Economic pressures

[Danny B]

hand grenade from Greece,,, the sinking ship

British and American voters tossed hand grenades into the political establishment. There is a great fear that French voters will do the same. BUT, tossing a hand grenade into the political establishment does the same thing to the bond market. It has been claimed that Trump has tossed a Molotov cocktail rather than a hand grenade.

Germany suffered the Weimar hyperinflation because their finance minister was hoping to deflate the value of all the debt that they owed. John Maynard Keynes was an observer at the reparations débâcle. He told them that they had planted the seeds of the next war by crushing Germany.
The current German establishment has an inbred fear of hyperinflation that can not be rationalized away. The feces-for-brains politicians insist on austerity for Greece. Austerity has reduced the Greek GDP by 25%. There is no possible way for them to repay loans from irresponsible German banks.

"Greek people who suffer for their politicians playing games with Goldman Sachs to get into the Euro at all costs.
However, the euro ministers reject a debt cut before the Bundestagswahl 2017 once again concerned for Merkel’s reelection bid. In other words, they fear that any debt forgiveness will mean Merkel loses her election but without debt forgiveness the euro will crack.
Not even a single austerity measure has led to the stabilization of the Greek budget and the deflation that has been unleashed is a human tragedy all because Merkel DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE GERMAN HYPERINFLATION."

"Forcing the Greek people to pay to keep the Euro together, which benefited Germany at the expense of Greece, has run its course. Greece will have no choice but to default all because Merkel has continued to put her personal polls ahead of Europe.
Greece forgave the debts that Germany owed it after World War II to help Germany get back on its feet. Merkel REFUSED to listen because that was her promise that Greece would repay."

"Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has completely failed the Greek people. He was elected to exit the EU but instead he has wiped out his country trying to stay in the Eurozone. Pensions have been attacked 11 times since the crisis began in 2010. The very day Greece asked the IMF for help was precisely on the day of our target – Pi from the 2007.15 high. " Armstrong nails it again.

So, the banks irresponsibly loaned money to Greece knowing that it was a serial defaulter. That was after Goldman Sachs finagled the books to get Greece into the EU. Merkel figures that she has the upper hand. Alexis Tsipras screwed over the Greeks. It would be complete and total chaos if the Greeks tried to do an overnight change back to the drachma.

Evidently, they have a plan "B".
"He asserted that Athens is so desperate it is prepared to tie itself to the dollar on the same terms as the likes of Puerto Rico if it means being able to quit the eurozone.
And Prof Malloch said German leaders including Angela Merkel were “freaked out” at the humiliating possibility of losing Greece to a rival currency, which would be a devastating blow to the EU project.

Tying Greece temporarily to the US dollar would be one way for the authorities in Athens to ensure that its currency does not completely tank if it leaves the eurozone, as would likely occur with a reissued drachma.
However critics may argue the country would be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it would simply be trading one currency it has no control over for another. "
Ah yes, the critics. The critics are totally FREAKED OUT that Greece would just default and tell them to go piss up a rope.
Eurozone crisis - Greece could ditch euro for US dollar claims Trump man Ted Malloch | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

More from Armstrong.
" Do not put equities in the same boat with bonds. The ship is sinking, but that is concerned with debt – not equity. Keep in mind that the collapse of a financial system has historically unfolded to different degrees. If we are talking about a Dark Age, then you are into the Mad Max situation. Then the only thing that has value is food – not even gold. "
In order for tangible assets like stocks, gold, art, antiquities, etc. to survive, the fundamental infrastructure must survive. That means there must be ample food for gold to have any value whatsoever. So you must stop short of the Mad Max event for anything tangible to have a safe haven value."

"Therefore, if we are only talking about a reset of the world financial system, then tangible assets retain value that becomes translated into the new currency. Hence, equities will survive, government debt and currency will not"
Disagree; currency has a critical utility value in the lower loop. Bonds do NOT.

"this is a battle shaping up for the future; the final conflict over Marxism, which began with the fall of Communism in 1989. This final battle began 26 years from 1989.95."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ip-is-sinking/

[Danny B]

Educated idiots

Reading available articles on economics is like reading literature on free energy. There is so much bogus info, it makes you wonder why people bother.
Jeff Berwick is a gold bug and a smart guy. He says that Trump should default. That's like saying; drain the water out of the reactor and pull out the graphite rods.
America imports "Total crude oil imports averaged 8.1 million b/d in November, which was an increase of 446,000 b/d from imports during October 2016. "
So we blow the bond market, and pay for oil with WHAT?
TRUMP SHOULD DEFAULT ON DEBT | Jeff Berwick | Silver Doctors

Michael Pento;
"In the short-term a successful implementation of Trumponomics equates to a stronger dollar, higher bond yields and rising borrowing costs."
He actually sells a news letter
Stronger dollar: nobody buys our exports.
Higher bond yields: Debt-service costs go through the roof.
Rising borrowing costs: This would wipe out the entire corporate sector. Only 2 companies have AAA rated credit.
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...ael+Pento&mk=1

It's far too late for sound money because the whole world would have to have sound money for it to work.
What Will Trump Do About The Central-Bank Cartel? | Zero Hedge

"She takes on the research staffs of elite, Ph.D. economists — “the MIT mafia” — who are married to their mathematical models and focused on publishing in peer-reviewed journals. She exposes the institutional groupthink — “groupstink,” she calls it — and disdain for dissenting views. And she reserves her most strident criticism for those at the very top."

"In her columns, DiMartino Booth had warned about lax mortgage-lending standards, a housing bubble and escalating systemic risk. Once ensconced at the Fed, she was left to wonder why so many “highly educated and well-paid economists” were “oblivious as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was about to break over their heads.” (One of the main reasons is the Fed’s reliance on econometric models that don’t include anything related to the financial system, such as debt or credit.)"
We don't need no stinking information, we have MODELS.
‘Fed Up’ exposes the elite rot inside the Federal Reserve - MarketWatch

[Danny B]

Chapter 11 for you and me

I'm trying to take a group of simple ideas and build a complex structure,,, with a simple conclusion. Start with;
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [John Perkins] John illustrates every dirty trick that banks and States use to put other States into deep debt. Job number 1 for the bankers is to create debt and then, morph that debt into Tangibles. John has stated that the banks got a lot of money and practice pillaging smaller States/economies. His updated book claims that the bankers have now set their sights on America and other first world States.

