Submitted by Mish Shedlock of Mish Talk

Class 8 Truck Orders Plunge 39%; Large Truck Sales vs. Recessions

Class 8, “heavy duty” truck orders are down 39% from a year ago.

First, let’s take a look at the reports, then we will take a look at what this may mean for the economy.

Class 8 Truck Orders Plunge 39%

The Wall Street Journal reports Truck Orders Fall in April.

Last month, trucking fleets ordered just 13,500 Class 8 trucks, the big rigs used on long-haul routes, down 16% from March and 39% from a year earlier. It was the fewest net orders in any April since 2009, FTR said.

 

DAT Solutions, an Oregon-based transportation data firm, reported that loads available for dry vans, the most common type of tractor-trailers used for shipping consumer goods, fell 28% in April while capacity on the market was up 1.7% on a year-over-year basis.

 

Eaton Corp. , the sales leader in heavy-duty truck transmissions, predicted that organic sales from its vehicles unit will fall 10%-12%, after earlier predicting that sales would drop 7% to 9%. The company lowered its outlook for the business after concluding there are at least 20,000 heavy-duty trucks built last year that are still sitting on dealer lots.

 

Engine maker Cummins Inc. said on Tuesday it doesn’t expect any improvement in the truck market later in the year. It now expects heavy-duty truck production in North America to be at 210,000 vehicles this year, down 5% from its earlier view and down 28% from 2015’s actual volume. Cummins’ first-quarter sales of diesel engines to the heavy-duty truck market dropped 17% from a year earlier to $631 million.

Worst Yet to Come

CCJ reports Sagging truck orders ‘will probably get worse before it gets better’.

Last month was the worst April for Class 8 truck orders since 2009 according to preliminary data released by FTR Wednesday.

 

North American Class 8 truck net orders fell for the fourth consecutive month in April to 13,500 units, down 16 percent month-over-month and 39 percent year-over-year.

 

Don Ake, FTR’s vice president of commercial vehicles, says “surprisingly low” orders across the board were weak as the Class 8 market tries to find the bottom of this cycle.

 

Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst for ACT Research, says the blame for low orders was widespread.

 

” … an ongoing overcapacity narrative, a resulting weak freight rate environment, softness in late-model used truck values, and excessive new vehicle stocks,” he adds.

Large Truck Sales vs. Recessions

Variant Perception reports Peak in Heavy Truck Sales Point to Cyclical Pain.

Heavy truck sales are oddly a good leading indicator for the economy. It is odd because a lot of industrial production is coincident with the business cycle. However, if you go back over forty years, you can see that recessions have always been preceded by a decline in heavy truck sales. This is particularly true if the increase in truck sales is very large. Today, truck sales are not far from where they were at previous cyclical peaks in 1999 and 2007.

Heavy Truck Sales

Orders are down, sales will follow, sharply!

Topping off the the automotive sector please don’t miss About Those Record Auto Sales: Let’s Communicate!

 

via http://ift.tt/1T2cq5u Tyler Durden

Ahead of the most important macroeconomic event of the week, US nonfarm payrolls (Exp. +200,000, down from 215,000 and following a very poor ADP report two days ago), the markets have that sinking feeling again.

Futures seem unable to shake off what has been a steady grind lower in the past week, while the Nasdaq has been down for nine of the past ten sessions, after yet another session of jawboning by central bankers who this time flipped on the hawkish side, hinting that the market is not prepared for a June rate hike. Additionally, sentiment is showing little sign of improvement due to concerns over global-growth prospects as markets seek to close the worst week since the turmoil at the start of the year.

Perhaps its the suddenly ascendent dollars, which has rallied the most since November in the past week, which has not only pushed global markets lower but has resulted in the S&P futures sliding to session lows, down 0.3% as of this moment.

The MSCI World Index extended its biggest weekly decline since February as corporate earnings failed to reassure investors.

“We’ve turned a little bit cautious,” John Woods, chief investment officer for Asia-Pacific at Credit Suisse Private Banking, told Bloomberg TV. “One of the reasons why we’ve gone underweight equities recently is because valuations look stretched at the top of the range but also because the two interest-rate hikes we expect are not being fully priced in by the market.”

Emerging markets headed for the worst week in four months with Turkey, Poland and South Africa providing focal points for selling. U.S. crude oil sank, set for its first weekly drop in more than a month and industrial metals were poised for their biggest weekly loss since 2013 as the aforementined Chinese bubble appears to have finally popped. Bonds and the dollar have been the main beneficiaries, with a gauge of the U.S. currency headed for its best week this year, while German bunds advanced.

“The top worry in the market is still slower growth perspective than feared, and central banks,” said Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, head of trading at MPPM EK in Eppstein, Germany. “We are on thin ice already and we don’t need more disappointments as the Fed is eyeing the job market very closely.”

As expected, pleas for more central bank handouts were quick: “We expect BOJ to do a U-turn in the coming months by opting for more easing and this is likely to result in renewed yen depreciation,” said Salman Ahmed, the London-based chief global strategist at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, which oversees about $165 billion. “However, we are sometime away from this dynamic to take hold.”

Perhaps the biggest reason for the drift lower is that late yesterday, four regional Federal Reserve presidents said they were open to considering an interest-rate increase in June. After financial markets were roiled in the first six weeks of the year, the central bank had adopted a more dovish stance. Of course, all that will take for these same 4 presidents to change their tune is for stocks to drop lower enough and back to square one we go. Recall how fast the Fed flipflops “With These Two Headlines, Fed “Credibility” Just Hit A New All Time Low.”

