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Icons of financial industry warn: "We will kill each other" if our broken economic system isn't fixed

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 05:55 UTC
Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones

Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones
Two hedge fund icons - Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones - joined Yahoo Finance for the 2nd annual Greenwich Investment Forum earlier this month. Speaking directly after Connecticut Gov. New Lamont, with whom Dalio is working to bolster Connecticut's schools via a $100 million gift - the largest charitable gift the state has ever received, PTJ and Dalio focused their "Fireside Chat" on the flaws of Fed policy, the dangers of America's ballooning budget deficit, and the steps that must be take to "stop us from killing each other" in a violent revolution, as Dalio warned.

PTJ spoke first, starting with a few words about President Trump, praising him as "the greatest salesman" to ever enter the American political arena. After all, didn't Trump convince the Republican Party - once the party of fiscal piety - that 5% budget deficits 10 years into an economic rebound are necessary to protect the economy. Similarly, didn't he also convince the Fed - "through great moral suasion" - that returning to real negative rates with unemployment at 50-year lows was a necessity?

Both Dalio and PTJ agree that, while clearly stimulative in the short-term (obviously just take a look at the S&P 500), these decisions will set up the US economy for one of the most punishing downturns in history, which is why PTJ always laughs when Jerome Powell is quizzed about financial conditions and whether he sees bubbles anywhere. Because at this point, the whole market is a bubble.
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Stock Up

World-changing event: Russia opens taps on new mega gas 'Power of Siberia' pipeline to China


RT
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 10:49 UTC

Comment: This is the game-changer Putin and Xi signed off in this memorable photo amidst mass freak-outs in Western capitals in early 2014...
Xi Jinping y Putin

Power of Siberia
© Reuters / Maxim Shemetov
Power of Siberia
In a move to cement energy cooperation with the fast-growing economies in Asia, Russia officially launched delivery of natural gas supplies to China, via the Power of Siberia pipeline, on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping gave the green light at an official ceremony via teleconference.

Russia, the world's biggest gas exporter, is looking to one of the globe's top consumers, China, as Moscow's relations with the West deteriorate. The move gives Russia an enormous new market outside of Europe which has targeted Moscow with sanctions, over the conflict in Ukraine, since 2014.

The mega pipeline was built in record time. Initially, the launch was planned for December 20 but the construction was completed ahead of schedule.

The 3,000km-long (1864 miles) pipeline will ship gas from Russia's huge gas reserves in its eastern regions to the Chinese border. It will then link up with China's own network to deliver gas as far as the eastern seaboard and help satisfy the nation's vast and growing energy needs.

Comment: The economic and strategic powerhouse relationship between China and Russia just grows by the day and is motivated by at least two factors: 1.) good business sense, and 2.) the need to escape the yoke of egregious and short-sighted policies inflicted on these countries by the West, and the US in particular.

See also:

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Light Sabers

Indispensable or obsolete? Reheated Cold War rhetoric can't patch fractured NATO that lacks sense of purpose & vision for future

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:39 UTC
νατο
© Sputnik / Alexey Vitvitsky
A war of words between prominent NATO members over its continued existence has revealed cracks in the 70-year-old alliance, which seems to be returning to its Cold War roots in desperate search for a new sense of purpose.

"The transatlantic relationship is in a very, very healthy place," insisted US officials briefing reporters on the eve of the NATO summit in London. Meanwhile, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been repeating that NATO is the "most successful alliance in history."

Behind this brave facade, however, the septuagenarian alliance is tearing itself apart. US President Donald Trump's insistence on everyone dedicating two percent of their GDP to military spending is a target only seven members have met so far. Most NATO countries are nothing but hangers-on to the US military, and can't conduct independent operations. Only a few, like Turkey, can - and the fact that Ankara just did, without bothering to consult the rest of the alliance, is the cause for the latest display of discord.

French President Emmanuel Macron set things off by complaining about Ankara's operation in Syria last month, pointing to "no coordination whatsoever" between either the US or Turkey with the rest of NATO and calling the alliance "brain dead."

That, ironically, brought otherwise feuding NATO members together - in condemnation of the French leader. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tore into Macron on Friday, suggesting he should have "his own brain death checked."

