Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Crusade for MMT vs the bakers

It is getting more difficult every day to see the big picture and; how and where it is moving.
The Fed has surrendered and here’s what comes next – Saxo
Doing harm with uber-dovish – Credit Bubble Bulletin
The real end of the bond market – Alhambra Partners
]No one knows how monetary policy works – Credit Bubble Bulletin
3/24 The Fed’s in over its head…and chaos is mounting – Ron Paul
3/23 Schiff: Fed not getting it right; it’s proving how much it got wrong – SA
3/23 U.S. Treasuries signal trouble, stocks fall on global growth worries – Reuters

OK, you get the idea. It's not just the FED. The ECB and BOJ are a big mess. BOE isn't far behind. The BOJ has effectively shown that you can create debt almost without limit and still not get much price inflation. Armstrong has said to avoid ALL sovereign debt. There is one exception though.
Just business: British & US investors gobble up Russian government bonds
OK, so, sovereign bond markets are a lost cause. Keep in mind that this bond market is how the State finances itself,,, ignoring taxes.
There are 200 PHDs working for the FED. Undoubtedly, they have a pretty good idea where this is going. Powell gave it the old "college try" but, failed as expected.
3/23 The Fed has given up: get ready for more QE – Mises Institute
That is pretty much assured.

Unlimited QE has pretty much worked in Japan because they hold "all" their debt internally. Since bond buyers have pretty much deserted the BOJ, ECB and FED, this would argue that the respective Treasuries will have to openly buy State debt. Kuroda, and now Draghi have already done this. Draghi had to fire up QE again ONE MONTH after it ended. Powell had to reverse course ONE MONTH after he started rate hikes. Manufacturing is the prime value-added industry. Once it ran away, there was very little true earnings left.

3/23 U.S. runs largest monthly budget deficit on record in February – MarketWatch
3/23 Near full inversion: 10-year note inverts with 1-month T-bill – Mish
3/23 Politics has failed, now central banks are failing – Charles Hugh Smith
This isn't a completely accurate assessment.
Parkinson's Law definition is - an observation in office organization: the number of subordinates increases at a fixed rate regardless of the amount of work ..
Observation that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion," and that a sufficiently large bureaucracy will generate enough internal work to keep itself 'busy' and so justify its continued existence without commensurate output.
Over 22 million work for the government. This could accurately be called socialism.
Since the State doesn't actually produce anything, it must suck blood from the producers. BUT, every additional $1 of taxes reduces the producing economy by $3.

U.S gov takes about 40% in taxes and is reducing the productive economy. It turns to the bond markets to finance itself and avoid additional tax. Since it perpetually rolls over these bonds, it only has a finance cost, not a repayment cost. The State has pissed away the confidence of bond buyers AND has reached the practical limits on taxation.
All the debate that you hear about MMT is just a discussion to get MMT drug out into the open.
The full inversion of the 10 year vs the 1 month note suggests that there is zero confidence in the U.S. sovereign market.
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/econo...UatxHYqcpzsQg/
U.S. debt is rising exponentially. Powell and Trump are walking the FED to it's deathbed.

Greenspan, Yellen and Bernanke all worked to save the money renters at the cost of destroying the middle class. The CB gave the banks free money so that they did NOT have to pay interest on savings,,, to attract deposits. This saved the banks $400 billion a year on avoided interest payments to depositors. This also drove money into speculative investments that the bankers could easily skim.
All we hear about is the danger to money markets and credit markets. There is little-to-no consideration of the danger to the lower loop.
3/24 41% of New York residents say they can no longer afford to live there – Zero Hedge
So, either the treasury takes over money creation OR, the pitchforks and torches come out. The big question is; will the money be directed at the upper loop OR the lower loop?

[Danny B]

Latent socialism becoming untenable

3/24 41% of New York residents say they can no longer afford to live there – Zero Hedge
AND
New York city headed or bankruptcy.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...or-bankruptcy/
"In the case of New York City, their long-term debt is now more than $81,100 per household"
If you are invested in BTC, you should read these. Remember that BTC is a trading platform, NEVER a store-of-value.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ading-is-fake/
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...itcoin-v-gold/

Armstrong, "ANSWER: That is one of the reasons the Deep State is fighting so hard to remove Trump. They simply believe it will take a seasoned Bureaucrat to sign such a bill. That said, a cashless society will be arriving in Europe before it will appear anywhere else. You must understand that all governments are in their death throes. Instead of stepping back and looking at this from a practical perspective, they remain fixated on their debt crisis that is propelling them to raising taxes. They firmly believe if everyone paid their taxes, they would have no problem. Of course, that is a fantasy. Whatever they collect will NEVER be enough to sustain their power."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...hless-society/

The more that fracking crashes, the more that we covet the oil in Venezuela.
https://journal-neo.org/2019/03/21/v...-oil-disaster/
3/23 Amount of global debt yielding less than 0 approaching 10 trillion – MarketWatch
Smells like MMT to me.
Rense, More than half of young people in America don't have a romantic partner
Is it MGTOW or, is it poverty?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-caused-crisis
3/24 Donald Trump picks fierce Fed critic for its board – USA Today An executioner ?
3/24 UK coup erupts: Theresa May cabinet in revolt, overthrow imminent – Zero Hedge Buy more Guinness and curry.

The blob State is willing to embrace MMT if that will keep their salaries going.

Don't move or bark,,,, or you're dead, https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/...hoot-the-dogs/

[Danny B]

Emerging fascism in Europe,,,coming detonation of China and the contagionm

The NWO people are focused on centralization and CONTROL. The EU project has been long in the making regardless of viability. The PTB knew long ago that NWO would be bad for Great Britain. They figured that; once in place, it could never be gotten rid of.
https://archive.is/5pZSV
Most of the world is locked in a battle with an enemy that is eternal, voracious, unassailable, mindless and heartless. Humanity is losing that battle.
How Corporations Hijacked Personhood
"However, the lineage of The Dark Roots of the “Brussels EU” is most revealing and shocking.

“This article highlights the birth place of the "Brussels EU" on the drawing boards of the Nazi/IG Farben-coalition for a post-war Europe under their control." "Stripped out of the plot, was the ultimate goal that would eliminate any semblance of national identity. Global control always is founded upon the need to eradicate as much of cultural distinctiveness as a path to eliminate national sovereignty. "
"They established in the European Union a bureaucratic corporatist state so monolithic that most can be intimidated into silence by the very size of the project, and emasculated by the necessary remoteness of the powers involved."
Fascist Victory Behind the European Union
The forced immigration as part of the Kalergi Plan is designed to remove cultural distinctiveness. I suspect that it will remove ALL State cohesion. Especially since many of the immigrants are from garbage societies that bring their garbage attitudes with them.

