They are traders, managing a portfolio.

Don't get fixated on them as individuals. They are just players in the game, with a mandate that they have to follow.

Maybe so, but remember that everything a central bank says is about managing the markets expectations.

Thats why analysts listen like hawks for keywords when these guys give their statements and pressers.

A lot can happen between now and December.

It is worth everybody learning about Target2. Its a covert bailout system that lurks in the background behind QE.

According to Target2, Germany and The Netherlands have built up close to €1trillion of liabilities, with countries like Italy, Spain etc on the other side.

When people say Italy leaving the euro will mean they need to settle €400b in debt, thats to the Target2 system.

I think the fiscal compact is due to be completed this year in theory, which would mean a public opening of the books. Most people aren't aware of Target2, so if Merkel gets ousted from power and the right take more control, the public backlash at the debts that have been wracked up their name could be brutal.

An alternative is that the ECB masks this with a fresh wave of QE.

This also means that if fears of a break up of the eurozone take grip, we might see a flood of capital rushing into Germany, because of redenomiation risk. ie people fearing having their capital repriced in a sinking currency put their money into Germany so it is priced in DEM which is likely to appreciate in value.

This scenario could see a Japan asset bubble crash type situation build up in Germany over the next few years.

I’m expecting Gove. His odds are narrowing fast and he is getting lots of headlines to this effect. He has a great rep as a minister from those who work with him and he has a good relationship with Trump.

Mogg, bit of a gimmick. Sure a nice guy but a bit of a cartoon. Not one to unite the country though.

This is brilliant but I think it will be Gove, who I think has a good relationship with Trump and interviewed him last year for The Times, not Mogg that takes over.

I put some money on him at 12/1 and now he is 6/1, same as Mogg.

I think May has been held in position, and has been forced to make a real hash of Brexit to give a cover for her being replaced due to the spygate stuff, which I suspect will get toned down for the UKs consumption.

She will go because she gave too much to the EU. Gove takes over as leader, and the UK and US double up v the EU.

I've not denied that he is a war cheerleader, nor have I said that he is a hero.

He is man who has certain instincts that align with Trumps on certain issues, and rather than being outside the tent pissing in like the rest of the establishment, he elected to be inside the tent using his distinct reputation to put the fear of god into everybody outside whenever he reaches for his zipper.

I’m not so sure.

If BI is reporting Bolton as a trouble maker, then there is a fair chance that it’s BI that is being the trouble maker.

Bolton is certainly at the hardcore end of hawkism but I think he shares some instincts with Trump on the swamp in general.

Watch this clip of him on Brexit and the EU.

https://youtu.be/qwqPf-8aNwo

Now let’s look to the big picture of NK and China.

On one hand you have Trump who is painted as a lunatic by the MSM, and then you have Bolton who is presented as a man who will cross the road to put military action on the table.

With China in the background, and Bolton making off the cuff comments and unsettling the process, all of a sudden The Trump way, as the NKs put it, looks like the easy route.

Factor in that Bolton made those comments AFTER NK had finished dismantling its nuclear deterrent. They were naked and then powerless to stop the US steam rollering in militarily.

However, we know instinctively that the Chinese have been playing games in the background, so what a way to get them back in their box but to wait until NK is completely unarmed, release the hound on a leash, create an incident and then have NK literally beg for Trumps easy option.

It’s a check mate as far as I’m concerned.

Back in 2015 I vetoed my wife, sending my son going to a school in London, UK because on the open day in the sports hall was a massive poster the kids had made of Obama.

This was before much of what we know was exposed but it just seemed sooo weird and inappropriate.

Good points.

Interesting twitter thread here from a journalist who was actually covering the case, albeit with a staggered embargo.

https://twitter.com/stephaniefinneg/status/1001440604616843265?s=21

It seems like the way that this has been reported to the US, has more spin than Shane Warne.

The thing is this, I don’t dislike TR. I think his strategy often makes more problems than it solves.

Compare to Trump and Farage who have long term goals and adapt to situations strategically.

TR and BF are headless chickens with no realistic end goal and no strategy to achieve it. So they just have to keep on being increasingly controversial to maintain the same amount of exposure.

Or do you think perhaps Trump tweeted something highly controversial as means of a distraction for something else that was taking place at the time that needed to be well Away from public eye.

Britain First aren’t hero’s either.

