Foreign shocks' could harm US financial stability: Lew

 

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US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, pictured on April 17, 2015, warned Congress that foreign turmoil, such as Greece's debt crisis, could destabilize the US financial system (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm)

Washington (AFP) - US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Congress on Wednesday that foreign turmoil, such as Greece's debt crisis, could destabilize the US financial system.

Lew cited political uncertainty in Greece that has added to concerns about stability in the 19-nation eurozone. Greece's negotiations with its creditors, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, have bogged down as payment deadlines loom and the risks grow of a debt default and exit from the currency bloc."In today's globally integrated financial markets, foreign shocks have the potential to disrupt financial stability in the United States," Lew said in testimony to the House of Representatives financial services committee.

"Although there has been some progress during Greece's ongoing discussions with Europe and the IMF, the negotiations and the path to securing agreement are challenging and complex," Lew told lawmakers.

"We continue to urge a timely resolution so that Greece is able to continue to meet its obligations," he said.

Lew, in a phone call on Tuesday with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, warned Athens that a failure to reach a deal on financing would immediately create hardship for Greece and "broad uncertainties for Europe and the global economy."

Talks between Greece and the creditors over the release of 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) of bailout funds to Athens have ground to a halt this week over the conditions for the funding. Greece needs the money to make a debt payment of around 1.5 billion euros to the IMF at the end of June.

Lew, presenting an annual report to Congress on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, highlighted that the current ultra-low interest rate environment was encouraging increased risk-taking that could threaten the financial system.

"Investors may seek incremental gains in yield for disproportionate amounts of risk. Banks, credit unions, and broker-dealers have lower net interest margins, leading some firms to increase risk by holding longer-duration assets, easing lending standards, or engaging in other forms of increased risk-taking," he said.

The Council recommends close monitoring of those heightened risks "as well as the risks from potential severe interest rate shocks," he said.

Lew spoke ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest-rate announcement at 1800 GMT. The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to maintain the benchmark federal funds rate at the zero-level, where it has been pegged since the 2008 financial crisis. Many analysts expect the US central bank will launch its first rate hike in nine years in September.

NatWest and RBS customers are panicking after thousands of payments went 'missing' overnight

The embarrassing incident follows a spate of disruptions at the bank

CLARE HUTCHISON

 

 

WEDNESDAY 17 JUNE 2015

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RBS has alerted customers that up to 600,000 overnight payments may be 'missing' from bank accounts at NatWest, Coutts and Ulster Bank due to a technical glitch, sparking a string of complaints over "yet another Natwest blunder".

RBS said in a statement that the issue, which "resulted in a delay to payments and Direct Debits being applied to some customer accounts", was now resolved, but it could take days to clear up.

It said: "We have fixed the underlying issue, we apologise for the inconvenience caused and we are working flat out to get these payments updated for our customers no later than Saturday.

"We will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result of this issue."

Around 600,000 payments may have failed to enter accounts, the BBC said.

A number of customers replied to the notice to complain about the problem, with some worried about facing charges for late payments of bills

One user tweeted: "Mines missing hurry up got bills to pay and over draft from you can't pay till you get my money back."
Another said: "I'm glad losing our money is an urgent matter for you #useless #changingbank #beingfinedforit" 

An RBS spokesman said there had been "an issue our overnight process which has resulted in some of our customers not having credits or Direct Debits being applied to their accounts".

"We are working to get this resolved as quickly as possible and apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused... We will ensure no customers are left out of pocket as a result of this issue."

The embarrassing incident follows a spate of disruptions at the bank.

In March some customers' wages did not appear to have arrived into accounts and cash transfers were not going through.

In 2013 it was subject to a denial of service attack that saw online card payments blocked.

NatWest said the number for its customers to call for help with the issue was 03457 888444.

