Steve Bull's Blog, page 1379
April 16, 2017
Fake News From the Fed
What you see in the media is mostly “fake news.”Reuters had this story recently:
Most Federal Reserve policymakers think the central bank should take steps to begin trimming its $4.5 trillion balance sheet later this year as long as the economic data holds up, minutes from their last meeting showed…
Provided that the economy continued to perform about as expected, most participants anticipated that gradual increases in the federal funds rate would continue and judged that a change to the Committee’s reinvestment policy would likely be appropriate later this year,” the Fed said in its minutes.
This is the public spectacle – where tiny and often trivial bits of real news are conflated with vast myths and illusions.
The Fed fiddles with short-term interest rates… President Trump tweets a threat to the Freedom Caucus… the GOP proposes a new health-care plan…
You can’t know what any of these “facts” mean without reference to a huge body of non-facts – beliefs, ideas, and prejudices, many of them absurd.
Remember, a “myth” is not necessarily untrue; it just can’t be tested or disproven.
And since reality is infinitely complex, and a myth can only reflect a small trace of it… no matter how attractive or “true” it is, the myth always leaves out more truth than it describes.
Critical Narrative
We make no pretense of ever knowing the “truth.”
That would be impossible. All we can do is try to identify the most ridiculous myths… and find the most useful one, the one we can believe without getting kicked in the pants.
Imagine you were a Jew in Germany in the 1930s… or a stock market investor in the US in 1929… or a merchant in Mosul, Iraq, in 2003.
In each case, there were plenty of ways to understand what was going on. But the critical narrative was: Time to get out of town.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How America and China Could Stumble to War
How America and China Could Stumble to War
Can Beijing and Washington escape the Thucydides Trap?
Would a Chinese leader barely in control of his own country after a long civil war dare attack a superpower that had crushed Japan to end World War II five years earlier by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? As American troops pushed North Korean forces toward the Chinese border in 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur could not imagine so. But Mao Zedong did. MacArthur was dumbstruck. Chinese forces rapidly beat American troops back to the line that had divided North and South Korea when the war began. That thirty-eighth parallel continues to mark the border between the two Koreas today. By the time the war ended, nearly three million had perished, including thirty-six thousand American troops.
Similarly, in 1969, Soviet leaders could not imagine that China would react to a minor border dispute by launching a preemptive strike against a power with overwhelming nuclear superiority. But that is precisely what Mao did when he started the Sino-Soviet border war. The gambit showed the world China’s doctrine of “active defense.” Mao sent an unmistakable message: China would never be intimidated, not even by adversaries that could wipe it off the map.
In the years ahead, could a collision between American and Chinese warships in the South China Sea, a drive toward national independence in Taiwan or jockeying between China and Japan over islands on which no one wants to live spark a war between China and the United States that neither wants? It may seem hard to imagine—the consequences would be so obviously disproportionate to any gains either side could hope to achieve. Even a non-nuclear war conducted mostly at sea and in the air could kill thousands of combatants on both sides.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Will Trump Accept Responsibility When This Shitshow Implodes?
Donald J. Trump has taken credit for making America’s economy great again. He’s been crowing about all the jobs being created, the soaring consumer confidence and record highs in the stock market. It’s all because the Donald has inspired Americans about our glorious future.
But, a funny thing has been happening in the real world. The economy has gone into the shitter and GDP will be lucky to reach 1% in the first quarter of his presidency. The bullshit consumer confidence surveys mean absolutely nothing. Feelings don’t mean shit. What consumers do is what matters.
67% of the US economy is dependent upon Americans spending money they don’t have on shit they don’t need. And they’ve dramatically reduced that spending. If consumers are so confident, why are a record number of major retailers going bankrupt and closing 3,500 stores in 2017? Mom and pop retailers have been shuttering for years.
If the narrative about a dramatically improving housing market was true, why would furniture store sales and building material store sales be falling? They wouldn’t. It seems even the spendthrift millennials have run out of dough, as restaurant sales are in free fall. Restaurant chains have begun closing units now. It has only just begun.
The auto industry ponzi scheme has come to an end, as billions in subprime loans to deadbeats is finally coming home to roost. If you lend money to idiots with no means to repay you, the loans will go bad. Auto sales have begun to fall and will continue to fall for the next couple years, as this house of cards built on the Fed’s easy money collapses.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
April 14, 2017
WikiLeaks Issues Response To CIA Director Mike Pompeo
The feud between Julian Assange and Wikiealks is growing.
After being blasted by new CIA Director Mike Pompeo yesterday as a “hostile non-state intelligence service,” late on Thursday Julian Assange responded on Twitter by trolling the CIA, the “state non-intelligence agency,” over its own roles in producing “al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran and Pinochet.”
So, one day later, having let tempers cool, Julian Assange – who one month ago released the contents of its “Vault7” exposing the CIA’s hacking exploits around the world in the “largest ever publication of confidential CIA documents” – issued moments ago the following statement via the Wikileaks twitter account responding to Mike Pompeo (highlights ours).
