Aggregatore di feed

di Gary North


Remnant Review

Che cos'è il denaro fiat? Viene da "fiat", che significa per autorizzazione formale o per proposizione oppure per decreto. Sinonimi sono: editto, ordine, comando, comandamento, ingiunzione, proclamazione, mandato, dictum, diktat. È un ordine arbitrario.

La frase "fiat lux" deriva dalla Genesi 1:2: "Sia la luce".

Il denaro fiat è denaro emesso da uno stato. Si basa sul presupposto del diritto divino: non c'è nulla più in alto. È la corte d'appello finale. In breve, è divino.

Un sistema monetario di libero mercato è un sistema operativo nei confronti del quale le persone possono fare appello, poiché non è denaro statalista. Le persone usano monete d'oro o monete d'argento per comprare ciò che vogliono. Oppure usano rivendicazioni legali su tali monete. Lo stato non è nel "business del denaro".

Nessuno stato-nazione lo permette mai. Ogni stato-nazione vuole essere la più alta corte d'appello, soprattutto negli affari monetari. Ogni stato-nazione rivendica la sovranità legale sul denaro.

Qualsiasi gold standard in cui il governo civile rappresenta l'agenzia ultima di riferimento, è un pseudo-gold standard. È una contraffazione. Quando pensate a "gold standard garantito dallo stato," pensate alla "contraffazione".



QUANDO IL DENARO MUORE

In tempi di grande crisi, il denaro muore. Le cose che il denaro può comprare in tempi normali, non sono disponibili a qualsiasi prezzo vicino a quello prevalso in tempi normali.

L'esempio più famoso nella Bibbia è la carestia in Egitto sotto l'amministrazione di Giuseppe. Il denaro finì per non valere più nulla (Genesi 47:15). Ma c'è un altro caso.

Ci fu una carestia eccezionale in Samaria, mentre l'assedio si faceva più duro, tanto che una testa d'asino si vendeva ottanta sicli d'argento e un quarto di qab di tuberi cinque sicli. (II Re 6:25).
I prezzi sono così rappresentativi delle condizioni sociali, che Eliseo profetizzò la fine di un assedio da un calo significativo dei prezzi: «Eliseo disse: “Ascoltate la parola di Dio. Dio ha detto questo: ‘Domani verso quest’ora una sea di fior di farina varrà un siclo, e due sea d’orzo varranno un siclo alla porta di Samaria’.”» (II Re 7:1). Prima che finisse, l'argento non valeva più molto. O per dirla in modo diverso, bisognava avere tanto argento per comprare qualsiasi cosa valesse la pena di possedere. Ciò che valeva la pena di possedere era il cibo.

Prezzi normali sono rappresentativi di tempi normali. Quando i prezzi di oggi sono vicini a quelli di ieri, possiamo essere sicuri che la società di domani sarà più o meno quella che è oggi, a meno che non accada qualcosa di totalmente imprevisto. Raramente accade.

I prezzi monetari sono indicatori di ampie tendenze sociali. L'oro ha raggiunto il suo prezzo più alto, in dollari statunitensi, la settimana prima di Gettysburg. Il 3 luglio del 1863, l'esercito di Lee venne sconfitto. Il 4 luglio, Vicksburg cadde di fronte alle forze di Grant. Il prezzo in dollari dell'oro scese il giorno successivo e non vide quelle altezze per un secolo. Il mondo credeva che l'Unione avrebbe vinto la guerra, e a quanto pare non importava quello che dicessero in pubblico i politici e i generali del Sud.

Cos'aveva da dire la leadership del Sud? "Beh, è tutto finito. Tanto vale arrendersi ora. Perché continuare questo bagno di sangue? Il dollaro Yankee vola in alto. L'oro scende. L'oro dice che siamo stati battuti. Faremmo meglio a farcene una ragione." Se un politico avesse detto questo, non sarebbe riuscito a portare a termine il suo mandato. Ma questo era esattamente ciò che avrebbero dovuto dire i leader del Sud. Hanno continuato il bagno di sangue, ma il risultato è stato quello che aveva proiettato il prezzo dell'oro.

Tutto questo per dire che il prezzo dell'oro, ai tempi in cui gli stati vi ancoravano le valute, è uno dei migliori indicatori delle condizioni sociali rispetto ai discorsi dei politici.

Non importa ciò che i politici vogliono che la gente creda, se predicano bei tempi mentre il prezzo dell'oro sale, la popolazione farebbe meglio a scontare le parole dei politici. Gli uomini liberi valutano lo stato in cui versa il mondo, e il prezzo dell'oro riflette il loro giudizio. Lo stesso vale per i tassi d'interesse. Possono sbagliarsi in alcune previsioni, ma queste ultime si riflettono meglio in questi due prezzi di mercato.



AL CENTRO DELL'ATTENZIONE

Perché l'oro dovrebbe essere al centro dell'attenzione, l'indicatore ultimo? Uno dei motivi è che di solito è stato così. Quando l'oro non è stato ampiamente usato come moneta, l'argento ha svolto la stessa funzione. Questi due metalli preziosi sono gli indicatori più familiari riguardo le tendenze economiche generali. La gente ha imparato dopo millenni che il potere d'acquisto dell'oro e dell'argento rivela molte cose sulla stabilità sociale. Quando il prezzo di uno o di entrambi continua a salire, il mondo viene avvisato della crisi di alcune nazioni. Quando i prezzi dei prodotti di base salgono più velocemente del prezzo dell'oro e dell'argento, la società sta diventando disperata.

Ludwig von Mises definì il denaro come la merce più commerciabile. Per la maggior parte del secolo scorso, a partire dai primi mesi della prima guerra mondiale, l'oro venne separato dalle valute. Le monete nazionali fiat hanno ricoperto il ruolo di denaro. Inoltre i depositi bancari sono diventati denaro, al posto della cartamoneta. Questi depositi sono stati moltiplicati. Oggi gli economisti non sono sicuri di quello che sia denaro o il modo in cui misurarlo. Ci sono numerose misure concorrenti. L'oro e l'argento raramente sono tornati a ricoprire il ruolo di denaro. Ma la definizione di Mises è lo stesso esatta: il denaro è la merce più commerciabile. È possibile acquistare ciò che si desidera: (1) immediatamente, (2) senza offrire uno sconto e (3) senza pubblicità. In questo senso, il denaro si definisce liquido. È la misura suprema di liquidità. All'interno di un confine nazionale, l'oro e l'argento non sono più così liquidi come quello che il governo nazionale definisce denaro. Dobbiamo pagare una commissione per comprare una moneta d'oro o una moneta d'argento. In questo senso, l'oro e l'argento non sono denaro. Non sono le merci più commerciabili.

È quindi lecito domandarsi: la nostra era è un'anomalia? Stiamo vivendo in un nuovo ordine mondiale monetario? Questa situazione rischia di persistere? O vedremo un ritorno all'oro e all'argento come merci più commerciabili?

Se le persone saranno infine degne di fiducia, se i politici diranno la verità, se potremo fidarci delle banche centrali affinché non inflazionino durante una recessione, e se le cose continueranno a funzionare senza problemi, allora il mondo moderno sarà sfuggito ai vincoli sentimentali nei confronti dell'oro. L'oro non tornerà ad essere denaro, se non come un dispositivo di contabilità per il regolamento dei pagamenti internazionali tra le banche centrali.

Ma questo pone una domanda: perché le banche centrali si rifiutano ostinatamente di abbandonare la "reliquia barbara", come la definì ironicamente John Maynard Keynes? Se l'oro non è buono per noi persone comuni in modo da usarlo come denaro, perché dovrebbe esserlo per i banchieri centrali? Se l'oro è solo una delle tante altre merci, perché le banche centrali non lo vendono tutto e investono il denaro in buoni del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti o nel debito oneroso di qualche altra nazione? Che cosa sanno che la popolazione non sa e che gli economisti che odiano l'oro non sanno?

C'è una risposta: i banchieri centrali non si fidano degli altri banchieri centrali. Non si fidano dell'affidabilità dei governi civili. Sanno che quando arriva il momento critico del ciclo economico, gli altri banchieri centrali potranno arroventare le stampanti monetarie. Quando questo accade, tutti vogliono essere in possesso d'oro. Così dovrebbe accadere per il resto di noi. Per conservare la loro capacità di credito in caso di crisi, devono possedere oro. Lo stesso vale per il resto di noi.



NON SIAMO ONNISCIENTI

Se sapessi cosa accadrà domani, la prossima settimana o il prossimo anno, potrei pianificare la mia vita per ridurre al minimo l'uso del contante. Potrei mettere i miei soldi in un conto di risparmio e guadagnare interessi. Perché tenere contanti quando non ne avete bisogno? Migliori saranno le vostre abilità di previsione, meno denaro vi servirà.

Oggi abbiamo vari sostituti del denaro. Possiamo depositare i soldi in una banca o in un fondo del mercato monetario. Possiamo anche firmare un assegno, o utilizzare una carta di credito, per comprare quello che vogliamo. Possiamo farlo grazie alla famosa riserva frazionaria. Noi prestiamo denaro a breve termine alla banca -- prelievo consentito in qualsiasi momento -- ma la banca lo presta per mesi o anni. La banca si trova nella condizione di "prendere in prestito a breve termine e prestare a lungo termine." Fino a quando la quantità di denaro non viene prelevata totalmente, questa condizione può andare avanti senza problemi. È un sistema remunerativo la maggior parte del tempo. Smettiamo di portare molto denaro. Portiamo, invece, carte di plastica. È più sicuro. È più semplice. E ci lascia dati utili per i nostri programmi informatici di finanza personale (e anche per i programmi degli esattori delle tasse).

Ma poi arriva un qualche sviluppo imprevisto. Vi ritrovate in una qualche piccola città, la vostra auto è in panne e il meccanico locale accetta solo soldi contanti. Il meccanico ha capito come funziona il sistema: il computer dell'esattore delle tasse non traccia ciò che una società di carte di credito o un assegno non registra. Il meccanico sembra stupido, ma in realtà è molto intelligente. Nel frattempo, l'auto è ferma. Allora chiedete: "Quanto costerà aggiustarla?" Il meccanico, essendo molto intelligente, risponde: "Quanto denaro hai?" Glielo dite. Comincia a ridere. Grida verso il garage: "Ehi, Sam, vieni a sentire." Tutto d'un tratto, vorreste qualche soldo in più, dal momento che le alternative sono limitate e le vostre capacità di previsione hanno mostrato una falla.

Cerchiamo d'andare fino in fondo a questo ragionamento. Che cosa succede se, a causa di un qualche evento imprevisto, come un crollo del mercato azionario, un sacco di gente inizia a pensare come il meccanico? "La mia banca potrebbe fallire in questo caos. Bancarotta, dopo tutto, è una parola composta da 'banca' e 'rotta.' Questa storia mi rende nervoso. Non si può sapere cosa succederà. Non si sa mai in questi giorni. Forse è meglio se possedessi più denaro contante. Credo che andrò dalla mia banca a ritirarne un po'." Tutto ad un tratto, i depositi diminuiscono man mano che i prelievi aumentano. Le persone che hanno prestato denaro a breve termine alle banche, lo vogliono indietro oggi. Come farà la banca a racimolare abbastanza denaro?

Può vendere asset. Così, i prezzi degli asset cominciano a scendere. Una corsa al denaro significa che i tassi d'interesse cominciano a salire. I mutuatari iniziano ad andare nel panico. I datori di lavoro cominciano a licenziare. Le persone licenziate, piene d'incertezza fino all'orlo del loro animo, si recano presso le proprie banche e prelevano denaro contante. Quest'ultimo è un sostituto per la conoscenza del futuro. Quando le persone sono veramente spaventate per il loro futuro economico, vogliono contanti.

In una spirale come questa di paura, incertezza e necessità di contanti, la banca centrale stamperà denaro e lo darà alle banche. Non c'è altro modo per fermare il panico e impedire che si trasformi in una depressione in cui i pagamenti rallentano, le imprese non possono raccogliere i loro soldi e l'economia crolla. Questa viene definita una rottura nel sistema dei pagamenti. Non succede spesso, ma quando accade, il risultato è una crisi economica di proporzioni monumentali.



