Economic pressures

[Danny B]

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/italy-seeks-to-abolish-poverty-via-bigger-deficits-guaranteed-income-cBf7T_DWb0-wutrMGuUhHA/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-budget/defiant-italy-says-no-turning-back-on-budget-despite-eu-threats-idUSKCN1MC1FS

https://dailyreckoning.com/a-three-way-train-wreck-is-about-to-derail-the-markets/

"We have to come to the reality that from 2019 onward, we are headed into a Pension Crisis that will be serious. Many are starting to yell about the debt crisis. They lump on private debt and yell its a bubble. What they miss entirely is the fact that we face more than a decade of crises"
"This is by no means prophecies of doom and gloom. Unfortunately, they are prophecies not even of a pessimist, but only facts that are comprehensible simply using a pocket calculator and not even a computer. The Pension Crisis is the end of Socialism. Promises that were made which were never sustainable but were a scheme to win votes. Then the money needed to pay the pension required 8% interest annually. Then the central banks enter the game and mess everything up even more. Instead of DIRECTLY aiding the economy, they lower rates and HOPE that the banks will pass it along. They never did. The banks parked the money at the Excess Reserve Window that the Fed has still not closed."

"The cost of pensions is currently stifling Western society beyond belief. Europe itself is ahead of the curve and will crack before the United States. Europe already has between 30% to 40% of the population who have already retired or are about to leave the labor market. "
"We have to realize that government state pensions are the real crisis. Like California, their solution is always to raise taxes to pay for government pensions."
"The pressure is building on the ECB in Europe behind the curtain to stop this nonsense of Quantitative Easing that has failed to start with and is now the cause of a massive Pension Crisis for the next 10 years."
Martin Armstrong Blog | Beware Of The Real Debt Crisis On The Horizon | Talkmarkets
The CAFR reports show a LOT of money in State pensions,,, just no money in private pensions.

[Danny B]

Inflation, feed the State and, kill the worker

Nature created the family and clan. Later, man created society. Later, kings and priests created the State. The kings and priests would protect us from our temporal and spiritual enemies. The priests would intercede for us as only they could understand and, communicate with the gods. All of this came with a price. The priests demanded 1/10 of our income.
The kings protected us from our foreign enemies. Though, they often started wars just to insure a continuous supply of enemies. After all, the kings needed some kind of justification for the endless taxes that they squeezed out.
Thus was born the endless and growing bureaucracy that always surrounds the State. It was centered on the justification of the inevitability of war.
"Peace must be avoided at all costs". "War and the military is how we organize our society" Report From Iron Mountain.

Society and the State are 2 entirely different constructs. Society was created and organized so that man could organize all of his institutions. The State was created to promote war,,,, and then, protect us from the inevitable wars created by the backlash from the original war.
The State inevitably accumulated a huge agglomeration of bureaucrats and war-profiteers. This is where we find ourselves today. We pay 50% of our income to the State. The State has thoroughly convinced most people that it is an integral and INSEPARABLE component of society.
Frederic Bastiat wrote extensively about this lie.

Society could get along well without the State but, the reverse is not true. The State is simply a parasite that promotes war to gain control over ALL facets of our lives. The Deep State wants endless wars. The blob State wants a growing and, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. All of this costs money. The State prints money and distributes it to it's cronies. They buy government bonds. The worker is heavily taxed to repay these bonds. The worker also pays the "inflation tax" where the State can unload 1/2 of the debt burden by inflating the money supply. The working class constantly loses ground in the battle to survive.
currently, there are 96,2 million Americans of working age who are not in the labor force. Consequently, the State has had to carry the money printing to extremes.
The Deep State and the blob State can only "get" money by printing it. They hope to later throw this debt onto the backs of the worker. They hope to reduce the repayment burden to the bond market

https://news.goldcore.com/ie/gold-blog/equities-gold-bonds-stepek/

So, the deep state and the blob state are in danger of losing their paychecks. They squeezed us with the inflation tax. They robbed us with direct taxes. Now, they are borrowing hundreds of $billions. They are well aware that we don't like this arrangement. What to do?
Military and U.S. Law Enforcement Establishing Joint Communication Network for Biometric Databases

https://www.activistpost.com/2018/10/military-and-u-s-law-enforcement-establishing-joint-communication-network-for-biometric-databases.html

The Living Reality Of Military-Economic Fascism Exposed

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-23/living-reality-military-economic-fascism-exposed

