Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Danger of banking

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

The new Pope fired quite a few of them also. What about the ones that remained? Things haven't gone so well.

Jim Willie;
"an exclusive report on the banker deaths, which has now increased to 5 in the past week with American Title CEO Richard Tulley found dead of �self-inflicted nail gun wounds�.
The Golden Jackass states that the suicided bankers had flipped during prosecution investigations, and were assassinated to prevent insider testimony of bank fraud from reaching the prosecution.
Willie, who recently sat down with The Doc for an exclusive interview revealing the �Smoking Gun� proving gold rehypothecation by US officials, emphasizes that we are NOT seeing bad bankers removed, we are witnessing bankers taken out who are on the verge of revealing BIG DATA details. "
"The banker hits are being done by the bad guys to keep men from singing after they flipped during prosecution investigation.
All have been working with police teams and continental cops like Interpol.
The STL Fed guy discovered some Bush giant multi-$B fraud and was ready to report it.
The STL Fed economist was hit by the Bush gang, before he sang against them.
The London bankers had begun to sing to Interpol on Mafia Vatican connections on massive FOREX fraud thefts.
It is unclear which is bigger: Vatican links to narco money, or links to FOREX fraud theft, or their control room for Nazis."
"They said Talley died from seven or eight self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun fired into his torso and head".

[Danny B]

Winding down society

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Danny B]

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

This is where our economy is relative to where it should be;
http://d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net.../140209-02.png
Obummercare will reduce it further;
Editorials | Mauldin Economics

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

[Danny B]

Charles Hugh Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Danny B]

Retail expectations

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

[Danny B]

Keeping the State together

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

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

U.S. GOV reports that it costs $ 1 million a year to maintain a soldier in Afghanistan. War has gotten very expensive. The Bretton Woods agreement made the U.S. dollar the reserve currency. America was able to wage war with a credit card. War has another use.
The Report From Iron Mountain;
http://www.stopthecrime.net/docs/Rep...n_Mountain.pdf
Says that peace would be a complete disaster.
The mega state is an un-natural contrivance. A forced agglomeration. The STATE must constantly create enemies, both real and imagined. The fear that this creates is the glue that holds tightly bound the people of that State.

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

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

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

That attack would REALLY put the fear back in the people and they would be willing to put up with anything,,, give up ANY freedoms just to get security.
We would have wars EVERYWHERE. After all, there were enemies and terrorists everywhere.
But, was has gotten expensive. Our unlimited credit card is in danger of crashing. We have a nice fleet of inexpensive drones that work admirably for creating new enemies. We've had to economize on our war efforts. It costs a LOT to create a continuous stream of enemies. We are hard at work to preserve our credit card. Some people seem to have gotten wise to us.

"....told King World News that there may in fact be over 20 dead bankers at this point, rather than the 7 that are being reported, and all of this is happening in order to protect US world dominance. Below is what Gerald Celente, founder of Trends Research and the man considered to be the top trends forecaster in the world, had to say in this remarkable interview.

Eric King: �Gerald, as you know it�s raining bankers, and Stephen Leeb told KWN this all has to do with the United States maintaining the US dollar as the world�s reserve currency. Meaning, people are being killed in order to protect secrets and to protect the dollar.�
My Blog

I need to break this up to a second post

[Danny B]

The new dimension to war

War has become VERY expensive. BUT, man is always working towards efficiency. Big battles and Big ships just don't work anymore.
israel knows plenty about war.

"But Israeli officials have warned that the next war might begin with just such a scene. In an October speech, Israel Defense Forces chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz put �a cyber-attack on banks� in the same category as a missile strike on Israel�s version of the Pentagon or mass attacks on a border town.

The IDF�s head of intelligence says the menace is even worse.

�Cyber defense, in my modest opinion, will soon be revealed to be the biggest revolution in the past century, more than gunpowder and the use of air power,� Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel�s head of military intelligence

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

Cyberattack on Energy Sector would be 'Devastating'

The World's Most Dangerous Software - Bloomberg

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

[Danny B]

The murder of exceptionalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The biggest turning points were the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, the broken Bretton Woods gold standard, the Most Favored Nation status grant to China, and the Patriot Act passage,. Those events were prologue for the death of a nation."
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article44487.html

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

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

[Danny B]

Morality and commerce

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams
LOTS more quotes;
Quotes on Liberty and Virtue

A pure gold standard would bring back some discipline but, it wouldn't bring back morality.

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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Three important trends demonstrate moral decay. They
are the "rise in immorality," the "decay of religious belief," and the
"devaluing of human life."

