet, who had penned an essay in which he wrote:
“the decline of literature and the deep changes wrought in France and Europe by continuous and extensive immigration from outside Europe, with its intimidating elements of militant Salafism and of the political correctness at the heart of global capitalism; that is to say, the risk of the destruction of the Europe and its cultural humanism, or Christian humanism, in the name of 'humanism' in its 'multicultural' version.”
Kenneth Baker just published a new book, On the Burning of Books: How Flames Fail to Destroy the Written Word. It is a compendium of so called “bibliocaust,” the burning of books from Caliph Omar to Hitler, and includes the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. When Nazis incinerated books in Berlin they declared that from the ashes of these novels …read more
Source: How Much Of Our Culture Are We Surrendering To Islam?
By Tyler Durden
Draghi, we have a problem.
The European Central Bank's balance sheet has reached a new record high this week – surpassing the chaotic expansion peak in 2012 – as Mario Draghi prepares to unleash TLTRO-II, which will definitely increase this time (just like LTRO and NIRP didn't!)
“Fool me once” in 2011/12 but not in 2015/16.
Given the utter failure to create any 'real' economic gains via the expansion of the ECB balance sheet, the plunge in stock prices (and thus crushing the trickle-down wealth-creation mandate) leaves Draghi in the same boat as Yellen – utterly impotent.
Which is ironic because this is what Draghi just said…
Though we'll never know, can you imagine just how bad things are in reality?
Source: ECB Balance Sheet Hits Record High (With Stocks At 18-Month Lows)
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Frank Hollenbeck via The Mises Institute,
The United Kingdom will tomorrow vote either to leave or remain in the European Union. This is the most important European event of this century since it will likely have important domino effects for the rest of Europe.
A recent poll showed that if the UK could keep free trade with EU nations, the British people would vote overwhelmingly to leave the EU. To drum up support for staying in the EU, the UK government and quasi-government agencies, like the IMF and OECD, have issued continuous warnings about the costs of such a divorce. The IMF recently reiterated its forecasts that Brexit would have a significant negative effect on the UK economy with a drop in GDP anywhere between 1% and 9% over the long term.
The reality is that Brexit would probably only have a minor initial impact on trade or GDP and, on the contrary, would open up vast possibilities for the UK to exploit trade relations with other faster growing regions of the world without having to reach complex trade agreements that satisfy the vested interests of the other 28 members of the EU.
The impact of Brexit on trade has been grossly exaggerated. In today's world, a product has parts coming from all over the world. A BMW is only called German because of historical association. In reality, the steel in a BMW may come from Brazil or China, the upholstery from the UK, the engine from France, and the electronics from the USA. Labor costs are only 10% of a car and some may even be foreign labor. Also, profits are distributed to BMW shareholders and bondholders which are more likely to be sent to a hedge fund in Japan than to the mechanic in Dusseldorf. The world is massively economically integrated. Relatively free trade and free movement of capital is no longer an option for most countries, whether it is the UK or any of the other countries in the EU. That boat sailed years ago!
Trade restrictions and capital controls are no longer a countries’ choice: either you participate in the world economy or accept living standards equivalent to that of North Korea or Venezuela. So the issue is NOT whether the UK will continue to trade mostly freely with the EU: it will, because today there is no other choice: and the same is true for the other countries of the EU. Despite French threats of a bloody Brexit, Germany, which runs its second largest bilateral trade surplus with the UK, has little interest in starting a trade war, nor do most of the private interests in the rest of Europe.
If the UK government is really concerned about trade, it has the power to significantly increase both its exports and living standards. It only has to remove any impediments to imports. We must never forget that imports are intractably linked to exports. What is true of …read more
Source: Britain Doesn’t Need The EU To Thrive
By Tyler Durden
First it was The Fed's Janet Yellen coming “as close to capitulation on monetary policy's lack of efficacy,” and now The Bank of Japan's Kuroda appears to have had an epiphany. In a stream of truth-filled consciousness unheard of for central planners, the governor admitted, among other things, that “monetary policy doesn't always turn out as expected,” and that “many economists don't think financial markets always right,” implying, of course, that he and his brethren know better. It appears that as central bank credibility collapses, so the central bankers themselves are having their own 'Greenspan'-moment when their life's work is finally proven entirely pointless.
The results of monetary and fiscal policies don’t always turn out as expected, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda says in an interview on TV Tokyo, aired early on Wednesday.
Nope!
His additional comments were just as ironic:
Nope!
Given all that, now consider the following, excerpted from Kuroda’s opening remarks at the 2015 BOJ-IMES Conference:
The issues I have raised so far are all complex, and there are no quick, definitive solutions for them. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that, at this one-and-a-half day conference, we will address the issues we currently face and find our way forward through lively discussions. I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, “the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction. Indeed, each time central banks have been confronted with a wide range of problems, they have overcome the problems by conceiving new solutions.
