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In its pursuit of objective, impartial hard-hitting news, and unquenchable thirst to uncover the truth, CNN first went dumpster-diving outside the Russian troll farm accused of costing Hillary Clinton the election and “undermining democracy” (turns out America can do so on its own), it then sent a film crew to Thailand to interview the Belarus hooker currently holed up in a local jail after she vowed to spill Trump’s secrets (if only the CIA first gets her out of jail of course), and then overnight, in its crusade to leave no Trump stone unturned, CNN dispatched a camera crew to Stormy Daniels’ first live strip club performance since she filed a lawsuit against the President claiming the nondisclosure agreement she signed to keep quiet about their alleged affair is invalid because he never signed it.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is a porn star who regularly makes appearances at strip clubs across the country; on Friday night she was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to perform at the Solid Gold gentleman’s club.

CNN’s hard-hitting reporter Nick Valencia appeared on New Day on Saturday morning after Stormy’s show to report that the stripper performed in front of about 200 people, and while she had said previously she would not talk to the press, she did just that when she gave an interview during a meet and greet afterwards.

While Daniels avoided questions about her lawsuit, but told Valencia about how her newfound fame has affected her.

Daniels explained that being in the headlines apparently does miracles for one’s career because while before she only danced once a month, she is getting far more bookings now:

“It’s sort of a double-edged sword where a lot of people are very interested in booking me for dancing and stuff like that. So, it’s… I’m getting more, more dance bookings.”

Wow, almost as if suing the president was a catalyst to boosting one’s career. She continued: “I usually only dance once a month and now I’m dancing three or four times a month, so that’s been really great.”

With great lapdance power, however, comes great porn film responsibility, and as Stormy’s strip club career is exploding, she is at a loss how to keep her “adult film” reputation from sagging”

“But, because of that, it’s sort of overshadowing a lot of adult films that I’m supposed to be promoting, and a lot of the mainstream projects that I was actively working on have indefinitely put on hold.”

It gets better: in a morbid twist on Clinton’s Lewinsky affair, the Solid Gold strip club had previously advertised that Stormy’s performance would be accompanied by an auction of a dress the porn star wore during her alleged affair with Trump according to Mediaite, but any mention of the auction was taken down before the event. Stormy’s lawyers pushed back hard on the idea, telling the Miami Herald that an auction was definitely not happening.

Daniels career-boosting performance came after it was reported that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen used his professional Trump Organization email address to correspond with Daniels about her NDA, and that he used his home-equity line of credit to arrange the $130,000 “hush” payment to Daniels.

Watch below

Porn star Stormy Daniels tells @CNNValencia about the “double-edged sword” of the recent attention. https://t.co/vVtT7AtIcv pic.twitter.com/JeyqqDJ9wI

— New Day (@NewDay) March 10, 2018

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Submitted by FF Wiley

“During the 1980s and 1990s, most industrial-country central banks were able to cage, if not entirely tame, the inflation dragon.”
—Ben Bernanke

Ben Bernanke began his oft-cited “helicopter speech” in 2002 with a few kind words about his peers, including the excerpt above. Speaking for central bankers, he took a large share of the credit for the low inflation of the 1980s and 1990s. Central bankers had gained a “heightened understanding” of inflation, he said, and he expected the future to bring even more inflation-taming success.

Of course, Bernanke’s cohorts took a few knocks in the boom–bust cycle that followed his speech, but their reputations as masters of inflation (and deflation) only grew. Today, the picture he painted seems even more firmly planted in the public mind than it was in 2002, notwithstanding recent data showing inflation creeping higher.

Public perceptions aren’t always accurate, though, and public figures aren’t the most reliable arbiters of credit and blame. In this 3-part article, I’m proposing a theory that challenges Bernanke’s narrative, and I’ll back the theory with data in Part 3. I’ll show that it leads to an inflation indicator with an excellent historical record.

But first, let’s recap a few points I’ve already discussed.

The Endless Tug-of-War

In Part 2, I said inflation depends on a tug-of-war between purchasing power (on the demand side) and capacity (on the supply side), and the war takes place within the circular flow, in which spending flows into income and income flows back to spending. Two circular-flow patterns and their causes demand particular attention:

1. When banks inject money into the circular flow in the process of making loans, they can boost spending above the prior period’s income, thereby fattening the flow (or the opposite in the case of a deleveraging).
2. When foreign imports exceed exports, spending might not adequately recycle back to income, opening a leak in the flow (or the opposite in the case of a trade surplus).

