Yen to hit 200 vs. the dollar - Kyle Bass

ReutersVideo: "if there is no way out for them, there is no way out for the rest of us - unless we change the way we operate." "The insidious nature of a runaway inflation is that it bankrupts the middle class... the poor stay poor, the middle class (with savings in the banks) get wiped out, the wealthy (with productive assets) do the best" Kyle Bass expects the Japanese yen to weaken significantly against the dollar and says that this is the riskiest time for an investor to be complacent about the markets. Source

Making the Truth Illegal - "Case Closed"

I think the questions we need to ask ourselves and our politicians is why is it that the financial world is ‘regulated ‘ while we, ordinary citizens, are policed? Why do they have regulations to observe, while we have laws to obey? Why are they asked to merely assess themselves  while we are investigated by officers of the law? Who profits from this careful double standard?
By Golem XIV: “Making the Truth Illegal” is the title of the only post I have ever removed from my blog.
I removed it because I was threatened with legal consequences if I did not. (Plus, I would like to add, some of the way I had written the blog post was stupid and could have hurt someone who had helped me.)
The post concerned an article I had written for Reuters which they decided they could not/would not publish.  Reuters pulled the article because they and I had been threatened, by a major European Bank, with legal consequences if they did not. The title of the article was “Cyprus, Magnitsky and the truth about Money Laundering.”
Although I cannot publish the article I can show you how it began and tell you how it is, that the truth it contained was made illegal.
The article began:

Money laundering is the life blood of organized crime.
Without it crime would simply not pay.  But who does the laundering? The easy and obvious answer is criminals. But that is completely wrong and is at the root of our inability to stop it.

USS Carter Hall Assaults Greece

The Slog: The strangely secret itinerary of USS Carter Hall. An amphibious assault landing troop carrier dropped anchor in the harbour off Corfu town last week. The 11,500 ton big guy from the US Sixth fleet was quite happy to publish the fact that it had been in the East Atlantic, and then on a tour of duty throughout the Med, including several Italian ports.
What the published accounts leave out is that the Carter Hall docked at Corfu twice in eight days, putting several hundred marines ashore. This account from a local eye-witness is interesting:
“Standing in line behind a small group of guys [in McDonalds] and being from Los Angeles, I asked this sailor where he was from.  He goes on to tell me that he is from Kentucky and some of the others on their boat are mostly from Missouri, but that no one knows where the Marines they have as passengers came from… he says that this is the last day they are in port, that they were here last week, and that they were told to get out and get a lay of the land and to get to know the culture… I asked where they were heading… he said no one knew as they never tell them that stuff anyway….. this is the first time I have ever seen a US military presence here…”
That’s true. Usually, the Corfu military visitors are Russian.
A potted history of the vessel is equally intriguing: it has been used in the past on Somalian operations. Further, in North Carolina on 25th January , 400 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit integrated with more than 300 sailors on board USS Carter Hall to participate in amphibious squadron/marine expeditionary unit integration and Composite Training Unit Exercises.
On 5th March 2010, Berlin made serious noises about trying to buy Corfu to ameliorate the banksters imaginary fiat Greek debt mountain. But now, of course, Berlin’s prize is Cyprus. Does this perhaps mean that, after Schäuble’s land-grab, Corfu is now an American sphere of influence?

The Country (USA) Is Over

Monty Pelerin's World: Data are hard to deal with when your vision is on the wrong side of it. Those wanting to claim there is a recovery underway are having just this problem. These people either have no understanding of economics or they believe falsely that they can inflate “animal spirits” with their hyped reports and that will initiate a recovery.

There will not be an economic recovery given the economic policies of this country. A recovery is not unlikely, I would argue it is closer to impossible if not impossible. The reasons for this position are not complicated. In short, the nation has become an out-of-control welfare state that is rapidly destroying the incentives to work or create jobs. Government policies appear designed toward this end. One doesn’t need a high IQ or  an advanced degree in economics to understand the problems.
There are innumerable factors responsible for the decline of the US. Only three important ones will convey why the economy is dying:
1. The rule of law and property rights are under attack. 
What do you really own? The depositors in Cyprus believed they owned what was in their bank accounts. They found out otherwise. Bondholders of General Motors believed they were protected by bankruptcy laws when GM was bankrupted by the government. They found out otherwise. Do you own your pension plans and IRAs. Well you always believed you did except now there is talk about confiscating a portion or all of these funds.
How much of your income do you own? For those doing well, let’s say 60%. But that portion is under attack with the “need” for higher taxes and “fair share” gobbledegook. What about Social Security? Although the government sold it as a retirement policy and told you it is yours, the government says in fine print it is not.