As a result, concerns about the Fed and payrolls, have sunk Asian and European markets, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index falling 0.6 percent as of 11:05 a.m. in London, extending its weekly drop to 3.1 percent. Miners and energy producers posted the worst performance among industry groups, tracking declines in oil prices and base metals. ArcelorMittal slid 4.9 percent, adding to the gloom as it posted a 33 percent drop in quarterly earnings. Tullow Oil Plc tumbled 6 percent and Royal Dutch Shell Plc lost 1.6 percent. Futures on the S&P 500 lost 0.3 percent, after the index ended Thursday little changed, as investors awaited the jobs report to shed light on growth in the world’s largest economy and the trajectory of borrowing costs. Traders are pricing in only a 10 percent chance of a Fed interest-rate increase in June, with February 2017 the first month with at least even odds of a raise.

Global Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures down 0.3% at 2039
• Stoxx 600 down 0.6% to 330
• FTSE 100 down 0.4% to 6091
• DAX down 0.3% to 9818
• German 10Yr yield down less than 1bp to 0.16%
• Italian 10Yr yield up 2bps to 1.51%
• Spanish 10Yr yield up 2bps to 1.6%
• S&P GSCI Index up 0.2% to 348.3
• MSCI Asia Pacific down 0.5% to 127
• Nikkei 225 down 0.3% to 16107
• Hang Seng down 1.5% to 20142
• Shanghai Composite down 2.8% to 2913
• S&P/ASX 200 up 0.2% to 5292
• US 10-yr yield down than 1bp to 1.74%
• Dollar Index down 0.18% to 93.61
• WTI Crude futures down 0.1% to $44.26
• Brent Futures down 0.2% to $44.93
• Gold spot up 0.3% to $1,281
• Silver spot up 0.1% to $17.37

Top Global News

• Goldman Said to Extend Fixed-Income Job Cuts to 10% of Staff: Firm is also said to dismiss staff in equities division
• Evonik Said Near $3.5 Billion Acquisition of Air Products Units: Agreement excludes Air Products’ electronics division
• Herbalife Soars After Saying It’s Close to FTC Resolution: Co. expects to pay about $200m in potential settlement
• Credit Suisse Banker Case Said to Widen With Three New Suspects: Another three former employees as suspects in a case looking into unauthorized trades on the accounts of rich eastern Europeans
• Dish Network Is Said to Be Target of Negative Kerrisdale Report: Report to say Dish’s airwave holdings are overvalued, according to people familiar with the situation
• ArcelorMittal Sees Better Steel Market as Prices Rebound: Co. sees broad recovery in global steel market
• Facebook Must Face Privacy Claims Over Photo-Tagging Feature: Social network accused of violating Illinois biometrics law
• U.S. Trade Panel to Start Probe on 8 Smartphone Vendors’ Devices
• Teva Said Finalizing Asset Sales to Clear Allergan Deal: Reuters
• Ron Burkle, SBE Said to Near Deal to Buy Morgans Hotel: NYP
• JCPenney Said to Take Cost-Cutting Measures: New York Post

Looking at regional markets, Asian stocks traded mostly lower following a subdued lead from Wall St. with participants tentative ahead of NFP. 8 out of 10 sectors fall with energy, finance underperforming and consumer stocks outperforming. The Nikkei 225 (-0.7%) caught up with losses on return from its 3-day absence with a firm JPY weighing on exporter names. ASX 200 (-0.2%) was pressured from the open by energy weakness but then recovered off worst levels following the RBA SOMP which suggested the RBA were still open to future rate cuts given the weaker inflation forecasts. Chinese markets (Shanghai Comp -1.9%) conformed to the negative tone amid lingering growth concerns and after the PBoC conducted a consecutive weekly net drain, with CNY 220b1n of funds exiting the interbank market. Finally, 10yr JGBs tracked T-notes higher as the cautious tone in the region underpinned demand for safe-haven assets.

Top Asia News

• China Ponzi Warning to Asset Managers Cites Pooling of Cash: Asset Management Association reiterates ban on money pooling
• CLSA Sees China Bad-Loan Epidemic With $1 Trillion of Losses: Soured credit may be at least 9x official number
• Indian State Power Giant Revives Threat to Cut Delhi Supplies: NTPC may halt supplies from May 10 over non- payment of dues
• RBA Sees Inflation Below Goal in 2016; Yields, Aussie Plunge: RBA cuts 2016 underlying inflation forecast to 1-2% from 2-3%
• Uber’s China Rival Said Close to Raising $2b in New Funding: Didi Kuaidi is close to raising funds in round that will give it valuation of ~$25b
• Macquarie’s Record Profit Run May Be Ending as Challenges Mount: Group FY net A$2.063b vs est. A$2.037b

European equities are trading modestly in the red ahead of the key risk event in the form of the latest payrolls report. 17 out of 19 Stoxx 600 sectors fall with basic resources, oil & gas underperforming and automobiles, real estate outperforming. 55% of Stoxx 600 members decline, 42% gain. Notable outperformers in Europe have been Italian banks after earnings from Banca Monte dei Paschi (BMPS IM), which saw Co. beat on expectations and announce bad loan provisions had fallen to their lowest level in 4 yrs, however failed to lift the FTSE MIB out of the red. While Bunds have seen somewhat of a subdued start to the morning with little in way of newsflow as all eyes remain firmly fixed on the US jobs data.