Those points might sound obvious to some (if not, they might look obvious in the diagrams included in Parts 1 and 2), but they’re inconsistent with mainstream economics. According to models favored by mainstream academics and central bankers, the circular-flow pattern involving bank-created money doesn’t exist. In other words, my way of thinking yields conclusions that you don’t find in mainstream theory or at, say, the Fed.

In particular, I’m proposing a circular-flow inflation indicator that consists of bank-created money, the trade balance and real GDP growth. As described in the bullets above, bank-created money and the trade balance measure injections to and leaks from the circular flow—they tell us whether injections and leaks could be upsetting the balance between purchasing power and capacity—while real GDP growth approximates capacity. Using “M63” for bank-created money (see Part 1 for further explanation), the exact inflation indicator is M63 growth plus the trade balance as a percent of GDP minus real GDP growth.

History’s Pages

To be sure, this is a high-level indicator—it should help predict major trends, not month-to-month volatility. When I tested it against history, I wanted to see if it explains inflation’s big-picture behavior in each business cycle, and it does exactly that, as I’ll demonstrate by comparing the indicator to core inflation over the last eight cycles. Here’s the core inflation data:

The chart shows why it makes sense to evaluate each business cycle as a separate event—namely, business-cycle recessions normally act as reset buttons, crushing inflation by constricting pricing power, which then sets the stage for the next expansion. So inflation begins a new life with each expansion, and the chart shows the differences from one to the next. To keep it simple, I assigned each of the business cycles to one of three inflation categories (low, moderate and high), and I also noted whether inflation was rising or falling relative to the previous cycle.

My first test, then, is to track the paths followed by the circular-flow indicator during three cycles plagued by high inflation:

As you can see, the indicator went three for three, climbing higher during all three cycles. In circular-flow speak, there was too much purchasing power chasing too few goods. Anyone who had followed the indicator during those periods—basically, the 1960s and 1970s—would have expected the inflation dragon to fly free and been on the money.

But what about the five cycles marked by disinflation or low inflation?

Here are the indicator readings during those cycles:

Once again, the indicator had a perfect record—five for five in predicting the inflation dragon was caged and then being proven correct. In each period of disinflation or low inflation, purchasing power was either losing or at a stalemate in the tug-of-war with capacity, and that continues today, although the trend turned sideways during the last three years. The recent turn from downward to sideways doesn’t tarnish the indicator’s historical performance—which I would call stellar—but if it turns upward from here that would become a cause for concern.

Notice also that core inflation jumped above the Fed’s current 2% target at some point during every expansion. In other words, core inflation can be volatile regardless of the circular-flow indicator’s direction. In fact, recent trends in monthly data place core CPI inflation above 2% again by spring or early summer, and core PCE inflation could follow. I mention this because I don’t want readers misinterpreting the charts above, which don’t preclude inflation continuing to fuel financial volatility as during the past month.

Conclusions

More to the point, the indicator bears watching as investors wonder if the recent inflation scare will be contained. It isn’t the only way to evaluate inflation risks, but there’s much to recommend it. I would say it fits the data like caroling fits Christmas, it’s as logical as giving thanks on Thanksgiving, and it supplies information not included in traditional indicators—like Groundhog’s Day but without the nonsense.

And that’s not all—the circular flow analysis I’ve proposed can also shine a cold light on stories told by mainstream economists. I discussed two of those stories earlier in this article—the Monetarist story and the story of central bank omnipotence—and I have a few concluding comments on each.

Monetarism. As discussed in Part 1, Monetarism enjoys nowhere near the popularity it reached in the late 1970s, despite a small tribe of modern-day descendents who continue to fixate on monetary aggregates such as M2. In my opinion, the 1970s Chicago Monetarists were like the 1990s Buffalo Bills—that is, they came oh so close. (Did you think I was going to call them wide right?) They had plenty of research proving the importance of money creation by banks, but they chose to preserve the mainstream narrative that banks are conduits, not creators, of the “initial monetary impulse.” If all of their eggheads hadn’t crammed into the same M2 basket, their popularity might not have fizzled out as it did.

