Here below I have stacked three of Paul Craig Roberts' recent blog posts, all on the theme of how the U.S. is driving Europe do the U.S.'s will at the expence of their freedom, wealth, and safety. I strongly suggest that you click on the link provided in the first one. It's a real eye opener!

---

---

Washington Is Forcing Its European Vassals To Accept 2nd Wave of Immigrants

---

April 23, 2016 | Original Here | If you wish to receive his newsletter via email go to Original and sign up at bottom.

Washington Is Forcing Its European Vassals To Accept 2nd Wave of Immigrants

The Obama Regime forced the EU to accept millions of refugees from Washington’s failed wars in the Middle East and Africa. Now the Obama Regime is forcing the EU to accept millions of refugees from its failed policy in Ukraine. Europe as we once knew it no longer exists. Washington has thrown the European peoples into the trash bin of history.

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160423/1038492048/ukraine-visa-free-regime-analysis.html

---

Another Letter from the Netherlands

---

April 23, 2016  |  Original Here

Another Letter from the Netherlands

Dear Dr Roberts, As another citizen from the Netherlands, I would like to join Steven who wrote the letter that you sent us today. Like Steven, I am appalled at our Government’s and Parliament’s constant, blind submission to Washington. Even the liberal, progressive press very subtly demonizes Russia on a daily basis, and 9/11 truth is absolutely taboo. And although the Dutch people voted against a treaty with Ukraine in a referendum recently, the Government just put the ‘Nee’ aside, since it was only advisory, and Brussels is keen on implementing the treaty. We also very loyally take part in all of NATO’s utterly provocative ‘exercises’ on Russia\’s very borders. And our Parliament does not have the guts to question this or insist on a definitive MH17 report. You have said it correctly again and again: we are nothing but a vassal state to Washington. On top of it all, this week has seen another shameful event: the Dutch Air Force wants to buy 4 American Reaper drones, and arm them, but the Minister of Defense has told the Air Force not to talk about it ‘because there is not enough money to buy them’; see the article from a quality newspaper, which basically says: ‘DoD tells Air Force to shut up about drone programme.’ http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/defensie-snoert-luchtmacht-de-mond-over-nederlands-droneprogramma~a4283380/ I am outraged. If you would like to use my message, please feel free to do so, but anonymously, of course. Thank you for your relentless excellent work, Best regards, Annelies

---

Letter from Europe

---

April 23, 2016  |  Original Here

Letter from Europe

Dear Sir, Inside of 25 years I’ve observed the shift of the mass-media in Europe from somehow different and somehow independent /original and free as much the official media can be in this “democracy-capitalism” to a “European Media” which is absolutely identical and absolutely uniformity qua content, being different only the name of that media and the country language . Does not matter the language I read (English, Dutch, Romanian, French, Italian…) it is almost the same text, very badly translated from a general source, I suppose. The only “free” journal in the West it is “Le Monde Diplomatique” from France!  Mass media in Europe is an Imperial Orthodoxy of an Orwellian informational terrorism in one absolute monotone monologue of one schizophrenic world. About your Dutch correspondent, he said the truth, but I would like to add that according to my experience a lot of Dutch people don’t agree with the Dutch gov. and Parliament, which are only a machine to repeat what USA/Israel and Bruxelles has to say! The manipulation, brainwashing and the diktat of “political correctness” and “we know better, always” are the perfect picture of our political ruling class. It is sometime worst than some periods of Stalin proletarian cultism or Mao’s so called “cultural revolution. Yes it is a Western democracy “cultural revolution” of His Majesty The LIE!   About anti-Russian propaganda, the insanity has reached the infinite!  Even Shakespeare/Dostoevsky/Kafka and Cervantes are out of words to explain such insanity. To me as a doctor it is crystal clear that all politicians in West are really psycho-sociopaths. No chance left! I can say this because I was living 38 years on the other side of the Iron Curtain, I know perfectly all it was about in all former Communist Socialist systems, but sometime painfully I discovered that the Western democracy (if exists) is worst then that! Therefore I highly appreciate what are you doing. I would like to thank you and to all like you, trying to do something positive for this world.

---

Paul Craig Roberts is just one year younger than me and we both took 4-year degrees from technical universities, mine from Carnegie Tech, his from Georgia Tech. We both took 6 years to get our PhDs, mine in Physics from Brown University, his in Economics from the University of Virginia ...after spending his last year in Oxford. After being a post doc I became a midlevel government employee at the Naval Research Laboratory and Washington, DC, whereas he began as a member of Congressional Staff (also DC) and rose to Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan. At the time I scoffed at Reagan as being a movie actor rather than what it takes to be President of the USA. However, PCR has made the point that Reagan may be the only American President ever to stop a war, rather than start one. And PCR, being an academic had many university appointments and took part in many high-level think tanks, where he met face-to-face all of the neocons that are today pushing for an all-out war with Russia and China …which if it reaches an exchange of nuclear weapons would likely kill us all. For this reason, dear reader, please read my re-post below of PCR’s latest blog and mention it to your friends, because they will never hear of it from the despicable “mainstream media” (who PCR terms “presstitutes”).

