August 2014 – Page 7

Government To Regulate Groundwater For 1st Time As California Drought Becomes “Race To The Bottom”

The ongoing disaster that is the drought in the West is leaving wells dry across California – which account for up to 60% of water usage. As WSJ reports, as groundwater levels plunge (100 feet or more lower than norm), wells are being driven further and further into the earth (500 feet in some cases) forcing the state legislature is considering regulating underground water for the first time. “We can’t continue to pump groundwater at the rates we are and expect it to continue in the future,” warns one engineer, adding “What’s scary is we’re not fixing anything… It’s a race to the bottom.”

“Everybody was pumping to their heart’s content, until they realized the basin isn’t that big.”

As WSJ reports, Groundwater was kind of out of sight, out of mind,” said Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation, a nonprofit policy group in Sacramento, and former director of the state Department of Water Resources. But now…

With groundwater levels falling across the Golden State—causing dried-up wells, sinking roadbeds and crumbling infrastructure—the state legislature is considering regulating underground water for the first time.

Californians have long battled over rights to rivers, lakes and other surface-water supplies, but the drought is finally shifting the focus to groundwater, which accounts for about 40% of water used in normal years—and up to 60% in drought years, as other sources dry up.

Other states were forced to act earlier.

Arizona, for example, began regulating its major groundwater basins in 1980 after experiencing subsidence, or sinking soils from lack of water, and other problems from agriculture pumping, said Michael Lacey, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. “Had we done nothing, many of the areas would have no supplies left,” Mr. Lacey said.

But in California…

Groundwater remains there for the taking—except in places such as Orange County with special management districts. The Department of Water Resources said earlier this year that groundwater tables in some parts of California have dropped 100 feet or more below historic averages. That has resulted in an estimated $1.3 billion in damage to infrastructure, such as cracked highways due to subsidence, Mr. Snow said.

And so the government is stepping in…

A bill pending in the Legislature would require that groundwater be managed sustainably at major aquifers throughout the state, such as by authorizing local agencies to impose pumping limits and conduct inspections.

Farmers are worried…

“There is no good time for hurried legislation, but during a critical drought year…is absolutely the wrong time,” Danny Merkley, director of water resources for the California Farm Bureau Federation, wrote in a recent column for a trade publication.

But the problem is vast…

County Supervisor Frank Mecham said the near-doubling of the county’s population to 275,000 since 1980 has put pressure on groundwater, particularly in rural areas where more vineyards also have sprung up.

As a result, many rural homeowners have reported dramatic drops in their well water levels. Sue Luft, for instance, said she and her husband last year had to drill a second well to 540 feet after one 355 feet deep went dry.

“What’s scary is we’re not fixing anything,” said Ms. Luft, 57, a retired environmental engineer who leads a homeowners’ group that recently teamed with the vintners to support the water district bill. “It’s a race to the bottom.”

* * *
Of course, none of this matters as stocks are at record highs…

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Jesse Benton, Former Ron Paul Campaign Manager, Resigns From Mitch McConnell Re-Election Bid Days After Revelations Paul Campaign Bribed Iowa State Senator for Support

Jesse Benton The
revelation
earlier this week by Republican Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson
in federal court that he took bribes from both the Michele Bachmann
and Ron Paul campaigns during the 2012 election season in exchange
for his support in the all-important Iowa caucus was bound to have
some fall-out. As a federal probe into Sorenson and the bribes
continue, Jesse Benton, who managed Paul’s campaign in 2008 and
2012 (and Rand Paul’s in 2010) has resigned as campaign manager for
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The Washington Post reports:

In a statement issued Friday evening, Benton cited “inaccurate
press accounts and unsubstantiated media rumors about me and my
role in past campaigns that are politically motivated, unfair and,
most importantly, untrue.”

“The press accounts and rumors are particularly hurtful because
they are false,” Benton wrote. “However, what is most troubling to
me is that they risk unfairly undermining and becoming a
distraction to this reelection campaign.”

Benton
previously weathered controversy over comments caught on tape
that suggested he wasn’t committed to McConnell’s politics.

Reason.com has reached out to Benton for a statement.

