Economic pressures

[Danny B]

The biggest loser,,, contagion from China

The currency wars are related to debt levels. It seems that several countries are in competition on this account.
"Greece Is Bad, But China Is Much Worse" "The Shanghai composite has lost $1.96 trillion in market cap since June 12. That number is comparable to the entire GDP of India. Incredibly, the Shanghai index is down 32 percent in only 17 trading days."

Read more: Greece Is Bad, But China Is Much Worse | Benzinga

"Opinion: You think China has problems? Look at Japan " You think China has problems? Look at Japan - MarketWatch
Then, there are Portugal and Spain vying for title of the worst in Europe. If currency wars aren't bad enough, there is the problem of cyber war, Could cyberwar knock us back to the Stone Age? – ZDNet
BTW, the crash of the auto makers is baked in the cake; Tyler Durden Blog | Are Automakers About To Hit The Panic Button? | Talkmarkets
"China's economic collapse has crushed forecasts for the automakers.
Inventories are already at record highs. And July saw a massive surge in production."
"About $119 billion in auto loans originated in the second quarter of this year" Just imagine the banks trying to repo a couple million cars.

[Danny B]

wage imbalance, Failed policies

After WW II, America had 3% of the population and 50% of the manufacturing capacity. This allowed us to inflate both wages and the dollar. This has come to an end, especially when containerized shipping threw all of our manufacturing into global competition. 50% of the cost of anything is for the finance industry. This allowed China to undercut American prices with lower finance costs . Chinese work for a small fraction of American wages. This allowed China to undercut American labor costs. China burst on the scene and dominated manufacturing. They sold to everybody and displaced high-paid workers. These, now unemployed workers can't buy stuff from China. In retrospect, this isn't a surprise.
WHILE China was growing at 7---19% a year, they engorged the commodities markets. As purchasing power of formerly well-off Westerners falls, Chinese exports fall. As exports fall, resource economies fall. Again, not a surprise.
" (China) which, for some years now, has acted as a locomotive, pulling along the rest of the world."
China now wants to concentrate on their DOMESTIC market to replace the now-lost foreign markets. They have a problem. "Chinese wages have been rising, making its products less competitive"
"China has been trying to engineer a shift from export-led growth to an expansion based on consumer spending –" China is less competitive if wages rise but, China can't have a domestic consumer economy if wages DON'T rise. Eight reasons why China’s currency crisis matters to us all | Business | The Guardian

There are plenty of complaints that China is stealing jobs but, this is caused in large part by the predations of the finance industry and GOV. "Foxconn — the China-based outsource manufacturer that makes the iPhone — employs more than 300,000 people inside its walled “iPhone City.”

The average worker purportedly is paid around 1,000 yuan — or $156 — after taxes per month. That’s what a US worker would make before taxes in a single day."
Why China is the bull in a US shop | New York Post

"Having grown 9.8pc a year since the late-Seventies, the Chinese economy now outstrips America on a purchasing power parity basis (adjusted for living standards). " Ah yes,,, adjusted for living standards. OUR living standards are soon to get adjusted.
The Central Banks are knowingly following failed policies. "That’s one of the ideas of Prospect Theory. Normally people are risk averse, they don’t risk what little they still have if they have anything left – however they do gamble when all of their other options seem hopeless anyway. Underlying all of this is that the rising incomes are no longer there."
Approaching a Global Deflationary Crisis? | Credo: Economic beliefs in a world in crisis

The bankers have always done pump-and-dump to fleece anybody who had money. The computational power of computers is making this scheme much more obvious. The internet soap-box has allowed poor but, informed people to sound the alarm. The bankers are forced to be far more obvious,,, far more predatory. The bail-in laws will allow the banks to take client's money. BUT, a lot of people know to get their money out of banks. It remains to be seen if credit-unions and brokerage houses will do bail-ins.

