Infowars: Google-Berg Merger Ushers in Planned-Opolis Future in the “Hybrid Age”
Daniel Taylor
Infowars.com
May 16, 2013The secretive Bilderberg Group has had more exposure in the past several years than it has since its founding in 1954. This is due mostly to the alternative media pushing the issue to the forefront. Today Bilderberg appears to be grooming itself for a new era and coming into the open. As reported by Paul Joseph Watson, Google and Bilderberg are apparently merging.
In his 2011 book How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance, Parag Khanna – Director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation - outlines a vision for the future in which mega corporations, NGO’s and governments team up to govern the globe. As the Asia Times reports “Apart from the usual government/institutional suspects, Khanna includes an array of extra players in the new rulers of the world, mostly powerful NGOs such as the Gates Foundation. These players are particularly fond of the global conference circuit – from the annual bash at in Davos of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to the seductively mysterious Bilderberg Group.”
An example of these individuals “fondness of the global conference circuit” is a 2009 meeting in New York at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. As to the secrecy of the meeting, a guest said, “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.”
This is the backdrop to the Google-Berg merger. Governments are going broke. Globalist influences have broken down national borders. Tax exempt foundations and mega corporations are filling the gap.
These groups are essentially hijacking national government’s policies and advancing a top down, authoritarian system of control. In an interview with the Seattle Times, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked, “Some say the emergence of super rich philanthropies like the Gates Foundation has undermined the effectiveness of the U.N. and its member organizations, like the WHO.” Moon responded,
“On the contrary that is what we really want — contributions from the business community as well as philanthropies. We need to have political support, but it doesn’t give us all that we need. NGOs and philanthropies and many foundations such as Bill Gates Foundation — they’re taking a very important role…”
The Gates Foundation has successfully hijacked America’s national education policy. To demonstrate the intimate relationship that the Gates Foundation has with the Obama administration, this 2009 article points out that within the first four months of his Presidency, Obama appointed four high ranking officials from the Gates Foundation.
The Bilderberg conglomerate is tapping into this immense power to advance its objectives.
Planned-Opolis
What will the future look like under the direction of mega corporations and philanthropic organizations?
Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna write in Foreign Policy magazine, “As we move into the Hybrid Age, whoever has the capacity to mange the intersection of technology, capital, and identity can become a pole of power.” As we have seen, tax exempt foundations and corporations like Google have taken on a powerful role in global affairs. Governments are increasingly taking a back seat to the influence of these groups. Some have charged that they are “monopolizing development.”
In joining with Bilderberg, Google is preparing to enter this “Hybrid Age” of advancing technology and rapidly changing geopolitical landscapes with its hands gripped tightly on the reigns of power. With this merger, the world is set to be shaped into a highly surveilled and planned system at the direction of unelected elitists.
In 2010 the Forum for the Future presented a vision of the future in which mega-cities are run by supercomputers and citizens lives are tightly controlled. The Forum for the Future is backed by Bank of America, Sony, the City of London Corporation, PepsiCo UK, Time Warner, and Royal Dutch Shell. Each of these entities have representatives at the Bilderberg Group.
Their vision for the future was called “Planned-Opolis”:
These mega-cities will likely be based on an ongoing project in a South Korean city called New Songdo. The “U-City” will deploy so called “ubiquitous computing” technology that enables the monitoring of citizens 24/7 via pressure sensitive floors that track your walk to computer chips that are embedded everywhere in the environment. U-cities are described as places where “…all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers (e.g., RFID, smart cards and sensor-based devices) are built into the houses, streets, bridges and office buildings.”
Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corporation is playing a key role in developing technology for New Songdo. While a large portion of the technology is being developed in the U.S., it is being tested in South Korea where there are historically less traditional, ethical and social blockades to prevent its acceptance and use.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt – who expects to be swallowing nanobots in the not too distant future – envisions life in this technological age as a streamlined and convenient existence. Google’s driverless cars – now legal in California and Nevada – will no doubt find their way into Planned-Opolis.
The Hybrid Age
Are we headed to a Rollerball like future in which corporations have replaced countries? According to Parag and Ayesha Khanna we are indeed headed in that direction. In the Hybrid Age, mega coporations will provide advanced technology to their constituents and thus gain loyalty. As we stray away from broken governments to provide security and prosperity, these entities will fill the gap.
