Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Fools and economic cycles

MonsieurM, Sir Alan Greenspan is a real smart guy. He knew that monetary growth has to be somewhat close to GDP growth. Many economists and central bankers believed that they could banish economic cycles and have permanent growth. He knew better but, went along with GOV mandates.

"Look, I'm very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here."
Alan Greenspan
Read more at Alan Greenspan Quotes - BrainyQuote

He knew that it was disastrous to end Glass-Steagal. He did at anyway.
He also had a streak of stupidity;
"The maestro admitted in an October congressional hearing that he had "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves."

Read more: Alan Greenspan - 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - TIME #ixzz2JEb8B1SK

The monetary authorities and Central Bankers deluded themselves into thinking that they could end all economic cycles.
The first modern person to identify economic cycles was Nikolai Kondratieff.
He was sent to a gulag for his accuracy.
Nikolai Kondratiev - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Strauss and Howe identified cycles and periods that they called turnings and "Generational Changes".
Strauss–Howe generational theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The current stage is the "fourth Turning.
The Fourth Turning
Another wave study is "Elliot waves.
Elliott Wave Theory

In the Kondratieff cycle, we are approaching the Kondratieff Winter.
Fiat Currency in a Kondratieff Winter

A crash isn't a matter of "IF". It is a matter of WHEN.
No fiat currency has ever survived,,, 100% failure
No democracy has ever survived,,, 100% failure
No centrally-planned economy has ever lasted,,,, 100% failure
Socialism has never worked,, it eventually morphs into communism.

There is truly no other production system other than capitalism.
True, it has flaws. Consider this; modern middle class people have luxuries that kings didn't enjoy not too long ago. Any system other than capitalism negates the incentive of greed. Greed is absolutely necessary.
Milton Friedman - Greed - YouTube

A true free-market economy erases the worst effects of runaway greed. That is why groups are always trying to form monopolies,,, to escape the free market. Do you think that politicians want to be paid what they are actually worth? Do you think that bankers want to be compensated for their actual productivity?

The most lucrative monopolies are the monopolies on stuff that we need to survive. Imagine what it would be like if every house had a Lockridge device and an atmospheric water generator. Suppose that we all planted a big garden.
Growing Your Own Food in an urban backyard - YouTube

The parasites depend on monopoly power since they lack actual productivity.

[Danny B]

[Danny B]

Morality and productivity

Douglas Macarthur was first in his class at West point. Here are a couple of quotes;
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed in to political and economic decline.[31]"
"It [socialism] discourages development of moral forces which would preserve inviolate our representative form of government, answerable to the will of the electorate.[16]"
Douglas MacArthur - Conservapedia

Democracy (mobocracy) eventually leads to socialism. Socialism generally morphs into communism. Communism works (temporarily) by enforcing a command economy. A command economy always goes bust.
Respect for private property was a MAJOR influence in the growth of wealth in America. At the same time, Europe stagnated because royalty didn't respect private property of commoners.

Moral decay in leaders (GOV) is followed by decay in the general populace.
Why work and produce when it will just be stolen? Economic decline follows moral decay. There has been plenty written on moral decay.
Moral decline - Conservapedia

Mores change over the years but, some things MUST be inviolate.
HONESTY is one of them. Can a person be selectively honest?
Can one lie to everyone but be strictly honest in business? It doesn't appear to be possible. Can one be successful in business if one is dishonest?
At one time, this may have been possible. Presently, in the information age, it is almost impossible. There are still a lot of net scams that pull in money but, it is more difficult.

The majority of liars that are successful are working for GOV. The rest of successful liars have to use force in addition to lying. Mafia.
Productivity withers away when socialism steals the profits.
Theft by the parasites (beggars, bankers and bureaucrats) brings economic stagnation. Communist East Germany was a good example.

It's impossible to have an integrated economy where there is no trust.

In reality, there is no honor between thieves. Government is a pack of thieves. Lacking honor, they demand GOLD. Lacking trust, they demand GOLD. What happens when the gold isn't really there?
Max Keiser has a great paper on the subject.
gold repatriation - Max Keiser

[Danny B]

Game on?

