“No Obvious Reason” Why China Is Stockpiling Rice, Iron Ore, Precious Metals, Dry Milk


Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
January 11, 2013
If there were ever a sign that something is amiss, this may very well be it.
United Nations agricultural experts are reporting confusion, after figures show that China imported 2.6 million tons of rice in 2012, substantially more than a four-fold increase over the 575,000 tons imported in 2011.
The confusion stems from the fact that there is no obvious reason for vastly increased imports, since there has been no rice shortage in China. The speculation is that Chinese importers are taking advantage of low international prices, but all that means is that China’s own vast supplies of domestically grown rice are being stockpiled.
Why would China suddenly be stockpiling millions of tons of rice for no apparent reason?
Perhaps it’s related to China’s aggressive military buildup and war preparations in the Pacific and in central Asia.
If a 400% year-over-year increase in rice stockpiles isn’t enough to convince you the Chinese are preparing for a significant near-term event, consider that in Australia the country’s two major baby formula distributors have reported they are unable to keep up with demand for their dry milk formula products. Grocery stores throughout the country have been left empty of the essential infant staple as a result of bulk exports by the Chinese.
A surge in sales of one of Australia’s most popular brands of infant formula has led to an unusual sight for this wealthy nation: barren shelves in the baby aisle and even rationing of baby food in some leading retail outlets.
We’d be more apt to believe the Chinese were panic-buying baby formula had the Chinese milk scandal occurred recently. The problem is that it happened four years ago. Are we to believe the Chinese are just now realizing their baby food may be tainted?
In addition to the apparent build-up in food stocks, the Chinese are further diversifying their cash assets (denominated in US Dollars) into physical goods. In fact, in just a single month in 2012, the Chinese imported and stockpiled more gold than the entirety of the gold stored in the vaults of the European Central Bank (and did we mention they did this in one month?).
Their precious metals stockpiles have grown so quickly in recent years that Chinese official holdings remain a complete mystery to Western governments and it’s rumored that the People’s Republic may now be the second largest gold hoarding nation in the world, behind the United States.
We won’t know for sure until the official disclosure which will come when China is ready and not a moment earlier, but at the current run-rate of accumulation which is just shy of 1,000 tons per year, it is certainly within the realm of possibilities that China is now the second largest holder of gold in the world, surpassing Germany’s 3,395 tons and second only to the US.
But the Chinese aren’t just buying precious metals. They’re rapidly acquiring industrial metals as well.
Spot iron prices are up to an almost 15-month high at $153.90 per tonne. The rally in prices, which started in December 2012, is mainly due to China’s rebuilding of its stockpiles as the Asian giant gears to boost its economy, which in turn, could improve steel demand.
The official explanation, that China is preparing stockpiles in anticipation of an economic recovery, is quite amusing considering that just 8 months ago Reuters reported that China had an oversupply, so much so that their storage facilities had run out of room to store all the inventory!
When metals warehouses in top consumer China are so full that workers start stockpiling iron ore in granaries and copper in car parks, you know the global economy could be in trouble.
At Qingdao Port, home to one of China’s largest iron ore terminals, hundreds of mounds of iron ore, each as tall as a three-storey building, spill over into an area signposted “grains storage” and almost to the street.
Further south, some bonded warehouses in Shanghai are using carparks to store swollen copper stockpiles – another unusual phenomenon that bodes ill for global metal prices and raises questions about China’s ability to sustain its economic growth as the rest of the world falters.
Now, why would China be stockpiling even more iron (and setting 15 month price highs in the process) if they had massive amounts of excess inventory just last year?
Something tells us this has nothing to do with an economic recovery, or even economic theory in terms of popular mainstream analysis.
Why does China need four times as much rice year-over-year? Why purchase more iron when you already have a huge surplus? Why buy gold when, as Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke suggests, it is not real money? Why build massive cities capable of housing a million or more people,and then keep them empty?
It doesn’t add up. None of it makes any sense.

Sequestering the working and middle class – The implications of runaway debt. GDP at record levels yet nonfarm employment is 4 million below previous peak. Trillion dollar coins. Greece unemployment reaches a new record.

