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With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump's inner circle to halt the simmering push for war in Aghanistan, North Korea, the Middle East and virtually everywhere else courtesy of Generals Kelly and McMaster, this morning Reuters reported, quoting Defense Secreta Read more.....

With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump's inner circle to halt the simmering push for war in Aghanistan, North Korea, the Middle East and virtually everywhere else courtesy of Generals Kelly and McMaster, this morning Reuters reported, quoting Defense Secretary Mattis that Trump has a made a decision on the United States' strategy for Afghanistan after a "sufficiently rigorous" review process.

However, Mattis did not provide details on when the White House would make an announcement or what the decision was on Afghanistan, where fighting still rages more than 15 years after U.S. forces invaded and overthrew a Taliban government.

"I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous and did not go in with a pre-set position," Mattis told reporters traveling with him aboard a military aircraft to Jordan. "The president has made a decision. As he said, he wants to be the one to announce it to the American people."

As reported earlier in the year, soon after taking office in January the Trump administration began a review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan, which has expanded into a broader South Asia review. After Trump met with his national security aides on Friday to review an array of options for Afghan strategy, the White House said no decision had been made on whether he would commit more troops to America's longest war. However, Trump tweeted on Saturday: "many decisions made, including on Afghanistan".

U.S. officials have told Reuters that the president was expected to be briefed on options ranging from a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to a modest increase. Out bet is on the latter, and scrap the "modest" part: after all, if there was ever a time Trump need a "war diversion" it is now.

Luckily, we won't have long to wait: according to a statement issued moments ago by the White House, "Trump will address our Nation's troops and the American people tomorrow night at 9:00 pm (EDT) from Fort Meyer in Arlington, VA, to provide an update on the path forward for America's engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia."

Anyone harboring any hope that with two generals whispering strategy in Trump's ear, and with anti-interventionist Bannon out of the picture, that Trump will announce an accelerated withdrawal of US troops from the war-battered country, should probably not hold their breath. Meanwhile, keep a close eye on Mattis, Kelly and McMaster: once Trump announces the inevitable boost in military activity in Afghanistan first (and soon, everywhere else), it will be the three generals who - together with Goldman Sachs when it comes to domestic policy - are now officially in control of the U.S. executive branch.

It was two years ago, in June of 2015, when just as the Shanghai Composite was flirting with 5,000 and when literally the local banana stand guy was trading stocks, that the Chinese stock bubble burst, unleashing an unprecedented selling spree, a 40% drop in just two months, and Beijing's nationalization of the stock market, courtesy of the domestic plunge protecti Read more.....

It was two years ago, in June of 2015, when just as the Shanghai Composite was flirting with 5,000 and when literally the local banana stand guy was trading stocks, that the Chinese stock bubble burst, unleashing an unprecedented selling spree, a 40% drop in just two months, and Beijing's nationalization of the stock market, courtesy of the domestic plunge protection team, the China Securities Regulatory Commission also known as the "National Team".

The decision by local authorities to effectively shut down price discovery had a huge confidence crushing impact on local investor confidence. As Gavekal Research put it overnight, "the lack of trust was crystallized by the decision in the summer of 2015 to “shut down” the equity markets for a while and stop trading in any stock that looked like it was heading south. That decision confirmed foreign investors’ apprehension about China and in their eyes set back renminbi internationalization by several years, if not decades."

Understandably, with the realization that China (or any other nation for that matter), no longer has a an efficient, discounting stock market, but merely a policy tool meant to inspire confidence on the way up, and punish short sellers and "speculators" on the way down, the China Securities Regulatory Commission kept a low profile: after all why remind traders and investors that the local market only exists in the imaginations of several Beijing bureaucrats who sit down every day to decide the "fair value" of all market-traded equities.

That changed last week, when for the first time in years, the Chinese Plunge Protection Team broke its silence and said that "state meddling has successfully stabilized China’s US$7 trillion stock market by curbing volatility and steering valuations to rational levels."

For those stunned by the idiocy in the circular statement above, don't worry it's not just you: China indeed just said that the local market has become more efficient as a result of more manipulation. What is far more shocking, however, is that most central bankers around the world would agree with this statement.