---

How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace — Paul Craig Roberts

---

April 18, 2016 | Original Here | If you wish to receive his newsletter via email go to Original and sign up at bottom.

How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace

Paul Craig Roberts

When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev. The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers.

I know about this, because I was part of it. I helped Reagan create the economic base for bringing the threat of a new arms race to a failing Soviet economy in order to pressure the Soviets into agreement to end the Cold War, and I was appointed to a secret presidential committee with subpeona power over the CIA. The secret committee was authorized by President Reagan to evaluate the CIA’s claim that the Soviets would prevail in an arms race. The secret committee concluded that this was the CIA’s way of perpetuting the Cold War and the CIA’s importance.

The George H. W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State James Baker kept Reagan’s promises to Gorbachev and achieved the reunification of Germany with promises that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

The corrupt Clintons, for whom the accumulation of riches seems to be their main purpose in life, violated the assurances given by the United States that had ended the Cold War. The two puppet presidents—George W. Bush and Obama—who followed the Clintons lost control of the US government to the neocons, who promptly restarted the Cold War, believing in their hubris and arrogance that History has chosen the US to exercise hegemony over the world.

Thus was mankind’s chance for peace lost along with America’s leadership of the world. Under neocon influence, the United States government threw away its soft power and its ability to lead the world into a harmonious existance over which American influence would have prevailed.

Instead the neocons threatened the world with coercion and violence, attacking eight countries and fomenting “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics.

The consequence of this crazed insanity was to create an economic and military strategic alliance between Russia and China. Without the neocons’ arrogant policy, this alliance would not exist. It was a decade ago that I began writing about the strategic alliance between Russia and China that is a response to the neocon claim of US world hegemony. http://www.rense.com/general77/tus.htm

The strategic alliance between Russia and China is militarily and economically too strong for Washington. China controls the production of the products of many of America’s leading corporations, such as Apple. China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. China can, if the government wishes, cause a massive increase in the American money supply by dumping its trillions of dollars of US financial assets.

To prevent a collapse of US Treasury prices, the Federal Reserve would have to create trillions of new dollars in order to purchase the dumped financial instruments. The rest of the world would see another expansion of dollars without an expansion of real US output and become skepical of the US dollar. If the world abandoned the US dollar, the US government could no longer pay its bills.

Europe is dependent on Russian energy. Russia can cut off this energy. There are no alternatives in the short-run, and perhaps not in the long run. If Russia shuts off the energy, Germany industry shuts down. Europeans freeze to death in the winter. Despite these facts, the neocons have forced Europe to impose economic sanctions on Russia. What if Russia responded in kind?

NATO, as US military authorities admit, has no chance of invading Russia or withstanding a Russian attack on NATO. NATO is a cover for Washington’s war crimes. It can provide no other service.

Thanks to the greed of US corporations that boosted their profits by offshoring their production to China, China is moderinized many decades before the neocons thought possible. China’s military forces are moderized with Russian weapons technology. New Chinese missiles make the vaunted US Navy and its aircraft carriers obsolete.

The neocons boast how they have surrounded Russia, but it is America that is surrounded by Russia and China, thanks to the incompetent leadership that the US has had beginning with the Clintons. Judging from Killary’s support in the current presidential primaries, many voters seem determined to perpetuate incompetent leadership.

Despite being surrounded, the neocons are pressing for war with Russia which means also with China. If Killary Clinton makes it to the White House, we could get the neocon’s war.

The neocons have flocked to the support of Killary. She is their person. Watch the feminized women of America put Killary in office. Keep in mind that Congress gave its power to start wars to the president.

The United States does not have a highly intelligent or well informed population. The US owes its 20th century dominance to World War I and World War II which destroyed more capable countries and peoples. America became a superpower because of the self-destruction of other countries.

Despite neocon denials that their hubris has created a powerful alliance against the US, a professor at the US Navy War College stresses the reality of the Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. http://sputniknews.com/world/20160414/1037981155/russia-china-cooperation.html Last August a joint Russian-Chinese sea and air exercise took place in the Sea of Japan, making it clear to America’s Japanese vassal that it was defenseless if Russia and China so decided.

The Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu said that the joint exercise illustrates the partnership between the two powers and its stabilizing effect on that part of the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Russian-Chinese relations are able to resist any international crises.

The only achievements of the American neoconservatives are to destroy in war crimes millions of peoples in eight countries and to send the remnant populations fleeing into Europe as refugees, thus undermining the American puppet governments there, and to set back the chances of world peace and American leadership by creating a powerful strategic alliance between Russia and China.

