Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Danger of banking

To start with, I'm going to post a couple of commercial vids. They're pretty cool.
автоФигурное Катание. Танец машин и фигуристов на льду - YouTube
Huge Bear Surprises Crew on EcoBubble Photo Shoot in BC - YouTube
It is well known that banking was taken over by organized crime. This made a lot of legitimate bankers very nervous. A LOT of them quit.
"FREEDOM PROJECT: 594 BANKER RESIGNATIONS"
FREEDOM PROJECT: 594 BANKER RESIGNATIONS ~ by American Kabuki ~ 15.4.12... | The Galactic Free Press

[Danny B]

Winding down society

Currency has 2 factors that are affected by trade. Quantity and velocity. Americans are debt saturated and have cut back on spending. A drop in velocity acts the same as a drop in quantity. As velocity drops, the FED increases quantity. Since our currency is a debt note, SOMEBODY has to take on more debt to increase the velocity and quantity of currency and debt in circulation.

Commercial bank money (debt with interest) is inflationary at inception. It also raises velocity. BUT, the repayment is deflationary. FED money can be inflationary. Senator Inhoffe reports that much of the TARP money was not paid back. This was deliberately inflationary to offset the deflation of consumer loan defaults.

The wealth transfer to the 99% has been very deflationary for the rest of us. Japan has had falling wages for many years BUT, corporate Japan sits on a $ 70 trillion nest egg.
BUT, what is that wealth? It is paper debt notes.... for the most part, bonds. Public and private bonds are serviced and repaid by profits and taxes. An impoverished populace does not generate adequate wealth to pay profits and taxes. GOV will resort to confiscation as a short term solution.

As deflation digs deeper, there will be far fewer people with money. Since all stores of wealth are subject to supply & demand, the rich will find that their stores of wealth are not in demand. Those who have the highest percentage of non tangible wealth will lose the highest percentage. Even now, we see the auction houses for high dollar items setting new records. People with money are dumping debt instruments to overpay for tangibles.

The rich are starting to understand that a prosperous middle class is necessary to a functioning economy. Without a functioning economy, all those debt instruments are worthless. Warren Buffet came out and said that the rich should pay more taxes. There is a growing appreciation for what will happen when the middle class becomes the poverty class.
ALL credit/debt instruments become worthless when only the 1% have any wealth.

The corporatocracy robbed everybody's wages and interest income. They have starved the goose that laid the golden eggs. Commerce is dying. The birth rate is falling. There is only ONE way to turn this around. Massive price deflation. Energy is the master resource. Oil consumption is used as a predictor for societal collapse.
ClubOrlov: How To Time Collapses

The only way to bring massive price deflation is to free up ZPE.

[Danny B]

GOV would prefer that investors do not know what is going on. In 2006, GOV quit reporting what the M3 money supply was. There are credible reports that unemployment has reached 37%.
The Daily Bell - A Trend to Note: Over One-Third of Adults Unemployed
NOT from GOV.
GOV also keeps 2 sets of books. The congressional budget office has 2 reports.
Extended Baseline Forecast or EBF.
Alternative Fiscal Scenario or AFS
"The Alternative Fiscal Scenario (AFS) is what the CBO thinks we're facing absent a truly dramatic and sustained shift in fiscal policy.

Because of Kotlikoff's ability to get news coverage for the AFS, the CBO decided this year not to publish it."
"Using the AFS figures, the unfunded liability is $205 trillion. This is the figure that the CBO does not want the general public, meaning the financial media, to be aware of.

Understand, this is not the unfunded liabilities added up in all future years. This is the present value of the unfunded liabilities, discounted to today. This means that the government needs $205 trillion, cash on hand, to invest in the private sector, in order to fund its legal liabilities."
$205 trillion doesn't sound like so much of you say it real fast
"This is the soft-core version that he wrote for Forbes. He released a hard-core version in an interview on the Financial Sense website. He called this a conspiracy. But he made it clear that it is a bipartisan conspiracy."
Now, you know why congress passed the increase in the debt ceiling. We're a couple hundred $ trillion short.

