Tag: finance

With climate change impacting the poles, the potential for trade routes and resource extraction are improving.. and with that the world’s powers are rattling sabres over who owns what. From Canada’s claims to Russia’s defense forces and China’s purposeful dependence-building aid to small Arctic states, everyone knows the stakes. So, with very few big new diamond mines having been developed in recent years, the FT reports that scientists have found a site containing the rocks that often produce diamonds – in Antarctica. The problem is that the frozen continent is protected from mining for decades under an international treaty.

 

Some color on the climate change impact on arctic resource extraction…

 

Via The FT,

In a frustrating discovery, scientists have found a site containing the rocks that often produce diamonds – in Antarctica. The problem is that the frozen continent is protected from mining for decades under an international treaty. Even if it were not, the prospect of drilling through layers of ice in a harsh climate is likely to deter many would-be miners.

 

Still, the discovery is scientifically significant…

 

“It’s the first kimberlite occurrence reported in Antarctica,” he said, referring to the carrot-shaped volcanic rock formations that have been found on other continents and have been a significant source of diamonds in places such as South Africa.

 

“It’s really not very surprising there are kimberlites there. We were lucky enough to be the first ones to find one.”

 

…

 

“You could see some mining companies might argue, ‘We can do this; we don’t have to waste this resource’,” said Dr Robert Larter of the British Antarctic Survey.

 

However, the physical obstacles are immense in a continent that is 99 per cent covered in ice, some of which is 3-4km thick, he said.

 

…

 

Very few big new diamond mines have been developed in recent years, leading to expectations of a squeeze in supply by the end of the decade. At present levels of output, existing reserves will sustain global diamond production for 18 years, according to research by Bain & Co this year. About 70 per cent of the world’s 2.3bn carats of diamond reserves are in Russia and Africa.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/xFJ1zqucaEw/story01.htm Tyler Durden

China’s crackdown on extravagance and its anti-corruption campaign appears to be having a significant impact as Bain & Co reports that spending on luxury goods is estimated to grow at only 2% in 2013 – its slowest pace since 2000 (and dramatically lower than the 7% growth last year). “The mindset among global brands [in China] is changing from ‘where do we find growth’ to ‘how do we create growth’,” Bloomberg reports as “gifting” to high-ranking officials – one of the major growth engines of the industry – has crushed luxury watch sales down 11% in 2013. Ironically, given yesterday’s mall-jumping news, female shoppers are picking up some of the slack with shoes growing 8-10%. New store openings fell by 33%.

 

 

Via Bloomberg,

China’s luxury spending grew this year at the slowest pace since at least 2000 as more shoppers traveled abroad and the government’s anti-corruption efforts curbed purchases, consultant Bain & Co. said.

 

Spending in luxury goods is estimated to have increased about 2 percent in 2013, compared with 7 percent last year, the Boston, Massachusetts-based company said in a report released yesterday. Growth in 2014 will be at a pace similar to this year, it said.

 

Demand for luxury items from Swiss watches and expensive liquor have slumped since President Xi Jinping ordered officials to cut down on lavish spending and stepped up investigations into graft.

 

…

 

China’s crackdown on extravagance and its anti-corruption campaign had a “large” impact on gifting, one of the major growth engines of the industry, and that hit sales of watches and menswear the most this year, Bain said. Sales of luxury timepieces declined by 11 percent in 2013, it said.

 

…

 

Chinese consumers, who last year overtook shoppers in the U.S. to become the world’s biggest buyers of personal luxury items, account for 29 percent of global purchases, Bain said.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/xlSW-BRztbE/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

During 2013, America continued to steadily march down a self-destructive path toward oblivion.  As a society, our debt levels are completely and totally out of control.  Our financial system has been transformed into the largest casino on the entire planet and our big banks are behaving even more recklessly than they did just before the last financial crisis.  We continue to see thousands of businesses and millions of jobs get shipped out of the United States, and the middle class is being absolutely eviscerated.  Due to the lack of decent jobs, poverty is absolutely exploding.  Government dependence is at an all-time high and crime is rising.  Evidence of social and moral decay is seemingly everywhere, and our government appears to be going insane.  If we are going to have any hope of solving these problems, the American people need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and finally admit how bad things have actually become.

