Claire Bernish – Landmark Study Shows Half of Cancer Patients are Killed by Chemo — NOT Cancer

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No matter how much doctors push the treatment, chemotherapy might not be the best option in the fight against cancer, as a new study shows up to 50 percent of patients are killed by the drugs — not the disease, itself. Researchers from Public Health England and Cancer Research UK performed a groundbreaking study examining for the first time the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of beginning chemotherapy — indicating the treatment, not the cancer, was the cause of death. Looking at those death rates in hospitals across the U.K., researchers found an alarming mortality rate associated with chemotherapy. Across “England around 8.4 per cent of patients with lung cancer, and 2.4 per cent of breast cancer patients died within a month,” the Telegraph reported. Read more

The post Claire Bernish – Landmark Study Shows Half of Cancer Patients are Killed by Chemo — NOT Cancer appeared first on Progressive Radio Network.

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US Congressman Demands FBI Release Notes From Financial Crisis Banker Investigations

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

These agreements were created 100 years ago to give juvenile defendants and first-time offenders a chance to for rehabilitate themselves. Only in the last 20 years have DPAs migrated to the field of corporate criminals, treating them like kids who’ve just gone down a bad path in life.

 

The Justice Department is leaning on these toothless agreements more and more. Of the DoJ’s 283 deferred prosecution agreements since 2000, half have come since 2010, Reilly found in a working paper for BYU Law Review.

 

Why has the DoJ been so keen on deferred prosecution since 2010? It coincides exactly with investigations into the 2008 financial crisis.

 

– From the 2014 post: The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

This is a really good move by Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey. Indeed, the American public certainly has a right to know the details of why the U.S. government allowed Wall Street executives to walk away free, with zero accountability and wealthier than ever before.

Bloomberg reports:

FBI files on the firms that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis should be released to help the public understand why no senior executives were charged, a U.S. congressman from New Jersey said.

 

Democrat Bill Pascrell asked FBI Director James Comey for witness interview transcripts, notes, reports and memos from the agency’s probes into the crisis, according to a letter dated Tuesday. Pascrell said the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated criminal inquiries into at least 14 companies as part of its investigation into the origins of the crisis, which was ignited when prices of subprime-mortgage bonds plummeted after home-loan defaults soared.

 

“Here we are eight years later — do you think the public knows how this happened? Do you think the public knows all of the recommendations made to the Justice Department?” Pascrell said Wednesday in an interview. “Why are Hillary Clinton’s e-mails any more important?”

 

Pascrell, who sits on both the budget and ways and means committees, said in many cases it would be too late to bring legal actions. Releasing the information would increase transparency and provide a public service, he said. Some of the investigations would have taken place under Republican President George W. Bush and some under current Democratic President Barack Obama.

Protecting and coddling banksters is certainly a bipartisan affair.

While the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission “have secured financial settlements from several major financial institutions in recent years, the investigations into potential criminal activity remain hidden from the public,” Pascrell said in his letter, which was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

For more on one of the greatest betrayal of justice in U.S. history, see:

Must Watch Video – “The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime”

Why Obama Allowed Bailouts Without Indictments by Janet Tavakoli

Cronyism Pays – Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job

Another Settlement – JP Morgan Receives Slap on the Wrist Despite Years of Fraudulent CFTC Data

It Takes a Village to Maintain a Dangerous Financial System

How Obama’s Top Trade Representative, Michael Froman, Received Millions from Citigroup During the Financial Crisis

When it Really Mattered, Ben Bernanke Coddled, Protected & Bailed Out Financial Criminals

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"Clinton Foundation Is Charity Fraud Of Epic Proportions", Analyst Charges In Stunning Takedown

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In early May, we introduced readers to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who uncovered financial discrepancies at General Electric before its stock crashed in 2008, and whom the Sunday Times of London described as "one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet" in a 2009 story detailing the troubles at AIG. Having moved on beyond simple corporate fraud, Ortel spent the past year and a half digging into something more relevant to the current US situation:"charities", and specifically the Clinton Foundation’s public records, federal and state-level tax filings, and donor disclosures. 

Four months ago, Ortel began releasing his preliminary findings in the first of a series of up to 40 planned reports on his website. His allegation was simple: “this is a charity fraud.”