Not only that, but circular-flow analysis such as mine would be standard fare if heterodox (and more realistic) thinking about money creation had forced its way into the mainstream before it became too late, shut off by powerful economists who built careers and reputations on orthodox theory alone. Again, 1970s Monetarism opened a window of opportunity but failed to climb through it—it was foiled by misconceptions about money and banking. (For a more thorough discussion on this topic, see my recently published book, Economics for Independent Thinkers, which applies circular-flow concepts to various issues in economics.)

Central Bank omnipotence. I recommend being wary of economists claiming to have everything figured out, whether they claim to have tamed the business cycle or, our topic here, inflation. The economy isn’t an animal or a motor vehicle or any of the other analogies that suggest a designated expert can control it, and the inflation outcomes of the last three decades weren’t engineered in an economics lab somewhere deep in the Eccles Building. On the contrary, it might be perfectly normal for inflation to trend toward low single digits—without central bank intervention—when a large trade deficit diverts purchasing power overseas, foreigners fail to inject that purchasing power cleanly back into America’s circular flow, and commercial banks refrain from rampant money creation. (Okay, banks have sometimes acted stupidly, but not by enough to offset trade-related deflationary forces, as shown in the last chart above.)

In other words, the Fed was probably more lucky than skillful, and it certainly wasn’t omnipotent.

Finally, inflation surfs the same waves stocks and bonds surf, but on the opposite phase (with exceptions, of course, such as TIPS), suggesting the circular-flow indicator can also help investors create their own luck. In future commentaries, I’ll make recommendations for applying it to economic and capital market forecasting. In particular, look for research supporting our bond outlook, which should give you another reason to swim away from the mainstream. Who knows? Adjusting your stroke for the circular-flow indicator might make a late but lucrative New Year’s resolution.

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Authored by Michael Jabara Carley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral “peace keeper”, pursuing a so-called policy of “multilateralism” and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.

Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left. Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism, especially in Québec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite—Liberal or Conservative did not matter—was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Québec French public opinion under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman’s club or kept more discrete by people who did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.

The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany

Even after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis, there was strong reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was a shotgun marriage, a momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the over-riding threat of the Nazi Wehrmacht.

“If Hitler invaded Hell,” Winston Churchill famously remarked, “I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a “truce”, as some of my students have proposed to me, in a longer cold war between the west and the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the “truce”, or if you like, the Grand Alliance, came to a sudden end.

This was no more evident than in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown commodity and not simply an American imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after 1945 the Canadian government – Mackenzie King was still prime minister – should open its doors to the immigration of approximately 34,000 “displaced persons”, including thousands of Ukrainian fascists and Nazi collaborators, responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and Poland. These were veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.

Chrystia Freeland, the current Canadian minister for external affairs

The most notorious of the Nazi collaborators who immigrated to Canada was Mykhailo Chomiak, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of the war and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured by the Red Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In Canada however he prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the “Ukrainian-Canadian” Chrystia Freeland, the present minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe, persona non grata in the Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a “victim” of World War II. Her claims to this effect have been demonstrated to be untrue by the Australian born journalist John Helmer, amongst many others.

In 1940 the Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress (UCC), one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian descent though generally the latter. Most “Ukrainian-Canadians” were born in Canada; well more than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in Ottawa.

The Canadian Ukrainian Congress (UCC) president Paul Grod

After the coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to support the Ukrainian “regime change” operation which had been conducted by the United States and European Union. The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages from the Harper government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only through massive EU and US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed backing from fascist militias who repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims that Russia is pursuing a policy of “aggression” against the Ukraine. If that were true, the putschists in Kiev would have long ago disappeared. The Harper government allowed fund raising for Pravyi Sektor, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded “charitable status” to one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent military “advisors” to train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The Trudeau government has continued that policy. “Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to destabilize its democracy,” according to Minister Freeland: “Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to support its efforts for democracy and economic growth.” For a regime that celebrates violence and anti-Russian racism, represses political opposition, burns books, and outlaws the Russian language, “democracy” is an Orwellian portrayal of actual realities in the Ukraine. Nevertheless, late last year the Canadian government approved the sale of arms to Kiev and a so-called Magnitsky law imposing sanctions on Russian nationals.