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Employers Aren’t Just Whining: The “Skills Gap” Is Real

By way of Mauldin Economics

Employers Aren’t Just Whining – the “Skills Gap” Is Real

Every year, the Manpower Group, a human resources consultancy, conducts a worldwide “Talent Shortage Survey.” Last year, 35% of 38,000 employers reported difficulty filling jobs due to lack of available talent; in the U.S., 39% of employers did. But the idea of a “skills gap” as identified in this and other surveys has been widely criticized. Peter Cappelli asks whether these studies are just a sign of “employer whining;” Paul Krugman calls the skills gap a “zombie idea” that “that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.” The New York Times asserts that it is “mostly a corporate fiction, based in part on self-interest and a misreading of government data.” According to the Times, the survey responses are an effort by executives to get “the government to take on more of the costs of training workers.”

Really? A worldwide scheme by thousands of business managers to manipulate public opinion seems far-fetched. Perhaps the simpler explanation is the better one: many employers might actually have difficulty hiring skilled workers. The critics cite economic evidence to argue that there are no major shortages of skilled workers. But a closer look shows that their evidence is mostly irrelevant. The issue is confusing because the skills required to work with new technologies are hard to measure. They are even harder to manage. Understanding this controversy sheds some light on what employers and government need to do to deal with a very real problem.

This issue has become controversial because people mean different things by “skills gap.” Some public officials have sought to blame persistent unemployment on skill shortages. I am not suggesting any major link between the supply of skilled workers and today’s unemployment; there is little evidence to support such an interpretation. Indeed, employers reported difficulty hiring skilled workers before the recession. This illustrates one source of confusion in the debate over the existence of a skills gap: distinguishing between the short and long term. Today’s unemployment is largely a cyclical matter, caused by the recession and best addressed by macroeconomic policy. Yet although skills are not a major contributor to today’s unemployment, the longer-term issue of worker skills is important both for managers and for policy.

Nor is the skills gap primarily a problem of schooling. Peter Cappelli reviews the evidence to conclude that there are not major shortages of workers with basic reading and math skills or of workers with engineering and technical training; if anything, too many workers may be overeducated. Nevertheless, employers still have real difficulties hiring workers with the skills to deal with new technologies.

Why are skills sometimes hard to measure and to manage? Because new technologies frequently require specific new skills that schools don’t teach and that labor markets don’t supply. Since information technologies have radically changed much work over the last couple of decades, employers have had persistent difficulty finding workers who can make the most of these new technologies.

Consider, for example, graphic designers. Until recently, almost all graphic designers designed for print. Then came the Internet and demand grew for web designers. Then came smartphones and demand grew for mobile designers. Designers had to keep up with new technologies and new standards that are still changing rapidly. A few years ago they needed to know Flash; now they need to know HTML5 instead. New specialties emerged such as user-interaction specialists and information architects. At the same time, business models in publishing have changed rapidly.

Graphic arts schools have had difficulty keeping up. Much of what they teach becomes obsolete quickly and most are still oriented to print design in any case. Instead, designers have to learn on the job, so experience matters. But employers can’t easily evaluate prospective new hires just based on years of experience. Not every designer can learn well on the job and often what they learn might be specific to their particular employer.

The labor market for web and mobile designers faces a kind of Catch-22: without certified standard skills, learning on the job matters but employers have a hard time knowing whom to hire and whose experience is valuable; and employees have limited incentives to put time and effort into learning on the job if they are uncertain about the future prospects of the particular version of technology their employer uses. Workers will more likely invest when standardized skills promise them a secure career path with reliably good wages in the future.

Under these conditions, employers do, have a hard time finding workers with the latest design skills. When new technologies come into play, simple textbook notions about skills can be misleading for both managers and economists.

For one thing, education does not measure technical skills. A graphic designer with a bachelor’s degree does not necessarily have the skills to work on a web development team. Some economists argue that there is no shortage of employees with the basic skills in reading, writing and math to meet the requirements of today’s jobs. But those aren’t the skills in short supply.

Other critics look at wages for evidence. Times editors tell us “If a business really needed workers, it would pay up.” Gary Burtless at the Brookings Institution puts it more bluntly: “Unless managers have forgotten everything they learned in Econ 101, they should recognize that one way to fill a vacancy is to offer qualified job seekers a compelling reason to take the job” by offering better pay or benefits. Since Burtless finds that the median wage is not increasing, he concludes that there is no shortage of skilled workers.

But that’s not quite right. The wages of the median worker tell us only that the skills of the median worker aren’t in short supply; other workers could still have skills in high demand. Technology doesn’t make all workers’ skills more valuable; some skills become valuable, but others go obsolete. Wages should only go up for those particular groups of workers who have highly demanded skills. Some economists observe wages in major occupational groups or by state or metropolitan area to conclude that there are no major skill shortages. But these broad categories don’t correspond to worker skills either, so this evidence is also not compelling.