Armstrong on climate change and food production. "They could care less about history or truth. The cycle is very clear. This major flooding which may destroy at least 6 billion bushels of wheat is a prelude to what is coming."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ood-shortages/
There was plenty of food during the great famine in Ireland. The British exported it. Same for the famines in India. The British maintained the population of India at 230 million for 100 years by holding rotation famines.

RE: stocks. lance Roberts shows a lot of statistics where he claims that financial investor services do not care at all about retail investors,,,, only the big funds. For their part, millennials don't trust anybody.
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/for...y-be-the-last/

China:
China says that they are going to open their markets to foreign investors. WHY NOW ?

"China has acted as part of the life support system for the global economy during the past two decades. The other part being comprised of central banks. When the Tech Bubble burst back in 2000, China began printing and borrowing an incredible amount of money to create demand for fixed assets. After the Great Recession struck in 2008, Beijing again reacted with a massive government stimulus package that helped further inflate its real estate bubble and placed a pervasive bid under global markets. It was much the same in the wake of the global slowdown and earnings recession in the U.S. in 2016. In fact, China has been a humongous tailwind for growth since 2000; taking on about $38 trillion in new debt, which amounted to an incredible 150-percentage point increase in its debt to GDP ratio."

"Because of this untenable debt load, China recently began a much-needed policy of deleveraging, leaving many to speculate how long the global economy can sustain itself without its main growth engine. After all, the Red Nation had been responsible for roughly a third of global growth since 2008. However, and regrettably, China’s flirtation with austerity did not last very long. Authorities have now begun to reset priorities away from reigning in the nation’s $40 trillion worth of debt and are instead seeking to prop up the economy with yet more debt.

Some of the debt ratios in China not only exceed that of the U.S. but are also estimated to be twice as high as that of the average emerging market economy. Total debt has more than quadrupled since 2007. Total debt including household, corporate and government increased from 160% of GDP in 2008 to over 304% of GDP in 2018, according to the Institute of International Finance."
The State owned enterprises and regional governments were allowed to create mountains of debt. Imagine what would happen if every State in America had it's won printing press.
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/micha...to-china-debt/
Everybody is talking about the necessity of decoupling from China.
That should be a real hoot.

Doug Casey, the perma-bear has 4 predictions. Umm, what can I say?
Prediction 1: The End of Retirement
Prediction 2: A White Male Privilege Tax, and Other Radical Tax Hikes
Prediction 3: Like Venezuela, Socialism Will Conquer the U.S.
Prediction 4: A New 9/11-Type Event – Real or a Contrived False Flag
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ld-falls-apart
Evidently, he isn't aware of who is in the White House,,, and will be for 5 more years.

Wells Fargo deserves honorable mention.
https://thomasdishaw.com/comprehensi...-and-counting/

GREAT charts on corporate debt, https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/23/co...e-debt-to-gdp/
3/25 One by one, global bond markets are flashing the same warning – Bloomberg

[Danny B]

Speedbumps everywhere you look

The bond markets are flashing RED and, everybody is talking about extended QE.
You should read this whole article,
https://medium.com/new-york-magazine...ed-51788cb6578
Trump has fired a full broadside at the blob State.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/suprem...state?ref=home
It appears that many States have reconciled themselves to printing money out of thin air to address the pension crisis. Nobody wants the elderly to die off by the millions.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almos...210656147.html

John Perkins in "Confessions of an economic hitman" detailed how many national economies have been destroyed by Hitmen who arrange loans that are designed to impoverish a country and, rob it blind. He recently updated his book to say that the BIG prize is AMERICA.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almos...210656147.html
Something stinks.
https://www.caseyresearch.com/the-ci...-american-soil
Now, Trump and TSA are warning about an EMP attack.

3/27 World of negative debt expands to one-fifth of global market – Bloomberg
3/27 China’s industrial profits shrink most since late 2011 – Reuters
3/27 China’s local debt at ‘boiling point’ as Beijing seeks to boost growth – SCMP
3/26 China’s local government debt: the bomb that gets kicked down the road – Japan Times
Money printing just doesn't work like it used to. There is a new term for it. Instead of "monetary viagra" it is now monetary methadone.

Armstrong, "As shown here, the accumulative interest expenditures eventually exceed 70% of the total debt so the money never went to anything such as schools, roads, or social programs. I"
So, run the pixel presses even faster.

[Danny B]

Turkey, China,,,, crashing confidence

Armstrong, "Last week, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bill fell below that of the 3-month note for the first time since 2007. This is what everyone calls an Inverted Yield Curve, and is seen as an early indicator of a recession. In that regard, it is conforming to the Economic Confidence Model (ECM) which has been warning that this last leg should be a hard landing economically for most of the world. Nonetheless, while the yield curve has inverted, it has done so in a rather unusual manner. This is NOT suggesting a major recession in the United States. Instead, it is a reflection of global uncertainty outside the USA."
When demand goes up, the interest rate goes down. This would suggest that there is enormous demand for U.S.Treasuries. The inversion of the yield curve would suggest that there is IMMEDIATE demand. Armstrong was correct in stating That U.S. markets would be upheld by investors fleeing shaky foreign markets.

Armstrong, "This Inverted Yield Curve is confirming that as the political chaos emerges around the world, the more foreign capital is parking in the dollar. With the May elections on the horizon in Europe, and the October elections in Canada, April elections in Israel … etc. etc., the capital flows are still pointing ever stronger into the dollar right now. The foreign capital has been buying the 10-year notes driving the spread lower"
"The Yield Curve (10-2yr) has not inverted. This is clearly showing the capital flight to the dollar that has been going on post-2014. This is not reflecting a major recession in the USA, but it is inferring that the ECM will be turning soon. We are in serious trouble globally as people are turning away from the established political norm "

This ECM,,, confidence model is all-important because the State needs to attract private investment.

