A new report by Oxford Economics says accelerating technological advances in automation, engineering, energy storage, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have the potential to reshape the world in the 2020s through 2030. The collision of these forces could trigger economic disruption far greater than what was seen in the early 20th century.
Across the world, a new wave of investment in automation could displace 20 million manufacturing jobs by 2030. This coming period of change should be called the great transformation period where job losses due to automation will be on par to the automation of agriculture revolution ( the transition of farm workers into the industrial sector) from 1900 to 1940.
Robots have so far increased three-fold since the Dot Com bust. Momentum in trends suggests the global stock of robots will multiply even quicker through the 2020s, reaching as many as 20 million by 2030, with 14 million in China alone. The collision of automation in the economy will lead to more volatility and economic swings.
The adoption of new automation technologies can significantly boost income inequality and, by extension, wealth inequality. Many countries, including the US, are entering the 2020s with extreme inequalities, and automation will likely accelerate that trend. Oxford Economics estimates that 20 million manufacturing jobs across the world will be displaced by robots by 2030.
By 2030, most of the automation disruption in major manufacturing countries will be centered in China, the EU, and the US:
China: over 11 million
European Union: almost 2 million
United States: nearly 1.7 million
South Korea: nearly 800,000
The rest of the world: 3 million
Oxford Economics developed the Robot Vulnerability Index – where specific regions across the US are at the highest risk of labor disruption thanks to automation.
The crosscurrents of these macroeconomic force could dramatically reshape economies around the world. Nevertheless, displacing blue-collar manufacturing jobs with robots will continue to drive income/wealth inequality to such extreme levels that governments will be forced to become more interventionist, using higher taxes, regulation, and policy to control economic imbalances.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RHAxMl Tyler Durden
Scientists have said that the Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park keeps erupting erratically and they can’t pinpoint a reason. This recent activity is a new record for the geyser, which has come back to life in recent years.
According to theBillings Gazette, the Steamboat geysers’ eruptions are historic. This recent activity is the shortest time ever recorded between eruptions. Yellowstone National Park’s Steamboat Geyser blasted steam and water into the air at 12:52 p.m. local time on June 12. Then, three days, 3 hours and 48 minutes later at 4:40 p.m. on June 15, it blasted steam and water into the air again, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS)’s Volcano Hazards Program. That’s a new record for the geyser.
The newspaper also reported that the eruptions were especially dramatic, large and loud, with one ejecting a rock that shattered a wooden post. Researchers don’t have good, tested theories to explain why geysers like one this slip in and out of active periods, according to the Gazette. Which can be translated as: we have no idea what the hell is going on, all we know is don’t panic. “Geysers are supposed to erupt, and most are erratic, like Steamboat,” the USGS wrote in a statement. Meaning, don’t worry about the supervolcano erupting any time soon. Especially considering Steamboat’s eruptions records only go back to 1982, the Billings Gazette noted. Of course, Yellowstone’s history is much older than that.
The eruptions suggest that now is a particularly good time to go see Steamboat Geyser erupt if you are interested in doing so. After all, the scientists say its perfectly safe. The geyser set a record for the total number of eruptions back in 2018, with 32 in the calendar year, according to USGS. Already in 2019, there have been 24 eruptions, six of them in June at the time of Billings Gazette’s reporting.
“I wish I could tell you,” said Michael Manga, of the University of California, Berkeley, who studies geysers when asked why Steamboat has been more active.
“I think this is what makes Steamboat, and geysers in general, so fascinating is that there are these questions we can’t answer.”
Manga, however, was a bit more cautious about the geyser’s activity. He stressed that it “should trouble everyone” that scientists can’t better explain geysers since they are similar in many respects to their much more dangerous cousin, the volcano. Steamboat sits atop the Yellowstone supervolcano, a large caldera that has erupted in the past.
Michael Poland, the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said the irregularity of Steamboat is just “a geyser being a geyser.” Poland added: “Steamboat clearly has a mind of its own “and right now it’s putting its independence on display.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YthojX Tyler Durden
Police have finally tracked down and arrested a fugitive who kept an “attack squirrel” caged and hopped up on methamphetamine at his house for protection, according to the NY Post.
The man, identified as 35 year old Mickey Paulk, was arrested on Thursday after authorities caught him leaving a hotel in a stolen ambulance. Paulk eventually rammed into an investigator’s vehicle after a short chase and was arrested.