As SCMP adds, in this rare move to comment on the market performance, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said in a statement on its website on Tuesday that the gauges tracking the nation’s big-cap blue-chip stocks beat the world’s other major benchmarks such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and UK’s FTSE 100 Index in the first seven months of the year. In spite of the outperformance, the valuations were still lower than the global peers, it said.

It did not say that the "valuations" would be whatever the CSRC decided they should be, and not a penny less or more. That much was assumed.

Here are some striking facts showing what state intervention in quote-unquote markets looks like: within the 140 trading days in the period, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index had not closed up or down by more than 2% and registered only eight days with daily movement exceeding 1 per cent, the CSRC said in the statement.

Clearly unaware of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and what "price discovery" means, the Chinese regulator produly attributed the tame market performance to state-linked funds, which were created during the equity crash in 2015 to shore up stocks, and said maintaining market stability was the pre-condition for carrying out reforms. In other words, China's stock market will never again be allowed to suffer a crash, and in the process, the whole concept of a fair and efficient market has been thrown out of the window.

“The CSRC has put the prevention against financial risks at a more important position and taken a series of strong measures to rid any potential risks in collaboration with relevant departments,’’ the regulator said in the statement.

To be sure, nothing about the above statement is a surprise: even after the 2015 market rout that almost erased $5 trillion in market value, the state funds, also known as the "national team", continue to frequently interfere and meddle in the market, usually in the last hour of trading when an "inexplicable" force sends the stock from sharply lower to just barely in the green, in the process "restoring confidence" in the stock market, or so they think. The most prominent case this year was January 16, when the Shanghai Composite almost recouped an intraday loss of as much as 2.2 per cent in the last 30 minutes of trading to end the day only 0.3 per cent lower. The miraculous recovery happened shortly after Beijing ordered "no market selloffs during Xi Jinping's Davos Trip, and sure enough...

... that's precisely what happened.

Unlike the US, China is not ashamed to admit that there is no such thing as "price discovery" in its stock market, where everything is a function of daily government intervention. State-linked funds, mainly operated by China Securities Finance and Central Huijin investment, are estimated to hold stocks worth about 1 trillion yuan (US$150 billion) now, according to fund tracker Howbuy.

And if Beijing has to hold 1 trillion yuan in stocks when the "market" is stable, one wonder what will happen when things start turmoiling once again: will Beijing simply nationalize the entire stock market during the next market crash?

Meanwhile, it did not take long for the adverse consequence of China manipulating its market to emerge: while state intervention reduced price swings in what until recently was the world’s most volatile emerging stock market, it has come at a cost of waning trading activities among retail investors, who make up 80% of transactions. The number of new investors is growing at the slowest pace in almost two years, and turnovers remain down 80% from the all-time high, as nobody has any confidence or trust left in any displayed "price."

Just like in the US, the 100-day volatility on the Shanghai Composite fell to a record low of 8.6 in May and it currently stands at 9.3, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. China’s CSI 300 Index of the nation’s 300 most valuable companies climbed 13 per cent in the January-to-July period, outpacing Dow Jones Industrial’s 11 per cent gain and FTSE 100 ’s 3.2 per cent advance.

As long as China, along with every other central bank, continues to supress volatility artificially, it is unlikely that any major market turmoils will emerge. The flipside is that the longer China, and other developed nations, kick to can on realizing fair market value, the more dire the collapse will be when (or maybe if) price discovery is once again permitted.

In the 50 years since the first Krugerrand was minted in South Africa, the gold coins have turned out to be one of the best investments in the country.

As Bloomberg reports, the Krugerrand originally sold for 27 rand (then worth $35) back in 1967. One ounce of gold is now worth 16,840 rand ($1,273), Read more.....

In the 50 years since the first Krugerrand was minted in South Africa, the gold coins have turned out to be one of the best investments in the country.

As Bloomberg reports, the Krugerrand originally sold for 27 rand (then worth $35) back in 1967. One ounce of gold is now worth 16,840 rand ($1,273), boosted by a combination of rising global gold prices and a depreciating local currency.

Since 2000, the rand value of the coin has outperformed local property, the stock market and gold priced in dollars...

Which is exactly what it should do as a preserver of wealth as faith in fiat dissolves.

However, there are further fundamental reasons to support gold gains from here...

Gold supply from mines has fallen "dramatically" this year, bolstering prices of the safe-haven asset in the face of geopolitical tensions, ANZ said in a note on Thursday.