Top European News

• Monte Paschi Profit Surpasses Estimates on Lower Provisions: Bad-loan provisions drop to lowest in four years
• Telenor Said to Hire JPMorgan to Explore Sale of VimpelCom Stake: VimpelCom said to work with Morgan Stanley on valuation
• InterContinental Shares Fall on Mideast Sales Hit, Early Easter: Oil markets hit Middle East travel

In FX, as is always the case on NFP day we will be looking out for any major moves in the USD, currently EUR/USD and GBP/USD are gaining ground on the USD. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed on Friday, on course for a weekly gain of 1.3 percent.  The Aussie dropped as much as 1.4 percent to a two-month low and was poised for its biggest weekly loss since January. Australia’s central bank said underlying inflation is expected to be 1 percent to 2 percent 2016, down from the 2 percent to 3 percent it forecast in February. The authority cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low on Tuesday.

The yen rose 0.3 percent to 106.91 per dollar, trimming its weekly loss to 0.4 percent. The currency jumped 5 percent last week, prompting policy makers to warn of possible intervention, as the Bank of Japan unexpectedly refrained from adding to record stimulus at a policy review. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday he was ready to respond to excessive currency moves if needed.

In commodities, oil fell as rising U.S. stockpiles and OPEC production cushioned the impact of declines in North American output. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 0.5 percent to $44.08 a barrel, extending its weekly loss to 4 percent. Brent fell 0.7 percent to $44.70.U.S. crude inventories rose to the highest since 1929 while production slid the most in eight months last week, government data showed Wednesday. Canada’s supplies are sufficient to cover production losses from fires in the country’s oil-sands region, Genscape said. OPEC output climbed in April amid gains from Iran and Iraq.

Industrial metals in London were heading for their biggest weekly drop since 2013 on a resurgent dollar and rising concerns about the strength of demand in China, where authorities have taken steps to cool a speculative frenzy. Copper is down 5.1 percent this week to $4,791.50, poised for the biggest decline since November. Steel reinforcement-bar futures dropped by a record 9.5 percent this week on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. Iron ore and coking coal plunged by a similar amount on the Dalian Commodity Exchange after Chinese authorities clamped down on speculators. The USD weakness has also benefitted spot gold, with the yellow metal higher by around USD 5/oz, although still some way off the USD 1300/oz level, which it saw earlier in the week.

The main event is reserved for this afternoon however with the release of the April employment report for the US. As highlighted earlier the main focus will be on the payrolls figure as well as average hourly earnings and the unemployment rate. Elsewhere, later on this evening we’ll also receive the March consumer credit data. There’s little in the way of Central Bank speak today, while on the earnings front we’ll receive quarterly reports from just 6 S&P 500 companies and 4 Stoxx 600 companies.

Bulletin Headline Summary From RanSquawk and Bloomberg

• Light newsflow has seen equities in modest negative territory ahead of the main risk event of the day in the form of the US nonfarm payroll report
• The USD has seen downside against major counterparts this morning, with the likes of GBP, EUR and JPY all seeing strength as a result
• Highlights today include the aforementioned US NFP report, Canadian jobs figures and potential comments from ECB’s Visco
• Treasuries little changed in overnight trading as global equities and oil drop, precious metals rally ahead of today’s nonfarm payroll report.
• If Britain is a country of the brink of a revolutionary vote to defy its leaders and leave the European Union, there was little evidence of it in elections held Thursday
• Next week the Bank of England governor will present economic projections to guide investors on an outlook that has rarely been more clouded in doubt. He also has to balance how far to stray into the fraught political battle concerning Brexit
• A new accounting rule that will force banks to set aside provisions for bad loans long before they sour could cannibalize profits and eat into capital at U.S. lenders
• Chinese banks’ bad loans are at least nine times bigger than official numbers indicate, an “epidemic” that points to potential losses of more than $1 trillion, according to an assessment by brokerage CLSA Ltd
• China’s $237 billion social security fund posted a rare public advertisement for job openings in economic analysis, equity research and global fixed-income investment, fueling speculation that the state-run institution is preparing to boost holdings of riskier assets
• The world’s largest debt market is sound and traders’ ability to transact remains robust, U.S. Treasury Department officials said in premiering a liquidity gauge Friday in a blog to be posted on the government’s website
• BlackRock Inc.’s iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, the largest exchange-traded fund that buys junk bonds, has seen 27.8 million shares redeemed, or about $2.6 billion, in the last four days
• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is cutting more jobs in its securities units, extending reductions in fixed-income operations this year to roughly 10 percent of workers there, according to people with knowledge of the situation
• Sovereign 10Y yields mixed, Greece rallies 17bp; European and Asian equity markets drop; U.S. equity- index futures lower. WTI crude oil falls, precious metals rally