" Anne Krueger – at the time the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first deputy manager – was very straight-forward about the whole matter. She proposed introducing the concept of bankruptcy of entire countries as a means to, above all, afford international creditors fullest protection.
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for Nation-States!"
"Although the global banking elite would love to put Argentina up against the wall, they must however be cautious regarding the precedent this would create that could bring mischief to on-going debt restructures in other parts of the world, especially in the European Union."
Ah yes, the European union.

"So, what’s up? Basically, that Anne Krueger’s concept of setting up the international legal framework that would allow bankruptcy procedures to be imposed on whole nations is again in the forefront.

That would “legally” permit turning Argentina upside down so that it not only gives up every last Dollar but, more importantly, its immense natural resources, a most attractive prospect for the Global Power Elite, as long it does not wreak havoc or derails their long-term plan of the controlled deconstruction of sovereign nation-states "

“bold suggestion” whereby “under certain conditions a government’s international debt repayments should be temporarily suspended while negotiations take place on restructuring that debt.” With her statement, the IMF officially endorsed the radical suggestion of introducing an international legal framework addressing country bankruptcy as a way of “improving the international financial architecture”. Yes, planned rape by the bankers.

"The implicit objective is to ensure that Sovereign Bond creditors – hedge funds, vulture funds, giant megabanks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, CitiCorp, JPMorganChase, HSBC, and the IMF itself – can exert huge leverage taking priority in cashing in on the monies sucked out of a Nation’s taxpayers’ (workers’), central banks, mineral, oil & gas wealth, and other resources and reserves."

"As if horrific debt crises caused by artificially created unsustainable debt burdens could ever be resolved by taking on/imposing ever higher, heavier, long-term debt."
"Now the Global Power Masters appear to be keen on refloating the whole “Chapter 11 for countries” idea. But they must do this with great caution lest they end up shooting themselves in the foot, because if Argentina is to be made an example of by a New York Court ordering Argentina to pay vulture funds who did not accept the 2005 Debt Mega-Swap, that example could spill over not only into countries like Greece, Portugal and Cyprus, which mega-bankers could macro-manage, but also Spain and Italy – even France – which is a totally different and more complex ball game that could even sound the untimely death-knell of the Euro earlier than what the global Elite want.

Remember: the Elites pushing all nations towards World Government need to engineer the CONTROLLED demise of Sovereign Nation-States; and the CONTROLLED demise of municipal governments like Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington DC and 120 other US cities earmarked for bankruptcy, where they propose applying constructive Chapter 9 public bankruptcy conditions rather than Chapter 11 designed to “orderly” tear apart and gobble up private companies."

"Governments in Greece, Portugal, the United States and elsewhere are borrowing, and often wasting, money at a reckless pace. Why do banks and financial markets cooperate? Because there’s something in it for them. They keep a little slice of the public money being borrowed or wasted. This is the ‘Sliver Strategy’, and it underlies the ways many of the Western world’s wealthy institutions relate to government: Only a sliver. But the more that is borrowed, the larger the sliver becomes….”

This begs the question “why did big banks underwrite the liars’ loans that caused the housing bubble? Because they took origination fees and other payments, then passed the toxic debt along to taxpayers. The greater the loan volume the larger the sliver — and most of the slivers ended up in the pockets of the banks’ top management.”
Can countries go bust? IMF created new form of modern mass slavery | Adrian Salbuchi

"the very foundations of today’s global banking system lie on parasitic pro-vulture rules and laws coupled with an overpowering lack of moral values."
"Here is where all the above “experts” go berserk & ballistic, shouting back: “Issue currency? Are you crazy?? That’s against the “rules & laws” of economics!!! Issuing national sovereign currency to finance the real economy’s monetary needs leads to inflation and lost jobs and chaos and… (puts us nice mega-bankers out of a job…)!!"
"“only if the debtor nation cannot restore its financial health are its assets liquidated and the proceeds distributed to its creditors – again under the guidance of a (global) court” (!).
"Time and The New York Times, for example – even suggested that the immensely rich Patagonia southern region should secede from Argentina as a defaulted debt payment mechanism."

"today’s delicate post-2008 banking system, a new and less controllable sovereign debt crisis could thwart the global elite’s plans for an “orderly transition towards a new global legal architecture” that will allow orderly liquidation of financially-failed states like Argentina. Especially if such debt were to be collateralized by its national territory (what else is left!?)"
"Will yet another sovereign debt bond mega-swap be imposed upon Argentina, this time with large swathes of its national territory – especially Patagonia – being used as collateral guarantee?"
Sovereign Debt for Territory: A new Global Elite Swap Strategy | Adrian Salbuchi

I'm not done yet,,, moving on;
"When James Baker made his keynote speech in 1987, he stated that, �No longer will the World Bank carry this debt unsecured. The only assets we have to collateralize are federal lands and national parks.� Baker�s definition of federal lands includes Heritage sites, of which there are about 20 in the United States"
" At the same time there is a bill before Congress called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act that would increase the acreage of designated wilderness by 50% in the lower 48 states. *** While our Heritage sites take in quite a large amount of territory, such as Yellowstone National Park and Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon and the Everglades, "
"Throughout the entire Draft National Animal Identification System Users Guide, land is referred to as a premises and not property. A �Premises� has no protection under the Constitution of the United States, while property always has the exclusive rights of the owner tied to it. Property rights are protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

The word �Premise� is a synonym for the word tenement. A definition of the word tenement in law is: Property, such as land, held by one person "
"I am convinced that the word �premise� will put an encumbrance on your deed. The bankers say they want to monetize land. It�s your land and my land they want to monetize."
https://www.newswithviews.com/brownf...ownfield59.htm

So, sovereign debt crashes and the bankers have to settle for what they can take. Just what do you think that might be? The WWF has already been quite active at screwing anyone they can.
"The idea was to propagandize for "debt for natural re*sources swaps," such as those the WWF has arranged with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Although Mrs. Wood worked ardently to play up its economic advantages to the debtor countries, her numbers were so ridiculous that she ended up recognizing that "the debt is not reduced panelists thus revealed that the whole package is nothing but a scam"
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/publi...ers_target.pdf

"mineral, oil & gas wealth" "Similarly, a 2012 report from the Center for American Progress determined that 13 of our nation’s national parks have oil and gas within their borders, while 30 could experience oil and gas drilling in the future."
MAP: Six National Monuments Where Oil and Gas Production is Currently Occurring – Center for Western Priorities
Yep, the bankers love oil and gas.
So we go into a crash of sovereign debt. The bankers offer to bail us out,,, for a price.

