Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Fifth part

There must be something objectionable because I had to break it up again.

"abundant resources" is the government dole. "delayed sexual activity" certainly does NOT describe the average immigrant from islamic societies. "competition for limited resources among members." holds true for those who want to provide a good upbringing for their offspring. For those people who just want to pump out babies and abandon them, there is no great limit of resources. They just don't need as much. This mindset makes it easier for the ignorant to out-populate the thinking people. Especially when the bleeding-heart liberals support the breeders.

Keynesian economics demands an ever-growing credit bubble. Japan shows us that you must have a growing population to have growing consumption. The people who push tainted immigration into the U.S know that they won't have the trash living in their neighborhoods. They just want more warm bodies.

[Danny B]

Bond vigilantes, dollar short-sellers,, Trump will have his hands tied

Wiki; "A bond vigilante is a bond market investor who protests monetary or fiscal policies he considers inflationary by selling bonds, thus increasing yields.[1]

In the bond market, prices move inversely to yields. When investors perceive that inflation risk or credit risk is rising they demand higher yields to compensate for the added risk.[2] As a result, bond prices fall and yields rise, which increases the net cost of borrowing. The term references the ability of the bond market to serve as a restraint on the government's ability to over-spend and over-borrow."
When GOV over-prints, bond investors demand more spread to compensate for lost purchasing power of their capital+interest. Historically, they would also flee into gold to preserve wealth. With the FED monetising the debt and buying treasury bill issuance, bond vigilantes have less influence. Starting in the late 70s, GOV began to manipulate the gold markets to keep investors out.

FED GOV credit markets are "worth" about $ 40 trillion dollars. The average taxpayer is on the hook for about $ 167,000. This will never be paid. It also appears that "they" can never inflate away the pain of repaying all this debt. One could speculate on a total collapse of sovereign debt as Armstrong has forecast.
Besides the bond vigilantes, there is another group that keeps a good eye of the FED flow of funds. These are the short-sellers. They have recently piled on to short-selling the dollar.
This is an excellent article and I'll link a few of the VERY interesting graphs that show a very painful reality.
Treasury Specs Are So Short, It Is Now A 4 Sigma Event | Zero Hedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...%20specs_0.jpg

" The International Economy is burdened with all-time-record levels of both Sovereign and Business Debt. Over $150 Trillion according to the IMF. "
"As former OMB Director David Stockman puts it:
“Trump and his so-called GOP Majorities are caught in a giant inherited Debt Trap, and will therefore be foiled time and time again as they attempt to implement the big Tax Cuts and infrastructure stimulus programs that the Casino (Wall Street-ed.) has already so foolishly “priced-in.” [Emphasis added]"

" The USA’s 20 Trillion Debt Ceiling will be hit in Mid-March with dramatically negative consequences for the Markets whether it is raised or not

---And consider the Corporate Earnings Bubble. The Russell 2000 is now trading at 230 times reported Earnings!!"
"the Establishment aka The Globalist Deep State is not happy about the election of Donald Trump. As a Nationalist and Internationalist, he is not one of them and is not controlled by them. They have every reason to keep him from succeeding so they can regain power. Thus, it is likely they will use the impending Markets Collapses and Chaos as a pretext to regain Global Domination. "
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...eepcaster&mk=1 Lots more info.

More cool graphs;
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2017/...-moon.html?m=1
Actually, EXCELLENT graphs.

[Danny B]

The Yuan is caught between a rock and a rock

The FED/IMF/ dollar is stuck in a ZIRP rut that it can't escape. ZIRP kills all interest income but, an escape from ZIRP brings bankruptcy.
China has their own sort of intractable problem. China prints to save everything that it inflated. The more that it prints, the more that capital flees the country. They print to lower the Yuan and keep their export markets going. To keep the Yuan from getting too weak, they sell their dollar reserves and buy Yuan. It's a balancing act that doesn't have much of a future.

"China last devalued between December 2015 and January 2016. The result? U.S. stocks kicked off the year to their worst start ever. And that was only a 2% devaluation.

China previously devalued 4% in August 2015. That was enough to send the Dow plunging 508 points in one session — the Dow’s eighth-worst single-day crash in its history."
"China wants a weak currency to spark its export economy. Weak, yes. But not too weak"
"More capital flight out of China leads to more weakness as investors dump yuan for dollars.
So China must put a floor under the yuan to end the capital flight."
"That means the Chinese central bank been dumping dollars to steady the yuan. But here’s Catch-22: To defend the yuan, it’s been selling dollars at such a gait… that it’s burned a gaping hole through its dollar reserves. It’s unsustainable.

China’s reserves fell nearly $320 billion last year, to $3.01 trillion. That’s piled on top of a record loss of $513 billion in 2015. $3 trillion in reserves may sound like a lot. But for China, it’s less than you might think…"
"China started 2015 with about $4 trillion in hard currency reserves. About $1 trillion fled the country in 2015 and 2016 based on fears of yuan devaluation. That’s classic capital flight.