Turkey is big news because Erdogan is cutting off the bankers / speculators.
"This week, Turkey further roiled markets by preventing foreign banks from accessing the liras they need to close out their swap positions. That’s made it almost impossible for bankers to short the lira or exit carry trades, and forced the overnight lira rate up to about 1,000 percent from 23 percent."
" banking stocks were down more than 7 percent and the yield on 10-year lira bonds rose 74 basis points to 18.23 percent."
A lack of confidence means that Turkey has to offer 18% interest.
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/tur...raveling-fast/
"Turkey’s overnight swap rates doubled from Tuesday’s levels, reaching more than 600 percent on Wednesday"

Armstrong, "The distortion in the yield curve is building with tremendous force. There are vast bids for US 90-day T-Bills from around the world and no offers. The shortage in US government paper is now being reported to us from repo desks around the world. There is a MAJOR PANIC in to the dollar as emerging markets come under a financial crisis, in part, instigated by Turkey. The government simply trapped investors and refuses to allow transactions out of the Turkish lira. Turkey’s stand-off with investors has unnerved traders globally, pushing the world ever closer to a major FINANCIAL PANIC come this May 2019.

There is a major liquidity crisis brewing that could pop in May 2019. European Banks have loaded their portfolios with real estate loans thanks to quantitative easing and negative interest rates, and emerging market debt. Spanish banks are especially invested in Turkish debt where they hoped to get the highest yields expecting that the IMF would never let Turkey default. On top of this, banks have been lending to each other to also avoid parking money at the European Central Bank where they would be charged with a negative interest rate.

Currencies from South Africa’s rand to Brazil’s real are witnessing a spike in their expected volatility, signaling concern they may weaken the most along with the Turkish lira going into May. The price swings have evoked sudden deep-rooted fears that there may be an emerging market crash before the end of the year.

We will update on the private blog in more detail. However, keep in mind that this Inverted Yield Curve is by no means reflecting a US recession. This is a global financial panic unfolding on a grand scale. This is why we selected May for the WEC in Rome. This is far more than just politics. This is beginning to evolve into a serious liquidity crisis where we may yet see more countries try capital controls to save the day."

So what has all this capital flight caused?
3/28 China will cut real interest rate levels, lower financing costs – Reuters
China has admitted that they just can't dismount the credit tiger.
3/28 China makes unprecedented proposals on tech, trade talks progress – Reuters
The more desperate they get, the more concessions they will offer,,, and the more that Trump will stall.
3/27 China’s industrial profits shrink most since late 2011 – Reuters
Yes but, the tiger is hungry.
3/27 China’s local debt at ‘boiling point’ as Beijing seeks to boost growth – SCMP
So, they're going to throw more gas on the fire.
3/28 Bond yields on the canvas, Turkey’s lira on the ropes – Reuters

[Danny B]

MMT and post-capitalism

Looking farther into the future.
"The president will certainly pin his re-election prospects upon a pulsating economy and an electric stock market.

That is, No.1 recognizes his path to victory runs through America’s wallets
If the economy plunges into recession and/or the market plummets on the timeline here envisioned… Trump will likely be heaved from office.
"All this can be ours without raising taxes to kingdom come. Salvation comes by way of the printing press."
The article goes on to assert that Trump will institute some kind of MMT so that he gets re-elected.
https://dailyreckoning.com/a-glimpse...uture-part-ii/

There is certainly going to be a long, messy transition period. But, transition to what?
Stephanie Kelton is a smart girl and was Bernie anders advisor. She says that we can print judiciously and fix everything.
https://stephaniekelton.com/
Frank Newman, "He recognizes that this runs counter to the conventional wisdom, but he insists that these truths simply follow from an accurate portrayal of “how the system actually works.” And he should know. He served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Prior to that, he was Vice Chairman of the Board and CFO of BankAmerica Corporation, and Executive Vice President and CFO of Wells Fargo Bank."
There are some good notes here.
https://stephaniekelton.com/2013/07/...ry-theory-mmt/
These are a couple of smart people. All they have to do is to input money into the economy for actual work done. The present system is; input the money to the speculators first. You can see why the speculators universally deride the idea.

I have to comment on one of ms. Kelton's claims. " We can provide a job for everyone."
At the moment, 51% of Americans receive a check from GOV. 44 million are on direct assistance of some kind. There are a lot of people who just don't want a job. BUT, that isn't the main problem.

Boston Dynamics, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-millions-jobs
Zero Hedge, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...olve-reproduce
So, you eliminate the salary of the producer and, you eliminate his purchasing power.
Zero Hedge, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...eath-dinosaurs

Now, there are some thinkers who have some plans.

The Meaning of Life in a World without Work
As technology renders jobs obsolete, what will keep us busy? Author Yuval Noah Harari examines ‘the useless class’ and a new quest for purpose.
The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms. Consequently, by 2050 a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable.
The real problem will then be to keep the masses occupied and content. People must engage in purposeful activities, or they go crazy. So what will the useless class do all day?

One answer might be computer games. Economically redundant people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the “real world” outside. This, in fact, is a very old solution. For thousands of years, billions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. In the past, we have called these virtual reality games “religions”.

In the end, the real action always takes place inside the human brain. Does it matter whether the neurons are stimulated by observing pixels on a computer screen, by looking outside the windows of a Caribbean resort, or by seeing heaven in our mind’s eyes? In all cases, the meaning we ascribe to what we see is generated by our own minds. It is not really “out there”. To the best of our scientific knowledge, human life has no meaning. The meaning of life is always a fictional story created by us humans.

If you have at home a teenage son who likes computer games, you can conduct your own experiment. Provide him with a minimum subsidy of Coke and pizza, and then remove all demands for work and all parental supervision. The likely outcome is that he will remain in his room for days, glued to the screen. He won’t do any homework or housework, will skip school, skip meals and even skip showers and sleep. Yet he is unlikely to suffer from boredom or a sense of purposelessness. At least not in the short term.
Soon, we will have the Holodeck to keep us entertained.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...d-without-work

The end of capitalism has begun
"revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.
Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity"

" Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism."
"The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all."
"Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. "

"Even now many people fail to grasp the true meaning of the word “austerity”. Austerity is not eight years of spending cuts, as in the UK, or even the social catastrophe inflicted on Greece. It means driving the wages, social wages and living standards in the west down for decades until they meet those of the middle class in China and India on the way up.
Advertisement

Meanwhile in the absence of any alternative model, the conditions for another crisis are being assembled. Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant in Japan, the southern Eurozone, the US and UK. The shadow banking system has been reassembled, and is now bigger than it was in 2008. "
Neoliberalism, then, has morphed into a system programmed to inflict recurrent catastrophic failures. "
"That is because neoliberalism was the first economic model in 200 years the upswing of which was premised on the suppression of wages and smashing the social power and resilience of the working class. If we review the take-off periods studied by long-cycle theorists – the 1850s in Europe, the 1900s and 1950s across the globe – it was the strength of organised labour that forced entrepreneurs and corporations to stop trying to revive outdated business models through wage cuts, and to innovate their way to a new form of capitalism.