UNA ROTTURA NEL SISTEMA DEI PAGAMENTI

Non vi è alcun evento economico più terrificante di questo. Avviene quando una società con un'alta divisione del lavoro, che si basa su un sistema di pagamenti prevedibile, smette di fidarsi del suddetto sistema di pagamenti. Le persone iniziano a cercare altri modi più sicuri per comprare e vendere. Si spostano da un'unità monetaria ad un'altra. Nel frattempo, le previsioni precedenti si dimostrano sbagliate. Le aziende falliscono, i mercati azionari crollano e le banche chiudono i battenti. Dato che le persone abbandonano una forma di denaro -- gli assegni, per esempio -- nella loro ricerca di un'altra forma di denaro -- denaro contante, per esempio -- quegli individui che in precedenza facevano affidamento sulle vendite di persone che firmavano assegni, fanno fatica a trovare acquirenti per i loro prodotti. I loro acquirenti non firmano più assegni.

Nessun problema! Basta iniziare a vendere in cambio di contanti. Problema: come si fa a mandare denaro ai propri fornitori? Per posta? Come si può dimostrarlo? Bisogna andare in banca. La banca accrediterà l'importo dovuto alla banca del fornitore. Ma la banca è chiusa. La domanda di liquidità l'ha spazzata via. Forse anche la banca del fornitore è chiusa. Quindi come si fanno a fare spedizioni di merci in modo che le si possa vendere? Probabilmente non si può. La bancarotta è assicurata.

Ora, consideriamo la tecnologia. La vostra banca locale ha il vostro denaro conservato nei suoi computer. Beh, naturalmente non immagazzina i soldi in un computer. Oppure sì? I byte sono veramente denaro? Lo sono finché si possono firmare assegni, o utilizzare una carta di credito. Ma se l'assegno non viene più accettato, o la carta di credito non funziona più, o i bancomat della banca non funzionano più, le voci nel computer cessano di funzionare come denaro. Se il sistema informatico delle banche non consente aggiunte e sottrazioni da quelle voci digitali che chiamiamo denaro, la maggior parte delle persone non avrà più denaro.

Come si possono tirare fuori i soldi dal circuito digitale? In altre parole, è come se si fosse bloccati. Oggi è possibile acquistare monete d'oro e d'argento, beni immobili e cibo. Ma se tutto il denaro oggi, tranne i contanti, è denaro digitale, allora solo il denaro fiat svolge il ruolo di mezzo di scambio. È possibile fare solo una scelta: cifre digitali o carta.

Per uscire dal denaro digitale ed entrare nella cartamoneta è difficile. In pratica, la maggior parte delle persone non può spostarsi dai fondi pensione al denaro non-digitale. Possono acquistare solo elementi non monetari. Monete d'oro e d'argento sono elementi non monetari. Sono altamente vendibili, ma non sono denaro. Richiedono una rete di rivenditori specializzati per avere un loro mercato.

Pensate al numero di istituzioni che non si basa affatto sul denaro digitale. È un elenco molto breve. Ora pensate a quelle istituzioni che potrebbero sopravvivere ad una transizione dal denaro digitale alle monete d'oro e d'argento, ma senza riserva frazionaria. Non saranno molte.

I governi nazionali di questo mondo sopravvivono perché sottraggono denaro digitale da coloro sotto la loro giurisdizione. Ciò significa che fanno affidamento al sistema bancario. L'alleanza tra governi centrali e banche centrali è stata operativa sin dall'istituzione della Banca d'Inghilterra nel 1694. Quel modello s'è diffuso in tutto il mondo nel XX secolo. Oggi è la base dell'ordine internazionale. Se il sistema bancario crollerà per un mare di debiti o per l'iperinflazione, gli umanisti del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale crolleranno con esso.

Il NWO deve difendere le banche. Questo è il motivo per cui l'iperinflazione è una minaccia; indebolisce le banche. Ma anche i crediti inesigibili sono pericolosi per il sistema bancario. Che cosa deve fare un organo di pianificazione centrale? In breve, che deve fare una banca centrale? Esattamente quello che fanno i politici: ritardare nel prendere una decisione. Nel frattempo, tenere conferenze stampa facendo ricorso ad un linguaggio incomprensibile. Il modello di tutti i tempi è quello di Alan Greenspan.






LA CADUTA DI GERUSALEMME

Con questo in mente, è il momento di rivedere un po' di storia antica: la caduta di Gerusalemme nel 70 a.C. Val la pena notare che il lasso di tempo è stato di un'ora. In realtà, ci sono voluti molti mesi affinché la città cadesse. Giovanni lasciò una profezia riguardo questo evento:

I mercanti della terra piangeranno e faranno cordoglio per lei, perché nessuno compera più le loro mercanzie: mercanzie d’oro, d’argento, di pietre preziose, di perle, di lino fino, di porpora, di seta, di scarlatto; e ogni sorta di legno odoroso, e ogni sorta d’oggetti d’avorio e ogni sorta d’oggetti di legno preziosissimo e di rame, di ferro e di marmo, e la cannella e le essenze, e i profumi, e gli unguenti, e l’incenso, e il vino, e l’olio, e il fior di farina, e il grano, e i buoi, e le pecore, e i cavalli, e i carri, e i corpi e le anime d’uomini. E i frutti che l’anima tua appetiva se ne sono andati lungi da te; e tutte le cose delicate e sontuose son perdute per te e non si troveranno mai più. I mercanti di queste cose che sono stati arricchiti da lei se ne staranno da lungi per tema del suo tormento, piangendo e facendo cordoglio, e dicendo: Ahi! ahi! la gran città ch’era vestita di lino fino e di porpora e di scarlatto, e adorna d’oro e di pietre preziose e di perle! Una cotanta ricchezza è stata devastata in un momento. E tutti i piloti e tutti i naviganti e i marinari e quanti trafficano sul mare se ne staranno da lungi; e vedendo il fumo dell’incendio d’essa esclameranno dicendo: Qual città era simile a questa gran città? E si getteranno della polvere sul capo e grideranno, piangendo e facendo cordoglio e dicendo: Ahi! ahi! la gran città nella quale tutti coloro che aveano navi in mare si erano arricchiti con la sua magnificenza! In un momento ella è stata ridotta in un deserto.  (Ap. 18:11-19)
Ciò che è qui descritto, può essere applicato a qualsiasi città in cui il mezzo di pagamento va a ramengo. Perché i commercianti dovrebbero portare le loro merci in una città se i relativi abitanti non possono pagare? È la prospettiva di un pagamento che mantiene operativo ogni sistema di consegna di beni. È questa prospettiva che permette ad un giornale di trovarsi ogni mattina sui prati delle case, che permette alla corrente elettrica di passare attraverso i cavi, che permette all'acqua di scorrere lungo le tubature, e così via. In breve, se il mezzo di pagamento dovesse cadere preda del fallimento, ci saranno sempre meno consegne fino a quando quelli all'interno della città non cominceranno a produrre qualcosa di valore affinché possano entrare in possesso della nuova moneta.

Problema: la produttività di una persona che vive in un'economia ad alta divisione del lavoro dipende dall'esistenza di un mezzo universale di pagamento. Il valore della sua produttività crolla improvvisamente -- "in un'ora" -- se i mezzi tradizionali di pagamento non vengono sostituiti immediatamente da un nuovo mezzo di pagamento.

Questo è il motivo per cui ci dev'essere continuità dal denaro fiat al denaro basato sui metalli preziosi, se volessimo tornare mai a limitare i governi nazionali -- il controllo delle masse, che comprano e vendono.

Non dev'essere l'ennesimo schema dello stato per avvolgere la popolazione con un vello d'oro. Non dev'essere l'ennesimo gold standard garantito dallo stato. Abbiamo visto quanto possano essere affidabili tali gold standard. Spingono la gente a consegnare il loro oro ad una banca locale. Poi la banca locale si unisce ad una banca centrale. Poi il governo autorizza la banca centrale a conservare l'oro. Questo è accaduto nel 1914. La maggior parte degli europei non ha mai avuto indietro il proprio oro.



CONCLUSIONE

Affinché un gold standard possa essere affidabile, dev'essere il prodotto di uno scambio volontario. Non dev'essere solo l'ennesima moneta a corso forzoso. Non dev'essere denaro perché lo dice un governo nazionale: "Che ci sia libertà monetaria!" I governi civili non hanno mai dichiarato una libertà monetaria. Odiano la libertà monetaria. La libertà monetaria è una restrizione sul governo civile. È per questo che ne abbiamo bisogno.

Nel 1914 c'era stata una rottura a livello mondiale nel sistema dei pagamenti: dalle monete d'oro al denaro fiat. Per ripristinare la libertà monetaria, c'è bisogno di un'ampia riforma monetaria, la quale è il prodotto dell'azione umana e non della progettazione umana.

Chiunque abbia un piano di riforma monetaria progettato da un governo nazionale, sta delirando: la dottrina della sovranità legale dello stato-nazione sul denaro. Ignoratelo... o ignoratela (ad esempio, Ellen Brown).

Non accettate sostituti!


[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: http://francescosimoncelli.blogspot.it/

Come termine economico “inflazione” è l’abbreviazione di “inflazione dell’offerta di moneta”.

Tuttavia l’opinione pubblica la intende generalmente come “aumento dei prezzi” e ciò non deve sorprendere poiché uno degli effetti più comuni dell’aumento dell’offerta di moneta è proprio un aumento generale dei prezzi. I sostenitori delle politiche governative spesso affermano che “se l’allentamento quantitativo (QE) ed il suo pessimo gemello – la riserva frazionaria delle banche – sono così terribili, perché l’inflazione ancora non si vede?”

Per affrontare questo enigma, ci sono sei fattori tra loro connessi e degni di nota:

Primo: dobbiamo essere chiari circa i termini che stiamo usando.

Invece di parlare di “inflazione” in termini generici come sopra, è più appropriato parlare di svalutazione monetaria, che è l’effetto reale della creazione con ogni mezzo della moneta cartacea a corso legale (fiat). Noi sperimentiamo una svalutazione della moneta come diminuzione del potere di acquisto. Due facce della stessa medaglia: una riflette l’altra.

Secondo: la suddetta domanda trascura il fatto che le rilevazioni usate in questo processo sono di per sé inattendibili. La diminuzione del potere di acquisto è più evidente quando misurata oggettivamente in confronto ad una materia prima essenziale come il petrolio (piuttosto che in riferimento all’Indice dei Prezzi al Consumo, CPI). Il CPI si propone di riflettere il prezzo di componenti selezionati da statistici del governo in quello che essi considerano essere un tipico – ma ipotetico – paniere “di beni e servizi di consumo”. Questo paniere, il cui contenuto è periodicamente modificato, risulta in un indice che non può essere considerato un indicatore oggettivo. Questo convalida le alchimie di non- indipendenti statistici del Tesoro e si riferisce a dei beni che difficilmente sono presenti nel mio o nel vostro carrello della spesa.

Misurare il prezzo del petrolio in termini di oro.

Nel 1966 (50 anni fa) il prezzo di un barile di petrolio era pari a 3,1 dollari. Ora è appena sotto ai 50 dollari: così sembra che il prezzo del petrolio sia aumentato. Ma questo incremento apparente è piuttosto la misura della diminuzione del potere d’acquisto del dollaro nello stesso periodo: una diminuzione di circa 94%! Inoltre, l’apparente incremento del prezzo di un barile di petrolio sparisce quando è misurato in confronto ad una materia prima stabile, come l’oro, piuttosto che in confronto ad un’instabile unità di moneta legale cartacea, come il dollaro.

Ed ecco perché: 50 anni fa il prezzo dello stesso barile di petrolio era equivalente a 2,75 grammi di oro. Oggi è equivalente a 1,0 grammo di oro – pertanto il potere di acquisto dell’oro, misurato in barili di petrolio, si è quasi triplicato.

La capacità dell’oro di misurare la svalutazione in corso praticamente di ogni moneta consiste, di certo, nella sua stessa relativa stabilità in termini di quantità. Sebbene ci siano nuove fonti di offerta – principalmente l’estrazione mineraria – la sua estrazione e produzione è costosa e strettamente controllata. E, più importante, il suo valore non può essere svalutato da una stampante di un governo centrale.

L’esempio del petrolio inoltre evidenzia inoltre la differenza tra moneta stabile e moneta cartacea a corso legale (es. sterlina, dollari, yen, yuan, euro). In pratica, le politiche monetarie di ogni banca centrale probabilmente aggraveranno questo problema nel prossimo futuro. Tale è il dominante livello d’ignoranza ovunque si guardi.

Terzo: la nuova moneta appena creata DEVE andare da qualche parte e così va nelle mani dei suoi primi destinatari – le banche, le istituzioni finanziarie, le istituzioni del governo e le categorie abbienti del paese che meno ne necessitano – allargando gratuitamente la differenza tra ricchi e poveri e creando così bolle speculative nelle proprietà, nelle auto di lusso, nelle imbarcazioni ed in una miriade di gingilli che solo pochi ricchissimi possono permettersi di acquistare. Pertanto mai dire che non c’è “inflazione dei prezzi”, ma semplicemente che i prezzi di questi beni non figurano nelle statistiche ufficiali del CPI.