MyBudget360
January 13, 2013


Gear up those printing presses.  You might be thinking that some of the policy talk coming out today is from The Onion but no, the idea of a $1 trillion coin is being discussed.  The Federal Reserve is already very willing to become a shadow bad bank and take on all the questionable assets from the latest bubble from member banks.  As the middle class is crushed, our nation is becoming more polarized.  You have a massively large group of people that are now classified as poor in the world’s wealthiest nation.  We have over 47 million Americans on food stamps.  Theaverage per capita pay is $26,000 much to the surprise of many people conditioned on only getting their data from the mainstream press.  Those that deny inflation are not looking hard enough.  The purchasing power for working and middle class Americans is being slowly destroyed.  Europe is still facing major headwinds with Greece reaching a troubling new record with their unemployment rate.  All this rhetoric means the Fed and ECB will continue on their path of quantitative easing and digital money printing.
Sequestering the working and middle class
One of the major stories that was not reported during this crisis is that many companies used the economic crisis as a reason to lay off employees or slash wages.  Yet by looking at GDP, you will realize that we are at a current peak yet nonfarm employment is down by 4 million from the previous peak:
GDP and nonfarm employment
In other words we are producing just as much with far fewer people.  Where are these people now?  Many of them are now on food stamps.  Over 47 million Americans are receiving food assistance.  Their voice is largely unheard and politicians have little incentive to recite their concerns.  We are now stumbling from one crisis to another like a drunkard.  Only a few hours after the fiscal crisis was diverted for the short-term we were then talking about the debt ceiling.  This even inspired the idea of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin to pay off some of our national debt.
It would be comical if it were not so absurd.  The GDP equation is rather simple:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)
We’ve been going hog wild on the government spending portion recently.  Take a look at the current government spending and revenues:
fed spending
After the recession government spending ramped up dramatically to make up for the losses in revenue.  But we are still spending at record levels while not taking in enough.  We are running gargantuan trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.  Maybe minting a few trillion dollar coins isn’t such a bad idea.  We wouldn’t be the first nation to lead this charge.  Zimbabwe already went down this road with a trillion dollar note:
Zimbabwe_$100_trillion_2009_Obverse(1)
Nothing bad ever came from that right?  The problem with the road we are leading in is that the US middle class is being crushed.  Even projections for this are highlighted in many reports:
share of middle class
For the very wealthy, they don’t mind pursuing this global low wage system where they can squeeze dollars all around the planet.  Do you want to work for $1,000 or $2,000 per year?  This is the future for many.
There really are no easy decisions.  Take a look at a high wage system with cronyism in their government, Greece.  They recently just reached a new peak unemployment rate of 26.8 percent:
unemployment greece
Youth unemployment (15 to 24) is now up to 56.6 percent.  So much for high unemployment suddenly creating a healthier marketplace and a fertile environment for the middle class.  This sequestering of the middle class has been ongoing for a few decades now and has happened under both political parties.  People need to wake up and pay attention to what is really going on.  These massive increases in debt do come at a price.  Maybe a trillion dollar coin is our sale price.

Mark Levin : Our Government Has Become a Dictatorship!

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
January 12, 2013






On his January 11, 2013 program, Radio Talk Show host and Constitutional Attorney, Mark Levin explains how the current administration has become a dictatorship, as Obama pushes for control over the Treasury through Fiat dictatorship powers....

