Tag: finance

By now it should be clear to everyone that any myth that the Ebola epidemic, which has clearly gone global, is contained is about as real as the S&P 500 at 2000. And if it isn’t, the latest confirmation came moments ago from BBC which reports that a Spanish nurse who treated an Ebola victim in Madrid has contracted the virus herself in the first case of contagion outside Africa, health officials say.  What is different about this case is that the nurse contracted the virus in Madrid while she was part of the team that treated Spanish priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died of Ebola on 25 September, despite being treated with the same drug regiment that previous is said to have worked on US Ebola patients.  

The priest died in the hospital Carlos III de Madrid after catching Ebola in Sierra Leone. He was the second: another Spanish priest, Miguel Pajares, died in August after contracting the virus in Liberia.

The nurse was admitted to hospital on Monday morning with a high fever, Spanish newspaper El Pais said.  Doctors isolated the emergency treatment room, the report said.

Once again questions emerge just how the virus is transmitted, because if the nurse, who obviously took every possible precation against the world’s most dangerous virus that is supposedly non-airborne, contracted it, then it clearly leads to speculation that Ebola may be transmitted by means other than what the population is being told.

And while the media will surely try to downplay the seriousness of this latest contagtion, it will likely fail:

• SPANISH HEALTH OFFICIAL SAYS HEALTH WORKER WITH EBOLA STARTED TO FEEL SICK ON SEPT. 30
• SPAIN MONITORING 30 MED STAFF WHO WORKED WITH EBOLA PATIENT
• SPAINISH EBOLA PATIENT ENTERED ORIGINAL PATIENT’S ROOM TWICE
• SPAIN EBOLA PATIENT POSS HAD CONTACT W/OTHERS BEFORE SYMPTOMS

But the punchline:

• SPANISH HEALTH OFFICIAL SAYS HEALTH WORKER WITH EBOLA WENT ON HOLIDAY THE DAY AFTER SPANISH PRIEST DIED AND HAS BEEN ON HOLIDAY EVER SINCE

Well, good luck finding everyone she interacted with.

And if that wasn’t enough, perhaps the safest and sleepiest city in the world, Mozart’s birthplace, Salzburg, hours ago activated its emergency Ebola response after a 15 year old refugee from Liberia was exhibiting Ebola-like signs. From German ORF google-translated:

In the Salzburg State Hospital, a 15-year-old from Liberia is examined for the Ebola virus infection. The young man was picked up on Monday night at the Wals. He claimed to have escaped alone.

 

In the Salzburg Federal Clinics (SALK) Monday had therefore first the existing emergency plan for the handling of a suspected Ebola are capitalized: The young refugee from Liberia had been taken up in a Flachgauer community. Since Liberia is a country affected by Ebola area, the young man was admitted immediately for evaluation in the country’s hospitals. This was confirmed in the evening Salzburg hospital and health speaker Governor Deputy Governor Christian Stöckl (ÖVP).

And cue panic prevention mode:

“It is absolutely too early to speak of a suspected case. The patient must first be examined for possible symptoms throughout. However, the emergency plan has been activated as a precaution in the Salzburg Regional Hospital, and the case is treated as a suspected case. It has paid off, that a meticulous contingency plan for the entire country and in the state hospital in an Ebola-Team was established in the fall of last year by the Regional Health Directorate. The probability that there is an Ebola patient in the refugee may be small, but we have taken all measures to be fully prepared. The crisis team has gathered in a short time and will advise the next steps, resulting from the initial examination of the patient, “said Stoeckl.

Finally, all this is happening as America’s own Ebola patient, Thomas Duncan, is in deteriorating, critical condition.

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It was just yesterday when, in an interview with CNN, Israel PM Netanyahu reminded the world that before there was ISIS, there was Israel’s most loathed enemy Iran, and told Fareed Zakaria that in addition to combating ISIS, Netanyahu said Israel and other moderate Arab states see Iran’s nuclear program as a “twin” challenge that goes hand-in-hand with stopping the spread of radical Islam. From that point on it was only a matter of time before something exploded.