The classic study of Roman civilization, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
written by English historian Edward Gibbon was published in that famous
year of 1776. He "observed that the leaders of the empire gave into the
vices of strangers, morals collapsed, laws became oppressive, and the
abuse of power made the nation vulnerable to the barbarian hordes."{9}"

"Life became cheap in the latter days of the Roman Empire.
Burdensome regulation and taxes made manufacturing and trade
unprofitable."
When Nations Die - Probe Ministries

Crony capitalism and corporatism waste our physical and human capital. It is dissipated down to nothing. Look at youth unemployment. What happens to a society when you tell the young that they have no future. Moral decay combined with Marxism is a sure road to poverty. Where does that leave us?

The number of banks is the lowest since records have been kept. What about Western commerce?

"Wall Street�s growing legions of analysts might have overlooked
one reason the stock market has risen in recent years: The U.S. stock
market itself is shrinking. At the end of last year, 5,008 stocks traded
on U.S. exchanges, down 44% from a peak of 8,884 in 1997, according to
the World Federation of Exchanges. Similarly, there were only 3,776
stocks in the Wilshire 5000 stock index, the broadest gauge of the U.S.
equity market, which also peaked in 1997, with 7,459 stocks.

What�s more, the number of outstanding shares of stock available to
be bought or sold has shrunk by nearly 10% since the end of 2010,
according to S&P Dow Jones Indices."

".....following the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, when
close to 1,000 more stocks disappeared from exchanges, according to the
WFE.
That steep drop was due in part to fewer companies going
public, with investor fear, as well as rising costs, increased scrutiny
and more stringent regulations from the federal government"
Debt Rattle Feb 18 2014: The Best And Brightest Among Us Are Not - The Automatic Earth

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

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

Deflation huh? That is what happens when you pi$$ away capital on consumption rather than on investment.

Another interesting article from Ambrose. We all know that QE caused emerging markets to grow at about 18%. Taper talk that is mostly talk is causing HUGE capital outflows from EMs. While there is a bit of taper, it is more than made up for by LTROs and repos. Evidently, talk alone was able to cause these outflows. Now, it appears that these outflows and the resulting EM deflation is coming back to our shores;
"Analysts are slashing their forecasts at an "all-time record rate �
this is wholly inconsistent with talk of economic acceleration".

"The dire profits situation will only get worse as EM implodes and
waves of deflation flow from Asia to overwhelm the fragile situation in
the US and Europe."
""Even if the Fed resumes massive QE at some point as the world melts
down, and markets desperately attempt their return to the dream trance,
they will instead find themselves locked into a Freddy Krueger-like
nightmare in which phase 3 of this secular bear market takes equity
valuations down to levels not seen for a generation."
SocGen bear growls: deflation shock-wave from Asia to trigger global recession – Telegraph Blogs

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

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

[Danny B]

Banking and technology

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

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

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

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

[Danny B]

Too many dollars,, no takers

In a general sense, deflation is a reduction in the supply of currency and credit. There is a second aspect to deflation; a reduction in the value of debt instruments. The world is awash in debt instruments and this dilutes their value. When the value of each (currency) debt instrument falls fast enough, we call this hyperinflation. It is more correctly called hyperdeflation of the debt note.
In a true deflation, the currency goes UP in value because there are fewer of them. BUT, as the currency gets more valuable, debtors are less able to pay back loans. The banksters always print more to keep debtors from defaulting. They would rather suffer from currency devaluation that default.

True deflation is very rare with fiat currency because it is so easy to switch on the presses. The presses are switched on adequate to rescue debt that is in danger of default. This time around, the debt bubble was allowed/forced to grow so big that the presses can't realistically be expected to rescue the debt.

The FED is printing a reported $ 80 B a month. Jim Willie claims that it is actually 3--4 times that amount. China is printing about 4 times as much as the FED claims to be printing. Japan is printing with wild abandon.
People lose jobs,,, companies lose sales. The press makes all the payments that they are missing. There is currency creation as a substitute for wealth creation.
The economy is composed of production & consumption,,,supply & demand. The printing press is only a temporary substitute.
Eventually the supply of currency has nowhere to go.

"(7), resulting in a surplus of dollars and an increase in demand for the local currency, causing it to rise automatically (8). For example, in such a period Turkey, India, Brazil and Indonesia among others, have each offloaded in the order of tens of billions of Dollars per month (9).

This means that Dollar buyers, the emerging countries, have become sellers. In other words, the only countries able to absorb excess Dollars are now refusing them. Let�s recapitulate: the Fed and the Treasury continue to flood the world with $65 billion a month, but no one wants them� Where can they dump them now? In a few oil producing countries which still sell in Dollars, but especially in the US of course. And what can this country�s lifeless economy do with them? Not a lot� certainly less than the emerging countries did (10). "
GEAB N°82 is available! 2014, resumption of the global systemic crisis’ « normal » path

"Fred Sheehan: The globalists will be sorely disappointed. You are probably correct in what they want. The opposite is happening. We are in a period of disintegration. For instance, the Eurocrats have so abused any trust � any willingness among the people to sacrifice to the greater good � that their only future is to be filleted and served alongside a plate of Brussels sprouts. The globalists are aligned with vast bureaucracies filled with the sort of self-satisfied, test-taking, personally ambitious, know-nothings who only serve their own interests. They have no sense of duty, honor, self-sacrifice, all of which are necessary to achieve what they wish. They will crumble. - See more at: The Daily Bell - Fred Sheehan on the Futility of Wall Street, the Coming Derivatives Disaster and the Craziness of Keynes

[Danny B]

Deflation from the BRICs coming back to U.S.

