That Special Relationship Is Also With London’s City

Via The Daily Bell

 

On Friday, British Prime Minister Theresa May will become the first world leader to meet with Donald Trump since he was sworn in as U.S. President. The meeting breathes new life into the long-standing “special relationship” between the United States and Britain, with Mr. Trump already calling her “his Maggie,” drawing comparisons to the political bond forged between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. -The Globe and Mail

President Trump and Ms. May had a press conference to discuss some of their conversations and seemed to indicate it had gone well on a number of levels.

But really it doesn’t matter so much because the real special relationship is not so much between Trump and May as it between Washington and London’s City.

It is The City of London that has decided, at least partially, that Britain and America have a special relationship. That special relationship involves to some extent London’s city telling America what to do and even how to do it.

More:

Despite the many political differences between Ms. May and Mr. Trump – at first glance significantly larger than those between Mr. Reagan and Ms. Thatcher – both leaders would welcome a constructive partnership that builds on the traditional ties between the two countries, ties founded on demographics, religion, culture, law, politics and economics.

 

For Ms. May, the rekindling of this special relationship, in a post-Brexit context, would potentially add some credence to her aspirations for a new “global Britain,” while Mr. Trump’s as-yet untested credentials as a leader on the world stage would be burnished.

We can see from this that the special relationship is potentially good for both leaders. But if neither leader wanted a special relationship, the relationship would still exist. The leaders would be gone.

That’s right. One way or another, the people at the top would be encouraged to leave if they didn’t believe in the special relationship. The special relationship is that important.

It is a relationship based on the influence of top bankers in The City of London over the American financial system. It is not necessarily clear who these bankers are. They may be the Rothschilds or they may be other less well known families.

But it is a relationship based on the power that the City has around the world.

The City’s power goes back thousands of years. It may have begun in Sumer or Babylon. Then the neolithic culture that spawned it was found in Egypt and then Rome. After Rome, it was heavily integrated with the Holy Roman Empire and then with Venice.

After Venice, the City migrated to England and the square mile in London that comprised the Roman part of the City of London.

The City was primarily financial in nature and comprised primarily of banking. Its banking nature was reinforced in the 15th century when it became involved with central banking. It offered the King the ability to make war and forgave his debts in return for printing official bills.

Since then the City has only deepened its relationship with central banking and the counties that have central banks. The relationship is rarely spoken about. But it apparently runs around the world.

In Afghanistan, once the Americans came to power, they started a central bank though it doesn’t do much of anything. There is even a central bank of Libya, though the country itself is in a state of collapse.

Often as we can see it is America that helps create the foreign central bank. But ultimately central banking is run out of London’s City to a greater or lesser degree. This gives London’s City enormous, often unspoken, power.

Again, London’s City is not the same as London itself. It is a square mile within London that operates with its own rules. There are at least two other regions that are similar. One is Washington DC, and the other is the Vatican.

A fourth region may be added to these three. That would be Jerusalem.

But the City of London is where it all originates from what we can tell. And each central bank has a monopoly orientation. Thus the monopoly orientation of central banking is also encouraged by the City.

Conclusion: The City of London is at least partially behind the special relationship between England and America. The City is also behind monopoly central banking around the world. The special relationship is not necessarily objectionable but monopoly central banking most certainly is.

Other stories:

The Guardian Wants Other Newspapers to Help Share in Trump Investigation

Now the Entire EU Is Urged to Adopt a Basic Income

Negative Trump Coverage Is Long-Term Threat to His Presidency
 

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Stocks Soar To Record Highs As Peso Jumps Most In A Year

Just seemed appropriate…

 

Ugly GDP helped take US Macro to its worst weekly drop in over 3 months…

 

Stocks had their best week in 2 months…(Trannies best, S&P worst)

 

Banks had a great week…(post-Inauguration)

 

But we wanted to bring this to stock traders' attention…

 

Note however that the short-squeeze highs were hit on Wednesday's open…

 

VIX plunged to its 2nd lowest close in 11 years… and note the desperate VIX plunge to get Dow back above 20100 into the close…

 

As realized vol crashed…

 

The VIX curve has steepened drastically…

 

The collapse in VIX has pushed the relative risk of stocks to bonds to near-record lows (something that has not ended well previously)…

 

With all the excitment in stocks, bonds ended the week barely unchanged (0-2bps higher)…