To the contrary, there is evidence that select groups of workers have been had sustained wage growth, implying persistent skill shortages. Some specific occupations such as nursing do show sustained wage growth and employment growth over a couple decades. And there is more general evidence of rising pay for skills within many occupations. Because many new skills are learned on the job, not all workers within an occupation acquire them. For example, the average designer, who typically does print design, does not have good web and mobile platform skills. Not surprisingly, the wages of the average designer have not gone up. However, those designers who have acquired the critical skills, often by teaching themselves on the job, command six figure salaries or $90 to $100 per hour rates as freelancers. The wages of the top 10% of designers have risen strongly; the wages of the average designer have not. There is a shortage of skilled designers but it can only be seen in the wages of those designers who have managed to master new technologies.

This trend is more general. We see it in the high pay that software developers in Silicon Valley receive for their specialized skills. And we see it throughout the workforce. Research shows that since the 1980s, the wages of the top 10% of workers has risen sharply relative to the median wage earner after controlling for observable characteristics such as education and experience. Some workers have indeed benefited from skills that are apparently in short supply; it’s just that these skills are not captured by the crude statistical categories that economists have at hand.

And these skills appear to be related to new technology, in particular, to information technologies. The chart shows how the wages of the 90th percentile increased relative to the wages of the 50th percentile in different groups of occupations. The occupational groups are organized in order of declining computer use and the changes are measured from 1982 to 2012. Occupations affected by office computing and the Internet (69% of these workers use computers) and healthcare (55% of these workers use computers) show the greatest relative wage growth for the 90th percentile. Millions of workers within these occupations appear to have valuable specialized skills that are in short supply and have seen their wages grow dramatically.

This evidence shows that we should not be too quick to discard employer claims about hiring skilled talent. Most managers don’t need remedial Econ 101; the overly simple models of Econ 101 just don’t tell us much about real world skills and technology. The evidence highlights instead just how difficult it is to measure worker skills, especially those relating to new technology.

What is hard to measure is often hard to manage. Employers using new technologies need to base hiring decisions not just on education, but also on the non-cognitive skills that allow some people to excel at learning on the job; they need to design pay structures to retain workers who do learn, yet not to encumber employee mobility and knowledge sharing, which are often key to informal learning; and they need to design business models that enable workers to learn effectively on the job (see this example). Policy makers also need to think differently about skills, encouraging, for example, industry certification programs for new skills and partnerships between community colleges and local employers.

Although it is difficult for workers and employers to develop these new skills, this difficulty creates opportunity. Those workers who acquire the latest skills earn good pay; those employers who hire the right workers and train them well can realize the competitive advantages that come with new technologies.

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The “Real” Retail Story: The Consumer Economy Remains At A Recessionary Level

Earlier this month, Retail Sales missed expectations for the 3rd month in a row, essentially flat on the month. As Doug Short rhetorically asks ‘how much insight into the US economy does the nominal retail sales report offer?’ With the release of the CPI data, we can judge this in ‘real’ terms (adjusted for inflation and against the backdrop of our growing population)… and the picture is anything but healthy.

Via Advisor Perspectives,

The “Real” Retail Story: The Consumer Economy Remains at a Recessionary Level

How much insight into the US economy does the nominal retail sales report offer? The next chart gives us a perspective on the extent to which this indicator is skewed by inflation and population growth. The nominal sales number shows a cumulative growth of 168.0% since the beginning of this series. Adjust for population growth and the cumulative number drops to 114.7%. And when we adjust for both population growth and inflation, retail sales are up only 24.8% over the past two-plus decades. With this adjustment, we’re now at a level we first reached in September 2004.

Click for a larger image

Let’s continue in the same vein. The charts below give us a rather different view of the U.S. retail economy and the long-term behavior of the consumer. The sales numbers are adjusted for population growth and inflation. For the population data I’ve used the Bureau of Economic Analysis mid-month series available from the St. Louis FRED with a linear extrapolation for the latest month. Inflation is based on the latest Consumer Price Index. I’ve used the seasonally adjusted CPI as a best match for the seasonally adjusted retail sales data. The latest retail sales with the dual adjustment declined 0.1% month-over-month, and the adjusted data is only up 0.9% year-over-year.

Click for a larger image

Consider: Since January 1992, the U.S. population has grown about 25% while the dollar has lost about 42% of its purchasing power to inflation. Retail sales have been recovering since the trough in 2009. But the “real” consumer economy, adjusted for population growth is 3.9% below its all-time high in January 2006.

