In major cities across Europe, particularly in Spain and France, a major exodus occurs in August.
In Madrid, for example, traffic becomes quieter, restaurants close and offices lie empty as locals flock to the coast to escape the stifling heat. These holiday migrations,as Statista’s Niall McCarthy explains, are the norm in both countries where people can easily take them for granted.
There are exceptions, however, with new and depressing data from Eurostat showing that holidays are simply unaffordable for large numbers of Europeans.
The highest share of people who could not afford a one-week holiday away from home in 2018 was recorded in Romania at 59 percent. Croatia came second with 51.3 percent while Greece and Cyprus were tied for third with 51 percent. Large proportions of the population in Italy (43.7 percent), Ireland (35.3 percent) and Poland (34.6 percent) also said a one-week holiday was out of their financial grasp. Even in Spain where long holidays in August are typical, 34.2 percent of people said they still could not pay the costs of a week-long break.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2yufNi9 Tyler Durden
When devising a plan from the ground up, timing is perhaps the most important component of the process. For instance, building a one hundred story structure does not begin with a spade in the ground. There are blue prints to draw up, consultations to undertake, funding to put in place, planning permission to acquire, before the objective can start to become a reality.
It could be argued that global economic institutions operate in a similar manner. It is evident from their communications that they have as part of their agenda plans to introduce digital only currency to supplant physical capital. But they cannot simply foist these plans onto the population. Instead, they require public consent. Change on this scale takes time to gain approval, which is why globalists invariably utilise the model of gradualism when seeking to centralise powers further for their own benefit.
Unlike the standard creation of a new building where the intent might simply be to do good, globalists have a track record of using more nefarious means for achieving their ends. Inducing crisis scenarios and presenting themselves as a solution to the subsequent upheaval (the hegelian dialectic approach) is their primary, and I would argue only, method that they have at their disposal.
Where Brexit is concerned, it has been my contention for a while now that the tool which internationalists can exploit the most in their pursuit for a global currency framework is pound sterling. As of writing, the pound just dropped to the lowest monthly close since 1985 off the back of Boris Johnson’s ascension to Prime Minister and the growing risk of the UK leaving the EU with no withdrawal agreement.
This invites a number of questions. With the Brexit deadline of October 31st just three months away, why has an advocate for no deal risen to power at this moment? A man routinely compared to Donald Trump and classified as a ‘populist‘, why is now the time for Johnson to take direct responsibility for Brexit? I fear the answer may be in the question.
Stood before No. 10 Downing Street, minutes after becoming Prime Minister, Johnson said this to the nation:
I will take personal responsibility for the change I want to see. Never mind the back stop. The buck stops here.
Immediately on taking office, Johnson began surrounding himself with what the media term as ‘Brexiteers‘. Prior to this, the majority in the cabinet – along with Theresa May – supported leaving the EU with a withdrawal agreement. The dynamic has now shifted. Over two thirds of cabinet ministers now support leaving the EU with no deal should no other option be attainable.
One of the most notable appointments to Johnson’s cabinet was Jacob Rees Mogg as Leader of the House of Commons. Mogg remains chair of the European Research Group (ERG) which was influential in bringing Theresa May’s tenure as Prime Minister to a close.
With the ‘Brexiteer‘ cabinet in place, the media began perceiving it as an ‘alt-right‘ purge and a ‘right wing coup.’ Ever since the referendum result three years ago, elements of the mainstream press have been cultivating the narrative that Brexit is a product of the hard right. Despite evidence to the contrary (millions of Labour supporters voted to leave the EU), the ever present figures of Nigel Farage and interjections by Donald Trump have served to reinforce the media propaganda on how Brexit is identified.
Back in 2017 when the Conservatives held on to power following a snap general election, I posted an article (‘Conservative Brexit’ – The Reason the Tories are Still in Office) that discussed specific traits often associated with conservatism – like the championing of national sovereignty and individualism. I argued that these were important factors in being able to maintain Brexit under the banner of conservative doctrine, for the purpose of gradually ostracising these beliefs in favour of the internationalist ideology of global citizenry and collectivism.
Figureheads from the 2016 Vote Leave campaign were also appointed into key positions under Johnson. Campaign Director of Vote Leave, Dominic Cummings, is now Johnson’s senior advisor. Lee Cain, who was head of broadcast, is director of communications. Two other Vote Leave ‘alumni‘ – Rob Oxley and Oliver Lewis – were made press secretary and Brexit policy advisor respectively.
As with most events around the world, it did not take long for Donald Trump to attach himself to Johnson’s elevation. After it was announced that Johnson would be the next Prime Minister, Trump told an assembly of high school pupils in Washington:
They call him Britain Trump and people are saying that’s a good thing.
The parallels with Trump are clear. On becoming president, Trump took ownership of a boom in the stock market, in spite of calling the post 2008 rise in stocks during the campaign trail as a ‘big fat ugly bubble‘. What we have seen with Boris Johnson is him taking ownership of a potential ‘hard‘ Brexit in three months time.
Currently, Trump’s repeated criticism of the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell has encouraged the narrative of central bank independence being put in jeopardy. It is conceivable that we might see a similar narrative build here in the UK, with a Boris Johnson led government calling for the Bank of England to support Britain should the country leave the EU with no deal. As a back bencher, cabinet member Jacob Rees Mogg accused the current BOE governor Mark Carney of politicising the central bank and called for him to be removed from his position. A sign of things to come perhaps?
Speaking to the same assembly in the U.S, Trump went on to advocate that Johnson work with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage in the lead up to the UK’s exit:
I know he’s going to work well with Boris. They’re going to do some tremendous things.
There is speculation that after Parliament reconvenes from its summer recess in September that another general election could be called, either directly by Boris Johnson or through a vote of no confidence in his government. Farage’s Brexit party are ready to field candidates throughout the UK in the event of an election. Farage has also stated that Johnson would have his support provided he commits to taking the UK out of the EU with no deal on October 31st. This support would potentially extended to a coalition deal with the Conservatives. For what it is worth, Johnson ruled out a coalition with Farage days before becoming Prime Minister.