 

The USD Index fell for the 5th week in a row, closing at 2-month lows…

 

 

Yuan sold off into golden week (which is seasonally normal)…

 

The Mexican Peso surged to its best week in almost a year – the 3%-plus spike is the best since Feb 2016…

 

Oil ended the week unchanged, glued around the $53 level…

 

But RBOB (amid major inventory builds) tumbled for the 4th week in a row…

 

Silver spiked back to unchanged on the week…

 

And gold was monkeyhammered to its worst week in 6 weeks, back below $1200…

 

Top-down things don't seem so awesome…

 

And the gap between reality and hope is at a record high…

 

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Obama Issued A Massive Ammunition Ban Just One Day Before He Left Office

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

In early December SHTFplan contributor Jeremiah Johnson warned the inauguration was still a long way off and that we should never underestimate a Marxist with an army of oligarchs to lean on. It turns out that Johnson’s warnings were right on target, as we have learned over the last couple of weeks that President Obama and officials in his administration moved feverishly to implement new rules and regulations with last minute initiatives.

One such regulation, which seemingly disappeared within the hustle and bustle of inauguration day, was a new order issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe just 12 hours before our new President was sworn into office.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, an Obama appointee, ordered a new ammunition ban for certain federal lands on Thursday–his last full day in office.

 

The ban, which took effect immediately, eliminates the use of lead-based ammunition on federal lands like national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as any other land administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service.The ban is expected to have a major impact on much of the hunting that takes place on federal lands across the United States as lead-based ammunition is widely legal and used throughout the country.

 

Ashe said the order was necessary to protect wildlife from exposure to lead.

 

Source: The Free Beacon Via Survival Blog

That may seem like a big win for the anti-gun left, but The National Shooting Sports Foundation has already leapt into action:

“This directive is irresponsible and driven not out of sound science but unchecked politics,” said Lawrence Keane, the group’s senior vice president.

 

The timing alone is suspect. This directive was published without dialogue with industry, sportsmen, and conservationists. The next director should immediately rescind this and, instead, create policy based upon scientific evidence of population impacts with regard to the use of traditional ammunition.”

As we noted earlier, President Trump has a lot of work to do to reverse the damage caused by the Obama administration.

Reversing this asinine ammunition ban is a good start.

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Is It Smart For Trump To Embrace “Big League” Dow Gains? History Says No

President Trump is anything but traditional.  He frequently says things that his predecessors would never have dared to utter publicly.  But, for the most part, his supporters applaud the candor and straight talk.

That said, one Presidential tradition that Trump may not want to break is celebrating stock market gains because what goes up, at least on Wall Street, usually comes crashing down in spectacular fashion at some point soon thereafter.  Alas, that didn’t stop Trump from celebrating #Dow20K over twitter:

 

Trump assistant, Anthony Scaramucci, also celebrated, saying “Dow 20,000 = big league. Thank you @POTUS.”

 

Of course, the only problem with taking credit for the gains on Wall Street is that you set yourself up to also get blamed for the losses.  Thats why, according to The Hill, past presidents have shied away from linking their presidency to stock market gains.

Under former President Obama, the Dow more than doubled in value, but his administration rarely cited gains in the market when promoting its record on the economy.

 

The main reason for that, longtime Wall Street observers say, is because what goes up will almost always go back down.

 

“There’s always a temptation for the president to celebrate what Wall Street is applauding,” said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Wise advisers usually restrain them from doing it.”

 

Wessel noted that during the tech boom of the late 1990’s, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin counseled President Clinton against any back patting for surging stocks.

 

“He told the president, don’t take credit for the market going up, because you’re setting yourself up to take the blame when the market goes down,” he said.

There is no doubt that the “Trump Bump” is real with the Dow surging since election day.

Dow

 

That said, there is also no doubt that with each passing day, U.S. stock markets are looking increasingly bubblicious.  And, unfortunately for Trump, if it all comes crashing down over the next 4 years he will be saddled with the blame even though this catastrophe has been in the making for quite some time courtesy of Yellen & Co.

DOw

 

Taking a look at the Shiller 10-year trailing P/E, aside from the tech boom in 2000 when company valuations soared despite generating no revenue, the S&P hasn’t been this overvalued since the great depression in 1930. 

