Economic pressures

[Danny B]

shorting treasuries,,,greenback is a stake in the heart of China

' Short selling is an investment or trading strategy that speculates on the decline in a stock or other securities price. ... Before the borrowed shares must be returned, the trader is betting that the price will continue to decline and they can purchase them at a lower cost.
Short selling makes it possible to sell what one does not own"

This sounds real lucrative and is used by the sharks any time that they smell blood.
"For years now, US government bonds have looked like terrible investments, what with those trillion-dollar deficits and multiple wars and all. "
'But two things are true of bubbles always and everywhere: They tend to go on longer than a reasonable analyst believes possible. And they burst when fundamentals finally win out. Treasuries will go the way of all bubbles someday and, just maybe, today is that day. "
"The long bonds of any country with government debt and total debt exceeding, respectively, 100% and 350% of GDP are an automatic short, just on simple math. But the US, as the printer of the world’s reserve currency, is a special case in terms of timing. When trouble strikes elsewhere, people still come here to hide. So even in the face of ridiculous, Greek-like numbers, the dollar continues to function as money and Treasuries continue to find a bid.

There will come a time when shorting Treasuries is the trade that makes fortunes and reputations "
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/are-t...of-the-decade/
You can see why U.S. GOV is trying to push MMT to the fore AND, why bankers and money renters hate the idea. The only way that the money renters can stop MMT is to boycott sovereign bonds. If they do that, they make it easier for the State to rationalize the necessity of MMT.
As debt-service costs go higher, we get that much closer to needing a printing press that is independent of the FED. GOV has the guns and the lawbooks. Shorting U.S. sovereign debt is not a good plan.

5/24 Trump orders intel community to cooperate with Barr probe – Politico
Why do I get the idea that he did not say it nicely?
5/24 Does Ray Dalio really not know better than to invest in GLD? – GATA
GLD is paper gold. At some point, the paper gold market will break down. With 6400 tons of paper gold traded every day, the crash will be a flash that nobody can escape.
5/24 Oil plummets, on track for biggest weekly drop in 2019 – Reuters
If the cost of energy goes up, everything else goes down. Trump has to work overtime to hold down the price of energy.
5/24 Deutsche Bank CEO pledges tough investment bank cuts as shares hit low – Yahoo
TOO late to save DB.

"Initially, the stock market decided the trade war fears were overblown. Inside the Beltway, conventional wisdom said that Trump would reach a deal with China, that all of his tough talk was just a negotiating ploy.

It wasn’t. Agree or disagree with Trump, he means what he says about tariffs and trade."
These realities mean that China will not acquiesce but will retaliate for any actions taken by the U.S. It has already proven that. Next time, the Chinese may choose to retaliate not only with further tariffs of their own, but also with other forms of financial warfare.'
Armstrong said that the financial capital of the world will move to China in 2032. Presumably, Trump wants to stop this.
"This new trade war will get ugly fast and the world economy, which is already slowing, will be collateral damage. Given the trillions in dollar-denominated debt in emerging markets, a full-scale foreign sovereign debt crisis could be in the making if emerging-market countries cannot earn dollars from exports to pay their debts."
https://dailyreckoning.com/trump-vs-the-world/

So, as Trump cuts back on Trade with emerging markets, they have a very difficult time earning dollars to service dollar-denominated debt. He cuts in to their earnings at the same time that they need uninterrupted earnings.
HOPEFULLY, we will see the inception of cyber-war and economic war displace kinetic war.

[Danny B]

Ctrl P or,,, not,,,,,trouble in China,,,Topping,,,crop loss & plague.

The Chinese didn't believe that he meant what he said.
Now, it is Wall Street's turn.
"After years of increasingly close cooperation and collaboration, the relationship has turned strained. Both sides are digging in their heels. Credibility is on the line. If one side doesn’t back down, things could really turn problematic. The Fed is asserting that it’s not about to lower the targeted Fed funds rate. Markets are strident: You will cut, and you will cut soon. Bonds are instructing the world to prepare for the Long March. "
" The Shanghai Composite declined 1.0%, trading back to around February lows. China’s growth/tech ChiNext index sank 2.4% to the lowest level since February 22nd. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Financials index dropped 1.5% to the low going back to January 21st. "

"During a three-day trip this week to the southern province of Jiangxi, a cradle of China’s Communist revolution, Xi urged people to learn the lessons of the hardships of the past. ‘Today, on the new Long March, we must overcome various major risks and challenges from home and abroad,’ state news agency Xinhua paraphrased Xi as saying, referring to the 1934-36 trek of Communist Party members fleeing a civil war to a remote rural base, "
"May 19 – Bloomberg (Karen Leigh): “President Donald Trump said he was ‘very happy’ with the trade war and that China wouldn’t become the world’s top superpower under his watch."
"The president also told Hilton he believed China wants to replace America as the world’s leading superpower, and it’s ‘not going to happen with me.’
Credit Bubble Bulletin : Weekly Commentary: The Ignore Them, Then Panic Dynamic

"s we’ve been warning in recent reports, the fundamentals show a global economy sliding into recession. And the technical charts show a dangerously bearish triple-top in the markets,"
"The chart below from Sven Henrich presents a compelling argument that, using comparable measures from the 2001 and 2008 market routs, the S&P 500 has a very real risk of dropping in half within the coming year:"
https://www.peakprosperity.com/pain-...g-is-optional/

All the charts show that the markets have topped out. Wall Street demands more cash to keep the party going a bit longer. I suspect that Trump will let them choke.

Mother Nature does NOT do extreme centralization. The risk of pandemics and plagues is too high. Air travel has made the risk of plagues much higher. Same for antibiotic resistance. Charles Hugh Smith writes about both the crash in farming and, the rise of plagues.
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Superbugs and the Ultimate Economic Weapon: Food
Rural America is doing very badly. The ongoing floods will greatly reduce food crops.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...verge-collapse

ice age farmer :: grand solar minimum crop loss map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diEpXZhML_g

The Chinese people are well on their way to avoiding banks completely just by using direct payment apps to the vendor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJh_Uir5EMI
It looks like internet buyers of property are going to be a big problem in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYxgY9_AEPM&t=119s
Eisman says that the crash will probably take out all the banks except for the big 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMvJFEjPWw&t=30s

[Danny B]

Trump??? Europeans are turning the suicidal ship of state.

In December, Powell made a bit of a move that markets did not like. They crashed and, he had to walk back his actions. Now, Trump has a trade war going and, markets want it to END. Also, they want a LOT more money pumped into markets.
5/26 The bulls continue to bet on the Fed – Investing
I guess that we have to wait and see.
5/26 World faces ‘clear and present danger’ from trade war escalation – Reuters
Certainly, the money renters face danger.
Good graphs showing that stocks have turned.
You Know Things are Falling When... - The Great Recession Blog
So, just how fast will investor confidence turn?

