The European Union Times |
- Putin Emergence As “Last Hope For World” Shocks West
- US is Losing Its Status of World Power: German Media
- 6 U.S. Banks Have 278 TRILLION Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives
- NASA offering $18,000 for human lab rats to stay in bed
- German anti-Israeli Nobel writer, Günter Grass dies at 87
- Israeli Nobel Scientists Find Cancer Suppressing Proteins
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 10:29 AM PDT
The Presidential Office (PO) in the Kremlin today is reporting that President Putin has “shocked” the capitols of the West, and their propaganda media organs, by his emerging as the top vote getter in a global poll conducted by Time Magazine as to whom the most popular and beloved person in the world is. The RT News Service in their reporting about this unprecedented failure of the massive propaganda efforts to demonize Russia and President Putin by Western governments and their media stooges further stated: “Putin – the only world leader to rank in the top 10 – grabbed the global spotlight from the leading divas of pop music: Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Taylor Swift (2.6 percent, 1.9 percent and 1.8 percent of the votes, respectively). Meanwhile, aside from Putin, the only non-celebrities to appear in the top 10 were the Dalai Lama (1.7 percent), Pakistani female activist Malala Yousafzai (1.6 percent) and Pope Francis (1.5 percent). President Barack Obama narrowly missed the top 10 with 1.4 percent of the votes, while First Lady Michele Obama attracted 1.2 percent. Putin’s victory appears all the more incredible when you realize that more than half the votes — 57.38 percent — were cast inside the United States.” Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov in publically commenting on this historic affirmation of President Putin’sglobal efforts for peace also stated: “The fact that the president is one of the most popular, well-known and respected politicians in the world is obvious. This leadership has been recorded by a number of media outlets — this is also an obvious fact.” Even more than his global popularity though, this report continues, is the devotion shown to President Putin by the citizens of the Motherland, who even while enduring the illegal and unjust sanctions put upon the Federation by the West, back him by an 86% margin during this historic standoff with the West for his advocating of peace, instead of war…and as, perhaps, best said in his own words: “Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.” And to how right President Putin has been in advocating global peace, this report notes, the United States and its Western allies, by contrast, have over the past 14 years initiated failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Africa, Ukraine, and now Yemen, endangering the lives of over 500 million innocent human beings…and which up to 2011 when they stopped counting, had cost nearly 250,000 lives and $4 trillion. At the exact same time that President Putin has sought to stop the West’s warmongering, this report adds, the US and EU have continued their unprecedented buildup of massive military forces all around the Federations borders, while at the same time comically accusing him of wanting to recreate the former Soviet Union… a situation made even more laughable when viewed in the context of Putin’s own words: “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.” But not to President Putin’s “brain” have the Western power elites focused their attention upon, this report points out, put towards their own people whom they’ve really believed their propaganda was having an effect upon…but which this global Time Magazine poll clearly shows otherwise. And to the greatest effect President Putin has had, and as the world looks to him now as their last hope of peace, this report concludes, was his showing to the entire planet the hypocrisy of the United States this past November (2014) when after the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee passed the Federations proposed resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes… the US, Canada and Ukraine became the only countries in the world to vote against it. Source |
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 05:37 AM PDT
The US is losing its status of world power, as the country has lately not been able to enforce its geopolitical interests in several regions and has had to retreat, according to German Media. The descent of the United States as a world power started in Syria, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reported. Out of frustration over the forced retreat in Syria, the driving forces behind the US government sought to lay the blame for the debacle in Syria on Russia. The US could not get over the fact that exactly Vladimir Putin played the role of a reasonable actor in the Middle East and at the same time was able to protect Russia’s interests. This fact was frustrating for the US, which had always viewed such issues as military dominance and moral superiority as its domain. The new ‘Cold War’ against Russia is not a self-perpetuating issue for Americans, the media source wrote. Although it was possible to persuade the EU to impose sanctions against Russia, the alliance of European countries is far from united. The Baltic States and Poland support the hard policy towards their neighbor. But many other EU governments oppose the idea of the continued confrontation with Russia. The sanctions have negative impact on EU countries as well. Among these countries are Italy, Greece, Spain, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary, who have always had close and beneficial economic ties with Russia. However, the worst defeat of the US has been the one with China, when Beijing launched the idea of setting up a new development bank (AIIB), the article said. Even Australia and South Korea did not much care about the warnings and provocations of the US government, showing their interest and expressing their approval for the project. However, according to Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, the US is losing its status as a world power not only because of its failure in the foreign policy. Not less important is the fact that government has failed to lessen the gap between rich and poor and abandoned its own moral standards. Source |
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 05:28 AM PDT