Another $1 trillion is relatively illiquid, including direct investments in mines and natural resources through sovereign wealth funds such as China Investment Corp. That’s wealth, but it’s not money that can be used in a liquidity crisis. "
"Finally, $1 trillion has to be held as a precautionary reserve to bail out China’s insolvent banks and Ponzi-style “wealth management products.” Failure to bail out the banks… could lead to social unrest that would topple Communist rule, so that won’t be allowed.

“That,” says Jim, “leaves only $1 trillion of the original $4 trillion in liquid form.” And if it keeps jettisoning dollars at this rate, “China will be devoid of useable liquid assets by late 2017.”
“History shows that weak capital controls may be worse that no controls because they send a message of ‘no confidence’ while not really stopping the outflows.”

So… If the yuan’s going to depreciate anyway and capital controls are shams, how does China manage the problem without further depleting its dollar reserves?

Devaluation.
Just flat out devalue the yuan. That way they don’t have to keep torching dollars to try to prop it up. "
“Yuan devaluation is happening in baby steps, but that may soon turn into a one-time ‘maxi-devaluation’ of 30% or more to stop the bleeding.”

The last times China devalued 2% and 4% the stock market practically collapsed. What happens if it devalues 30%? And what if the Fed can’t pull another rabbit out of that tired old hat?"
https://dailyreckoning.com/china-may-soon-shock-market/

A strong Yuan brings a crash in exports and manufacturing.
A weak Yuan brings capital flight and an eventual end to dollar reserves.
Trump has talked equal tariffs to & from China. The Chinese reply is; bring it on. Capital will flee to the best managed economy and that is NOT China.
Chinese businessmen export goods with an inflated invoice. Upon receipt, the receiver pays the agreed-upon(lower) price and deposits the difference in a foreign account for the exporter.
This difference in invoicing has moved about $ 900 billion out of China last year.

[Danny B]

Hoffman, thermonuclear currency war, downhill in the EU

It was summer of 2005 that I concluded that we were going to crash. This came from reading the articles written by gold bugs. Gold Bugs are obviously going to write a slanted article but, that doesn’t mean that the main body does not contain any truth. There are ALWAYS other opinions for balance. The good thing about the net is; people with no financial interest in a subject can still publish. Charles Hugh Smith writes VERY well and only asks ONE DOLLAR a month for his newsletter. Needless to say, I'm not getting paid to write here.

Andy Hoffman is a gold bug BUT, he has done very well at predicting events. He has a new article that is longish but, it has a lot of important info and conclusions.
"Then, when the powers that be nearly lost control in 2011 – when it became readily apparent that their post-2008 market-saving mechanisms (like TARP) were failing, they passed the “point of no return” (in silver, in May; and in gold, in September); when they realized they must manipulate all markets, all of the time – or face a disastrous, immediate defeat at the hands of “Economic Mother Nature.”
" However, clearly Trump has taken the “final currency war” I warned of four years thermonuclear, inadvertently putting the gold and silver Cartel “on notice” that its days are numbered. "
"Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s historic Davos speech – in which he attacked protectionism, claimed China had no intention of devaluing the Yuan (LOL, after having devalued it by 15% in the past 17 months), and claiming China would “take the gloves off”

"Throw in the fraudulent OPEC “production cut” – which with each passing day, inches closer to being “called out” – and you have the ingredients for an historic financial market “transformation” (detonation) in the coming months. "
"Thus, when Trump “shocked the world” last night by claiming the dollar is “too strong”; and to boot, slamming the Republicans’ “border adjustment tax” proposal, in lieu of the hard-coated import tariffs he favors, he for all intents and purposes took the aforementioned “final currency war” thermonuclear;"

"In other words, as I wrote last week, the death throes of “money” are becoming eminently visible – making it more and more likely that the inevitable “run” from worthless fiat; and into “priceless” Precious Metals”; is rapidly approaching "
The worthless fiat is very valuable because there there is no other viable medium of exchange. The "run" is from the bond market.
Trump Takes The Final Currency War Thermonuclear, Puts Gold Cartel On Notice! | SilverSeek.com

Here is an article about credit tightening in 1937 causing a huge contraction in the economy. These contractions are always in the upper loop and have little effect in the lower loop. The exception is; a contraction in liar-loans to people who are debt saturated. Liar-loans are in full bloom in the auto sales industry. This is part of the obummer stimulus to pave the way for Killary. If the PTB want to hand Trump a contraction, they can just stop liar loans.
2017?Shades of 1937 | Paul Kasriel | FINANCIAL SENSE
1/18 Runaway credit card debt makes 2017 look like 2007 – Financial Sense

Spanish bankers were sentenced to fines and jail time for fleecing their banks. They ignored the fines and demanded that the sentences be withdrawn. It didn't work out very well for them. Spanish bankers sent to jail in landmark ruling - The Local

The Eurozone was a BAD idea and was built on fraud. The architects ignored the debt history of the weaker States. The southern States had a long history of devaluation and default. They were locked into the strait-jacket of a common currency. The EU was to be a socialist heaven with a fascist control mechanism. Socialism always breaks the bank because of it's underlying mantra. "to each, as to his needs" ,,, From each, as to his abilities." Ignore human nature at your peril.
Euro Crisis Deepens This is an old article but, it shows that nothing has gotten better.

