Paradigm Blindness | KUNSTLER
Paradigm Blindness | KUNSTLER. (FULL ARTICLE)
Something is sucking the air out of the humid terrarium that is US politics, making the lizards, tarantulas, and scorpions within hyperventilate. That something is the vacuum of disappearing wealth. All the accounting fraud, statistical mis-reporting, price manipulations, naked-short beat-downs, high-speed arbitrage hijinks, and carry trade rackets can’t conceal the reality that the nation is going broke – at least 99 percent of the nation. The remaining 1 percenters, outside the terrarium, are swimming in a pool of notional wealth that is primed to go down the drain and leave them at the bottom, desiccated little husks of animal matter that the crows will feed on.
The reason nobody seems to know what to do is because they know anything they do will make them look bad, so the only thing to do is nothing, with a sound track of lizard squawks and much darting of forked tongues. Nature is now in charge, not personalities, and nature is now leading a purblind humanity to the place it has to go, which is smaller, simpler, and local. The flailings and squawking of politicians can only avail to make the journey more painful and disorderly, but the march is on….
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12 Very Ominous Warnings About What A U.S. Debt Default Would Mean For The Global Economy
12 Very Ominous Warnings About What A U.S. Debt Default Would Mean For The Global Economy.
A U.S. debt default that lasts for more than a couple of days could potentially cause a financial crash unlike anything that the world has ever seen before. If the U.S. government purposely wanted to damage the global financial system, the best way that they could do that would be to default on U.S. debt obligations. A U.S. debt default would cause stocks to crash, would cause bonds to crash, would cause interest rates to soar wildly out of control, would cause a massive credit crunch, and would cause a derivatives panic that would be absolutely unprecedented. And that would just be for starters. But don’t just take my word for it. These are the things that top financial experts all over the planet are saying will happen if there is an extended U.S. debt default.
Because they are so close together, the “government shutdown” and the “debt ceiling deadline” are being confused by many Americans.
As I wrote about the other day, the “partial government shutdown” that we are experiencing right now is pretty much a non-event. Yeah, some national parks are shut down and some federal workers will have their checks delayed, but it is not the end of the world. In fact, only about 17 percent of the federal government is actually shut down at the moment. This “shutdown” could continue for many more weeks and it would not affect the global economy too much….
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Is Saving Money Bad for the Economy? – Gregory Bresiger – Mises Daily
Is Saving Money Bad for the Economy? – Gregory Bresiger – Mises Daily. (FULL ARTICLE)
Our grandparents believed in the value of thrift, but many of their grandchildren don’t.
That’s because cultural and economic values have changed dramatically over the last generations as political and media elites have convinced many Americans that saving is passé. So today, under the influence of Keynesian economists who champion government spending and high levels of consumption, thrift has been devalued.
“The growth in wealth, so far from being dependent on the abstinence [savings] of the rich, as is commonly supposed, is more likely to be impeded by it,” according to John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
“The more virtuous we are, the more determinedly thrifty, the more obstinately orthodox in our national and personal finance, the more incomes will have to fall,” he writes. “Saving,” Keynes wrote in his Treatise on Money, “is the act of the individual consumer and consists in the negative act of refraining from spending the whole of his current income on consumption.”…
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No Planes, No Trains, And No Automobiles As Record Smog Shuts Beijing | Zero Hedge
No Planes, No Trains, And No Automobiles As Record Smog Shuts Beijing | Zero Hedge. (FULL ARTICLE)
China started re-opening roads and airports in Beijing and surrounding areas that have been shut by record high levels of smog. An estimated 430 million people were expected to travel during the holiday that ends today and with the air quality index “improving” from its highest possible level to below 200 (the line between heavy and medium pollution), some will be able to return home. The clips below are stunning (and no that is not ‘fog’); summed up best by one Shanghai-based accountant that Bloomberg reportsnoted, “I won’t go to heavily polluted places like China’s north region as it’s either hazardous to your health or causes trouble when traveling.”…
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Veteran New York Times Reporter: “This Is Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I’ve Ever Covered” | Washington’s Blog
Veteran New York Times Reporter: “This Is Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I’ve Ever Covered” | Washington’s Blog. (FULL ARTICE)
Seasoned CBS News Anchor: “Whenever I’m Asked What Is The Most Manipulative And Secretive Administration I’ve Covered, I Always Say It’s The One In Office Now”
American constitutional experts say that Obama is worse than Nixon.
The government has taken to protecting criminal wrongdoing by attacking whistleblowers … and any journalists who have the nerve to report on the beans spilled by the whistleblowers. (The government has also repealed long-standing laws against using propaganda against Americans on U.S. soil, and the government is manipulating social media – more proof here and here).
The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.
And it goes out of its way to smear whistleblowers, threaten reporters who discuss whistleblower information and harass honest analysts….
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Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse? | Washington’s Blog
Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse? | Washington’s Blog. (FULL ARTICLE)
Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?