Quarto: la Banca Centrale Europea (BCE) è piuttosto in gamba nel creare denaro dal nulla e le banche all’interno dell’eurozona devono pertanto fare affidamento su di essa per sopravvivere. La solvibilità dei paesi del sud dell’area euro dipende dalla promessa di iniezioni di liquidità senza limiti a sostegno (“qualsiasi cosa sarà necessaria, M. Draghi!”) da parte della BCE – ma finchè non arriva effettivamente, questi paesi utilizzano i propri migliori strumenti coercitivi per sostenere con ogni mezzo (lecito o illecito) le loro banche insolventi. In Italia, per esempio, il governo ha ora “invitato” i fondi pensione del paese ad investire 500 milioni di euro in un fondo bancario chiamato “Atlante” che è stato formalmente costituito come compratore di ultima istanza per aiutare i creditori italiani (i cui debiti inesigibili corrispondono ad un quinto del PIL) a ridurre le loro esposizioni tossiche! Investire? E’ uno scherzo? Avendo esaurito il denaro della gente comune, ora il governo italiano sta cercando di razziare i fondi pensione nazionali.

Quinto: nello stesso ritornello avrete senza dubbio sentito riferirsi a “liquidità dall’elicottero”. Questa è una variante del QE preferita da alcuni politici che parlano tranquillamente della necessità di un “QE per la gente comune”! L’idea è quella di aggirare i burocrati del tesoro elargendo nuova liquidità appena stampata direttamente alle persone, così queste (piuttosto che le categorie sociali già ricche) possono beneficiare dell’abbondanza ed aiutare l’economia spendendo la loro nuova ricchezza. Ancora, questa idea commette l’errore fondamentale di equiparare “moneta” e “ricchezza”. Se tutti improvvisamente scoprono che aiuti finanziari gratuiti hanno gonfiato i loro conti bancari, quanto ci vorrà prima che tutti i prezzi aumentino? (E poiché anche la liquidità lanciata dall’elicottero – per la gente comune – ha origine nella banca centrale, di certo la City ci metterà le mani comunque per prima).

Sesto: il punto riguarda l’effetto deleterio della decisione totalmente errata di sopprimere i tassi di interesse i quali, se fossero liberi di trovare nel mercato il loro livello di equilibrio, rappresenterebbero il valore temporale del denaro, o quello che il settore privato è disposto a pagare per la liquidità (sia per spendere ora o risparmiare per necessità future).

La soppressione dei tassi di interesse è l’ennesimo tentativo disperato di stimolare la domanda, sperando che questa possa stimolare l’attività economica e produttiva. Ma questo è in contrasto con la cd. Legge di Say secondo cui, correttamente, si produce al fine di consumare. Al contrario questo conduce all’idiozia della “gestione della domanda”: come se stimolando la domanda si generasse magicamente la produzione necessaria per soddisfare quella stessa domanda! Se fosse vero, Venezuela e Zimbabwe si contenderebbero proprio ora il titolo di economie più prospere del mondo.

La soppressione dei tassi di interesse distrugge la misura naturale della preferenza temporale. Questa frena molti progetti d’investimento di lungo periodo in infrastrutture, semplicemente perché nessun imprenditore privato di progetti d’investimento avvierà un’impresa il cui costo non può essere quantificato in modo attendibile. Dopo di tutto, chi può sapere quando i tassi di interesse saliranno? E quale sarà il costo economico per il progetto? L’incertezza soffoca l’azione.

Il rischio di una cattiva allocazione dei capitali è semplicemente troppo alto per il settore privato delle costruzioni, basta guardare ai numerosi fallimenti del settore pubblico: ci sono aeroporti Spagnoli sui quali non atterra alcun aereo ed autostrade portoghesi sulle quali non passano automobili.

Ed in questo paese? Basta attendere HS2, le nuove piste di atterraggio, Hinckley (e tutti gli altri progetti faraonici “a tassi zero” che avranno il via libera) che non sono mai stati soggetti ad alcun calcolo economico attendibile. Pertanto cosa concludiamo in merito al settore produttivo? I tassi di interesse prossimi a zero favoriscono i programmi d’investimento a breve termine che richiedono un capitale minimo come linee di produzione a basso rischio di beni economici. Per questo vediamo ovunque negozi “tutto a 99 centesimi” o” tutto ad 1 dollaro” e tutti gli altri miseri negozietti che infestano ogni strada delle periferie creando appunto l’illusione di un’inflazione nulla. Che è da dove siamo partiti.

The post L’enigma dell’inflazione appeared first on Ludwig von Mises Italia.

It’s really quite embarrassing on a global scale when members of our own government seem to be deliberately trying to pick fights with people who aren’t interested in fighting with us. If you’ve traveled outside of the United States much, you probably know that we Americans have a rather negative reputation off of our own shores. Now, generally speaking, that isn’t our fault as individuals. You and I don’t create headlines that make waves throughout Europe and Asia.

While average Americans aren’t directly responsible for this, our federal officials are. I’ve written recently about President Obama doing things in Syria that are worsening the conflict there. I’ve also written about the fact that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are starting to butt heads. And finally, I’ve warned time and time again that war is upon us – and everyone knows but the US.

Michael Morell is the director of the CIA. Here’s a little blurb from Wikipedia about him.

Michael Joseph Morell (born September 4, 1958) is an American intelligence analyst. He served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as its acting director twice, first in 2011 and then from 2012 to 2013. Since November 2013, he has been a Senior Counselor to Beacon Global Strategies LLC. He is a proponent of the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques which many consider to be torture, and is also a proponent of the CIA’s targeted killings by drones.

Wow, and just think. He’s a guy that has almost unfettered power to call a hit on anyone in the world.

This video shows us how the global situation is being manipulated towards war by our own Central Intelligence Agency. Watch as Michael Morell boasts about how the CIA operates – and then watch as his boasting comes to life.

This is the creepy, sadistic little puppetmaster that is going to deliberately get our sons and daughters sent off to fight the next war “for our freedom.” This is just more proof that nothing we see on the mainstream news is as it seems and that the federal alphabet agencies are never what they present themselves to be.

Reprinted with permission from DaisyLuther.com.

The post CIA Puppet Masters appeared first on LewRockwell.

For all Hillary Clinton’s reputation as a policy wonk, her debate performance consisted almost entirely of personal attacks. And while our media is out there proclaiming a Clinton “victory,” their evaluation merely shows how distanced they are from ordinary Americans, who don’t revel in nastiness.

Trump, on the other hand, although he allowed himself to be distracted by her cattiness, was focused on the issues, and in the course of the evening, he made three important points of interest to my readers.

1) The most important issue of our time, or any time – nuclear weapons and the looming possibility of nuclear war:

“The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming like you think and your — your president thinks. Nuclear is the single greatest threat….

“I would like everybody to end it, just get rid of it. But I would certainly not do the first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.”

This is the most under-noticed – and most significant – moment of the debate. Although, to be sure, it was immediately noted by the folks over at The Intercept, who opined:

“That may seem like common sense, but it’s actually a commitment that President Obama has been reluctant to make. The Pentagon argues that unless the U.S. is prepared to threaten a nuclear strike, it is less likely to deter Russian and Chinese aggression.

“Arms control advocates have been pushing President Obama to vow ‘no first use,’ ironically in part to try and reign [sic] in a future president.”

On the other end of the spectrum, neocon columnist and Bush Republican Marc Thiessen declared this a “gaffe,” correctly noting that no President has ever taken this position, i.e. committed himself to abjuring the nuclear annihilation of humankind. It’s interesting to note what’s considered a “gaffe” in the world of the Washington insiders.

As usual, Buzzfeed obfuscated the issue, and Trump’s answer, with “political editor” Katherine Miller feigning confusion over what the GOP standard-bearer actually said. She cited him as saying:

“I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table.” [Emphasis added]

What she conveniently left out is the rest of the quote:

“Because you look at some of these countries, you look at North Korea, we’re doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.”

What Trump was referring to in saying “I can’t take anything off the table” is the unpredictability of North Korea’s loony leaders: they could well launch a nuclear first strike if they felt threatened enough. While Trump is not the clearest expositor, when you’re the “political editor” of Buzzfeed misreading the GOP nominee is obligatory.

In a rational world, this no-first-strike pledge would’ve headlined media accounts of the debate: however, in our world, the “mainstream” media – which functions as an unregistered PAC working on Hillary’s behalf – ignored this historic first in favor of what Trump said about some beauty pageant contestant in 1996.

2) On the question of intervention and the costs of collective security, Trump brought to the fore his “America first” foreign policy. When Hillary tried to mock his reluctance to pay for the defense of Korea, Japan, and the NATO counties, Trump replied:

“I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world.”

And in the context of discoursing on deindustrialization, Trump averred:

“So the worst of all things has happened. We owe $20 trillion, and we’re a mess. We haven’t even started. And we’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw. Whether it’s 6 or 5, but it looks like it’s 6, $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice. And it’s really a shame.”

This is a powerful argument, albeit not one the political class finds compelling. It speaks to the frustrations of ordinary Americans, who wonder why we can build schools and bridges in Afghanistan while our own are falling to pieces. Indeed, the Washington crowd hates Trump for his “nationalist” (i.e. common sense) approach to world affairs and the way he links the issue to the specter of industrial decline. After all, there’s no money in it for their friends in the military-industrial complex, and it contradicts Washington’s favorite conceit, given voice by Hillary when she declaimed:

“Are we going to lead the world with strength and in accordance with our values? That’s what I intend to do.”

Translation: The US is going to impose its values on the rest of the world – and never mind the costs, in blood and treasure. This is just another variation of the old neoconservative project, perhaps dressed up in the garb of political correctness to make it more palatable to “progressives.”

Another first in this debate was Trump’s denunciation of the Saudis, long a bipartisan sacred cow:

“I mean, can you imagine, we’re defending Saudi Arabia? And with all of the money they have, we’re defending them, and they’re not paying?”

As Michael Tracey put it in the New York Daily News: “This may well be the first instance of a candidate criticizing the Saudi government in the heat of a nationally-televised presidential debate — a clear departure from bipartisan norms. (The Clinton Foundation has taken as much as $25 million from despotic Saudi royalists.)”

Read the Whole Article

The post Trump’s Debate for Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

Anyone who knows anything about the Kennedy family’s relationship with the Bushes will find the following odd: Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter got together with George H.W. “Poppy” Bush and gleefully announced that “Bush 41” is planning to vote for Hillary Clinton.

The Bush-Clinton alliance, at least, is not so surprising. The elder George Bush became famously chummy with Bill Clinton after the latter defeated him in 1992. They became so close that the former CIA director-turned-president considers him “like family” and his son refers to Clinton as his “brother from another mother.”

Further, the Bushes harbor tremendous resentment for the way Donald Trump ridiculed Poppy’s eldest son Jeb during the 2016 Republican primaries.

But what about the Kennedys? They have often been seen as a rival dynasty by the Bushes.

Going Back to Some Dark Places

Members of the Kennedy clan have long been a mum on whether they believe that the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were really just the doings of isolated, aggrieved or disturbed individuals, or whether there was more to the story. Privately, however, many Kennedy family members are known to suspect the truth has yet to emerge. And at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has started to go public with his beliefs.

Now, we have RFK Jr.’s sister, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, going viral with a picture on Facebook of her with Bush 41 and a statement that the 92-year-old supports Democrat Hillary Clinton in her general election battle with Trump.

One reason the scene of a Kennedy and Bush Sr. hanging out and mugging for the camera seems odd is Bush Sr.’s curious behavior around the time that Townsend’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, was murdered.

Read the Whole Article

The post A Bush Helped Kill a Kennedy appeared first on LewRockwell.