This boils down to extraordinary failure. It is time to hold the neoconservatives accountable, not elect another puppet for them to manipulate.

---

For the last couple of years I have been listening to investment advisor's advice (rarely followed) and what they make of the economy (a few think it OK, but most of those whom I perceive to be the best and brightests forsee a major market crash with grave consequences to both the rich and poor). A few strong indications of this can be found in my previous pair of blog re-posts. Here below I am re-posting an article by Bill Bonner, a very rich and very savvy Republican who nevertheless has genuine sympathy for the working poor. Here he tells us all the best way to save our nesteggs and our cash before our banks crash ...which they certainly will.

---

Original here: http://bonnerandpartners.com/our-favorite-way-to-own-gold/ 

BALTIMORE – We live in a world of sin and sorrow, infected by a fraudulent democracy, Facebook, and a corrupt money system.

Wheezing, weak, and weary from the exertion of trying to appear “normal,” the economy staggers on.

Last week, we gained some insight into the ailment. Something in the diagnosis has puzzled us for years: How is it possible for the most advanced economy in the history of the world to make such a mess of its most basic bodily functions – getting and spending?

Poison Money

By our calculations – backed by studies, hunches, and deep research – the typical American man (it is less true for women) earns less in real, disposable income per hour today than he did 30 years ago.

He goes to buy a car or a house, and he finds he must work longer to pay the bill than he would have in the last years of the Reagan administration.

How is that possible? What kind of economic quackery do you need to stop capitalism from increasing the value of workers’ time?

What kind of policies and circumstances are required to stiffen its joints… clog up its innards… and rot its brain?

Globalization? Financialization? Bad trade deals? Too much red tape? Too many cronies? Too many zombies?

All of those things played a role. But our answer is simpler: poison money.

The bigger the dose… the sicker it got.

When you say you “have some money,” you usually believe that there is, somewhere, an electronic database in which it is recorded that you are the owner of some amount of currency.

You have $100,000 in your account, right?

Does it mean that there is a little cubbyhole somewhere, with your name on it, in which you will find a stack of 1,000 Ben Franklins?

Nope. Not even close.

No cubbyhole. No stack of money. No nothing.

Does it mean the bank is carefully guarding some 1s and 0s, digital information proving that it at least “stores” your money in its database?

Nope again!

What it means is there is a financial institution of uncertain integrity… with a complex electronic balance sheet of uncertain accuracy… listing alleged financial claims and contracts of uncertain quality…

…and that you are one of the many thousands of entries on the debit side… with a claim to a certain number of dollars… which the institution may or may not have, each of uncertain value.

Today, banks – and this could be said of the entire financial system – no longer have “money.” They have credits and debits. Your deposit is your bank’s liability and your asset.

But look at the balance sheet. You don’t know how many of the claims shown on the left are right… or whether, when the other creditors get finished with it, any of the assets shown on the right are left.

All you know is that the system works. Until it doesn’t.

System Seizure

For many months, we have urged readers to prepare themselves for problems.

One day, the accumulation of contradictions, misinformation, and plain old “trash” in the system will cause a seizure. You will go to the ATM, and it won’t work. That day, your life could take a big turn to the downside… depending on how widespread the problem is… the cause of it… and how you prepared for it.

Of course, we don’t know for sure that that day will ever come. We are always in doubt, especially about our own forecasts.

Still, the potential problem seems likely enough… and grave enough… to justify some minimal precautions. You might cross the street blindfolded without getting run down, but it is still a good idea to look both ways.

Usually, we look to the right… where we see the problems inherent in a credit-based money system.

The feds can create all the credit they want. But real people can’t pay an infinite amount of debt service. Like a junkyard dog reaching the limit of his chain, the credit cycle has a way of jerking people back to reality.

Real Money

But there are other potential problems coming from the left…

An electronic, credit-based money system is fragile.

It can be hacked by thieves. It can be attacked by terrorists. It can be shut down by accident. Even a “bug” could bring it to its knees.

And then what? How will you get money? How will you spend it? How will you buy gasoline or food?

Our advice: Keep some cash on hand. Make sure you own some gold, too – real gold, coins that you can hold in your hand and you can flip to your grandchildren.

“Hey kid,” you say with a knowing and superior air, “take a look at this. This is real money. You don’t have to plug it in.”

By the way… Gold just had its best quarter in 30 years.

Do buyers know something?

Maybe.

Regards,

Bill

Further Reading: If you haven’t heard Bill’s warning about an ATM shutdown yet, you’re leaving yourself dangerously exposed…

There’s a massive crisis looming in the global financial system. And it when it finally hits, every service you've come to depend on – from your bank to your grocery store to our federal government – will shut down.

