Steve Bull's Blog, page 1303
September 26, 2017
Go Green Beans!
GO GREEN BEANS!
Green, string, snap, pole, or bush, whatever you call these beans, these edible little pods are great to grow in the garden. Green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), as we think of them, typically grow in two forms. These two main growing forms are what we call bush and pole bean growing styles. Bush beans usually grow more compactly and won’t necessitate support. Pole beans are more viney and will need stakes or trellises to grow on for support. The other difference between bush and pole beans are that bush beans are relatively low maintenance and easier to grow, however pole beans are more widely known for producing higher yields and being more resistant to disease.
NOT SO GREEN IN YEARS
Green beans have been around for thousands of years, originating in Central and South America. They were introduced to the Mediterranean area the mid 1400’s and quickly spread to Turkey, Italy, and Greece by the 1600’s. Today over 100 varieties are grown in various parts the world.
GROW GREEN
If you want to try and grow green beans in your part of the world then begin sowing seeds 2 weeks after the last frost date in your area and when soil temperatures are above 50° F. Seeds should be planted 1-1.5”deep, spaced 2” apart for bush beans and 3” apart for pole beans, with trellises in place for support. To continuously harvest beans throughout summer, plant additional seeds every 2-3 weeks.
Once beans are planted, and as they continue to grow, water the beans consistently, but make sure your soil doesn’t become waterlogged. Typically green beans don’t need to be fertilized, as too much nitrogen gives you beautiful plush leaves, but drastically reduces your bean production. As with any garden, be sure to weed around your beans, but do so using shallow cultivation in order to leave the bean roots undisturbed.
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Washington Has Initiated Military Conflict With Russia
Russia has provided evidence that Washington is collaborating with ISIS in attacks on Russian forces. http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/breaking-russia-presents-satellite-proof-us-troops-collaborating-isis-syria/ri21030
In one Washington-directed attack, ISIS tried to capture 29 Russian military policemen. However, Russian special forces entered the fray, and the result was spectular losses for ISIS. http://russia-insider.com/en/military/us-secret-services-tried-nab-29-russian-troops-syria-and-got-their-butts-kicked-russian
In another attack Washington-directed attack, Russian General Valery Asapov and two Russian colonels were killed in an attack that violated agreements. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/syria-us-centcom-declares-war-on-russia.html#more
Sooner or later it will dawn on the Russian government that Washington is not a rational government with which diplomacy can be practiced, peace pursued, and agreements reached. Sooner or later it will dawn on the Russian government that far from being rational, Washington is a criminally insane collection of psychopaths in thrall to the military/security complex which, in turn, is in thrawl to its massive profits.
In other words, for the powerful interest groups that control the US government, war is a profit center. No amount of Russian diplomacy can do anything about this fact.
t is unfortunate that the Russian government did not realize what it was dealing with. If the Russian government had not projected its own rationality on Washington, the war in Syria would have been over a couple of years ago. Instead, hoping for a settlement, the Russians were stop-go/stop-go, which gave Washington time to recover from the shock of Russian intervention and put in place plans to partition Syria in order to keep the conflict alive forever. Having dallied in hopes of a settlement, the danger of which The Saker warns us is real. http://thesaker.is/very-dangerous-escalation-in-syria/
The protests by black pro-football players by refusing to stand for the national anthem has come at an unfortunate time. It is playing into the hands of the military/security complex which is using President Trump’s loud voice challenging the “anti-americanism” to whip up patriotic fervor. It is amazing how people fall for it every time. The military/security complex and their presstitutes are creating public anger at those “attacking our country.” This anger will be turned from black football players to Russia.
With the public in its pocket, the military/security complex will increase its reckless provocations of Russia until we are all dead.
The Forthcoming Global Crisis
The global economy is now in an expansionary phase, with bank credit being increasingly available for non-financial borrowers. This is always the prelude to the crisis phase of the credit cycle.
Most national economies are directly boosted by China, the important exception being America. This is confirmed by dollar weakness, which is expected to continue. The likely trigger for the crisis will be from the Eurozone, where the shift in monetary policy and the collapse in bond prices will be greatest. Importantly, we can put a tentative date on the crisis phase in the middle to second half of 2018, or early 2019 at the latest.
Introduction
Ever since the last credit crisis in 2007/8, the next crisis has been anticipated by investors. First, it was the inflationary consequences of zero interest rates and quantitative easing, morphing into negative rates in the Eurozone and Japan. Extreme monetary policies surely indicated an economic and financial crisis was just waiting to happen. Then the Eurozone started a series of crises, the first of several Greek ones, the Cyprus bail-in, then Spain, Portugal and Italy. Any of these could have collapsed the world’s financial order.
But Mario Draghi steadied the sinking Eurozone banking system by promising to do whatever it takes. We derided him, but he has succeeded. The intention of zero interest rates and QE was to prevent a slide into deflation, a spiral of collapsing bank credit and asset values. Markets steadied. It was intended to restore private sector wealth by inflating asset prices. It enriched the hard-pressed financial sector, with bond and stock markets not only recovering, but going on to record levels.