To learn more about the Clinton Foundation, Ortel decided to "take it apart and see how it worked" and he has been doing that ever since February 2015. 

“I decided, as I did with GE, let’s pick one that’s complicated,” said Ortel. “The Clinton Foundation is complicated, but it’s really very small compared to GE.”

When Ortel tried to match up the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings with the disclosure reports from its major donors, he said he started to find problems. That includes records from the foundation’s many offshoots—including the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Clinton Global Initiative—as well as its foreign subsidiaries.

"I decided it would be fun to cross-check what their donors thought they did when they donated to the Clinton Foundation, and that’s when I got really irritated,” he said. “There are massive discrepancies between what some of the major donors say they gave to the Clinton Foundation to do, and what the Clinton Foundation said what they got from the donors and what they did with it."

As previously reported, last year the Clinton Foundation was forced to issue corrected tax filings for several years to correct donation errors. But Ortel said many of the discrepancies remain. “I’m against charity fraud. I think people in both parties are against charity fraud, and this is a charity fraud,” he said.

To be sure, Ortel's efforts were to be commended: digging through the foundation's numbers can not have been easy, considering that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put the Clinton Foundation on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits in 2015. Furthermore, the Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. That's because the organization spent the vast bulk of its windfall on "administration, travel, salaries and bonuses", with the fattest payouts going to family friends.

“It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group where progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout was once an organizing director.

* * *

Overnight, on his website, Ortel released the long-awaited executive summary of his numerous, and at time confusing, findings: "Beginning today, and regularly thereafter, numerous detailed Exhibits will examine the known public record of the Clinton Charity Network within the context of applicable state, federal, and foreign laws."

And while we await the upcoming exhibits to his summary, here are the main highlights from the executive summary, which we urge all visitors - who have an even passing interest in the effort that has consumed the Clintons' time and energy for the two decades, and brought them substantial wealth - to read.

* * *

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

Understanding the Clinton Foundation Public Record in Proper Context: 1997 to Present

 

To informed analysts, the Clinton Foundation appears to be a rogue charity that has neither been organized nor operated lawfully from inception in October 1997 to date--as you will grow to realize, it is a case study in international charity fraud, of mammoth proportions.

 

In particular, the Clinton Foundation has never been validly authorized to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than as a presidential archive and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moreover, its operations have never been controlled by independent trustees and its financial results have never been properly audited by independent accountants.

 

In contrast to this stark reality, Bill Clinton recently continued a long pattern of dissembling, likening himself to Robin Hood and dismissing critics of his “philanthropic” post-presidency, despite mounting concerns over perceived conflicts of interest and irregularities.

 

Normally, evaluating the efficacy of a charity objectively is performed looking closely into hard facts only -specifically, determining whether monies spent upon “program service expenditures” actually have furthered the limited, authorized “tax-exempt purposes” of entities such as the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, its subsidiaries, its joint ventures, and its affiliates (together, the “Clinton Charity Network”).

 

But, popular former presidents of the United States retain “bully pulpits” from which they certainly can spin sweet-sounding themes to a general audience and media that is not sufficiently acquainted with the strict laws and regulations that do, in fact , tether trustees of a tax-exempt organization to following only a mission that has been validly pre-approved by the Internal Revenue Service, on the basis of a complete and truthful application.

 

This Executive Summary carries forward a process of demonstrating that the Clinton Foundation illegally veered from its IRS-authorized mission within days of Bill Clinton’s departure from the White House in January 2001, using publicly available information which, in certain cases, has been purposefully omitted or obscured in disclosures offered through the Clinton Foundation website, its principal public portal.

 

Getting to Reality

 

The question of whether a federally authorized nonprofit corporation has been validly organized and operated is a question of fact, best answered through close review of the record.

 

Without having access to helpful corroborative materials (including board minutes, donor solicitation presentations, after-action reports to donors, management representation letters to accountants, internal memoranda, and communications with key counterparties), this Executive Summary previews 40 detailed Exhibits that dissect portions of the public record concerning activities of the Clinton Charity Network.