Shiller PE

 

So, while it’s fun to “win”, we suspect this fight will only have losers.

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Make Stocks Volatile Again

The general sentiment on the Convergex trading desks continues to be bearish, so today Nichaolas Colas reviews seasonal patterns for the CBOE VIX Index going back to its starting point in 1990 to see what that math says about current market risk.

Over the last 27 years, the VIX has tended to bottom in three specific months: January (15% of the time), July (22%), and December (30%).  When the VIX does bottom in January, its average low reading is 12.2; today’s close was 11.9. That doesn’t guarantee that we’re at the lows on the VIX for the year, but given January’s propensity to represent an annual low it does merit your attention.  And since changes in the CBOE VIX index are strongly (and negatively) correlated to equity market returns, this is a warning sign about the near term direction of US stocks.  Potential hiding places are few and far between, but we’d look at yield sensitive groups like Utilities, Consumer Staples and REITs, plus precious metals.

Nothing much typically happens in January, right?  It is cold out, daylight is in short supply, and everyone is economizing after spending too much around the Holidays. More recently, the “Dry January” movement seems to have emptied out the bars and nightspots in New York as well.

Yet a quick look at the history books shows that January (and not just the one in 2017) does get its fair share of excitement.  A few examples:

  • January 1, 1863. President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.  (Which, by the way, was a Presidential Executive Order.)
  • January 1, 1959. Fidel Castro rolls into Havana.
  • January 8, 1982. Breakup of the American Bell System into regional phone companies and AT&T long distance service.
  • January 10, 1946. The first meeting of the modern United Nations, in London.
  • January 16, 1979. The Shah leaves Iran after mass protests led by religious clerics.

When it comes to US stocks, January has an even-money chance of being the best or worst month of the year when it comes to one key measure of expected near term volatility.  Since the start of the modern CBOE VIX Index in 1990, January has marked the high point for risk pricing in a given year 4 times.  Likewise, it has been the low point for expected volatility 4 times as well. 

A few details:

  • In case you aren’t up on your options math, the CBOE VIX Index is essentially the price of insurance against a sudden drop in the S&P 500. Mathematically it is the implied volatility imbedded in the options prices for near dated S&P 500 futures contracts.  But all you really need to know is that when the VIX goes up, stocks tend to go down.  The range on the VIX since 1990 is 9 to +60. Lower numbers indicate little current volatility and fear, while higher numbers correlate to periods of market turmoil.
  • The VIX has peaked during any given year in January four times since 1990: On the 14th in 1991, the 14th in 1999, the 20th in 2009 and the 27th in 2003.
  • The VIX has troughed 4 times for any given year in January since 1990: on the 28th in 1994, the 26th in 1996, the 22nd in 1997, and the 24th in 2007.
  • This shows that January has an abnormal number of VIX highs and lows; if the distribution were even through a year then January should have only 2 apiece (27 years, 12 months in a year).
  • The VIX has a very strong seasonal pattern, especially as it relates to annual low points. Just three months – January, July and December – account for 66% of the annual lows for this measure back to 1990 (when it shifted from measuring expected volatility on the S&P 100 to its current look at the S&P 500 index).
  • As a point of interest, January, August and October are high points for the VIX some 48% of the time since 1990. Only January is on the “Top 3” list for both VIX highs and lows.

Now, the obvious question is “Could the current CBOE VIX reading represent a low point for the year?”  There are 3 reasons why it could:

A reading this low is more than one standard deviation away from the VIX’s long term average of 20. Additionally, the VIX rarely goes below 10.  Statistically, it is an unusually low reading for the VIX.

 

 

 

The seasonal factors we outlined above show that the VIX often visits its extreme point, high or low, for the year in January. And since we know the current level is not likely to the high point for the year, it could well be a low.

 

Fundamentally, there are rafts of reasons why stocks may become more volatile as the year progresses. US large cap equity valuations are still high at 17x this year’s earnings for the S&P 500 of $130. President Trump’s agenda may be largely pro-business with tax cuts and less regulation on offer, but it comes with uncertainties over trade policy and tariffs.  And the timing and cadence of those changes is still a wild card even if the promised reforms do eventually come to pass.

