banks

#EMP Attack Would Destroy #Civilization: “A Nightmare You’ll Never Wake Up From”

May 2, 2016 by mac slavo

It could all be over tomorrow. A truly modern threat.

The threat of an EMP – via natural event or deliberate attack – remains a grave one. Its potential as a WMD looms larger than any other weapons known to man.

Due to the dependency of modern society on electricity, supply chains and cities, an electromagnetic pulse wave poses a threat that really could kill or cripple 90% of the population.

It is a system wide reset that few are prepared for.

As WND reported:

Think this couldn’t happen in today’s America?

Think again, says former Defense Department security policy analyst and WND national security writer Michael Maloof. All it would take is an EMP attack to knock out all “life-sustaining critical infrastructure.”

[…]

“And if the electrical grid system is knocked out, it affects everything that depends upon that electrical grid. It could include our telecommunications, our banking and finance systems, our petroleum and natural gas transportation systems, our food and water delivery systems, our emergency services. It also affects all of the automated control devices that we take for granted every day, like the automatic control of lights, our surge system.”

He added, “It would be a nightmare you’ll never wake up from.”

The impact on life supporting-medical devices alone would be devastating to millions of people in the population.

It is a stark reminder that all the high technology of this world has been built on a fragile and very vulnerable foundation.

Such an event would also render hospitals unable to help their patients, as they rely on electronics. People with pacemakers or other electrical-based medical devices would suddenly lose their source of life.

“One thing people don’t really talk about is the impact it would have on nuclear reactors,” added Maloof, who wrote about the EMP threat in his book “A Nation Forsaken.” “When you look at what happened in Fukushima in Japan a few years ago with just one reactor, the impact on something like 147 nuclear reactors we have in the United States could be not only catastrophic, but cataclysmic.”

As SHTF has reported numerous times before, these effects could be minimalized if the government worked with the private sector to reinforce the grid, and protect critical infrastructure.

The problem is that this is very expensive, the grid is very old, and the powers-thatbe are much more likely to capitalize on the fear and horror after an event has already taken place… rather than simply resolve the issue with proper shielding.

Of course, that may change. But will it be too late?

The military has moved many of its vital operations, equipment and contingency forces back to Cheyenne Mountain to reinforce the continuity of their operations; numerous government agencies have taken similar measures.

But the vast majority of the population remain dangerously unprotected. Self-reliant individuals can, however, prepare for life off the grid, and even protect backup electronics in a homemade Faraday cage, as SHTF previously reported:

“Island yourself” from the central grid… that’s former FERC chief John Wellinghoff’s advice to individuals – preppers if you will – for surviving any grid downs that could occur from an EMP, a cyber attack or other event powerful enough to interrupt the highly vulnerable primary grid.

People are beginning to understand that they need their own onsite capabilities to island themselves from the grid. That’s because the grid’s external vulnerabilities will continue to be a problem until we do have substantial amounts of distributed generation. I have a solar photovoltaic system that provides 100% of my power needs. I am looking into how I can island myself off the grid. But it is not just me, the military is moving toward micro-grids at all of their bases because they understand the vulnerability of those bases to outages.

Let us pray that the day never comes…

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Pay Attention To The #Economy Right Now, Because A Disturbing Series Of Events Seems To Be In Motion

April 20, 2016 by contributing author

This article was written by Daisy Luther and originally published at her TheOrganicPrepper.ca site.

Editor’s Comment: Stability is paper thin, an illusion, a coyote over a cliff. The big banks on Wall Street have seized even greater power since the 2008 and collapse and are poised to consolidate the balance in the wake of the coming “third wave,” as Goldman Sachs recently warned in its own ominous statements.

For preppers, and anybody with a head on their shoulders, staying informed will mean staying ahead of the curve. The insiders at the top know the right moment to pull out their money, but the rest of us don’t. In the absence of privileged information, we can avoid the obvious traps, and hedge ourselves against some of the worst potential repercussions. But the truth is, this next wave could mean wipe out for tens of millions.

Economic Collapse? Fed Issues an Ominous Warning to JPMorgan Chase and Leaders Flock to Secret Meetings

by Daisy Luther

Tick. Tock.

Do you hear that? It’s the clock on the time bomb, and it appears to be ticking relentlessly toward our economic collapse.

It seems like every day, there is a new threat to the financial well-being of the disappearing middle class in America. Of course, less affected are the members of Congress and their buddies on Wall Street. You know, the ones that put the politicians in office to get favorable decisions made on their behalf in Washington.

But if you happen to have been ignoring the folks Obama calls “peddlers of fiction” who have been warning us all of an impending economic crisis along the lines of the last financial collapse, you might want to pay attention now, because a disturbing series of events is in motion.