The result is that, in each upswing, we find a synthesis of automation, higher wages and higher-value consumption. "
"It is called “The Fragment on Machines”.

In the “Fragment” Marx imagines an economy in which the main role of machines is to produce, and the main role of people is to supervise them. He was clear that, in such an economy, the main productive force would be information. The productive power of such machines as the automated cotton-spinning machine, the telegraph and the steam locomotive did not depend on the amount of labour it took to produce them but on the state of social knowledge. Organisation and knowledge, in other words, made a bigger contribution to productive power than the work of making and running the machines."

"t suggests that, once knowledge becomes a productive force in its own right, outweighing the actual labour spent creating a machine, the big question becomes not one of “wages versus profits” but who controls what Marx called the “power of knowledge”."
"Marx imagined information coming to be stored and shared in something called a “general intellect” – which was the mind of everybody on Earth connected by social knowledge, in which every upgrade benefits everybody. In short, he had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high”."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...pitalism-begun

[Danny B]

State sponsored excesses in China

The world is floating along on fresh debt / credit, mostly created in China. The Chinese were not about to depend on organic growth to raise up the country fast enough to avoid being subsumed by the Western powers. China started out by moving 300 million people into the cities. It ultimately aims to integrate about 70% of China's population, about 900 million people, into cities by 2025. Things are getting very crowded.
China to move half a million people from Beijing to new city .Xiongan

The only practical way to execute these enormous changes is with a State-run economy. China made a lot of mistakes. Since they took the jobs of their best customers, their export economy is shrinking. Since they created and fostered the global mean wage, they can't very well raise domestic wages to create a domestic consumer economy.
Not only that, domestic consumption is hampered by a falling population.
"China’s labor force fell to 897.29 million workers in 2018, falling by 0.5% in the seventh straight year of decline,"
China is losing markets and losing workers. The PBOC was printing credit instruments faster than the rest of the world combined. Their excess steel production was greater than the combined steel production of Japan, America and Europe combined.

Mises, "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.1"

Here are a couple of vids about the excesses of the State-run economy in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGHmk4UeK_w&t=332s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKHyqO72oAo&t=66s

Leave it to the Chinese to get over-excited about credit and prosperity. The American economy is dependent on credit creation from China enough that a crash in China will bring down quote a few things here.

[Danny B]

Banks and war,,,, perverse incentive

In the times of the Roman Empire, wars were conducted pay-as-you-go. The silver content of the Denarius was diluted as a means for the State to pay it's bills. Rome had no Central bank. Moving forward several centuries, the States had to borrow money to go to war. Rothschild was famous and practical for lending to both sides. Later, war bonds were sold to the public to finance wars. This was somewhat inconvenient having to stir up lots of war sentiment before bonds could be sold. States needed to have a credit system in place to conduct wars.
The Bank of England was founded as a private bank in 1694 to act as banker to the Government. Central Banks were created primarily to finance wars for the State.
Go to war first and then, have the taxpayers pay off the debts. War finance demanded very high interest rates and was quite profitable. This created a perverse incentive for bankers to desire and promote wars.

"In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, and which wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing for the allied forces during World War I … pushed Wilson out of neutrality"
"Now, on the other side of that war, for example, was the National City Bank, which, though they worked with Morgan in financing the French and the British, they also didn’t have a problem working with financing some things on the German side, as did Chase "

Indeed, JP Morgan also purchased control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of US entry into World War 1.
And many big banks did, in fact, fund the Nazis.
The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek."
https://www.zerohedge.com/contribute...re-behind-wars

Makow - Bankers Extended WWI By Three Years
https://rense.com/general72/cav.htm

After the battle of Bull Run, the confederate armies were just a few miles from a very lightly defended District of Colombia. It was a banker who convinced the General to stop where they were and NOT take the capital. This greatly extended the War of Northern Aggression
International Bankers and WW I - Mujahid Kamran
International Bankers and WW I
Apr 17, 2012 - It were the bankers who manipulated the horrific World War I

Masonic Bankers Started WWI to Exterminate Germany - henrymakow ...
https://www.henrymakow.com/illuminat...anned_wor.html

Bankers are Behind the Wars | Zero Hedge | Zero Hedge
https://www.zerohedge.com/contribute...re-behind-wars

Churchill, " WW II could have been avoided but, the bankers wanted it"
The Bretton Woods agreement was an attempt to keep States from expanding their bond market to finance wars. Unfortunately, this agreement left America in a prime position for starting wars.

"According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money."
"huge interest costs" That is the whole idea from the beginning.
US has spent $5.9 trillion on Middle East, Asia wars since 2001: Study
https://www.cnbc.com/.../us-has-spen...ia-wars-since-...
Now, America has a new problem. We don't have any credible threats of invasion but, the bankers need to keep the money rolling inm.
Price tag of the 'war on terror' will top $6 trillion soon - Military Times
https://www.militarytimes.com/.../pr...-6-trillion-so...

Everybody knows that there is a terrorist behind every tree and rock.

The original charter of the Federal Reserve forbade it from buying Government paper. This was all changed so that it could buy State paper to finance world wars. War finance is quite profitable but, the State seems to be going broke. The FED held $4.5 trillion of State debt that it planned to sell to investors. BUT, GOV debt is rising exponentially and seen as too risky.
The FED has only been able to unload 10% of this $4.5 trillion. it has been forced to stop balance sheet reduction.
The central problem to ALL of this is; banks have great motivation to precipitate and extend wars.

[Danny B]

Yang,,,, more bumps in the road

Andrew Yang is running for president. He has an interesting platform.
"There's this fallacy that if you're a truck driver and you get displaced by self-driving trucks, folks will say, “Oh, we'll just teach you how to code!” I think that’s presumptuous and insulting.

