Wall Street plunges, S&P posts biggest drop since Nov 2011

USA - Stocks fell more than 2 percent on Thursday, extending the previous day's sharp decline as investors fretted over the Federal Reserve's plan to begin reducing its stimulus later this year if the economy strengthens. The S&P 500 recorded its biggest daily decline since November 11, 2011, on the year's heaviest day of trading. All 10 S&P sectors were sharply lower, with 94 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange down for the day and more than four-fifths of Nasdaq-listed shares ending lower.

 
If Bernanke really shakes the tree, half the world may fall out

USA - We no longer have a free market. The world’s financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers. Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times, if ever.

Everything is Rigged, This Time, It's Currencies

USA - Given the LIBOR story, the Interest Rate Swap manipulation story, the Euro gas price manipulation story, the US energy price manipulation story, and (by now) countless others of the "Everything is Rigged" variety, this screams out for immediate notice. Via Bloomberg:

The Biggest Bond Bubble The World Has Ever Seen

USA - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is on the way out the door, but the consequences of the bond bubble that he has helped to create will stay with us for a very, very long time. During Bernanke’s tenure, interest rates on US Treasuries have fallen to record lows.

China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities

CHINA - The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

G8 seeks rewrite of global tax rules

NORTHERN IRELAND - G8 leaders called on Tuesday for a major shake-up of international corporate tax rules and the systematic tracking of just where multinational companies make their profits as part of a plan designed to “rewrite the rules on tax” across the world.

200,000 Take To Brazil's Streets In Largest Protest In Two Decades

BRAZIL - As many as 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Brazil's biggest cities on Monday in a swelling wave of protest tapping into widespread anger at poor public services, police violence and government corruption.

Trying to Revive Mideast Peace Talks, Kerry Finds a Conflicted IsraelComment

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - The intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be seen as a trio of conflicts. There is, of course, the bitter enmity between Israelis and Palestinians, hardened over decades, with many on each side questioning the other’s claim to the land bridging the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

We need a much smaller state, not an even bigger one - bring on the cuts

UK - Something is rotten in the state of Britain, but those who believe the problem is that the Government isn’t spending enough of our money have got it all wrong. True, given our dilapidated infrastructure and health service, a visitor from Mars might be forgiven for thinking that public expenditure had been cut to the bone. Yet the sobering truth is that the public sector still spends almost half of our national income, in a shocking indictment of its inefficiency, misplaced priorities and intractable structural flaws.

Berlusconi: Let’s breach EU deficit rules. Who would throw us out?

ITALY - Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday, “We need to tell those gentlemen [in Brussels], ‘We are in this situation because of your d--n austerity policies. From now on, you can forget about the fiscal pact and the deficit limit of 3% of GDP. Do you want to throw us out of the single currency? Go ahead. Do you want to throw us out of the EU? Well, we’d like to remind you that we pay €18 billion a year [into the EU budget] and only get €10 billion back’. Who would throw us out?”

 
Ben Bernanke under pressure to spell out QE timeline

USA - US stocks jumped and the dollar climbed against the yen on Monday, amid expectations that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke will spell out how it will decide when to put the brakes on America's quantitative easing programme, at its two-day meeting this week.

Whenever Margin Debt Goes Over 2.25% Of GDP The Stock Market Always Crashes

USA - What do 1929, 2000 and 2007 all have in common? Those were all years in which we saw a dramatic spike in margin debt. In all three instances, investors became highly leveraged in order to "take advantage" of a soaring stock market. But of course we all know what happened each time.

MoD serves news outlets with D notice over surveillance leaks

UK - Defence officials issued a confidential D notice to the BBC and other media groups in an attempt to censor coverage of surveillance tactics employed by intelligence agencies in the UK and US.

Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know

USA - There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the NSA is actually doing. Are they reading our emails? Are they listening to our telephone calls? Do they target American citizens or is it only foreigners that they are targeting? Unfortunately, the truth is that we aren’t going to get straight answers from our leaders about this.

Vatican to announce John Paul II 'miracle'

VATICAN - The Vatican has secretly attributed a mystery miracle to the late John Paul II, clearing the way for him to be declared a saint. The Holy See has yet to reveal what the miracle was or where and when it took place but Vatican sources said it would “amaze the world”. One Vatican expert said it involved the “extraordinary healing” of a woman. Details of the miracle are likely to be announced at the end of this month or at the beginning of July, a Vatican insider told The Daily Telegraph. John Paul II was beatified — the first step towards sainthood — in a lavish outdoor ceremony in St Peter’s Square in May 2011.

 
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Just what is an Apostle?

Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”

The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!

Read online or contact email to request a copy

Listen to Me, You who know righteousness, You people in whose heart is My Law: …I have put My words in your mouth, I have covered you with the shadow of My hand, That I may plant the heavens, Lay the foundations of the earth, and say to Zion, “you are My people” (Isaiah 51:7,16)