"Growth in mine output is at its lowest point since the financial crisis, with risks only getting greater," wrote ANZ's senior commodity strategist, Daniel Hynes.

Gold production has fallen 2 percent in the first five months of 2017 from the same period a year ago, Hynes added, citing data from the World Bureau of Metal Statistics. Production in the month of May alone was down 3.1 percent from a year ago. Changing government policies in producing countries are creating uncertainties and hitting supply, said Hynes.

And as PiercePoints details, today’s prices (red dotted line below) are not much above production costs for a majority of mines. The average mine pays $1,083 to pump out an ounce of gold, leaving a couple hundred dollars of profit at current rates.

The chart above shows the global cost curve for gold mining — in terms of all-in costs. That includes operating costs, sustaining capital at mines, and development costs to bring new ounces of production online.

That equates to under a 20% profit margin. Not terrible, but not likely to spur a lot of new mine development.

Outspoken exposer of the establishment smoke and mirrors, economist John Williams spoke with USA Watchdog's Greg Hunter this week in a far-ranging interview from Trump impeachment to economic collapse and from the demise of the dollar to physical gold ownership as the "ultimate hedge."

“A big factor in the dollar’s value is political stability or the perceived political stability. Right now, you have a circumstance in Washington where there is tremendous political discord. I can’t remember seeing anything like this in the past.

 

The President has effectively had his options shut off in terms of moving the economy. I was looking for him to get elected because of the weakness in the economy. . . . This intensifies the problems for the economy, but I can tell you right up front it’s a big negative for the dollar...

 

If you have a move for impeachment for the President, that will tank the dollar.”

It appears the trend is in place for sure...

What does John Williams’ gut tell him to do before this Fall?

Williams says,

“I would be out of the stock market, and I’d have my money in gold. I mean physical gold, physically owning the gold...

 

Suppose the things I am looking for begin to break. You may see rioting in the streets. You may see disruptions in the supply chains to grocery stores...

 

Gold is the ultimate hedge against all the craziness in the world and very bad financial markets, dangerous currency markets and bad inflation.  Physical gold is the ultimate hedge because it retains its value over time... I have been looking for it to go higher, and it is going to go a lot higher as the circumstances deteriorate."

Williams conclude rather ominously...

"As the dollar plummets, so will U.S. stock prices. They are heavily supported by the influx of capital from abroad...

 

Given the underlying fundamentals in the markets and in the economy, I think all the components are in place for one of the great financial panics of all time."

Judging by the recent moves in markets, they are inching that way...

"Bannon the Barbarian" has been spending a lot of time talking to reporters since being fired by President Donald Trump on Friday. During an interview with Bloomberg, his first after being relieved of his duties as Trump’s chief strategist and returning to his former leadership role at Breitbart, Bannon claimed that he was going “to war” for Trump, and that he w Read more.....

"Bannon the Barbarian" has been spending a lot of time talking to reporters since being fired by President Donald Trump on Friday. During an interview with Bloomberg, his first after being relieved of his duties as Trump’s chief strategist and returning to his former leadership role at Breitbart, Bannon claimed that he was going “to war” for Trump, and that he would marshal the resources of Breitbart, the Government Accountability Institute and the power and rage of Trump's base against any establishment Republicans and Democrats who stand in the way of the president’s nationalist agenda.

He repeated his warnings against establishment Republicans during an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday, saying that the president's enemies in Congress should either fall in line or risk being targeted.

“In an interview in Washington on Saturday, Bannon warned Republican leaders to enthusiastically support Trump’s priorities on taxes, trade and funding a massive border wall — or risk the wrath of the president’s base, including Breitbart, to which Bannon returned Friday as executive chairman.”

If Republicans enthusiastically support Trump’s priorities on taxes, trade and funding a massive border wall, everything will be “sweetness and light,” Bannon said. However, he doesn’t expect moderates to capitulate so easily.

“'If the Republican Party on Capitol Hill gets behind the president on his plans and not theirs, it will all be sweetness and light, be one big happy family,’ Bannon said. But Bannon added with a smile that he does not expect “sweetness” anytime soon — and described the turbulent political moment in the Republican Party and the country as a necessary battle over Trump’s priorities.”