AY: That's exactly right. Why would we even think we can retrain coal miners and truck drivers to become software engineers? The only reason we think that is we've been brainwashed to equate economic value and human value, where if workers have lost their value in the marketplace then we think, OK, we have to transform you into something that does have value "
He has interesting ideas about robot taxes and UBI.
https://www.wired.com/story/andrew-y...-21st-century/

This is off topic but it is a FASCINATING article about the development of machine intelligence.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...rld-with-logic

Armstrong, "China is set to curb all types of fentanyl production following a plea from the U.S. The Chinese-based drug has had a huge impact on U.S. citizens facing drug addiction."
Knowing Trump, it was NOT a plea.
Armstrong, " Since Quantitative Easing has failed, capital was driven into non-traditional investments to simply try to earn income. There were institutions buying farmland just to lease it out to get 5% annual income. Others ran off into Emerging Markets. Spanish banks are heavily invested in Turkey. The problem is that this trend has caused a liquidity crisis insofar as capital has been invested in assets that are not liquid."
"The combination of investment shifts into real estate, Emerging Markets, and corporate buybacks have created an interesting risk factor for liquidity during a financial panic."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/p...uidity-crisis/
Remember that everything is bought on margin / leverage. In the event of a panic, there will be enormous margin calls. There just won't be any liquidity available to meet all the demands.

Armstrong, "The sheer demographics warn that more people will move into retirement, increasing expenditures at a faster pace than there are younger generations to compensate. This means that expenditures will rise and revenues will decline. Even if we were talking about governments that actually did pay off debt, they would still not be able to do so once we pass 2020."
"They have not yet reached the point where they will come to terms with the fact that this is a fictional world in which they dream of endless powers and they will prevail in the end. We have gone past the point of no return. We now require structural change and FAST!!!!!!!"
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...-of-no-return/

4/02 PMI data: recession in German manufacturing is worse than thought – Business Insider
4/02 Durable-goods orders slump 1.6% in February and investment slackens again – MW
4/02 Analyst slaps $42 target on Lyft — 42% below its IPO price – CNBC
4/02 Walgreens shares slide on missed earnings, lower forecast – CNBC
4/02 Retirement crisis: In America most will be unable to afford a ‘solid life’ – CNBC

3/29 Even high-income households can’t keep up with California home prices – Zillow
3/29 Median-priced homes still unaffordable in nearly 75% of US counties – Real Deal
Rense, Americans Borrowed $88 Billion to Pay for Health Care Last Year

[Danny B]

Socialism, confidence and currency

So little time,,, so much BS to wade through.
4/02 London real estate suffers largest drop in a decade – Zero Hedge
3/29 London house prices suffer their biggest drop in 10 years as Brexit fears bite – CNBC
There you have it. Brexit fears are pulling down London RE prices. Not surprisingly, that is a lie.
It was the tax increases that killed the market.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/r...erty-market-2/

Europe has a lot more socialist tendencies than America. Socialism always, eventually breaks the bank. With the instant capital flight made possible by globalization, capital is fleeing to safer havens. CBs around the world are de-dollarizing as much as possible. BUT, capital movements by CBs are tiny compared to capital flows from private money. As the CBs de-dollarize, the private sector loads up on dollar-denominated instruments and investments. The CBs have failed utterly because they believe that currency strength is controlled by their laws and mandates. NOT true. Currency demand is controlled by investor confidence.

Armstrong, " Property investment shifted to the USA where they did not follow that socialist path against real estate as took place in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As the currency declines, prices will find a bottom. But they will have to decline to compensate for the tax increases."

"They say we are de dollarizing etc. My off the cuff remark is that the central bank reserves are a tiny part of daily FX transactions."
"The central banks have been trying covertly to defend against the dollar. Even China and Russia are desperately trying to price things outside the dollar but this is not helping either.
The U.S. dollar’s share of currency reserves as reported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fell to a near five-year low going into the end of 2018. "
"The Central banks have been trying to use reserves to help support their respective currencies and suppress the dollar’s rally without any real impact. This is very similar to the crisis of 1927. Back then, there was also a capital flight from Europe. There too, the European share markets all peaked well before the US market in 1929. The capital flight from Europe to the dollar was massive. "

"They lobbied the US Fed to lower its interest rates, as they have been doing of late once again, in hopes of altering the capital flows and diverting the flow back to Europe. This is once again why the Fed has put raising rates on hold currently – the same strategy that failed back in 1927."
"The Fed indeed lowered the US interest rates in 1927 (see chart below). However, just as quantitative easing has failed, lowering the US interest rates resulted in the opposite expectation. Instead of the capital diverting back to Europe, it intensified into the US buying real estate creating the Florida land boom, and pushing the US share market to record highs in 1929."
"Even Paul Volcker back in 1978 in his Rediscovery of the Business Cycle pointed out that this new era of Keynesian economics had utterly failed. Nonetheless, the economic community keeps trying to make it work. "
NOT true. It is the public sector that has tried to make Keynesian economics work.

"The Fed lowered the rates in 1927, then as the capital inflow really intensified pouring into the USA because of European politics, the Fed nearly doubled the interest rates into 1929 also without succeeding in preventing the stock market rally. The Fed will most likely make the same mistake once again following Keynesianism"
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/m...-sell-dollars/

Armstrong, "Anyone who wants to understand why the dollar is the only game in town, all they need do is look at the politics in Europe. It is just absurd. In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May simply REFUSES to abandon her BREXIT plan no matter how many times Parliament votes against it."
"In all my years of politics, I have never seen such absolute stubbornness on the part of any world leader to the point that she will alienate her own party. "
May seems to think that she is the reincarnation of Thatcher. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-b...-idUSKCN1RB0R6

" If we needed any explanation as to why the British pound will collapse in the future, all we need do is look at this dynamic-duo May-Corbyn for the answer.

