Steve Bull's Blog, page 1186
February 19, 2018
Kofi Annan Echoes Soros Scaremongery: “Social Media Threatens Democracy”
Just a few short weeks after billionaire George Soros spoke in Davos, demanding that the European Union regulate social media because voters’ minds are being controlled and “manipulated,” none other than former secretary-general of the United Nations and Nobel Peace laureate, Kofi Annan, has issued an op-ed very much in support of Soros’ free-speech suppression ideas… with very similar phrasing… and using the same double-speak ‘war is peace, ignorance is strength’ narrative to demand the regulation of social media.
In his Davos speech (above), Soros claimed the reach of social media firms made them a “public menace” while arguing they had led people to vote against globalist causes, including electing President Trump (all his ramblings about “open societies” aside)…
“They deceive their users by manipulating their attention, targeting them to their own economic interests and (…) depending on their services (…)
The platforms are similar to gambling companies (…) and force people to renounce their freedom (…). …), to renounce what John Stuart Mill called the freedom of thought “
And now, via Project Syndicate, Kofi Annan echoes the same sentiment…
How IT Threatens Democracy
Social media could be just the start of a slippery slope leading to an Orwellian world controlled by Big Data Brother, accelerated by convergence with the sensors in our devices and rapid advances in artificial intelligence. Some authoritarian regimes are already marshaling these developments to exercise control on an unprecedented scale.
The Internet and social media were once hailed for creating new opportunities to spread democracy and freedom. And Twitter, Facebook, and other social media did indeed play a key role in popular uprisings in Iran in 2009, in the Arab world in 2011, and in Ukraine in 2013-2014. Back then, the tweet did at times seem mightier than the sword.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russian Meddling: Gagging on the Irony
The irony that is most gagging is that America’s power elite is destroying the nation’s social order by its concentration of wealth and abuse of power.
The irony of the Deep State’s obsessive focus on “Russian meddling” in the precious bodily fluids of our hallowed democracy is so overwhelming that it’s gagging. The irony is a noxious confluence of putrid hypocrisy and a comically abject terror at the prospect that the citizenry may be awakening to the terrible reality that America has lost its soul as well as its democracy.
The foul stench of hypocrisy arises from the long and sordid history of America’s meddling in the internal politics of virtually every nation on the planet— a deeply entrenched policy of meddling on such a vast scale that the Deep State minions tasked with projecting a wounded astonishment that some foreign power has the unmitigated gall to attempt to influence our domestic politics must have difficulty restraining their amusement.
America’s foreign policy is one of absolute entitlement to influence the domestic affairs and politics of every nation of interest, which to a truly global empire includes every nation on the planet to the degree every nation is a market and/or a potential threat to U.S. interests.
Assassination of elected leaders–no problem. Funding the emergence of new U.S.-directed political parties–just another day at the office. Inciting dissent and discord to destabilize regimes–it’s what we do, folks. Funding outright propaganda–one of our enduring specialties. Privatizing public assets to reward our cronies and domestic corporations–nothing’s more profitable than a public monopoly transformed into a privately owned monopoly.
(If your nation hasn’t been targeted for intervention and campaigns of hard and soft power influence, we apologize for the oversight. We’ll get to destabilizing your political order and economy just as soon as the queue of pressing interventions clears a bit.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How the Fed’s Inflation Policies Crucify Workers in Pictures
Every month, pundits comment on average wages. But median wages best explain how the Fed’s policies crucify workers.
The meme of the day is wage growth is accelerating.
I disputed that notion on February 7, in Acceleration in Wage Growth is a Statistical Mirage.
On February 16, I reported Congratulations Workers! You Make One Penny More Than a Year Ago.
That penny more a year is by hour, in “real” inflation-adjusted terms. The calculation is from the BLS.
Nonetheless, the Fed is not happy with wage destruction.Various Fed presidents seek still higher inflation.
Inflation Targeting
Instead of using an inflation target of 2%, San Francisco Fed President John Williams proposes the Fed use a price-level target, that would allow inflation to run higher during expansions to make up for prior shortfalls.
We need that discussion, but in the opposite sense because the Fed’s insistence inflation in a disinflationary world has seriously harmed median and average wage earners.
Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) from the BLS supports this view.
The following charts are from OES data downloads at the state and national level coupled with additional CPI data from the BLS.
Data for these charts are from May 2005 through May 2016. Those are not arbitrary dates.
The latest OES data is from May of 2016 and prior to May of 2005, the OES used varying months. Having all yearly data from May allows easy comparison of wages vs. year-over-year CPI measurements.
National Hourly Wages
Wage Differentials Mean vs. Median Hourly Wages by State
Every month, analysts track the monthly jobs report for “average” wage increases. Such analysis is misleading because most of the benefits go to the top tier groups.
This behavior is not unexpected, but it makes it very difficult for the bottom half of wage earners who do not own a house, to buy a house.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Royal Society and the GMO-Agrochemical Sector
The Royal Society in the UK is a self-governing fellowship of distinguished scientists. Its purpose is reflected in its founding charters of the 1660s: to recognise, promote and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. Its motto, nullius in verba, is taken to mean ‘take nobody’s word for it’. It is an expression of the determination to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts based on experiment.
