Month: July 2016

Via Priceonomics.com,

Marijuana pop culture has traditionally centered around the young male smoker and his high times. But the legalization movement has made marijuana more accessible than ever been before, and cannabis’s application as a painkiller is particularly appealing to senior citizens. 

So what does the typical, recreational marijuana user look like today? And how do the preferences and spending habits of groups like young men and senior citizens differ? 

We explored these questions by drawing on the data of Headset, a Priceonomics customer with a large dataset of cannabis retailer transaction data. Since many of these cannabis dispensaries have customer loyalty programs, the data includes information about customers’ age and gender. We decided to use to this data to learn more about who buys weed and what they smoke or consume.

The data suggests that smokers in the customer loyalty program are overwhelmingly male, accounting for about 70% of all members. And, while customers range from ages 21 to 95, over 50% of loyalty members are under 40.  

We also found that while Flower (your typical marijuana bud) accounts for about half of the purchases made by each demographic, each group has its own quirks. Compared to the opposite sex, men prefer concentrates and women prefer pre-rolls and edibles. Older consumers prefer edibles to pre-rolled joints.

***

We began our analysis by examining the the customer split by gender. Are men or women more likely to visit cannabis dispensaries often?

Data source: Headset

Accounting for 68.9% of customers, the ratio of men to women is well over 2:1. This disparity is not surprising given cannabis culture’s emphasis on the male pothead.  

Next we examined the distribution of customer age.

Data source: Headset

25- to 29-year-olds account for the largest percentage of customer loyalty members (20%), followed by 21- to 24-year-olds (16%). Yet the average customer age is 37.6-years-old, which is a higher than one might expect given stereotypes about marijuana users. The average age for female customers is slightly older at 38.2, while the average age for males is 37.4. People ages 65 to 95 make up less than 5% of customers.

We also wanted to look at customer spending habits. Below is the distribution of average dollars spent per trip to the store.

Data source: Headset

Most people spend between $25 and $50 per trip to a marijuana store, with a $33 median spend per trip. 34.7% of customers spend less than $10 on average, usually picking up a single item like a half gram pre-roll or a carbonated beverage. Only 8.2% spend more than $100/trip.  

We also analyzed the distribution of annual spend by customer loyalty members on marijuana. The chart below shows the total amount spent in dispensaries over the last year by customers who have been loyalty members for over one year.

Data source: Headset

The median customer spends $645 on pot each year, and over 57% of customers spent more than $500. Very few customers—less than 10%—spent over $2,500.

So do different demographics have different shopping habits? To investigate, we first analyzed the marijuana purchasing behavior of loyalty members by gender.

Data source: Headset

For the most part, men and women have similar shopping and spending habits. Men shop slightly more often, visiting the store about every 19.5 days compared to 21.5 day for women. Although men buy fewer items per trip, they spend almost as much ($33) as women ($35).  

Next we looked at these habits segmented by age.

Data source: Headset

Older loyalty members generally visit dispensaries less frequently, but they spend more when they do visit. Customers in their 80s spend the most per trip, with a median spend per trip of $64. Customers in their 40s, however, spent the most last year: a median of $823. 

In a previous blog post, we looked at the most popular types of cannabis products. We were curious to see if the popularity of particular products differed by demographic. The chart below displays the product preferences of men and women.

Data source: Headset

Flower, which is “traditional” marijuana bud, is the most popular product for both genders. But it is even more popular among men: flower accounts for 4.4% more of their purchases. Women tend to buy more Pre-Roll and Edibles, while men buy more Concentrates. Women also tend to experiment more with non-traditional products (Other) such as Beverages, Tincture & Sublingual and Topicals.

We also explored product preferences by age.

Data source: Headset

Each segment buys mostly Flower, with those in their 50s buying Flower at the highest rate. Older customers buy less Pre-Rolls than their younger counterparts. Pre-Rolls make up 27% of purchases among customers in their 20s, and this ratio drops down with each age band to only 8% of purchases for those 80 years or older. Conversely, the proportion of both Edibles and Other purchased increase with age—from 6% to 18% and 3% to 12%, respectively.   

***

In contrast to the stereotypical depictions of marijuana users in popular culture and the mainstream media, our customer loyalty data shows that there is a wide range of pot smokers. Each customer segment brings their own habits and product preferences with them into the marijuana store. 