If you need any explanation as to why the dollar continues to be the currency to which everyone is fleeing, you have it in spades."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...her-own-party/

More notes about the PARASITE.
"Clearly, though, America’s colonial monetary experience exposes the fallacy at the heart of MMT (which might be better called postmodern monetary theory): the best monetary policy for the government is not necessarily the best monetary policy for the economy. As Samuel Sewall noted in his diary, “I was at the making of the first Bills of Credit in the year 1690: they were not Made for want of Money, but for want of Money in the Treasury.”
"While true that colonial governments controlled the money supply by directly issuing (or lendin) and then retiring pieces of paper, their macroeconomic track record was abysmal, except when they carefully obeyed the market signals created by sterling exchange rates and the price of gold and silver in terms of paper money."
We don't need no stinking market signals.
"South Carolina and New England were the poster colonies for inflation, in part because they bore the brunt of colonial wars against their rival Spanish and French empires. Relative peace and following market signals eventually stabilized prices in South Carolina. "

So, the economy does OK if we avoid wars.
"In New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, by contrast, legislatures followed market signals and were never pressed as hard militarily as the buffers to their north and south were. They therefore did not inflate away the value of their paper moneys by issuing too much. "
"After the French and Indian War, however, the Middle Colonies suffered from a large deflation rooted in wartime excesses, structural economic changes, and new imperial regulations."
"About the only time the colonial monetary system functioned effectively was when paper money circulated in tandem with full-bodied gold or silver coins (specie). When the government found itself in dire straits, as it did during the American Revolution, the value of paper money vis-a-vis specie slipped. "
https://www.aier.org/article/mmt-recipe-revolution
So, war is incompatible with MMT
At the same time, few bankers would survive in a world that shunned war.

4/03 ‘The spigot turned off’: how the stock market fall clobbered corporate debt – CNBC
4/02 Why “a spike in defaults is on the way, sooner or later” – Zero Hedge
4/02 Why corporate America’s profits are set to drop – MarketWatch
Trump was told that he would never get re-elected if he killed obamacare. so, he'll kill it AFTER he gets elected for his last term.
4/02 Trump punts health care until after 2020 – Politico

The senate killed the green new deal from OAC. BUT, the blob State thrives on bureaucracy and boondoggles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTHe_rn0dEU

[Danny B]

Liquidity crisis,,, stock inflows,,,Trump and the FED

Post 2008, the CBs created about $250 trillion of new debt-instrument "money". All of this flowed into new investments. It's difficult to break down or explain but, the value of all these investments depend on confidence. Any kind of a downturn would demand $trillions in margin calls. This would require a mountain of liquidity. BUT, in a downturn, you could never be sure of the true value of a prospective purchase., Everybody wants to wait til the market bottoms before buying anything. The end result, there would be no avail;able liquidity.

"All of that said, the crisis we have is a LIQUIDITY Crisis. This time it has been created especially by the European Central Bank (ECB). By keeping interest rates negative and punishing banks for having cash, they have (1) lent into real estate to get higher yields but this type of asset cannot be sold easily, (2) buying emerging market debt to get a high-yield like Turkey. Turkey was the favorite of Spanish Banks and the capital controls that Turkey did before the election sent shivers down the spine of institutional investors. The ECB has driven banks into these markets that are notoriously illiquid. This means that under Basel III, banks will not have the liquid assets to support their capitalization requirements. It becomes more likely that the Basel III requirements will be suspended or else there will be a wholesale collapse of the banking system."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...uidity-crisis/

"Can already record high prices continue to rise in the face of falling corporate profits? "
"Why does that imply falling stock prices, especially when corporate profits stagnated between 2015 and 2018 while share prices kept rising? Because of what those rising share prices did to valuations."
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/end-b...-three-charts/
It's a pretty good article but, makes NO mention of capital flight to safe-haven U.S. stocks.

"Political economist Thomas Oatley has likewise argued that every postwar economic boom, save one, was caused directly or indirectly by military spending (including stagflation and the 2008 financial crisis). Ten years after 2008, the average middle-class family’s net wealth is still $40,000 lower than 2007"
YES, but, we have great weapons.
https://www.theamericanconservative....-middle-class/
"The net result of conducting social programming by way of military spending is to ensure the burdens of America’s wars fall on an increasingly small part of the population already beset by serious economic woes. In regions of America suffering trade-related job losses and bipartisan abandonment, military enlistment rates are rising to compensate for the withering American Dream."
"In the Federalist Papers, even our most pro-federal spending founders held that a large standing army and a heavy, un-financed public debt burden were a danger to our republic’s health and security. Combining the two in the form of an ever-growing military budget is no victory. It is a threat to the future of the United States as we know it."

Trump wants to make some real changes at the FED;
"Trump’s choice of former campaign adviser Stephen Moore to serve on the Federal Reserve Board is stirring misgivings among some bankers,” reports Politico.
“Economists are furious,” "Trump tried deferring to the monetary establishment. Now he is sending it a sharp rebuke in the form of Stephen Moore."
"CNN complaining he owes $75,000 in taxes, and Bloomberg fretting he “would jeopardize the Fed’s hard-won reputation for fairness and independence.”
An intact Fed reputation for being “fair” and “independent”? That is fake news for sure!"
"The Fed’s actions during the 2008 financial crisis – bailing out large financial institutions, picking winners and losers, pumping trillions of dollars into the bond and mortgage markets – revealed it to be beholden to the interests of bankers and politicians."

"Real assets would largely substitute for the arbitrary opinions and forecasts of the so-called experts at the Fed (who have a near perfect track record of failing to anticipate recessions and market crashes, many of which are actually caused or exacerbated by the Fed itself)."
"As Fed apologists conceive it, their privately owned banking cartel is akin to a pristine sanctuary that Trump now threatens to despoil. According to Vanity Fair’s William D. Cohan, “Like nearly everything he touches, Donald Trump is now in the process of thoroughly debasing the Federal Reserve...”"
Cohan is a jew who worked for Goldman Sachs,,,, what a surprise.

“Debasing” is an interesting word choice. Like nearly every liberal journalist who makes a living penning anti-Trump hit pieces, Cohan fails to appreciate the irony of his hyperbolic attacks.
The Federal Reserve is literally an institution of debasement! It has been engaged in a steady campaign of debasing our money since its inception in 1913."
Trump Readies Shake-up of Fed Banking Cartel :: The Market Oracle ::

Great article on "model bills"
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/ne...csp=chromepush

4/04 China preps more stimulus measures to aid consumption recovery – Bloomberg
You can bet that they won't raise wages.
4/04 Job layoffs surge 35% to highest level to start a year in a decade – CNBC
You can bet that we won\'t demand higher wages.
4/04 US government’s net worth is now negative $75 trillion – Sovereign Manwhat can you say?
The CBs tried to save the private banks when the economy just couldn't support them. This looks to be a full time job.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...nancial-crisis
4/04 Massive increase of central bank assets warns of financial danger ahead – SRSR
Assets, my a$$. They just hold each other's paper.
4/03 Debt crisis warning as poorest countries’ repayment bills soar – Guardian
They have about $11 trillion in dollar-denominated debt. Hot money flees Marxist jurisdictions in Favor of America,,,, the dollar goes up,,, debt-service costs triple..