In 2015, Steven Druker challenged the Royal Society to justify its outspoken and partisan support of genetically modified (GM) crops and to correct any errors of fact in his book ‘Altered Genes,Twisted Truth’. Not long after the book’s release, he wrote an open letter to the Society calling on it to acknowledge and correct the misleading and exaggerated statements that is has used to actively promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and in effect convey false impressions.
Druker cited specific instances where members of the Royal Society have at various times made false statements and the Society’s actions were not objective or based on scientific reasoning but biased and stridently pro-GMO. He argued that the Royal Society has misrepresented the case for GMOs and has effectively engaged in a campaign of disinformation.
Almost three years later, from what we can gather, the Royal Society has not responded to Druker.
In August 2017, Druker wrote:
“For more than 20 years, many eminent scientists and scientific institutions have routinely claimed that genetically modified foods are safe. And because of the perceived authority of their pronouncements, most government officials and members of the media have believed them. But when the arguments these scientists employ to support their claims are subjected to scrutiny, it becomes clear that important facts have invariably been misrepresented — either deliberately or through substantial negligence. And when these facts are fairly considered, the arguments collapse.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Mueller, Russia and Oil Politics
Dunder-Mifflin as Troll Farm
The Mueller indictment made public on Friday charges 13 Russian nationals with trolling the American electoral process to ‘sow discord’ by falsely representing themselves as American dissident personas. Once the field of presidential aspirants had been narrowed in 2016, their goal became to support Donald Trump’s candidacy while disparaging Hillary Clinton. There is no charge that the outcome of the 2016 election was changed by these actions.
The form of the alleged conspiracy was a ‘troll farm,’ an office populated by various functionaries who worked together from 2014 to today to magnify already existing social tensions on social media. Those charged were likewise mainly functionaries— IT workers, managers, etc. Despite allegations to the contrary in the American press, no links between the alleged troll farm and the Kremlin and / or Vladimir Putin were put forward.
The 13 people charged are Russian nationals presumably living in Russia. As of this writing none have been arrested. Unless they plan to voluntarily return to the U.S., an unlikely move, the charges will never be contested in a courtroom. This most certainly was understood by Mr. Mueller before the indictments were handed down. Lest this remain unclear, charges made without the likelihood of a trial are unlikely to ever be resolved.
In reading through the charges, what is striking is that the Russians aren’t charged with creating social tensions. They are charged with exploiting and exacerbating them. It is their personas that are deemed to be false, not the familiar chatter of quasi-anonymous voices on social media. The point is that the social tensions preceded the chatter. Mr. Mueller’s term ‘sowing discord’ literally means that discord was planted. The actual sequence is of discord being exploited.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How is the world ruled?
It is Saturday evening and snowing in New York. I have nowhere to go, I do have things to do (my book!) but my memories take over.
Like for example, the simple question of how is the world ruled. I think that lots of misunderstanding among people in the world comes from inability to visualize how organizations and countries are managed: people either overestimate their singularity of purpose and scheming, or try to convince themselves that there is a full freedom of action and that things are decided on merit. Neither is true. The truth is complex, elusive and lies somewhere (somewhere!) in the middle: it is what Nirad Chaudhury called in a broader context of human history “Libertas in imperio”.
I can describe it, I am afraid, best using the examples that I know well, from my life and long association with the World Bank.
Proposition 1. The world is ruled by a cabal.
Around 1989 when Yugoslavia was in its death-throes (which were not obvious to the naïve types like myself) when on vacation there I wrote an article for an economics and politics weekly in Belgrade that argued that the best privatization strategy, under the last (sensible and brilliant) Yugoslav PM, Ante Markovic, should be such that vouchers be distributed to all citizens of the country and citizens be allowed to buy shares in enterprises in whatever part of the country they wished. It was an utterly quixotic proposals because the national nomenklaturas were precisely then working on the break-up of the country and the last thing they wanted was to cooperate with each other which they would have to do if their citizens owned shares in companies in the other republics. So, the proposal was dead on arrival.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back: ‘It’s Russia! Russia! Russia!’
The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back: ‘It’s Russia! Russia! Russia!’
There’s no defense like a good offense.
For weeks the unfolding story in Washington has been how a cabal of conspirators in the heart of the American federal law enforcement and intelligence apparat colluded to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton and, when that failed, to undermine the nascent presidency of Donald Trump. Agencies tainted by this corruption include not only the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) but the Obama White House, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA, plus their British sister organizations MI6 and GCHQ, possibly along with the British Foreign Office (with the involvement of former British ambassador to Russia Andrew Wood) and even Number 10 Downing Street.
