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Paul Merrell

The US Retail Industry is Collapsing: Here's Why You're in Trouble | - 0 views

www.theorganicprepper.ca/-why-youre-in-trouble-01132015

economic-collapse retail-industry store-closures

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Shopping malls across America are going to look a whole lot emptier soon. An exodus of giant retailers is beginning with the announcement of hundreds of store closures and thousands of people newly unemployed. The first of January, I broke with my usual tradition and wrote not about positive resolutions, but about the impending rockslide of the US economy. And “rockslide” is an apt word: as one thing starts rolling down the mountain, it will pick up other things until a veritable avalanche of other businesses and people are affected and rolling pell-mell right alongside. Last year, we saw announcements of the expected closure of some retail giants. In February of 2013, Michael Snyder wrote on The Economic Collapse Blog that we would see the following: Best Buy Forecast store closings: 200 to 250 Sears Holding Corp. Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125 J.C. Penney Forecast store closings: 300 to 350 Office Depot Forecast store closings: 125 to 150 Barnes & Noble Forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments Gamestop Forecast store closings: 500 to 600 OfficeMax Forecast store closings: 150 to 175 RadioShack Forecast store closings: 450 to 550
  • Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. This morning, a World News Daily report announced: Macy’s is closing 14 of its 790 stores across the country. JCPenney is closing 39 of its stores and laying off 2,250 workers. Sears has been around for 122 years, but it, too, is closing 235 under-performing stores.  C. Wonder, the preppy retailer, is going out of business, closing all 11 of its U.S. stores in the next few weeks. Wet Seal is closing 338 retail stores while dealing with bankruptcy proceedings. Nearly 3,700 full- and part-time workers will be unemployed. Aeropostale, suffering from declining sales, closed 75 stores during the holiday season, which runs from November through January. And in 2015, they expect to close an additional 50 to 75 stores. RadioShack, which is negotiating with lenders to gain approval to shutter 1,100 stores, said last month that it closed 175 locations in 2014. (source)
  • Even holiday sales, normally high, plummeted this Christmas.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • You may not work in retail yourself, but never doubt that the mass closure of these businesses will directly affect you.. Maybe you are wondering how.  You aren’t much of a shopper. You aren’t a retail worker. Perhaps you believe you can compartmentalize this information, pack it away, and go on with your life as you always have. The thing is, it’s not just the patrons and employees of these stores who are affected. This is going to be catastrophic on a variety of levels.
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Paul Merrell

Russia Abandons PetroDollar By Opening Reserve Fund - 0 views

oilprice.com/...r-By-Opening-Reserve-Fund.html

war & peace economic-warfare Russia U.S. 2015 oil-forecast

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • 2015 has not been good to Russia; the spread between Brent and WTI is gone in anticipation of US exports and both benchmarks have flirted with sub $45 prices. A hostage to such prices, the ruble has yet to begin its turnaround and the state’s finances are in extreme disarray. President Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings remain sky-high, but his country has not faced such difficult times since he took office more than 15 years ago. Since the turn of the new year the ruble has fallen over 13 percent and Russia’s central bank and finance department are running out of options – to date, policy makers have hiked interest rates to their highest level since the 1998 Russian financial crisis and embarked on a 1 trillion-ruble ($15 billion) bank recapitalization plan to little effect. Their latest, and most dramatic, plan is to abandon the dollar – at least somewhat.
  • In late December, the Kremlin ordered five large state-owned exporters – including oil and gas giants Rosneft and Gazprom – to sell their foreign currency reserves. Specifically, the companies must bring their foreign reserves to October levels by the beginning of March. To comply, the exporters may have to sell a combined $1 billion per day until March. Private companies have not yet been hit by these soft capital controls, but have instead been advised to manage their foreign exchange maneuvers responsibly. More recently, the Kremlin announced it will open its $88 billion sovereign wealth fund and flip it for rubles. The plan will see Russia convert as much as $8 billion to rubles (~500 billion) over a two-month span and place them in deposits for banks. Overall, the move will provide the Russian economy with some much needed liquidity and could speed up the healing if oil were to rebound, but it sends the wrong signals to investors and Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukaev believes the country’s credit rating will soon be marked below investment grade.
  • In any case, the move does little for the country’s ailing oil industry. The domestic market is projected to shrink amid the economic slowdown, and competition for market share abroad is increasingly competitive. Production forecasts are no rosier and the EIA predicts Russian crude production growth will be among the worst performers in both 2015 and 2016 – contrasted by continued growth in North America. Russia’s gas industry has fared no better. Gazprom’s 2014 output was historically awful and LNG is ever more a counter to the country’s pipeline politics.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • While Russia likely envisioned abandoning its dollars under far better circumstances, the news is just as worrying for the United States and its dollar hegemony. Along with Russia, energy exporters worldwide are pulling their petrodollars out of world financial markets and other USD-denominated assets in favor of greater, and certainly necessary, spending domestically. In the past, these dollars have given life to the loan market and helped fund debt among energy importers, contributing to overall growth.
  • Petrodollar exports – otherwise known as petrodollar recycling – were negative in 2014 for the first time in nearly two decades. The result is falling global market liquidity, record low US Treasury rates, and higher borrowing costs for everyone – a tough pill to swallow for energy producers if oil prices remain low. The US dollar remains the global reserve currency for now, but the fact remains that nations are increasingly transacting on their own terms, and often times without the USD.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Jan 15
     
