If anybody had any doubts about the Washington’s determination to give Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman a pass over allegations that he was involved with the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump put them to rest earlier this week when he released a statement praising Saudi Arabia, openly questioning the CIA and stressing the importance of the US-Saudi relationship (while also portraying Khashoggi as a suspicious and untrustworthy figure with ties to terror groups).
And while rumors about a possible intra-family coup in Riyadh have been simmering since Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 (with the latest reports surfacing earlier this week), the notion that MbS’s spurned relatives might rise up and exact their revenge for last year’s brutal “corruption crackdown” at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton is looking increasingly improbable. In other words, as long as the international response to the Khashoggi incident is limited to countries that don’t sell weapons to Saudi Arabia ending arms sales to the kingdom, then MbS will almost certainly survive.
And in the latest indication that the royal family – not to mention nearly all of the Saudis’ regional allies – remains firmly behind the Crown Prince, even as the return of his uncle from exile has set tongues wagging about MbS’ impending ouster, one senior prince recently told Reuters that the CIA’s findings are “not to be trusted.”
The prince reportedly raised doubts about the CIA’s purported determination that MbS ordered Khashoggi’s murder, saying the agency’s many past failures suggest that it shouldn’t be relied upon to reach a credible conclusion.
“The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the royal family, told journalists in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
The prince, who served in the Saudi intelligence service, and also as ambassador to the US, has a point: the agency’s conclusion that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical weapons helped justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
“That was the most glaring of inaccurate and wrong assessments, which led to a full-scale war with thousands being killed,” he said, speaking at an event hosted by the New York-based Beirut Institute.
But Al-Faisal’s estimate is too generous. In reality, more than half a million people died in the Iraq War, or as a direct result of the instability that it created. All thanks to faulty CIA intelligence.
Yet nobody in the CIA went to prison or in any way took responsibility for these enormously costly mistakes. Something that Al-Faisal said he finds hard to believe.
“I don’t see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul.”
Still, some of the evidence that has been leaked to the press doesn’t look great for MbS. One Turkish newspaper reported this week that CIA director Gina Haspel had told Turkish officials that the agency had a recording of a call where the Crown Prince gave an order to “silence” Khashoggi.
Regardless, the public prosecutor who is handling the kingdom’s investigation recently revealed that five of the men arrested for their involvement with the murder could face the death penalty in a kingdom that still carries out an unknown number of executions by sword.
Things are worsening. But we’re not over the edge quite yet…
As you already know, things are unraveling. The narratives of the past are being revealed as false and fraudulent — even harmful.
For example, the fallacy of pursuing “ever more” growth. Growth up to a point is beneficial, but it turns self-destructive when it exceeds what available resources can sustain.
As it is practiced, economic growth as pursued around the world today is now destructive. If we continue on our current trajectory, it will become fatal.
It already has for an increasing scope of the natural world. Beauty is being ruined. The complex web of life is being shredded. Species loss is accelerating.
This kind of damage is essentially permanent.
Pollinator Collapse
Right now insect ecologists the world over are utterly horrified by the declines in insect populations. “Crashing” is not too strong of a term.
It’s almost as if the Rapture happened; but instead of humans, it’s the insects who were taken.
A healthy, prudent response by a healthy, prudent culture would be to immediately ban any insecticides suspected of contirbuting to the problem. And to swiftly deploy a serious scientific resources into studying the issue.
Nothing of the sort is happening in the US yet. Few other countries are, either; with the exception of France. This is really positive news:.
France Is The First Country To Ban All Five Bee-Killing Pesticides
Nov 21, 2018
With bees on the endangered list and the terrible consequences that will come to pass if they become extinct, France has taken a drastic step in an attempt to save the population of pollinating insects.
As reported by Organic Consumers, the European nation has decided to ban all five pesticides that scientists believe are responsible for killing bees.
Both beekeepers and environmentalists have praised the move, but others, including cereal and sugar beet farmers have issued stark warnings about the move instead. They have warned that their crops could well be left defenseless against harmful insects aside from bees that destroy their produce.
Just recently, the European Union ruled to ban three of the five neonicotinoid pesticides — clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam — but France decided to put a blanket ban on the two excluded by the EU’s ban as well, thiacloprid and acetamiprid. The ban from the European Union starts on December 19 this year.
France’s ban extends to the use of all five pesticides both on outdoor crop fields and inside greenhouses.
My prediction is that within 5 years, France will enjoy a resurgence in all sorts of insects — bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, as well as the birds that feed on them.
If these efforts include habitat preservation and the planting of various plants that support pollinators and other insects, beauty and harmony will return to the French landscape along with better crop and native flora yields.
Perhaps you’ve read the recent research on the process known as “co-extinction” where the loss of a small handful of species can bring about the collapse of an entire ecosystem. In this past week, the esteemed journal Nature conducted a review of the scientific literature on the subject, offering this observation:
In particular, it is becoming increasingly evident how biotic interactions, in addition to permitting the emergence and maintenance of diversity, also build up complex networks through which the loss of one species can make more species disappear (a process known as ‘co-extinction’), andpossibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden regime shift, or even total collapse.
In other words, complex systems are complex. We cannot predict what will happen when such systems are perturbed, because the results are emergent. That means they arise from the exceedingly subtle interplay of conditions which are themselves subject to all sorts of feedback loops.
I’m personally very weirded out and terrified by the sudden loss of insect populations across the globe. I think it’s a very clear harbinger of big danger to come.