“Employees of Facebook or Google can spend their days on campuses that are effectively full-service communes; the same is happening in companies in Russia, India, and China. One day a corporate passport might afford them greater freedom of mobility than their national citizenship.”
In 2008 the Washington Post published an article titled “Washington’s Future, a History.” The Post gathered trends analysts, university heads and government officials to look into the future and develop potential scenarios. The Post depicts a future in which small scale terror attacks and angry rioters plague the streets while implantable ID chips allow government workers to pass through checkpoints unmolested. Economic decline and cyber terrorism fracture the country. Bobbie Kilberg, president of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, told the Washington Post, “Basic functions of government will be outsourced.”
In the Post’s vision of the future, “Google LifeServices” provide the wealthy with employment at “work pods,” goods, and other services in one complex. Those who subscribe have access to,
“…entertainment and socializing… gathering goods, eating and working. The new subscription retailing was catching on in cavernous buildings, old big box stores that had been reconstituted as workspaces. Here, people could spend a good chunk of their day, moving seamlessly from their work pod to take in a movie with a friend, choose the dinner items that would be delivered before they got home, and take care of the day’s errands, all while staying in constant touch with colleagues, and all for one monthly Google LifeServices subscription fee.”
The global elite are pushing the globe toward a dystopic future in which all aspects of life are in some way managed by their interests. Humanity cannot afford to blindly accept this future, no matter how attractive the propaganda might seem. On June 6 the Bilderberg conference will commence. The future of humanity will be discussed by a handful of elites with agendas that will have a far reaching impact on all of our lives.
Daniel Taylor’s website is Old-thinker News.
Infowars: Google ‘Knows When You’re Home’
Google Now: Next phase of technology giant’s takeover of your entire life
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 16, 2013Google has devised yet another ingenious way of convincing people to hand over their real-time location data, by offering location specific “reminders” as part of its Google Now feature.
During the company’s Google I/O conference for developers in San Francisco yesterday, it was announced that Google Now, the voice-recognizing search product, will soon be available on desktop computers and will network seamlessly with mobile devices.
Google Now enables users to perform Internet searches by speaking to their computers, but it also allows Google to provide both time and location specific reminders that function via GPS technology.
Google makes Big Brother look like an amateur.
“For example, you can, from your desktop at work, tell Google Now: “Remind me to take out the garbage when I get home,” and when it senses through your smartphone that you are back at home, Google Now will send you a reminder,” reports Business Insider.
The program will also access your calendar to give you warnings about heavy traffic before you set off on your journey.
Another Google Now feature will provide recommendations on activities to do based on your current location and previous habits. A new Google tool called Activity Recognition will also know if you’re “walking, driving, or biking.”
If all this sounds completely invasive, Orwellian and ultimately annoying as hell, then that’s because it is – not for the transhumanist trendies who don’t find Eric Schmidt’s dream of swallowing nano-bots every morning and sending his robotic clone to social functions completely horrific – but for those of us who still want to retain some essence of privacy and basic humanity.
We are already glued to our smart phones that buzz and beep with every text message, email, Facebook comment or Twitter response. Now Google will not only distract us with things that just happened, but what we forgot should have happened, and what is set to happen in the future.
Studies already confirm that social media outlets like Facebook are only making people more depressed, while the Internet is literally re-wiring our brains as our ability to concentrate is eviscerated by constant distractions and the inability to absorb information more lengthy than a 2 minute YouTube clip or a 140 character Twitter post.
With the onset of Google Glass, all of this will be virtually glued to your head as you live in an augmented reality where you are constantly plugged into the matrix.
Where is all this leading? A 2008 Washington Post article envisaged a future dominated by “Google LifeServices,” where the entirety of people’s work and leisure time would be housed under one Google building, allowing them access to “work pods,” entertainment, shopping and socializing for one monthly subscription fee all under one roof, and all under the watchful gaze of Big Brother Google.
As Daniel Taylor writes, “The global elite are pushing the globe toward a dystopic future in which all aspects of life are in some way managed by their interests,” a “hybrid age” where “mega coporations will provide advanced technology to their constituents and thus gain loyalty.”