That something took place a few hours ago when a large explosion took place near a suspected nuclear site in Iran has reportedly killed two people and according to the Washington Free Beacon, prompted speculation of sabotage at a military site long suspected of housing Tehran’s clandestine nuclear activities, according to Iran’s Defense Industries Organization (DIO), which operates under the country’s Ministry of Defense.

The Free Beacon, citing Fars New Agency, reports that one explosion rocked a production plant late Sunday night in east Tehran, near the Parchin nuclear site.  The explosion at a facility referred to as a “production plant” caused a fire that killed two workers, according to Fars, which cited information provided by Iran’s DIO. Fars first reported news of the explosion, claiming that it took place at an “explosive material factory” near Parchin. According to Iran opposition sources, the blast killed at least four military personnel.

More from WFB:

Official state run outlets, which often censor material, quoted the head of Tehran’s Fire Squad as saying that four fire stations responded to control the fire and that some were “wounded” during this. These official reports acknowledge that Parchin is a military site, but claim that actual explosion took place at a non-military installation used as a waste storage depot.

 

Other thinly sourced reports, such as one from London’s Manoto TV, claimed that as many as 35 were killed in the explosion, though no such number has been confirmed.

 

Other reports referred to a “strong” and “tremendous explosion” that “shook Eastern Tehran” and blew out the windows of a nearby building and impacted about a 10-mile area, according to Saham News.

 

The report also cites the explosion as taking place near the “Parchin military site,” which has been known to house “high explosives” and other work related to Iran’s nuclear program, according to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

 

“The Parchin site is among the military sites of Tehran which produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles without any safety rules and precautions,” Saham reported, according to a translation provided by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

 

Iranian security forces blocked off local streets and assumed a presence near the facility following the explosion, according to the report.

In addition to Netanyahu’s veiled threat, it bears observing that the explosion came just hours before inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Organization were set to tour some of Iran’s nuclear sites, according to Fars.

Iran has long claimed that Western nations and Israel are attempting to sabotage its nuclear site, and has been, for the most part, correct in accusing Israel of sabotage-related provocations, whether via STUXnet, by drone or by conventional weapon means.

It remains to be seen if this just the latest provocative Israeli act that it hopes nobody notices or comments on, and later is shocked to find when its neighbor states retaliate.

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Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

As the Governor goblins at the Federal Reserve whistle past the graveyard of dead Quantitative Easing, and the US dollar magically expands like a prickly puffer fish, and Mario Drahgi does what it takes with Euro duct tape to patch all black holes of unpayable debt from Athens to Dublin, and Japan watches its once-wondrous economy congeal in a puddle of Abenomic sludge (with a radioactive cherry on top), and China chokes on its dollar-peg, and Russia waits patiently with its old friend, Winter, covering its back – and notwithstanding the violent chaos, beheadings, and psychopathic struggles across the old Levant, not to mention the doubling of Ebola cases every 20 days, which the World Health Organization did not have the nerve to project beyond 1.2 million in January (does the doubling just stop there?) – there is enough instability around the globe for the gentlemen of Wall Street to make one last fabulous fortune arbitraging the future before the boomerang of consequence circles this suffering planet and finally accomplishes what the Department of Justice under Eric Holder failed to do for six long years.

It’s the season of witch and you should be nervous. Especially if you live in part of the world where money is used. Pretty soon nobody will know what any currency is really worth — at least for a while — or what anything else is worth, for that matter. Perhaps the fishermen of India will start using their worthless gold for sinkers. Jay-Z and Diddy will gaze down on their bling in despair, thinking, perhaps, they should have invested in Betamax players instead. In the time of anything-goes-and-nothing-matters, it’s dangerous to expect anything.

Here’s what I expect: the surge of the dollar is the crest of an historic Great Wave. A Great Wave is an awesome event, and its crest is a majestic sight, but soon the foam spits and hisses and the wave breaks and crashes down on the beach — say, out at the Hamptons — where hedge funders stroll to catch the last dwindling rays of a beautiful season, and all of a sudden they are being swept out to sea in the rip-tide that retracts all that lovely green liquidity, and no one is even left on the beach to weep for them. Indeed their Robert A. M. Stern shingled manor houses up behind the dunes are swept away, too, and the tennis courts, and the potted hydrangeas, and the Teslas, and all the temporal bric-a-brac of their uber-specialness.