First of all, the Fed just issued a terrifying warning to the biggest bank in the country.

Finally, the Fed has admitted that we just can’t take another hit without incurring an epic disaster.

And by “admitted” I mean they’ve issued a chilling warning to JP Morgan Chase, the biggest bank in America.

The letter is addressed to Teflon-coated Jamie Dimon, the leader of the bank (who seems to have made a deal with the Devil to become completely immune to prosecution, no matter what he does.)

It is 19 pages and heavily redacted, but here are some excerpts that should send a chill down your spine. The emphasis is mine.

The Agencies also identified a deficiency in the 2015 Plan regarding the criteria for a rational and less-complex legal entity structure. In order to substantially mitigate the risk that JPMC ‘s material financial distress and failure would have systemic effects, JPMC should ensure that its legal entity structure promotes resolvability under the preferred resolution strategy across a range of failure scenarios. Flexibility—or “optionality”—within the resolution strategy helps mitigate risks that, if not overcome, could otherwise undermine successful execution of the strategy and, more broadly, pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States.

Then there’s this:

These divestiture options do not appear to provide sufficient optionality under different market conditions.

The divestiture options in the 2015 Plan also were not sufficiently actionable, as the 2015 Plan sections fore did not contain detailed, tailored, and complete separability analyses. For example, only one obstacle to divestiture to the [redacted] key vendor contracts was adequately analyzed; the analysis of the other key obstacles cited regulatory approvals, client communications [redacted]

This is also concerning:

JPMC does not have an appropriate model and process for estimating and maintaining sufficient liquidity at, or readily available to, material entities in resolution (RLAP model). This is notable given J?MC’s liquidity profile in its 2015 Plan, which relies on the firm’s ability to shift substantial amounts of liquidity around the organization during stress, as needed. As explained below, JPMC’s liquidity profile is vulnerable to adverse actions by third parties.

Even without a degree in finance, I know this is bad:

JPMC’s 2015 Plan relied on roughly of parent liquidity support being injected into various material entities, including its U.S. broker-dealers, during the period immediately preceding JPMC’s bankruptcy filing. This includes reliance on funds in foreign entities that may be subject to defensive ringfencing during a time of financial stress.

Here’s the long and the short of it:

Every year, large banks must create a contingency plan that explains what they’ll do if they begin to go under. The biggest bank in the country has such a lackluster, half-baked plan that the Fed called them out on it for 19 pages and warns that their nonchalance could be responsible for the financial instability of the entire country.

PS: Since this isn’t my first rodeo, I downloaded the entire PDF. It’s funny how things have a way of disappearing off the internet when the mainstream media wants to ignore them. You can download it yourself too at this link:

Living-Will-Letter-Issued-to-JPMorgan-Chase

JPMorgan Chase is not alone.

But they’re not the only ones.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo also saw their contingency plans rejected. Zero Hedge reports:

Three of the five largest U.S. banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) have now had their wind-down plans rejected by the Federal agency insuring bank deposits (FDIC) and the Federal agency (Federal Reserve) that secretly sluiced $13 trillion in rollover loans to the insolvent or teetering banks in the last epic crisis that continues to cripple the country’s economic growth prospects.

Are all three banks going down?

But that isn’t even the scariest part.

In case you think it’s just a normal day at the Fed…It isn’t just these warning letters that should make you pay attention. At the risk of sounding like I’m selling Ginsu knives, there’s more.

The Great Recession Blog posted a bullet list that should blow your mind when taken in conjunction with the news above. (Be sure to read the full article – it goes into a lot more detail.) It seems that there’s enough concern to spark a flurry of secret meetings among those in power.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors just held an “expedited special meeting” on Monday in closed-door session.

The White House made an immediate announcement that the president was going to meet with Fed Chair Janet Yellen right after Monday’s special meeting and that Vice President Biden would be joining them.

The Federal Reserve very shortly posted an announcement of another expedited closed-door meeting for Tuesday for the specific purpose of “bank supervision.”

A G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central-bank heads starts in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, too, and continues through Wednesday.

Then on Thursday the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meet in Washington.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta just revised US GDP growth for the first quarter to the precipice of recession at 0.1%.

US banks are widely expected this week to report their worst quarter financially since the start of the Great Recession.

The European Union’s new “bail-in” procedures for failing banks were employed for the first time with Austrian bank Heta Asset Resolution AG.

Italy’s minister of finance called an emergency meeting of Italian bankers to engage “last resort” measures for dealing with 360-billion euros of bad loans in banks that have only 50 billion in capital.

How does this affect you?