In his first speech in office, CIA Director Mike Pompeo rather than focusing on China, North Korea, or the rise of extremism, chose to announce an offensive against WikiLeaks and other publishers. In doing so Director Pompeo characterized WikiLeaks as a “non-state intelligence service”. This absurd definition would have all serious media organizations (with the exception of state owned media) transformed into ‘non-state intelligence services’- with the explicitly stated goal of stripping constitutional protections for publishers.History shows the danger of allowing the CIA or any intelligence agency, whose very modus operandi includes misdirection and lying, to be the sole arbiter of what is true or what is prudent. Otherwise every day might see a repeat of the many foolish CIA actions which have led to death, displacement, dictatorship and terrorism.
All serious media organizations are in the business of obtaining information by encouraging sources to step forward. The key difference between media and intelligence is that the media is in the business of publishing what it discovers to a wide audience. WikiLeaks is an award winning media organization that is well known for the accuracy and volume of its publications and its millions of readers.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Latest “Shadow Brokers” Leak Reveals NSA Hacked Most Windows Platforms; SWIFT Banks
One week after the “Shadow Broker” hacker group re-emerged when in a Medium blog post it slammed Donald Trump’s betrayal of his core “base” and the recent attack on Syria, urging Trump to revert to his original promises and not be swept away by globalist and MIC interests, it also released the password which grants access to what Edward Snowden dubbed the NSA’s “Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons”, it has made fresh headlines by releasing data which reportedly reveals that the NSA had hacked the SWIFT banking system of several banks around the globe including in the EU and middle east.
As a reminder, last year the Shadow Brokers claimed to have stolen files from the NSA’s cyber-espionage group known as the Equation Group. After initially putting up the tools up for auction (ultimately nobody was interested in paying the price of 1 million Bitcoin, or around $570 million at the time), Last week, the Shadow Brokers dumped the password for the files they had put up for auction last summer. Missing from last week’s dump were the Windows files they put up for individual auctions over the winter.
Fast forward one week, when on Good Friday the Shadow Brokers dumped a new collection of files, containing what appears to be exploits and hacking tools targeting Microsoft’s Windows OS and evidence the Equation Group had gained access to servers and targeted banks connected to the ubiquitous SWIFT banking system.
The tools were dumped via the Shadow Brokers Twitter account and were accompanied by a new blog post. As Bleeping Computer’s Catalin Cimpanu, who first noticed the release, points out, the blog post is called “Lost in Translation,” and in addition to some premeditated ramblings in broken English…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Leaked NSA Malware Threatens Windows Users Around the World
The ShadowBrokers, an entity previously confirmed by The Intercept to have leaked authentic malware used by the NSA to attack computers around the world, today released another cache of what appears to be extremely potent (and previously unknown) software capable of breaking into systems running Windows. The software could give nearly anyone with sufficient technical knowledge the ability to wreak havoc on millions of Microsoft users.
The leak includes a litany of typically codenamed software “implants” with names like ODDJOB, ZIPPYBEER, and ESTEEMAUDIT, capable of breaking into — and in some cases seizing control of — computers running version of the Windows operating system earlier than the most recent Windows 10. The vulnerable Windows versions ran more than 65 percent of desktop computers surfing the web last month, according to estimates from the tracking firm Net Market Share.
The crown jewel of the implant collection appears to be a program named FUZZBUNCH, which essentially automates the deployment of NSA malware, and would allow a member of agency’s Tailored Access Operations group to more easily infect a target from their desk.
via Matthew Hickey
According to security researcher and hacker Matthew Hickey, co-founder of Hacker House, the significance of what’s now publicly available, including “zero day” attacks on previously undisclosed vulnerabilities, cannot be understated: “I don’t think I have ever seen so much exploits and 0day [exploits] released at one time in my entire life,” he told The Intercept via Twitter DM, “and I have been involved in computer hacking and security for 20 years.” Affected computers will remain vulnerable until Microsoft releases patches for the zero-day vulnerabilities and, more crucially, until their owners then apply those patches.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The dream of 100% renewables assessed by Heard et al
Posted on April 12, 2017 by
Before the world can transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewables it must come up with a transition plan that has some realistic chance of working. So far Energy Matters has evaluated a few such plans, including ADEME and the Centre for Alternative Technology and most recently Lappenranta, and has concluded that none of them does. There are, however, a large number we haven’t looked at. Now a recent study evaluates 24 of these plans and reaches the same conclusions. It finds that none of them meets the criteria necessary to provide a reasonable guarantee of success, or even comes close, and questions whether a 100% renewable electricity system is in fact feasible.