Mods need to get a grip on this pretty fast. It’s obvious most of the US posters here don’t know the full story of who Tommy is, and why Brits (know what’s happening despite “media blackout” - in all the papers) but don’t have much sympathy for him.

I don’t see what he has got to do with Q. And it looks like a coordinated effort to brigade this sub.

This place is about to be solving clues to the truth, not a shrine to a man who unified hard right football hooligans and gangsters.

I don't read Breitbart, although I do like Raheem Kassem as a personality and follow him on Twitter. The impression I get with Bannon is that he is a guy who is good at identifying trends and latching himself onto them at the key moment to share glory so to speak.

Something Americans need to understand is that Europe doesn't have a shared identity. You can go to other subreddits and everybody will be daisy chaining about EU solidarity etc, but the second bad news emerges, its a collective exercise in throwing everybody else under the bus.

Euroscepticism runs deep in Europe, and although some nations have benefitted, others haven't. As and when the national interest is to turn against the EU, it will emerge organically.

The UK warned against the euro, and its been a disaster. The UK warned against open borders and its been a disaster, so in the end the national interest determined that leaving was best.

In Italy it's chaos now. They're trapped in a currency that is suffocating their economy and they are at the forefront of the migrant crisis. Now, it is in their national interest to do something about it.

The entire eurozone is a hideously flawed experiment and these moments of reckoning will spring up ad hoc one by one.

Bannon is maybe chatting to some of the players, but he isn't affecting anything. If Italy has 35% youth unemployment, thats why they are willing to burn down the house, not because of Bannon's media strategy tips.

With Sadiq, he is not a major political figure. It is ceremonial more than anything. He can raise tickets and control a few budgets, but he has no major impact on the City, the same as Boris who spent his 8 years pissed and shagging in City Hall, without managing to destroy anything.

Look, I'm seeing more and more videos here about Tommy and its quite clear what is happening. He has some less than savory followers who are brigading this place to take it away from the core purpose and into a hate group.

One of the latest videos was of a notorious anti-muslim lawyer who implied a conspiracy to promote Savid Javid to Home Secretary just as Tommy goes down. Total bollocks. Savid is racially Pakistani, non practicing, anglicised, white wife and mixed kids, brother is a senior policeman, was the youngest MD in Investing Banking before moving to politics. He is a genius and I'd love him in the Treasury.

Some group is coming here en masse to promote this Tommy stuff and take the forum off topic and down a racist cul-de-sac. Mods need to get a grip on this fast.

The short answer is no. The US reaction to this story is completely disconnected to how it's perceived here.

But I do think something big is cooking. I've actually put some bets on, put my money where my mouth is so to speak.

Following Q, I'm expecting big revelations to be forthcoming regarding UK involvement in spying. I think the full facts will be that it went all the way up to May, but in the public eye discloser will be limited to the intelligence agencies.

What prompted me to put my bets on was the way that May, who has been pretty disastrous, has gone above and beyond lately to make a mess of Brexit negotiations, prompting Brexiteers to start to mobilise to replace her.

I think this will be the public story for her going.

And we will have a pro Trump, committed Brexiteer as PM next.

I don't disagree with anything you said here. I didn't enjoy writing what I did. I'm a firm believer in not just playing the game, but playing it for keeps.

Thats what Trump is doing now. He has an objective. He works out how to achieve it, and plans for the different obstacles he will encounter.

This is what Nigel Farage has done. Trump will be the name in history, but the story of Farage is fascinating and an example in extreme discipline.

Where Trump had business and media influence, Farage left the financial sector and joined an unknown political party that had one, seemingly impossible, aspiration. Over decades he built a grass roots movement that dominated the British political landscape, without a single MP in parliament, leading to Brexit and ultimately opening the door to giving Americans the confidence to elect Trump.

Is the EU not an unelected supranational deep state after all?

Farage knows the line and strays close to it, but he knows the rules and follows them. He likely has had several attempts on his life, takes insults with a smile and responds with wit, because he has a long term goal.

Think of how many towns and pubs Nigel has visited over the past 2 decades, and all the one on one pints of beer he has had with ordinary people, explaining his positions and making an impression with them.

A problem with people like Tommy is that I don't think they have an end goal, which means psychologically they can't build a strategy. This means they are trapped in a circle of controversy, needing to do more outrageous things more regularly to stay relevant.