The mature response when faced with a situation that is well outside of one’s personal capabilities should be rooted in humility and caution. If you don’t understand what the big red button on the control panel in front of you does, then don’t push it.
Sadly, that’s not how society is reacting (so far) to this tremendous mass die-off.
We’re currently losing species at the fastest rate than the past tens of millions of years. CO2 is now building up at an alarming rate producing unpredictable results. The climate is yet another highly-complex system with its own emergent behaviors, the impacts of which we’re only now just beginning to feel.
So, in my eye, France is doing the right thing. Barring conclusive scientific ‘smoking gun’ evidence that A causes B which leads to C (which is almost never available by the way), they’ve combined both the direct and circumstantial evidence to justify a ban on the entire class of neonicotinoid pesticides.
To date, while causation has not been definitively proven, in part due to the resistance mounted by the deep-pocketed companies who manufacture and sell these chemicals (which are real biocides for their broad toxicity to both invertebrate and avian species), data showing correlation between the use of neonics and pollinator die-offs has been clear for years.
The subtler thing at work here is evidence that a growing consciousness is arising. One that also values non-human life and is willing to admit that science and technology have their limits.
This is a sort of wisdom long absent from the power structures in place.
I am personally grateful for this dawning awareness. And it’s coming not a moment too soon.
New Money Awareness
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
~ Leonardo Davinci
What do plummeting insect populations have to do with the S&P 500? A lot more than most people realize.
To begin with, the trajectories of both over the past ten years are unsustainable.
Both are artifacts of the human experiment of running an exponential economic growth model on a finite planet. And both will end very badly if continued at their same rate.
Very few people are ready to accept that outlook. If insects go to zero, then in all probability so do humans. One does not simply upend a billion years of careful ecological fine-tuning and skate away unharmed.
With a similar deficit of perspective, many people expect (and are counting on) that equities will continue to compound at 10% per year on average — forever. But these same people will stare back at you blankly if you point out that the economy is advancing at half (or less) that rate.
How can the claims upon something sustainably grow at a faster rate than the thing itself?
Look: the economy can’t grow infinitely, forever. It just runs out resources at some point. Or room. Or maybe its raping/pollution of ecosytems ends up killings all the insects and that’s the trigger for collapse. Who knows?
All we can be certain of is that our current addiction to infinite growth is a death sentence.
Focus on Markets
Why do I spend a lot of time focusing on the financial markets?
Because everybody has a stake in them, even if they have no money parked there. So that’s where the trouble will first be felt by the majority of people.
Once the trouble gets large enough and loud enough, more people will be willing to take a harder look at the more difficult issues. This is why I consider the financial markets to by a telegraphing agent for the trouble ahead.
Part of my mission is to help protect people from unnecessary losses. We work hard for our money, our wealth, and it would be a shame to have it disappear in a flash due to inane policy errors by the central banks.
So understanding the likely impact(s) of a painful delfation of the third and largest credit cycle — the Everything Bubble which we’re currently living through — is vitally important.
Yes, I happen to think that we (as in humans) are currently headed for hardship. We’ve got ecological issues rapidly exploding all around us, and our collective energy policy is not progressing nearly rapidly enough to wean us off of fossil fuels — oil, most critically — in time to avoid serious disruptions to our way of live in the future.
But those are harder issues to engage folks on. Huge belief systems stand in the way, guarding the entrance and preventing awareness for most people.
So we begin with the markets. They are non-denominational, nonpolitical, and everybody cares about them.
But our “gains” in the markets won’t matter in the slightest if we’ve collapsed the ecosystems along the way. Or forgot to reconfigure our energy infrastructure for an all-electric future and a complicated assortment of alt-energy devices and storage methods.
More personally, whether or not your portfolio is larger or smaller will be meaningless if you don’t protect that wealth. The same is true if you’re not personally resilient across all 8 Forms Of Capital.
A time of rapid change is upon us. Most people will be caught unawares because they have not taken the time to educate themselves. That’s a pity, but it seems to be a human constant throughout history.
Please don’t be among them. Educate yourself and take smart action today.
Thoughts From The Precipice
As is proper for this time of the year, I’m reminded of all the things in my life that I’m grateful for. This moment. My family. Time. The support of so many PeakProspery.com readers — both those I’ve met in person, and the many I haven’t.
The past decade of ‘free money’ issued by the central banks has given us all a bit more time to prepare, to get ready, to learn and educate ourselves as to the true nature of the many predicaments we will face in the arriving future.
Despite my very strong motivation in pointing out the many ways our systems are failing us; I am a preservationist. And a conservationist. I think life, of all kinds, is amazing.
I want human progress to continue. I want a better future for all of us. And I want to leave behind a world worth inheriting.
Yes, we’re at the precipice. And while it feels like we may be in the process of tipping over, we are not yet fully over the edge. There’s much you can still do.
Which is why in Part 2: Easy Come, Hard Go we identify which failure points in the economy/financial markets are most vulnerable and the 7 key indicators we’re monitoring most closely now that crash-risk and recession-risk alarms have started screaming loudly.
As I’ve said, there is still much you can do with the fleeting time you have left. Educate yourself and take smart action today.
There is a bit of irony in the fact that the global warming Elon Musk is so vehemently fighting against is nowhere to be seen as cold weather continues to expose how poorly designed and thought out the company’s Model 3 is.