As the industry develops, talking generically about “marijuana” and “pot sales” may become like referring to “alcohol sales” rather than talking about beer, wine, and cocktails.

via http://ift.tt/2aQRJt8 Tyler Durden

Hillary and the federal government are determined to ensure a “fair” and “open” election this November and will stop at nothing to reverse discrimination against “oppressed” segments of the American electorate, well at least if you live in a large swing state.  This morning, the WSJ reported that the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law just days after we wrote about Virginia’s similar effort to register 200,000 “oppressed” felons.  The ruling asserts that North Carolina’s law violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against low-income and minority voters, saying:

“In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees. This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.”

 

“Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inept remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.”

Meanwhile, Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, described the ruling as a “stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade.”

While we have no doubt that the intentions of Hillary and the various federal organizations involved in this process are “pure,” we do wonder why we so often see greater efforts to “protect” the “oppressed” voters in larger swing states like Virginia and North Carolina but not so much in a small states like New Hampshire, which has a very strict voter ID requirement but only 4 electoral votes and has swung Democrat in 5 out of the past 6 Presidential elections.  Surely, low-income and minority voters are just as likely to be “oppressed” in New Hampshire as in North Carolina, right?

Ballotpedia posted the following graphic which highlights the voter ID requirements of each state in the US with the red states having the most strict requirements:

 

It just so happens, that we may have stumbled upon the perfect solution to this problem which we recently discussed in a post titled “There Is Now A Marketplace For White People To Make Reparations Payments“…a state-issued ID could make a very good reparation offer.

The decisions for the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can be read in its entirety below:

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Via The Daily Bell,

Hillary Clinton at her DNC speech: “I’m not here to take away your guns” …   Hillary Clinton wants you to know one thing about her position on gun control: “I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns.”  She elaborated further on her comments, which she made at her Democratic National Convention speech accepting the presidential nomination: “I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.” –Vox

During her acceptance speech, see above, Hillary said she wasn’t going to take away guns in the US, but this is untrue.

She knows just how to do it.

First of all, she will make guns more expensive with new back ground checks.

Second, she will make guns manufacturers liable for selling guns that later are used in crimes.

But that is just the beginning.

Hillary doesn’t actually believe that people in the US should have guns.

In a Fox post HERE entitled, “Four ways Hillary Clinton will work to end gun ownership as president,” John Lott points out that in an appearance on ABC, Hillary would not say whether citizens had a constitutional right to own guns.

George Stephanopoulos pushed Clinton twice on whether people have a right to own guns on ABC News’ “This Week”:

 

“But that’s not what I asked.  I said do you believe that their conclusion that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right?”

 

Clinton could only say: “If it is a constitutional right…”

Clinton like other gun opponents, believes an overabundance of guns are responsible for the shootings that take place in the US, especially in mass shootings.

But there are many questions about these mass shootings.

David Steele, second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence and former CIA clandestine services case officer, has said this here:

“Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.”

Such FBI involvement leads one to ask whether there are forces in and behind the US government that are manufacturing violence in order to justify continued anti-gun agitation.

Authoritarian governments and those who back them don’t want people to have guns because without guns, it is much easier to force people to obey. When people are not armed, genocide becomes a more viable and convenient option.

Government killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century. The 21st century may equally bloody, especially if guns continue to be confiscated.

In the US, many citizens have fought back against gun confiscation.  But if Hillary wins the presidency, discussions about gun control will become moot.

Guns will be confiscated. Lott explains it this way:

Until 2008, Washington, D.C., had a complete handgun ban. It was also a felony to put a bullet in the chamber of a gun. In effect, this was a complete ban on guns. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down these laws.

But the constituency of the Supreme Court is changing. Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are Bill Clinton appointees. Sonia Sotomayor was appointed by Obama as was Elana Kagan.

“If Hillary wins in November, she will appoint [Antonin] Scalia’s successor and the Supreme Court will overturn the Heller decision.  Make no mistake about it, gun bans will return.”

Only one more appointee is needed.

Conclusion: Hillary herself will not have to “pull the trigger” on gun confiscations. She will let the Supreme Court do it for her.