If we all just blindly have faith that "everything is going to be okay", the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions are going to absolutely blindside us and we will be absolutely devastated by the great crisis that is rapidly approaching.  The United States is in a massive amount of trouble, and it is time that we all started facing the truth.  The following are 83 numbers from 2013 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 Most people that hear this statistic do not believe that it is actually true, but right now an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job.  That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

#2 Because of the lack of jobs, poverty is spreading like wildfire in the United States.  According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.

#3 As society breaks down, the government feels a greater need than ever before to watch, monitor and track the population.  For example, every single day the NSA intercepts and permanently stores close to 2 billion emails and phone calls in addition to a whole host of other data.

#4 The Bank for International Settlements says that total public and private debt levels around the globe are now 30 percent higher than they were back during the financial crisis of 2008.

#5 According to a recent World Bank report, private domestic debt in China has grown from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

#6 In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left.

#7 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

#8 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets.  The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

#9 JPMorgan Chase is roughly the size of the entire British economy.

#10 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

#11 Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

#12 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

#13 According to the Bank for International Settlements, the global financial system has a total of 441 trillion dollars worth of exposure to interest rate derivatives.

#14 Through the end of November, approximately 365,000 Americans had signed up for Obamacare but approximately 4 million Americans had already lost their current health insurance policies because of Obamacare.

#15 It is being projected that up to 100 million more Americans could have their health insurance policies canceled by the time Obamacare is fully rolled out.

#16 At this point, 82.4 million Americans live in a home where at least one person is enrolled in the Medicaid program.

#17 It is has been estimated that Obamacare will add 21 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#18 It is being projected that hea
lth insurance premiums for healthy 30-year-old men will rise by an average of 260 percent under Obamacare.

#19 One couple down in Texas received a letter from their health insurance company that informed them that they were being hit with a 539 percent rate increase because of Obamacare.

#20 Back in 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#21 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

#22 Incredibly, 74 percent of all the wealth in the United States is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans.

#23 According to Consumer Reports, the number of children in the United States taking antipsychotic drugs has nearly tripled over the past 15 years.

#24 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of just 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.

#25 According to a shocking new study, the average American that turned 65 this year will receive $327,500 more in federal benefits than they paid in taxes over the course of their lifetimes.

#26 In just one week in December, a combined total of more than 2000 new cold temperature and snowfall records were set in the United States.

#27 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.

#28 The rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.

#29 Only 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point.

#30 The unemployment rate in the eurozone recently hit a new all-time high of 12.2 percent.

#31 If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#32 In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

#33 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006.  Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

#34 Only 19 percent of all Americans believe that the job market is better than it was a year ago.

#35 Just 14 percent of all Americans believe that the stock market will rise next year.

#36 According to CNBC, Pinterest is currently valued at more than 3 billion dollars even though it has never earned a profit.

#37 Twitter is a seven-year-old company that has never made a profit.  It actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter.  But according to the financial markets it is currently worth about 22 billion dollars.

#38 Right now, Facebook is trading at a valuation that is equivalent to approximately 100 years of earnings, and it is currently supposedly worth about 115 billion dollars.

#39 Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.

#40 Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.

#41 At this moment, there are 6 million Americans in the 16 to 24-year-old age group that are neither in school or working.

#42 The "inactivity rate" for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has just hit a brand new all-time record high.

#43 It is hard to believe, but in America today one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency.

#44 Middle-wage jobs accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession, but they have accounted for only 22 percent of the jobs created since then.

#45 According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all U.S. workers make less than $20,000 a year.

#46 Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

#47 After accounting for inflation, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#48 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#49 Investors pulled an astounding 72 billion dollars out of bond mutual funds in 2013.  It was the worst year for bond funds ever.

#50 Small business is rapidly dying in America.  At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed.  That is an all-time record low.

#51 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

#52 Once January 1st hits, it will officially be illegal to manufacture or import traditional incandescent light bulbs in the United States.  It is being projected that millions of Americans will attempt to stock up on the old light bulbs before they are totally gone from store shelves.

#53 The Japanese government has estimated that approximately 300 tons of highly radioactive water is being released into the Pacific Ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear facility every single day.