[Danny B]

less earnings,,, more credit

GDP is growing slowly. What does it cost to make GDP grow?
$32 billion increase in credit-card borrowings, IN 90 days
The rise brought total consumer debt to $12.58 trillion, just shy of the $12.68 trillion peak in the third quarter of 2008.
Student loan balances rose to a new record high of $1.31 trillion, and auto loan debt also increased to a record $1.16 trillion in the 18-year history of this data series. What could possibly go wrong?
Is This What They Mean By “Crack-Up Boom�? - DollarCollapse.com

Headlines;
2/16 Auto loan bubble is bursting – Investors.com
2/16 Philly Fed index rockets to 33-year high in another postelection blast – MarketWatch Beware of gravity.
2/16 Europe’s delusional economic policies – Credit Writedowns
2/16 Austerity was a bigger disaster than we thought – WaPo Give it time and it will be a biggerer disaster.
2/16 Aetna CEO: Obamacare in ‘death spiral’ – Bloomberg That is not possible. It cost $ 2.1 billion to build the website so, nothing can go wrong.

2/15 Biggest EU banks embark on the mother of all debt binges – Wolf Street That will result in the mother of all crashes.
2/16 Inflation could push 4m more Britons below poverty line – Guardian What, do you mean that their wages are not rising?
2/16 Fed frets about commercial real estate bubble & its $2 trillion in loans – Wolf Street
2/16 American home values are about to be cut in half – Economy And Markets "Fret" is the word for the moment. There will be a new word later on.

[Danny B]

Nope, it's not a science

Here are the top 30 universities for economics; Best Schools For Economics - Business Insider
Here are the 9 major "Schools" of economic thought; https://mises.org/blog/nine-schools-economic-thought
They did leave out Modern Monetary theory.
From Investopedia; "What does 'Animal Spirits" mean

A term used by John Maynard Keynes used in one of his economics books. In his 1936 publication, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," the term "animal spirits" is used to describe human emotion that drives consumer confidence. According to Keynes, animal spirits also generate human trust."
So, in short, he didn't have a phucking clue about the dynamics that have such a huge effect on people and markets.

Hugo Salinas Price; "Specifically, we refer to "Mainstream Economics" - the "Economics" that is taught today at every single prestigious university in the world."Mainstream Economics" is the child of Physics, and it looks and walks and talks like its parent, Physics:
First of all, the central fallacious concept: "The Economy"
"thus by definition, economic activity has to be denominated in a number of units of money. Thus, all human choices that do not require the use of money escape the attention of the mainstreamers"

"Where the babbling becomes utterly disconnected from any human reality is when the variables are assigned quantities, just as variables are quantified in Physics, and are then combined in mathematical functions to produce indecipherable equations.

Mainstream economists love equations, they adore the simplicity of E=mc2.
But human activity does not operate on the basis of equating one thing with another, it operates by choosing between what is preferable and less preferable, in other words, not by equating things, but by differentiation in power of satisfaction."
"The mainstream economists, as such, consider humans as simple machines which consume or produce, and treat us as such, in their specious formulas. The valuations or preferences of flesh and blood humans are disregarded because numbers cannot be assigned to them.

Since "Mainstream Economics" is only a sham science that imitates the methodology of Physics, it turns out that "economists" - at the Fed, at the ECB, and at every Central Bank in the world - in fact do nothing "scientific" at all; they do nothing more than impose upon whole nations their own personal value judgments while they destroy the free markets, that are truly impersonal."
"The "New Austrian School of Economics", as presented by Professor Antal E. Fekete on his website, Professor Antal E. Fekete, is true Economics. Based on the original thinking of Carl Menger, the founder of Austrian Economics, this school rigorously avoids the error of following the methodology of the Physical Sciences. Our present "mainstream economics", like Physics, uses Numbers, as opposed to the "New Austrian Economics" which is based on Principles of Logic. Unfortunately, both the "Austrian Economics" of Ludwig von Mises and the improved "New Austrian Economics" of Fekete are quite out of favor in academic circles today.

"Mainstream Economics" imitates the methodology of Physics because of the enormous prestige that has accrued to Physics over the past four centuries, and is thus leading the world to an economic, political and social collapse which will mark the end of an Age."
.:Plata:.

[Danny B]

A world run by idiots and parasites,,,, degrowth

So, the world is saturated with well-paid economists who don't have a clue of how the world works. MANY if their recent endevours have failed to work as planned OR even worked the opposite as planned. China DESTROYED the wage level in the West for manufacturing jobs. China just figured that they would magically morph into a big consumer economy. WHERE did they imagine the disposable income would come from at slave wages?
"It has been seven or eight years since the Great Economic Transition was due to take place – the move from an export to a consumer-led economy. "

"President Xi Jinping gave a pre-released keynote speech saying that globalisation was not to blame for the world’s economic woes. No propaganda this… he is quite right"
Most of the article is lies and wishful thinking. The feces-for-brains economists can't see any connection between wages and consumption.
Globalisation isn?t going away, nor is it to blame for the world?s economic woes | South China Morning Post

The Central Bank is there exclusively for the speculator class. They add no value to the things they manipulate. The speculator class exists ONLY to jack up prices to those in the lower loop. They are maintained by the constant monetary inflation. The FED figures that we need 2% per year money growth. This constant monetary inflation is NEVER offset by wage inflation. Leaving the gold standard has given an enormous profit boost to the upper loop at the expense of the lower loop. The CB prints,,, they speculate,,, we pay more.
This Is One Of The Big Reasons Why So Many Families Are Feeling Extreme Financial Stress

As wages and employment have crashed, there just wasn't enough money flowing into the upper loop. The CB printed to make up the difference. EVERY bit of this support was drawn out of the bond market. It certainly wasn't drawn from the productive sector of the economy. Wages continue to crash and prices continue to rise.