Listen Here


Controlled Chaos And The Battle For The Human Mind


Personal Liberty Digest
January 7, 2013 
Controlled Chaos And The Battle For The Human Mind
PHOTOS.COM
The psychopathic political elites use controlled chaos to advance their agenda of continued theft of wealth and liberties and gradual march to one world government.
The recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations are a perfect example of this controlled chaos. Their chaos is the result of ongoing manufactured crises, one piled upon the other.
Political elites love for the public to be whipped into a state of frenzy over thoughts of impending doom. The false two-party left/right paradigm is used to great advantage to keep the “debate” alive.
Carefully chosen words and phrases are used to create a sense of urgency over the crisis du jour. The elites then sit back wait until the midnight hour — or sometimes later — to swoop in and “save” us. They then brag about how their actions have headed off yet another catastrophe. It brings to mind a quote from Captain James T. Kirk in “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country.” “Once again, we’ve saved civilization as we know it,” Kirk said near the end of the film.
The political elites utter these words or something similar, then pat themselves and each other on the back for their brilliance. The masses lap it up and let out a big sigh of relief that their “leaders” are so benevolent and responsible and “bipartisan,” never realizing they’ve just surrendered more liberty to the state.
The people are taught at an early age to pledge fealty to the state through the public noneducation indoctrination system. Children are taught they must not question authority. Zero tolerance policies squelch free speech and the exchange of ideas. Truths and absolutes are rejected in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus. Immoralities are presented as normal lifestyles. Feelings are elevated above logic.
In public schools the great explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries are described as genocidal maniacs responsible for the destruction whole races. U.S. Founding Fathers are presented as evil, slavery-loving, women-hating bigots. Actual freedom-stealing racist tyrants are presented as role models.
The evils and murders of totalitarian regimes have been whitewashed as necessary for the safety and continuation of the state — hence the acceptance of the very uncivil war; the American love affair with the war criminals Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant and William T. Sherman; and the dismissal of the deaths by violence, disease and starvation of 850,000 people, many of them noncombatants. The state is presented as right and just, despite a Constitution that is outdated, inadequate and unjust.
Sometime early in the last century, republicanism was recast as democracy. It came about gradually, but purposefully. The idea of American exceptionalism was shoved down the memory hole. Over the course of the past several decades, it has been replaced with democratic exceptionalism: the idea that democracy is a superior philosophy that must be forced upon the people of all nations and that wars to install democracy are just ones.