#54 Back in 1967, the U.S. military had more than 31,000 strategic nuclear warheads.  That number is already being cut down to 1,550, and now Barack Obama wants to reduce it to only about 1,000.

#55 As you read this, 60 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty and there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.

#56 Wal-Mart recently opened up two new stores in Washington D.C., and more than 23,000 people applied for just 600 positions.  That means that only about 2.6 percent of the applicants were ultimately hired.  In comparison, Harvard offers admission to 6.1 percent of their applicants.

#57 At this point, almost half of all public school students in America come from low income homes.

#58 Tragically, there are 1.2 million students that attend public schools in the United States that are homeless.  That number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.

#59 According to a Gallup poll that was recently released, 20.0 percent of all Americans did not have enough money to buy food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year.  That is just under the all-time record of 20.4 percent that was set back in November 2008.

#60 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

#61 Right now, one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.

#62 The U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#63 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#64 According to one survey, approximately 75 percent of all American women do not have any interest in dating unemployed men.

#65 China exports 4 billion pounds of food to the United States every year.

#66 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

#67 The number of Americans on Social Security Disability now exceeds the entire population of Greece, and the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

#68 It is being projected that the number of Americans on Social Security will rise from 57 million today to more than 100 million in 25 years.

#69 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars.  Today it is over 56 trillion dollars.

#70 Back on September 30th, 2012 our national debt was sitting at a total of 16.1 trillion dollars.  Today, it is up to 17.2 trillion dollars.

#71 The U.S. government "rolled over" more than 7.5 trillion dollars of existing debt in fiscal 2013.

#72 If the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#73 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 101 percent.

#74 The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the Obama administration.  In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

#75 The federal government is borrowing (stealing) roughly 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.

#76 At this point, the U.S. already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

#77 Japan now has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 211 percent.

#78 As of December 5th, 83 volcanic eruptions had been recorded around the planet so far this year.  That is a new all-time record high.

#79 53 percent of all Americans do not have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.

#80 Violent crime in the United States was up 15 percent last year.

#81 According to a very surprising survey that was recently conducted, 68 percent of all Americans believe that the country is currently on the wrong track.

#82 Back in 1972, 46 percent of all Americans believed that "most people can be trusted".  Today, only 32 percent of all Americans believe that "most people can be trusted".

#83 According to a recent Pew Research survey, only 19 percent of all Americans trust the government.   Back in 1958, 73 percent of all Americans trusted the government.

So do you have any numbers from 2013 that you would add to this list?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/_uEa6hzNrs0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

On January 29, 1845, the New York Evening Mirror published a poem that would go on to be one of the most celebrated narrative poems ever penned. It depicted a tragic romantic’s desperate descent into madness over the loss of his love; and it made its author, Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most feted poets of his time.

The poem was entitled “The Raven,” and its star was an ominous black bird that visits an unnamed narrator who is lamenting the loss of his true love…

So, with the vision firmly planted in your mind’s eye of a man completely out of touch with reality, seeking wisdom from a mysterious talking bird — knowing that there is only one response, no matter the question — Dear Reader, allow me to present to you a chart. It is one I have used before, but its importance is enormous, and it will form the foundation of this week’s discussion (alongside a few others that break it down into its constituent parts).

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (drumroll please) total outstanding credit versus GDP in the United States from 1929 to 2012:

This one chart shows exactly WHY we are where we are, folks.

From the moment Richard Nixon toppled the US dollar from its golden foundation and ushered in the era of pure fiat money (oxymoron though that may be) on August 15, 1971, there has been a ubiquitous and dangerous synonym for “growth”: credit.

The world embarked upon a multi-decade credit-fueled binge and claimed the results as growth.

Fanciful.

Floated ever higher on a cushion of credit that has expanded exponentially, as you can see. (The expansion of true growth would have been largely linear — though one can only speculate as to the trajectory of that GDP line had so much credit NOT been extended.) The world has congratulated itself on its “outperformance,” when the truth is that bills have been run up relentlessly, with only the occasional hiccup along the way (each of which has manifested itself as a violent reaction to the over-extension of cheap money).

…

 

Folks, rates WILL have to go up again. They cannot stay at zero forever. We all know that. When they DO, because of all the additional debt that has been ladled atop the existing pile, the whole thing will come tumbling down.

