“This Is Where The Next Financial Crisis Will Come From” – Deutsche Bank

 

In an extensive, must-read report published on Monday by Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid, the credit strategist unveiled an extensive analysis of the “Next Financial Crisis”, and specifically what may cause it, when it may happen, and how the world could respond assuming it still has means to counteract the next economic and financial crash.

In our first take on the report yesterday, we showed one key aspect of the “crash” calculus: between bonds and stocks, global asset prices are the most elevated they have ever been.

Air Force: U.S. falling behind China, Russia in race for hypersonic weapons

China last tested its hypersonic technology in April. / Artist rendering.

 

China and Russia are winning the race in the development of “game-changing” hypersonic weapons, making the U.S. vulnerable to a future attack, according to a U.S. Air Force study.

The unclassified summary of the report, “A Threat to America’s Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power: High-Speed, Maneuvering Weapons,” was produced by a blue-ribbon panel of experts for Air Force Studies Board at the National Academies of Science. The summary was made public last month.

Eurozone banks are in DEEP trouble: Wall Street top bankers issue warning to EU

EUROPE’s biggest banks are vulnerable and pose a huge risk to financial stability, according to some of Wall Street’s top bankers.

Financial heavyweights from the US and Switzerland joined forces to sound the alarm over Deutsche Bank and its peers.

Goldman Sachs’ president Gary Cohn hit out at eurozone banks for failing to clean-up their balance sheets after the financial crisis.

Admiral: China Launching Cyber Attacks on Missile Defense Nets ‘Every Day’

Chinese soldiers browse online news on desktop computers at a garrison of the PLA / AP

 

Cyber threat comparable to Iranian, North Korean missile danger

Chinese military hackers are conducting cyber attacks on the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency networks on a daily basis and will soon shift to hacking into networks of missile defense contractors, the admiral in charge of the agency told Congress on Thursday.

Vice Adm. James D. Syring, the MDA chief who is in charge of building multi-billion dollar anti-missile defenses, told a House hearing that while his networks are successfully fighting off the cyber attacks, missile defense contractors need to improve their network security.

A New Nuclear Strategy: Painting A Nuclear Bullseye on America

The only people within a country who would want to disarm that same country, making it vulnerable to enemies who routinely break treaties to gain first-strike capability, are the same people who want to destroy their own country. There is no excuse, ignorance or naïveté in such high levels as this. The only mistake is letting these people be in positions of power to destroy a nation from within. People continue to deny this, and will until it’s too late.

It doesn’t matter who wins the White House in November of 2016. They will have a mess they cannot clean up. Only God will be able to save the nation if it turns back to Him rather than being bent on suicide and lucky if it ever sees 2018.

 

The defense budget was sent to Congress on February 9th and already many are looking at ways to cut the budget further, even though the administration undercut the 2015 Fall budget agreement with Congress on defense spending by some $25 billion.

However, the administration largely supports the nuclear modernization accounts, increasing funding for the new strategic bomber, the Minuteman ICBM and the Ohio Replacement strategic submarine.

But others are proposing very radical nuclear ideas. One suggestion would eliminate entirely the Minuteman ICBM force and its three bases and 450 missiles–unilaterally.

Why would the United States, without our Minuteman missile force, make it easy, in fact tempting, for an adversary such as Russia, to take out the entire U.S. strategic nuclear forces in one or a series of very limited even surreptitious first strikes? 

CHINA SECURITY: China Is Developing More Effective Ways to Hide Nukes

A new, potentially off-road missile launch truck made by the Tai’an Corporation that could be for the new “DF-31B” ICBM reportedly tested in September 2014. (Chinese Internet)

 

It’s possible a real-world nuclear war could end without a single missile being fired, and the United States could find itself on the losing end.

I’ve covered the problem before. The United States has barely moved its nuclear launch sites since the Cold War, and according to Richard Fisher, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, all of these sites are overtargeted by Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Of course, it’s not unusual for rivals to target nuclear weapons sites; some of the original U.S. nuclear war scenarios had all the Soviet nuclear weapons sites as primary targets.

The difference today is that while you can literally find most U.S. nuclear weapons sites using Google Earth—and while Russia and the United States are disposing of warheads—the Chinese regime is making significant efforts to build its nuclear arsenals, and to keep these weapons hidden.