Bloomberg says that manufacturing jobs are gone.... get over it. We will be a service economy. Manufacturing is the main value-added enterprise. At the other end of the economy is interest drain. What do you think happens to the economy if interest drain continues but, there is no value-added input?
Bloomberg Businessweek says: “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It.” | Robohub

We are overly burdened by parasites but, JPM and GS want to buy up everything to institute monopoly pricing and control over EVERYTHING.
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet | Politics News | Rolling Stone
No problem, we'll all live like the Amish.

Big, Bad, Bald Ben Bernanke claimed that he could have stopped the Great Depression of 1929 by providing unlimited liquidity to the banking industry. Well, he got his chance to try it out on the recession of 2008. ALL he accomplished was to postpone the depression.
Abe in Japan was / is? a great believe in Bernanke style reflation. He REALLY printed. How strange, the stock market crashed as a result. The European Central Bank is furious with Germany because Germany does NOT want unlimited printing. Germany told Mario to "piss off".


China has 10,000 producers of coal and brings on a new coal-fired plant every week. The economy has cooled off and the price of coal is below the cost of production. All those coal producers are highly leveraged and many/ most will crash and bring down their creditors.

This is where our economy is relative to where it should be;

http://d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net/uploads/newsletters/140209-02.png

Obummercare will reduce it further;
Editorials | Mauldin Economics

Just in case you missed it, all of this was predicted many years ago.
1958 Robert Welch founder of John Birch Society Prediction Americas Destruction from Inside - YouTube
Here is something that is not screwed up;
Vangelis - Conquest of Paradise (Pan pipe Version) - YouTube

[Danny B]

Charles Hugh Smith

The ECB wants unlimited printing to save the banks. The Germans say NO!
The ECB has come up with an alternate solution. "Europe Considers Wholesale Savings Confiscation, Enforced Redistribution"
Europe Considers Wholesale Savings Confiscation, Enforced Redistribution | Zero Hedge

This is an article about the FED's "nuclear option". The FED could just buy all failing assets. "The New York Times recently published an article that nails the core issue in the entire U.S. economy: the top 10% is the only segment able to support additional consumption"
"This raises an obvious question: can the excess consumption of the top 10% support every mall, strip mall, premium outlet and retail center in the U.S.? "
" The Fed can buy half the U.S. stock market, all the student loans, all the subprime auto loans, all the defaulted CRE and residential mortgages, and every other worthless asset in America"
"Holders of disintegrating assets will be delighted to sell the assets to the Fed, of course, but that won't fix what's fundamentally broken in the American and global economies"
charles hugh smith-The Federal Reserve's Nuclear Option: A One-Way Street to Oblivion

Another article from Charles Hugh Smith;
" Our Middleman-Skimming Economy

The Internet is enabling sellers and buyers to bypass the predatory State and the parasitic middlemen the State enforces."
"Here's the deal between the two worlds right now: the Status Quo is dying but trying to take everything with it and the other is trying to hold the old world up enough to avoid complete collapse, buy time, and construct the airplane of the new world, all while flying."

"Here's the Status Quo arrangement: the Elites trying to take everything they can before their vast skimming arrangement finally collapses:"
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Our Middleman-Skimming Economy
"In our middleman-skimming economy, the State partners with various private cartels to fix prices, guaranteeing immense profits for the corporate cartels and the State functionaries who enforce the involuntary trade."

"In a no-middleman system such as the one I propose in The Nearly Free University and The Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education, students (buyers) pay the lecturers, working professionals/mentors, adaptive learning providers, etc. directly, cutting out the middleman universities entirely because the system is based on the professional model of accredit the student, not the institution."

Repost: Bloomberg said that we will be a service economy;
Bloomberg Businessweek says: “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It.” | Robohub
Gordon long points out that the service economy is quickly dying because of automation.
02 03 14 - Macro Analytics - THE RETAIL CRE DOMINO w/ Charles Hugh Smith - YouTube

Here's a vid from the good old days;
Pangea - Fantasy Animation HD - YouTube

[Danny B]

Retail expectations

America has 5 times the retail space per person that France has. Only 10% of Americans are in a financial position to spend as they have previously. Gordon Long has an excellent set of graphs on what to expect from the retail sector.
Gordon T Long : Global Macro Economic Research
The Automatic Earth has a great article showing that the middle class has been / is deprived of $ 1.6 trillion every year in spendable income.
Debt Rattle Feb 15 2014: Kill The Middle Class, Kill The Nation - The Automatic Earth
The richest of the rich have taken all of our income but, it is all in the form of paper promises. WE are the only ones who can fulfil these promises.