'It’s going to be bad, whatever happens': Greece on edge as eurozone exit looms

“Everybody’s doing it,” said Joanna Christofosaki, in front of a Eurobank cash dispenser in the leafy Athens neighbourhood of Kolonaki. “Our friends have all done it. Nobody wants their money to be worthless tomorrow. Nobody wants to be unable to get at it.”

A researcher in the archaeology department at the Academy of Athens, Christofosaki said she knew plenty of people who had “€10,000 somewhere at home” and plenty of others who chose to keep their stash at the office. Was she among them? “If I was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”

It was not too hard, in central Athens’ plushest district on Tuesday, to find people worried that the latest breakdown of talks between Greece and its creditors over a new aid-for-reforms deal may have implications for the security – and accessibility – of their savings.

With time fast running out to secure a desperately needed €7.2bn in new rescue funds before the end of the month, when Athens is due to repay €1.5bn in loans to the International Monetary Fund, anxious Greeks have begun withdrawing money from their country’s banks at an unprecedented rate.

Bank deposits have been falling steadily since October and now stand at their lowest level since 2004. Withdrawals in recent weeks have averaged €200-250m a day, but on Monday – after the shock collapse of last-ditch talks between the Greek government and its eurozone and international lenders – withdrawals surged to €400m.

“People are very concerned,” said the owner of a small company who asked not to be named. “I think those who could, have already transferred some money abroad. And lots of others have taken out a few thousand, enough to see them through any immediate crisis. I have.”

Sofia, who runs a boutique in one of Athens’ wealthier suburbs, said she and her husband had €15,000 in a safe in the garage, “just to be sure we’re not caught out.”

Elsewhere, an anonymous car concessionaire confessed to “getting into gold a little bit. Not much. But it’s safe, isn’t it? That’s what they say.”

Nikos Grigoriou, who runs a software consultancy, said the possible introduction of capital controls – as happened two years ago in Cyprus – was the big worry now. “If they fail to reach a deal and Greece defaults, there’ll be a lot of panic. Anything could happen.”

Governments use capital controls to stop banks haemorrhaging deposits and to avert insolvency. They can involve setting ceilings on foreign transfers, taxing particular kinds of withdrawal, performing physical checks at borders – but also limiting cash withdrawals from banks and ATMs.

In Cyprus that limit was set at €300 a day, but many observers believe Greece might well need to set a considerably lower daily limit. “What’s that going to be like – no one allowed to take out more than, I don’t know, €100 a day?” asked Christos Ekonomou, a hairdresser.

As Greece’s choice comes ever more sharply into focus – between opting to stay in the eurozone and experiencing yet more austerity, or defaulting on its repayments and possibly returning to the drachma – some economists have also suggested, as an interim measure, a halfway house parallel currency that would involve government IOU notes and tax credit certificates.

On Tuesday, for every wealthy Kolonaki resident fretting about their cash, there was a less well-off state or company employee convinced it would not come to that. “I’m worried, sure, for my job, my kids, my future. But not about my money at the bank, said Nancy Parlakidi outside the Alpha Bank on Stadiou Street. “That’s the least of my worries right now. The bank’s the safest place for it.”

Withdrawing a couple of €10 notes from the Piraeus Bank near Syntagma Square (“but only so I can go shopping”) Georgios Votskaris, a junior office worker, suggested that “older people and richer people are withdrawing money because they’re frightened.

“First, I’m not frightened, I think there’s going to be a deal. But mainly I don’t really have any money to take out. I’m 33 years old; what kind of savings do you think I could have built up over the past five years?”

At the Eurobank on Voukourestiou Street, Dimitrios Barpakis, a 40-year-old software engineer, said much the same. “I have no money to speak of that I could actually get worried about. I’ve lost a lot of money during this crisis; I’ve had to spend my savings, not put them under the bed. And I think there’ll be a last-minute deal. It’s in no one’s interest for there not to be.”

“It’s going to be bad and it’s going to be hard, whatever happens. No one’s kidding themselves about that,” said Kristina Vongas, a lawyer. But despite deep concerns about the their country’s economic future, few Greeks see any benefits to be had from leaving the eurozone.

