Steve Bull's Blog, page 1256
November 15, 2017
Venezuela Defaults On A Debt Payment – Is This The First Domino To Fall?
Did you know that Venezuela just went into default? This should be an absolutely enormous story, but the mainstream media is being very quiet about it. Wall Street and other major financial centers around the globe could potentially be facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, and the ripple effects could be felt for years to come. Sovereign nations are not supposed to ever default on debt payments, and so this is a very rare occurrence indeed. I have been writing about Venezuela for years, and now the crisis that has been raging in that nation threatens to escalate to an entirely new level.
Things are already so bad in Venezuela that people have been eating dogs, cats and zoo animals, but now that Venezuela has officially defaulted, there will be no more loans from the rest of the world and the desperation will grow even deeper…
Venezuela, a nation spiraling into a humanitarian crisis, has missed a debt payment. It could soon face grim consequences.
The South American country defaulted on its debt, according to a statement issued Monday night by S&P Global Ratings. The agency said the 30-day grace period had expired for a payment that was due in October.
A debt default risks setting off a dangerous series of events that could exacerbate Venezuela’s food and medical shortages.
So what might that “dangerous series of events” look like?
Well, Venezuela already has another 420 million dollars of debt payments that are overdue. Investors around the world are facing absolutely catastrophic losses, and the legal wrangling over this crisis could take many years to resolve. The following comes from Forbes…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Unbearable Slowness of Fourth Turnings (Part Two)
In Part 1 of this article I provided the background regarding the phases of Fourth Turnings and where we stand nine years into this period of crisis. I will now ponder what could happen during the remainder of this Fourth Turning.
“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The most important point to comprehend is the death of the existing social order always occurs during the course of a Fourth Turning. Thus far, those constituting the Deep State hierarchy have fended off their demise. They are utilizing every tool at their disposal to retain their wealth, power and control. As their mass media propaganda machine falters, they have redoubled their rigging of financial markets to promote a narrative of economic recovery, while further enriching themselves and their cronies.
It is clear they have reached the peak of financial manipulation, money printing, and artificial interest rate suppression. The narrative is faltering. Their last and final option to retain power is war. As their “everything bubble” (stocks, bonds, real estate) inevitably implodes, civil and/or global military conflict will be utilized to distract the populace from their Deep State domestic disasters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What Would Happen To The World If The Yellowstone Super Volcano Erupted Right Now?
With the looming threat of a possible eruption at the Yellowstone super volcano, some preppers have wondered exactly how to prepare for such a cataclysmic event. Here is what would happen should the super volcano erupt right now.
Yellowstone’s supervolcano is essentially a giant, lid-topped cauldron, and it’s so vast that it can only truly be seen from low-Earth orbit. Its crater is 45 miles (72 kilometers) across, and its underlying plumbing contains several tens of thousands of cubic kilometers of magmatic material. But if it were to erupt right now, we would have very little time to even know that it is happening.
IFL Science spoke to one of the country’s most respected volcanologists to get the most up-to-date low-down on the future of the world’s most famous supervolcano. Hopefully, it will give preppers and idea of what to expect in the unprecedented event that it actually explodes.
According to Yellowstone Volcano Observatory’s Scientist-In-Charge, Dr. Michael Poland, the super volcano may not have enough energy at present to produce a supereruption. “Right now, much of Yellowstone’s magma body is partially solidified, and you need a lot of magma to feed a large eruption.” The chances of a supervolcanic paroxysm are currently around one-in-730,000, which makes it less likely than a catastrophic asteroid impact.
A sudden injection of new magma from beneath the caldera, or a sudden weakening of the geological layers encasing it, as unlikely as this is, may be enough to trigger a sudden depressurization event, and the entire system would violently expunge onto the surface and up into the atmosphere. What would happen next is speculative, but it may be important to understand just how dire that could be.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The California Duck Curve isn’t confined to California
The California Duck Curve is causing concern among California’s utilities, who wonder whether they will be able to ramp generation up quickly enough to meet evening peak demand when all the new solar capacity California plans to add over the next few years comes on line. As the title of this post notes, however, the California Duck Curve isn’t unique to California. It’s present everywhere to a greater or lesser extent regardless of the shape of the daily load curve, and in many places it’s a more serious problem than it is in California.
From the Institute for Energy Reasearch:
(The California Duck Curve) provides a scenario of a sunny day where distributed photovoltaic generation pulls down non-solar electricity demand to extremely low levels at midday when the sun is at its hottest and distributed photovoltaic generation is at a high. That is, the state’s non-solar generating capacities must reduce their production to inefficient lows when the energy supply at the “belly” of the duck from solar distributed generation is at its highest. Later in the day when solar generation is declining and California residents are coming home from work and turning on their appliances, electricity demand ramps up dramatically, which requires flexible generation capacity to come on-line very quickly to meet it. The California ISO is worried that the “neck” of the duck curve could overwhelm the state’s available generating capacity.