The economy runs in cycles but, pension managers figure that the good times will never end. The Dallas Pension Fiasco Is Just The Beginning | Zero Hedge

[Danny B]

Understanding the effects of GOV expenditures

Vids;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_AoyucDOw0 The IRS couldn't be bothered to collect taxes from the rich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZM5hxF35No GOV paid tons of money for scanners that don't work well when dogs work VERY well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuuRBoICEMQ Waste in Medicare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0qc0ZfXwMY $ 75 K to repair a few bicycles.
Ammo, 14 1/2 million bullets bought,,, 15 fired. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5REI-_WJKuY

$20 million spent on firewood for Afghans, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_xsPZW5n3s
$900 billion waste in Medicare, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDszvp8_ffA
Then, it gets surreal, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2d1OOjeqmU

Socialism is the firewall between Darwinian pressures and those who have no job niche in private enterprise. The more that we automate, the more people who are left out of the private sector.
GOV can print money but, it has to inject it into the economy. U.S. GOV reportedly spends 24% of the GDP. How then, to get the money from the digital printing press, into circulation in the economy.
GOV "wastes" trillions of dollars by pumping it into the economy. The money costs nothing to GOV so, why not? It employs a lot of people.

F-35 Turkey Crisis Soars To $1.5 TRILLION
F-35 Is UNFIT For Combat Ops - Pentagon This Junkpile Still Has Over 276 Defects
US Navy's newest $12.9bn supercarrier doesn't work: Most... - Daily Mail
Congress Buys the Navy a $400 Million Pork Ship - POLITICO Magazine

Almost everything FED GOV does is some kind of job program. The money costs "Nothing". The amount is added to the federal debt pile. Total outstanding federal debt is about $ 40 trillion, all included. The working classes are employed in GOV "jobs" programs. The working class people are expected to repay the federal debt with their taxes.
So where did the money come from? How is it going to be repaid?

The money was created as debt in the bond market. The bond buyers were told that it is risk-free,,, even though all States eventually default. The working poor were expected to pay this debt through taxes and currency inflation. More money printed to pay old debt. Historically, 50% of the burden of repaying the debt was erased through inflation.
GOV minimises reported inflation to keep bond buyers coming back.

"as of March 23rd 2006 the government will no longer be publishing the M3 money supply data." " M3 tracks what the big boys are doing with the money. This includes US dollars held in banks in Canada and the UK"
http://inflationdata.com/articles/20...rnment-hiding/

War is another GOV jobs program but, war is expensive, "Pentagon being unable to account for up to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer funding. "
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-0...ds-unaccounted
"Alibaba'a Jack Ma Drops a Redpill in Davos: The U.S. Wasted $14 Trillion on Wars Over the Past 30 Years" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...-past-30-years
It wasn't wasted. It killed lots of little brown men and made a lot of people rich. It furthered the interests of israel. Though, in the long term, this is doubtful.

Trump has a different idea, Trump Plans 20% Cut of Federal Work Force
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/us/201701181...ral-workforce/
There will be far less money injected into the economy. "The federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of a total U.S. workforce of 236 million — just over 1 percent of the workforce. " Remember, 95 million of that workforce are not participating.
Trump is conditioned to run things for maximum efficiency. GOV is run for maximum in-efficiency.
The bond market is where it all comes un-glued.

Confidence and trust are extremely important for the PTB but,
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/surve...rldwide_012017
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/13/trust...al-survey.html
The fireworks start soon.

[Danny B]

Shrinking productive sector,,, growing parasitic structure

GOV has historically given "welfare" to people who would never make it in the private job market. GOV has historically given make-work jobs to people who were employable to some degree. For useless people with a degree, GOV employs them as bureaucrats. 1 out of 11 in the Beltway is a lawyer. The American legal system is set up specifically to employ and enrichen lawyers. Search, American rule (attorney's fees)

"countries with bigger government experienced less growth, and concluded that there would be much more prosperity if those nations merely reduced government " "general government compensation of employees grew faster than nominal GDP over the whole 2007-2014 crisis period"
https://fee.org/articles/overpaid-bu...ntire-economy/

"Pay for federal workers rose 53.7% between 2000 and 2008, compared to 28.5% for private sector workers.