Maybe you think this won’t affect you. Maybe you don’t have an account with anyone affiliated with JP Morgan Chase, BofA, and Wells Fargo. Maybe you aren’t an investor. Maybe you don’t have real estate. Maybe you are absolutely certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that your job is secure. Perhaps you have money in the bank, or maybe not – maybe you keep it stuffed in your mattress.

The trouble is, the money you are working overtime to make, the security you feel that you have by saving it…it’s perceived value can be completely wiped out by a financial crisis that occurs on a national level. That’s because if a huge bank like JPMC fails, lots of other companies fail with it. Then this stuff happens:

Prices will go up. We’ve seen an almost unprecedented increase in the price of food over the past couple of years, even as the quality of the food available plummets. This is due to massive droughts, early freezes, and basic cost-of-living increases.
Unemployment will go up. Those without jobs now are equal to the number of unemployed during The Great Depression. As the economy plummets, that number will almost certainly exceed the previous highs as businesses scramble to keep their heads above water. They’ll cut stuff to try and keep afloat, and if that fails, the jobs will be lost anyway.
Rents will increase. If you don’t own your home, prepare to pay higher rent as landlords try to cover their losses of income in other sectors. Foreclosures will be on the rise, which means there will be fewer homes available.
Bail-ins could dip into your savings. Remember a few years ago when depositors in Cyprus could do nothing when the banks there helped themselves to their savings in order to “save” themselves? Do you really, truly, think it can’t happen here?

The bottom line is, income will remain the same, decrease, or even disappear entirely for many of us. Meanwhile, the price of darn near everything will go up. Expect to pay more for things like keeping your utilities on, feeding and clothing your family, keeping a roof over your heads. Aside from that, those dollars you are carefully saving? They are only providing you with the illusion of security.

Aside from that, those dollars you are carefully saving? They are only providing you with the illusion of security.

Here’s what you need to do

Here’s what you need to do immediately in the event of either a market crash or further news of a bank failure. (Of course, if you wait until a bank failure has been announced, you may have waited too long.)

Take your money out of the bank ASAP. If you still keep your money in the bank, go there and remove as much as you can while leaving in enough to pay your bills. Although it wasn’t a market collapse in Greece recently, the banks did close and limit ATM withdrawals. People went for quite some time without being able to access their money, but were able to have a sense of normalcy by transferring money online to pay bills or using their debit cards to make purchases. Get your cash out. You don’t want to be at the mercy of the banks.
Stock up on supplies. Make sure you are prepped. If you’re behind on your preparedness efforts and need to do this quickly, you can order buckets of emergency food just to have some on hand. (Learn how to build an emergency food supply using freeze dried food HERE) Hit the grocery store or wholesale club and stock up there, too, on your way home. As mentioned above, if you can’t get your money out, you may be able to make online or debit card purchases.
Load up on fuel. Fill up your gas tank and fill your extra cans also. Quite often, fuel prices skyrocket in the wake of a market crash.
Be prepared for the potential of civil unrest. If the banks put a limit on withdrawals (or close like they did in Greece) you can look for some panic to occur. If the stores dramatically increase prices or close..more panic. Be armed and be prepared to stay safely at home. (Although this article was written during the Ferguson race riots, civil unrest follows a similar pattern regardless of the cause.)
Be prepared for the possibility of being unable to pay your bills. If things really go downhill, the middle class and those who are the working poor will be the most strongly affected, as they have been in Greece during that country’s ongoing financial crisis. This article talks about surviving if you are unable to pay all of your bills.

For the long term, focus on information

Hopefully there’s no need to empty out your bank accounts, stock up on last minute supplies, or lock-and-load for home protection. However, if this is an actual 1929/2008-style stock market crash, you need to take your preps to the next level. If you can’t buy your necessities, you’re going to have to produce them, something that is a complete turnaround for most folks.

Information is the key. It’s imperative that you learn everything you can so that you know what you need to add to your preps. As well, it’s essential to acquire the knowledge you need to fend for yourself. Take these two steps, if you haven’t already.

#1. Bookmark these preparedness websites. (Free)

The internet is a wonderful place, and best of all, this knowledge can be found for FREE! The more you know about crisis situations, the more ready you will be to face them. Some sites are friendlier to beginners than others, so if you stumble upon a forum where people seem less than enthusiastic about helping people who are just starting out, don’t let it get you down. Move on and find a site that makes you feel comfortable. Following are some of my favorites, and the link will take you to a good starting point on these sites. In no particular order:

Following are some of my favorites, and the link will take you to a good starting point on these sites. (Actually, it’s wise to begin increasing your knowledge even if we get a reprieve.) In no particular order:

#2. Build your library. (Small expense)

This is where some money could come into play. Most of the time, people in the preparedness world like to have hard copies of important information. This way, if the power goes out and you can’t access the internet or recharge your Kindle, you still have access to vital advice.