"Trump administration’s decision to order a thorough review of banking regulations with the express intention of loosening them.
This decision, widely criticized by powerful central banks" That's a good sign right there.
"Trump has long made his disdain for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act public knowledge, recently announcing his intentions to “do a number” on the bill and promising to loosen a large part of the restrictions it put into place. Immediately, members of the neoliberal political and financial establishment lashed out,"
"Yet Trump and his advisors hold a starkly different view of the situation, arguing that Dodd-Frank’s regulations are holding the economy back — a fact that Frank admitted last year when he called key elements of the bill “mistakes.”
” Trump himself expressed these same concerns in an interview with the conservative news site Newsmax in 2011, telling Americans to prepare for “financial ruin”
Making America Broke Again: Trump & The Inevitable Financial Crisis

As the economy shrinks, who is going to take a reduction?
" Everyone turns on their most compelling emotion-based defense: "we wuz promised" is a reliable standard, as is "we need more money to defend the nation from the rising threat of XYZ." "Help those in need" plays the heartstrings effectively--as long as the "help" comes out of somebody else's pocket.
Everyone sharpens their knives, the better to carve a slice off somebody else's slice of the pie. A passive-aggressive free-for-all ensues as everyone reacts with aggrieved defensiveness to any attempt to diminish their slice, even as they launch shrill attacks on everyone else's defense."
"Here's the current federal spending pie: 55% is entitlements and interest. Both of those are set to soar as the populace ages and interest rates rise."

"We haven't "grown" at all. What we've done is borrow from future generations to create the illusion of growth"
"Fragmentation, discord, discontent, class war: this is the inevitable result of a shrinking pie. Our political, social and economic systems have no history or memory of how to navigate this systemic Degrowth successfully."
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: This Is How the Status Quo Unravels: As the Pie Shrinks, Everybody Demands Their Piece Should Get Bigger

[Danny B]

America will no longer be allowed to run a trade deficit

Jim Willie; "The Petro-Dollar system has stood for 45 years. It has decayed into tatters. Its derivative foundation is being liquidated, a long painstaking process. A new disruptive model was forged in 2014 when Iran sold India oil, which was paid in gold, but delivered from Turkey. Gradually emerging is the Gold Trade Note, first in oil payment then later in general payments in shipped goods. It is evolving within the Chinese market from Russian energy sales, all conducted outside the USDollar sphere."

"The Petro-Dollar has been effectively replaced with the mechanisms of a Petro-Yuan erected on the Gold table. The Chinese are putting in place a link between oil and gold, once again like before the Bretton Woods Gold Standard was violated by Nixon in 1971. The Gold Standard is emerging, with respect to the oil market. "
" The Gold Trade Note is en route to supplant and to replace the USTreasury Bill within the global payment system. The USDollar has been incredibly abused, with monetary printing used to cover USGovt deficits, to redeem toxic bonds held by Wall Street banks, to justify the US trade deficit, and to finance endless wars. "
"With barter and the oil for gold sales, the elements were coming into shape for the Gold Trade Note. The nefarious bullies in Washington had been outwitted while giving the death sentence to the Petro-Dollar, and a death warrant to the USDollar. "

"Consider it another gigantic backlash from yet another illicit war. The USGovt and Israel kicked off the fascist coup in Kiev Ukraine, but the joke was on the Petro-Dollar, again a victim of severe blows to the groin. The Russians began both massive oil & gas sales with China, paid in RMB, but also energy pipeline construction to connect the two Asian nations. The construction would be paid in USTreasurys held by China."
Gold Trade Note Sighted

I suspect that the bankers will still insist that we must keep the military in Afghanistan, Drug Wars: 70% of the heroin in US streets comes from Afghanistan - Jim Willie

[Danny B]

Oil priced in gold, once again,,, where did all the money come from?

The mega-criminals are doing (almost) everything possible to get a war with Russia and Iran. I imagine they are doing this because of oil. They are trying to do an end-run around Trump to get things kicked off.
"Between 1865 and 1973, the price of oil was incredibly stable against a backdrop of perhaps the greatest simultaneous economic, demographic and technological expansion in human history.
How was that possible?
Well simply put, because oil was effectively priced in gold.
However...Once the gold window closed and the petrodollar system was implemented, the price of oil soared 50-fold in just 35 years."
The article has great charts and graphs.
Things That Make You Go Hmm... Like The Death Of The Petrodollar, And What Comes After | Zero Hedge

Almost our entire finance system is focused on supporting the non-producers. A LOT of people got rich. Where did the money come from? The FED inflated the money supply by about 2% a year. Recently, the CB has been buying LOTS of stocks. Labor's share of the economic pie has been steadily shrinking. The bond market is expected to be repaid by future workers
The money was ALL puled out of the pocket of the producer. That which wasn't pulled out of the pockets of current producers is expected to be pulled out of the pockets of future producers.
With ~ 95---100 million producers not at work, the equation just doesn't work. FED GOV debt is reckoned to be at least $40 trillion. If it didn't go into the pocket of the working man, it must have gone into the pockets of the parasites.

The investor class couldn't / wouldn't pay adequate wages so, the middle class slips away. Regulatory capture allowed them to avoid taxes. When the transaction tax (Tobin) was proposed, they threw up their hands in horror. NOTHING could be allowed to cut into their profits. They keep stacking the debt notes higher and higher. They have lost sight of the fact these debt notes can only be repaid by somebody with money. Who has the money?
ALL debts must be paid by either the debtor or the loaner.
The whole economy is a sham where those who have the money don't pay and those who don't have the money are expected to pay. The debt mountain has grown so big that neither party can pay now.