But Bill’s warning is more than just doom and gloom, he also has some easy-to-follow advice for protecting yourself. Find full details here. 
 _________________

Bill Bonner is Chairman of Bonner & Partners and found of the Agora. In his daily newsletter, Bill Bonner’s Diary, Bill shares his decades of accrued knowledge about history, politics, society, finance, and economics.

What a perfect story to have followed the one below! I have listened to many experts on investing who, once they get you hooked, announce that there is a price for their advice. However, in all of the many months that I have come across articles by Mike Larson, he has been giving away the knowledge I've wanted for free. For example, we are now made aware of the fact that car sales are tanking. What more do we need to realize that the U.S. economy is an the verge of a crash that might well exceed that of 1929. I believe that buying gold or silver now while its cheep is your best way to protect your wealth.

---

Right on Cue, Auto Sales Tank; Here’s What to Watch for Next …

Mike Larson | Monday, April 4, 2016 at 4:20 pm

The market’s focus on Friday was squarely on jobs. Investors apparently decided the employment situation was good enough that stocks should be bought, and the Dow edged ever closer to 18,000.

But is there something ELSE investors like you should be paying attention to? I think so. I’m talking about fading auto sales!

Frankly, the March numbers stunk up the joint. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales ended up coming in at 16.6 million. That missed the average forecast of 17.3 million by a country mile. It also represented a 3.1% drop from March and a drop of almost 1 million vehicles from February.

March auto sales were the weakest since
February 2015.

As a matter of fact, sales were the weakest since February 2015. They would have been even weaker if automakers hadn’t boosted incentive spending by 10% from a year earlier to $3,005 per vehicle, according to TrueCar. To top it all off, this March had two more selling days than last March. That means the headline results are even more disappointing once you look under the hood.

I’ve been focusing so closely on autos for the past several months because what’s going on in that industry has major implications for the economy. Just like with the broader credit cycle, the boom/bubble cycle in auto lending and leasing also appears to be taking a turn for the worse.

Specifically, auto-loan delinquencies and defaults are rising fast. That’s forcing lenders to begin tightening standards.

That, in turn, will put downward pressure on vehicle sales and upward pressure on already-bloated auto inventories. Companies like General Motors (GM), Ford (F), and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCAU) will have to respond by cutting back on production and laying off workers, hurting U.S. GDP growth.

My advice? Stay away from auto stocks, many of which are vastly under performing the broader market. Several got hit hard Friday and today, even as the overall market rallied or remained relatively stable – and they look vulnerable to even sharper declines in the coming weeks and months if the auto-lending bubble continues to burst.

Here Paul Craig Roberts is again focusing on the fake U.S. job results. So as a preamble, I am including below "The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for March 2016 is 22.9%" ...as permited by ShadowStats.com at http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts. Note that all officially discouraged workers "were defined out of official existence in 1994". So adding those "out of official existance" to the "U-6 unemployment" rate now proves that about 23% of all Americans are out of work or working only part time. Nevertheless, the Fed and the Stock Markets(!) are running on the (incorrect) assumption that about 95% of all Americans are employed and thus boosting the economy by consuming. What do you think will happen when they find out the truth?

 

---

Jobs Report Blues — Paul Craig Roberts

---

April 2, 2016 | Original Here | Use original and sign up at the bottom if you wish to receive his newsletter via email

Jobs Report Blues

Paul Craig Roberts

On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 215,000 new jobs in March.

John Williams of ShadowStats.com reports that these “new jobs” result from the the Birth-Death model that “artificially inflates headline month-to-month payroll gains with add-factors that currently average well in excess of 200,000 jobs per month.”

In other words, the jobs are the product of a model’s assumption that unreported new start-ups created 200,000 more jobs than unreported business failures lost.

To look at the jobs report in a different way, assume March did bring 215,000 new jobs and ask, “which sectors had jobs gains?” The answer is the same as has been the case since I began years ago reporting on the payroll jobs report:

Retail trade accounts for 47,700 of the jobs.

Health care and social assistance account for 44,000 of the jobs.

Waitresses and bartenders account for 24,800 of the jobs.

Manufacturing lost 29,000 jobs.

Part-time jobs without benefits comprise a rising percentage of US employment.

In the 21st century the main source of corporate profits has been lower labor costs achieved by offshoring US jobs and by bringing in lower-paid foreigners on work visas. This practice stopped the growth of US real median family income. Federal Reserve policy kept consumer demand alive by expanding consumer credit, which substituted a rise in consumer indebtedness for the missing growth in consumer income. Today the growth of consumer credit is limited by the absence of income growth to service the debt.

In short, corporations maximized short-run profits by ruining their domestic consumer market along with the personal income and sales tax base for government. It is unclear that this extraordinary mistake can be unwound.

---