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Jeff Gundlach is not the only person who is feeling “maximum negative” on Treasuries.

In an interview, none other than the “Maestro” Alan Greenspan, the man whose “great moderation” policy made the current global bond bubble possible, said that he is worried bond prices have risen too high.

Asked if he finds what is happened in the bond market right now “in any way, shape, or form concerning for financial stability”, Greenspan replied that “it’s obvious that you ought to be looking at the price earnings ratio in bonds to income.  We get very nervous when the stock price index goes to high PE.  We ought to be somewhat nervous when the bond rate does the same…. To believe that we can keep rates down here for very much longer strikes me as to say that human nature is going to change, and that’s one thing I wouldn’t bet on.“

He did not mention that the only reason why there continues to be such an unprecedented stampede into fixed income, pushing yields to record (negative) lows, is because investors are merely frontrunning central banks; they also know that as monetization accelerates and as private supply leave the market, the same central banks will purchase whatever bonds they can find at any price, and that is the only reason why global bond yields are where they are.

Instead he said the following:

The best way to view negative interest rates is to think in terms of the fact of, where, for example, securities denominated in the Swiss franc, the yields on those, versus, for example, the Italian lire as it used to be, the Italian euro now.  But that spread hasn’t changed very much for a very long period of time.  So when global deflation takes hold, as it has, all interest rates fall, but the spread doesn’t.  So, in order to maintain that spread, Swiss interest rates have got to turn negative.  Now, the question is, how far can they?  Well, there is an arbitrage, that obviously one can get. 

 

For example, in the United States, if interest rates got very negative, what we would do is all get in to currency in which it’s a zero interest rate — I should say it’s a zero cost. We would get into currency, stack it all up in, I would say, in a vault somewhere.  The problem with that arbitrage, obviously, is there’s a limited amount of currency you can hold, so at some point, something is going to give.  The initial sign is going to be a big pickup in the holding, for example, of U.S. currency, both here and abroad – sorry, parenthetically, very large part of currency, U.S. currency, is held outside the United States. 

Which reveals an interesting tangent: to Greenspan, a key indicator of when the system begins to tip over is when the run on the US physical currency begins, not so much in the US as abroad.  And speaking of tipping over, Greenspan was quite clear: “it hasn’t happened, but it will.”

The only thing you can hedge against is the currency, and that’s got a physical limit to it.  So there’s a downside limit to how far people are willing to pay to say, for example, get into Swiss securities.  And that’s when the markets begin to react quite differently.  Hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

Remaining on the topic of currency, Greenspan then tied in the issue of surging currency vol, to his favorite topic: unsustainable entitlement costs. Answering a question what is causing global foreign exchange volatility, Greenspan’s responded as follows:

I think the cause of it is that there’s a very significant amount of uncertainty in the global economy.  It’s coming from the fact that, as I indicated before, in the United States, we’ve got very, very major entitlements problem, which politically, I don’t see how we’re going to touch.  We went through two conventions.  The word entitlements never got raised, except, let’s do it more.  Now, we’re going to have to cut back.  There’s no physical way to continue doing this without destabilizing the financial system.  So, it will stop, but the problem is that it’s going to take a while before the political system adjusts.  So, it’s hard for me to see how we get out of this unless we address that problem first.

But more important than his discussion on bonds or currencies, was Greenspan’s explanation of “what he is most concerned about”, namely stagflation – the same economic problem that we wrote about in early April in a post titled: “The Next Big Problem: “Stagflation Is Starting To Show Across The Economy.” The former Fed chairman agrees, as follows:

Three fourths of the major economies, OEC economies for example, have, over the last five years, have had a less than a one percent annual rate of upward growth. The economy can’t go anywhere under those conditions, and we’re getting a state of stagnation which is not only evident in the United States but pretty much throughout Europe and the far east. And as a consequence of that, it’s very difficult to see where the next step is except what I’m concerned about mostly, is stag–flation, meaning I think we’re seeing the very early signs of inflation beginning finally to pick up as the issue of deflation fades.

