From The Business Insider, June 11, 2009:

The recent buoyancy of the financial markets has created a sense of calm
about the economy. The overall sense of panic has gone.

But there’s still a wariness in the air, a feeling that the fragile “green
shoots” of the recovery might be stomped out by some new crisis. People are
waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Here we suggest 10 things that might stymie our recovery. Some are purely
financial events. Others are geopolitical. And one involves these little
piggies.

Did your favorite nightmare scenario make the cut?

1. Swine Flu Second Wave: Typically, influenza outbreaks come in waves, getting worse with each
one. The very ease with which we seem to have survived the first wave
of swine flu may make us vulnerable to a horrific second wave.

2. Commercial Real Estate Collapse: Various commercial real estate deals face trillions in refinancing
obligations over the coming years. But the market is practically
closed, ensuring massive bankruptcies and restructuring.

Why are lenders so freaked out? Because existing loans are going
sour at a pace unlike anything we’ve seen in history. Because of that,
even commercial real estate properties with strong cash flows are
finding financing extremely difficult to come by.

3. The Option Adjustable Rate Mortgage Explosion: Anyone referring to the “subprime crisis” has got to get with the
program. The subprime wave of defaults is basically over. Now the
question is, what about all the other types of mortgages? You know,
Option ARM, Alt-As and of course, good old fashioned prime mortgage.

The big wave of Option ARM resets has yet to come, and given the drop
in home prices, refinancing won’t be realistic. Let’s hope the
homeowners can afford their new monthly payments.

4. Global Food Crisis: As we saw last year, the global food supply teeters on the edge of
adequacy. Any serious shock–floods in the Midwest, a war in Asia,
social unrest in China, political upheaval in Thailand or Egypt–could
result in shortages in countries that import large amounts of their
food.

5. Israel Bombs
Iran: The Obama administration’s openness to the Iranian regime may have
the perverse effect of emboldening its nuclear ambitions. Very likely,
the fears of the nuclear Iran are over-stated. It would probably behave
like most members of the global nuke club, cowed by its own destructive
power into behaving responsibly.

But Iran isn’t the only country to worry about in the region. Israel
may not be willing to tolerate a nuclear armed Iran, and may choose to
strike out to destroy Iran’s nascent nuclear capabilities. This would
obvious raise tensions throughout the Middle East. At the very least,
oil prices will likely spike and remain elevated following any military
action against Iran. This, in turn, will slow the global economy.

6. A Wave of Municipal Defaults: Historically, cities and states don’t default on their loans very
much. But as Warren Buffett pointed out, historical results don’t mean
jack because muni insurance wasn’t around. Unless it gets a bailout,
California may go bankrupt, causing the muni market to seize up,
bringing public works and spending to a halt, kneecapping GDP.

At that point, with no ability to borrow, the other states will rush
to default themselves, sparing their taxpayers any more pain.

7. Another Bank Run: It seems unlikely, given the government’s implicit guarantee of the
banking sector, but it’s always possible that investors or lenders
could lose confidence in one of the banks again, prompting a financing
run a la Bear Stearns.

If this happened, we’d be back to square one with all the confidence
and bailouts since Lehman’s collapse — only, the government would have
fewer bullets left in the gun.

8. Runaway Inflation: The Federal Reserve seems confident that it can “land the recovery.” Is it right?

There’s good reason to be skeptical that the Fed will be able to
reduce the monetary base before it floods out into the economy, driving
up prices and destroying savings. For one thing, the Fed has never
really been very good at doing this. By the time the Fed realizes that
inflation is taking off, it may be too late.

9. North
Korean Missile Launch: Wee dictator Kim Jong II has lulled the world to sleep, performing
missile tests on a seemingly daily basis. What was once a cause for
alarm now barely merits a bulletin on CNBC. In fact, the dollar has
rallied on the nervousness.

But his neighbors in China, South Korea and Japan are freaked out
and an actual war, or genuine provocation, could wreak havoc on far
eastern trade. This might cause investors to flee towards the dollar,
but it would be terrible for markets and economic activity.

10. Chinese Financial Crisis: Most economic discussion of China these days is about how dependent
the US government has become on China buying Treasury bonds. But China
has lately learned that its own economy is dangerously leveraged on
foreign demand for Chinese manufactured goods. The global downturn has
helped expose the fragility of the Chinese economic miracle, and worse
might be coming.

A collapse of profits in China could very well spark a banking
crisis, much like the collapse of real estate prices did to US
financial institutions. Very little attention has been paid to the
fragility of the Chinese financial system, which is dominated by large,
slow, non-transparent, often corrupt state-run banks and centralized
decision making. Slowing exports could be the tide that goes out and
reveals which Chinese banks have been swimming naked. And the Chinese
financial system, which has almost no effective securitization and
therefore high concentrations of financial risk, is much less prepared
to deal bank failures than the US was.

Of course, this will be bad news for the US. Any financial crisis in
China will hurt the demand for our debt, both public and private,
driving up interest rates and slowing down the US economy.  This, in
turn, would reduce demand for Chinese exports, exposing shaky banks to
risk of collapse all over again.

Dear Dennis:

The shot was a weird angle, with me looking upward as if mentally distracted, and with yellowed skin. Look at the other PP-G photo (after it) where I at least look like a white man….not some new and wondering race.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09163/976862-84.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml

I object to both 1) this gotcha shot that makes me look like an oddball — have you ever run such a “wondering-man” pic of Obama, Specter or Ravenstahl? — and also 2) to apparently my skin being photoshopped in yellow. I like Korean food but lack Korean genes….

The photo PP-G used in an earlier online edition of your excellent story that same day, Dennis, depicted me under a harsh light and just as wrinkly as possible — crows’-feet-o-rama– but at least as a white-skinned man  who was looking focused, almost visionary and compos mentis!