The very same people that caused the last economic crisis have created a 278 TRILLION dollar derivatives time bomb that could go off at any moment. When this absolutely colossal bubble does implode, we are going to be faced with the worst economic crash in the history of the United States. During the last financial crisis, our politicians promised us that they would make sure that “too big to fail” would never be a problem again. Instead, as you will see below, those banks have actually gotten far larger since then. So now we really can’t afford for them to fail. The six banks that I am talking about are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. When you add up all of their exposure to derivatives, it comes to a grand total of more than 278 trillion dollars. But when you add up all of the assets of all six banks combined, it only comes to a grand total of about 9.8 trillion dollars. In other words, these “too big to fail” banks have exposure to derivatives that is more than 28 times greater than their total assets. This is complete and utter insanity, and yet nobody seems too alarmed about it. For the moment, those banks are still making lots of money and funding the campaigns of our most prominent politicians. Right now there is no incentive for them to stop their incredibly reckless gambling so they are just going to keep on doing it. So precisely what are “derivatives”? Well, they can be immensely complicated, but I like to simplify things. On a very basic level, a “derivative” is not an investment in anything. When you buy a stock, you are purchasing an ownership interest in a company. When you buy a bond, you are purchasing the debt of a company. But a derivative is quite different. In essence, most derivatives are simply bets about what will or will not happen in the future. The big banks have transformed Wall Street into the biggest casino in the history of the planet, and when things are running smoothly they usually make a whole lot of money. But there is a fundamental flaw in the system, and I described this in a previous article… The big banks use very sophisticated algorithms that are supposed to help them be on the winning side of these bets the vast majority of the time, but these algorithms are not perfect. The reason these algorithms are not perfect is because they are based on assumptions, and those assumptions come from people. They might be really smart people, but they are still just people.Today, the “too big to fail” banks are being even more reckless than they were just prior to the financial crash of 2008. As long as they keep winning, everyone is going to be okay. But when the time comes that their bets start going against them, it is going to be a nightmare for all of us. Our entire economic system is based on the flow of credit, and those banks are at the very heart of that system. In fact, the five largest banks account for approximately 42 percent of all loans in the United States, and the six largest banks account for approximately 67 percent of all assets in our financial system. So that is why they are called “too big to fail”. We simply cannot afford for them to go out of business. As I mentioned above, our politicians promised that something would be done about this. But instead, the four largest banks in the country have gotten nearly 40 percent larger since the last time around. The following numbers come from an article in the Los Angeles Times… Just before the financial crisis hit, Wells Fargo & Co. had $609 billion in assets. Now it has $1.4 trillion. Bank of America Corp. had $1.7 trillion in assets. That’s up to $2.1 trillion.During this same time period, 1,400 smaller banks have completely disappeared from the banking industry. So our economic system is now more dependent on the “too big to fail” banks than ever. To illustrate how reckless the “too big to fail” banks have become, I want to share with you some brand new numbers which come directly from the OCC’s most recent quarterly report (see Table 2)… JPMorgan Chase Total Assets: $2,573,126,000,000 (about 2.6 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $63,600,246,000,000 (more than 63 trillion dollars) Citibank Total Assets: $1,842,530,000,000 (more than 1.8 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $59,951,603,000,000 (more than 59 trillion dollars) Goldman Sachs Total Assets: $856,301,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $57,312,558,000,000 (more than 57 trillion dollars) Bank Of America Total Assets: $2,106,796,000,000 (a little bit more than 2.1 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $54,224,084,000,000 (more than 54 trillion dollars) Morgan Stanley Total Assets: $801,382,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $38,546,879,000,000 (more than 38 trillion dollars) Wells Fargo Total Assets: $1,687,155,000,000 (about 1.7 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $5,302,422,000,000 (more than 5 trillion dollars) Compared to the rest of them, Wells Fargo looks extremely prudent and rational. But of course that is not true at all. Wells Fargo is being very reckless, but the others are being so reckless that it makes everyone else pale in comparison. And these banks are not exactly in good shape for the next financial crisis that is rapidly approaching. The following is an excerpt from a recent Business Insider article… The New York Times isn’t so sure about the results from the Federal Reserve’s latest round of stresstests.That doesn’t sound good. So what is up with the discrepancy in the numbers? The New York Times explains… The discrepancy is due mainly to differing views of the risk posed by the banks’ vast holdings of derivative contracts used for hedging and speculation. The Fed, in keeping with American accounting rules and central bank accords, assumes that gains and losses onderivatives generally net out. As a result, most derivatives do not show up as assets on banks’ balance sheets, an omission that bolsters the ratio of capital to assets.Derivatives, eh? Very interesting. And you know what? The guys running these big banks can see what is coming. Just consider the words that JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon wrote to his shareholders not too long ago… Some things never change — there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial market.In the same letter, Dimon mentioned “derivatives moved by enormous players and rapid computerized trades” as part of the reason why our system is so vulnerable to another crisis. If this is what he truly believes, why is his firm being so incredibly reckless? Perhaps someone should ask him that. Interestingly, Dimon also discussed the possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone… “We must be prepared for a potential exit,” J. P. Morgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said. in his