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September 25 2011
Global Dashboard -- What is resilience? [Three-dimensional (3D) wellbeing]
'...wellbeing is a dynamic process with #material (what people have), #relational (what people are able to do) and #subjective (how people feel) dimensions. These dimensions are interlinked, co-evolving and fluid. The review is largely an individual/household level analysis but potentially could be applied to community/country-level resilience too. #Material dimension: ...households suffer asset loss; people’s health deteriorates; families go hungry. And attempts to minimise vulnerability in the present can have material consequences in the longer term... #Relational dimension: Social networks are important in enabling migration towards areas of relative safety and opportunity, even when restrictive policies are in place to limit movement. #Subjective dimension: The way in which an individual feels vulnerable is ultimately shaped by the culture and environment in which they grew up, by their position in society, by gender, and by a whole other range of contextually specific factors.'September 21 2011
Asia Times Online -- China squeeze drives boom in 'black' banks
'About 3 trillion yuan (US$470 billion) of bank loans have been channeled into underground lending in the eastern coastal provinces, China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman Liu Mingkang told a recent closed-door conference with lenders. Companies are not alone in engaging in such lending businesses; individuals are welcome to join. Liu Chumei, a housewife in Liantan town in Yunfu city, in southern Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, said credit companies had promised her family a 7.5% interest rate per month on deposits of 10,000 yuan. "Seeing the inflation rate is higher than the [official] deposit rate, we actually loose money putting our cash in the bank ... I would put my money in such credit companies if I had any, so I called some of my relatives in Hong Kong to see if they were interested," she said. "They refused on security reasons."'September 18 2011
Paymaster Germany and the Endgame by Gary North
'Every time Merkel meets with Sarkozy in one of their "no, no, yes, yes" liaisons, European stock markets rise. There is some vague language about another round of bailouts. Investors rush in to buy, buy, buy. The fund managers are not rewarded to produce long-term capital gains. So, they cannot resist buying whenever Merkel and Sarkozy emerge from their tryst to tell the world that they are willing to let Germany bail out the Greek bond market one more time. This is great political theater. The funds' memos to major banks regarding the funds' refusal to roll over their short-term loans can go out at any time. No one wants to be the first fund to trigger a banking panic. But no one wants to be left holding the bag. This is why predictions regarding the day of reckoning are highly speculative. The major decisions will not be made by banks. They will be made by fund managers with large deposits at banks. The bankers are just sitting there, hoping for the best.'Why Land Rent Will Save The World
'In most countries, income tax plus sales tax plus all the other taxes come to around 40% of income. So if you need $100, you have to earn $167 just to pay the tax (because 167 -40% = 100). This means no work can be done unless it makes an instant 67% profit. If you earn very little you pay slightly less tax (but you still pay sales tax etc.), but for most kinds of work, tax is unavoidable. Now imagine you paid the same amount as last year, but this year it was a fixed land rent. All the previous work would still be done, at the same prices (so you could pay the same amount as before to the government), but any extra work is completely tax free. So all the "less than 67% profit" work would suddenly become profitable. -- With land rent, there are no hidden taxes: you know exactly what each government costs each person. So voting will have a clear price, just like buying any other product or service. If trust is abused, you simply choose a different government. Or make your own.'September 17 2011
YouTube -- Peter Schiff FULL Testimony Before Congress on Obama Jobs Bill 9/13/11
"The consequences are the exact opposite of the intent." -- That which is not seen.
"The consequences are the exact opposite of the intent." -- That which is not seen.
August 31 2011
Trade & Forfaiting Review -- The last word: Getting carried away...
'The case of Japan is cited as the reason why inflation will not take place in the UK and US. However, there is a fundamental difference between the UK, the US and Japan. During the period of the carry trade, Japan was generating a large current account surplus, so the flood of yen onto the market did not result in significant currency weakness. By contrast, both the UK and US have been (and continue) to run large current account deficits. In both cases the currency is already sitting on weak foundations and, therefore, export of the dollar and sterling into the carry trade will simply put more pressure on the value of those currencies. They are flooding the market with currencies for which there is already a potential over-supply. At the moment, the increase in money has not entered into the real economy, but it will do at some point. I suspect that it will be through the back door of the carry trade.'Trade & Forfaiting Review -- The last word: Cash and carry
'If you are a central banker in the destination country, it might be that the flood of carry-trade money could push inflation upwards. What is the central banker or policymaker to do? The ‘hot’ money flooding into their country might be causing an asset-price bubble, or inflation. Something must be done. The problem is this: if interest rates are increased, the incentive for the carry trade is likewise increased – and might even cause the inflow of even more ‘hot’ money. If the central bank targets low interest rates, then there is the possibility that this might end the carry trade, but at the cost of creating an internal stimulus to inflation. The strengthening of the destination country’s currency might, in turn, have a negative effect on the balance of trade and the export sector of the economy. Exports will fall... Despite this, assets in the destination will be going up, while the underlying performance of the economy will be going down (albeit disguised by the inflow of money).'CynicusEconomicus -- An Agenda for Gold?