Those implicated form a regular rogue’s gallery of the Deep State: Peter Strzok (formerly Chief of the FBI’s Counterespionage Section, then Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division; busy bee Strzok is implicated not only in exonerating Hillary from her email server crimes but initiating the Russiagate investigation in the first place, securing a FISA warrant using the dodgy “Steele Dossier,” and nailing erstwhile National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn on a bogus charge of “lying to the FBI”); Lisa Page (Strzok’s paramour and a DOJ lawyer formerly assigned to the all-star Democrat lineup on the Robert Mueller Russigate inquisition); former FBI Director James Comey, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and – let’s not forget – current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, himself implicated by having signed at least one of the dubious FISA warrant requests. Finally, there’s reason to believe that former CIA Director John O. Brennan may have been the mastermind behind the whole operation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
February 18, 2018
Data-Dependent … on Imaginary Data
Invisible Derivatives
Giant Mystery
Zero Confidence
Sonoma and the SIC in San Diego
Federal Reserve officials like to say their policy course is “data-dependent.” That sounds very cautious and intelligent, but what does it actually mean? Which data and who’s interpreting it? Let’s ask a few questions.
Photo: Federal Reserve Board of Governors
First, how could their policy choices not be data-dependent? The only alternatives would be that they made decisions randomly or that there was an a priori path already determined by previous Fed policymakers that they were forced to comply with. A predetermined path would, of course, eventually be leaked, and then everybody would know the future of Fed policy. Until they changed it.
Of course, they do depend on data, and lots of it, but are they looking at the right data? If it is the right data, theoretically speaking, is it accurate? As we will see, more often than not they are basing their decisions on data created by models that rely on potentially biased assumptions derived from past performance, etc. Often the data they look at is actually a sort of metadata, a kind of second-derivative model, with all sorts of built-in assumptions, quite removed from the actual data.
That approach is actually reasonable when you realize that the amount of data that must be managed is simply too large for any human being to process in a coherent manner. The data has to be massaged, and that means making assumptions that create the models in the programs. Those are assumptions are not made by computers, they are made by human beings who are doing the best they can – using models based on assumptions they build in to guide them as to what assumptions they should make about the data. Convoluted? Yes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Fed Targets Stock Prices – Here’s Why
The week before the Dow/SPX quickly plunged 10%, the Fed had reduced its SOMA account (the SOMA account is its “QE” account) by $21 billion. Just as quickly as the stock market dropped, it has sharply recovered more than half of its losses from the previous week. As it turns out, the Fed added $11 billion back to its SOMA account. That’s an $11 billion injection of cash directly into the banking system. Clearly the Fed’s actions were a large factor in the 10% plunge and the subsequent bounce.
The Federal Reserve is targeting stock prices with it’s monetary policy because, if it did not, the financial system would collapse led by collapsing pension funds and the housing market. The pension collapse alone would run into the trillions of dollars.
I have a good friend/colleague who works at big public pension fund. He did a “stress test” study with the data available to him on all big public pensions. He concluded that, based on the current stated amount of underfunding at every big pension fund, if the Dow/SPX declined 10% or more over a sustained period of time – where “sustained period” is defined as 3-4 month – every public pension fund in the country would collapse.
You’ll note in the graphic above that the three 10% drops in the Dow since August 2015 were followed with sharp, “V” recoveries. Each one encompassed 10% drawdowns which were remarkably brief. The latest 10% plunge has been met with an equally forceful recovery, with the 10% decline allowed to persist for less than three trading days.
Craig Hemke – aka “Turd Ferguson” – invited me to discuss the the massive financial pressures building in the U.S. financial and economic system. It’s 2007 before the de facto financial system collapse on steroids. The factors discussed explain why the Fed will not let the stock market sustain a meaningful sell-off – visit TF Metals for the podcast link.
Stock Market’s Massive Moves Not Seen Since Great Recession: Many who didn’t see the bubble bursting have fallen
Talk about the market busting a move … and a lot of people! In less than half a month, the Trump Rally lost a third of the height it had developed over a period of sixteen months — the worst two-week drop since February 2009. (The market’s moves are so extreme by many measures that the Great Recession is the closest touchstone one can find to assay the last two weeks of market action.)Most of the plummeting happened in two record-breaking 1,000-point plunges with the total fall taking all indices into the red for 2018. The remaining two-thirds of the Trump Rally remains at peril as the market probes downward to potentially test its 200-day moving average, with the Dow having readily broken through the 50-day and 100-day and now testing its 150-day average:
A break through the 200-day moving average would likely trigger an even larger sell-off as the last major technical support gives way. To give some perspective on the cliff we just leaped off of, look at every move from the cliff-dive into the Great Recession to the present:
Ah, a picture’s worth a thousand words. That’s the plunge so far, but one of the things I said would make the difference between a normal correction of top-heavy prices and an all-out crash would be how much momentum the downdraft developed — enough momentum and the dive will be hard to stop. Well, this just in:
That’s “ever!” Not just worst since we crashed into the Great Recession (which we are still in, as far as I’m concerned, as we have merely existed propped up on life support while all flaws of the Great Recession remained). Clearly, this fall is already equal in steepness and depth to the worst the Great Recession had to offer and greater than any drop since.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
