Month: November 2020

Authored by Jake Anderson via TheMindUnleashed.com,

Every 26 seconds for the last 60 years seismologists have detected a ubiquitous pulse emanating from deep inside the Earth. The debate over the cause of this mysterious “microseism” has gone on for decades and produced several cogent hypotheses, but scientists still don’t know decisively what’s behind the phenomenon.

First observed and recorded by geologist Jack Oliver in the early 1960s, then studied more extensively in the following decades, the pulse is known to be stronger during storms. But storms don’t turn off and on every 26 seconds, nor do volcanos, which have also been proposed as the source.

In 2005, a graduate student named Greg Bensen tracked the origin of the pulse to a more narrow location, a single source in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa; six years later, another team honed in even closer, pinpointing the origin in an area of the Gulf of Guinea called the Bight of Bonny.

This team believed the waves crashing on that coast were responsible for the seismic blip. Others, however, weren’t convinced. Some believed it was caused by the sun itself. While tectonic activity, earthquakes, and volcanos regularly trigger solid seismic sounds, a more mellow soundscape of seismic static runs in near perpetuity.

Mike Ritzwoller, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied the pulse for decades, says that while the pulse is a mystery, seismic activity, in general, is not.

“Seismic noise basically exists because of the sun,” whose energy hits the equator and the poles unevenly, creating wind, storms, ocean currents, and waves, all of which work to displace and buffet energy onto the coastline.

“It’s like if you were tapping on your desk. It deforms the area near your knuckle, but then it’s being transmitted across the whole table,” Ritzwoller explains. “So someone sitting at the other side of the table, if they put their hand, or maybe their cheek, on the table, they can feel the vibration.” 

With the advent more advanced tools and technologies, scientists have been able to study the pulse more closely and most generally agree that the Bight of Bonny is ground zero for whatever is happening. Currently, many researchers are beginning to think the cause may be that this specific place on the edge of the enormous North American continental shelf (far below the ocean floor) is basically the other end of the desk Ritzwoller used as a metaphor. In other words, a drum the size of a continent is somehow consolidating its reverberations into a single spot.

Some researchers still believe volcanism is the answer and point to an active volcano on the island of São Tomé in the Bight of Bonny as evidence.

Why any of these physical phenomena would produce such a strange clockwork pulse every 26 seconds remains a mystery.

“We’re still waiting for the fundamental explanation of the cause of this phenomenon,” Ritzwoller says with a beat of optimism about the next decades of seismology.

 “I think the point [of all this] is there are very interesting, fundamental phenomena in the earth that are known to exist out there and remain secret.”

Though many of them are probably still living in mom and dad’s basement despite being two years removed from college, Gen Zers will soon become the most dominant force in the urban rental market.

As a result, landlords in major urban centers are trying to figure out how to cater to this new generation, particularly as their predecessors, the millennials, rotate out of housing markets like NYC and San Francisco.

With rents on the downtrend in formerly hot urban rental markets like Manhattan and San Francisco, landlords might get stuck going the extra mile to attract tenants.

In a recent study examining the priorities of Gen Z renters, the oldest of whom are now turning 24, researchers with RentCafe have discovered that Gen Z is far less willing to compromise on amenities and quality, unlike their predecessors. One could argue that this is in keeping with “Zoomers” behavior in other areas, like the workplace, where they are reportedly more likely to speak up for themselves, and less likely to toil relentlessly in silence, simply grateful to have a job.

Seeing as they’re the first generation to come of the age with social media, Gen Zers do more research online before deciding on an apartment. They’re more choosy than millennials, too. As the researchers wrote, “affordable quality” is the “Gen Z mantra”.

Read the rest of the RentCafé survey below:

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The most culturally diverse and digital native age cohort, Generation Z, the oldest of whom are turning 24 this year, are the new must-watch generation in the housing market. Already a growing share of today’s renters, the little-known Gen Z’s accounted for 19% of respondents in a recent survey on rentcafe.com about renting preferences.

It’s time to pay attention to how Gen Z renting preferences differ from what older generations value. Perhaps as expected, their choices stem from the fact that they value technology more than any other generation. Embracing technology and social media as a way of living, these young adults seem to know exactly what they are looking for when it comes to renting an apartment, what they expect from their apartment communities, and how much they are willing to spend. Although they are budget conscious and still at the dawn of their earning years, Gen Z renters want the highest-quality apartments and rental communities that feature the most technologically-advanced features.