He was booked on drug and gun charges, as well as charges of attempting to elude, criminal mischief, receiving stolen property and felon in possession of a pistol.
Police had been looking for Paulk since June 18 after police raided his apartment and rescued the “attack squirrel”. During the bust, they also seized drugs, paraphernalia and body armor. It had been reported to police previously that Paulk was keeping an “attack squirrel” and feeding it drugs to keep it aggressive.
The squirrel was released to a nearby wooded area.
According to USA Today, the squirrel’s name was “DeezNuts”.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KKD5sj Tyler Durden
India under Modi, an essential cog in US strategy, gets cozy with China and Russia…
It all started with the Vladimir Putin–Xi Jinping summit in Moscow on June 5. Far from a mere bilateral, this meeting upgraded the Eurasian integration process to another level. The Russian and Chinese presidents discussed everything from the progressive interconnection of the New Silk Roads with the Eurasia Economic Union, especially in and around Central Asia, to their concerted strategy for the Korean Peninsula.
A particular theme stood out: They discussed how the connecting role of Persia in the Ancient Silk Road is about to be replicated by Iran in the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And that is non-negotiable. Especially after the Russia-China strategic partnership, less than a month before the Moscow summit, offered explicit support for Tehran signaling that regime change simply won’t be accepted, diplomatic sources say.
Putin and Xi solidified the roadmap at the St Petersburg Economic Forum. And the Greater Eurasia interconnection continued to be woven immediately after at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, with two essential interlocutors: India, a fellow BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and SCO member, and SCO observer Iran.
At the SCO summit we had Putin, Xi, Narendra Modi, Imran Khan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sitting at the same table. Hanging over the proceedings, like concentric Damocles swords, were the US-China trade war, sanctions on Russia, and the explosive situation in the Persian Gulf.
Rouhani was forceful – and played his cards masterfully – as he described the mechanism and effects of the US economic blockade on Iran, which led Modi and leaders of the Central Asian “stans” to pay closer attention to Russia-China’s Eurasia roadmap. This occurred as Xi made clear that Chinese investments across Central Asia on myriad BRI projects will be significantly increased.
Russia-China diplomatically interpreted what happened in Bishkek as “vital for the reshaping of the world order.” Crucially, RIC – Russia-India-China – not only held a trilateral but also scheduled a replay at the upcoming Group of Twenty summit in Osaka. Diplomats swear the personal chemistry of Putin, Xi and Modi worked wonders.
The RIC format goes back to old strategic Orientalist fox Yevgeny Primakov in the late 1990s. It should be interpreted as the foundation stone of 21st-century multipolarity, and there’s no question how it will be interpreted in Washington.
India, an essential cog in the Indo-Pacific strategy, has been getting cozy with “existential threats” Russia-China, that “peer competitor” – dreaded since geopolitics/geo-strategy founding father Halford Mackinder published his “Geographical Pivot of History” in 1904 – finally emerging in Eurasia.
RIC was also the basis on which the BRICS grouping was set up. Moscow and Beijing are diplomatically refraining from pronouncing that. But with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro seen as a mere Trump administration tool, it’s no wonder that Brazil has been excluded from the RIC summit in Osaka. There will be a perfunctory BRICS meeting right before the start of the G20 on Friday, but the real deal is RIC.
Pay attention to the go-between
The internal triangulation of RIC is extremely complex. For instance, at the SCO summit Modi said that India could only support connectivity projects based on “respect of sovereignty” and “regional integrity.” That was code for snubbing the Belt and Roads Initiative – especially because of the flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which New Delhi insists illegally crosses Kashmir. Yet India did not block the final Bishkek declaration.
What matters is that the Xi-Modi bilateral at the SCO was so auspicious that Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale was led to describe it as “the beginning of a process, after the formation of government in India, to now deal with India-China relations from both sides in a larger context of the 21st century and of our role in the Asia-Pacific region.” There will be an informal Xi-Modi summit in India in October. And they meet again at the BRICS summit in Brazil in November.
Putin has excelled as a go-between. He invited Modi to be the guest of honor at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in early September. The thrust of the relationship is to show to Modi the benefits for India to actively join the larger Eurasia integration process instead of playing a supporting role in a Made in USA production.
That may even include a trilateral partnership to develop the Polar Silk Road in the Arctic, which represents, in a nutshell, the meeting of the Belt and Road Initiative with Russia’s Northern Sea Route. China Ocean Shipping (Cosco) is already a partner of the Russian company PAO Sovcomflot, shipping natural gas both east and west from Siberia.
