Tag: news

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com,

One of the most dangerous philosophical contentions even amongst liberty movement activists is the conundrum of government force and prevention during times of imminent pandemic. All of us at one time or another have had this debate. If a legitimate viral threat existed and threatened to infect and kill millions of Americans, is it then acceptable for the government to step in, remove civil liberties, enforce quarantines, and stop people from spreading the disease? After all, during a viral event, the decisions of each individual can truly have a positive or negative effect on the rest of society, right? One out of control (or “lone wolf”) citizen/terrorist could reignite a biological firestorm, so, should we not turn to government and forgo certain freedoms in order to achieve the greater good for the greater number?

If the government in question was a proven and honorable institution, then I would say pro-Medical Martial Law arguments might have a leg to stand on. However, this is not the case. In my view, medical martial law is absolutely unacceptable under ANY circumstances, including Ebola, in light of the fact that our current government will be the predominant cause of viral outbreak. That is to say, you DO NOT turn to the government for help when the government is the cause of the problem.

The recent rise of global Ebola is slowly bringing the issue of medical martial law to the forefront of our culture. Charles Krauthammer at The Washington Post recently argued in favor of possible restrictions on individual and Constitutional liberties in the face of a viral pandemic threat.

The CDC now argues that in the case of people who may be potential carriers, or even in the case of people who refuse to undergo screenings, it has the legal authority to dissolve all constitutional protections and essentially imprison (quarantine) an American citizen for as long as they see fit to do so.

The Obama Administration is now using militant terminology in reference to Ebola response, including the formation of “Ebola SWAT Teams” for quick reaction to potential outbreak areas.

In typical socialist fashion, the nurses union 'National Nurses United' has called for Barack Obama to use “executive authority” to take control of all Ebola response protocols in hospitals across the country. Yet another perpetuation of the myth that more government power is the solution.

And finally, the Department of Defense has been tasked to create a military controlled “quick-strike team” to deal with Ebola within U.S. borders. This team will be under the command of none other than Northcom, apparently trampling the Posse Comitatus Act and setting the stage for the rationalized use of military personnel against U.S. citizens under the guise of pandemic prevention.

It should be clear to anyone with half a brain that medical martial law is being quietly prepared, and that the threat of such measures is not a paranoid conspiracy, but a very real possibility. It should also be noted that such provisions are not only the products of the Obama Administration. It was George W. Bush who first created laws intersecting with the World Health Organization's pandemic preparedness planning. These laws include the “overrule of existing legislation or (individual) human rights” in order to quell a viral outbreak, and were originally drafted around the potential of an influenza crisis.

It is this kind of executive overreach that has set precedence for states such as Connecticut to announce a tentative state of emergency with medical martial law restrictions.

I discussed in great detail why Ebola works in favor of establishment elites in my article 'An Ebola Outbreak Would Be Advantageous For Globalists'.

Understand that bureaucrats will come to you with promises of offering a helping hand, hoping that you are afraid enough to accept, but their intentions will not be compassionate. Rather, their intent will be to assert as much dominance over the public as possible during the chaos, and to erase any conception the people may have had in the past that they have inalienable rights.

But going beyond the hidden motives of tyrants, I think it is important to point out that the Center for Disease Control and the federal government in general has already lost all credibility in dealing with Ebola, and therefore, it has lost any authority it may have had in administrating a future response.

Ebola has been officially known to the CDC for over thirty years. Why has the CDC refused for three decades to produce proper care guidelines for hospitals? Medical staff in the U.S. didn't even receive guidelines when the outbreak in Western Africa was obviously progressing out of control.

Why did the CDC leave Thomas Duncan, the very first U.S. Ebola case, in the hands of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, without proper procedures in place to prevent further infection, and without a CDC team present? The CDC has an annual budget of nearly $7 billion. Where is all of this money going if not to stamp out such threats as Ebola?