As I mentioned at the outset, nominal month-over-month retail sales were up 0.04%. Let’s now examine Core Retail Sales, a version that excludes auto purchases.

Click for a larger image

By this analysis, adjusted Core Retail Sales were down 0.1% in July from the previous month, up only 0.4% year-over-year and down 1.9% from its record high in November 2007.

The Great Recession of the Financial Crisis is behind us, a close analysis of the adjusted data suggests that the recovery has been frustratingly slow. The reality is that, in “real” terms — adjusted for population growth and inflation — consumer sales remain below the level we saw at the peak before the last recession.

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Every once in a while I step out of my sweaty gym clothes, put on some make-up and wear some bitchin’ pumps.

@hooper_fit

Every once in a while I step out of my sweaty gym clothes, put on some make-up and wear some bitchin’ pumps.

9
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»WEBSTA

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The Time Is Ripe For A False-Flag Attack On American Soil

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Government engineered false-flag terrorism is a historically established fact. For centuries, political and financial elites have been sinking ships, setting buildings on fire, assassinating diplomats, overthrowing elected leaders, and blowing people up, then blaming these disasters on convenient scapegoats so that they can induce fear in the public and transfer more power to themselves. Skeptics might argue whether certain calamities have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be false-flag events, but no one can argue that such tactics have not been used by the establishment in the past. Governments have openly admitted to creating bloody and catalyzing tragedies under false pretenses, like Operation Gladio, a false-flag program in Europe supported by European and American covert agencies which lasted decades, from the 1950's to the 1990's.

Gladio utilized well-paid and trained rogue groups and agents as well as patsies, compartmentalized and controlled, who would commit atrocities against the European public. These atrocities would then be blamed on “left wing extremists”, galvanizing the citizenry and political representatives towards the false East/West paradigm. The superficial motivation given by whistleblowers was that Gladio was to be used to keep the right wing in power. However, the broader and deeper goal was clearly to manipulate Europeans into accepting a unification mindset, paving the way for the eventual centralization of Europe into the EU supranational block. Gladio, is only one well documented example of false-flag terrorism being exploited by governments to mold mass psychology towards greater collectivism.

It is therefore vital that the public question the legitimacy of EVERY so-called “terrorist attack” or geopolitical incident, otherwise, we may find ourselves duped into supporting wars and unconstitutional actions that only end up poisoning our society and elevating tyrants.

Why do I believe a new false-flag event is imminent? America has not suffered a large scale terrorist attack for over 13 years, after all. I can only say that current trends and international developments seem to be spiraling towards a breaking point; a kind of singularity, and if you understand that the majority of these events are deliberately engineered, then you also understand that the inevitable singularity (or primary disaster) is engineered as well.

The foremost current threat and most useful scapegoat is, of course, the ISIS insurgency in the Middle East. If one's source of information was the mainstream media alone, one might be inclined to believe that ISIS has materialized out of nowhere to become a menace so organized and effective it has eclipsed Al-Qaeda as the hot button boogeyman used by the establishment. ISIS is certainly a disturbing militant group that goes out of its way to play the villain, complete with scary Muslim clothing and beards, not to mention the severed heads and indiscriminate genocide. Where is Jack Bauer when you need him, right?

The cartoonish nature of ISIS is not accidental, but I can see why they frighten a subset of the American population; if I didn't know that they were funded by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, with military aid from Israel, then I might find them a terrifying enigma as well.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was held at a U.S. run detention facility called Camp Bucca from 2005 until 2009. Before his imprisonment, Baghdadi's friends and family reported him to be a “quiet, studious fellow who was also a talented soccer player”. Only one year after being released from U.S. detention, however, he was a fanatical Islamic extremist who would go on to command the ISIS caliphate. In 2011, the U.S. State Department listed Bagdhadi as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” with a bounty of $10 million. There is no public record as to why Baghdadi was originally detained.

Former U.S. Air Force security officer, James Skylar Gerrond, served at Camp Bucca while Bagdhadi was held there, and is quoted as saying "Many of us at Camp Bucca were concerned that instead of just holding detainees, we had created a pressure cooker for extremism." Indeed…

Let's look at the culmination of events that led to the current incarnation that is ISIS:

George W. Bush signed and Barack Obama enforced (sorry politifact cultists, but they are BOTH to blame) a new foreign policy framework which allowed the release of numerous (and now somehow radicalized) prisoners from facilities like Camp Bucca in 2009.

