Steve Bull's Blog, page 1340
August 12, 2017
If War Comes, Don’t Blame the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ – Things Are Even Worse Than You Think
If War Comes, Don’t Blame the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ – Things Are Even Worse Than You Think
As the drumbeat intensifies for what might turn out to be anything but a «splendid little war» against North Korea, it is appropriate to take stock of the ongoing, seemingly successful effort to strip President Donald Trump of his authority to make any foreign and national security policies that fly against the wishes of the so-called Military-Industrial Complex, or MIC. A Google search for «Military-Industrial Complex» (in quotation marks) with «Trump» yields almost 450,000 hits from all sources and almost 26,000 from just news sources.
During the 2016 campaign and into the initial weeks of his administration, Trump was sometimes described as a threat to the MIC. But over time, with the appointment to his administration of more generals and establishment figures (including some allegedly tied to George Soros) while purging Trump loyalists, it’s no surprise that his policies increasingly seem less a departure from those of previous administrations than a continuation of them (for example, welcoming Montenegro into NATO). Some now say that Trump is the MIC’s best friend and maybe always was.
There are those who deny that the MIC exists at all. One self-described conservative blogger writing in the pro-war, pro-intervention, and mostly neoconservative National Review refers to the very existence of the MIC as a «myth» peddled by the «conspiracy-minded». Sure, it is conceded, it was appropriate to refer to such a concept back when President Dwight Eisenhower warned against it in 1961 upon his impending departure from the White House, because back then the military consumed some 10 percent of the American GDP. But now, when the percentage is nominally just 3.2 percent, less than $600 billion per year, the term supposedly is inapplicable.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Signs Of Distress
The need to change is becoming more obvious than ever
The world is edging closer to the final moments after which everything will be forever changed. Grand delusions, perpetuated over decades, will finally hit the limits of reality and collapse in on themselves.
We’re over-budget and have eaten deeply into the principal balances of all of our main trust accounts. We are ecologically overdrawn, financially insolvent, monetarily out past the Twilight Zone, consuming fossil fuels (as in literally eating them), and adding 80,000,000 net souls to the planet’s surface — each year! — without regard to the consequences.
Someday there will be hell to pay financially, economically, and ecologically as there simply isn’t any way to maintain these overdrafts forever. Reality does not renegotiate. Its deal terms aren’t compromisable.
For those who have the neural plasticity to actually see what’s happening around us, the changes are already here, blatant and frightening. Younger folks, with their fresher eyes and fewer ties to the past, can see them a lot easier than their elders.
The prosperity enjoyed by the past few generations — especially the Baby Boomers — was stolen from future generations. All the while, they pretended as if their borrowing-heavy standards of living were the result of sheer genius and intelligence; like trust fund babies who mistake being born on third base for hitting a triple.
Young people have sussed this out; and are now pulling back from many of the principal occupations of their forebears — like marriage, babies and buying homes and cars. This perplexes older folks, who are beginning to find themselves increasingly at odds with the generations following after them.
Humans can be very very smart, but the flip-side of our ingenuity is our capacity for self-delusion. We’ve very consistently preferred to look past our faults. That can work for a while, but eventually an incomplete view will lead to a complete disaster.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
August 11, 2017
Britain bans gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2040
When will hybrids and electric cars really take over?
Britain will ban sales of new gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2040 as part of a bid to clean up the country’s air.
The decision to phase out the internal combustion engine heralds a new era of low-emission technologies with major implications for the auto industry, society and the environment.
“We can’t carry on with diesel and petrol cars,” U.K. environment secretary Michael Gove told the BBC on Wednesday. “There is no alternative to embracing new technology.”
Almost 2.7 million new cars were registered in the U.K. in 2016, making it the second biggest market in Europe after Germany.
Meeting the 2040 deadline will be a heavy lift. British demand for electric and fuel cell cars, as well as plug-in hybrids, grew 40% in 2015, but they only accounted for less than 3% of the market.
Still, experts say sales of clean cars are likely to continue on their dramatic upward trajectory.
“Ending diesel and petrol car sales by 2040 is a step in the right direction but given that electric cars are coming anyway this is probably pretty irrelevant. It’s a bit like saying we’re banning the sale of steam engines by 2040,” said David Bailey, a professor of industrial strategy at Aston Business School.
The car industry says that demand for electric vehicles will only reach a tipping point once they’re cheaper to own than conventional vehicles.