1. The Real Hitlery In epic meltdown. (NB: very bad language.) . 2. The Navy Shoots Down an Airliner And the lying gov’t and mainstream media easily cover it up. Article by Ron Unz. . 3. What’s the FBI Hiding? A pile of dirt. Article by Andrew P. Napolitano. . 4. Hillary’s Parkinson’s Symptoms Gary North on the video. . 5. Does Hillary Use a Body Double? Like LBJ and other politicos. Article by Phillip F. Nelson. . 6. The 10 Worst US Presidents Only 10? Article by Chuck Baldwin. . 7. Darwin Unhinged Fred Reed on the bugs in evolution. . 8. Ignore the Flu Vaccine Propaganda Bill Sardi on what to do instead. . 9. Hillary’s 911 Disaster It could already have decided the election, says Lew Rockwell. . 10. 19 Things We Know About 9/11 That we’re not supposed to remember. . Hidden History: An Exp... Donald Jeffries Best Price: $13.79 USD Buy New $15.53 Conspiracy Theory in A... Lance deHaven-Smith Best Price: $12.46 USD Buy New $14.07 The Law Frederic Bastiat Best Price: $2.28 USD Buy New $9.95 The Problem with Socia... Thomas DiLorenzo Best Price: $9.49 USD Buy New $12.91 Nullification: Reclaim... Clyde N. Wilson Best Price: $6.51 USD Buy New $8.95 The Devil's Chessboard... David Talbot Best Price: $14.77 USD Buy New $22.27 Dr. Feelgood: The Shoc... Richard A. Lertzman, W... Best Price: $6.88 USD Buy New $10.88 The Anatomy of the Sta... Murray N. Rothbard

The post Hot and Hotter appeared first on LewRockwell.

Months after Omar Mateen’s deeply distressing mass shooting spree in Orlando, which took the lives of 49 innocent people, the full transcripts of his phone calls with emergency services and police have been released. The records of his exchanges with authorities reveal not only his obvious mental instability and inner-turmoil but also provide insight into why the FBI withheld the complete conversations for months.

When the FBI released its heavily redacted snippet of a transcript from Mateen’s 911 call in June, the agency faced widespread outrage for excluding Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State. Following the outcry, the FBI and the Department of Justice claimed the omission was intended to avoid providing a “publicity platform” to would-be terrorists.

Nevertheless, they said the unreleased transcripts were creating an “an unnecessary distraction” from their Orlando investigation and opted to release the unredacted version of the Orlando shooter’s brief first phone call with a 911 operator. At that time, the FBI also provided summaries of the subsequent calls Mateen had with police. They even admitted — as a witness to the attacks had more or less testified — that the shooter demanded the United States stop bombing Syria and Iraq.

Though that admission in June was a surprising concession from the bureau, which plays a heavy-handed role in the War on Terror,  the Intercept noted in June that the FBI’s summaries were not in life with statements FBI Director James Comey made previously:

“However, based on a previous description of Mateen’s 911 calls given by FBI Director James Comey last week, it appears that the federal investigators continued to withhold details of a second conversation Mateen had with the 911 operator, which was not referred to at all in the government’s timeline.”

The Intercept reported another gap in the FBI’s transcript and summaries, pointing out that Comey had previously acknowledged “Mateen had expressed solidarity with the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, a Floridian who carried out a suicide bombing in Syria in 2014 on behalf of al Qaeda’s representatives there, the Nusra Front.”

This information was not included in the summaries or transcript the FBI released in June, and these omissions cast doubt on the transparency of the agency’s summaries.

With the release of the full transcripts last Friday, a better understanding of Mateen’s motives is emerging.

Early in Mateen’s second phone call of the evening, this time with a police negotiator, he made his reasoning clear:

“Can you tell me where you are right now so I can you get some help?” the negotiator asks Mateen.

“No,” Mateen replies. ‘Because you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. You get what I’m saying?”

While this matches up with the FBI’s original descriptions of the calls, Mateen’s resolve on this matter was remarkably persistent. It was a predominant, recurring theme of the phone call, which the FBI failed to emphasize.

After the negotiator says he understands what the Orlando shooter is saying, Mateen again says:

“You need to stop the U.S. air strikes. They need to stop the U.S. air strikes, okay?”

The negotiator tells him he understands, but again, Mateen urges:

“They need to stop the U.S. air strikes. You have to tell the U.S. government to stop bombing. They are killing too many children, they are killing too many women, okay?”

“I understand that,” the negotiator says again. He asks Mateen to tell him “what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is that I feel the pain of the people getting killed in Syria and Iraq and all over the Muslim (unidentified word)” Mateen answers.

Shortly after, he again references the ongoing bombings, this time mentioning America’s collaboration with Russia (it is unclear what collaboration he is referencing as the proposed U.S.-Russia partnership to fight ISIS in Syria was not officially announced until July):

“Well, you need to know that they need to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is collaborating with Russia and they are killing innocent women and children, okay?”

Shortly after, Mateen’s references Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers, as Comey initially admitted in June.

“My homeboy Tamerlan Tsarnaev did his thing on the Boston Marathon, my homeboy (unidentified name) did his thing, okay, so now it’s my turn, okay?” he says.

The Tsarnaev brothers, particularly Tamerlan, were motivated by the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and sought revenge for them. Mateen evidently saw them as models for his own attack.

Mateen, who pledged allegiance to ISIS and their leader, expressed outrage in a subsequent phone call with police over one U.S. strike in particular:

“Yo, the air strike that killed Abu Wahid a few weeks ago… That’s what triggered it, okay?…They should have not bombed and killed Abu Wahid.”

Abu Wahid, also referred to as Abu Waheeb, was a prominent ISIS leader killed by a U.S. drone strike in May. Based on the full transcripts, it appears Mateen was increasingly agitated and radicalized by U.S. attacks on the people of Iraq and Syria, and the final straw was the death of Wahid, who he apparently considered an important force in his tirade against the American military.

Mateen’s pledge to ISIS indicated to many he was a radical Islamic extremist. However, reports from his ex-wife painted him more as a volatile, mentally unstable, potentially gay man who was not particularly religious. He wanted to be a police officer and wore shirts emblazoned with the New York Police Department’s logo.

Considering these varying factors, the full transcripts shed light on just how powerfully U.S. foreign policy factored into the clearly unstable man’s decision to murder dozens of innocent people.

Whether the FBI withheld the full transcripts out of a genuine desire to discourage further attacks or did so for nefarious reasons, Mateen’s repeated references to air strikes should not be discounted. As the U.S. continues to wage air campaigns in Syria and Iraq and the messy, perpetual war continues, the Orlando shooter’s sentiments suggest these bombardments will continue to inspire blowback in the form of hatred and retaliatory violence.

As Mateen continued to stress in his phone calls with police:

“This went down, a lot of innocent women and children are getting killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, okay?”

He told the negotiator to tell authorities “[t]o stop, tell them to stop.”

“Tell — tell the f*cking — the air strikes need to stop.”

The post FBI Hid the Orlando Shooter’s Motive appeared first on LewRockwell.

By Dr. Mercola

While multiple companies manufacture and market “new and improved” FMCGs — fast- moving consumer goods — that we use every day, such as soap, toothpaste, deodorant and body lotion, one of the best and most natural products has been right under our noses, so to speak.

Coconut oil has a pleasant scent, and besides being very economical, it’s an amazingly versatile and therapeutic substance. Since the mid-1990s, roughly, coconut oil for a number of applications, such as cleansing, deodorizing and healing, has been growing in the larger population.

Questions like “Where does coconut oil actually come from?” and “What does it smell like?” are apropos. Coconut oil, like butter, is a solid substance, melting to a liquid form when it reaches about 76 degrees.

Insoluble at room temperature, it takes on a creamy consistency when blended with water using a whisk. If not treated to processes such as bleaching, refining or deodorizing, coconut oil exudes the mild fragrance you would expect — like coconut.

Visit the Mercola Video Library

2 Kinds of Coconut Oil — Commercial Grade and Virgin

The relatively recent interest in the many uses of coconut oil also elicits questions regarding its production. There are two basic types: Commercial-grade and virgin coconut oil. Nutiva Organic Virgin ... Buy New $18.68

Commercial grade coconut oil — This product is made from copra, which is the dried meat of the coconut. It’s usually smoke-, sun- or kiln-dried or a combination of the three. But when standard copra is used to make coconut oil, it’s not sterile and therefore unsuitable for human consumption.

It’s “purified” or refined through a process known as RBD — refined, bleached and deodorized. According to Coconutdiet.com:1

“High heat is used to deodorize the oil, and the oil is typically filtered through (bleaching) clays to remove impurities. Sodium hydroxide is generally used to remove free fatty acids and prolong shelf life.

This is the most common way to mass-produce coconut oil. The older way of producing refined coconut oil was through physical/mechanical refining. More modern methods also use chemical solvents to extract all the oil from the copra for higher yields.”

Virgin coconut oil — In comparison, like olive oil, coconut oil is best when “first-pressed” and “virgin.” Like pressing a tea bag that’s been steeping in boiled water a few minutes, the first water released will contain the most actual extracts.

The second time it’s pressed, as in the teabag analogy, the result isn’t as concentrated. Coconutdiet.com continues:

“Virgin Coconut Oil can only be achieved by using fresh coconut meat or what is called non-copra. Chemicals and high heating are not used in further refining since the natural, pure coconut oil is very stable with a shelf life of several years.

There are currently two main processes of manufacturing Virgin Coconut Oil:

• Quick drying of fresh coconut meat which is then used to press out the oil. Using this method, minimal heat is used to quick dry the coconut meat, and the oil is then pressed out via mechanical means.
• Wet-milling. With this method, the oil is extracted from fresh coconut meat without drying first. ‘Coconut milk’ is expressed first by pressing. Nutribiotic Pure Cocon... Buy New $19.98

The oil is then further separated from the water. Methods which can be used to separate the oil from the water include boiling, fermentation, refrigeration, enzymes and mechanical centrifuge.”

Why Keep Coconut Oil in the Bathroom?

Raw, organic coconut oil, besides being good enough to eat (which we’ll discuss in a minute) has a plethora of benefits apart from actual ingestion. Here’s a list of 15 benefits of coconut oil, in no particular order:

1.Smooth shave — If you’ve been plagued by the red, irritated and razor-burned skin after shaving, coconut oil is both soothing and antibacterial.

2.Rash recovery — Other rash problems from diaper rash to mild allergic reactions can be remedied using coconut oil. Propylene glycol is one chemical found in commercial moisturizers that can cause skin irritation and dermatitis.

3.Lip balm — Use coconut oil to moisturize, nourish and hydrate chapped lips without inadvertently eating endocrine disruptors.

A study on the metal content in lip balm revealed lead, aluminum, cadmium, chromium and manganese in high concentrations, some associated with reproductive, developmental or other adverse health effects.2

4.Facial cleanser — Effective as a face wash, mixing equal parts coconut oil and castor oil is known as oil cleansing. Massage it into your skin and remove gently with a warm washcloth.

Ninety percent of the body washes and cleansers you buy contain harmful chemicals such as sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, which, in combination with other chemicals, can form cancer-causing nitrosamines.3Coconut oil can even improve acne.

5.Makeup remover — Not only can you cleanse your face, you can remove use it as a natural makeup remover — even stubborn mascara and eyeliner.

6.Night cream — While you may not want to use coconut oil under makeup, applying it lightly before bed will hydrate your skin because its fatty acids form a natural emollient. If the skin around your nails is hard and peeling, treat your cuticles to a soothing coconut oil rub to keep them soft. Majestic Pure Fraction... Buy New $12.99

7.Deodorant — A tiny dab of coconut mixed, if you desire, with an essential oil such as lavender is very effective — so much better than the antiperspirants containing aluminum, which is linked to Alzheimer’s.

Another deodorant recipe combines 3 tablespoons each of coconut oil, arrowroot powder (or cornstarch) and baking soda.

8.Foot fungus fighter — Because it’s antimicrobial and antibacterial, coconut is very effective in combating athlete’s foot. Rub it on the bottoms of your feet after every shower.

Antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal compounds in coconut oil have been shown to inactivate microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast, and fungi.4

9.Soothing bath — As an alternative to bubble baths that may induce urinary tract infections, especially in children, drop a dollop of coconut oil in your bath with a few essential oils. It’s both moisturizing and helps kill bacteria.

10.Body scrub — Combining equal parts coconut oil with sea salt, sugar or baking soda to make a homemade scrub softens, smoothes and moisturizes your skin.

11.Body lotion — Moisturizers you buy at the store typically contain harmful chemicals such as aluminum, phthalates, parabens, formaldehyde and propylene glycol.5 Coconut is a fragrant, moisturizing alternative containing none of these.

12.Toothpaste — To combat tooth decay and even whiten teeth, make a DIY coconut oil toothpaste by mixing 1 teaspoon with 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 2 drops of peppermint essential oil. Just brush as usual.

13.Oil pulling — An oral rinse works much like a mouthwash, only you shouldn’t gargle with it. As you swish vigorously for five to 15 minutes, it penetrates the soft tissue between your gums and “pulls out” bacteria that causes cavities, plaque, and bad breath.

14.When applied to infected cuts or wounds, coconut oil develops a layer of naturally protective chemicals that also keep out dust, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Applied to bruises, it speeds up the healing process in damaged tissues.