The argument presented by the White House, the CDC, and even the World Bank, has been that stopping direct or indirect travel from nations with an Ebola outbreak would be “impractical”, and that such travel bans would somehow “make matters worse”. They have yet to produce a logical explanation as to how this makes sense, but what if we did not need to institute a travel ban? The CDC, with it's massive budget, could easily establish quarantine measures in infected countries. Anyone wishing to travel outside of these nations would be welcome to do so, as long as they voluntarily participate in quarantine procedures for a set number of days. No quarantine, no plane ticket. Where has the CDC response been in Western Africa?

Why not use minor and measured travel restriction in Africa today, instead of using unprecedented martial law in America tomorrow? It makes no sense, unless, of course, the plan is to allow Ebola to spread…

Why has the White House nominated Ron Klain, a man who knows absolutely NOTHING about Ebola or medical emergency strategies, as the new “Ebola Czar”?

Why has all discussion on Ebola prevention revolved around government measures rather than community measures?  Why has all talk centered on what the government will do AFTER an outbreak occurs, rather than on what can be done to prevent an outbreak in the first place?

The reality is that the federal government does not have any treatments for Ebola that are outside of the knowledge and capabilities of the average medically trained citizen. Meaning, the government and the CDC are NOT needed for a community to handle an Ebola outbreak, if that community is given proper guidelines and strategies in advance. Treatment for Ebola, at least in first world nations, consists primarily of regimented transfusions. These transfusions are a mixture of isotonic saline, electrolytes, and plasma, designed to keep the body supported until it's immune system can build up a proper defense to the virus. Natural and homeopathic methods can also boost immune system functions making the body resistant to the virus before it is ever contracted. The most effective of all treatments appears to be the transfusion of blood from a recovering patient with anti-bodies into a newly sick patient. This is likely the reason for the quick recovery of infected doctors like Kent Brantly.

The CDC would never be able to coherently organize a large scale program of transfusion initiatives, even if it wanted to. Most hospitals around the country have no isolation wards able to handle even a minor Ebola outbreak. The hospitals that do have facilities are limited to less than a dozen beds. According to the medical workers I have spoken with, most hospitals require a minimum of around 50 health professionals to deal with a single Ebola patient.  In the event of an outbreak larger than a few people per state, the CDC and local hospitals are simply not equipped to react to the problem.  Blood transfusions from recovering donors would be few and far between, unless organized by local citizens working under their own directives.

Ironically, it was the Bush Administration's own report in 2006 on the possibility of bird flu pandemic that admitted the government is completely unequipped to handle an outbreak of moderate size. The report stated that “all sources of external aid may be compromised during a pandemic,” and that "local communities will have to address the medical and non-medical effects of the pandemic with available resources." Little has changed in the federal government's pandemic preparations since the report was written.

This leaves individual communities to either prepare for the worst, or die off while waiting for the government to save them. Self isolation and self treatment are the only practical options.

The greatest danger to American citizens is, in fact, not the Ebola virus, but government reactions to the Ebola virus. Already, several medical outfits around the world are suddenly interested in producing an Ebola vaccination when no one seemed very interested before. This might sound like good news, until you learn the terrible history of modern vaccinations.

Pharmaceutical company Merck was caught red handed faking vaccine efficacy data. Merck's Gardisil was found to contain DNA fragments of human papillomavirus.

Glaxosmithkline, a major vaccine producer, has been caught repeatedly attempting to bribe doctors and health professionals into promoting their products or outright lying about their effectiveness. Glaxo was caught producing rotavirus vaccinations tainted with a swine virus in 2010. Glaxo has been caught producing vaccines tainted with bacteria and endotoxins.

It is important to point out that Glaxo is also spearheading an Ebola vaccine initiative.