Google Now represents the next step towards this technocratic vision of a life full of convenience and clinical efficiency, relying on computers to do your thinking for you as man increasingly merges with machine, losing a little piece of his humanity every day in the process.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
Senate Subcomittee Investigating Apple’s Offshore Tax Practices
Infowars.com
May 16, 2013In lieu of the recent IRS scandal it might seem a little like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Nevertheless, it looks like Apple CEO Tim Cook will be appearing in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday, May 21, to explain why the company is borrowing money to pay investors when they have $102 billion in offshore funds.
As of March 2013 Apple reported having a total of $145 billion cash on hand, but $102 billion was stashed in offshore funds. On April 24, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple would return $100 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015. To finance the expanded capital return, Apple will raise its dividend 15 percent and increase its share buyback program six-fold to $60 billion. In other words, Apple is going to go into debt, for the first time in more than a decade, in order to keep investors happy.
Why go into debt? Why not just use some of those offshore billions they’ve got lying around gathering dust? Because, to bring that money into the U.S., Apple would have to pay a 35 percent corporate tax. Why pay an outrageous tax bill when a company with a AA-rating like Apple’s can borrow money at a 1.9% interest rate?
Under current tax laws, money in offshore accounts can not be spent or invested in the United States. It can’t even be given to the shareholders who rightfully own the money, until someone antes up 35% to cover the taxes. At that point, once the taxes are paid, the investors would also be responsible for paying income taxes on their dividends – a double whammy for investors.
It should be noted that the money in these offshore accounts was earned outside the U.S. and the appropriate taxes are paid to the countries involved.
For major corporations like Apple, whch has more money than it knows what to do with, it just makes sense to leave that money in offshore accounts. Analysts estimate that the amount of corporate money in offshore accounts could exceed $1 trillion, money which could be boosting the US economy if it were repatriated.
Apple isn’t the only U.S.-based corporation holding money in offshore accounts. Last year, a lobbying coalition consisting of Google, Microsoft, Cisco and Apple sought a tax holiday, similar to one in 2004, for repatriating offshore funds. In 2004 Congress agreed to let companies repatriate money at a discounted tax rate of only 5 percent.
The 2012 effort was suspended because Republicans were focused more on permanent tax policy and Democrats were worried about the potential loss of tax revenue.
What they failed to understand is that there is no loss of revenue as long as Apple and other major corporations can use those offshore funds to secure low-interest loans right here on American soil. It only makes sense: Why pay a 35% tax when you can get the same results with a 1.9% loan?
Infowars: Bilderberg 2.0: New Technocratic Construct In The Works?
New generation of elites taking the transnational reins?
Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars.com
May 13, 2013As today’s groundbreaking revelations by Infowars will possibly reveal, Bilderberg is moving itself into a new hybrid leviathan, with Google as the new vehicle for policy implementation. A new generation has emerged, alligning itself with the good old boys at Bilderberg. Not that this newer generation has appeared out of thin air to rock the world of the old-timers. Far from it. The key players now taking the digital helm in this probable “Googleberg” construct are literally the offspring of the older players who are keenly aware that if the ancient agenda is to endure, a merger with the new guard needs to be established.
One such key player who has presumably been offered the steering wheel in both policy setting- and operational activities, is the son of the former queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau. As EU commissioner Neelie Kroes’ first man in her “digital agenda” cabinet, Constantijn is well placed to play a key role in securing the reigns in the hands of international bankers who make the final decisions. Constantijn was described as “programme associate” of the Bilderberg group on the official royal website back in 2009. Although the website scrubbed the mention shortly after I published this information on Infowars.com, the original cached page was salvaged thanks to vigilant observers in the alternative media.
Constantijn’s benefactor in the world of global governance, Neelie Kroes, attended all Bilderberg meetings from 2006 onward- and since 2011 is the European commissioner for the digital agenda. Kroes, who is right up there with Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, is now handing over some of the responsibilities to a new generation of technocrats. Not very surprising then that Van Orange- the grandson of Bilderberg founder Bernhard- has recently been appointed by Kroes to head up her commission cabinet.