UBS: A Stock Market Crash Is Inevitable

The bull market is about to end, says UBS’ Julian Emanuel.

For months we’ve been warning of a stock market crash.

Money Morning Capital Wave Strategist Shah Gilani – a former CBOE trader, co-creator of the VIX (“fear index”), and hedge fund manager – has seen a bear market just over the horizon since March 2014.

Ex-CIA director: U.S. wide open to grid attack

How many times can a nation be warned, yet still do next to nothing to neutralize the threat, before an attack or natural disaster actually happens? For more on the SCADA systems, see HERE and HERE. Imagine, for example, Russian or Chinese hackers being able to control dosage levels of medications for patients in America, without America knowing. The threat is real.

 

A former CIA director says the Obama administration hasn’t done nearly enough to protect the nation from attacks to America’s information and critical infrastructure systems.

“The president has to put this first on his list because we are very vulnerable, and we will stay vulnerable until some key things get fixed. So far, I have not seen anywhere near enough commitment from the White House or any place else in getting this done,” said R. James Woolsey, who served as director of the Central Intelligence in the Clinton administration. Woolsey is now chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

U.S. States Aren’t Prepared for the Next Fiscal Shock

U.S. states, still grappling with the lingering effects of the longest recession since the 1930s, are even more vulnerable to another fiscal shock.

The governments have a little more than half the reserves they’d stashed away before the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009, according to a report last month by Pew Charitable Trusts. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Arkansas have saved the least.

Bank Deposits No Longer Guaranteed By Austrian Government

If you’re not already familiar with one of the more recent invented economic terms of the last few years, “bail-in”, it essentially means your respective government has given the banks the green light to legally take your deposits to cover their obligations should there be another crisis. Instead of the corrupt government bailing ‘out’ the banks, you, the depositor, are bailing them ‘in’. This is also an indication of an anticipated crisis.

In 2013, the United States reportedly missed one by a hair’s length.

 

– Austria will remove state guarantee of bank deposits
– Austrian deposit plan given go ahead by the EU
– Banks to pay into a deposit insurance fund over 10 years
– Fund will then be valued at a grossly inadequate €1.5 billion
– New bail-in legislation agreed by EU two years ago
– Depositors need to realise increasing risks and act accordingly
– “Bail-ins are now the rule” and ‘Bail-in regime’ coming

Bank deposits in Austria will no longer enjoy state protection and a state guarantee in the event of bank runs and a bank collapse when legislation is enacted in July. The plan to ensure that the state is no longer responsible for insuring deposits has been readied by the Austrian government in conjunction with the EU two years ago according to Die Presse.

Power grid’s failing infrastructure at risk of cyberattack

Please see the source for the video.

 

Tuesday’s power failure in Washington has once again raised questions about the vulnerability of America’s electric power grid.

Fox News National Security Analyst KT McFarland spoke to experts Darren Hammell and Jonathan Pollet about potential threats.

Experts: China Boosts Space Warfare Capabilities

U.S. military and commercial satellites highly vulnerable to Beijing’s anti-satellite missiles, killer robot satellites

China is developing anti-satellite missiles and other exotic weapons that can destroy or disrupt vital U.S. military and commercial communications, space warfare experts told Congress on Tuesday.

“The current and evolving counterpace threat posed by China to U.S. military operations in the Asia Pacific theater and outside is extremely serious,” said Ashley J. Tellis, a former State Department and National Security Council strategic specialist.

‘Cryptopalypse’ Now: Looming Security Crisis Could Cripple Internet

The Internet, and many forms of online commerce and communication that depend on it, may be on the brink of a “cryptopalypse” resulting from the collapse of decades-old methods of shared encryption.

The result would be “almost total failure of trust in the Internet,” said four researchers who gave a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Securing Command — Strategic commander worried about cyber attacks on nuclear command and control

At times, news like this makes one wonder if it’s a strong case of déjà vu that was probably never fully admitted.

U.S. strategic nuclear weapons and the command systems that control them are vulnerable to cyber attacks although most are hardened against many types of electronic attacks, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command said on Tuesday.

Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that nuclear weapons and the communications used to control them are older and thus less vulnerable to disruption by computer network attacks.

“However, we are very concerned with the potential of a cyber related attack on our nuclear command and control and on the weapons systems themselves,” Kehler said. “We do evaluate that.”