“Much depends on the cost of these new technologies and how willing consumers are to adopt battery, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen cars,” said Mike Hawes, CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. “Consumers have concerns over affordability, range and charging points.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Tesla Cars Aren’t As Carbon (And Taxpayer) Friendly As You Think
Tesla proponents love to remind people how their vehicles are “carbon free” (in spite of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s own carbon profligate lifestyle):
Fact: the Tesla Model S is an environmentally friendly, zero emissions electric vehicle that won’t pollute the air like gas-powered cars. Carbon emissions from a gas car’s tailpipe has a dangerous impact on global warming…. In addition, Tesla CEO Elon Musk explains that, “combustion cars emit toxic gases. According to an MIT study, there are 53,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone from auto emissions.”
But in reminding people about how they don’t burn fossil fuels, they make sure to omit and/or obfuscate all the other emissions-laden factors that go into production of Tesla automobiles, including the oft-unspoken costs of the vehicles to the taxpayer and to other auto manufacturers.
Start with the power source for the Tesla; their electric power plant uses lithium-ion batteries to store the electricity required to run the car. And while a good amount of lithium is produced at salt lake brines that use chemical processes to extract the requisite lithium…
…a large (and growing) amount of lithium is sourced from hard-rock mining, which is also referred to as strip mining:
This type of mining involves not just all the carbon used to extract the lithium from mines, it “strips” the land of its forests, which is far more environmentally (and carbon) detrimental. And while it is likely impossible to know exactly where Tesla sources its materials from, a closer examination on Tesla’s impact on the mining industry should paint a crystal clear picture:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
5 Best Off-Grid Currencies That Don’t Require Electricity
When zombies attack or when the electric grid is taken down by an EMP or solar flare, trade must go on.
Currently, about 90% of U.S. dollars exist only digitally. Even if fiat cash remained valuable post-apocalypse, it would be pretty hard to come by.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are great, but still rely on electricity and the internet to function.
So what are the best off the grid currencies for a worst case scenario?
A currency stores the value of labor or goods that are otherwise hard to store, trade, and transport.
A Proper currency will not physically deteriorate over time. It will be widely useful, all the better if you can use it yourself, worst case scenario.
Here are the five best off the grid currencies to hoard, or have the means to create.
1. Distilled Spirits AKA Moonshine–Hard Freakin’ Alcohol!
We would never advocate that you break the law, except for right now when we encourage you to break any stupid laws against brewing your own hard liquor. Or try to navigate the legal minefield of home brewing, either way.
Whiskey was the currency of choice for Western Pennsylvanians after the Revolutionary War. Instead of hauling grain to market over hill and through dale, they converted it to whiskey. This was much easier to transport and trade since it had high value for a low volume. The scumbag Alexander Hamilton ruined that by demanding a whiskey tax paid in coin. This set off the Whiskey Rebellion which set the precedent for the terribly cronyistic and centralized government we have today.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is Australian Government – Crossing the Line into a Totalitarian State
Behind the Curtain, there seems to be no government going completely nuts more so than Australia. They are doubling taxes on all foreigners who own property, which is a violation of international law, and then they made it a crime for a foreign to even buy a house undisclosed. On top of all of this insanity, then they are planning to strip consumers of their legal protections if they pay in cash and fail to get a receipt. If an Australian pays for anything in cash, they suspect he is hiding money.
This outrageous proposal is clearly exposing the Australian government as a leftist goose-stepping authoritarian regime going completely insane hunting Australians for taxes. They are even stalking children on their way to school and then check the school as to how they are being paid. This is real Hitler stuff. That is why the Swiss created numbered accounts because Hitler made it illegal for a German to have any account outside of Germany.
This anti-free society the Australian government is establishing is just off the charts. They have set up a Black Economy Taskforce to hunt down their own citizens. This is becoming very dangerous. Can you imagine a government staking your children? This gestapo agency is indeed spying on its own citizens in every aspect just as did the NAZI government in Germany. They have put forth 35 recommendations contained in the interim report where they are arguing the need for “consumer-focused action” to crack down on cash payments.
The Black Economy Taskforce has turned its attention from the businesses to consumers they now say are “part of the problem” adding that “[w]e intend to examine the merits of consumer focused sanctions, including the loss of consumer protections, warranties and legal rights for people who make cash payments without obtaining a valid receipt.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Freedom and the Fear of Self-Responsibility
Liberty is under a renewed challenge and attack in the contemporary world. From “political correctness” and its accompanying growing totalitarian closed-mindedness at institutions of higher learning in both America and Europe, to the rebirth of economic nationalism with its rejection of freedom of trade, investment and people in places like the United States, along with the continuing stranglehold of the interventionist-welfare state seemingly everywhere, we are facing possible reductions in the degrees of individual liberty still remaining in our lives.
The question is, why? Various attempted answers have been offered by those deeply fearful of this direction, especially in “the West,” where the idea, ideal and practice of personal and economic freedom first emerged and took significant hold over the last three hundred years.