Just a short post with a couple of predictions.
"March-June 2013, extreme tension: the least spark lights the blue touch-paper"
GEAB N°71 is available! United States, March-June 2013 – Unpluggig the world’s sick man: last impact phase of the global systemic crisis

"May 2013-End of the Road-John Williams"
May 2013-End of the Road-John Williams | Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog

Ho Hum,,, time to party

[Danny B]

Bubbles and bonds

There were 8.4 million jobs lost during the recession to low-wage labor markets. They are not likely to come back. Jobs are still leaving. Decreased aggregate wages cause more domestic job loss.
Bankers bet on continuing growth. Keynesian economics requires a continuing growth in money and credit. When this failed to happen, the bankers tapped into taxpayers to keep things going for THEM. They demanded that NO bank investor ever lose a dime.

Even though these job losses were permanent, Bernanke considered this to be just a cyclical downturn that would soon be over.
How To Spot A Zombie | Finance
He MUST have taken a stupid-pill.

Greenspan started blowing the bubbles to keep things from crashing. This article has a good comparison between the tech-bubble,,, the housing-bubble and the current bond-bubble.
The Next Great(er) Recession Now Baked In The Cake? - Forbes

Everybody knows that bonds will go bust eventually. The problem is that the contagion would take out everything else.
How far could bonds crash? - Telegraph

Who knows what would set it off? France is totally bankrupt.
Labor Minister Says France Is "Totally Bankrupt" | Zero Hedge
Japan has no possible exit. GB has 500% debt to GDP. Ron Paul says that he is waiting for the FED to self-destruct.
Ron Paul: I’m Waiting for the Fed to Self-Destruct
More of the same.

[Danny B]

Currency wars

This is a pretty good doc on world currency wars.

https://d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net/images/uploads/ttmygh/6214/Jan_29_2013_TTMYGH.pdf

Since every country attacks the currency of other countries, every country HAS to have protection. This was well proved in the Asian currency crisis.
Protection means GOLD. A couple of months ago, Germany said that it was ludicrous to think of repatriating their gold. NOW, they want it back. Several other countries want the same thing.

Germany's gold is gone. It was leased out to boost the dollar. The Treasury said that it will take 7 years to get it back.
Germany's gold at NY Fed may be impaired, Centennial's analysts agree | Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
Drexel admitted that it had lost 17 tons of Swiss gold. Everybody is getting nervous.
Sovereign states debase their currency to maintain market share against low-wage competitors. If they don't hold gold, the debasement can run out of control. Currency inflation tends to flow into commodities rather than into wages. Currency inflation is essentially a wage cut. As wages are (effectively) cut, people buy less and this improves the balance of trade. Fewer imports. But, since everybody is forced to cut consumption, ALL exports and imports are reduced.
Nobody wins in a currency war.

The currency printing eventually causes price inflation. When the price inflation hits food commodities, it causes the poor to be priced out of the market for food. Great graph halfway down this page comparing food price spikes to revolutions.
U.S. drought could cause global unrest | Grist

This page shows graphs comparing food prices to oil prices.
What Lies behind Egypt’s Problems? How do They Affect Others? | Our Finite World
It doesn't look good for countries that have let their population outrun their food-production capacity.

[Danny B]

Insolvent GOV

The currency wars will eventually bring back gold. Our multitudinous criminals have killed paper.
Countdown to the Collapse | John Butler | FINANCIAL SENSE
There is actually nothing wrong with paper money if it isn't over printed.

Doug Casey;
"It's not the US economy that's facing a fiscal cliff, it's the US government. People equate government with the economy. They are entirely two different things. The only way to revitalize the US economy is through both vast reductions in taxes and vast reductions in government spending"
Doug Casey's Current View of the World - Casey Research

The banks made the mistake of lending to Sovereign states believing that the states had unlimited taxing authority. The limit was not taxing authority. The limit was the productivity of the private sector. When the private sector went bust, sovereign income went down.
Here is a chart comparing public debt / National Government Revenue.
The Critical Chart in Sovereign Debt Analysis - Gresham's Law

Banks create the principle, NOT the interest. Debt has to grow or there is NO way to produce the interest. This is Keynesian economics and it is still taught to this day. GOV can only create DEBT money. The economy has too much debt and GOV creates more debt ... as a solution.
NOT a good plan but, it is the only plan available with our current system.