You may recall our report from last week detailing how Model 3 vehicles were experiencing significant issues as a result of the cold weather making its way through the Northeast. Among the issues we documented were Tesla owners – including pro-Tesla blogger Frederic Lambert himself – unable to get into their vehicles and some owners complaining of not being able to access their charge ports. Lambert documented his own issues in this hilarious video, where he, bare-handedly in Quebec, can’t get into his own car:
“Jesus Christ!” Lambert exclaims about 53 seconds into the video, hands shaking from the cold, upon finally getting his door handle to pop out.
As is often the “solution” for many problems, Tesla, who said at the time said they were investigating the issue, has reportedly now issued a software update to try and address these issues.
At the time, owners were reporting that the Model 3 door handles were becoming extremely difficult to use because of the cold weather. They are usually activated by pressing on one side of them to pop them out. This is usually followed by the corresponding window rolling down slightly, something that other owners were reporting was not happening as it should.
Of course, the issue with the door handles being frozen in place doesn’t have anything to do with software and is a result of the “pop out” style handles simply not “popping”. In terms of a software fix, it looks as though the only thing that was addressed was the corresponding window not always coming down after the door opens. Since there are no door frames on the Model 3 doors, the window rolling down is semi-necessary to help open the door once the handle has popped out.
In the release notes of its new software improvement, Tesla said very little:
“Window position and charge connector locking behaviors have been optimized for cold weather.”
Due to a lack of information from the company about exactly what they addressed, the pro-Tesla lot at electrek dutifully tested out the improvements and found that the Model 3 simply “doesn’t close the windows completely anymore” after the door is closed. electrek editor Lambert, upon experimenting, found that his window would not go “completely up anymore” which he attributed to Tesla trying to help people safely open the doors in cold weather.
The disadvantage, he notes, is that this doesn’t seal the interior of the vehicle and it is still not a cost-efficient or energy-efficient way to warm up the cabin of the car. This doesn’t differentiate much from the nonsense solution that Lambert had jerry-rigged once discovering the problem to begin with, which was to overheat his vehicle. As he noted at the time:
In the meantime, the best solution is likely to overheat the cabinfor a longer period of time before trying to unlock the Model 3. Of course, it’s not really convenient or efficient, but it’s the best ai [sic] can think of for now.
So much for efficient energy usage.
In terms of the charge port, Lambert said he “couldn’t see a difference” with it, but was told by Tesla that the charge port would remain unlatched even in the event when the latch is frozen shut. He stated that he didn’t know what temperature would be the threshold for keeping the door permanently unlatched.
To add insult to injury, an update to Lambert’s software update article later stated that his window now scratches on the trim of the car when it opens and closes the door.
Update: after the update, my window doesn’t go completely back up as previoucly [sic] noted, but it also doesn’t seem to go as far down as it previously would when opening and closing the door. The window scratches on the trim when I open and close the door. That’s not good.
As we said already, enjoy your winter with your Model 3 in Quebec, Fred. It’s rumored Musk’s next project is a “software update” to just stop all cold weather from occurring on Earth. Keep us posted.
Global financial markets are once again throwing up some warning signs, as the selloff in equities entirely erased the gains made in U.S. stock markets for 2018. The economic and financial turmoil could bleed over into a broader slowdown, which raises pitfalls for oil prices.
The risks to financial markets have multiplied this year. The latest catalyst has been turmoil in tech stocks, which once helped drive up the value of equities, but is now dragging down the broader financial system. As the New York Times notes, Apple was worth $1 trillion in October, but is now only worth about $880 billion, a rather dramatic decline in just a month. The so-called FANG stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet (Google) – are not in a bear market.
The tech sector is getting hit on multiple fronts. A series of scandals at Facebook have heightened scrutiny and raised the odds of regulatory action. Profits for many tech companies are also not what they once were.
But the problem is not just with tech. Other corporate financials are spooking investors. Third quarter earnings from an array of top U.S. companies disappointed. Credit markets are also starting to sour. Bloomberg notes that both high-yield and investment-grade notes are set for losses this year in both euros and dollars, the first time that has occurred since 2008.
Goldman Sachs is telling investors to switch into cash, a sign that the bank is worried about the near-term future of global stocks. “Cash will represent a competitive asset class to stocks for the first time in many years,” Goldman analysts wrote in a note.
With 2018 coming to a close, economists are increasingly worried that 2019 will see more economic turmoil. The Federal Reserve continues to ratchet up interest rates, which has increased the cost of borrowing, hit the housing market, and increased the trade deficit. The dollar has also strengthened significantly this year, which has battered emerging market currencies and led to volatility and capital flight.
The U.S.-China trade war also continues to rage. Over the weekend, Vice President Mike Pence and Chinese President Xi Jingping addressed the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, where both dug in and took hard lines on the trade dispute. The APEC summit failed to muster even a lukewarm joint statement, the first time that has occurred. China blamed the U.S. delegation. “It is mainly that individual economies insisted on imposing their own texts on other parties, excusing protectionism and unilateralism, and not accepting reasonable revisions from the Chinese and other parties,” China’s foreign ministry said.
The heightened tension has diminished hopes of a near-term resolution to the trade war. President Trump’s mercurial nature always leaves open the possibility of a surprise development, but as of now, the trade war seems set to continue.