62% of Gen Z renters believe apartment technology is extremely and very important

One of the most important aspects for the youngest group of renters today is no doubt technology, which they value more than any previous generation. in fact, 62% of the Gen Z respondents to our survey indicated technology as being extremely or very important in their apartment and community. 28% of them said it was extremely important, more than any other generation, and 34% of them said it was very important, again, more than any other generation.

Gen Z respondents also reported that the most important feature to have in their apartment community was “high-speed internet”, which came in higher than all other features, including parking, gym, or laundry.

In their apartments, technologically advanced features like smart locks & thermostats, as well as energy-efficient appliances, were ranked as more important than extra space, such as an extra bedroom.

Their digital features of choice were online rent payments and maintenance requests (37%), followed by a mobile app for managing rent and maintenance (28%), which is consistent with the preferences of other generations of renters. However, what sets them apart is that Gen Z respondents were more interested in text rent payments than the other respondents.

Where can you find the Gen Z’s? On Instagram

For the first time ever, Instagram is the most used social media channel by a generation, and Gen Z’s are the ones to make that shift. As they indicated in our survey, 36% of Gen Z’s chose Instagram as their top media channel, followed by 17% who prefer Facebook. In fact, of all of the age groups that responded to our survey, they were the only ones that reported preferring Instagram over Facebook. All other generations are overwhelmingly Facebook users.

Generation Z uses Google search to find apartments more than any other generation

Google search is the number one channel to find apartments these days, but for Gen Z more so than for others. According to our survey, 39% of the youngest of renters start their apartment search on Google. Second in popularity are apartment search websites, like rentcafe.com, which 27% of Gen Z’s use as a starting point in their search, equal to the share of Millennials, but above the other generations.

Property ratings and reviews are the top decision factor for Gen Z-ers

When asked what research they do before choosing a rental property, the largest share of Gen Z’s (30%) selected property ratings and reviews. Moreover, they reported relying on property ratings and reviews more than any other previous generation. The second most important research tools were videos and virtual tours, which were selected by 24% of Gen Z respondents.

Although technology fans and experts when it comes to online and social media resources, in person tours are still important even for this cohort before deciding on an apartment to rent. In fact, 72% of them prefer touring apartments in person, whether that is with an agent or self-guided.

Affordable quality is the Gen Z mantra

It’s no surprise that price is important to young renters when choosing an apartment, as is for everyone, for that matter. However, the quality of the apartment is not something that Generation Z is eager to give up. In fact, of all of the age groups of renters, Gen Z-ers seem to care the most about the quality of apartment finishes and the quality of the building, more than any other generation.

While they do demonstrate maturity in realizing that they can’t afford to spend too much money on rent (yet), Gen Z’s are indicating that they aren’t willing to give up quality and know exactly what they’re looking for in their rental. Therefore, as their financial power grows in the coming years, we might expect a new type of renter to emerge: a tech-savvy, research-focused, and confident renter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via SchiffGold.com,

The debt monster is loose.

S&P Global Ratings projects the global debt-to-GDP level will swell to a record 265% this year. It also expects insolvencies and defaults to rise to levels not seen since the 2009 crisis.

Higher leverage and “a more challenging operating environment” has led S&P Global Ratings to downgrade 22% of corporate and sovereign debt issuers globally — “particularly speculative-grade borrowers and those suffering most from COVID19’s economic effects.”

According to the report, default rates could double by mid-2021.

Corporate bankruptcies are already surging in the US and many overleveraged small businesses are simply shutting down.  A total of 509 companies had gone bankrupt this year as of Oct. 4, exceeding the number of filings during any comparable period since 2010.

A recent article at ForeignPolicy.com warned, “The next US administration will likely face a global debt crisis that could dwarf what the world experienced in 2008-2009. To prevent the worst, it will need to address the burdensome debt plaguing both the United States and the global economy.”

The report singled out the growing levels of debt in the US and called them “unsustainable.”