52% of Americans rely on a check from GOV. I suspect that very few of them will vote for "vast" reductions in spending.
All-inclusive, GOV debt rises at about $ 7 trillion a year. Total debt is reckoned at $ 212 trillion by Kotlikoff. Last year, he figured it at just $ 202 trillion.

We spend about $ 450 billion on interest payments. Should interest rates rise to the average of 6%, this cost would go up to a few $ trillion a year. Interest rates on treasury notes are slowly rising. The FED is losing control.
Much of our debt is for unfunded liabilities. You wonder if GOV will fail to make payroll one of these days. GOV sends out 80 million checks a month.
Wait and see.

[Danny B]

Silver

While gold is real nice, many people can't afford to buy it. They can't afford to increase their savings in something so valuable for so little. Even Judas Iscariot took payment in silver. He had expenses.
Historically, many countries have been on a silver standard. China and Germany included. Germany went off the silver standard when the Comstock Lode was discovered in Nevada.

Silver has had a very interesting history just like gold.
In the early sixties, American GOV had about 4 billion ounces of silver.
JFK really wanted to get rid of the FED. Even though there were limited amounts of "silver certificates" in circulation, he printed up nice "U.S. Notes" backed by the silver. The bankers killed him a short time later and LBJ stopped the U.S. Notes printing 11 days after the assassination.

Shortly afterwards, U.S. GOV worked very hard to dump the silver horde so that nobody else would get any bright ideas about dumping the FED.
It took decades but, the 4 billion ounces ran out about October of 2005.
While silver stagnated at around $ 5--6, high-tech found it very valuable for almost everything.
The Manhattan Project used 15,000 TONS of it for R&D work.

Eventually, all the silver got used up. There is still lots of it produced. Less is produced than used. We are getting close to all reserves being GONE.

http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-peak-silver-.aspx?article=4219112506G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Ranting+Andy&mk=1

The U.S. mint recently ran out of silver,,, again. Americans bought nearly 1/2 billion dollars worth of silver and gold just in January.
Americans Buy Nearly Half a Billion Dollars Of Gold and Silver In January (NYSEARCA:GLD, NYSEARCA:SLV, NYSEARCA:AGQ, NYSEARCA:IAU, NYSEARCA:UGL, NYSEARCA:GDX) | ETF DAILY NEWS

A lot of gold is processed at 1 gram per ton. Silver is processed at .05 ounces per ton.
MANY applications using silver only use a small amount relative to the final end cost of the product. That means that producers will find it easier to absorb a higher cost.
Silver is so useful that it will be re-monetized (de facto) along with gold.

It won't be much longer before our foreign suppliers will demand payment in gold or silver. We don't have the gold.
“Everybody in the Industry Knows the US Doesn’t Have the Gold”
Fort Knox is empty. Jim Rickards has proposed that we take all the gold that we store for the world in New York. Sounds like a good plan. We take everybody's gold so that we can pay them for the stuff that they export to us. They may very tell us to "piss off".

[Danny B]

Italy and bogus bonds

An Italian bank that was founded in 1472 is now failing. It is a curious story. Everything about finance in Italy is VERY curious. The bank in question was investigated 2 years ago. Apparently, it was being run by some very powerful lefties and the investigation went nowhere. Now, the bank is blowing up in scandal and corruption.
Italy risks political crisis as MPS bank scandal turns 'explosive' - Telegraph
This wouldn't be newsworthy except for the fact that Italy is home to HUGE scandals.