Greenspan is then asked about these two elements, “the stag and the flation. How acute is this problem with productivity, the lack of growth?  Do you see a recession in our future within the next 12, 18, 24 months?“

It’s very difficult to say.  In fact, I don’t think you can describe the world economies in terms of the old conventional issue of inflation, recession, and the like.  What we are dealing with is a population that is aging very rapidly, and that is inducing a major increase in so-called social benefits, what we in the United States call entitlements.  And that is dominating the whole financial system, and until we come to understand that we have got to slow this rate of growth, which in the United States has been 9% per year since 1965, we are now down to the point where it’s taken so much savings out of the economy that we’re not getting enough investment, but that has very little to do with whether we’re going in a recession or not.  I think we’re just in a stagnation state. 

That covers the “stag.” How about the “flation“?

Well we’re beginning to get a pickup in wages beyond the rate of growth of productivity, and that is usually the best indicator.  But, just as importantly now, is that since money, at the end of the day, is what causes inflation, we have been seeing, since the beginning of the year a significant pickup in the rate of money supply growth, and over the very long-run, it’s the ratio of money supply divided by the real GDP capacity to produce, which ultimately determines the price level.  It’s a very rough indicator.  It doesn’t work for two or three years and then it pops in.  But over the long-run, it’s never failed.  And we’re in a situation now where looking at the interest rate levels that we’re looking at and the inflation rates we’re looking at, it’s very clear that we’re going to be moving reasonably shortly into a wholly different phase.

In retrospect, between the soaring welfare costs, and the upcoming stagflationary hit, it is also very clear why exactly a month ago Alan Greenspan also warned that not only is a crisis imminent but that it is paramount to “return to the gold standard” immediately. We doubt that will happen.

Much more in the full interview below:

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Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

To the left, a shot from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator; to the right, Hillary’s acceptance speech was a carefully scripted triumph over the democratic process… as demonstrated by her playing with the balloons like the world is her toy.

In a fair election, my best estimate is that Donald Trump would win in a landslide.

But this election will not be fair. In fact, few of them are.

For Trump’s part, there is no doubt that he has been this year’s sensation. A newcomer to politics, he has thrown out all the conventional rules, played by his own, and found a captivated country hanging onto his every word. Love him, hate him, or somewhere in between… no one can look away from the spectacle.

After a war within the party and the convenient disposal of 16 conventional GOP contenders, Trump is now the official Republican candidate and he is in a strong position. Coming out of the relatively calm Republican National Convention and going into the tumultuous DNC, Trump has enjoyed soaring poll numbers while Hillary has been losing ground fast to the scandals and corruption revealed by Wikileaks and other related mouthpieces.

But the fat lady has not sung.

Hijacking the Party, Keeping Dissent Under Wraps

Hillary’s coronation last night as she formally accepted her party’s nomination could hardly have been more forced. The entire Democratic convention has been stage-managed to downplay the overwhelming noise from Bernie supporter who are outraged and feel betrayed by Hillary.

The entire convention has had a certain air to it, a quality that reveals the desperation for power, and the crisp sense of danger that brings with it.

 

Protesters Rage Against the DNC: “Hillary Didn’t Get the Nomination. The Nomination Was Stolen”

 

To a casual observer, things might look typical enough, with a few sore losers and pipe dreamers wishing for an ideal country run by decent and fair people that either don’t exist or haven’t figured out how to win an election. But things are not typical – the paradigm is shifting. Politics realigns every 30 years or so, or at least that is the maxim that has held in political science. Only, the last shift has been 30 or 40 years overdue.

There is a reason for that, and the establishment has been fighting to stop the change for the past generation. They have faked out the cycle and kept the population under their thumb (when was the last time you saw a “real” presidential election that wasn’t a means to keeping the status quo?)

But delaying the inevitable won’t hold.

Why Trump Should Win…

As Michael Moore argued, Trump has been preaching the gospel of restoring America’s manufacturing, and is working to woo and turn to “red” the “blue” Rust Belt states where Americans once had strong middle class jobs, especially in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. According to Moore’s numbers (which are cited to motivate support for Hillary and opposition to Trump), if Trump captures those key states in addition to the red states that Mitt Romney, a weak candidate, won in 2012, then Trump should win the electoral college:

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest.

In fact, Moore is right. Nobody wants any more Flint, Michigans (where the water is contaminated and poverty seems to be airborne and contagious), least of all Michael Moore.