Many of the new bureaucrats are being hired as a result of Obama's welfare-filled stimulus package, which largely repealed welfare reform."
"Earlier this year, (2009) Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento."
"The $9.3 trillion in deficits under Obama's budgets is twice the $4.4 trillion baseline left behind by Bush, despite at least $1.9 trillion in tax increases projected under Obama."
Socialism is expensive. https://cei.org/blog/overpaid-bureau...number-and-pay

"student,,, Loans are easily accessible for students, and universities are constantly raising rates because those loans are so easily accessible, "
Yep, GOV makes money available and the bureaucrats continually raise rates. GOV made money available for real estate and,,, prices went way up.
https://sputniknews.com/society/2017...ial-net-worth/

So, what happens when GOV blows a bubble in student loans? "latest loan total number over $1.4 trillion, rising at a pace of nearly $100 billion per year, but that the government - either on purpose or due to honest miscalculation - was not correctly accounting for the true extent of delinquencies and defaults."
"many more students have defaulted on or failed to pay back their college loans than the U.S. government previously believed."
"A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the problem resulted from a "technical programming error.""
"How bad was the data fabrication? When The Wall Street Journal analyzed the new numbers, the data revealed that the Department previously had inflated the repayment rates for 99.8% of all colleges and trade schools in the country."
"Previously, the Department said that 67% of its students were repaying loans within seven years of entering the repayment period. That number fell to 47% after the recalculation."
US Government Caught Massively Fabricating Student Loan Default Data | Zero Hedge
The cost of an education inflated at 3 timers the rate of general inflation. Everywhere that GOV makes money available, prices shoot up.

Millions of useless bureaucrats are spending $ billions into the economy. Should the bond market blow, this will all come to an end.
And what do the bureaucrats do to justify their jobs? http://www.investors.com/politics/ed...r-on-children/
America has $ 213 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Somebody is going to get the shaft.

Puerto Rico, "The report released Tuesday reported deficits of $230 million for the island’s Education Department" http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2211...o-steps-taken/

[Danny B]

Populism,,, a danger to corporatism

The Central Banks could easily produce the amount of money needed by the economy BUT, the private banks wanted a big piece of the action. The BIS pushed this worldwide; the private banks must be allowed to create the money, NOT the CB. Our wages are taxed. Our NECESSARY transaction are taxed but, their speculative transactions are NOT taxed. We vote,,, they take the shortcut and just buy politicians. WE produce, they consume. The money has gradually risen up to those who are best at siphoning off wealth.

All democracies eventually go bankrupt when the populace discovers that they can vote for themselves the whole pie. America is a democratic-republic to avoid the failings of a pure democracy (mob rule). The money powers have strangled democracy with corporatism. The pendulum has swung away from popular control. The blessing of having the reserve currency has allowed America to have a VERY generous pay scale in the public sector. This has gotten out of control and the public sector is going bankrupt. The Hegelian dialectic has come to it's eventual end.

Meanwhile, the private sector has gone broke. The triumph of corporatism over democracy has left a destroyed private sector. In response, people see that they don't really have democracy. The election of Trump was a political hand-grenade voted in by people destroyed by corporatism.
The rise of "populism" is seen as a great danger by the money powers,,, those same money powers who killed our standard of living with regulatory capture.
Forbes Welcome

The money powers scream about populism and turn a blind eye to debt; http://media.wix.com/ugd/1f610b_f878...9f89a27f60.pdf
The EU is going down FAST, partly because of the enormous cost of the bureaucratic overload imposed by Brussels.
The economies of the West are crashing. The predations of the bankers and bureaucrats is just a load too heavy. Public employees are NOT embracing populism because it threatens the public food trough that sustains them. Finance sector employees are not embracing populism because populism threatens the regulatory-capture that continues crony-capitalism.

1/20 Trump and Janet Yellen look to be on a collision course – NY Times Janet better have a well-padded helmet.
1/20 Ideological civil war in Davos – Mish The PTB have barely started to get an inkling of what the problem is.
The rotten 8astards who run the EU are chitting bricks over the fact that Trump has no particular interest in talking to them. https://www.apnews.com/37402db309e0482a922fc159f4e61dd1
What's worse, Marine Le Pen was seen in Trump Tower. That piece of dung, Junker is starting to panic, Hands off EU, Trump; we don't back Ohio secession: Juncker | Reuters

Trump can spread a HUGE populist contagion around the West. The corporatists can only blame themselves for using regulatory capture to destroy democracy in the name of increased profit. Socialism and communism rise as a response to fascism. We were OK with democracy. When they murdered democracy in the name of profit and killing emergent socialism, we responded with populism. It's too late now to backtrack.

[Danny B]

Debt saturation moves up the financial ladder

Sadly, Trump is going to rue the day that he got inspired to run for president. Many writers have opined that the PTB (who want world socialism) have allowed Trump to take the helm just before the crash to give a bad name to representative democracy. Obummer certainly had the pedal-to-the-metal before he left.
In an effort to extend-and-pretend, the State started to manipulate precious metals back in the 70s. That bought a bit of time. They eventually had to manipulate ALL markets to keep the ship-of-State off the rocks. The printing presses are running in hyperdrive. The galactic quantities of debt are driven into the system by,
The Federal Reserve board,, FED
The President's working group on markets, PPT
The exchange stabilization fund ESF

Debt saturation set in at different levels at different times.
"For the last few years, even with the U.S. trying and struggling to “play the game”, the debt structure had already begun to slow and roll over."
" As mentioned at the beginning, Richard Russell’s most famous quote was “inflate or die”. With regard to the above chart, Sir Richard was saying “inflation” (growth of debt) must either continually go up AND at an increasing rate …or it rolls over and dies. "

"Credit conditions all over the world have been tightening. The greatest fear of the Federal Reserve has always been a credit contraction that could not be reversed …their greatest fear has arrived and in spades! Please understand that “credit” affects EVERYTHING. Production, consumption and the “ability” to consume, and importantly “distribution”.
This is Sr. Price's graph of the fall in credit, https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/pr...es/grafica.png

"Looking at this graph, you will notice the parabolic move began in 1971. This was possible because “debt” had previously been constrained by the amount of purported U.S. gold holdings. De linking from gold allowed literally parabolic growth in new debt issuance. The increase in reserves really started to accelerate around the year 2000 and went vertical beginning around 2008."
The economy wanted to correct twice and the bankers and politicians wouldn't allow it.