    Re: "EIA predicts Russian crude production growth will be among the worst performers in both 2015 and 2016 - contrasted by continued growth in North America." That's not what is being reported. Many shale oil production facilities are no longer profitable in North America and credit for new efforts has completely dried up. And unless Congress can raise enough votes in both houses to overried Obama's promised veto of a bill to alow construction of the KXL Pipeline, Most of Canada's new oil production capacity will never reach the market. (Canada has ruled out pipelines from the Alberta tar sands to its own ocean coasts, so there is no alternative to KXL.)
Gary Edwards

Jeff Gundlach June Webcast Presentation - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ne-webcast-presentation-2013-6

Jeff-Gundlach Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Jun 13
     
    Fascinating presentation filled with stats and charts depicting the state of the world's economy.  51 slides in total, so it takes some time.  The summation is clear though.  We are in a world of hurt.  The $85 Billion per month the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel is pumping into the financial markets is the only thing holding the world economy together.  When the dollar collapses, the USA must officially devaluate the dollar, the QEII $85 Billion per month joy ride will be over. ""Something happened in the middle of May," said investing god Jeff Gundlach as he began his latest webcast on the state of the global markets and the economy. He was referring to how global interest rates quietly rallied and how the Japanese stock market fell spectacularly. He notes that the magnitude of the interest rate rally isn't unusual.  Having said that, Gundlach believes rates will stay low thanks to a "put" by the Federal Reserve. Should rates rise, Gundlach believes the Fed would actually expand quantitative easing. This is because high interest rates would put too much pressure on the economy, and it would cause Federal interest expenses to become too onerous. "I certainly think the Fed is going to reduce quantitative easing," he said. But he attributes the reduction to the shrinking Federal deficit. "I'm starting to like long-term Treasuries," said Gundlach as he predicted the 10-year Treasury yield would end the year at 1.7%. All of Gundlach's theses are based on the fact that the global economy remains weak, GDP growth forecasts continue to come down, and unemployment remains high and lop-sided. He communicates all of this in his eye-opening, hand-picked collection of charts on growth, employment, inflation, stocks, bonds, and other critical global macro indicators. Anyone who is serious about investing must consider his charts. And for anyone who's just curious, these charts will give you a peek into how Gundlach thinks. Click Here To See Gundlach's Presentation >"
Paul Merrell

Student Loan Borrowers' Costs To Jump As Education Department Reaps Huge Profit - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...nt-loan-profits_n_5149653.html

student-loans

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Department of Education is forecast to generate $127 billion in profit over the next decade from lending to college students and their families, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Beginning in the 2015-16 academic year, students and their families are forecast to pay more to borrow from the department than they did prior to last summer’s new student loan law, which set student loan interest rates based on the U.S. government's costs to borrow. The higher costs for borrowers would arrive at least a year sooner than previously predicted. James Kvaal, a top White House official, last year dismissed the possibility that student borrowers would pay higher costs under the new law. The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau on Monday warned borrowers about a "jump" in rates.
Gary Edwards

American Thinker: Obama's Ides-of-March Moment is Near - 0 views

www.americanthinker.com/...s_idesofmarch_moment_is_n.html

obammunism bernake carter volker

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Feb 10 - Cached
  • If Bernanke stops QE, he fulfills his role as an independent central banker. Presumably, that action stops the decline in the dollar and reduces the risk of future inflation. It was the course that Paul Volcker chose in the late 1970s. Volcker's action was bold, highly controversial, and highly criticized. Volcker's action had the support of President Reagan, who was willing to face short-term unpopularity to fix the economy. Bernanke's task is harder than Volcker's. Volcker stopped the economy dead in its tracks. If Bernanke ends QE, he will stop both the economy and the federal government dead in their tracks.Without QE, the government will be unable to honor its obligations. Non-payment of Social Security or Medicare or federal payroll or welfare checks or retirement checks, or military payroll, etc., etc., would show up almost immediately. That would jeopardize foreign (and domestic) purchases of additional federal debt, exacerbating the problem. Bernanke's second option enables the government to continue operating irresponsibly until market forces eventually stop the profligate behavior. Market discipline would likely be imposed in the form of a collapse of the dollar or raging inflation (or both). Under either scenario, the Obama presidency is destroyed.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Feb 10
     
    Incredible must read for all Americans. excerpt: By the end of March, Barack Obama's administration will face its destiny, its Brutus a pawn of the fates. In Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Wall Street Journal editorialized about "Ratcheting to Ruin." The title derived from the fact that each cycle high in unemployment was higher than previous ones, and each cycle high in inflation was also. "Stagflation" was the neologism coined to describe what up until then was believed to be impossible in the Keynesian world. This period ushered in a new era in both politics and economics. Carter was replaced by Reagan, and Keynes was replaced by Friedman. Thirty years later, Keynes is back in vogue, Obama has ascended to the White House, and times are reminiscent of the Carter era. The economy is awful. Fear and dissatisfaction prevail. Politicians are held in contempt. There is one major difference -- Carter did not face an "ides of March" event. ..... The problem is bigger than the numbers above might suggest. Budget forecasts show that the problem increases over time. In addition, 40% of existing debt matures in the next year. That means $2.8 trillion of debt has to be refinanced. The Treasury must sell on average $90 billion of debt a week! In five weeks, we need to sell $450 billion. That is equal to the largest full-year deficit in history, at least until Obama's first year. There are no plans to curb spending or cut deficits. President Obama just increased the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion. To outsiders, we appear like a banana republic with ICBMs. Does anyone seriously believe that funding based on "the kindness of strangers" is workable much longer? ..... If Bernanke stops QE, he fulfills his role as an independent central banker. Presumably, that action stops the decline in the dollar and reduces the risk of future inflation. It was the course that Paul Volcker chose in the late 1970s. Volcker's action was bold, highly controversial, and highly criticized. Vol
Gary Edwards

