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"Following the initial de-dollarization meeting, there has been a slew of anti-dollar moves around the world (including Gazprom's shift of 90% of its clients to non-dollar payments). However, on the heels of the "anti-dollar alliance" discussions yesterday, DW reports that China would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday. China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) confirmed Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary.   Via DW, China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) said Wednesday the Asian nation would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday.   Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary, the trade platform noted.   "The move will promote the bilateral trade and investment between China and the United Kingdom and facilitate the use of renminbi and pound in the cross-border trade settlement," CFETS commented.   China has long had direct currency trade with the US and has recently added Japan's yen, the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars, Russia's ruble and the Malaysian ringgit to its options.   Wednesday's announcement came during a visit to the UK by China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang and after the signing of various bilateral business contracts.   Britain for its part has been looking to make London a European hub for overseas yuan trading in competition with Frankfurt and Paris. China's central bank announced Wednesday that a subsidiary of China Construction Bank had been chosen to undertake yuan clearing business in London. Still - there's always Iraq to trade USDs with..."

"In a democracy, elected representatives make laws. But with new trade agreements, businesses could co-write legislation. The United States and the European Union (EU) are negotiating a trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The aim is to lower trade barriers. Unfortunately those 'barriers' include not just traditional trade tariffs and quotas, but also the laws your elected representatives make. For example, Pierre Defraigne, former Deputy Director-General in the EU Commission Department responsible for Trade, sees the core battle of TTIP is over "the norms and standards in terms of environmental, health and consumer protection". This is why the fight against TTIP is a fight for democracy. It is not about protectionism, but rather the protection of our democratic laws over their business interests. If TTIP was to be signed, two new doors will be opened for businesses to influence legislation: 1. Firstly, regulatory co-operation will give access to industry before laws are to be signed. This means regulators and stakeholders work together for the convergence of laws across the Atlantic. 2. And secondly, once laws are enacted, private investors can sue the EU or US in private tribunals, outside of national courts (known as ISDS or investor-state dispute settlement). The example of the chemical Bisphenol A illustrates what both these 'open doors' for business could mean in practice. Used in everything from water bottles to the lining of food cans, Bisphenol A is one of the most ubiquitous endocrine disruptors. As such, it disrupts the hormonal system of the body, which is responsible for all vital features such as growth, sexual development, and even behaviour. Its presence in the natural world is already felt: two out of three fish caught in Austrian rivers are now female. Bisphenol A has been banned in France since 1st January 2015. This ban goes further than the existing EU ban. Meanwhile, Bisphenol A is stil

This is the first of a must-read, in-depth, four-part series of articles on the ISIL/Kurd oil smuggling from Syria and Iraq via Turkey to world markets. The series details the involvement of western banksters (including Goldman Sachs) in setting up the capitalization of a new company created to plunder the natural resources of Iraq, Syria, and other nations targeted by the U.S. for destabilization. The second article, Turkish-ISIL Oil Trade: Did the Turkish Military Enter Mosul to Protect its Oil Trade? (II), is here. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/18/turkish-isil-oil-trade-did-turkish-military-enter-mosul-protect-oil-trade-ii.html The third article, Turkish-ISIL Oil Trade: The Roles of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Britain, and Israel (III), is here. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/19/turkish-isil-oil-trade-did-turkish-military-enter-mosul-protect-oil-trade-iii.html The final article, Turkish-ISIL Oil Trade: US and NATO Culpability (IV), is here. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/20/turkish-isil-oil-trade-us-and-nato-culpability-iv.html   

I haven't been keeping up lately on the Doha Round of trade agreement negotiations. But generally speaking, the WTO series of trade agreements have been of, by, and for moneyed interests. Which is why their get-togethers get picketed a lot. Money talks at the WTO; not mere mortals.  When this round concludes, there will be in the U.S. a very large package of treaties delivered to the Senate for ratification, followed by ratification conditioned on the President certifying that certain Congressional limitations have been achieved, whereupon enabling legislation will automatically kick in. For example, the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, 19 U.S.C. 2501, et seq., , ushered in the following: [to be filled in on Diigo because the list is so long].  