Xi is also beginning to get Modi’s attention on the restarting possibilities for the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCMI) corridor, another major Belt and Road project, as well as improving connectivity from Tibet to Nepal and India.
Impediments, of course, remain plentiful, from disputed Himalayan borders to, for instance, the slow-moving Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the 16-nation theoretical successor of the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership. Beijing is adamant the RCEP must go into overdrive, and is even prepared to leave New Delhi behind.
One of Modi’s key decisions ahead is on whether to keep importing Iranian oil – considering there are no more US sanctions waivers. Russia is ready to help Iran and weary Asian customers such as India if the EU-3 continue to drag the implementation of their special payment vehicle.
India is a top Iran energy customer. Iran’s port of Chabahar is absolutely essential if India’s mini-Silk Road is to reach Central Asia via Afghanistan. With US President Donald Trump’s administration sanctioning New Delhi over its drive to buy the Russian S-400 air defense system and the loss of preferred trade status with the US, getting closer to Bridge and Road – featuring energy supplier Iran as a key vector – becomes a not-to-be-missed economic opportunity.
With the roadmap ahead for the Russia-China strategic partnership fully solidified after the summits in Moscow, St Petersburg and Bishkek, the emphasis now for RC is to bring India on board a full-fledged RIC. Russia-India is already blossoming as a strategic partnership. And Xi-Modi seemed to be in sync. Osaka may be the geopolitical turning point consolidating RIC for good.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RHuSG5 Tyler Durden
Cyber-criminals have struck for the second week in a row, this time on a small Florida city called Lake City, according to the WSJ. The city has agreed to pay ransom to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars after a ransomware attack crippled its systems.
Lake City’s council approved the measure during an emergency meeting Monday night and will be paying about $462,000 via Bitcoin, by way of the city’s insurer. This payment follows a similar incident in Riviera Beach, a city of 34,000 near West Palm Beach, where the city’s council authorized a similar $600,000 ransom payment.
The event [in Lake City] began June 10 with what the city described as a “triple threat” malware attack, then escalated with a ransom demand last week, the city said in a news release. The attack knocked out email and hindered city services, and people had to temporarily pay utility bills on terminals at the police station, the city manager said. The attack included a ransomware variant called Ryuk that is known for hefty ransom demands.
Emergency services weren’t affected. But Lake City authorities worried they wouldn’t be able to access encrypted files such as ordinances, public-record requests and utility information.
These are both signs of how increasingly sophisticated hackers are targeting cities with outdated IT infrastructure and holding them ransom for sizeable sums. And suceeding. The Riviera Beach ransom was about 12 times the size of a ransom demand that Atlanta refused to pay last year. These demands are becoming more common and are growing in size. The six figure sums averaged only a couple thousand dollars a few years ago.
Ironically, the hacking measures appear to come thanks to a hack of the NSA’s own weaponized hacking arsenal, which is now being used against the US.
Larry Ponemon, whose Michigan research company, the Ponemon Institute, focuses on information security said: “There are a lot of copycats out there, and they figure they’re going to ride the gravy train.”
Attackers are going after both companies and cities regularly by exploiting vulnerabilities via malicious email attachments and demanding payments for decryption keys.
The attacks occur “every day and many are never publicized”. Local governments are especially vulnerable if they lack resources to update infrastructure and invest in security.
Michael Tanenbaum, head of North America cyber and professional liability at insurance giant Chubb said: “We do see an increased frequency against municipalities.”
The FBI advises against paying hackers, saying there’s no guarantee they will release data and that it could make victims susceptible to future attacks. But some victims don’t have a choice: for instance, in March, Jackson County, Georgia paid $400,000 after realizing a cyber attack had compromised its backups.
Joe Helfenberger, city manager in Lake City said: “I thought we had a backup, but obviously we didn’t have a good enough backup for this kind of attack. Fortunately, we had all the financial data backed up properly off-site, so that wasn’t affected, but pretty much everything else was.”
The payouts are emboldening hackers to raise their demands. Ponemon said: “That might explain why the ransom is going up: The bad guys can get away with it.”
At the start of this month, we detailed a similar ransomware attack on the City of Baltimore. Officials have estimated that attack, where Baltimore rejected a $76,000 ransom, will instead cost the city about $18 million in IT costs and lost revenue.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XKVQCh Tyler Durden
In 2017, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created a special unit — the Iran Mission Center — to focus attention on the U.S. plans against Iran. The initiative for this unit came from CIA director John Brennan, who left his post as the Trump administration came into office. Brennan believed that the CIA needed to focus attention on what the United States sees as problem areas — North Korea and Iran, for instance. This predated the Trump administration.