Figure 1 shows the duck curve. It clearly illustrates the problem California’s utilities face. Adding more solar generation increases ramp rates leading up to the evening demand peak that coincides with the setting Sun, and if enough is added California’s load-following capacity could find itself unable to ramp up quickly enough to keep the air conditioners running. Could this happen?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Auto-Loan Subprime Blows Up Lehman-Moment-Like
But there is no Financial Crisis. These are the boom times.
Given Americans’ ceaseless urge to borrow and spend, household debt in the third quarter surged by $610 billion, or 5%, from the third quarter last year, to a new record of $13 trillion, according to the New York Fed. If the word “surged” appears a lot, it’s because that’s the kind of debt environment we now have:
Mortgage debt surged 4.2% year-over-year, to $9.19 trillion, still shy of the all-time record of $10 trillion in 2008 before it all collapsed.
Student loans surged by 6.25% year-over-year to a record of $1.36 trillion.
Credit card debt surged 8% to $810 billion.
“Other” surged 5.4% to $390 billion.
And auto loans surged 6.1% to a record $1.21 trillion.
And given how the US economy depends on consumer borrowing for life support, that’s all good.
However, there are some big ugly flies in that ointment: Delinquencies – not everywhere, but in credit cards, and particularly in subprime auto loans, where serious delinquencies have reached Lehman Moment proportions.
Of the $1.2 trillion in auto loans outstanding, $282 billion (24%) were granted to borrowers with a subprime credit score (below 620).
Of all auto loans outstanding, 2.4% were 90+ days (“seriously”) delinquent, up from 2.3% in the prior quarter. But delinquencies are concentrated in the subprime segment – that $282 billion – and all hell is breaking lose there.
Subprime auto lending has attracted specialty lenders, such as Santander Consumer USA. They feel they can handle the risks, and they off-loaded some of the risks to investors via subprime auto-loan-backed securities. They want to cash in on the fat profits often obtained in subprime lending via extraordinarily high interest rates.
Subprime borrowers are perceived as sitting ducks. They’ve been turned down, and they’re aware of their bad credit, and they often think they have no other options. And so they often end up with ludicrously high interest rates on their loans, which these borrowers, because of the ludicrously high interest rates, have trouble servicing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity
The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity
The Department of Justice is full of excuses for wanting back doors into encryption systems, but they’re just that: excuses.
In a press conference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stated that the “absolutist position” that strong encryption should be, by definition, unbreakable is “unreasonable.”
The DOJ is lying about three things:
First
The US government works against the security of businesses. Just this week, I had to tell Apple that my iPhone app did not have certain kinds of encryption that the U.S. government has export control on. Encryption export controls cripple the security and innovation of software products made by American businesses.
Furthermore, the U.S. government hoards software exploits so it can hack into your computer rather than publish them that so companies can patch their products. The NSA intentionally sneaks weaknesses into protocols and bribes businesses to add holes to security products so it can steal the data of their customers.
The only “cybersecurity” that the government cares about is its ability to conduct surveillance and attacks on political targets.
When businesses want to improve the security of their products, they offer rewards for exploits – Microsoft pays up to $250,000 per exploit, Facebook has paid $40,000, and so on. The NSA purchases millions of dollars of exploits from hackers and uses them to spy on the entire world, including U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, the NSA is incompetent at keeping secrets, so it lost their exploit database and caused millions of computers to be infected and hijacked with the exploits they hoarded.The hardware and software pieces of both the Internet and individual user’s computers are made by private companies. There is nothing the U.S. government can do to improve “cybersecurity” other than prosecuting criminal behavior. However, the U.S. government prosecutes a minuscule proportion of cybercrime.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Ongoing Misery of Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria, which hit the U.S. territory on Sept. 20, remains slow and spotty with continued power outages, unsafe water and school closings, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
It’s been nearly seven weeks since Hurricane Maria shredded the island of Puerto Rico and, still, conditions for millions of Puerto Ricans remain grim and barely livable. Thousands are still stuck in shelters, while many others remain in their homes with limited access to electricity and clean water.
Puerto Rican residents walk in flooded streets in Condado, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sept. 22, 2017, following Hurricane Maria. (Puerto Rico National Guard photo by Sgt. Jose Ahiram Diaz-Ramos)
Last Thursday, large swaths of San Juan were again without power and those without their own independent generators were thrown into darkness with little support. Once again, heavy rains flooded out the streets of San Juan, creating the conditions for various water-borne diseases like cholera to proliferate.
I spoke with attorney and human rights activist Judith Berkan about conditions on the Island, even as federal troops prepare to leave the struggling U.S. territory.
Dennis Bernstein: Tell us about your day today.