U.S. company Baxter produced a flu vaccination in Austria tainted with both avian flu and swine flu. The mixture just happened to be randomly tested on a group of ferrets by a lab in the Czech Republic. The test animals died. The exposure of this “mix up” was quietly swept under the rug by Baxter and the mainstream media, but reports indicate that if the vaccine had been used on the general population, a terrible pandemic would have erupted.

Beyond the fact that vaccinations have a tendency to cripple our natural immune system and infect patients with the very disease they are meant to prevent, none of these existing companies can be trusted to produce a vaccine that is safe even by traditional pharmaceutical standards (which are very low). If the CDC and the federal government trigger a medical martial law scenario, they will most likely include forced vaccination of the population to maintain “herd immunity”. The bottom line? The use of such vaccines will be a death sentence for many, a death more certain than the contraction of Ebola. In my opinion, Ebola vaccination should be avoided at all costs by the American populace.

I can think of no rationale for government involvement in the treatment of an Ebola outbreak. If it is not pure incompetence on their part that has exacerbated the threat, then even worse, it is a deliberate program of genocide. In either case, no military or CDC “strike teams” should be allowed free reign in our neighborhoods, towns, counties, or states. DHS and FEMA Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) are also a no go, given FEMA's track record of dismal disaster response. They CANNOT be allowed to take control of our communities.

The only way for Americans to survive such an event is to cut out government entirely and establish their own medical strategies, as organizations like the Oath Keepers Community Preparedness Teams (CPT) are doing.

If someone wants to voluntarily go to the CDC or FEMA for assistance, then they should be allowed to take that risk. However, medical martial law over all of us in the name of the “greater good” should not be tolerated. The government has proven beyond a doubt that it is not qualified to handle a viral crisis scenario, let alone determine what the “greater good” actually is. I can't speak for the whole of the Liberty Movement, but as for myself, if a group of hazmat suited thugs decides to chase me down with a syringe, I am relatively certain none of them will live through the encounter.

Will I be accused of aiding the spread of Ebola because of my non-compliance? Of course. Do I care? Not so much. Each individual American will have to make their own decision on this matter in due course. Is it better to conform and risk annihilation at the hands of an ignorant and/or corrupt government, or, to fight back and be labeled a bio-terrorist? With the clear lack of tangible government preventions for outbreak in the U.S., you'll probably get your chance to find out soon enough.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1wic3uF Tyler Durden

Excerpted from Hoisington Investment Management’s Quarterly Outlook,

via Van Hoisington and Lacy Hunt:

The U.S. economy continues to lose momentum despite the Federal Reserve’s use of conventional techniques and numerous experimental measures to spur growth. In the first half of the year, real GDP grew at only a 1.2% annual rate while real per capita GDP increased by a minimal 0.3% annual rate. Such increases are insufficient to raise the standard of living, which, as measured by real median household income, stands at the same level as it did seventeen years ago.

…

Asset Bubbles

Historically, in our judgment, the most important authority on the subject of asset bubbles was the late MIT professor Charles Kindleberger, author of 20 books including the one of the greatest books on capital markets Manias, Panics and Crashes (1978). He found that asset price bubbles depend on the growth of credit. Atif Mian (Princeton) and Amir Sufi (University of Chicago) provided confirmation for Kindleberger’s pioneering work and expanded on it in their 2014 book House of Debt. Chapter 8, entitled “Debt and Bubbles,” contains the heart of their insights. Mian and Sufi demonstrate that increasing the flow of credit is extremely counterproductive when the fundamental problem is too much debt, and excessive debt can fuel asset bubbles.

Based on our reading of these two books we would define an asset bubble as a rise in prices that is caused by excess central bank liquidity rather than economic fundamentals. As Kindleberger clearly stated, the process of excess liquidity fueling higher prices in the face of faltering fundamentals can run for a long time, a phase Kindleberger called “overtrading”. But eventually, this gives way to “discredit”, when the discerning few see the discrepancy between prices and fundamentals. Eventually, discredit yields to “revulsion”, when the crowd understands the imbalance, and markets correct.