Kroes’ agenda as commissioner and dedicated Bilderberg member has been from the very onset to create and expand a mandatory electronic ID system for all citizens within the EU. In 2012 Kroes announced that a common “electronic signature”- a single authenticating ID- should safeguard access to the Internet, online data and commerce- described by Aaron Dykes on May 23 2012 as “nothing short of an attempt to phase in a Mark of the Beast system, and a prominent Bilderberg attendee is behind the scheme.”
Dykes also pointed out that such a common digital signature, used by all people within the EU, is destined for worldwide expansion:
“According to EurActiv.com, Neelie Kroes would later “widen the scope of the current Directive by including also ancillary authentication services that complement e-signatures, like electronic seals, time/date stamps, etc,” as the supra-national body attempts to corral more nations into participation.”
In 2009 Constantijn wrote a RAND technical paper, stating that the EU and a few elite nations should take the lead role in deciding a global governance structure for internet regulation and developing technologies. In the paper titled Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts, the prince envisions a global coordination role for the EU:
“ (…) both policy issues and effective responses must be defined at a global level; to influence the solution a global coordination and ‘enlightened leadership’ is required.” and “policy issues, not always solutions, will be defined at a global level. Those few countries or regional blocks like the EU where these technologies are already at an advanced stage may take a more or less enlightened lead role.”
Constantijn’s speciality in his days with the RAND Corporation ranged from several technical reports on web 2.0 to RFID technology and other matters concerning “global governance” and electronics. In 2008 Constantijn was promoted to head the Brussels RAND office, expanding his influence even more. In 2009 Constantijn published his “discussion paper on critical issues” under the RAND-umbrella titled The Future of the Internet Economy. In it, he is quite uninhibited in his call for the emergence of an overall system of control to steer the course of events globally.
“(…) the Internet as a global infrastructure needs a global governance structure”, Van Oranje writes. “International governance is necessary to deal with global issues and ensuring effective functioning of the Internet, following principles of good governance.”
The intentionally vague addition of “good governance” is a smart way to circumvent explaining that only a tyrannical transnational system can guarantee “effective functioning of the Internet.” Furthermore, the prince advocated the ideal tool for future slavery: one common, global electronic denominator hooked into a hive-like supercomputer:
“Though a sectoral, geographic and multi-layered patchwork is likely, a scenario with a more unified system is not impossible either. There are significant benefits for citizens, governments and commercial operators to have a more standardised system that would support a large range of eGovernment services and functions. One system would eliminate the need for multiple cards, would increase the possibility for interconnecting systems”, and the list goes on.
The warnings of Aaron Russo immediately spring to mind, don’t they? As one of the determinants of such a common system through which all of human traffic should be channelled, the report mentions:
“The level of Pan-European ambition towards the use of a single eIdentity throughout Europe by 2015: Will policy makers of Commission (European Commission) and Member States agree on a system that is to support only simple identity; will Pan-European services be build/transformed in a way that they benefit directly from eID; or will there be a natural evolution towards one single European IDM, adequate for most national and Pan-European Government Services?”
As the royal family’s own website reports, from 2001 to 2003 prince Constantijn worked as a strategic policy consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton operating out of London, England. Booz Allen is a globally operating, self-proclaimed “private consulting firm” right out of a John Grisham novel with all the dark intrigue that goes along with it. Since its creation in the early 1900s, Booz, Allen & Hamilton has been intimately tied to the military-industrial complex including “long-standing relationships with federal intelligence agencies”- as a superficial glance on Wikipedia reveals. A March 8 2008 article in CorpWatch reported that the firm “is a key advisor and prime contractor to all of the major U.S. intelligence agencies (…). Among the many services Booz Allen provides to intelligence agencies, according to its website, are war-gaming- simulated drills in which military and intelligence officials test their response to potential threats like terrorist attacks.”
A most interesting speciality of the firm is the development of electronic surveillance equipment and other spy-tools. After Van Oranje’s promising career at this key corporation within the intelligence community, his obvious next step was the RAND Corporation where the young prince could work on his policy-making skills while at the same time maintaining his close relationship with the big foundations. In Daniel Estulin’s 2005 bestseller “The Bilderberg Group” the author clarifies the ties between the RAND Corporation and these global entities:
“The interlocking leadership between the trustees at RAND, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations is a classic case of Bilderberg modus operandi. The Ford foundation gave one million dollars to RAND in 1952, at a time when the president of the Ford Foundation was simultaneously the chairman of RAND.”