And, of course, it being the season of the witch, that’s where the zombies come out for real — the tattooed savages who all this time have been stewing in their own rancid juices awaiting their turn to get jiggy with the nation that left them restlessly undead. I don’t think you can overestimate the depth of ill-feeling that the American public harbors for the cravens who engineered their USA into the biggest booby-trap the world has ever seen. The trouble is, they lost their humanity in the process, so when they have their way with the feckless folks tweaking the dials, you might want to contemplate moving to Finland.

Who can feel confident about the tending of things just now? The diminishing returns of the Information Age are about to bite our collective ass like an army of Orcs. The sum of all that digital magic is a nation completely incapable of telling itself the truth or acting honorably. Unemployment is down without employment being up. Candy Crush is making the world safe for democracy. We have the finest health care system in the world. ISIS is trying to compete with our homegrown videogame industry for supremacy in porno-violence (actually, I thought we already won that) but now we will obliterate all the bad guys in the world by remote control from the drone bunkers of Las Vegas, and that will show them. Thank goodness the long holiday season is almost upon us to juice the so-called economy ever-higher.

There has never been a crazier moment in history. The weeks before the outbreak of the First World War seem like a garden party compared to the morbid antics of these darkening days. America, you’ve been wishing fervently for the Zombie Apocalypse. What happens when you discover you can’t just change the channel?

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As Martin Armstrong exclaims, Obama is out of control. According to NewZimbabwe.com, Washington has said it will accelerate sanctions imposed against Harare in 2003, due to the Robert Mugabe-led government’s closer ties with Russia over the US$3 billion Darwendale platinum project. Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru (who is thought to be Mugabe’s spokesman), reported, Washington explained its expectations on Zimbabwe, namely that Zimbabwe was expected (read required) to support those sanctions by avoiding any association with companies sanctioned by the Americans and their Western allies, or their subsidiaries or affiliates. Manheru said “it was ridiculous for the US to refuse to lift sanctions against Harare and then demand support for its measures against Moscow… This is where I am tempted to tell the American government to go and hang, hang on a banana tree, bums up.“

Via AllAfrica.com,

The United States has reportedly warned Zimbabwe about its growing economic dealings with Russia after Harare recently sealed an agreement with Moscow for a US$3billion platinum mine.

 

According to Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru, who is thought to be President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba, the Obama administration threatened further sanctions against Zimbabwe over its ties with Russia.

 

…

 

Zimbabwe’s Pen East Investments has teamed up with Afronet, a consortium of three Russian partners, to form Great Dyke Investments, which is developing the US$3 billion Darwendale platinum project.

 

At full development in 2024, the mine will produce 800,000 platinum ounces, pushing Zimbabwe’s output over one million ounces, and create 8,000 jobs.

 

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visited Zimbabwe last month to conclude the deal with President Robert Mugabe.

 

However, according to Manheru, the deal could see Washington hit Harare with further sanctions.

Wrote Manheru in the Saturday Herald:

“A week or two ago, the US government, through its local embassy, sent an official communication to the Zimbabwean Government, listing the full measure of sanctions the West, led by America, have slapped on Russia.

 

“The communication went further.

 

“It spelt out American expectations on Zimbabwe, namely that Zimbabwe was expected (read required) to support those sanctions by avoiding any association with companies sanctioned by the Americans and their Western allies.

 

“Or their subsidiaries or affiliates.

 

“And . . . yes you guess right, that targets the new US$3bn-plus platinum investment by the Russians at Darwendale! It (Zimbabwe) should not proceed or else we are under sanctions.”

The US imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2003, accusing Mugabe of human rights abuses and electoral fraud. Harare denies the allegations, insisting the sanctions were meant to punish the country’s land reforms.

Obama’s administration has ignored calls by Mugabe to remove the sanctions which the veteran leader blames for bringing Zimbabwe’s economy to its knees.