[Danny B]

Deflation indicators

A few more links; Video: Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control - Telegraph
Market timer Tom McClellan sees stocks set up for ‘ugly decline’ as early as Thursday - MarketWatch
Funds For Fracking Finally Dry Up: One Last Hail Mary Pass Remains | Zero Hedge
GREAT graph; Why Everyone Is So Nervous About What China Does Next, In One Chart | Zero Hedge
Lost earning power; That’s right. Nearly eight years and $3.5 trillion of Fed money printing later, yet the vaunted American consumer is struggling to stay above the flat line, not shopping up a storm.
The Wall Street Ponzi At Work——The Stock Pumping Swindle Behind Four Retail Zombies | David Stockman's Contra Corner
Ah yes, that money went to people who speculate, NOT to people who spend.
"This is yet another confirmation that we are facing a strong dollar ahead, ushering in this age of DEFLATION, which should start to hit in the USA after October." "No degree of austerity by the ECB will reverse the economic decline in Europe. Socialism has reduced Europe from a major economic power to a shadow of its former self. The bulk of the money supply today is DEBT, not actual currency. " "The idea of creating money is only the old school concept of monetary inflation, whereas today the bulk of money creation is actually debt. This is not something that can be PAID off; the only outcome is default."
http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35992

[BroMikey]

It looks like getting a loan for that shiny gold tooth

is going to be harder than I thought. The Globalist have

cause the AMERICAN's to veer from their once rigid

path on "charging it" til it hurts and pass the notes to

a lawyer who can take 8 cards and melt them into one

casting. Those sneaking blokes off shore, God hating, control

freaks have gone and done it now.

Just thinking back when I talked to my 72 year old builder

friend who made the big bucks all through the years left

with the baby boomers holding the bag.

Much to his dismay the 3 or 4 cards he had were eating him

alive with no end in site so when he dies the FED's can move

in and seize everything he has worked for.

Make the payment and live high on the hog.


After all that generation was favored as they were given

4000-6000-10,000 dollars per month to retire on as early as 50 years

old while the rest of the emerging followers in the stream of life

are going to get the minimum across the board, if that.


The only reason America looks like it is doing well is because

as long as they continue to pay the $1000 mortgage they can

get another $5000 to buy anything they want, til they can't pay

then it all goes back to the bank.


We will be reduced to the level financially of every nation on earth

and lower for sometime. Better get yer bug out bags or bug out

plans made ahead of scheduled.


Oh yeah and one more thing, since We American's live to brag

and are a haughty people, when the money goes so many will

jump from tall buildings to end their existence. Or they will resort to

the under world philosophy of survival of the fittest.


When it rains, it pours and what we will see is that very few

American's still retain the Pioneering heart to be free by trusting

in GOD and not their money.


America has been weighted for the last 50 years with the balances

teetering in the wrong direction.


Very few today could keep from killing one another in the event

of a real war where each man must watch the other man's back.

These American's today are in total confusion.

[Ruphus]

Consumer debt

I hope you can comment on this:

Consumer Debt Statistics, Definition and Economic Impact

Basically the article says that growing debt is a good sign for a healthy economy. The stats for debt in the last 8 months are about 10 times greater than the average of the last few years.

[Danny B]

How Consumer Debt Benefits the Economy

Excerpts; "As long as the economy grows, you can pay off this debt more easily in the future. That's because your education allows you a better-paying job, and the cars and furniture you buy create jobs. This creates an upward cycle,"
ALL fiat currencies fail after 30--40 years. During the upswing, it is possible to grow the economy with increasing credit. ALL credit bubbles eventually pop. LOTS of people are using student loans to finance their daily survival. Same for credit cards.
The economy is not growing. Shadow Government Statistics - Home Page

[Ruphus]

LOTS of people are using student loans to finance their daily survival. Same for credit cards.
The economy is not growing.

I agree, the economy appears to be stuck.

But I wondered why the sudden increase in consumer debt that has continued for months? It started in 2014......Oh maybe this is why....


"The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act relieves some of the debt burden on college grads repaying their student loans. College students enrolling on or after July 1, 2014 can take advantage of these initiatives:
Income-Based Repayment Plan (IBR). Obama’s new law expands the income-driven repayment plans that are currently available to student borrowers. According to the revised IBR plan, graduates pay a maximum of 10 percent of their discretionary income — or their remaining earnings after they have covered basic living expenses like housing and food. Before 2014, the maximum repayment was 15 percent of the borrower’s disposable income. The Obama Administration estimates that over 1 million borrowers will enjoy reduced loan repayments as a result of this plan.

Student Loan Forgiveness.

After 20 years of making regular payments on a student loan, responsible borrowers can qualify to have the rest of their loan forgiven. Before 2014, student loan debt could be forgiven after 25 years. Under the new law, public service workers (teachers, nurses, peace officers, members of the military, and others) may qualify for loan forgiveness after 10 years of making regular monthly payments.