Comment: Marc Champion and Jonathan Stearns write for Bloomberg:
Were Johnson to lose to Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, that would give NATO yet another individual to worry about at its next summit, due in 2021.

Over his career the socialist firebrand has called NATO "a danger to world peace and a danger to world security". He has more recently fallen into line with party policy, which is for the U.K. to stay in the alliance, but he'd likely prove another awkward partner.

The last time Britain hosted NATO leaders, in 2014, he told an anti-NATO rally the end of the Cold War "should have been the time for NATO to shut up shop, give up, go home and go away."


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Sherlock

Airbus fires 16 employees linked to alleged industrial espionage on German military contracts


RT
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 21:38 UTC
airbus
© FILE PHOTO. Reuters / Regis Duvignau
Europe's aerospace giant Airbus has found itself at the center of a scandal after it was revealed that some of its employees, in a division handling German military projects, are suspected of involvement in industrial espionage.

The aviation and defense company has dismissed 16 employees, including a department manager, without notice, as all of them were suspected of spying on corporate secrets and of illegally obtaining confidential documents on future projects of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr).

Airbus is one of the major suppliers of the German Armed Forces; it regularly wins contracts to provide the Bundeswehr with new airplanes and helicopters, as well as for retrofitting existing equipment.

Comment: Considering this investigation was only prompted because of an employee sounding the alarm, isn't it likely that similar activity is occurring in other countries but, as yet, has gone undetected? It's also notable that Airbus had been recently considered a safer option following the deadly crashes caused by Boeing's MAX planes.

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Sherlock

Netanyahu behind Labour anti-Semitism scandals according to Dutch Daily newspaper's cartoonist


Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 14:28 UTC
Netanyahu
© De Volkskrant
A caricature suggesting Benjamin Netanyahu is behind British Labour's anti-Semitism scandals
A major Dutch daily ran a caricature whose critics say reinforces anti-Semitic tropes and suggests that Israel's prime minister is attacking Britain's Labour Party over anti-Semitism to distract from corruption charges against him.

In the caricature Thursday in De Volkskrant, Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted holding a stone labeled "anti-Semitism charges" in one hand and reading an indictment for corruption in the other.

Opposite the Israeli leader is Jeremy Corbyn, who heads Labour Party, which is under an investigation by the British government's Equality and Human Rights Commission over complaints that Corbyn's anti-Israel agenda and far-left politics have made it institutionally anti-Semitic.

Comment: While it's highly unlikely that Corbyn will become PM, what with an establishment campaign to keep him out of power, were he to do so, he would likely pose as a significant thorn in the side of the psychopaths controlling Israel: Labour party adds ban on selling arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia to election platform

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Red Pill

Yes Virginia, it really did happen: Ukraine and election meddling in 2016

Yasha Levine
yasha.substack.com
Fri, 22 Nov 2019 21:29 UTC
Ukraine interfere US election cartoon hillary trump
I know I've written about this before, but I feel like I have to address it again — seeing how just about every impeachment witness has repeated the claim that meddling by Ukrainian government officials did not happen in 2016 and that anyone who says otherwise is spreading toxic Russian propaganda. I've been dipping into these hearings every now and again and've seen this said over and over. It reminds me of those new age quantum-mind-over-matter types in the The Secret: Repeat the mantra often enough and convince yourself it's true and...it is!

Let's start with a fact: Meddling in the 2016 election by Ukrainian politicians and government agencies happened.
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Bizarro Earth

Jeremy Clarkson mocks 'idiot' Greta Thunberg, but the cancel-culture 'snowflakes' are the ones out of touch with reality

Graham Dockery
RT
Sat, 30 Nov 2019 19:05 UTC
Jeremy Clarkson Thunberg
© Global Look Press / Planet Photos and Reuters / Carlo Allegri
Jeremy Clarkson and Greta Thunberg
Jeremy Clarkson is piggish, childish, and uncool. But people like him because, despite what woke puritans would have you believe, people still love cars and don't care about nonsense like "toxic masculinity."

An interview with Jeremy Clarkson by The Independent was never going to be a friendly exchange. Clarkson has built a career out of mocking the social justice proclamations of the liberal newspaper's bedfellows, and the Independent unloaded a woke broadside at the 'Grand Tour' host the moment he swaggered into the room.

