Steve Bull's Blog, page 1237
December 7, 2017
Cold War Number One: 70 Years of Daily National Stupidity; Cold War Number Two: Still in Its Youth, But Just as Stupid
Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair
“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.”
– President Trump, re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam.
Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”
Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”
As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.
Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis.
What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:
How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
December 6, 2017
“Declaration Of War”: Trump Jerusalem Decision Sparks Outrage, Warning Of “A Fire With No End In Sight”
Today at 1pm, president Trump will announce the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but will sign a waiver delaying the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to there for 6 months. Trump’s decision to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem upends decades of American policy in the Middle East and risks inflaming violence in an already-tense region. And sure enough, the announcement prompted an immediate – and furious – response sparking Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests.
While Israel naturally welcomed the news, Palestinian officials declared the Mideast peace process “finished”, calling it a declaration of war, and Turkey announced it would host a meeting of Islamic nations next week to give Muslim countries’ leaders an opportunity to coordinate a response.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, warned him the announcement would have “dangerous” repercussions for regional stability. Separately, the Palestinian delegate to the United Kingdom said on Wednesday that President Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel signals “a declaration of war” in the region. “He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims, hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel,” Manuel Hassassian told BBC 4 Radio’s “Today.”
The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and fear that Trump’s declaration essentially imposes on them a disastrous solution for one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “There is no way that there can be talks with the Americans. The peace process is finished. They have already pre-empted the outcome,” said Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi. “They cannot take us for granted.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Climate Change – Volcanoes (Part II)
Eruption of volcano Agung in Bali
Over the past few decades, there have been several research papers in the scientific press that submit there is a correlation between cosmic-solar radiations and destructive geological events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. On top of this, there are correlations with climate change that kick in where volcanoes throw up ash into the atmosphere which blocks the sun and that sets in motion the global cooling sending the earth back toward an Ice Age. Therefore, the entire process is extremely complex. Our computer can put out a forecast, but it is looking at everything and the dynamic complexity of all the interactions. This is why I do not put forth X happens because of Y. It is just more complex than such correlations.
Nonetheless, the strongest correlation between volcanoes and earthquakes remains that with the sun. In the last two and half centuries the following major volcanic eruptions occurred during strong solar minimum when the energy is at its greatest: Grimvotn (Iceland) 1783/84 (14 km3), Tambora (Indonesia) 1810 (150 km3), Krakatoa 1883 (5.0 km3), Santa Maria (Guatemala) 1902 (4.8 km3), Novarupta (Alaska) 1912 (3.4 km3). The only major eruption to occur during a solar maximum was Pinatabo (Philippines) 1991 (between 6 and 16 km3).
Additionally, research has concluded that there is an extremely high correlation between global volcanic activity among the largest of classes of eruptions and solar activity lows. Over 80% of these volcanic eruptions greater than VEI 5 and almost 88% of the extreme largest eruptions measuring VEI 6 or greater also taking place with solar minimums. There appears to be a strong correlation of volcanic eruptions coinciding with solar minimum. Pictured above, the Bali, Indonesian Agung volcano has been putting out smoke for several weeks. If this eruption unfolds as a VEI 6+ or VEI 7 as was Tambora back in 1815, this will accelerate the Global Cooling. That is going to be devastating for society and the global economy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fed Tightens, “and so far, Nothing Has Blown Up”
Gundlach frets about bonds during QE unwind, rate hikes, tax cuts, and rising deficits.
“A tax cut will reduce revenue and it will grow the deficit and therefore, it will probably grow bond supply, and perhaps boost economic growth,” DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said on an investor webcast on Tuesday. And if it does, “it is going to be bond unfriendly.”
And possibly in a big way.
It’s a “strange environment” for cutting corporate taxes as the economy is already in its eighth year of expansion, he said, according to Reuters, which reported the webcast. He reiterated his prediction that the 10-year Treasury yield could reach 6% over the next “four years or so.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The last time the 10-year Treasury yield was at 6% (on the way down) was in August 2000! Four years from now, 6% would be a two-decade high-water mark.
“I don’t think it is at all strange to think we can tack on something like 75 basis points, on average, with volatility of course, per year for the next four years or so,” he said.
The 10-year yield is currently 2.36%, and sliding, as opposed to the shorter maturities whose yields have surged: the three-month yield reached 1.30% today and the two-year yield jumped to 1.83%, the highest since September 2008.