Gerald Celente: The Greatest Depression & The First Great War or the 21st Century - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ld-celente-greatest-depression

gerald-celente financial-collapse world-war

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Feb 11
     
    The fake "recovery" was nice while it lasted, says famous apocalyptic forecaster Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute. But now the fun's over, and we're headed for what Celente describes as the "Greatest Depression." Specifically, the always startling Celente says the country is headed for rising unemployment, poverty, and violent class warfare as the government efforts to keep the economy going begin to fail. The crux of the problem, Celente argues, is that the middle class has been wiped out. America used to be a land of opportunity for all, where hard-working people could build their own small businesses in their own communities and live prosperous and fulfilling lives. But now a collusion of state and corporate interests that Celente describes as "fascism" have conspired to help only the biggest companies and the richest Americans. This has put a shocking amount of the country's wealth in the hands of a privileged few and left the rest of the country to subsist on chicken-feed wages and low job satisfaction as Wal-Mart "associates" -- or worse. The answer, Celente says, is to bring back the laws that prevented huge companies from getting so big and powerful, and put some opportunity back in the hands of ordinary people.  But doing that is going to take a while.  And in the meantime, we're headed for trouble. (Celente's dead right about U.S. wealth inequality, by the way.  It's shocking.  And it's getting worse.) 
Paul Merrell

The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...tegy-against-the-islamic-state

war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • A national strategy emerges over the decades and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of realities crafted by all those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. The United States has an inherent interest in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq. Whether we should have that interest is an interesting philosophical question for a late-night discussion, followed by a sunrise when we return to reality. These places reflexively matter to the United States. The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm.
  • The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm. This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • Because the Islamic State operates to some extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power. The use of air power against conventional forces that lack anti-aircraft missiles is a useful gambit. It shows that the United States is doing something, while taking little risk, assuming that the Islamic State really does not have anti-aircraft missiles. But it accomplishes little. The Islamic State will disperse its forces, denying conventional aircraft a target. Attempting to defeat the Islamic State by distinguishing its supporters from other Sunni groups and killing them will founder at the first step. The problem of counterinsurgency is identifying the insurgent. There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States?
  • There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one who would threaten the United States emerges. The Islamic State had real successes at first, but the balance of power with the Kurds and Shia has limited its expansion, and tensions within the Sunni community diverted its attention. Certainly there is the danger of intercontinental terrorism, and U.S. intelligence should be active in identifying and destroying these threats. But the re-occupation of Iraq, or Iraq plus Syria, makes no sense. The United States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local population makes that impossible.
  • The danger is that other Islamic State franchises might emerge in other countries. But the United States would not be able to block these threats as well as the other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia must cope with any internal threat it faces not because the United States is indifferent, but because the Saudis are much better at dealing with such threats. In the end, the same can be said for the Iranians. Most important, it can also be said for the Turks. The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region, and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara. This is partly because of Ankara’s fear that the jihadist group might spread to Turkey, but more so because its impact on Iraqi Kurdistan could affect Turkey’s long-term energy plans.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14
     
    The article is by the Chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence company. I don't agree with its analysis because I am decidedly non-interventionist. But this article should be required reading for all who have fallen for the war fever being spread by the War Party for full-scale military invasion of Iraq and Syria. The article at least lays a sound basis for a large degree of restraint.
Paul Merrell

Secret US cybersecurity report: encryption vital to protect private data | US news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ect-data-cameron-paris-attacks

