Category: zerohedge

On America’s day most famous for over-consumption, we thought a few minutes of quiet ‘tryptophan-induced’ contemplation of the state of our world would be useful. Infamous for his correct predictions of the great recession, Europe’s demise, and the collapse of the US financial system (as well as profiting handsomely from being right), Dr. Michael Burry’s infamous UCLA commencement speech has much to offer (especially considering Burry is making a come-back – Bill Fleckenstein style – at Scion Asset Management). In this “age of infinite distraction”, the painful ‘truthiness’ of this brief speech stunningly summarizes the ominous truth facing most of the developed (and much of the emerging) world today: “when the entitled elect themselves, the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable.” A quarter-of-an-hour well spent from a self-described ‘chicken-little’ who was “just trying to figure it all out”.

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/EMe6TlTNcp4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

On America’s day most famous for over-consumption, we thought a few minutes of quiet ‘tryptophan-induced’ contemplation of the state of our world would be useful. Infamous for his correct predictions of the great recession, Europe’s demise, and the collapse of the US financial system (as well as profiting handsomely from being right), Dr. Michael Burry’s infamous UCLA commencement speech has much to offer (especially considering Burry is making a come-back – Bill Fleckenstein style – at Scion Asset Management). In this “age of infinite distraction”, the painful ‘truthiness’ of this brief speech stunningly summarizes the ominous truth facing most of the developed (and much of the emerging) world today: “when the entitled elect themselves, the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable.” A quarter-of-an-hour well spent from a self-described ‘chicken-little’ who was “just trying to figure it all out”.

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/EMe6TlTNcp4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Despite the stock’s renaissance (eerily reminiscent of Eastman Kodak), recent images of the crammed and disorganized racks at various JCPenney stores do little to conjure confidence that staff or management either know what they are doing – or give a shit… except for this clarifying quote…

“What one may misconstrue as clutter is merely a strategic effort to meet high customer demand,” said Penney spokeswoman Daphne Avila.

Is that like saying, “one man’s trash…?” It seems, for JCPenney that marketing and product placement come a weak second to a pit full of tangled clothes…

 

 

 

h/t @BrianSozzi

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/n0_Ij5ghiHQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The definition of the term Hail Mary as it pertains to football, provided here by Wikipedia, does a sterling job of setting the stage for this week’s topic:

A Hail Mary pass or Hail Mary route is a very long forward pass in American football, made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half.

Ah…

Yes, the Hail Mary is used in desperation, near the end of a contest when there is only a small chance of success…

When Abenomics was unveiled in Japan upon the re-election of Shinzo Abe as prime minister in late 2012, it is safe to say that, having been mired in a 20-year deflationary spiral and with debt totaling 240% of GDP, Japan was nearing an endgame of sorts.

For two decades the country had watched the yen strengthen and endemic deflation thwart any and all attempts to generate even moderate inflation, as repeated bouts of quantitative easing failed to administer the desired antidote to Japan’s ever-increasing debtload.

Realizing just how late in the game he found himself, Abe promised to change all this, but in order to do so he needed to pursue a high-risk strategy with a low probability of success.

The press (ever hungry for a new, catchy portmanteau word) dubbed it “Abenomics.”

Grant Williams, in his excellent letter below, prefers to call it “Avenomics”: the economics of the hopeless.

Abe’s opening (and perhaps his most important) gambit was the politicization of the Bank of Japan. Without a complicit governor quarterbacking Japan’s printing press, any attempt at reaching the endzone would be futile.

[The story twists and turns]

So here he is — Japan’s great hope — with time about to expire and the pressure mounting.

Facing the rush of a moribund economy, entrenched price deflation, an aging demographic that has drawn down its savings and actually likes the idea of lower prices, and a debt mountain that eclipses that of every other major economy on earth, is it any wonder that Abe-san has decided to hurl the ball into the endzone and hope that a helpful pair of hands hauls it in for a TD?

Of course, popular thinking goes that, since Japan has been doing the constant-stimulus thing for two decades without any noticeable consequences, all will be well; but the problem lies in the fact that, throughout the nineties and noughties, Japan was basically scrimmaging on its own practice field — alone, behind closed doors.

