California City May ‘Experiment’ with UBI

 

 

Sitting in between the enormous economic opportunities of the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley, yet unable to break free of its largely agriculturally based economy, the City of Stockton, Calf., is now planning to “experiment” with Universal Basic Income.” The city went bankrupt just five years ago.

Can a Divided America Survive?

Torn sign at a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Ore., June 4, 2017. (Reuters photo: David Ryder)

 

History has not been very kind to countries that enter a state of multicultural chaos.

The United States is currently the world’s oldest democracy.

But America is no more immune from collapse than were some of history’s most stable and impressive consensual governments. Fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and many of the elected governments of early 20th-century Western European states eventually destroyed themselves, went bankrupt, or were overrun by invaders.

Illinois Is Essentially Experiencing Its Own Private Great Depression

 

The state of Illinois has not passed a budget for close to three years.

Arguably it’s just as well because Illinois budgets for decades have been nothing but a moth-eaten collection of lies, one time deficits repeated endlessly, and financial wizardry statements designed to disguise Illinois’ real problems: failure to rein in spending coupled with a very business unfriendly environment.

As Illinois’ bond rating careens towards junk, Illinois Unpaid Bills Jumped to $14.3 Billion. Today, the state told contractors to halt roadwork other that required for safety.

The Government Will Never Let It Happen!

What a tangled web the global geopolitical situation has become.  Geopolitics and finance have always been interrelated but recently much more so.  As many readers know, I have speculated we would be hit over the head with a “truth bomb” from the East and most likely from Mr. Putin himself.  Just this week Britain has alleged Mr. Putin personally ordered a “hit” on an ex KGB agent for calling him a pedophile  (http://nypost.com/2016/01/21/murdered-ex-spy-accused-putin-of-pedophilia/).  Another story came out that Turkey shot down a NATO helicopter which made no press coverage at all in the West.  Also, Victoria Nuland recently travelled to Russia and was refused an audience by Mr. Putin.  This, after John Kerry had a meeting where he went into it saying “Assad must go” and came out saying Mr. Assad can stay …  Why all of this now?  I would simply say this reeks of desperation and also a VERY dangerous strategy to attack Mr. Putin personally.  I say “dangerous” because it raises the likelihood of a response from him.  Can you imagine the outrage were Russia to accuse president Obama or the Prime Minister Cameron of Britain for ordering the murder of someone who called them a pedophile?

Why the U.S. Is the Next Greece: Doug Casey on America’s Economic Problems

 

“With these stupid governments printing trillions and trillions of new currency units,” says investor Doug Casey, “it’s building up to a catastrophe of historic proportions.”

Germany Could Lose €80 Billion if Greece Goes Bankrupt

Are you starting to see who has the most to lose in the Eurozone crisis? If so, you see why Greece might not go. If Greek can’t pay, the German banks cannot survive. Germany is also exposed to $72 trillion in derivatives whereas the nation’s GDP is roughly $2.7 trillion, to put it in perspective. The stakes are high and Greece might have the upper hand after all.

 

Head of Bundestag Committee on European Union Affairs predicts that Germany could lose billions of euros if Greece goes bankrupt.

Athens may not be able to return €80 billion of economic aid that it received from Germany in case of bankruptcy, Deutsche Welle wrote.

Germans Furious After Varoufakis/Tsipras Admit “Greece Will Never Repay Its Debts”

And Varoufakis was was right when he mentioned that in 2010 Germany knew Greece would never be able to pay back its debts. However, that doesn’t go far enough. Germany knew from the get-go that Greece, among many other nations who never really qualified but were intentionally let in as EU members, was let into a system that was designed to fail. In other words, the failure was planned by Germany’s Fourth Reich in order to subjugate the continent via chipping away at national sovereignty in exchange for bailouts via its Troika proxy which kept the members from descending into chaos and riots. Furthermore, all the bailouts really did was bailout the French and German banks.

In the end all roads lead back to Berlin, the only winner in all of this.

 

The Greco-Germanic war of words continues… Having pissed off The Greeks with his “Troika” remarks, Germany’s Schaeuble went on today to more ad hominum attacks by reportedly calling the Greek FinMin “foolishly naive.” The Greek ambassador has ‘officially’ complained to “friend and ally” Germany about the personal insult. But The Greeks had the last laugh, as first Varoufakis and then Tsipras explained respectively that “Greece would never pay back its debts,” and “Greece cannot pretend its debt burden is sustainable.” The German response, via tabloid Bild, “there must be an end to this madness. Europe must not be made to look stupid.”

Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US

An eerie and well-laid out article from 2006 that warrants attention. What this article doesn’t take into account is that the USSR underwent a controlled and planned strategic collapse to dupe the West into thinking that it was going to become democratic and full of freedom, no longer a threat. As explained by Anatoliy Golitsyn, America has been sold New Lies for Old the entire time and fell for the Perestroika Deception. Slide 23 hints at it, but misses the mark. Over 92% of Golitsyn’s predictions came true, yet alarmingly received very little attention.

While the undertones of the article may seem pro-Soviet or Communist to some in an ‘America vs Russia’ framework, it remains objective in illustrating the final point(s) in principal of how the USSR panned out and how America might pan out. It doesn’t take into account

Most of the article will be posted here for documentation purposes, the remaining portions can be found on the source link.

 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.

The Great Italian Auto Bailout — Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers

At the beginning of 2014, Detroit may be bankrupt, but they’re cheering the five-year-old U.S. auto bailout in Italy. That’s because after being the beneficiary of billions in U.S. taxpayer largesse, Fiat, the leading Italian auto company, is going to buy its final stake in Chrysler from that other big bailout recipient, the United Auto Workers (UAW).

“Chrysler’s Now Fully an Italian Auto Company,” reads the Time magazine online headline. But wait a minute! Wasn’t the bailout supposed to be about saving the American auto industry?

U.S. opens door to Chinese investors

The United States faces a massive US$8 trillion infrastructure investment bill, and is courting Chinese investors since many of its own local governments are in financial difficulties, according to a US Chamber of Commerce report.

“The US is poised to undertake the most significant expansion and modernisation of its infrastructure since the 1950s,” the chamber said in its report.

“This is taking place in the context of significant pressure on federal and local budgets. The pressing need for capital to modernise US infrastructure is creating substantial new opportunities for Chinese investors.”

France Is Heading For The Biggest Economic Train Wreck In Europe

“The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories or the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete successes or for exemplary misfortunes. Our country, as it is, surrounded by the others as they are, must aim high and hold itself straight, on pain of mortal danger. In short, to my mind, France cannot be France without greatness.

– Charles de Gaulle, from his memoirs

Recently there have been a spate of horrific train wrecks in the news. Almost inevitably we find out there was human error involved. Almost four years ago I began writing about the coming train wreck that was Europe and specifically Greece. It was clear from the numbers that Greece would have to default, and I thought at the time that Portugal would not be too far behind. Spain and Italy clearly needed massive restructuring. Part of the problem I highlighted was the significant imbalance between exports and imports in all of the above countries.

U.S. approves sale of fed-backed Mich. battery maker A123 to Chinese

If anyone is wondering just how China is acquiring their technology and are able to use it to modernize their military, here is one of the best examples in the last five years. Once brought up in a previous article (see also here), here is an update on the plight of the A123 battery making company:

Washington — The Obama administration approved the sale of most of bankrupt battery maker A123 Systems’ assets to Chinese firm Wanxiang Group Corp.

The company’s U.S. subsidiary, Chicago-based Wanxiang America, said it has received approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to complete its acquisition of substantially all of the non-government business assets of A123 Systems, Inc.