The Libyan civil war erupts, as “rebels” are aided by the CIA and multiple foreign governments. These are the same rebels who would ultimately participate in the Benghazi raid on a U.S. consulate/CIA complex.

Libyan agents along with CIA operatives move into Jordan, where they have been training Syrian insurgents for over a year (officially – much longer unofficially), and still train them to this day, despite the apprehensions of the Jordanian government.

Libyan insurgents along with newly trained operatives have also shifted into Syria, turning general civil unrest into outright war.

ISIS recently gave praise to one of its commanders, a man from Libya, who had fought in the Libyan civil war, and in Syria, and in Iraq.

The U.S. has been secretly arming and training ISIS extremists in Syria for years, but only at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 did it begin a more open campaign to provide support.

The Israeli government also aided insurgent groups in Syria using airstrikes to cripple Syrian Government regional command centers. It is also currently providing medical aid to Syrian rebels.

It was insurgent Sunni majority groups, trained in Jordan and funded by Saudi Arabia that have linked with Saudi funded groups in Iraq to form what we now know as ISIS. These are NOT separate groups acting autonomously. These are U.S. backed organizations acting in concert, and coalescing into a single movement – ISIS.

Violent genocidal actions, mass executions, as well as torture have become the common calling card of the establishment organized Islamic insurgent groups. Despite this horrifying development, Barack Obama is STILL seeking over $500 million in aid to Syrian rebels, though the rhetoric now specifies that funds and arms will only go to “moderate and well-vetted” insurgents. As far as I can tell, there are no “moderate” insurgents in Syria; insurgents that are now moving into Iraq and bringing their distinct brand of barbarism with them.

On the Council On Foreign Relations website, the globalist think-tank argued that the inclusion of extremist Al-Qaeda elements in the Syrian insurgency “improved the moral” of the movement, stating that the “Free Syrian Army needs Al-Qaeda now”. The CFR acknowledges that the goal of Al-Qaeda operatives in Syria is not necessarily to overthrow Assad, but to establish an Islamic state. Despite this, the CFR still continues its support of the strategy to overthrow Assad.

In an absurd display of forced schizophrenia, globalist organizations along with the puppet White House now argue that the existence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the same ISIS insurgency THEY CREATED, requires the U.S. to execute air strikes and military intervention in the region. Of course, to remain “fair and balanced”, the White House proposes to strike Syrian Government targets as well in order to avoid “strengthening Assad”. Yeah, read that twice, folks…

Remember the Syrian crisis at the end of last year? Remember how the U.S. and Russia were on the verge of conflict over Obama's funding of the insurgency as well as his proposal to provide air support? Well, now the plan is to utilize air strikes against the same insurgents we had originally planned to help with air strikes.

Now, I have asked this question in the past, and I'll ask it again – Is it merely irony that the White House is going to war with the covert militant group it gave birth to?

No, it is not irony. It is planned. ISIS is the new and improved Al-Qaeda. All of the terrorist disaster scenarios showcased in propaganda shows like '24' that seem rather ridiculous to many Americans if plotted by Al-Qaeda goat herders hiding in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan now become believable if plotted by highly organized and savvy ISIS operatives.

Don't believe ISIS is savvy? I don't either, aside from the CIA agents pulling their strings. However, DoD officials and others have been bombarding the mainstream media with one specific meme: ISIS is awesome!

Chuck Hagel, Department of Defense Secretary, has made statements claiming that “ISIL (ISIS) poses a threat greater than 9/11… “

"They're beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology with a sophisticated strategic and tactical military prowess and they're tremendously well-funded. This is way beyond anything we have seen. We must prepare for everything. Get Ready!"

U.S. Special Operations sources argue that ISIS is an “incredible fighting force”, acting more like a “state with a military” than a disorganized band of guerrillas. I would argue that ISIS tactics appear sophisticated exactly because they are receiving sophisticated direction from state funded covert intelligence agencies like the CIA.

Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney recently revealed that he believed a new 9/11 event is looming, and I would like to note that even if this is true, the Neo-Conservatives are no more a solution to the problem than the Neo-Liberals.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee claims that ISIS members are “rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city…”

Governor Rick Perry of Texas (a Bilderberg attendee) claims that ISIS agents may have already crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.

In the meantime, Senators on both sides of the fake aisle are warning the Obama Administration that ISIS is the “best funded terror group in history”.