Now they find themselves in a competitive game with every other major economy in the world suited up and also needing higher inflation, weaker currencies, and genuine growth after littering the field with trillions in stimulus.

Say a prayer for Shinzo Abe, folks. For Avenomics to score, he’s gonna need a miracle.

Full Grant Williams Letter below:

TTMYGH – Avenomics

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Fg4r1JBfyX4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The definition of the term Hail Mary as it pertains to football, provided here by Wikipedia, does a sterling job of setting the stage for this week’s topic:

A Hail Mary pass or Hail Mary route is a very long forward pass in American football, made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half.

Ah…

Yes, the Hail Mary is used in desperation, near the end of a contest when there is only a small chance of success…

When Abenomics was unveiled in Japan upon the re-election of Shinzo Abe as prime minister in late 2012, it is safe to say that, having been mired in a 20-year deflationary spiral and with debt totaling 240% of GDP, Japan was nearing an endgame of sorts.

For two decades the country had watched the yen strengthen and endemic deflation thwart any and all attempts to generate even moderate inflation, as repeated bouts of quantitative easing failed to administer the desired antidote to Japan’s ever-increasing debtload.

Realizing just how late in the game he found himself, Abe promised to change all this, but in order to do so he needed to pursue a high-risk strategy with a low probability of success.

The press (ever hungry for a new, catchy portmanteau word) dubbed it “Abenomics.”

Grant Williams, in his excellent letter below, prefers to call it “Avenomics”: the economics of the hopeless.

Abe’s opening (and perhaps his most important) gambit was the politicization of the Bank of Japan. Without a complicit governor quarterbacking Japan’s printing press, any attempt at reaching the endzone would be futile.

[The story twists and turns]

So here he is — Japan’s great hope — with time about to expire and the pressure mounting.

Facing the rush of a moribund economy, entrenched price deflation, an aging demographic that has drawn down its savings and actually likes the idea of lower prices, and a debt mountain that eclipses that of every other major economy on earth, is it any wonder that Abe-san has decided to hurl the ball into the endzone and hope that a helpful pair of hands hauls it in for a TD?

Of course, popular thinking goes that, since Japan has been doing the constant-stimulus thing for two decades without any noticeable consequences, all will be well; but the problem lies in the fact that, throughout the nineties and noughties, Japan was basically scrimmaging on its own practice field — alone, behind closed doors.

Now they find themselves in a competitive game with every other major economy in the world suited up and also needing higher inflation, weaker currencies, and genuine growth after littering the field with trillions in stimulus.

Say a prayer for Shinzo Abe, folks. For Avenomics to score, he’s gonna need a miracle.

Full Grant Williams Letter below:

TTMYGH – Avenomics

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Fg4r1JBfyX4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

With delays, glitches, and broken promises plaguing the President’s healthcare reform, it is perhaps surprising that the level of coverage among the mainstream media of the SNAFU – and more importantly its potential implications – is not higher. Of course, in each news cycle, Obamacare is mentioned, along with a soundbite of how it will all be fixed soon and it’s only the website, but, as the following uncomfortable clip shows, there are notable and far-reaching implications (not the least of which is the progression to a part-time economy that we have so vociferously pointed out – explicitly here and anecdotally here) for Americans and the US economy as a whole.

 

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kPJjgyb-BkQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

If one of the initial fears surrounding Bitcoin, or rather digital currencies of which there suddenly appears to be a veritable tsunami now that anyone with an algorithm can become their own central bank (and all are exploding in value in what should make at least a few people nervous) is lack of adoption, that may be put to rest courtesy of a new initiative called “Bitcoin Black Friday” which, as TechCrunch reports, has been adopted by over 400 online retailers who starting on Friday will be offering special deals just for Bitcoin users.

Since this is Bitcoin’s first unofficial Thanksgiving, having stormed on the public scene after exploding in price from under $100 to nearly trading on parity with an ounce of gold, many of the Bitcoin-only offers are gimmicky: “you can use bitcoins to buy a bacon-flavored lollipop or a ticket to space on Virgin Atlantic, for example. That’s not really going to help you with your holiday shopping list, though. However, there are some decent choices on the site, too, but for obvious reasons, they tend to be a little more geeky in nature. Adafruit, for instance, is offering 10% off of everything in stock, including Raspberry Pi. Reddit is selling Reddit Gold. The Humble Bundle has deals up for grabs. There are also software, electronics, domain name and hosting deals, and so on.”