Recently, 6000 ?fake? treasury bonds were discovered in Italy. The denomination was ONE BILLION DOLLARS each. That's $6 TRILLION in fake bonds. Even stranger, the bonds were in boxes from the Federal Reserve.
They were marked " Mother Box Treaty of Versailles".
Why Were The Trillions In Fake Bonds Held In Chicago Fed Crates? | Zero Hedge

How could one possibly pass of a note with a face value of One billion dollars? Who would you pass it to?
The bonds are said to be such good quality that they must have been produced by the Treasury.
There is speculation that these bonds were used for market speculation.
$134 billion US Bond Mystery - solved - GrandeLander's column on Newsvine

I suspect that the whole thing will blow up sooner or later.
Jim Willie has reported about LOTS of bogus U.S. Treasury bonds that J.P. Morgan and Cantor Fitzgerald were passing to foreign investors.
Unfortunately, a big plane flew into the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald and all evidence was destroyed.
The Italian bank is probably so deep into this that the truth will never come out.

[Danny B]

Energy and food

This page has lots of graphs and info relating to energy and food.
ENERGY | FOOD | POPULATION | RESOURCES | SOVERIGN DEBT | WORLD ECONOMIES
Our current arrangement is to convert carbon energy into food energy.
Since very few people grow their own food, most depend on an uninterrupted supply of energy/food.

There are ways to produce food with almost no man-made energy input.
1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost - YouTube
This isn't an option for the average city dweller.
During the Greta Depression, 5.4 million Americans stared to death,,, 1.5 million children. This comes from a Russian researcher who was studying the holdomar. this was at a time when 42 % of Americans lived on the farm.

All societies eventually collapse.
"The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter shows that societies throw off levels of complexity as they use up their resources.
The Apocalyptic Magazine - Book Review; The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies In Archeology)

There is disagreement with Tainter.

http://www.dylan.org.uk/greer_on_collapse.pdf

There is also a book by Diamond.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Energy production is a big factor in collapse

[Danny B]

The Automatic Earth

One of the most informed and comprehensive sites on the net is, The Automatic Earth. Their latest article has dozens of categorized links to earlier articles.
The World According to The Automatic Earth - A 2013 Primer Guide | Finance
Morality is gone. Corruption holds sway. In the absence of morality, trust dies out. With the death of trust, commerce and investment fall apart. Why bother to invest when your gains will be stolen by officialdom.
It is generally accepted that every additional one dollar of taxes reduces the productive economy by three dollars.

75% of Americans don't trust GOV. The unfolding of the police-state certainly isn't going to help commerce. GOV expects to substitute coercion for trust.
It was proved long ago that prosperity is directly linked to economic and personal freedom.

The parasites have bled too much out of the economy. It is dying.
It was inflated way too fast. America has 5 times the retail space per-person that France has. America also has 500 MILLION square feet of empty retail space. With all the money pumping, the stock market has become divorced from the real economy.
Bill Gross invests $ 1.9 trillion for his clients. He warns that the credit markets are on track for a "supernova".

There is a reported 10 quadrillion worth of contracts denominated just in dollars. The underlying world GDP is only $ 55 trillion including financial instruments. How much of that would survive a credit supernova?

Here are 3 links from Comments at TAE.
Robert Hart's Forest Garden



The One-Straw Revolution

[MonsieurM]

Here are 3 links from Comments at TAE.
Robert Hart's Forest Garden



The One-Straw Revolution

thanks for the link ..... just saw it

http://www.energeticforum.com/agriculture/8276-electro-culture.html

[Danny B]

The stock market and unemployment

The stock market recently broke 14,000, supposedly on a good jobs report.
this just shows you that investors can't read.
Percentage of civilian labor force employed;
2006: 63.1
2007: 63.0
2008: 62.5
2009: 59.3
2010: 58.5
2011: 58.4
In January, only 57.9 percent of the civilian labor force was employed.

Americans not in the labor force;
2006: 77,387,000
2007: 78,743,000
2008: 79,501,000
2009: 81,659,000
2010: 83,941,000
2011: 86,001,000
In January, there were supposedly 89,868,000 Americans that were at least 16 years of age that were not in the labor force.
In America today 41 percent of all workers make $20,000 a year or less.