Some of these books are for just such an event, while others are guides to building your self-reliance skills. Commit to picking up a good book each pay period until you have a library to reference during any type of scenario.

The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster (This is the be-all and end-all Bible of prepping. I wish I could put my own book first, but Tess’s book is the most complete compendium out there, broken into easy, manageable steps.)
The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget (This is my newest book, which outlines building your pantry while on a strict budget)
The Complete Tightwad Gazette (While this book is about hardcore frugality, trust me, there’s crossover. There are a lot of great suggestions for creating stockpiles on a budget, living simply, and doing things the old-fashioned way. And saving money is always a good idea, so that you can use it to help you become more prepared.)
SAS Survival Guide: How to Survive in the Wild, on Land or Sea (I keep this little gem in my vehicle, my bug out bag, and in my kids’ backpacks. It doesn’t go into lots of detail, but if you find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere, this small book could save your life.)
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual of Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself(A compendium of all things self-reliance)
Prepper’s Home Defense: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary (If you can’t protect it, you don’t own it. It’s that simple.)
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times (By James Wesley Rawles, who many consider to be the “Father” of the modern preparedness movement)
The Prepper’s Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster (Quick, inexpensive preparedness steps that anyone can take)
The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way (It’s vital to have a guide on hand that doesn’t rely on 911 for serious injuries, in the event that you’re completely on your own)
The Organic Canner (It’s awesome to grow your food, but how will you make it last through the winter, particularly during an off-grid scenario?)
Prepper’s Natural Medicine: Written by my friend and colleague, Cat Ellis, this book has everything you need to know about creating your own medicine and caring for your family’s health in the event of a crisis.
Get Prepared Now: Written by the autor of The Economic Collapse Blog himself, this book will provide you with budget-friendly, practical, collapse-specific advice.
Prepper’s Financial Guide: By prolific author Jim Cobb, this book will help you figure out how to function in a post-collapse marketplace.

Be sure to check out used bookstores, libraries, and garage sales, too. Look for books that teach self-reliant skills like sewing, gardening, animal husbandry, carpentry, repair manuals, scratch cooking, and plant identification. You can often pick these up for pennies, and older books don’t rely on expensive new technology or tools for doing these tasks.

Have they finally kicked the can to the end of the road?

Things aren’t looking good. It makes me wonder if all of the quantitative easing and can-kicking has finally reached the point that they can’t push economic disaster back any further.

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

Also From Daisy Luther:

The Prepper’s Blueprint: A Step-By-Step Guide To Prepare For Any Disaster

Here’s How You’ll Die When the SHTF (and How to Prevent Your Untimely Demise)

How to Prepare for a Cyber Attack: ‘These Systems Could Be Completely Inoperable or Breached’

San Andreas for Preppers: 12 Essential Survival Lessons from the Movie

12 Bad Strategies That Will Get Preppers Killed

Lock and Load: Are You Prepared for Civil Unrest?

You’ve Been Warned: Why You Need to Be Ready for Total Grid Failure

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

#Whistleblower Says #CIA Behind #PanamaPapers Leak

April 12, 2016 by carey wedler

Carey Wedler
April 12, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) A former Swiss banker-turned-whistleblower has accused the CIA of playing a key role the Panama Papers leak, which implicated numerous foreign leaders, companies, organizations and individuals in offshore tax evasion, among other offenses. Bradley Birkenfeld, a former American banker for Swiss firm UBS, told CNBC “the CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” in an interview conducted Tuesday from Munich.

Birkenfeld originally blew the whistle on American tax evaders using Swiss bank accounts to divert their funds away from the reach of U.S. authorities. He served two-and-a-half years for his involvement and was released from prison in 2012. Pursuant to whistleblower policy, Birkenfeld was awarded $104 million of the $780 million settlement UBS was forced to pay as a result of his cooperation with authorities. Since his release from prison in 2012, he has said he wants “to force the government to explain why it was so aggressive in prosecuting him, but let nearly everyone else involved in the scam get off with light penalties or none at all.”

Focusing on the CIA on Tuesday, Birkenfeld was careful to note his comments were his “opinion,” but nonetheless offered strong observations on the scope of the data leak, which is the biggest in history.

“The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

Asked why a U.S. spy agency would release information that damages U.S. allies, like David Cameron, Birkenfeld said he was likely “collateral damage” in the purported overarching scheme to smear American adversaries.