My dad, James Nugent, actually dropped out of candidate politics after the Providence Journal (RI) kept running huge front-page pix of him (GOP candidate for governor of RI in 1974, alas, the Watergate year) that were making him look ugly and goofy. In reality, my dad was a handsome and distinguished man, a successful entrepreneur, an elder in the Presbyterian church, and almost a darker-haired John Kennedy physically. But my dad just could not take the underhandedness of the media, and bitterly called the Journal privately the Urinal. As a Marine he detested the sneak attacks. In one shot, they ran almost a telephoto lens from below up the underside of his nostrils! He looked like Nostril-Man! Pretty hard to get a man mistaken in dark restaurants in the early 1960s for JFK to look ugly, but they succeeded…..

It was interesting that my father was so brave in combat in two wars, including Iwo Jima, but not able to take the press abuse and ridicule against his hard-won reputation — which he had worked hard at for decades as one of New England’s leading insurance brokers. As a child of the Depression he began with almost nothing in Greensburg, Pa. and ended up a guest at the White House many times. Our house has photos of my dad with Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, the legendary then-Providence mayor Buddy Cianci, etc.

Well, as I wrote earlier, Dennis, your reporting was excellent, superb, accurate, ethical and fair — I would not change one word — and made me want to work with you again — although your paper’s readership is far less likely that the Trib’s to be my at least closet supporters. I certainly do not expect any puff pieces on me from either Establishment paper in Pittsburgh, and as a child of sexual abuse I have not had a perfect, role-model, Mormon-like life either , and so I fully expect to be dissected, attacked and slow-roasted.

However, I ask that my foes fight fair. I will answer and debunk unfair coverage on my blog if I cannot get fairness restored.

http://enationalist.com/john_de_nugent/blog/

Interesting note: most search engines now give me about 35,000 web pages under “John de Nugent”,  yet Google keeps dropping my pages — even since the Von Brunn media mania — (yesterday 22,000, today DOWN to 19,000; two months ago it was 34,000) and the Googloids (i.e., two nice Jewish boys, Serge Brin and Larry Page) puts true troll sites high and on the first page against me — such as “BaconEatingJew” — which no other search engine does…. (Chrisy58 is not a troll but a sincere liberal.)

Voici:

Google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22John+de+Nugent%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:fr:official&client=firefox-a
“only” 19,000 views

Yahoo:

http://fr.search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22John+de+Nugent%22&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2

39,000 views

AltaVista:

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=%22John+de+Nugent%22&kgs=1&kls=0

38,000 views

Quintura (an intriguing search engine):

http://quintura.com/?request=%22John+de+Nugent%22&lng=en&r1=from&r2=browser

35,000 views

Far be it from me to see a Google conspiracy, but all power corrupts…..

Best,

John

PS Below are excerpts from my email today to Kimberly Easton, the African-American reporter, who was interviewing me, as you know, for WPXI…..

You can mine this if you find it interesting.

* * *

Dear Ms. Easton,

I saw your segment with me on James von Brunn (http://www.wpxi.com/news/19727856/detail.html) and thought it was fair and accurate. Thanks. I will work with any good and ethical journalist and provide serious stories that can help ratings, inform viewers, and can give you good background as well.

I am glad your interview zeroed in on the question “Could I myself have prevented this?”

I still say No, because I did not sense the clear danger, not knowing him Von Brunn well at all, and he acted on the phone as if he were in good spirits  (but then all Germans do that…they are angry but “fine”……not unlike WASPs).

In subsequent interviews on CBS and ABC other reporters asked the same question you did — and it made me think harder.

As I then said, in the later network interviews, I have met many Americans who say “when I watch the news it just makes me upset and there’s nothing I do so I just don’t watch any more.”

That is what I hoped after hanging up the phone with Von Brunn, that his giving away the computer meant that he was like others who are burned out and drop out, having “said their peace.”

Instead it was a Von Brunn disaster that was a-brewing, and it harmed my own specific agenda of white and black nationists communicating better. Von Brunn’s rants were actually directed 90% against Jews, not blacks — I support this prioritization, and view blacks also as being victims of Jewish power. (My “beef” with blacks has to do mainly with crime affecting our white community and schools, not about blacks trying to take over our lives, media, economy and Mideast policy.)

So if James von Brunn had been consistent with his violent talk he would have gone after a rabbi or Jewish museum official. Instead, if the reports are true, he shot an African-American guard, Mr. Johns,  who had kindly opened the door for him…..!

I noted in his final emails also his hostility to Christianity. He really was a Nietzschean: “God is dead and only force rules.” What a disastrous philosophy — and I hope that I for my part as a Solutrean can create a sense of a moderate white community that demands and gets a seat at the table with the other ethnic communities — and is not primarily about anger at other communities (unless attacked) but instead about defending our own interests and getting along. This IS a multiracial society now.

(A nearly empty church nearby in western Pa., which we are looking at to possibly buy for my meetings… I am very pro-Christian in a non-dogmatic way. Notice the non-yellow skin, often found in white people. )

With a depression coming on, we all need to realize that Kennedy was right. I too have a dream — that there will never be any race war in America, even if our economy collapses.

And God knows what the Chinese, Russians, Arabs and Mexicans will do externally if there is a race war internally … America now is surrounded by enemies, as a result of Washington’s hypocritical and alienating behavior that is getting our American boys hated and killed.

Is my view somewhat apocalyptic? — Yes. But the centuries-old Roman Empire fell too. It was also multiethnic and multiracial and held together more and more by force. And then the Dark Ages began.

Who will speak responsibly and forthrightly for the real feelings and worries of whites?

John de Nugent