This is not a typical Energy Matters post in that it does not provide any original data analysis. It simply synthesizes a study written by others. The study in question is the 2017 paper entitled Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems by Heard, Brook, Wigley and Bradshaw (hereafter Heard et al., link to the full paper kindly supplied by Ben Heard.) And the most remarkable thing about the study isn’t what it says but who wrote it. The authors are not, as one might expect, climate change skeptics, but firm believers in the threat that climate change allegedly poses and the need to do something constructive about it, as the following statement attests:
With the fate of modern society and global environments at stake, effective action on climate change demands credible, evidence-based plans …..
The authors are also not nonentities. Barry Brook is a leading environmental scientist with hundreds of publications to his credit, Tom Wigley is “one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change and one of the most highly cited scientists in the discipline” and Corey Bradshaw has co-authored books with Paul Ehrlich.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Price Of Gold Spikes As Investors Get Spooked By Talk Of World War III And Nuclear Conflict
Whenever the world starts going crazy, investors instinctively begin flocking to precious metals. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when gold and silver prices started to move upward aggressively as global leaders continued to talk about the possibility of World War III and nuclear conflict. The price of gold spiked to a five month high on Tuesday, and as I write this article gold is currently sitting at $1277.10 an ounce. Right now silver is at $18.35 an ounce, and many analysts believe that it is poised for a dramatic jump in the weeks and months to come as global tensions continue to rise. Google searches for the phrase “going to war” are the highest that they have been at any point in recent years, and many people out there are starting to understand that the U.S. could soon be facing military conflicts in Syria and in North Korea simultaneously.
In response to persistent threats from the Trump administration, the North Koreans are promising that they will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they are attacked by the U.S. military.
In particular, an article that was just published in North Korea’s official state newspaper says that U.S bases “in South Korea and the Pacific operation theater but also in the U.S. mainland“ would be targeted.
Most analysts do not believe that North Korea has any missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland, so that is probably an empty threat, but they can definitely hit Seoul, Tokyo and all U.S. military bases in South Korea and Japan.
And even if the U.S. was able to locate and take out all North Korean nukes in an overwhelming first strike, the North Koreans would still have thousands of artillery guns and rockets aimed at Seoul.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Conducts Successful Field Test Of New Nuclear Bomb
With the world still abuzz over the first ever deployment of the GBU-43/B “Mother Of All Bombs” in Afghanistan, where it reportedly killed some 36 ISIS fighters, in a less noticed statement the US National Nuclear Security Administration quietly announced overnight the first successful field test of the modernized, “steerable” B61-12 gravity thermonuclear bomb in Nevada.
In a well-timed statement, just as tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program and potential US airstrikes run wild, the NNSA said that in conjunction with the US Air Force, it had completed the first qualification flight test of B61-12 gravity nuclear bomb on March 14 at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.
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Frank Klotz @FrankKlotzNNSA
#NNSA & @usairforce complete first B61-12 #LEP qualification flight test. @NellisAFB@NNSANevadahttps://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/nnsa-air-force-complete-first-b61-12-life-extension-program-qualification …
10:38 AM – 14 Apr 2017
In the press release, the NNSA said that the “non-nuclear assembly test” was dropped from an F-16 based at Nellis Air Force Base and was intended to evaluate “both the weapon’s non-nuclear functions as well as the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.”
This test was the first of a series that will be conducted over the next three years to qualify the B61-12 for service. Three successful development flight tests were conducted in 2015.
“This demonstration of effective end-to-end system performance in a realistic ballistic flight environment marks another on-time achievement for the B61-12 Life Extension Program,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Lutton, NNSA’s principal assistant deputy administrator for military application. “The successful test provides critical qualification data to validate that the baseline design meets military requirements. It reflects the nation’s continued commitment to our national security and that of our allies and partners.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Bankruptcy of Nuclear Proportions
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With the failure of Westinghouse, the future of American nuclear power looks even bleaker. (JEFF FUSCO/Getty Images)
Summary
In any given year, a handful of companies file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. Rarely, however, does one of these filings reverberate beyond the boardroom and into the realm of geopolitics. Those that do — Lehman Brothers in 2008, or several U.S. automakers in 2008-10 — usually involve hundreds of billions of dollars. But the next big geopolitically relevant bankruptcy may be on the horizon, and the amount of money involved is tiny next to the collapses of the past decade.
Analysis
On March 29, Westinghouse Electric Co., a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, filed for bankruptcy. The U.S.-based nuclear power company has been building two state-of-the-art nuclear power plants in Georgia and South Carolina, but it has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The filing sent Toshiba scrambling to cut its losses by March 31, the end of Japan’s fiscal year. The Japanese conglomerate ended up writing down over $6 billion on its nuclear reactor business. But Toshiba’s troubles don’t end there; the firm is also working to sell off a portion of its chip manufacturing holdings.
The U.S. government is worried about what the sale of Westinghouse could mean for the future of traditional nuclear power in the United States and for nuclear power in China, which is keen to learn the secrets of a Western firm such as Westinghouse. The Japanese government, meanwhile, is wary of how Beijing could benefit in the long term, should a Chinese firm acquire Toshiba’s semiconductor unit.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
