Top CEO Warns of Global Reset:
Jun 25th, 2015
Daily NewsSHTF Plan
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary
Over the last several months there have been numerous reports highlighting the frantic activities of the world’s ultra-wealthy elite. From the purchasing of emergency hideaways and airstrips to warnings from their financial advisors that it’s time to shift their assets into physical holdings, it appears that a lot of powerful people are afraid of a significant shift set to take place in the near future.
In his latest interview with Future Money Trends Keith Neumeyer, who recently penned a very public (and very viral) letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commissions outlining the rampant manipulation by concentrations of shadowy market players taking place on commodities exchanges, shares his insights on what many believe to be a coming global reset.
According to First Mining Finance Chairman Neumeyer, the day of reckoning may come a lot sooner than most people think:
It’s in the cards for sure. Predicting exactly what it’s going to mean or what it’s going to look like… that’s the big challenge… I think a lot of people are ignoring it… but there are some forward thinkers out there who talk about it.
I think that the Chinese want their currency part of a floating currency… I think that’s really going to be the next leg in this whole change… in this reset going forward. It could even happen this year.
When this reset comes to pass the manipulations so apparent in commodities and broader stock markets today will be exposed, and according to Neumeyer, may lead to the biggest surge in precious metals we have ever seen.
Echoing the forecasts of one of the world’s leading trend strategists Gerald Celenete, Neumeyer notes that the monetary system that takes hold after a global reset could result in gold rising to $3000 an ounce or more. Such a move would have a similar impact on silver, which may stabilize at it’s historical silver-to-gold ratio of 16:1, putting it’s strike price somewhere above $150 an ounce.
Right now, you’re mining 10 ounces of silver for every one ounce of gold. So gold is trading at… let’s say $1,200 just to round it up. So that would be $120 silver, if the ratio was 10-to-1. So I say silver should be $120.
The other key ratio is the ratio that has been common for 500 years… Sir Isaac Newton came up with the ratio of 16-to-1 and that’s how they created the pound sterling. And so there was a theory that there was for every one ounce of gold, 16 ounces of silver in the earth’s crust. So using 16-to-1, at $1,200, it’s somewhere around $80-$90.
Silver should be trading, in my view, somewhere from $80 to $120 an ounce.
The prices Neumeyer cites are based on current trading levels, suggesting that silver is significantly under-priced already.
Now imagine what happens should we see a widespread crisis and subsequent global reset of the financial, economic and monetary systems. Markets are so fragile that even something as simple as China publicly declaring their true gold holdings could spark the next bull run in precious metals:
Of course it would and that plays back to what I was saying earlier. I don’t know if China’s ready for that to happen, because once they do it gold will probably go up by multiples… hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
I could see gold going up to $3,000 or some number like that.
Who knows exactly… but I do believe that that would occur because the people would see the hoard that the Chinese have actually accumulated over the last decade and that would completely change the market.
Countries like China and Russia are secretly accumulating massive stockpiles of gold and silver. Further, the ultra-wealthy have been warned in no uncertain terms by their advisors to do the same.
If there were ever a tell-tale sign that a momentous set of events is soon to take place, this is it. Follow the money, which at this time just so happens to be shifting to physical assets of real value in anticipation of the next leg of the global reset.
Prepping for war in orbit, the military is honing tactics and building a new center to coordinate defense and development.
The Pentagon and intelligence community are developing war plans and an operations center to fend off Chinese and Russian attacks on U.S. military and government satellites.
The ops center, to be opened within six months, will receive data from satellites belonging to all government agencies, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Tuesday at the GEOINT symposium, an annual intelligence conference sponsored by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.
“[W]e are going to develop the tactics, techniques, procedures, rules of the road that would allow us … to fight the architecture and protect it while it’s under attack,” Work said. “The ugly reality that we must now all face is that if an adversary were able to take space away from us, our ability to project decisive power across transoceanic distances and overmatch adversaries in theaters once we get there … would be critically weakened.”
Work also said that Air Force Secretary Deborah James would soon be named the “principal space advisor” to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, where she will to provide “independent advice separate from the consensus process of the department.”
Senior officials at the Pentagon and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are still finalizing details of the new center, which will back up the military’s Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
The center will help the military and government coordinate their preparations for and responses to any attack, said Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, a spokeswoman for Work.
The hope is that it will also shore up the U.S. technological advantage over China and Russia—the latter of which Work said “represents a clear and present danger”—by coordinating the development of new capabilities. In particular, Work said, the Defense Department intends to “double down” on geospatial intelligence.
