And Another Thing: Chase Was Hit Before July 4th Too…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 14, 2017

Yesterday, I blogged about the silver “flash crash” of July 7, and earlier this week, about the NASDAQ flash crash, but, just in case you might have thought these were nothing but accidental “glitches” from the “coincidence” side of the glitch family, rather from the esteemed branch of the family of deliberately planned glitches, it looks as if things might be leaning definitely to the “deliberate action” side of the equation, according to this article shared, once again, by Mr. G.B.:

Nationwide outage hits Chase bank customers before 4th of July

Chase’s system went down coast to coast, but what’s very intriguing here is the suggestion that Chase might have been dealing with its own glitches, which it was calling “improvements”:

A message on the Chase website explained to customers that the outages were due to the bank “making a few improvements”according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The bank said customers would not be able to access their information or schedule bill payments or transfers.

However, customers reported that entire branches had been shut down Monday, while others complained they were unable to pay their rent and bills, withdraw money from ATM’s, or even access their information over the phone or in person.

Now, as you might have guessed, I have all sorts of wild and crazy high octane speculations running through my head reading this, not the least of which is the thought that “two is coincidence, three is a conspiracy.” On my view that these types of events are the results of some systematic probing of financial cyber-architecture vulnerabilities, then targeting the NASDAQ, a commodities market, and Chase Manhattan, a large international bank, makes a lot of sense.

But that’s not the only thing running through my head, so let’s speculate on the very end of the twig, where the weight of speculation far exceeds the amount of evidence to prop it up.

Let’s posit a hypothetical bank, say, Deutsche-Manhattan-Cheese Banco dei Flaschi di Cesspool, and let’s say that, just before the beginning of August, when the entire country of France goes on vacation holiday, Deutsche-Manhattan-Cheese Banco dei Flaschi di Cesspool announces in the Toulouse Daily Whistle, that it is going to shut down its systems to make improvements just before the next holiday, stranding thousands of Frenchmen at their ATMs and keeping Paris unusually populated for the month of August. That’s quite an improvement, for during this period of being “down,” one might – just as a kind of hypothetical high octane speculation – be able to access the funds that its depositors could not access, and via a variety of cutouts, fronts, and so on, be able to place gobs of trades, make huge amounts of money, keep it all off the books (remember, the system is down – just before the holidays – to make “improvements”), trigger various flash crashes in various markets, and perhaps even target specific equities to be re-evaluated because of the reset when the circuit breakers kick in and halt all the trading.

But of course, nothing like that could ever happen, because we all know that big international mega-banks like Deutsche-Manhattan-Cheese Banco dei Flaschi di Cesspool are cleaner than a Wall Street toilet.

And thank goodness too, because I was beginning to lose my faith in crony finance crapitalism.

See you on the slip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
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About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Record “Wealth” in America: 72% of US businesses are NOT profitable

Source: Sovereignman.com
Simon Black
June 12, 2017

The Federal Reserve in the United States just released a new report showing that “Total Household Wealth” in the United States has reached a record $94.8 trillion.

That’s an impressive figure.

Even more impressive is that Total Household Wealth has increased by $40 trillion since the lows of the Great Recession in 2009.

No doubt there’s probably a multitude of central bankers and bureaucrats toasting their success in having engineered such magnificent prosperity.

And it’s certainly an achievement worth celebrating. As long as you don’t look too closely at the data.

Total Household Wealth is exactly what it sounds like– the total net worth of every person in the United States, from Bill Gates down to the youngest newborn baby.

So when you add up all the 330+ million folks in the Land of the Free and tally up their combined net worth, the total is $94 trillion.

The thing is that the VAST majority of that wealth, especially the incredible growth over the last 8 years, has been from increases in just two asset classes: real estate and the stock market.

In fact, stocks and real estate alone account for roughly 2/3 of the wealth increase since 2009.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Now, simultaneously, we see plenty of other interesting data, also published by the Federal Reserve and US federal government.

Both the Fed and Census Bureau, for example, tell us that over 80% of businesses in the US are “nonemployer” companies, i.e. businesses which only employ one person (the owner), and often provide his/her primary source of income.

Yet according to the Federal Reserve, only 35% of these small businesses are profitable. Most are operating at a loss.

In other words, only 35% of the companies which make up 80% of American businesses are profitable.

You’re probably already doing the arithmetic– this means that a whopping 72% of all US businesses are NOT profitable.

That hardly sounds like record wealth to me.

Shifting gears, there’s the little factoid that an astounding 40% of young Americans are living with their parents– the highest percentage in the last 75 years.

And who can blame them considering student debt in the Land of the Free also hit a record $1.4 trillion three months ago, more than double the amount since the Great Recession.

Speaking of record debt, US credit card debt passed a record $1 trillion, and total US consumer credit hit a record $3.8 trillion last month.

Again, all of this hardly seems like ‘wealth’ to me.

Then there’s the issue of wages, which have remained essentially flat since the 2009 Great Recession if you adjust for inflation.

According to the US Department of Labor, inflation-adjusted wages, aka “real hourly compensation” in the US fell an annualized 0.9% last quarter, and fell a dismal 5.6% in the previous quarter.

Adjusted for inflation, the average American isn’t making any more money.

Once again, this is a pitiful excuse for ‘wealth.’

American businesses aren’t more productive either.

The same Labor Department report shows that productivity in the Land of the Free was flat in the first quarter of this year.

And productivity actually declined in 2016– something that hasn’t happened in at least the last 50 years.

Not to mention total economic growth in the Land of the Free has been pretty pitiful, logging a pathetic 1.6% last year.

And GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017 was just 1.2% on an annualized basis.

The US economy has exceed hasn’t surpassed 3% growth in more than 10-years, and it’s only happen two times so far in this millennium.

Seriously? This is “wealth”?

Look, I get it. Houses are ‘worth’ more than they used to be, and the stock market is much higher.

But these effects are heavily influenced by the trillions of dollars that was conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.

ExxonMobil may be the most telling example.

In early September 2008, just prior to the financial crisis, Exxon had recently reported revenues of $72 billion, with $11.1 billion in net operating cashflow.

For the first quarter of 2017 the company reported revenues of $61 billion and net operating cashflow of $8 billion.

Plus, ExxonMobil managed to add nearly $20 billion in debt to its balance sheet over that same period.

So over 8-years, Exxon is making less money and has more debt. Yet its stock price is actually HIGHER.

More broadly, 66% of the largest companies in the US that have given estimates of their earnings for next quarter have issued “negative guidance”.

Companies expect to make less money. But stocks are near all-time highs.

Does this make any sense? Is that also wealth?

No.

This is nothing more than the result of paper money that has been created by central bankers, allocated to a tiny financial elite, and dumped into the stock market.

It’s the same with real estate. Sure, prices are higher. But it’s not because of fundamentals.

In terms of population, there’s only been a 7% increase in the number of households in the United States since 2009.

There’s been a commensurate increase in the supply of homes as well.

So in terms of supply/demand fundamentals, the average price nationwide shouldn’t be that much higher.

But take a look at this chart, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.

The red line shows interest rates, which have been generally falling since 1990. The blue line shows home prices, which have been rising like crazy since 2012.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot the correlation: record low interest rates mean higher home prices.

This isn’t wealth.

It’s just phony paper.

And as the Great Recession showed in late 2008, phony paper wealth can go ‘poof’ in an instant.

With that in mind, it may be time to consider taking some of that paper wealth off the table and setting it aside for a rainy day.

Read More At: SovereignMan.com
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About the Author

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man. His is about using the experiences from his life and travels to help you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.