surveillance-state NSA GCHQ encryption hypocrisy

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal gangs because encryption technologies were not being implemented fast enough. The advice, in a newly uncovered five-year forecast written in 2009, contrasts with the pledge made by David Cameron this week to crack down on encryption use by technology companies.
  • In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the prime minister said there should be no “safe spaces for terrorists to communicate” or that British authorites could not access. Cameron, who landed in the US on Thursday night, is expected to urge Barack Obama to apply more pressure to tech giants, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, which have been expanding encrypted messaging for their millions of users since the revelations of mass NSA surveillance by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
  • Cameron said the companies “need to work with us. They need also to demonstrate, which they do, that they have a social responsibility to fight the battle against terrorism. We shouldn’t allow safe spaces for terrorists to communicate. That’s a huge challenge but that’s certainly the right principle”. But the document from the US National Intelligence Council, which reports directly to the US director of national intelligence, made clear that encryption was the “best defence” for computer users to protect private data. Part of the cache given to the Guardian by Snowden was published in 2009 and gives a five-year forecast on the “global cyber threat to the US information infrastructure”. It covers communications, commercial and financial networks, and government and critical infrastructure systems. It was shared with GCHQ and made available to the agency’s staff through its intranet.
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  • An unclassified table accompanying the report states that encryption is the “[b]est defense to protect data”, especially if made particularly strong through “multi-factor authentication” – similar to two-step verification used by Google and others for email – or biometrics. These measures remain all but impossible to crack, even for GCHQ and the NSA. The report warned: “Almost all current and potential adversaries – nations, criminal groups, terrorists, and individual hackers – now have the capability to exploit, and in some cases attack, unclassified access-controlled US and allied information systems.” It further noted that the “scale of detected compromises indicates organisations should assume that any controlled but unclassified networks of intelligence, operational or commercial value directly accessible from the internet are already potentially compromised by foreign adversaries”.
  • The report had some cause for optimism, especially in the light of Google and other US tech giants having in the months prior greatly increased their use of encryption efforts. “We assess with high confidence that security best practices applied to target networks would prevent the vast majority of intrusions,” it concluded. Official UK government security advice still recommends encryption among a range of other tools for effective network and information defence. However, end-to-end encryption – which means only the two people communicating with each other, and not the company carrying the message, can decode it – is problematic for intelligence agencies as it makes even warranted collection much more difficult.
  • The previous week, a day after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, the MI5 chief, Andrew Parker, called for new powers and warned that new technologies were making it harder to track extremists. In November, the head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, said US social media giants had become the “networks of choice” for terrorists. Chris Soghoian, principal senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said attempts by the British government to force US companies to weaken encryption faced many hurdles.
  • The Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica have previously reported the intelligence agencies’ broad efforts to undermine encryption and exploit rather than reveal vulnerabilities. This prompted Obama’s NSA review panel to warn that the agency’s conflicting missions caused problems, and so recommend that its cyber-security responsibilities be removed to prevent future issues.
  • The memo requested a renewal of the legal warrant allowing GCHQ to “modify” commercial software in violation of licensing agreements. The document cites examples of software the agency had hacked, including commonly used software to run web forums, and website administration tools. Such software are widely used by companies and individuals around the world. The document also said the agency had developed “capability against Cisco routers”, which would “allow us to re-route selected traffic across international links towards GCHQ’s passive collection systems”. GCHQ had also been working to “exploit” the anti-virus software Kaspersky, the document said. The report contained no information on the nature of the vulnerabilities found by the agency.
  • Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, a lobby group that represents Facebook, Google, Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo and other tech companies, said: “Just as governments have a duty to protect to the public from threats, internet services have a duty to our users to ensure the security and privacy of their data. That’s why internet services have been increasing encryption security.”
Paul Merrell

No, Obama, Russia's Economy Isn't 'in Tatters' - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...ia-s-economy-isn-t-in-tatters-

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russia sanctions oil-prices economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Western politicians and pundits should be more careful with their predictions for the Russian economy: Reports of its demise may prove to be premature. Bashing the Russian economy has lately become a popular pastime. In his state of the nation address last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was "in tatters." And yesterday, Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics published an article predicting a 10 percent drop in gross domestic product this year -- more or less in line with the apocalyptic predictions that prevailed when the oil price reached its nadir late last year and the ruble was in free fall. Aslund's forecast focuses on Russia's shrinking currency reserves, some of which have been earmarked for supporting government spending in difficult times. At $364.6 billion, they are down 26 percent from a year ago and $21.6 billion from the beginning of this year. Aslund expects $166 billion to be spent on infrastructure investments and bailing out companies, and another $100 billion to exit via capital flight and other currency outflows. As a result, given foreign debts of almost $600 billion, "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," he says.
  • What this argument ignores is that Russia's foreign debts are declining along with its reserves -- that's what happens when the money is used to pay down state companies' obligations. Last year, for example, the combined foreign liabilities of the Russian government and companies dropped by $129.4 billion, compared with a $124.3 billion decline in foreign reserves. Beyond that, a large portion of Russian companies' remaining foreign debt is really part of a tax-evasion scheme: By lending themselves money from abroad, the companies transfer profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. Such loans can easily be extended if sanctions prevent the Russian side from paying. The declining price of oil is also less of a threat than many have warned. True, the Russian government's revenues from energy exports will fall in dollar terms. But because Russia's central bank has allowed the ruble's value against the dollar to decline, the ruble value of the revenues will be higher than they otherwise would be. As a result, Russia no longer requires $100 oil to balance its budget -- and the effect of lower oil prices on the broader economy will be muted.
  • Economists at the respected Gaidar Institute, for example, expect the floating of the ruble to roughly halve the negative GDP impact of the decline in oil prices. They estimate that Russian GDP will shrink by a moderate 2.7 percent this year, even if Brent oil trades at $40 (it traded at $61 today). That's just a bit more optimistic than the consensus among 39 economists polled by Bloomberg between Feb. 20 and Feb. 25: On average, they see a decline of 4 percent. Economic sanctions, which most forecasts assume will continue this year, are having less impact that many in the West would like to believe. Sergei Tsukhlo of the Gaidar Institute estimates that the sanctions have affected only 6 percent of Russian industrial enterprises. "Their effect remains quite insignificant despite all that's being said about them," he wrote, noting that trade disruptions with Ukraine have been more important.
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  • Granted, there's no avoiding a significant drop in Russians' living standards because of accelerating inflation. The economics ministry in Moscow predicts real wages will fall by 9 percent this year -- which, Aslund wrote, means that "for the first time after 15 years in power," Russian President Vladimir Putin "will have to face a majority of the Russian people experiencing a sharply declining standard of living." So far, though, Russians have taken the initial shock of devaluation and accompanying inflation largely in stride. The latest poll from the independent Levada Center, conducted between Feb. 20 and Feb. 23, actually shows an uptick in Putin's approval rating -- to 86 percent from 85 percent in January.  It's time to bury the expectation that Russia will fall apart economically under pressure from falling oil prices and economic sanctions, and that Russians, angered by a drop in their living standards, will rise up and sweep Putin out of office. Western powers face a tough choice: Settle for a lengthy siege and ratchet up the sanctions despite the progress in Ukraine, or start looking for ways to restart dialogue with Russia, a country that just won't go away.
Paul Merrell