If there is an election prior to the Brexit deadline, I would consider it most likely that Boris Johnson wins an outright majority or the Conservatives enter into coalition with the Brexit party. Either scenario would entrench the perception of Brexit being firmly within the grip of ‘populists‘, and would ensure a no deal exit under this identity.
A recent announcement that the government will soon commence with a nationwide communications campaign in preparation for a potential no deal outcome is perhaps an indication that an election will occur. The official line is that the campaign would seek to prepare the public and businesses for a October 31st exit. It would encompass billboards, TV adverts, leaflets and social media advertising, at an estimated cost of around £100 million.
Keep in mind that Johnson’s new senior advisor, Dominic Cummings, was behind the Vote Leave campaign slogan of ‘Take Back Control‘, and played a part in using social media to influence voters to support Brexit. Perhaps his role in Downing Street and the announcement of this upcoming campaign are not a coincidence.
As I have debated previously, globalists require a strawman of sufficient size to hold culpable for the next major economic downturn. Central banks have been tightening monetary policy for several years now, and whilst they have been in a ‘holding pattern‘ so far in 2019, they continue to promote their inflation mandates as being fundamental in how they conduct policy.
With sterling and trade being most vulnerable to a no deal scenario, it was Mark Carney who described Brexit as ‘inflationary‘. The obvious danger here is that the BOE exploit the fallout from a no deal by tightening policy into economic weakness. Much as the Federal Reserve have been doing since Donald Trump was elected.
A lot will develop before this possibility, however. Right now the government are operating under the delusion that a new withdrawal agreement can be negotiated with the EU inside the next twelve weeks. This is a fallacy when you consider that the agreement Theresa May forged with Brussels took over a year to conceive. There is no discernible plan for how Boris Johnson intends to renegotiate the original withdrawal agreement. All we know for certain is that the government will not re-engage with the EU until they agree to remove the Irish backstop from the text. The EU have insisted that the deal already rejected three times by parliament cannot be changed and remains ‘the only agreement possible.’ There is no reason to suggest that they will relent on this.
In his first speech as Prime Minister, Johnson attempted to deflect any blame for a no deal Brexit back onto the EU, saying that Brussels may ‘refuse to negotiate any further‘, meaning ‘we are forced to come out with no deal.’
With Johnson having already taken ownership for his actions, the moment of leaving the EU will be seen as a political decision. I highly doubt that the EU will be held widely accountable, except by those most loyal to the Brexit cause.
What Johnson is doing now is playing on the traits of positivity and optimism. He has employed the tactic of characterising opponents to Brexit as those who seek to run the country down. So far, the promotion of vacuous, feel good rhetoric is finding a home within people. The upcoming communications campaign may cement this further. Johnson is selling hope over detail, which I suspect is working given that warnings of a no deal Brexit have longed been dismissed by supporters of leaving the EU as ‘Project Fear.’
The more that ‘remainers‘ ratchet up the scaremongering and try to delay or stop Brexit, the more chance it will draw the electorate over to Johnson. ‘Project Fear‘ has been in full flight since the spring of 2018. If its purpose was to demonise Brexit to the point of turning sentiment against it, then it has failed. Since then The Brexit Party have won an EU election, and Boris Johnson has become Prime Minister.
If anything, ‘Project Fear‘ has emboldened Brexit. Trust in the establishment has been steadily eroding since the financial crisis. People have become less inclined to believe the warnings of economic armageddon. It would not surprise me if this was the intent from the beginning. De-legitimise Brexit and those behind it, but not to the point of their destruction.
Where I believe this is going is that we will witness the resurgence in national sovereignty movements and the rise of nationalism being blamed for an impending economic decline, one that will extinguish the post 2008 false recovery. The ‘populists‘ will oversee the immediate fallout, which I consider as inevitable will manifest into the ‘Brexit recession‘. Eventually, when the majority of public sentiment turns against Brexit, the paradigm will shift back to the left in the run up to 2030.
Over the next few years, globalists are seeking to have reformed payment systems in place that will be able to utilise blockchain technology and work in conjunction with the issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDC’s). The Bank of England are in the process of reforming the UK’s RTGS system, with a target of 2025 for completion. It is important to recognise that they are not doing this out of necessity, but out of choice. Last month Bank for International Settlements general manager Agustin Carstens linked the rise of CBDC’s to the development of payment systems. This is one of the reasons why the pound’s susceptibility to Brexit is of increasing concern to me.
Back in June 2016, when the waiting press fully expected Boris Johnson to run for the Tory party leadership, he announced that the next leader ‘cannot be me‘. Now, with the withdrawal agreement with the EU ‘dead‘, he has assumed office and rallied behind the drive for a no deal exit months before the October 31st deadline.
Is Johnson’s rise to Prime Minister designed to ensure that a ‘hard‘ Brexit happens on his watch and, by extension, under the banner of alt-right populism? We will soon find out.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GHXT06 Tyler Durden
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces severe challenges in stimulating a faltering economy as his second term begins.
A global synchronized industrial slowdown has hit the Indian automobile and technology sectors somewhat hard, resulting in over a million job cuts in the last several years, reported The Economic Times.
India is in a cyclical downturn with no signs of abating. The industrial slowdown has already spread into the auto industry, with volume contraction in the June quarter the steepest since 2001.
Indian new car sales plunged 18.4% in May YoY to 308,194 units versus 377,716 units in May 2018. Sales in June were the lowest in 18 years. The auto sector is about half of all manufacturing in the country. About 35 million jobs could be affected if the downturn gains momentum in 2H19.
India’s technology sector has also been experiencing financial hardships related to the slowdown.
Since 2017, India’s handset industry slashed 250,000 jobs as growth rates stalled, and Chinese competitors have dominated domestic brands.
