JAN 31 16 SIT EC y POL
ZERO HEDGE
ECONOMICS
"Pandora's
Box Is Open": Why Japan May Have Started A 'Silent Bank Run'. Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/30/2016 : "... if
the negative interest rate continues for longer or goes deeper, commercial
banks may have to set negative interest rates on deposits, which would expand
not only the tax on commercial banks, but also on depositors (households and
companies). This could lead to a ‘silent bank run’ via a shift of deposits
to cash (banknotes), which in turn damages the sound banking system by
enlarging the leakage of funds from the credit creation mechanism in the
banking system."
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POLITICS
MEET "THE DECIDERS"...
This “state within
a state” hides “mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act
in the light of day,” says Lofgren, and yet the “Deep State does not
consist of the entire government.”
“Our plutocracy, whether the
hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo
Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but
not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no
concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling
bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn’t even
compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo
Clinic, why worry about Medicare?”
Mike Lofgren, The Deep State:
The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
"Our analyses suggest that
majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the
policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to
democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and
association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise.
But we believe that if
policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number
of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are
seriously threatened."
…
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing
Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,
Princeton 2014
"As a congressional staff
member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top
secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am
describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it
by psychological disposition.
But, like virtually every
employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the
institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the
invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state
that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, 'the
deciders.'
Cultural assimilation is partly a
matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called groupthink, the
chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and
peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by
sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or
invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those
ideas as if they were radioactive.
As in the military, everybody has to
get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing
move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the
institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair
said, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when
his salary depends upon his not understanding it.'"
Mike Lofgren
* * *
As
we previously concluded, for all intents and purposes, the
nation is one national “emergency” away from having a full-fledged, unelected,
authoritarian state emerge from the shadows. All it will take is the right
event—another terrorist attack, perhaps, or a natural disaster—for such a
regime to emerge from the shadows.
As unnerving as that prospect may be, however, it is
the second shadow government, what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren
refers to as “the
Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of
who is formally in power,” that poses the greater threat right now.
Consider this: how is it that partisan gridlock has
seemingly jammed up the gears (and funding sources) in Washington, yet the
government has been unhindered in its ability to wage endless wars abroad, in
the process turning America into a battlefield and its citizens into enemy
combatants?
The credit for such relentless, entrenched, profit-driven
governance, according to Lofgren, goes to “another
government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of
Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions
ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out,
connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose
leaders we choose.”
This “state within
a state” hides “mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the
light of day,” says Lofgren, and yet the “Deep State does not consist of
the entire government.”
Rather, Lofgren
continues:
It is a hybrid of
national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense,
the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department
of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement
of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.
All these agencies are coordinated
by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council.
Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to
most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial
courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of
Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are
conducted.
The final government component (and
possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established
by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional
leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and
intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and
partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when
required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s
emissaries.
In an expose titled “Top
Secret America,” The Washington Post revealed the private side of
this shadow government, made up of 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret
clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian
employees of the government.”
Reporting on the Post’s findings, Lofgren
points out:
These contractors now set the
political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting
the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings
unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register,
and are rarely subject to congressional hearings…
The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in
thrall, but it also
controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political
machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and
Silicon Valley.
As Lofgren concludes:
[T]he
Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance,
firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost
impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is
silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as
they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock:
Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from
its agenda.
Remember this the next time you find yourselves
mesmerized by the antics of the 2016 presidential candidates or drawn into a
politicized debate over the machinations of Congress, the president or the
judiciary: it’s all intended to distract you from the fact that you have no
authority and no rights in the face of the shadow governments.
…
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The
United States Of Crazy Laws. Submitted
by Tyler Durden
on 01/30/2016 : Presented with no comment... apart from Arizona wins!
HERE THE CRAZY LAWS IN EVERY STATE
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Peak
"Sharing Economy" - Syphilis Rates Soar To Record Highs. Submitted by Tyler
Durden on 01/30/2016 : "What's
mine is yours, for a fee," is the mantra of the new normal
"sharing economy," as various segments of our heretofore
under-utilized assets are 'rented' out for the enjoyment of others. However, as
The
LA Times reports, perhaps we are sharing just a little too much. As we
previously noted, sexually
transmitted diseases are on the rise across the nation, but the problem is
particularly acute in Los Angeles County with health officials
pointing the finger at casual sex arranged through social media as "the
perfect storm."
Not only does the county have the most cases, it also
has some of the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in
California and the nation.
Some public health experts have blamed the heavy use of
online dating apps, arguing that
they lead to more casual sex among people 25 and younger, who are the most
likely to be infected and also the least inclined to seek testing.
…
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Trump
Pulls Away From Pack As Iowa Countdown Begins; Hillary Tied With Bernie. Submitted
by Tyler Durden
on 01/31/2016 : America is inching ever closer to putting itself in a position
of having to choose between an avowed socialist and what the Des Moines
Register calls "a smash-mouth game show host" as Trump and Sanders poll
strongly in Iowa ahead of caucus.
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GLOBAL RESEARCH
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WASHINGTOIN BLOG
Targeted
Individuals: what the US .01% MUST do to avoid arrests for obvious crimes
centering in war, money, lies. Posted on January 30, 2016 by Carl Herman
We’ve documented US
government use of harmful and deadly experiments upon the public (here,
here,
here, here,
here,
here, here,
here
for just a few, that the US
tortures people in Orwellian violation of six binding areas of law),
and that the US spies on absolutely everything (here,
here).
We published testimony
of a “targeted individual,” Ramola D, who asked that
we share her story. This is a second request from Ricardo Camilo López.
19-minute TED talk on the history of government secret
surveillance and coercive control of political dissent. This history is
ordinary on Earth: VIDEO URL. https://youtu.be/IWjzT2l5C34
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NOTICIAS UN SPANISH
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PRESS
TV
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