When bond yields rise, bond prices fall by definition. The 10-year yield is still very low. But if it rises from this level to 6% over the next few years, there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth along the way by bond investors, and it’s not going to be a fun time for a bond-fund manager to navigate this environment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Myth and dystopia in the Anthropocene
The sleeping ice giants of Antarctica are stirring. Will we wake up before they devour us?
Calving front of the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. Credit: Flickr/Etienne Berthier, Université de Toulouse. CC-BY-2.0.
In the autumn of 1913, Karl Jung dreamt of a monstrous flood of yellow waves cascading down from the North Sea through north-west Europe and down onto the Alps. Later in his apocalyptic dream-vision the swirling yellow seas turned blood red amidst “the floating rubble of civilisation, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands.”
Nine months later Jung had a similarly dramatic dream, but this time with a different emphasis: “An Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice…The whole of Lorraine and its canals frozen and the entire region totally deserted by human beings.”
I thought of Jung’s pre-World War One visions when I read of the stirring of the sleeping ice giants of East Antarctica earlier this year. According to recent research, one of those glaciers—the Totten (larger than the state of California)—is moving slowly towards the Southern Ocean as a result of global warming, with the potential to raise sea levels by 3.5 metres in future decades.
This figure is a worst case scenario, but a sea level rise of even a fraction of that figure could lead to extraordinarily worrying outcomes. In the case of the Totten glacier, warm ocean water is seeping up from the bottom of the sea into the cavity beneath this vast ice giant, which could destabilise the surrounding ice sheet even further. That’s important because East Antarctica has long been regarded as more stable than West Antarctica in terms of its melting ice.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is The EIA Overestimating The U.S. Shale Boom?
The American shale boom may be overstated by the U.S. Energy Department, according to a new MIT study that suggests the agency may be over-attributing a rise in shale drilling to technological advances.
“The EIA is assuming that productivity of individual wells will continue to rise as a result of improvements in technology,” MIT researcher Justin B. Montgomery told World Oil. “This compounds year after year, like interest, so the further out in the future the wells are drilled, the more that they are being overestimated.”
Instead, lukewarm oil prices have forced oil majors to drill only in easy-to-access areas, located mostly in the Eagle Ford and Permian basins in Texas, and the Bakken formation in North Dakota. This has led to an exaggerated increase in the number of active wells, and a hyperbolized narrative of growth in the shale industry, the study says.
“The same forecasting methods are used in other plays in the U.S., and the same dynamic is likely to be present,” Montgomery added.
Margaret Coleman, the Energy Information Administration’s chief of oil, gas and biofuels exploration and production analysis, said the “study raised valid points” and offered insights for more accurate analysis of domestic fossil fuel forecasting. Part of the blame can be attributed to an information gap in data available to the EIA team, she added.
Many shale wells lack key pieces of data tracked down by the MIT team, meaning EIA projections over-emphasized geological and capital assumptions as well as technological developments to estimate the shale industry’s growth. Of course, there have been some advances in drill head technology, mapping software, and hydraulic fracking, but that is just one part of the puzzle.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
150,000 Flee Los Angeles As Wildfires Rage – “We’ll Be Fighting This All Week”
In what sounds like a replay of the devastating fires that killed dozens of people and torched a broad swath of California wine country this past summer, at least five discrete fires barreled across Southern California with extreme speed, torching more than 65,000 acres as firefighters struggled to contain the simultaneous infernos.
The first blaze started at about 6:25 p.m. Monday in the foothills near Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, a popular hiking destination. It grew quickly to more than 15 square miles in the hours that followed, consuming vegetation that hasn’t burned in decades, Ventura County Fire Sgt. Eric Buschow said, according to CNN.
Powerful Santa Ana winds and extremely dry conditions have fueled the wildfires, according to the Washington Post, adding hundreds of millions – if not billions – of dollars in damage to what has already been a devastating year for fires. The winds that caused the fires were part of the season’s longest and strongest wind event – driving down from the desert and mountains into the city of Los Angeles.
So far, the latest fires have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, burned down more than a hundred buildings and triggered power outages in the region.
