The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
– China Crashes Most Since 2007 Amid “Panic Sentiment”; Over Half Stocks Suspended, PBOC Promises “Liquidity Support” (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
*CHINA TRADING HALTS LEAVE 54% OF ENTIRE STOCK MARKET FROZEN, CHINA’S SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX FALLS 8%, MOST SINCE 2007
There’s “panic sentiment” currently in our stock market with “unreasonable selling” pressure – China’s stock regulator spokesman. PBOC TO KEEP SUPPORTING CHINA SEC. FINANCE FOR STABLE STK MKT…
– The Greferendum Shocker: Tsipras “Intended To Lose” And Is Now “Trapped By His Success” (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
Call it game theory gone horribly chaos theory.
It all started with a report by the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose release of on the record comments by Yanis Varoufakis (which we noted was rather surprising) that Greece was contemplating a parallel currency and potentially nationalizing Greek banks over the weekend, was supposedly the catalyst that got the Greek finmin fired. As a reminder, this is what Varoufakis told AEP on Sunday night: “If necessary… issue parallel liquidity and California-style IOU’s, in an electronic form. We should have done it a week ago.” And this is what the WSJ said on Monday morning:
… the premier decided to act after Mr. Varoufakis told a U.K. newspaper late Sunday that Greece might introduce a parallel currency and electronic IOUs similar to those issued previously in California. Mr. Varoufakis quickly backtracked on his comments to the Daily Telegraph, but his prime minister had had enough, the people familiar with the matter say.
That was the first indication that the wheels had officially come off the Greek wagon.
Read moreThe Greferendum Shocker: Tsipras “Intended To Lose” And Is Now “Trapped By His Success”
– Meet the Immigrants Building Trump’s International Hotel in Washington D.C. (Liberty Blitzkrieg, July 7, 2015):
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
– Donald Trump in the speech announcing his candidacy for President
A Trump company may be relying on some undocumented workers to finish the $200 million hotel, which will sit five blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, according to several who work there. A Trump spokeswoman said the company and its contractors follow all applicable laws. But in light of Trump’s comments, some of the workers at the site said they are now worried about their jobs — while others simply expressed disgust over the opinions of the man ultimately responsible for the creation of those jobs.
“It’s something ironic,” said Ivan Arellano, 29, who is from Mexico and obtained legal status through marriage. He now works as a mason laying the stonework for the lobby floor and walls of what will become the Trump International Hotel.
– From the Washington Post article: At Trump Hotel Site, Immigrant Workers Wary
Donal Trump is a class A clown, but readers of this website don’t need me to tell them that. It’s one thing to be strongly against illegal immigration. It’s quite another to demonize and stereotype Mexican immigrants, the vast majority of whom come here merely to work hard and create better lives for their families. Kind of like the many immigrants working on Trump’s mega construction project in D.C.
Read moreMeet The Immigrants Building Trump’s International Hotel In Washington D.C.
– Florida Man Sentenced to 2.5 Years in Jail for Having Sex on the Beach (Liberty Blitzkrieg, July 7, 2015):
Back in May, I highlighted the case of 40-year-old Jose Caballero, who faced 15 years in jail for having sex on a Florida beach in broad daylight. Here’s an excerpt from the post, titled: Florida Man Faces 15 Years in Jail for Having Sex on the Beach (Still No Bankers in Jail):
This story demonstrates how completely and totally broken the U.S. justice system is. Should this couple have been having sex in public and in broad daylight? Absolutely not. Should there be some sort of punishment? Absolutely.
That said, the punishment should fit the crime in a just civilization, and 15 years behind bars for public sex is more akin to what you’d expect in Saudi Arabia. It’s particularly appalling when compared with the license to commit fraud and steal, which politically connected oligarchs have been granted. After all, who was really harmed by this couple’s act? Sure, some tourists may have had their day temporarily ruined or inconvenienced. A three-year-old girl may have seen something, but would probably have no way of understanding what it was. On the other hand, criminal bankers have demonstrably ruined the lives of hundreds or millions, if not billions, of people across the globe. Yet not a single TBTF executive has been prosecuted. They were bailed out instead.