The terms of Obama’s loan forgiveness initiatives apply only to federal loans, not to private student loans. Refinancing or consolidating private loans can make it easier to repay private debts. Meanwhile, if you have both federal and private loans, lowering your monthly federal payments will allow you to devote more of your income to paying off your more expensive private loans."

[Danny B]

Too little,,, too late

20 years huh?? Such a deal.
" More than two million college graduates are now unemployed and millions more are underemployed."
"Recently, Investors Business Daily reported that for the first time in history, the majority of jobless workers (57 percent) have attended college."
"Just 14 percent of graduating college seniors in 2015 have accepted real job; thus five in six college graduates have no job lined up"
AND
"Study: Over 27% of Student Loans Are in Default - Breitbart"
That is on $ 1.4 trillion.

[BroMikey]

Collection of news clips.

[VIDEO]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsmxOWpqmPI[/VIDEO]





[VIDEO]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObCG6baxgko[/VIDEO]

[Danny B]

Gold and bogus bonds

During the Bretton Woods negotiations, many States wanted an international currency,, the Bancor. America had a LOT of gold and wanted gold to be the international standard and not the Bancor. Times have changed and the PTB in the district of corruption want the SDR to be the international currency and NOT gold. America gets rid of all it's gold. THE U.S. EMPIRE INVESTMENT STRATEGY: Export All Of It?s Gold? The Barbarous Relic : SRSrocco Report
Decades ago, America flipped from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation. The gold is gone and America wants to continue to pay for everything with conjured-up paper. Russia and China want gold to re-enter the picture. Ditching the dollar: Russia, China to create new gold market
This makes PERFECT sense. Triffin's dilemma states that every State that produces a surplus will want to store their surplus in whatever the reserve currency is. As States got richer and richer, they demanded that America print more and more currency and bonds. America obliged. This gave America a credit card to trash the world.
The R.O.W. doesn't want to see this happen ever again and prefer to use gold to store excess wealth.
CURRENTLY, the U.S. dollar is very strong because Many States are accustomed to storing their surpluses in dollars. Also, dollars were very safe. There is a lot of demand for dollars and dollar instruments. There is a lot of temptation too;
"The abuse is laced all through the USTreasury Bond market. To begin with, JPMorgan is on the hot seat, the center of some unwanted attention since it has become known that the venerable crime syndicate hive had sold over twice the total USGovt bond issuance in its worldwide offices. At one point in 2013, the Jackass came to learn that from past data, almost $4.5 trillion in USTBonds were sold by JPMorgue when only $2.2 trillion had been issued formally. Some foreign nations like Italy had been caught using each sovereign bond serial number twice in sales."
Cantor Fitzgerald was caught years ago selling bogus bonds. There was never prosecution because all the evidence was destroyed when an airplane crashed into their offices. Don't worry though, the CEO happened to not be at work that day. Pretty lucky when you consider that the plane crashed directly into their offices and killed more than 500. AA settled the suit for $ 135 million and the CEO got the bulk of the money and none went to the families. 9-11 Settlement Distribution Stirs Ire Among Cantor Insiders | Fox Business
Pretty lucky guy.
" (ZIRP) exerts a powerful force toward killing the USEconomy from the street level. It assures and delivers an inadequate income for pensions and insurance firms. The 0% rate has been in place since 2009, when the public was told it would be temporary. The Jackass warned it would be permanent. Pensions cannot meet their obligations any longer, and have resorted to selling their core holding assets, often called their nut. Not a single corporate or state pension fund has avoided serious problems. Insurance firms are more sprawling in their structure. They cannot meet their obligations any longer, and have resorted to selling their core holding assets, their nut. "

QE hasn't stopped,,, it's just out of sight. " The USFed uses the Reverse REPO to hide some of its QE volume. "
"Sometimes the USFed announces a ripe volume of Reverse REPO infusions into the system. . The USFed uses the Reverse REPO to hide some of its QE volume. It is concealed QE volume, part of the biggest lie in US financial history since the USFed has generated multiple $trillions in hidden channel support. The key is no collateral placed on the opposite side of the window. "
NO collateral,,, sweet deal.
"It indicates counterfeit or naked shorting by Wall Street banks. They have found a way to bring in liquidity to their broken insolvent big banks, selling USTBonds they do not own, receiving the funds into the corporate treasuries, improving handsomely their cash flow, never to deliver on the product.
And what do they do with this stolen liquidity? They buy tons of gold The 'Big Long' - Goldman Sachs And HSBC Buy 7.1 Tons Of Physical Gold | Seeking Alpha