Trump’s appeal is much broader than just his sensational antics and controversial statements. He is resonating with America because he is speaking to the wounds of those struggling to cling to what’s left of the middle class American Dream.

And the strength of Trump’s position there is buttressed by the cold fact that the Clinton’s strong support for NAFTA played a major role in the downward spiral of the Rust Belt, and many other parts of the United States.

Trump’s appeal to bringing jobs back to America has to sound like not only a good campaign strategy, but an actual sound idea.

Things have reached a point where nearly every American – regardless of how little they pay attention to news and world affairs – is feeling the damage that has been done. NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and an entire shift into pseudo-governing structures of globalism that have eaten away at the sovereignty of the United States and devoured the prosperity of its people have taken a serious toll on our way of life. And we have all been programmed to take it lying down.

The steady flow of funny money, artificially pumped out by the Federal Reserve has kept many from noticing it, but the real world effects are still hitting people on the street. Not only does the dollar not go as far as it used to, but everything in life is increasing in cost, and getting watered down in value and substance. Society is acting out one big charade, and pretending not to notice the outrage, dissent and anger seeping through the cracks and edges.

Inevitable and determined to win at all costs

Rather than let that burst on her watch, and during the only opportunity she has left in this lifetime, Hillary Clinton and her minions have rearranged all the deck chairs in her favor to force a win. It certainly hasn’t come from the grassroots. Where necessary, the Democratic party has fudged primaries and stolen them outright. The mainstream media has been scripted around her as an anointed figure who is untouchable and beyond reproach. They have stifled exposure of Bernie and would have done so to any other rival… if only any others had dared to enter the race.

Instead, the campaign to elect Hillary became an unrelenting junta to force her into office in spite of the will of the people, the rules of the game or the ever-expanding negative image of the former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State whose corruption and ties to bad deeds are both legendary and sufficiently documented to warrant life without parole.

There was a never a realistic chance that Hillary would be prosecuted or even reprimanded over her email scandals, because the fix was in a long time ago. Those who would theoretically hold her into account were appointed by her husband, or by President Obama, and their cooperation was assured in private.

Though many have argued that you can’t put lipstick on a pig, that is exactly what has taken place. 2016 is more of a farce than ever… and there is still another round to go.

Only One Persons Stands Between Her and the Presidency

Can anyone else see that the most rigged and stolen election of all time is shaping up? If the Democratic party doesn’t want Hillary, what makes anyone think the entire country wants anything to do with her?

Before you answer that openly, make a strong educated guess about who the next president is going to be… and how many bodies she will have to climb over to get there.

What Wikileaks exposed with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC, and what the emails have revealed about Hillary and the Clinton Foundation are surely only the tip of the iceberg. The stories of the delegates who were silenced or kicked out of the convention, and many other deceitful acts to destroy dissent and keep up appearances suggest some of the rest of the story… and it is anything but democratic or “of the people” – though very likely the whole of it will never be known.

There is something very, very wrong going on and it is time that everyone – regardless of ideology, party affiliation or politics – needs to face up to. Preliminary evidence indicates strongly that there has been a very carefully orchestrated coup taking place… and if successful, it will have only one logical conclusion:

Total power, at any price, with a facade of support and momentum that just isn’t there from anyone other than a handful of elite billionaires, and a cadre of clients with addresses that are either foreign or based on Wall Street.

If you missed the convention coverage, then you have got to see Hillary playing with the balloons after her speech.

There really is no wondering who she is concerned about… herself, of course.

As I mentioned above, it is reminiscent – even spot on – of Charlie Chaplin’s amazing parody in The Great Dictator, where his version of a Hitler-esque autocrat toys with the world as his plaything.

We are in for a world of hurt if what I think is going to happen turns out. The entire democratic process is being pushed back under the water, and a crude, fake smile is broadcast for appearances, while holding it all down.

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While we here in the United States debate pressing issues in the wake of the upcoming Presidential election, like the urgent need for gender-neutral bathrooms, the people of Venezuela remain entrenched in a food crisis that continues to sow widespread unrest which has become increasingly violent in recent months (see our post here).  So what do you do if you’re the President of a Socialist government with mounting civil unrest and growing political opposition seeking your ouster via a recall referendum?  Well you enslave your entire nation, of course.  