" You see, unlike past “reflations”, there is now little to no unencumbered collateral left (even including sovereign balance sheets) anywhere in the world. The amount of existing debt (Ponzi clients) is so large, new additional debt (new Ponzi clients) has little to no effect on the entire pool. In other words, we have reached and passed the point of “debt saturation” where the ability to add meaningful debt does not exist."
Inflate or DIE! - Bill Holter | Silver Doctors

The gold standard put a limit on the growth of credit. That is a world that we can never go back to. The effects of the demographic crash and automation will demand that the State produce debt-free money OR face total disaster and revolution. U.S. GOV spends 24% of the GDP. That doesn't even include the injections from the FED, ESF and PPT. GOV is pumping in a LOT of liquidity. It is called debt-money BUT, it can never be repaid. From one point of view, it is debt-free money.

The bankers drug us down to keep the money rolling in. After they had fleeced the working man, they went after the next entity with money,,, the State. They have now bankrupted the State. ALL collateral is encumbered by paper claims. They are looking at the pension funds.

GOV is still harping on their dream of getting rid of cash. This shows just how out of touch the PTB are.
"In the today’s world, drug dealers and prostitutes accept credit cards.

No matter what you’re selling on a street corner, whether it’s hot dogs or marijuana, there are plenty of solutions (like Stripe, Square, or PayPal) to easily allow anyone to accept credit card payments.

But these intellectuals seem stuck in a Pablo Escobar fantasy that drug dealers have entire rooms filled with cash.

What Stiglitz, and perhaps many law enforcement agencies, fail to realize is that one of the biggest tools in masking illegal activity is actually Amazon.com.

Specifically, Amazon gift cards.

If you’re looking to quietly and easily pay large sums of money, even tens of thousands of dollars, you can do so with Amazon gift cards."
Nobel Prize Winner Tells Davos' Elite, US Should "Get Rid Of Currency" | Zero Hedge

If you look at ALL the numbers, the stock market is not worth the trouble, https://realinvestmentadvice.com/3-t...ly-optimistic/

"In Venezuela, political elites treated the oil industry like the parents’ credit card. They pulled out money to fund their socialist utopia, but did little to ensure the industry’s, and thus the nation’s, long-term viability. Why? Because they kept the industry’s profit for themselves, but not its losses. Those were for the Venezuelan people. "
The Truth About Venezuela's "Economic War" | Zero Hedge

Sadly, the exact same story in Mexico.
"Dargin is particularly critical of Pemex’s decline as a result of state monopoly, short-sightedness and endemic corruption. “Pemex is symbolic of what Mexico didn’t do right."
"Mexico’s oil industry was nationalised in 1938, giving Pemex monopoly over production and distribution of fuel in the country. However, over the decades, lack of investment, planning and poor management has come to erode Pemex’s production capacity, distribution and storage capacity. "
"Oil subsidies are like religion. Tinker with it and you have a volcanic eruption of anger. "
This is true of all GOV programs. Once people get used to them, they go ballistic if they end. http://www.forbes.com/sites/nishthac.../#660a466542ef

Both Mexico and Venezuela have LOTS of oil. Oil production is growing around the world. It has FALLEN by 25% in Venezuela. The socialists always seem to pass out a bit too much money and forget to maintain the wealth-producing mechanisms. Venezuela has it doubly bad. Imported food was so cheap that they let their home-grown agriculture sector wither away. Taking a clue from this, Mexico is building up their domestic agriculture sector.

[Danny B]

Debt limits, debt clocks, math errors,

Thin-air money is pouring into everything in the upper loop. How long can it go on? The FED is buying up Treasury bonds. What is the limit that they can buy.
Same for stocks. The various CBs are buying everything in sight. How long can it go on?
" At the moment, every US citizen owes over $205,000 with $7,600 interest, with every American family owing nearly $810,000." How are we going to pay this off,, with our government pension?
"It shows that when Obama entered the Oval office in 2008, the national debt stood at $10.7 trillion. Thus, the increase is 86 percent.