US Event Calendar

• 8:30am: Change in Non-farm Payrolls, April, est. 200k (prior 215k)
  • Two-Month Payroll Net Revision, April, no ests. (prior -1k)
  • Change in Private Payrolls, April, est. 195k (prior 195k)
  • Change in Mfg Payrolls, April, est. -5k (prior -29k)
  • Unemployment Rate, April, est. 4.9% (prior 5%)
  • Average Hourly Earnings m/m, April, est. 0.3% (prior 0.3%)
  • Average Hourly Earnings y/y, April, est. 2.4% (prior 2.3%)
  • Average Weekly Hours All Employees, April, est. 34.5 (prior 34.4)
  • Change in Household Employment, April, est. 170k (prior 246k)
  • Labor Force Participation Rate, April, est. 63% (prior 63%)
  • Underemployment Rate, April, no est. (prior 9.8%)
• 1pm: Baker Hughes rig count
• 3:00pm: Consumer Credit, March, est. $16b (prior $17.217b)

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

And so welcome to random number generator day, also more commonly known as US nonfarm payrolls. The current consensus forecast is for a 200k print this afternoon although it’s interesting to see that the range of forecasts are from as low as 160k to as high as 315k. Our US economists are sitting at the lower end of that range and are forecasting for a below-market 175k gain. This is based on their view that upon closer inspection of the sectors responsible for job growth last quarter, the details reveal that retail trade has accounted for a disproportionate share of these gains (in the fact the pace of which is the fastest since 1994). They expect the pace of hiring in this sector to moderate somewhat closer to its 12-month average this month. As well as this, temp hiring, which has historically been a leading indicator of payroll growth, has declined over the same period and so these trends together contribute to their below-consensus forecast.

As usual we’ll also receive the other important details of the April employment report including average hourly earnings (market expecting +0.3% mom and +2.4% yoy), labour force participation rate (expected to be 63.0%) and the unemployment rate (expected to nudge down one-tenth to 4.9%). All of this data is due out this afternoon at 1.30pm BST so all eyes on then.

Markets have been trading cautiously all week leading into payrolls and a big part of that is the renewed fear and uneasiness about global growth. As a result we’ve also seen the Fed futures markets continue to price a lower probability of a hike at the June meeting despite the chorus of vocal support from Fed officials signalling that the meeting is ‘live’ – although in reality that is just in-keeping with the FOMC script so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Currently the probability of a 25bp hike next month is a lowly 10% and the lowest it’s been in months. In fact pricing for just one hike by the December meeting has now fallen below 50% and there’s little evidence to suggest that the gap currently between the Fed and the market is narrowing.

So the S&P 500 goes into today’s print on the back of three consecutive daily declines (in which it has shed -1.5%) and five in the last six days (in which it’s down -2.1%). It had looked as though we might be in for a better day yesterday with the index up as much as half a percent early doors, before gains were wiped out with the move down for Oil off the highs. The index closed a smidgen lower (-0.02%) but it is credit which seems to have been at the forefront of the risk-off moves of late. Last night the CDX IG index closed another 1.5bps wider. It means the index has weakened for the last 6 sessions and in that time is 11bps wider. It was interesting to see yesterday that the biggest HY ETF in the US (the iShares HYG Index) has had redemptions of around $2.3bn over the last four days and that the short interest in the fund is now up over 80% since mid-April. It’s worth noting that over a 4-day period the redemptions now are greater than during the selloff earlier this year and provides further evidence that this close to 3-month rally is quickly losing momentum.

In terms of that Oil move yesterday, WTI peaked back above $46/bbl mid-way through the day yesterday (and about +5% on the day) as the market reacted to the impact of the Canada wildfires and subsequent production curtailment in the Canada Oil Sands region, as well as the news of political infighting out of Libya and the potential knock on effect to output levels there. That said, $46 marked the high point for the day as prices quickly reversed with WTI trading all the way back down towards $44/bbl, which is where it’s hovering just north of this morning. That move coincided with another strong day for the US Dollar. The Dollar index rallied to a +0.65% gain yesterday, marking three consecutive daily gains.
Glancing at our screens this morning, markets look like they’re sent to end the week on a bit of a whimper in Asia. The focus has been on Japan where bourses have reopened following the public holiday. After initially opening positive the Nikkei is now down -0.89% with the Yen also posting a modest gain this morning. Some of that may also reflect data released in Japan overnight. The Nikkei services PMI for April was recorded as declining 0.7pts and into contractionary territory at 49.3. Combined with the manufacturing data, that has resulted in the composite dropping a full point to 48.9 and to the lowest since April 2014.

Elsewhere this morning we’re also seeing further losses for the Hang Seng (-1.30%), Shanghai Comp (-1.85%) and the ASX (-0.31%). The Aussie Dollar (-1.00%) has been the big focus for FX markets after the RBA revised down their inflation forecasts for this year.

Over the last 24 hours we’ve also had a host of Fedspeak to contend with. Yesterday we heard from St Louis Fed President Bullard who said that ‘my attitude about June is that it’s a live meeting in which we will have plenty of new data compared to March’. Dallas Fed President Kaplan backed this view up yesterday too, while overnight we’ve heard from these two officials again, along with Williams and Lockhart as part of a panel discussion. Lockhart highlighted that he doesn’t support a shift from the Fed’s 2% inflation target, while Williams questioned if the inflation goal is the right strategy for the future. Williams also said that in the face of another ‘negative shock’ then the Fed has a list of things that it can do including QE4, while negative rates are ‘at the bottom of the list’. Bullard also agreed with negative rates as being ‘very unlikely’.