Brennan’s successor — Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director for just over a year (until he was appointed U.S. Secretary of State) — continued this policy. The CIA’s Iran-related activity had been conducted in the Iran Operations Division (Persia House). This was a section with Iran specialists who built up knowledge about political and economic developments inside Iran and in the Iranian diaspora.
It bothered the hawks in Washington — as one official told me — that Persia House was filled with Iran specialists who had no special focus on regime change in Iran. Some of them, due to their long concentration on Iran, had developed sensitivity to the country.
Trump’s people wanted a much more focused and belligerent group that would provide the kind of intelligence that tickled the fancy of his National Security Adviser John Bolton.
To head the Iran Mission Center, the CIA appointed Michael D’Andrea. D’Andrea was central to the post-9/11 interrogation program, and he ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Assassinations and torture were central to his approach.
It was D’Andrea who expanded the CIA’s drone strike program, in particular the signature strike. The signature strike is a particularly controversial instrument. The CIA was given the allowance to kill anyone who fit a certain profile — a man of a certain age, for instance, with a phone that had been used to call someone on a list. The dark arts of the CIA are precisely those of D’Andrea.
What is germane to his post at the Iran Mission Center is that D’Andrea is close to the Gulf Arabs, a former CIA analyst told me. The Gulf Arabs have been pushing hard for action against Iran, a view shared by D’Andrea and parts of his team. For his hard-nosed attitude toward Iran, D’Andrea is known—ironically—as “Ayatollah Mike.”
D’Andrea and people like Bolton are part of an ecosystem of men who have a visceral hatred for Iran and who are close to the worldview of the Saudi royal family. These are men who are reckless with violence, willing to do anything if it means provoking a war against Iran. Nothing should be put past them.
The initiative for this unit came from CIA director John Brennan, who left his post as the Trump administration came into office. Getty Image.
D’Andrea and the hawks edged out several Iran experts from the Iran Mission Center, people like Margaret Stromecki — who had been head of analysis. Others who want to offer an alternative to the Pompeo-Bolton view of things either have also moved on or remain silent. There is no space in the Trump administration, a former official told me, for dissent on the Iran policy.
Saudi Arabia’s War
D’Andrea’s twin outside the White House is Thomas Kaplan, the billionaire who set up two groups that are blindingly for regime change in Iran. The two groups are United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and Counter Extremism Project. There is nothing subtle here. These groups — and Kaplan himself — promote an agenda of great disparagement of Muslims in general and of Iran in particular.
Kaplan blamed Iran for the creation of ISIS, for it was Iran — Kaplan said — that “used a terrible Sunni movement” to expand its reach from “Persia to the Mediterranean.” Such absurdity followed from a fundamental misreading of Shia concepts such as taqiya, which means prudence and not — as Kaplan and others argue — deceit. Kaplan, bizarrely, shares more with ISIS than Iran does with that group — since both Kaplan and ISIS are driven by their hatred of those who follow the Shia traditions of Islam.
It is fitting that Kaplan’s anti-Iran groups bring together the CIA and money. The head of UANI is Mark Wallace, who is the chief executive of Kaplan’s Tigris Financial Group, a financial firm with investments — which it admits — would benefit from “instability in the Middle East.” Working with UANI and the Counter Extremism Project is Norman Roule, a former national intelligence manager for Iran in the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Roule has offered his support to the efforts of the Arabia Foundation, run by Ali Shihabi — a man with close links to the Saudi monarchy. The Arabia Foundation was set up to do more effective public relations work for the Saudis than the Saudi diplomats are capable of doing. Shihabi is the son of one of Saudi Arabia’s most well-regarded diplomats, Samir al-Shihabi, who played an important role as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Pakistan during the war that created al-Qaeda.
These men — Kaplan and Bolton, D’Andrea and Shihabi — are eager to use the full force of the U.S. military to further the dangerous goals of the Gulf Arab royals (of both Saudi Arabia and of the UAE). When Pompeo walked before cameras, he carried their water for them. These are men on a mission. They want war against Iran.
Evidence, reason. None of this is important to them. They will not stop until the U.S. bombers deposit their deadly payload on Tehran and Qom, Isfahan and Shiraz. They will do anything to make that our terrible reality.