Decline And Fall Of The New Rome - 'How long will it take this time around?'

Submitted by Luke Eastwood: Rampant inflation, caused by debasement of the currency, government corruption and nanny state corrective action that makes matters worse. Declining trade, caused by wars to control the empire, massive military over-reach and ever increasing spending on the military – funded by increases in taxation on the citizens, especially those least in a position to pay.
Sounds familiar? The above, paragraph describes not our present day society but that of the Roman Empire from the 3rd century onwards. However, one could be forgiven for thinking I was describing the faltering western economies of America, Japan and Europe.

The similarities between the declining ancient Roman empire and current Western empire are quite striking. Not only are the same mistakes being made by our rulers, but the symbolism and structure of our governments differs remarkably little from that of Rome.

UK Banksters carry on unabashed, unscathed and unashamed + British Queen gets £5,000,000.00 pay rise as the people get stuffed

Nick Cohen: The right's folly lies in its inability to understand that banksters have barely been slapped

The self-pity of the British right swells in inverse proportion to its self-knowledge. Conservatives, of all people, ought to have been horrified when the state used taxpayers' money to prop up lame-duck banks. Conservatives, who shout the loudest about scroungers living off the taxpayers, ought to have been the most concerned about sponging financiers.
In the 19th century, James Mill described the British empire "as a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes". In the 21st, honest conservatives might describe the public purse "as a vast source of corporate welfare for the moneyed classes". Yet honest conservatives have been replaced by paranoid fantasists. Fraser Nelson, a charming man who edits me when I write for the Spectator, and is without doubt my favourite rightwing loon, complains: "It has been almost five years since the crash and still the guilty men are being tracked down and subjected to what seems like a never-ending trial for financial war crimes."

Death And Recession Good For Corporate Profits

Gerald Epstein: Low wages and interest rates create rocketing profits and stock markets Source

Unnatural selection will ruin the UK 2015 General Election - ANALYSIS

The next political bunfight will not be an occasion for outsiders.

The Slog: I am beginning to get concerned about the ‘UK’ ‘General’ ‘Election’ scheduled for May 2015. Not on the basis of who might or might not win it, but rather from the feeling that it looks increasingly likely to be incredibly boring and irrelevant. Given what is likely to be at stake, this might seem like a cavalier judgement; so allow me to expand upon why I think this.

The NWO Wants You And Your Children Dead - Proof

Alex Jones: The globalist master plan is mass extermination of you and your family. They think we are so stupid they openly write books about it bragging . And one last point, they enjoy hurting people. No one will be safe until humanity awakens to this blackest of perils. Source

Anonymous - #Operation Israel (v2.0) - massive world cyber assault in aid of the Palestinians

Crypt0nymous: Greetings World.

During November 2012 Israel's aggression towards the people living in the Gaza strip resulted in the deaths of more than one hundred people. This included thirty children and wounding more than 1000 others. At the time of the aggression, #OpIsrael was launched. Within few hours of the operation launch there were thousands of defaces and hacks, databases released or deleted, dozens of disruptions to government sites and more.
Peace had been achieved for the residents of Gaza and Israel. However, this peace was short lived.

The knockout blow people won’t see coming

'Bottom line, the numbers don’t match up with sentiment at all'

By Simon Black: Have you ever done something really stupid, just because you were in love? Something you look back on and cringe, thinking “why on earth did I do that?”

Of course. Who hasn’t?
Fear. Love. Panic. Exuberance. Jealousy. Desire. These emotions have tremendous influence over human behavior. And when they kick in, they skew our judgment and cause us to do things that can only be characterized as highly irrational.
In the world of economics and finance, they call this ‘sentiment’. Consumer confidence, business confidence, investor confidence… these are basically emotional readings. Screw the numbers. To hell with the truth. It’s all about how people feel.
It seems crazy, but it’s true. Right now, for example, ‘sentiment’ is telling us that the euro crisis is over. It’s telling us that the debt ceiling is pretty much resolved. And, after taking five years to reach pre-crash levels, it’s telling us that the stock market is once again safe for the average investor.
Yet the numbers tell a completely different story.

Putin 'Entire eurosystem on verge of bankruptcy'

Press TV: "The banking crisis in Cyprus shows that the entire Euro system has been completely bankrupt and has failed." The comments came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the banking crisis in Cyprus has revealed the unreliability of Western financial institutions. In an interview on Friday with Germany's state-owned ARD television before an April 7 visit to the European nation, Putin accused Cypriot and European Union leaders of undermining confidence in Europe's banks by taxing deposits as part of the island country's international bailout agreement.