According to CNN, on Tuesday, the city of Ventura declared a daily curfew, beginning 10 pm to 5 am. The curfew is to protect residents and prevent crime such as looting in the evacuation areas, the city said. The largest fire, called the Thomas Fire, was seen crossing the 101 Freeway north of the city of Ventura. That fire had been burning at nearly an acre per second Tuesday. At that speed, it would have covered Manhattan’s Central Park in about 14 minutes.
The Thomas Fire spanned 50,000 acres (about 78 square miles) in Ventura County alone, which sits just north of Los Angeles. The fire was 0% contained as of Tuesday night.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Collapse of Media and What You Can Do About It
Photo by Poster Boy | CC BY 2.0
When a system enters into the final stage of its deterioration – whether that is an institutional system, a state, an empire, or the human body – all the important information flows that support coherent communication breakdown. In this final stage, if this situation is not corrected the system will collapse and die.
It has become obvious to nearly everyone that we have reached this stage on the planet and in our democratic institutions. We see how the absolute dysfunction of the global information architecture — represented in the intersection of mainstream media outlets, social technology platforms and giant digital aggregators — is generating widespread apathy, despair, insanity and madness at a scale that is terrifying.
And we are right to be terrified, because this situation is paralyzing us from taking the action required to solve global and local challenges. While liberals fight conservatives and conservatives fight liberals we lose precious time.
While progressives fight government, the corporations and the super-rich we drown in despair. While philanthropists, fueled by their own certainty and wealth, fight for justice or equality or for some poor hamlet in Africa we become apathetic and distracted from the real source of the problem. And while the president fights everyone and everyone fights the president, the collective goes mad.
In the background, however, the game of hoarding resources and not redistributing them accelerates; absorbing the sum total of our collective actions and commitments into a singular unacceptable future. There is only one way to avoid this fate; uncover the source of the disease and cure it by mobilizing solutions.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s More Than Just the Absences of Acceleration, It’s the Synchronization Where There Should Be None
According to the latest ECB figures, as of yesterday total “liquidity” added to the European banking system for that central bank’s ongoing monetary “stimulus” was just shy of €2 trillion. The outstanding balance in the core current account (reserves) held on behalf of the banking system was €1.296 trillion. In the deposit account, banks are holding €686 billion at -40 bps in “yield.”
To create all these euro-denominated numbers, the European Central Bank through its constituent National Central Banks (NCB) has purchased €2.21 trillion through its three main active LSAP’s (Large Scale Asset Purchases): the PSPP, or QE, which buys up sovereign bonds and is the reason for running them through the NCB’s (out of original concern exactly who would bear any default risk); the CBPP3, or the third time the ECB has bought covered bonds from banks; and the Corporate Sector Purchase Program which is self-explanatory.
The numbers given above don’t appear to balance because of the way all this stuff is accounted for. The NCB transactions of QE and other material operations actually subtract from the ECB’s asset side because it isn’t doing them, becoming instead -€1.21trillion in so far accumulated autonomous factors. On the other side, the liability side of the simple balance sheet, there are outstanding €769 billion in normal liquidity operations (OMO) at the MRO.
The net of all these hundreds of billions and trillions is actually unclear. I don’t mean that in an accounting sense, for all the euros are there in the various statements. Rather, what these massive transactions have produced where it counts is truly negligible.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Your Disaster Response Is Limited By Your Imagination
I touched on this in a previous article. You need to imagine the many forms a disaster will take and have a plan to cope with the changing situation.
I am sure there were many people in the areas affected by the recent hurricanes that had prepared for such an occurrence only to find they were still lacking in some form. It is good to have several months of supplies on hand to deal with a crisis but how many of these people had to evacuate due to flood waters and leave the bulk of these supplies behind? I often wonder how many ended up in evacuation sites anyway and how many had a plan and were able to load up their supplies and get to an alternate safe location.
It is difficult to know how any disaster will play out but your response to it is only limited to how much imagination you put into planning for it. I’m often accused of having crazy ideas but those ideas provide me with a data base to draw on in times of crisis. It is often hard to think straight when disaster approaches and time is short and it is in those moments that you must rely on what you already know.
For instance, following the unprecedented flooding in the gulf states I wondered what I would do if I suddenly found my home surrounded by rising flood waters. I live on a small hill which is one of the highest places in the area. Any flooding would cut off vehicle evacuation long before water reached the house. I concluded my only options would be to sink or float.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