The whole farce was promulgated on the idea that the middle class wouldn't complain too loudly if part of the great wealth channelled to the rich were to trickle down the the rest. Forget the fact that the "great wealth" was in fact "great debt".

"But something happened between 2015 and now.
It’s not just Neiman Marcus, which last month killed its plans for an IPO (after reporting five straight quarters of declining sales).
Or home prices in the Hamptons, which recently fell 17% compared to year-ago levels. Or art market prices, which crashed last year as well. Or even dull jewelry sales, with Tiffany’s reporting vastly disappointing numbers."
"For instance, the folks at Standard & Poor’s keep a Global Luxury Index that tracks 30 of the largest publicly traded companies in the worldwide consumer discretionary sector.

We’re talking the likes of Tesla, LVMH Moët Vuitton, Diageo, Daimler AG, BMW, Pernod Ricard and even Nike. Yet S&P’s Global Luxury Index peaked almost three years ago in July 2014. Since then, it’s down about 13%."
In the Lapse of Luxury: When the Rich Stop Spending
The stock market is going up like crazy,,, the proverbial suckers rally.

"He once again defended the gold standard monetary system that was widely followed by economies around the world until the 1930s.

“Today, there is a widespread view that the 19th-century gold standard didn’t work. I think that’s like wearing the wrong size shoes and saying the shoes are uncomfortable! It wasn’t the gold standard that failed; it was politics,” Greenspan said."
https://www.rt.com/business/377677-g...e-not-working/
The bankers are bad enough, it's the politicians who really get behind currency inflation.

"In fact, Americans managed to shed $1.5 trillion in debt from 2008 through 2013 through foreclosures and the slow process of just paying down debt. But in less than three years, we’re right back to where we were."
The Household Debt Meltdown
Nobody can resist the siren call of credit and free money.

[Danny B]

We mis-spent our fortunes

Reserve-currency status meant that everybody sent us their money. We could have built a worldwide trading empire. Alas, it was not to be. We built a worldwide military empire. Shumpeter called for creative destruction to keep the economy producing. Keynes called for perpetual war to keep everybody employed. Israel used regulatory capture to promote endless war in their favor.

Alibaba'a Jack Ma Drops a Redpill in Davos: The U.S. Wasted $14 Trillion on Wars Over the Past 30 Years Alibaba'a Jack Ma Drops a Redpill in Davos: The U.S. Wasted $14 Trillion on Wars Over the Past 30 Years | Zero Hedge
America is laid to waste, 11 Deeply Alarming Facts About America's Crumbling Infrastructure | Zero Hedge
America is attacked on 2 fronts; Socialism and Islam.

"Now we know why America’s middle class suffers, too – not on the same scale, but for the same basic reason. Too many win-lose deals were imposed on them by the Parasitocrats, the insiders – the same people who now loathe the president they so richly deserve."
"More than likely, the new president will be unable or unwilling to make any substantial dent in spending on pensions, pills, or schools. There are simply too many crony swamp critters and zombie voters on the receiving end. Besides, they are not completely lose-lose programs. Overpriced and inefficient they may be. Still, ordinary people do get some real benefits from them.

That leaves the two biggies: the military-industrial-security complex and Wall Street. Thus do the clouds lift and the picture clarifies. Trump and his team must try to rein in the gunmen and the moneymen, or they are nothing but conmen." Give him credit for trying.
The Great Wailing | Zero Hedge

"The monetary base, or “central bank money” – money created directly by a central bank – has gone from 10% of GDP in 2008 to 35% at the end of 2016 in OECD countries! And nothing seems to be able to stop this frenzy which was triggered by the subprime crisis." BS, it was triggered by manipulation and a loss of wages. That 25% increase in the issuance of free-money was what it took to keep the upper loop from crashing.
"When a central bank purchases a financial asset from an economic agent and pays it with money it creates out of thin air, said agent can do what he pleases with the money – buy financial assets (stocks, bonds, credit...) or real estate. This money created without any counterparty then artificially inflates the value of these assets, until they reach a breaking point "
https://www.goldbroker.com/news/endl...-here-why-1085
Yep, free money endlessly created to keep the speculators rich.

Australia is still in the news; Apocalyptic warning for Australian families

Information deficit;
"At first it, issuing more currency feels good because those closest to the money printing get stinking rich while doing practically nothing. As that trickles down, everybody initially feel smart and wealthier. Well, not everybody; but those running the system sure do."
"Our grand experiment in debt-based fiat currency -- unbacked by anything tangible, like gold -- began on August 15th, 1971 when Nixon unilaterally broke the Bretton Woods agreement and forced the entire world off of the gold standard. Not that the world minded much, because this then meant that politicians and monetary hacks everywhere could ignore centuries of economic lessons and begin making exorbitant promises by printing currency like mad. "

"We see that debt has shot up by a factor of 40 while income has only increased by a factor of 17. We have indeed grown our debts wildly faster than our income over the past 45 years".
"What have they done with the trillions in "thin air" currency they have printed up? They handed them to the big banks, to speculators and the already wealthy. Which should come as little surprise. These are the people they count on for their high-status jobs, as well as the big payouts awaiting them when they return to the private sector."

Part two; " the bankers and politicians are already frantically at work on the only question they care about: Who, instead of us, is going to eat the losses?"
Well, who has all the money?
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/...ancial-bubbles

" The stronger parties in all this, the governments, companies, richer individuals, may be wrong, but they have no reason to correct their wrongs: the system appears to work fine for them. They actually make good money because all corrections, all policies and all efforts to hide the negative effects of the gross ‘mistakes’, honest or not, made in economic and political circles are geared towards making them ‘whole".
“Real GDP growth fell and leveled off in the mid-1970s, then started falling again in the mid-2000s”. What happened during that 30-year period was that we started printing and borrowing with abandon, making both those activities much easier while we did, until the debt load overwhelmed even our widest fantasies ten years ago. "

"As the first graph below shows, there was still growth post-Gold Standard but the rate of growth fell and then “leveled off”, More parasites.
"the amount of dollars it takes to produce a dollar of real growth. That amount has been increasing, and fast, to the point where it takes over $10 to create $1 or growth in the US and Europe"

St. Louis FED; "The U.S. economy expanded by 1.6% in 2016, as measured by real GDP. Real GDP has averaged 2.1% growth per year since the end of the last recession, which is significantly smaller than the average over the postwar period (about 3% per year). These lower growth rates could in part be explained by a slowdown in productivity growth and a decline in factor utilization. However, demographic factors and attitudes toward the labor market may also have played significant roles. "
I'm glad to see that they made at least a slight mention of labor. Not one mention of falling consumptive power.