This trend has seemed most peculiar in the face of the dramatic, and “miraculous” transformation of the human condition in the last two hundred years, during which life for the ordinary person has gone from abject economic poverty and political oppression to a world of amazing affluence and material comfort for the vast, vast majority, with the institutionalization (if not always the practice) of respect for and protection of wide array of civil liberties.
The Trend Away From Freedom, Back to Paternalism
This trend, alas, has been going on for some time. For instance, in 1936, the noted Swiss economist and political scientist, William E. Rappard (1883-1958) delivered a lecture in Philadelphia on, “The Relation of the Individual to the State.” Looking back at the trend of political and economic events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Rappard explained:
The revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century . . . were essentially revolts of the individual against the traditional state – expressions of his desire to emancipate himself from the ties and inhibitions which the traditional state had imposed on him . . . which one may define as the emancipation of the individual from the state, to the will of the individual.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Capitalist Central Banks Have Been Creating the Next Financial Crisis
As central bankers, finance ministers, and government policy makers head off to their annual gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this August, 24-26, 2017, the key topic is whether the leading central banks in North America and Europe will continue to raise interest rates this year; another topic high on the agenda is when the three major central banks – the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England – might begin to sell off their combined $9.8 trillion dollar balance sheets that they accumulated since the 2008-09 banking crisis.
But the more fundamental question – little discussed by central bankers and academics alike – is what are the likely effects of further immediate rate hikes and/or commencement of central banks’ balance sheet reductions? The assumption is further rate hikes and sell-offs will have little negative impact on the real economy or financial markets. But will they? The effects of hikes and sell off will prove the opposite of what they predict.
Central banks in the US and Europe were grossly in error predicting in 2008 that massive liquidity injections and zero interest rates would re-stimulate their economies and return them to pre-crisis real GDP growth rates. They are now about to repeat a similar error, as they presume that raising those rates, and retracting excess liquidity by selling off balance sheets, will not have a significant negative impact on the real economy or financial markets.
Central banks’ balance sheets have been growing for almost nine years, driven by programs of zero-bound (ZIRP) interest rates and the introduction of firehose liquidity injections enabled by quantitative easing, QE, bond and other securities purchases.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Volatility in Housing: What Surges & Crashes the Most?
It depends on the value of the home.
What happens to home prices during the current housing boom and the next housing bust depends to some degree on whether the home is relatively “affordable” — whatever that means at today’s prices — or more expensive.
This is an important data point in the consideration for lenders that have to worry about their collateral value and for residential property investors and for homeowners who might want to get a foretaste of what is next.
The CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index offers an index based on three tiers of prices — low tier, middle tier, and high tier. Like small-cap stocks versus large-cap stocks, the less expensive homes show much more price movements up anddown and are thus far more volatile during booms and busts than their more expensive counterparts.
The Tiered Home Price Index (TPI) comprises 16 metro areas: Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco (five-county Bay Area), Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, and Tampa.
Prices in the low tier rose 10.8% year-over-year, according to the TPI, published in August. For mid-tier homes, the index rose 7.5%. And for expensive homes prices rose 4.8%.
That principle has been true for the past 17 years of the index, covering two housing booms and one housing bust so far. The chart below shows how prices of homes in the low tier (yellow line) rise much faster than higher priced homes, but during the bust, they also plunge much faster and bottom out a lot lower (chart via John Burns Real Estate Consulting):
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Venezuela: Dictatorship, Collapse And Consequence
If you want to outline the numerous failures of ideological and economic socialism, just name any socialist nation and you are sure to uncover an endless supply of examples. In fact, many countries where socialism is not total but making considerable inroads often suffer from severe decline — the U.S. being one of them. Whatever socialism touches it destroys, because forced interdependency does not work. It is a broken concept with no large scale successes (this includes China, which suffers from considerable poverty and a totalitarian government despite it being the most successful garbage economy out of a host of other garbage economies). Yet, proponents of socialism keep trying again and again claiming that “this time is different.”
So ample have been socialism’s failures in the past several years that socialists have resorted to a classic blame game in order to maintain the delusion. You see, when you bring up nations at the very end of the socialist cycle on the verge of extinction — nations like Venezuela, all you are going to hear is the argument that it was “the evil western capitalists that sabotaged the experiment.”
This is a fascinating journey into cognitive dissonance. Because in order to believe this nonsense, you have to first ignore the cold hard reality that socialist policies and politics have permeated every aspect of most western nations to the point that they can no longer be called free market societies. The fact is, IF sabotage of Venezuela can be proven as the cause of its economic ills rather than the inherent pitfalls of socialism, it would merely be a group of socialist nations sabotaging another socialist nation. “Capitalism” plays no part in this mess whatsoever.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