Oil-price scenarios: Good, bad and ugly - Business - CBC News - 0 views

www.cbc.ca/...os-good-bad-and-ugly-1.2997386

pipelinestan-wars oil-forecast Iran-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • As the price of oil trades at a six-year low, there’s no consensus on what the rest of the year will bring for crude. But there are many different forecasts. Here are three scenarios being considered by commodity strategists.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 15
     
    After a short interregnum of stability when the price of oil settled around $50 per barrel, the market has once again gone wonky with oil hitting a six-year low of $42 per barrel. The possibility of a deal with Iran and the easing of sanctions has many worried that the floor could drop below $30. Here are three likely scenarios: The Good: OPEC cuts in June and the glut is curtailed. The Bad: No OPEC cut, but storage levels aren't exceeded, which means the glut isn't clogging the system and drowning producers in oil. The Ugly: Storage tanks do fill up, producers have no place to send their excess crude and sanctions on Iran are eased. That would drown the market. So there' are oil industry interests that gets gored if Iran sanctions are removed too soon. That goes a long way toward explaining thedepth of resistance to the Iran negotiations. I.e., apparently it's more than the Israel Lobby. 
Paul Merrell

A New Recession and a New World Devoid of Washington's Arrogance? - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38931.htm

war & peace economic-warfare U.S.-foreign-policy Russia China

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • June 25, 2014. A final number for real US GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was released today. The number is not the 2.6% growth rate predicted by the know-nothing economists in January of this year. The number is a decline in GDP of -2.9 percent. The negative growth rate of -2.9 percent is itself an understatement. This number was achieved by deflating nominal GDP with an understated measure of inflation. During the Clinton regime, the Boskin Commission rigged the inflation measure in order to cheat Social Security recipients out of their cost-of-living adjustments. Anyone who purchases food, fuel, or anything knows that inflation is much higher than the officially reported number. It is possible that the drop in first quarter real GDP is three times the official number. Regardless, the difference is large between the January forecast of +2.6 percent growth and the decline as of the end of March of -2.9 percent.
  • Any economist who is real and unpaid by Wall Street, the government, or the Establishment knew that the +2.6 percent forecast was a crock. Americans’ incomes have not grown except for the one percent, and the only credit growth is in student loans, as those many who cannot find jobs mistakenly turn to “education is the answer.” In an economy based on consumer demand, the absence of income and credit growth means no economic growth. The US economy cannot grow because corporations pushed by Wall Street have moved the US economy offshore. US manufactured products are made offshore. Look at the labels on your clothes, your shoes, your eating and cooking utensils, your computers, whatever. US professional jobs such as software engineering have been moved offshore. An economy with an offshored economy is not an economy. All of this happened in full view, while well-paid free market shills declared that Americans were benefiting from giving America’s middle class jobs to China and India.
  • An official decline of -2.9 percent in the first quarter implies a second quarter GDP decline. Two declines in a row is the definition of recession. Imagine the consequences of a recession. It means that years of unprecedented Quantitative Easing failed to revive the economy. It means that years of Keynesian fiscal deficits failed to revive the economy. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy worked. What then can revive the economy? Nothing except to force the return of the economy that the anti-American corporations moved offshore. This would require credible government. Unfortunately, the US government has been losing credibility since the second term of the Clinton regime. It has none left.
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  • Washington’s lies are catching up with Obama. German chancellor Merkel is Washington’s complete whore, but German industry is telling Washington’s whore that they value their business with Russia more than they value suffering in behalf of Washington’s empire. French businessmen are asking Hollande what he proposes to do with their unemployed workers if Holland goes along with Washington. Italian businesses are reminding that government, to the extent that Italy has one, that uncouth Americans have no tastes and that sanctions on Russia mean a hit to Italy’s most famous and best recognized economic sector–high style luxury products. Dissent with Washington and Washington’s two-bit puppet rulers in Europe is spreading. The latest poll in Germany reveals that three-quarters of Germany’s population rejectpermanent NATO bases in Poland and the Baltic states. The former Czechoslovakia, currently Slovakia and the Czech Republic, although NATO members, have rejected NATO and American troops and bases on their territory. Recently, the Polish foreign minister said that pleasing Washington required giving free oral sex for nothing in return.
  • Thus, America’s two largest business organizations, important sources of political campaign contributions, have finally added their voice to the voices of German, French, and Italian business. Everyone, except the brainwashed American public, knows that the “crisis in Ukraine” is entirely the work of Washington. European and American businesses are asking: “why should our profits and our workers take hits in behalf of Washington’s propaganda against Russia.” Obama has no answer. Perhaps his neocon scum, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice can come up with an answer. Obama can look to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Weekly Standard to explain why millions of Americans and Europeans should suffer in order that Washington’s theft of Ukraine is not endangered.
  • Today no one anywhere in the world believes the US government except the brain dead Americans who read and listen to the “mainstream media.” Washington’s propaganda dominates the minds of Americans, but produces laughter and scorn everywhere else. The poor US economic outlook has brought America’s two largest business lobbies–the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (or what is left of them) into conflict with the Obama regime’s threat of further sanctions against Russia. According to Bloomberg News, beginning tomorrow (June 26), the business groups will run advertisements in the New York Times, Wall St Journal, and Washington Post opposing any further sanctions on Russia. The US business organizations say that the sanctions will harm their profits and result in layoffs of American workers.
  • The strains that Washington’s morons are putting on NATO might break the organization apart. Pray that it does. NATO’s excuse for existence disappeared with the Soviet collapse 23 years ago. Yet, Washington has increased NATO far beyond the borders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO now runs from the Baltics to Central Asia. In order to have a reason for NATO’s continued expensive operation, Washington has had to construct an enemy out of Russia. Russia has no intention of being Washington’s or NATO’s enemy and has made that perfectly clear. But Washington’s military/security complex, which absorbs about $1 trillion annually of US hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, needs an excuse to keep the profits flowing. Unfortunately the Washington morons picked a dangerous enemy. Russia is a nuclear armed power, a country of vast dimensions, and with a strategic alliance with China.
  • Only a government drowning in arrogance and hubris or a government run by psychopaths and sociopaths would pick such an enemy. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has pointed out to Europe that Washington’s policies in the Middle East and Libya are not merely total failures but also devastatingly harmful to Europe and Russia. The fools in Washington have removed the governments that suppressed the jihadists. Now the violent jihadists are unleashed. In the Middle East the jihadists are at work remaking the artificial boundaries set by the British and French in the aftermath of World War I. Europe, Russia and China have Muslim populations and now must worry if the violence that Washington has unleashed will bring destabilization to regions of Europe, Russia and China.
  • No one anywhere in the world has any reason to love Washington. Least of all Americans, who are being bled dry in order that Washington can parade military force around the world. Obama’s approval rating is a dismal 41 percent and no one wants Obama to remain in office once his second term is complete. In contrast, two-thirds of the Russian population want Putin to remain president after 2018. In March the poling agency, Public Opinion Research Center, released a report that Putin’s approval rating stood at 76 percent despite the agitation against him by the US financed Russian NGOs, hundreds of fifth column institutions that Washington established in Russia during the past two decades. On top of US political troubles, the US dollar is in trouble. The dollar is kept afloat by rigged financial markets and Washington’s pressure on its vassal states to support the dollar’s value by printing their own currencies and purchasing dollars. In order to keep the dollar afloat, much of the world will be inflated. When people finally catch on and rush into gold, the Chinese will have it all.
  • Sergey Glazyev, an adviser to President Putin, has told the Russian president than only an anti-dollar alliance that crashes the US dollar can halt Washington’s aggression. That has long been my opinion. There can be no peace as long as Washington can print more money with which to finance more wars. As the Chinese government stated, it is time to “de-Americanize the world.” Washington’s leadership has totally failed the world, producing nothing but lies, violence, death, and the promise of more violence. America is exceptional only in the fact that Washington has, without remorse, destroyed in whole or part seven countries in the new 21st century. Unless Washington is replaced with more humane leadership, life on earth has no future.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 14
     