With all this hype circling ISIS, I have to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we are being given the ultimate scapegoat for the ultimate false flag attack. When building the narrative of a traditional story, the hero is really a secondary character, because the hero is only as impressive as the villain he must eventually defeat. If you look at mainstream media and geopolitics as a theater script, rather than a series of random events, it appears as though ISIS is being built up as a villain so pervasive and devious the group could accomplish ANYTHING.

I believe the time is in fact ripe for a large scale false-flag on American soil. It may be a singular attack limited to a city or region, or, numerous smaller attacks executed in concert. I see the media overload of ISIS fever as a means to condition the public to believe in the ISIS myth – the myth that they are a sophisticated international super-terrorist conglomerate; a real life Legion of Doom. If Americans are conned into buying this myth, they may also be fooled into abandoning their Constitutional liberties and natural freedoms in the face of a well planned attack blamed on ISIS elements. I believe there will likely come a day when the mere act of exposing the lie or standing against government overreach will be called "treason", and people like myself will be labeled "no better than ISIS".

If an attack does take place in the name of ISIS, it is vital that Americans remember that this is not the violent invasion of a foreign army, that there is no Islamic enemy except that which our government created, that this is not some unexpected form of “blowback” from terrorists who used to be our allies, that this is an engineered attack by contracted employees of our own defense and intelligence apparatus leading a horde of useful psychopaths, and just like during Operation Gladio, the goal will be to terrify you and those around you into seeking out a more powerful, more centralized government authority to protect your security, to provide cover for the continued planned collapse of American society into third world status, and out of these ashes, the centralization of the political and financial foundations of our world into the hands of an elite few.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1wPzw7p Tyler Durden

“Sand Is The New Gold”?

Thanks to the growing use of fracking, or extracting oil and natural gas from shale formations, shares of U.S. companies which supply sand to energy producers are surging, and as Bloomberg reports, it does not look set to stop anytime soon. “Sand is the new gold,” says Ivaylo Ivanov, founder of Ivanhoff Capital, as Ole Slorer, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley, expects demand for fracking sand in 2016 will be 96 percent higher than last year’s level. Nope, no bubble here…

As Bloomberg adds,

Emerge Energy, a Southlake, Texas-based partnership that made its initial public offering at $17 a share, changed hands for more than $140 yesterday. Hi-Crush, based in Houston, and U.S. Silica, based in Frederick, Maryland, more than tripled during the past 15 months.

…

Demand for fracking sand in 2016 will be 96 percent higher than last year’s level, Ole Slorer, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote two days ago in a report. The sand helps prop open fractures in shale, which eases the flow of oil and gas. He expects shortages for years, with supplies in 2016 trailing demand by 10 percent.

Slorer raised his 12-month price estimate for U.S. Silica by 36 percent, to $80, and wrote that the stock may reach $95. U.S. Silica traded yesterday at a record $71.29 and closed at $70.72, up 4 percent. Emerge Energy, whose main business is fuel processing and distribution, rose 2.6 percent. Hi-Crush added 3.2 percent.

Source: Bloomberg

* * *

Nope, no bubble here at all…

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Kick Russia Out Of SWIFT, UK Demands; But Beware The Retaliation…

UK Prime Minister David Cameron came out swinging this morning; not only at ISIS but in calling for European leaders to block Russia from the SWIFT banking transaction system. European leaders have already (via unnamed sources) denied any actual new sanctions will take place (though they will be discussing them at the NATO Summit) but – as we have noted previously – this is yet another unintended consequence-driven nail in the coffin of USD hegemony…

Bloomberg reports that the U.K. Said to Press EU to Block Russia From Banking Network

The U.K. will press European Union leaders to consider blocking Russian access to the SWIFT banking transaction system under an expansion of sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, a British government official said.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as SWIFT, is one of Russia's main connections to the international financial system. Prime Minister David Cameron's government plans to put the topic on the agenda for a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels Aug. 30, according to the official, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

This has consequences…

“Blocking Russia from the SWIFT system would be a very serious escalation in sanctions against Russia and would most certainly result in equally tough retaliatory actions by Russia,” said Chris Weafer, a senior partner at Moscow-based consulting firm Macro Advisory. “An exclusion from SWIFT would not block major trade deals but would cause problems in cross-border banking and that would disrupt trade flows.”

But then we already knew that…

1) Russia is likely looking to move away from the NSA-sponsored SWIFT system's total transparency to Western powers…

But while collecting credit card data was to be expected, what is even worse is that the NSA has also secretly planted itself in the nexus of the entire global USD-intermediated financial transactions system courtesy of SWIFT.