[Danny B]

Keeping the State together

Burke said "War is the Health of the State". I believe that he was talking about wining wars. Losing a war is never a good idea. A State wins a war,,, gains some territory, spoils and slaves. It used to be that war was cheap.
Haile Selassie;
"Mobilisation Order by Emperor Haile Selassie - Abyssinia 1936

' Everyone will now be mobilised and all boys old enough to carry a spear will be sent to Addis Ababa '
' Married men will take their wives to carry food and to cook. Those without wives will take a woman without a husband. Woman with small babies need not go '
' The blind, those who cannot walk, or for any reason cannot carry a spear, are exempted.'
' Any one found at home after receipt of this order will be hanged."

U.S. GOV reports that it costs $ 1 million a year to maintain a soldier in Afghanistan. War has gotten very expensive. The Bretton Woods agreement made the U.S. dollar the reserve currency. America was able to wage war with a credit card. War has another use.
The Report From Iron Mountain;

http://www.stopthecrime.net/docs/Report_from_Iron_Mountain.pdf

Says that peace would be a complete disaster.
The mega state is an un-natural contrivance. A forced agglomeration. The STATE must constantly create enemies, both real and imagined. The fear that this creates is the glue that holds tightly bound the people of that State.

After the U.S.S.R. fell, America had to search high and low to find potential enemies and provoke them. America was a convenient boogeyman for the Russians to employ to keep the various Russian satellites bound to Russia for "protection" . VERY strange that nobody invaded when Russia collapsed.

Korea and Viet Nam were useful to make money for the war profiteers. The threat of communism and nuclear war was the scourge that America GOV used to keep us always fearful. BUT, the U.S.S.R. was a command economy and all command economies fail. Ludwig Von Mises predicted the fall of the U.S.S.R about 25 years ahead of time.

America was always facing one enemy or anther. As these enemy states became ever smaller, it wasn't convincing that they could credibly attack us.
A new enemy had to be created that was powerful enough to inspire adequate fear.
A faceless enemy would fit the bill perfectly. TERRORISTS,,, they're everywhere. A very big and convincing strike would be needed to inspire the required fear level. Ehud Barak, et al came up with a great plan.
How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11 | Sabbah ReportMy Blog

I need to break this up to a second post

[Danny B]

Israel Credit Card Glitch Raises Cyber War Fears | TIME.com
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A couple of articles on cyberwar;
PM - The threat of cyber war 05/02/2014

Cyberattack on Energy Sector would be 'Devastating'

The World's Most Dangerous Software - Bloomberg

If a cyber-war is the most formidable type of war, maybe conventional war will fade away. M.A.D. fostered the developing peace in Europe. Could a cyber war with assured mutual destruction be the basis of a new peace? Flame and STUXNET could not be kept in bounds. Conventional weapons have gotten increasingly lethal. Could the same happen with cyber weapons?

[Danny B]

The murder of exceptionalism

All belligerent empires self-destruct. We live in an America that is NOT the same America that our founders created.

Richard Ebeling: Let me put it this way. There is a meaning to the notion of "American Exceptionalism," if rightly understood. America was exceptional in its founding and its practical existence for a long time because it was based on a series of principles not practiced anywhere before in the world in the same way. Before "America," virtually all societies were founded on conquest and plunder. The conquering chieftains and their descendants asserted the authority and legitimacy to absolutely and arbitrarily rule over those under their political control.

In some places such as Great Britain there had been long battles over centuries between the kings and some segments of his subjects concerning defined limits on monarchical power. The achievements of the British in this regard were part of the premise upon which the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed and the Constitution promulgated a handful of years later.
But nowhere else than in America was there such a conscious and explicit claim that kings and their governments were not the giver and taker of "rights" belonging to the people. In America it was stated that all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights, which included each individual's right to his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These rights preceded government, and a government's only legitimacy was in protecting the people's individual rights, not violating them. And far more than in any other part of the world, this idea and ideal was preached and practised.