The Harper government allowed fund raising for Pravyi Sektor, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group

There is no political opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New Democratic Party (NDP), that burnt out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper government, at the behest of Mr. Grod, a Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In 2015 the UCC put a list of questions to party leaders, one of which was the following: “Does your party support listing the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic as terrorist organizations?” The Lugansk and Donetsk republics are of course anti-fascist resistance movements that emerged in reaction to the violent coup d’état in Kiev. They are most certainly not “terrorist” organisations, although they are subjected to daily bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev putschist forces. Nevertheless, the then NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to almost anything to win power, answered in the affirmative. This must have been a moment of dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could it support a US/EU installed putschist regime which governs by intimidation and violence? In fact, it was a Conservative electoral strategy to obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and East European descent by backing putschist Kiev and denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to outflank Harper on his right, but that did not work for he himself was outflanked on his left.

Some Canadians harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties

In the 2015 federal elections the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair and won the elections. The NDP suffered heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who had made a Faustian bargain for nothing in return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader. The Liberals campaigned on re-establishing better relations with the Russian Federation, but that promise did not hold up. The minister for external affairs, Stéphane Dion, tried to move forward on that line, but appears to have been stabbed in the back by Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland guiding his hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017 Dion was sacked and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to improve relations with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian relations have worsened.

The influential Mr. Grod appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There are photographs of him side by side with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been a great success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional Ukrainian fascist salute, “SlavaUkraini!”, to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great believer in identity politics.

The influential Mr. Grod appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket

The latest gesture of the Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year grant to promote a “Holodomor National Awareness Tour”. Ukrainian “nationalists” summon up the memory of the “Holodomor”, a famine in the Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by Stalin, they say, in order to emphasise their victimisation by Russia. According to the latest Stalin biographer, Steven Kotkin, there was indeed a famine in the USSR that affected various parts of the country, the Ukraine amongst other regions. Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered most. Between five and seven million people died. Ten millions starved. “Nonetheless, the famine was not intentional. It resulted from Stalin’s policies of forced collectivization…,” Kotkin writes, himself no advocate of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant rebellion, bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to the catastrophe. “Similarly, there was no ‘Ukrainian’ famine,” according to Kotkin, “the famine was [a] Soviet[-wide disaster]” (Stalin, 2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29). So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a politically motivated myth to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.

Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II

The Canadian government also recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 “advisors” to train Ukrainian militias, along with twenty-three million dollars—it is true a pittance by American standards—for “non-lethal” military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian “democracy”. Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism is democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II. “Any country sending representatives to Russia’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler,” warned putschist Kiev in April 2015, “will be blacklisted by Ukraine.”

*  *  *

“The further a society drifts from the truth,” George Orwell once said, “the more it will hate those that speak it.”

Well, here is one truth that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland will not want to hear, hate it or not: 42,000 Canadian soldiers, not to mention 27 million Soviet citizens, died during the war against the Axis. Memories must be fading, for now we have come to this pass, where our government is supporting a violent, racist regime in Kiev directly descended from that very enemy against which Canada and its allies fought during World War II.

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Climate change alarmists are taking full advantage of the “Sudden Stratospheric Warming” (SSW) event, which occurred above the Arctic in mid-February, as further evidence that the world’s unpredictable and sometimes chaotic weather is jeopardizing humanity’s food security.

The split of the polar vortex, otherwise known as an SSW event, shifted the Arctic airmass to most of Europe as well as Western parts of North America. Climate alarmist pointed out that massive snowstorms in Europe, dangerous weather patterns in the United States, and rain in the Arctic demonstrates how extreme weather is altering seasonal growing patterns.

Here is what Bloomberg said, “the world was upside down: it was raining in the Arctic Circle and snowing in Rome,” as explained above, the SSW event has been the primary driver of chaotic weather since mid-February.

Researchers, activists, executives and government officials gathered in Longyearbyen, a small coal-mining town on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of what has become known as the “Doomsday Vault,” which is an underground bunker buried deep inside a mountain where the world stores its plant seeds from apocalyptic consequences of climate change and war, said Bloomberg.

Last month, we reported how the Norwegian government is planning to allocate 100 million kroner ($13 million) in technical improvements to enhance the facility after it sprung a leak from melting permafrost — officials warned that climate change could put the facility at risk.

“Biodiversity is the building block to develop new plants and because of climate change we’re in a terrible need to quickly develop new varieties,” said Aaslaug Marie Haga, executive director of Crop Trust, a group established to support gene banks. “The climate is changing quicker than the plants can handle.”