Away from the Fedspeak, the data took a bit of a pause for breath yesterday. Ahead of today’s payrolls we received the latest reading for initial jobless claims which revealed an uptick in the number of claims last week to 274k (vs. 260k expected), a rise of 17k. While that was the highest reading in five weeks, the four-week average still remains at a lowly 258k. Meanwhile, closer to home in the UK the services PMI for April (52.3 vs. 53.5 expected; 53.7 previously) backed up what was a soft set of PMI indicators for the country last month. Combined with the first sub-50 manufacturing print for the UK in over three years, the composite declined 1.7pts last month to 51.9 and the lowest going back to 2013. With the Brexit referendum looming, the data points to some growth concerns for the start of Q2 and it’ll be interesting to hear what the BoE makes of the data.

Just wrapping up the price action yesterday, with a number of European holidays yesterday volumes were a bit thinner in the region although the Stoxx 600 (+0.32%) did manage to eke out a small gain for the first time in a week. Meanwhile core sovereign bond markets were stronger once again. 10y Bund yields eventually closed 4bps lower at 0.161% while Treasury yields were lower again too. The benchmark 10y year was 3bps lower at 1.746% and is now close to 20bps down from the highs in yield last month.

Looking at today’s calendar, it’s a particularly quiet close to the week datawise in Europe with just the latest industrial production for Spain due out. The main event is reserved for this afternoon however with the release of the April employment report for the US. As highlighted earlier the main focus will be on the payrolls figure as well as average hourly earnings and the unemployment rate. Elsewhere, later on this evening we’ll also receive the March consumer credit data. There’s little in the way of Central Bank speak today, while on the earnings front we’ll receive quarterly reports from just 6 S&P 500 companies and 4 Stoxx 600 companies.

Before we wrap up, there’s more important data out over the weekend from China too. On Saturday we’ll get the April foreign reserves data while on Sunday the all-important trade numbers are due out. So worth keeping an eye on those ahead of the open in Asia again on Monday.

via http://ift.tt/1rZFvWY Tyler Durden

 

 

 

 

The First Casualty is Truth
 Written by Jeff Thomas (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

 

 

 

 

In the fifth century BC, Greek dramatist Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Quite so. Whenever national leaders decide to go on the warpath for the sake of their own ambition or self-aggrandizement, it’s the citizenry that will pay the bloody price for their aspirations. Since war is rarely desired by the citizenry, it has to be sold to them. Some form of deception, exaggeration or outright lies must be put forward to con the populace into getting on board with the idea.

War, after all, represents a monumental failure of national leaders to serve the rightful national objectives of a citizenry – peace and prosperity. Of course, in the case of an empire going to war, this represents a monumental failure on steroids – the outcome may well be world war in such a case.

Readers of this publication will no doubt be well-versed in the knowledge that, when an empire is nearing the end of its period of domination, war is almost always used by leaders as a last-ditch attempt to maintain order. (During wartime, a populace tends to focus more on the war than the failure of its leaders. In addition, they’re likely to tolerate the removal of freedoms by their leaders to be “patriotic”.)

This being the case, we might surmise that an empire in decline would be likely to display similar symptoms to a country at war. One of those symptoms might well be the loss of truth, not just as relates to warfare, but as relates to the society as a whole. A nation in decline might even welcome the disappearance of truth, as it would allow the people to continue to feel good about themselves at a time when a truthful outlook would be too unpleasant to be tolerable. Further, the closer to collapse the country may be (economically, politically and socially), the more extreme the self-created loss of truth would be likely to be.

Let’s have a look at a few cultural examples and see if that premise seems viable.

Silver Versus Chocolate

As I described in January on “Running Out of Candy,” Californian Mark Dice stood on a street corner offering passers-by either a free ten-ounce bar of silver or a free bar of Hershey’s chocolate. Without fail, each one chose the chocolate. Even though Mister Dice was standing in front of a coin shop where the silver bar could be redeemed, they rejected the silver which they knew had to have greater value.

Only twenty years ago, people would have been far less likely to deny truth in favour of a falsehood that was more palatable – the instant gratification of candy. In effect, this is the abandonment of basic truth in favour of whatever perception is more pleasant.

Kim Jong-Un on Dancing with the Stars

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel recently asked people on the street if they had seen Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on the popular television show, Dancing with the Stars. Clearly they had not, as the idea was absurd, yet many answered yes, then went on to describe their appraisal of his performance as though they’d seen it. (Some went into depth, expounding on the artistry and social value of the non-existent performance.) The interviewer went on to remind the interviewees that Kim Jong-Un is in fact a dictator and asked whether they thought it was in good taste for him to have pointed a machine gun at the audience. In spite of the now blatant absurdity, interviewees continued to pretend they had actually witnessed the performance, offering their opinions on how well he had performed. They responded in accordance with what appeared to be expected of them, rather than choose the less-pleasant option of saying, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t see it.”

Now, the video was clearly offered by Jimmy Kimmel to show his audience “how dumb people can be,” but it demonstrates something more. It shows us that a significant segment of the population is quite prepared to simply abandon reality by, first, pretending to have witnessed something they have not and, second, offering firm and even complex opinions on something that did not occur.

Political Candidacy

Certainly, political hopefuls have always had a reputation for being less than truthful and any responsible voter would be advised to look at every candidate with a jaundiced eye. But what if voters choose to lie to themselvesin order to validate candidates?

Back when the US became the unquestioned empire in the world (just after World War II), Americans took a great deal of pride in truth and honour. A candidate might be suspected of personal immoral behaviour and/or corruption and still be elected, but if it were blatant, he would not.