Global wage arbitrage has moved the jobs from the West to the East.
Aggregate American earning power is falling rapidly. 10,000 baby boomers sign up for social security every day for the next 19 years.

The plunge protection team has pumped $ trillions into the stock market.
Working Group on Financial Markets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sooner or later, reality is going to set in.

[Danny B]

Great Britain and growth

Dear Alumni and Friends

Please see information below about the next Trinity Hall Forum. Please let me know if you would like to attend. If you have already booked your place, please disregard this email.

Best wishes.

Mary Richmond

Events Officer, Alumni and Development Office,

Trinity Hall, Cambridge, CB2 1TJ

01223 332555 [email protected][email protected]

[Danny B]

[email protected]

The key issue here is the rate of interest. While the capitalistic world believes that interest must be paid on loans and time deposits, the Islamic belief is that interest is usury (Riba). Instead, only profit should be shared, due to the fact that risk is already covered by counter guarantees.Interest is not so much a problem of morals and ethics, but a matter for mathematic logics. Interest rates are the growth factor for money. In other words, if the macro-economic interest rate is at allto be paid, money supply must always increase. As a result, the western or capitalistic economy is awash with ever growing money.The unstoppable money tsunami causes long term inflation,particularly, price increases in real estate, and precious metals.


here is a need for Western capitalistic economic theory to be re-considered, reviewed, and, if discovered to be contradictory,changed for the better. Let us not forget that the first economist in history was Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), and, as we can see, his thinking



is valid still today. Riba or usury has always been a problem, both for morals as well as for logics.As a way to deepen our thought about the rate of interest, we should meditate about the mathematical constant e, or the logical idea of compound interest causing money growth by at least 2,7182818.,according to Leonhard Euler and Jacob Bernulli.We must accept that interest rates accelerate  pari passu  with inflation. There is plenty of statistical evidence that galloping inflation feeds on interest rates, which tend, the more inflation grows, to explode and to shoot up at an exponential pace.Interest rate increases do not combat inflation, but cause stagflation first, and accelerating inflation, the more the rates grow.Islamic economics, to our surprise, are right.And there is much more to it, than it appears: The incredible achievements of Islamic investment in Dubai, where the Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed has built a splendid city in the form of a palm tree in the ocean, without causing inflation, using his capital in a most productive, daring and magnificent way, shows that the penny pinching ways of western economics, always busy pretending to balance budgets and raising taxes again and again, wasting money in tiresome bureaucracies, neglecting public works, and ruining old peoples retirements as a way to save expenditure, proof that Economics as conceived in the West by Lord Keynes, and put in practice by the IM
F
needs to be re-considered due to its frequent failures.Bubbles and more bubbles caused by desperate greed, enormous damage to private investors inflicted by certain important dis loyal banks shows a most vicious situation in our western economies.

There is a need of grandeur, decency and moral principles which are valid within the frame of Islamic Economics.The example of Europe ruined by excessive sovereign debt and corrosive interest rates show us the misconceptions of Economics asa science. A key issue which must be resolved, in accordance with the principles of logics, is the solvency of sovereign debt: If public debt is issued in the national currency, either in US$ or Euros, then itis contradictory to sound thinking to deny the repayment on maturity at face value, because the sovereign country is able to issue money.In the case of Greece, a member of the European Community, its sovereign debt should have had the guarantee of the European Central Bank at face value. Banks and other creditors bought sovereign debt well assured that it did not imply risk, due to the principle that sovereign debt can always be repaid in the national currency.This rule has always applied to Treasury Bills issued by the US Government. There is no logical reason why this principle would not be applicable to the European Community as a whole.In any case it appears as foolhardy that member states of the EUshould have issued bonds to be sold in the capital market, instead of requesting such credit from the European Central Bank.At any rate it is contrary to sound thinking that sovereign countries who can issue money should go into debt at all. Interest payments by sovereign states, who can issue money, would be utter nonsense.