A sampling of the deals from the site is shown below:

And while there are some good deals to be found…

Mobile gift card app Gyft is one of the better deals available, giving Bitcoin shoppers 4 percentage points back when you buy gift cards from its supported retailer partners, like Target, Gamestop, Gap, Zappos, Nike, Old Navy, and hundreds of others. If you were stocking up on gift cards anyway, that’s worth taking advantage of. (For what it’s worth, PayPal users will get 3% back, while credit card users get 2% back, the company says.)

… TechCrunch correctly observes that the catalog is no Amazon, for obvious reasons: “the deal quality on “Bitcoin Black Friday” is a good indicator of where Bitcoin is in terms of mainstream adoption. That is, not so much. There really aren’t big-name retailers on board with the digital currency at this time… big-name tech companies like Google, Amazon and eBay aren’t going to play along either, as they all have their own payment mechanisms to push (Google Wallet, PayPal and Amazon’s one-click checkout experience, respectively).”

But the list of vendors is growing at a pace that only rivals the explosion in the price of Bitcoin itself:

The Bitcoin Black Friday movement is still growing, however. Earlier this week, it was touting that 250 retailers had signed up, and today there are nearly 200 more. Evan Greer of Fight the Future also tells us the site has seen over 30,000 unique visitors to date, almost half of which arrived yesterday. Meanwhile, over 4,000 people have signed up to get an email when the deals go live.

And even if the popularity of Bitcoin adoption also follows a parabolic curve, a bigger problem is accurately observed by TechCrunch. Consider that on one hand Internet activists Fight for the Future are trying to spread the word about the Bitcoin Black Friday efforts, somewhat radicalizing the event by pointing to Bitcoin’s potential to be disruptive to the status quo. “Bitcoin is an amazing new technology, but because it challenges established industries, it will face serious political opposition–especially in the U.S. where those industries are strongest,” the message reads on the project’s site. “Bitcoin will only be safe once millions of people rely on it every day.”

Yet on the other hand, it is the sheer surge in the USD-denominated value of Bitcoin itself that may be turning off many people due to the law of large numbers (Bitcoin can’t do a reverse stock split), and instead potential entrants to the digital currency world are looking at far cheaper BTC competitors (and there are plenty), as an alternative:

Of course, Bitcoin won’t reach those mainstream “millions” while speculators drive the price of the cryptocurrency to crazy new heights. That doesn’t discount its long-term potential though as a money transfer platform, though. But as a payment mechanism for online shopping? While it’s great that there are over 441 retailers on board with Bitcoin Black Friday, it would be better if there were more deals mainstream users would actually want to buy. Instead of say, Bitcoin t-shirts, stickers, glasses, mining equipment….and, oh yeah, more Bitcoin.

Then there is the flipside to the argument. If and when the inevitable correction comes, how many of those who decided to give bitcoin “a try” will end up losing substantial disposable income and be turned off by the whole concept of alternative currencies? Someone with a paranoid bent may see how such a scenario could be put to great use by those who can create fiat de novo and use it to bid up BTC to stratospheric levels only to force a crash subsequently.

* * *

And in totally unrelated news, and showing that sometimes nothing beats having a physical currency in one’s hand is the story of James Howells from Wales, who bought 7500 Bitcoins in 2009, forgot about them, threw away his hard disk and is now scrambling to retrieve because the value of his “digital wallet” has exploded to over $7 million! From BBC:

A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

 

James Howells’s hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins – which is a virtual form of currency for use online. It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out.

 

But this week, a single bitcoin’s value hit $1,000 (£613) for the first time. It means Mr Howells’s collection is now worth $7.5m (£4.6m).

 

A few years ago Mr Howells, who works in IT, had dismantled his computer after spilling a drink on it. “I stored a couple of parts away like the hard drive, and the rest of the bits and pieces which were still working I sold for spares,” he told BBC Radio Wales.