As Vice News reports, President Nicolás Maduro signed a new law last week that requires "all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how" to work in agricultural fields on demand.  The new law mandates that citizens can be required to work in the agricultural sector for a period of 60 days which can be extended "if the circumstances require it."  

While we’re “sure” President Maduro’s intentions are good, we’re somewhat skeptical of his plan.  As we recently reported (here), the real issue at hand in Venezuela is, of course, the hyperinflation death spiral gripping the Socialist nation in the wake of the collapse of their oil-dependent economy.  As Miguel Pérez Abad, minister of industry and business, recently told Reuters the decline in domestic production is being exacerbated by plummeting imports which are likely to fall by 60 percent this year, compared to 2015.  As a local baker pointed out, "We cannot make more subsidized bread with the current cost of flour.  We always end up losing, but we cannot afford to stop making bread either."  

Per the FT, local merchants are being forced by an increasingly oppressive military to sell groceries at a loss to avoid civil unrest:

“They went into all the shops in the area, forcing us to sell at a loss,” says Daniel, not his real name, of the incident earlier this month. The army men demanded that Daniel sell his beef at 250 bolívares (roughly $0.25 at black market rates) a kilo, even though he explained it cost 3,000 bolívars to buy from his suppliers.

 

“They told me the beef belonged to the people and stayed seven hours as a huge queue formed outside.”

Not wanting to be outdone by his U.S. counterparts who masterfully utilize complicit media outlets to control news cycles at their will (see our recent post here), President Maduro has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to blame the food shortages in Venezuela on an "economic war" waged by right-wing businesses, and supported by US imperialism, who seek to bring down his Socialist regime.  Just last month, Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency based on his fears that the U.S. was plotting a coup attempt.  Per Vice News:

He alleges that business owners are sabotaging the economy in an effort to force him out. Maduro accuses them of wanting to bury the socialist legacy of his popular predecessor, President Hugo Chávez, who created a solid base of support among the poor thanks to oil-subsidized social programs and price-controlled food.  

Meanwhile, Antonio Pestana, chief of Venezuela's farming association, indicated that Venezuela’s food crisis was a simple issue related to the underutilization of available ag land, telling reporters last month that only 25 percent of agricultural land is actually being farmed in Venezuela.  While we don’t doubt Mr. Pestana’s figures, we’re not sure how enslaving a nation of people helps to alleviate Venezuela’s food crisis.  Without the ability to import critically important irrigation equipment and fertilizer supplies, due to a useless currency, we’re not sure what use additional ag labor will be.  We’ve heard that singing to plants can help improve yields, perhaps that is the plan?

Vice News posted the following video detailing the challenges of grocery shopping in Venezuela:

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Submitted by Robert Higgs via The Indepedent Institute,

As elderly people get older they tend toward feeble-mindedness. Not in every case, of course, but as a general rule applicable to any given cohort. I am acutely aware of this tendency whenever I express an opinion or explain a conclusion: I may simply be losing my grip. Moreover, older people tend to become stuck in their ways. So they may often fail to see how the world is changing, not to mention why it is changing as it is.

With the foregoing declarations as my preface, you may wish to disregard what I now have to say, which is—if you’ve decided to stick with me—that I find many people’s outlooks, especially my fellow libertarians’ outlooks, touchingly sweet, innocent, and cheerful. Oh, they complain bitterly about all sorts of injustice and destruction, especially the instances perpetrated by the people who fancy themselves fit to rule the rest of us, but nevertheless my fellow libertarians, the younger ones in particular, tend to see the future as turning out much for the better. For them the present is akin to the situation that Wordsworth described more than two centuries ago:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

 

But to be young was very heaven!

They believe that truth will triumph over lies, that peace rather than war will recommend itself to the public and its leaders, that the miracles of the market will ultimately displace the chaos and impoverishment of government’s central planning and haphazard intervention—in sum, that truth, beauty, and goodness will win in the contest with mendacity, ugliness, and evil. They almost always believe that technological change is working to move the world closer to a sweet, cooperative anarchy than to an Orwellian nightmare of omnipresent surveillance, manipulation, and control, and they have almost limitless confidence that the advent of the Internet changes everything insofar as the campaign for liberty is concerned. This outlook is so hopeful, so filled with good cheer, so uplifting, and so congenial to carrying on the struggle for a better world that it would take a nasty fellow indeed to quarrel with it or point out its deficiencies. And, to be sure, these hopeful optimists do have some facts on their side.

