Carnival approved for Cuba cruises starting in May
Cruise ships from America will soon be dropping anchor off Havana.
Source: Carnival approved for Cuba cruises starting in May
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Will The American People Succeed In Clawing-Back Their Democracy?
By Tyler Durden
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
With much help from the failures of neoliberal economic policy and neoconservative foreign policy, we are changing the world.
Look at Bernie Sanders’ inroads on the corrupt Clintons’ control of the Democratic Party. Look at how easily Donald Trump defeated the Republican establishment’s candidates. Some Americans are catching on, shedding their unawareness. I am not confident that Sanders or Trump could bring change. In The Deep State (2016), Mike Lofgren concludes that powerful private interest groups, such as the military/security complex and the financial sector, have hijacked democracy. Still, voters’ interest in Sanders and Trump, despite the beating they receive in the media, is a positive sign. Voters are supporting them not so much for their positions on issues as for the fact that neither are part of the Washington establishment. Many voters now understand that the political establishment represents the One Percent, not them.
A New Russia has appeared on the scene and demonstrated to the entire world its power to checkmate the hegemonic ambition of the crazed neoconservatives who have controlled the US government since Bill Clinton. The world now understands that the leadership for peace comes from Russia not from warmonger Washington.
Washington’s vassals in Europe are in disarray, with the Northern European EU members plundering the Southern EU members, with all of Europe overrun with refugees fleeing Washington’s hoax “war against terrorism.” Europeans are beginning to realize that the establishment political parties that they have blindly supported since World War 2 are nothing but agents of Washington, who serve Washington and not Europeans. Merkel, Cameron, Hollande are puppets of Washington, not leaders of the German, British, and French people.
The Chinese government is finally beginning to realize that the neoliberal American economic policies that it has so slavishly been copying have led it into economic difficulties. Perhaps China will now cease to follow America into oblivion.
The Russians have learned that being part of the Western system subjects them to economic sanctions and makes it easy for Washington to interfere in Russian internal affairs. The Russians are beginning to show that their desire for their independence is greater than their desire to be accepted by a corrupt, immoral, decadent, and failing West.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders speak to Americans’ loss of economic opportunity and financial independence. Today the 99 Percent are slaves to their debt burdens and lack of productive employment, while those who deceived them into these burdens and lowly-paid employment in domestic services are reveling in multi-million dollar annual paychecks.
The US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and financial regulators are corrupted by the private financial interests that control them. The US government serves only the One Percent. Despite this obvious fact, many Democratic Party voters—-traditionally the less well off, union members, and American blacks—-are turning out for Hillary Clinton, a tried and proven representative of the One Percent. The Clintons have been enriched to the amount of $153 million by the ruling One Percent who own the …read more
Source: Will The American People Succeed In Clawing-Back Their Democracy?
Trump struggles to provide details on libel law changes
Donald Trump was unable to provide specifics when asked by the Washington Post what specific changes he would make to libel laws. He has repeatedly said he would make it easier to sue the media if he becomes president.
Source: Trump struggles to provide details on libel law changes
This Critical Consumer Is Buying Gold For The First Time In Three Weeks
Helicopter Money: Global Central Banks Consider Distributing Money Directly To The People
Should central banks create money out of thin air and give it directly to governments and average citizens? If you can believe it, this is now under serious consideration. Since 2008, global central banks have cut interest rates 637 times, they have injected 12.3 trillion dollars into the global financial system through various quantitative easing programs, and we have seen an explosion of government debt unlike anything we have ever witnessed before. But despite these unprecedented measures, the global economy is still deeply struggling. This is particularly true in Japan, in South America, and in Europe. In fact, there are 16 countries in Europe that are experiencing deflation right now. In a desperate attempt to spur economic activity, central banks in Europe and in Japan are playing around with negative interest rates, and so far they seem to only have had a limited effect.
So as they rapidly run out of ammunition, global central bankers are now openly discussing something that might sound kind of crazy. According to the Telegraph, central banks are becoming increasingly open to employing a tactic known as “helicopter money”…
Faced with political intransigence, central bankers are openly talking about the previously unthinkable: “helicopter money”.
A catch-all term, helicopter drops describe the process by which central banks can create money to transfer to the public or private sector to stimulate economic activity and spending.