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Bubble About to Burst?
( ANTIMEDIA ) — Last month, Anti-Media reported that some of the biggest institutions on Wall Street have issued warnings to investors that planet-wide financial markets are nearing a downturn. From an August 22 article by Bloomberg:
“HSBC Holdings Plc, Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley see mounting evidence that global markets are in the last stage of their rallies before a downturn in the business cycle.
“Analysts at the Wall Street behemoths cite signals including the breakdown of long-standing relationships between stocks, bonds and commodities as well as investors ignoring valuation fundamentals and data. It all means stock and credit markets are at risk of a painful drop.”
It appears the fear may be spreading. Citing a new financial survey, Mark DeCambre of MarketWatch reported on Friday that a vast majority of Wall Street executives interviewed think the currently record-setting stock market is about ready to decompress:
“More than 80% of chief financial officers surveyed by accounting firm Deloitte said U.S. stock markets are overvalued, marking the highest level since Deloitte began conducting its quarterly poll about eight years ago.
“The findings underline an increasing sense of dread by market participants that stock valuations have become bloated after the S&P 500 index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index have registered repeated records and remain less than a percentage point from fresh records in recent trade.”
Specifically, DeCambre writes, the Dow has hit 42 records thus far in 2017, Nasdaq has hit 49, and the S&P 500 has ended on record highs 37 times.
MarketWatch’s Ciara Linnane also reported on the new survey on Friday. Linanne spoke with the survey’s lead author and managing director of Deloitte’s CFO program, Greg Dickinson, who said one of the most worrisome risks to the market CFOs cited was tension between the United States and North Korea.
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You Are Either A Prepper Or A Future Victim
The recent disasters around the world have shown most people are ill prepared for sudden disruptions to normal life. Just as there was a lack of imagination that allowed 9/11 to happen, the population suffers from a lack of imagination that allows them to suffer from sudden occurrences. Survival favors the prepared mind.
Simply having supplies piled up in preparation for some occurrence is not enough to insure your survival. There are several other things you must keep in mind and balance out among your preparations.
You must imagine the potential catastrophic possibilities
You must prepare yourself mentally to deal with whatever happens
You must have knowledge of how best to employ your resources
You need to use your imagination to think outside the box
You must be able to improvise, adapt and overcome obstacles
You must have a flexible plan to guide you
Many people have spewed hateful rhetoric at preppers over the years and today some are finding themselves in dire circumstances as infrastructure and supplies are cut off for an indefinite period of time. Those unprepared individuals have few options and now rely on the actions of others to insure their survival.
As many in the Caribbean can now attest to, having to wait for help to come from hundreds or even thousands of miles away is slow and stressful to those who wait. They do not know when help will arrive and what resources will be available when they arrive. It could take years for many locations to return to some type of normalcy and this is at a time when help is available and forthcoming. What happens when that help is not available following an event?
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The Exit Strategy of Empire
The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man’s burden. We have added freedom and democracy.
— Garet Garrett, Rise of Empire
The first step in creating Empire is to morally justify the invasion and occupation of another nation even if it poses no credible or substantial threat. But if that’s the entering strategy, what is the exit one?
One approach to answering is to explore how Empire has arisen through history and whether the process can be reversed. Another is to conclude that no exit is possible; an Empire inevitably self-destructs under the increasing weight of what it is — a nation exercising ultimate authority over an array of satellite states. Empires are vulnerable to overreach, rebellion, war, domestic turmoil, financial exhaustion, and competition for dominance.
In his monograph Rise of Empire, the libertarian journalist Garet Garrett (1878–1954), lays out a blueprint for how Empire could possibly be reversed as well as the reason he believes reversal would not occur. Garrett was in a unique position to comment insightfully on the American empire because he’d had a front-row seat to events that cemented its status: World War II and the Cold War. World War II America already had a history of conquest and occupation, of course, but, during the mid to late 20th century, the nation became a self-consciously and unapologetic empire with a self-granted mandate to spread its ideology around the world.
A path to reversing Empire
Garrett identifies the first five components of Empire:
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September 25, 2017
50K Evacuated From Bali, As Nation Is On Volcano Alert For Imminent Eruption
Fears of an imminent eruption on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali have led to the evacuation of an estimated 50,000 people. The Mount Agung volcano is going to erupt, scientists say.
Waskita Sutadewa, the spokesman for the disaster mitigation agency in Bali, said people have scattered to all corners of the island and some have crossed to the neighboring island of Lombok. Indonesian authorities raised the volcano’s alert status to the highest level on Friday following a dramatic increase in seismic activity. It last erupted in 1963, killing about 1,100 people.