Were there governmental abuses and interventionist corruptions? Yes. Did the government act in aggressive and plundering ways at various times at some people's expense? No doubt. But in comparison to the thousands of years before, America was a living reality of a society based on and respecting the individual's right to be free, and not the manipulated pawn in the hands of arbitrary monarchs or democratic majorities.

This was the essence of "American Exceptionalism." In America, society was made up of uniquely self-governing and sovereign individuals. - See more at: The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Austrian Economics, Economic Freedom and the Trends of the Future

This "exceptionalism is NOT compatible with communism. Many groups are constantly pushing sectors of the world into socialism,,,, that always morphs into communism. American principles had to be destroyed if communism were to advance world wide.
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"........ deeply flawed US State of the Union. A certain geopolitical force was detected. It did not like America, not at all, but it was hidden. Many are its agents and tools. Its dark knights were few, most with extreme success stories and baron status. Their symbols are scattered across American landscape, entering lives in subtle manner, most prominently on the back of a $1 bill. After the turn of the millennium, much changed. Darkness extended its shadow."

"The biggest turning points were the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, the broken Bretton Woods gold standard, the Most Favored Nation status grant to China, and the Patriot Act passage,. Those events were prologue for the death of a nation."

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article44487.html

Hoarding Gold, Food and Friendship
Hoarding Gold, Food and Friendship - Chris Martenson on Freedomain Radio - YouTube

Here's Roy Clark;
roy clark - ghost riders in the sky - Download, Play - 4shared

[Danny B]

Morality and commerce

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams
LOTS more quotes;
Quotes on Liberty and VirtueWhen Nations Die - Probe MinistriesDebt Rattle Feb 18 2014: The Best And Brightest Among Us Are Not - The Automatic Earth

The corporatocracy is firmly focused on eliminating it's competition. After it eliminates small business and destroys the fabric of society, it may find that the resulting moral collapse is unsurvivable.

I found a couple more interesting articles.
Ambrose; "
People laughed at the Observatoire. Nobody is laughing any more. As
the IMF said last night, Europe is one external shock away from a lurch
into outright deflation."
France is looking straight down the barrel of a deflation shock – Telegraph BlogsSocGen bear growls: deflation shock-wave from Asia to trigger global recession – Telegraph Blogs

The economy is shrinking,,, in spite of what you may have heard about green shoots The U.S. is producing less electricity than it did seven years ago for a population that has added more than 14 million people. - See more at: Electricity Price Index Soars to New Record at Start of 2014; U.S. Electricity Production Declining | CNS News

Haile Selassie
"He who would be a leader must pay the price in self-discipline and moral restraints. This details the correction and improvement of his personal character, the checking of passions and desires and an exemplary control of one's bodily needs and desires"
Haile Selassie Quotes
I don't think that he had Bill Clinton in mind.

[Danny B]

Banking and technology

"The banking/financial sector claims to be eliminating risk, but what it's actually doing is perfecting the threats that will destroy the system from within. Another way to understand this is to look at what happened to home mortgages in the runup to the meltdown of 2008: the "safest" part of the financial sector ended up triggering the collapse of the entire pyramid of risk.

Once we concentrate risk and impose perverse incentives and moral hazard as the foundations of our financial/banking system, then we guarantee the risk will explode out of whatever sector is considered "safe."

Once you eliminate the "risk" of weak bacteria, you perfect the threat that will kill the host.

The banking sector cannot be reformed, for its very nature is to concentrate systemic risk and moral hazard into breeding grounds of systemic collapse."
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Why Banks Are Doomed: Technology and Risk

[Danny B]

GEAB N°82 is available! 2014, resumption of the global systemic crisis’ « normal » pathThe Daily Bell - Fred Sheehan on the Futility of Wall Street, the Coming Derivatives Disaster and the Craziness of Keynes

[Danny B]

Fasten Your Seatbelts: The Coming Global Monetary ResetThe People's Bank Of China Just Joined The Currency War | Business Insider
50% of the cost of the average item in America is for finance. 19% for trash collection and 78% for public housing. 50% average. We pay 100% markup
to the bankers. In an effort to survive, the East will flood all of our markets with anything that is moving. That won't be good for jobs. The fewer people working,,, the more deflation.