4/04 Japan policymakers shun ‘modern Monetary Theory’ as dangerous – Reuters
What a crock of crab. Their debt-to-GDP is 260% and will never be repaid. They look askance at MMT money printing.

Kitco, " Gold and silver prices are moderately lower and have dropped to more-than-three-month lows in early U.S. trading Thursday"
4/04 Perth Mint’s gold bullion sales surge 68% in March – GoldCore
One of these days the manipulation will end.
4/03 “Synchronized global growth has collapsed”: Deutsche downgrades Cat – ZH
Caterpillar should downgrade Deutsche Bank.

[Danny B]

The perpetual and undying monster in our midst

I'm trying to make a coherent picture of a bunch of notes that I took.
"In classical economics, Say's law, or the law of markets, states that "Supply creates its own demand", the aggregate production necessarily precedes an equal quantity of aggregate demand"
This is true in a system with adequate wages. Lacking adequate wages, demand will continue as long as cheap credit is available. Until wages rise up, cheap credit must be perpetual. BUT, if cheap credit is universally available, it will flow into speculative schemes that cause more price inflation. As automation grows, aggregate supply increases but, aggregate demand is diminished by stagnant wages. This INCLUDES demand for credit. To survive the banks were required to generate income by fleecing producers.
Here is a graph of the rise in productivity.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...04192L.svg.png
Here is a graph in manufacturing wage growth.
https://i1.wp.com/weatherinternal.co...75%2C360&ssl=1

Here are the corporations that control the world.
https://www.internationalbusinessgui.../corporations/
Here is an excellent list of all the financial corporations that control the world.
https://www.henrymakow.com/banking_cartel.html
While they work hard to keep wages down, the real cause of the constraint on purchasing power is price inflation. This, they can accomplish very easily.
Since business and household initiate very little demand for new legitimate credit, The State is fulfilling the demand. If the State fails as Armstrong predicts, there will be nobody left to demand credit.

How did we reach this state of control and poverty?
The god that won the war against humanity.
The corporation is an entity that demands to grow no matter the cost to humanity.
It never dies and never stops consuming.
No crime against humanity is too great as long as it makes a profit. No food too dangerous,,, no drug too deadly,,, no pollution too devastating.
The bankers have always sought war because the profit margins are so high.

By law, the corporation was given the rights of a person, even though it has not one shred of humanity. This further allowed it to buy politicians to further it's profitable schemes.
Hearst and Pulitzer "created" the Spanish-American war just to sell more newspapers.

The U.S. bond market is valued at $41 trillion. This is money borrowed from the future to be paid back with money skimmed from profitable enterprise. With the abandonment of the gold standard and regulatory changes to corporations, bond issuance was allowed to grow practically without limitation. There were no practical constraints on debt issuance, both public and private. Bonds carry an interest burden and, profitable enterprise must grow to service principle and interest.
BUT, the corporation is anti-human. Where the corporation gains, humans must lose. Wages must be suppressed to skim off more money from a shrinking economy.

These two phenomena—rising inequality and chronic weakness of demand—are related. Specifically, rising inequality transfers income from low-saving households in the bottom and middle of the income distribution to higher-saving households at the top. All else equal, this redistribution away from low- to high-saving households reduces consumption spending, which drags on demand growth.
A stunningly large upward redistribution of income has characterized the American economy in recent decades.

"By far the most important driver of this upward redistribution is the growing wedge between economy-wide productivity growth (a measure of income generated in an average hour of work in the United States) and hourly pay of typical American workers Inequality has transferred income from low- and middle-income households with relatively low savings rates towards higher-income households with higher savings rates.
The failure of wages of the vast majority of Americans to benefit from economy-wide growth in productivity (or income generated in an average hour of work) has been the root cause of the stratospheric rise in inequality and the concentration of economic growth at the very top of the income distribution.
The share of overall income held by the top 1 percent more than doubles (rising from 8.9 to 18.7 percent of total income) between 1979 and 2007.
the top 1 percent share in 2012 of 17.3 percent was almost double its 1979 level. Particularly salient to this analysis is the rough doubling of both labor and total capital shares claimed by the top 1 percent from 1979 to 2007 and 2012."
https://www.epi.org/publication/secular-stagnation/

So, there was no real constraint on credit issuance. But, there was a huge constraint on wage growth. The article argues that wages must be lifted and interest rates must fall to support the working class.
It isn't a lack of wage growth that is a constraint on consumption. It is the monetary inflation and price inflation over-running the wage inflation that became a constraint on consumption.
This lack of consumption creates the lack of profitability that increasingly makes the corporate bond market weaker and weaker. The solution from the corporatocracy is to issue more bonds to service previous debt notes.
Wall Street is beginning to take notice of problems forming in the $9 trillion corporate debt market."
So, there are no constraints on debt creation. No constraints on price inflation. The constraints on wage growth have created a constraint on consumption.
The bankers have responded to the fall in consumption be lengthening credit terms. The people have responded by reducing the birth rate.
The bankers have gutted wages to keep the credit bubble growing. American banks realize a $400 billion a year gain by NOT paying interest on savings accounts. This is deflationary to the lower loop and, cuts consumption even more.

"’It doesn’t take a genius’ to know capitalism needs fixing. Capitalism helped Ray Dalio build his investment empire. But in a lengthy LinkedIn post, the Bridgewater Associates founder says that it isn’t working anymore. Mr. Dalio writes that he has seen capitalism ‘evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it’s producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots.’ ‘Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of populism of the left and populism of the right and often in revolutions of one sort or another.’ ‘The problem is that capitalists typically don’t know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don’t know how to grow it well"
http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot...esmanship.html

The banks have had their most profitable years yet. But, for the corporation to gain, the population must lose. Everywhere that you look, you see deflation of the lower loop.
https://mailchi.mp/rickackerman/here...7?e=652b304c3b
The pension system are beyond saving.