Here is a graph that is painfully clear.
https://twitter.com/KathyJones/statu...582662/photo/1
https://upfina.com/is-this-the-first-recession-warning/

Intervention is the lifeblood of the markets. What will Trump and the FED do?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...vention-coming
The trade war will crash the markets. What will Trump do?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-crash-markets
Huawei was the flagship of the Chines tech pirates.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ew-expose-says
What will Trump do?

The State, by way of crony capitalism and legislative capture has now made housing unaffordable. Energy is fast becoming unaffordable for many people. Climate change is destroying crops worldwide. What happens when food is unaffordable?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...d-inflation-40
Three Charts Show Millennials Are Nowhere Close In Buying A Home

There is very good news from Europe. Farage / Brexit is trouncing everybody. LePen has kicked Macron in the A$$. afD is doing well in Germany. The tribes of Europe are bing emphatic. They refuse to be subsumed by the garbage pouring in from garbage countries. Merkel won the Kalergi Prize for her work at destroying Germany with so called migrants. They wanted to migrate because they had screwed up their home countries.
Even Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has called a snap election because of disappointing results for his party. He really screwed his fellow Greeks by going along with the troika of executioners. There will be SO many euroskeptics in the European parliament that it will truly melt down,,,, Just as Armstrong guaranteed them it would happen back in 1987.

The Brexit party is going to have quite a party when they get to Brussels.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...ortant-to-usa/

Evidently, D.C. does NOT like transparency
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiHBnpCbZZo
Headlines
In Deep State Coup Attempt, All Roads Lead Back To Barack Obama & HRC
Let's Call The Russian Collusion 'Hoax' What It Really Is - Treasonous Sedition
America's Cities Are Unlivable - Blame WealthyLiberals And The One Percent
NYT Admits Dem-Run Cities Unlivable - Dr. Drew Predicts Major Epidemic This Summer

Pence Tells West Point Graduates They Should Expect to See Combat
Yeah right, ground troops are going to invade somewhere.
The army talks about virtue. The soldiers talk about horror.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ng-horrors-war

[Danny B]

Bank risk in Mexico,,, shorting the yuan

This is just a short note on banking risk. I worked for 10 years during the winters driving around Mexico. It was always a mystery how they paid so much interest on bank deposits. Many American expats had Mexican bank accounts. I was there during one of the periodic devaluations. The Expats lost most of their money,,,, all legal, of course.
I have a Mexican friend who drove his new Suburban into Mexico on a trip. He checked into a hotel and parked his Suburban in a locked, walled compound. In the morning, it was gone. The tapes from the security cameras had several minutes erased.
In that same era, the American FBI caught the Mexican FBI stealing new cars from American dealerships and, turning them over to Mexican government officials.

This same thing is happening at Mexican banks.
"formerly the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s primary representative in Mexico. “Mexican authorities try to prosecute these cases but often aren’t successful.” In 2018 there were 7.3 million complaints of fraud involving 18.9 billion pesos,"
"Kathy and Jim Machir discovered that their nest egg was gone. When the Machirs and other San Miguel expatriates met with Monex officials in early January, the bankers told some of them that about $40 million was missing from as many as 158 accounts, many belonging to English-speaking Americans. A dozen people interviewed by Bloomberg News say that bank statements Zavala sent them purporting to show full accounts were apparently falsified. "
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...xican-accounts
The Mexican economy is shrinking and banking fraud has doubled since 2014. This is just a note for anybody who may have a deposit in a Mexican bank.

The Yuan is getting weaker and the sharks are smelling blood. China has warned them NOT to short the Yuan. The typical way for a State to support their currency is; sell off dollars or gold and buy up home currency on the international markets. BUT, China and the emerging markets are desperate for dollars. Scrounging around to get dollars and, buy Yuan will just strengthen the dollar. They can punish the Yuan shorts but, it will cost them. The stronger dollar will make it that much harder to service dollar-denominated debt.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...short-the-yuan

5/26 Plunge of CNN, MSNBC ratings reveals fake news as bad business strategy – AT
5/26 CNN lays off staffers after massive ratings drop – Zero Hedge
How about that?
This is a re-post of a vid from Bloomberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJh_Uir5EMI
DHL is doing drone delivery in China to cut way back on cost of delivery. The whole world is getting more competitive and trying to get more efficient.
Just imagine what would happen if Amazon, for instance, took direct payments outside the banking system. Everybody else would have to follow.

Here is a side note from China. The Chinese are big believers in LUCK. Somebody tossed coins into a jet engine,,, for luck before the flight.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/c...rts/index.html
When China's air industry hits the news, stories are typically centered on passengers going rogue, punching each other, trying to wrestle open emergency doors mid-takeoff or dangerously tossing coins into airplane engines for luck.

5/26 Glyphosate exposure linked to fatty liver disease in humans – Beyond Pesticides
I'm sure that this report is just a mistake.

[Danny B]

QE as a TEMPORARY fix for the global mean wage

Marin Armstrong has a computer program that has all the history of the world and, receives the news from all the RSS feeds. Just the same, he is missing the big picture.
The West was a high-wage & high-price economy. The BRICs forced a low global mean wage on the world. The bankers absolutely need the high prices to be maintained to preserve the notional value / price of all the stuff they hold. They do not care about high wages for the consumer. The West is on it's way to becoming a low-wage & low price economy. This would wipe out the assigned, artificial value of just about everything. These current prices / values are ONLY maintained by enormous, sustained liquidity injections from the Central banks.

DANGEROUSLY RIDICULOUS: The World Economic Forum Says We Need $100 ...
https://www.businessinsider.com/worl...-credit-2011-1

Jan 20, 2011 - World needs $100 trillion more credit, says World Economic Forum ... After all, there were only three million foreclosure filings last year in the US,

Global debt hits a new record at $247 trillion - CNBC.com
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/glob...-trillion.html
Jul 11, 2018 -

All this liquidity is created to hold off defaults that would bring true price discovery. We already have true wages. "They" want to hold back true prices. The State has gotten just too many dependents. They can't afford this anymore. QE has reached it's practical limits. MMT is slated to take over liquidity creation. The bankers are aghast at the idea that GOV would stop borrowing from them. What they don't seem to realize is; It is ONLY CB liquidity that has kept consumption going.
Mar 23, 2019 - “A $100 Trillion here, a $100 Trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money. ..