The cut represents about 15% of the handset workforce, included mostly in-store brand promoters who left the industry amid the closure of thousands of small phone-retailing shops.
Industry executives and retailers told The Times that India had 400,000 handset retailing outlets, many of which were smaller family-owned stores.
“More than 250,000 jobs have been lost over the past two years because many retail shops had closed, in-shop promoters have been laid off, and even distribution chains had also shut shop,” said Pankaj Mohindroo, president of the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA).
Mohindroo said the handset industry had laid off “20,000-25,000 on the manufacturing side…but it is retail and distribution that have seen the maximum impact.”
The combination of a slowdown in handset sales and Chinese companies commanding 75% of the Indian market, has led to the recent demise of the Indian handset industry.
With the Indian economy slowing, growth rates plunging across all major industries, a credit crunch that could start making trouble in the industrial sector, India is headed for a prolonged downturn that could be extended well into 2020.
Rising protectionism from President Trump’s trade war and a hostile global environment could have already started to compound India’s economic troubles.
Export growth for India hit a 41-month low in June after slowing was seen in automobiles, petroleum oil, gems and jewelry, and engineering goods.
June outbound goods plunged 10%, after rising 4% in May. Imports dipped 9%, a 34-month low in June.
Government officials blamed India’s slowdown on the trade war.
And to summarize the global industrial slowdown in one chart. Here’s Global Trade YoY crashing to levels not seen since the last financial meltdown.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YDL68Q Tyler Durden
There are no valid free market arguments for a nationwide, one-size-fits-all federal plan to provide paid leave. But should experimentation with this policy be off-limits to states? The beauty of a federalist system is that states can experiment and innovate with their own policies. This diversity can teach us what works and what doesn’t. In this sense, Colorado’s commitment to implement a new state-level, paid leave entitlement program—the Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) Act—is consistent with federalism.
The FAMLI Act would provide paid leave benefits to workers who have family events, such as the birth or adoption of a child or the need to care for a loved one, but the hefty price tag would be paid for by collecting a “premium” from employers and employees. So, while it’s ill-advised for the state government to intrude in this way, depending on what the plan ends up looking like, the rest of the country will learn a valuable lesson at Colorado’s expense.
After years of being dead on arrival, the FAMLI Act passed in the last legislative session. A task force was established to “study” the idea. According to Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment, the task force consists of “private employers, organized labor, worker advocates, labor economists and state agencies.” Its final recommendations are due in January.
The legislators claim the reason for this policy is simple: Not everyone gets paid leave. That’s true. As American Action Forum data show, between 66 percent and nearly 84 percent of middle- and high-income workers, respectively, already have paid leave through their employers. On the other hand, a little over 33 percent of workers in low-income families have access to this benefit. But is that a reason for the government to provide it?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fully in favor of the private provision of paid leave as a benefit. There’s no denying the value of paid leave to families and young parents. Many companies understand that they will gain from providing this type of benefit to their workers. That’s why the data demonstrate that a vast majority of employers accommodate their employees’ desire for paid leave.
It’s no secret why high-income workers are more likely to receive such leave than are low-income workers. Low-income workers are often part time and prefer getting all their compensation in the form of cash rather than fringe benefits. As a result, relatively speaking, low-income workers stand to lose the most from Colorado’s FAMLI Act.
Moreover, we can only shake our heads in dismay that yet another state is willingly jumping in headfirst to provide a benefit that will impose a considerable tax hike. It will also reduce women’s employment and promotion opportunities as an unintended consequence. We can predict these unfortunate results because of the large number of studies that have been done on the issue. From Norway to France, Canada to Sweden, California to New York, economists have found that government-provided paid leave leads to lower wages for women, fewer prospects for advancement, and overall reduced employment.
Worse yet, the trade-offs are more dire for lower-income employees, whom the legislation’s sponsors claim they want to help. For example, consider that for 50 years, Canada has tinkered with its paid parental leave program, trying to design a program that doesn’t simply redistribute from low-income workers to higher-income ones. But it has failed so far.
The truth of the matter is that nobody would oppose a world with more benefits and higher wages for everyone, as well as fulfilling jobs in which no one ever has to choose between one’s vocation and family care. But that world doesn’t exist when you consider the real costs, trade-offs, and economic reality. There’s also no getting around the fact that a payroll tax—which will likely be used to pay for the benefit—is regressive, with its burden falling more heavily on lower-income earners. It defies logic that this tax will create a net benefit for low-income workers.
In fact, the government makes these trade-offs so much worse that when women are more fully informed, their support for any mandatory paid leave program collapses. Colorado can ignore these lessons and implement a punitive FAMLI Act, but it will be at their own citizens’ expense.
Prince Charles has just given the world 18 months to save the world. Over the past years, the prince and his father (among other inbred aristocrats of Europe) have taken an incredible interest in the safety of the earth from the pollution emitting machines who greedily consume and reproduce without any consideration for Mother Gaia. In recent months this green transformation of the globe has taken the form of the “Green New Deal” promoted in the U.S. by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. A children’s campaign endorsed by pope Francis and led by Greta Thunberg has spread across Europe and America while a Billionaires Club under the guidance of Al Gore, and George Soros is funding a Sunrise Movement to fight global warming.
Is this passion to save the planet from humanity genuine? Do these oligarchs and billionaires really care so much that their support for a Green New Deal is as benevolent as the media portrays… or is something darker at play? To answer these questions, we will have to first quickly review what the Green New Deal IS, then where it came from and then finally what its architects have stated they wish to accomplish with its implementation.
What is it?
As the name implies, the Green New Deal is a sweeping policy agenda which takes its name from the original New Deal of 1932 enacted under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal was originally a program for bank reform, and mass infrastructure building in order to heal America from the deep wounds caused by 4 years of Great Depression. While the Green New Deal of 2019 proposes to dramatically overhaul the rules of finance and infrastructure planning, its similarities to the original end there.