A recent opinion poll for the news website Newsit showed as many as 74% of Greeks back the euro – with fully 50% saying they would be prepared to accept “major concessions” by the country’s Syriza-led government if it would help break the deadlock with bailout lenders. “We have to stay in,” said Votskaris. “If we leave, things will only get far, far worse.”

Barpakis concurred: “We should definitely stay in – as long as the eurozone is prepared to be what it really should be, which is to say a genuine union whose members help, not punish, each other.”

Christofosaki, though, while also convinced Greece’s future had to be inside the eurozone, was less sure how things would pan out. “The big problem in this country is a mental one,” she said. Even if we do get concessions and there is a deal, a majority of people don’t really want to reform. Greeks are a recalcitrant lot.”

EU building FIVE new "HAARP type" arrays -- 50,000 antennas...

EU BUILDING 5 NEW "HAARP TYPE" ARRAYS  - 50,000 ANTENNAS


Published on Apr 20, 2015

Big news in the world of science. Europe is building five new antenna arrays to take the lead in RF (radio frequency) "research".

Full website post covering these 5 new VHF arrays being built, each array is to consist of 10,000 dipole elements per array! (absolutely huge) .. total of 50,000 antennas, talk of going up to 100,000!

http://dutchsinse.com/4202015-five-ne...

The new program is called EISCAT 3D -- called "5th generation RADAR".

All five stations are designed to cross beams to interact with each other (scalar potential). Stations to be located in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

This overall array is MUCH larger than the IRI antenna instrument at HAARP in Gakona Alaska, and working on FM frequency bands (VHF - very high frequency) instead of lower HF bands like at HAARP.

In other words, bigger facilities, multiple facilities, and on a higher frequency band than the US is using at HAARP. HAARP is still open and active by the way:

http://dutchsinse.com/2262015-new-haa...

If HAARP was a single instrument plucking a few strings of the ionosphere, then these FIVE facilities could be more likened to a rock band with 5 members. Or a 5 string guitar as opposed to a single stringed guitar.

On another 'note' (no pun intended) , Norway has announced they are STOPPING using FM (VHF) bands for radio station broadcasts by 2017 -- stopping VHF use by public entities, freeing up the FM bands for EISCAT.

Coming in 2017, the new EISCAT 3D arrays will be dominating the FM radio spectrum.
In 2017, the radio station across Norway will be 233.3 FM.  I can hear the future EISCAT FM radio station ID now!  "You are listening HOTT 233.3FM in Tromso Norway!! Where we are literally BURNING UP THE AIRWAVES with the latest greats hits" (hits off the ionosphere that is to say)

Top Ex-CIA Agent Has 'Chilling Warning' About Obama's Plans for Islamic ...

TOP EX-CIA AGENT HAS "CHILLING WARNING" ABOUT OBAMA'S PLANS FOR TURNING AMERICA IN TO AN ISLAMIC STATE!

It’s true President Obama has sided with Islamists more than any other U.S. 'president' in history, but just how deep the ties run has leaders giving warning about the future security of America.

Obama is being charged with “switching sides” to support Muslim extremists, and the accuser isn’t a Tea Party activist or right-wing extremist.

A former CIA agent is pleading with Americans to open their eyes to the infiltration of epic proportions in our White House:

http://www.undergroundworldnews.com 


http://madworldnews.com/cia-agent-war...