Globalism has only benefited 6 STATES. It has greatly benefited the bankers because they are first in line for the liquidity injections.
In this article, Armstrong defends globalism,,, no surprise. He has stridently proclaimed that QE has destroyed public bond markets. Did it never occur to him what would happen if all QE was stopped?
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ive-advantage/

"Here are the share markets based in euros. All peaked in 1999 to 2000, except Spain which entered the euro late. How any analyst could recommend Europe two years ago was just nuts. This demonstrates that they do not understand international capital flows or the importance of the currency in making such forecasts."
"Now, look at the European share markets that are NOT in the Eurozone. They have all made record highs. The difference has been the currency and regulations pouring out of Brussels with self-interest in maintaining the European Project, even though it has failed."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/m...-always-wrong/
The Eurozone project is a full-employment program for bureaucrats. It shrunk the GDP of it's member States by 20%. At the same time, it is an attempt by the fascist corporatocracy to wrest all control away from the people.

As long as the liquidity injections continue, there is a chance that the bankers can hold back true-price discovery. All this currency inflation is gradually bleeding over to the lower loop and causing price inflation. The continuous price inflation causes an effective reduction in purchasing power / wages. The CBs print to hold off defaults by people who depend on wages.
Since housing is a major store-of-value for the working man AND, an investment target for the upper loop, it is a good indicator of financial conditions.
In 2005, there were 74.93M owner-occupied housing units. In 2018, there were 79.36 million owner-occupied housing units. All that hot money buying houses is driving up rents.

Armstrong writes about the recapitalization of Freddy and Fannie.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/m...ublic-in-2020/
The average wage will no longer buy the average house. Armstrong writes about taking Freddie and Fannie private and, recapitalizing them. There is a very important note in the article.
"Moreover, we face a period where the interest rate is going to enter a major divergence. Central banks will be forced to create interest rate caps on sovereign debt, assuming people will buy them at these low rates of under 3%. This all hinges upon confidence. When we begin to see economic stress in the sovereign markets, such as in Europe with the ECB unable to stop QE, sovereign rates will become merely artificial and irrelevant. The ECB moved to negative interest rates but that did not lower private interest rates."

There you have it. The death knell for sovereign bonds. BUT, Armstrong theorizes that private debt will command a higher interest rate than the "capped" sovereign bond rates. NOBODY will buy sovereign bonds. Draghi has already show that the ECB can't stop printing. Any kind of divergence in interest rates between public & private debt will ensure the rollout of MMT.
Armstrong seems short-sighted in his projections. Public debt is strained and ballooning because of the lack of earning / spending power. That extra $247 trillion has papered over the problem temporarily. The QE money filters down into the lower loop very slowly. It did nothing for wages and just caused price inflation to strain the working man.
So, what is the alternative?

The Fed caused 93% of the entire stock market's move since 2008 ...
https://finance.yahoo.com/.../the-fe...rket-s-move-si...
Naturally, Wall Street is DEMANDING more QE.

What will Trump do? All the king's horses and all the king's men can NOT put a bubble back together again.

[Danny B]

Chaos everywhere.

I'll start with Kunstler to set the grim mood. He has always been a peak-oil guy. America has long ago reached peak-cheap-oil in the lower 48. Big Oil refuses to drill the enormous proven reserves in the Gull Island area of Alaska.
https://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/rumors-of-war/
The elections in Europe REALLY threw things into chaos,,, along with other recent problems.
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/stumbling-towards-chaos/

Assorted headlines.
5/28 Yield curve flashing biggest recession signal yet: Shilling – Mish
5/28 Key slice of U.S. yield curve dives further into inversion zone – Bloomberg
5/28 EU likely to start disciplinary steps vs Italy in June over debt – Reuters
5/28 Italy’s Salvini seizes on election win to demand new ECB debt role – Reuters BUY OUR BONDS !
Nope, don't even worry. That won't cause any kind of revolt.
5/28 Next downturn could see ‘radicalization’ of policies used last time – CNBC
How do you radicalize NIRP?
5/28 Former Lehman trader: “investors are acting like frogs in boiling water” – Zero Hedge
These investors are NOT in a frying pan. They are in a pan with very deep sides.

5/28 Blain: “We start the week with UK and European politics fractured” – Zero Hedge
5/28 The slow death of Europe’s traditional center – Atlantic

5/28 In honor of Memorial day, John Bolton announces 7 new wars – Babylon Bee
He's worse than McCain.
5/28 In Baltimore and beyond, a stolen N.S.A. tool wreaks havoc – NY Times
5/16 Trump declares national emergency over IT threats – BBC
5/16 Microsoft warns wormable Windows bug could lead to another Wannacry – Ars Technica
Those NSA tools got out into the wild and, there's no putting the evil Genie back into the bottle.
The markets are headed down and, Wall Street is screaming for more QE and a rate cut.
If Trump is going to continue to attack China, he will do it indirectly by crashing their markets by restricting liquidity. They won't have dollars to service dollar denominated debt. We shall see.
5/28 Falling diesel fuel demand in china paints bleak picture – CNBC
China did production without consumption. All those ghost cities are stranded assets that are losing value.
There may be as many as 64 million empty apartments in China.Jun 26, 2018
A State-directed economy has always been a bad idea.

[Danny B]

Brexit,,,women in politics,,,Anti-competitive taxes

Naturally, I have to write about Brexit,,, everybody else is.
Crosscurrents.
Fleeing a Sinking Ship: New York Becomes World's Financial Centre Due to Brexit
Reportedly the banks are all leaving Britain. Many to Ireland, then Frankfurt, Madrid and New York.
" Credit Suisse is moving 250 jobs to Germany, Madrid, and Luxembourg — and in December 2018 told its wealthiest clients to move their money out of the UK quickly."
https://sputniknews.com/business/201...ancial-centre/
OK. so money is draining out of the finance center.

Globalist Elites Rejoice As Brexit Party Rise Increases Odds Of A "No Deal" Crisis
The claim is ;"Over the past year I have detailed on numerous occasions why I believe a no deal Brexit is the desired outcome for the central banking fraternity. Their goal of creating a global currency framework is entirely compatible with Brexit given the exposure of sterling to a ‘disorderly‘ exit."
So, a no-deal exit will crash everything and help to usher in a one-world currency.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...no-deal-crisis
NOPE, there will be no phoenix rise up out of the ashes of Great Britain. There will be a cooked bird unfit to eat.