List of WTO (and one agreement with Hungary) Agreements ratified and enabled by the Trade Agreements Act of 1979: (1) The Agreement on Implementation of Article VII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to customs valuation). (2) The Agreement on Government Procurement. (3) The Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures. (4) The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (relating to product standards). (5) The Agreement on Interpretation and Application of Articles VI, XVI, and XXIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to subsidies and countervailing measures). (6) The Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (relating to antidumping measures). (7) The International Dairy Arrangement. (8) Certain bilateral agreements on cheese, other dairy products, and meat. (9) The Arrangement Regarding Bovine Meat. (10) The Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft. (11) Texts Concerning a Framework for the Conduct of World Trade. (12) Certain Bilateral Agreements to Eliminate the Wine-Gallon Method of Tax and Duty Assessment. (13) Certain other agreements to be reflected in Schedule XX of the United States to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, including Agreements- (A) to Modify United States Watch Marking Requirements, and to Modify United States Tariff Nomenclature and Rates of Duty for Watches, (B) to Provide Duty-Free Treatment for Agricultural and Horticultural Machinery, Equipment, Implements, and Parts Thereof, and (C) to Modify United States Tariff Nomenclature and Rates of Duty for Ceramic Tableware.

In my lifetime, I have encountered only a single trade agreement, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, that I would have supported had I been given the opportunity, and its mandates have been trashed in their implementation. Beware "trade agreements" in general. They are almost uniformly the tools of banksters seeking greater profits at the expense of non-banksters. 

Diigo is screwing up the URL AGAIN!!!!! WTF!!! The correct title is "Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo :: http://goo.gl/wDhDhL From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial ba

Related link: Summers Withdraws From Consideration for Fed Chairmanship, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-15/obama-said-he-accepted-summers-decision-to-withdraw-his-name.html

From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "d

High comedy from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR's press release is here along with a link to its report. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/USTR-Targets-Telecommunications-Trade-Barriers The USTR is upset because the E.U. is aiming to build a digital communications network that does not route internal digital traffic outside the E.U., to limit the NSA's ability to surveil Europeans' communications. Part of the plan is to build an E.U.-centric cloud that is not susceptible to U.S. court orders. This plan does not, of course, sit well with U.S.-based cloud service providers.  Where the comedy comes in is that the USTR is making threats to go to the World Trade organization to block the E.U. move under the authority of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). But that treaty provides, in article XIV, that:  "Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where like conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on trade in services, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Member of measures: ... (c)      necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement including those relating to:   ... (ii)     the protection of the privacy of individuals in relation to the processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts[.]" http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm#articleXIV   The E.U., in its Treaty on Human Rights, has very strong privacy protections for digital communications. The USTR undoubtedly knows all this, and that the WTO Appellate Panel's judges are of the European mold, sticklers for protection of human rights and most likely do not appreciate being subjects o

Chris Horner was in the room when BP, Enron, Al Gore and Clinton met to discuss by-passing the Constitutional advise and consent role role of the Senate and signing the Kyoto Treaty with "Cap and Trade" mandates.  Enron and BP invented "Cap and Trade".  And now Obama promises to punish BP by passing a USA "Cap and Trade" energy tax on US citizens.  Right.  Figure that one out!  Excellent article. Tim Carney has a column at the Washington Examiner detailing BP's lobbying influence, which begs the following history lesson and first-hand account for voters, generally unaccustomed to such sleaze, to fully appreciate the game presently being played out in Washington. President Obama announced in Pittsburgh last week that BP's Gulf oil spill demands his wrath in the form of the Kerry-Lieberman "cap-and-trade" energy tax. Hearing this, your reaction may have been to wonder just how making energy more expensive for everyone-seniors, the poor, it's all good-is a proper response. And the truth is that our young ideological president's effort to make sure this crisis doesn't go to waste is actually much worse than it seems on its face. BP, joined by Enron, invented carbon cap-and-trade in the mid-1990s. Yeah. That cap-and-trade. I know, because I was in the room. And BP has been lobbying for it aggressively and at great expense ever since, some eight figures of which has gone to green pressure groups. Specifically, in May 1997 I met with senior officials from BP, Niagara Mohawk Power, and others… "others" like the Union of Concerned Scientists and their ilk… in the Washington offices of a white-shoe New York law firm, putting our collective heads together strategizing on how to get the U.S. roped into a global warming treaty, and get "cap-and-trade" imposed domestically, too.