Large M7.0 earthquake strikes South-central Mid-Atlantic ridge

New post on Dutchsinse

6/17/2015 — Large M7.0 earthquake strikes South-central Mid-Atlantic ridge by Michael Janitch A rare, and very large M7.0 earthquake has struck the South Central Mid-Atlantic ridge. _______ This earthquake started out as a magnitude 6.2, which was then removed from the USGS feeds, and replaced entirely by this M7.0 event. The European EMSC agency is reporting one single M6.8 event.  Thus this is certainly a USGS upgrade, as opposed to a 2nd earthquake. This large earthquake activity on the Mid-Atlantic was expected to occur.  A forecast for the Central Mid-Atlantic was issued 7 days ago. Watch the forecast calling for larger Mid-Atlantic ridge movement here: none given _______ In addition to this large earthquake activity, a series of Volcanoes has erupted in the West Pacific over the past day.   These volcanic blasts were also expected to occur, and talked about in the above forecast video. Mount Bulusan in the Philippines, Mount Sinabung in Indonesia, and Mount Asama in Japan -- all three sent off volcanic blasts in the past 24 hours (up to June 17 2015). _______ Information on the 7.0M earthquake from the USGS here: M7.0 - Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002qn7#scientific_origin:us_us20002qn7 Magnitude 7.0 mww Location/uncertainty 35.362°S 17.392°W± 11.0 km Depth/uncertainty 10.0 km± 1.8 Origin Time 2015-06-17 12:51:33.140 UTC Number of Stations – Number of Phases 142 Minimum Distance 2444.01 km (21.95°) Travel Time Residual 1.53 sec Azimuthal Gap 65° FE Region Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge (410) _______

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://dutchsinse.com/6172015-large-m7-0-earthquake-strikes-south-central-mid-atlantic-ridge/

Video: Dahboo7... Busted...UN Trucks Caught On I-20 With Their Pants Down, So To Speak...

It is their right - it is their duty to throw off ..........................

The Declaration of Independence


IN CONGRESS July 4, 1776


The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,........................... 

enhanced excerpt ...



But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,  it is their right, it is their duty,  to throw off such Government and to prove new Guards for their future security.


(1776)  ~ Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father, great American Patriot, author of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd U.S. President

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html 

'Planetary Court' and removal of 6 billion people

Vatican speaker and California Governor in push for massive depopulation... talk of 'Planetary Court' and removal of 6 billion people under new 'Earth Constitution' and 'World Government'

Monday, June 15, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) The depopulationists are on the move again, pushing hard for the elimination of six billion people on planet Earth in order to bring the planet down to what's being touted as its "sustainable carrying capacity of one billion people."

But this time, the depopulation agenda may be codified by the Vatican. Professor John Schellnhuber has been chosen as a speaker for the Vatican's rolling out of a Papal document on climate change. He's the professor who previously said the planet is overpopulated by at least six billion people. Now, the Vatican is giving him a platform which many expect will result in an official Church declaration in support of radical depopulation in the name of "climate science."

"The teaching document, called an encyclical, is scheduled for release on June 18 at Vatican City," reports Breitbart.com. "Perhaps with the exception of the 1968 encyclical on contraception, no Vatican document has been greeted with such anticipation."

A  new  Planetary  Court  to  hold  power  over  all  nations ... one  ring  to  rule  them  all

Schellnhuber daydreams about a "Planetary Court" guided by a new "Earth Constitution" which would hold power over every nation and government on the planet. As he explains himself in this document on HumansAndNature.org, he's a proponent of an all-powerful, climate-focused world government that would rule over the planet... a literal "science dictatorship" based on whatever "science" the climate change proponents can fudge together each year.

As Schellnhuber says:Let me conclude this short contribution with a daydream about those key institutions that could bring about a sophisticated -- and therefore more appropriate -- version of the conventional "world government" notion. Global democracy might be organized around three core activities, namely (i) an Earth Constitution; (ii) a Global Council; and (iii) a Planetary Court. I cannot discuss these institutions in any detail here, but I would like to indicate at least that:

- the Earth Constitution would transcend the UN Charter and identify those first principles guiding humanity in its quest for freedom, dignity, security and sustainability;

- the Global Council would be an assembly of individuals elected directly by all people on Earth, where eligibility should be not constrained by geographical, religious, or cultural quotas; and

- the Planetary Court would be a transnational legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to violations of the Earth Constitution.