Exporting inflation through the carry trade: '...if the money exits the economy via the carry trade, it will severely weaken both nations’ currencies and re-enter the economy through the back door of import-price inflation. For the proponents of QE, the lack of massive inflation is used as a justification for continuation of the policy. For those who are arguing for a return to gold, they can see that somehow, at some point in time, the massive expansion of the monetary base in QE countries must eventually see a rise in inflation. For the latter, they are not always clear in their understanding/explanation of why massive inflation has not taken place. However, their instinct that QE must eventually have a price is correct. Furthermore, the price is already being paid around the world as easy money has flooded into other economies. That in turn is creating distortions in markets, and those distortions will ripple back towards the countries that caused the problem in the first place.'August 21 2011
YouTube -- Mike Maloney: Debt Collapse - $20,000 Gold (FULL PRESENTATION)
'Mike Maloney is the author of the world's best selling book on precious metals investing. Since 2003 he has been advocating gold and silver as the ultimate means of protecting wealth from the games played by our governments and banking sector. In this 90 minute presentation he lays down his 'most likely' scenario for the global economy over the next decade... short term deflation, followed by big or even hyperinflation. Here you will learn the true definitions of inflation/deflation, the difference between currency and money, price vs value, 'Wealth Cycles', gold and silver accounting for the expansion of fiat currency, gold and silver supply and demand, the differences between the today's bull market and that of the 1970s, The Debt Collapse, and more.' -- "Voodoo, hocus-pocus scheme."
'Mike Maloney is the author of the world's best selling book on precious metals investing. Since 2003 he has been advocating gold and silver as the ultimate means of protecting wealth from the games played by our governments and banking sector. In this 90 minute presentation he lays down his 'most likely' scenario for the global economy over the next decade... short term deflation, followed by big or even hyperinflation. Here you will learn the true definitions of inflation/deflation, the difference between currency and money, price vs value, 'Wealth Cycles', gold and silver accounting for the expansion of fiat currency, gold and silver supply and demand, the differences between the today's bull market and that of the 1970s, The Debt Collapse, and more.' -- "Voodoo, hocus-pocus scheme."
August 06 2011
CynicusEconomicus -- Round 2?
'If you increase the workforce by 10% but only increase the resource by 5% then something is going to happen to the distribution of resources. ...the real reason for this crisis is not capitalism, but the actions of communist and socialist governments before they started the process of opening their economies. They created barriers to the integration of their labour force into the productive and enriching capitalist world economy, and then suddenly started 'dropping' the labour into the world economy at a rate that the capitalist system could not absorb. It is why we see the increasing divide in incomes between the rich and the rest. It is not the evils of capitalism, but rather the last terrible contribution of years of rejection of capitalism in countries like China and India. They created a flood of new labour into the world economy, and the result is that labour has been devalued. ...the fundamental causes...[:] government constraints and interference with free market capitalism.'July 07 2011
Socionomics Institute -- Sociometrics: Applying Socionomic Causality to Social Forecasting
'Social action is the eventual result of social mood change, not the cause of social mood change. Cautious businessmen cause recession. A happy population makes leaders appear talented. Depressed and fearful people are susceptible to epidemics. Increasingly optimistic people make the stock market rise. Outraged people seek out scandals. A desire to speculate fosters the availability of derivatives. Fearful and angry people make war. People who want to smile choose happy music. Nervous people test nuclear bombs. -- A Temporal Continuum of Socionomic Response: Socionomic actions fall along an open-ended continuum of delay following the initial impetus from social mood, from immediate (e.g. stock market trends) through intermediate (e.g. styles of popular entertainment) to eventual (e.g. climates of peace and war). This continuum makes earlier sociometers leading indicators of later ones, which is one source of their utility. ...there is no leading indicator of social mood itself.'June 27 2011
The Daily Bell -- WSJ – International Banking Is in Crisis
'The system of central banking has created perhaps the most monumental bubble ever seen. There are literally thousands of major banks and bank branches all over the world. The downtowns of every major city in the developed world and the developing world are littered with them. People are so conditioned as to their ubiquity that they don't even notice it. Imagine if banks were actually ... tire manufacturers. Now imagine entering a strange city and seeing the entire downtown was FILLED with skyscrapers, each one representing a different, competing brand. Imagine the city and the countryside was full of branches, all selling tires. It wouldn't make any sense. Nor does it make any sense to have so many banks. But they are protected by central banks; they are appurtenances of central banking. ...the Anglosphere elites behind them will never discard a large bank. They may MERGE the bank, but they will never wish to lose it.'June 24 2011
The Daily Bell -- Ben Bernanke's Pathetic Failing Fed Promotion
'...Without the ability to print money from nothing, the elites would not be able to start the wars they have prosecuted so promiscuously in the past decade, would not be able to control governments, manipulate universities and their scientists, purchase wholesale the political process, etc. In other words, the ability of Western elites to pursue and impose one world government would be much constrained. Money Power is the gift that keeps on giving. The key to this pusillanimous process of wealth redistribution lies with Federal Reserve. Simply examine the 20th century and its "world wars," all of which occurred AFTER the US Federal Reserve received its brief. ...the central banking promotion is beginning to fail. John Maynard Keynes said not one man in a million understood the current money system. He had it wrong. Today, not one man in a million, if asked, would approve of it. And what happens when millions wake up and rise up in unison? You get the drift, dear reader.'June 22 2011
The Automatic Earth -- June 22 2011: A low thunder rolling 'cross the plains
'Derivatives are the $800 trillion or more gorilla in today's financial room. The problem lies in the bets, the wagers, in the shape of default swaps, to the tune of trillions of dollars, that are out there, and that risk being triggered by a default being declared a "credit event"... It's starting to look like that "CDS to hide debt" idea might be backfiring. ...all the Merkels and Obamas and Papandreous and Geithners on this planet will try with all their might to prevent that from happening. And they have virtually limitless access to your money, and that of your children, to do just that. They have exactly zero chance of succeeding, but that won't keep them from trying: their jobs, their social status, perhaps even their very lives depend on it. There's a low thunder rolling across the plains, and it's coming this way. There's nowhere to hide; we’ll have to live through it. It's called debt deflation. Derivative debt deflation. Financial crisis? You ain't seen nothing yet.'June 17 2011
The Daily Bell -- Sino-Forest Is Leading Indicator of China Disaster?