Britain imports 50% of their food. The idea is; they won't be able to pay for imports.
https://sputniknews.com/europe/20190...-spam-peaches/
GREAT graph, https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/econo...0igtWCJABnNgA/

5/29 The welfare state is tearing Sweden apart – Mises Institute
What Makes the Nordic Countries Gender Equality Winners? | HuffPost
https://www.huffingtonpost
Women in Nordic countries reportedly experience high levels of rape ...
https://www.businessinsider
Is Sweden's feminist agenda working? - BBC News - BBC.com
https://www.bbc.
Women should never been allowed to vote. To many of them vote with their feelings instead of their brain.
Look at the failures of May, Merkel,,, along with the Prime Minsters of Denmark, Iceland, Finland and others.
http://content.time.com/time/special...005455,00.html

"The US Treasury curve is now at its most inverted 3-month to 10-year since 2007, "
"market rates are so incredibly low everywhere else that China can happily ride those coat-tails. That’s how markets in China (and, increasingly, everywhere else) work: we love it when they go up, but the problems begin when they go down. That’s apparently when central banks need to use their Infinity Stones to change reality, regardless of the fact that they kill 50% of us in doing so."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...are-still-come

"I explained that Americans are taxed on worldwide income whereas Europeans pay taxes on what is earned in their territory. Why should someone pay taxes on income generated outside the USA when they are not using any services in the United States? It turns out that we are economic slaves because whatever we produce anywhere belongs to the government. It is no different from the 19th century – we are still the property of the state.

What we must understand is that American companies began to set up offshore just to be competitive. It was not that labor was $5 an hour v $15. That is the popular image they create to target corporations. The real problem is our tax code looks like the brainwave of a schizophrenic."
"If we are really concerned about jobs, then address the elimination of income taxes which would make American workers more competitive. Restore the Constitution to indirect only."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...e/world-trade/

[Danny B]

Lost decades,,,justifying QE,,,wealth

It's pretty quiet while everybody digests the reality of the populist revolt in Europe. The Kalergi plan calls for the replacement of native populations in Europe with dumb, brown people. Merkel won the Kalergi plan for her part in the destruction.
Teresa May has not been a slouch either.
Violent crime in London SURGING under Sadiq Khan claims damning new report
https://www.express.co.uk
They don't have guns so, they have to make do with what they have.
Ten charts on the rise of knife crime in England and Wales - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com
Police officer numbers hit record low as reported crime rises by 14% in ...
https://www.independent.co
Just wait til all the money pulls out.

5/30 Lost decade specter haunts Latin America as big economies falter – Bloomberg
5/29 China showing signs similar to ‘lost decades’ Japanese housing bubble – SCMP
The primary causes of Russia's population decrease and loss of about 700,000 to 800,000 citizens each year are a high death rate, low birth rate, high rate of abortions,
Seems like everybody is having a population decline. Population is falling in most of the world and, the economic system just can't cope.

All the news and charts show that we have entered a new recession. News travels fast and, greed has turned to fear.
5/30 Corporations were the biggest buyers of stock, but now they’re selling – CNBC
5/29 Americans are old and having fewer kids – CNN
Crony capitalism has meant that nobody can afford to have kids. The economy shrinks. The money renters need ever-more QE. They brought it on themselves.

Originally, we were cursed with an academician named Bernanke who had a sure-fire cure for economic problems. later, we got a UCLA economist in charge of QE.
"Potter's arrival was most notable for not only taking over the Fed's QE baton from Sack, currently a director at quant trading giant DE Shaw, but because his arrival also marked the start of a multi-year crash in the VIX future, which collapsed the month Potter took over and has hit ever steeper lows ever since (with the exception of the occasional VIX explosion)."
FED chairman, "investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy."

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today announced that Simon Potter, executive vice president and head of the Markets Group, and Richard Dzina, executive vice president and head of the Financial Services Group, will be stepping down from their respective roles effective June 1, 2019."
June 1,,, why does this sound like they are being forced out?

"The New York Fed will conduct a broad and thorough search for their successors."
Does this sound like stalling?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-team-quitting
SO, is Trump going to print everything that Wall Street is demanding or NOT?

Armstrong, "The US military budget comes in about 4% or twice that of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire lasted far longer than any modern state for it seems to have been much more tolerable of a burden, whereas the U.S. military budget will be around 20% at times of total expenditure."

QUESTION: You do a lot of comparison to the Roman Empire. What was the size of the government relative to GDP? Can you estimate that?

. The US military budget comes in about 4% or twice that of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire lasted far longer than any modern state for it seems to have been much more tolerable of a burden, whereas the U.S. military budget will be around 20% at times of total expenditure.

The primary purpose of my investigation into the monetary system of the world is very simple. The political unrest ONLY rises when there is economic tension. Turn the economy down and you will get historically civil unrest. Additionally, it is interesting to see what policies produce the best and worst results. Augustus (27-14 AD) created a real land boom as he issued a tremendous amount of coinage creating a booming economy. He was followed by Tiberius (14-37 AD) who imposed austerity and issued very little coinage by comparison. That resulted in an economic depression in 33 AD and this was in part reflected in the Jewish rebellions over taxes."

This is the road that China is trying to avoid,,, REVOLUTION. Trump is doing all he can to bring it about. QE is a backdoor method of pumping money into the economy to avoid crashing austerity / crashing taxes. Taxing is deflationary to those who don't have the political connections to avoid taxes.
Earlier this year, ITEP reported Netflix and Amazon paid no federal taxes. Other companies on this list include Chevron, Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly, General Motors, Gannett, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Halliburton, IBM, Jetblue Airways, Principal Financial, Salesforce.com, US Steel, and Whirlpool.Apr 11, 2019
60 Fortune 500 Companies Avoided All Federal Income Tax in 2018 ...
https://itep.org/60-fortune-500-comp...x-in-2018-unde...

Wages have crashed and, crony capitalism has sent the money to the upper loop where it is frozen. QE is necessary to replace this frozen money. MMT is a program to institutionalize the printing of fresh, debt-free money to hold back deflation and revolution in the lower loop. The money has to be debt-free or, debt-service costs would require $trillions more printing.

QUESTION: Dear Martin,
Whereas for years you have put in a solid 5,000 year data for arguing for no individual taxes yet in countries around the Middle East there is no income tax. Yet they have not made any dynamic economic progress as such. I mean the evidence is seen by us live. How do we argue that zero direct individual tax will bring more economic growth? What am I missing?"

"ANSWER: It is not just taxation. The wealth of a nation is not its resources, but its people. The Middle East has been blessed with oil in many areas. As a result, the emphasis has been historically on a mercantilist model of just selling things to others. If you look closely at the economic model, you will see that Germany may be the strongest economy in Europe, but the wealth of its people is actually less than Italy’s. According to the German Bundesbank, the European reports show a median wealth of around €163,400 in Italy vs. €51,400 for Germans. Germans pay a lot more in taxes than Italians where they make it an art form to avoid taxes.

China understands this model. This is why they are turning inward to develop their domestic economy. A consumer-based economy creates jobs and provides a stronger economy. This is why the USA has the largest economy and everyone else stands in line to sell things to American consumers.

Economies are constructed on their people — not resources. You need education and a work ethic to succeed. Commodity-based economies that rely on exports lack the sustainability long-term. The Middle East realizes this and we are witnessing a change in places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia."