A surge in spending to mitigate the health and economic impacts of the pandemic has brought the total public debt in the United States to over 100 percent of GDP—its highest level since 1946 and a hurdle that will create a considerable drag on future economic growth. Other types of debt—household, auto, and student loans, as well as credit card debt—have seen similar surges. Almost 20 percent of US corporations have become zombie companies that are unable to generate enough cash flow to service even the interest on their debt, and only survive thanks to continued loans and bailouts.”

According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), global debt is already well above the level S&P Global warned about. In April, the organization reported that global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion.

At over 322% of GDP, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the pandemic.”

You can thank the Federal Reserve and central banks globally for this surge in indebtedness. In fact, we were warning about surging global debt long before the pandemic. In the wake of the Great Recession, central banks worldwide gave us 10 years of easy money. With loans cheap and easy to come by, households borrowed money. And governments borrowed money. And corporations borrowed money. With all of this borrowing, it should come as no shock that today the world is swimming in a sea of red ink.

Central banks simply doubled down on their debt-producing policies in response to the pandemic. The Federal Reserve immediately took interest rates to zero and it has promised to leave them there for years to come.  It then launched “QE infinity,” and has increased the money supply at a record pace. Just last week, the Fed lowered the threshold for its “Main Street” loan program for small businesses down to $100,000.

Despite the record levels of indebtedness, S&P Global said it’s not concerned about a debt crisis. But it bases its view on some rather rosy assumptions, including the wide-spread availability of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. It also assumes a global economic recovery.

It seems just as likely that the debt-bubble will pop. In fact, we warned back in December of last year that it was a matter of when, not if, the debt bubble was going to burst.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that the world can avoid economic pain simply by borrowing money that was created out of thin air by central banks. But any sane person understands you don’t borrow your way to prosperity. Borrowed money always has to be paid back. This is an unsustainable path and one to watch closely, despite the optimistic assurances of the mainstream.

Not too long ago, NASA asked Tesla’s Elon Musk, who runs the rocket company SpaceX, to assist in a future space exploration mission of a giant metallic asteroid called “16 Psyche” that contains trillions of dollars in rare metals. 

16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. It measures 140 miles across, and in previous observations, it has been shown as a dense metallic core of a failed plant.

A new study, published Monday by Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist Dr. Tracy Becker, provides new insight into why NASA and Musk could be interested in this space rock that’s more than 230 million miles from Earth. The reason: The asteroid is entirely comprised of iron and nickel. 

Some believe the asteroid is valued at around $10,000 quadrillion. For comparisons, the global economy in 2019 was worth about $142 trillion. 16 Psyche is turning out to be an astronomical treasure trove of wealth for whoever seizes it. 

“We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” Becker said.

She continued: “Earth has a metal core, a mantle and crust. It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.”

Becker’s study comes as SpaceX and NASA prepare for an uncrewed mission to the asteroid in 2022, with the spacecraft landing on 16 Psyche in 2026.

What this all suggests is the NASA and private corporations are in the beginning stages to mine space. 

As we’ve noted several times (see: here & here), mining space will start on the moon and likely branch out from there. 

A Reuters story from 2019 perfectly explains why Musk is interested in nickel-heavy 16 Psyche because he anticipated global shortages of the metal in the coming years. 

Authored by Mark Episkopos for The National Interest,

The Biden campaign has worked tirelessly over the past year to channel the image of Joe Biden as a “serious person,” particularly on foreign policy matters. Biden, according to this narrative, is an elder statesman who grasps the intricacies of international politics. Trump, by contrast, is presented as an inept bull in a china shop who only speaks the language of “fire and fury.” Only Biden, we are told, can bring back stability around the globe.

Don’t believe a word of it.

This carefully curated image of Joe Biden’s strategic acumen and geopolitical foresight is at odds by the former vice president’s own stated views and policy track record. His statements about a variety of countries suggest that they are based less on a strategic view of world affairs than snap judgments.

Consider Korea. At the Third Presidential Debate on October 22, Trump touted the benefits of having “good relations” with foreign leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Biden responded by invoking Hitler: “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded Europe, the rest of Europe. Come on. The reason he would not meet with President Obama is because President Obama said, ‘We’re going to talk about denuclearization. We’re not going to legitimize you and we’re going to continue to push stronger and stronger sanctions on you.’ That’s why he wouldn’t meet with us.” It should go without saying that likening Kim Jong Un to Adolf Hitler is not only wildly inflammatory but also contributes nothing to our policy understanding of either figure. The second part of Biden’s statement is even more dangerous, reflecting a failed commitment to old Washington orthodoxy at a time when a growing number of North Korea experts are quite correctly warning that a blanket insistence on denuclearization as a precondition for peace talks is futile and counterproductive.

