...Humanity is now in the midst of its fastest-ever period of change. There were almost 2 billion people alive in 1918; there are now 7.6 billion, and they have migrated rapidly into cities, which since 2008 have been home to more than half of all human beings. In these dense throngs, pathogens can more easily spread and more quickly evolve resistance to drugs.

Not coincidentally, the total number of outbreaks per decade has more than tripled since the 1980s. Globalization compounds the risk: Airplanes now carry almost 10 times as many passengers around the world as they did four decades ago. Among all known pandemic threats, influenza is widely regarded as the most dangerous. Its various strains are constantly changing.

Currently, Swiss banks are capping client cash withdrawals to between 100,000–200,000 euros.  Although the onus is placed upon individual banks to decide cash withdrawal limits for their clients, we have recently seen these limits enforced more strictly.  This has to be an unannounced official mandate as it is now being widely reported by our clients…

It’s important to understand that these cash withdrawal limits also determine physical gold withdrawal limits. It is the strictly enforced physical gold withdrawal limits that have our attention. Following at least 10 similar reports to us of banks refusing to deliver clients’ physical gold bars, this week a very wealthy client sought to remove 500 kilos of his physical gold from a German bank for safekeeping in a secure, independent vault. The bank refused delivery of his gold bars.

These refusals to deliver bullion are now resonating loudly enough to prompt something to be officially sanctioned soon.  Cash restrictions are already in place, however, the problem officials potentially face is being forced to go to market to buy thousands of tonnes of gold bullion to meet the surge of requests to withdraw bullion. That is simply not going to be allowed happen as the bulk of unallocated exposure sits on the balance sheets of the too-big-too fail bullion banks…

“If Iran’s oil exports are [stopped], we will not give permission for oil to be exported to the world through the Strait of Hormuz,” Kowsari said, as cited by Bloomberg. The US and Iran have been trading veiled threats for quite some time now.

On Wednesday, the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also warned Washington against intervening in Iran’s oil trade and threatened the US with “consequences,” even though he did not name any specific measures. Some international media then promptly attributed the remark to a possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A spokesman for US Central Command (Centcom), Captain Bill Urban, responded by saying that the US Navy and its regional allies are ready to safeguard “the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce” in the Persian Gulf.

Marxists, after the tremendous failure of their *economic* ideas, decided to change their angle of attack. There was no way that people could be convinced that Socialism is economically superior to Capitalism. Socialism produced tyranny and death in the hundreds of millions, while Capitalist nations were bursting with wealth.

So, Marxists shifted to targeting culture instead of the economy. If Cultural Marxists could *destroy the culture* of Capitalist nations, *then* they would try to use the opportunity to change the governments and economies to their Socialist utopia. Their original argument of workers being *exploited* by capitalists, didn't sell. It's obviously not the case.

So Marxists just shifted their "exploitation" schtick to culture:

- women exploited by men

- gays exploited by heterosexuals

- The old exploited by the young...and vice-versa

- This list goes on and on.

Anything that is true is to be twisted like a pretzel - to the point where people can't tell what is true anymore.

How do you think they're doing?

Had enough yet?

He said: “The Germans lost the shooting war but they did not lose their ambitions. Nazi Germany left us a legacy. Back in, I think it was 1942, when the Germans thought they were going to win the war, they wrote a plan for how they were going to govern their new empire. It was called the European economic community.”

“They were going to have interest rates linked to the Reichsmark, they were going to have a common agricultural policy, a common industrial policy, a common policy for everything. That plan resurfaced in 1957 as the European Economic Community.” Batten was heckled by other MEPs in the chamber as he made the remarks.

The idea was reportedly floated in meetings in Brussels, Berlin and Beijing, between senior Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, according to Reuters. Willing to use either a carrot or a stick to achieve its goals, in these meetings China has been putting pressure on the European Union to issue a strong joint statement against President Donald Trump’s trade policies at a summit later this month.

However, perhaps because China's veneer of the leader of the free trade world is so laughably shallow - China was and remains a pure mercantilist power, whose grand total of protectionist policies put both the US and Europe to shame - the European Union has outright rejected any idea of allying with Beijing against Washington ahead of a Sino-European summit in Beijing on July 16-17.

