The economist Jeffrey Sachs, recently penned an article entitled, The age of impunity. Sachs explains that, “Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view. Impunity is epidemic in America. The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight.” Dubious practices, fraud and embezzlement are common during financial bubbles, which are usually created by central banks’ loose monetary policies and by poor supervision of the financial sector.

Currently, there is a wide gap between GAAP earnings and “adjusted” earnings, which are usually reported to investors. In the first quarter of 2016, according to FactSet, the companies in the DJIA that "adjusted" their earnings inflated them on average by 28.9% over their earnings under GAAP.... According to Wolf Richter, “no one wants to see it. Instead, everyone wants to believe the sweet fairy tale spun by Wall Street and Corporate America.” Richter calls this phenomenon, “Consensual Hallucination.”

The Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung opined that, “The wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.” The flood of money that central banks are creating pollutes the Western capitalistic system and free markets, as well as democracy. The consequences are anemic economic growth, deep social discontent, a culture of cheating, and moral degeneration. At the same time, “the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy”. Hardly a recipe for sustainable economic growth and rising standards of living.

This border assistance is part of an EU Border Assistance Mission in Libya called Operation Sophia which was given the green light back in May 2013 with an annual budget of around €26 million. ...For me this highlights how the European Commission has ulterior motives and would use its involvement in this complex, protracted and multifaceted conflict to bolster its push for the creation of a combined EU army, which we know some European Parliament groups wish to see in place by 2025.

The fact is that any ground forces deployed in Libya could quickly find themselves fighting multiple enemies, on multiple fronts. We have already seen what a mess Western leaders made in Libya through their intervention to topple Gaddafi with President Obama admitting it was his worst mistake. Both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, who are wholeheartedly against Brexit and would dearly love to keep this kind of information away from the British public, need to come clean.

Andrew Balls, chief investment officer of global fixed income, also said the risk of a fresh recession was becoming "worrying", given that the global economy was seven years into recovery and central banks were already at risk of "policy exhaustion". Mr Balls said the prospect of Mr Trump's election in November would create "a lot of uncertainty" and "a potential risk to the US outlook" that would be negative for US risk assets.

However, Mr Balls said the Republican candidate was more likely to use the "bully pulpit" of the White House as a platform for his populist agenda rather than to enact sweeping reform. "Unlike in Europe, [Trump's] powers would be constrained, so it's not obvious that a Trump presidency would struggle to get beyond the gridlock we've seen in recent years," said Mr Balls. "So I would stress it's more likely to be heightened uncertainty rather than guaranteed disaster."

Mr Balls said the risks in Europe, which is still blighted by high unemployment, were much larger. "Certainly in the European case we could get a highly radical government with a lot of power to implement its policy proposals, and that's a key risk," he said.

And they assure us that new methods of identification will not be intrusive and will simply allow them to crack down on criminals such as identity thieves, tax evaders and terrorists. But could it be possible that there is more going on here than we are being told? Could it be possible that we should actually be highly alarmed by this huge push for “Mark of the Beast” technology?

We will soon be living in a world that looks nothing like the world that our grandparents grew up in. Technology is increasing at an exponential rate, and even now it is hard to grasp just how rapidly our planet is being transformed. As technology becomes even more important to our lives, there will be even more of a push to move all transactions online. That means phasing out the current system of physical cash and coins, and going to a system that will eventually be entirely cashless.

The stage is being set for the Mark of the Beast, and the time is coming when we are all going to be faced with some very tough choices. When you and your family don’t have any food and you can’t buy or sell without proper “government-sponsored identification”, will you give in and do whatever they tell you to do?

During his speech, he stressed that every American is responsible for preparing for disasters, and that includes “having an evacuation plan” and “having a fully stocked disaster supply kit”. These are basic steps that I have been encouraging people to do for years, but if they won’t listen to me, perhaps they will listen to the man currently residing in the White House.

This speech was timed to coincide with the beginning of the hurricane season, although hurricanes have not posed much of a threat lately. In fact, a major hurricane has not made landfall in the United States for 127 straight months. But without a doubt, we all need to be preparing for disaster. Hurricanes can create a short-term emergency that can last for a few days, but there are other threats that could create a major emergency that could potentially last for an extended period of time.