RAND plays a key role in developing technologies that may be used by intelligence agencies who in turn want to get rid of certain non-compliant regimes. In a RAND document from 2012 titled Using Social Media to Gauge Iranian Public Opinion and Mood After the 2009 Election the authors describe collecting thousands of tweets from the Iranian people in the months following the Iranian elections of 2009. The think tank complained about the shortcomings of just scanning through Iranian blogs and such. In order to assess the Iranian zeitgeist, RAND turned to an extraordinary computer-program called LIWC:
“Given the shortcomings of the manual approach, using a computerized method to study the content of social media can serve as a useful complement, compensating for some of these limitations. Such a tool exists: an automated content analysis program called “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007” (LIWC, pronounced “Luke”).”
“Focusing on Twitter, we used LIWC as a means of tapping into Iranian public opinion and mood during the tumultuous months following the highly controversial 2009 presidential election”, the report states.
Admitting that the probing and analyzing of Iranian tweets serves the national security interests of the United States, the RAND researchers in the same breath admit:
“Given that LIWC is largely untried in non-Western political contexts, we used Iran during this period as a test case. On the one hand, we sought to shed light on how public opinion and mood evolved after the 2009 election. But at the same time, we intended to examine the validity of a new methodology—one incorporating the LIWC tool—for analyzing foreign public sentiment on political topics, as expressed through the social media platform, Twitter.”
The results, according to the authors, are so full of promise that they seek to expand the program even further. Under the header “Expanding the Scope of the Current Work” they state:
“To extend this current work, applying the methodology to other forms of social media is an obvious next step. For instance, we have conducted initial analyses of Iranian, Persian-language blogs, and of political leaders’ Facebook postings, which are not reported here.”
The authors are aware of the implications of their research when it comes to national security “interests”:
“We could also extend the current research by looking across more than one country at a time to gauge the sentiments that social media users in each country express on topics of interest to them all”, the report continues.
“For example, using the current methodology, it is possible to compare sentiments expressed across Iran, Pakistan, and other countries on topics including the United States, nuclear weapons, and domestic political issues. Other extensions of the current research could focus on Asian countries that are high on the national security agenda, such as China and Taiwan, or on Middle Eastern countries where political protests in early 2011 were reportedly influenced by social media use, such as Egypt and Tunisia.”
Because the methods used by RAND were retrospective in nature, the authors envision using this and other software for monitoring of international conflicts “as they unfold”:
“A final way to extend the current methodology is to build a real-time tracking tool for social media texts. Such a tool could automatically download texts as they are posted, run them through a parsing algorithm, and place them into a database for processing through LIWC (or other software). Using such a tool, it would be possible to view and analyse patterns in written texts almost as quickly as they unfold. Given the policy relevance of our findings, these recommendations for validation and extensions of the methodology illustrate the potential of analysing social media to understand public mood and opinion in various populations of interest.”
Studies such as these should not give on the impression that these monitoring and surveillance technologies are being used without the consent of corporations like Twitter, Google and Facebook- nor have they been hijacked at some point. On the contrary, as has become clear from countless “incidents” where these corporations have been caught censoring information, they are an active player within the technocratic architecture, set up from their very beginnings by globalist money. As Google Ideasillustrates, already hybrid connections between Google and the US government are being strengthened. According to several Stratford e-mails released by Wikileaks in March of 2012, Google Ideas’ current director Jared Cohen was presumably working for the White House as he attempted to fire up the spark of regime change. As Alahkbar reported, the Brookings Insititute valued Google Ideas as “the best new think tank established in the last 18 months.” Such accolade arguably suggests that Google Ideas is expected to be a major player in the near future.”
Brookings, an extremely influential think tank advising policymakers within the US government, also use their academically preconditioned brains to think about using Google, Twitter and Facebook as tools to achieve regime change in dissenting nations. As their document Which Path To Persia demonstrates, the plans for such operations are already being contemplated. In chapter 7 of the manuscript titled “Inspiring an Insurgency”, it examines the possibility of propagandizing the Iranian people into helping out the globalists loot their nation, stating “U.S. media and propaganda outlets could highlight group grievances and showcase rival leaders.”