All of it.

There is simply no way out, I am afraid. But that is clearly a problem for another day. Right now, everything is fine, so we can all go on pretending it will continue that way.

Evermore.

So now, if you’ll indulge me in a little poetic license (not to mention there being not one but four mysterious strangers in my offering), I give you, “The Maven” (abridged version):

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of financial lore
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — for the world had sought to borrow
From both friend and foe and neighbour — borrow, borrow, borrow more
For the cheap and easy money which the bankers forth did pour
Shall be paid back nevermore.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered words, “Some More?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the words, “Some More”
Merely this and nothing more.

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped four stately Mavens from the Central Banks of yore;
Not the least obeisance made they; not a minute stopped or stayed they;
But, with air of lord or lady, stood inside my chamber door —
Standing by a mug from Dallas just inside my chamber door —
Stood, and stared, and nothing more.

Then these tired-looking men beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance they wore,
“Though thy faces look unshaven, thou,” I said, “art sure enslaven’d,
Ghastly grim and ancient Mavens wandering from the Nightly shore —
To free money ever after lest the markets pitch and yaw.”
Quoth the Mavens, “Evermore.”

While I marvelled this ungainly bearded man explained so plainly,
Though his answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For he cannot help a-printing, brand new currency a-minting
Ever yet was blessed with seeing nothing wrong in doing more
Mortgage bonds upon his balance sheet he’ll place, then markets jaw
With the promise “Evermore.”

“You there” said I, “standing muted — what is there to do aboot it?”
In a heavy accent quoth he — that by God he was quite sure
That more money being printed and, new measures being hinted
At would quell all fear of meltdown and the markets all would soar
Would this mean the printing presses would forever roar?
Quoth the Maven, “Evermore.”

Lastly to the fore there strode a small and bookish man, Kuroda,
Who with glint of eye did warn that he was happy to explore
Measures once thought so outrageous as to never mark the pages
In the history of finance — but those times were days of yore
Drastic printing was required, this was tantamount to war
Quoth the Maven, “Evermore.”

And the Mavens, never blinking, only sitting, only thinking
By the Cowboys mug from Dallas just inside my chamber door;
Really do believe their action has created decent traction,
And that freshly printed money can spew forth for evermore;
But the truth about the ending shall be seen when markets, bending
Shall be lifted — nevermore!

The full must-read Grant Williams letter is below:

Ttmygh Dec 09 2013

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7L3XWWDOLU0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Just because we thought it worthwhile to keep track of how out of control things are getting in Japan, a quick summary of this evening’s data. The Japanese trade balance (adjusted) shows a deficit for the 32nd month in a row and has surged to its largest (worst) level on record. It has missed expectations in 5 of the last 6 months. Imports rose more than expected again with a 10.2% MoM gain in imports from the US (and 35% YoY). This massive deficit is before the military spending unveiled last night has hit though one thing is certain, Goldman Sachs will be out with a report any second proclaiming the mythical J-curve about to arrive any moment… The reaction – JPY dumps and NKY explodes higher as bad news is good news in QQE land.

 

32nd and record monthly trade deficit…

 

as imports from the US explode…

 

The reaction

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/4LNms-SvW2o/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Just because we thought it worthwhile to keep track of how out of control things are getting in Japan, a quick summary of this evening’s data. The Japanese trade balance (adjusted) shows a deficit for the 32nd month in a row and has surged to its largest (worst) level on record. It has missed expectations in 5 of the last 6 months. Imports rose more than expected again with a 10.2% MoM gain in imports from the US (and 35% YoY). This massive deficit is before the military spending unveiled last night has hit though one thing is certain, Goldman Sachs will be out with a report any second proclaiming the mythical J-curve about to arrive any moment… The reaction – JPY dumps and NKY explodes higher as bad news is good news in QQE land.

 

32nd and record monthly trade deficit…

 

as imports from the US explode…

 

The reaction

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/4LNms-SvW2o/story01.htm Tyler Durden

A new Washington Post/ABC poll released today shows that Obama is the least popular president in 39 years:

The president’s overall approval rating stands at 43 percent, while disapproval is at 55 percent.

 

***

 

Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.

Why is Obama so unpopular?