 

Determined review of these 40 Exhibits that deal primarily with the period 23 October 1997 (when the Clinton Foundation was organized) through 2011 (when attempts to re-organize the Clinton Foundation were most active) demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the Clinton Charity Network was neither organized nor operated lawfully.

 

As the following IRS publication states clearly, a nonprofit corporation must pass both an “organizational test” and an “operational test” to be legitimately exempt from federal income taxes.

 

“The Dual Test: Organized and Operated

 

1. IRC 501(c)(3) requires an organization to be both "organized" and "operated" exclusively for one or more IRC 501(c)(3) purposes. If the organization fails either the organizational test or the operational test, it is not exempt. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(a)(1).

 

2. The organizational test concerns the organization’s articles of organization or comparable governing document. The operational test concerns the organization’s activities. A deficiency in an organization’s governing document cannot be cured by the organization’s actual operations. Likewise, an organization whose activities are not within the statute will not qualify for exemption by virtue of a well written charter. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(b)(1)(iv).”

 

The Clinton Foundation and each part of the Clinton Charity Network fails either the organizational test, the operational test, or both of these tests. The consequences for failing to meet either the organizational test or the operational test are severe. In normal circumstances, a charity would have its tax-exempt status revoked retroactively.

 

The “charity” would then have to refile its tax returns and pay corporate income taxes upon any profits earned from the date its authorization is revoked, forward to the present.

 

Donors who took tax deductions in the relevant time periods would owe personal income taxes on contributions they had made.

 

And, a raft of criminal as well as civil sanctions would likely ensue, whose financial consequences might, or might not be mitigated by insurance.

 

What the Public Record Reveals about Clinton Foundation Entities

 

To understand the full extent of illegal activities involving Clinton Foundation entities and personnel, you must resist unvetted words and numbers published in press releases, marketing brochures, and filings to state, federal, and foreign governments, the latter having been submitted under penalties of perjury.

 

Instead, you must concentrate upon “stubborn facts”--information whose veracity you can confirm, for yourself.

 

Though allies of the Clinton family, and some extended family members believe otherwise, in truth: “...whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, you cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

 

What does available evidence reveal about the scale and scope of frauds committed and ongoing by the Clinton Foundation Charity Network?

* * *

At this point, Ortel previews the 40 detailed Exhibits which will be published starting September 7 on www.charlesortel.com. As a preview of the extensive analysis contained in these Exhibits, "these Exhibits document an escalating pattern of lawlessness and suggest that trustees of entities in the Clinton Charity Network exhibited gross negligence and reckless disregard in performance of their solemn duties."

The exhibits can be read in their entirety in the pdf attached at the bottom of this post.

Instead, we fast forward to Ortel's conclusion:

The scope and scale of illegal activities carried out by trustees, executives, significant donors, and professional advisors in the names of Clinton Foundation entities are only evident when you consider abundant information in the public domain and then read the body of laws that serves as a framework for regulating charities and their solicitation efforts.

 

All told, declared donations to Clinton Foundation entities from 1997 through 2014 are greater than $2 billion; but this vast amount is likely a pittance when compared to sums sent to affiliated “charities” and relief efforts around the world. Though required by strict laws, no part of the Clinton Charity Network (including affiliates and joint ventures) has ever procured a comprehensive, independent, and compliant audit of its financial results.

 

No part of the Clinton Charity Network is controlled by experienced and independent trustees who can defend against conflicts of interest--in consequence Clinton charities regularly are used illegally to create substantial “private gain”, and to advance the political interests of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party.

 

Unless and until an independent conservator is appointed by the Arkansas State Attorney General, the public will not know the true dimensions of a fraud that started in Bill Clinton’s home state and in Washington, D.C., then metastasized, and spread around the world.

 

His stunning summary: "An educated guess, based upon ongoing analysis of the public record begun in February 2015, is that the Clinton Foundation entities are part of a network that has defrauded donors and created illegal private gains of approximately $100 billion in combined magnitude, and possibly more, since 23 October 1997."