 

“I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought – totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house.

 

“Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment – I hadn’t used this drive for over three years, I believed I’d taken everything off it… so it got thrown in the bin.”

 

Mr Howells later realised what was left on the hard drive.

 

He added: “I had been hearing a few stories of a chap from Norway who had bought a number of
coins for a very low price and had sold them for a high price and that’s when I got back into checking the price and seeing what I’d done.

 

“When I found out what the price was, the penny dropped and I realised the coins I have ‘mined’ were on the drive I had thrown away.

 

“There was not a lot I could do.”

Good luck James.

The irony here is that while many owners of the barbarous relic, (which may not be rising parabolically in price right now, but at least feels quite firm to the touch) are known to have “unfortunate boating accidents”, water has a less than desired effect on electronics. But that’s ok: we are confident that any Bitcoin lost in the electronic ether can always be retrieved eventually: just call 1-800-NSA.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Rq5pGDIQD4s/story01.htm Tyler Durden

If one of the initial fears surrounding Bitcoin, or rather digital currencies of which there suddenly appears to be a veritable tsunami now that anyone with an algorithm can become their own central bank (and all are exploding in value in what should make at least a few people nervous) is lack of adoption, that may be put to rest courtesy of a new initiative called “Bitcoin Black Friday” which, as TechCrunch reports, has been adopted by over 400 online retailers who starting on Friday will be offering special deals just for Bitcoin users.

Since this is Bitcoin’s first unofficial Thanksgiving, having stormed on the public scene after exploding in price from under $100 to nearly trading on parity with an ounce of gold, many of the Bitcoin-only offers are gimmicky: “you can use bitcoins to buy a bacon-flavored lollipop or a ticket to space on Virgin Atlantic, for example. That’s not really going to help you with your holiday shopping list, though. However, there are some decent choices on the site, too, but for obvious reasons, they tend to be a little more geeky in nature. Adafruit, for instance, is offering 10% off of everything in stock, including Raspberry Pi. Reddit is selling Reddit Gold. The Humble Bundle has deals up for grabs. There are also software, electronics, domain name and hosting deals, and so on.”

A sampling of the deals from the site is shown below:

And while there are some good deals to be found…

Mobile gift card app Gyft is one of the better deals available, giving Bitcoin shoppers 4 percentage points back when you buy gift cards from its supported retailer partners, like Target, Gamestop, Gap, Zappos, Nike, Old Navy, and hundreds of others. If you were stocking up on gift cards anyway, that’s worth taking advantage of. (For what it’s worth, PayPal users will get 3% back, while credit card users get 2% back, the company says.)

… TechCrunch correctly observes that the catalog is no Amazon, for obvious reasons: “the deal quality on “Bitcoin Black Friday” is a good indicator of where Bitcoin is in terms of mainstream adoption. That is, not so much. There really aren’t big-name retailers on board with the digital currency at this time… big-name tech companies like Google, Amazon and eBay aren’t going to play along either, as they all have their own payment mechanisms to push (Google Wallet, PayPal and Amazon’s one-click checkout experience, respectively).”

But the list of vendors is growing at a pace that only rivals the explosion in the price of Bitcoin itself:

The Bitcoin Black Friday movement is still growing, however. Earlier this week, it was touting that 250 retailers had signed up, and today there are nearly 200 more. Evan Greer of Fight the Future also tells us the site has seen over 30,000 unique visitors to date, almost half of which arrived yesterday. Meanwhile, over 4,000 people have signed up to get an email when the deals go live.

And even if the popularity of Bitcoin adoption also follows a parabolic curve, a bigger problem is accurately observed by TechCrunch. Consider that on one hand Internet activists Fight for the Future are trying to spread the word about the Bitcoin Black Friday efforts, somewhat radicalizing the event by pointing to Bitcoin’s potential to be disruptive to the status quo. “Bitcoin is an amazing new technology, but because it challenges established industries, it will face serious political opposition–especially in the U.S. where those industries are strongest,” the message reads on the project’s site. “Bitcoin will only be safe once millions of people rely on it every day.”