That list of potential threats includes a major volcanic eruption, a natural or engineered pandemic, a west coast earthquake, a New Madrid earthquake, a tsunami on either the east or west coasts, a meteor impact, Islamic terror, war, an EMP burst that takes down the power grid, cyberwarfare, economic collapse, and civil unrest resulting in the imposition of martial law.

Of course the items that I just mentioned are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in different scenarios we could actually see multiple events happen in rapid succession.

“The armed forces of the two states are both active in fierce fighting on the Turkish-Syrian border, in some cases just a few kilometers from each other,” one NATO official told Der Spiegel. Ankara’s aggression seems partially based on the assumption that, should conflict erupt, Turkey will be supported by its NATO allies. According to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the collective defense clause would be invoked if any member state is attacked.

But European leaders have made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in participating in a war of Turkey’s making. “NATO cannot allow itself to be pulled into a military escalation with Russia as a result of the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel. Of Article 5, Asselborn stressed that “the guarantee is only valid when a member state is clearly attacked.” Germany appears to agree.

“We are not going to pay the price for a war started by the Turks,” said a German diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. NATO leadership made similar warnings soon after Turkey’s downing of the Russian bomber last year. “We have to avoid that situations, incidents, accidents spiral out of control,” NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said at the time. “I think I’ve expressed very clearly that we are calling for calm and de-escalation. This is a serious situation.”

In later years the crew-cut Barbies will be chuckled about over Sunday lunch. ‘Do you remember when…’ But now imagine someone else learns about the Barbie incident — during a seemingly casual conversation with that hurt younger sister, say. This person is not a relative or friend but an official appointed by the state, without your permission, and allowed to gather information about you and your children — in secret, if it is deemed necessary — and circulate it among other state agencies such as the police and social services.

It so happens that this snooper doesn’t possess the sense of proportion or humour that is essential when addressing the issue of warring children. This hacking-off of synthetic blonde locks appears a bit odd to our ‘state guardian’. Disturbing, in fact. So, this government-appointed busybody opens a file on you and your family and enters a remark: ‘Older girl exhibiting signs of aggression against younger. Doll disfigurement may indicate deeper issues of anger management within family unit.’ And suddenly it isn’t just about Barbie dolls any more.

George Orwell understood this kind of thing: how the state, always wary, always contemptuous of the people it claims to represent, forever seeks to exercise control over them. Knowledge is power — and what better knowledge can one have of a person than that pertaining to the inner workings of their family? Intelligence-gatherers, imposed on each and every family by the State, they are able to mould perceptions — often in secret — of the families allotted to them.

There is no right of appeal against their findings — indeed, no automatic right to know what those findings are — and no way to prevent their judgments spreading out into the state bureaucracy via a soon-to-be-created mass database. The idea is that these people will provide a ‘single point of contact’ for those concerned about a child, including its parents. No longer will a boy or girl in distress be allowed to ‘fall between the cracks’ created by different agencies.

But this is a benign interpretation of something regarded by opponents as profoundly sinister in its ambition and scope. This is like “Big Brother is watching you”. Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, a main backer of No2NP, puts it simply: ‘The Named Person scheme is a Civil Service tick-box approach to family life, patronising parents, over-assessing children and trampling on people’s right to confidentiality.

‘Do these “experts” ever stop to ask themselves how the family has managed to function for millennia without them? Just who do these people think they are?’

While the timing is uncertain, the move ups the ante in an intensifying nuclear arms race between the US and China that heightens the risk of war. Since coming to office, the Obama administration has engaged in a military build-up and strengthening of alliances throughout Asia in preparation for war with China. It has committed more than $1 trillion over 30 years to the upgrading and expansion of the US nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

The Chinese regime has responded by taking measures to maintain its ability to launch a reprisal in the event of a US nuclear attack on its military apparatus, cities and leadership. The decision to send nuclear-armed nuclear submarines (SSBNs) on patrol in the Pacific Ocean is the latest step in Beijing’s efforts to protect its relatively small nuclear force — estimated at 260 warheads, as compared to 7,000 for the US.

The nuclear arms race is compounding the increasingly volatile and unpredictable situation in Asia. As American academic Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Guardian: “The law of unintended consequences is in danger of taking the upper hand. The two sides may thus be stumbling blindly into severe crisis, instability and growing competition by China with respect to strategic forces. A competition between unevenly matched forces is inherently unstable.” In its own cautious way, Lewis’s comment is another warning of the rising risks of a nuclear war.