Tag Archives: Brexit

03/30/17

WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN?

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

I think most do not realize how different the world is today from yesterday. Globalism is on life support, the result of Brexit and Trump’s election emphasizing economic nationalism versus multipolarity.

I think the globalist environment could potentially die in the next 60 days. Depending upon which poll one utilizes, the leading candidate in both Italy and France’s national elections are anti-EU. Even if pro-establishment candidates win, the closeness suggests great discord about the current macroeconomic and geopolitical environment.

What does this have to do with markets? Everything.

Since 2008, the vast majority of funds have gravitated to ETFs… ETFs which are primarily capitalization weighted structures where the big get bigger and the small get smaller. Mega capitalized growth issues, which in itself is an oxymoronic term, have greatly outperformed most other asset classes. In my view, this outperformance is a direct result of the globalist environment that grew exponentially under the Obama and current EU administration.

I rhetorically and conjecturally ask if the pathway to outperformance was only this simple by passively investing into some index… As inferred above, passive index investing has outperformed active stock managers since 2008. Some could make the case since 2005.

Yesterday, a WSJ headline stated Blackrock, is that the world’s largest asset manager with $5.1 trillion under management is reducing their exposure to active management in favor of passive ETFs.

What I found interesting, according to the article, active managed funds at Blackrock was only $317.3 billion three years ago and today stand at $275.1 billion, a relative rounding error as compared to their total assets under management of $5.1 trillion.

What happens to the passive investment strategy if globalism does implode? As I opined above, I believe the globalist environment has directly contributed to the capitalization driven mantra, where the mega capitalized growth issues greatly outperformed.

Is this about change? If economic nationalism again becomes the primary global geopolitical and macroeconomic catalyst, yes.

On a lighter note, the Who’s Roger Daltry is supporting both Brexit and bad-mouthed Hillary Clinton. When I read the headline, the lyrics from Won’t Get Fooled Again were loudly echoing:

There’s nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again, no no

Yeaaah!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

To remind all, Peter Townshend penned these words in 1971 in the midst of the social upheaval of that era and the new breed of politicians that all had erroneously thought had come around.

[Note: The 5/26/2006 issue of the National Review declared Won’t get Fooled Again as one of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs.]

Enough of the classic rock history lesson, equities edged insignificantly higher as data indicated crude inventories were not as great as anticipated. There was little reaction to the UK’s formal triggering of Brexit. Treasuries ended nominally lower in yield.

Last night the foreign markets were down. London was down 0.32%, Paris was down 0.11% and Frankfurt was up 0.01%. China was down 0.96%, Japan was down 0.80% and Hang Sang was down 0.37%.

The Dow should open little changed. The 10-year is flat at 2.38%.

06/29/16

Why Does Obama Hate Britain?

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Britain

Coming to the end of the Obama administration, with the wreckage of its foreign policy all around us, the naïve conservatives running the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal are begging President Obama to offer “A New American Deal for Europe.”

“It’s time for the U.S. to get back in the game because America needs a confident, prosperous Europe as a partner to defend the West against the rise of authoritarian regimes and global disorder,” the editorial writers say. In the case of Obama, however, this is like waiting for the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny.

Europe is already dominated by the Germany of Angela Merkel, an agent, or at least a stooge, of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her welcome mat to Syrian refugees has been disastrous for her own country, an unsurprising development considering the fact that Air Force General Philip M. Breedlove had described the exodus of refugees from the Middle East as a form of “weaponization” used by Russia and its ally Syria to destabilize Europe. Breedlove served as the Commander of U.S. European Command.

But rather than confront Russia, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hasaccused NATO of “warmongering” because the alliance is conducting military exercises in order to repel a full-blown Russian invasion of Europe. This is a sure sign of the German government’s desire to accommodate Russian interests in Europe.

Christopher Story, a former economic adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had always warned of Russian-German collaboration in wanting to dominate Europe. His massive volume, The European Union Collective: Enemy of Its Member States, was published in 2002.