    Paul Craig Roberts wields a pen striking at the very heart of what ails American government.
Paul Merrell

What Sanctions? The Russian Economy Is Growing Again - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/t-about-russias-economy-321934

Russia economic-warfare

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Six months ago, the price of oil—the lifeblood of the Russian economy—began to crater, and U.S.-led sanctions, implemented in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, were biting. Russia’s currency, the ruble, buckled, and capital flight began to accelerate as rich but nervous Russians moved more and more money out of the country. It seemed plausible then to wonder: Could Vladimir Putin be losing his grip? Might economic pressure be enough to rein him in, or even lead to his downfall?Today, the answer is becoming clear—and it’s not the one the West was hoping for. Not only is Putin still standing, but the Russian economy, against most expectations, is recovering. Its stock market is one of the best performing globally this year; the ruble, after losing nearly half its value against the dollar over the course of a year, is rebounding; interest rates have come down from their post-sanctions peak; the government is taking in more revenue than its own forecast expected; and foreign exchange reserves have risen nearly $10 billion from their post-crisis low.
  • The lower price of oil still hurts. Citicorp economists estimate that every $10 decline in the price of Brent crude shaves 2 percent from Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Further declines—not out of the question, given that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest and lowest-cost producer, is still pumping record amounts of crude—will crimp growth even more. But those same Citicorp economists forecast that GDP, after contracting for the past 18 months, could now begin to grow at up to 3.5 percent per year, even without a recovery in crude prices.
  • Though better run than many Russian firms, Severstal is not an outlier. According to data from Bloomberg, some 78 percent of Russian companies on the MICEX index showed greater revenue growth in the most recent quarter than their global peers did. And Russian companies on the whole are now more profitable than their peers on the MSCI Emerging Markets index.What’s bailing out Moscow? For the second time in two decades, Russia is showing that while a sharp drop in its currency’s value does bring financial pain—it raises prices for imports and makes any foreign debt Russia or its companies have taken on that much more expensive in ruble terms—it also eventually produces textbook economic benefits. Since a devaluation raises import prices, it also paves the way for what economists call “import substitution,” a clunky way to say that consumers switch to buying less pricey products produced at home instead of imported goods.
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  • For companies such as Severstal, which exports nearly 20 percent of its output, the benefits of devaluation are obvious: All of the costs that go into producing steel in Russia—iron ore, manganese, nickel, labor, electricity—are priced in rubles. That means the companies’ costs relative to their international competitors’ have plummeted. At the same time, any steel they sell abroad is priced in either U.S. dollars or euros—both of which have risen in value against the ruble. When the companies bring those sales dollars home, they are worth far more in rubles than they were a year ago.The same phenomenon applies in a big way to Russia’s vast energy sector. Moscow exports huge amounts of oil and gas, and brings in dollars for it. That’s why Rosneft, a huge oil producer with close ties to Putin’s Kremlin, reported a revenue increase of 18 percent last year, compared with an increase of less than 1 percent for its international competitors, according to Bloomberg data. This is a big part of the reason why Russia’s tax revenue has not fallen off a cliff, mitigating somewhat the pain of last year’s crisis. Russia’s oil output is still near record highs—one of the reasons, along with continued full-tilt Saudi output, that prices remain so weak.
  • The world shouldn’t have been surprised by what has happened. More or less the same thing happened in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis spread to Russia and Moscow both defaulted on its international debt and devalued the ruble. There was an immediate negative economic shock, followed by an import substitution-led recovery that was sharper than most international economists at the time believed would occur. “This argues for an economic recovery now similar in nature, if not necessarily in magnitude, to the one after 1998,” says Ivan Tchakarov, an economist at Citicorp.
  • When oil prices crumbled last year, there was a fair bit of hope in Western capitals that the pain would do what sanctions hadn’t yet: force a Russian climbdown in Ukraine, and perhaps prompt Putin to turn back inward and tend to his troubles at home.Maybe that was wishful thinking. Whatever the case, it’s now a moot point. The Russian economy is showing enough resilience that it appears unlikely to check Putin’s behavior abroad. Public opinion surveys at home provide little evidence that the people have turned on him. For Washington and its allies, the time for wishful thinking is over. Vladimir Putin is not going anywhere. 
Paul Merrell