Long considered one of the last policymaking taboos, debate around the merits of helicopter money has gained traction in recent weeks.
Do you understand what is being said there?
The idea is basically this – central banks would create money out of thin air and would just give it to national governments or ordinary citizens.
So who would decide who gets the money?
Well, they would.
If you are anything like me, this sounds very much like Pandora’s Box being opened.
But this just shows how much of a panic there is among central bankers right now. They know that we are plunging into a new global economic crisis, and they are desperate to find something that will stop it. And if that means printing giant gobs of money and dropping it from helicopters over the countryside, well then that is precisely what they are going to do.
In fact, the chief economist at the European Central Bank is quite adamant about the fact that the ECB can print money out of thin air and “distribute it to people” when the situation calls for it…
ECB chief Mario Draghi has refused to rule out the prospect, saying only that the bank had not yet “discussed” such matters due to their legal and accounting complexity. This week, his chief economist Peter Praet went further in hinting that helicopter drops were part of the ECB’s toolbox.
“All central banks can do it“, said Praet. “You can issue currency and you distribute it to people. The question is, if and when is it opportune to make recourse to that sort of instrument“.
Apparently memories of the Weimar Republic must have faded over in Europe, because …read more
Source: Helicopter Money: Global Central Banks Consider Distributing Money Directly To The People
Helicopter Money: Global Central Banks Consider Distributing Money Directly To The People
Should central banks create money out of thin air and give it directly to governments and average citizens? If you can believe it, this is now under serious consideration. Since 2008, global central banks have cut interest rates 637 times, they have injected 12.3 trillion dollars into the global financial system through various quantitative easing programs, and we have seen an explosion of government debt unlike anything we have ever witnessed before. But despite these unprecedented measures, the global economy is still deeply struggling. This is particularly true in Japan, in South America, and in Europe. In fact, there are 16 countries in Europe that are experiencing deflation right now. In a desperate attempt to spur economic activity, central banks in Europe and in Japan are playing around with negative interest rates, and so far they seem to only have had a limited effect.
So as they rapidly run out of ammunition, global central bankers are now openly discussing something that might sound kind of crazy. According to the Telegraph, central banks are becoming increasingly open to employing a tactic known as “helicopter money”…
Faced with political intransigence, central bankers are openly talking about the previously unthinkable: “helicopter money”.
A catch-all term, helicopter drops describe the process by which central banks can create money to transfer to the public or private sector to stimulate economic activity and spending.
Long considered one of the last policymaking taboos, debate around the merits of helicopter money has gained traction in recent weeks.
Do you understand what is being said there?
The idea is basically this – central banks would create money out of thin air and would just give it to national governments or ordinary citizens.
So who would decide who gets the money?
Well, they would.
If you are anything like me, this sounds very much like Pandora’s Box being opened.
But this just shows how much of a panic there is among central bankers right now. They know that we are plunging into a new global economic crisis, and they are desperate to find something that will stop it. And if that means printing giant gobs of money and dropping it from helicopters over the countryside, well then that is precisely what they are going to do.
In fact, the chief economist at the European Central Bank is quite adamant about the fact that the ECB can print money out of thin air and “distribute it to people” when the situation calls for it…
ECB chief Mario Draghi has refused to rule out the prospect, saying only that the bank had not yet “discussed” such matters due to their legal and accounting complexity. This week, his chief economist Peter Praet went further in hinting that helicopter drops were part of the ECB’s toolbox.
“All central banks can do it“, said Praet. “You can issue currency and you distribute it to people. The question is, if and when is it opportune to make recourse to that sort of instrument“.
Apparently memories of the Weimar Republic must have faded over in Europe, because …read more
Source: Helicopter Money: Global Central Banks Consider Distributing Money Directly To The People
Hulk Hogan jury adds $25.1 million to Gawker’s liability in sex tape case
A Florida jury ignored Gawker’s plea for mercy Monday and added another $25.1 million in punitive damages for posting a Hulk Hogan sex tape.
Source: Hulk Hogan jury adds $25.1 million to Gawker’s liability in sex tape case
Former PM Says Sweden Needs More Migrants: "Does Any Place Still Believe In Humanity?!"
By Tyler Durden
Uppsala is Sweden’s fourth largest city with around 150,000 people.