Incredibly, Bloomberg reports that Obama is now proposing to use the Brexit as an excuse to replace Britain with Germany as America’s key ally in Europe.

Britain’s decision to leave the EU was a patriotic but dangerous move, not only because Obama is the U.S. President and he opposed Brexit, but because of the global forces now arrayed against it. Billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros, who argued for Britain to “remain” in the EU, now warns, “…the UK itself may not survive. Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, can be expected to make another attempt to gain its independence, and some officials in Northern Ireland, where voters also backed Remain, have already called for unification with the Republic of Ireland.”

A major Democratic moneybags who backs such figures as current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Soros is capable of destabilizing entire countries. In 1992 he engaged in a complex financial transaction that resulted in the Bank of England losing billions of dollars defending the British pound sterling, before having to devalue it.

This time around, his spokesman denies that Soros speculated against the pound, but admits that “because of his generally bearish outlook on world markets, Mr. Soros did profit from other investments.”

Trying to get Merkel off the hook for what has happened to Germany, Soros wrote that while her decision in welcoming the refugees “was an inspiring gesture,” it was “not properly thought out” because the “sudden influx of asylum-seekers disrupted people in their everyday lives across the EU.”

It’s hard to believe this was “not properly thought out,” and that Merkel didn’t know what she was doing. In any case, Soros says “the disintegration of the EU” is now “practically irreversible.” He stands ready to pick up the pieces, making tons of money, and then funneling a major portion of it into liberal coffers. Over the last 32 years,according to their own estimate, the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations had expenditures of more than $13 billion.

From their perspective, the British people were desperate to save what’s left of their nation, whose capital, London, recently elected a Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who has connections to radical Islam.

For his part, Obama said openly that he wanted the British to stay in the EU. Otherwise, he said they would end up at the back of the line for trade deals.

Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, quite rightly blasted Obama for those remarks. But he said at the same time that Putin had behaved in a more “statesmanlike” manner. Putin had just returned from a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and spoke of their growing strategic alliance against the West, consisting of expanding political, economic, and military operations.

Obama’s terrible treatment of an ally is not surprising. Obama views Britain as a white colonial power that oppressed his brothers and sisters of color, and Muslims around the world.

In 2012, it was reported that Obama had removed the bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who rallied the British people during WWII, from the Oval Office, and sent it back to the British Embassy. The White House scrambled to correct that, saying the bust had just been moved somewhere else in the White House complex.

Where does this hatred come from? All roads lead to Obama’s mentor, the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, the man the media haven’t wanted to talk about for seven years now.

Professor Paul Kengor, author of a book about Davis, notes that he “harbored a special hatred for Winston Churchill, who, like [Democratic President Harry S.] Truman, opposed Stalin’s Soviet Union—the country to which Davis dedicated his heart, his mind, his soul, and his pen.” Davis, a propagandist for the Communist Party in Hawaii, had written that “the only people Churchill gives a rap about are the white people of the British Empire,” and that Churchill wanted America to join him in bludgeoning “all other countries into submission.” He complained that Churchill favored a postwar U.S.-UK alliance that excluded the USSR.

Despite Obama’s anti-British mentality, the Journal’s recent editorial said, “An important first signal would be for the U.S. to invite the U.K. to begin bilateral free-trade talks that run alongside current talks with the EU.”

But the Journal editorial writers have to know that Obama has no intention of pursuing that idea. However, Art Harman, who was legislative director for former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), has proposed a bill to do just that. Harman tells AIM that “just introducing such a bill or resolution would send our great ally the message that they can vote according to their best interests without fear that the U.S. would cost them trade if they vote the ‘wrong’ way, and to reassure markets that Obama’s threat will not stand.”

Harman suggests that the bill should be called “The Winston Churchill Trade Continuation Act.”

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

06/25/16

Leftists Find a Socialist They Don’t Like

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

SPLC

Fresh from their attendance at the Left Forum gathering of socialists and communists in New York, officials of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have finally found a socialist they can hate: Brexit murder suspect Thomas Mair, the alleged killer of British MP Jo Cox. The SPLC says Mair has been linked to the “once-prominent American neo-Nazi group” known as the National Alliance.