Yet on the other hand, it is the sheer surge in the USD-denominated value of Bitcoin itself that may be turning off many people due to the law of large numbers (Bitcoin can’t do a reverse stock split), and instead potential entrants to the digital currency world are looking at far cheaper BTC competitors (and there are plenty), as an alternative:

Of course, Bitcoin won’t reach those mainstream “millions” while speculators drive the price of the cryptocurrency to crazy new heights. That doesn’t discount its long-term potential though as a money transfer platform, though. But as a payment mechanism for online shopping? While it’s great that there are over 441 retailers on board with Bitcoin Black Friday, it would be better if there were more deals mainstream users would actually want to buy. Instead of say, Bitcoin t-shirts, stickers, glasses, mining equipment….and, oh yeah, more Bitcoin.

Then there is the flipside to the argument. If and when the inevitable correction comes, how many of those who decided to give bitcoin “a try” will end up losing substantial disposable income and be turned off by the whole concept of alternative currencies? Someone with a paranoid bent may see how such a scenario could be put to great use by those who can create fiat de novo and use it to bid up BTC to stratospheric levels only to force a crash subsequently.

* * *

And in totally unrelated news, and showing that sometimes nothing beats having a physical currency in one’s hand is the story of James Howells from Wales, who bought 7500 Bitcoins in 2009, forgot about them, threw away his hard disk and is now scrambling to retrieve because the value of his “digital wallet” has exploded to over $7 million! From BBC:

A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

 

James Howells’s hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins – which is a virtual form of currency for use online. It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out.

 

But this week, a single bitcoin’s value hit $1,000 (£613) for the first time. It means Mr Howells’s collection is now worth $7.5m (£4.6m).

 

A few years ago Mr Howells, who works in IT, had dismantled his computer after spilling a drink on it. “I stored a couple of parts away like the hard drive, and the rest of the bits and pieces which were still working I sold for spares,” he told BBC Radio Wales.

 

“I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought – totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house.

 

“Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment – I hadn’t used this drive for over three years, I believed I’d taken everything off it… so it got thrown in the bin.”

 

Mr Howells later realised what was left on the hard drive.

 

He added: “I had been hearing a few stories of a chap from Norway who had bought a number of coins for a very low price and had sold them for a high price and that’s when I got back into checking the price and seeing what I’d done.

 

“When I found out what the price was, the penny dropped and I realised the coins I have ‘mined’ were on the drive I had thrown away.

 

“There was not a lot I could do.”

Good luck James.

The irony here is that while many owners of the barbarous relic, (which may not be rising parabolically in price right now, but at least feels quite firm to the touch) are known to have “unfortunate boating accidents”, water has a less than desired effect on electronics. But that’s ok: we are confident that any Bitcoin lost in the electronic ether can always be retrieved eventually: just call 1-800-NSA.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Rq5pGDIQD4s/story01.htm Tyler Durden

By: Chris Tell at http://capitalistexploits.at/

I first met Joe in Mongolia last year. He is one of the most fascinating men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. A spook from the cold war with stories that would not be out of place in any spy novel. Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

This is not the first time I’ve written about our favourite curmudgeon. Joe was previously introduced in a post discussing elderly care here. He was Formerly COO and CFO, Executive Vice President and Member of the Board of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, DC. He was also the U.S. Representative of the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs in Paris, France.

He has written professionally on economic development and international security affairs. On the lighter side, he is co-author of GAMBIT with Antoinette Falquier, a novel of international intrigue, nuclear hijinks and improbable espionage. I have read the book and have to say that it should be made into a movie. It has all the ingredients that are required for a fantastic, action packed screenplay, but I digress.

Joe recently sent me his projections for 2014. Given his incredibly diverse background and involvement in geopolitics, combined with the very real fact that he’s already doubled my time on this ball of dirt and amassed more insights and experience than I can hope to acquire in my lifetime, I always find his views interesting. He kindly agreed to share them with our readers.

11/20/13

The Early Line on 2014

by: Joseph Harned

It is said that making predictions is often a risky business, particularly when they’re about the future. The “early line” is what book makers call the very first predictions by odd makers about a given outcome. Early lines are the riskiest predictions of all. Sheer folly. Pure chutzpah. All hat, no cattle. With that in mind, and tongue firmly in cheek, here are my early lines for 2014 – in no particular order of importance.