Biden extended a similarly brash stance toward America’s friends. At a recent Philadelphia town hall event, Biden– who has incessantly lectured Trump on the perils of spurning America’s longstanding allies– all but consigned two key US partners into a new Axis of Evil:  “And NATO is in the risk of beginning to crack because they don’t doubt — they doubt our — whether we’re there. You see what’s happened in everything from Belarus to Poland to Hungary, and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world, and as well, this president embraces all the thugs in the world.” It bears repeating that Hungary and Poland— which have both had legitimate and competitive elections within the past several years– are not only members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but are among the two biggest military contributors to NATO’s collective security arrangement. Biden’s comments are even more tone-deaf in light of data showing that Poland and Hungary consistently rank among the most pro-American EU member states. This unprompted attack has already prompted vigorous rebuke from the government in Budapest, needlessly harming relations between a NATO ally and prospective President-elect before they began.

Nor does Biden fare better on matters of grand strategy. At a political event in Iowa City, the former Vice-President dismissed the bipartisan consensus that Beijing poses potential economic and security threats to the United States. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man… I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us,” he said. Biden’s reasoning? Chinese society is too divided, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) too corrupt, to mount a credible challenge to the United States: “They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean the west.. they can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system.”

In point of fact, serious ethnic cleavages and rampant corruption have not prevented China from aggressively expanding its geo-economic influence across every continent. From shoring up Venezuela’s embattled Nicolás Maduro with mercenaries and billions of dollars to systematically undercutting Washington’s economic and political reach in Africa, the CCP is actively challenging US interests across the world. This isn’t to say that those challenges are unmanageable with fresh and forward-looking strategies, but to deny their existence only serves to compound their growing threat.

Biden’s comments unsurprisingly drew the ire of politicians from as diverse a cast as Mitt Romney and Bernie Sanders. With the 2020 presidential election looming large on the horizon, Biden jettisoned his position for an entirely new set of talking points. By the summer of 2019, Biden was arguing that Trump is the one who is blind to the Chinese threat: “While Trump is attacking our friends, China is pressing its advantage all over the world… you bet I’m worried about China—if we keep following Trump’s path.” He labeled China as a “competitor” at a September 18 CNN town hall in 2020, and again during a 60 minutes interview last week.

It is unclear what prompted Biden’s change of heart, other than perhaps the electoral optics of being seen as soft on China at a time when millions of Chinese Uighur muslims are being ethnically cleansed in hundreds of internment camps strewn across China’s northwest. Biden’s abrupt, pre-election transformation into a China hawk has hardly been accompanied by concrete solutions for managing Sino-American competition. Instead, he continues to tout the old chestnuts of Washington’s inept bipartisan China policies: targeted sanctions for human rights abuses, multilateral action to stem China’s “illegal and unfair trade practices,” and more robust enforcement of intellectual property laws. These generic prescriptions are premised on the decades-old neoliberal article of faith that closer engagement with international institutions will inevitably bring China into the fold of liberal-democratic nations.

But a rising China remains a secondary concern for the Democratic candidate, whose go-to campaign trail foreign policy topic remains the Russia menace. Beginning with the Obama administration’s support for regime change in Ukraine during the 2014 Maidan revolution, Biden has distinguished himself as one of the foremost advocates for a bellicose approach toward Russia. Biden’s conceit stems from a peculiar, but unfortunately popular, understanding of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s true motives: “The Cold War was based on a conflict of two profoundly different ideological notions of how the world should function. This is just basically about a kleptocracy protecting itself… I think there’s a basic decision that they cannot compete against a unified West. I think that is Putin’s judgment. And so everything he can do to dismantle the post-World War II liberal world order, including NATO and the EU, I think, is viewed as in their immediate self-interest,” said Biden during a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations appearance.