But strangely enough, the SPLC neglected to mention that William Pierce, the head of the National Alliance, was also the editor of a publication called National Socialist World.

The SPLC seems to believe there is a significant moral difference between socialism based on race—the Nazi version—and socialism based on class, the Marxist version. Otherwise, why would they find one form objectionable and the other worthy of a conference featuring Evelyn Schlatter, deputy director of research of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project?

In fact, however, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism was based on Marxism. “In public,” notes George Watson, author of The Lost Literature of Socialism, “Hitler was always anti-Marxist…” However, Watson notes that Hitler privately “acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition” and stated explicitly that “I have learned a great deal from Marxism…” Watson cites the book, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, by Otto Wagener, who was Hitler’s economic advisor.

In the case of the British Brexit attacker, who allegedly killed Cox because she favored keeping Britain in the European Union, the SPLC cites the  British press in saying that Nazi regalia and literature, including a manual with instructions on building a pistol, were found after searching Mair’s home.

All of this is very disturbing. The neo-Nazi movement here and abroad is full of dangerous characters. But years before the SPLC advertised itself as an authority on such groups as the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, the FBI was monitoring and even infiltrating these groups. Leftist objections to government “surveillance” forced the FBI to curtail the monitoring of extremists.

The FBI used to infiltrate the far-right and the far-left, including such groups as the Weather Underground of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. A Weather Underground bomb factory discovered by the FBI in San Francisco in 1971 turned up bombs, killing instruments, and communist literature, including books by Lenin and Mao.

And yet, the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” project ran an article praising Bill Ayers, who never repented for his crimes, as a “civil rights organizer, radical anti-Vietnam War activist, teacher and author.” It also claimed he had become “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.”

President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice has refused to prosecute Ayers and/or Dohrn for their alleged involvement in the bombing murder of San Francisco police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell in 1970. Dohrn has adamantly denied involvement in the bombing.

The softball treatment of Ayers and Dohrn demonstrates that the media’s designated “experts” on right-wing extremism have a big blind spot. In fact, the SPLC helped inspire an actual terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. offices of the conservative Christian Family Research Council (FRC). This occurred after a homosexual militant discovered the location of the FRC on an SPLC “hate map.” A security guard was wounded before he took down the attacker.

Using Thomas Mair and his link to the National Alliance in their latest successful attempt to drum up some favorable media attention, the SPLC says Pierce turned the group into the most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi formation in America. But it is not considered very significant these days. By contrast, as demonstrated by the thousands in attendance at the recent Left Forum in New York, the organized pro-communist movement, which is based on Marxism, is very much alive. Yet the SPLC mixes among and with them.

What’s more, some groups in the U.S. today considered to be pro-white are aligned with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin and his one-time influential adviser, Alexander Dugin. In fact, former KKK leader David Duke once traveled to Russia and met with Dugin.

Interestingly, the Charleston church shooter, Dylann Roof, had declared in his alleged manifesto, that “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet,” when it came to racist support groups for his planned massacre of black people. The drug-abusing 21-year-old was complaining about a lack of organized support for his views. But the SPLC tried to transform Roof into a global right-wing terrorist by linking him, without any substantial evidence, to a “worldwide white supremacist movement.”

An Internet search by Carrie Devorah determined that Roof’s website was hosted by a Russian server. This was the only evidence of an international connection to the massacre.

Nevertheless, Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was invited to address “the scope of radicalization, and assess what steps can be taken to mitigate the rise of terror via lone wolf attacks and organized terrorist plots” in a June 23 hearing conducted by the Subcommittees on National Security and Government Operations of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

In his testimony, Cohen mentioned how he had previously testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security and had served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.