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RIM9Ph Tyler Durden
The issue of Millennial ‘burnout’ has been an especially hot topic in recent years – and not just because the election of President Trump ushered in an epidemic of co-occurring TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that sent millions of American twenty somethings on a never-ending quest for a post-grad ‘safe space’.
For those who aren’t familiar with the subject, the World Health Organization recently described burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” As birth rates plunge and so-called deaths from despair (suicides and overdoses) climb, sending the US left expectancy lower for multiple consecutive years for the first time since the 1960s, many researchers see solving the problem of burnout as critical to fixing many of our societal issues.
To try and dig deeper into the causes and impact of millennial burnout, Yellowbrick, a national psychiatric organization, surveyed 2,000 millennials to identify what exactly is making a staggering 96% of the generation comprising the largest cohort of the American labor force say they feel “burned out” on a daily basis.
The answer is, unsurprisingly, finances and debt: These are the leading causes of burnout (and one reason why Bernie Sanders latest proposal to wipe out all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt might be more popular with millennial voters than many other Americans realize).
Because of this ‘burnout’, a plurality of respondents said they experience mental and physical exhaustion tied to burnout on a daily basis.
Work, finances and socializing (that is, dating) were the top three reasons given for millennial burnout.
When it comes to work, pressure to work long hours coupled with low pay and job insecurity were seen as the primary drivers of burnout.
Amazingly, more than half of respondents said they work more than one job to make ends meet (having a second job has become known as having a “side hustle” in millennial parlance).
When it comes to coping with burnout, the top strategies listed were watching Netflix/Hulu, sleeping and exercise. And for those who take drugs to cope, roughly 70% said that drug is marijuana.
Fortunately for millennials, popular lifestyle ‘news’ websites like Buzzfeed and Slate.com have plenty of resources to help them improve their lifestyles.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2IXUrjr Tyler Durden
California Senator Kamala Harris won the Democratic presidential debate last night. It was not a close contest. She will win every debate she enters during this election cycle. If she becomes the nominee, she will win every debate with Trump.
Night two of the debates was just as vapid and ridiculous as night one. Candidates interrupted and talked over each other a lot, questions about foreign policy were avoided like the plague to prevent NBC viewers from thinking critically about the mechanics of empire, and Eric Swalwell kept talking despite everyone in the universe desperately wanting him not to. Buttigieg and Gillibrand did alright, Bernie played the same note he’s been playing for decades, and everyone was reminded how bad Joe Biden is at talking and thinking.
Biden has been treated kindly by polls and regarded as a “frontrunner” in this race exclusively because for the last decade he hasn’t had to do anything other than be associated with Barack Obama. Now that he’s had to step out of that insulated role and interact with reality again, everyone’s seeing the same old garbage right-wing Democrat who sucks at making himself look appealing just as badly as he did in his last two presidential campaigns. By the end of the night, even Michael Bennet was slapping him around.
The full exchange between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on Biden’s history with racial issues. pic.twitter.com/sK950pFyvf
The moment everyone’s talking about was when Harris created a space for herself to attack Biden on his citing his collaboration with segregationists as an example of his ability to reach across the aisle and “get things done”. Harris had not been called upon to speak, and once given the go-ahead by moderator Rachel Maddow after interjecting went way beyond the 30 seconds she’d been allotted in tearing Biden apart. She skillfully took control of the stage and engineered the entire space for the confrontation by sheer dominance of personality, and Biden had no answer for it.
That’s the moment everyone’s talking about. But Harris had already been owning the debate prior to that.
The goal of a political debate is to make yourself look appealing and electable to your audience. You can do that by having a very good platform, or you can do it with charisma and oratory skills. It turns out that Kamala Harris is really, really good at doing the latter. She made frequent and effective appeals to emotion, she built to applause lines far more skillfully than anyone else on the stage, she kept her voice unwavering and without stammer, she made herself look like a leader by admonishing the other candidates to stop talking over each other, and she hit all the right progressive notes you’re supposed to hit in such a debate.
Unlike night one of the debates, night two had a clear, dominant winner. If you were a casual follower of US politics and didn’t have a favorite coming into the debate, you likely went away feeling that Harris was the best.
This wasn’t a fluke. Harris has been cultivating her debate skills for decades, first in the Howard University debate team where she is said to have “thrived”, then as a prosecutor, then as a politician, and she’ll be able to replicate the same calibre of performance in all subsequent debates. There’s more to getting elected than debate skills, but it matters, and in this area no one will be able to touch her.