By the time Donald Trumps is sworn in, the debt will have grown to almost $20 trillion." "The largest budget item is Medicare/Medicaid which has seen over $1.1 trillion added to US debt. Social Security accounted for $900 billion"
Cut them back and people will freak out and die. Don't cut them back and the bond market will blow that much sooner.
https://www.rt.com/business/374384-o...ation-us-debt/

Don't forget State level debt, State of California Debt Clock
Just like Venezuela, politicians promised TOO much. As the holder of the reserve currency, we were able to extend-and-pretend longer that the rest of the States.

repost; "latest loan total number over $1.4 trillion, rising at a pace of nearly $100 billion per year, but that the government - either on purpose or due to honest miscalculation - was not correctly accounting for the true extent of delinquencies and defaults."
"A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the problem resulted from a "technical programming error."
OK so, what else is going to come crawling out from under the rug?

"Embarrassingly, when asked about the "mistakes" that resulted in a $1.6 billion budget deficit, the Chief Deputy Director of Brown's Department of Finance could offer no other explanation than that the "math was wrong" while another spokesman admitted, “There’s no other way to describe this other than a straight up error in accounting, which we deeply regret."
California Governor Jerry Brown Admits To $1.5 Billion "Math Error" In State Budget | Zero Hedge

How much do we pay these morons who can't do simple math?
Trump is going to cut GOV expenditures way back. This will result in less money going from the bond market into the economy. The debt is rising faster than exponentially and I don't really see how this will work out.
The EU "leaders" are absolutely frantic worrying that he won't let loose enough dollars to service European dollar-denominated debt. But, since Trump said that the dollar is too strong, he will probably have to inflate to weaken it.
This is the start of a wild ride.

People who own property gain value whenever the value of the property rises. Mexico plans to tax that gain; https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...e-wall-mexico/
In Michigan, a guy was fined $ 128 for warming up his car. In Britain, a woman was fined 80 pounds for dumping her coffee down a drain, https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ee-down-sewer/
The squeeze is on. GOV is out hunting.

[Danny B]

War with the CIA, Waiting on the FED

Trump is going to try to rein in the CIA. The whole world is going to shake. Trump’s Declaration of War - PaulCraigRoberts.org In the meantime, the markets have rolled over. Here is a chart with lots of good graphs. http://www.yardeni.com/Pub/buybackdiv.pdf

We will soon learn if the FED is going to fight Trump and America. The next FED meeting is quite soon,
2017 FOMC Meetings
February 1 July 26
March 15 September 20
May 3 November 1
June 14 December 13
One Big, Fat, Ugly Bubble | Casey Research
"Even though most politicians, economists, and pundits in the mainstream media won’t admit it, central banks exist to help governments finance themselves, at the expense of the average man. It’s the hidden, but real, reason they exist."

1/21 Despite reforms, city and county pension funds are billions short – Voice of San Diego What reforms?
1/20 Amazon is going to kill more American jobs than China did – MarketWatch Check
1/21 Trump and a new gold-backed dollar – International Man NEVER happen.

[Danny B]

Crashing EROI,,,, Raúl Ilargi Meijer

To write this thread, I have to read a lot of people who are smarter /more informed that I am. Here is an IMPORTANT article from Raúl Ilargi Meijer and Alistair Crooke.
Overunity has been suppressed mostly to keep the carbon energy business from crashing. Trump says that he is going to focus on oil & gas fracking. Sorry but, it's FAR too late. Fracking was a high-flyer riding on investment from the junk-bond market. The markets have rolled over and are shrinking. The carbon industry is crashing anyway. They are losing $ billions because it is too expensive to find and pump domestic oil, https://www.theautomaticearth.com/wp...-Dividends.jpg

It is just too costly to find and extract oil in the lower 48. GOV made money available for RE loans and the price of RE blew sky high. GOV made money available for student loans and the price of an education blew sky high. GOV went off the gold standard to inflate the money supply and the price of oil went sky high (concurrent with the drawdown of domestic supplies) https://www.theautomaticearth.com/wp...keOilPrice.jpg


"Well, the Hill’s Group, who are seasoned US oil industry engineers, led by B.W. Hill, tell us – following their last two years, or so, of research – that for purely thermodynamic reasons net energy delivered to the globalised industrial world (GIW) per barrel, by the oil industry (the IOCs) is rapidly trending to zero. Note that we are talking energy-cost of exploration, extraction and transport for the energy-return at final destination. We are not speaking of dollar costs, and we are speaking in aggregate."

'But as Steve St Angelo in the SRSrocco Reports states, the important thing to understand from these energy return on energy cost ratios or EROI, is that a minimum ratio value for a modern society is 20:1 (i.e. the net energy surplus available for GDP growth should be twenty times its cost of extraction). For citizens of an advanced society to enjoy a prosperous living, the EROI of energy needs to be much higher, closer to the 30:1 ratio. Well, if we look at the chart below, the U.S. oil and gas industry EROI fell below 30:1 some 46 years ago (after 1970):"

"“You will notice two important trends in the chart above. When the U.S. EROI ratio was higher than 30:1, prior to 1970, U.S. public debt did not increase all that much. However, this changed after 1970, as the EROI continued to decline, public debt increased in an exponential fashion”. (St Angelo).