Roosevelt’s New Deal was driven by projects which increased the productive powers of labor of the nation as a whole by investments into hydroelectric projects, transportation corridors, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and thousands of other infrastructure projects. The Green New Deal on the other hand seeks to lower American productive powers of labor and living standards by investments into zero growth green infrastructure. Of course if that were explicitly stated, no one would drink the Kool-Aid.
As presidents Putin and Trump have both emphasized at various times not only has it never been proven that human-made CO2 drives climate variations, but it has also come to light that since 1998, the warming trend dominant since 1977 has been on an strange “pause”. While CO2 output steadly rose from 1938-1977, it was accompanied by a total cooling causing scientists in 1977 to sound the alarm that we were on the verge of an ice age. This fact reflects the embarrassing reality that CO2 tends to follow climate variations rather than precede them, indicating that this greenhouse gas is actually being effected by the warming of the earth most likely driven by space-based causes as Putin has referred repeatedly. Even more surprising to some, recently published NASA studies have shown that the world’s biomass has increased by 10% in recent years due in large measure to the industrial growth policies of China and India. Plants have, after all, been observed to grow much better when fed by increased levels of carbon dioxide.
Where did it come from?
So how could so many respectable scientists, journals and politicians have possibly assumed a fallacy to be so true that an overhaul of the entire global society is being proposed? This obviously didn’t arise over night, but the current pressure to transform our entire world to the undisputed “reality” of man-made global warming finds its true origins in the Malthusian revival of 1968-1972.
In this short interval of time, a vacuum left by the assassinations of pro-development leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Enrico Mattei, Charles de Gaulle, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy was filled by establishment hacks and cowards. These tools ushered in a paradigm shift towards “conservationism” and rejected the industrial growth ethic that defined western civilization up until that point.
This Malthusian Revival answered the challenge put forth by Eugenics Society president and UNESCO founder Julian Huxley who wrote in 1946:
“Political unification in some sort of world government will be required… Even though… any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
Of course, just one year after the world had come to realize the horrors of Nazi eugenics, Huxley and his associates among the Anglo-American elite who financed Hitler had a big job to clean up the image of eugenics and re-package it under another name.
The Club of Rome and 1001 Nature Trust
In 1968, an organization was formed known as the Club of Rome led by two misanthropes named Aurelio Peccei and Sir Alexander King. The organization quickly set up branches across the Anglo-Saxon world with members ranging from select ideologues from the political, business, and scientific community who all agreed that society’s best form of governance was a scientific dictatorship. Sir Alexander wrote:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
In order to finance this paradigm shift, the 1001 Trust was founded in 1970 by Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands. Bernhardt (card carrying Nazi and founder of the Bilderberger Group in 1954) had worked alongside his close misanthropic associates Prince Philip Mountbatten, and Sir Julian Huxley to create the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) just a few years earlier. The plan was simple: each of the 1001 founding members simply put $10,000 into the trust which was then directed towards the green paradigm shift. Other prominent 1001 Club members included international royalty, billionaires, and technocratic sociopaths who wanted nothing more than to manage this promised Brave New World as “alphas”. Many of these figures were also members of the Club of Rome, including Canada’s Maurice Strong, who later became Vice President of the WWF under Prince Philip’s presidency. Strong had replaced another WWF Vice President by the name of Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. Bloomfield was another 1001 Club member whom New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison discovered to be at the heart of the Montreal-based assassination of the anti-Malthusian President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
The document which became the bible and blueprint of this new anti-humanist movement that birthed today’s Green New Deal agenda was titled Limits to Growth (1972) and today holds the record as the most widely read book on ecology, having sold 30 million copies published into 32 languages.A recent article celebrating the book’s 40 year anniversary stated “it helped launch modern environmental computer modeling and began our current globally focused environmental debate. After Limits [To Growth], environmentalists, scientists and policy-makers increasingly thought of ecological problems in planetary terms and as dynamically interconnected… It is worth revisiting Limits today because, more than any other book, it introduced the concept of anthropocentric climate change to a mass audience.”
The book itself was the culmination of a two year study undertaken by a team of MIT statisticians under the nominal heading of Jay Forrester and Dennis Meadows. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez today, these young MIT professors were merely cardboard cut-outs selected to deflect from the higher social engineers managing the show from the top.
The MIT study itself was not even begun in the USA, but rather in Montebellow Quebec in 1971, when Club of Rome-backer Pierre Trudeau allocated tax payer money to begin the project. A network of Rhodes Scholars and Privy Councillors centered around Alexander King, Maurice Strong, Maurice Lamontagne (founder of Environment Canada), Michael Pitfield (Privy Council Clerk and founder of Canada’s CSIS) and Governor General Roland Michener, among others, had presided over that meeting. When the Canadian funds had served their role, the project continued to receive its funding from the Volkswagen Foundation, whose Nazi-supporting past should have made some of the MIT statisticians uncomfortable.
Sir Alexander King (left) and the model produced by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth predicting an apocalyptic end of the world by 2000 (right)
Malthusianism in Brief
These Club of Rome/WWF/1001 Club members dubbed themselves “neo Malthusians” referring to the ideology popularized by the British Empire’s Thomas Malthus. Malthus’ 1799 Essay on the Principle of Population pessimistically noticed that human population grows geometrically while food production grows arithmetically leading invariably to a crisis point of over-population. This crisis point creates a mathematical foundation for the concept that later came to be dubbed “carrying capacity” by the authors of Limits to Growth. Of course rather than permit those human cattle from developing their minds in order to make more discoveries and inventions which would offset this crisis point, Malthus (and his heirs later) knew that the British Empire which employed him could never exist were that creative power unleashed. Instead, Malthus coldly advocated the elimination of the “unfit to make way for the more fit.” Not adept at the subtleties of modern 21st century newspeak, Malthus went so far as to propose that even children perish:
“All children who are born beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons… therefore we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality”
By re-packaging Malthus’ assumptions into a more complex computing system, these neo-Malthusians wanted to create a shame based movement of willful self-annihilation among an entire generation of baby boomers.