“We want to be able to establish patterns of life from space. We want to know what the unusual looks like,” he said. “If, all of a sudden, a lot of cars show up in a parking lot of an adversary’s missile plant, we want to know about it and we want to know about it quickly. If, suddenly, small boats are swarming in the Gulf or pirates are starting to congregate off Aden, we want to know.”
“If Russian soldiers are snapping pictures of themselves in war zones and posting them in social media sites, we want to know exactly where those pictures were taken,” Work said, alluding to a 24-year-old Russian soldier named Alexander Sotkin who posted photos of himself operating Russian-made military equipment inside Ukraine last July.
“If [we see] a ship that we suspect might be carrying illicit materials, we want to know how deep it’s sitting in the water so we can know how much cargo it’s holding,” said Work. “On top of all of that, we need this information more quickly than in the past.”
Space, once a “virtual sanctuary,” must now “be considered a contested operational domain in ways that we haven’t had to think about in the past,” he said.
In 2007, China shot down one of its own weather satellites, creating a large field of debris that still orbits Earth. In 2013, China launched a more powerful rocket that could threaten U.S. satellites currently beyond range of ground-launched missiles.
“We must be prepared now to prevail in conflicts that extend into space,” Work said.
Space Projects
One of several changes to space strategy and posture that have emerged from a year-long Pentagon review, the new facility is part of a $5 billion boost for space security included in the Defense Department’s 2016 budget request. Among the other high-priority projects in the request are $21 million for Navy communications satellites, up from $11 million the previous year; and $100 million for space-based reconnaissance, up from $78 million the previous year. Proposed funding for Air Force space situational awareness rose from $9 million to $32 million.
But it may prove easier to alter budgets than the way the military thinks about space. “I’m wanting and pulling and looking for those new ideas and trying to change the culture that is really very comfortable with the status quo right now,” Gen. John Hyten, the head of Air Force Space Command, said in April. His 40,000-person command runs most of the Pentagon’s space projects, the vast majority of military satellites, and all of the large U.S. reconnaissance and communications satellites.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the media ahead of a NATO Defence ministers' meeting at the NATO headquarter in Brussels on June 24, 2015.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday the alliance will not get dragged into an arms race with Russia but must counter Moscow's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine.
Defence ministers are due to approve measures including more than doubling NATO's rapid response force, while the US on Tuesday announced it would pre-position heavy weapons on the alliance's eastern flank.
Russia has denounced the moves as Cold War-style provocations while upgrading its own armed forces, including with more than 40 new nuclear ballistic missiles this year.
"We will not be dragged into an arms race but we must keep our countries safe," Stoltenberg said as the meeting opened at NATO HQ in Brussels.
"What Russia has done in Ukraine is not defensive; to annex (Crimea)... that is an act of aggression."
Stoltenberg played down fears of a return to the worst days of the Cold War, insisting NATO's response was "defensive, proportionate and in line with all our international obligations".
"Russia continues to send troops, forces and supplies into eastern Ukraine. There is no doubt that Russia is responsible for aggressive actions in Europe," he said.
If the 28-member alliance had not responded, then that would have been cause for concern, he said, adding that NATO "continues to strive for more constructive relations with Russia".
Russia denies that it is directly involved in the 15-month conflict in Ukraine which has cost 6,500 lives.
NATO beefs up forces
In the fallout from the crisis, NATO has adopted a series of measures to give it a very high-speed reaction unit, on top of a fast response force which will be increased to about 40,000 troops from 13,000.
Exercises have been stepped up, planes and ships deployed to reassure nervous allies in eastern Europe once ruled from Moscow, and commitments made to reinforce the message that NATO is ready to meet its commitment to defend any ally under attack.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that Washington would pre-position heavy weapons in central and eastern Europe to ensure any NATO troops responding to a fresh crisis would hit the ground running.
"While we do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia, we will defend our allies," said Carter, who will be attending his first NATO defence ministers' meeting.
The US equipment includes some 90 Abrams main battle tanks, among the best in the world, 140 Bradley armoured vehicles and 20 self-propelled howitzers.
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland agreed to take the equipment which will be moved around the region as required for training and exercises.
Russia charges that such deployments breach the 1997 Founding Act with NATO which notably bans the permanent stationing of significant forces and equipment in former Warsaw Pact states.
NATO insists that all such deployments are rotational and temporary but the three Baltic states last month called for a permanent NATO presence to deter Russia.