Economists have commented on the high correlation between the S&P 500 and the Fed’s balance sheet since 2009. From 2009 to the latest available month, the monetary base (MB) surged from $1.7 trillion to $4.1 trillion. We ran the MB increase against the S&P 500 and found a very high correlation of 0.69. While correlation does not prove causality, the high correlation is certainly not inconsistent with the idea that the Fed liquidity played a major role in boosting stock prices. However, even as the MB has exploded since 2009 and stock prices have soared, the U.S. economy has experienced the worst economic expansion on record. In spite of a further large rise in the base this year, the GDP growth has subsided noticeably and corporate profits after taxes and adjusted for inventory gains/losses (IVA) and over/under depreciation (CCA) has declined 10% in the latest four quarters. Such discrepancy between the liquidity implied by the base and measures of economic performance could indicate the process of bubble formation. Kindleberger’s axiom that asset price bubbles depend on excess liquidity may yet face another test.

Still Bullish on Treasury Bonds

With the nominal growth trajectory extremely soft, U.S. Treasury bond yields are likely to continue working lower as similar circumstances have created declines in government bond yields in Europe and Japan. Viewing the yields overseas, it is evident that ample downside still exists for long U.S. Treasury bond yields, as the higher U.S. yields offer global investors an incentive to continue to move funds into the United States.

Another factor suggesting lower longterm U.S. Treasury yields is the strength of the U.S. dollar. In many industries, the price leader for certain goods in the U.S. is a foreign producer. A rising dollar leads to what economists sometimes call the “collapsing umbrella”. As the dollar lifts, the foreign producer cuts U.S. selling prices, forcing domestic producers to match the lower prices. This reinforces the prospect for lower inflation as nominal GDP wanes. This creates a favorable environment for falling U.S. Treasury bond yields.

Full letter below:

Van Hoisington Q3

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1sf6VzD Tyler Durden

With today’s exuberance around earnings (notably forgetting the reality of various bellwether fails), we thought it appropriate to get some context on just what the “market stalwarts'” results look like in context.

A third of the companies in the Dow have posted shrinking or flat revenue over the past 12 months, as WSJ notes,

“steady has become stagnant as companies once considered among the market’s most reliable post poor growth, quarter after woeful quarter.“

Source: WSJ

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Submitted by Alisdair Mcleod via Peak Prosperity,

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As Brookings notes, “overall the economic devastation would be difficult to exaggerate,” with regard the shift from print to online journalism – as the following chart sums up in all its devastating reality… it’s a new world.

“…putting newspapers online has not remotely restored their profitability…”

“Now, however, in the first years of the 21st century, accelerating technological transformation has undermined the business models that kept American news media afloat, raising the possibility that the great institutions on which we have depended for news of the world around us may not survive.”

Source: Brookings

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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/12lOnc7 williambanzai7

Albert Edwards is angry, and understandably so: almost exactly two weeks after warning readers to “sell everything and run for your lives” and the market was on the verge of its first correction in years, several powerful verbal interventions by central banks from the Fed, to the BOJ to the ECB have staged yet another massive rebound which has nearly wiped out all the October losses.

Central-planning aside (and ask how much the USSR would have wished for central planning to indeed have been “aside”) we share his frustrations, almost to the point where we would reiterate word for word Edwards’ furious outburst, as follows: “Simply put, the central banks for all their huffing and puffing cannot eliminate the business cycle. And they should have realised after the 2008 Great Recession that the longer they suppress volatility, both economic and market, the greater the subsequent crash. Will these morons ever learn?“

Obviously, they will never will because their very entire existence is based on the assumption that what they do can impact the business cycle when all it does is merely delay the inevitable. In this case, a recession whose arrival will be so violent, it will crush not only US stocks, but the overall economy, which has for the past 6 years existed purely on the Fed’s CTRL-P fumes. Fumes, which by the looks of things, will evaporate at just the worst possible moment: just when half of the world’s entire growth in 2015 is expected to come from the US (the other half from China).