Goldman Sachs Makes Oil Prices Drop | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globaliz... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5502477

banksters Goldman Sachs oil-market market-manipulation

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Schedule of falling oil prices, adjusted in relation to the current fluctuations, has essentially been a straight line since last September, when prices fell from $ 50 per barrel to the current $ 29. What was so momentous that happened in the world market in September? In September, “Goldman Sachs” lowered expectations for the average oil price for 2016, assuming that it will drop to $ 20 a barrel. “Expectations” of “Goldman Sachs” were “whole-heartedly” supported by “Merrill Lynch”, “Bank of America” and others. There you have it – $ 20, quoted by “Goldman Sachs”, was not a forecast. It was the target. Only our own Ministry of Economy is the one that makes forecasts, “Goldman Sachs” , on the other hand, makes the markets. The oil market – is not the market of raw materials. Supply contracts for actual oil makes only 2% percent of the market, the rest – speculative securities, futures and other derivatives. Prices for futures are not determined by supply and demand, but by “expectations”. The futures market is completely controlled by the largest US banks. This is the market of expectations, which creates a real “Industry of expectations” using the notorious rating agencies, “independent” experts and the media.
Paul Merrell

Guide to the Presidential Candidates' National Security Positions | Just Security - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...es-national-security-positions

Auction 2016 candidates-positions national-security-issues

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Last spring, we launched the first version of Just Security’s guide to the 2016 presidential candidates’ positions on national security matters. We’re relaunching that guide below with interactive features designed to make it easier use. For this version of the guide, we’re focusing on candidates who, according to Five Thirty-Eight’s forecasts, have a better than 10 percent chance of winning a primary. As a result, this version includes Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. As the field shifts over the coming weeks, we may add or remove candidates from this list. We’ll also be periodically updating the information about the candidates’ positions as they wind their way through primary season and move into the general election. This guide features sources for each summary and, whenever possible, cites official government websites or the candidates’ websites. In our research, we relied on their own statements and records rather than commentary on the candidates’ positions.
Gary Edwards

STRATFOR George Friedman predictions for the future - Business Insider - 1 views

www.businessinsider.com/dictions-for-the-future-2016-2

STRATFOR George-Friedman

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Feb 16
     
    excellent read with lots of non political reality based thinking. good stuff, even if you disagree. "George Friedman founded Strategic Forecasting in 1996. Stratfor's existence is based on the controversial but now influential premise that geopolitical events can be anticipated and even predicted in ways that can benefit private-sector actors. Friedman stayed at the pioneering political-risk firm until May 2015, when he left to found a new company called Geopolitical Futures. Friedman is a commentator on international affairs and author of the book "The Next 100 Years." He spoke to Business Insider earlier this month about the future of war, the next stage in the European debt crisis, and how and whether it's even possible to predict what's coming next. This interview has been edited for length and clarity."
Paul Merrell

The Syria Endgame: Strategic Stage in the Pentagon's Covert War on Iran - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33562.htm