15.Frizz fighter — People with hair that tends to frizz often turn to silicone- or alcohol-based gels and mousses, which coat the hair, prevent it from absorbing moisture and dries out the hair shaft. Just a few drops of coconut oil are all you need for a natural hair conditioner for smooth, silky shine.

Healing Properties of Coconut Oil

Virgin coconut oil has been described as having a “haunting, nutty, vanilla flavor (and) even milder and richer-tasting than butter.” A New York Times article noted that coconut oil, while once demonized by the “all saturated fats are bad for you” camp, has now become accepted:

“The main saturated fat in coconut oil is lauric acid, a medium-chain fatty acid. Lauric acid increases levels of good HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, and bad LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, in the blood, but is not thought to negatively affect the overall ratio of the two.

… Any number of health claims have been made for lauric acid. According to proponents, it’s a wonder substance with possible antibacterial, antimicrobial, antiviral properties that could also, in theory, combat H.I.V., clear up acne and speed up your metabolism.”6

Even applied topically, coconut oil has healing properties. One interesting factoid is that while antiperspirants containing aluminum are associated with Alzheimer’s, coconut oil actually prevents it because of the medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) that are easily absorbed and metabolized by the liver and can convert to ketones. One study noted:

“Ketone bodies are an important alternative energy source in the brain, and may be beneficial to people developing or already with memory impairment, as in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) … (It may also) be beneficial in the treatment of obesity, dyslipidaemia, elevated LDL, insulin resistance and hypertension — these are the risk factors for (heart disease) and type 2 diabetes, and also for AD.”7

Alzheimer’s is projected to affect 1 in 4 Americans in the next generation, rivaling obesity, and diabetes, but evidence suggests that ketone bodies in coconut oil may help restore and renew neurons and nerve function in your brain, even after damage has set in.

Unhealthy Alternatives to Coconut Oil

Regarding coconut oil in the kitchen, even as a household cleaner, there are a few points to consider:

•Virgin coconut oil has a smoke point of 350 degrees, so for cooking, it’s best used at lower temperatures. Olive oil overcooks even as low as 250 degrees, which may cause oxidization, doing your body more harm than good.

•You can substitute coconut oil for butter or olive oil, and most definitely instead of so-called vegetable oils. Here’s why:

Multiple studies reveal coconut oil to impart amazing benefits when used in nutritional applications. One of the most dramatic changes you can make in your health will be to replace the so-called “healthy” vegetable, soy, corn and cottonseed oils such as canola when sautéing food or baking cake or cookies.

It’s interesting to note that Polynesian populations, who’ve been using full-fat coconut oil as a diet staple for untold generations, have no heart disease to speak of. Why? It’s a direct contradiction to what conventional medicine touted for a few decades, that saturated fats are bad for you, and will lead to obesity, high cholesterol levels, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

The truth is, saturated fat like that of coconut oil and olive oil is natural, not the concocted substances created in a laboratory using methods like hydrogenation and partial hydrogenation that convert polyunsaturated fatty acids to trans fats. Vegetable and seed oils undergo the double whammy of hydrogen atoms and high heat, creating a cheaper oil with a long shelf life that’s very bad for your health.

Further, when vegetable oils are heated to a high temperature, the chemical compounds break down, get “stuck” in your cells, oxidize and create dangerous free radicals that lead to disease, including heart disease and cancer. Here’s a timeless article on the type of oil you should cook with.

Sources and References

• 1 How is Coconut Oil Produced?
• 2 Concentrations and Potential Health Risks of Metal in Lip Products
• 3 Final Report on the Safety Assessment of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate
• 4 Coconut Oil Offers Hope for Antibiotic-Resistant Germs
• 5 10 Toxic Beauty Ingredients to Avoid
• 6 Once a Villain, Coconut Oil Charms the Health Food World
• 7 The role of dietary coconut for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: potential mechanisms of action.

The post Anti-Diabetes, Anti-Heart Disease, Anti-Alzheimer’s, Anti-Cancer appeared first on LewRockwell.

Hillary Clinton: You don’t see any photo ops with her holding an infant because she would drop the baby.

Hillary Clinton is a known factor: a puppet of the oligarchs and the influential, if there ever was one.  War-minded (keep the war industry going); bought off as a stooge for Wall Street; incompetent for anything but a government job; makes up her own rules (destruction of emails, etc.) part of what growingly appears to be a crime syndicate; violates US law by indirectly accepting money for favors from foreign sources who are forbidden by law to tamper with US elections; says she accepts full responsibility for Benghazi, but when public officials do that, they don’t just give lip services, they resign, Hillary is the first President to be exposed as an “emperor who wore no clothes” in this era of internet-gleaned information.  For in all practicality, Hillary would not be a credible candidate for President if she didn’t have the backing of the nation’s new press that pretends to be unbiased.

Hillary is physically unfit for the job.  The body double is going to be the public persona.  How long will this charade continue and the news press hide that fact?  Hillary is goose meat if the press ever stops rigging her imagined popularity.  Her backers have come out of their closets, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Huffington Post, Wall Street, all the usual suspects, who have obviously benefited from hands-off government policies due to pay-offs that simply won’t continue under a Trump White House.

Hillary doesn’t have a mind of her own.  She uses without concealment the Council on Foreign Relations as her think-tank.  She has left a wake of instability throughout the Middle East (by the plan, not by accident).  She (and Obama) faked they were in a control center viewing what was going on inside that enclave in Pakistan when Osama bin Laden was taken down.

At a time when America can no longer bully every other nation, at a time when alliances are of the essence, at a time when the American financial bubble could pop at any time, America would be turning over the Presidency to a covert group Hillary handlers.  She is completely controlled and given words to speak via a teleprompter built into a contact lens.

An elitist by any definition, she claims to have disdain for wealthy Americans who don’t pay their fair share.  Yet it is those Americans who pay 70%+ of taxes.  She cannot fathom that American business has had to set up their taxable base of operations outside the country just to remain competitive in the world marketplace.  She offers platitudes, like tougher gun laws (only the criminals will have guns) and elimination of tax loopholes (not really).  Who is going to put a halt to American-brand fascism that hides under a legacy of a Christian heritage and works ethic?

When Americans say, “I’m with her,” they are saying they are as clueless as she is.  Remember that revamp of America’s health plan she cooked up in the Bill Clinton White House?  She should have stuck to flower arranging like other First Ladies.

We are on the cusp of the collapse of the Western monetary system and society and Hillary’s friends are concerned about their opponent being sexist (calling a Miss America candidate “piggy”) and about his misdirection over President Obama’s birth certificate (which has yet to appear).  Foreign countries will laugh at us if Hillary Clinton becomes the leader of the western world.  Only her thumb on the big red button will keep their lips closed.

Donald Trump: He won’t drop the baby and he won’t leave any money on the table

Donald Trump is no saint.  What you see is what you get.  A bit impulsive but a great analyst, Americans have become so apologetic over the American way of life that his detractors can’t fathom the idea of “speak softly and carry a big stick” which was Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy.  Donald Trump is more like “speak harshly AND carry a big stick.”

The Donald lets everyone know he is coming.  No, he won’t restore waterboarding to our repertoire of treatments for captured terrorists.  But we don’t want to tell the world that do we?  When people say Trump is scary, yep, he is the right guy for the job.  We don’t want a wuss for the job.  Nurturing female voters want to see a candidate who is empathetic.

OK, he held a baby in his arms to show he has a softer side.  After all, many women still have the image of Donald Trump saying “You’re fired!”  I guarantee you, if Hillary had to hold an infant for a photo op, she would drop the baby.

Trump wins at the negotiation table before he sits down.  He has Mexico back-peddling and changing their ambassador to the US in anticipation of having to deal with him.  No, Trump is not going to build a $40 billion fence between Mexico and the US, but somebody had better address the sieve that our southern border has become.  Hidden from public view is the fact the southern US border areas have the highest crime rates.

And at a time when millions of jobs have been exported to China and robotization looms, adding more people to the labor pool simply drives down salaries.  Want to raise incomes?  Decrease the size of the labor pool.  With no politician offering any answers to the lack of jobs other than throwing people onto welfare, the middle -class has been eclipsed by the welfare class, and no Presidential candidate outside of Trump seems to care.

The reason why the Border Patrol looks the other way and allows people to cross the border from the south is that America needed to add younger workers to pay for the growing population of retirees (Medicare and Social Security).  These trust funds are empty and Medicare and Social Security payments now come out of the general fund.

This is an issue that Trump will be confronted with when he enters the Oval Office.  He addresses the loss of jobs, which has caused union workers to break ranks with the Democrats and lobby for Trump.  So far Trump is silent on how to provide for the growing number of retirees.  So far, nobody has come up with any answers beyond rationing health care and delaying the age of retirement.  An anti-aging pill would throw a monkey wrench into the social planners and life insurance companies who want retirees to die on time.

There was a fictional book published years ago entitled Elixir where the President of the United States began taking an anti-aging pill and the rest of the world followed, but only after making a deal with doctors for exclusive distribution of the pill.  The Donald puts a pill like that up to his lips and you can be sure Big Pharma and the AMA will have a cow.

Now Trump wants to place tariffs on imports, but frankly, that foments war.  Recall it was a tea tax that started the Revolutionary War.  Better to mandate that goods made overseas, intended for sale in the US market, use American-made raw materials – cotton for T-shirts, metals, and plastics for electronics, etc.

Now Trump talks and talks about the trade imbalance.  The US buys about $500 billion more goods from overseas than it exports.  Charles Hugh Smith points out that if the US wants to maintain its position as the distributor of the reserve currency for the world, any country issuing a reserve currency must run a trade deficit.

When the US buys goods at $1 from China and that product makes its way through importers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers and sells for $10 suggested retail, that $1 in foreign trade has added $9 of value to the US side of the equation.  We need to stop demonizing the trade imbalance.  We get great bargains from China.

Foreign countries practice currency manipulation, that is, they buy up US dollars, artificially driving up the value of the dollar by increased demand, thus making foreign goods relatively cheaper.  To stop this all a Commander in Chief need do is instruct the US Treasury Department to buy up another country’s currency when they buy US dollars.  This does not take an act of Congress.  Currency manipulation would cease and US goods would be more competitively priced with foreign goods.  Trump needs an education in this department.

In reality, take jobs back from China and you have millions of unemployed, riots and starvation there.  Not a good scenario.

Yes, Trump didn’t finish off Hillary Clinton in his first TV debate.  Maybe television producers wanted to build up a bit more drama rather than having Trump lower the boom on her.

When Hillary said Trump wants to maintain tax loopholes for the rich, wants to lower corporate taxes so the wealthy don’t pay their fair share, he should have said:

“We lower corporate tax rates to make our US companies more competitive with foreign companies who tax rates are lower.  That brings back a few trillion dollars US companies are holding overseas.  Business and industry can now hire more people to expand their operations.  And the cost of goods will decline because costs (taxes) have been lowered, so Americans will essentially be getting an indirect pay raise via increased purchasing power.”

That kind of statement would have completely obliterated Hillary. When critics jumped on Trump when he took campaign donations and used them to fund an event at his own resorts and hotels I said, “Hey, I want this guy on my side.  He doesn’t leave any money on the table.

A problem with Trump is his naivety.  He does not really know how the world operates.  Trump wants a strong military.  OK.  The US is committed to 11 aircraft carrier strike groups.  Why?  Because we bully and badger other countries militarily the moment they get out of line.

Any country that wants to convert to a gold standard to back its currency and thus subjugate the US debt-based dollar, the aircraft carriers will be dispatched in their direction.

Donald Trump appears to be oblivious to all this.  Hillary certainly knows all this, yes, and she installs criminal elements (The Muslim Brotherhood) into foreign countries (Egypt), which was reversed by an outraged public in Egypt, thank God.  Trump would maybe upset the puppet governments that the US has installed around the globe.  That is why former CIA chiefs have given a thumbs-down on Trump.  He would likely upset the New World Order.

Countries that trade with the US must return the money to the US or otherwise all the goods end up here and the money overseas.  For example, China is holding $3 trillion of US dollars.  Look for Trump to fly to China and get that money returned to invigorate China’s economy in a circuitous fashion.  America would buy more goods from China if it had the money.  Hillary would rather head butt China.  Donald too, with trade tariffs, but he will likely come to his senses when he sees what can be done as the negotiating table.

US dollars overseas are returned by buying US Treasury notes, essentially an IOU + interest.  In the oil business, this became known as the Petro Dollar scheme, fashioned by Henry Kissinger when he was secretary of state.  The middle-eastern oil states have to buy US treasury notes, or else! Again, Trump has to be briefed here.