Almost as if behind the facade of smiles and agreement, Europe has absolutely no belief that Beijing will ever follow through with its promises. In other words, not even when faced with the specter of a full-blown trade war, is Europe willing to terminally alienate the world's biggest buying power: the US consumer, in exchange for some vague promises for "open trade" from Beijing.

“Homeless encampment is blocking sidewalk and creates a health hazard with trash and feces. Please move them, and send a cleaning crew. Sidewalk is impassable, forcing pedestrians into the street,” reported one user, his complaint accompanied with a photo of a tent pitched under a tree in the city’s central Mission district.

San Francisco residents can make non-emergency ‘311’ municipal complaints with the touch of a button, thanks to a website and a mobile app. Complainants can attach photos as proof, and the authorities send a notification when the problem is resolved. Many of the complaints are connected to the city’s homeless problem. Rent in the city averages over $3,500 per month, pricing out all but the highest earners and creating a city of wealthy tech employees on one side, and a teeming homeless underclass on the other.

Dr Lee Riley, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California in Berkeley, told NBC reporters that in some parts of the city, the contamination is “much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or Italy.” Getting stuck by a used needle can pass on diseases like HIV and Hepatitis B and C. San Francisco has one of the largest HIV-positive populations in the US, with an estimated 16,010 people living with the disease.

Over the past several decades, US consumers have loved gobbling up super-cheap goods from China, and the Chinese have used many of the dollars that they have been accumulating to fund our exploding national debt.  This symbiotic relationship has been bad for the United States in a lot of ways, and something had to be done, but in the short-term this trade war is going to be enormously painful.  Sadly, most Americans are completely oblivious to what is happening. 

Another way should have been found to deal with our trade imbalances with China, because a trade war is not going to work. Instead of giving in, the Chinese are promising to respond with measures of “equal scale, equal intensity”, and President Trump is already pledging to hit the Chinese with another 500 billion dollars in tariffs if the Chinese hit back in this manner…

Once these escalations begin, where will they end? The Chinese can really, really hurt us by dumping our debt and by cutting off our access to rare earth elements. Would they really go that far? We simply cannot continue to enjoy a massively inflated debt-fueled standard of living if we decide to provoke all of the other nations that are funding our debt by starting trade wars with them. What we are doing does not make any sense at all, and there will most certainly be severe consequences in the not too distant future.

Their investigation touched on a known but persistent problem in the research world: too few studies have large enough samples to support generalized conclusions. But pressure on researchers, competition between journals and the media's insatiable appetite for new studies announcing revolutionary breakthroughs has meant such articles continue to be published. "The majority of papers that get published, even in serious journals, are pretty sloppy," said John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford University, who specializes in the study of scientific studies.

The problem also comes from the media, which according to Oransky needs to better explain the uncertainties inherent in scientific research, and resist sensationalism. "We're talking mostly about the endless terrible studies on coffee, chocolate and red wine," he said. "Why are we still writing about those? We have to stop with that."

What’s more, they might not be alone in this attempt to curb OPEC’s clout on the global oil market. According to Bloomberg’s Carl Pope, Europe and Japan, previously reluctant to take part in any anti-OPEC projects, may now join in. The reason they are likely to join in is that unlike in previous oil price cycles, now there are alternatives to fossil fuels. Electrification is where OPEC may have to face off with a future oil buyers’ cartel.

India, China, and Europe are all very big on EV adoption. Japan is a leader in battery manufacturing. If they set their minds to it, these four players could upend the oil market and effectively cripple OPEC. Of course, this is a best-case scenario of the kind that rarely unfolds in reality.

In an address to Germany's lower house of parliament Wednesday, Merkel cited President Trump's threat of targeting US imports of cars from Europe, which risk hitting Germany the hardest. She backed efforts by the European Union and US negotiators to reach a deal this month.

“The international financial crisis, which ensured that we now act in the framework of the (Group of 20), would never have been resolved so quickly, despite the pain, if we hadn't cooperated in a multilateral fashion in the spirit of comradeship,” Merkel said. “This has to happen.”

As the leader of Europe's biggest economy, Merkel underscored her resolve to fight for the survival of post-World War II global institutions under attack by the Trump administration. At the same time, she renewed her counterattack against US criticism of German exports by saying that the United States has a trade surplus with the EU if services are included.