Of course if you assume that technological progress has ended, then it will certainly appear that a closed system of fixed limited resources can only be managed by a technocratic elite choosing who gets diminishing returns as the world settles into some imaginary “mathematical equilibrium” of sustainability. Fortunately for humanity, reality rarely conforms to the pessimistic ideals of racists and imperialists.
The Chaining of Prometheus
A long time London trained asset and close collaborator of Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Maurice Lamontagne was Club of Rome member, and former President of the Privy Council. Of all Club of Rome members, Lamontagne was the most candid in identifying the Earth’s greatest enemy to be human creativity itself. Writing in his Senate Committee Reports of 1968-1972 which reformed science policy funding and planning, Lamontagne wrote:
“Nature imposes definite constraints on technology itself and if man persists in ignoring them the net effect of his action in the long run can be to reduce rather than to increase nature’s potential as a provider of resources and habitable space… But then, an obvious question arises: How can we stop man’s creativeness?”
Correctly recognizing that the yearning to discover the unknown is built into the human condition, Lamontagne answers his own question, writing:
“How can we proclaim a moratorium on technology? It is impossible to destroy existing knowledge; impossible to paralyze man’s inborn desire to learn, to invent and to innovate… In the final analysis we find that technology is merely a tool created by man in pursuit of his infinite aspirations and is not the significant element invading the natural environment. It is material growth itself that is the source of conflict between man and nature”
Thus creativity and its fruits of technological progress are acceptable only IF they reduce the assumed conflict between man and nature posited by Lamontagne! “Bad” technology in Lamontagne’s formulation, has the effect of increasing humanity’s material growth (ie: powers of productivity). If, on the other hand, we promote technologies of a low energy flux density form, such as windmills, solar panels and biofuels, which lead to the reduction of man’s powers to exist, then technology can be defined as a “good” thing” according to this twisted logic.
This concept was echoed by another Club of Rome member and collaborator with Lamontagne on his Senate Report named Omond Solandt. Solandt made his career as the science advisor to Lord Mountbatten (Prince Philip’s pedophiliac mentor) during WWII and headed the Defense Research Board until 1957, where he collaborated on MK Ultra alongside the infamous Ewan Cameron at McGill University. Solandt sophistically said: “There is no longer any need to advance science. The need is rather to understand, guide and use science effectively for the welfare of mankind.”What defines “the welfare of mankind” in the mind of an MK Ultra proponent should give one chills.
In preparation for the “post-industrial order” that was unleashed with the 1971 floating of the US dollar and the destruction of the Bretton Woods monetary system, that at least included a modicum of regulation of the monetarist speculators, Lamontagne prescribed that the “new wisdom” no longer aim at discoveries in atomic, medical and space sciences, in order to focus on more “practical” engineering endeavors. He also proposed that funding to advanced science be diminished by widening the definition of “science” itself to embrace the humanities, monetary economics and social sciences. Those programs then began absorbing the funding that had formerly been directed to research on pure science. Lamontagne stated this in volume one of his Report:
“The new wisdom prescribes that the additional R&D effort be devoted to the life sciences and social sciences rather than the physical sciences… to economic and social objectives rather than curiosity and discovery.”
In Defense of Prometheus
One leading Canadian scientist took an early stand against this Club of Rome-driven transformation. Ronald Hayes, professor of environmental science at Dalhousie University and Canadian Civil Servant wrote his 1973 book “The Chaining of Prometheus: The Evolution of a Power Structure for Canadian Science”, where he identified Lamontagne as a minion of the god Zeus as portrayed in Aeschylus’ famous drama Prometheus Bound. The ancient Greek drama told the story of the demi-god Prometheus who was punished for 10 thousand years for the defiant act of teaching humanity how to use the Fire which Zeus had monopolized for himself.
Attacking the call to deconstruct the entire 1938-1971 science funding structure and rebuild it under a new technocratic regime, Professor Hayes said that the main problem with the Lamontagne approach was called the Egyptian Syndrome:
“if only we could destroy all that the Israelis have built up and reduce Palestine to a desert everyone would be equal and we could start to build a better world for the Arabs. Thus Lamontagne wants to destroy the National Research Council, the body that has nurtured and launched much of the government research and got the graduate programs going in our universities. It is a fault of the Trudeau administration which Lamontagne echoes.”
Hayes attacked the newly-formed powers of the Treasury Board which were now given exceptional control of science policy under a new scientific dictatorship when he said “the most subtle exercise of power, which obviates the necessity of close control, is infiltration by reliable people- the creation of a ruling elite…These Englishmen became known the world over as the rulers of the British Empire… With somewhat similar aims, the Public Service Commission is grooming future Canadian government managers to follow the general policies and precepts of the Treasury Board.”
There Are No Limits To Growth
Ten years after the publication of the Limits to Growth, American presidential candidate and founder of the Fusion Energy Foundation Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019) responded to the neo-Malthusian movement in more forceful terms than Dr. Hayes. Writing his 1982 “There are no Limits to Growth” as an early publication of the Club of Life, LaRouche wrote:
“It is not the growth of industry which destroys the world’s forests. In most cases, the cause is a lack of industrial output, a lack of good industrial management of the ecosphere. Over the past fifteen years, the greatest single cause for destruction of the world’s “ecology” has been the toleration of the policies demanded by the so called “ecologists,” the so-called “neo-Malthusians” of the Club of Rome, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), of the World Wildlife Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Ford Foundation, the ‘Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Sierra Club, and so forth and so on. We are not putting enough industrially-produced energy, in the form of water management, chemicals, and so forth, into the farming of the Earth’s biosphere. At the same time, we are using biomass for fuel and other “traditional” uses, in cases we should be using nuclear-generated energy supplies, and using modern, industrially produced materials in place of timber for housing and so forth”
Describing the extraordinary influence which the Limits to Growth had on consolidating the neo-Malthusian revival as a dominant factor in western policy circles, LaRouche identified the core fallacies which are only now being properly challenged by the efforts of President Trump in America. LaRouche stated:
“The study itself [Limits to Growth] was most conspicuously fraudulent on two leading counts. First, in attempting to prove that industrial society was using up its remaining natural resources very rapidly, Meadows and Forrester greatly understated the known quantities of such resources. Second, more important, Meadows and Forrester projected the rate of consumption of natural resources by using systems of simultaneous linear equations. The very use of such linear equations for a computer “model” of that sort, builds into the computer projections the assumption that absolutely no technological progress is occurring in society. In fact, technological progress, including fundamental redefinitions of what “natural resources” means, has been the outstanding feature of European civilization for five hundred years. The Limits to Growth depended upon the assumption that such technological progress had come to a sudden, absolute stop.”