Today the liberal media regularly refer to the record of presidential candidate Donald Trump, highlighting the companies that have gone bust and people who have financially ruined as a result of his dealings. They also highlight his ever-changing political viewpoints, his arrogance and distain for virtually everyone but himself. Yet supporters of Mister Trump virtually block out the repeated reports, focusing only on their enjoyment of his bombast toward the establishment.

And the conservative media have been equally persistent in calling attention to candidate Hillary Clinton’s long history of shady business dealings, her failure with regard to the Benghazi incident, her selling of influence whilst acting officially as Secretary of State, her acceptance of large campaign donations from Wall Street and, most prominently, her (very possibly illegal) abuse of top secret government documents.

Yet half of all democrats at present are content to simply treat all that evidence as though it has no significance.

To put this in perspective, as recently, as 1974, the American public were so outraged over their president having complied with a coverup of an information burglary that he was forced to resign his office. Today, however, we observe not a sitting president, but candidates for president, each of whom, regardless of their glaring unsuitability, is able to attract a major portion of the public’s support and continue to campaign.

Here, we need not focus on the shortcomings of the candidates, no matter how unfit for office they may be, but on the voters, who choose to disregard the obvious truth.

Again, abandonment of basic truth in favour of whatever perception is more pleasant.

All of the above, I believe are symptoms of a greater problem. As a Briton, I’m very aware that, during the decline of the British Empire,many of my fellow Brits pretended that it wasn’t happening, saying, “There will always be a Britain,” and “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” And, tellingly, they continued to behave as though Britain were still top doggie in the neighbourhood. (We still had vestiges of this, right up until the 1980’s, decades after it was clearly all over.)

The US, in its own decline, is showing this same self-destructive tendency. The worse things get, the greater the inclination of the citizenry to say, “Carry on, everything’s fine.”

When a ship is going down, the very worst reaction is to pretend that everything’s fine; that it will all turn out okay. Yet, just as occurred in Britain, we see today in the American people a desire to pretend that, although all is not well, there’s a rainbow just over the next rise; that if the people (and their presidential candidates) will only make their hopes and promises big enough, the greatness will return, along with good times for all.

I wish that that were the case, but I’m inclined to believe that self-deception does not improve the situation; it exacerbates it. Better to face reality, then create a plan to address that reality.

 

 

 

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The First Casualty is Truth
 Written by Jeff Thomas (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

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With her country's political landscape shifting significantly before her, Angela Merkel has now put her political hat on in order to survive politically in Germany.

As France 24 reports, Angela Merkel is urging European Leaders to protect the EU's external borders or risk a "return to nationalism." Merkel said the "freedom of movement" in Europe is at stake as it deals with the worst migration crisis since WWII.

The irony of course, is that it wasn't very long ago that Merkel was vehemently defending her open borders policy, saying:

"I am in favor of showing a friendly face of Germany. This is my open-arms policy"

The 180 degree turn on the issue is of course explained not by a change of heart, but by a change in sentiment within Germany.

As we reported earlier, Germany's AfD party is gaining significant popularity, and is on track to become the second most popular party in the country. The problem Merkel has is that the AfD party has a platform that is anti-immigrant, and anti-muslim, and the growing popularity of the party implies that these beliefs are starting to be held by the voters as well.

It won't be long now before the AfD surpasses SPD and becomes Merkel's newest headache to deal with. As she now sits on the complete opposite side of where the German people seem to be going on the issue of immigration, a dramatic policy change and increased rhetoric such as what was reported above can now be expected from Merkel.

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

I simply cannot stress enough how important Greece is to freedom, liberty and civilization across the globe. Greece is not a one-off, or merely a small nation in big trouble that holds little relevance for the rest of us. Greece is everything.

 

What is happening to Greece follows the exact same game plan of what will eventually happen to every other supposedly sovereign nation. First there is an explosion of debt. Then a crisis. Then a bailout. Then creditor imposed hardship is forced upon the average population, in conjunction with unlimited bailouts for the bankers and other oligarch criminals.

 

Finally, when a public which mistakenly believes it is living in a democracy exercises its right to national sovereignty, the sad truth is exposed. They are not a people living under a free political system.

 

– From last year’s post: This is Sparta – 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs are Coming to Greece

A recent German study just confirmed what tens of millions of Greeks already knew. That they are a people fully conquered by criminal mega banks and the corrupt politicians and technocrats in their employ.

Get ready for another epic screw job this summer.

From Ekathimerini:

Some 95 percent of the 220 billion euros disbursed to Greece since the start of the financial crisis as loans from the bailout mechanism has been directed toward saving the European banks. That means about 210 billion euros was eventually channeled to the eurozone credit sector while just 5 percent ended up in state coffers, according to a study by the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin.

 

“Europe and the International Monetary Fund have in previous years mainly saved the banks and other private creditors,” concluded the report, published yesterday in German newspaper Handelsblatt. ESMT director Jorg Rocholl told the financial newspaper that “the bailout packages mainly saved the European banks.”

 

The economists who took part in the study have analyzed each loan separately to established where the money ended up, and concluded that just 9.7 billion euros – less than 5 percent – actually found its way into the Greek budget for the benefit of citizens.

 

“This is something that everyone suspected, but few people actually knew. That has now been confirmed by the study.