He said, “We must ensure that the government’s attention to the threat of Islamic extremism does not cause it to fail to devote the resources necessary to combat homegrown violent extremism based on other ideologies.” He added that “All forms of extremist violence are dangerous to our nation and must be vigorously confronted.”

But there was no mention of whether these “other ideologies” included Marxist groups like the ones the SPLC associated with at the Left Forum, or whether “extremist violence” from Marxist-oriented groups is a potential problem.

One of the participants in the Left Forum was pro-terrorist lawyer Lynne Stewart, freed from prison by the Obama administration.

As we noted previously, the SPLC employs the tactic of “partisan tolerance,” meaning that the conservatives who want to protect America and its allies from Islamic terrorists, or even from Russian aggression, have become, in their eyes, the problem.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

06/24/16

This Is Your Victory – Brexit Passes!

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Vote

Brexit passed! My friends in Britain are celebrating and it is a very good day indeed. The spirits of Winnie Churchill and “Iron” Lady Thatcher smile down on Britain today.

Despite all odds, Britain has voted to leave the European Union for better or worse. They voted for freedom and survival. Well done lads. David Cameron has announced his resignation as Prime Minister. Numerous countries are now lining up to leave the EU as well. The pound went through the floor last night and stock markets are tanking all over the world. The Yen is soaring and I would bet gold is through the roof. Oil has fallen below $48 a barrel as well. Good times folks – this is going to be one hell of a ride. Hold on to your butts.

“It’s scary, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said James Butterfill, 41, head of research and investments at ETF Securities in London. “A lot of people were caught out, and many investors will lose a lot of money.”

From Bloomberg:

Sterling slid by the most on record and European stocks headed for the biggest drop since 2008 as trading soared. The yen strengthened past 100 per dollar for the first time since 2013, gold rose the most in more than seven years and benchmark Treasury yields had their biggest drop since 2009.

The victory for the “Leave” campaign prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to resign. The outcome stunned many investors who’d put wagers on riskier assets over the past week as bookmakers’ odds suggested the chance of a so-called Brexit was less than one in four.

The final tally, announced just after 7 a.m. London time, showed voters had backed “Leave” by 52 percent to 48 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc said the result may prompt them to move thousands of jobs out of London. S&P Global Ratings said the U.K. will lose its AAA credit rating.

The price of freedom won’t be cheap here and if you think this isn’t going to affect America, you are a fool.

These are among the most notable moves in global financial markets:

  • British pound falls as much as 11 percent to $1.3229, weakest since 1985
  • Yen jumps 3.2 percent to 102.85 per dollar, after reaching 99.02
  • FTSE 100 Index slides as much as 8.7 percent, most since 2008
  • S&P 500 Index futures slump as much as 5.1 percent, triggering a trading curb
  • Yield on 10-year Treasuries drops 29 basis points to 1.46 percent
  • Gold surges as much as 8.1 percent to $1,358.54 an ounce
  • New York crude oil retreats 3.8 percent to $48.20 a barrel, poised for biggest loss since April
  • Poland’s zloty, South Africa’s rand drop more than 4 percent per dollar, lead emerging-market currencies lower

It will take Britain two years to exit. There will be financial rangling and regulation amendments during this time. George Soros says this is the end of the EU… let it be so. It should never have happened in the first place. No one says it better than my friend Denise Simon: “Populism and Elitism finally lost… the people have spoken and the battle for independence is long and hard but ultimately sweet. Citizens are disgusted with being ruled by Belgium.” May the same come to America.

I will leave you for now with David Cameron’s resignation speech – it made my day:

“Good morning everyone, the country has just taken part in a giant democratic exercise, perhaps the biggest in our history.

Over 33 million people from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar have all had their say.

We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people for these big decisions.

We not only have a parliamentary democracy, but on questions about the arrangements for how we’ve governed there are times when it is right to ask the people themselves and that is what we have done.

The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected.

I want to thank everyone who took part in the campaign on my side of the argument, including all those who put aside party differences to speak in what they believe was the national interest and let me congratulate all those who took part in the Leave campaign for the spirited and passionate case that they made.