Large Cities All Over America Are Degenerating Into Gang-Infested War Zones


Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Jan 7, 2013
Large U.S. cities that the rest of the world used to look at in envy are now being transformed into gang-infested hellholes with skyrocketing crime rates.  Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Camden, East St. Louis, New Orleans and Oakland were once bustling with economic activity, but as industry has fled those communities poverty has exploded and so has criminal activity.  Meanwhile, financial problems have caused all of those cities to significantly reduce their police forces.  Sadly, this same pattern is being repeated in hundreds of communities all over the nation.  The mainstream media loves to focus on mass shooters such as Adam Lanza, but the reality is that gang violence is a far greater problem in the United States than mass shooters ever will be.  There are approximately 1.4 million gang members living in America today according to the FBI.  That number has shot up by a whopping 40 percent just since 2009.  There are several factors fueling this trend.  Unemployment among our young people is at an epidemic level, about one out of every three U.S. children lives in a home without a father, and there are millions of young men who have come into this country illegally and have no way to legally support themselves once they arrive in our cities.  Gangs provide a support system, a feeling of “community”, and a sense of purpose for many young people.  Unfortunately, most of these gangs use violence and crime to achieve their goals, and they are taking over communities all over America.  If your community is not a gang-infested war zone yet, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate.  If nothing is done about this, the violence and the crime that is fueled by these gangs will continue to spread, and eventually nearly every single community in the United States will be affected by it.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the large cities all over America that are degenerating into gang-infested war zones…
East St. Louis
East St. Louis has a national reputation for being a city that you want to avoid.  The following is from a recent Bloomberg article about the growing crime in that community…
Dodging open manholes where thieves had swiped cast-iron covers, Stephen Wigginton drives the crumbling streets of his hometown, East St. Louis, Illinois, pointing out new landmarks in America’s most violent city.
There’s the shopping mall where a police officer was shot in the face, a youth center that saw a triple homicide in September, and scattered about the city of 27,000 are brightly lit gas stations that serve as magnets for carjackers, hit-and-run robbers and killers.
“It’s the Wild West,” said Wigginton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.
Today, the murder rate in East St. Louis is 17 times higher than the national average, but financial problems have forced huge cuts to the police budget.  The number of police patrolling the streets of East St. Louis was reduced by 33 percent between 2008 and 2011.  Police in the city admit that they are outgunned and outmanned, but there is not much that can be done about it.
Camden
Camden, New Jersey is another city that has experienced huge cuts to the police budget.  Their police force shrank by about a third between 2008 and 2011.  Today, Camden is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities in America and it has a murder rate that is about ten times higherthan New York City.
The gangs have a very strong hold over Camden, and kids kill kids on a regular basis in the city.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article about the horrible violence that is plaguing Camden
At the vigil last week, residents prayed that Camden would simply find peace and that the masked gunman who killed Jewel Manire and Khalil Gibson would be caught.
As it grew darker, Michael Benjamin stood toward the back of the crowd, his son huddled even closer now, and shook his head.
“I’ve known at least 45 kids who’ve been killed in my lifetime,” he said, the boy holding his finger. “I stopped counting in 2004, though.”
Chicago
In recent years there have been massive cuts to the police budgetin Chicago due to financial difficulties.  At the same time, gang activity has dramatically increased in the city.
As a result, Chicago has become known for murders and violence.  The murder rate in Chicago was about 17 percent higher in 2012 than it was in 2011, and Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city“.
If you can believe it, the number of murders in Chicago during 2012 wasroughly equivalent to the number of murders in the entire country of Japan during 2012.
And the primary reason for all of this violence in Chicago is the gangs.  As I have written about previously, there are only about 200 police officers assigned to Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit.  It is their job to handle the estimated 100,000 gang members living in the city.
Approximately 80 percent of all murders and shootings in the city of Chicago are gang-related, and as the gangs continue to grow in size the violence in the city is going to get even worse.  If Barack Obama wants to do something about violence in America, perhaps he should start with his home city.
Detroit
I write a lot about Detroit, but that is because they are a perfect example of where the rest of America is headed if something dramatic is not done.
Detroit used to be one of the greatest manufacturing cities the world has ever seen, but over the past several decades the economic infrastructure of Detroit has been gutted and now there is very little industry left in the city.
Over half the children in the city live in poverty and a sense of hopelessness hangs in the air.  At the same time, financial problems have forced the city to lay off huge numbers of cops.  Back in 2005, there were about 4,000 police officers in Detroit.  Today there are onlyabout 2,500 and another 100 are scheduled to be eliminated from the force soon.
Meanwhile, crime in Detroit just continues to get even worse.  There were 377 homicides in Detroit in 2011.  In 2012, that number rose to411.
Things have gotten so bad that even even the Detroit police are telling people to “enter Detroit at your own risk“.
New Orleans
New Orleans was a crime-infested city even before Hurricane Katrina hit it in 2005, but life has never quite been the same since that time.
The gangs have a very strong presence in the city, and there simply are not enough financial resources to keep crime in check.
If New Orleans was considered to be a separate nation, it would have the 2nd highest murder rate on the entire planet.  There are some areas of New Orleans that you simply do not ever want to venture into at night.
Meanwhile, the police force has been such a mess in recent years that the federal government finally decided to step in.  It is hoped that the “reforms” will mean less crime in New Orleans in future years, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Oakland
Today, there are 626 police officers in Oakland, California.  That is about a 25 percent decline from the 837 police officers that were patrolling the streets of Oakland back in December 2008.
Predictably, criminals have stepped in and have taken advantage of the situation.  At one point in 2012, burglaries in the city of Oakland were up43 percent over the previous year.
If you can believe it, more than 11,000 homes, cars and businesses were burglarized in Oakland during 2012.  That breaks down to approximately 33 burglaries a day.

CRUZ ON DEBT CEILING: OBAMA TRYING TO SCARE PEOPLE WITH FINANCIAL APOCALYPSE

Breitbart
January 7, 2012

Direct Link Here to Video
http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=91074&sitesection=breitbartprivate&VID=24168752

Let me be clear, I do not support default on the debt and we should never default on the debt and the only players who are threatening to default are President Obama and Harry Reid. This is an issue, and earlier in the show you played the President threatening default. In any given month tax revenue are 200 billion and interest is 30 or 40 billion. There is it plenty of revenue to service the debt and any responsible President would've stood at that podium and said 'whatever happens with the debt ceiling, we will always pay our debt. We'll never default on the debt' and the reason the President isn't doing that is he's trying to scare people and raise the spector of financial apocalypse." - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Fox News Sunday 1/6/12

Obama President For Life? H.J. Res 15 Bill


Infowars.com
Jan 6, 2013
The lemmings would love a dictator. This proposed legislation would repeal the 22nd Amendmentthat limits presidents to two four-year terms in office.
This article was posted: Sunday, January 6, 2013 at 8:08 am