Education and work ethic. Most of the muslim countries turned their backs on education years ago. As the demands of the workplace turn to people with great cognitive abilities, the lazy and ignorant people fall further behind.
" A consumer-based economy creates jobs and provides a stronger economy."
This sounds real good. How do you demand decent wages when Robby the robot is breathing down your neck?
So, the wealth of nations is people.
But, the population is falling.

[Danny B]

Zero Hedge articles

Well, there is certainly no shortage of claims and conner-claims and confusion. I often quote stuff from articles at zero Hedge. Here are some headlines. You can follow up on whatever interests you.

"This Is A Black Swan Event": Futures, Peso Tumble As Trump Unleashes Tariffs On Mexico "Until Illegal Immigration Stops"
"United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP."
In all fairness, the port of entry at Tapachula in southern Mexico is very small and easy to control. The Mexicans have been giving a lot of aid to Central Americans who want to come here.
New Satellite Imagery Reveals Chinese Navy Simulating An Invasion On Taiwan
U.S. Will Sell $1.42 Billion Worth of Arms to Taiwan | Time

Kim Jong-Un Executes Four Officials Over Failed Trump Summit Hard core
American Chernobyl
"The US has entered it’s terminal phase and most of it’s citizens are as blithely unaware of this reality as they were of the impending dissolution of the Soviet system in the late 1980’s."
Trade War Bites As China Manufacturing PMI Tumbles Back Into Contraction
...much worse than expected.
Nothing Pays In Venezuela Anymore, Not Even Crime: There's Nothing Left To Steal
Crypto-Crash Accelerates. Bitcoin Plunges To $8000
Forget '****ty' San Fran, New York City Is Facing A Rat Invasion
“...so far the city is losing” the war on rats...
Doing More Of What's Failed Will Fail Spectacularly
Uber Reports Record Cash Burn, $1 Billion Loss In First Quarter As Public Company
Short Sellers Are Ripping Uber Apart

Cryptos & Crude Crack As Credit & Yield Curve Collapse Continues
Which Chinese Banks Will Fail Next?
Here is a list of regional banks that have delayed publishing 2018 reports,
MAGA, baby
Treasury Yields Tumble As Pence Warns US "Can More Than Double" Tariffs On China
I doubt that anybody has given much thought to collateral damage.
China Accuses US Of "Naked Economic Terrorism," Will "Fight Until The End"
The end of WHO?
Credit Flashes Warning For Stocks As Investor Outflows Soar
...traders yanked almost $429 million from HY funds
Pending Home Sales Suffer Worst Decline Streak Since Financial Crisis

Italian Yields Jump As Salvini Threatens To Crash Government
Just DO IT!
Powell Channels Bernanke: "Subprime Debt Is Contained"

“Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a ‘corporate junk bond’ bomb on a bus. Once the economy slides toward 0%, the bomb is armed.
Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism Of The Surveillance State
PIMCO: "This Is The Riskiest Credit Market Ever, Central Banks' Control Over Markets Is Coming To An End"

Here is another warning about the junk bond market.
"Here’s how this probably plays out. As low-quality borrowers’ interest costs soak up an ever-larger share of their earnings, they’ll start dropping into junk status. This will lead investors to demand higher yields for the remaining BBB bond issuers. Higher borrowing costs will then push more iffy companies into junk, and so on, until lenders stampede for the exits, shutting off access to capital for all but the top corporate borrowers.

Credit-starved companies will start dying, spooking the stock market, and that will be that for this expansion."

Pushing interest rates below zero is both an act of desperation and something that in theory should have a huge, immediate impact of the behavior of borrowers and savers. The fact that negative rates have become the new normal in big parts of the world but haven’t caused the expected behavior change should scare the hell out of everyone."
"So go ahead and cut interest rates to any crazy level you want. The inevitable, necessary result of too much bad debt is a crash that wipes that debt out. Or a hyperinflation that destroys the currency with which desperate governments flood the market in an attempt to stave off the debt implosion.

This explains why today’s negative interest rates haven’t ignited a boom (there’s already too much bad paper circulating), and also why the next round of monetary experiments will fail even more spectacularly than its predecessors."
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/negat...rifying-truth/
What is missing from the analysis is; Money pumped into the upper loop does nothing for the lower loop. Wages is the avenue for inflating demand in the lower loop.

PBOC Panics, Floods Market With Liquidity As Interbank Funding Freezes After Baoshang Seizure
The Chinese can't afford a stampede.
Dow Loses 25k As Major US Equity Indices Break Below Critical Support
Lastly, here is an article at ZH that really lays into the younger generation.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...merica-heading
"Survey after survey has shown that Millennials reject traditional American values more than any other generation that has come before them by a very wide margin. They are selfish, rude, arrogant, boastful, proud, disrespectful, ungrateful, undisciplined, slothful and completely obsessed with themselves. In fact, one study found that they are the most narcissistic generation in American history. They feel entitled to everything, but they don’t want to work for it. They want to be treated like kings and queens, but they don’t see a problem with treating others like dirt."

5/30 Failure at 2,800 spells doom for the S&P 500! – Phil’s Stock World

[Danny B]

Global realignment,,, Mexico,,,disinflation,,,S-curve

I forgot to include the link to Zero Hedg's front page.
https://www.zerohedge.com/

'Not Winning' - Collapse In Global Trade Escalates: Imports -2.7%, Exports -4.0%
"Capital goods are the US's largest exports and these fell 6.5 percent in the month to $44.3 billion."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-27-exports-40

"After all, we are well past the point where parts of the globe are increasingly carved up via competing ideologies (e.g., capitalism vs. communism), given today’s broad embrace of various permutations of capitalism, or divided via proxy wars, or the “great game” of colonial expansion."
"The reality of the 21st-century world is that neither the United States nor China can readily force third-party countries to join their respective competing blocs as the United Ttates and Soviet Union were once able to do."
"Indeed, the so-called era of “Pax Americana”—an alleged state of relative international peace overseen by the United States—has not been all that it has been cracked up to be. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Pax Americana” itself has been characterized by a surprisingly large number of unilateral wars of choice from “Americana,” and comparatively little “Pax.”