Judith Berkan: I had two court hearings and in the middle of the first one, which was in the federal court, we became aware that there had been a major blackout throughout the north coast of Puerto Rico. This one is supposed to last between twelve and eighteen hours. The system gets overloaded and then it goes out again.
Tuesday night there were incredible storms here in Puerto Rico. Because we don’t have electricity, the pumps to drain water from the drains are not functioning. One of the attorneys at the first hearing had actually been pulled out of her car during the awful rains.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
November 14, 2017
IEA Pours Cold Water On OPEC Optimism, Warns Global Oil Demand Shrinking
Pouring cold water on yesterday’s optimistic demand forecast projected by OPEC, which projected global crude demand growth to rise by 1.5mm b/d in 2018, this morning the International Energy Agency warned that the crude oil price rally could be short-lived because, contrary to OPEC’s expectations, global oil demand will be weaker than expected this year and next. In its closely watched monthly oil report, the IEA cut its crude demand growth outlook by 100,000 barrels a day for 2017 and 2018, as the WSJ reported. The agency now expects demand to grow by 1.5 million barrels a day this year and 1.3 million barrels a day next year.
The IEA predicted that balances will likely show the crude market is oversupplied in Q4 2017 and the first half of 2018, with oil demand in 2017 at 97.7mmb/d, rising to 98.9 million in 2018. Meanwhile, non-OPEC Oil Supply is expected To rise by 700,000b/d In 2017 To 58.1mmb/d, and another 1.4 mmb/d in 2018 to 59.5mm b/d, led by shale output.
The IEA also noted that global oil inventories fell 63mm barrels In Q3, only second quarterly draw since 2014, with the call on OPEC crude seen at 32.6mmb/d in Q4, declining to 32.0mmb/d in Q1 2018.
However, “the highlight of the report was that they lowered their demand forecast,” said Jens Pedersen, senior analyst at Danske Bank. The report also cautioned that “if the geopolitical concerns calm down, then prices could fall down again, so on the margin it’s a tad bearish.”
The IEA noted that oil prices have risen roughly 20% since early September with Brent crude sustaining gains above $60 a barrel in recent weeks, on the back of supply disruptions and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. But if those problems prove temporary, a “fresh look at the fundamentals” would likely show the “market balance in 2018 does not look as tight as some would like and there is not in fact a ‘new normal.’”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Millions Face Starvation in Yemen Due to Saudi Arabia’s Blockade
Two years ago, German intelligence warned the world of the unique risks Saudi Arabia posed to the region. I covered it at the time in the post, German Intelligence Warns – Saudi Arabia to Play “Destabilizing Role” in the Middle East. Here’s an excerpt:
Saudi Arabia is at risk of becoming a major destabilizing influence in the Arab world, German intelligence has warned.
Internal power struggles and the desire to emerge as the leading Arab power threaten to make the key Western ally a source of instability, according to the BND intelligence service.
“The current cautious diplomatic stance of senior members of the Saudi royal family will be replaced by an impulsive intervention policy,” a BND memo widely distributed to the German press reads.
Saudi Arabia has previously been accused of supplying arms and funding to jihadist groups fighting in Syria, including Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
At the core of this intelligence warning was none other than crown prince Mohamed bin Salman, or MBS. I’ve been warning about the specific dangers presented by his brazen and sociopathic personality for years, and the recent purge finally threw it all into the spotlight for everyone to see.
MBS has already wreaked havoc on portions of the region with his reckless and failed polices with respect to both Yemen and Qatar. Today’s post will focus on the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Yemen, courtesy of the Saudi crown prince.
The New York Times reported last week:
Saudi Arabia’s three-day-old blockade of entry points to Yemen threatens to plunge that war-ravaged country into a famine that could starve millions of people, the top relief official of the United Nations said Wednesday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Runaway Inequality Creates Runaway Global Warming
How Runaway Inequality Creates Runaway Global Warming
The bottom half of humans own next to nothing, but they own as much as the world’s richest 80 individuals do, because though the bottom half are poor, there are 3.79 billion of them.
The average person among the richest 80 owns 45,750,000 times as much as does the average person among the lower half. In other words: in terms of wealth, the typical one of those hyper-rich equals nearly 46 million of those poor people.
The richest person among the poor half of humanity owns approximately $5,000, but billions of people in the lower half own less than nothing — they’re negative net worth: owing more than they own. However, whatever they own is visible, and easily seizable, either by creditors, or by thieves.
By contrast, the wealth of all billionaires, including of the top 80, is largely secret, lots of it being in shell companies, many offshore, untraceable. Consequently, estimates of the wealth of the richest 80 individuals are probably unrealistically low. This secretiveness is a major reason why the public tolerates being ruled by an aristocracy: they don’t even recognize that they are — they think they live in a democracy, even if they don’t.
The roughly two thousand known billionaires do lots of business with others in the billionaire class, and with politicians whose careers they fund. And they tend to get what they want in the resulting governmental policies.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