He suggested the CIA had a calculated role in the way the leak was presented to the public:

“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

Birkenfeld’s comments seem even more perceptive considering German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday that “secret agents and their informants have made wide use of [Mossack Fonseca’s] services,”as translated by Raw Story. Sueddeutsche Zeitung originally received the leaked data from an anonymous whistleblower before handing it over to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

“Agents have opened shell companies to conceal their activities… Among them are close intermediaries of the CIA,” the German publication noted. Other individuals reportedly mentioned in the leaks included players in the infamous 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, in which the CIA was involved. The Iran-Contra scheme involved the U.S. selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, then using the profits to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.

Though the CIA was not explicitly named in Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s report, their “intermediaries” were. Regardless, these revelations taken alongside Birkenfeld’s suspicions can mean one of two things: either Birkenfeld is wrong, or the CIA actually is involved with the Panama Papers and considered reports on their “intermediaries” to be “collateral damage,” as Birkenfeld suggested of Cameron.

Regardless, the Panama Papers leak has faced scrutiny beyond Birkenfeld’s. Wikileaks has called on the ICIJ to make all data from the 11,500 leaked pages available to the public.

Wikileaks also said, “If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition.”

Gerard Ryle, Director of the ICIJ, has said, “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” and the ICIJ has noted it will not release all of the data. However, it will continue to release parts of the leak in the coming months.

Wikileaks also took to Twitter to accuse the ICIJ of being a “Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge” that “has a WikiLeaks problem.”

Further, the publishing organization accused ICIJ and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with whom ICIJ shared the data, of launching an attack against Russian president Vladimir Putin:

“Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros,” Wikileaks tweeted. Another Twitter post later clarified the Panama Papers were not an “attack” against Putin, but that “DC organization [ICIJ] & USAID money tilt coverage.” USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, has been previously accused of corruption. Billionaire George Soros has been accused of influencing narratives in the mainstream media.

Regardless of who was behind the leak — and who may or may not be clandestinely pulling the strings on the flow of information — the CIA has faced similar accusations of media manipulation before. Otto Ulfkotte, the former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, a large German publication, said he was bribed by the CIA to write pro-American stories.

“It is not right what I have done in the past. To manipulate people and make propaganda,” he said in 2014. “I was bribed by billionaires, I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth.” Explaining how this relationship began, he said:

“Germany is still kind of a colony of the United States… And being a colony it is very easy to approach young journalists from transatlantic organizations.”

Noting that “all journalists from really respected and recommended big German newspapers” tend to be members of such transatlantic organizations, he said:

“They invite you [to see] the U.S. They pay for that, they pay all your expenses and everything, so you are bribed, you get more and more corrupt, because they make you good contacts. You won’t know that those good contacts are, let’s say, ‘non-official’ covers or officially people working for Central Intelligence Agency or other American intelligence agencies… so you make friends, you think you are friends, and you cooperate with them. They ask you, ‘Well, could you do me this favor? Could you do me that favor?’ And so your brain is more and more brainwashed.”

He said many reporters in countries around the world “play the [role of] respected journalists but if you look behind them you’ll find they are puppets on the string of the CIA.”

Though some may discount Ulfkotte’s account because it was not corroborated by a third party — and the interview aired on Russia Today, Russia’s state-funded news agency — the CIA has been known to work with other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, to manipulate news stories in their favor.

Regardless of whether or not Birkenfeld is correct in his assessment of the CIA’s role in the leaks, his statements on CNBC provide, at the very least, cause for continued skepticism among the many interests and motivations driving the ongoing leak.

This article (Whistleblower Says CIA Behind Panama Papers Leak) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

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Rich Flee #Chicago Amid Racial Strife, Civil #Unrest: “Turning Into A Crime Infested Hell Hole”

April 11, 2016 by mac slavo

This article was written by Joshua Krause and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

Editor’s Comment: Those who pull the strings are apt to push racial division and general chaos, as the economic avalanche falls in on the population at large. Uncertain about why finances and money become so difficult, most will fall into the trap of faction-vs-faction on the streets, as the elite helicopter away on profits derived from our general demise.

Taxpayer bailouts, harsher regulations, and more and more policing of every aspect of life would soon follow. If Chicago goes the way of Detroit, it will be not only because of crime and racial tension, but because the jobs, the opportunity and the future have all been shipped overseas and sold off to the highest bidder.

Millionaires Fearing Civil Unrest Are Fleeing Chicago By The Thousands

by Joshua Krause

As time goes on the city of Chicago is rapidly turning into a crime infested hell hole, rife with poverty, debt, and racial tension. The city is well on its way to joining the likes of Detroit, and there may be no escaping that eventuality. That’s why many of the city’s wealthy elites are getting the hell out of there.