In what sounds like an implicit threat against Gary Cohn and the other purported “globalists” in Trump’s orbit, Bannon complained that the White House has become hopelessly divided on its priorities and agenda because of the ongoing battle between Trump’s Nationalist base and Trump’s more mainstream advisers a group that includes not only Cohn but the President’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

“No administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction about where it should go,” Bannon said, adding that Trump’s base is frustrated by a congressional agenda that has dovetailed more with traditional Republican priorities than the agenda Trump championed."

Several of Bannon’s friends told WaPo that the former top strategist would probably be more effective outside the White House.

“Several friends and former co-workers said that they expect Bannon to use the platform to attack his political opponents, including those he has derided as “globalists” and Democrats inside the White House.

 

‘I think Steve is going to be more effective on the outside,’ said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime friend of Bannon. ‘On the outside, if you are well-funded and you are feared and you have a platform, you are going to be a power player. Steve has all of that in spades.’”

Most agreed that Bannon would probably retain at least some of his influence with the president, who has been known to call former advisers late in the evening after Chief of Staff John Kelly has left for the day.

“With Donald Trump, once he likes you, you’re either in his inner orbit, or you’re in his outer orbit,” said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media and a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. “You never leave altogether.”

To a degree, the White House’s feuding factions represent broader national divisions, Bannon said.

“The tensions in the White House are slightly different than the tensions in the country. It’s still a divided country. Fifty percent of the people did not support President Trump. Most of those people do not support his policies in any way, shape or form,” Bannon said.

Bannon also warned that both Republicans and Democrats weren’t paying enough attention to working people around the country.

“Bannon said both Republicans and Democrats will need to pay close attention to the anxiety among many working people in the country over economic opportunity and national identity, even as they work to settle their turf fights in Washington.”

Everybody in Washington already knows that Bannon’s resources in the coming battle for the soul of the Trump presidency are nearly limitless: He has the backing of the family of billionaire Robert Mercer, an early supporter of president Trump, and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, was an executive on the president’s transition team. Presumably, he’s telling every reporter who will listen about his war plans as a scare tactic. Bannon, who developed a reputation as an untrustworthy leaker at the White House, has never had a reputation for subtlety. 

President Trump has praised Bannon publicly and congratulated his move back to Breitbart, saying “fake news” like CNN could use the competition. 

Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews...maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

But while Chief of Staff John Kelly, Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn and maybe even Kushner and Ivanka Trump are probably celebrating Bannon’s departure from the West Wing, the question is, will Bannon be a bigger threat to the Trump-team globalists from outside the White House than he was on the inside?

Authored by Ken White via PopeHat.com,

Discussions of free speech in America are usually dominated by hypotheticals — or by slippery slope arguments, if you prefer.

The First Amendment unquestionably and broadly Read more.....

Authored by Ken White via PopeHat.com,

Discussions of free speech in America are usually dominated by hypotheticals — or by slippery slope arguments, if you prefer.

The First Amendment unquestionably and broadly protects what we call "hate speech." If you point that out, you get hypotheticals in return. "Really? So, the day that Nazis march the streets, armed, carrying the swastika flag, sieg-heiling, calling out abuse of Jews and blacks, some of their number assaulting and even killing people, you'll still defend their right to speak?" That literal parade of horribles is invoked when free speech defenders talk about anything from bigot college kids acting out to Alt-Right racism online.

We free speech defenders are just as quick with hypotheticals; it's built into our worldview. "Really? So you'd give the state the power to choose what speech is acceptable and what speech isn't, and use its vast power to punish the difference? You're comfortable giving it that power, even though some day that state might be controlled by an implacable enemy of everything you believe in, a tyrant who overtly relishes the power to punish people who think like you do, encouraged by supporters who hate you?" The unprincipled-tyrant-that-could-be is a staple of First Amendment rhetoric.

Hypotheticals - called slippery slopes when you're dismissing them - are supposed to require some imagination, are supposed to involve some projection about how current events could deteriorate to an ugly future scenario. How will it change our thinking when that ugly future is now?

Last weekend the hypotheticals about how far the Alt-Right might go collapsed into a grim reality. Literal Nazis marched the streets of an American city, calling out Jews and blacks and gays, wielding everything from torches to clubs and shields to rifles, offering Nazi slogans and Nazi salutes. Some of their number attacked counter-protesters, and one of them murdered a counter-protester and attempted to murder many others. This is the "what if" and "how far" that critics of vigorous free speech policies pose to us as a society.