Entropic or Anti-Entropic
Just like Thomas Malthus centuries earlier, the neo-Malthusians had to deny the existence of technological progress (and its origins in human creative reason) as the means by which humanity’s carrying capacity is changed according to discoveries and inventions. This fact of humanity’s relationship with the universe absolutely defines our existence as a species above all other creatures of the biosphere. As the “carrying capacities” of other species are defined by the environment and genetic characteristics, humans uniquely can transcend those conditions willfully on the condition that we are given access to the best cultural and educational heritage of the past with the inspiration and curiosity to carry that heritage to ever higher limits without ever expecting to reach a “mathematical equilibrium” or “entropic heat death” as so many statisticians from the Limits to Growth school pessimistically presume.
In opposition to this school, LaRouche’s discoveries in the science of physical economy (made during a period of 1952-1956) were premised on the opposing concept that mankind’s ability to leap from lower to higher forms of energy consumption (ie: wood burning, to coal to oil to nuclear fission to fusion etc.) allows for the upward transformation of humanity’s physical economic potential without limits. Creative leaps into the unknown drive new discoveries of principles which allow for humanity’s potential relative population density to increase with increased standards of living, life expectancies and cognitive potential in ways that no other animal (which the Malthusians wish us to presume we are) can achieve. This fact of life is the essential proof that not only mankind but the universe is unbounded in its potential for constant self-perfectibility and thus ANTI-ENTROPIC in its essence.
The BRI and the REAL New Deal
I hope that this report has demonstrated that the Green New Deal is nothing other than a new form of eugenics masquerading as a socially conscious reform of the system. The fact is that not only is this Green New Deal NOT green (as a world covered by solar panels would increase desertification of the earth through heating), but has no connection to the true New Deal. The effects of a program that seeks to reduce global CO2 emissions to “acceptable levels” in accord with the will of today’s British Empire would bring nothing more than chaos, famine and depopulation to humanity.
Luckily, today’s world carries nearly 8 billion souls and (barring a few stubborn oligarchs and technocrats)- all of whom have minds that could be willfully perfected and deployed to make great discoveries in science and the arts. The world in which these people live is increasingly being shaped by a REAL New Deal under the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative which now has more than 160 countries on board and is the size of 20 Marshall Plans. This initiative requires a return to an ethic founded upon a love of mankind and belief in scientific and technological progress. This spirit was expressed beautifully by President Xi Jinping who said on May 15 at the Dialogue of Asian Civilizations:
“For a civilization to endure, efforts must be made to keep it alive and build on its heritage from one generation to the next. More importantly, a civilization needs to adapt itself to the changing times and break new ground. The history of world civilizations tells us that every civilization needs to advance with the times and take in the best of its age in order to develop itself. We need to come up with new ideas to add impetus and inspiration to the development of our civilizations. With these efforts, we will deliver achievements for our civilizations to transcend time and space and have a lasting appeal. To spur people’s innovation and creativity, the best way is to come into contact with different civilizations, see the strengths of others and draw upon them.”
The fact that such figures as Presidents Xi Jinping and Putin have created an alliance based upon long term planning, great infrastructure projects to uplift the conditions of life of everyone and frontier technological progress indicates that the “great green game” created in the wake of the assassinations of anti-Malthusian leaders in the 1960s is finally coming to an end. America’s slow self-mutilation has finally a chance to heal with the first anti-Malthusian President elected since the days of the well-intentioned (though often dim-witted) Ronald Reagan over 35 years ago.
While Reagan did not have a Russia-China power alliance to cooperate with during the Cold War, President Trump does. The offer for America to join the Belt and Road and new strategic operating system of cooperation is on the table and awaiting an answer. How Trump will respond remains to be seen.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GGUoH0 Tyler Durden
There are no valid free market arguments for a nationwide, one-size-fits-all federal plan to provide paid leave. But should experimentation with this policy be off-limits to states? The beauty of a federalist system is that states can experiment and innovate with their own policies. This diversity can teach us what works and what doesn’t. In this sense, Colorado’s commitment to implement a new state-level, paid leave entitlement program—the Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) Act—is consistent with federalism.
The FAMLI Act would provide paid leave benefits to workers who have family events, such as the birth or adoption of a child or the need to care for a loved one, but the hefty price tag would be paid for by collecting a “premium” from employers and employees. So, while it’s ill-advised for the state government to intrude in this way, depending on what the plan ends up looking like, the rest of the country will learn a valuable lesson at Colorado’s expense.
After years of being dead on arrival, the FAMLI Act passed in the last legislative session. A task force was established to “study” the idea. According to Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment, the task force consists of “private employers, organized labor, worker advocates, labor economists and state agencies.” Its final recommendations are due in January.