Harris won the debate despite fully exposing herself for the corporate imperialist she is in the midst of that very debate. While answering a question about climate change she took the opportunity to attack Trump on foreign policy, not for his insane and dangerous hawkishness but for not being hawkish enough, on both North Korea and Russia.
“You asked what is the greatest national-security threat to the United States. It’s Donald Trump,” Harris said. “You want to talk about North Korea, a real threat in terms of its nuclear arsenal. But what does he do? He embraces Kim Jong Un, a dictator, for the sake of a photo op. Putin. You want to talk about Russia? He takes the word of the Russian president over the word of the American intelligence community when it comes to a threat to our democracy and our elections.”
Harris is everything the US empire’s unelected power establishment wants in a politician: charismatic, commanding, and completely unprincipled. In that sense she’s like Obama, only better.
Harris was one of the 2020 presidential hopefuls who came under fire at the beginning of the year when it was reported that she’d been reaching out to Wall Street executives to find out if they’d support her campaign. Executives named in the report include billionaire Blackstone CEO Jonathan Gray, 32 Advisors’ Robert Wolf, and Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly. It was reported two entire years ago that Harris was already courting top Hillary Clinton donors and organizers in the Hamptons. She hasn’t been in politics very long, but her campaign contributions as a senator have come from numerous plutocratic institutions.
Kamala Harris Set to Announce 2020 Run On or Around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In 2 Years in Senate, majority of her donations have come from financial interests including Wall Street, financial industry lawyers, and real estate industry. https://t.co/0dTBVo7QlCpic.twitter.com/tMwzIehihr
In the summer of 2017, just half a year into her term as Senator, Harris met with @HillaryClinton‘s top donors in the Hamptons. I do not think they were there strategizing how to pass #MedicareForAll and free public college https://t.co/xqJFXGXqfK
Trump supporters like to claim that the president is fighting the establishment, citing the open revulsion that so many noxious establishment figures have for him. But the establishment doesn’t hate Trump because he opposes them; he doesn’t oppose existing power structures in any meaningful way at all. The reason the heads of those power structures despise Trump is solely because he sucks at narrative management and puts an ugly face on the ugly things that America’s permanent government is constantly doing. He’s bad at managing their assets.
Kamala Harris is the exact opposite of this. She’d be able to obliterate non-compliant nations and dead-end the left for eight years, and look good while doing it. She’s got the skills to become president, and she’ll have the establishment backing as well. Keep an eye on this one.
* * *
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More American renters now believe that owning a home is “financially out of reach”, according to the WSJ.
In a new survey set to be released by Freddie Mac, just 24% of renters said it was “extremely likely” that they would ever own a home. This is 11% lower than four years ago. Of those surveyed, 82% said that renting was more affordable than buying, up 15% from February 2018.
44% of renters who moved in the last two years said they could no longer afford their rent.
Freddie Mac’s incoming chief executive David Brickman told WSJ:
“The notion that there’s a housing affordability crisis is not new. But this is really bringing it closer to home in terms of what people are doing about it.”
One of the main causes for the “crisis” has been home prices and rents rising faster than the rate of inflation and wage increases.
The largest obstacle preventing renters from buying was “difficulty in saving for down payments and closing costs”, according to the survey. So rising prices and the inability to save are the problem. Is everyone at the Fed taking notes?
The issues are being felt by about 80% of millennials and Gen Xers and 71% of baby boomers who rent.
In addition, another government led great idea is also weighing down on millennials: student loans. Of respondents 23 to 29 years old, 51% said they made different housing choices due to their lingering loan debts. Another survey found that most millennials prioritize paying down debts before saving for down payments.
“I lived in a basement for 10 years. When my son was born, I didn’t want my son to grow up in a basement,” said Fabiola Morales, a 23-year-old single mother who works as an office administrator in Chicago and who recently bought her first home. She said she never would have had the money for a down payment had she not of qualified for a grant through a non-profit called Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago.
Her mortgage payment is less than her rent, which is a common benefit of home ownership once down payments and closing costs are dealt with. 25% of homeowners surveyed said they spend more than 1/3 of their income after taxes on housing, compared with 34% of those who rent.
Both homeowners and renters also cited child-care costs as a key factor in their housing decisions.