Read moreFlorida Man Sentenced to 2.5 Years in Jail for Having Sex on the Beach
– Heavy snowfall in Vorkuta, Russia – In July! – Video (Ice Age Now, July 7, 2015):
“Meteorologists report that is very unusual,” says Juan José Cipriano in Spain. “There are so many videos (issued on this fifth of july).”
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2637570&cid=8
– July Snowfall in California (Ice Age Now, July 7, 2015):
This weekend’s storm brought a fresh dumping of snow to the Sierra Nevada.
In the above photo, Yosemite’s legendary Half Dome is coated with powder. (Credit: Yosemite Conservancy/NWS)
Bristol Bay Times, Jul 3 2014 (emphasis added): [T]he sluggish start to a large forecast run was making many people in the industry restless… Naknek-Kvichack district’s run total was about 434,000 sockeye – less than 2 percent of this summer’s expected run of 28.8 million… on the same date in 2014 [it] was already nearly 5 million… Elford saw just one fish hit a net all morning. They were, however, catching jellyfish by the hundreds. Elford says this is strange timing, as jellyfish… signal the end of salmon season.
Alaska Dispatch News, Jul 2, 2015: [Kuskokwim River salmon] returning to spawn is still alarmingly low… [Kings are] dramatically below last year’s count… “Mounting evidence suggests that the 2015 chinook salmon run was early and weak,” Fish and Game managers said… chum salmon also is very low, the Bethel test fishery shows… “The chum salmon run is showing so poorly” [a state biologist] said…”comparable to 1997, which was one of our crash years… It looks really bad.”
Fox San Francisco transcript, Jul 6, 2015 (emphasis added): Several dead sea mammals found along Ocean Beach — In San Francisco, an unusual and sad sight at Ocean Beach today. That’s where several dead marine mammals washed ashore… This part of a troubling trend… Back in May, 3 dead whales washed up along San Francisco beaches… Joey DeRuy: “I took photos of it because it was so unusual“… But that wasn’t the end of his unusual beach sightings. DeRuy: “I kept walking and I kept running into more.” He said he spotted a small dead seal, then a much larger mammal that appeared to be an elephant seal. Several people walking by couldn’t help but stop and wonder what is behind the deaths… DeRuy: “It’s very disturbing, because I’ve never seen so many animals.”
KTVU tweet, Jul 7, 2015: Dead dolphin & seals are latest marine mammals to wash up on Bay Area beaches
H/T reader M.G.:
Eric Holder gets greedy gut job after failing to prosecute ONE greedy gut who caused the crash of 2008……..
What will it take to wake Americans up?
This is appalling.”
More from the “JUST US” department …
– Cronyism Pays – Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job (Liberty Blitzkrieg, July 6, 2015):
Trying to determine Barack Obama’s most corrupt, crony appointee presents a virtually impossible task. Every single person he’s appointed to a position of power over the course of his unfathomably shady, violent and unconstitutional presidency, has been little more than a gatekeeper for powerful vested interests. Obama’s job was to talk like a marxist, but act like a robber baron. In this regard, his reign has been an unprecedented success.
All that said, if anyone is a top contender for the worst of the worst of the Obama Administration, it’s Eric Holder. As head of the Department of Justice, he was the one man who could’ve played an enormously positive role in American society, by punishing those responsible for creating the financial crisis that destroyed tens of millions of lives globally. Instead, he chose to actively protect the financial oligarchs and ushered in a tragic new era for these United States. One in which the world suddenly realized that the U.S. is little more than a glorified oligarchy. Essentially an aggressive Banana Republic armed with nuclear weapons and the swagger of a third world dictator.
Holder’s list of failures and evidence shameless cronyism are virtually endless. I’ve covered many of them on this site. Here are just a few:
– Hard luck story: Inmate’s painful 6-day erection costs NYC $750k in damages (RT, July 6, 2015):
The City of New York has paid a former jail inmate $750,000 after detention center staff failed to address a painful six-day erection which left him impotent. The man said he was treated “worse than a dog” by workers at the facility.
Rodney Cotton, 51, experienced the hardcore symptoms while serving time at the Manhattan Detention Complex.
“It just started hurting,” Cotton told the New York Post. “And I’m like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ It wasn’t going down.”