'The Chinese people are still in the phase, thanks to Western monetary stimulation, where they believe that everything that has happened to them is due to their industriousness and native intelligence. ...after the Chinese economy crashes as it must inevitably (unless they manage to pull off the proverbial soft-landing). What will be revealed by the wreckage is the full panoply of central banking deceit. The scales will fall from the eyes. The stock market will be revealed as manipulated; the companies as inept monopolies; the ChiComs themselves as the hands-on managers of their wrecked enterprises. In the near-term, the great cities and skyscrapers will go unfilled; the 10-lane highways shall remain untraveled. A billion people, newly wealthy will find that their condos are not sellable, that food is not available at almost any price and that their jobs were merely the extended froth of the most powerful central-banking bubble that the world has ever known.'June 15 2011
YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: True News: Bitcoin, Free Markets and Economics 101
'Why we would be better off without seat belts -- everything in the free market balances out...'
'Why we would be better off without seat belts -- everything in the free market balances out...'
June 09 2011
Seth's Blog -- The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
'As we've made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we've actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there's a huge cohort that's just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it. As the free-only cohort grows, people start to feel foolish when they pay for something when the free substitute is easily available and perhaps more convenient. Think about that – buying things now makes some people feel foolish. This new default to free means that people with something to sell are going to have to push ever harder to invent things that can't possibly have a free substitute. Patronage, live events, membership, the benefits of connection – all of these things are outside the scope we used to associate with the creative business model, but that's changing, fast. ... Most ideas have never been something one could monetize.'Ribbonfarm -- A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100
'...energy and ideas could be used to shrink autonomously-owned individual time and grow a space of corporate-owned time, to be divided between production and consumption. Two phrases were invented to name the phenomenon: productivity meant shrinking autonomously-owned time. Increased standard of living through time-saving devices became code for the fact that the “freed up” time through “labor saving” devices was actually the de facto property of corporations. It was a Faustian bargain. Many people misunderstood the fundamental nature of Schumpeterian growth as being fueled by ideas rather than time. Ideas fueled by energy can free up time which can then partly be used to create more ideas to free up more time. It is a positive feedback cycle, but with a limit. The fundamental scarce resource is time. The point isn’t that we are running out of attention. We are running out of high-energy-concentration pockets of easily mined fuel. Each new pocket of attention is harder to find...'May 31 2011
YouTube -- RT: Keiser Report: Neo-Feudal Gulag Casino State
'Max talks to former chief forex trader for VISA, Jon Matonis of TheMonetaryFuture.blogspot.com, about Bitcoin, the new peer-to-peer crypto-currency.' -- "I believe digital cash will do to legal tender what torrents did to copyrights."
'Max talks to former chief forex trader for VISA, Jon Matonis of TheMonetaryFuture.blogspot.com, about Bitcoin, the new peer-to-peer crypto-currency.' -- "I believe digital cash will do to legal tender what torrents did to copyrights."
May 26 2011
YouTube -- RT/Freedomain Radio: Gold Currency in Utah, the IMF Taking Over Ireland, and the end of Democracy!
'Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio on the television show Adam Versus the Man, talking about the emergence of a gold and silver currency in Utah, the financial disasters in Ireland, and the end of democracy as we know it.' -- Molyneux: "Democracy can only work with fiat currency and with debt. The reason for that is you can't bribe people with their own money while keeping a cut for yourself."
'Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio on the television show Adam Versus the Man, talking about the emergence of a gold and silver currency in Utah, the financial disasters in Ireland, and the end of democracy as we know it.' -- Molyneux: "Democracy can only work with fiat currency and with debt. The reason for that is you can't bribe people with their own money while keeping a cut for yourself."
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