"The United Nations drug task force identified the New York money center banks as surviving the aftermath of the Lehman failure in 2008, only due to the heavy flow of narco trafficking money. "
"The profits are astronomical, like between $800 billion and $1.2 trillion each and every year since 2010-2011 when the peak industrial output was realized from the vertically integrated industrial engineering project led by Langley. The USGovt backs the business by covering the costs within the Defense budget. It is a brilliant business model."
QE Death Sentence & USTBond Black Hole

[Danny B]

The FED has no "tools" that work

The computer ate my composition so, I'll do a short version. Everybody and their dog knows that Austerity does not work. The FED just came out and said that QE does not work. "So in sum, the vice President of the St. Louis Fed has taken a look around and discovered that in fact, not only have trillions in asset purchases not worked when it comes to creating "healthy" inflation and boosting growth in the US, these asset purchases haven't worked anywhere they've been tried."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...qe-was-mistake
America is blessed with 7 bubbles. How Much Time Before "The 7 Bubbles of America" Start to Burst? - munKNEE dot.com

"In a word, the Greenspan era of central bank driven price falsification and monetization of trillions of existing assets with credits conjured from thin air has generated a $50 trillion overhang of excess financialization."
"Stated differently, under a regime of honest money and market determined financial prices, the combined value of corporate equities and credit market debt would not have mushroomed by 8X—- from $11 trillion to $93 trillion—- during the past 27 years. For crying out loud, the nominal GDP grew by only 3.5X during the identical span."
David Stockman Blog | The Warren Buffett Economy—Why Its Days Are Numbered, Part 2 | Talkmarkets
So, what do you think will happen to the $ 50 trillion extra?
Canada is getting a painful lesson in what it means to slide down to a global-mean wage. Canada “Getting Clocked� by Something Far Bigger than Oil | Wolf Street

Andy Hoffman; "anything less than “QE to Infinity” will result in an instantaneous collapse of all things financial, economic, and political. "
"Or commodity prices remaining below the 2008 crisis lows – and barely above 40-year lows – with the $500 billion of high yield bonds underlying the imploding U.S. shale oil industry in freefall"
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...r=Andy+Hoffman

Headlines;
• Oil Goes Down, Bankruptcies Go Up – The 5 Frackers Next To Fall (Forbes)
• Brace For More Dividend Cuts As Canada’s Oil Patch Runs Out Of Cash (Bloomberg)
Purchasing power has collapsed in the lower loop of the economy. People stop buying and other people have to stop producing. The upper loop of the economy responds to this by; producing more and more debt paper as there is less and less wealth produced.
There is a massive fall-off in commodity consumption that has fallen even lower than the bad days of 2008. This has produced a glut on the market, especially for oil. There are even projections for $ 20 a bbl. This would bankrupt most producers. http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/newsw...n=widgetphase2
The crashing oil derivatives are probably worth $ 50 trillion worldwide. $ 14.3 trillion just in America.

[Danny B]

The FED's empty toolbox

"A mistake made by central bankers is to believe that the price of money is its interest rate, instead of the reciprocal of the price of the products for which it is exchanged. Interest rates are money's time preference, which in free markets broadly reflects the average time preference of all the individual goods bought with money. The problem with monetarism is that it ignores this temporal aspect of exchange"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-0...sequences-gold
The interest rate is not the price of money.
It is well proven that austerity does not work.

• The US government has three main “tools” for pumping cash into the economy to fight a crisis...
Cut interest rates,,, cut taxes,,, print money. These are the standard tools. Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Run Out of Ammo | Casey Research
The FED now claims that printing money doesn't work. So, none of the traditional "tools" work.
" • We agree that the government will “use up” its traditional tools early in the next crisis…

But we don’t think the government will stop there.

In the last crisis, the government proved it would do anything to keep the financial system together. After it uses up its traditional tools, it will likely create new, more dangerous, ones.