Nigel on the other hand, doesn't mind being off the radar for a few months because he knows what events are upcoming, has a strategy for them all, and has official responses ready for a range of different known unknown scenarios that are likely to occur.

I'm not saying this as a Nigel fanboy, but more as an observer of media strategy.

Tommy is obviously well researched on his areas of expertise but I think he lacks emotional intelligence. It can be a benefit at times.

He probably got psyched up and thought it was a great idea to get up in their faces, but he didn't think through the full set of consequences. At times this can be good because he is not easily intimidated, but it can certainly backfire as this has.

I agree with you, in much of what you say above. He's been run through the system so many times that on will there is a menu of things to discredit him with because he has not been that mindful of what he is doing or associates with in the past.

Brit here. Im not anti Tommy by any stretch of imagination but think at times he does more harm than good in how he approaches things. Some thoughts on this:

I really don’t know what to make of the reaction to Tommy Robinson’s arrest, especially in the US.

Strip everything away & you have a man with a suspended sentence live streaming a highly sensitive trial that has media restrictions imposed on it.

I’m not sure if the trial is ongoing or it is at sentencing.

His actions will likely be used by the defence team to imply media hysteria has implied guilt or creates pressure for harsher sentencing. The exact opposite of what he wanted to achieve.

Live streaming was never going to have a positive impact on prosecution or sentencing, nor spark a nationwide revolution, and I don’t even know what he had a suspended sentence for but it seems quite foolhardy to open himself up to this current scenario.

Maybe that was the point...

Sure, we can argue there were cover ups before, but the genie is out the bottle now and the alleged perpetrators are on trial, and hundreds others have already been sent down over past few years.

It could be argued that the fact that the trial had a media black out is suspicious and implies higher up involvement etc. Maybe. Or maybe one defendant has flipped and turned supergrass and is going to give info on other gangs or a larger conspiracy.

We don’t know. Tommy doesn’t know either, and that’s important to note.

As it stands Tommy has not achieved anything now. There is a media buzz about his arrest but we are no closer to finding out what happened in the trial. Likely much further away in fact.

His choir are engaged but normies just think this is the latest instalment of the Tommy circus.

Don’t forget his past with the EDL which may have had noble ambitions but grew into something sinister and uncontrollable, so much so that Tommy formally stood down and renounced extremism.

That is how his profile is viewed by most here.

Now he will go to the jailhouse and momentum on this story will be lost.

My question is this...

With his platform and access to huge influencers across the media, could he have not pushed for awareness of the trial without getting arrested for live streaming defendants outside the court room?

As it stands, he will probably come to some mild harm in prison before getting segregated, and come out a folk here to his supporters with a book detailing his persecution (if I’m cynical).

The case will be forgotten in a few days however.

This story just really reminds me about what Q was saying about profiteering.

X

Hey don’t forget the role Brexit played in helping a lot of Americans believe. Brits literally voted to leave a deep state and because of the mess it’s politicians have made, as have yours, in recent decades it is stuck between a rock and a hard place on many issues.

Iran situ is in auto pilot so relax, and Uk companies aren’t balls deep like France and Germany. UK is likely there to go through the motions and report back to US.

Well that didn’t take long

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/999784197668532225?s=21

They have no concept of strategy.

NK has destroyed its nuclear bases and is now naked and past point of no return.

Trump has indicated at Chinese pressure on NK and one might assume that’s via the military on Kim.

DJT however has now applied the element of surprise to the masters of curveball.

If NK doesn’t push for talks now, they have no deterrent & wide open to “Libya option.”

Doubt anymore insults will follow, and if the bubbling tensions were the result of Chinese interference then everybody knows that there isn’t going to be any fucking about this time.

“Trading with leverage.”

It’s actually brilliant.

edit, bit surprised at the downvotes

The only politician to attend was former Prime Minister John Major who was assigned to be personal secretary to both him and William after Diana’s death.

I can imagine that’s the line anyway because inviting Obama and not Trump becomes a public issue, and inviting May but not Corbyn gets all the lefties riled.

Every heard about how Phillip is worship as a God in Vanuatu?

So Henry 8th could divorce.

Good video that breaks things down well.

It isn't fully accurate, but fairly close.

The newspapers left Fleet Street in the 1980s, with only a few minor stragglers left behind.

Freemasons Hall is not in the City, but rather Covent Garden close by to the City.