The legislators claim the reason for this policy is simple: Not everyone gets paid leave. That’s true. As American Action Forum data show, between 66 percent and nearly 84 percent of middle- and high-income workers, respectively, already have paid leave through their employers. On the other hand, a little over 33 percent of workers in low-income families have access to this benefit. But is that a reason for the government to provide it?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fully in favor of the private provision of paid leave as a benefit. There’s no denying the value of paid leave to families and young parents. Many companies understand that they will gain from providing this type of benefit to their workers. That’s why the data demonstrate that a vast majority of employers accommodate their employees’ desire for paid leave.
It’s no secret why high-income workers are more likely to receive such leave than are low-income workers. Low-income workers are often part time and prefer getting all their compensation in the form of cash rather than fringe benefits. As a result, relatively speaking, low-income workers stand to lose the most from Colorado’s FAMLI Act.
Moreover, we can only shake our heads in dismay that yet another state is willingly jumping in headfirst to provide a benefit that will impose a considerable tax hike. It will also reduce women’s employment and promotion opportunities as an unintended consequence. We can predict these unfortunate results because of the large number of studies that have been done on the issue. From Norway to France, Canada to Sweden, California to New York, economists have found that government-provided paid leave leads to lower wages for women, fewer prospects for advancement, and overall reduced employment.
Worse yet, the trade-offs are more dire for lower-income employees, whom the legislation’s sponsors claim they want to help. For example, consider that for 50 years, Canada has tinkered with its paid parental leave program, trying to design a program that doesn’t simply redistribute from low-income workers to higher-income ones. But it has failed so far.
The truth of the matter is that nobody would oppose a world with more benefits and higher wages for everyone, as well as fulfilling jobs in which no one ever has to choose between one’s vocation and family care. But that world doesn’t exist when you consider the real costs, trade-offs, and economic reality. There’s also no getting around the fact that a payroll tax—which will likely be used to pay for the benefit—is regressive, with its burden falling more heavily on lower-income earners. It defies logic that this tax will create a net benefit for low-income workers.
In fact, the government makes these trade-offs so much worse that when women are more fully informed, their support for any mandatory paid leave program collapses. Colorado can ignore these lessons and implement a punitive FAMLI Act, but it will be at their own citizens’ expense.
Obesity has been on the rise over the past decade across the US, despite the advent of Instagram, “athleisure” and boutique fitness classes. According to data from the CDCP, obesity has risen “significantly” in the past decade, with more than one in three American adults now qualifying as obese.
Another study from ConsumerProtect cited by MarketWatch looks at this trend in greater detail, breaking down the most and least, obese states in the country.
So, which state has the worst obesity problem? that would be West Virginia, where 38.1% of adults are obese. WVa. also has the highest diabetes rate in the country, and ranks poorly on other health metrics that often accompany obesity.
I second place is Mississippi, with 37.3% of its population qualifying for that label.
There are a long list of accompanying factors that include the lowest life expectancy, the second lowest level of people who report engaging in no exercise and the highest rate of people who eat less than one piece of fruit a day.
On the other end of the spectrum is Colorado, which has the lowest level of obesity in the country, at less than 23%: “The proximity to beautiful outdoors and better eating habits in Colorado result in the lowest BMI scores in the country among its citizens. Hawaii, the state with the highest life span in the country, has the third lowest obesity rate in the country. On average, people in Hawaii live 6.5 years longer than those in Mississippi,” ConsumerProtect said.
One thing that’s important to remember is that obesity comes with costs both to the individual, and to society at large.
Obese people shoulder medical costs that are $1,400 per year than people of average wait. Another estimate put that number at about $2,700.
Obese people generally earn less than their more svelte friends.
Already, the societal costs of obesity are extremely high: “Treating obesity and obesity-related conditions costs billions of dollars a year. By one estimate, the US spent $190 billion on obesity-related health care expenses in 2005 – double previous estimates.”
What’s the solution? Since diets have proven largely ineffective in terms of a long-tern solution, Harvard’s School of Public Health recommends that “prevention is key.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3339wrM Tyler Durden
Former Vice President Joe Biden said during Wednesday’s Democratic debate that he would not try to re-insert the United States into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-nation trade deal that the Obama administration was unable to finalize before leaving office.
But Biden did voice support for the idea of a trade deal that would bring together American allies as leverage against China—which was basically the goal of the TPP.
“I would not rejoin as it was originally put forward,” Biden said, though he also said he would “join with the 40 percent of the world that was with us [in the TPP].”
“That’s what we have to do. Otherwise [China is] going to write the rules of the road,” the former vice president said Wednesday.
Biden’s answer on TPP was not entirely coherent—at one point, he referred to the pact deal as the “TTP”—but it does appear to be a pretty significant retreat from the unabashedly pro-TPP stance he took as President Barack Obama’s second-in-command. Through 2016, Biden was still acting as the chief cheerleader for the trade deal, and he was deployed to coax Democrats to support a bill authorizing the administration to enter a final round of negotiations for the deal.
Part of his shift is an acknowledgment that politics have changed since 2008, when the TPP was first proposed. The TPP became politically toxic on both sides of the aisle during the 2016 campaign, as Trump’s anti-trade views swamped the previously TPP-friendly Republican Party, while Sanders’ opposition to the deal eventually convinced Hillary Clinton to change positions and oppose it too. One of Trump’s first actions after being inaugurated was to yank America out of the TPP negotiations; the other 12 countries eventually finalized a deal that does not include the U.S.
Still, polls show that most Americans support free trade as a concept and believe that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade deals have made the country better off.
Another way to view Biden’s answers on Wednesday is as an attempt to find a middle ground between the two factions on trade policy that appear to be emerging within the 20-plus candidate Democratic field. In Tuesday’s debate, clear lines were drawn between progressive candidates ,like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who are vocally skeptical of trade deals like the TPP and NAFTA, and more moderate candidates, like former congressmen Beto O’Rourke and John Delaney, who say they would reverse Trump’s anti-trade policies.
The TPP itself never came up for a vote in Congress, but a bill granting the Obama administration the authority to negotiate the deal—technically known as “Trade Promotion Authority”—did. Both Warren and Sanders voted against granting that authority. During Tuesday’s debate, both stuck to their guns and bragged to the crowd about that vote.