For related articles, see:

Yanis Varoufakis Reveals – Berlin Blocked Greece From Chinese Funding During Crisis

“This is a Coup” – The Story of How Greece Lost Democracy

This is Sparta – 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs are Coming to Greece

Yanis Varoufakis on “Europe’s Vindictive Privatization Plan for Greece”

Yanis Varoufakis Issues a Major Warning to the Greek People

 

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from The Great Recession Blog by David Haggith

 

Establishment Republicans have a plan to help workers because they hear you after all the clamor that has formed around Donald Trump. That is how they bill it anyway — a plan to help laborers. They have heard through their marble walls that some of you are not happy with wages that have been stagnant for decades. So, they have hatched a brave new plan.

Are you ready to see some innovative thinking now that they have had the better part of a decade to come up with something?

Their creative plan to help the common worker is to make it illegal for unions to withhold union dues automatically “so that you have more money in your paycheck.” That’s it. Boost your pay by stripping as much away from unions as they can. The marvelous creativity here is in how they manage to construe that as being for the benefit of the American worker to such a degree that they even believe it themselves.

Never mind that unions are the only thing that might give you enough unified strength to get your pay or benefits improved against cost-slashing corporations. Never mind that your pay stopped going up as soon as Reagan started breaking unions and as soon as Bush I started shipping factories to Mexico in that great sucking sound to the south.  That is when pay stagnated while corporate profits soared … unless you were working in upper management where your pay rocketed into the Vanderbiltian stratosphere.

What the Republican establishment calls “the Employee Rights Act” (ERA) is just another disembowelment of unions to make sure that the corporate execs and stockholders continue to get the lion’s share of corporate fat. How else will they build up their bonuses and dividends and buy back the company’s own stocks in order to inflate the value of their stock-options? Money going to union bosses could be going to them.

Now, some of you hate unions. I can understand that because unions have used a lot of their own evil tactics to coerce membership. I used to hate unions, too, because of all their goldbricking; but it’s a well established historic fact that — corrupt as they have sometimes been — they are the only thing that significantly forced up wages, working conditions and benefits for decades. Even non-union shops only paid more in many cases because they had to match or beat union shops in order to keep the unions out.

 

The Heritage Foundation has a plan for the working man

 

(And woman. I just wanted that line to rhyme.) Steve Moore, a visiting fellow of the Heritage Foundation, is concerned that union leaders are getting rich and fat off these dues. Maybe they are, but corporate executives also get rich and fat when there are no union leaders, and the Heritage Foundation wants to assure you they have what is best for your income in mind.

According to Moore, “The ERA puts the GOP firmly on the side of working-class Americans and higher pay. (“Stephen Moore: Republicans Can Give Workers a $1 Billion Pay Raise“) You see, the neocons are not formulating their plan for the sake of helping their rich constituents — the one percenters who back both parties. No, they are doing it to put a billion dollars in your pocket. They are glad to do that since all of that money would otherwise go to people who campaign against the wealthy corporate bosses who own the politicians.

If you’re going to give money back to the proletariate, do it by stripping it from unions that seek to diminish the grasp of the one-percenters. Take the money from the one area that might in the long run help workers get more money for their labor because unions just help workers redistribute wealth to themselves. We know the wealth rightfully belongs to the corporate leaders and stockholders and that redistribution to the people doing the work simply appeals to the envy of the working class. It is most important that we keep the wealthy rich so the workers have something to aspire toward. For all those reasons, you can know by the ERA that the GOP is now firmly on the side of the working class.

Why is it that the only plan establishment Republicans can ever come up with to help labor and improve wages is a plan that helps the establishment, such as giving tax breaks to stock investors that put their taxes lower than the middle class. They repeat inanely that those investors are the “job creators” until people believe it is true because it has been said so many times. True, they are the job creators … in Mexico … in China … in India where they moved all of their factories.

 

The “entitlement” trap

 

Have you noticed that governments, whether they are run by Democrats or Republicans, have no problem with underfunding their employee retirement plans? Even the most liberal cities have struggled to find ways to get out of paying the pensions they promised. The only thing that stands in their way is government employee unions. The citizens of those governments (municipal, county and state) had no problem deriving the benefits of new roads and parks, etc., off the backs of government employees by promising them “great government benefits.”

We have probably all talked at one time or another about how so and so that we know got a good government job with great government benefits like that was a good move for them. We probably even recommended a job like that to a friend or two: “The benefits are great, man.” We knew the benefits were the one thing that could drive our neighbors or relatives to take a government job in spite of all the red tape that comes with working for the government.

Will we now insist that our fellow citizens be treated fairly by taxing ourselves what it takes to honor those promises that we knew were being made? I doubt it. For many, those coveted government benefits have turned out to be a lie all along because governments never paid for the program as they went … always figuring some future government would deal with the problem of underfunding, but that never stopped them from continuing to hold out the promised retirement benefits. We’ve known these programs were underfunded for decades now.

Several states and municipalities declared bankruptcy during the Great Recession just so their citizens could escape the higher taxes that would be pushed on them in order to make good on the promises made to those other citizens who served them. Can you believe those nasty employees felt “entitled” to what was made as a promise of deferred gains in their retirement years if they would work below going wages at present? Greedy bastards.

I’m not talking about the wealthy people who serve at the head of local government and who sit on counsels. I’m talking about the gal who mowed your park lawns or sat in a back office drawing up sewer plans or drove the bus. I’m also not talking about the lazy four guys who stood around a hole while one guy leaned on a shovel and sometimes pretended to dig.