"The most creative thing the EU can do in the current circumstances is to leverage the instruments it already has, and turn them into geopolitical tools. Among such instruments, none is more potent than the euro, especially if combined with a deep capital markets union and a pan-eurozone treasury bond and treasury bills. If there is one reason to keep the euro, this is it."
The Euro and Eurozone are in complete meltdown,,,, as predicted by Armstrong. This is because they have a currency union but NOT a debt union.
"pan-eurozone treasury bond and treasury bills.".... in the words of Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau:
There you have it. The corporatocracy wants a common European debt market. This market would presumably combine Germany's 1 trillion surplus with Europe's 1 trillion deficit.
"Nation-states are not going to disappear, but the narrowly destructive forces unleashed by Trump and his populist counterparts in the rest of the world do not represent a viable alternative."
NO, of course not. We can NOT have nationalism, nor patriotism. The corporatocracy must rule it all.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...hat-comes-next
"“On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. "
"And those details state the tariffs will rise to 10% by 1 July, 15% by 1 August, 20% by 1 September, and 25% by 1 October, where they will remain permanently if that illegal immigration via-Mexico doesn’t stop. Despite some writers no doubt leaping to say this is a Mexican Stand Off, it isn’t: it’s a Mexican Sit On, as in the US is sitting on Mexico with its full, rotund body weight."
"Mexico sold USD347bn worth of goods to the US last year, and is as deeply integrated into the US economy as China despite its smaller size,"
" Yet internationally, the message to China is clearly “We play ultra hardball,”
"And what of those businesses who had already been moving supply-chains out of China due to 25% tariffs and who had, logically, thought that the US was happy to see this production shift to close cost-competitor Mexico? "
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ried-worry-now

Well, Trump is definitely stirring things up in Mexico. The June 10th date means that he doesn't want to muck around doing negotiations. Shoot first and, ask questions later.

Here is an article on "disinflation". None dare call it deflation.
"Most analysts –and the Fed – don’t understand that inflation cycles are different from business cycles."
Here is the graph.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=VQj_cqSf
"The USFIG turned down early last year, and by summertime, it was clear that a fresh inflation cycle downturn was taking hold. That inflation cycle downturn wasn’t obvious to the Fed, which hiked rates in September and December. Despite being forced to pivot hard early this year, Fed Chairman Powell just this month called low inflation “transitory.”
The working age population is falling but, it is a complete MYSTERY as to why the economy is deflating.

Turkey demands that the Syrian army stay OUT of parts of Syria. Pox Americana has historically done everything that it could to break up Syria,,, so that israel could take the oil in the Golan. Putin is having no part of Erdogan attacking Syria. Talks failed and, he sent in the jets. Previously, this would have been a causus Beli for America to jump in and, start fighting. Trump is purposely ignoring the actions of Putin. This is a very good sign that Trump has no intention of being drug into more wars.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ks-turkey-fail

Smith weighs in on the S-curve.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com...-of-whats.html
"Credit offers a cogent real-world example. When credit becomes available in a credit-starved economy, it generates a rapid, sustained expansion as credit-worthy borrowers borrow and spend on new productive capacity, consumer goods, housing, etc., all of which further drives expansion."
"Either way, credit expansion stops: either lenders prudently refuse to issue credit to risky borrowers and ventures, and credit expansion grinds to a halt, or they foolishly lend money to borrowers and ventures which predictably default, triggering a credit crisis that brings imprudent lenders to their knees and triggers cascading defaults as declining asset prices push marginal borrowers into bankruptcy."
If lenders refuse to extend credit, just print up free money.

5/31 Lynette Zang: how Deutsche Bank & high risk bets can cause the collapse – MS
5/30 UK car production plunges amid ‘untold damage’ of EU leave date chaos – Guardian

[Danny B]

the reset,,,Regulatory capture blocks debt-free money

Communication is amazingly fast and, changes are coming amazingly fast. 300k
Christine Lagarde of the IMF said that the world is going to have a big "reset".
Jim Willie talks about this reset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-7b3E5Uv4c Long vid.
Jim Willie: Trump, Putin & Xi Secret Reset Meetings To Beat The Globalists And Avoid WWIII

Ellen Brown, " the private buyers of these (Treasury)securities will be pocketing the interest, adding to the taxpayers’ bill."
"In fact it is the interest, not the debt itself, that is the problem with a burgeoning federal debt. The principal just gets rolled over from year to year. But the interest must be paid to private bondholders annually by the taxpayers and constitutes one of the biggest items in the federal budget"
"projections are that by 2027 U.S. taxpayers will owe $1 trillion annually just in interest on the federal debt. That is enough to fund President Donald Trump’s trillion-dollar infrastructure plan every year, and it is a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy investors holding most of the bonds.

Where will this money come from? Crippling taxes, wholesale privatization of public assets, and elimination of social services will not be sufficient to cover the bill."
"The irony is that the United States does not need to carry a debt to bondholders at all. It has been financially sovereign ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the dollar off the gold standard domestically in 1933. This was recognized by Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a 1945 presentation before the American Bar Association titled “Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete.”

"“The necessity for government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments,” he said, “but it is not true for a national government.” The government was now at liberty to spend as needed to meet its budget,
"It could just create the money on its books. This insight is a basic tenet of Modern Monetary Theory: the government does not need to borrow or tax,"

"The Treasury could do that in theory, but some laws would need to be changed. Currently the federal government is not allowed to borrow directly from the Fed and is required to have the money in its account before spending it. After the dollar went off the gold standard in 1933, Congress could have had the Fed just print money and lend it to the government, cutting the banks out. But Wall Street lobbied for an amendment to the Federal Reserve Act, forbidding the Fed to buy bonds directly from the Treasury as it had done in the past."
"According to Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1934 to 1948, the prohibition against allowing the government to borrow directly from its own central bank was written into the Banking Act of 1935 at the behest of those bond dealers that have an exclusive right to purchase directly from the Fed. A historical review on the website of the New York Federal Reserve quotes Eccles as stating, “I think the real reasons for writing the prohibition into the [Banking Act] … can be traced to certain Government bond dealers who quite naturally had their eyes on business that might be lost to them"

"The government was required to sell bonds through Wall Street middlemen, which the Fed could buy only through “open market operations” – purchases on the private bond market.
"Rep. Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1963 to 1975, called the official sanctioning of the Federal Open Market Committee in the banking laws of 1933 and 1935 “the power revolution” — the transfer of the “money power” to the banks. Patman said, “The ‘open market’ is in reality a tightly closed market.” Only a selected few bond dealers were entitled to bid on the bonds the Treasury made available for auction each week. The practical effect, he said, was to take money from the taxpayer and give it to these dealers."
"Patman asked Eccles, “Now, since 1935, in order for the Federal Reserve banks to buy Government bonds, they had to go through a middleman, is that correct?” Eccles replied in the affirmative. Patman then launched into a prophetic warning, stating, “I am opposed to the United States Government, which possesses the sovereign and exclusive privilege of creating money, paying private bankers for the use of its own money. … I insist it is absolutely wrong for this committee to permit this condition to continue and saddle the taxpayers of this Nation with a burden of debt that they will not be able to liquidate in a hundred years or two hundred years.”"
https://ellenbrown.com/2019/05/31/th...ckled-by-debt/

Regulatory capture is nothing new. We have paid the bankers $trillions for the use of our own money. We're coming to the end of a credit super-cycle. The CBs are printing like mad to uphold the nominal price of the instruments that they hold. But, without decent wages and a growing population, GOV will have QE to infinity. Governments worldwide now face the threat of starvation and revolution. They are ramping up surveillance and control but, that won't be enough. The world has to end the wars and other useless drains on the economy. We have to find another way to stimulate the economy besides ongoing destruction. There just isn't enough jobs / work to go around BUT, war is no longer the answer.

