White House Says It Is “Monitoring The Bitcoin Situation”

White House Says It Is “Monitoring The Bitcoin Situation”:

In the past few days two Federal Reserve presidents have discussed cryptocurrencies and concluded they are “niche” and “don’t matter today.

The total market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency space is around $300 billion – smaller than the Top 10 names in the S&P 500.

In the last three years, Bitcoin has gained a similar amount of market cap as Nvidia…

A de minimus percentage of Americans are exposed to Bitcoin and crypto-currencies.

But it appears the last few days of turbulence in Bitcoin  – which saw total losses of around $3 billion yesterday, compared to $60 billion lost in FANG stocks alone – has ‘triggered’ the world’s media into a frenzy..

Which led to today’s White House Press Briefing and an unusual question from one reporter…

Has the president been following cyrptocurrencies at all? Specirfically the major run-up in it…

Does he have an opinion on it, and does he feel it is now something that needs to be regulated?

The answer was, perhaps, somewhat surprising…

“The [Bitcoin situation] is something that is being ‘monitored’ by our team…

Homeland Security is involved.”

Which made us wonder…

Read moreWhite House Says It Is “Monitoring The Bitcoin Situation”

Crypto Carnage Continues As The Fed Warns Digital Currencies Could “Pose Serious Financial Stability Issues”

Crypto Carnage Continues As The Fed Warns Digital Currencies Could “Pose Serious Financial Stability Issues”:

Update: Bitcoin and Ethereum are holding at the lows of the day, but following ECB comments earlier (see below), The Fed’s vice chariman of supervision, Randy Quarles, warns that digital currencies like bitcoin pose “serious financial stability issues” as they grow…

Today, the vast majority of our payments by volume and value are processed by regulated financial institutions. In the U.S. payment system, digital currencies are a niche product that sometimes garners large headlines.

While these digital currencies may not pose major concerns at their current levels of use, more serious financial stability issues may result if they achieve wide-scale usage.

Perhaps most ironic is Quarles’ description of the ‘drawbacks’ of cryptocurrencies…

But from the standpoint of analysis, the “currency” or asset at the center of some of these systems is not backed by other secure assets, has no intrinsic value, is not the liability of a regulated banking institution, and in leading cases, is not the liability of any institution at all. Indeed, how to treat and define this new asset is complicated.

So because it’s not backed by ‘other secure assets’ – analysing its value is complicated… like the dollar.

It’s a bloodbath in cryptocurrency markets this morning…

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Supreme Court to Debate Warrantless Collection Of Cellphone Records in Huge Fourth Amendment Battle

Supreme Court to Debate Warrantless Collection Of Cellphone Records in Huge Fourth Amendment Battle:

In one of the most important Fourth Amendment battles of the digital age, the Supreme Court is preparing to tackle a case involving law enforcement accessing cellphone records without a warrant.

On Wednesday the US Supreme Court is scheduled to address the case of Carpenter v. United States to determine whether or not law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant before accessing the cellphone records of an individual. The case deals with a set of armed robberies that took place between December 2010 and March 2011. Several men worked together to rob RadioShack and T-Mobile stores in the Michigan and Ohio areas, stealing cell phones and holding store employees and customers hostage in the process.

Read moreSupreme Court to Debate Warrantless Collection Of Cellphone Records in Huge Fourth Amendment Battle

Trump Sparks Outrage In UK With “Truculent Tweet” To Theresa May After Retweeting Far-Right Videos

Trump Sparks Outrage In UK With “Truculent Tweet” To Theresa May After Retweeting Far-Right Videos:

President Trump sparked outrage among Britain’s political establishment on Thursday with a sharp rebuke on Twitter of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. Following Trump’s condemnation by British politicians who lashed out at the US president for sharing videos originally posted by a leader of a British far-right fringe group, in an unprecedented attack on Theresa May, Trump replied with what Reuters dubbed an “unrepentant message”:

“Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” he tweeted.

Trump initially addressed his tweet to a Twitter handle that was not May‘s, though he later retweeted to the British leader’s correct account.

Read moreTrump Sparks Outrage In UK With “Truculent Tweet” To Theresa May After Retweeting Far-Right Videos

Video Shared By Trump Featured US-Backed FSA Commander Destroying Virgin Mary Statue In Syria

Video Shared By Trump Featured US-Backed FSA Commander Destroying Virgin Mary Statue In Syria:

While Trump’s Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader’s “anti-Muslim videos”, there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video.