When the CBOE VIX Index moves higher, stocks tend to go lower, so the next thing to consider is what sectors might be safe parking lots during a shift in risk appetites.  Assuming that whatever shock that drives equity volatility higher also puts a bid into Treasuries, the answer are dividend yield plays such as Utilities, REITs, and Consumer Staples.  Gold and silver may also be safe havens, especially if the dollar weakens.

As with any historical analysis, we should always remember the old saying about history rhyming more than repeating.  We do know January tends to show extremes of the market’s perceptions of near term risks, for good or for bad. And we know that at current levels the VIX highlights a complacent market.  Does that assure us that things will get choppier from here?  Of course not.  But to be boldly bullish here is to ignore the historical patterns.

And that seems riskier than staying aware of both history and current market dynamics.

Furthermore, as Gavekal Capital's Eric Bush details, given the level of economic policy uncertainty, VIX should probably be higher…

Global economic policy uncertainty is near 20-year highs while the VIX is nearing 20-year lows.

This is an odd configuration for these two series. Usually as economic policy uncertainty moves higher, the VIX moves higher with it. That is not the case today. In the scatter plot below which plots monthly data points for the two series going back 20 years, you can clearly see how the latest data is an outlier. The other three data points surrounding the latest data point are from June 2016, July 2016, and November 2016. Based on the level of the economic policy uncertainty in the world, a regression model would have predicted that the VIX would be pushing 30 instead of hovering around 10.

All in all, it would seems more likely to us that the VIX will climb higher to close this gap rather than a swift drop in economic uncertainty.

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Greece Is In Trouble Again: Bonds, Stocks Plunge As Bailout Talks Collapse; IMF Sees “Explosive” Debt

It may – or may not – shock readers to learn that Greece is once again on the verge of collapse.

10-year bond yields shot up and stocks tumbled on Friday, a day after euro zone finance ministers acknowledged the country’s fiscal progress but once again failed to break an impasse with the IMF over the country’s future bailout targets. Early on Friday morning, the greatest Greek nemesis alive, and surely in the afterlife, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Greece’s creditors won’t unlock further financial aid to the country unless the government meets its reform promises, which he said it hasn’t done yet.

Two years after its third bailout, Athens and the Troika, or is that Quadriga, i.e., its European and IMF creditors, are still at odds over the fiscal goals Greece can achieve after 2018, when its third rescue programme ends. According to Reuters, the talks have dragged on for months, hindering the conclusion of a bailout review that would help Athens qualify for inclusion in the ECB’s much desied bond-monetization programme and return to bond markets as early as this year.

And, yes, the ongoing disagreements have rekindled fears of a new crisis in Greece, which never really emerged from any of the previous ones, which was forced to sign up to another bailout in July 2015 in order to stay in the euro zone.

Worse, hinting that there may not be a 4th bailout simply because the Greek people will snap by then, the Greek parliament’s budgetary office warned on Friday that “the fiscal cost of the delays may prove bigger than the benefit of a deal”.

Greek 10-year bond yields rose by 21 basis points on Friday, while stocks were 3 percent down. Which means that in the Greek market where an occasional trade takes place once a week, someone sold an oddlot.

“The outcome was tougher than what the market had hoped for,” Beta Securities analysts Takis Zamanis told Reuters.

There was some good news for Greece, now in its 7th years of economic depression, when European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said that Greece outperformed its fiscal targets last year and was on track to meet its 2018 primary surplus target of 3.5 percent of economic output. But he added that more discussions were needed on the fiscal trajectory thereafter and on measures which might be needed and would be implemented only if Greece missed its targets.

In other words, back to square one.

The IMF, which participated in two Greek bailout programmes but is so far only an observer in the current one, says Athens can only achieve a surplus of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2018 unless it adopts more measures now and is granted more debt relief.

The IMF also was the source of bad news, reporting that Greece’s debt is “highly unsustainable” and will reach 275% of GDP – this is after it has been “reprofiled” three times already – by 2060 unless the country’s loans are significantly restructured, according to a draft confidential review of the country’s economy. Without prior bailouts, Greek debt/GDP would be between 400% and 500% as of this moment.

The assessment, prepared ahead of an IMF board meeting on Feb. 6  and seen by The Wall Street Journal, was significantly more pessimistic than that of Greece’s eurozone creditors and underscores the difficulty of the fund moving ahead with a new bailout for Greece in the near future.