Schellnhunber, in other words, believes a new world government can create "freedom" for humanity by dictating to it with a new Planetary Court guided by an Earth Constitution which will no doubt begin by declaring the planet can only sustain one billion people. The other six billion or so simply have to go. So instead of a Bill of Rights, this new Earth Constitution will be founded on a Bill of Deaths and a global government that might order the extermination of billions of human beings in order to "save the climate."

"In an unprecedented encyclical on the subject of the environment, the pontiff is expected to argue that humanity’s exploitation of the planet’s resources has crossed the Earth’s natural boundaries," reports The Guardian. "...[T]he world faces ruin without a revolution in hearts and minds."

The Guardian goes on to report:

The pope is "aiming at a change of heart. What will save us is not technology or science. What will save us is the ethical transformation of our society," said Carmelite Father Eduardo Agosta Scarel, a climate scientist who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires.

California  Governor  worried  that  too  many  people  exist

Interestingly, California Governor Jerry Brown might welcome such a depopulation agenda organized under a new world government. He recently tweeted about California having too many people, saying, "At some point, how many people can we accommodate?" Gov. Brown goes on to say that climate change is the reason the current drought is so much more worse than anything they've seen in the past.

Apparently, California has too many people, Gov. Brown says, and that means California needs to be deliberately depopulated.

With this, the Vatican and Jerry Brown join the efforts of other depopulation advocates like Bill Gates, who once said that vaccines can help reduce the world population by 10 to 15 percent.

True to that claim, vaccines given to young women have now been discovered to be intentionally laced with sterilization chemicals, according to the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, a pro-vaccine organization funded in part by UNICEF.

Similarly, a shocking 75% of children given vaccines in a small town in Mexico ended up hospitalized or dead after a recent round of vaccine shots that many have speculated might be part of a depopulation test run.


Fast  depopulation vs slow depopulation     




Since YOU are one of the targets of global depopulation, you may want to increase your awareness of how it might be accomplished. When it comes to depopulation, there are two approaches considered by the globalists:

SLOW DEPOPULATION: This method focuses on covert sterilization via vaccines, free birth control pills, and "social services" education efforts that try to convince women to have fewer children. The idea is to slowly let the current population of 7 billion die off while the birth rate plummets, causing the total population to shrink over time. You might call this the "non-violent" way to gradually reduce the population over time. Nobody has to prematurely die for this to be pulled off, in other words.

FAST DEPOPULATION: This method involves fast-kill strategies to essentially murder billions of people while blaming it on something else. The most likely candidates include the release of an aerosolized bioweapon (Ebola 2.0?), the insertion of aggressive cancer viruses in vaccines (see the confession of former Merck vaccine scientist Maurice Hilleman for background), global nuclear war, the intentional release of EMP weapons that destroy the power grid, and so on. These are obviously the more nefarious, dastardly depopulation pursuits, and they would obviously consist of global murder on a massive scale.

"Slow depopulation" methods have been tried since the 1970's. They haven't worked. As world population continues to rise, the global power brokers now seem to be experimenting with "fast depopulation" approaches to achieve their goal of eliminating six billion people from the planet.

Deliberate  depopulation  vs.   unintentional  depopulation

Another dimension in this discussion emerges in the distinction between "deliberate" and "unintentional" depopulation.

Deliberate depopulation is, of course, the pursuit of actions and policies which are intended to directly and quantifiably reduce the number of humans living on the planet.

Unintentional depopulation is what happens when catastrophe strikes and the systems keeping modern civilization humming along suddenly collapse: a power grid failure, for example, or a runaway genetic pollution of crops that leads to global starvation. The climate change scientists insist that the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will somehow cause the catastrophic collapse of society, leading to the deaths of millions or billions of people.

Accordingly, the globalists see themselves as being compassionate for humanity by invoking deliberate depopulation, thereby preventing catastrophic, unintentional depopulation (i.e. a global die-off following the catastrophic collapse of the global ecosystem). That's how they justify covert vaccine sterilization programs, for example, or talk of eliminating six billion people on the planet. In other words, when they are murdering you and six billion of your brothers and sisters, just remember that in their own minds, they LOVE life and are protecting the ecosystem!