The merging of Bilderberg’s post WW2-style corporate complex with technocratic giants will now accelerate an agenda that has been long in the making. By Benito Mussolini’s definition of fascism, that’s what it is. “Fascism”, Mussolini wrote, “should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Already in the works for decades this construct, or governance structure- merging big government with big corporations- is now taking a decisive digital leap with Bilderberg 2.0 which, by Mussolini’s definition, equals a new and enhanced version of the same old fascism.
Jurriaan Maessen’s website is Explosivereports.com.
Infowars: Groundbreaking New Bilderberg Revelations Coming Soon
Key intelligence uncovered: Transformation of Bilderberg into new breed of technocratic elite
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 11, 2013Bilderberg 2013: Infowars Reporters at the Grove Hotel
Major new revelations concerning the secretive Bilderberg Group have been uncovered by Infowars reporters who visited the Grove Hotel in Watford, UK – site of the elitist confab’s 2013 get-together.
With international policy having been set by Bilderberg for decades behind closed doors with complete contempt for transparency and the democratic process, the organization is in the process of merging with a new breed of technocrats under the umbrella of Google – with the behemoth corporation being handed the baton by Bilderberg to implement policies in a variety of different fields, both technology-related and geopolitical.
Infowars reporters who visited the Grove were able to document how the site is being used as an outpost for social media-driven regime change under the auspices of the “Arab Spring”.
The hotel is a key encampment for the newly extended private corporate-global government.
Other sources had already indicated that this was unfolding which is why Infowars reporters were sent to the Grove well in advance of Bilderberg’s 2013 confab.
Infowars reporter Paul Joseph Watson outside the Grove Hotel, Hertfordshire.
The information set to be released is a game changer and will highlight how Bilderberg is transforming itself into a new technocratic elite, with Google at the helm.
Infowars was also able to fully document the layout of the hotel and the sprawling grounds which surround the complex outside of which will gather hundreds of protesters when the clandestine group meets from June 6-9.
Visit Infowars.com on Monday to uncover the true agenda behind “Googleberg” as well as the Bilderberg Group’s talking points and political agenda for 2013.
Infowars: The Big Dogs On Wall Street Are Starting To Get Very Nervous
Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Feb 22, 2013Why are some of the biggest names in the corporate world unloading stock like there is no tomorrow, and why are some of the most prominent investors on Wall Street loudly warning about the possibility of a market crash? Should we be alarmed that the big dogs on Wall Street are starting to get very nervous? In aprevious article, I got very excited about a report that indicated that corporate insiders were selling nine times more of their own shares than they were buying. Well, according to a brand new Bloomberg article, insider sales of stock have outnumbered insider purchases of stock by a ratio of twelve to one over the past three months. That is highly unusual. And right now some of the most respected investors in the financial world are ringing the alarm bells. Dennis Gartman says that it is time to “rush to the sidelines”, Seth Klarman is warning about “the un-abating risks of collapse”, and Doug Kass is proclaiming that “we’re headed for a sharp fall”. So does all of this mean that a market crash is definitely on the way? No, but when you combine all of this with the weak economic data constantly coming out of the U.S. and Europe, it certainly does not paint a pretty picture.
According to Bloomberg, it has been two years since we have seen insider sales of stock at this level. And when insider sales of stock are this high, that usually means that the market is about to decline…
Corporate executives are taking advantage of near-record U.S. stock prices by selling shares in their companies at the fastest pace in two years.
There were about 12 stock-sale announcements over the past three months for every purchase by insiders at Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) companies, the highest ratio since January 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Pavilion Global Markets. Whenever the ratio exceeded 11 in the past, the benchmark index declined 5.9 percent on average in the next six months, according to Pavilion, a Montreal-based trading firm.
But it isn’t just the number of stock sales that is alarming. Some of these insider transactions are absolutely huge. Just check out these numbers…
Among the biggest transactions last week were a $65.2 million sale by Google Inc.’s 39-year-old Chief Executive Officer Larry Page, a $40.1 million disposal by News Corp.’s 81- year-old Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch and a $34.2 million sale from American Express Co. chief Kenneth Chenault, who is 61. Nolan Archibald, the 69-year-old chairman of Stanley Black & Decker Inc. who plans to leave his post next month, unloaded $29.7 million in shares last week and Amphenol Corp. Chairman Martin Hans Loeffler, 68, sold $27.5 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, 57, announced plans to sell as many as 3.2 million shares in the operator of the world’s most-popular search engine. The planned share sales, worth about $2.5 billion, represent about 42 percent of Schmidt’s holdings.