Under the draft review, which comes as Athens and its creditors once again failed to find an “austerity” solution, debt is projected to reach around 160% of GDP by 2030 but “become explosive thereafter.” Under the same scenario, debt is seen reaching as much as 275% of GDP in 2060.

The assessment presents a contrast with the eurozone’s own forecasts. An official eurozone analysis in May projected debt-to-GDP of 104.9% in 2060, under a baseline scenario in which Greece fully implements its bailout program. Eurozone governments are resisting the IMF’s push for more debt forgiveness that will come largely at their expense.

 

“Greece cannot be expected to grow out of its debt problem, even with full implementation of reforms,” the IMF says, adding that the country needs significant debt relief from its European partners to ensure the debt load is sustainable.

 

The draft review says that measures agreed by the eurozone in May to ease Greece’s debt load need to be further specified, and that “ambitious extensions of grace and maturity periods, a full deferral of interest on European loans, as well as a locking in of the interest rate will be needed” to put debt on a sustainable path.

Meanwhile, “The pressure is on for the Greek government following yesterday’s Eurogroup meeting, since it did not receive substantial support, not even by the supportive EU Commission,” Axia Ventures Group said in a morning note. Greece’s leftist-led government, which is sagging in opinion polls, is refusing to adopt more austerity measures, saying the country is delivering on its bailout promises.

And so, the impasse will go on until Greece either runs out of money again leading to the next social crisis and bailout, or until either China or Russia acquires it in bankruptcy auction, or the Turks invade.

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The US Cannot Afford To Build and Maintain TrumpWall (Video)

By EconMatters


We discuss the Politics & Economics of the Trump Wall in this video. If we build the Mexico Wall, is Canada going to reimburse us for the Canadian Border Wall as well?

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

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Grad Student Exposes Massive Network Of Over 350,000 Fake Twitter Accounts

A computer scientist in London has stumbled upon massive networks of fake Twitter accounts – with the largest consisting of over 350,000 profiles – which may have been used to 'fake' numbers of followers, send spam, and boost interest in trending topics.

On Twitter, bots are accounts that are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and activities they carry out.

Some people pay to get bots to follow their account or to dilute chatter about controversial subjects.

As The BBC reports, UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it.

The network of 350,000 bots stood out because all the accounts in it shared several subtle characteristics that revealed they were linked. These included:

  • tweets coming from places where nobody lives
  • messages being posted only from Windows phones
  • almost exclusively including quotes from Star Wars novels

It was "amazing and surprising" to discover the massive networks, said Dr Shi Zhou, a senior lecturer from UCL who oversaw Mr Echeverria's research.

"Considering all the efforts already there in detecting bots, it is amazing that we can still find so many bots, much more than previous research," Dr Zhou told the BBC.

 

"It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots," said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a computer scientist at UCL, who uncovered the massive networks.

Mr Echeverria's research began by combing through a sample of 1% of Twitter users in order to get a better understanding of how people use the social network.

However, analysis of the data revealed some strange results that, when probed further, seemed to reveal lots of linked accounts, suggesting one person or group is running the botnet. These accounts did not act like the bots other researchers had found but were clearly not being run by humans.

His research suggests earlier work to find bots has missed these types of networks because they act differently to the most obvious automated accounts.

The researchers are now asking the public via a website and a Twitter account to report bots they spot to help get a better idea of how prevalent they are. Many bots are obvious because they have been created recently, have few followers, have strange user names and little content in the messages.

"Their potential threats are real and scary due to the sheer size of the botnet," he said.

A Twitter spokesman said the social network had clear policy on automation that was "strictly enforced".

Perhaps not…

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What Would A Labor-Centered Economy Look Like?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

How about moving the power to create money from the apex of the pyramid down to its lowest level?

Let's spend a moment deconstructing the word "capitalism." Note it contains the word Capital. So far so good. Obviously the key concept here is capital.

So what is "capital"? It turns out there are multiple kinds of capital. The most familiar kinds are tangible: cash, orchards, factories, water rights, tools, and so on.

Then there's credit. If you have unlimited credit at very low rates of interest, you can buy all the tangible capital you want, as long as it produces enough income to cover the costs of production and the interest you owe on the borrowed money you used to buy the factories, orchards, etc.

Some types of capital are intangible but essential to the productive use of tangible capital. You can have the credit, land and pile of lumber needed to build a house, but if you don't have the knowledge, experience and skills needed to turn the pile of wood into a productive form of tangible capital, you have nothing but an unproductive pile of lumber.