The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. SWIFT was named as a "target," according to the documents, which also show that the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the agency's "tailored access operations" division. One of the ways the agency accessed the data included reading "SWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks," the documents show.

What is curious is that while the NSA and its henchmen, in this case the GCHQ, had no qualms about violating personal privacy at every level, it is only when banks were threatened that someone feel like perhaps a line was crossed:

But even intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area.

In other words, America's unsupervised uber spies, when not checking in on their former significant others, spend the bulk of their time tracking who is buying what, where, and with whose money.

2) Russia is planning its own (possibly BRICS-based) payment system…

Faced with the risk of losing access to the network, Russia’s government has already drafted a bill to create a new Russian system for domestic bank transfers, Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev said on Aug. 27, according to the Itar-Tass news service.

SWIFT transmitted more than 21 million financial messages a day last month, facilitating payments between more than 10,500 financial institutions and corporations in 215 countries, the organization said on its website.

“There’s no doubt that in the short term restricting Russian usage of SWIFT would be extremely disruptive to Russian financial and commercial activities,” said Richard Reid, a research fellow for finance and regulation at the University of Dundee in Scotland. “However, it may carry a longer-term downside, namely the likelihood that large chunks of Russian international payments flows would move to much less well monitored and measured financial channels and thus be beyond sanctions at any future point.”

and 3) Russia (and China) have begun the de-dollarization…

Several months ago, when Russia announced the much anticipated "Holy Grail" energy deal with China, some were disappointed that despite this symbolic agreement meant to break the petrodollar's stranglehold on the rest of the world, neither Russia nor China announced payment terms to be in anything but dollars. In doing so they admitted that while both nations are eager to move away from a US Dollar reserve currency, neither is yet able to provide an alternative.

This changed in late June when first Gazprom's CFO announced the gas giant was ready to settle China contracts in Yuan or Rubles, and at the same time the People's Bank of China announced that its Assistant Governor Jin Qi and Russian central bank Deputy Chairman Dmitry Skobelkin held a meeting in which they discussed cooperating on project and trade financing using local currencies. The meeting discussed cooperation in bank card, insurance and financial supervision sectors.

And yet, while both sides declared their operational readiness and eagerness to bypass the dollar entirely, such plans remained purely in the arena of monetary foreplay and the long awaited first shot across the Petrodollar bow was absent.

Until now.

According to Russia's RIA Novosti, citing business daily Kommersant, Gazprom Neft has agreed to export 80,000 tons of oil from Novoportovskoye field in the Arctic; it will accept payment in rubles, and will also deliver oil via the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline (ESPO), accepting payment in Chinese yuan for the transfers.

* * *
As we concluded previously, these short-term 'punishments' borne of ego and bluster merely further 'isolate' the status quo from the inevitable transition…

Still confused? Then read "90% Of Gazprom Clients Have "De-Dollarized", Will Transact In Euro & Renminbi" for just how Gazprom set the stage for the day it finally would push the button to skip the dollar entirely. Which it just did.

In conclusion we will merely say what we have said previously, and it touches on what will be the most remarkable aspect of Obama's legacy, because while the hypocrite "progressive" president who even his own people have accused of being a "brown-faced Clinton" after selling out to Wall Street and totally wrecking US foreign policy abroad, is already the worst president in a century of US history according to public polls, the fitting epitaph will come when the president's policies put an end to dollar hegemony and end the reserve currency status of the dollar once and for all, thereby starting the rapid, and uncontrolled, collapse of the US empire. To wit:

In retrospect it will be very fitting that the crowning legacy of Obama's disastrous reign, both domestically and certainly internationally, will be to force the world's key ascendent superpowers (we certainly don't envision broke, insolvent Europe among them) to drop the Petrodollar and end the reserve status of the US currency.

And once China and Russia show that not only can it be done but thanks to US prodding it has been done, expect other countries to promptly follow the anti-SWIFT axis on their own…

* * *

Isolation… indeed.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1qoeAOK Tyler Durden

GWU Prez Should Not Apologize for Remark About Drunk Girls and Rape

Rape of Tamar Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president
emeritus of George Washington University, is in trouble with his
campus’s feminist alliance, Jezebel, et al., for remarks he made
about the causal relationship between intoxication and rape. His
comments came during a panel discussion about campus sexual assault
and how to stop it on the
Diane Rehm Show. Here is what he said:

I think it turns out that there are good and bad in fraternities
and out of fraternities. What we’re focusing here on is a general
situation. I think what we’re doing is creating a false
correlation. For example, we point out that the women don’t drink
— don’t have sorority parties which have alcohol. They don’t have
to. They go to the parties at the fraternities. So it’s not as if
the women aren’t drinking. They are, in fact, without taking —
without making the victims are responsible for what happens.