Trump says he will take care of the North Korean threat to Asia and now suggests maybe China is better suited to handle that problem. But North Korea is a puppet for the US.  Those near-perfect propaganda photos are seen in the US news press of a tyrant leader, Kim Jong-Un, a US-invented bogeyman who keeps surrounding countries reliant on the US for defense via treaties.

When the EURO was first issued Japan’s diet (its congress) dropped the idea of buying EUROs instead of US dollars.  A week later North Korea launched a missile over Japan.  That was the US’ way of saying, “OK, but let’s see who protects you from North Korea.”   If and when Trump is briefed about all this (who knows if they don’t shoot him or have his aircraft downed first) he will have to deal with the realities of a black ops world.  How will Donald Trump deal with the realization the US runs drugs and launders money to fund its black ops?

The objective after WWII was to create an America where its workers were paid good money to create a consumer economy and subjugate the rest of the world to produce goods that are exported to the US on the back of cheap labor.  Any country that threatens to create a competing consumer economy is a threat to US ability to control foreign countries by trade.  What would Japan do if it couldn’t sell automobiles and cameras to the US?

Summary: Trump has a lot to learn.  Trump is not going to lose at the negotiation table.  The US economy must recover to its prior predominance in order for the world to recover from an economic collapse of unprecedented proportion.  Hillary is just a front for the thugs who run the world.  Bottom line, Hillary will drop the baby and be bought off by the bidder who offers the highest price.  Trump will not drop the baby and negotiate a profit rather than a running loss that has accumulated into a trillion dollar national debt.

The post Hillary and Donald appeared first on LewRockwell.

KINGSTON, NY, 28 September 2016—From Asia to Europe to America, equity markets around the world on Monday swayed in anticipation of who would win The Presidential Reality Show® “debate” between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Across the business-media spectrum, market experts claimed that a positive financial future hinged upon a Clinton victory and were parroted as economic gospel:

US stocks close sharply lower as all eyes turn to debate; financials lag

U.S. equities closed sharply lower on Monday, with financials and health care lagging, as market watchers kept a close eye on a key OPEC meeting and looked ahead to a U.S. presidential debate.

“The market has basically priced in a Hillary Clinton victory,” said Randy Warren, chief investment officer at Warren Financial Service. “If it’s a big victory for Hillary, then no one will watch the next two debates and the market is going to go back to business. If it’s a big victory for Trump, then no one will watch the next two debates and everyone is going to be freaking out.”

“…Investors are waiting to see what happens at the presidential debate,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial. (CNBC, 26 September 2016)

On Tuesday, when the Dow regained most of what it lost on Monday, CNBC contributors attributed it to Clinton beating Trump. “It looks like Hillary Clinton earned the market’s vote,” said James Abate, chief investment officer at Centre Fund, adding she “is going to be good for the status quo.”

The Real World

In trend forecasting, we observe three worlds: the political world, media world, and real world. In the real world – comprising some 95 percent of the planet’s population – the US Presidential Reality Show® spectacle of two contestants slinging insults, spouting prepared one-liners and providing no in-depth solutions to complex problems, the elections will mean little or next to nothing to their economies.

While the US media remain reality-show addicted, a European banking crisis brews. For example, yesterday, Deutsche Bank shares plunged to 1980s lows while Commerzbank announced it will cut 9,000 jobs and scrap its 2016 dividend. Also yesterday, the World Trade Organization sharply reduced its 2016 forecast for global trade volume from 2.8 percent to 1.7 percent… the slowest increase since The Panic of ’08.

Further dampening the global economic outlook, The International Monetary Fund yesterday warned that advanced nations risked falling into a deflation trap triggered by “broad-based phenomenon” fed by slumping commodity prices and weak global demand (i.e., too much product, not enough buyers).

On Monday, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi admitted that ECB action was “not enough for delivering real and sustainable growth in the long-term,” and pushed governments to inject fiscal stimulus to boost the Eurozone’s Gross Domestic Product, which is slogging along at 0.4 percent for the first half of the year.

Trend Forecast: We maintain our forecast that in this economic climate of high market risk and increasing geopolitical volatility when gold prices stabilize above $1,400 per ounce they will spike toward $2,000.

The post Trouble Ahead appeared first on LewRockwell.

Originally published by AmmoLand.com.

Las Vegas, NV – KRQE TV 13 reports this week (9/9/2016) in Tijeras, New Mexico, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department Officers were called to a home on Campo Road about 5:30 in the afternoon.

Deputies found that a 48-year-old intruder had broken into a home and attacked a 70-year-old male resident with a bamboo stick and a hockey stick. The victim suffered a severe head injury but was able to shoot the intruder in the chest with his .38 caliber handgun.

The intruder died at the scene. Neighbors were calling the resident a hero.

One neighbor said “He walks with a cane. He’s ‘kind of’ a bit older and has some issues. I think that a strong breeze would push him over”.

Deputies are not releasing where it happened but neighbors pointed out the home to KRQE News 13. They say seeing deputies surround it left them worried about their neighbor.

“Thank God that he’s armed and you know, most of us up here are. I hope people see this is not a good place to come for sure,” said another area resident. Neighbors agree that this incident should serve as a warning for anyone else considering targeting their community.

BCSO says no arrests have been made in this case and that it will be forwarded to the District Attorney’s office to determine if it was a justifiable homicide.

Comments:

A perfect self-defense case. This appears to be a home invasion wherein the intruder tried to eliminate the homeowner’s resistance as soon as he entered.

As in most cases, the event starts and ends before Officers can arrive. A firearm in the home with the ability to use it once again makes the victim equal to a younger, agiler and more aggressive attacker.

The outcome had the elderly intended victim not been armed is easy to envision. A tragedy with few possible good outcomes.

Never bring a hockey stick to a gunfight!

Reprinted with permission from AmmoLand.com.

The post Home Invader Smashes 70-Year-Old’s Head Again and Again appeared first on LewRockwell.

In my last article, “The Deplorables – Who We Are And What We Want,” I examined the basic philosophies that define what I call the liberty movement; the same group of Americans that Hillary Clinton admonishes as part of her “basket of deplorables.”

It is important to recognize that only foolish progressives actually take Clinton’s claims at face value. Clinton seeks to characterize a large subset of conservatives as narrow-minded when she mentions the “deplorables.” But, it is how she defines “narrow-minded” that is the crux of the thing.

When people like her talk about “racists,” they are referring to conservatives who want a secure southern border. When they talk about “Islamaphobes,” they are referring to people who want to stop Islamic refugees from being bused into the country without being vetted or philosophically and morally acclimated to our way of life. When they talk about sexists, they are usually referring to all males in general, because remember, social justice warriors (SJWs) claim that we are “subconsciously sexist,” even if we think we are fair to women. When they talk about homophobes, they are referring to Christian bakers who do not want to participate in services for gay weddings despite the fact that they should be perfectly free to refuse association with anyone at any time for any reason.

What Clinton and social justice lunatics are really referring to when they use these attacks are those people who want to be free to think and do as they see fit as long as they are not violating the constitutional rights of others. No one in Hillary’s basket is actually narrow-minded, but she and her cronies pigeonhole them as narrow-minded anyway.

Clinton is not actually worried about real racists, or real sexists or real homophobes. What she and the establishment are worried about are true conservatives, because our principles are not built on hate; they are built on reason and truth. It’s easy to defeat a movement driven by hate; it’s next to impossible to defeat a movement driven by truth.

It is absolutely essential for liberty activists to understand that the goal of the establishment will be to redefine the core of our movement. If they can repaint us as hateful, then we can be beaten. If they can fool us into acting against our principles in the name of winning by any means, then once again, we can be beaten. If we are able to retain our principles and repel the propaganda, then we will NEVER be beaten. Even the greatest war machines on Earth can be crushed by the force of a principled rebellion.

As my readers know well, I do not hold much optimism for America in the short term. Our economic status is dismal. In my article, “Brexit Aftermath – Here’s What Happens Next,” I warned that global markets would be experiencing a slow grinding decline into the U.S. elections. This is now occurring. It is my belief that international financiers and central banks will pull stimulus support from the global economy just before or just after the elections. I believe that the establishment will attempt to blame conservative movements for the fiscal crisis they created.

By extension, and as I have been predicting for many months, I believe that Donald Trump will be allowed into the White House. Whether Trump is aware of this dynamic or not, I do not know. The point is, our fight is just beginning, and it has nothing to do with a Trump presidency.

The U.S. cannot be saved from the financial crisis; instability is a mathematical certainty. It is how we respond to this instability that will determine our success or failure. Here is what we “deplorables” must accomplish in the next decade if we are to rebuild America and defeat globalism.

Put An End To Economic Harmonization

Economic harmonization is nothing more than a globalist phrase meaning the socialist redistribution of wealth. Globalists and progressives will assert that capitalism is the cause of all our ailments. They will say it leads to an unfair allocation of wealth into the coffers of a select few through the “natural” evolution of corporate power. In reality, most socialist nations work side by side with corporations, and even the existence of the legal corporate model is owed to government interference in free markets. That is to say, there is nothing natural about corporations.

It was western governments that fabricated special legal protections for corporations including corporate personhood and limited liability. Without government protection, corporations could not exist at their current level of dominance. Therefore, bigger government and more government intervention in free markets will likely only serve to secure even greater empires for the corporate elite.

These empires can only be dismantled by removing government as a factor in free markets and allowing true competition in business to return instead of corporate favoritism. As a part of this shift, the middle class must be allowed to thrive through innovation and production. Taxation designed to redistribute wealth only seems to harm burgeoning entrepreneurs and stifles their ability to use good ideas to compete with larger businesses and their superior capital.

Economic harmonization will eventually result in equality — it will make everyone equally poor. Only a handful of elites will ever be able to pursue economic success within this kind of framework.

The End Of Forced Multiculturalism

We’re tired of Cloward-Piven strategies used by cultural Marxists to undermine western principles and heritage. The bottom line is, some cultures are completely incompatible and they should not be roommates. Are we racist for holding this view? No, we’re just being practical. One look at the scheisse-storm hitting Europe right now and only an idiot or a Leftist with an agenda would argue that mass immigration of contrary cultures is a good idea.

Uncontrolled migrations of peoples from socialist nations into nations that desire free markets will only make the effort towards free markets impossible. Illegal immigration by people who only want taxpayer-funded entitlements and that import their socialist ideals as they invade is counter to the health of a liberty-based model.

Harshly theocratic cultures also will not be able to integrate into a society that respects individual freedom. Social justice groups assume that religious freedom requires us to remain apathetic in the face of unchecked theocratic immigration (as long as it is anything other than Christian).  But, potential immigrants and illegal immigrants do not have legal rights under the U.S. Constitution. Religious freedom has nothing to do with immigration.

For example, fundamentalist Islamic culture does not mix with the traditional Western ideals of liberty and free market participation. Period.

Leftists are willfully blind to the distinction. Globalists understand the problem full well and they intend to exploit it. Their goal is to import counter-ideologies en masse in order to annihilate the last vestiges of the West.

Why? Because this is about eliminating the final obstacle to total globalization. They seek to wash out conservative and classical liberal thinking to make way for a collectivist system that outlaws sovereign philosophies as “barbaric.” It is not exactly an “ethnic cleansing;” more like an ideological cleansing of true conservativism.

We aren’t going to allow that.

This is why many in the liberty movement do in fact support a ban on all immigration into Western nations until the damage done by the multicultural cabal can be mitigated. Some may argue for a limited ban on the immigration of certain groups (including Muslims) and this is an issue where the “deplorables” diverge.

I personally don’t know how such a selective ban could be enforced without an insanely large, intrusive and expensive immigration bureaucracy designed to investigate and weed out millions of people not allowed under such a law. A simpler solution would be to freeze ALL immigration for a period of time (perhaps 10 years or more).

This would eliminate the need for the U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Services (USCIS). The $3.2 billion allocated to that entity could be spent better securing U.S. borders.

Frankly, there is nothing wrong with denying citizenship to immigrants for a period of time. The extreme left acts as if open immigration into our country is some kind of human right. It’s not.

A Less Inclusive Republican Party

It is perfectly healthy to be discriminating against ideologies and people that are destructive to inherent freedoms. I remember after Barack Obama took office for a second term that the common argument by Democratic and Republican elites alike was that it was “time for the Republican Party to be more inclusive” if they ever wanted to win the White House again.  What that really means in translation is, it was time for the Republican Party to move completely away from conservative values and be more like the Left.