We call this form of capital human capital (also called knowledge-based capital, intellectual capital, etc.).

If you hire a person with some of these skills, that's a good start, but you need specialists who can complete all the trades needed to build a fully functional house that can be rented or sold, i.e. earn a return on the capital invested.

If the person you hire knows a lot of other trustworthy tradespeople, that's what we call social capital.

If we dig deeper, we find even more forms of capital. The idea of credit is actually pretty bizarre; not all cultures have such a form of capital. We call concepts that enable all sorts of expansion of other types of capital symbolic capital.

If we drop our pile of lumber and builder on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, with no roads, power lines, etc., that house is going to be a lot harder to build than one with access to transport, electrical power, etc. We call this infrastructure capital. (It's pretty expensive to construct this sort of networked infrastructure capital on your own.)

At the deepest level, we find cultural capital. This is the network of trust and productive values that enable all the other kinds of capital to blossom and work together in a mutually beneficial system.

A tool or factory or plot of land does not come with cultural capital. Tools without any cultural capital are left to rust.

So the first thing we notice about cultural capital is that it resides in people, not credit or tools or even knowledge. Yes, this is a shocking development: people are required for capital to become productive.

We call human effort labor. In the techno-credit fantasy of our current version of capitalism, the dream is that robots make everything and human effort is devoted solely to consuming what the robots produce. Human = consumer, not producer.

The problem is that nobody will invest in a robot unless that robot will produce a profit above and beyond the cost of production and credit/interest. So all these wonderful robots will only perform work that is profitable.

The problem with that is most of human life and activity is unprofitable. How about beautifying your neighborhood? Have you noticed that impoverished neighborhoods tend to be ugly and run-down, and wealthy neighborhoods tend to be attractive and well-maintained? Where's the profit in creating neighborhood beauty?

Is Google making billions of dollars from beautifying neighborhoods? How about McDonalds, or Amazon, or Apple or Netflix? If it was really profitable, wouldn't these global corporations be all over it?

It turns out profits only flow from very specific kinds of things and services. The rest of human life has to be done by people who aren't doing the work to maximize profit, because there is no profit in the work they're performing.

Let's switch gears and look at credit. As noted above, if you give me $1 billion at .01% annual interest, I am instantly wealthy because I can buy assets yielding 3% and keep the 2.99% I earn for myself.

In our credit-cartel-state form of capitalism, money is borrowed into existence at the top of the wealth-power pyramid, in central and private banks. Some modest amount of this new money trickles down the pyramid, but as you can see, not very much trickles down to all the people doing all the work that isn't profitable, or to all the people without access to the nearly-free-money that's available to those at the very top of the pyramid.

So here's a new idea: why not create new money at the bottom of the pyramid when people perform useful work in their communities? How about paying people for being producers, rather than paying them to be consumers?

How about paying people to do work that isn't profitable enough for global corporations to churn out robots to perform the work, but that is useful to the community?

How about moving the power to create money from the apex of the pyramid down to its lowest level? Impossible, you say? Not at all. We now have a new form of symbolic capital called cryptocurrencies–"money" that can easily be created in the accounts of people doing useful work, as opposed to being created in the accounts of the already-obscenely wealthy, as we do now.

Rather than trickle down, money would trickle up the pyramid, if the wealthy actually produced goods and services of value.

So what would a labor-centered economy look like?

1. New money would be created at the bottom of the pyramid, in the accounts of people doing useful work in their communities. (The usual global corporations would continue making billions of dollars in profits from doing whatever highly profitable work was available.)

2. Being productive in terms of creating and sustaining cultural and infrastructure capital would be compensated; consumption of corporate goods and services would take care of itself without subsidies like guaranteed basic income.

3. Labor would be paid for being productive, and capital would serve labor.

Yes, yes, I know all this is "impossible"–but actually, it isn't at all impossible. We simply choose to maintain the doomed, parasitic, exploitive system we now have that gives capital the power (to create money) to dominate the world.

I lay all this out in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology & Creating Jobs for All. Perhaps we should think through some new ideas before declaring all new ideas are "impossible."

Remember: new idea = symbolic capital that enables all the other forms of capital to work together more productively.