Because – as horrible as Bush was – Obama is worse than Bush in favoring the super-elite, bailing out the big banks, protecting financial criminals, targeting whistleblowers, keeping government secrets, trampling our liberties and starting military conflicts in new countries.

Obama is even worse than Bush in redistributing wealth from the American people to a handful of fatcats and trampling civil liberties.

Americans now realize that Obama is not following the will of the people.

Moreover, having a sell-out president Obama after a sell-out president Bush has shown the people that neither mainstream parties represents them.

Indeed, both the mainstream Republican and Democratic parties are virtually identical regarding core issues including:

• Allowing the trampling of our liberty and see this

• Launching preemptive war and aggression

• Re-distributing the nation’s wealth from the people to the ultra-elite

• Bailing out the giant banks while shafting the little guy

• Otherwise selling out to the big banks (and see this)

Any apparent difference is just a scripted show.

Under both Republican and Democratic politicians, both the rule of law and free market capitalism have been trashed.

In reality, we no longer have free market capitalism. Instead, we have socialism for the rich and sink-or-swim capitalism for everyone else.   Conservatives see the socialism half of this equation, and liberals see the laissez faire free market half. Both liberals and conservatives hate crony capitalism. Look here, here, here.

Please have lost faith in the 2 party system.

Note: The poll numbers for Congress are even worse.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ogrrCYVuelk/story01.htm George Washington

Just when one thought the government’s boondoggles couldn’t get any worse, along comes this…

Sometimes working in the Senate is stressful and means staying up all night to get your projects done.

Fortunately, overworked and under-slept staffers can take one of dozens of lifestyle coaching classes offered by the Senate to ensure they’re okay.

The Senate Office of Education and Training offers Senate employees a wide variety of free courses on everything from the “Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep” to “Pressure Point Therapy Workshop,” in which students are taught “how to locate and relieve active pressure.” For its efforts, the office was provided $1.9 million in 2013 according to information provided by the office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms.

While the office is little known, even within the Senate, it made national headlines briefly in 2012 over a typo on the cover its course catalog.

After misspelling the word “training” by leaving out the first “N,” one staffer remarked, “Ooh! They’ve got an editing and proofreading class!”

According to its website, the Office “provides a variety of ways for you [a Senate staffer] to enhance your professional development and increase your performance and technical skills.” These include such offerings as, “Assert Yourself: Speak Up with Tact Rather than Suffer in Silence,” which will teach Senate employees the recognize the difference between assertive, aggressive, and passive behavior “without being a steamroller or a pushover.”

Other classes for the more reserved include, “Small Talk: Breaking the Ice in Social Situations” and “That’s Not What I Meant!,” a one hour class that “explore[s] the difference between your intention and the impact of your words and behavior on the other person.” It teaches the important lesson that “[c]ommunication is difficult and complex.”

In “Be Curious, Not Furious” students are taught how to examine a difficult work relationship, discuss the difference between labeling people and understanding them, and discuss five ways for understanding challenging behavior.

Should that fail to do the trick, the class on “Forgiveness,” defines the concept and explains the “[c]onsequences of holding a grudge.”

Some classes are there for Senate staff who slept through elementary, middle and high school such as “Making Subjects and Verbs Agree.”

Source: Wastebook 2013

* * *

And now, pay your taxes.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/s5Uo83V1QDI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Dmirty Orlov via The Burning Platform blog,

Nomenclature means a lot to our pride. People take offense if they are told they are living in a collapsed culture. Collapsed implies over. Collapsed implies hopeless. Collapsed implies that we have failed. But at some point we have to look at people like my angry friend and admit that we are failing—on many, many levels. My friend was once a middle-class woman with a college degree and a profession. She raised children on her own after her husband died. And as she tried to push forward, her career started moving backwards. And then somehow, eventually, it came to a point where she was willing to do work of questionable legality to pay her bills and keep a roof over her head. The horror that awaited her if she were to became homeless was arguably much worse than the controlled environment of the massage parlor, even taking into account the occasional police raids.

Our culture is such that half of Americans probably think “If the money is good, so what?” There is no thought given to the proper way to live and to relate to people. There is no thought given to what such work does to the soul of this woman. The American thinking process jumps to the bottom line of the financial transaction, and declares victory if cash has changed hands. The woman is “richer” so for them she is better off. These same people see the American economy as rebounding. People are spending. Some people are getting rich. What’s the problem?