That is bad news as it will only grow worse as time passes. The 10 percent U.S. tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods jumps to 25 percent at the start of 2019. Moreover, if the highly-anticipated meeting between Trump and Xi Jingping in Buenos Aires later this month does not go well, the Trump administration could move forward on its threat to slap tariffs on an additional $260 billion of Chinese imports.
In fact, the outcome of this meeting could have global ramifications. A breakthrough in negotiations would provide a lift to global financials, but a deepening of the conflict could drag down the global economy further, already reeling from slow growth and the latest bout of volatility.
All of this is negative for oil demand, which has already been repeatedly revised down this year. The IEA sees demand growing by 1.3 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2018 and 1.4 mb/d in 2019. Earlier this year, the agency thought demand would grow by 1.5 mb/d in 2018.
“The outlook for the global economy has deteriorated since the last report,” the IEA said this month. The flip side is that lower oil prices will mitigate demand destruction.
“While slower economic growth in some countries reduces the outlook for oil demand, a significant downward revision to our price assumption is supportive.”
Two police officers in Alabama are in hot water after admitting that the criminal suspect whom they shot and killed during a pursuit on Thursday might not have been the right guy.
According to RT, officers with the Hoover Police Department released a statement claiming that they had “engaged, shot and killed” the 21-year-old suspect in a mall shooting that left an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl wounded on the night of Thanksgiving.
Police believed that the suspect, Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford, was involved in a shooting at the Riverchase Galleria, a mall in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover, at around 9:30 pm on Thursday. Both of the victims suffered gunshot wounds, but are expected to survive.
As the officers responded to the incident, witnesses said they had seen Bradford fleeing from the scene with a handgun. Officers tracked down Bradford and engaged him in what turned out to be a fatal encounter. However, after 20 hours of investigation into the incident, police now believe that Bradford was “likely” not the gunman who fired the shots that struck the initial victims – though they still believe he was involved in the incident “in some aspect.” Police now say there were likely two gunmen involved in the shooting.
In an apology that we imagine the victim’s family members will find immediately reassuring, the officers involved said they “regret” that their initial statement about the shooting was “not accurate”, and that they “remain committed to maintaining the integrity” of the investigation.
“We regret that our initial media release was not totally accurate, but new evidence indicates that it was not,” police officials said in a statement.
Media reports are claiming that the officer who killed Bradford has been placed on administrative leave, according to NBC.
They are asking anybody with information about the identity of the real shooter to come forward.
Only after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered did the major networks like CNN finally discover Saudi atrocities in Yemen and a horrid human rights record and history of crackdown on dissent at home.
While perhaps we might say better late than never, it’s interesting to now see pieces being written about “the latest countries to suspend new arms deals with Saudi Arabia” given that some of these countries’ arms exports to Saudi Arabia were so minuscule to begin with that it hardly warrants congratulatory celebration.
Denmark and Finland on Thursday became the latest countries to suspend new arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Denmark’s Foreign Ministry said it was freezing new deals over both Khashoggi and Yemen, while the Finnish Foreign Ministry mentioned only Yemen. Finland also banned new arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition in the conflict.
Their announcements came just two days after Germany said it was stopping all arms transfers to the kingdom.
via CNN
But CNN follows this with, “Denmark and Finland are not major suppliers of weapons to Saudi Arabia, but Germany certainly is.” This didn’t stop global headlines from lauding the move though the headlines should more appropriately read Everyone who is not exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia is halting exports of weapons to Saudi Arabia given that Finnish arms exports to Saudi Arabia totaled a whopping (cough) 5.3 million euros in 2017 according to figures published by a think tank, SaferGlobe.
Compare this to the heavy hitters the United States and United Kingdom. Despite European nations over the past years since the start of the 2015 Saudi coalition air campaign over Yemen steadily decreasing their arms exports to Saudi Arabia by the multiple tens of millions, the overall value of Saudi arms imports actuallyincreased.
Despite these decreases, the overall value of Saudi weapons imports actually increased by 38% between 2016 and 2017.
That was almost entirely because of a huge uptick in transfers from the United States, which almost doubled its exports in terms of value from $1.8 billion to $3.4 billion in that time. Germany also multiplied its exports from $14 million to $105 million, although it is expected to be much lower this year following its suspension.
In terms of the negligible to almost non-existent deals that Denmark and Finland have with the kingdom, the countries announced that the few existing contracts in place would not be canceled.
Between 2016 and 2017 the U.S. almost doubled the value of its arms exports to Saudi Arabia, from from $1.8 billion to $3.4 billion.
The United Kingdom transferred worth an estimated $843 million in 2016 but almost halved that value to $436 million in 2017.
French arms exports were worth $174 million in 2015 but dropped to $91 million in 2016 and $27 million in 2017.
Germany had increased its exports from $14 million to $105 million between 2016 and 2017, a number expected to drop significantly following its announcement to suspend weapons sales with the kingdom.
Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria all made sales of over €100 million to Saudi Arabia, according to 2016 figures.
via CNN
In total CNN concludes that over the past half decade “the US accounted for 61% of major arms sales to the Saudis” with the UK “a distant second, with a 23% share” and “France, in third place” with “a mere 4%”.
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad world, mad world
The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy.
The song was influenced by Arthur Janov’s theories in his book The Primal Scream. The chorus above about his “dreams of dying were the best he ever had” is representative of letting go of this mad world and being free of the monotony and release from the insanity of this world. Our ego fools us into thinking the madness of this world is actually normal. Day after day we live lives of quiet desperation. Despite all evidence our world is spinning out of control and the madness of the crowds is visible in financial markets, housing markets, politics, social justice, and social media, the level of normalcy bias among the populace has reached astounding levels, as we desperately try to convince ourselves everything will be alright.