• Mid-term U.S. election results will see the Democrats retaining control of the Senate and re-taking control of the House despite the lowest voter turn-out in decades. Pundits decide this resulted from the Tea Party overplaying its hand, the “sane Right’s” inability to provide an attractive alternative to the “insane Right”, and the traditional ability of the left to organize reluctant voters to vote early and often.

• In Europe, the French government’s steadfast determination to refuse to f*#k its poor with austerity programs just to appease its right wing and German overseers actually begins to pay off, as the French economy rebounds while the German economy falters and its oh-so-determined society faces self-doubt. Some Euro-meisters are heard to mutter that “a little inflation may even be a good thing”.

• The price of gold breaks below $1100 per ounce, as even the most fervent gold bugs are forced to admit that 1) the gold market price is manipulated, and 2) not by me. [We spend a fortune to find and mine the stuff, only to hoard and bury it again. At least with oil, between finding and “mining” it, and eventually sequestering by burying the CO2 it produces, we at least get some working productivity out of it.]

• For the first time, India is beginning to realize its extraordinary potential by making progress in taming the high inflation that has crushed economic growth until now. The rising economic tide has muted fractious internecine political struggles, secular battles and religious antipathies enough to permit the population to see light down the tunnel together. Possibilities unlimited.

• Energy-dependent Mideast governments are rapidly losing their leverage as the U.S. becomes the largest oil producer in the world, and fracking enables old and marginal fields to become productive.

• As a corollary to an increasingly marginal Middle East, the Shi’a versus Wahhabi, Iran versus Saudi proxy struggles become rapidly marginal. Now it’s just sand they are fighting over. So be it. Let them at it.

• Which leaves Israel. For the first time since 1920, the U.S. Has the leverage to arrange a two-state sit-down-and-shut-up peace accord with Israel, and between Israel and Palestine and Jordan. And no one, no one, wants it more than American Jews, who are sick and tired of being arm-twisted and guilt-driven by Israel into indefensible positions of backing colonialist Israeli policies.

• China succeeds on two fronts simultaneously: first, in shifting with alacrity from a developing-nation exporting economy to a newly industrializing nation consumer-spending economy; and second; from highly pollution per-capita developing nation to a moderate pollution per-capita more responsible nation. The ability to accomplish both steps in tandem provides China with increased political and even moral leverage in Africa as well as Asia.

• Japan, on the other hand, weakens its short term 2013 growth spurt by enacting consumption taxes meant to pay for the increasing costs of caring for an inverted pyramid of aging population cohort depending upon decreasing working population cohort. [The Japanese should, of course, adopt the Israeli system of training the mobile aged to care for immobile aged.]

• Africa truly begins to come into its own, led by Botswana, which proves to foster better political leadership and less corruption than its southern neighbor. As China and now India do well, resource-rich, newly capitalized and trained Africa will prosper.

• Mexico, undergoing real structural and political reform, will take advantage of a recovering U.S. economy, and begin a decade of unprecedented growth.

• Downside risks include the knowns, the unknowns, the imponderables (that which we don’t know we don’t know), and a new category that has cost us more lives and dollars already than anyone predicted: climate change. As a layman, reading voraciously, with a lifetime of contacts and access, the best I can make of it all at this date is: By 2030 – in 16 years or so – we will have serious crop failures in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia which will result in massive starvation and political upheaval. If you have a five-year-old today, his or her likely military or alternative healthcare service will be connected to this crisis. By 2050 the U.S. will have lost 15% of its habitable near-shore cityscapes and housing, and crop failures will be affecting the U.S. Heartland. If you have a child – any age – this will be its future.