That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed “moderate”. 

Read moreVideo Shared By Trump Featured US-Backed FSA Commander Destroying Virgin Mary Statue In Syria

European Union Remains ‘Committed’ To Opening Borders to 75 Million Turkish Citizens as ‘Soon as Possible’

European Union Remains ‘Committed’ To Opening Borders to 75 Million Turkish Citizens as ‘Soon as Possible’:

The European Union (EU) remains “committed to” giving, and is in the later stages of securing, Turkish citizens visa-free travel in the bloc, as well as handing an extra three billion euros to migrants in the nation by next year, a commissioner has said.

The EU’s Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos explained that all elements of the migrant deal with Turkey were moving ahead, after Turkey agreed to stem the tide of Middle Eastern migrants in return for billions in aid and the opening Europe’s borders to Turks.

He made the comments to Turkish paper Hurriyet ahead of a visit to the nation. In a Turkish language version, he is quoted, according to a rough translation, as saying the deal in its “last level”.

Read moreEuropean Union Remains ‘Committed’ To Opening Borders to 75 Million Turkish Citizens as ‘Soon as Possible’

Nobody Wanted to Help Swedish Woman Raped by 20 Migrants: “Eeew, You’ve got Sperm on Your Face…!”

Nobody Wanted to Help Swedish Woman Raped by 20 Migrants: “Eeew, You’ve got Sperm on Your Face…!”:

A rape case so brutal that even Swedish main stream media is reporting about it shows signs of total collapse of moral and culture in Swedish society.

“Eeew, you have sperm on your face and on your clothes, don’t involve us,” they said to the woman. She had just endured a gang rape and abuse by up to twenty perpetrators in a stairwell in Fittja, but nobody in the southern Stockholm suburb wanted to help the victim, Metro reports.

More details are now being published about the high profile case in Fittja, which took place in a stairwell in August 2016. The woman was gang-raped and also beaten up by up to twenty perpetrators. The woman was kicked, beaten, threatened with a knife and her head was knocked against the floor until she went unconscious.

Read moreNobody Wanted to Help Swedish Woman Raped by 20 Migrants: “Eeew, You’ve got Sperm on Your Face…!”

China: New missile, DF-41, expected to be deployed next year

China: New missile, DF-41, expected to be deployed next year:

BEIJING’S new missile is so exact, none of its launches have reportedly ended in failure. The weapon is also capable of hitting the US.

CHINA has unveiled its most powerful weapon yet and its new intercontinental ballistic missile is a force to be reckoned with.

The DF-41 ICBM can carry up to 10 manoeuverable warheads ranging from 100 to 200 kilotonnes to megaton size and has a range of between 12,000kms and 15,000kms.

In comparison, North Korea’s Hwasong-15, which was launched yesterday, has an estimated range of 13,000km.

Read moreChina: New missile, DF-41, expected to be deployed next year

EU Migrant Policies Rejected by 74 Per Cent of People in Central Europe

EU Migrant Policies Rejected by 74 Per Cent of People in Central Europe:

A strong majority of Europeans across 11 nations are opposed to the European Union’s (EU) immigration policies, including nearly nine in 10 Hungarians.

The survey was conducted by the Néz?pont Institute in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

It revealed that 74 per cent of respondents in those countries believed that the EU’s migration policies have or will be negative for the continent.

Central Europeans were the most opposed, with 89 per cent of Slovaks and Hungarians holding a negative view of the policies, closely followed by 88 per cent of Czechs.

Meanwhile, 63 per cent of Austrians and 58 per cent of Germans also said the mass immigration overseen by the EU is bad for the bloc.

Furthermore, when asked about Hungary’s rejection of forced EU migrant quotas, 56 per cent of people in the Visegrád nations (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) say they agreed with the Hungarian premier’s fight against them.

Read moreEU Migrant Policies Rejected by 74 Per Cent of People in Central Europe

Canada: “Leading expert” insists that jihad “terrorist travellers” can be rehabilitated

Canada: “Leading expert” insists that jihad “terrorist travellers” can be rehabilitated:

University of Waterloo Sociology professor Lorne Dawson thinks jihadists can be rehabilitated because they are “disillusioned and traumatized.” Dawson displays an appalling insensitivity to the millions of victims who have experienced the real trauma of abuses, torture and murder inflicted upon them by jihadists. Dawson states:

No credible expert in the world thinks you arrest your way out of jihadist radicalization — it’s a social movement..You can’t possibly arrest all the people who are engaged with this ideology.