"when growth is gone, so is all centralization, including globalization, other than by force. "
"At the same time, of course, those who profit most from centralization want that to continue. They can’t, but they will try, and hard."
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/20...-keep-growing/
America channelled too much of it's productivity into war instead of it's own people,, own country. The war-mongers on the Mediterranean drug everybody down until we "believe" that perpetual war is the norm.

[Danny B]

Bone-headed academics have come to the end of the road

There is no shortage of academics in ivory towers who are too willing to convince policy-makers that Academia has all the answers.
December 16, 2008 meeting of the federal reserve open market committee.
"That next sleety morning, they met again, determined to take action to prop up a faltering Wall Street, hopelessly mired in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. "
"virtually all of those at the meeting were PhD economists who had earned doctorates at MIT, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and other top American universities. They met under the auspices of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the decision-making body of the Federal Reserve System. They believed a lifetime of study in economic theory and monetary policy had given them unique insight to steer policy for the most powerful central bank in the world, the lender of last resort for failing Wall Street banks"

"Bernanke was calm but insistent. His lifetime of study of the Great Depression indicated this was the only way. His sheer depth of knowledge about the Fed’s mishandling of that tragic period was undoubtedly intimidating." Of course, the FED couldn't managed the Great Depression. The FED had caused the Roaring 20s by inflating everything in sight.
"It took a few months, but the Fed’s mouth-to-mouth resuscitation brought gasping investment banks and hedge funds and giant corporations back to life. Wall Street rejoiced." BIG mistake.
"But the Fed’s academic models never addressed one basic question: What happens to everyone else?"
"To what end? All around are signs of an economy frozen in motion thanks to the Fed’s bizarre manipulations of monetary policy, all intended to keep the economy afloat." NO,,, to keep the bankers afloat.
"Ruining Americans’ pension systems? The professor and the FOMC had not anticipated that particular side effect."
"Delaying household formation and all the consumer spending that goes with that? Not on the FOMC’s radar."

"Killing the move-up housing market? Nope, the FOMC didn’t foresee that either."
"The members of the FOMC knew their decision would screw savers and the risk-averse elderly. They didn’t care. They couldn’t afford to. " they only POSTPONED the pain.
"Greenspan championed the era of financial deregulation that drove Wall Street to levels of greed that surprised even the most hardened investment banking veterans.
His pragmatic response to every crisis on Wall Street? Lower interest rates, which Greenspan did again and again and again. Blow bubbles and pray they don’t pop.
But they always do."

"The resulting wealth-effect tide would lift all boats. Hailed as a genius by other academics, Bernanke had every confidence his theories would work.

When they didn’t, when the American economy continued to stagger, Bernanke doubled down. His models couldn’t be wrong; something else must be holding back the economy."
"But real people haven’t responded the way academics anticipated in their wealth-effect models. "
"Since 2005, U.S. corporations have disbursed an estimated $296,000 on share buybacks for every single new employee who has been hired." The FED prints money and is quite certain of where that money will flow.

"Proof: a third of all cars traded in during 2015 had loans that were “underwater.” The owners had taken on debt for more than the value of the vehicles."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-f...american-booth

Since the dollar is the reserve currency, MANY States must have lots of dollars so that they can print a commensurate amount of their domestic currency. Heaven forbid that they just print whatever amount is necessary to run their domestic economy. There is an ever-growing demand for dollars overseas.
"The first time we explained that one of the biggest risks facing a world in which the dollar is the reserve currency is a global USD shortage, was in mid-2009, when we wrote "How The Federal Reserve Bailed Out The World."
"no longer the VIX that was the widely accepted barometer of market "fear", it was now the dollar's turn to become the global fear gauge: "
""why the Dollar shortage a symptom of an inherently unstable system."

As Snider explains, "the dollar shortage isn't so much the shortage per se, it’s the fact that it's a symptom of what is an inherently unstable system." He notes that "the reason banks are withdrawing from the system is that it's just is no longer tenable" and "so there has to be some kind of – whether you want to look at it like another Bretton Woods – conference, a global monetary system, a global monetary get together where people start to analyze solutions to the problem as they are rather than keep trying to apply band aids that are not going to work. "
I'm SURE that the PTB would like the SDR to be the global money. There is an ongoing battle between the SDR and gold.

"An implication of the ongoing reserve currency funding shortage is that, according to Snider, despite the occasional blip (arguably funded by massive Chinese credit creation), "reflation is going to fail and there’s nothing the Fed can do about it." He goes on to state that "until they fix the global dollar problem we're not going to fix the global economy "
"we want them to start considering the global currency system and how it actually is operating and failing rather than their stylized academic approach which doesn't apply. "
"What's important about this is that "in each of these reflation episodes you can clearly see the market's faith in that reflation diminishes each time for these very reasons that we're talking about because these markets have become attuned to the fact the Fed isn't exactly what everybody thought it was, monetary policy isn’t what everybody thought it was."

"That's the only thing that truly matters" and concludes gloomily that "the probability scenarios for economic and financial future are much darker now than they were three years ago."
"There's Something Weird Going On": Jeff Snider On The Global Dollar Shortage | Zero Hedge

"In 2013, policy makers largely ignored two Oxford economists who suggested that 45% of all US jobs could be automated away within the next 20 years. But today that sounds all but inevitable."
"Automation is inevitable. But we still have time to take action and help displaced workers."
"Bill Gates recommends we tax robotic workers "
"Elon Musk recommends we adopt universal basic income "
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/bill...398#.db5iu2v2b

[Danny B]

The collapse of socialism will bring a LOT of death.