In reality, the Republican Party needs to stop accommodating socialist and globalist ideals and be more selective about who its friends are, and who its leaders are. Either that or the party needs to go the way of smallpox and die so that more honest political organizations can take its place.

The Eradication Of Language Policing

We “deplorables” have seen political correctness and social justice fear mongering turn our society into a simpering cesspool of terrified effeminate spineless men, deluded miserable vitriolic women who think they are men, and the rest of us who are supposed to walk on eggshells whenever the PC police are around while being sure to use the “proper pronouns.” I think not.

I think instead, the deplorables are going to say whatever the hell we feel like saying. Why should we concern ourselves with the irrational feelings of others? Why should we censor ourselves just to satisfy the ignorant notion that language shapes environment? Language is irrelevant to our internal monolog. Changing the language is not going to change our souls. Thus, controlling it is pointless and only serves to oppress the public.

We’re not going to refer to anyone by a gender other than what their genetics dictate. We don’t care if you wear make-up and a wig and a tampon. If you were born with a Y chromosome, then you are a man. Your personal freedoms do not include the right to force others to recognize you as a woman, a “trans,” a diva, a porpoise, etc. Your feelings do not matter. We are no longer going to participate in your gender role-play fantasies.

Some of us may at times play with race-related jokes and have fun at the expense of other groups. We might argue that women actually don’t make very good Ghostbusters or that movies pontificating about slavery are becoming extraordinarily boring. We will probably refer to illegal immigrants as illegal immigrants and stare at beautiful women like we have x-ray vision.

Understand, there is nothing you can do to stop us, so you might as well spend your time doing something more constructive, like dropping out of gender studies and enrolling in a real college course.

No More Recognition Of Victim Group Status

For decades now it has become trendy for anyone besides white heterosexual males to blame all their failures on white heterosexual males. With all the gnashing of teeth over “white male privilege,” we might forget that the only groups with privileges under the law are victim groups. So much government preference is being given to these groups that almost everyone is now clamoring to categorize themselves as a victim in some sense.

The “transgender” movement is the culmination of this insanity; primarily because there is no such thing as a transgender person except the extremely rare occasion when someone is born with both male and female genitalia. Gender is biological, it is not fluid. You cannot argue with nature about your gender. Laws that govern gender issues should follow biological standards, not hollow psychological standards.

Today, anyone can simply say they are a victim group by virtue of what amounts to a mental illness. It is time to stop treating this mental illness as a civil rights issue. In turn, it is also time to stop the government from designating privileges to groups based on arbitrary victimhood. Everyone today has equal rights under the law. Everything else should be based on merit. If you fail, then it is your own fault. To foster the notion in our society that the evil white man is to blame for all the inadequacies of every loser in the world is to do more harm to those losers than good. Instead, let them take responsibility for their failings so that they might actually strive to do better.

Limited Government

There are only a few reasonable purposes behind government — to defend the inborn liberties of the populace, to repel foreign invaders and to secure a sound monetary framework. That’s about it. But while we deplorables see these as limited powers and responsibilities, socialists and globalists see these as excuses for an infinitely expanding government behemoth.

For example, you can build a functioning military based on the militia model, in which every able-bodied citizen rises to the defense of their community and nation in the event of an attack. This would be a cost-effective and less intrusive model.

Or, you can build a massive standing army with hundreds of bases around the world and a police state here at home, all funded by an unsustainable fiat money and debt system. This would be the big government model, which socialists argue is what government should do to fulfill its role.

The government can also be used to force private associations in the name of protecting the “rights” of others. A Christian taxpayer might be forced to fund entities they oppose, like Planned Parenthood (which receives around $500 million in tax dollars per year). This is the problem with open-ended nanny government; the individual freedom to associate is violated in the name of protecting the victim status of others.

This comes from a “fluid interpretation” of the Constitution and the role of government that allows expansion to be rationalized. To put an end to this would require we “deplorables” to assert a literal and limited interpretation.

True Free Markets

The establishment has spent the better part of the past 30 years trying to convince the world that globalism is a natural extension of the free market. It’s not. The fact is, globalism is a system thrust upon the people, not an organic evolution of economics.

True free market philosophy would dictate that if a model is destroying the wealth standards of a society, that society would naturally abandon it. If a model is elevating corporations, which are a product of government charter and are artificially supported by taxpayer dollars, then this is not conducive to real competition. If a model is allowing those same government chartered corporations to export jobs while destroying any chance for smaller competitors to fill the void through unfair taxation and other laws, then this creates economic instability. Without government intervention, globalism would not exist, because no society with a free market would naturally seek to destroy itself.

The “deplorables” want the end of all welfare, including corporate welfare and the concept of the “too big to fail” company. We want the end of government intervention in business and special favors for corporate elites. We also want the end of central banking and fiat debt based currency. It’s funny, but the mainstream media constantly accuses us of seeking an unfair world, but we are actually the only group of people working on a level playing field.

This concept terrifies progressives and corporate elites alike because without a socialist welfare system and special treatment for victim groups and companies, all success would then rely on merit. This means they would have to work harder than most, or be smarter than most or be more naturally gifted than most in order to be more prosperous than most. Take a look at the millennials permeating the halls of universities today — those that espouse socialist ideals –and you will find yourself struggling to identify a single person with exceptional merit or work ethic.

Take a look at all the banks and corporate monstrosities that should have collapsed eight years ago due to terrible business practices. Under a free market, they would be failures, and rightly so.

As mentioned in my first article on the “deplorables,” these changes– which represent a redress of grievances over decades of American corruption –will not take place without years of struggle and sacrifice. Again, this is not about a Trump presidency or any other future election. This is about action on the part of regular men and women, average conservatives, every day. This is about self-sufficiency, localized economies, the return of individual producers, the refusal to comply with social justice-based laws and legislation, the return of community-based security rather than reliance on state and federal security, local efforts for border security, the punishment of criminal financial institutions, etc.; all of which will probably come at the cost of a fight with the establishment.

While you are welcome to vote for whatever candidate you please, remember that central leadership is not the solution. Self-leadership is the solution. We do not need a hero on a white horse. The future is in OUR hands. Only by the efforts of millions of liberty champions in large and small ways can America return to prosperity, and to freedom.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.com.

The post The Deplorables Can Save America appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”—George Orwell

The final countdown has begun to the 2016 presidential election, and you can expect to be treated to an earful of carefully crafted sound bites and political spin.

Despite the dire state of our nation, however, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to undermine our freedoms will be addressed in any credible, helpful way by any of the so-called viable presidential candidates. Certainly not if doing so might jeopardize their standing with the unions, corporations or the moneyed elite bankrolling their campaigns.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates. Battlefield America: T... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $11.95 USD Buy New $19.14

1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”

2. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.

3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.

4. Presidential elections are not exercises in self-government. They are merely business forums for selecting the next CEO of the United States of America, Inc.

5. No matter which candidate wins this election, the police state will continue to grow. In other words, it will win and “we the people” will lose.

6. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

7. Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?” The answer, then and now, remains the same: None. There is virtually no difference between psychopaths and politicians.

8. Americans only think they’re choosing the next president. In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another manufactured illusion conjured up in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process. A Government of Wolves... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $1.81 USD Buy New $14.74

9. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

10. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance.

11. Fear, which now permeates the populace, leads to fascism.

12. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.

13. America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now and operates beyond the reach of the Constitution with no real accountability to the citizenry—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.

14. The government does whatever it wants.

15. You no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.

16. Any police officer who shoots to kill rather than incapacitate is no longer a guardian of the people. By appointing himself judge, jury, and executioner over a fellow citizen, such a police officer short-circuits a legal system that was long ago established to protect against such abuses by government agents.

17. Whether instigated by the government or the citizenry, violence will only lead to more violence. Anyone who believes that they can wage—and win—an armed revolt against the American police state is playing right into the government’s hands.

18. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled.

19. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

20. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

21. Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes. Likewise,private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.

22. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.

23. Parents no longer have the final say over what their kids are taught, how they are disciplined, or what kinds of medical care they need. From the moment they are born to the time they legally come of age, young people are now wards of the state.

24. All you need to do in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

25. Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police.

26. Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

27. Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

28. Finally, we all bleed red. And we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card. Remember, in a police state, you’re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.

These are not problems that can be glibly dismissed with a few well-chosen words, as most politicians are inclined to do. Nor will the 2016 elections do much to alter our present course towards a police state.

Indeed, the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House will not significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. Those life-changing decisions are made elsewhere, by nameless, unelected government officials who have turned bureaucracy into a full-time and profitable business.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”

What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.

There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.

No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.

The post A Few Uncomfortable Truths appeared first on LewRockwell.

[See larger]

Reprinted from Mental Floss.

The post Sometimes You Need an Interrobang appeared first on LewRockwell.

by Stephen Lendman Anyone paying attention to war on Syria, following reliable independent sources for credible information, avoiding media scoundrel propaganda, knows the conflict is Obama’s war, using terrorists as imperial foot soldiers, supported by Pentagon-led “coalition” air power. On Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov blasted State Department

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin Global Research, September 29, 2016 American Herald Tribune 25 September 2016 French imperialism is exceedingly busy these days. Since April 2012 the DGSE, France’s equivalent of the CIA, have been helping French terrorists enter Syria so they can behead children and eat their body parts in the name of ‘human rights’. Though we have been saying this for some time, the

via NaturalNews Thursday, September 29, 2016  by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer Meet Matthew Barzun, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Sweden. Barzun bought his ambassadorship, paying more than $3.5 million to the DNC and Obama's Organizing for Action nonprofit from 8-21-2009 to the present. This is how the government has been operating under Obama; globalists are paying large sums to

L'attuale sistema economico ha nove vite come i gatti. Dopo che il keynesismo è diventato imperante sia nelle sale accademiche sia tra la popolazione in generale, tale assetto è andato in crisi quando nel 1968 gli USA erano praticamente insolventi di fronte alla richiesta francese di rimpatriare il proprio oro. Nixon fece resuscitare quel sistema il 15 agosto 1971 a Camp David: moneta fiat scoperta. Ora ci stiamo affacciando di nuovo ad un punto di rottura simile, con la maggior parte delle banche centrali impegnate a cestinare le proprie valute e a crocifiggere la gente comune sull'altare della NIRP. È una situazione insostenibile, e il recente Brexit ha dato il via ad un a serie di cambiamenti che probabilmente scateneranno un evento simile a quello di Nixon. Attenzione, perché anche il Regno Unito stesso potrebbe essere il catalizzatore. Infatti, nonostante il quadro presumibilmente tranquillizzante disegnato dalle recenti notizie riguardo lo stato dell'economia britannica, il tutto è dovuto allo stimolo monetario artificiale e ad un falso boom. Il ceto medio è stato spazzato via dalle precedenti campagne monetarie ed ormai ha raggiunto lo stato di Picco del Debito, in quella corsa che sin dal 1971 ha sibilato nelle orecchie di tutti coloro avessero bilanci puliti: "Consuma oggi, paga domani." Gli investimenti improduttivi sono scoppiati in ogni dove e le conseguenze stanno iniziando a farsi sentire anche tra la gente comune, mentre le banche centrali continuano a guadagnare tempo esponendosi sempre di più ad un sistema economico al capolinea. La domanda è: quanto dolore economico si è disposti a sopportare prima di dire basta?
_________________________________________________________________________________


di Alasdair Macleod


Carney e Osborne si stanno rivelando un duo pericoloso per gli investitori inglesi in immobili residenziali. Hanno utilizzato politiche monetarie e fiscali al fine di sopprimere la domanda di immobili residenziali, attraverso una combinazione di prestiti bancari diretti, un aumento selettivo delle tasse di transazione e implementando altre politiche fiscali.

Se pensano di poter mettere a punto questi mercati, la storia ci suggerisce che alla fine falliranno. Gli investitori in immobili residenziali nel Regno Unito hanno già i loro grattacapi senza l'intervento dello stato. Per inciso, i problemi discussi nel presente articolo hanno poco a che fare con le attuali difficoltà affrontate dai fondi immobiliari commerciali nel Regno Unito, i quali hanno dovuto sospendere i rimborsi a causa della mancanza di liquidità, anche se il loro cedimento strutturale ci fornisce un monito su questa caratteristica inflessibile della proprietà in generale.