[Danny B]

No hope and no CLUE in Japan,,,Gold in Italy

Japan, the "lab rat" once again.
"The BoJ has accumulated ¥557 trillion in assets, equivalent to 101% of 2018 nominal GDP (that compares to about 39% in Europe and 19% in the U.S.), as policymakers continue to up the ante in their quest to achieve a 2% measured rate of inflation."
chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, told Bloomberg that the Bank of Japan must “carefully consider” the impact of deepening its subzero interest rate policy: "
"For his part, BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda opined in March that “I don’t think our ETF buying is having any effect on market function.” The central banker said in a speech today that the BoJ “needs to continue easing persistently.”

"Of Japan’s banks, Kuroda attributed their profit woes to “structural factors, such as a dwindling population,”
"In that address, the BoJ governor articulated his plan to rouse the Land of the Rising Sun from its longstanding disinflationary torpor. Namely, manipulate expectations such that citizens begin to expect rising prices, which would then presage the real McCoy:"
So, expectations of rising prices will cause the Japanese to have more children.
" (1) directly working on people's expectations through a price stability target of 2 percent " So, 2% annual rise in prices is "price stability"
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...s-he-persisted

"Complaining that hundreds of thousands of small individual investors lost billions of dollars after several Italian banks failed in recent years, the anti-establishment '5 Star Movement' and the nationalist 'League', depict the central bank as a symbol of a technocratic elite aloof from the needs of ordinary Italians. "
DO NOT WORRY. The big banks came out OK.
"Five Star and the League have repeatedly attacked the Bank of Italy for not preventing the banking crises, and blamed it for the losses suffered by mom-and-pop savers who had bought bank shares and bonds."
Well, somebody had to eat the losses from bank speculation.
The italians want to take control of the state gold.
"

“The gold belongs to the Italians, not to the bankers,” said Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right opposition party that supports both bills. “We are ready to battle everywhere in Italy and to bring Italians to the streets if necessary.”
Draghi says, NO! Italy owes many billions of Euros to the ECB and, Draghi intends to hold the gold hostage for repayment.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...d-central-bank

The Saudis are rattling sabers, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...nti-trust-bill

4/08 Europe isn’t Japan in the 1990s. You should still be worried – Bloomberg
Same birth rate.
4/07 What deleveraging? Global leverage continues to break records – RIA
And the result,
4/08 Wall Street prepares to profit off looming global credit crunch – NY Post
4/08 Barack Obama warns progressives to avoid ‘circular firing squad’ – Guardian
No, NO, NO,,, send them more bullets
Brexit is shaping up to be quite a big deal.
https://www.apnews.com/98ee581b43a74efebd2db70eef1dad2d

Keep in mind that regulatory capture was the name-of-the-game for bankers to fleece everybody in sight. The bankers know where ALL the bodies are hidden.
https://www.silverdoctors.com/headli...he-deep-state/

[Danny B]

You spent $234 billion in February,,,

Just so you know that the State is there to look out for your welfare.
"In March 2017, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the idea of humans losing jobs because of AI “is not even on our radar screen.” It might be a threat, he added, in “50 to 100 more years.”
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-cold-...d-doom-us-all/
14 numbers that show the true state of the economy.
https://www.silverdoctors.com/headli...f-the-economy/

US budget deficit hits record $234 billion in February, national debt
National Debt Hits a New Record High: $22 Trillion -
The US needs to borrow almost $300 billion this week
So, what happens when something goes wrong?
"Last week I told you that the US government recently reported a negative net worth of MINUS $75 TRILLION."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ion-insolvency

Repost, "The testimony of this one man could put away prominent members of the Deep State. He has given Congressional testimony, but was ignored."
I wonder why?
https://www.silverdoctors.com/headli...he-deep-state/

General Douglas MacArthur warned in a speech to the Salvation Army, December 12, 1951, stating:

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline.

There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ly-out-control

[Danny B]

Will AI displace politicians and corruption?

Power corrupts and, attracts the already corrupted. The honest man who just wants to live his life and be left alone is always at a disadvantage to the criminals. Organized crime has gradually taken over much of the world. Political power has attracted it's share of corrupted people. They are driven by insecurity, narcissism, ego, stupidity and hatred. We vote but, the corruption of mass media makes voting an exercise in futility. Vote for criminal one or,, vote for criminal two. The concentration of power in the political system makes it a prime target for control by the corrupted banking system.
The banking system is naturally corrupted because it is a parasite. The power of the banking system combined with the corruption of the political system gives us a long history of financial crashes and wars. Power brings out the worst tendencies in man.

Voting is frustrating because of the lack of honest candidates. If we do vote for something that is beneficial to the honest man, it is just blocked or derailed by the politicians. It is impossible to be informed on all the issues because it is too complex and time consuming.
We use computers to manage and control our most complicated processes. Why not use computers to manage our economy and political system? Computers are used to break down complex ideas.
César Hidalgo has come up with a way to do that. Our computers learn our preferences and, present us with a tailored list of suggested reading. His idea is that; computers could learn every nuance of proposed legislations or candidates. They could then propose how we should vote on an issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGWML6cI_k

This idea IS logical. It has occurred to many people. Tired of corruption, they are willing to turn over decisions to a computer that has no insecurities, nor ego and no ignorance.
https://www.rt.com/news/454259-europ...rnment-survey/

This idea is coming into play from another angle also.
"China’s tech giants were enlisted as well. Alibaba, the giant online retailer, was tapped to develop a “City Brain” for a new Special Economic Zone being planned about 60 miles southwest of Beijing. Already, in the city of Hangzhou, the company was soaking up data from thousands of street cameras and using it to control traffic lights with AI, optimizing traffic flow in much the way AlphaGo had optimized for winning moves on the Go board; now Alibaba would help design AI into a new megacity’s entire infrastructure from the ground up."
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-cold-...d-doom-us-all/

OK, AI will control much of the city. When programmed correctly, a computer has inescapable logic. What happens when a computer presents the politicians with a logical but, unpalatable set of projections?

Edit; The producer has security because he is directly supporting himself. The parasite must get his support second-hand. The parasite has far less of a sense of security. This inspires theft and a constant fight for control, along with various other criminal activities. This insecurity is motivation for all kinds of evil deeds.
Congress gets their salary for life. Private sector unions have been wiped out. Public sector unions are large and growing. This is all tied to the insecurity of being a non-producer.
The politicians have convinced the producers that; society would fall apart if they didn't use their mental powers and expertise to control everything. Due to their insecurity, they invariably direct the expertise to enriching themselves.
Insecure, greedy and power-mad, the politicians are the worst candidates for controlling our lives.