It might find a new way to print money. It might make interest rates negative to force Americans to spend instead of save."
Think of the irrationality of trying to force people to "spend instead of saving" when everyone is out of work.
Defence contractors get hugely lucrative no-bid contracts. Millions of people are on welfare. $Trillions are doled out to the beneficiaries of the welfare-warfare State. 50% of Americas receive a check from GOV. Socialism for both the rich and the poor.
Current GOV deficit is reported at $18 trillion with $ 212 trillion of unfunded liabilities. Not to worry,, the FED has a toolbox.

We had a lock on the prime value-added industry. We lost that and blew a credit bubble to try to maintain our standard of living. Wealth creation went WAY down so, the bankers created massive debt to compensate. These debt notes are "calls" on future goods and services from people who are unemployed.
The Council on Foreign Relations has proposed that the FED credit every bank account with ~ $80,000. That idea certainly qualifies as "unconventional".

[Danny B]

Harry Dent

There are several writers who have a good track record at economic predictions. Most won't give dates. The not quite so smart ones give dates. Then, there is Martin Armstrong. He gives exact dates. There are several writers who give progress reports on the economic pathogenesis. They don't need dates because they report on phase changes.
Harry Dent has a good track record. He along with a few others report just how bad the effects are from the collapse in oil prices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ic1iD9SNog
Aug 13, 2015,,, Expert: Weeks Till Global Collapse

Commodities have collapsed, China has collapsed about 35%. All the giant funds that depend on interest income are collapsing. Tech and media stocks are crashing.
Headlines; Marc Faber says USA is ‘the last man standing’ – Market Sanity
,,, Oil bear market will end in panic liquidation – CNBC Faber stock market crash prediction doesn't go far enough – Money Morning
If the FED raises interest rates, the economy is instantly vaporized. If they don't raise interest rates, the funds collapse. There is about a $ 100 trillion debt overhang that isn't connected to any economic reality.

" the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their forefathers fought for"
So, how will this happen? The markets are collapsing and investors are running for safety. Some go to U.S. Treasury bonds,,, slated to collapse. Some go to banks,,,they all have bail-in laws.
Some go to residential RE,,,default and foreclosure will bring that down, How Western Governments Will Steal Your Land, Part I | Zero Hedge

[Danny B]

armstrong and time

MARTIN ARMSTRONG ABOUT HIS DISCOVERY
“PI IS THE ABSOLUTE PERFECT CYCLE. IT IS THE WAY ENERGY MOVES, IS WHY WE ARE BORN, WE LIVE AND WE DIE, IS THE ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING.“
"Nobody can watch everything everywhere 24hrs a day and then interpret it to be always correct. You can attribute such super-human ability to me, accuse me of manipulating the entire world, ignore me as an anomaly, or plagiarise me and pretend you are the smartest person alive.

Others have tried so desperately to rob this technology from me to make a fortune or to just try to undo the accomplishments. None of this will change the simple fact that perhaps there is another way and the world just may not be flat after all. In their personal greed, they cannot stop for one second and see that they are only part of the cycle and are the evil invisible hand that keeps society trapped in a vortex of corruption unable to ever escape to the next level of the game we call life."

READ LESS
"I understand I have an expiration date. If this were my theory, I would shut-up, make as much as I can, and run to some remote island and wait for the mushroom cloud to dissipate. However, since this is my discovery, rather than a predetermined theory, then I feel I have an obligation to pass it along at least for my own posterity.
So yes, we will go public and I have just brought in a CEO to head the company with decades of experience as an institutional client for several major firms over the years. What we have up is still in the testing phase and we will be moving that to a more stable platform that is secure for we have to take into account the tactics of the NSA.

It is my hope to get ready to go public and pass my discoveries on so this level of analysis will continue when I am no longer here. Hopefully, this major effort will finally get people to comprehend that analysis cannot be personal opinion – we are really all connected. It is time that analysis departs on the next train to get out of this primitive age of opinion that is not much different from when medicine bled patients to get the disease out even if a common cold."

"The answers lie in the study of TIME, not personal opinion of someone being smarter than another or dumb luck. We all have a shelf-expiration date like a bottle of milk. With every single advancement in knowledge, there is resistance, punishment, and death. They burned Bruno alive at the stake for insisting that the sun was the center and the earth revolved around it along with the planets. The teachers of Einstein said he was a dreamer that would amount to nothing.

TIME is the fourth dimension. Einstein’s entire theory of relativity is about TIME. Yet with all of this, people resist, hate my guts, accuse me of manipulating the world, all because it conflicts with what they WANT to believe. When we just recently published the Cycles of War report last year, there were people who said it was absurd and a joke for nobody could predict war in such a manner. The closed mind is what keeps us in a perpetual cycle of war. We cannot advance until we take that first step to understand TIME.
Einstein wrote:
Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.