The Chicago Tribune reports that roughly 3,000 millionaires have left the city over the past year alone, which amounts to about 2 percent of their wealthy population. This is the largest exodus of wealthy people in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. Paris and Rome are the only cities that lost more millionaires than Chicago in the same time period.

According to research, many of these elites are relocating to other cities in the United States such as Seattle and San Francisco, which saw a net inflow of millionaires over the past year. When asked about why they were leaving Chicago, most of these millionaires cited racial tension and rising crime rates.

If you happen to live in Chicago, take a hint from the people with insider knowledge and connections, and get out while you still can.

—–

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

This article was written by Joshua Krause and originally published at The Daily Sheeple.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Proof It Is Rigged: “Fed Moved 93% of Entire Stock Market Since 2008″

March 18, 2016 by mac slavo

Fact: The Federal Reserve has screwed over the country.

Monetary policy has been the single most important factor in the economy for some time.

A new analysis from economist Brian Barnier shows that while future GDP, household debt from credit cards and tech accounted for past bubbles in American history, the bubble that has risen since Obama became president is due to one – and only one – factor: the Federal Reserve.

And the private banking cartel – which masquerades as a public government institution – has become plenty controversial for its ties to elite hidden agendas and its debasement of the economy.

However, few Americans realize just how huge – and detrimental – this institution has become.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed, then chaired by Ben Bernanke, began an unprecedented quantitative easing (QE) program that literally changed everything.

During the last eight years, monetary policy has completely upended the economy, and concentrated wealth into fewer and fewer hands, while making it more and more difficult for ordinary people to stay afloat. This intervention has gone way, way too far and has driven up a particularly unstable bubble that is ready to burst.

Through QE and bond purchases, the Fed managed to double the S&P 500 value, while more than doubling its own balance sheet in the process.

Yahoo! Finance reported:

The factors behind that and previous bubbles can be illuminated using simple visual analysis of a chart.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) doubled in value from November 2008 to October 2014, coinciding with the Federal Reserve Bank’s “quantitative easing” asset purchasing program. After three rounds of “QE,” where the Fed poured billions of dollars into the bond market monthly, the Fed’s balance sheet went from $2.1 trillion to $4.5 trillion.

This isn’t just a spurious correlation, according to economist Brian Barnier, principal at ValueBridge Advisors and founder of FedDashboard.com. What’s more, he says previous bull runs in the market lasting several years can also be explained by single factors each time.

[…]
As the financial crisis reached a fevered pitch in 2008, the Federal Reserve took to flooding the financial market with dollars by buying up bonds. Simultaneously, interest rates fell dramatically, as bond yields move in the opposite direction of bond prices. Barnier sees the Fed as responsible for over 93% of the market from the start of QE until today. During the first half of 2013, the Fed caused the entire market’s growth, he said.

Barnier, who compiled this data analysis, dubbed this the “Era of the Fed” – as this ill-reputed institution has been more responsible than any other factor (including the 2008 financial crisis) for how bad the economy has gotten for average Americans, college-graduates seeking careers and small businesses.

The above chart is simplified from others before it to show that the Fed was the single most important factor during the last era – overlapping Obama’s presidency – and that a staggering 93% of the economy has been dictated by the Federal Reserve. See the Yahoo! article for more data and charts.

As many analysts have discussed before, this unprecedented intervention has distorted and warped the American experience. Savers, pensioners and investors have all take harsh blows as the interest rate held at zero and even dipped into negative – forcing some customers to pay for deposits and others to take a haircut on their life savings and retirement packages!

Federal Reserve About To Do “Tremendous Amount of Damage” To U.S. Dollar

Trump Accuses Fed of Not Raising Rates Because Obama “Doesn’t Want a Bubble Burst” Until He Leaves

Ron Paul: Unless the Fed is Stopped, America Will “Soon Experience Major Economic Crisis”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Clamp Down on Cash Is the Ultimate Surveillance State: “Citizens Shouldn’t Be Under General Suspicion”

March 7, 2016 by mac slavo

The war on cash is more than just a currency war to clamp everyone down on the electric grid. It is also a war on your privacy, and the nail in the coffin for the free market of low level transactions.

Soon, restrictions on cash will become so severe that even spending $100 will arouse suspicion, despite the constant inflation on the value of such a denomination. One day, physical currency may become obsolete.

When that day comes, they will know everything you do.

Conducting transactions in anything but digital creds will be not only increasingly difficult, but seen as outright criminal behavior. It might even make you a terrorist.

Don Quijones argues on Wolf Street:

There are two sides in the global war against cash. On one side are many of the world’s governments, central banks, fintech firms, banks, credit card companies, telecommunication behemoths, financial institutions, large retailers, etc. According to them, the days of physical currency are numbered, so why not pull the plug already, beginning with the largest denomination bills such as the $100-note and particularly the €500-note?