But it won’t.
The opiate of the masses is not just religion, but the propaganda, misinformation, lies and technological distractions designed by the invisible government ruling class to provide the masses with pleasant illusions about their country, society, and material situation. If the masses were to wake up and realize they are being manipulated, oppressed, and corralled like sheep, revolution would sweep the land. People are being driven mad by an overwhelming feeling of cognitive dissonance.
The mental masturbation required by a vast swath of the population who see the evidence of decline, created by excessive use of debt and systematic corruption of government, finance, and the media, has created a society of mentally stressed zombies. They know things aren’t right, but to admit the truth would shatter their delusions and require them to act. It’s easier to self-medicate with drugs, alcohol and losing themselves in their technological fantasy world of social media. They would rather believe comforting lies than deal with uncomfortable truth. They go along with the lies because to do otherwise would produce tremendous mental discomfort.
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
The lyrics can be interpreted differently by different people, but the lyrics above paint a clear panorama of our mad world for me. We are running in circles, getting up early every morning, following the same routine, dutifully going to our work cubicles, seeing the same people, doing the same thing, and pretending it matters, for a paycheck worth less each day. We do this because we are trained like animals to believe buying shit we don’t need on credit is the way to get ahead in life.
Materialism, consumerism, greed, and keeping up with the Joneses has been embedded in our brains through years of government school indoctrination and media propaganda. Very few people succeed in getting ahead. They are just running on a hamster wheel and going nowhere. This is why there is so much depression, anger, and misplaced priorities in our lives.
Walking along a street in any crumbling urban area in this country you see miserable faces staring blankly as they trudge through their lives on the road to nowhere or wasting time absorbed by trivialities and bullshit emanating from their iGadgets. The lives of so many are a meaningless march of misery and mindless repetition of daily chores. There is an overwhelming cloud of sadness permeating the lives of the masses as our repulsive culture, built on fulfilling desires, consumerism, selfishness and greed, ultimately results in delusional, disappointed and desperate human beings.
This dysfunctional culture has resulted in soaring levels of suicide, drug overdoses, depression, and the formation of mentally unstable people who periodically go on shooting rampages for no foreseeable reason. Turn on the 24 hour news and try not realizing the world has gone mad.
Children waiting for the day, they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
Our society did not become so ludicrous, misguided and defective overnight. It has been decades in the making. And it can be attributed to the purposeful effort by those in control of the government in destroying our educational system and replacing it with a social indoctrination system. Children are no longer taught how to think, but how to feel. Children are being raised by the state as nothing more than cogs in the machine.
The family unit has self-destructed as millions of children are raised in fatherless households, broken households, or dysfunctional households. They are not taught how to act and think by loving parents at home, so they are easily susceptible to the social justice dogma jammed down their throats by low IQ government robots inhabiting the classrooms of our public schools. As Frank Zappa pointed out years ago, you need to educate yourself and not let government schools rot your mind. We didn’t heed his advice.
“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.” ― Frank Zappa
Children who question authority or do not act in a subservient manner are immediately diagnosed with ADD and drugged into submission. The public-school system doesn’t want high performers, critical thinkers or anyone questioning their government mandated orthodoxy. The ruling class (aka Deep State) wants controllable, malleable, non-thinking automatons to do the menial low paying jobs, buy cheap foreign crap with their credit cards, and be dependent upon the state for their miserable existence. George Carlin figured it out many years ago:
“They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.”
Unhappy, drugged up, deluded children, who have been treated like a number, grow up to be unhappy, overly medicated, easily manipulated adults, creating the mad world we are experiencing. Children are waiting for the day they will feel good – like their birthday – but the day will never come. They grow up and do as they are told – going into massive debt to get a worthless college education – learning how to be offended – graduating as special snowflakes seeking safe spaces. After being protected and propagandized during their entire youth they are entirely unprepared for the real world of low wages, menial labor, and thinking for themselves. Multiple generations have experienced this despicable process, implemented by those in power.
They enter adulthood just as their keepers desire – enslaved in debt, dependent upon the mass media to tell them how to think – and dependent upon the state for their health and welfare. They don’t know how to think critically as their technological toys and endless absorption of trivialities on social media platforms makes them dumber by the minute. Frank Zappa understood the danger of mass media 45 years ago with his song “I’m the Slime”.
He realized the government and mega-corporations used TV as a tool for their propaganda, molding the minds of our youth, manipulating them into conforming to the ideas, opinions, habits and tastes desired by those pulling the strings of society. Zappa had no idea how much more control the corporate fascists could seize once the internet and social media proliferated around the world. Combining the power of the surveillance state with the devious underhanded methods of Google, Facebook and Twitter has created a social concentration camp with government armed guards and social justice warrior corporations providing the propaganda.
“I’m vile and perverted.
I’m obsessed and deranged.
I’ve existed for years but very little has changed.
I’m the tool of the government and industry too.
For I’m destined to rule and regulate you.
You may think I’m pernicious, but you can’t look away.
I’ll make you think I’m delicious with the stuff that I say.