* * *

Ortel leaves us with some critical questions:

• Why was the Clinton Charity Network allowed to expand the scope of its illegal activities between 20 January 2001 and 20 January 2009, when George W. Bush served as president?
• Why has the administration of Barack Obama allowed the Clinton Charity Fraud Network to grow even more, in bold violation of state, federal, and foreign laws from 20 January 2009 to present?
• Why did Valerie Jarrett and the Obama Administration bother with the pretense of signing a legal document, late in 2008, purporting to regulate potential conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton in her role as Secretary of State , and the Clinton Foundation, when this document was false, misleading, incomplete, and manifestly unenforceable?
• Why is the IRS still resisting full-scale audits of the Clinton Charity Network?

The answer is surprising and simple--once again, Americans and regulators around the world appear to have fallen victim to the “Big Lie” strategy.

* * *

Ortel's appeal to readers is simple:

Charity fraud on international scale, led by persons who must know better, should not stand unprosecuted. Will it?

 

You can make the crucial difference. Raise your voice.

 

Contact government officials now who have not yet done enough to regulate the rogue Clinton Charity Network.

* * *

Ortel's full executive summary is below (pdf link), and those who wish to follow the release of the detailed exhibits can do so at Ortel's website. 

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The Derangement Of Journalists Against Transparency

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Officials from President Barack Obama’s administration collude with Wall Street executives to push for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The FBI monitors “professional protesters” in Baltimore and Ferguson. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s aides discuss whether to release a video showing the extrajudicial killing of a young black man by the city’s police.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder withheld the results of lead testing in Flint. Immigration and Customs Enforcement privately lobbied against California legislation to reduce deportations of law-abiding immigrants. State Department officials likely colluded with TransCanada executives as early as 2011 on the Keystone XL pipeline project.

All of these stories share something in common. The public learned about what government officials were doing because emails were subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Journalists obtained those emails, and the public was able to use the information to mobilize opposition to government action.

Vox’s Matt Yglesias recently outed himself as a Journalist Against Transparency or a jatter. He argued, very incorrectly, that emails and other electronic records produced by “conversational” communication tools should not be subject to FOIA.

Over at Muck Rock, a site dedicated to helping the public pursue FOIA requests, Michael Morisy appropriately corrects Yglesias. He failed to mention anything about privacy exemptions or the so-called “deliberative process privilege,” which exists to protect officials from the exact thing he railed against in his piece: to enable frank conversations among government officials.

Morisy makes two key points about the ideology behind Yglesias’ post. “These types of requests have proved [to be] an essential tool for journalists in an era when the press is significantly diminished and agencies have become increasingly sophisticated in spin.”

And, “Leaving emails and other routine documents subject to FOIA encourages a general culture of transparency within agencies while creating another reminder that government employees work for the people.”

The problem is jatters like Yglesias do not support the journalism being done around Hillary Clinton’s emails. He favors increasing restrictions on what government records can be released to journalists and the public because he identifies with a candidate, who has been dogged by the fact that she tried to keep her emails out of the purview of FOIA when she was the Secretary of State.

Beyond his inability to grasp how FOIA works (and correct his misunderstanding in his post), Yglesias wrote:

The issue is that administration officials and other executive branch aides don’t want to leave a record of the conversation that might come to light one day. Not necessarily because they have anything scandalous to say. After all, we live in a world where something as banal as Doug Band, a top Clinton Foundation aide, asking Huma Abedin, a top State Department aide, for a special diplomatic passport for a hostage rescue trip to North Korea and being told he can’t have one can be spun as a scandal by a determined team of reporters and editors.

If Band had made a phone call instead of sending an email, Hillary Clinton would have been spared the bad—and totally unjustifiably so—news cycle she suffered last week. Which is why prudent staffers want to do basically everything, no matter how innocent, over the phone.

Essentially, Yglesias’ opposition to journalism with right wing ideological motives leads him to advocate for curtailing government transparency. Or, in other words, he would like to reduce the flow of information so there would be less reporting and less speech about Clinton that was negative.

Yglesias is tired of dealing with the manufactured scandals of conservative media mavens, and aren’t most people sick of it? But that scarcely justifies closing off access to types of records that could contain bombshells, which may impact Clinton when she is president.