Manheru said it was ridiculous for the US to refuse to lift sanctions against Harare and then demand support for its measures against Moscow.

He wrote:

“America then invites sanctioned Zimbabwe to support sanctions against Russia, itself a bird of the same feather!

 

“Oh America!

 

“This is where I am tempted to tell the American government to go and hang, hang on a banana tree, bums up.”

As Martin Armstrong concludes,

Obama is Out of Control

 

Obama is attempting to impose his own rule of law over the entire world – my way or highway. He has no such constitutional authority and this guy who misses most of his daily briefings as Fox News reported, and countless others.

 

I am not kidding. This is precisely how Athens fell. It dictated to all its allies and one by one they turned against Athens and joined Sparta. Sparta was a virtual communist state and Athens was a state in a battle swinging back and forth between oligarchs and democracy.

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Making friends and isolating people…

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Last May, I covered the work of Defense Distributed with regard to its building of tools for individuals to 3D-print their own firearms in the post. Meet “The Liberator”: The World’s First Fully 3D-Printed Firearm, In it, I noted:

3D-printing, like decentralized crypto currencies, have the potential to change the world in which we live in extraordinary ways. Ways that are almost inconceivable at this point given we are so early in the game. More than anything else, these technologies can empower the individual like never before, and I think that is generally a very good thing.

While all sixteen pieces of the Liberator were printed in ABS plastic, the $1,200 computer-controlled (CNC) milling machine called the “Ghost Gunner,” is capable of automatically carving polymer, wood, and metal in three dimensions. More from Wired:

Americans want guns without serial numbers. And apparently, they want to make them at home.

 

On Wednesday, Cody Wilson’s libertarian non-profit Defense Distributed revealed the Ghost Gunner, a $1,200 computer-controlled (CNC) milling machine designed to let anyone make the aluminum body of an AR-15 rifle at home, with no expertise, no regulation, and no serial numbers. Since then, he’s sold more than 200 of the foot-cubed CNC mills—175 in the first 24 hours. That’s well beyond his expectations; Wilson had planned to sell only 110 of the machines total before cutting off orders.

 

While the Ghost Gunner is a general-purpose CNC mill, capable of automatically carving polymer, wood, and metal in three dimensions, Defense Distributed has marketed its machine specifically as a tool for milling the so-called lower receiver of an AR-15, which is the regulated body of that semi-automatic rifle. The gun community has already made that task far easier by selling so-called “80-percent lowers,” blocks of aluminum that need only a few holes and cavities milled out to become working lower receivers. Wilson says he’s now in talks with San Diego-based Ares Armor, one of the top sellers of those 80-percent lowers, to enter into some sort of sales partnership.

 

The sales numbers for the Ghost Gunner may be far smaller. But at $1,200, every sale helps fund the activities of Defense Distributed. “I’ve never felt more optimistic about the ability of Defense Distributed to become an installed part of the future, and to help create an expansion of the second amendment,” he says. “There’s hope that Defense Distributed can become a significant civil liberties organization…That’s the ambition, the wildest dream of this entity, to have a marked material effect like that.”

Now here’s the Ghost Gunner in all its YouTube video glory:

 

Long-time readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will know that I am a huge supporter of gun rights. While I am personally not a gun enthusiast in my own life, I recognize the right of my fellow citizens to be armed. While many people like to blindly push for gun control, it would be mush wiser for Americans to focus on “war control.” That is, stopping our own government from consistently, aggressively and unconstitutionally unleashing violence on populations all over the world, particularly the Middle East.

I find it the height of hypocrisy when politicians constantly using our nation’s blood and treasure to bomb and murder civilians all over the world, get up on podiums to stress the importance of disarming peaceful civilians due to a few random school shootings (as tragic as they are). When the U.S. government becomes Switzerland, then we can talk gun control. The biggest criminals, murders and war-profiteers around are at the top of the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex, and they’re doing it with our tax dollars. So if you want a more peaceful world, let’s start there.