In Biden’s view, Putin, an authoritarian kleptocrat fearful of losing his iron grip over Russia, is on a mission to divide and destroy NATO and the EU because he knows he can’t compete against a united west. Thus, concludes Biden, the thrust of Washington’s Russia policy should be to “impose meaningful costs” on Moscow for its vast and ever-growing list of transgressions against the free world. Predictably, these “meaningful costs” amount to more of the same: targeted sanctions, stationing NATO troops ever closer to Russia’s borders, corralling NATO into a united front against Russia’s global assault on democracy, and lobbying for the NATO accession of post-Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine.

Though certainly punitive in their effect, it is unclear what concrete strategic goals these policies are meant to accomplish. After six years of crescendoing sanctions and international measures aimed at isolating Moscow geopolitically, Russia is no closer to pro-western regime change; if anything, the economic pain from sanctions has only stoked anti-western sentiment and further consolidated the Russian masses behind Putin’s government. Nor did the Obama-Biden administration’s punitive measures induce any significant changes in the Kremlin’s behavior, partly because the sanctions arrayed against Russia are so rigid and exhaustive that the Kremlin has long since abandoned any hope they will ever be lifted. 

If nothing else, Biden’s recent foreign policy statements are par for the course of his four-decade long political career– one that has long been characterized by intermittent attempts to seize short-term political advantages by rewriting his own policy history. Since the beginning of the 2020 election, for example, Biden has consistently portrayed himself as an avowed opponent of the Iraq War. “From the moment Shock and Awe started,” said Biden at a Democratic Presidential Debate in 2019, “from that moment, I was opposed to the effort.” But, as numerous fact-checkers have noted, Biden was not at all opposed to “the effort.” In fact, he repeatedly endorsed the invasion of Iraq from 2003 through 2004, even chiding some skeptical Democrats for not being sufficiently supportive of the war effort. Biden’s volte-face only came in 2005, coinciding with his newly revealed intention to explore a presidential run. By then, opposition to the Iraq war was no longer a particularly novel political opinion to hold.

Biden’s track record hardly paints the portrait of a sophisticated statesman or “serious” foreign policy thinker. What emerges instead is the familiar portrait of an old party stalwart who will say anything, sign on to any position, to seize an advantage in that moment. What so many commentators and journalists have graciously dismissed as his countless ‘gaffes’ is really a reflection of a tired and outdated worldview.

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Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest. 

Could the love affair between Tesla and the Chinese Communist Party be drifting toward an unceremonious end?

From the looks of an editorial published in Xinhua on Tuesday, that could very well be the call. The country’s state owned news agency called Tesla “unreasonable and arrogant” in an article published on Tuesday that addressed Tesla’s recall of 30,000 imported Model S and Model X vehicles in the country. 

“The automaker refused to acknowledge its defect outside China while taking the recall in the market, blaming the user behavior and pressure from regulatory bodies. Tesla needs to learn first to abide by the local regulations and protect legitimate rights of the car owners,” the editorial said, according to Bloomberg. 

Recall, it was about a week ago we first highlighted a massive recall Tesla had to undergo in China due to lingering, years old questions about the safety of Model S and Model X suspensions. 

And what the NHTSA was too blind to see, the Chinese clearly noticed. That’s why Tesla was forced into a recall of 30,000 Model S and Model X vehicles made for the Chinese market over suspension issues to begin with.

The issue was due to “a weakness in the Model S and Model X suspension that can lead to a cracked linkage after an impact.”

We used the term “forced” into the recall because it didn’t appear as though Tesla was “on board” with it. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Tesla found “no defect with its Model S/Model X suspension and [said] that China is basically forcing an unnecessary recall”.

Despite the recall supposedly being over nothing, Tesla “decided not to dispute a recall for the China market only,” the company’s managing counsel wrote to the NHTSA in a letter from early September. The same letter indicated that the NHTSA knew about the Chinese recall since the beginning of September – though we’re not sure why anybody would expect the NHTSA, who has sat idly by and watched one fatal wreck after another involving Teslas, to do anything about it.

Recall, as far back as 2016, we were reporting about an investigation into the suspension of Tesla vehicles.

A major lingering question is whether the Chinese recall could prompt a similar recall – that would likely affect over 200,000 vehicles – in the U.S.

Far be it for us to tell the U.S. government that China is setting the example, but when dealing with matters of automobile safety and not accepting petulance and nonsense from manchild Elon Musk, China is drawing a nice roadmap.

Now, if someone would just wake the NHTSA from their coma…