5/31 Risks for the second half of 2019 are mounting by the day: part 1 – KL
Armstrong writes about religious war in Europe.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...-war-religion/

[Danny B]

agravation

I wrote a long, detailed post and, near the end, the page just disappeared. I put quite a bit of time into it.
I started over and, after the first paragraph, the page disappeared again with touching any key.
I don't fine it easy to compose in mail or notebook because it wants to put in a big blurb instead of just a link. I'm not completely surprised. I've often had trouble posting here.
I'll try again in the morning.
It was a pretty good post.

[Danny B]

Trump as executioner

There are just TOO many bots on this board. It is a pain to do this in mail.

In 1934, the exchange stabilization fund was created. It was a fund created for the use of the president that would not be subject to the approval of congress. It specialized in currency manipulation.

In 1988, President Reagan created the President's working group on markets, other wise know as the plunge protection team. The PPT is the main avenue for the president to pump up the finance industry.
The secretary of the treasury participates in both funds.
Every time that the markets fall, they get mysteriously levitated by some unknown source. So, while the Federal Reserve is very reticent to pump up markets,,, and, thereby preserve it's reputation, somebody else is inflating like crazy. Both the ESF and PPT are under the direct control of the president.
The FED didn't necessarily have to pump money into the markets. It could get much the same effect by creating no-loss guarantees for stock speculators.

The "Greenspan put" refers to the monetary policy approach that Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, and other Fed members exercised from late 1987 to 2000.

In effect, it promoted heavy risk taking. The runup to the dotcom crash was preceded by investors throwing money at unicorns because there weren't enough legitimate opportunities. By creating a no-lose floor under stocks, Greenspan promoted inordinate risk taking.
In recent years, the FED has been responsible for 93% of the rise in the stock market. Who knows what effect the ESF and PPT have had.

Trump talks up what a great economy we have. BUT, he also knows money markets. Obummer inflated the snot out of the markets knowing that his term was coming to an end. He wanted to pave the way for HRC. We are at a turning point. The markets are already headed down. What will Trump do?
His attacks on China give us a hint. His attacks on Europe tell us the same. Now, he has attacked Mexico and, most recently, he has attacked India.
The only one of the BRICs that he hasn't attacked is Russia. That won't work because they are too strong.

The markets are REALLY apprehensive now. Will Trump save their bacon? He has already refused to get us in big, expensive wars that the Pentagon is demanding. Just how far will he go?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/inve...n-the-fed.html
Trump has turned the investment world upside down.
https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspo...trump-put.html
So, how far will he go? All credit bubbles eventually come to an end. Will Trump try to do a controlled demolition. It certainly looks that way. Why else would he sanction our neighbor Mexico,,, and then immediately sanction India. The markets just can't absorb and adjust that fast.

Only six countries benefited from globalization. It has become obvious that it just can't work. Germany has a 1 trillion account surplus. The rest of the EU has a 1 trillion account deficit. Globalization has to come to an end but, nobody wants to pull the plug. Especially China.

The Ugly End of Globalization
The capital defect of America’s contrived economy is the capital itself. Namely, it’s fake. The importance of this defect cannot be overstated.
About this time, something even more historic happened. Roughly one billion Chinese workers, who were willing to work for less than peanuts, joined the global workforce. As a result, the U.S. was able to export its inflation – and jobs – to China and other emerging economies over the next three decades.

At the same time, the prices of goods and services that couldn’t be exported – like health care and college tuition – inflated with the money supply. In addition, the gap from stagnant U.S. wages, due to the flood of cheap labor abroad, was made up with an endless supply of credit. Financial assets, like stocks, bonds, and real estate, also inflated beyond comprehension.
VERY clear, concise explanation.
Massive public and private debts, runaway deficits, trade tariffs, and the end of globalization have set the table for the return of consumer price inflation to the U.S economy.

Make what you want of Trump’s trade policies. You may like them. You may not. But there’s little he or anyone else can do to stop the ugliness that’s coming.
https://economicprism.com/the-ugly-e...globalization/
Type and save,,, type and save.

Previously, America was a high-wage & high price economy. As we slide down to a global-mean wage, we become a high-price economy with low wages. All the monetary inflation and credit inflation is an attempt to maintain the high prices.
M.N. Gordon is calling for great domestic price inflation. What he fails to factor in is; as prices go up, most people will be priced out of the market. More and more people will be living on the streets. More and more stores will close. BUT, that is only the start. People will default very heavily.

What about the entities that do NOT have a printing press?
6/02 $5.2 trillion of pension debt threatens to overwhelm state budgets – Forbes
6/01 South Korea May exports fall for sixth month, worse than expected – Reuters
They benefited from globalization but, that phase is over.
6/02 Recession ahead? A reliable warning light is blinking ‘yes’ – SF Chronicle
Of course it is. The current recession started last December.

So, the trade war has morphed into a wider war.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...531-story.html
Trump has never been shy about making enemies. He's really fired up this time.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...monopoly-probe

[Danny B]

Nuke vs coal,,, desperation unfolding,,, Trump, the executioner

Here are some excerpts from an anti-Trump article.
Trump’s latest folly to place a 5% per month tariff on Mexico if it doesn’t control the border with the U.S. is just another idiotic move in his quest to control global trade.
Reduce, not control
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is Trump’s enemy on the border. In fact, if anything, AMLO has been on Trump’s side. But, like Trump, he’s got just as big a Deep State problem and that precludes anything substantive getting done.
AMLO doesn't have a deep state problem. He has a cartel problem.
This latest outburst by Trump ensures that his USMCA, the “Greatest Deal Ever,” won’t get ratified. And it just goes to show that he’s so weak as a President that he can’t win any wins within his own government so now he’s going to punish Mexico while pandering to his mostly brain-dead base.

Most Americans don't like NAFTA and, they don't want it's successor. Apparently, Trump stabbed USMCA in the back.
He’s looking at his rising approval numbers and surveying the carnage in global trade and thinking he has the political capital for this. And, sadly, he’s right.
So, Trump has driven a stake in the heart of globalism. What's not to like?
Trump is going to be Mr. Legal Immigration. He’s going to let in as many skilled foreign workers as he can to fill the jobs he’s trying to win back from China, India and Europe.
ALL nations are trying to attract skilled workers.
Notice how Americans aren’t going to fill those jobs.
NOPE, they refuse to take a job in a chicken rendering plant.

If these tariffs aren’t about the border than what are they about? They are about China. They are about stopping the re-branding of Chinese imports as being from Mexico a
https://tomluongo.me/2019/06/02/what...mr-tariff-man/
Trump recognises that Americans will always lose if they have to work for global mean wages.