The “Doomsday Vault” is a secure seed bank buried deep inside a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The underground bunker is a long-term seed storage facility, built to keep its three vaults cool for 200-years — and can survive natural or human-made disasters.

The “Doomsday Vault” serves as a storage facility for more than 850,000 seed samples, according to the Bloomberg, which the three vault rooms are cooled to -18 °C (-3 °F).

Bloomberg describes the organizations behind the “Doomsday Vault:”

The vault is run by NordGen, the Nordic gene bank. A total of 74 institutes globally have deposits, and only those that send seeds have access. One notable exception is China, which has not signed the treaty, and is creating its own seed and gene banks outside the international cooperation. Participants say the real fight to preserve biodiversity is at the local level. Crop Trust is seeking to build an $850 million fund to finance its efforts, a long way to go from its current level of $285 million. Its largest donors are the U.S., Germany and Norway, but it’s now looking more to private business for funding.  

“We have to be prepared for the unknown,” Jon Georg Dale, Norway’s food and agriculture minister, said in his hotel in Longyearbyen during the event, where he was stuck after canceling a snow-scooter trip because of the thaw gripping the Arctic.

Some researchers, activists, executives, and government officials at the conference said there are no signs that the United States is backing away from its enviormental commitments, but did stress, Trump’s climate skepticism is concerning.

Ann Tutwiler, a former Obama-administration official who’s now head of Bioversity International, a global research group backed by more than 50 governments said, “businesses are becoming more aware of the problems of losing biodiversity.”

“The narrative of the 20th century was that we have to produce more food and that was all about a very narrow range of crops,” said Tutwiler. “Now because we have other issues we are trying to solve, such as climate and nutrition there’s a recognition you can’t do that with just those crops.”

Patrick Mulvany, an agriculturalist and adviser on biodiversity and food sovereignty said, ” the real efforts aren’t being made where they are needed the most: on the ground with the farmers who are not getting adequately compensated.”

“Unless that happens our future food is very insecure,” he said. “You can have as many seeds as you want locked up in the vault here but they deteriorate a little bit over time and they aren’t adapting to climate and new social pressures.”

It the minds of a climate change alarmist, well, never let a serious crisis go to waste. With the recent wild swings in weather across Europe and the United States, alarmists have come out of the woodwork — pushing their fear-mongering rhetoric of impending climate doom. But why? Well, perhaps, in the case of the “Doomsday Vault,” officials are looking for more government handouts to fund operations.

And there it is, the ah-ha moment: climate change alarmist preying on fear [climate change] to extract money from governments. 

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John Mauldin interviewed Fourth Turning best-selling author and demographics expert, Neil Howe about generational changes and their effect on the markets, during a session at the Strategic Investment Conference 2018.  Howe said that demographics and generational factors have a huge impact on equity prices in the long run. Not only that, he thinks that there’s now a generational shift in wealth distribution that could spark major political and economic disruption.

Today’s Demographics Defies Conventional Wisdom

The main example Howe shared is that people in the 75+ age bracket still dominate stock ownership by far. This defies conventional wisdom that people reduce risk as they retire and leave the workforce. Meanwhile, Millennials have lower income and stock ownership levels than previous generations did at the same age.

This is a key change as senior adults once had the highest poverty rates. Younger people are now challenging that once-safe assumption.

Howe also pointed out striking differences between early and late Baby Boomers. Those born in the mid/late 1940s inherited some of the Silent Generation’s wealth and good fortune. Late-stage Boomers born in the early 1960s score lower in all kinds of metrics.

Major Political and Financial Disruption Is Ahead

Neil Howe ended  with an update on his Fourth Turning generational theory. He thinks we are about midway through it. From an economic standpoint, he foresees inflation fear and Fed tightening, which will be followed by a painful recession.

Politically, Millennials desperately want civic re-engagement. They are seeking to completely restructure institutions. The right wing is a brick wall on this subject and numbers have let them hold off the pressure so far. This will change as Millennials grow older and Boomers die.

Howe also pointed out that generational wealth transfer is going to be highly concentrated, reflecting current wealth inequality. Boomer wealth will flow to younger generations but the vast majority of Generation X and Millennials will get very little.

As that happens, Howe anticipates major disruption, by which he means ugly inter generational conflict.

For this an more presentations tune in to the SIC 2018 live blog.