"In countries such as the United States, whose economies are commonly, though inaccurately, described as "capitalist" or "free-market," war and preparation for war systematically corrupt both parties to the state-private transactions by which the government obtains the bulk of its military goods and services."
"Moreover, military-economic fascism, by empowering and enriching wealthy, intelligent, and influential members of the public, removes them from the ranks of potential opponents and resisters of the state and thereby helps to perpetuate the state's existence and its intrinsic class exploitation of people outside the state. Thus, military-economic fascism simultaneously strengthens the state and weakens civil society, "

OK, the deep state and the blob state plan to survive by sucking out more and more money. The money is only there if they first print it.
Where does all that lead?
Why Chris Hedges Thinks The American Empire Has Lost Control... And Its Failure Is Imminent

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-24/why-chris-hedges-thinks-american-empire-has-lost-control-and-its-failure-imminent

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-28/can-trump-still-save-united-states

Armstrong said that Trump is an outlier and that the disintegration will continue.

[Danny B]

Normalized interest rates will blow everything anyway.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/government-are-just-going-broke/

" What it looks like is the seat of the Empire is filled with corrupt bureaucrats fighting for dominance." " It is really sad because it exposes how deep the hatred goes. You are correct, we have crossed the Rubicon. There is no putting this back together. The November elections will NEVER be accepted by either side."
"This is the Array on the Democrats. We are plagued by Directional Changes and Panic Cycles showing up in 2019 and 2021. This is all coming to a MAJOR head by 2020"
"I sincerely fear that Trump will be the very last democratically elected president. They will from here on out alter the actual voting counts to support their desired outcome. This is game over! Turn out the lights! As they said of Rome: they will still laughing when the lights went out."

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/american-politics-has-crossed-the-rubicon-theres-no-going-back/

"The capital inflows to the USA began over FEARS of the Euro. They were deeply against the Euro because of the faulty design. It was a political creation that nobody in their right mind would have created such a currency under this structure. So the capital fled Europe and this was one of the reasons why the DOT.COM bubble was so big. It was aided by foreign capital fleeing Europe, to begin with."

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/why-capital-flows-are-the-only-real-guide-to-market-trends/

This is the main reason that the American stock market is so high,,,, foreign capital inflows.

"It is just not practical that we have a monetary system that is based upon a commodity. Historically, inflation would come in waves depending upon new discoveries of the metal. So the quantity theory of money was not developed purely from fiscal mismanagement as often portrayed today. The true value of money is the productive-capability of its people. China, Germany, Japan, all rose from economic depression WITHOUT gold. They did it with the productive capacity of the people. The produce whatever and sell it to someone else and then get gold or whatever in return. This theory that you have nothing without gold is just stupid."

"The collapse of the Turkish lira is a reflection of the collapse in confidence in the government. The same has taken place in Venezuela. China and Japan rose from the ashes, not because of their possession of commodities, but because they could bring their people to bear and produce various items efficiently and cost-effective. It was the people first that produced the economic recovery and then they bought even gold."

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/precious-metals/gold/silver-v-gold-standard/

Armstrong argues that you can not have a gold standard or commodity money. This is duplicitous at best. The money supply has to grow commensurate with the growth in population. BUT, there can not be an unlimited supply of whatever commodity is chosen as money. It then becomes worthless. If the population grows faster than the money supply, that particular commodity grows too expensive and, is unavailable to the producing economy. EG, wheat, salt, cattle, etc
If gold is used for money, it really doesn't matter if the price goes too high. It isn't used in the producing economy so, it makes no difference.
Gold serves the purpose of limiting the creation of government bonds.

The industrial revolution created an enormous quantity of tangible wealth. The banks and the State do NOT want wealth stored beyond their reach. If people go to gold as a store of value, it is out of reach. Rather than letting gold rise way up and, serve as money, banks / State created paper money, and then, electronic entries. This allowed the banks / State to continuously steal your "stored labor". Gold could rise to $50,000 an ounce and, this would not hurt the economy. Central Banks have started buying gold again. They want that stability but, they don't want you to have it.

https://www.dollarcollapse.com/spiking-interest-rates-huge-deal/

The ECB told the Italians that their budget would break the EU. So, the Italians are just going to bide their time. The EU will break soon enough and, this way, Italy can't be blamed.
This will be the bad news story that never ends.

Capital inflows from all over the world are juicing up American markets.