NATO leaders agreed at a September summit to boost defence spending to the equivalent of 2.0 percent of annual economic output after years of cuts following the end of the Cold War.
Stoltenberg said five countries were already above the target, but overall, NATO's combined defence spending would still fall 1.5 percent this year.
In contrast, "Russia has over many years invested heavily in defence," he added.
Alliance to discuss military exercises and missile guidelines in development harking back to Washington v Moscow rhetoric during cold war
Nato, in an echo of the cold war, is preparing to re-evaluate its nuclear weapons strategy in response to growing tension with Russia over Ukraine, sources at the organisation have said.
Updating Nato’s nuclear policy would amount to an escalation in tit-for-tat exchanges with Russia since the Ukraine crisis erupted last year. Expressing concern over President Vladimir Putin’s announcement last week that Russia was to buy 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles, Nato officials also said there was alarm over Russian rhetoric on nuclear weapons and the extent to which such weapons are involved in military exercises.
A Nato diplomat said: “There is very real concern about the way in which Russia publicly bandies around nuclear stuff. So there are quite a lot of deliberations in the alliance about nuclear [weapons], but it is being done very slowly and deliberately. We need to do due diligence on where we are.”
The issue is being discussed on the margins of a two-day Nato ministerial meeting that began in Brussels on Wednesday. But the US is keen to get the issue on the table and a meeting of Nato’s ministerial nuclear planning group is likely to be held later this year – earlier than planned – to discuss refreshing the nuclear doctrine.
Icahn Warns Market is Extremely Overheated
Jun 25th, 2015
Daily NewsMarket Watch
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
Extremely overheated markets worry billionaire investors Charles Icahn.
Activist investor Carl Icahn took to Twitter and CNBC Wednesday to issue a stark warning to investors: “I think the public is walking into a trap again as they did in 2007,” Icahn told CNBC.
Specifically, the 79-year-old investor warned of a bubble in high-yield debt. The prominent investor joins a chorus of voices pointing at frothiness in the so-called junk-bond market, including DoubleLine Capital founder Jeff Gundlach.
In two tweets published on Wednesday, Icahn cautioned against listening to so-called permabulls, saying the 2008 crisis might have been avoided if more investors had warned about the risk of a bubble in 2007, as he is attempting to do now.
On Monday, Los Angeles-based bond fund manager Jerry Cudzil, head of U.S. credit trading at TCW Group, told Bloomberg that he is also building up a big cash stockpile to brace for a bond-market selloff.
This isn’t the first time Icahn has sounded alarm bells. In early May, Icahn warned that “when [high-yield bond funds] start coming down, there is going to be a great run to the exits.”
The selloff may have already started. S&P Capital IQ reported that investors withdrew $2.9 billion from high-yield funds for the week ended June 17 — the biggest redemption in six weeks — on top of another $2.6 billion that pulled out the week before.
Investors removed $2.9 billion out of high-yield funds for the week ended June 17, on top of $2.6 billion the week before.
Ultraloose monetary policy underpinned by razor-thin interest rates has been the main driver of investors into so-called junk bonds, which promise to offer richer yields than, say, Treasurys. But the risks in junk debt also are much greater than the typical, higher-quality government bonds.
“The yield advantage over high-quality bonds remains significant and stands out in a low-yield world,” said Antoni Valeri, Investment Strategist for LPL Financial, in a research note.
But yield differentials, known as spreads, between high-yield bonds and Treasuries have contracted over the first half of 2015. This suggests that yield-starved investors are taking higher risks for lower returns.
The average yield spread remains near 4.5%, a level that has halted further improvement among high-yield bonds in the past, Valeri said.
As measured by the Barclays High Yield Bond Index and five-year Treasury yield, the average yield spread remains near 4.5%.
DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach also warned earlier this year that as interest rates are expected to rise, “the quest for yield will cool down, because that is what’s driving a lot of investment activity.”
For that reason, at a private event on May 5 in New York, Gundlach advised investors to sell high-yield bonds and buy Treasurys, as they prepare their portfolios for the first interest-rate increase in nearly a decade.
Bipartisan group calls on US administration to hold out for a ‘good agreement,’ address Israel’s concerns over accord
Several former members of President Barack Obama’s inner circle are among a bipartisan group of 18 diplomats, legislators, and experts warning against the emerging nuclear deal with Iran and urging the US administration to address Israel’s concerns regarding the pending accord.
In a public statement issued to the press Wednesday, the group said the deal being negotiated between the P5+1 and Iran “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement'” and laid out a series of key requirements it said Iran should agree to ahead of the June 30 target date for the deal.