The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered.

It was not a decision that was taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so many different organisations about the significance of this decision.

So there can be no doubt about the result.

Across the world people have been watching the choice that Britain has made.

I would reassure those markets and investors that Britain’s economy is fundamentally strong and I would also reassure Britons living in European countries and European citizens living here there will be no immediate changes in your circumstances.

There will be no initial change in the way our people can travel, in the way our goods can move or the way our services can be sold.

We must now prepare for a negotiation with the European Union.

This will need to involve the full engagement of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments to ensure that the interests of all parts of our United Kingdom are protected and advanced.

But above all this will require strong, determined and committed leadership.

I’m very proud and very honoured to have been Prime Minister of this country for six years.

I believe we’ve made great steps, with more people in work than ever before in our history, with reforms to welfare and education, increasing people’s life chances, building a bigger and stronger society, keeping our promises to the poorest people in the world and enabling those who love each other to get married whatever their sexuality, but above all restoring Britain’s economic strength.

And I’m grateful to everyone who’s helped to make that happen.

I have also always believed that we have to confront big decisions, not duck them.

That is why we delivered the first coalition government in 70 years, to bring our economy back from the brink.

It’s why we delivered a fair, legal and decisive referendum in Scotland.

And it’s why I made the pledge to renegotiate Britain’s position in the European Union and to hold the referendum on our membership and have carried those things out.

I fought this campaign in the only way I know how, which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel – head, heart and soul.

I held nothing back, I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union and I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone – not the future of any single politician including myself.

But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.

I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.

This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly but I do believe it’s in the national interest to have a period of stability and then the new leadership required.

There is no need for a precise timetable today but in my view we should aim to have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative Party conference in October.

Delivering stability will be important and I will continue in post as Prime Minister with my Cabinet for the next three months.

The Cabinet will meet on Monday, the Governor of the Bank of England is making a statement about the steps that the Bank and the Treasury are taking to reassure financial markets.

We will also continue taking forward the important legislation that we set before Parliament in the Queen’s Speech.

And I have spoken to Her Majesty the Queen this morning to advise her of the steps that I am taking.

A negotiation with the European Union will need to begin under a new prime minister and I think it’s right that this new prime minister takes the decision about when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU.

I will attend the European Council next week to explain the decision the British people have taken and my own decision.

The British people have made a choice, that not only needs to be respected but those on the losing side of the argument – myself included – should help to make it work.

Britain is a special country – we have so many great advantages – a parliamentary democracy where we resolve great issues about our future through peaceful debate, a great trading nation with our science and arts, our engineering and our creativity, respected the world over.

And while we are not perfect I do believe we can be a model for the multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, that people can come and make a contribution and rise to the very highest that their talent allows.

Although leaving Europe was not the path I recommended, I am the first to praise our incredible strengths.

I said before that Britain can survive outside the European Union and indeed that we could find a way.

Now the decision has been made to leave, we need to find the best way and I will do everything I can to help.

I love this country and I feel honoured to have served it and I will do everything I can in future to help this great country succeed. Thank you very much.”

04/24/16

Keep Calm Folks – The World Won’t End After Brexit

By: Chris Knowles

Run_on_the_Seamen's_Savings'_Bank_during_the_Panic_of_1857-640px-wide

Run on the Seamen’s Savings’ Bank during the Panic of 1857. Image obtained from Commons.Wikimedia.org

There seems to be a lot of worry, angst and hysteria from the Remain camp about the trade issue and what is going to happen on 24 June after we have voted to leave the EU.

They forget what the 2 year transition period is for. We don’t leave the EU at the stroke of midnight on 23 June, much as many if us would like to. Contrary to all the alarmist talk, every county in the EU that trades with the UK has as much stake as we do to make the transition work. No company wants to lose out on trade opportunities.

On 24 June the negotiations start to make things work. The last thing the EU will want is the massive disruption to trade that Brenainers are fantasising about. European and British firms will continue their primary goal – to make money.

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