Apparently, the cost of hurricanes is going up quite a bit.

https://www.dollarcollapse.com/running-hurricane-numbers/

https://realinvestmentadvice.com/a-pause-that-refreshes-09-29-18/

[Danny B]

Money supply expansion,,,debt-to-gdp,,, Roman Trump

The Bretton Woods agreement was specifically designed to keep nations from hyperinflating their bond markets to finance wars. Since America was the reserve currency, we still had the ability to inflate the money supply. We had previously promised NOT to do that. We kicked off a war in Korea and, later, a war in French Indo-China. This made a lot of money for war-profiteers but, it destroyed the Bretton woods agreement. We broke the gold link. With the link broken, we could engage in endless wars with bubble economics.
The post-Bretton Woods economic picture was a series of bubbles & crashes. Here is a good article from Charles Hugh Smith. Just remember that the main purpose of bubbles is to promote wars.
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Pensions Now Depend on Bubbles Never Popping (But All Bubbles Pop)
"The nice thing about the "wealth" generated by bubbles is it's so easy: no need to earn wealth the hard way, by scrimping and saving capital and investing it wisely. Just sit back and let central bank stimulus push assets higher."
Keep in mind that the deep State

https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/china-for-the-trade-win

Japan and China have a declining population & workforce. Here is a graph of worldwide debt creation. You can easily see the reason for capital flight to America.

https://ggc-mauldin-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/newsletters/Image_5_20180921_TFTF.png

Much of that capital flight is going into stock markets. Armstrong has warned the world about the danger of sovereign debt.
"Treasury Yields Surge, Curve Steepens, 30-Yr Yield Highest Since 2012: 6 Reasons"
Here is a graph of "Treasury shorts", https://imageproxy.themaven.net/http...wUevKqWTMMGzSQ

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/treasury-yields-surge-curve-steepens-30-yr-yield-highest-since-2012-6-reasons-BbDuxr0hMUChpx8e9T1JpQ/

Zero Hedge has an interesting take and more charts in his post This Is Why Bonds Are Crashing, According To Bill Gross.
The debt-to-GDP ratio is a country's debt as a percentage of its total economic output. Countries with a ratio above 77% are in danger of default.
A debt-to-GDP ratio of 60% is quite often noted as a prudential limit

Powell wants to go full speed ahead with rate hikes. While it might bring some profitability to pension funds, he will crash everything else. Debt service on our $21.5 trillion public debt could easily hit $1 trillion a year. Corporate debt will becomes unpayable and most will default. There are only 2 American companies with AAA credit. Keep in mind that U.S. Gov lost it's AAA rating years ago.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-03/fed-chair-powell-hints-he-may-soon-crash-market

https://www.opslens.com/2018/10/03/national-debt-crisis-what-does-136-trillion-look-like/

Going from gold to paper allowed a big expansion in the money supply. Going from paper to pixels allowed even more. When the default cascade hits, the pixels will vanish without even a puff of smoke.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/draining-the-swamp-why-the-new-york-times-is-trying-to-overthrow-trump/

The blob state killed the emperor to maintain their positions of power,,,, not long before the empire collapsed.

[Danny B]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-04/something-has-break-chinas-onshore-defaults-hit-new-record

https://realinvestmentadvice.com/debts-deficits-a-slow-motion-train-wreck/

https://stephenlendman.org/2018/10/10-4-million-us-taxpayer-dollars-to-israel-daily/

"Wall Street banks are now collecting more from Los Angeles just in fees than it has available to fix its ailing roads."
Keep in mind that the gas tax money was sucked into the general fund to be handed out as welfare payments.
Los Angeles wants to have it's own bank for it's own money. The bankers are in a panic.

https://ellenbrown.com/2018/10/03/breaking-with-wall-street-l-a-puts-it-to-the-voters/

It looks like it's 'game on" now for Italy.


Powell will get something to break but, what will break first?
There is talk of breaking up the big banks.

https://sputniknews.com/us/201810031068566906-us-legislation-bank-breakup/

[Danny B]

https://dailyreckoning.com/worlds-most-important-bank-issues-urgent-zombie-alert/

Here is a graph of global yield curve.

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/2018-10-04_5-30-11.jpg

A blind man could interpret this. There just isn't enough capital to service the enormous credit bubble. As rates go up, there will be even less capital available.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-04/liquidity-crisis-looms-global-bond-curve-inverts

https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2018/10/03/how-commodities-will-perform-in-the-impending-massive-credit-crunch.html

[wayne.ct]

[Danny B]

A short history of Trana-Jordan

Off topic but, since everything is connected, I'll address it. You must start with Theodore Herzl.