“The [current] agreement will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability,” the group charged. “It will not require the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure…It does not address Iran’s support for terrorist organizations (like Hezbollah and Hamas), its interventions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen (its ‘regional hegemony’), its ballistic missile arsenal, or its oppression of its own people.”
The signatories include Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to the president who oversaw Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the White House’s Iran policy during Obama’s first term; David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA; Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Robert Einhorn, a former special adviser to the Secretary of State for nonproliferation and arms control (2009-2013) who also helped devise sanctions against Iran; Gary Samore, a former coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction under President Obama who now heads United Against a Nuclear Iran; and General James Cartwright, who in 2007-2011 was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
![Former CIA director David Petraeus leaves the federal courthouse in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, April 23, 2015 after pleading guilty to sharing top government secrets with his biographer [photo credit: AP/Chuck Burton]](http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2015/05/AP809912801290-e1431438644517-305x172.jpg "Former CIA director David Petraeus leaves the federal courthouse in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, April 23, 2015 after pleading guilty to sharing top government secrets with his biographer [photo credit: AP/Chuck Burton]")
Former CIA director David Petraeus
The letter writers urged a more robust monitoring and inspections mechanism that would grant IAEA inspectors “timely and effective access to any sites in Iran” and “review and copy documents as required for their investigation of Iran’s past and any ongoing nuclear weaponization activities.”
The administration recently backed away from a promise to force Tehran to reveal its past nuclear activities as part of the negotiated deal, alarming opponents and supporters alike. And Iran has repeatedly indicated that not all its sites would be open to inspectors.
While the signatories said that the US should not impose new sanctions while negotiations are underway, they warned that sanctions relief “must be based on Iran’s performance of its obligations,” and “must not occur until the IAEA confirms that Iran has taken the key steps required to come into compliance with the agreement.”
Sanctions for non-nuclear affairs, like terrorism, should remain in effect, the letter said.
“Precisely because Iran will be left as a nuclear threshold state (and has clearly preserved the option of becoming a nuclear weapon state), the United States must go on record now that it is committed to using all means necessary, including military force, to prevent this. The President should declare this to be US policy and Congress should formally endorse it,” the group said, adding that “without these features, many of us will find it difficult to support a nuclear agreement with Iran.”
They also urged the Obama administration not to treat the June 30 deadline as “inviolable” and called for US negotiators to stay at the table until a “good” agreement is reached.
“US alternatives to an agreement are unappealing, but Iran’s are worse. It has every incentive to reach an agreement and obtain relief from sanctions and international isolation well in advance of its elections next February. If anyone is to walk out of the negotiations, let it be Iran,” they warned.
Acknowledging Israel’s vociferous objections to the deal and its repeated warnings against allowing Iran to remain a nuclear threshold state, the signatories called on the Obama administration to “create a discreet, high-level mechanism with the Israeli government to identify and implement responses” to Israel’s concerns.
Regarding the US’s other regional allies, the letter called on the Obama administration to bolster any Iran agreement by “doing more in the region to check Iran and support our traditional friends,” including the expansion of training and arming of Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the sidelining of Iranian militias in Iraq; the acceleration of US train and equip programs in Syria for non-extremist opposition fighters; increased support for Saudi Arabia in the ongoing Yemen crisis; and generally curbing Iranian hegemony in the region.
Two Christian groups booted last year from California State University for insisting that their student leaders must be Christian are scheduled to return in the fall after making what could be described as a leap of faith.
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ, now Cru, have agreed to modify their bylaws so that students may apply for leadership posts without having made a formal profession of Christian belief, CSU Director of Public Affairs Toni Molle said.
“We can’t have clubs that discriminate. We didn’t change our executive order,” Ms. Molle said in an interview. “The charters and bylaws for InterVarsity and Cru have been modified to be in compliance with our executive order.”
That 2011 executive order, issued by CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed in one of his last acts before retiring, requires student groups to allow “all comers” to join as well as run for leadership posts, even if the candidate’s beliefs conflict with that of the organization.
![Former CIA director David Petraeus leaves the federal courthouse in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, April 23, 2015 after pleading guilty to sharing top government secrets with his biographer [photo credit: AP/Chuck Burton]](http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2015/05/AP809912801290-e1431438644517.jpg "Former CIA director David Petraeus leaves the federal courthouse in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, April 23, 2015 after pleading guilty to sharing top government secrets with his biographer [photo credit: AP/Chuck Burton]")