Please recall: If We Don't Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, We Change Nothing (December 24, 2015)

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The Slow Death of the Deadbeat Carriers, pt 4

Over the last 5 years, I have warned that T-Mobile would start turning up the heat in the US dead beat carrier business (see links below). I call them dead beat carriers because they relied on a virtual duopoly of cash cow cash flows and failed toi innovate. They actually allowed Silicon Value to capitalize on thier apathy, and now they are rlelgated to bg dumb utlitiy pipes in lieu of the lifeblood… the synapses of communication and commerce between all people an businesses. 

So, as US mobile carriers sat back and allowed Dropbox to dominate THEIR cloud storage opportunities, and Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominate THEIR cloud compute opportunities and Netflix dominate THEIR content delivery opportunities, what did they do? They created ways to overcharge consumers. This was easy to do because they were seeing fatter margins and didn’t look at that truck called technological innovation roaring towards them.

After they’re caught as deer in the headlights, what do they do? They scrambled to join in last year’s opportunity. 

 

John Legere makes valid points, points that I made clearly years ago, reference T-Mobile Threatens Deadbeat Carriers With The Death Of The American Wireless Business Model. Now Verizon wabts to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion after buying AOL for $4.4 Billion. Good use of their shareholder capital? Not! Don’t worry, even flailing Sprint is trying to jump into the make-no-money content gaine…

 

I’m highly sceptical of carriers ability to find growth prospects as Sprint buys 33% of Jay Z’s streaming service http://ow.ly/SudT100zim5 

In the meantime, Google is quietly building a obal sort of software abstraction layer that will make conventional mobile telephony obsolute. Before I go on, be aware that Google controls the global mobile OS, nearly all of it. It is at over 88% and still rapidly climbing,,,

This is another sea change that I predicted back in 2010, quite contrarian at the time….

These videos show how it happened, and why…

Now, how does Google’s “abstraction layer” affect the deadbeat carriers? Google gives autonomy and freedom to all  your texts, phone calls, voicemails, pcitures, data (including data stored on your phone) and texts. This autonomy is available to you irrespective of the carrier you use. You can switch carriers and don’t even have to bother porting your number. All of your handsets, tablets, home phones and computers can share one common cloud-driven number (for free) for what you currently pay the carriers a lot of money for. What are the carriers needed for now? Dumb broadband pipes, and that’s just about it. Whose fault is that? Well don’t call it Verizon Voice, now do we?

This disintermediation will simply get worse because the deadbeat carriers are chasing last years business model. At lease John Legere has a clue. Now all he needs to do is to consult me on how to add high margin, value added services that look forward, and not backwards… and it’s a wrap!

What’s new in Google Voice

Google Voice and Sprint

Sprint customers can now seamlessly enable Google Voice on their mobile phones without having to get a new number, or choose to display their Google Voice number when making calls from their mobile phone.

Number Porting

Take advantage of all of the features of Google Voice without changing your phone number with Number Porting.

What’s been keeping us busy…

Google Voice for iPhone

Make calls from your Google Voice number, get cheap rates for international calling, send free texts to U.S. numbers, and get push notifications when you receive new voicemails and texts. Get the Google Voice iPhone app.

Call phones from Gmail

You can now call any phone in the US and Canada for free and at very low rates internationally. And if you have a Google Voice number you can also receive calls from right within Gmail. Learn more about calling in Gmail.

New Voice of Google Voice

When you call your Google Voice number to listen to voicemail messages or make a call, you’ll be greeted by a new voice. Meet Kiki Baessell, the Googler behind this new voice.

Goodbye invites, hello open sign-ups!

You no longer need an invitation to sign up for Google Voice. Anyone can now sign up at google.com/voice.

Enjoy some quiet time with Do Not Disturb

Google Voice now allows you to set your account to “Do Not Disturb” for a predetermined length of time. During that time, calls to your Google number will go straight to voicemail.

Videos of the top 10 features of Google Voice

Check out our brand spanking new YouTube channel, complete with 10 short videos that will help you get the most out of Google Voice.

Send SMS to multiple recipients

You can now send a single SMS message to up to 5 recipients. Just click SMS at the top of your inbox and start typing names or numbers. Learn more.