Gli immobili residenziali sono diventati il fondo pensione di tutti

Nel corso degli anni i privati ​​nel Regno Unito hanno imparato che l'acquisto di immobili residenziali era il modo migliore per proteggere il proprio capitale. L'aumento dei prezzi degli immobili era la conseguenza naturale degli sforzi ufficiali per ridurre il potere d'acquisto della sterlina nel corso del tempo, e di conseguenza la proprietà è stata ampiamente accettata come un investimento migliore a lungo termine rispetto ad altri veicoli di risparmio, come i depositi bancari, i titoli quotati e i fondi comuni. Il desiderio di qualcosa di tangibile, la sicurezza dei mattoni, ha inevitabilmente portato ad un notevole aumento di tale investimento, con molti privati che acquistavano uno, due o anche tre immobili con l'ausilio di finanziamenti ipotecari. Ciò ne ha notevolmente aumentato l'offerta, ed è stato economicamente vantaggioso in un momento di alta immigrazione e crescente mobilità del lavoro.

Ma i consiglieri di George Osborne al Tesoro non sembrano vederla così. Secondo loro la restrizione dell'offerta complessiva delle abitazioni, senza dubbio a causa di piani regolatori inflessibili, è il motivo principale dell'aumento dei prezzi. Come sempre gli economisti governativi credono che tale problema porti ad una ridistribuzione indesiderata della ricchezza a favore di ricchi proprietari di abitazioni, penalizzando le generazioni future che dovranno lottare per comprare un immobile. La risposta politica è stata quella di imporre tasse più alte, prima sugli immobili residenziali di proprietà di stranieri e poi sul mercato degli immobili acquistati a scopo d'investimento. I proprietari di questi ultimi hanno anche subito gli effetti marginali dell'introduzione di imposte discriminatorie sulle plusvalenze, e la rimozione delle normali agevolazioni fiscali, in particolare per quanto riguarda gli oneri finanziari.

L'approccio del governo s'è fondato sulla stessa premessa di base dietro tutti i controlli dei prezzi: il mercato ha fallito e lo stato può migliorare il mercato. Il governo ha il dovere di garantire i prezzi in modo che gli immobili restino accessibili agli acquirenti di prime case, e la soppressione dei valori del capitale serve anche come mezzo indiretto di controllo degli affitti.

Tuttavia l'uso di politiche fiscali per controllare i prezzi è destinato a fallire, se la storia è una guida, per non parlare della teoria economica. Nel frattempo, la Banca d'Inghilterra è stata occupata a dire alle banche a quali condizioni potessero offrire mutui, e a chi. Ma invece di gestire il mercato per ottenere un risultato desiderato, è improbabile che le politiche monetarie e fiscali possano influenzare in modo significativo i prezzi, almeno fino a quando i tassi d'interesse rimangono soppressi vicino allo zero.

La morale della favola è che con le loro azioni, Mark Carney e George Osborne si comportano come se fossero del tutto all'oscuro del vero motivo dell'aumento dei prezzi degli immobili. È stata la politica dei tassi d'interesse e la distruzione della valuta la causa di fondo, portando a flussi d'investimento in tutto quello che non fosse un deposito monetario. Hanno rinchiuso le persone in uno spazio d'investimento limitato, e non sembrano capire le conseguenze di lungo periodo delle loro azioni. Inoltre essi non riescono a cogliere il messaggio importante proveniente dal mercato: gli investimenti a lungo termine, come ad esempio gli immobili residenziali, l'arte, le azioni e ora anche l'oro, stanno scontando un tasso accelerante di perdita di potere d'acquisto dei depositi monetari.

Oltre ai tentativi di Carney e Osborne di manipolare il mercato, le nuove norme bancarie di Basilea III permetteranno alle banche d'imporre un haircut consistente sui mutui ipotecari dal 2019 in poi, e senza dubbio le banche ridurranno la loro offerta di finanziamenti ipotecari con largo anticipo rispetto a tale data. Questo cambiamento macroeconomico, per prudenza principalmente, avrà un impatto negativo sul finanziamento degli acquisti immobiliari.



I tassi d'interesse alla fine aumenteranno

Questo è il background della prossima crisi, quando i tassi d'interesse alla fine saliranno. E questo potrebbe accadere prima di quanto la maggior parte degli analisti si aspetta. I tassi ufficiali d'inflazione sono destinati ad aumentare nei prossimi mesi, man mano che l'aumento dei prezzi dell'energia e delle materie prime comincerà a mordere, un effetto peggiorato dalla svalutazione della sterlina. Senza dubbio c'è preoccupazione per i tassi d'interesse che hanno avuto una certa influenza sugli investitori in fondi immobiliari commerciali.

Allo stesso tempo, al crescere delle ansie circa i tassi d'interesse a lungo termine, una crescente consapevolezza dei rischi sistemici a breve termine in Europa incoraggerà gli investitori attenti a ridurre i loro depositi in denaro nel sistema bancario. Lo scambio di soldi per altri asset finanziari, e, infine, merci, promette di portare ad un declino accelerato del potere di acquisto di tutte le valute, inizialmente in termini di patrimonio investibile e, infine, in termini di beni fisici. L'attuale forza dei vari mercati degli asset è proprio questa: un anticipo della perdita di potere d'acquisto delle principali valute.

È da qualche tempo che questo dilemma è stato al centro delle preoccupazioni dei mercati, da quando le turbolenze post-Lehman si sono attenuate a seguito della costante soppressione dei tassi d'interesse. Per il momento la fase "pump" segnalata in questo articolo viene prorogata da una crisi bancaria, che potrà spingere le banche centrali ad implementare un maggiore stimolo monetario, non solo in Europa, ma anche altrove, anche in Gran Bretagna.

Ad un certo punto aumenteranno le preoccupazioni per le conseguenze di lungo termine riguardo un nuovo ciclo d'inflazione monetaria, con l'attualizzazione degli effetti sui prezzi che si diffonderanno dagli asset ai beni. Così la Banca d'Inghilterra, in comune con le altre principali banche centrali, finirà per trovarsi in una posizione impossibile, in conflitto tra la necessità di alzare i tassi d'interesse per proteggere la sterlina ed evitare la bancarotta delle classi medie che hanno contratto quantità record di debito ipotecario. Questo sarà il momento del "dump".

L'aumento dei tassi d'interesse nominali sarà un incubo per tutti i mercati degli asset, non solo per gli immobili residenziali. L'effetto sugli immobili residenziali colpirà duramente i prezzi delle case, diffondendo ampio disagio a causa di una fuga dal finanziamento ipotecario, accelerato dalle regole di Basilea III e dai pignoramenti. Tuttavia gli investitori immobiliari che resisteranno a questa fase della crisi, dovrebbero tenere a mente che la proprietà continuerà ad offrire protezione contro la distruzione monetaria.

Questo perché la logica fondamentale di possedere un bene immobile è che è più produttivo nel suo valore d'uso rispetto ad una valuta in deprezzamento, dando protezione al capitale in misura secondaria solo all'oro.


[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: http://francescosimoncelli.blogspot.it/

How much do you know about storing household batteries for the long term?  Until I started prepping, I did not have a clue.  Even after I started to prep, I was unsure, although it did make sense to store batteries at room temperature, not too hot and not too cold.  Still, when the topic came up while out with friends, some wise guy mentioned keeping batteries in the freezer and I was lost.

Shortly after that, I check snopes.com and learned no, batteries should not be refrigerated or frozen.  Snopes is not always correct so I decided to ask my pal Ron Brown for his opinion.  Ron is a retired industrial engineer and my go-to person when it comes to this kind of thing.

Rather coincidentally, he told me he had already performed a battery test using standard run of the mill flashlights and run-of-the-mill carbon zinc batteries.  Here are the results of his testing.  You might be surprised.  Or not. Rayovac UltraPro Alkal... Buy New $11.57

Flashlight Batteries – To Refrigerate or Not to Refrigerate

I had a childhood friend that, when he needed flashlight batteries, got them from his mother who retrieved them from the refrigerator. Later, when I mentioned this to a college roommate, I was informed that HIS grandmother went a step further. She kept unused batteries in the freezer.

As preppers, we should probably all know the answer to this question: Can we extend the shelf life of flashlight batteries by refrigerating or freezing them? What do you think?

Instant Access to Current Spot Prices & Interactive Charts

One thing is certain. If you freeze or refrigerate batteries, you must let them thaw for a couple of days and come up to room temperature before using them. Your car battery, for example, might crank on your hard-starting car for 15 minutes in the summer before dying but only two or three minutes in the winter. Cold saps a batteries’ strength dramatically.

But that’s in use. In storage, cold will slow electrical activity (leakage, in the case of batteries) and, in theory, stop the battery from running down. Or slow the battery from running down. Nothing will stop it completely. “All energy systems run AmazonBasics AA Perfor... Buy New $12.49 downhill,” as they say.

As a child, comparing the performance of my flashlight to my friend’s flashlight (equipped with refrigerated batteries), I never saw much of a difference. But what if I conducted a controlled experiment? Would refrigeration make a measurable difference?

So, a while back I went to the store and bought six “D” batteries. They were neither dollar-store cheapies nor expensive alkaline batteries. They were Eveready-brand carbon-zinc batteries. I marked the date on the packages and put two in the freezer, two in the refrigerator, and two in the cupboard over the kitchen stove. Because of cooking heat, the last two were slightly above room temperature, both summer and winter, for the duration.

After two years, eight months and three days, I decided it was testing time. So I laid all the batteries on the dining room table for D-FantiX Digital Batte... Buy New $19.99 two days to thaw out and equalize in temperature. As regards the batteries stored above the kitchen stove, I really thought that they would die after just a couple of hours.

I tested them all simultaneously, side by side. I used three Rayovac-brand flashlights, all purchased at the same time, all equipped with standard bulbs (not LED, not Krypton). The flashlights were carefully labeled as to which batteries they contained.

The first thing that impressed me – amazed me, really – was how long the batteries lasted. When first started, they all appeared to give off the same amount of light; they were of equivalent brightness. After SIX HOURS they had all dimmed and needed replacement. SIX HOURS of continuous burning after 2.5 years of storage! I had expected two or three hours.

At the end of six hours they were all burning with equivalent brightness but had all dimmed. I would have been somewhat reluctant to have gone to the mailbox or out to the barn with any of them.

At the end of eight hours, they were all down to glowworm status. At this point the room-temperature batteries gave only a Amazon.com $25 Gift Ca... Buy New $25.00 pinpoint of light and the refrigerated/frozen batteries a brighter glow.

BUT, as a practical matter, they all reached the end of their useful life at the same time (six hours) at which point they had equivalent brightness. You could have switched the labels around on the flashlights and no-one would have been the wiser.

I concluded that attempting to extend battery shelf-life by refrigeration was, and is, a waste of time. And that’s worth knowing, is it not? This was not, and is not, armchair theory. This was a real test with real batteries. If you repeat the test, you can expect the same results. Call it the “scientific method” in action.

Read the Whole Article

The post What’s the Best Way To Store Your Batteries? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Exorcists are in urgent demand as a result of a sharp rise in people dabbling in Satanism and the occult,  experts from the Catholic Church in Italy and the US said.

Speaking in tongues, levitating and vomiting nails may seem far-fetched to most people, but church experts insist there is a need to recruit more priests as exorcists in order to combat sorcery and black magic.

Valter Cascioli, a psychologist and scientific consultant to the International Association of Exorcists, which is endorsed by the Vatican, described as an “emergency” the lack of priests capable of fighting the forces of evil.

“The lack of exorcists is a real emergency. There is a pastoral emergency as a result of a significant increase in the number of diabolical possessions that exorcist priests are confronting,” he told La Stampa newspaper.

“The number of people who take part in occult and satanic practices, which lead to serious physical, psychological and spiritual damages, is constantly rising.”

Current Prices on popular forms of Silver Bullion

Dr Cascioli teaches courses in exorcism at the Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum, a Vatican-backed university in Rome. “The number of exorcists has increased in recent years, but there are still not enough to deal with a dramatic situation that affects, above all, young people who use the internet a lot.

“There is a broad spread of superstitious practices, and with that a growing number of requests for help from people who are directly or indirectly struck by evil.

“It is dangerous to underestimate a phenomenon that is caused by the direct actions of the devil, but also by a decline in faith and values.”

He called for the establishment of a permanent training college or university where Catholic priests would be taught how to counter the malign influence of the Devil. “There doesn’t exist a training institution at university level. We need an interdisciplinary approach in which science collaborates with religion, and psychiatrists work with demonologists and exorcists.”

He said it was important not to confuse cases of diabolical possession with psychiatric illnesses. Only one per cent of people who claim to have problems with demons have real need of an exorcist, he said.

Father Ildebrando Di Fulvio, the exorcist for the diocese of Frosinone, a town south of Rome, said people possessed by the devil often vomited metal objects and chunks of undigested food and gibbered in archaic languages such as Aramaic, ancient Greek and Latin.

Read the Whole Article

The post Satanism Surges appeared first on LewRockwell.