Follow
Indonesian Red Cross ✔@palangmerah
Evacuation post #SiagaGunungAgung is in 9 distric; Karangasem, Buleleng, Klungkung, Bangli, Tabanan, Denpasar, Gianyar, Badung &Jembrana
11:36 PM – Sep 24, 2017
Villagers are staying in temporary camps, sports centers, village halls, or with friends and relatives. Some do return to the exclusion zone during the day to tend to their livestock or shift the animals to areas further from the volcano for their safety. Others say they are selling their cows because they don’t know when they’ll be able to return.
“It’s obviously an awful thing. We want to be out of here just to be safe,” said an Australian woman at Bali’s airport who identified herself as Miriam. National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said hundreds of thousands of face masks will be distributed in Bali as part of government humanitarian assistance that includes thousands of mattresses and blankets. Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
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If Economists Are So Smart, Why Are They Always Wrong?
When I took Econ 101 and 102 as a young college student back in antediluvian times the textbook we were assigned was Paul Samuelson’s Economics: An Introductory Analysis. This book is the all-time best selling economics textbook and is still around today (19th ed.).
I had the 1961 edition. In it, Samuelson, a prominent Keynesian economist who won the Nobel prize in economics, predicted that the economy of the Soviet Union would overtake the U. S. economy in 23 years (by 1984). Even as late as the 11th edition (1980), Samuelson stood by his prediction.
As anybody who knows anything about the Soviet Union, their top-down centrally planned economy was a disaster that left its citizens in poverty. It was inefficient, wasteful, driven by coercion, politics, corruption, and cronyism. Consumer wishes were ignored. Goods were under-produced or overproduced. There were shortages of everything, except vodka and hydrogen bombs.
There was a joke floating around Moscow at the time about shortages: Yuri Gagarin’s daughter (he was the first man in space and hero of the Soviet Union) answers the phone: “No, mummy and daddy are out,” she says. “Daddy’s orbiting the earth, and he’ll be back tonight at 7 o’clock. But mummy’s gone shopping for groceries, so who knows when she’ll be home.”
They were far, far behind us.
So how is it possible that Samuelson and his fellow Keynesians could even consider that a planned economy could work better than a free economy? For 11 editions he persisted in believing that failed theory. And a generation of students left school with the idea that a centrally planned economy could work.
Mainstream economists today aren’t much better.
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The Steep Price of Disaster in Mexico
Rescue efforts in Mexico are beginning to wind down after a trepidatory (vertical) earthquake unleashed destruction and bedlam in Mexico City and the two central states of Puebla and Morelos on Tuesday. The temblor took place 32 years to the day after a horrendous quake killed at least 10,000 people in Mexico City in 1985.
Thankfully, the number of victims this time is many magnitudes lower, due largely to improved building standards and enhanced public awareness in the wake of the ’85 quake. Nonetheless, the death toll is close to 300 with thousands more injured. And for survivors the financial toll is just beginning.
Just as happened in 1985, the response of civil society to the latest disaster has been astounding. As CNN’s Mexico correspondent Susannah Rigg reports,rather than rushing away from danger in the immediate aftermath of the quake, many people ran towards it, in order to help others who may be trapped in collapsed buildings.
All over the city, people began forming human chains to help remove debris while other volunteers, including the so-called “topos” (moles), a famous volunteer group that formed after the 85 quake, burrowed into the loose wreckage in search of survivors. So far these groups have helped rescue scores of people, including eleven school children, from the debris. Social media has also played its part by helping send people to where they are most needed.
It’s this kind of solidarity that is keeping Mexico going. In fact, in some areas there are so many people helping out that willing volunteers are being told that no more help is needed. Hospitals are providing free care to the quake’s victims, architects and structural engineers are assessing the structural health of buildings free of charge, and therapists are offering free counselling.
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A Failing Empire: Russia and China’s Military Strategy to Contain the US
A Failing Empire: Russia and China’s Military Strategy to Contain the US
Looking at the global political landscape over the last month, two trends are becoming more apparent. The infamous military and economic power at America’s disposal is declining, whereas in the multipolar field, an acceleration has occurred in the creation of a series of infrastructures, mechanisms and procedures to contain and limit the negative effects of America’s declining unipolar moment. This series of three articles will focus firstly on the military aspect of these ongoing changes, then the economics at play, and finally, how and why smaller countries are transitioning from the unipolar camp to the multipolar field.
One of the most tangible consequences of the decline of US military power can be observed in the Syrian conflict. Over the past few weeks, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have completed the historic and strategic liberation of Deir ez-Zor, a city besieged for more than five years by Islamists belonging to Al Qaeda and Daesh. The focus has now shifted to the oilfields south of the liberated city, with a frantic rush by both the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the SAA to free territories still held by Daesh. The final goal is to claim Syria’s resources and strengthen a weak US position (the US is not even part of the Astana peace talks) in future negotiations concerning the country’s future. To understand how much the US dream of partitioning Syria is failing, one only need note repeated US failures as seen in the liberation of Aleppo and then Deir Ez-Zor, and now the crossing of the Euphrates river. In spite of American intimidation, threats, and sometimes even direct aggression, the Syrian army continued to work against Daesh in the province of Deir Ez-Zor, advancing on oil rich sites.
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