Madison Avenue told us to spend, spend, spend! The bankers told us to borrow, borrow, borrow! FED GOV and SS told us that they would take care of us when we were to old and infirm to work. The money supply was growing at 9% per year. Nowhere did they teach prudence and restraint.
"There are close to 76 million baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) alive today representing 28% of the total US population. Starting in 2011, an estimated 10,000 Boomers have been retiring every day and that trend will continue for at least another 10 years."

Only 55% of Boomers have saved money for retirement.
59% of Boomers cite Social Security as their major source of retirement income.
Health care costs consume 33% of income amongst Boomers age 60 and over.
Economic satisfaction has fallen from 76% in 2011 to 43% in 2016.
1 in 3 Americans has $0 saved for retirement.
Women are less prepared for retirement than men.
28% of Americans over 55 have no retirement savings.

"1 in 5 individuals age 85 and older who died between the years 2010 and 2012 had no assets other than a home, 1 in 6 died broke, and 1 in 10 died with an average debt of $6,000."
The Four Horsemen of the Retirement Apocalypse | James J Puplava CFP | FINANCIAL SENSE

"In 2015, Wall Street Bonuses, not regular compensation, bonuses, seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled $29.4 billion dollars. Total compensation paid to every single person in this country who makes minimum wage totaled $14 billion..."
"The replacing of honor and duty with egoism and greed as the most honored of civic virtues was a long and slow process."
"The crux of the problem is the huge imbalance between corporate power and the ability of worker's to achieve increasing wages. Without increasing wages, broader aggregate demand in the form of consumption cannot be sustained."
Jesse's Café Américain: Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Three Day Weekend - Times of General Corruption

Armstrong has plenty to say.
"The Social Security system is likewise a disaster. I tried to convert it into a wealth fund almost 20 years ago. The Democrats blocked it for anything to do with the free markets to them was risky."
"Nobody would have sat down and designed a financial or political system as we have today. This whole mess is just total insanity. It does not take a conspiracy, it takes stupidity. "
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...-common-sense/

"forecasting a Great Depression for 2017. Have the monetary powers delayed this?" "ANSWER: No. 2017 is the start of this whole mess."
"This was equivalent to the 1923 turning point in a basket of currencies back then. So the 2009 target was correct and this implies that the 2017 target should also be correct. This year 2017 will be just the beginning."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ycle-due-2017/

"Do you really think it was just coincidence that now Tony Blair is telling the British people to also rise up and create civil unrest in Britain like Obama and Schummer? Remember Obama going to Britain and insulting the people trying to tell them to vote against BREXIT or they would be at the “back of the queque” on any trade deal with the USA? Obama was in the same camp as Tony Bair – surrender sovereignty to Brussels. Obama was coordinating the USA for the Left trying to subjugate Britain. They all work together. The one world government they dream of is a Marxist utopia. They cannot see beyond their own desire for power. "
"The left is fighting tooth and nail to prevent socialism from collapsing. They refuse to admit that their corrupt agenda of always using Marxism disguised as “progressive” or “liberal” has led the world to the brink of total economic collapse"

"We are headed into the closest thing possible to an all outright civil war and the left is INTENTIONALLY trying to overturn everyone everywhere to keep their Marxist agenda in place. The HATRED spewing out of their mouths is really off the wall. Obama has definitively aided this movement and has accepted money from George Soros to help create his dream – restoration of a Marxist state."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...ed-revolution/

"As we head into April/May, we are looking at a real crisis emerging that is beyond contemplation. The prospect of the breakup of the European Union because Brussels refuses to consider that their dream of ruling all of Europe is coming to an end. "
"The real crisis behind the curtain remains not TRADE, but BANKING. The EU hired over 20,000 people to regulate the European banking system"
" All of this becomes a major risk and the European Central Bank holds 40% of all government debt in the Eurozone. The cracks in the foundation of the EU are tremendous and the ramifications will ripple through the entire global economy. The seriousness of this crisis is being ignored by mainstream media because they are too busy trying to undermine Trump because their own ratings have collapsed."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...he-real-issue/

"The Bank of America stock, for example, has increased some 41% since Trump was elected on November 8. The Goldman Sachs stock has increased some 37% during this same time period."
http://www.munknee.com/todays-hyper-...s-responsible/
The bankers are crashing the dollar and the Marxists are crashing the finance system.

[Danny B]

Printing to keep the bond market alive

Very quiet at the moment.
"Global central bank balance sheets are up from $6 trillion in 2007 to $21 trillion today and they are still being expanded at the pace of $200 billion each and every month. "
"So you can tell, anybody with any objective, critical, independent mind can tell this is an unsustainable, very ephemeral rally in stocks that has occurred since 2009. And when the bond market breaks, when that bubble bursts, it will wipe out every asset -- everything will collapse together -- because everything is geared off of that so-called 'risk free' rate of return.

If your risk free rate of return has been warped down to 0% for 96 months, then everything -- and I mean diamonds, sports cars, mutual funds, municipal bonds, fixed income, REITs, collateralized loan obligations, stocks, bonds, everything, even commodities -- will collapse in tandem along with the bond bubble burst."
Contra Corner » The Coming Bond Bubble Collapse
He made no mention of prostitutes?

"Share buybacks and capital returns, sometimes funded by debt, have been used to support share prices. In January 2008, prior to the global financial crisis, U.S. companies were using almost 40% of their cashflow to repurchase their own shares. Ominously, that position is similar today."
Satyajit Das Warns Financial Engineering "Has Masked The Global Economy's Precarious Health" | Zero Hedge

"The next crash will be concentrated in bonds this time. Keep in mind that Andrew Mellon said that Gentlemen refer bonds. That statement proved to also be fatal during the Great Depression. Countless foreign bonds defaulted and were delisted. A stock that goes into bankruptcy typically returns something unless it was a dream start-up. Government bonds MORE-OFTEN-THEN-NOT, simply evaporate and the government will never prosecute itself."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...take-delivery/

[Danny B]

Using the printing press to put lipstick on a pig

The CBs printed lots of money and handed it out. The upper loop of the economy can't survive without perpetual monetary expansion. BUT, the FED wanted to attract capital outflows from weaker sovereign bond markets. The FED needed to appear conservative at the same time that it kept the money flowing. The FED needed to appear conservative so that it could outlast the rest of the CBs. At the same time, the FED has to uphold the appearance that it's bonds are attractive to the wider market.