“This is taking on the contours of a trade conflict. I don't want to use words that go any further,” Merkel said in her speech. “It's worth every effort to try to defuse this so that this conflict doesn't become a war.”

A high level of market turnover is often a sign of big trouble ahead, and according to Bloomberg our financial markets “are churning at the fastest rate since 2008″…

"From junk bonds to emerging-market stocks, market turnover is through the roof, reaching multi-year highs. Within the S&P 500 Index, investors traded more than $2.9 trillion worth of shares in each of the past two quarters, a feat last achieved in early 2008."

Bloomberg is not prone to hyperbole, and so when they say that “market turnover is through the roof”, I hope that you will take that statement seriously… stock prices are more overvalued today than they have been at any other point in modern American history.  Meanwhile, all sorts of red flags continue to indicate that big trouble is on the horizon, but most investors are ignoring those red flags.

But if you look closely, it is becoming clear that the most savvy investors are getting out while the getting is good.  In a previous article, I explained that the “smart money” is getting out of stocks at a pace that we have not seen since just before the last financial crisis.  Fortunately for them, the “dumb money” has been willing to buy what they are selling at these massively inflated prices.

...global stocks lost approximately 10 trillion dollars in value during the first six months of 2018. Just think about that. 10 trillion dollars is almost half of the US national debt. If global stocks continue to fall at a similar pace during the second half, it is only a matter of time before US stocks get absolutely slammed.

But the truth is that online retailers are not exactly taking over the world. At this point, 91 percent of all retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores, and that means that online retailers only account for about 9 percent of all retail sales.  Sadly, there is a much bigger reason why thousands of retail stores are closing down and millions upon millions of square feet of retail space is now sitting empty all over America.

The mighty US consumer base was once primarily made up of middle class Americans, but the middle class in America has been on a slow, steady death spiral for many years. We have never been through anything like this in modern American history.

2017 was the worst year for retail store closings in the United States that we have ever seen.  The number of retail stores that closed approximately tripled the number from 2016, and this year we are definitely on pace to shatter the record that we set last year.

Not too long ago, I shared with you some absolutely shocking numbers about the decline of the middle class, and I would like to share them with you again now…

#1 78 million Americans are participating in the “gig economy” because full-time jobs just don’t pay enough to make ends meet these days.

#2 In 2011, the average home price was 3.56 times the average yearly salary in the United States.  But by the time 2017 was finished, the average home price was 4.73 times the average yearly salary in the United States.

#3 In 1980, the average American worker’s debt was 1.96 times larger than his or her monthly salary.  Today, that number has ballooned to 5.00.

#4 In the United States today, 66 percent of all jobs pay less than 20 dollars an hour.

#5 102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now.  That number is higher than it was at any point during the last recession.

#6 Earnings for low-skill jobs have stayed very flat for the last 40 years.

#7 Americans have been spending more money than they make for 28 months in a row.

#8 In the United States today, the average young adult with student loan debt has a negative net worth.

#9 At this point, the average American household is nearly $140,000 in debt.

#10 Poverty rates in US suburbs “have increased by 50 percent since 1990”.

#11 Almost 51 million US households “can’t afford basics like rent and food”.

#12 The bottom 40 percent of all US households bring home just 11.4 percent of all income.

#13 According to the Federal Reserve, 4 out of 10 Americans do not have enough money to cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing the money or selling something they own.

#14 22 percent of all Americans cannot pay all of their bills in a typical month.

#15 Today, US households are collectively 13.15 trillion dollars in debt.  That is a new all-time record.

This is why so many US retailers are failing.

The controversy began when an influx of nearly 1,000 asylum seekers from Yemen arrived on the South Korean resort island of Jeju. They took advantage of a new visa waiver program that allowed people from 186 countries to visit the island without a tourist visa. This led to 950 foreign nationals, the majority from Yemen, arriving as tourists under a one month permit but then immediately claiming asylum, a process that can take years while they remain in the country.

“And local people here are worried,” said Hank Kim, owner of the Core Travel Agency. “We have all read about the problems that immigrants have caused in Europe — in Germany and France in particular — and we do not want that to happen here.” Emphasizing that South Koreans do not think the Muslim religion is compatible with their culture, Kim added, “They all have big families and they bring their own culture instead of trying to adapt to the place where they live.”