Skylar Olsen, director of economic research at Zillow said: “The time an average earner needs to put together enough money for a down payment is now about a year and a half longer than it was 30 years ago. Home values have most certainly outpaced incomes.”
But some still prefer to rent so they are not tied to one location and don’t have to pay for the upkeep.
Karen Gillespie, a 55-year-old real-estate agent said: “Every time you turn around it needs money.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XxDncb Tyler Durden
Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals.
If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid – Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars.
The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of proving it up.
NASA plans to do just that, beginning in 2022.
Of course, says veteran miner Scott Moore, CEO of EuroSun Mining “The ‘Titans of Gold’ now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world, but the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.”
In the decades to come, if you want to be a gold titan, you’ll have to get your feet off the ground. The real titans will be far from Earth.
Moore should know: He heads up a junior mining company that is seeking a seat at the titan table with the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.
The 21st-Century Gold Rush
Can we actually extract this space gold? That is the quintillion-dollar question, certainly.
Speaking to Outerplaces, Professor John Zarnecki, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimates that it would take around 25 years to get ‘proof of concept’, and 50 years to start commercial production.
Of course, it all depends on two key things: Economic feasibility and our advancement of space technology.
And then, we’re not alone, either. There are other world powers who would like to get their hands on that asteroid, as well. China definitively plans to dominate this race.
Mitch Hunter-Scullion, founder of the UK-based Asteroid Mining Company, tells the BBC that this is definitively the next industry “boom”.
“Once you set up the infrastructure then the possibilities are almost infinite,” he said.
“There’s an astronomical amount of money to be made by those bold enough to rise to the challenge of the asteroid rush.”
EuroSun’s Moore agrees:
“What we’re doing on the ground now may be impressive, but like everything else, even gold exploration in space is only a matter of infrastructure. We’ll get to it, eventually.”
But it’s not just about the quintillion-dollar prospects of the Asteroid Belt, which is 750 million kilometers from Earth.
“This may be the Holy Grail of space exploration for gold, but it won’t be the first stop on this adventure,” Moore says.
There are also Near-Earth asteroids, which pass close to Earth and could be pushed into an orbit from which water and other elements could be extracted.
Then there’s the moon, which holds resources from gold and platinum group metals to Helium-3, water and rare earth metals. Even though mining operations require gravity and the Moon’s is only one-sixth of Earth’s, scientists say there is enough gravity to make it work.
The Global Asteroid Mining Market
Yes, there is already a global market for asteroid mining, and Allied Market Research estimates that it will top $3.8 billion by 2025.
They’re counting ongoing and future space missions, the rise in inflow of investments in space mining technologies, and the growing use of print materials obtained from asteroids in 3D printing technology.
According to Allied, while the spacecraft design segment of this market accounted for four-fifths of the total revenue in 2017 and is expected to continue to dominate through 2025, the big change here will be in the space mining segment, or the “operation segment”. That segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 29% by 2025 “due to a surge in investment by public and private stakeholders in space mining technologies for resource exploitation”.
“You can’t just think of space mining as something that will suddenly happen in 25 or 50 years,” says EuroSun’s Moore.
“It’s already happening from an investment perspective. And the Asteroid Belt is just one aspect of this market. The entire global space market is worth hundreds of billions already.”
Indeed, Morgan Stanley estimates the global space economy to be worth $350 billion today. By 2040, it will be worth a cosmic $2.7 trillion.
Nor is the Psyche-16 Asteroid the only thing of interest in the Belt. Another small asteroid measuring 200 meters in length could be worth $30 billion in platinum.
Who Will Get There First?
China has vowed to dominate this race, and that’s an easier game for a country that controls all the major natural resource companies and maintains a tight leash on tech developers.
That’s not to say that the U.S. doesn’t have ambitions here. The difference, though, is stark. While NASA is focused on space exploration and scientific missions, China is focused on a space-based economy that is zeroing in on long-term wealth generation.
Even Europe, where EuroSun is developing a major goldmine in Romania, has its hand in the game. In January, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a deal with ArianeGroup, the parent company of Arianespace, to study a prep mission to the moon in 2025. It’s got natural resources on its mind.
Even tiny Luxembourg has 10 space-mining companies registered since 2016, with some targeting space ventures to the Moon, and others eyeing near-Earth asteroids for mining.
Tokyo-based iSpace, for instance, is a private space exploration company that plans to complete a lunar orbit in 2020, and a soft landing in 2021.
