Officially A No-growth World

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This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Alhambra Investments. To view original, click here. Reposted with permission.
I really don’t think people quite understand just how much trouble China is in right now. That’s no mystery because in the Western media the Chinese economy is almost always described as somewhere between awesome and magnificent (only slight hyperbole). Their government, on the other hand, is not fooled.
General Secretary Xi Jinping opened the Communist Party’s 19th Congress with an amazing speech. It wasn’t amazing in the respect of soaring rhetoric announcing some actual, concrete commitment to freedom and free markets; it was instead the opening bell for, I think, a very different world outlook.
I write for my column tomorrow that it was in some cursory way reminiscent of the Trump candidacy.
On the surface, it almost seemed as if Xi Jinping was channeling Donald Trump. Opening China’s 19th Party Congress this week, the Communist General Secretary of that Congress talked a lot about ‘rejuvenation.’ The word recalled the 2016 US Presidential campaign and the Republican’s promise to ‘make America great again.’

This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Jeffrey P. Snider ‘ October 19, 2017.

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Emails Reveal Bill Clinton Met With Vladimir Putin Just Before Uranium One Deal

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If President Trump or anyone even remotely close to his presidency, including his best friend from 2nd grade that he hadn’t seen in 40 years, sought to meet with key Russian nuclear officials, in Moscow, just months before the federal government approved a very controversial deal handing Vladimir Putin 20% of U. S. uranium reserves, despite an ongoing investigation into Russian fraud, bribery, extortion and money laundering, it would be the only story played on a 24 x 7 loop on CNN and MSNBC.
Ironically, that is exactly what new emails dug up by The Hill show that Bill Clinton did in June 2010, just months before the Uranium One deal was approved by a committee on which his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat. Oh, and did we mention that Bill’s Clinton Foundation just happened to collect millions of dollars in bribes donations from Russian sources and Uranium One shareholders shortly after his Moscow meetings?
As you will recall, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), approved the Uranium One transaction in October 2010. According to new emails revealed by The Hill, just months before that approval, Bill Clinton sought permission from the State Department, run by his wife at the time, to meet Arkady Dvorkovich, a top aide to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and one of the highest-ranking government officials to serve on Rosatom’s board of supervisors, the company which was ultimately approved to purchase Uranium One.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 20, 2017.

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Who’s ‘Winning’ In Africa?

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Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
On October 4 in Niger in central Africa four American special forces soldiers were killed in an ambush by ‘fifty fighters, thought to be associated with ISIS [Islamic State], a US official said.’ In the course of the attack, one US soldier was left behind when the others withdrew, and was subsequently found dead. Nigerien soldiers were also killed, and it is interesting to examine how US media outlets recorded this aspect of what was obviously a disaster for US Africa Command, AFRICOM, the organisation headquartered, bizarrely, in Germany, that has 46 military bases (that we know of) in that continent. (Niger, incidentally, is twice the size of Texas.)
ABC News reported that ‘a soldier from Niger also died from the attack’ while CBS thought that ‘four Nigerien soldiers died,’ and Stars and Stripes went with ‘several.’ CNN’s tally was five but the New York Times didn’t mention Nigerien soldiers at all. Fox News, surprisingly, said that four were killed, as did the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which even expanded to record that there had been eight Nigerien soldiers wounded.
It isn’t to be expected that the US media would ever concern themselves with deep research into how many foreign soldiers are killed in any of the countries in which the US is involved in armed conflict, but the sloppy reporting is a good indicator of the shrug factor.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 20, 2017.

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Swedish Police Chief Rages “It’s An Attack Against Society” After Station Bombing

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A police station in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg was hit by a powerful explosion in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
As The Local reports, a large part of the building and even the windows on the building opposite were damaged by the force of the blast, though nobody was injured.
Sweden’s National Police Commissioner, Dan Eliasson, was visibly shaking when he raged:
“This is very serious. An attack on the police is not just an attack against society, but on everyone’s safety,” No one has claimed responsibility for the blast about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city.
The alarm was raised shortly after midnight, and there was severe damage to both the entryway and the inside of the building.
“The whole entrance has been blown away. The windows are shattered and there’s damage to the doors themselves,” said Lennart Linderos from the regional emergency services. On Wednesday morning, bomb technicians had finished their survey but other technicians were still at work. Asa Emanuelsson, a police press officer, said that the rest of the property would be investigated during the day.
“It has suffered extensive damage, but exactly how much, we don’t know yet,” she said.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 20, 2017.

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Russia Goes All In On Arctic Oil Development

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Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
Neither sanctions nor persistently low oil prices are hindering Russia’s ambitions or plans to develop oil resources in its sections of the Arctic.
In April, state-controlled oil giant Rosneft started drilling the northernmost well on the Russian Arctic shelf in the Khatangsky license area in the Laptev Sea. In June, Rosneft struck first oil in the Eastern Arctic in this license.
Earlier this month, the oil firm said that recoverable reserves at the field exceed 80 million tons of oil, which is equal to around 586.4 million barrels. Geological data point to reserves at the field at 298 million tons of oil, or some 2.184 billion barrels, and the oil is high quality – light and low-sulfur, according to Rosneft.
The Russian oil giant – whose CEO Igor Sechin is a close ally of Vladimir Putin – continues to drill at the field to study its geology, search for more oil, and define future drilling strategies at the license, Rosneft says.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 20, 2017.