Just in case you have wondered at the PERSISTENCE of the global warming cadre, it is simple. They are all funded by the nuke power plant people.
The compelling argument used to convince that the world must turn to nuclear power plants centers on the fact that it is carbon-free energy to stave off global warming. It’s not at all clear that renewables can do the job alone and the dream of electric cars will never materialize without nuclear power on any grand scale. Nuclear is a proven technology, which already provides 11% of all electricity globally. They need the Global Warming propaganda to justify building nuclear power plants which are far more costly to construct – $5 billion to $10 billion a pop. Sometimes, it just helps to follow the money.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...low-the-money/
$5---$10 billion and MUCH more for decommissioning. Nuke plants are so dangerous that they can never get insurance. There are 235,000 spent fuel rods that must be cooled for decades.
Nuke power is FAR too expensive so, they have to keep pounding the drum to push global warming. Fission releases a LOT of heat but, don't worry, it doesn't contribute to global warming because it doesn't make carbon dioxide.

Collapse in bullish narratives, collapse in trade talks, collapse in yields, collapse in technical structures, collapse in rate expectations, collapse in growth projections and yes, collapse in stocks. While the price damage to equities for now seems reflective of a run of the mill correction the larger macro context is screaming danger. Danger that this long business cycle is turning or perhaps has already has turned.

Overly optimistic growth estimates have to contend with a bond market that’s yelling recession risk from the rooftops. A Fed now being bullied into rate cuts by a market that demands them more urgently by the day. Three rates cuts being priced in now by the end of the year.

Not long ago the prospect of three rate cuts coming would have been greeted with feverish buying by the TINA crowd, but cycle theory tells you that rate cuts at the end of a cycle are not a sign of strength, they never were, but signs that the economy is heading toward recession:
Great graph, https://i1.wp.com/northmantrader.com...24%2C757&ssl=1
https://northmantrader.com/2019/06/01/collapse/
It's not like this is any surprise. All credit booms eventually go BOOM.

6/01 Renewables are set to outprice oil & gas by 2020 – Oil Price
6/01 Renewable energy prices keep falling: when do they bottom out? – Utility Dive
The higher that oil goes, the more it opens the door to renewables.

The Economics of Nuclear Power - World Nuclear Association
http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploade...conomicsNP.pdf
Nuclear energy averages 0.4 euro cents/kWh, much the same as hydro, coal is over 4.0 cents

Electric Generating Costs: A Primer - IER - The Institute for Energy ...
https://www.instituteforenergyresear...osts-a-primer/
Aug 22, 2012 - A new nuclear power plant, for example, has one of the highest levelized costs, particularly compared to coal and natural gas-fired plants,
Lies and, damn lies. Bring on the FUSOR.

I haven't checked the veracity of this info.
How many coal plants are there in the world today?

The EU has 468 - building 27 more... Total 495

Turkey has 56 - building 93 more... Total 149

South Africa has 79 - building 24 more... Total 103

India has 589 - building 446 more... Total 1036

Philippines has 19 - building 60 more... Total 79

South Korea has 58 - building 26 more... Total 84

Japan has 90 - building 45 more... Total 135

China has 2,363 - building 1,171 more... Total 3,534

That’s 5,615 projected coal powered plants in just 8 countries.

USA has 15 - building 0 more...Total 15

And Democrat politicians with their "green new deal" want to shut down those 15 plants in order to "save" the planet.

6/03 Asia stocks fall on trade worries, falling exports – CNBC
6/03 Wall Street luminaries warn trade war could drag on for decades – Zero Hedge
6/03 U.S. stock futures fall as China blames U.S. on trade talks flop – Bloomberg
6/03 Domino #2: Chinese bank with $105 bn in assets on verge of collapse – ZH
6/02 China blames US for trade dispute, says it won’t back down – AP
of course they won't back down. It was all planned that way.MAGA, baby.

6/02 “Gold is a rock, bitcoin has real value” – James Altucher – Kitco

[Danny B]

Do the speculators get what they want or, NOT

The New York FED is the most important bank in the world.
"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today announced that Simon Potter, executive vice president and head of the Markets Group, and Richard Dzina, executive vice president and head of the Financial Services Group, will be stepping down from their respective roles effective June 1, 2019."
2 of the most important people at the NY FED are leaving.
6/03 Panic-stricken traders now expect Fed to cut rates twice in 2019 – MarketWatch
Where does this fit in the puzzle?

the Trump administration will soon be losing one of the market's favorite purveyors of economic optimism
Chief White House Economist Kevin Hassett Resigns
Where does this fit in the puzzle?

"Given this identity, which must hold, the trade deficit is equal to the excess of private sector investment over savings, plus the excess of government spending over tax revenue. So, the counterpart of the trade deficit is the sum of the private sector deficit and the government deficit (federal + state and local). The U.S. trade deficit, therefore, is just the mirror image of what is happening in the U.S. domestic economy. If expenditures in the U.S. exceed the incomes produced in the U.S., which they do, the excess expenditures will be met by an excess of imports over exports (read: a trade deficit).

The table below shows that U.S. data support the important trade identity. The cumulative trade deficit the U.S. has racked up since 1975 is about $47.003 trillion, and the total investment minus savings deficit is about $43.233 trillion."
"U.S. trade deficits are not caused by so-called unfair trade practices. They are made in the good old U.S.A. President Trump can bully countries he identifies as unfair traders, he can impose all the restrictions on trading partners that his heart desires, but it won’t change the trade balance."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...p-counterpunch

There is speculation that Trump is going to throw the trade war into high gear.
'Cutting off oil supplies to China is equal to a declaration of war' - analyst
"Chinese oil industry executives said this past week that China’s oil industry must have a contingency plan in case the trade war takes another turn for the worse.

According to Bloomberg, Wang Yilin, chairman of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), told employees to prepare for a “protracted” trade conflict, while Fu Chengyu, former chairman at Sinopec, said that China should be ready for the extreme and far-fetched case that its oil supply could be blocked"

"The trade war went parabolic. China refused to budge and Trump upped the ante with more tariffs, to which China responded by threatening to end rare earth exports, a terrifying prospect for US tech companies that rely on those elements. Then last night Trump shocked pretty much everyone by slapping tariffs on Mexico in retaliation for the recent surge of illegal immigration. Meanwhile, global trade flows are collapsing. "
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/stock...ing-feds-hand/

So, 3 VIPs in finance have stepped down in the last couple of weeks.
The money renters are demanding TWO rate cuts in the next few months. Trump is trying to torch China. The EMs are desperate for dollars to service dollar-denominated debt. Chinese banks are crashing. Will the FED / Trump give the markets what they want?
Will Trump hold it all back to crash foreign markets?