So why are all of these very prominent executives cashing out all of a sudden?
That is a very good question.
Meanwhile, some of the most respected names on Wall Street are warning that it is time to get out of the market.
For example, investor Dennis Gartman recently wrote that the game is “changing” and that it is time to “rush to the sidelines”…
“When tectonic plates in the earth’s crust shift earthquakes happen and when the tectonic plants shift beneath our feet in the capital markets margin calls take place. The tectonic plates have shifted and attention… very careful and very substantive attention… must be paid.
“Simply put, the game has changed and where we were playing a ‘game’ fueled by the monetary authorities and fueled by the urge on the part of participants to see and believe in rising ‘animal spirits’ as Lord Keynes referred to them we played bullishly of equities and of the EUR and of ‘risk assets’. Now, with the game changing, our tools have to change and so too our perspective.
“Where we were buyers of equities previously we must disdain them henceforth. Where we were sellers of Yen and US dollars we must buy them now. Where we had been long of gold in Yen terms, we must shift that and turn bullish of gold in EUR terms. Where we might have been ‘technically’ bullish of the EUR we must now be technically and fundamentally bearish of it. The game board has been flipped over; the game has changed… change with it or perish. We cannot be more blunt than that.”
That is a very ominous warning, but he is far from alone. Just the other day, I wrote about how legendary investor Seth Klarman is warning that the collapse of the financial markets could happen at literally any time…
“Investing today may well be harder than it has been at any time in our three decades of existence,” writes Seth Klarman in his year-end letter. The Fed’s “relentless interventions and manipulations” have left few purchase targets for Baupost, he laments. “(The) underpinnings of our economy and financial system are so precarious that the un-abating risks of collapse dwarf all other factors.”
Other big hitters on Wall Street are ringing the alarm bells as well. For example, Seabreeze Partners portfolio manager Doug Kass recently told CNBC that what he is seeing right now reminds him of the period just before the crash of 1987…
“I’m getting the ‘summer of 1987 feeling’ in the U.S. equity market,” Kass told CNBC, “which means we’re headed for a sharp fall.”
And of course the “perma-bears” continue to warn that the months ahead are going to be very difficult. For instance, “Dr. Doom” Marc Faber recently said that he “loves the high odds of a ‘big-time’ market crash“.
Another “perma-bear”, Nomura’s Bob Janjuah, is convinced that the stock market will experience one more huge spike before collapsing by up to 50%…
I continue to believe that the S&P500 can trade up towards the 1575/1550 area, where we have, so far, a grand double top. I would not be surprised to see the S&P trade marginally through the 2007 all-time nominal high (the real high was of course seen over a decade ago – so much for equities as a long-term vehicle for wealth creation!). A weekly close at a new all-time high would I think lead to the final parabolic spike up which creates the kind of positioning extreme and leverage extreme needed to create the conditions for a 25% to 50% collapse in equities over the rest of 2013 and 2014, driven by real economy reality hitting home, and by policymaker failure/loss of faith in “their system”.
So are they right?
We will see.
At the same time that many of the big dogs are pulling their money out of the market, many smaller investors are rushing to put their money back in to the market. The mainstream media continues to assure them that everything is wonderful and that this rally can last forever.
But it is important to keep in mind that the last time that Wall Street was this “euphoric” was right before the market crash in 2008.
So what should we be watching for?
As I have mentioned before, it is very important to watch the financial markets in Europe right now.
If they crash, the financial markets in the U.S. will probably crash too.
And the financial markets in Europe definitely have had a rough week. Just check out what happened on Thursday. The following is from a report by CNBC’s Bob Pisani…
Italy, Germany, France, Spain, U.K., Greece, and Portugal all on track to log worst day since Feb. 4. European PMI numbers were disappointing, with all major countries except Germany reporting numbers below 50, indicating contraction.