America was/is debt saturated. There was no point in investing here because so many were flat broke. Investors pumped money into emerging markets. The EMs wanted to make a great leap forward at industrialization. The money flowed in and they built huge industrial capacity.
The profits flowed in.
These profits were recycled into U.S. GOV bonds.
GOV pumped this money into the economy.
The BRICs were essentially doing vendor-financing.
GOV spent the money on consumption rather than on investment. It takes a lot of printing to make up for the missing money.
When money was flowing into the BRICs, we were exporting inflation. Money is rapidly flowing OUT of the BRICs and causing deflation. That is a problem.

"Listing the consequences and causes of this overreach is not easy and always open to argument, but possibly the best summary is to suggest that since 2008, �Ricardo�s comparative advantage� paradigm has been inverted. Economic and above all monetary globalization is now the path to ruin and poverty. From win-win to lose-lose. The worse it gets, expect the architects of ruin � establishment politicians, central bankers and financial pundits, to retreat into even deeper denial.

The Production Bubble That Triggers the Collapse

Another simple way to argue the global economy has overreached is that industrial and economic production capacity in the Emerging economies (EMs), starting with the BRICs, is now massively over-sized. This means the EMs can and will saturate the post-industrial, deflating North with industrial supply at every stage and opportunity as technology, design and product development throw up a new market openings everywhere.'
Fasten Your Seatbelts: The Coming Global Monetary Reset

"But besides the decision to target speculators, the PBOC and SAFE have another issue in mind � the loss of competitiveness of Chinese exporters relative to the rest of Asia and the world because of the appreciation of the yuan. "
The People's Bank Of China Just Joined The Currency War | Business Insider
50% of the cost of the average item in America is for finance. 19% for trash collection and 78% for public housing. 50% average. We pay 100% markup
to the bankers. In an effort to survive, the East will flood all of our markets with anything that is moving. That won't be good for jobs. The fewer people working,,, the more deflation.


Here are a couple of pics that I like; $18B
http://cdn.sliptalk.com/wp-content/p...on-Dollars.jpg
http://cdn.sliptalk.com/wp-content/p...of-trouble.jpg

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

[Danny B]

Gold, oil and food

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



If you read far and wide enough, you will come to the conclusion that Western gold is just gone. It was sent away to maintain the status quo. Our food supply is produced by converting carbon energy into food energy. Our industry consumes energy, the master resource, in huge quantities. You can't eat gold. Here is a graph of the price ratio of gold vs oil.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v01-hF962z...-oil+ratio.jpg
Most people assume that the POG has been suppressed so that there would be no alternate store-of-value available. It's true that all funds are available to be stolen if they are not FRNs in your physical possession. This tends to keep velocity high. This may be a secondary effect.

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

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

[Danny B]

You can't eat gold,,, or electricity

I already posted a graph showing the price of gold in oil,,, oil in gold. Numerous sources have shown clearly that Western vaults are empty. What would cause the West to disburse every bit of gold that they could beg, borrow and steal??? The OBVIOUS answer is FEAR. But, fear of what? Gold can rise to any particular price and not really cause serious problems. This is NOT true for oil. Suppose gold rises and oil follows it's historical trend?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DRpWTIXnLf...lcurve_oil.gif

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

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

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

[aljhoa]

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

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

Not all states have oil, of course (and it�s hardly a sustainable basis for an economy), but all could learn from the state-owned bank that allows North Dakota to capitalize on its resources to full advantage. States that deposit their revenues and invest their capital in large Wall Street banks are giving this economic opportunity away.

A number of other mineral-rich states were initially not affected by the economic downturn, but they lost revenues with the later decline in oil prices. North Dakota is the only state to be in continuous budget surplus since the banking crisis of 2008. Its balance sheet is so strong that it recently reduced individual income taxes and property taxes by a combined $400 million, and is debating further cuts. It also has the lowest foreclosure rate and lowest credit card default rate in the country, and it has had NO bank failures in at least the last decade.

If its secret isn�t oil, what is so unique about the state?
North Dakota has one thing that no other state has:
its own state-owned bank.
North Dakota's Economic Miracle It's Not Oil by Ellen Brown — YES! Magazine


Al