Unfortunately, however, they also seem to have a tendency to jump to pro-freedom prophecies that rest more on wishful thinking than on documented, accurately weighted facts viewed as a whole and without rose-colored lenses. In particular, they seem unable to appreciate the vast scope and deep embeddedness of currently established politico-economic institutions. Participatory fascism, the sort of regime that freedom lovers are up against nearly everywhere, is not simply a matter of a central bank, a cabal of big bankers, and a handful of opportunistic political puppets whose strings these so-called banksters pull; nor is it simply the military-industrial-congressional complex and its assorted cheerleaders and hangers-on; nor is it simply a gaggle of foolish and arrogant regulators at the SEC, EPA, FDA, and hundreds of other such agencies; nor is it simply the NSA, FBI, and a dozen other superlatively well-funded federal spy agencies in cahoots with thousands of police departments in each state and local jurisdiction across the USA; nor is it simply a host of privilege-dispensing ministries such as the Commerce, Agriculture, Labor, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development departments, among scores of similar others; nor is it simply the prison-industrial complex that feeds millions of people annually, disproportionately young black men, into a system of incarceration, convict labor, and ruined lives for political and financial profit, regardless of whether the prisoners have really wronged anyone; nor is it simply the medical-insurance-old people’s complex in which millions of affluent providers reap fortunes by irradiating and poking needles into old people and carving up their organs for as long as their bodies can stand the high-priced treatments and the reimbursements keep rolling in, while documenting everything with a nearly infinite assortment of filled-out forms and thereby supporting a big chunk of the IT industry; and so on.

What do the freedom-loving libertarians with their cheerful view of the future imagine will happen to all of these well-connected, powerful, and rich elements of the politico-economic status quo when the great day of revolution that they confidently expect finally dawns? Where will all of these exploiters, abusers, rent reapers, and grateful recipients of state handouts and privileges go? If, for example, the Fed should be abolished tomorrow, does one fancy that all the activities and actors I have just mentioned—and countless others not mentioned here—would merely evaporate without a whimper or a trace? Do the optimistic libertarians actually suppose that the government is incapable of, for example, simply printing and issuing fiat money directly from the Treasury, as it did previously on various occasions?

I ask these questions not to spoil anyone’s day, but only because I have lived long enough to earn the right to my skepticism. Time and again, I have personally witnessed the triumph of lies over truth, of injustice over justice, of savagery over civility, of reaction and hatred over genuine progress, harmony, and love. So, perhaps I am too old to appreciate all the resplendent things that my fellow, younger libertarians proclaim to be harbingers of a glorious future. Or perhaps I have simply lived too long, and thereby seen too much.

Don’t get me wrong, however: to be blessed with a hopeful, optimistic outlook is surely a fine piece of luck. But such an outlook is not a good substitute for a broad, well-informed appreciation of what is at stake in the struggle between the state and those who prefer a less fraudulent and destructive and more peaceful and cooperative arrangement for the production of law and order.

via http://ift.tt/2ag966R Tyler Durden

Two weeks ago, an already bearish Jeff Gundlach appeared to hit the “glass floor” of negative sentiment, and smash right through it.

On July 13, the new bond king said that there is “big money” to be made on the “short side.” Gundlach added that he has been selectively betting against shares in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and continues to favor emerging market bonds over high-yield “junk” debt. Gundlach was just as skeptical about bonds, warning that the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at around 1.38% to 1.39% “is a terrible trade location. It is the worst trade location in the history of the 10-year Treasury.”

His caution seemed prophetic: it was followed by the biggest two-day spike in 10Y yields in 5 years.  However, just like Gross’ infamous “Bund Spike” last May, the selling in TSYs now appears to be over, and following a series of lousy data reports yields are once again sliding.

Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of the $100BN DoubleLine Capital

So has the recent whiplash in bonds and the ongoing levitation in stocks to fresh record highs finally spooked the DoubleLine strategist. Not even close.