• Our old friend and cricket Naresh correctly pointed out that I failed to mention the increasing danger of a conflict between China and Japan. So, Here’s a PS for Naresh:Ever since Chiang Kai -Shek escaped across the Straits, whenever the Communist regime has needed a unifying cry to attempt to (ever so briefly) unify the 56 diverse ethnic groups speaking 292 different languages of China, they have called for reuniting Taiwan with the Mainland. No issue historically has had the same emotional, patriotic, political fervor, though the population being so disparate that fervor is always short-lived and cannot be counted on often.With the e
  conomic integration of Taiwan and the mainland, the cross-fertilization of investments and integration of technology, that arrow is no longer in the political quiver. It is being replaced by a handful of less effective arrows regarding contested islands in the Pacific. Each island has a 200-mile exclusive economic zone extending from its coastline, encompassing vast undersea areas of potential oil, gas and mineral resources. This fight over contested islands’ historical jurisdictions is being picked in particular with Japan, as the Chinese have long memories of Japan’s tortuous occupation in World War 2, which can be exploited politically by China’s Communist leadership. Look for Sino-Japan relations to heat up in 2014.To give you some perspective on the importance of the economic issue, while it is said that the U.S. doubled it’s size and potentially its wealth with the Louisiana Purchase under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 at a cost of 50 million FFrs, in fact the U.S. more than doubled its size and potentially its wealth under Ronald Reagan in 1983 with his creation of the Exclusive Economic Zones extending from 3 miles to 200 miles from our shores — all our shores, the mainland, Alaska, Hawaii, all islands, protectorates — some 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean — under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And for a Reagan’esque no money down!

Some very interesting and hopefully contentious food for thought!

– Chris

“American exceptionalism is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.” ? Zbigniew Brzezinski

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/vXW2P-rqpX4/story01.htm Capitalist Exploits

By: Chris Tell at http://capitalistexploits.at/

I first met Joe in Mongolia last year. He is one of the most fascinating men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. A spook from the cold war with stories that would not be out of place in any spy novel. Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

This is not the first time I’ve written about our favourite curmudgeon. Joe was previously introduced in a post discussing elderly care here. He was Formerly COO and CFO, Executive Vice President and Member of the Board of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, DC. He was also the U.S. Representative of the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs in Paris, France.

He has written professionally on economic development and international security affairs. On the lighter side, he is co-author of GAMBIT with Antoinette Falquier, a novel of international intrigue, nuclear hijinks and improbable espionage. I have read the book and have to say that it should be made into a movie. It has all the ingredients that are required for a fantastic, action packed screenplay, but I digress.

Joe recently sent me his projections for 2014. Given his incredibly diverse background and involvement in geopolitics, combined with the very real fact that he’s already doubled my time on this ball of dirt and amassed more insights and experience than I can hope to acquire in my lifetime, I always find his views interesting. He kindly agreed to share them with our readers.

11/20/13

The Early Line on 2014

by: Joseph Harned

It is said that making predictions is often a risky business, particularly when they’re about the future. The “early line” is what book makers call the very first predictions by odd makers about a given outcome. Early lines are the riskiest predictions of all. Sheer folly. Pure chutzpah. All hat, no cattle. With that in mind, and tongue firmly in cheek, here are my early lines for 2014 – in no particular order of importance.

• Mid-term U.S. election results will see the Democrats retaining control of the Senate and re-taking control of the House despite the lowest voter turn-out in decades. Pundits decide this resulted from the Tea Party overplaying its hand, the “sane Right’s” inability to provide an attractive alternative to the “insane Right”, and the traditional ability of the left to organize reluctant voters to vote early and often.

• In Europe, the French government’s steadfast determination to refuse to f*#k its poor with austerity programs just to appease its right wing and German overseers actually begins to pay off, as the French economy rebounds while the German economy falters and its oh-so-determined society faces self-doubt. Some Euro-meisters are heard to mutter that “a little inflation may even be a good thing”.

• The price of gold breaks below $1100 per ounce, as even the most fervent gold bugs are forced to admit that 1) the gold market price is manipulated, and 2) not by me. [We spend a fortune to find and mine the stuff, only to hoard and bury it again. At least with oil, between finding and “mining” it, and eventually sequestering by burying the CO2 it produces, we at least get some working productivity out of it.]

• For the first time, India is beginning to realize its extraordinary potential by making progress in taming the high inflation that has crushed economic growth until now. The rising economic tide has muted fractious internecine political struggles, secular battles and religious antipathies enough to permit the population to see light down the tunnel together. Possibilities unlimited.

