This stock market bubble was almost entirely fueled by easy money from the Federal Reserve, and now that easy money has been cut off.  The insiders can see the handwriting on the wall and they are getting out of the market at a pace that we haven’t seen since 2008.  Could it be possible that the day of reckoning is finally at our door?

Since 1913, the Federal Reserve has gone through 18 rate hiking cycles.  In 18 out of 18 cases, those rate hiking cycles have ended in either a recession or a market crash. Do you really think that the 19th time will be different? Yet again we have fooled ourselves into thinking that the good times will just continue to keep on rolling, and once again our society will be in for a very rude awakening when the inevitable crash finally arrives.

What was surprising about the report - certainly not the latest all time high debt numbers, those are now standard - is that the IIF voiced a strongly negative opinion of recent developments in the debt arena.

"The pace is indeed a cause for concern," warned IIF’s Managing Director Hung Tran during a call with reporters. "The problem with the pace and speed is if you borrow or if you lend very quickly, the quality of the credit tends to suffer." It also means more governments, businesses and individuals have been borrowing that could have trouble paying the money back, or merely paying interest on it as rates rise.

"The quality of creditworthiness has declined sharply," Tran added ominously, echoing what Moody's said at the end of May.

1313 BCE: The spies returned from the Promised Land with frightening reports, and the Israelites balked at the prospect of entering the land. G‑d decreed that they would therefore wander in the desert for 40 years.

Both Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on this date. The First Temple was burned by the Babylonians in 423 BCE and the Second Temple fell to the Romans in 70 CE, unleashing a period of suffering from which our nation has never fully recovered.

The Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 133 CE ended in defeat: The Jews of Betar were butchered on the 9th of Av and the Temple Mount was plowed one year later on the same date. Later on in our history, many more tragedies happened on this day, including the 1290 expulsion of England’s Jews and the 1492 banishment of all Jews from Spain.

World War II and the Holocaust, historians conclude, was actually the long drawn-out conclusion of World War I that began in 1914. And yes, amazingly enough, Germany declared war on Russia, effectively catapulting the First World War into motion, on the 9th of Av, Tisha b'Av.

Another staff member featured in the documentary, which airs tonight at 9pm, revealed their approach to combatting users beneath the age minimum of 13. They said: “We have to have an admission that the person is underage. If not, we just like pretend that we are blind and that we don’t know what underage looks like.” One worker said: “They had eight or nine violations and they’re only allowed five. But obviously they have a lot of followers so they’re generating a lot of revenue for Facebook.”

In the documentary, Roger McNamee, one of Facebook’s earliest investors and former mentor of the site’s boss Mark Zuckerberg, claimed that extreme content was the company’s money-making “crack cocaine.” He said: “If you’re going to have an advertising based business, you need them to see the ads so you want them to spend more time on the site. They want as much extreme content as they can get.”

But hours before the talks, he launched an attack against his own country’s policies, arguing previous administrations have deteriorated relations between Moscow and Washington. He wrote on Twitter: “President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok! Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of US foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” 

The talks, which are being held behind closed doors with just the presidents’ interpreters in the room, haven’t a set agenda. Russia hoped the summit would be "the first step" in overcoming a crisis in relations, he said. The spokesman added: "Presidents Trump and Putin respect each other and they get along well. There is no clear agenda. It will be determined by the heads of state themselves as they go along." 

The future of NATO

The cornerstone of German defense policy is its membership in NATO, so Berlin has been very disconcerted by Trump's occasional denigrating remarks about the trans-Atlantic alliance and his criticism of what he says is Germany's unfairly low military spending. "The big question is how reliable the American president will be and whether he will make promises to Putin that aren't agreed in advance with his NATO partners."

The status of Crimea

A litmus test of how far Trump hews to the NATO line or cozies up to Putin will be Crimea. Germany has left no doubt of its condemnation of Russia's annexation of the peninsula… Should Trump make concessions to Putin on this score, Germany and the EU would interpret it as an act of betrayal. "If President Trump… recognizes Crimea as Russian, he will be selling out not only the rights of Ukraine but also the security and sovereignty of states in Europe," Harms said.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has turned into a bone of contention

Germans also have a very vested interest in Trump and Putin's discussions concerning the two Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. Trump has been very critical of the project, claiming that it will leave Germany unacceptably dependent on the Kremlin.

All eyes now are on the much-anticipated summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which is scheduled for Monday in Helsinki on the final leg of Trump’s European tour. A number of German politicians have long feared that the US president could take actions that are not in line with NATO. 

Moscow has noted that the goal of the meeting is to finally start changing the negative situation in relations between the US and Russia for the better. When asked what the Kremlin thinks about Donald Trump calling Vladimir Putin a ‘competitor,’ Yury Ushakov, the Russian president’s adviser, said that Moscow considers the US president to be a ‘partner.’

Trump is the third US president Merkel has dealt with as chancellor. With George W Bush and Barack Obama, she built close and trusting relationships. Trump, she knew, would be more difficult. Even so, what she experienced during her second visit to the Trump White House shocked her. The president showed no interest in listening to her. Instead, she received a dressing-down over perceived German wrongdoings.

So Trump’s recent meeting with Merkel left no doubt: The current American president does not treat Germany as a partner. He views the relationship as an asymmetric arrangement between a master who is free from constraints and a client who has to obey his orders, or get punished.

Any future US president will believe that the US bears too much of the burden of policing the global order, as do many American voters. This means that Germany must hedge its bets. As Chancellor Merkel has warned several times, Germany can no longer expect America to automatically protect Europe. But how should Berlin adapt?

Germany must reduce its dependence on others by investing in its army, and by balancing exports with more investments at home. Playing diplomatic defense won’t be enough. Germany needs to become more active on the international scene, as risks and rivalries heat up from the Middle East to East Asia. Germany must venture out of its “postmodern” comfort zone, while remaining globalist and liberal in character. In that sense, Trump presents an opportunity.

The common denominator of all these high-level meetings is Donald Trump. That fact was summed up in a widely-reported tweet by EU Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday: “Looking at latest decisions of [Donald Trump] someone could even think: With friends like that, who needs enemies.”

The fact that Mr Trump has antagonized the European Union with his “America First” policy stance isn’t new. What is new is that Berlin, Brussels and other EU capitals seem ready to fight back. In the words of Mr Tusk: “If you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm.”

ANSWER: The deep state is the bureaucracy. It is not a global organization. Comey was protecting Hillary and the FBI was against Trump, which are both examples of the deep state. I have said before, up until 1999, I was actually asked to meet with people who wanted to run for president. They were told I was there to brief them on the real world economy but I was to also assess their mental capacity to handle the complexity.

Then I was asked to go meet with George Bush Jr and was told, “This is different, he is really stupid!” I was totally shocked. Everything up to that point in time was all about whether I thought they could handle a crisis. When I asked why they’d make someone stupid president, I was told he had the “name” and it suddenly shifted to just winning.

The deep state rose from 1999 onward. The bureaucracy could now be in charge with a president who is clueless. Obama followed Bush and he missed more than 50% of his daily security briefings. The bureaucracy gained substantial power under Bush and Obama. This is why they are so intent upon getting rid of Trump. They want their power back.

“Four percent [spent] on military spending will, however, not make our world any more secure,” Maas said in the same tweet, a rebuke apparently aimed at Trump. “Instead, we urgently need more respect to the international rules and order,” he added.

More weapons do not automatically mean more security, the minister then told the German dpa news agency, adding that Trump’s demands “have nothing to do with serious security policy.” He also criticized the US for becoming “less reliable” as a partner and called on Europe to take the matter of security in its own hands.