Gordon Brown;

The economist David Miles, who sits on the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England, may exaggerate when he forecasts financial crises every seven years, but most of the problems that caused the 2008 crisis — excessive borrowing, shadow banking and reckless lending — have not gone away. Too-big-to-fail banks have not shrunk; they’ve grown bigger. Huge bonuses that encourage reckless risk-taking by bankers remain the norm. Meanwhile, shadow banking — investment and lending services by financial institutions that act like banks, but with less supervision — has expanded in value to $71 trillion, from $59 trillion in 2008.

“I don’t want to really scare you,” he said, after half a chuckle. “But it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses” to which they could flee if it all hits the fan.

Someone’s Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet

Paul A. Rahe – Chinese Aggressiveness in Asia

In and for a long time after the time of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese talked softly while carrying a big stick. Deng and his immediate successors understood that the rise of China would elicit anxiety on the part of the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Taiwanese, and the Filipinos, and they did what they could to allay that anxiety by refraining from doing anything that would suggest on their part aggressive intent.
In the last couple of years, however, all of that has changed; and everywhere where one goes in Asia, an old friend who travels in high circles told me earlier this week, one senses hostility — not towards the United States but towards one’s neighbors. The anger underlying all of this has been stirred by the Chinese, who have been throwing their weight around with ever greater force.
This weekend the Chinese upped the ante. In the South China Sea, between Korea and Taiwan, there are some uninhabited islands, which are called the Senkaku isles by the Japanese and the Diayu isles by the Chinese. Although there are other claimants, these have been controlled for many decades by the Japanese. This weekend, however, China extended its air-defence zone to include the islands…

More: China’s new air defense zone above Senkakus ‘very dangerous’ escalation
Via

Washington Post: “It’s probably nothing”.

Zerohedge;

For whatever reason, JPM has decided that after November 17, 2013, it will halt the use of international wire transfers (saying it would “cancel any international wire transfers, including recurring ones”), but more importantly, limits the cash activity in associated business accounts to only $50,000 per statement cycle. “Cash activity is the combined total of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash withdrawals made at branches and ATMs.”

h/t Ed S.

Daily Caller;

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller.
Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.

Is it just me, or is it somewhat ominous that the people reponsible for organizing war are going back to work?

Poland Confiscates Half Of Private Pension Funds To “Cut” Sovereign Debt Load.

BREAKING. @CBSNews has learned that the Pentagon is making the initial preparations for a Cruise missile attack on Syrian government forces

— Charlie Kaye (@CharlieKayeCBS) August 23, 2013

Russia may reinforce naval grouping in Mediterranean in response to U.S. buildup – expert http://t.co/gtOai0LqqU #Russia #interfax #news

— Interfax News (IFAX) (@IFAXnews) August 24, 2013

More from Ezra Levant: Obama’s Middle East meltdown

“Remind me again, who thought it was a good idea to make critical infrastructure accessible via the internet?

Washington Examiner;

The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an “electromagnetic pulse” so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.
Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth’s typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.[…]
“There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us,” said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.

More background here.
Update: As expected, lots of discussion in the comments. Go read ’em.

Zerohedge;

While we still don’t have the answer, what we do know is that as of an hour ago when the Comex released its daily vault depository statistics, JPM has said goodbye to another 28.4% of all of its vaulted gold – the largest one day withdrawal since April 25, the result of the departure of 61.5% of its Eligible gold, or 218k troy oz, as hundreds of thousands of registered ounces in the bast few weeks have seen warrant detachment.

h/t Adrian

Putin offers to put Russian troops on the Golan Heights to serve as UN peacekeepers.
(h/t Mike K)