Extension for Google Chrome

The Google Voice Extension gives you easy access to voicemail, calling, and texting – all from a button on your browser. Plus, get notifications of new voicemails and simply click-to-call when a phone number is published on a website. If you’re not using it already, install Google Chrome first.

Get Google Voicemail for your existing number

You can now use Google Voice with your existing mobile phone number. You won’t get all the functionality that a Google number brings you, but you’ll get Google Voicemail, low priced international calling, and several other useful features. Learn more about Google Voice Lite.

Play voicemails within Gmail

Enable the Google Voice player lab and voicemail notification emails will include an embedded player so that you can listen to messages without leaving your inbox.

Receive & reply to SMS messages by email

With SMS forwarding, you can receive text messages via email. Reply straight to those emails to save on text message fees.

Google Voice mobile app

The Google Voice app for Blackberry and Android-powered phones allows you to make outbound calls from your Google number, read transcriptions of your voicemails, make low priced international calls, and send free SMS. Learn more about Google Voice mobile apps.

Change your Google number

If you’re not happy with your Google number, you can now switch to a new number for a $10 fee. Your old number will remain active for 3 months so that you have time to update everyone.

Keyboard shortcuts

Google Voice’s keyboard shortcuts allow you to do common tasks (like make a call or send a text message) with just a few key strokes. Check out the full list of keyboard shortcuts.

 

T-Mobile Threatens Deadbeat Carriers With The Death Of The American Wireless Business Model (BoomBustBlog)… at Carriers Successfully Launched Wireless WMDs” detailed how T-Mobile will throw the gauntlet down and turn the wireless industry on its head – at great risk not just to margins but entire business mode …Created on 07 May 20142. 

The Smallest & Liveliest Of The DeadBeat Carriers Successfully Launched Wireless WMDs (BoomBustBlog)  Bloomberg reports: T-Mobile Sales Beat Analysts’ Estimates as Subscribers Surge. So, how did BoomBustBloggers know this would occur? Well, It started last year with the article …Created on 05 November 20133. 

As NSA Spreads Disinformation Wooing Hoi Polloi To Shun Innovation, Dead Beat Carriers Represent Biggest Security Threat (BoomBustBlog)About a month and a half ago, I penned the piece NSA’s Greatest Weapon In Surveillance? Outright Ignorance In Tech Consumers. The goal was to attempt to wake up the less than conscious in …Created on 23 October 20134.

Wireless Pricing Clues Us Into The Downfall Of Wintel And The Rise Of Google-tel? (BoomBustBlog)… numbers in your “Deadbeat Carriers Compete” blog posting. First the biggest flaw is that the $70 T-Mobile plan does NOT include unlimited hot spot service. It only includes 500mb of hot spot service. Yo …Created on 06 June 20135. 

Death Of The Deadbeat Carrier, part 3 – Home Internet Access Unplugged! (BoomBustBlog)… nd the T-Mobile US Inc., TMUS -2.05% although Verizon Wireless and AT&T have the most extensive networks at the highest speeds. This simply isn’t true, and I demonstrated  …Created on 03 June 20136. 

Deadbeat Carriers Compete, aka #MarginCompression!!! (BoomBustBlog)… on. As states in yesterday’s post, T-Mobile’s subway experience delivers Verizon FiOS speeds via LTE. Well, T-Mobile must have read that post for they turned LTE on in Brooklyn and that’s what I’m using …Created on 24 May 20137. 

Deadbeat Carrier Creative Destruction In The Ongoing Mobile Computing Wars (BoomBustBlog) I have personally tested the T-Mobile LTE service in a NYC subway (the 42nd street station) using what is currently the best (big brand) mobile handset available, the LG Optimus G Pro. …Created on 23 May 20138. 

A New Sheriff (Make That Business Model) Is Coming to Town For US Wireless Carriers, And He Won’t Look Pretty! (BoomBustBlog)…  on education. You’ll see where I’m coming from once you get to the long graphic below… T-Mobile has had a serious problem competing with the big boys of US wireless carriers. They are the only one  …Created on 10 January 20139. 

US Celllular Carriers Are At Risk Of Being Marginalized Into Nothingness Unless They Learn To Think Outside The Box… Yesterday (BoomBustBlog)… d it not only to its customers but to Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile customers as well. Making money from all angles, again with that viral marketing slant. Follow me:  …Created on 30 April 2012

via http://ift.tt/2k12MF0 Reggie Middleton