Syria Iran U.S. foreign policy mid-east destabilization war & peace war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Since the kindling of the conflict inside Syria in 2011, it was recognized, by friend and foe alike, that the events in that country were tied to a game plan that ultimately targets Iran, Syria’s number one ally. [1] De-linking Syria from Iran and unhinging the Resistance Bloc that Damascus and Tehran have formed has been one of the objectives of the foreign-supported anti-government militias inside Syria. Such a schism between Damascus and Tehran would change the Middle East’s strategic balance in favour of the US and Israel. If  this cannot be accomplished, however, then crippling Syria to effectively prevent it from providing Iran any form of diplomatic, political, economic, and military support in the face of common threats has been a primary objective. Preventing any continued cooperation between the two republics has been a strategic goal. This includes preventing the Iran-Iraq-Syria energy terminal from being built and ending the military pact between the two partners.
  • All Options are Aimed at Neutralizing Syria Regime change in Damascus is not the only or main way for the US and its allies to prevent Syria from standing with Iran. Destabilizing Syria and neutralizing it as a failed and divided state is the key. Sectarian fighting is not a haphazard outcome of the instability in Syria, but an assisted project that the US and its allies have steadily fomented with a clear intent to balkanize the Syrian Arab Republic. Regionally, Israel above all other states has a major stake in securing this outcome. The Israelis actually have several publicly available documents, including the Yinon Plan, which outline that the destruction of Syria into a series of smaller sectarian states is one of their strategic objectives. So do American military planners. Like Iraq next door, Syria does not need to be formally divided. For all intents and purposes, the country can be divided like Lebanon was alongside various fiefdoms and stretches of territory controlled by different groups during the Lebanese Civil War. The goal is to disqualify Syria as an external player.
  • Although it should be read with caution, it is worth noting the release of the hacked correspondence of Strategic Forecast Incorporated’s Reva Bhalla to her boss, George Friedman, about a December 2011 meeting in the Pentagon between herself (representing Stratfor), US, French, and British officials about Syria. [4] The Stratfor correspondence claimed that the US and its allies had sent in their military special forces to destabilize Syria in 2011 and that there actually were not many Syrian anti-government forces on the ground or, as Bhalla writes, “there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army to train.”
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  • The conflict in Syria is not merely an Israeli affair. The slow bleeding of Syria has other interested parties that want to smash the country and its society into pieces. The US is foremost among these interested parties, followed by the Arab dictators of the petro-sheikhdoms. NATO has also always been covertly involved. NATO’s involvement in Syria is part of the US strategy of using the military alliance to dominate the Middle East. This is why it was decided to establish a component of the missile shield in Turkey. This is also the reason that Patriot missiles are being deployed to the Turkish border with Syria. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue are components of these plans too. Additionally, Turkey has ended its veto against the further integration of Israel into NATO. [22] NATO has been reorienting itself towards asymmetrical warfare and greater emphasis is now being put on intelligence operations. NATO strategists have increasingly been studying the Kurds, Iraq, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians. In the scenario of an all-out war, NATO has been preparing itself for overt military roles in both Syria and Iran.
  • Iraq is being destabilized further too. While Iran’s allies in Damascus have been weighed down, its allies in Baghdad have not. After Syria, the same conglomerate of countries working against Damascus will turn their attention to Iraq. They have already started working to galvanize Iraq further on the basis of its sectarian and political fault lines. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are playing prominent roles in this objective. What is becoming manifest is that the differences between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims that Washington has cultivated since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 are now been augmented by Kurdish sectarianism.
Gary Edwards

Crony Capitalists Are the Ruling Class, the Forgotten Cause of Free Markets and Sound M... - 0 views

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39260.html

David-Stockman Banksters Corporate-Facsists

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 13
     
    David Stockman, former Reagan Budget Director, gives an amazingly insightful and indepth analysis of the 2008 financial collapse.  He also identifies the banksters, fascist corporatists, politicians and political forces behind the collapse.  Great read, but also a very long speech.  Worth every bit of your time though.  Very informative.
Paul Merrell

Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion -study | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...iversary-idUSL1N0C5FBN20130314

foreign wars costs casualties

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.
  • The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.The 2011 study said the combined cost of the wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.That estimate climbed to nearly $4 trillion in the update.
  • The estimated death toll from the three wars, previously at 224,000 to 258,000, increased to a range of 272,000 to 329,000 two years later.Excluded were indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, for example, while the costs left out trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years.The interest on expenses for the Iraq war could amount to about $4 trillion during that period, the report said.The report also examined the burden on U.S. veterans and their families, showing a deep social cost as well as an increase in spending on veterans. The 2011 study found U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war totaled $33 billion. Two years later, that number had risen to $134.7 billion.
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  • The report concluded the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it. The war reinvigorated radical Islamist militants in the region, set back women's rights, and weakened an already precarious healthcare system, the report said. Meanwhile, the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud, it said.
  • "Action needed to be taken," said Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.Bucci, who was unconnected to the Watson study, agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs."If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in," Bucci said. "Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short."
Paul Merrell

IMF criticises US spending cuts - Americas - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...201361514211826626.html

Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Banksters economy sequestration

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The International Monetary Fund has assailed US government spending cuts as "excessively rapid and ill-designed" as it cut the economy's growth forecast for 2014. Warning that the country still faces downside risks to its recovery, the IMF cheered the Federal Reserve's stimulus efforts and urged Congress to help firm up growth by repealing the severe "sequester" budget cuts. In its annual report on the US economy, the IMF said growth would be only 1.9 percent this year, due to the sequester's impact, when it had the potential of growing as much as 1.75 percentage points faster.
  • It suggested fundamental tax reforms as part of actions to confront the longer term fiscal shortfall, including eliminating many exemptions and loopholes, and introducing a value-added tax and a carbon tax. It credited the Federal Reserve's aggressive quantitative easing - its $85 billion-a-month bond purchases, to hold down interest rates - with keeping the economy on a sure footing as the government slashes spending.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 13
     
    Austerity cuts for the rest of the world but more spending and "quantitative easing" for the U.S. Banksters!
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