For Moore, the prospect is daunting, even if it is the clear future reality, because mining in EuroSun’s Rovina Valley project in west-central Romania has been a cakewalk, both in terms of geology and infrastructure. Everything lines up for a large, low-cost project (the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.) That won’t be the case in space, but it’s a big bill that governments will want to help foot or risk losing their place in space.
Whoever gets there first will become the new god of gold, and the competition is heating up.
A few companies that could vie for a spot in the space-race are majors like…
Seabridge Gold Inc. (NYSE:SA) (TSX:SEA)
Seabridge is an ambitious young company taking the industry by storm. It has a unique strategy of acquiring promising properties while precious metals prices are low, expanding through exploration, and then putting them up for grabs as prices head upward again.
The company owns four core assets in Canada; the KSM project, which is one of the world’s largest underdeveloped projects measured by reserves, Courageous Lake, a historically renowned property, and Iskut, a product of a recent acquisition by Seabridge.
Recently, Seabridge closed a major extension deal to continue expansion at its KSM project. CEO Rudi Fronk stated: “We are pleased that our EA Certificate has been renewed until 2024 under the same terms and conditions, reaffirming the Government of British Columbia’s support for KSM and the robustness of the original 2014 EA.”
Teck Resources (NYSE:TECK) (TSX:TECK)
Teck could be one of the best-diversified miners out there, with a broad portfolio of Copper, Zinc, Energy, Gold, Silver and Molybdenum assets. Its free cash flow and a lower volatility outlook for base metals in combination with a potential trade war breakthrough could send the stock higher in H2 of this year.
Teck’s share price stabilized last year and many investment banks now see the stock as undervalued. Low prices for Canadian crude and disappointing base metals prices weighed on Q4 earnings.
Despite its struggles, however, Teck Resources recently received a favorable investment rating from Fitch and Moody’s, and will likely benefit from its upgraded score. “Having investment grade ratings is very important to us and confirms the strong financial position of the company,” said Don Lindsay, President and CEO. “We are very pleased to receive this second credit rating upgrade.”
Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE:KGC) (TSX:K)
Kinross Gold Corporation is relatively new on the scene, founded in the early 90s, but it certainly isn’t lacking drive or experience. In 2015, the company received the highest ranking for of any Canadian miner in Maclean’s magazine’s annual assessment of socially responsible companies.
While Kinross posted a significant loss in the fourth quarter of 2018, the company is making strong moves to turn around its earnings, including the hiring of a new CFO, Andrea S. Freeborough.
“Andrea’s successful track record at Kinross and throughout her career, including accounting, international finance, M&A, and deep management experience, will be an excellent addition to our leadership team,” said Mr. Rollinson. “We have great talent at Kinross and succession planning is a key aspect of retaining that talent for the future success of our Company.”
Wheaton is a company with its hands in operations all around the world. As one of the largest ‘streaming’ companies on the planet, Wheaton has agreements with 19 operating mines and 9 projects still in development. Its unique business model allows it to leverage price increases in the precious metals sector, as well as provide a quality dividend yield for its investors.
Recently, Wheaton sealed a deal with Hudbay Minerals Inc. relating to its Rosemont project. For an initial payment of $230 million, Wheaton is entitled to 100 percent of payable gold and silver at a price of $450 per ounce and $3.90 per ounce respectively.
Randy Smallwood, Wheaton’s President and Chief Executive Officer explained, “With their most recent successful construction of the Constancia mine in Peru, the Hudbay team has proven themselves to be strong and responsible mine developers, and we are excited about the same team moving this project into production. Rosemont is an ideal fit for Wheaton’s portfolio of high-quality assets, and when it is in production, should add well over fifty thousand gold equivalent ounces to our already growing production profile.”
Eldorado Gold Corp. (NYSE:EGO) (ELD.TO)
This Canadian mid-cap miner has assets in Europe and Brazil and has managed to cut cost per ounce significantly in recent years. Though its share price isn’t as high as it once was, Eldorado is well positioned to make significant advancements in the near-term.
In 2018, Eldorado produced over 349,000 ounces of gold, well above its previous expectations, and is set to boost production even further in 2019. Additionally, Eldorado is planning increased cash flow and revenue growth this year.
Eldorado’s President and CEO, George Burns, stated: “As a result of the team’s hard work in 2018, we are well positioned to grow annual gold production to over 500,000 ounces in 2020. We expect this will allow us to generate significant free cash flow and provide us with the opportunity to consider debt retirement later this year. “
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XevwMw Tyler Durden