As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil

"Today, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which covers 50 countries and 68.2%1 of world trade in services. The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. In a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre by the parties, the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force. Despite the failures in financial regulation evident during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis and calls for improvement of relevant regulatory structures2, proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets. The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals - mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt - into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers. The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data. TISA negotiations are currently taking place outside of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework. However, the Agreement is being crafted to be compatible with GATS so that a critical mass of participants will be able to pressure remaining WTO members to sign on in the future. Conspicuously absent from the 50 countries covered by the negotiations are the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The exclusive nature of TISA will weaken their position in future services negotiations. The draft text comes from the April 2014 negotiation round - the sixth round since the first held in April 2013. The next round of negotiations will take place on 23-27 June in Geneva, Switzerland."

Written in August of 2011, this article continues to be an important guideline to understanding Gold and Silver prices, and the efforts of Banksters to manipulate these competing forms of monetary exchange to the US Dollar.  Good stuff.  And i did write Brandon a proposal for a mobile application connecting PayPal to the Storage Vault Depositories he sites in this article (based on the GOLD app design i provided to Tino in 2008). excerpt: China Competes With The Comex As of this summer China now has its own Comex, called the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange. The exchange opened for trade on May 18th (the CME's incredible margin hikes in silver began only weeks before, which suggests to me that they were trying to preempt the positive effects the HKMEX would have on metals). The HKMEX moved into action only five months after the Chinese Pan American Gold Exchange was instituted. The exchange issues its own ETF's in gold and silver. These securities, though, are not based on leverage or derivatives like most Comex based ETFs. The bottom line; the Comex global monopoly on commodities trade is over: How To Break The Barrier Methods for smaller investors to fight back against the market manipulations of large banks have been sparse, and often limited to desperate appeals to the CFTC and the government, who are bought and paid for, and who have no intention of ever stopping global financiers from dragging their unwashed behinds across the face of the planet. Relying on bureaucrats to mend the wounds they themselves encouraged or inflicted is foolhardy, to say the least. Top down solutions are NOT an option now, and I'm not sure if they ever were. This leaves us with only one other choice; to fix the problem with our own hands from the bottom up. This is, of course, easier said than done… In the case of silver manipulation, what we are faced with is an unprecedented effort to subvert and suppress an alternative system so that the mainstream system can continue to

excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "derivatives trading."  JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets." Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives. But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws? The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:  eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet - in one single move.    It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous. How could they pull off this mad caper?  The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization. Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods-that is, my cars for your bananas.  The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" - toxic assets like financial derivatives. Until the bankers' re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders.  The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives "products." And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives. The job of turning the FSA into the bankers' battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization. "

Greg Palast does good work. I'm reminded of a passage from Carl Oglesby's The Yankee and Cowboy War where he argued rather convincingly that conspiracy is the norm rather than the exception at the boundary line between government and big business.

Will Obama rethink his push for sanctions against and military encirclement of Russia? One would suspect that the banksters will soon be pushing him to do so.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz takes on the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) trade agreement, explaining how corporations will use the agreement to side step environmental and regulatory laws of sovereign nations. Amazing stuff. No doubt Wall Street Money is behind these trade agreement. The Banksters are said to own over 40% of the world's corporations and these agreements are designed to establish corporate sovereignty while greatly diminishing state sovereignty. It's the New World Order. "Terms such as 'investor' and 'partner' are taking on new meanings as multinationals manipulate deals to take legal action against sovereign states"