As part of his weekly ritual to hold an interview with Reuters’ Jen Ablan, Gundlach said on Friday that many asset classes look frothy, which is understandable since the S&P hit an all time high today even as consensus expectations for Q2 earnings slid even more negative, and are now anticipating a 6th consecutive quarter of EPS declines. 

Observing the recent run-up in the S&P while economic growth remains weak and corporate earnings are stagnant, Gundlach said stock investors have entered a “world of uber complacency.” 

 

“The artist Christopher Wool has a word painting, ‘Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.’ That’s exactly how I feel – sell everything. Nothing here looks good,” Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine, said that his firm went “maximum negative” on Treasuries on July 6 when the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hit 1.32 percent.

That however does not mean he is short. “We never short in our mainline strategies. We also never go to zero Treasuries. We went to lower weightings and change the duration,” Gundlach said.

It is also unclear if Gundlach was short equities; what we do know is that he continues to hold (and likely accumulate) gold. He told Reuters that “his firm continues to hold gold, a traditional safe-haven, along with gold miner stocks.”

via http://ift.tt/2awDoF3 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Another 508 people renounced their US citizenship last quarter according to documents published this morning by the Internal Revenue Service.

This brings the total number of US ‘renunciants’ under the Obama administration to 17,359.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a government’s tax policy is so oppressive that it drives people to permanently divorce themselves from their country.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss these people as traitors and cowards, and to say “good riddance, we didn’t want you anyhow.”

But consider that many of these renunciants are what I call ‘accidental Americans’.

This could be someone born in, say, Thailand, to an American father and Thai mother.

Automatically at birth, the child is a US citizen due to his father’s nationality.

He grows up in Thailand for his entire life, barely ever setting foot on US soil.

He goes on to have a successful life, until, one day, he receives a ‘Dear John’ letter in the mail from the US government congratulating him on all his success.

“And oh by the way you owe us 20 years of back taxes.”

This has happened countless times. That’s because the United States is almost the only country in the world that has what’s called “citizenship based taxation”.

In other words, if you are a US citizen, you are required to file tax returns and pay tax to the US government, regardless of where you live, even if you are an accidental American who has never even been to the United States.

This isn’t normal. Most countries have ‘residency based taxation’ where they tax people based on where you live.

Here in Italy, for example, the Italian government (even as bankrupt as it is) only taxes people who actually live here.

For Italians living abroad (and who don’t have any Italian-sourced income), they don’t pay a single euro in income tax to the Italian government.

Residency-based taxation is a more sensible approach.

But in the Land of the Free, the government demands payment from all Americans, no matter where in the world they happen to live.

There are certain credits for foreign taxes paid, and exclusions like the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

But anyone earning income beyond the exclusion amount still owes tax.

Plus anyone earning investment income like capital gains, dividends, interest income, etc. still has to pay tax on those earnings without any exemption whatsoever.

Think about that. You’ve never received a dime of benefit or government service. And yet you’re still expected to pay up, along with all sorts of penalties and interest.

Unbelievable.

What’s really amazing is that when these accidental Americans get fed up and renounce their citizenship to put a stop to this madness, they aren’t allowed to do so until they settle their tax bills.

Many of these people never lived in the US, never worked in the US, never agreed to pay any tax…

Yet they’re not even ‘allowed’ to renounce until they pay off the federal government.

This is extortion, plain and simple.

Funny thing, solvent governments don’t engage in this type of behavior.

You don’t see Hong Kong devouring its own people through oppressive taxation that drives them to relinquish their passports.

On the contrary Hong Kong’s taxes are so low that they’re attracting talent and business.

Bankrupt governments, on the other hand, routinely resort to this type of financial cannibalism.

History is replete with cautionary tales of insolvent governments who plunder the wealth of their citizens in order to maintain the status quo.

So as western governments continue their grueling slide into insolvency, this is a trend that all of us will eventually face.

Yes, we can be grateful for the opportunities that have been afforded us by our nationalities.

But that’s no reason to lie down and be fleeced so that a government with a track record of wasteful, destructive spending can steal your wealth to drop bombs on children’s hospitals on the other side of the world.

Bottom line: they’re coming for your money at some point in the future.

It’s important to understand this reality, and have a plan to ensure you don’t become another statistic.

via http://ift.tt/2a5YrhL Tyler Durden