Another jatter, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, outed himself too, as he condemned the “weaponization” of FOIA:

…What we’ve seen with Hillary Clinton is not that she’s done anything especially wrong, but that a story can last forever if there’s a constant stream of new revelations. That’s what’s happened over the past four years. Between Benghazi committees and Judicial Watch’s anti-Hillary jihad, Clinton’s emails have been steadily dripped out practically monthly, even though there’s never been any compelling reason for it. It’s been done solely to keep her alleged corruption in the public eye.

Leaving aside the issue of whether Clinton has “done anything especially wrong,” which is highly, highly debatable, the idea that FOIA should be restricted because conservative organizations are “weaponizing” it is brain-dead and ill-conceived.

Who decides what information should not be used for political purposes? Clinton allies and progressive pundits have had it with the damn Clinton emails and all things Benghazi-related, but what if a Republican was the target? Would Drum and Yglesias want anyone telling them not to constantly cite emails to criticize and educate the public on questionable and corrupt practices?

Drum does not have any more clue about FOIA than Yglesias. He ham-handedly advocates, “Less transparency, but faster, more effective transparency. Even journalists might buy this trade. I believe that cabinet officers need to have a certain amount of space to have policy discussions without fear of every word they say becoming public.”

Good news, Mr. Drum. In the United States, cabinet officers do have a “certain amount of space to have policy discussions” and do not have to fear “every word they say becoming public.” Records of cabinet meetings with President Obama are not pasted all over the internet, jeopardizing honesty and forthrightness in government.

In addition to this unfounded fear, Drum also makes no reference to the privacy exemptions and so-called “deliberative process privilege,” which allows officials to shield certain records from FOIA.

Yglesias has merely generated the latest round of debate that allows members of the public to separate journalists, who favor strong investigative journalism, from journalists against transparency, who are quick to advocate for limits on what we know about the government.

It never occurs to Drum or Yglesias that government officials could simply not do the thing they are unwilling to defend in public.

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden helped us identify several jatters. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman declared, “I believe Snowden is someone who needed a whistleblower. He needed someone to challenge him with the argument that we don’t live in a world any longer where our government can protect its citizens from real, not imagined, threats without using big data — where we still have an edge — under constant judicial review.”

“It’s not ideal. But if one more 9/11-scale attack gets through, the cost to civil liberties will be so much greater.”

Stuart Taylor Jr., a contributing editor at Newsweek and columnist for the National Journal, suggested the media was “too loose in publishing anything they can get their hands on.” Although noting some exceptions, Taylor argued the trend was, “if we can get our hands on it, some secret program, we publish it. And I think there has not been enough attention to which of these leaks do real damage to national security and which do not.”

The rise of WikiLeaks has inspired several journalists, including entire editorial boards, to proclaim that publishing government documents is not journalism.

A 2013 Indiana University survey by David Weaver and Lars Willnat showed, “The percentage of U.S. journalists endorsing the occasional use of ‘confidential business or government documents without authorization’ dropped significantly from 81.8 percent in 1992 to 57.7 percent in 2013.” That represents a stark development, like journalists are increasingly unwilling to make decisions about documents being in the public interest.

This culture against transparency, whether because journalists ideologically identify with security agencies or certain politicians, remains entrenched among U.S. media and periodically bubbles to the surface. And, to use a phrase from Aldous Huxley, their “excruciating orgasms of self-assertion” betray a great tradition of muckraking and contribute to the decline of journalism.

The post The Derangement Of Journalists Against Transparency appeared first on Shadowproof.

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The Percentage Of Working Age Men That Do Not Have A Job Is Similar To The Great Depression

ORIGINAL LINK

Why are so many men in their prime working years unemployed?  The Obama administration would have us believe that unemployment is low in this country, but that is not true at all.  In fact, one author quoted by NPR says that “it’s kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940″.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but more men from ages 25 to 54 are “inactive” right now than was the case during the last recession.  We have millions upon millions of strong young men just sitting around doing nothing.  They aren’t employed and they aren’t considered to be looking for employment either, and so they don’t show up in the official unemployment numbers.  But they don’t have jobs, and nothing the Obama administration does can eliminate that fact.

According to NPR, “nearly 100 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked” in the 1960s.

In those days, just about any dependable, hard working American man could get hired almost immediately.  The economy was growing and the demand for labor was seemingly insatiable.