TIME is far more than just cyclical analysis. There are those who can try to find cycles and then make a forecast. However, that is still just a flat model that does not embrace the four-dimensional space-time element. There is much more to this than just determining a single frequency. TIME unifies everything and nothing could function, move, or exist without TIME. A single cell can do nothing by itself without movement that requires TIME.
Life could not exist without TIME, yet we do not bother to even explore thanks to prejudice and fear of what we might bump into in the middle of the night."
"In physics, we build upon the knowledge and discoveries of each person who went before us. In the social sciences, it is all about lies, manipulations, and opinions. Nobody seems to care to discover HOW something functions – only HOW to make it function as they would like to see (Marx-Keynes-Government). This is the curse of mankind. This is what plagues our soul and retards our advancement. Until we take that one last giant step for mankind as Neil Armstrong said, we will forever remain trapped in a violent and corrupt world with no hope of ever seeing the real light of day.

There is a whole new dawn awaiting us in knowledge and understanding. It is a mind twister – but this is a journey we simply have to take. It is indeed TIME that awaits our exploration. And as for my critics who cannot fathom cyclical analysis, well, knowledge is not for everyone.

Einstein said it best: “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” This is the secret to cyclical analysis but it is truly a mind changer. I promise we will go public to protect these systems and those who are clients can help to ensure that this technology remains for us all – not for some dark corner of humanity.

[Danny B]

Mad Max event

Armstrong; "Only during a decline under extreme circumstances when the system moves to a Mad Max event or Dark Age do we get the full blown control-alt-delete. This has happened many times throughout history and the recovery is consistent – 600 years for both Europe and Asia although different periods. At such points, all that is left is food. Property and even gold have no value for there is no commerce. "
The Mad Max Event | Armstrong Economics
Hugo Salinas price, The Daily Bell - Hugo Salinas Price on Gold and the Potential for '500 Years of Darkness'
There is quite a bit of proof that the economy runs in cycles; If Economic Cycle Theorists Are Correct, 2015 To 2020 Will Be Devastating For The US | Zero Hedge

Man has stumbled around the dark for quite a long time. Our leaders consistently failed us because they were power hungry. Many of our early gods were gods of war. There is a possibility of change.
Model Overview | Armstrong Economics
We need new gods and new leaders. We need leaders / advisors who don't make mistakes. We have a chance if we let the silicon gods advise us.
Computer independently solves 120-year-old biological mystery Computer independently solves 120-year-old biological mystery (Wired UK)
"Watson's successful diagnosis rate for lung cancer is 90 percent, compared to 50 percent for human doctors." " Watson can perform more than 80 trillion operations per second, and can read and understand 200 million pages of text in 3 seconds" IBM pdf

Armstrong is planning on "releasing " Socrates. Imagine Socrates and Watson as permanent residents in the cloud. Watson is reportedly NOT connected to the internet. Socrates receives RSS feeds and "knows" all current news. Would this be allowed? Could it be blocked?

Here are some pertinent links. You can spend a lot of time trying to divine the future.
"Robot fact-checkers will soon be able to verify the web" Robot fact-checkers will soon be able to verify the web (Wired UK)
The growth of "open source" http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/arch...e-big-question
"DIG already has a base of 50 million webpages from which it has extracted two billion records, and it continues to collect another 5,000 pages every hour".
"There are plenty more uses for a technology such as DIG, and in an ISI series of slides on the software both arms trafficking and the drugs trade are flagged up as potential areas of application. Szekely and Knoblock also already using it to analyse material science research."
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...king-data-hack
We are in the process of discovering that most accepted economic theory is worthless. It was promulgated by bankers wishing to continue their reign of control. It was promulgated by GOV for the same reason. Both of the major predators face the prospect of having the food trough removed.
Human nature is incompatible with socialism. Maybe it can be presented differently; http://peterjoseph.info/economics-sp...n-los-angeles/
We definitely need to change present governance; http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/arch...start/e-voting
We are going to crash. Armstrong has written a lot about Cycles of war. It would be nice to think that we can avoid war this time. The incident with the Donald Cook shows possibilities. http://allnewspipeline.com/Has_Russi...The_Future.php