I’m the best you can get… have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozing out of your TV set….”― Frank Zappa
The detrimental impact of social media has been documented in a recent study at an Ivy League university. Those who reduced their usage of social media saw a significant decrease in depression and loneliness. The data proved spending hours per day on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media is damaging to the mental health of college students.
Social media is nothing more than virtue signaling and peacocking by people trying to pump up their own egos. The incessant narcissism broadcast by the “beautiful” people results in others comparing their lives to these shallow egocentric elitists. When normal people spend their days comparing their plain lives to the fake awesome lives of strutting egomaniacs, they become depressed and unhappy with their own lives.
Until people put down their gadgets, spend time living in the real world with real people and stop idolizing shallow faux icons, they will become even more mentally unstable. This seems unlikely, as young children are handed tech gadgets while they are still in their designer cribs. The masses will never willingly put down their addictive devices and deal with real issues in a real way.
Until this selfie society undergoes a drastic reversion to reality, likely spurred by a debt implosion and civil or global conflict, people will continue to mindlessly wander the earth staring down at their smart phones, getting dumber by the minute. This madness will stop when daily survival becomes more important than Kanye and Trump’s latest tweet. Until people are more concerned with where they are going to obtain their next meal than the number of likes they are getting from posting a picture of their latest trendy restaurant meal, the madness will continue.
If you think the general public and our youth are acting madly, the supposedly brilliant Ivy League educated financial minds are saying “hold my beer”. The Intellectual Yet Idiot central banker academic puppets of Wall Street have done what they do best – blow bubbles and create madness in the markets. Their debt creation (aka money printing) since the crisis they created in 2008, due to their easy money/no regulation policies, has created the largest debt bubble in world history.
When you create the biggest bubble in history you will ultimately have biggest bust in history. They created the Dot.com bubble and the housing bubble in the space of eight years. They have triple downed and created a stock, bond and real estate (aka Everything Bubble) bubbles. It boggles my mind watching the feckless financial world go mad, believing they’ve made billions based on their investing prowess when it has clearly been handed to them by recklessly incompetent corrupt central bankers and government apparatchiks.
As Charles MacKay found throughout history, men go mad in herds, and will only regain their sanity individually based upon their ability to grasp reality when it clubs them over the head with a baseball bat. The recklessness of the highly educated is built upon a false belief they are smarter than markets and have rigged the system in a way that insures they will never lose.
The arrogance and hubris of these delusional masters of the universe during their mad pursuit of riches always leads to their downfall. These are truly mad times when millions of people can fix their minds on provably ridiculous conspiracy theories of Russians throwing a presidential election to the candidate of their choice. So many people are so easily convinced of the most ridiculous ideas (aka socialism works), that folly has become the national sport. This level of idiocracy will surely end badly for this nation.
“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” ― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
As a born skeptic, I feel uncomfortable living in this land of delusions, illusions and confusions. I don’t fit in. I don’t want to fit in. Does that make me abnormal or normal? I don’t want to be part of any team. I will not blindly cheer for Democrats or Republicans. I intensely dislike the worldviews and ideas of Obama, McCain, Romney, and Clinton. I have found Trump to be endlessly entertaining and agree with his pushback on the press, the GOPe, and left wing open border lunatics. The only politicians I’ve ever had any real respect for were from the Paul family.
I’m all for lower taxes, but Trump’s tax cuts for mega-corporations and the rich did little for the plight of the average American, while allowing corporations to buy back billions of their stock at market highs to keep the market bubble inflating. Cutting taxes while drastically increasing government spending nine years into an economic recovery is pure lunacy. Trump created a one year reprieve on the recession with this debt financed adrenaline injection, making this Potemkin economy appear strong, when in fact it is on the verge of collapse.
Driving deficits past the trillion dollar level at this point in the economic cycle is a recipe for disaster, but talking heads on the TV screen act like it is perfectly normal. Keeping real interest rates below zero nine years into a supposed economic recovery is insane, but the intellectual yet idiot central bankers and their criminal banking cartel owners, who profit from this insidious policy, act as if this is normal. It’s not normal. It’s about as abnormal as you can possibly get.
This madness and abnormality is clear to me. I can’t understand why it isn’t clear to others. Am I mad? Am I the one who is abnormal? How can so many millions of people be oblivious to the facts and reality of our situation? They just seem to sleepwalk through life believing what they are told, thinking the way their keepers want them to think, doing what they are told to do, not questioning authority figures, and fulfilling their infinite appetite for distractions with their technological gadgets. As Huxley predicted in the late 1950s, the fact people have adjusted to this profoundly abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. Being normal today is considered abnormal.
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
I refuse to accept the ideology perpetuated by the Deep State and their collaborators in the media, financial industry, academia and corporate board rooms. I would rather be estranged from the general population than sacrifice my integrity by adapting my thinking to a pathology of lies, delusions, and denial. I already feel like an outcast among family and friends. Meeting old friends for drinks and seeing how they have been brainwashed by the media and political class is depressing.
Sometimes I’ve doubted my own sanity when watching the stock market soar, year after year, to the most overvalued level in history. Shouldn’t I have gone along with the crowd and ignored facts and reality? Groupthink has enriched millions of lemmings. But, I’m a stubborn bastard and will never go along with the crowd. I believe my facts are right and expect to watch millions of lemmings get slaughtered over the next year or so. It’s already begun, but they are too brainwashed and will be paralyzed as their faux wealth evaporates once again.