But today, one out of every six men in their prime working years does not have a job…

In a recent report, President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers said 83 percent of men in the prime working ages of 25-54 who were not in the labor force had not worked in the previous year. So, essentially, 10 million men are missing from the workforce.

“One in six prime-age guys has no job; it’s kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940,” says Nicholas Eberstadt, an economic and demographic researcher at American Enterprise Institute who wrote the book Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis. He says these men aren’t even counted among the jobless, because they aren’t seeking work.

So why is this happening?

Millions of men in their prime working years have dropped out of the workforce.https://t.co/MpBg2N2e8X pic.twitter.com/NhcrssK1Y2

— NPR (@NPR) September 7, 2016

If you look at the inactivity rate for men in the 25 to 54 age bracket, it was sitting at just 8.1 percent in January 2000.

In January 2008, right at the beginning of the last recession, it was sitting at 9.2 percent, and by the end of the recession it had risen to 10.3 percent.

Today, it is sitting at 11.5 percent.

Remember, these are men that don’t even count toward the official unemployment rate.  They are not working, but they are not considered to be “looking for work” either.

So what are these men doing?

You may be tempted to think that many of them have decided to stay home and raise the kids as their wives go off to work.  But according to NPR, that is not what is happening…

What the missing men aren’t doing in large numbers is staying home to take care of family. Forty percent of nonworking women are primary caregivers; that’s true of only 5 percent of men out of the workforce.

We do have the largest prison population in the entire world by far, and without a doubt that does play a role in these numbers.  However, a far bigger factor is the millions of men that have become content being dependents of the federal government.  More than 100 million Americans receive money from the government each month, and a lot of people (both men and women) have found that it is just easier to sit back and collect government checks than it is to go out and try to work hard for a living.

But of course the number one factor is the lack of jobs available.  I personally know people that have been looking for work in their fields for years and have not been able to get hired.  We have a major employment crisis in this nation, and it is only going to get worse in the years ahead as we continue to lose jobs to technology and millions more good jobs get shipped overseas.

And a lot of the “jobs” that have been created during the Obama administration have been very low quality jobs.  Since December 2014, we have gained about half a million jobs for waiters and bartenders, but meanwhile we have actually lost good paying manufacturing jobs.  If we continue down this road, the middle class will continue to shrink.

In addition to everything that I have just shared, here are some other facts that are pertinent to this discussion…

-Right at this moment, there are approximately 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job.

-Nearly one out of every five young adults are currently living with their parents.

-The Wall Street Journal recently declared that this is the weakest “economic recovery” since 1949.

-Barack Obama is on track to be the only president in U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.

The economy is far weaker than you are being told, the employment crisis is far worse than you are being told, and as I mentioned yesterday, the stage is clearly set for a new financial crisis of epic proportions.

And if we are going to see markets crash, this time of the year is a good time for it.  In fact, CNBC says that history tells us that this is the “worst period of the year for stocks”…

The worst period of the year for stocks has just begun — at least based on market history.

Over the entire 120-year history of the Dow Jones industrial average, Sept. 6 to Oct. 29 tends to be the worst period for the market. And more specifically, the last few weeks of September have been an especially bad time.

Someday when people look back at this time in history, they will not be surprised by how horrific the coming collapse will be.  The truth is that anyone with a lick of common sense can see that the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world is going to end badly.

No, what is going to amaze them is that the system was able to hold together as long as it did.  It truly is incredible that the debt-based, fiat currency Ponzi scheme that the central banks of the world have been desperately trying to prop up has been able to keep chugging along all the way to the middle of 2016.

How much longer can they keep the magic going?

I don’t know, but history tells us that time is not on their side…

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Why the Media’s Portrayal of Carbon Dioxide Is Often Wrong

Why the Media’s Portrayal of Carbon Dioxide Is Often Wrong:



The picture used by the South China Morning Post illustrates a problem with how the media portrays carbon dioxide emissions generally. If you click on the link, the news story will show a picture of factories spewing out nasty, harmful black smoke. The caption of the photo from Reuters is: “Smoke billows from chimneys at a chemical factory in Hefei, Anhui province.”