* * *
With that, Kuroda has just confirmed that DM central banks are literally relying on a fairy tale to keep the global economy and financial system afloat.
At least he's being honest for once.
Source: Did Bank Of Japan’s Kuroda Just "Capitulate" Too?
The number of people spending half their income on rent hit a record high in 2014, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. …read more
Source: 11 million Americans spend half their income on rent
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
As if California doesn’t have enough problems already…
The big one is believed to be due every century or so along major fault lines – and California is long overdue. Eventually, there is just too much built up pressure that must be released.
Although experts don’t know when a major earthquake may hit the San Andreas fault, they expect that it is simply inevitable and have warned for years about mitigating the disaster to come.
Sadly, few of those warnings have been heeded, and major destruction is likely to someday affect, directly or indirectly, most of the tens of millions of residents who live in or near Los Angeles and the surrounding area.
Here are some of the simulations of what they officially say could happen. In reality, the damage and the secondary effect on social order could have an even greater impact:
And the real world data is troubling as well.
Now, researchers have been able to model that build up of pressure along the tectonic plates of the San Andreas using new GPS techniques that have allowed more information:
Analysis of GPS data has revealed new areas of motion around the San Andreas Fault System.
Using data collected by the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory’s GPS array, researchers identified 125-mile-wide “lobes” of uplift and subsidence. Over the last several years, the lobes, which straddle the fault line, have hosted a few millimeters of annual movement.
[…]
Lead author Samuel Howell, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, explained in a news release. “Using this technique, we were able to break down the noisy signals to isolate a simple vertical motion pattern that curiously straddled the San Andreas fault.”
Researcher Bridget Smith-Konter said: “The powerful combination of a priori model predictions and a unique analysis of vertical GPS data led us to confirm that the buildup of century-long earthquake cycle forces within the crust are a dominant source of the observed vertical motion signal.“
“Using this technique, we were able to break down the noisy signals to isolate a simple vertical motion pattern that curiously straddled the San Andreas fault.“
As SHTF recently reported, the news is not good.
According to the leading scientists in the study of tectonic plates and movements, earthquakes must periodically relieve plate pressure (about 16 feet worth of movement every century), but that has not happened on the San Andreas fault during that time period – in fact, the event is overdue.
Scientists have renewed their warnings that the faultline “looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go.” As the L.A. Times reported:
Southern California’s section of the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll,” a leading earthquake scientist said Wednesday at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach.
The San Andreas fault is one of California’s most dangerous, and is the state’s longest fault. Yet for Southern California, the last big earthquake to strike the southern San Andreas was in 1857, when a magnitude …read more
Source: Is This The Big One? Large-Scale Motion Detected Near San Andreas Fault
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By Tyler Durden
After a Gallup poll was released earlier this month showing that 53% of Americans prefer Donald Trump for handling the economy compared to 43% who prefer Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee felt the need to address the issue during a speech on Tuesday.
“Liberals and conservatives say Trump's ideas would be disastrous. The Chamber of Commerce and labor unions. Mitt Romney and Elizabeth Warren, economists on the right, the left and the center all agree: Trump would throw us back into recession.” Clinton said in Columbus, Ohio, adding that “Trump would take us back to where we were before the crisis. He'd rig the economy for Wall Street again. That will not happen on my watch, I guarantee you.“
Clinton also took the time to criticize Trump on his comments about debt: “The United States of America doesn't do business Trump's way, and it matters when a presidential candidate talks like this, because the world hangs on every word our president says. The full faith and credit of the United States is not something we just gamble away. That could cause an economic catastrophe, and it would break 225 years of ironclad trust that the American economy has with Americans and the rest of the world.”
Hillary also took a page out of Trump's book and let loose a barrage of Twitter posts. One tweet said that Trump's tax plan would add $30 trillion to the national debt over 20 years:
Donald Trump's tax plan would add $30 trillion to the national debt over 20 years. That's “trillion”—with a “t.” pic.twitter.com/o79WRixL9A
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016
Which is quite ironic since the Obama administration has almost doubled the national debt by itself.
Here are some additional tweets from Hillary that look to continue the narrative.
“Imagine him being in charge when your jobs and savings are at stake. Is this who you want leading us in an emergency?” —Hillary on Trump
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016
.@realDonaldTrump, only someone who’s never actually faced the consequences of his mistakes would brag, “I play with bankruptcy.”