Theodore Herzl was the spiritual godfather of the jewish State. He proclaimed that the foreign jewish settlers must BUY the land. He also demanded that the foreign settlers live in peace. Trans-Jordan was only 17% jewish in the '30s.
Unfortunately for the Arabs who lived there at the time, Herzl was ignored by the immigrants. Many of them were from Russia and, for lack of a better word, many of them were uncivilized and barbaric. Russia was a murderous and barbaric land for much of it's history after the Bolsheviks murdered the Tsar. The jews had been kicked out of just about every State and province. They wanted a homeland.
Keep in mind that the Amish and Mennonites were invited into Russia, Canada and many other States.

The British made a deal with the jews. If they could Drag America into the war, England would give them a homeland. The Balfour Declaration. They convinced the president that only a war would bring America out of it's great depression. Just as the Lusitania was used as a pretext for WW I, Roosevelt needed a pretext for a European war. Americans refused to get drug in again to Europe's troubles. Roosevelt figured that it would be easier to force Americans to accept a pacific war and then,,,, A European war. Roosevelt blockaded Japan to get them to Attack.
Admiral Kimmel, the commander of Pearl Harbor base testified before congress that military intelligence knew 2 weeks ahead of time when and where the attack would be.

When the war was over, many refugees poured into Trans-Jordon / Palestine. Their attitude was personified by ,,,, The great israeli patriot and freedom fighter, David Ben-Gurion was very clear when he said " we have stolen their land. God gave it to us but, he isn't their god so why should they care"
The British took on the problem of administering Palestine under the British mandate. They planned a continuation of the earlier situation of multi-theistic and multi-culturism. The land had previously been reasonably peaceful. [by middle eastern standards]
Terror gangs and parties were formed to drive out both the arabs and the British. Irgun, Stern, Nehi and Likud were very active at blowing up buses and market places.
The Russians seemed to be at the forefront of the terror. One Russian immigrant, Begin was particularly bloodthirsty. There isn't any doubt about his reign of terror. He documented it very well.
"The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi attacked Deir Yassin, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem."
"150 corpses were found in one cistern alone, among them people who had been either decapitated or disemboweled.[5] Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that there were also cases of mutilation and rape.[6] Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem.[7] "
Menachin Begin later became Prime minister.

The jewish/russian terrorists stacked up corpses for the media. Their crowning achievement was when they blew up the King David hotel and killed 97 members of the British command. The British left declaring that the land was ungovernable. "

Look at the dates. It was the terror gangs blowing things up in the late'40s.
BTW, it was Rahm Emmanuel's father who was part of blowing up the British command.
Israel was founded by murder and deception on stolen land. The Arabs were not attacking the jews. It was the other way around. Many jews consider themselves to be the master race. It is OK to do genocide to the goyim (cattle).
I've had israeli acquaintances tell me that israel is a communist country. Dunno. It sure takes a lot of foreign aid to keep them going.
"Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
This just isn't the right attitude to get along in the world. The israeli supreme court just declared that it's laws extended to the whole world.
What it gets down to is; the immigrants started blowing up everything to drive out the non-jews.
The jews are slowly waking up to the idea that zionism has hijacked Judaism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ZiVRedU-4&feature=youtu.be

There is no arguing over who started it first.
I wrote about this in 2009 at Burning Man.

https://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=28087

The jews didn't so much invent their enemies. They manufactured them.

[Danny B]

Bond yields turn,,,, Kunstler

"A severe sell-off in technology stocks has pushed the front-month VIX futures contract to a premium relative to the second-month contract."
"Typically, the curve is in contangobackwardation -- the opposite of contango -- indicates traders are acutely concerned with the near-term outlook for equities. "
"Joining the 10-year in breaking its long-term downtrend line are the 30-year and 5-year bond yields:" VERY important indicator of confidence.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114428/think-youre-prepared-next-crisis-think-again

Fishtailing into the Future - KunstlerImaginary Monsters and the Uses of Chaos - Kunstler

The changes in the bond markets are due to a change in psychology.

https://www.dollarcollapse.com/market-psychology-changed/

"by Ambrose Evans- Pritchard

Each super-cycle for bonds over the past two centuries has lasted the span of a career. The tide is immensely powerful. When it turns, the world economic system faces what amounts to a regime change.

The current "ice age" - to borrow from Albert Edwards at Societe Generale - began in 1981 when the US Federal Reserve delivered a crushing monetary shock and defeated the Great Inflation. Benchmark US yields have been falling in a staggered fashion ever since.