So, too, has the malevolent government we fear come to pass. We have a President elected on a platform of denouncing the press, "investigating" protest movements, and "opening up" libel laws (however little he can actually do so). We have an administration and its powerful, megaphone-equipped sycophants who define entire diverse protest groups — Black Lives Matter, as one example — by the violent actions or rhetoric of a tiny fraction of their members, and suggest that the state should treat the whole based on that part. (This, ironically, is exactly what the Nazis are now complaining that people are doing.) Rhetoric from officials and their media supporters about protest groups is full of accusations of incitement of crime and group criminality and conspiracy. Across the country, conservative legislators rush to craft statutes to protect people who run over protesters with cars. The NRA, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country, is putting out chillingly totalitarian propaganda videos to gun owners portraying protest against the regime as uniformly violent and criticism of the President as "inciting" that violence, and exhorting them to defend themselves and the regime from the violent protesters and their inciters. And we have a President who seems to respect no American norms.

What do we do when we near the bottom of the slippery slope?

These are hard times. Our values should be our beacons to lead us through them. Those values include due process, the rule of law and equality of all people before it, and freedom of speech and worship.

The Nazis, whether armed with rifles or clownishly clad in khakis, stand against our values - they stand for the proposition that some of us are less American than others by birth, and that America must be "preserved" to the tastes of a particular narrow ethnic prejudice. Nazis attacking and threatening our fellow Americans threaten not just their immediate targets but the foundations of everything we've built. Decent Americans should speak, organize, and lead against them. This is the end of another classic hypothetical — what would you do if America's most shameful ancient wrongs were resurgent? What would you do if the Nazis started marching again?

But you cannot destroy a value in order to save it. Nazis — like terrorists — hope that we will abandon principles and fundamentally change who we are out of fear. Assault is assault, threats are threats, murder is murder, and all of them should be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. The allowance for self-defense by those threatened by Nazis should reasonably be generous. But despicable speech is protected by the First Amendment, and should remain so. Our present circumstances show why it is sheer terrified madness to entrust a broad power to prevent or punish speech upon a fickle state. We've flirted with that madness of abandoning rights in pursuit of safety for our nation's whole life. The flirtation has turned sordid and degrading during the War on Crime and frankly self-destructive after 9/11. It would be philosophical suicide to hasten it now by giving a government — a visibly terrible and amoral government — the power to regulate speech.

This is the final hypothetical come to pass: if the state asked you to give up freedoms in exchange for a dubious promise it would make you safer, would you do it? Would you convince yourself that the state would only use the power against Them, and not you?

We're a long way from perfect. But we are better than this place we find ourselves. We can climb out of it.

Residents of Japanese coastal towns are holding evacuation drills as North Korea warned Sunday that the upcoming US-South Korea military exercises are "reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war."

Read more.....

Residents of Japanese coastal towns are holding evacuation drills as North Korea warned Sunday that the upcoming US-South Korea military exercises are "reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war."

Nearly 130 people took part in the drill in Kotoura, which has a population of 18,000, a town official said. Reuters reports that for 10 minutes, people ducked down covering their heads with their arms. Many of those taking part said they were worried. North Korea has in the past threatened to attack Japan, a staunch U.S. ally and host to U.S. military bases.

As sirens blared from speakers in the town of Kotoura, children playing soccer outside ran to take shelter in a school, along with their parents and their team coach.

"I've been concerned every day that something might fall or a missile could fall in an unexpected place due to North Korea's missile capabilities," said the coach, Akira Hamakawa, 38.

As a reminder, Japan is the only country in the world to be attacked with nuclear weapons, and so perhaps the threats from North Korea today are a little closer to heart than for many around the world.

Following North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's statement last week that he would "watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees," as US-South Korean military exercises begin, CNN reports that Pyongyang also declared that its army can target the United States anytime, and neither Guam, Hawaii nor the US mainland can "dodge the merciless strike."

The messages in Rodong Sinmun, the official government newspaper, come a day before the US starts the Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercises with South Korea.

"The Trump group's declaration of the reckless nuclear war exercises against the DPRK ... is a reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war," Rodong Sinmun said, using the acronym for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the nation's official name.

 

It described North Korea as the "strongest possessor" of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the US mainland from anywhere.