We all know those inefficiencies in government existed and were inexcusable, but there are many government employees in low-paying and mid-level positions who worked diligently for benefits for twenty years that they are now being deprived of just as they hit retirement. What about them? Do the bad apples we sometimes tolerated justify shorting our promises to those who worked dutifully at their tasks?

The reason they are said to be “entitled” is because you and I already extracted the work out of them. They are entitled to the benefit because they already paid for it with their labor. Now, surprise, surprise, they want what our leaders promised them for decades. Greedy bastards.

And what about your entitlements?

 

The Social Security slough

 

Nowhere are fraudulent promises more true than in Social Security. Some people who talk about balancing the budget by taking the money from entitlements like Social Security have forgotten that the reason they, themselves, are entitled to those benefits is that it was their money in the first place! They only allowed the government to take it (and very reluctantly even then) based on the government’s pledge of the United State’s good faith and credit that the money would be there for them when they retire or become disabled.

They probably even mumbled that the money wouldn’t be there when they retired, and now here they are. Some of them are such saps they are already willing to lie down and let the government keep that money without a fight, accepting the mantra that it is bad to feel entitled to that which you created and provided in the first place.

Establishment Republicans have a similar answer to solve the federal government’s huge deficit problems. Their solution is to whittle down your retirement benefits under social security because YOU are the problem, not them. Their talking point is targeted at making anyone who expects to receive those benefits appear greedy via a concerted plan of turning “entitlement” into a dirty word.

Before you let them strip you of your dignity, try to remember that you’re “entitled” to those benefits because the money was actually yours in the first place. You’re simply entitled to get your own money back. So, talking about these “entitlement” people as if they are someone other than you and are the problem with America is the same as talking about homeowners as being the problem with real estate because they think they have a right to own the home they’ve been paying for. If they’d just let the banks keep the home, we wouldn’t all have to bail out these miserable banks. Greedy homeowners, feeling they are entitled to retire in the home they have been paying for all these years!

Politicians, however, want to use Social Security funds to balance the budget that both parties have refused to balance for thirty-plus years. Republicans mostly railed against Social Security when it was created as something that was taking people’s money away and redistributing it to government to waste. Now they rail against those who want their money back.

The only difference between Republicans and Democrats on Social Security is that Democrats still think it is the money is owed back to you (though they have no idea how to make the math work after decades of their own profligacy with the money). Republicans think the best thing to do with this money that they kept telling you you would never see once the government got it … is to make certain that you never do see it! They want to fulfill their own predictions.

In the end, who was the greater thief? The group that promised your money back but now doesn’t know how to deliver on its promise and still balance a budget they never tried to balance in the first place? Or the group who kept warning you that, once you let government get its hands on the money, you would never see it again and now wants to make certain you actually never do see it again?

While neither party has shown any will to actually balance the budget, they have no problem finding ways to make the wealthy wealthier. Republicans are concerned, of course, that union dues only make Democrats wealthier — the wrong people — because 90% of union political contributions go to Democrats. Is it any wonder that union contributions go mostly to Democrats when the ERA is the most creative thing the Republican-controlled congress could come up with as an answer for laborers who are finally concerned that their wages haven’t risen against inflation since 1977?

This is their best plan? Give the unions one last stab in the back so that laborers have even less strength in negotiating wages? A little candy now to deprive you of a lot more later?

You see, everyone could have a job if everyone were willing to work for scrap meat as they ought to; but greedy American workers keep thinking they are entitled to some of that corporate revenue so they can live better than their Central American competition. If they wanted to be competitive, they would downsize to corrugated metal shacks. Unions are the reason people don’t have good paying jobs. They keep insisting that the jobs pay better, which forces those jobs to leave the country.

That’s how much establishment Republicans care about wage stagnation. They care enough to make certain it continues so that corporate leaders can keep inflating their overstuffed bonuses and pack their golden parachutes and puff up their stock options. The Employee Rights Act is the establishment’s most creative plan in years to help the flagging economy.

 

The government’s self-created entitlement trap

 

Now, to be sure, there is a lot of greedy entitlement thinking in this world, too — the kind where people feel entitled to assistance just because they need it or want it and where they endlessly suck off the government and give nothing productive back — but what I want to remind people of here is there is also genuine entitlement where you are only receiving something that you personally earned and that was promised to you; it came out of your paycheck in the first place, and it was supposedly held in trust for you.

You are not greedy if you refuse the idea of pushing back your retirement age from what was originally stated and demand the government provide the retirement benefit that it promised you when it took your money that you were reluctant to trust to government in the first place. So, before you let politicians strip away the retirement benefits you already put in your labor for on the basis that it is inevitable now, make certain you strip away every benefit they ever promised to themselves first. (And watch how fast they sue the government they helped create.) Make sure they do a lot of other things first. Don’t make it easy for them to get out of their promises by making “entitlement” a nasty word.

It’s nasty when people feel entitled to other people’s things, and apparently your politicians feel entitled to your things, which they already extracted from you for decades based on a pledge to give it all back. Why bend over and make it easy for them to kick you in the keister? Force them to end every entitlement of every politician alive today, especially those who have already retired, before they touch one cent of yours … for those retired politicians are the ones who made the promises in the first place.

It is one thing to feel entitled to things you never earned; quite another to feel entitled to that which you already did earn.

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