On the other side are people who like to use cash – most of whom, according to the dominant official narrative, are either criminals or terrorists. After all, they must have something to hide; otherwise, why would they use a private, untraceable (not to mention archaic, dirty, dangerous and unhygienic) form of payment like cash?

Although it may seem like a foregone conclusion, cash still accounts for a majority of transactions in many European countries, and still factors in significantly in the U.S., though use of cash is in decline.

Many leaders overseas are calling out the moves to kill cash – albeit in slow motion – as nothing more than an attempt to impose a police state where every transaction, every purchase and every activity is monitored and databased.

Likewise, the use of cash is linked with terrorists and criminals, every bit as much as using pagers was linked with drug dealers in the pre-cell phone days.

Don Quijones writes:

[I]n recent weeks the unlikeliest of defenders of physical money has emerged: the national central bank of Europe’s biggest economy, the German Bundesbank.

“I have my doubts that introducing a cash limit or getting rid of bigger denominations can really prevent terrorists or criminals from engaging in illegal activities,” Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Bundesbank board member in charge of cash issues, said in a speech last week. “We also should ask ourselves: what sort of an understanding of government forms the basis of these proposals? Citizens should not be put under general suspicion.”

[…]

And in Germany and Austria, the EU’s plans to suppress cash have already provoked a backlash.

“We don’t want someone to be able to track digitally what we buy, eat and drink, what books we read and what movies we watch,”said Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahreron on Oe1 radio. “We will fight everywhere against rules” including caps on cash purchases, he said.

The NSA surveillance has never been limited to just ferreting out terrorists, its mass surveillance of every conceivable communications device has created a Big Data tracking system that can hone in on specific behaviors of anyone in the country, or can track the mass patterns of human society like a school of fish.

Standing by complicit with the elimination of cash is surrendering yourself to a society based upon nothing more than Big Brother teamed up with the Big Banks – and what good could come from all of that?

Banning Cash “Necessary to Give Central Banks More Power”

Americans Face Impoverishing War on Cash: “More Big Banks Are Shunning Cash”

‘Cash Is Being Eradicated’: Digital Payments Take Over Western World

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Expert Warns That Unparalleled Financial Destruction Is “Just Six Months Away”

March 4, 2016 by mac slavo

The time is nigh.

The crash is coming. It’s waves can be felt pulsing through the system, foretelling its arrival.

But how long will it be until it hits, and how big will its magnitude be?

According to Yale’s Vikram Mansharamani, it is only months away.

Via London Express:

FINANCIAL bubbles across the globe are imploding and the problem is only set to get worse... Prices are falling around the world thanks to the collapse of China’s debt fuelled economic growth and this has triggered a succession of disastrous events that are starting to be realised, according to Vikram Mansharamani, an author and, lecturer at Yale University.

Fears are growing that the world could face a financial crash of unprecedented levels and could even be just six months away.

Bubbles created by the mountain of cheap money made available by low interest rates since the last financial crisis are now starting to burst, said Mr Mansharamani.

[…]

Mr Mansharamani added: “We’ve got a bubble bursting, I would argue, in Australian housing markets — that is beginning to crack; South Africa — the whole economy; Canada — housing and the economy; Brazil. We can keep going on and on.”

The details have come out in warnings posted here at SHTF and elsewhere, but the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program changed the metabolism of the global economy.

Like a diabetic or a heroin addict, people in the United States, and in countries abroad all borrow on cheap credit, and face a debilitating spike now that repayment is being demanded – all while oil prices have bottomed out and destroyed the fragile livelihoods of those who depended upon these and other commodity prices.

Nightmares are surfacing. Entire sectors are being destroyed. New technology is causing extreme upheaval in jobs, and economic warfare is subtly sucking away life and stability from the ranks of the hard working, aspiring and once prosperous. It is punishing and leveling out all those who haven’t learned to work inside the system.

All the rest will end up on welfare, until that collapses too.

Robots will replace millions of jobs in the next few decades:

That’s ok, though, according to the guy in the video, because we’re supposed to live in some technologically-planned future where computers figure out how to address the needs of everyone. But that’s not OK, because that leaves no room for freedom.

When you lose the ability to support yourself independently, you become a government serf overnight. And the rest is history. We are being pushed and shoved into a new collectivist state with strikingly few liberties.