So what is it that has peeved Edwards so much about the latest mispricing of, well, everything by the Mandarins of Marriner Eccles:

The bottom line is that there is far too much over-confidence in the US recovery. Fragile and vulnerable in itself, the US recovery now battles against the rest of the world, which like a horror movie is dragging it down into a hellish Ice Age underworld. The problem is that at, these stratospheric valuations, the market does not need to suffer an ACTUAL recession to see a crash. Like October 1987, just the fear of recession will be enough to trigger a massive market move.

Specifically, Edwards looks at implied inflation expectations – remember, this is critical for a recovery in a Keynesian context – and finds none.

The problem is that most risk assets, and especially equities and corporate bonds, are very expensive and priced for a long cycle. Meanwhile, this recovery has failed to generate any cyclical upward pressure to inflation – indeed quite the reverse. The global economy resembles a knackered old V8 engine which is now only firing on one cylinder (US). Hence, any data suggesting that the US economy is now also flagging were always likely to cause a meltdown as investors feared the imminent arrival of Japanese-style outright deflation. We note with interest that US 5-year inflation expectations in 5 years’ time have not fallen anything like as quickly as 5y expectations (see chart below). This suggests to me a continued misplaced market (over)-confidence about central banks’ ability to control events

 

Sure enough, the events from last week showed just how fast and how violent such a move would be, at least until the central bankers stepped in once again, and with chatter of QE4, made sure bad news if good news again, if only for a few weeks. However, with just one more POMO left, if only in theory, the fears of how the global economy will fare without the Fed’s monetary tailwind propping up everything are going to resurface very fast.

And it is not just the US where the market is underpricing risk. Look at the chart at the top: that’s right, the other place where Edwards is focusing on is China itself.

Two key items of Chinese data seem to have escaped close investor attention over the past week – maybe because of the flash crash. While I mentioned last Wednesday, what really surprised me that day was not the reaction in the wake of the US retail sales, but the fact that there was no reaction to the overnight news that China’s CPI inflation had slid to only 1.6% in September from 2% – I expected that to trigger a strong US Treasury rally in the European morning. Anyway, we have long warned that CPI inflation would gravitate downwards towards the GDP deflator, and that is indeed what is happening. Along with the 7.3% Q3 GDP data, the GDP deflator was also released showing economy-wide inflation is only around the 1% mark. Clearly, China too remains at a deflationary  precipice.

 

Source: Datastream

Finally, I was also surprised to see that the $100bn decline in China’s Q3 FX reserves, the largest quarterly fall ever, drew limited comment. As I have explained, this reflects deterioration in Chinese competitiveness from its excessively strong real exchange rate and a deteriorating of its balance of payments. If we have been warning that slower growth in FX reserves represents monetary tightening, then a decline of this order of magnitude is like a credit crunch! These data will ultimately prove to be more important than last Wednesday’s US retail sales. As I said two weeks ago “sell everything and run for your lives”.

 

So if Edwards is right, and the only two sources of growth in 2015 are taken out of the picture, watch how from 4% growth in 2014 the world grinds to an economic halt in the coming year. Which of course, would mean a global recession, if not worse, and this time not all the snows in Antarctica will save the narrative.

The only question is Edwards will be right this time, or if the “morons” will once again have the last laugh?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1whra7o Tyler Durden

Now you can substantiate to today’s generation why that ’60s and ’70s era’s music was objectively “better,” as JPMorgan’s CIO Michael Cembalest has previously noted, and furthermore, researchers also found that popular music has gotten a lot louder (as SAT scores have plunged.. hhmm?) However, as Consequence of Sound notes, a software application writer by the name of Virgil Griffith has charted musical tastes based on the average SAT scores of various college institutions… and the results are.. interesting. Bob Dylan, The Shins, Radiohead, and Counting Crows are the favorite bands of smart people. Meanwhile, Lil Wayne, Beyoncé, The Used, and gospel music comes in at the lower end of the spectrum — or, as Griffith puts it, is music for dumb people.