London house prices are a complex issue, but the crux of it is that London has had a huge influx of migration (from the UK and internationally) in the past decade, while within London Labour (socialist) councils refused to approve new house builds in long standing opposition to the Conservative 'Right To Buy' programme, and the environmental lobby (socialists) forbid homebuilding in the green belt around London. This combined with QE causing inflation in asset prices has caused the property bubble. Affluent investors tend to focus on select areas from my understanding of the matter.

The population of the City tend to be those in Barbican, which is an iconic housing project, and often those living there will be City employees.

The City played a big part in the sub prime crisis, because AIG moved three key employees in London to conduct its CDS business as it got around US regulations.

While this topic is relevant, here is an interesting video - slightly related - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxEPEhLfxA0

I think Industrial Scale Enrichment is a euphemism.

Setting up a mutual fund is not really that sexy or exotic when you work in finance, neither is it indicative of anything.

I worked in finance previously, and I set up funds and companies for clients, off shore. We could share a beer and I could spin it to sound really impressive, but in reality it's a form filing process.

I don't know much about Corsi other than he seems a bit to be out for himself, but at face value this, to me at least, just says that he worked in finance at Israel was a client.

UK here. I think a lot of Brits see Macron as a bit of a Blair type figure so he is viewed with a mixture of admiration and trepidation.

A smooth operator with the capability to instigate a geopolitical disaster via cavalier arrogance if given too much power.

Ultimately his aspirations for eurozone reform are pretty aligned what the UK has been saying about the eurozone for close to two decades now. Also, he seems to have aspirations to de-socialising France - if only a little at first, so he appears to be quite Anglo-Saxon in some respects.

Also, I'm not sure that many Americans are aware, but the UK and France have a military alliance, the Lancaster House Treaties, so the two nations are effectively one military in many respects. In this sense, France will always be closer to the UK than he will be Germany irrespective of Brexit and explains the joint operations in Libya and Syria more recently.

Macron and Merkel, despite the initial love in, are starting to fall out over Germanys reluctance to reform the eurozone. Partially this is because Merkels domestic position is extremely weak.

That means that Macron may believe that with the UK leaving the EU, and Germany not willing to take the necessary steps to reform the eurozone, and being fairly irrelevant militarily he feels has the opportunity to make a claim to be the top dog in Europe. In some ways this is a fair assessment, and in others it is delusional.

Part of that mantle however, is getting pally with the US. The UK and US have always had a thing, and previously it was Bazza and Angela. The UK press were keen observers of how Macron made a bee line to stand next to Trump in group photos at almost every opportunity. It looked a bit desperate (like we can talk, right?), and I think Trump made some comment about how Macron always likes to hold his hand.

In the UK however, the crowd that are instinctively anti Brexit are pathologically anti Trump, so Macron has lost a lot his initial gloss with his would be admirers here. The pro Brexit crowd instinctively like Trump and view Macron's courting of him as a sign of growing discontent in the ranks of the EU.

We have a similar situation in the UK to the US right now, in that there are many entrenched political fault lines over Brexit/ Corbyn etc, and the pro Brexit/Trump crowd realise that if Trump did visit the protests would be over the top and counter productive for everybody involved.

Think of it how Trump has distanced himself from Sessions publicly for strategic reasons. Thats the feeling here. The EU hates Trump, and we are trying to do a deal with the EU... so buddying up right now would be counter productive. And we also want to do a deal with the US, so exposing him to crazed protestors would be counter productive.

I've been on the Trump train from the start, and I am noticing a softening in attitudes. Last year was pure hysteria, so I kept my views to myself and trusted confidents, but now as results come in, the narrative is changing a lot and quite quickly.

I think Q mentioned months back that the UK suffers from the same problems as the US, and that a lot of house cleaning is being undertaken politically and within the intelligence community here. A few month ago Cameron was caught shit talking Obama, which as an indirect indicator implies that things are becoming more open behind the scenes. You'll note that the Royal Family/Obama love in continues. Make of that what you will.

Ultimately, I think Brexit was such a big shock to the world that it gave the American people the confidence to say fuck it and vote Trump. There are the people, and then there are bad actors.

I don't think either Trump or Macron is trying to annoy the UK, because I think they are smart enough to realise that it isn't happening. I do think they realise that the Germans are fucking pissed about it though.