Recently revealed statements by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the height of the banking crisis in October 2008 could give some insights into that question. An article on BBC News on September 21, 2013, drew from an explosive autobiography called Power Trip by Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride, who said the prime minister was worried that law and order could collapse during the financial crisis. McBride quoted Brown as saying:
If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco [a grocery chain] and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode…
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ABOUT THAT SHALE OIL & GAS MIRACLE « The Burning Platform
ABOUT THAT SHALE OIL & GAS MIRACLE « The Burning Platform. (FUL ARTICLE)
Not a day goes by without a story in the MSM by some industry shill like Daniel Yergen about the imminent energy independence of the Great American Empire. Shale oil and gas will revolutionize the American energy prospects. We have hundreds of years of oil and gas under our feet. We will be a net exporter in the next few years. A glorious future awaits. Politicians tout the billions of barrels to be extracted from Bakken, Eagle Ford and the hundreds of untapped shale formations across the country. Wall Street puts out glowing investment analysis papers promoting the latest IPO. There’s just one little problem. It’s all hype.
Royal Dutch Shell is one of the biggest corporations in the world, with financial resources greater than 99% of all the organizations on earth. Their CEO probably knows a little bit more about oil exploration than the Wall Street systers and CNBC bimbos. His company has poured $24 billion into shale exploration in the U.S. It has been a huge failure. They have already written off $2.1 billion. They are trying to sell huge swaths of land in the Eagle Ford area. They are losing money in the shale oil and gas business. If Shell can’t make it profitable, who can?…
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How Should People of Faith – Or Atheists Who Want to Talk With Them – Think of Bank Crime? | Zero Hedge
How Should People of Faith – Or Atheists Who Want to Talk With Them – Think of Bank Crime? | Zero Hedge. (FULL ARTICLE)
What Would Jesus – Or the Rabbis of Old – Do?
Preface: If you are an atheist and believe that religion is crazy, please remember that some 85% of the American population identifies itself as Christian and millions more identify themselves as Jewish. Very few Americans are atheists. (And the majority don’t trust atheists.) Therefore, knowing a few bible verses may be essential for atheists to be able to speak to people of faith.
The head of Goldman Sachs said he’s doing “God’s work” withhis banking activities. The head of Barclays also told his congregation that banking as practiced by his company was not antithetical to Christian principles.
Are they right? Is big banking as practiced by the giant banks in harmony with Christian or traditional Jewish principles?…
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A Suddenly Nervous China Tells The US To “Earnestly Take Steps” To Avoid A Default | Zero Hedge
A Suddenly Nervous China Tells The US To “Earnestly Take Steps” To Avoid A Default | Zero Hedge. (FULL ARTICLE)
While the world’s largest hedge fund, the Fed, may not care about the performance of its “bad bank” assets, and thus is largely ambivalent if the US Treasury defaults on the $2 trillion in US paper held by Ben Bernanke, others don’t have the luxury of merely printing away any incurred MTM losses. Such as America’s largest foreign creditor China, which at last check held at least $1.277 trillion in US Treasurys, which after realizing with a substantial delay that the US Congress is not precisely a “rational actor” and its bonds may be materially impaired in the case of a technical default, is starting to panic. In an oped in the largest media publication, China Daily, vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao, warned that the “clock is ticking” to avoid a US default that could hurt China’s interests and the global economy. Somehow we doubt Boehner or Obama are particularly concerned about what happens to “Chinese interests.” Of course, if China so wishes, it can pen an Op-Ed in the NYT and tell the US just what will happen if $1.3 trillion in US Treasurys were suddenly to be dumped in a liquidation fire sale.
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The Costs of Canada’s Inability to Ship Oil to Market | Kenneth P. Green
The Costs of Canada’s Inability to Ship Oil to Market | Kenneth P. Green. (FULL ARTICLE)
As almost everyone knows by now, Canada has some interesting challenges looming when it comes to transporting increasing oil production to markets both inside and outside of Canada. What many Canadians might not realize is how important oil exports are to Canada’s economy. Canada has the world’s third largest proven oil reserves, is the fifth largest exporter of crude oil, and is the fifth largest producer of crude oil in the world. And that’s only expected to grow: According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, production of oil from Alberta’s oil sands is expected to more than double by 2030, rising from the 2012 level of 3.2 million barrels of oil per day to 6.7 million barrels per day.
What would that mean for the Canadian economy? In 2011, CERI, the Canadian Energy Research Institute projects that investments and revenues from new oil sands projects would be approximately $2-billion over the period from 2010 to 2035, with a total GDP impact of $2.1-billion in Canada. Employment, both direct and indirect stemming from new oil sands investments is projected to grow from 75,000 jobs in 2010 to over 900,000 jobs by 2035. And CERI’s estimate is somewhat more conservative than CAPP’s, estimating oil production at only 5.4 million barrels per day by 2035….
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Olduvaiblog: Musings on the coming collapse 