annual letter to shareholders. “We continually stress test our company for possible repercussions resulting from such an event.”This is something that I have been warning about for a long time. And of course Dimon is not the only prominent banker warning of big problems ahead. German banking giant Deutsche Bank is also sounding the alarm… With a U.S. profit recession expected in the first half of 2015 and investors unlikely to pay up for stocks, the risk of a stock market drop of 5% to 10% is rising, Deutsche Bank says.The truth is that we are in the midst of a historic stock market bubble, and we are witnessing all sorts of patterns in the financial markets which also emerged back in 2008 right before the financial crash in the fall of that year. When some of the most prominent bankers at some of the biggest banks on the entire planet start issuing ominous warnings, that is a clear sign that time is running out. The period of relative stability that we have been enjoying has been fun, and hopefully it will last just a little while longer. But at some point it will end, and then the pain will begin. Source This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 04:42 AM PDT
NASA will pay $18,000 to anyone prepared to stay in bed for 10 weeks and submit to a gruelling regime of tests for more than three months. The only criteria are the candidates have to be healthy and American citizens. Scientists will constantly examine the lucky ones, who are selected, for 70 days. The research is being carried out to simulate how effective exercise is on astronauts, who lose cardiovascular, bone and muscle function as a result of living in zero gravity conditions. The volunteers will be split into those who exercise and those who don’t. The first step will see all those taking part, spend between two and three weeks inside a “bed rest facility.” Here they will be allowed to move around a lead a normal day’s life. The second stage will see the volunteers transferred to NASA’s Flight Analog Research Unit in Houston, Texas. They will spend 10 weeks lying in bed, with their bodies tilted slightly backwards, with their feet up and their head down. Movement will be kept to a bare minimum, with the human lab rats only able to go to the toilet in a plastic bedpan, while they will also have to wash while lying down with a hand-held showerhead. Reading and watching movies will be allowed, as these activates don’t use up much energy. However, the participants could suffer from aching joints, due to lying on one position for such a lengthy period of time. The idea is to emulate what an astronaut’s body goes through during the weightlessness of space flight. The third stage will see the participants undertake 14 days of exercise, which will include cycling, squatting and walking. The aim of these “reconditioning activities,” is to see how regular exercise helps the body to get back to normal shape. Treadmills and weight machines will also be used, while the workouts will vary in intensity everyday. Source |
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 04:22 AM PDT
Germany’s respected author and Noble Winning novelist, Günter Grass, known for his sharp criticism of Israel and those supporting the Tel Aviv regime, has died at the age of 87. Germany’s Steidl publishing house announced Monday that Grass died at a hospital in the northern city of Lübeck. Best known for his 1959 novel The Tin Drum, the German author won many international awards, with the most notable of them the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. Many still continue to relish the novels, poems and stories written by Grass, especially those created in his 80s, but the mustached literary icon took to the headlines by lashing out at Israel over the regime’s continuous spread of hatred and fear in the Middle East and the world. In his famous poem entitled “What Must Be Said” (“Was gesagt werden muss”), which was published in several prestigious European newspapers in 2012, Grass called the Tel Aviv regime the greatest threat to the peace in the world. He also criticized the hypocrisy of the German government for its open military support of the Israelis, who according to Grass, obtain military hardware like German submarines to launch nuclear warheads against Iran. Grass said such equipment “could annihilate Iranian people.” Those comments triggered fierce criticism inside Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the remarks “shameful.” Grass regretted that he kept silent for many years on the secret relations between Germany and Israel, just over fears that he may be branded anti-Semite. In his final years, Grass also criticized some major politicians and heads of state, including the former US President George W. Bush for his use of religion and religious terms as a pretext to justify the so-called “war on terror.” Source |
Posted: 14 Apr 2015 04:14 AM PDT
Israeli scientists have discovered two proteins that they claim can contain cancer and control the cells’ growth and development. A team of Israeli researchers headed by Professor Aaron Ciechanover, an Israeli Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, has discovered two proteins that they say can suppress cancer and control the cells’ growth and development, media reports said. The relevant study was carried out at Professor Ciechanover’s Haifa Laboratory earlier this month. The team included research students and physicians from Rambam, Carmel and Hadassah Medical Centers. Despite the discovery, Ciechanover admitted that suppressing cancer tumors is a formidable task that is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. He said that more research is needed “to establish the research and gain a solid understanding of the mechanisms behind the suppression of the tumors. The development of a drug based on this discovery is a possibility, although not a certainty, and the road to such a drug is long and far from simple.” Published in the journal Cell last week, the survey focused on the process of the two proteins repressing cancerous tissues. In particular, the study detailed how a high concentration of proteins called KPC1 and p50 in the tissue are able to protect it from cancerous tumors. Additionally, the research shed light on the role of the ubiquitin system in the above-mentioned process. The ubiquitin system is responsible for degrading and recycling damaged proteins that can harm to cells and tissues; it was co-discovered earlier by Ciechanover, for which he won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The research used human tumors grown in mice, and separate samples of human tumors. Source |