 

"The Korean People's Army is keeping a high alert, fully ready to contain the enemies. It will take resolute steps the moment even a slight sign of the preventive war is spotted," it said.

China has urged both Washington and Pyongyang to tone down the rhetoric, warning via the government's mouthpiece Global Times...

"The drill will definitely provoke Pyongyang more, and Pyongyang is expected to make a more radical response," it said in an editorial.

 

"If South Korea really wants no war on the Korean Peninsula, it should try to stop this military exercise."

Kim's threats come after both US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis said last week that the US was keeping military options on the table in dealing with North Korea.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Back in July, Fox News columnist, Steve Kurtz, asked the question regarding the 25th amendment: Constitution or Coup? But that wasn't the first time the 25th amendment was mentioned by democrats. They've been pining to use it to remove Trump from the day he took office.

Since the eve Read more.....

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Back in July, Fox News columnist, Steve Kurtz, asked the question regarding the 25th amendment: Constitution or Coup? But that wasn't the first time the 25th amendment was mentioned by democrats. They've been pining to use it to remove Trump from the day he took office.

Since the events in Charlottesville, this narrative has exploded inside the media, with one story after the next calling for the removal of the President under the terms of the 25th amendment.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Here is a collogue of media headlines, asking whether America should remove its President in less than 1 year from being elected. This is just a sample. I could've posted dozens of headlines if I wanted to.

Defenders of Trump will point out that his behavior has been consistent over decades and what you're seeing now is merely a continuation of his eccentric demeanor. In a CNN program this morning, CNN's Brian Stelter, joined by WaPo's Carl Bernstein and two other Never Trumpers, asked whether the President should be removed from office using the 25th amendment. Bernstein said it should be the primary goal of the media to get republicans on the record calling for his removal, emphatically believing the President was mentally ill.

Stelter posed the question to his audience: "Is the President of the United States a racist? Is he suffering from some kind of illness? Is he fit for office? (feigns fake concern) And if he's unfit, then what?"

In summary, Trump could not win the election -- because he was a joke. Trump ended up winning, but only thanks to Russian hackers. Since Trump was helped by Russian hackers, he must've colluded with them. If Trump colluded with them, he should be impeached (cue Muller). Since the Mueller investigation is taking forever, let's remove him for daring to suggest that ANTIFA thugs, who regularly beat up people for exercising free speech, were bad actors.

Notice how Stelter posed his multi-tiered question, leading with 'Is Trump a racist?' Get the audience to first agree to something they've been programmed to believe, and then the rest will fall into place -- sales 101.

In short...

The deep state is winning.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 19, 2017

Authored by Eugene Etsebeth via CoinDesk.com,

Eugéne Etsebeth is an ex-central banker who was employed as a technologist at the South African Reserve Bank from 2013 to 2017. During his time at the reserve bank, he notably chaired the virtual currency and distribut Read more.....

Horror Vacui. Nature abhors a vacuum. So do humans. Where there is a lack of knowledge, or a lack of answers, humans will make up stuff to fill the void. That might be comforting, but it can be dangerous. It is how superstitions are created, and it also can be the genesis for everything from racism to social division, strife, and violence. It is the sort of thing that gets "witches" burned at the stake.

This place, which is to say the Comments Section, never ceases to amaze! Simi Read more.....

Horror Vacui. Nature abhors a vacuum. So do humans. Where there is a lack of knowledge, or a lack of answers, humans will make up stuff to fill the void. That might be comforting, but it can be dangerous. It is how superstitions are created, and it also can be the genesis for everything from racism to social division, strife, and violence. It is the sort of thing that gets "witches" burned at the stake.

This place, which is to say the Comments Section, never ceases to amaze! Similar to other Open Comment sites, it tends to gather a specific type of person and then structures itself into a uniform community, with nary a dissonant voice. Years ago Tyler told me that less than 1% of the readership wrote comments. That was back when the site was primarily financial. I don’t know what the percent is today, but I would guess the demo has changed, and many who once came for financial insight now just visit occasionally for a few laughs. So long as there are clicks and eyeballs, it’s all good. The cash register still rings.

I wonder if the vocal membership ever stops to ask themselves why they think what they think, and what has convinced them to believe the most outlandish things? Do they really know what they think they know, or do they just assume a set of beliefs that has some odd internal psychological agenda, but about which they really know absolutely nothing?