It is the only experience that most investors, traders and PhD economists at central banks have ever known. But if the chartists are right - and you ignore them at your peril - the downtrend line has finally broken. US Treasury yields across the maturity spectrum are smashing through historic lines of resistance, with instant knock-on effects through the $US49 trillion ($62 trillion) market for global bonds."

https://www.afr.com/markets/market-data/bonds/bond-ice-age-thaw-will-send-shockwaves-through-global-markets-20180110-h0gkwn

[wayne.ct]

Thank you

Thanks for trying to answer my question. Yes, I see it is off topic so I'll let it go.

[Danny B]

The mention of o t. was a comment, NOT a condemnation. Consider that we had a jewish rabbi as the comptroller of the Pentagon when $trillions went missing.

https://rense.com/general75/latest.htm

Mention of just about anything connected to israel is also important to America. Most of the reason that America is broke and collapsing is directly related to israeli control of America.
Israel destroyed their bond market in the early 80s. I went there in '84 after they had knocked 3 zeros off the Shekel. They have now destroyed our bond market.

[Danny B]

more milestones on the road to bond default

You may be tempted to think that the economy is OK for most. You may believe that the crash is in a holding pattern. Not so. We are passing milestones on a regular basis on our journey to insolvency. Sovereign Bonds have broken out of a trendline that began in 1981.
Now, junk bonds (ccc) have broken out of a trendline.

China must inflate to keep employment going.

They're crashing anyway. OZ depends a lot on China.


The Central Bank is supposed to take the punch bowl away when the party gets going real good. BUT, voters and investors do not want the party to end. Yellen pumped it up good to help obummer. Powell is emptying the punchbowl.
"Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank has a ways to go yet before it gets interest rates to where they are neither restrictive nor accommodative."
"The bottom line is the Fed waited much too long to begin normalizing monetary policy. Moreover, they pre-committed to an extremely gradual path of rates increases. This policy approach essentially ensured that so-called "tightening" measures would fail to tighten financial conditions. Over-liquefied and speculative markets were content to look right through them, confident that cheap liquidity and easy Credit conditions would run unabated."

https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2018/10/weekly-commentary-contemporary-finances.html

https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2018/10/weekly-commentary-contemporary-finances.html

Charles Huge Smith has a good article, The Dynamics of Decadence
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Dynamics of Decadence
Italy is still stirring things up.


That won't do anything for confidence.

WE forked over $ 1/2 trillion to the owners of the FED. More deflation.

[Danny B]

productivity vs speculation,,,global cooling

"Jerome Powell said the central bank has a ways to go yet before it gets interest rates to where they are neither restrictive nor accommodative."
In Sharia-compliant banking, the bank is exposed to the risk of investment, NOT just the risk of default of the borrower.
The Bank of North Dakota only loans money for productive investments, NOT for speculation. The Bank of ND is more profitable than the NYC banks.
When Powell talks about interest rates being either restrictive or accommodative, he is, for the most part, talking about interest rates for speculation, NOT productivity. The money loaned for speculation is at far higher risk than money loaned for production. The 2 should have entirely different interest rates. The Bank of ND only loans money that has a dedicated cash stream to finance repayment.
So what happens when you loan money for a purely speculative purpose that isn't directly connected to any kind of productivity?

Greed can turn to fear in a heartbeat. Buying stocks on margin takes a lot of confidence. What happens when confidence wavers?



That could definitely dent confidence.

The latest warning from the BIS spooked a lot of CBs.


This official denial is the sure sign that everything in Turkey is about to fall apart.

All that hot money from the FED is fleeing just where the State does not want it to flee.
ABOUT TIME.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/understanding-cycles/napoleon-war-sunspots-human-excitability/

"Already, the data is now in for September. The world just had the coldest September for a decade, according to the latest satellite measurements by the University of Alabama at Huntsville."

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/september-the-coldest-month-in-a-decade-must-be-global-warming/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKP0_y6FrQ4

[wayne.ct]

Israel vs Papacy

So, are these two symbiotic forces? Or are they in opposition? It seems to me that the US is the lapdog of the Papacy and you seem to see the US as the lapdog of Israel. That all three are about to instigate a new Crusade/Jihad seems obvious. They are more likely to collude than bicker and the Muslim world will be overrun militarily. Your thoughts?

[Danny B]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsqZJP54shg&t=478s

Too many unknowns and variables for me.