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016
“The same people [Trump's] trying to get to vote for him now are people he’s been exploiting for years” —Hillary: https://t.co/dJYqAjRoC8
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016
Trump has written a lot of books about business—but they all seem to end at Chapter 11.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016
* * *
Speaking of rigging the economy for Wall Street, we seem to remember Goldman Sachs paying Clinton a lot of money to give speeches, the transcripts of which still have not yet been released. However, that is something that many Americans will choose to overlook we have no doubt.
And of course, Trump has responded on Twitter:
Obama-Clinton inherited $10T in debt and turned it into nearly $20T. They have bankrupted… https://t.co/1COtt0RPY7
— Donald …read more
Source: Hillary Clinton Rants That "Trump Would Throw Us Back Into Recession"
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By Tyler Durden
With USDJPY collapsing in fits and starts and the nightly nattering nabobs of Japanese officialdom sparking mini risk flare-ups in FX markets, we can easily comprehend a part-time currency trader mounting up some losses. But it appears 54-year-old Japanese Mint employee Yutaka Umeno turned the leverage dial to 11 and having lost it all, decided the appropriate solution was to to steal a 15 kilo bar of gold “to cover his FX losses.”
As Asahi.com reports, a Japan Mint worker is accused of swiping a 15-kilogram gold bar valued at around $650,000 from under the noses of his colleagues…
Yutaka Umeno, an officer at the Japan Mint's Tokyo Branch near Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward, has been arrested and charged with stealing the gold bar, which was displayed in the Tokyo Branch’s Mint Museum, Saitama prefectural police announced June 20.
The ingot, which measures about 20 centimeters in length, 10 cm in width and 6 cm in height, was found at a pawn shop here, north of Tokyo.
Umeno, 54, who lives in Saitama city’s Nishi Ward and works for the general affairs division at the Japan Mint, has admitted to a charge of theft and told police he did it to “compensate losses made by foreign exchange trading.”
According to the investigators, Umeno made a subordinate remove the gold bar from its display case in the museum on Jan. 5 this year. He lied to the colleague, saying that he needed it for work purposes, which was a plausible reason as the museum sometimes loans the ingot for educational use.
Perhaps even more intriguing is The Mint did not realize the large gold ingot was missing for five months!!
The crime came to light when the worker who removed the bar from the case became suspicious after Umeno, who kept working there, did not return it for five months and reported it to another superior officer.
On a number of occasions after the theft, staff members inquired with Umeno about the location of the bar. Umeno left his post at the Tokyo branch in the middle of the day on June 14. Three days later, a member of his family contacted police after he had not returned home. Saitama Prefectural Police apprehended him therafter.
Yasuhiro Ichiba, the mint’s assistant director of the general affairs department, offered an apology at a press conference in Osaka on Monday. “We will endeavor to ensure that a recurrence does not take place,” he said.
We wonder why the Mint worker did not steal share certificates or Yen… maybe it's a 'tradition' to steal 'valueless' yellow rocks?
Source: Japanese Mint Employee Stole 15Kg Gold Bar "To Cover FX Trading Losses"
By Tyler Durden
According to CNN, Federal investigators are trying to find out more specifically what Omar Mateen's wife, Noor Salman (profiled here), knew about the planned attack at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. The intent is to bring evidence before a federal grand jury to determine whether or not charges will be brought against Salman.
As US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said today, federal authorities are going back and looking at all of the contact with Omar Mateen, as well as those around him in order find out if there is anything that was missed.
AG Loretta Lynch on #OrlandoShooting gunman: “We're going to go back and look at all of our contact with him” https://t.co/bLFolbaCcK
— CNN (@CNN) June 21, 2016
However there is one rather large problem with one key person in the investigation, it appears that Noor Salman is missing and may not even be in the state of Florida anymore. In an interview the Sun Sentinel conducted with Seddique Mateen, the shooter's father, Seddique said that Salman was “not around here.”
“If you're looking for Noor, she's not here. I cannot say where she's gone, but she's not around here.” Seddique said.
The Sentinel went on to report that while reporters were outside Seddique's house, St. Lucie County sheriff's deputies arrived, went into the house for a few minutes, and then left without comment.
And perhaps most disturbing of all, according to Breaking911 citing CNN, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch says that she doesn't know if Salman has left the state or not.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch Says She Doesn’t Know if Orlando Shooter’s Wife Has Left the State of Florida -CNN
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 21, 2016
We believe the source to CNN's assertion that Lynch doesn't know where Salman is came from a press conference held today whereby Lynch said the following in response to an inaudible question: “right now I do not know exactly the answer to that, I believe she was going to travel but I do not know exactly her location now“
Comment begins at 17:33
* * *
If this is accurate, how it's possible that Noor Salman has given federal authorities the slip is beyond our comprehension. Perhaps the department needs more funding, that always seems to do the trick.
Source: Loretta Lynch Admits That Federal Authorities Have Lost The Orlando Shooter’s Wife
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