 

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman reportedly extracted $100 billion late last year from a group of dozens of Saudi royals and businessmen – many of whom were his own cousins – in a “corruption crackdown” that had all the makings of a naked cash grab.

After confining his countrymen to the Ritz Carlton Riyadh for months – even torturing some of those who initially refused to cooperate – the Prince won plaudits from the New York Times, but has been vilified elsewhere for his willingness to commit egregious human rights abuses – all to fill a hole in the Saudi budget.

Given the Saudi government’s reticence about the crackdown, it’s impossible to tell how much money was taken from each individual prisoner, making external evaluations of their post-crackdown wealth nearly impossible.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Forbes Magazine has decided to exclude all Saudi Arabian businessmen from this year’s list of the world’s 100 richest people. Last year, 10 Saudi nationals made the cut.

Out of the 10 Saudi billionaires who made the Forbes list last year, at least four were detained – the most recognizable being Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, pictured above, whose net worth last year was close to $20 billion.

As Forbes explains, given the Saudi government’s reticence, it’s impossible to tell how much money and assets were expropriated from each individual businessman.

Alwaleed and many others have been released, but checking out of the Ritz-Carlton cost billions. (Sources also told Forbes that Alwaleed is now banned from granting media interviews.) The Saudi government’s reported goal was to gather $100 billion to plug a hole in the budget that’s been growing amid years of low oil prices.

There are a thousand and one stories about what precisely happened, making it impossible to know definitively who gave how much to whom when. Forbes learned that at least one tycoon who was not detained handed over assets to the government.

Given these shifting sands of truth, we’ve chosen to leave all ten Saudis off our billionaires list this year; none would comment. With greater clarity regarding their wealth, some might eventually return to the ranking.

Here’s the list of Saudis that Forbes removed from this year’s list, accompanied by their last confirmed net worth (courtesy of Forbes)

* * *

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

$18.7 billion

Chairs publicly traded Kingdom Holding, which has investments in Lyft, Twitter, Citigroup and the Four Seasons.

Mohammed Al Amoudi

$8.1 billion

Assets include a Swedish refinery, Saudi gas stations and an Ethiopian conglomerate (gold mining, farming, construction).

Prince Sultan bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Kabeer

$3.8 billion

His publicly traded Almarai dairy company is among the largest in the Middle East.

Mohammed Al Issa

$2.6 billion

His Assila Investments has stakes in a bank, a food processor and hotels.

Saleh Kamel

$2.3 billion

Founded Dallah Albaraka conglomerate (real estate, food, health care).

Abdullah Al Rajhi

$1.9 billion

With brothers, built Al Rajhi Bank, one of world’s largest Islamic banks.

Abdul Majeed Alhokair

$1.2 billion

Salman Alhokair

$1.2 billion

Fawaz Alhokair

$1.2 billion

The three brothers’ real estate empire includes 19 shopping malls.

Mohammed Serafi

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Authored by Tom Luongo,

Those who have followed this blog for the past year know that I feel Presidents Trump and Putin are working towards a Middle East Peace Agreement.  Brick by brick, day by day, the foundation for this agreement is being built.

Last night’s nigh-historic statement by the South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong is another piece of that foundation.  You can read the entire statement here, but I’ll highlight the important part:

“I told President Trump that in our meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he is committed to denuclearization. Kim pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests; he understands that the routine joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue.  And he expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.”

“President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

This is the breakthrough that everyone was waiting for.  Once Trump gets involved in the negotiations, a deal will be made.  That’s his wheelhouse, making deals.  Everyone walks away a winner in their minds.

We can argue about the effectiveness of Trump’s sanctions until we are blue in the face. But the reality is that 1) Koreans no longer want separation and 2) North Korea is not the economic basket case we are constantly told it is in the media.

I remember meeting with Jim Rogers in 2015 at a conference and the two areas of the world he was most bullish on were Kazakhstan and North Korea.

Because North Korea, under Kim Jong-Un, is moving towards a more open society, not a closed one.  The sincere desire for reunification of the Korean peninsula, if only symbolically through a more open border, is the animating principle here.

And that only happens with a North Korea entering the modern world economy.

More Neocon Dreams Dashed

Neoconservative pipe dreams of encirclement of Russia and China to dominate and destroy them are ending.