But how, exactly, do you go about eliminating six billion people if you're a globalist pushing for mass murder in the name of climate science?

How  do  they  kill  six  billion  people?  Twelve  monkeys!

Killing one person is called murder. Killing six billion people is called "climate science." But how do you pull it off, exactly?

It's easier than you might think. As depicted in the movie Twelve Monkeys, all it takes is the release of a weaponized, genetically engineered virus in any major airport, anywhere in the world. (I'm not saying this is true because it was in a movie. That would be absurd. Rather, in this case, the movie correctly depicts the reality of how easily a bioweapon could be spread by someone with the intent to destroy human civilization as we know it.)

From there, the virus replicates and spreads globally, causing widespread death and depopulation while simultaneously empowering world governments to control their populations with medical police state powers such as forced quarantines, restrictions on travel, forced immunizations, medical checkpoints on highways and so on. (It's sort of the perfect police state model if you think about it, and it gives governments the justification to insert medical tracking RFID chips into everybody's bodies at gunpoint. C'mon you control freaks, you know how excited you get when you think about micro chipping the population! It's FUN!)

The  U.S.  military  already  possesses  biological  weapons  which  could  kill  one  billion  or  more

It's an undebatable fact that the U.S. military has long engineered and tested such viral bioweapons to potentially use as weapons of war. (I previously wrote about the airborne Ebola that ran wild through a U.S. Army medical research facility in 1990, killing an entire building full of monkeys before they "nuked" the building with sterilization chemicals.)

While international treaties claim such research has been abandoned, only a fool believes such hollow promises are ever kept. In reality, the research is merely shifted into covert status, continuing as normal on "black budgets." Today, the United States government possesses viral strains which could decimate humanity in less than a year's time... and they could be "accidentally-purposely" released anywhere on the planet without notice.

Of course, if you were going to release a deadly virus to decimate humanity (the word "decimate" means to kill 1 in every 10, by the way, it does not mean to "eradicate"), you would first make sure all your elite globalist buddies received vaccine shots against the virus. Naturally, those vaccine shots would be manufactured without any of the mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and MSG found in vaccines given to the general public, thereby making them significantly safer. The CDC, of course, would stay completely silent on this pandemic, just as they've maintained absolute silence on the confession of their scientist Dr. William Thompson, who publicly admitted to taking part in scientific fraud at the CDC to hide the links between vaccines and autism in African-Americans.

The public would be left to fend for itself. And in this scenario, guess who would be most likely to survive? People who use medicinal herbs and immune-boosting superfoods. Those who are wiped out by the weaponized population control virus would largely consist of the elderly, the immunosuppressed, and the malnourished.

That might be precisely who the new "Planetary Court" world government wants to eliminate in the first place, sparing the able-bodies workers who pay confiscatory taxes to governments and produce economic output that can be exploited by the globalist corporations.

So I now throw the question back to the Pope, Professor John Schellnhuber, Bill Gates, Ted Turner and other depopulation fanatics: How exactly are you planning to eliminate six billion people from this planet?

The truly hilarious part in all this is that the world's masses are already so totally brainwashed by climate propaganda that if you ordered them to voluntarily report to "eco-friendly euthanasia chambers" to save the planet by killing themselves, they'd line up in droves to comply! Heck, they'd buy tickets!

Interestingly, that might not be such a bad idea just to invoke the global Darwin award and invite the world's most idiotic, obedient sheeple to voluntarily remove themselves from the human gene pool in a sort of modern-day mass sacrifice to Gaia. The Aztecs did it, and that worked out just great! (Just ask all the Aztecs that are still around.) What could possibly go wrong?

http://www.naturalnews.com/050075_Vatican_climate_science_world_depopulation.html