When everything is calculated in a purely financial light, we start to lose any sense of decency or community. I saw the end result of this process when I recently visited Philadelphia to look at properties. There are houses there under $10,000. While checking out the neighborhoods where these properties are, I made an astounding observation. Almost every block in these neighborhoods has at least one abandoned home. These homes are impossible to miss because of the state of disrepair they were in: porches or parts of roofs are literally collapsed. As if there could be any question as to their status, the city posts large warning signs when boarding them up. The visually offensive chartreuse or neon orange signs warn that “trespassers” could end up spending two years in jail. I wondered which the city had more of—abandoned houses or homeless families. Sadly, I actually saw an occasional homeless person wander through the area. I was tempted to go purchase them some tools and hardhats, and organize a take-over of abandoned buildings by the homeless.

I got in contact a friend who is well-connected in Philadelphia politics. I pressed him with the obvious question: shouldn’t the city be teaching the homeless how to fix up these abandoned eyesores that litter the urban landscape? His answer was a resounding “No.” Apparently the city has to protect the rights of property owners, who are hoping to turn a profit on these places. I wondered what kind of financial alchemy could possibly turn a profit on ugly houses in depressed neighborhoods that are in need of serious labor. It must have something to do with “quantitative easing.”

At one point during my Philadelphia adventure I walked toward an old abandoned factory which, in a better city, would have been turned into hipster lofts, and I saw a bookstore. I was overjoyed. The bookstore seemed like a beacon of light in this dark ghetto—right until I got close enough to read what was painted in huge letters on its wall. “We ship to prisons! Ask inside.” I didn’t. I already knew these clever people were doing very brisk business. In the early 2000s I would occasionally volunteer for Books Through Bars, an organization that sent donated books to the incarcerated. Back then jailed people seemed somehow more distant. As the end of the decade approached and I returned to America after living abroad, the prison system seemed much closer. I lived with my mother temporarily, and I would ride the bus to work. Every day, on the bus, I heard men loudly discussing their parole officers on their cellphones. What I might have overheard whispered in hushed voices in my childhood was now a subject the transit riding public could hear about loud and clear, whether they wanted to or not. Nor did the women seem any more reticent, as they discussed what they were planning to do with their food stamps and benefit money. Even if I wore earplugs I would not have been able to avoid hearing these people, or smelling the drugs they occasionally lit in the back of the bus.

All life seemed to revolve around the trifecta of prisons, handouts and drugs. Every few days a van would park directly in front of our house before visiting “friends” across the street. “What are they doing?” asked my mother angrily. “Dealing drugs,” I would explain flatly. Based on their shiny new van, the dealers were certainly doing better than I was. I was waiting to be credentialed as a doctor, and worried about being unable to afford my bus rides to work. They were making so much money they could eat endless restaurant-cooked meals in their van and leave the trash on my mother’s front lawn. “I don’t know why the police don’t do something about the fact… they are littering, LITTERING!!” my mother would start screaming indignantly. “The police are in on the action,” I informed her.

On a recent trip home I noticed that the drug delivery van has left the neighborhood. I wondered whether it was a sign of the times getting better or worse. Are they getting better prices somewhere else? Have drugs finally become an item for the middle class? Had the neighborhood demographics tipped it toward prescription drug abuse? Sadly, one of the least probable possibilities is that the police had actually done their job.

When looking at a country as large and complex as the USA, one can make any number of contradictory assertions and still be factually correct. The economy doing extremely well, and the economy is going to hell. One need look no farther than the banking industry to figure that out: the banks are bankrupt and require bail-outs; the banks are doing well and making healthy profits. American banks are in every way typical of American corporations: they are corrupt, reliant on the government to subsidize and support them, and produce mind-boggling riches for those that run them. At the bottom of the bank hierarchy are the tellers. The polite, well dressed tellers wear conservative new clothes and jewelry. They exude the kind of stability and class that reflects well on the banks. Yet about a third of them earn little enough to qualify for public assistance. They have joined the ranks of retail workers, restaurant workers, hotel workers and other service industry personnel who must rely on the welfare system in order to work. I suspect they will be joined by more and more recent college graduates who can not actually earn a positive sum after subtracting their student loan payments.