Here are a couple of pics that I like; $18B

http://cdn.sliptalk.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/fa9e933646_12-This-pile-of-cash-before-it-was-counted-was-estimated-to-be-approximately-18-Billion-Dollars.jpg

http://cdn.sliptalk.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/bf0d7c7237_14-Guns-were-hidden-all-over-the-house-along-with-ample-ammo-just-in-case-of-trouble.jpg

Vid for today; Call Me Senator - From David Zucker - YouTube

[Danny B]

Gold, oil and food

There are a lot of people who don't like what is going on in the financial world. Reportedly, some of them talk to Jim Willie to get info out to the world. There is absolutely no doubt that huge quantities of gold are moving from East to West. Official import / export data proves it. Jim talks about the amount being near 60,000 tons. There is supposed to be about 170,000 tons of gold worldwide. 60,000 tons seems to be enough to clean out much of the West. So, who in the West had this much gold to lose?
Reportedly, Saudi Arabia held a LOT of gold in London. Official export records show a lot of gold leaving Great Britain. Jim says that the Saudis have been screwed.
Jim Willie Bombshell: Saudi Royal Gold Ransacked in London to Prevent Default! | SilverDoctors.com



If you read far and wide enough, you will come to the conclusion that Western gold is just gone. It was sent away to maintain the status quo. Our food supply is produced by converting carbon energy into food energy. Our industry consumes energy, the master resource, in huge quantities. You can't eat gold. Here is a graph of the price ratio of gold vs oil.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v01-hF962zM/ULPtRFXzILI/AAAAAAAAKX4/Hd9TQiMX71Y/s1600/Gold-oil+ratio.jpg

Most people assume that the POG has been suppressed so that there would be no alternate store-of-value available. It's true that all funds are available to be stolen if they are not FRNs in your physical possession. This tends to keep velocity high. This may be a secondary effect.

Various States are in a currency war. China just joined. They are printing like maniacs. The POG would reflect that if it were not "managed". Indirectly, the printers are trying to conduct a currency war without affecting the price of OIL. They want to print enormously but, NOT increase the price of food. They are sweeping up every ounce of gold in the vaults. They know very well what WILL happen when oil/energy/ food prices rise.

It is possible that gold will have some kind of huge spike without oil following. I suspect that this is not likely. The PTB would rather see all the gold leave rather than see the price of food quadruple. The banks forced the CBs to print. I imagine that they didn't consider the effect this would have on oil and food.

[Danny B]

You can't eat gold,,, or electricity

I already posted a graph showing the price of gold in oil,,, oil in gold. Numerous sources have shown clearly that Western vaults are empty. What would cause the West to disburse every bit of gold that they could beg, borrow and steal??? The OBVIOUS answer is FEAR. But, fear of what? Gold can rise to any particular price and not really cause serious problems. This is NOT true for oil. Suppose gold rises and oil follows it's historical trend?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DRpWTIXnLfM/Uw28g-brqNI/AAAAAAAAFxE/xxQqsh62_Eg/s400/Freegold_bellcurve_oil.gif

This kind of price for crude would cause an instant freeze in commerce. The cure for high prices is,,, high prices.
While this is true for discretionary items, what happens when the price of the master resource shoots up?
FOFOA: Think like a Giant 3

Working backwards, this would explain the fanatical dishoarding of gold,,, the breakneck conversion to a police state,,,the ill-fated and temporary sojourn into fracking,,, the NAU for Canada's oil

Bummer
Something cool;
Inside The Army's Spectacular Hidden Treasure Room

[aljhoa]

This kind of price for crude would cause an instant freeze in commerce. The cure for high prices is,,, high prices.
While this is true for discretionary items, what happens when the price of the master resource shoots up?
FOFOA: Think like a Giant 3

Working backwards, this would explain the fanatical dishoarding of gold,,, the breakneck conversion to a police state,,,the ill-fated and temporary sojourn into fracking,,, the NAU for Canada's oil

its own state-owned bank.
North Dakota's Economic Miracle It's Not Oil by Ellen Brown — YES! Magazine


Al