Over the weekend chief Neocon “man-baby’ Lindsay Graham had his Madeline Albright moment saying that war with North Korea would be worth it to rid it of nuclear weapons.  The millions of dead Chinese, Japanese and Koreans that would result don’t matter because Americans wouldn’t die.

“All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security.” 

And they say Kim Jong-Un is crazy.

Now the good news is that Trump is far more rational than either Albright or Graham.

Solving North Korea’s drive towards nuclear weapons would be a major feather in Trump’s cap.  It would stop the braying of Democrats about his incompetence, or at least make their cries of such less resonant with rational people, i.e. most voters.

The neocons are waging global war against Russia, China and Iran, but primarily Russia.  Some believe it is the only way to secure Israel’s future.  Others are simply playing a bad game of RISK.

But, the reality is that Israel’s security is a secondary benefit (which is why it goes along with this) of the larger plan of global geopolitical and economic domination that begins and ends with subjugating Russia.

Peace in the Middle East that begins with ending a nuclear weapons threat from North Korea would get Israel’s attention. If Trump pulls this off, along with his firm commitment to Israel, Israel can calm down as it would feel far more secure.

Now you know why Trump is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.  The goal is to break deadlocks which are all open wounds designed to create future flashpoints.

The Iran/Israel Reality Show

But,  would also solve another problem. As I’ve talked about multiple times, North Korea’s nuclear program is also Iran’s nuclear program.

As is the case with Iran’s ballistic missile program.

We’re not the only country that engages in outsourcing, by the way.

This is why solving North Korea helps to solve the Middle East.  Israel simply wants a secure future.  It can’t have that with a nuclear-armed Iran.  But, Iran wants to survive as well.

And it can’t do so with American troops building bases all around it and U.S. ships patrolling its coasts.

Taking North Korea’s nukes off the table, takes them off of Iran’s table as well.  The neocons have been in charge of foreign policy for months and it has resulted in more troops in both Syria and Afghanistan.

As well, it has brought us into direct conflict with Russia on multiple occasions and only Putin’s prudence and patience has kept us out of a full-fledged shooting war with Russia.

This is something that no sane person wants.

So, first you solve North Korean nukes and, by extension, you solve Iran’s nukes.  Assad’s forces continue winning in Syria, ousting ISIS from eastern Ghouta and near Deir Ezzor.

The Turks are straining the U.S./Kurdish relationship in the northern part of Syria. And Putin has Netanyahu cowed thanks to Syria shooting down an F-16I.  Do the math.

The neocon rodeo is becoming a clown show.

Are We Agreement Capable?

I always come back to Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who have said on multiple occasions that the U.S. is ‘not agreement capable.’  In diplomatic terms it means that negotiating with us is pointless because we do not keep to the agreements we sign.

And instead use the agreement as a stalling tactic to launch a new offensive in the near future.

By agreeing to talks with Kin Jong-Un Trump is doing what was always in the cards, backing off on direct conflict.  We were never going to attack North Korea.  Despite Lindsay Graham’s insanity, the cost would definitely outweigh the benefits.

The potential for war there to go global would be too high for any serious person to contemplate.  And Trump is no crazed war-monger.

Remember what Putin just unveiled at his State of the Union address.  Weapons that can nullify our military logistical superiority around the world.   The U.S. military power is in logistics.

So, don’t think for a moment that Trump is acting here out of strength.  Most of our military assets are, as of right now, sitting ducks.  Yes, they can do damage, but the risks of wipe out are incredibly high.

That’s the theatre part of this.  The reality is the neocon game is almost lost.

And humanity would be the winner.

Putin is happy to let Trump take the credit here, even though it is his hard work which brought us to this point.  By allowing Trump to take the lead Trump can firm up his domestic political support and marginalize the neocons in both parties.

But, that said, are we going to give up our drive to encircle China and Russia?  Does Trump have enough control over his intelligence and military command structure to abide by any agreement he signs?

Are the neocons on the run?  Or just playing ‘Possum?

Encirclement is why we still have troops in Japan and South Korea.  So, to be honest, I don’t know how far these talks go if the U.S. isn’t ready to pull the Seventh Fleet back from the South China Sea and/or remove our troops from the Korean Peninsula.

Because that’s exactly what Kim Jong-Un will want as a starting point for any discussions of giving up his nuclear weapons.

Given our recent history, if I was him I wouldn’t sign anything until I see troops packing up in the DMZ.  Then I’ll know Trump can deliver on whatever he promises.

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