But the entire story is about reducing carbon dioxide emissions and combatting man-made global warming. Carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless, nontoxic gas. We exhale it. Carbon dioxide is a necessary component for photosynthesis and the growth of green vegetation. The reason behind the regulatory agenda to close existing coal-fired power plants in the United States and push for an international crusade against conventional fuels is because of carbon dioxide’s alleged impact on the climate.



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Wall Street Bank Fraud: Database Reveals U.S. as “Financial House of Horrors”

ORIGINAL LINK
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has set up an online database of financial horror stories that shows what happens when an average American interacts with one of the financial supermarkets (a/k/a universal banks) that grew out of the repeal…

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I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”

ORIGINAL LINK
Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting: “ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent…

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The Swiss Begin To Hoard Cash

ORIGINAL LINK

While subtle, the general public loss of faith in central banking has been obvious to anyone who has simply kept their eyes open: it started in Japan where in February hardware stores were reported that consumers were hoarding cash, as confirmed by the spike in demand for safes, "a place where the interest rate on cash is always zero, no matter what the central bank does." Then, as we reported just over a week ago, Burg-Waechter KG, Germany’s biggest safe manufacturer, posted a 25% jump in sales of home safes as a result of “significantly higher demand for safes by private individuals, mainly in Germany.”

Rivals Format Tresorbau GmbH and Hartmann Tresore AG also reported double-digit-percentage German sales increases. “Safe manufacturers are operating near their limits,” said Thies Hartmann, managing director of Hamburger Stahltresor GmbH, a family-owned safe retailer in Hamburg, which he says has grown 25% since 2014. He said deliveries take longer from safe makers, some of which are running three production shifts.

And now, at long last, the revulsion to banking and the fractional reserve model has finally reached the country that according to many created modern banking as we know it: Switzerland.

Only unlike Japan and Germany, the Swiss are much more subtle about their cash hoarding than telling the neighborhood they have a stash of cash in their home by publicly buying a safe; instead, as Bloomberg reports, more and more companies are taking out insurance policies to protect their cash hoards from theft or damage.

"Because of the low interest rate level, we note increasing demand for insurance solutions for the storage of cash," said Philipp Surholt at Zurich Insurance Group AG, among underwriters reporting a surge in such requests. "We’re seeing demand for coverage for sums ranging from 100 million to 500 million francs."

Where the Swiss also differ from many other nations is that numerous local banks have already passed on negative rates to their wealthiest customers. The SNB imposed NIRP in early 2015, charging banks for excess deposits. Many lenders including UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG have passed on at least some of the burden, they don’t disclose how much, to cash-rich clients like asset managers and big companies.

Meanwhile, a fascinating arbitrage has emerged between NIRP and insurance costs: Helvetia Holding said it charges about 1,000 francs ($1,020) a year to insure 1 million francs, a fraction of the 7,500 francs a company would pay to park the same amount in a bank for a year, assuming the lender passes on the full charge. While that amount doesn’t include the cost of logistics such as transport or security features like reinforced walls, guards and alarm systems, those may not be an issue for the wealthiest clients who already own their own safes and have their own means of transportation of the physical cash.

Regardless of the tangential costs, the use of such policies has jumped in the recent past.

Companies need to save a lot on bank fees for cash storage to be economical because, in addition to insurance, they have to assume the costs of managing the money, said Roberto Brunazzi, a spokesman for Baloise Holding AG. He said the company has long offered such coverage “but there has been a noticeable increase and now it’s becoming more commonplace.”

But the best news for Swiss residents is that unlike in Europe where the ECB recently banned the €500 banknote, in Switzerland it is relatively easy to store substantial amounts of cash in relatively modest spaces courtesy of the CHF1000 bill, the highest denomination banknote in circulation in Europe. As Bloomberg points out, 1 million francs worth of 1,000-franc bills can fit in a small box.

Furthermore, unless Switzerland bans the 1000 swiss frank note, it may soon trade at a premium to its book value as demand for the "paper" rises. The reason is that more banks have warned that they may one day have to charge ordinary savers - not just big customers - for liquidity. In June, UBS and Credit Suisse exceeded their combined minimum required deposits by about 26 times, putting them about 25.8 billion francs over their exemption. Swiss cantonal banks were about 24 times over the amount they are required to hold at the SNB, or about 12.5 billion francs over their threshold, according to SNB data, which doesn’t break down the figures by bank.