China quit buying U.S treasuries some years ago. Not to worry, (Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Cayman Island, Switzerland) took over and maintained the foreign bid until the Federal Reserve ceased QE.
Forget the fact that Belgium had NO dollars to buy U.S. treasuries and Ireland is the brokest of them all.
"But since QE ended, the domestic public is buying all net new marketable debt plus that which foreigners are not rolling over."
The chart; Yikes, can't post the link for the chart, It's about 400 lines.

2011 to 2014 the "public" was buying 27% of the treasuries
2015 to 2016 the public bought 119%.
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/...uationsim.html
119% includes maturing notes (rollover) and new issuance. Great gobs of money are flowing into the stock market. Same for corporate bonds. HUGE amounts are flowing into sovereign bonds. This is attracting capital inflows even though stock valuations are at 2.7 times historical valuations.

Armstrong says that the U.S. sovereign bond market will collapse. The FED is encouraging inflows to hold back the collapse.
The ESF and PPT are doing the job for the FED so that it can appear to be avoiding expansion in the money supply.

[Danny B]

automation and work, human values and the family

Jon Rappoport; "these behemoths are operating their production lines at half-strength. Why? Because only 1.5 billion people in the world have enough money to rate as true consumers.
So these corporations, which are the leading lights of the Globalist agenda, are looking and hoping for many more customers. "
" Indeed, Globalists are all for wrecking economies and deepening poverty—aims which infect the lifeblood of corporations.
We are looking at a huge crack—a contradiction—in the very foundation of the Globalism."

"In short, the corporations are buying a pie-in-the-sky con. They insist on believing the favors and concocted advantages the Globalists are offering them in the marketplace are wonderful; but in fact, the long-term situation is a no-win. It’s a narrowing road, and a crack-up is coming.
Globalists are shrinking the worldwide consumer base. "
"In that scenario, the mega-corporations will also shrink to shadows of their former selves. Their usefulness will rapidly decay.
Memo to CEOs: why don’t you try waking up?
Your whole elite movement is a walking contradiction, and you’re on the downside."
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...-face-of-doom/

SO MANY writers,,, so little intelligence; https://hackernoon.com/the-bill-gate...e8c#.cztjfu5kd
David Autor: Will automation take away all our jobs? | TED Talk | TED.com
Various writers seem to think that re-training is the solution to runaway automation. 50% of the people in Detroit are illiterate;
Nearly Half Of Detroit's Adults Are Functionally Illiterate, Report Finds | The Huffington Post
It ISN'T going to get any better; Detroit Public Schools: 93% Not Proficient in Reading; 96% Not Proficient in Math
We spent $25 trillion on the "war on poverty" and,,, we lost the war.

It's not just Detroit, http://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/conten...?itok=3T0trV1z
The parasites drained away the money and destroyed the nuclear family.
"'The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do. . . . And that is to destroy the black family."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...94221050061598
Work is an absolutely critical part of our lives and the Left, et al just don't understand.

[Danny B]

Interest and social credit

There are millions of bureaucrats "working" for GOV that serve no discernible purpose. They act as a conduit for GOV to inject money into the economy FROM the bond market. EVERYTHING is financed by wet-ink money. The more that things become automated, the more money GOV injects into the economy independent of actual productivity. BUT, this is debt money. The interest burden just grows higher and higher. So, what solution does GOV offer?
2/24 Treasury eyeing issuance of 100-year U.S. government debt – GATA

GOV must currently depend on investors rolling over their bonds and NOT cashing them out. 100 year bonds should do the trick.
They can effectively ignore the principle.

The interest burden is another story. GOV prints and injects tons of money just to force interest rates down. Inflation of the money supply causes prices to rise. GOV makes public debt service "sustainable" at the expense of driving everybody into poverty. As people become impoverished, the demand more support from GOV. This is the cycle of GOV accruing more debt. It never has a happy ending.

Historically, interest has been limited or condemned. It has always had such a corrosive effect on society that, it was often outlawed.
“The most hated sort [of moneymaking], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural use of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term usury which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money, because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of making money this is the most unnatural.” ~Aristotle (384-322 BCE)1

"Opposition to usury seems to have been instinctive in many diverse civilisations and cultures, with an intuition it is something unnatural, parasitic and outright sinful. When a civilisation accepts usury as normal business practice, as does Western civilisation, it is symptomatic of an advanced cycle of decay."
"Plutarch (46–127 CE), in his essay “Against Running In Debt, Or Taking Up Money Upon Usury,” described usurers as “wretched,” “vulture-like,” and “barbarous.” Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE) compared usury to murder. Cicero (106–43 BCE) stated, “these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of… lenders of money on usury.”
"Dante (1265–1321) placed usurers in the seventh rung of Hell, where the usurer would spend eternity with a heavy bag of money around his neck. Dante wrote:

From each neck there hung an enormous purse, each marked with its own beast and its own colours like a coat of arms. On these their streaming eyes appeared to feast.9"
"What is money? A means of exchange devised to facilitate the transition of business. Oil in the engine. Very good then: if instead of letting it flow as smoothly and freely as possible, you baulk its very nature; you prevent it from doing its True Will. So every restriction on the exchange of wealth is a direct violation of the Laws of Thelema.15"

Fuller; "The science of credit is the secret of the limitation of wars. Therefore I welcome Social Credit, because in the clearest terms it reveals this secret to all.18"
A Secret History of Money Power : Waking Times
The article goes on at length about social credit.
After the crash of the bond market, everybody who was sucking at the public teat is going to be destitute. Emergent socialism isn't really the answer. It ignores human nature. Social Credit may be the answer.

The State printed money with the false hope that it would create a trickle-down effect and help out everybody. History shows that this makes the rich that much richer and the poor that much poorer.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...arious-poverty