In short, the question begged by the Hill’s Group research is whether the reason for the explosion of government debt since 1970 is that central bankers (unconsciously), were trying to compensate for the lack of GDP stimulus deriving from the earlier net energy surplus. In effect, they switched from flagging energy-driven growth, to the new debt-driven growth model."

"In 2016, according to Yahoo Finance, the U.S. Energy Sector paid 86% of their operating income just to service the interest on the debt (i.e. to pay for those extraction costs). We have not run out of oil. This is not what the Hill’s Group is saying. Quite the reverse. What they are saying is the surplus energy (at a ratio of now less than 10:1) that derives from the oil that we have been using (after the energy-costs expended in retrieving it) "
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/20...-of-modernity/

It is well worth reading the complete article. Trump talks carbon energy. Somebody needs to whisper in his ear about overunity. Maybe Alex Jones could do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsAKNC8gmGA

[Danny B]

Oil, trade and tarrifs

We spend almost as much energy to produce a barrel of oil as we get from that same barrel,,, EROI. The clowns in Davos are bewildered that their plans for globalization are just not going "according to plan". I have NO FAITH in the global brain trust if they can't figure out things that are painfully obvious to me. Ultra-cheap shipping brought us global-wage-arbitrage. The more stuff was shipped, the lower went wages,,, for the OECD. ALL of this globalization is dependent on cheap shipping and cheap oil.

"This pattern is illustrated in Figure 2. It shows the distance elasticity of trade as a function of the oil price. When the oil price is around $100 per barrel, a 10% increase in distance reduces trade by 15% (the shipping-distance elasticity is -1.5). The recent drop to $35 suggests a return to a distance elasticity of -1.35, a boon for globalisation."
"High oil prices in the future may indeed put the breaks on globalisation, as the distance elasticity of trade is higher in years of high oil prices."
The trade consequences of the oil price | VOX, CEPR?s Policy Portal

Trump proposes higher tariffs. This happened in Great Depression One in the guise of the Smoot Hawley Act. What can we expect to happen to world trade in the event of protective tariffs?
"In explaining the trade bust of the 1930s, the role of trade costs is dominant. Based on output growth alone, we would have expected world trade volumes to increase by nearly 90%. The fact that they declined by 13% highlights the critical role of the general tariff hike during the Great Depression and the collapse of the Gold Standard."

"Overall, they find that there is little systematic evidence to suggest that the maritime transport revolution was a primary driver of the late nineteenth century global trade boom. Rather, the most powerful force driving the boom was the secular rise in incomes across countries." That was then, this is now.
"Instead of transportation costs, the biggest reversal of international trade in recent history is linked to large increases in protectionist measures. The Great Depression marked the most dramatic increase in trade costs over the last 130 years. Trade costs jumped on average by 18 percentage points in the space of the three years between 1929 and 1932. This corresponds exactly to the well-documented rise of protectionist trade policy during that period."
Globalisation and trade costs: 1870 to the present | VOX, CEPR?s Policy Portal

[Danny B]

Pulling the rug out from under the economy,,, again?

Here is a comparison between conditions in 1930 and conditions today. It doesn't really give enough weight to the question of automation.
Weekend Edition: Comparing the 1930s and Today, Part I | Casey Research
Here is a very interesting comparison between Hoover and Trump.
" Hoover, a Republican, was a rich and successful businessman with investments all over the world. He was also somewhat of an outsider, having never held elected office until he was inaugurated in March 1929.

Today, people associate him with massive infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam, as well as the Mexican repatriation program, which deported over 500,000 illegal Mexican immigrants."
" Throughout the 1920s, the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies helped create an enormous stock market bubble. check!

In August of 1929, the Fed raised interest rates and effectively ended the easy credit.
inaugurated in March 1929.
August of 1929
October 1929
Only a few months later, the bubble burst on Black Tuesday in October 1929, barely seven months after Hoover took office." Deje vu?
Trump Could Go Down as the Worst President… But It Will NOT Be His Fault | Casey Research

[Danny B]

Marxists, Chinese policy, PISA scores, healthcare & death

You can count on the bankers to blow bubbles and eventually blow the economy. What about the Marxists.
"The Bolivarian socialists don't exactly have a strong first team when it comes to economic understanding. They actually had an economy minister for a time who refused to believe, point blank, that inflation was anything to do with money. It was just businessmen being greedy.
Forbes Welcome

"Here we come to a crucial difference between American and Chinese foreign policy. Washington’s approach to maintaining the Empire has consisted of military attack, threats of military attack, military occupation, and the imposition of sanctions. These are visibly declining in effectiveness."
"Unless Washington comes up with something quick, presumably a shooting war or a trade war" Probably a trade war.
"Trump now proposes sanctions on China, having said the he would impose a tariff of forty-five percent on goods from there." "A trade war won might prove less desirable than a trade war not started. " Nobody wins.