One of the groups that have to be trained not to drink in excess
are women. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the
nose if they misbehave. And so part of the problem is you have men
who take advantage of women who drink too much. And there are women
who drink too much. And we need to educate our daughters and our
children on that — in that regard.

Co-panelist Cailtin Flanagan of The
Atlantic challenged Trachtenberg on that, saying women
generally can’t overpower male assailants no matter how sober they
are. Trachtenberg replied that he “didn’t anticipate being taken
quite so literally” and was “astonished that somebody would attack
me for suggesting sobriety” as a remedy to the campus rape
problem.

Jezebel attacked Trachtenberg for being “jaw-droppingly
stupid” and a “buffoon.”
He eventually gave the following response to
Mother Jones:

Jezebel has a world view that informs their prose.
They are an advocate for an important cause and they take every
opportunity to make their case. Sometimes in their enthusiasm they
may get a little overheated. It’s hard to resist an apparent
opportunity when you believe you are on the side of the
angels.

I don’t think Trachtenberg should apologize for these comments.
It’s clear from his other statements he accepts that the
blame for sexual assault falls squarely on the
assailant. One can—and should!—hold the rapists responsible while
still giving practical advice on how to deny would-be rapists the
opportunity. And while his line about punching rapists in the nose
to frighten them off may seem like a stretch, it’s certainly the
case that some rapists strike when their victims
are immobilized from blackout drinking, and would be deterred if
their victims could resist at all.

As my colleague
Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote in response to criticisms made by
some feminists against a nail polish that detects date rape
drugs:

At the crux of most of these complaints is the axiom that we
should teach men not to rape instead of teaching women not
to be raped. And that’s an important message! Too much
cultural focus for too long has been on how a women’s own conduct
contributed or may contribute to her assault, in a way that winds
up absolving assailants of culpability.

But teaching men not to rape and helping women avoid rape aren’t
mutually exclusive options. It’s been said so many times already so
as to be a cliche, but no one accuses security cameras of
encouraging “theft culture”. And neither do most people blame theft
victims for getting robbed just because
they didn’t have security cameras.

On the whole, I don’t think Trachtenberg’s comments are
offensive. But that doesn’t mean his advice—drink less—is
particularly helpful, either. Instead, he should advocate a clear
policy change that would actually reduce binge drinking (and by
extension, opportunities for rape): lowering the drinking age.
Since drinking any amount of alcohol is illegal for most
undergraduates, they have an incentive to cram all their drinking
into short windows of time. They can’t just order a drink here and
there; they have to go to parties where alcohol is being consumed
recklessly, secretly, and illegally.

It seems likely that allowing more college students to consume
moderate amounts of alcohol—in public, during the hours of
daylight—would
decrease campus rape, just as repealing Prohibition decreased
violent gang crime.

Trachtenberg, however, is not a signatory to the Amethyst
Initiative, which calls on lawmakers to “rethink the drinking
age,” nor is any other past or current GWU president. According to
this column in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, his opinion on the issue is
decidedly mixed.

He should change his perspective and fully align himself with a
lower drinking age. He shouldn’t apologize to Jezebel, though.

Read more from Reason on efforts to combat capus sexual assault

here.

Hat tip:
Inside Higher Ed

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Your Wall Street Slumlord Arrives in Europe – Goldman and Other Financial Firms Launch “Buy to Rent” in Spain

Screen Shot 2014-08-29 at 3.15.21 PM Liberty Blitzkrieg was early in reporting on the trend of financial firms entering the U.S. residential real estate market with “all-cash” bids for tens of thousands of homes with the intention of turning former homeowners into permanent sources of rental income. The first of many pieces I published on the topic was in January 2013, titled: America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street.

Now that the financial oligarchs have had their way with the U.S. property market, to the point that average citizens can’t even afford to own a home (Zillow recently showed that 1 in 3 homes are unaffordable), it appears they have turned their sights overseas. What better market for bailed-out bankers to feast on than Spain, with its 50%+ youth unemployment rate and a continued depressed real estate market.

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