I feel I’ve psychologically and emotionally suffered from being a sane man in an insane world. I’ve been alienated and shunned, but I’ve retained my dignity and self-respect. I’ve got my family and preserve my ability to think critically, question everything, and refuse to go along with the crowd. It’s a sometimes lonely position, but I’ve made this decision with my eyes wide open and a willingness to accept the consequences.
I will not adapt myself to a sick society where vices are considered virtues, lies are considered truth, feeling overrides thinking, fiction passes for fact, enemies are created to instill fear, and insanity is considered sane. It’s a mad mad world, but I choose not be overcome by the madness. What is your choice?
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini escalated the ongoing standoff between the EU and Italy, saying he would bring down the government if the coalition’s budget deficit target was changed.
The remarks by Salvini, Italy’s de facto leader who has been enjoying a steady climb in public opinion polls as he has continued his hardline negotiating approach with the European establishment, were quoted by newspaper La Repubblica hours before the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was scheduled to make an attempt in Brussels to convince the European Commission that the country’s budget is sound. That, as is widely known by now, include the 2.4% deficit goal for 2019 that has become a lightning rod for Commission objections.
“The 2.4 percent deficit target can’t be touched, otherwise I will bring down the government,” Repubblica quoted Salvini as saying in a telephone call to Conte. The report said Salvini was willing to make only minor concessions in next year’s spending plan.
For Savlini the threat of new elections poses little downside risk: according to a recent poll, most Italians view Salvini, the outspoken leader of the anti-immigrant League party, as the real head of government, with just one in six casting Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in that role. The monthly survey in La Repubblica newspaper showed 58% considered Salvini the leader, while 16 percent picked Conte and 14 percent chose Luigi Di Maio, who heads the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and is the co-head of the coalition government. Salvini and Di Maio are deputy prime ministers in Conte’s coalition government, which took office in June and which the Demos poll found that 58 percent of respondents support.
Since then, Salvini has continued to pull ahead of Luigi Di Maio, the country’s other deputy premier, as the public face of hardline opposition to the EU. Salvini’s League party rose to 36.2% in voter intentions in November, the fourth straight poll showing an increase, according to an Ipsos survey in newspaper Corriere della Sera. Five Star, which emerged as the biggest single party in March’s general election, slipped to 27.7% this month, from 28.7% in October.
New elections would therefore only further entrench the anti-establishment Salvini, cementing his negotiating position vis-a-vis Brussels.
In an attempt to boost his approval Di Maio, meanwhile, ruled out shrinking the number of people who would benefit from the government’s welfare and pension reforms, though he reiterated the government would look at ways to cut more waste and raise money by selling some key assets, according to Bloomberg citing news agency Ansa. According to La Repubblica, he is in agreement with Salvini on possibly shifting up to 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion) from other parts of the budget for more investments.
Meanwhile, Italy’s budget plans and spat with the European Union have roiled its bond and stock markets in recent weeks. Some, such as Fitch, have warned that Salvini’s threat is in fact the biggest risk facing Rome, namely that Italy’s government may not survive.
Early in November, the head of Fitch’s sovereign ratings, James McCormack, warned that uncertainty involving Italy’s coalition government is as great a risk for BTP investors as the budget for the simple reason that the government may not survive as its members are “too different.” Speaking on Bloomberg TV, the Fitch strategist said that there are not many things that the coalition partners agree on, and that raises questions about the government’s survival.
“We are not convinced that this coalition government is actually going to survive. It has very different coalition partners” and there are “not many things that they agree on”, McCormack said.
“Then the question becomes: what happens then? Political uncertainty is not finished in Italy,” he added, expecting Italian political fireworks to continue well into 2019. As a reminder, there is a November 30 deadline for the Italian budget to be approved by European Commission, which then has to pass Italy’s parliament by December 31, with an April 30 “Plan B” extended deadline for Italian approval.
.
The Fitch analyst also said that if yields on Italian bonds go higher – whether with the active involvement of the ECB, which can be quite convincing as Berlusconi recalls all too well, or without – “this could force the Italian government to think of a different strategy.” Unless, of course, the contemplated strategy is precisely that of government collapse, which would fall right into Salvini’s hands.
While the standoff between Italy and Europe remains in the jawboning phase for now, the upcoming sequence of events will necessitate actions, and should the refusal to compromise by either Salvini of the EU continue, it is likely that the Italian “bond vigilantes” will have no choice but to send the spread between Italian and German bonds beyond 400bps, which the government has previously warned would be the “red line” for local banks, potentially triggering a deposit run among the Italian population which while entertained and enjoying the standoff between Savlini and Brussels, may soon grow more concerned about the safety of money it has saved in the bank.
French police used tear gas and a water cannon against protesters in the Champs Elysées, in the center of Paris, as “yellow vest” activists flooded the streets.
Originally formed to protest rising fuel prices, the “yellow vest” protesters have evolved into a wider demonstration against President Emmanuel Macron’s government in recent weeks.
BREAKING UPDATE: Situation At the Champs Élysée in central Paris is getting out of control as protests against rising fuel prices are continuing. Multiple people have been injured and there’s reportedly a lot of damage:#GiletsJaunes
🎥 @RemyBuisinepic.twitter.com/JxxCWXkYv4
Over 3,000 police officers have been reportedly mobilized to control the approximately 8,000 protesters – some of them masked, according to CNN. During the tense standoff with police, law enforcement officials were pelted with bottles before opening up with the tear gas and water cannon.