Dawson makes a silly, general, sweeping claim in an attempt to divert attention away from returning Islamic State fighters to Canada, who should face consequences for their war crimes, have their citizenship revoked and be kept safely away from the public. Murderers who are locked up in maximum security jails are child’s play compared to jihadists who have engaged in the cruelest, unimaginable atrocities against innocent people in their war of conquest.

Read moreCanada: “Leading expert” insists that jihad “terrorist travellers” can be rehabilitated

Great News From McKinsey: Robots Will Take 800 Million Jobs Worldwide By 2030

Great News From McKinsey: Robots Will Take 800 Million Jobs Worldwide By 2030:

Stories about robots taking over from humans have become prevalent. Recently we’ve written about a new Manhattan Shake Shack replacing human cashiers with robots, killer robots (a.k.a. lethal autonomous weapons systems), a Californian real estate company replacing commission-based human agents with robots, a cocaine workshop in Brazil with robots packing 150,000 baggies a day and the first robot to be awarded citizenship which hopes for “harmony with humans”. No chance.

In June, we discussed a McKinsey & Co. report which stated that US manufacturing could be poised for a recovery and not because of Trump’s policies. Indeed, McKinsey’s rationale was based on automation weakening the case for labour arbitrage. James Manyika, McKinsey Global Institute director, commented.

Read moreGreat News From McKinsey: Robots Will Take 800 Million Jobs Worldwide By 2030

Sweden’s New Government Censorship Exposed

Sweden’s New Government Censorship Exposed:

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • In the report, placing the word “refugees” in quotation marks, as well as “unaccompanied children,” is supposedly an expression of “hate”. (Many, if not most, migrants classified as “unaccompanied children” have turned out to be grown men).
  • Government agencies are going out of their way to protect the “integrity” of possible jihadists out of concern for a “democratic society” — the society that these jihadists want to subvert and destroy — and are using their government platform to smear non-mainstream media for matters as small as the use of quotation marks. What about the “integrity” of Swedish citizens and their right to not be blown up?
  • Why is a municipality sponsoring an organization that supports terrorists and even awarding it prizes? It appears that glorifying terrorism is acceptable in Sweden, so long as its victims are the Israeli children. Far from countering “hate”, Sweden appears to be doing all it can to strengthen Muslim extremism.

The Swedish government is now officially questioning free speech. A government agency has declared so-called Swedish “new media” — news outlets that refuse to subscribe to the politically correct orthodoxies of the mainstream media — a possible threat to democracy. In a government report, tellingly called “The White Hatred” written by Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (Total Defense Research Institute), a government agency under the Swedish Ministry of Defense, Swedish new media such as Samhällsnytt (formerly known as Avpixlat), Nyheter Idag and Nya Tider are lumped together with neo-Nazi media such as Nordfront.

Read moreSweden’s New Government Censorship Exposed

Pew: Even if Migration Ended, Europe’s Muslim Population Will Continue to Surge — Sweden 1/3 Muslim by 2050

Pew: Even if Migration Ended, Europe’s Muslim Population Will Continue to Surge — Sweden 1/3 Muslim by 2050:

The Muslim population of Sweden could hit 30 per cent by 2050 if current migration patterns continue, with the figure hitting 14 per cent continent-wide unless there are radical changes to Europe’s attitudes and policies towards mass migration.

Even in the unlikely case that all migration from outside the European Union suddenly and permanently ended, the new research on Europe’s rapidly shifting demographics found that by 2050 the Muslim population of the continent would hit 7.4 per cent, up from 4.9 per cent in 2016.

More likely is that levels of migration will continue as they have done for years, with so-called refugees and economic migrants arriving in European nations in large numbers. In the so-called high scenario described by Pew, Europe would be 14 per cent Muslim by 2050, a growth of 193 per cent.

It took six months and a lot of work but we’ve caved completely, says David Davis

😂😂😂

It took six months and a lot of work but we’ve caved completely, says David Davis:

BREXIT minister David Davis has proudly told Britain that after six months of tough negotiating he has given in to every single one of the EU’s demands. 

Davis, who turned up to negotiations in June with a blank notepad and a hopeful expression, promised that nobody could have fought harder or achieved less than he did.

He continued: “From the first day, when I conceded that negotiations would proceed exactly as the EU had decided and then spent months trying to reverse that, I have been massively out of my depth. 

Read moreIt took six months and a lot of work but we’ve caved completely, says David Davis