“Negative rates are the dominant topic,” said Markus Gygax, chief executive officer of the Swiss retail bank Valiant Holding AG. “As long as the interest rate on credit keeps falling, it’s a big problem for us.”

For now, there is no need to panic: “Consumers are shielded from the negative interest rates so far,” Oliver Adler, an economist at Credit Suisse, told Bloomberg Television’s Anna Edwards and Rishaad Salamat on Tuesday. “Large institutional investors have had to pay, but in the overall context it’s not dramatic.” However, sensing what is coming, some lenders that are below the SNB’s threshold are taking on other banks’ cash for a fee. As a result, a “market for liquidity” has developed between the banks as a result of negative rates, the Swiss Banking Association said last week in its annual report on the industry.

“Cash hoarding is a problem for monetary policy,” Koch said. “It’s a question of efficiency: the more corporates hoard cash, the smaller the impact of negative rates.”

For now, the SNB says it hasn’t seen evidence of widespread cash hoarding in Switzerland, Bloomberg concludes, to which all we can add is that this is precisely what the very sensible locals would want it to see. Meanwhile, the stealth hoarding continues.

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"Too Many Whites" - MSNBC 'Tweaks' CNN Poll To Show Hillary Back In The Lead

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Just over a month ago, Donald Trump shocked the establishment and took the lead in national polls.

Reuters jumped into action and 'tweaked' its polling methodology.

In a presidential campaign notable for its negativity, the option of “Neither” candidate appears to be an appealing alternative, at least to participants in the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

 

Many voters on both sides have been ambivalent in their support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, complicating the task of the pollsters trying to track the race.

 

That sentiment may help explain an apparent skew that recently emerged in the Reuters/Ipsos poll results. Given the choice, a relatively large group of voters opted for “Neither/Other” candidate compared with other major polls, leading to an underreporting of several percentage points for one or other of the two major contenders at times in the race.

 

As a result, Reuters/Ipsos is amending the wording of the choice and eliminating the word “Neither,” bringing the option in line with other polls.

And order was restored with Hillary surging into the lead:

 

Today, however, a CNN national poll showed Trump regaining the lead (by 2 pts):

Donald Trump has a two-point edge over Hillary Clinton in the latest CNN/ORC national survey of likely voters out Tuesday, as the Democratic nominee's post-convention lead has largely evaporated.

 

Among those likely to vote in two months, Trump took 45 percent to Clinton's 43 percent, while Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson earned 7 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein had 2 percent. But among all registered voters surveyed, Clinton leads by 3 points, 44 percent to 41 percent, while Johnson took 9 percent and Stein 3 percent.

 

The Republican nominee has a slightly higher favorability rating than Clinton among likely voters, although both are still underwater. Trump is seen favorably by 45 percent and unfavorably by 55 percent, while Clinton is at 42 percent to 56 percent. The disparity between the two candidates is lessened among registered voters.

And so, as Politico reports, MSNBC decided another tweak was required:

MSNBC 'unskewed' a CNN national poll on Tuesday that showed Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by two points, re-weighting the results to match the 2012 electorate and showing a four-point lead for the former secretary of state.

 

The poll of likely voters, released Tuesday by CNN/ORC, showed Trump ahead of Clinton nationwide in a four-way contest, 45 percent to 43 percent. But MSNBC host Chuck Todd explained that the poll, in his network’s estimation, may have oversampled white voters without a college degree, one of Trump’s strongest groups.

 

“Whites without a college degree appear to make up nearly half of their sample. In 2012, by the way, whites without a college degree was slightly more than a third of all voters,” Todd said.

 

“The point is, your numbers may not be wrong but your weighting may be, your assumptions. So the CNN folks assumed an electorate that is not an impossible scenario for Trump, but it would be an historic shift if it occurred.”

With the numbers adjusted to reflect how the electorate shook out four years ago, Clinton’s two-point deficit shifted to a four-point lead, 46 percent to 42 percent.

Mission accomplished.

To this latest, and most entertaining, "non-GAAP" poll adjustment, we have one question: just how stupid do 'they' think the American people really are?

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