Never have so many been so wrong about that which they are so sure. Yes, I’m talking to you with your endless conspiracies and your chemtrails and your Deep State and your debilitating fear of your own shadows---you know, because those shadows just might be CIA-generated ninja assassin 2D holograms armed with mini-HAARP neural disrupters!

I appreciate some of the folks here are batshit crazy---way too many---and that explains their bizarre world view. Sadly, nothing can be done about them. We’ll forever have them with us. I do believe Tyler gets a good chuckle out of the nonsense you guys produce, and he is expert at pushing your panic buttons. Kudos to him for capturing the moonbat demographic and monetizing it. Other folks, however, who may be sane, but who are viewing all sorts of events from outside of the arena, still become cocksure in their views merely because they had a pre-existing belief and searched the internet until they found something that corroborated it. They call that becoming ‘awake’, or ‘taking the red pill’, but to call a spade a spade, it is simply confirmation bias. One belief then becomes the base against which subsequent events are assessed and analyzed. “This one feels like a false flag” is a function of them assuming all of the previous events they believe were false flags actually were, which of course they were not. Foundations get built on quicksand. That is truly an odd thing, seemingly the result of that aforementioned vacuum, plus a sense of personal victimhood and self-esteem issues. It drives people to manufacture answers, and even bad answers are good enough. There isn’t any quality control, because the mental infrastructure that spews out thoughts is flawed.

This wonderful---and often not so wonderful---internet thing has replaced the old neighborhood coffee shop or greasy spoon diner, the place where like-minded people gather to reinforce each other’s beliefs and to find comfort in belonging. It has never been so easy for an individual to find an echo chamber, to feel they are independent free thinkers by becoming part of a flock. Yes, that is a contradiction, but the point is that vacuum filling, and finding a way to salve the pain of victimhood, is the goal. The internet delivers in a way, and to a degree, no coffee shop ever could.

This site is very much that echo chamber, a kind of cyber neighborhood coffee shop. Folks gather, memes are introduced, gnawed on, embraced, and ‘corroborated’ by posting LINKS to websites that ‘make sense’ (but where the original author likely knows absolutely nothing). Soon a sort of circularity or tail-chasing occurs, where LINKS stumble upon themselves so many times, that something someone somewhere pulled straight from his or her backside becomes gospel.

Once the meme morphs into gospel status, believers congratulate themselves on their sophistication and for ‘figuring it out’. Anyone who doubts is either a ‘paid troll’, woefully naïve, or something worse. It doesn’t matter whether the common song in the echo chamber is melodious or not, only that it fills the vacuum and offers solace to the victims of whatever the injustice from which they believe they suffer. Nobody can really imagine what the world would be if all the dragons were slayed, partly because it is far too complicated, and mostly because the majority of the concepts are wrong from the get-go. In any event, it really is all about the journey, not the destination.

There are countless examples of this process, though I will only mention one. Some of the unmentioned have resulted in needless violence born from pure stupidity (Dylann Roof, Edgar Madison Welch), while some have just served to generate lots of self-inflicted pain in the form of anger and bitterness (just scroll any comment section on this site for proof). One wonders if anger and bitterness do not become a need or an addiction. Certainly plenty of people go out of their way to fuel it and nurse it.

My personal favorite fantasy-turned-fact is the term, or entity, “Deep State”. What the hell do people think that means? That there is some constant cadre of self-appointed folks who run the country or the world? THAT is woefully naïve. Painfully naïve, even childish. It is a silly belief fed by a combination of Hollywood, pulp fiction, ignorance, and insanity, and it is about as real as Star Wars or Men in Black (I know, I know---some here will tell me those are actually documentaries---and they can prove it with LINKS).

The good news is that nobody is as clever as he or she would have to be to be able to pull off any of what so many sad souls believe to be true. A world of 210 countries and 7.3 billion individuals simply has too many variables. The bad news is that despite that lack of omnipotent beings, leaders and power brokers are, in a relative sense, still way above the conspiracy junkies.

So here is a quick overview of the actual State, and while it might be deep, lumbering and somewhat opaque, nefarious it is not:

There are three branches of government, as most learned in grammar school Civics Class. No news there. They check and balance each other. They also try to defend their turf, battling each other. Each branch has some turnover---political appointments or elected officials at the highest level, deaths or retirements, and tens of thousands of GS-employees, who spend careers working under many Administrations.