Seeking medical attention for the painful erection – a side-effect of an anti-depressant medication – Cotton asked to be taken to a prison medical clinic. But he received a stiff reply from staff members.
Read moreHard luck story: Inmate’s painful 6-day erection costs NYC $750,000 in damages
– Shanghai – Lowest temperature in 145 years (Ice Age Now, July 7, 2015):
Expected to get even colder
The mercury dipped to 17.3 degree Celsius in Shanghai on July 6, close to the historic maximum temperature of 15.9 degree Celsius on July 2, 1876, according to wenhui.news365.com.cn.
The weather is expected to get cooler as three typhoons are approaching coastal China, which may bring gales and rainstorms to an already flooded coastal parts of China.
– Kentucky farmers dealing with flooded crops – Video (Ice Age Now, July 7, 2015):
“The flooding is affecting crops including soy beans, wheat and corn in cities along rivers all the way to the Tennessee border,” says this report out of Eddyville, KY. “We’ve had a lot of rain, and it’s now flooding rivers and damaging crops across the area.”
WPSD Local 6: Your news, weather, and sports authority
About 50 acres of soy bean crops in Livingston County now looks more like a river than a crop.
Read moreKentucky farmers dealing with flooded crops – Video
– Ohio – Crop damage from flooding “looks grim” (Ice Age Now, July 6, 2015):
It’s hard to tell whether the corn is going to survive, says expert.
Paulding County flooding has caused significant crop damage. It’s in the middle of being assessed but it looks grim, says reader Kingbum.
– Indiana – Wettest June on record (Ice Age Now, July 5, 2015):
$475 million damage to crops so far. June also was the fourth-wettest MONTH on record since 1895.
The state average of 9.03 inches rainfall surpassed the previous June record of 8.13 inches set in 1958, says the Indiana State Climate Office.
Read moreIndiana: Wettest June On Record – $475 Million Damage To Crops … So Far
– Illinois – Wet weather disrupting the growing season (Ice Age Now, July 5, 2015):
Southern Illinois wheat farmers are behind on harvesting, and, with the continuing rainfall, the quality of the crop is losing value each day,” says thesouthern.com.
Not only are farmers delayed, said Diana Handley, executive director of the Illinois Wheat Association, but the crops are starting to deteriorate because of the wet conditions.
Could be a double whammy
Read moreIllinois: Wet Weather Disrupting The Growing Season
– Norwegian meterologist recognizes that it has been unusually cold in Norway (Ice Age Now, July 5, 2015):
Warns that longer-term weather prospects for July are far from summerlike, with forecasts the worst for Central-Northern Norway.
“As we see it now, the wave of warm weather we expect during the first several days of July will be blown away by a colder type of weather, and we’ll head back into the kind of period we’ve had earlier,” Geir Kjærnli, a senior consultant at the state Meteorological Institute, told website yr.no.
Read moreNorwegian Meterologist Recognizes That It Has Been Unusually Cold In Norway
– Severe freezing forecast for High Andes in Peru (Ice Age Now, July 4, 2015):
“The event seems to be the worst not only this year but also the most significant in human memory in Peru,”says former resident Roman Andrzejczyk.
“This is my own interpretation of the forecasted event of significant fall in temperatures / freezing within a large area of the Andes in Peru,” says Roman. “Obviously it is a local event in a sense.”
“As you can see on the website of the Peruvian meteorological service, the level of warning is 4; the highest I’ve ever seen posted there.
“A real calamity”
“The lowest temperature ever recorded in Peru by a meteorological station was -27 C some years ago. The forecasted event covers a relatively large area of the Peruvian Andes as you can see it on the map. To many villagers who live there ( even up to 4900m above sea level) and are familiar with the winter time frost at night, every night, this is a real calamity, because they don’t have heating /stoves in their huts and water pipes supplying them with uncontaminated water from higher elevations become frozen for almost the entire day.
– Survey says: 35 percent of Americans would expatriate (CNBC, July 1, 2015):
As the Fourth of July weekend looms and Americans prep their grills and ready their fireworks, some citizens are packing their bags.