What does this mean? It means Europe remains mired in recession: “The euro zone is on course to contract for a fourth consecutive quarter,” Markit, who provides the PMI data, said. A new insight is that France is now joining the weakness shown in periphery countries.
You’re giving me agita: Italy was the worst market, down 2.5 percent. The CEO of banking company, Intesa Sanpaolo, said Italy’s recession has been so bad it could cause a fifth of Italian companies to fail, noting that topline for those bottom fifth have been shrinking 35 to 45 percent. Italian elections are this weekend.
It wasn’t any better in Asia. The Shanghai Index had its worst day in over a year, closing down nearly three percent.
And the economic numbers coming out of the U.S. also continue to bequite depressing.
On Thursday, the Department of Labor announced that there were 362,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the week ending February 16th. That was a sharp rise from a week earlier.
But I am not really concerned about that number yet.
When it rises above 400,000 and it stays there, then it will be time to officially become alarmed.
So what is the bottom line?
There are trouble signs on the horizon for the financial markets. Nobody should panic right now, but things certainly do not look very promising for the remainder of the year.
Googling for a lawyer while under arrest is a right, rules Canadian judge
A Canadian judge ruled in a recent case that arrested individuals have the right to search for legal counsel with Google — going so far as to say that all police stations should have internet access and computers to let them do so. As reported by The Star, Judge H.A. Lamoureux of the Provincial Court of Alberta was ruling on the case of Christopher McKay. When McKay was 19 he was arrested for impaired driving — he scored above the legal limit on a breathalyzer test — and when brought to the police station was given the opportunity to contact an attorney. He placed one phone call, wasn’t successful, and then gave up (according to later testimony, he said he thought he was only allowed one call as is often depicted in films and television).
» via The Verge
The McDonald Collation: Google Transparency Report Shows Government Snooping Up
Law enforcement is asking Google for its users’ data more than ever — and most of the time, they aren’t getting a warrant first.
That’s the takeaway from a Wednesday update to the Google Transparency Report with information that breaks down for the first time how often the FBI and local cops use a subpoena, as opposed to a warrant, to snoop on Google users’ information.
From July to December 2012, Google revealed, the company received 8,438 total requests for information about 14,791 users or accounts in the United States. Requests were up 34 percent from 2011 to 2012.
Google has been disclosing requests from law enforcement for the past three years, making it one of the few email providers to do so. In that time, the number of requests has steadily ticked up — no huge surprise, according to the company, since it has more users and more data.
In many cases, the users or accounts targeted in the second half of 2012 weren’t even protected by the warrant process, which requires a judge agree that investigators have probable cause.
Because of an obscure 1986 statute, law enforcement often does not need to go to a court to get access to information that could identify Google’s users: Only 22 percent of the time were data requests to the company received as warrants. Instead, cops and FBI agents are often free to write out administrative subpoenas simply stating that they think metadata — like who you’re emailing — could be useful to their investigations.
Murray N Rothbard on Why a Person Becomes a Statist (by Robert Wenzel)
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A great clip on way people might support big government. Even if its not in their interest or ours.
Murray Rothbard - Identity Of The State (by LibertyPen)
From LibertyPen:
Professor Rothbard identifies the fixed nature of the state and points out the problem with a Constitution that cannot enforce itself. http://www.LibertyPen.com
Source: Murray Rothbard, “For A New Liberty, The Libertarian Manifesto.” Read by Jeff Riggenbaum.
Buy It: https://mises.org/store/Product2.aspx?ProductId=10732
Nigel Farage on council racism towards forster family and UKIP (24Nov12) (by liarpoliticians)
Yup, if you have the wrong political views you can’t have kids. How much longer before this spreads to childbirth? The next question, when will this spread to us here in the USA? This is big goverment and big brother at work.
Debt
Debt is like a monkey who lives on your back and has a whip. A whip he hits you with, with out reason or rhyme. Causing a great deal of pain and stress.
What is CISPA? (by LibertyNewsNetwork1)
What is CISPA?
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act is a proposed bill that will essentially give the government, private security agencies, and corporations the right to anonymously access your private information on your computer and let them do with it what they please. The bill was proposed in hopes to cut down on piracy, but CISPA poses much more problems for citizens than actually fixing them.