Most appointments last a maximum of eight years, but generally less. (Under Trump, it can be as little as a week---The Mooch).

Legislators can last longer than someone in the Executive Branch, though there are many one or two term Congresspeople.

Judges can hang around a long time, but there are so many courts at various levels that they have their own intramural competition, which explains why there is an appeals process.

Bureaucrats can linger for 20+ years, but most are just that: bureaucrats. They take a paycheck, do some work, and either go shopping on the weekend or binge watch something on Netflix. They worry about their kids’ grades, or try to remember what time they have to pick up little Noah or Amelia from soccer practice.

The elected officials and the appointees are the ones who push policy, not the bureaucrats, because it is the temporary players whose ego is at play, and who think they have all the answers.

Inside the Beltway, in is in, and out is out. One day a person is a Senior Official with access to the deepest intelligence, policy and military secrets of the nation. The next day, the same person is sitting in his or her pajamas on the couch watching the morning shows, completely out of the loop. Once Administrations change, former officials have a limited shelf life---perhaps six months---where they can be guests on panel shows or the Sunday Talk Shows, though a few land a corner office with an IB or hedge fund who wildly overpays and comes to feel Buyer’s Remorse (aka, they get Eric Cantor’d). After that, they become Jeopardy answers---unless they are really engaging guests on TV or write a best seller. The ones who last longest spend their final years as ‘Photo Ops’ or ‘Selfie Targets’. Lots of people want a picture to frame for their office standing, for example, with Henry Kissinger or James Baker. Bill Clinton has now officially entered Selfie Target status, and Hillary will, too, as soon as she comes to terms with her self-inflicted defeat (this writer has his share of such photos…somewhere, in some closet or box).

Outside of actual government officials, there are business leaders and lobbyists who tend to have longer term influence than political appointees, but even their influence is limited both by the tenure of their position as well as the changing landscape of American business. Competition and technological advancement bring new faces to the fore and old faces fade away. For example, one day Harold Geneen (“Not ‘J’ as in ‘Jesus’, but ‘G’ as in ‘God’”) gives way to Lee Iococca, who gives way to Jack Welch, who gives way to Jamie Dimon, who gives way to Mark Zuckerberg. Influence, or ‘Power’ is rather fleeting.

Even fortunes tend to dissipate with time, as neer-do-well kids eat up the corpus, or inflation makes yesterday’s fortune chump change compared to the newest next best thing. Thirty years ago the Bass Brothers were at the top of the Forbes 400. Remember them? Today, the combined Bass fortune is not even a fifth of Jeff Bezos’ wealth. Paul Ryan might tell his secretary to tell a Bass that ‘I’ll call him back”, but he’ll take Jeff Bezos’ call immediately That’s how it works. How about one of the internet’s bigly baddest Bogeymen, the Rockefellers? ZIRP and risk aversion killed that fortune’s clout. No matter how large the fortune, Bezos and Zuckerberg sped past it like Usain Bolt in an Olympic final. How much clout does the Rockefeller Foundation have compared to the Washington Post or Facebook?

The only thing constant in the halls of power is change. Deep State is a wading pool, with a leak, in the middle of a desert. Power lasts only slightly longer than a Higgs Boson.

If Steve Bannon learned anything during his seven months in Trumpistan, it is likely that he learned Deep State is a silly myth. If he still believed in it, he wouldn’t be going to a relatively small internet media site funded by a single man’s fortune. If Deep State was a reality, a David as small as Breitbart wouldn’t dare trying to stand up to the Deep State Goliath. Of course Bannon might still use the term if he thinks doing so will work to his advantage, just as he plays Pied Piper to the more virulent elements of Alt-Right, when in point of fact he considers them clowns.

Reality is likely disappointing to many. Things like Deep State or Secret Cabals provide excuses to people who fail to succeed. For others, such beliefs are just entertainment, and do no harm so long as they are not taken too seriously. For the former group, however, the ones who use such beliefs as excuses, it can be debilitating and lead to a kind of bitterness that never goes away. Every time I visit this website now, and scroll through comments, I see that bitterness. It is wasteful. It foments anger or rage that can’t be doing a body much good. It is also purely self-inflicted.