For more of my thoughts on gun control read: How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown

If 3D-printing of firearms isn’t your thing, check out: 3D Printing Entire Homes and Neighborhoods May be Just Around the Corner

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Having lost billions of dollars for quarter after quarter, The US Postal Service has a cunning plan to cut costs – end door-to-door postal delivery. More than 30 million American homes get door-to-door delivery and another 50 million get their mail dropped at their curbside mailboxes, but as Reuters reports, with the ‘entity’ buckling under massive financial losses, it sees savings in centralized mail delivery. This is good news for the customer though – apparently – as Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan explains “converting delivery away from door delivery to either curb line or centralized delivery would enable the Postal Service to provide service to more customers in less time.”

The Postal Service last year lost $16 billion, mostly due to dwindling mail volumes and massive payments into a mandatory fund for its future retirees’ healthcare.

The agency, which does not receive taxpayer funds, is under pressure to modify its business model and raise revenues or risk requiring a bailout of nearly $50 billion by 2017.

So, as Reuters reports, under a cost-saving plan by the U.S. Postal Service, millions of Americans accustomed to getting their mail delivered to their doors will have to trek to the curb and residents of new homes will use neighborhood mailbox clusters, the agency said.

The Postal Service has been quietly phasing in the change with some aspects starting in April, and it has given no timeline for the shift. It’s unclear if delivery to the door will be eliminated entirely.

 

“Converting delivery away from door delivery to either curb line or centralized delivery would enable the Postal Service to provide service to more customers in less time,” Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan said.

 

More than 30 million American homes get door-to-door delivery and another 50 million get their mail dropped at their curbside mailboxes.

 

But the Post Service, which is buckling under massive financial losses, sees savings in centralized mail delivery. Door-to-door delivery costs the Postal Service about $353 per address each year.

 

Curbside delivery costs $224, and cluster boxes cost $160 per address. With cluster boxes, mailboxes for individual addresses are grouped together at a central neighborhood location.

 

The move is one of many controversial cost-cutting steps the Postal Service is trying as it continues to plead with Congress for permission to overhaul its business and avert a bailout.

Not everyone is sure this is good idea…

Some in the mailing community such as the Greeting Card Association support a switch to a cluster box system.

 

But others such as the National Association of Letter Carriers and the American Postal Workers Union oppose it.

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Via Avax News,

Venezuela's economic crisis has led to some shocking and surreal price distortions that hit people's buying power dramatically. While the government of President Nicolas Maduro calls the country's minimum wage of Bs. 4,252 the highest in the region when converted to $675 using the official exchange rate, the galloping black market for currency considers it as just $42.50 when converted at the street rate of Bs. 100 per US dollar, the rate which many importers and retail outlets must use to acquire hard currency. Venezuela's annual inflation rate of more than 63 percent is the highest in the Americas, according to official statistics.

A box of 36 coloured pencils as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $115 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 725 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014.  (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A Goodyear brand automobile tyre as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $753 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 4,750 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

An aluminium pressure cooker as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $507 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 3,200 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A five-gallon bucket of house paint as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $528 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 3,329 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A can of Coca-Cola as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $5.56 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 35 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A pair of Stanley brand household pliers as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $121 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 765 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A Samsung 32" plasma TV as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $5,476 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 34,500 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A kilogram (2.2 lbs) of raw carrots as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $19.05 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 120 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

An Adidas Adipure Crazy running shoe as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $1,198 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 7,547 (bolivars) a pair of them costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A Big Mac as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $14.60 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 92 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A locally produced bath towel as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $136 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 859 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A hair dryer as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $697 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 4,392 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A Barbie doll as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $194 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 1,226 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A household broom as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $24.60 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 155 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A 50 lb. (22.7 kg) bag of Purina Dog Chow as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $272 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 1,716 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

 

A 75-watt incandescent light bulb as photographed in a studio with an illustrative price tag of $13.51 (US dollars), equivalent to the Bs. 85.12 (bolivars) that it costs on average to purchase in Caracas at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars per dollar, in Caracas September 29, 2014. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

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Coming to America near you sooner than you think…as we noted previously, "the road to poverty is paved with small inflations."

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