A recent online poll of more than 2,000 adults by TransferWise, a peer-to-peer money transfer service based in the United Kingdom, revealed that 35 percent of American-born residents and emigrants would consider leaving the United States to live in another country.
This percentage greatly increases for those age 18 to 34. More than half of millennials, a whopping 55 percent, said that they would consider leaving the U.S. for foreign shores. Among them, 43 percent of men and 38 percent of women noted that a higher salary would be a factor in their relocation decision.
…
– US Mint Runs Out Of Silver On Same Day Price Of Silver Plunges To 2015 Lows (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
In the aftermath of the latest breakout of the Greek crisis, Europeans across the continent, not just in Greece (even though with capital controls, potential deposit confiscation and currency devaluation they would have benefited by far the most), scrambled to buy physical gold and silver.
This is what the UK Royal Mint said a week ago, “During June, we experienced twice the expected demand for Sovereign bullion coins from our customers based in Greece.”
Read moreUS Mint Runs Out Of Silver On Same Day Price Of Silver Plunges To 2015 Lows
– Caught On Tape: HSBC Bankers Recreate ISIS Beheading Execution (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
HSBC just can’t seem to help itself. As The Sun reports, as part of a “team-building” exercise, six bankers filmed the fake ISIS-style beheading of an Asian colleague – while yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’. However, given that these were not C-level executives, there has been some consequences – the six bankers have been fired with HSBC noting “this is an abhorrent video and HSBC would like to apologize for any offense.”
Caught On Tape…
– China Bans Use Of Terms “Equity Disaster” And “Rescue The Market” (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
Although it’s not possible to know exactly what the mood is among Party officials in China regarding the inexorable slide in stock prices that’s unfolded over the course of the last three weeks, it’s reasonable to assume that at least some officials in Beijing are in the throes of Politburo panic after watching some $3 trillion in market value disappear into thin (and probably polluted) air.
Amid the turmoil, China has resorted to an eye-watering array of policy maneuvers, pronouncements, and plunge protection schemes aimed at arresting the slide.
Nothing has worked.
Read moreChina Bans Use Of Terms “Equity Disaster” And “Rescue The Market”
– Peak Central Banker Hypocrisy: ECB Warns On ELA “Moral Hazard” (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
On Monday, the ECB ratcheted up the pressure on the Greek banking sector.
The bank holiday is now in its second week and Greeks have been living with capital controls for nine days. The unequivocal results of Sunday’s referendum suggest that the ‘inconvenience’ of the daily limit on ATM withdrawals and the supplier credit crunch that threatens to empty the shelves at Greek stores hasn’t yet been sufficient to force the country into submission.
Read morePeak Central Banker Hypocrisy: ECB Warns On ELA “Moral Hazard”
– European Equity Losses Accelerate: Does This Look ‘Contained’ To You? (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
Does this look contained to you?
Portugal, Spain, and Italy all collapsing…
Charts: Bloomberg
– It Is NOT Priced-In, Stupid! (David Stockman’s Contra Corner, July 6, 2015):
Among all the mindless blather served up by the talking heads of bubblevision is the recurrent claim that “its all priced-in”. That is, there is no danger of a serious market correction because anything which might imply trouble ahead—-such as weak domestic growth, stalling world trade or Grexit——is already embodied in stock market prices.
Yep, those soaring averages are already fully risk-adjusted!
– ECB Board Member Says Introduction Of Another Greek Currency “Most Realistic Scenario” (ZeroHedge, July 7, 2015):
ECB Governing Council member and Latvian central bank chief Ilmars Rimsevics — who earlier leaked that the ECB’s new haircut on ELA for Greece will mean the ailing banking sector must now post “a third” more collateral — says the most “realistic scenario” is now for Greece to introduce “another currency.”
- ECB’S RIMSEVICS SAYS INTRODUCTION OF ANOTHER CURRENCY IN GREECE IS MOST REALISTIC SCENARIO, MAY BE ONE LESS EURO ZONE MEMBER IN FUTURE
Rimsevics also says Sunday’s referendum outcome means Greeks have effectively “voted themselves out of the eurozone.” Here’s more, via Bloomberg:
Read moreECB Board Member Says Introduction Of Another Greek Currency ‘Most Realistic Scenario’