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Merrill Lynch, Protection Rackets and the ‘P.R. Firm from Hell’

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Last week Jim Rutenberg penned a column for the New York Times titled Facing Down the Network that Produced Harvey Weinstein. Rutenberg explored the reasons that Weinstein’s decades of sexually harassing women and charges of assaults had not made it to the front pages of newspapers sooner. Correctly calling it ‘something akin to a protection racket,’ Rutenberg defined it as a ‘network of aggressive public relations flacks and lawyers who guard the secrets of those who employ them and keep their misdeeds out of public view.’
That sentence brought to mind a 2009 Rachel Maddow program on MSNBC where she enumerated the ignominious historical milestones of the monster public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, capping the history by calling it the ‘p.r. firm from hell.’ Among her litany of its p.r. projects, Maddow cited: ‘…when Blackwater killed those 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, they called Burson-Marsteller. When there was a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, Bobcock & Wilcox, who built that plant, called Burson-Marsteller… The government of Nigeria, accused of genocide in Biafra, Burson- Marsteller. Philip Morris, Burson-Marsteller. Silicone breast implants, Burson-Marsteller. The government of Columbia trying to make all those dead union organizers not getting in the way of the new trade deal, they called Burson-Marsteller.’
One of Burson-Marsteller’s oldest clients is, of course, Merrill Lynch, a company that has been repeatedly charged with tolerating sexual harassment of women over the same four decades that Burson-Marsteller has been shining up its image as bullish on America and vested in the human spirit.

This post was published at Wall Street On Parade on October 20, 2017.

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Be Afraid America – DHS Warns ISIS, Al Qaeda Are Planning ‘9/11-Style’ Attack Tyler Durden’s picture by Tyler Durden

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Nothing distracts like fear. And today, former DHS chief Elaine Duke invoked one of the most traumatic episodes in US history to remind complacent Americans that Al Qaeda and ISIS are still out there, plotting deadly terror attacks meant to kill as many American civilians as possible.
With the Islamic State in retreat following the surrender of its de facto capital to US-backed Arab and Kurdish fighters, Duke told reporters that remnants of the group have partnered with a resurgent Al Qaeda to plot a devastating terror attack on the scale of a 9/11 – thus generating a headline seemingly tailor made to make pulses quicken.
‘The terrorist organizations, be it ISIS or Al-Qaeda or others, want to have the big explosion like they did on 9/11. They want to take down aircraft, the intelligence is clear on that,’ the acting US secretary of homeland security said during a visit to the UK, as cited by British media.
‘The threat is still severe,’ she stated on Wednesday in London following her meeting with UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, according to Russia Today.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 19, 2017.

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STRANGER THAN FICTION: Why Is Foundation of Vegas Shooting Survivor Sponsored By DHS Linked Firm?

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When looking at the deeply entangled mystery surrounding the Las Vegas mass shooting, there’s been no shortage of questionable details and information that just doesn’t add up.
You know the old adage, truth is often stranger than fiction…
The shooting involving the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Route 91 Harvest Festival, has ushered in the brutal return of politicized mass tragedy in America. The dramatic nature of the surreal as of yet still motiveless crime, only adds to a traumatic event that is now being described as ‘the 9/11 of Mass Shootings.’
Similarly, over this past week, a story of concerning the sudden tragic death of a Las Vegas shooting survivor sent shock waves through both mainstream media and alternative media alike.
As a chorus of gripping media reports detailed the unexpected death of 28 year-old Kymberley Jo (Synder) Suchomel (left photo Daily Press) in the days after the Las Vegas mass shooting, many still in search of answers in the aftermath of the Las Vegas tragedy were left captivated by her tale.

This post was published at 21st Century Wire on OCTOBER 19, 2017.

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Can Trump and Rand Paul Save Healthcare?

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Last week, Donald Trump signed a new executive order facilitating more flexibility for consumers of health insurance.
The order allows for more flexibility in purchasing insurance across state lines, and greater freedom both small businesses and groups of consumers in creating “association health plans” (AHPs). In theory, this will broaden access to the benefits currently enjoyed only by those with employment-based insurance, and other types of group insurance.
The order paves the way for healthcare reforms long favored by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul who believes the reforms will help bring down healthcare costs.
In an op-ed for Breitbart, Paul writes:
Millions of Americans will be eligible to band together to demand less-expensive insurance. The 28 million individuals left behind by Obamacare will now be eligible for inexpensive insurance.
How will it work? Well, nationwide associations like the National Restaurant Association will be allowed to form groups across state lines and, with the leverage of size, demand Big Insurance bring down their outrageous premiums.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on October 20, 2017.

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