Biden’s retreat on TPP, even if only a minor one, would appear to be a victory for the anti-trade half of the Democratic field.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden said during Wednesday’s Democratic debate that he would not try to re-insert the United States into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-nation trade deal that the Obama administration was unable to finalize before leaving office.
But Biden did voice support for the idea of a trade deal that would bring together American allies as leverage against China—which was basically the goal of the TPP.
“I would not rejoin as it was originally put forward,” Biden said, though he also said he would “join with the 40 percent of the world that was with us [in the TPP].”
“That’s what we have to do. Otherwise [China is] going to write the rules of the road,” the former vice president said Wednesday.
Biden’s answer on TPP was not entirely coherent—at one point, he referred to the pact deal as the “TTP”—but it does appear to be a pretty significant retreat from the unabashedly pro-TPP stance he took as President Barack Obama’s second-in-command. Through 2016, Biden was still acting as the chief cheerleader for the trade deal, and he was deployed to coax Democrats to support a bill authorizing the administration to enter a final round of negotiations for the deal.
Part of his shift is an acknowledgment that politics have changed since 2008, when the TPP was first proposed. The TPP became politically toxic on both sides of the aisle during the 2016 campaign, as Trump’s anti-trade views swamped the previously TPP-friendly Republican Party, while Sanders’ opposition to the deal eventually convinced Hillary Clinton to change positions and oppose it too. One of Trump’s first actions after being inaugurated was to yank America out of the TPP negotiations; the other 12 countries eventually finalized a deal that does not include the U.S.
Still, polls show that most Americans support free trade as a concept and believe that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other trade deals have made the country better off.
Another way to view Biden’s answers on Wednesday is as an attempt to find a middle ground between the two factions on trade policy that appear to be emerging within the 20-plus candidate Democratic field. In Tuesday’s debate, clear lines were drawn between progressive candidates ,like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who are vocally skeptical of trade deals like the TPP and NAFTA, and more moderate candidates, like former congressmen Beto O’Rourke and John Delaney, who say they would reverse Trump’s anti-trade policies.
The TPP itself never came up for a vote in Congress, but a bill granting the Obama administration the authority to negotiate the deal—technically known as “Trade Promotion Authority”—did. Both Warren and Sanders voted against granting that authority. During Tuesday’s debate, both stuck to their guns and bragged to the crowd about that vote.
Biden’s retreat on TPP, even if only a minor one, would appear to be a victory for the anti-trade half of the Democratic field.
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This morning, General Electric reported second quarter results, including $28.8 billion in revenues and 17 cents in earnings per share, down 4% and 6% year-over-year but north of the expected $28.7 billion and 12 cents, respectively. CEO Larry Culp termed the updated outlook “a sign of progress, a sign of stability here.” But those figures were aided by a lower than expected tax rate, and the aviation division saw orders fall 10% from a year ago thanks in part to the Boeing 737 Max saga.
Some analysts were less than impressed, with Stephen Tusa of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. declaring that “the quarter was a miss operationally, with the combined power/renewable segments worse. . . and a material miss at aviation, the key value driver.” Gordon Haskett Research Advisors’ John Inch summarized the quarter as “a modest step back [relative to] expectations.” Mr. Market agreed, as GE common stock finished slightly lower. Since November 2007, GE shares are down 75%, compared to a 93% rise in the S&P 500 over that period.
It’s been a long, steep fall from grace for America’s former preeminent industrial concern. As early as the Sept. 14, 1990 issue and many times thereafter, Grant’s expressed a bearish view on then-CEO Jack Welch’s commercial pride and joy. That judgement was long flummoxed by GE’s routine one cent quarterly earnings “beats,” a soaring share price and a pristine triple-A credit rating. Following GE’s dramatic near-demise (and subsequent government rescue) during the 2008-era crucible, Grant’s issued the postmortem in the Sept. 18, 2009 edition:
Some day, financial historians will try to make sense of it all: the mere existence of a $100 billion GE commercial paper program (the number today seems incredible); the ideal of “shareholder value” carried to the point of alleged institutionalized fraud; an industrial company recreating itself as a highly and precariously leveraged financial institution with nary a peep of protest from the stockholders; the close brush with insolvency of a company still bearing the imprimatur, triple-A.
Finally, the historians of the future will scratch their heads to understand why Jack Welch and Alan Greenspan, icons of the late 20th century, put so much stock in an idealized “stability” that can only appear to exist in a dynamic world but can never be present in fact.
The company’s well-ventilated post-crisis struggles culminated with the Oct. 30 slashing of its dividend to a mere penny, while credit default swaps reached as high as 268 basis points on Nov. 23. In the Nov. 16, 2018 issue, Grant’s returned to the scene of now triple-B-minus-rated GE in search of value. While the company’s “mind-numbing” complexity, the run-off of its insurance operations and various contingent liabilities argued for a “wide berth” to GE common, the 5% series D perpetual preferred, then trading at 80 cents on the dollar for a 16.2% yield-to-call, offered a compelling risk vs. reward proposition in the sharp analytical judgement of colleague Fabiano Santin.
While the stock has managed only a halting recovery, those preferreds have since flourished, rising to 96 as of yesterday for a yield-to-call of 7.3%.
With that strong price run and generous yield, what might a series D preferred holder do now? A follow-up in the May 3 edition laid out the calculus:
Take a profit and pay the short-term capital-gains tax (which, for an afflicted New York resident, would total 53.5%)? Or stick with CEO Culp and his GE renovation plan, finally paying the long-term capital-gains rate (36.5% for the same overburdened New Yorker)?
With respect to tax advice, both Fabiano Santin, who performed the superb security analysis, and your editor agree that it is better not to live in New York. Fortunately, the self-directed readers of Grant’s have likely already made up their minds on this sensitive point.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Znkp5G Tyler Durden