Describing the show as "schoolboy sniggering from a trio who have drawn much criticism over the years for encouraging toxic masculinity and cracking colonial-style jokes," the Independent went on to suggest that "the public is finally tiring of his schtick," and noted that it's "tough to justify" a car show in 2019, when the European Parliament has declared a "climate and environment emergency."
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Bizarro Earth

The murdered Armenian priest in Syria and the roots of hatred and genocide of its Christians

Steven Sahiounie
InfoBrics
Sat, 30 Nov 2019 15:35 UTC
syria
Father Hovsep Bedoyan, the head of the Armenian Catholic community in Qamishli, and the priest's father, Abraham Bedoyan, were killed November 11, on the road leading from Qamishli to Deir Ez Zor, were they were headed to check on the rebuilding of the Forty Martyr's Armenian Apostolic Church in Deir Ezzor, which was destroyed in 2014 by terrorists who targeted Christians and churches. Deacon Fati Sano of the Al-Hasakeh church was injured in the attack when the car was ambushed at a checkpoint by masked gunmen on motorcycles, which shot at point-blank range. The car they drove was inscribed with the Armenian Church's logo. The same day, a series of bomb blasts in Qamishli occurred, targeting the Armenian Catholic church, an Assyrian Christian-owned business, and a Catholic school, killing at least 6 people and wounded 22 others. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians lived in Syria, mainly in the province of Aleppo prior to 2011; however, after the constant targeting of Christians by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) beginning in 2011, thousands have fled and many hundreds went to Armenia, who offered the Syrians a visa, when most of the world had shut its doors to them.

Comment: See also:

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X

AG Barr says Epstein died via 'series of coincidences', ends all conspiracy theories forever

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Sat, 23 Nov 2019 00:00 UTC

Comment: Imagine our shock...


AG Barr
© twitter.com
US Attorney General William Barr
In an interview with Associated Press, US Attorney General William Barr put all conspiracy theories to rest once and for all by assuring the world that alleged sex trafficker and alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's death was simply the result of a very, very, very long series of unfortunate coincidences.

"I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups," Barr told AP on Thursday.

This perfect storm of unlucky oopsies include Epstein being taken off suicide watch not long after a previous suicide attempt and shortly before his successful suicide, suggestions that the first attempt may have actually been an assault via attempted strangulation inflicted by someone else, two security guards simultaneously falling asleep on the job when they were supposed to be checking on Epstein, one of those guards not even being an actual security guard, security footage of two cameras outside Epstein's cell being unusable due to a mysterious technical glitch, at least eight Bureau of Prisons officials knowing Epstein wasn't meant to be left alone in his cell and leaving him alone in his cell anyway, Epstein's cellmate being transferred out of their shared space the day before Epstein's death, Epstein signing a will two days before his death, unexplained injuries on Epstein's wrists and shoulder reported by his family after the autopsy, and a forensic expert who examined Epstein's body claiming that his injuries were more consistent with homicide than suicide.

Comment: Common sense says there's more to Epstein's death than presented; thus whitewashed assessments are suspect. Epstein was the tip of an iceberg and just that idea alone is enough to not trust the 'evidence' nor Barr's conclusions. Barr was in fact directly intimately involved (twice) in Epstein's 'career'. Did he capitulate? If so, why and for whom?

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Bad Guys

US abuses justice systems to target its enemies, like it did with Huawei - Assange's father


RT
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 09:52 UTC
Assange supporters
© REUTERS / Luis Cortes
Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange protest in Mexico City.
The incarceration and extradition trial of Julian Assange is one of many examples of the US abusing the legal systems of other countries to target its political enemies, said John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks' founder.

Assange is currently held at a top security UK prison pending a hearing on extradition to the US. An American court wants him on espionage charges that may effectively result in imprisonment for life. Assange's case is one of many in which Washington puts pressure on other nations to abuse their legal systems to persecute people that the US government doesn't like, Assange's father believes.

The situation with Assange is similar to what happened to other people in Washington's crosshairs, Shipton told an audience at the University of Cologne on Saturday.

One similar case he cited is that of Huawei Chief Financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Canada on a request from the US. Like Assange, she is fighting an extradition request by the US, which accuses her of financial fraud in relation to violations of anti-Iranian sanctions imposed by Washington.
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