The criminals who orchestrated the last round of looting in 2008 have grown in power and wealth in the years since, and are now poised to come back for the rest – and use finance as a tool to condition societal behavior. Puppeteer bankers Goldman Sachs admitted that we are entering the third wave of a debt-supercycle that has been unleashed through predatory policy:

This wave is characterised by rock-bottom commodities prices, stalling growth in China and other emerging-markets economies, and low global inflation, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Peter Oppenheimer said in a big-picture note.

This triple whammy has its roots in the response to the first two waves of crisis — the banking collapse and European sovereign-debt crisis — and it is all part of the so-called debt supercycle of the past few decades.

Central banks all rushed to lower interest rates in response to the first two debt-fueled crises, encouraging investors to lend in emerging markets such as China for a decent return.

Now that interest rates are looking as if they might go up, lenders are heading for the exits and investors are pulling out of commodities, which are closely linked to the fate of the emerging economies.

Once they are done, everyone you know will be either working for the government, or under close government regulation. Wall Street crimes are instituted as policy, and competition and free enterprise from the little guy is yanked out of the system, and his salary is capped at the level befitting a modern day serf.

The borg is assimilating the economy and taking everyone as an asset/hostage now.

Time to make your final preparations, and place any wealth you have in carefully considered positions.

Goldman Sachs: The Third Wave of the Financial Crisis Is Upon Us

Global Economy Grinds to a Halt: We’re “Already in a Recession”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

As Banks Seek Monopoly Over Economy, “Cash Is Being Gradually Taken Away”

February 18, 2016 by mac slavo

There is a war on for the extermination of cash.

It is the ultimate monopoly game, but there are those who are willing to put up a fight to keep cash in the game.

The powers that be on Wall Street and in the central banks are aiming to eliminate paper money in large part to continue “sustaining and even intensifying the central banks’ nightmarish experiment with negative interest rates” – a doubly dangerous effort for economic

And banks stand to have all the control as digital transactions flow through their institutions, closely monitored and accumulating fees, penalties and charges that enrich the banks and hold customers hostage.

As Europe moves to take the 500 Euro note out of circulation, former Treasury Secretary and enabler of past crises, has called for an end to the Benjamins – the celebrated $100 note of outlaws, gangsters and all those who would oppose the new world economic order.

As Wolf Street notes:

Those motives include sustaining and even intensifying the central banks’ nightmarish experiment with negative interest rates, increasing public dependence on big banks, destroying the last vestiges of personal financial freedom and anonymity, expanding government surveillance of and control over the economy, and in the case of credit card companies and fintech firms, doing away with their biggest competitor, physical currency.

The powers that want to kill off cash already have vital technological and generational trends firmly on their side, as a result of which cash’s days as a commonly used payment method may well be numbered anyway. They also have the added bonus of widespread public ignorance, apathy, and disinterest.

[…]

“It would be fatal if citizens got the impression that cash is gradually taken away from them”: Bundesbank President Weidman.

As Don Quijones argues – the countries that have been quickest to adopt cashless societies in Scandanavia tend to be very well adjusted and relatively trusting of their governments.

By contrast, Americans, developing countries, and even Germany and Japan have less trust in their government, and will likely put up a fight against attempt to disarm cash:

All too often we hear about the countries in Europe and elsewhere that are furthest along the path toward a completely cashless existence — countries with high levels of public trust in public institutions such as Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Singapore. By contrast, we hardly ever hear about countries where public trust is low in government and financial institutions and physical cash is still revered. They include many of the nations of the Global South as well as two of the world’s biggest, most advanced economies, Germany and Japan.

[…]

“Cash allows us to remain anonymous during day-to-day transactions. In a constitutional democracy, that is a freedom that has to be defended,” tweeted the Green MP Konstantin von Notz. Even the head of the Bunderbank, Jens Weidmann, criticized the government’s proposals, telling Bild (emphasis added): “It would be fatal if citizens got the impression that cash is being gradually taken away from them.”

The right to a free exchange medium has been understated in Constitutional debates, as well as outlook to the global future, though gold and silver is mentioned in Article I Section 10.

But the going rate towards the use of credit/debit, phone apps and other digital payments strips away the fundamental free exchange of currency that historically come with physical currency.

Instead, it grants something pretty close to a monopoly for the handful of banks and online entities like PayPal who will operate the systems, decide the fees and surcharges, and freeze accounts for behaviors that could include things like trying to sell a firearm on a platform that has a policy against it.

Cash transactions (as well as those made with gold and silver or historically utilized mediums) are practically anonymous, rather than scrutinized and available as evidence to creditors, competitors, prosecutors or those with an agenda.

It will also make it harder for small businesses, who stand to be forced out of cash-only operations and onto the reservation of digital payments, where they will have to comply and qualify for status.

If cash dies, they will control authorization, they will hold nearly all the power.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com