That means more migrants entered the country last year than there are people in Uppsala. On a per capita basis, Sweden lets in more refugees than any other country in the EU. At 20,000 asylum applications per million people, the rate is twice that of Germany.
And it hasn’t come without consequences. Like other countries across the bloc, Sweden has had problems with sexual assaults allegedly perpetrated by migrants (see the events that occurred last August at a youth festival and concert in central Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården). The country has also had difficulties accommodating the refugees and in January, a 22-year-old asylum center worker was stabbed to death by a Somali migrant in Molndal.
Now, Sweden has quite literally reached its breaking point and recently announced it will deport some 80,000 of the migrants that entered the country in 2015. As Deutsche Welle noted last November, “when the Migration Agency upped its annual prediction for [asylum seekers in] 2015, it called for an extra 70 billion Swedish kroner (7.5 billion euros) in funding over the next two years – equivalent to Sweden’s entire annual budget for schools, universities and scientific research.”
“Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of Sweden’s center-right Moderate Party, called [last year] for Sweden to start applying the EU’s Dublin Regulation so strictly that any asylum-seeker who has stepped foot in another country en route would be turned back at the border,” DW continued, adding that Batra’s rhetoric “marked a U-turn for her party, whose previous leader Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2014 called on Swedes to ‘open your hearts to people fleeing under great stress.’“
Despite the country’s worsening immigration problem, Reinfeldt hasn’t given up on his message. At a charity event last Monday, the former PM delivered a message of hope and compassion while simultaneously questioning the narrative that the country is falling apart. This is what he said:
“True vulnerability is to put your family on a boat which you don’t know if it’s going to make it across the sea. True vulnerability is to flee even if you don’t know where you’re going, if you will get there, if you will even survive. But this is what it is when the alternative is impossible to live with. Therefore, you have to escape. That is vulnerability.”
“In our country we have now started using words to describe what Sweden is exposed to and I have understood that we’re living in a collapse[d society]. Everything has stopped working. With those kinds of words we’re there again – what do words mean in our time?”
“I have spent a few weeks meeting people and asking, in this country of collapse, how their Christmas holidays were. What was it like celebrating Christmas in a collapse? If Sweden is collapsing and nothing is working, what words …read more
Source: Former PM Says Sweden Needs More Migrants: "Does Any Place Still Believe In Humanity?!"
100% Pure Garcinia Cambogia Extract – Appetite Suppressant – Carb Blocker Capsules – 2100 MG – 90 Caps
Looking for something special ? Find The Lowest Price HERE
Stocks Edge Higher Despite Dismal Data & Hawkish Fed As Bonds & Bullion Slide
By Tyler Durden
To sum up: China car sales crash by most on record (boom goes the overseas growth meme), US existing home sales plunge most in 6 years (boom goes the domestic housing strength supporting consumption meme), Williams and Lockhart go full hawk-tard (positing April as “live” and suggesting everything is hawkishly awesome), and one of our most succeesful 'innovative' tech firms unveils the worst product launch ever… and investors buy stocks with both hands and feet…
Futures show the flip-floppiness of the day best…A ramp in the afternoon session of China (thanks to eased margin requirements) which gave way as Europe traded weak then was slammed by Fed's Williams “April live” comments… a ramp back into the US open was then slammed by crappy housing data… which the machines ramped into Europe's close… Then Fed's Lockhart reiterated “April live” warnings but early weakness just spurred USDJPY to ignite momentum in stocks to overnight high stops…
Leaving Nasdaq the winner as cash equities rallied into the European close and sold off after NYMEX close despite extended gains from oil…
Post-Fed, things are back to normal as they should be… stocks #winning over gold and bonds… (buty silver is still in the lead)
AAPL disappointed…
It appears last week's apparent “QE Trade” – buy stocks, buy bonds, buy gold, sell USDs – is fading…
Treasury yields rose 4-5bps on the day with some modest steepening…(japanese markets on holiday) Notice that the buying was between US open and EU close..
The USD gained ground for the 2nd day ion a row – best gain in March…
Commodities dropped as China closed, rallied into US open, then flatlined…
But once again Crude was up and down faster than a whore's drawers…
Charts: Bloomberg
Source: Stocks Edge Higher Despite Dismal Data & Hawkish Fed As Bonds & Bullion Slide