• Energy-dependent Mideast governments are rapidly losing their leverage as the U.S. becomes the largest oil producer in the world, and fracking enables old and marginal fields to become productive.

• As a corollary to an increasingly marginal Middle East, the Shi’a versus Wahhabi, Iran versus Saudi proxy struggles become rapidly marginal. Now it’s just sand they are fighting over. So be it. Let them at it.

• Which leaves Israel. For the first time since 1920, the U.S. Has the leverage to arrange a two-state sit-down-and-shut-up peace accord with Israel, and between Israel and Palestine and Jordan. And no one, no one, wants it more than American Jews, who are sick and tired of being arm-twisted and guilt-driven by Israel into indefensible positions of backing colonialist Israeli policies.

• China succeeds on two fronts simultaneously: first, in shifting with alacrity from a developing-nation exporting economy to a newly industrializing nation consumer-spending economy; and second; from highly pollution per-capita developing nation to a moderate pollution per-capita more responsible nation. The ability to accomplish both steps in tandem provides China with increased political and even moral leverage in Africa as well as Asia.

• Japan, on the other hand, weakens its short term 2013 growth spurt by enacting consumption taxes meant to pay for the increasing costs of caring for an inverted pyramid of aging population cohort depending upon decreasing working population cohort. [The Japanese should, of course, adopt the Israeli system of training the mobile aged to care for immobile aged.]

• Africa truly begins to come into its own, led by Botswana, which proves to foster better political leadership and less corruption than its southern neighbor. As China and now India do well, resource-rich, newly capitalized and trained Africa will prosper.

• Mexico, undergoing real structural and political reform, will take advantage of a recovering U.S. economy, and begin a decade of unprecedented growth.

• Downside risks include the knowns, the unknowns, the imponderables (that which we don’t know we don’t know), and a new category that has cost us more lives and dollars already than anyone predicted: climate change. As a layman, reading voraciously, with a lifetime of contacts and access, the best I can make of it all at this date is: By 2030 – in 16 years or so – we will have serious crop failures in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia which will result in massive starvation and political upheaval. If you have a five-year-old today, his or her likely military or alternative healthcare service will be connected to this crisis. By 2050 the U.S. will have lost 15% of its habitable near-shore cityscapes and housing, and crop failures will be affecting the U.S. Heartland. If you have a child – any age – this will be its future.

• Our old friend and cricket Naresh correctly pointed out that I failed to mention the increasing danger of a conflict between China and Japan. So, Here’s a PS for Naresh:Ever since Chiang Kai -Shek escaped across the Straits, whenever the Communist regime has needed a unifying cry to attempt to (ever so briefly) unify the 56 diverse ethnic groups speaking 292 different languages of China, they have called for reuniting Taiwan with the Mainland. No issue historically has had the same emotional, patriotic, political fervor, though the population being so disparate that fervor is always short-lived and cannot be counted on often.With the economic integration of Taiwan and the mainland, the cross-fertilization of investments and integration of technology, that arrow is no longer in the political quiver. It is being replaced by a handful of less effective arrows regarding contested islands in the Pacific. Each island has a 200-mile exclusive economic zone extending from its coastline, encompassing vast undersea areas of potential oil, gas and mineral resources. This fight over contested islands’ historical jurisdictions is being picked in particular with Japan, as the Chinese have long memories of Japan’s tortuous occupation in World War 2, which can be exploited politically by China’s Communist leadership. Look for Sino-Japan relations to heat up in 2014.To give you some perspective on the importance of the economic issue, while it is said that the U.S. doubled it’s size and potentially its wealth with the Louisiana Purchase under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 at a cost of 50 million FFrs, in fact the U.S. more than doubled its size and potentially its wealth under Ronald Reagan in 1983 with his creation of the Exclusive Economic Zones extending from 3 miles to 200 miles from our shores — all our shores, the mainland, Alaska, Hawaii, all islands, protectorates — some 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean — under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And for a Reagan’esque no money down!

Some very interesting and hopefully contentious food for thought!

– Chris

“American exceptionalism is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.” ? Zbigniew Brzezinski

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