"It is interesting to consider recent PISA scores, which measure the academic performance of school kids. Math scores in order by country: Singapore, Hongkong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, China. The US was well below average for the countries tested, though its scores are lowered by minorities. Headline: “NY Professor Says Algebra Is Too Hard, Schools Should Drop It.” On fairness, America leads in safe spaces, trigger warnings, puzzled diversity, and whimpering Snowflakes. Watch out, Beijing."
Sidestepping the Military Leviathan - The Unz Review

Here is an article from a guy who understands the whole world.
"This is advisable from the Chinese viewpoint; for why should they sell their work to the US for a dollar that has no intrinsic value and get really nothing back for the work. China should have a car in every Chinese worker’s garage and they will become a larger producer of cars than the EU, US and Japan combined, and their own nation will keep their wealth in their own country.”
The minimum wage in China is $ 118 a month.
China Labor Stats: NationMaster.com

I keep reading the experts who make economic projections based on a high level of discretionary spending.
Here’s how the Trump presidency will play out | The Vineyard of the Saker

"The administration also admitted last year that overall healthcare spending continues to rise, surpassing $10,000 per person for the first time ever.

Then there’s a question of quality and efficiency.

In 2016, a Johns Hopkins study concluded that the number of preventable medical errors has soared in recent years and is now the third leading cause of death in the United States."
"Consider this: in the last two weeks alone, the Treasury Department has auctioned off tens of billions of dollars worth of debt in the form of 30-year bonds.

This means that a child who won’t even be born until 2030 will have some high school summer job in late 2046, and an increasing chunk of his income will be taxed to pay off the debt that Treasury Department borrowed a few days ago."
https://www.sovereignman.com/expat/s...k-obama-20697/

[Danny B]

GOV unions, Crooks in office,,"kill them, kill them all"Dustin Hoffman as CaptainHook

"Approximately 85% of the state's 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period."
"A Baron’s cover article, The $2 Trillion Hole lays out the dire dilemma.

"According to a survey last month by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, eight states -- Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia -- lack funding for more than a third of their pension liabilities. Thirteen others are less than 80% funded.

According to the latest compensation survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average state and local employee out earns his counterpart in the private economy with an hourly wage of $26.11, versus $19.41. That's before benefits (pensions, health care, paid vacations and sick days and leaves) drive the disparity even higher, to $39.60 an hour for public employees and $27.42 for private workers."
Public Employee Unions Guarantee National Bankruptcy

Bill Clinton forked us good by ending Glass-Steagal. Killary forked the students real good by excluding student loans from being discharged by bankruptcy. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/i...empt-from-law/

"Original backers of the Federal Reserve System boasted that it would prevent the financial setbacks that typically preceded recessions. There have been 19 recessions since the Fed opened its doors in January 1914. Until the 1960s, bankers dominated the Fed; since then it has been economists. The track record of this form of interventionist central planning has remained the same. "
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...butor=Bob+Hoye

"In this regard, it should be noted stocks have not rallied like this post election since the days of Hoover in 1928, adding some $2 trillion globally. (i.e. and we know what came after that.) What’s more, US debt credit risk spreads have also improved, however this has been at the expense of an approximate $2 trillion in fixed income losses globally, which likely hurt the average investor more than stock markets gains helped "
1928,,, wasn't that just before 1929?
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...r=Captain+Hook

"Many would argue that it was the Clinton regime (with Larry Summers in charge of economic policy) which began the transformation of the U.S. economy from what was still a relatively strong and prosperous entity into the hopelessly crippled, financial Ponzi-scheme which it has become today. It was during the Clinton years, with a Democrat at the helm of the U.S. economy that the Wall Street crime syndicate was fully unleashed upon the U.S. – and the world – through tearing up the Glass-Steagall Act (1933)."
"Not only did that crime against humanity mark the beginning of the worst financial crime spree in the history of humanity (X 100), it also marked the beginning of the financial cannibalization of the U.S. economy"

"The economic bubbles which ended up imploding during the reign of error of George Bush Jr. were all germinated during the Clinton years, with Larry Summers spreading most of the economic fertilizer, personally. "
"He spent part of that time as president of Harvard University, where his principal “accomplishment” was managing to incur a $1 billion loss for the university, in financing just $2 billion of debt. Of course that was just part of the losses he racked up while mismanaging Harvard. Altogether, Larry Summers was a $1.8 billion mistake during his short tenure as Harvard’s president. "

"Through the magic of “Reaganomics”, the world’s strongest economy managed to triple its national debt – in just eight years. Not even Larry Summers could have done that.

After Reagan the Republican drowned the U.S. in debt, and after Clinton the Democrat gutted the U.S. manufacturing base came George Bush Jr.: someone who managed to combine the mismanagement and incompetence of the Reagan and Clinton regimes. Like Ronald Reagan the “fiscal conservative”, George Bush Jr. also managed to triple the U.S. national debt (again) in just eight years."

" The velocity of money roughly translates into the “heartbeat” of an economy. What this chart clearly shows is that the U.S. economy was already several years into its present death-spiral before Barack Obama ever took his Oath of Office.

Barack Obama is a slick con-man who has spent the last eight years duping the world into believing that the deceased U.S. economy is still alive. "
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...ott+Money&mk=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzC4Dzj7kWI
The rest of the article runs down Trump. No matter that he has only been in office for a few days.