But rest assured that from each and every payment or delinquency notice or collection activity someone somewhere is making a profit. In this economy every action is monetized, even our very socializing. As you randomly clicked around the Internet to find this article, you generated income for tech companies. At some point, as every last penny was pushed or pulled out of your pocket, you began shifting from consumer to producer: you became a prosumer… and the machine that is American capitalism milked more profit still from your existence. Your eyeballs and clicks generated inc
ome based on some strange calculations by marketers. American-style capitalism now has you in debt and producing for it even as you consume, but that is now a middle class privilege, and no one is forcing people to make these choices.

At the bottom of the food chain are the forced producers. Those people are so broke that they have become superfluous to the normative economy. They seem to be channeled in one way or another into the prison system, where they become the ultimate producers. Their very bodies create profits for prison corporations simply by existing in prisons, while their arguably forced labor is compelled at pennies on the dollar to produce cheap consumer goods. The American economy seems to be succeeding at monetizing everything while producing fewer and fewer goods or services of any real value to anyone but a few rich people profiting off the entire system.

America’s political economy has changed incrementally enough that many people have not noticed what is really happening. It’s over for most of us. You can call it collapse, or you can call it restructuring. You can even call it a recovery. But you can not call it sustainable, or pleasant. The overall trajectory is toward decline, decay, destitution…

I’m sure some dyed-in-the-wool patriots will be angered or confused by this article. They may live in a safe, posh area of a city or a suburb, and see none of the decay I observed. Or perhaps, based on some vague ideas they heard at the university, they can guess that this different America is a place into which I have been redlined by my ethnicity. They can’t yet see that the fact that they can, for the time being, shield themselves so completely from this other America is a symptom of our problem—which is going to become their problem. There is little sense of a larger American community where people care for their fellow citizens.

But then no one seems particularly concerned with the plight of the doomed, and perhaps no one ever was. So what is the fundamental shift that is happening—one that we could call “collapse”? Well personally, if I look at myself as a black American, I’m not really in a culture of depression or collapse. It’s just more of the same, and in some ways things have never looked better. Arguably the issue that really has some people upset is the increasing equality—albeit an equality of suffering. Now that middle class success is no longer achievable for many young middle class white people, who are being called “the lost generation,” everyone can suddenly see what the rest of us have been complaining about for decades. This collapse is the collapse of dreams, hopes and expectations, not an obvious one like the collapse of the currency or the government. And if you have no hopes or dreams, and your expectations are sufficiently low, then you might not even be aware of it.

A really painful and obvious collapse isn’t in anyone’s interest, not even the people suffering under the unjust rule of America’s empire. The USA admits to a military presence in a staggering number of countries, and many middle class young people in all of these countries sit around in cafés cursing American imperialism. In reality, while the end of America might mean fewer drone strikes and assaults on the sovereignty of other nations, it might also mean misery and death for the emerging global middle class—the very class that supports the young global intellectuals who whine about the injustice of this arrangement. For the time being, what is really in everyone’s interest, here and abroad, is to keep playing along. Collapse? What collapse? We all have to keep pretending everything is fine, or things will get even worse quickly – for us. But if things are continuing to get worse for us in any case…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Gxm2nJC9tE4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

On Friday we presented the first part of Goldman’s Top 100 Charts of 2013. Among the themes presented were the interweaving links between key investment themes, and the implications of these for companies, sectors and countries. They include the widening disparity in relative energy costs, the rising cost of growth in emerging markets, the increasing ubiquity of technology in most sectors, the disruptive technologies that are changing how things are made and consumed, the growing influence of governments, and also, the twin challenges of fewer jobs and longer lives. Below we present the second half of the best charts of 2013.

The size and influence of governments is rising

 

A taxing subject

 

Tracking the habits of global consumers

 

Fast food is a global phenomenon

 

Dominance takes many shapes

 

…and so does disruption

 

Ill gotten gains?

 

The geography and nature of conflicts are changing

 

Going places

 

Diversions

 

Some market charts

 

On a parting note, did you know…

 

For reference

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/DNDgKSRtKRo/story01.htm Tyler Durden