At least eight Yellow Jackets were arrested by police around noon for throwing projectiles, according to Le Figaro, while one protester could be seen being dragged away by riot police. The protests spilled into the Subway at one point, disrupting traffic as several stations closed due to “malicious acts.”
Saturday marks the second week of Yellow Jacket protests, sparked by rising fuel prices and a planned fuel tax set to be implemented on January 1, 2019. Macron’s government insists that the move is aimed at promoting environmntally friendly policies. During last wekend’s protest, a Yellow Jacket protester died in the southeastern region of Savoie after protesters surrounded a car and began kicking it. The driver accelerated to flee the scene and knocked the woman down.
Predictably, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner blamed the “far right” for the protests.
Alt-right wheelchair-bound granny
“Today, the far right has mobilised,” he told reporters. “The security forces perfectly anticipated this situation.”
“Their freedom of expression will be guaranteed, but it must not be exercised to the detriment of security, public order and the right of everybody to come and go. There is no liberty without public order,” Castaner added.
Conservative political leader Marine Le Pen slammed the accusations, calling them a “pathetic and dishonest” form of “political manipulation” by the French government.
The protests couldn’t come at a worse time for Macron, who said he would govern like a Roman God, yet finds his approval rating in a major tracker poll has cratered to just 25%.
the poll was conducted between November 9th and the 17th across 1,957 people.
Specifically, Macron saw a steep drop of four points from October, with only 4% of respondents saying they were “very satisfied” with the French President’s performance. 21% claimed to be “mostly satisfied”. –TheBurningPlatform
Meanwhile, French residents are not happy with the refugee camps and large migrant settlements which have appeared throughout the country, resulting in no-go zones and clashes between cultures.
Across the border in Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s approval rating has been steadily climbing as he presses forward with his anti-mass-migration Italy-first policies.
The ECB sovereign systemic risk indicator – capturing pressures on government funding – is approaching the levels seen at the peak of the 2011-12 Euro crisis, as Italian spreads over German yields rise.
And as risk soars, the European Union’s TARGET 2 (im)balances increased further in October.
…Hans-Werner Sinn, the former head of Ifo Institute for Economic Research, a leading economic think tank, told Handelsblatt the figure was basically worthless – an “unsecured credit against the euro system, which cannot be called in and which debtor countries pay no interest on.” A private company would simply write off the amount, he added.
…No one quite knows would happen to the Target2 system in the event of a high-deficit country leaving the euro system. Last year, ECB president Mario Draghi told the European parliament that any deficits would have to be repaid. But it appears that countries have no binding legal obligation to do so; it is simply “guidance” from the ECB.
…If Italy were to withdraw from the euro zone, its banks’ assets and liabilities would be redenominated in its new currency, which would probably see a steep fall in value. The question then would not only be whether Italy should pay its Target2 deficit, but how it possibly could. The Bank of Italy would almost certainly default on a bill for half a trillion euros.
The latest data shows TARGET 2 claims of (core) northern Euro countries (Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland) reached a new high level of EUR1.318 trillion (70% of which represents the German claims), very close to the historical peak of June 2018. In parallel, TARGET 2 liabilities of the southern peripheral countries (Italy, Spain and Portugal) also increased further to EUR957 billion.
In contrast with Spain and Portugal, Italy’s TARGET 2 liabilities increased in each month since the market tensions associated with the emergence of the new Italian government last May.
As Goldman Sachs explains, the evolution of Euro area TARGET 2 (im)balances owes to two different underlying driving forces.
A ‘malign driver’, reflecting a “flight to quality”, whereby deposits flee the banks of weaker peripheral countries for the relative safety of banks in stronger core countries. Concerns about the financial soundness of the domestic banking system (and/or perceived risks of an EMU breakup) may lead to deposit outflows and/or shifts in asset holdings from a country perceived as vulnerable towards another country in which assets are considered to be safer, reflecting a flight to quality.
A ‘benign driver’, whereby central bank asset purchases from banks that hold their liquid balances in other Euro area countries (for example, a non-Euro area bank with its continental European subsidiary in Germany or the Netherlands) would lead countries’ TARGET 2 liabilities to increase.
And ‘malign’ strains are starting to show.
In contrast with domestic deposits (namely from residents in Italy) at the aggregated level – mostly reflecting the behaviour of households and non-financial corporations (Exhibit 11) – deposits from pension/insurance companies and other financial institutions have gradually decreased since last May amid greater volatility (Exhibit 12).
The optimistic assumption is that the magnitude of the ‘malign driver’ behind Italy’s TARGET 2 liabilities is relatively contained at present at around EUR100bn (information available until the end of October 2018).
But, more ominously, as Goldman concludes, the reduction of the credit exposure of both foreign investors and non-bank financial institutions (until September) – part of which have been transformed in cash deposits still in Italy – is already a warning signal.
And the latest available data reported in this analysis is prior to the tensions between Italian and EU authorities about the 2019 draft budget. In our view therefore there is a real risk that in the coming months we will observe Italy’s TARGET 2 liabilities being driven more by ‘malign’ than ‘benign’ forces.
Since deposits are more easily transferable than any other financial asset, the ‘malign’ driving force could be rapidly strengthened should political uncertainties and the likely upcoming confrontational debate between Italian and European authorities on the 2019 budget increase substantially.
In this respect, the EC recommendation to launch the EDP in response to Italy’s 2019 budget increases this risk, having in turn the potential to create additional political tensions.