Via Consequence of Sound blog,

Among other interesting revelations from the Griffith’s chart: Smart people prefer John Mayer over Pink Floyd; rock titans like Tool, System of a Down, and Pearl Jam fall right in the middle — so, music for average people?; and people still listen to Switchfoot.

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Of course, correlation is not causation but…

As JPMorgan’s Michael Cembalest has previously noted, there has been a “progressive homogenization of the musical discourse”, a process which has resulted in music becoming blander and louder.

Bring those classic rock and R&B playlists back

 

Now you can substantiate to today’s generation why that era’s music was objectively “better”.

 

The Million Song Dataset is a database of western popular music produced from 1955 to 2010. As described in Scientific Reports (affiliated with the publication Scientific American), researchers developed algorithms to see what has changed over time, focusing on three variables: timbre, pitch and loudness. Timbre is a proxy for texture and tone quality, terms which reflect the variety and richness of a given sound. Higher levels of timbre most often result from diverse instrumentation (more than one instrument playing the same note). Pitch refers to the tonal structure of a song: how the chords progress, and the diversity of transitions between chords. Since the 1960’s, timbral variety has been steadily declining, and chord transitions have become narrower and more predictable.

The researchers also found that popular music has gotten a lot louder. The median recorded loudness value of songs by year is shown in the second chart. One illustrative example: in 2008, Metallica fans complained that the Guitar Hero version of its recent album sounded better than it did on CD. As reported in Rolling Stone, the CD version was re-mastered at too high a decibel level, part of the Loudness Wars affecting popular music.

 

Overall, the researchers concluded that there has been a “progressive homogenization of the musical discourse”, a process which has resulted in music becoming blander and louder. This might seem like a reactionary point of view for an adult to write, but the data does seem to back me up on this. All of that being said, I do like that Method Man-Mary J. Blige duet.

*  *  *

So now you know…

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Short of China converting to a democracy tomorrow and the European Union becoming the giant that every backpacking teenager wished it could be, the US will remain the currency of choice for Oil, gold, and any other commodity, raw material, and energy available on this pseudo green earth.  Yes, aliens descending from MARS with technologies into the next millennium may make this a less compelling argument.  For the time being, the bet is on the USD.  

Take Japan for instance.  In the early nineties numerous economists and analysts were suggesting the Yen will become the currency of choice after the Japanese binge of US assets in the late eighties and early nineties.  The USD was on the “outs”.  History proved this notion wrong. Not only did Japan not become the currency of choice, but the Yen became the center of what was commonly referred to as the carry trade of choice.  The Japanese economy is only now hinting at an exit of the stagflation that took place during the 1990’s and 2000’s.   

We know what is happening in Europe.  Does the global economic power really want a currency that is mired in incongruous and possibly debilitating political strife, inefficient diplomacy, lack of sufficient job creation, to be the backing of all materials that contribute to global production and growth?  For the time being, NO.

On to China. Yes, the Chinese have grown by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years.  A little known fact, in the year 496 was China had 50% of global GDP.  The Chinese have already surpassed Japan to be the 2nd largest economy.  Even with “slower growth”, 7.3% growth per annum is nothing to gloss over. The problem with China, as every analyst, central banker, and hedge fund manager has commented is the reluctance of the Chinese government to reduce controls of the Yuan. 

The reason for the control of the currency is the fact that China is a communist regime with capitalist tendencies.  What is the probability that China will see the Western Light and convert to a capitalist democracy?  Clearly, quite low.  Does the G20 feel comfortable in readjusting the entire macro-economic mechanism to step away from the USD as a primary currency?  You know the answer to this answer as well as I do.

Given crisis and after crisis, through crashes and market exuberance, the USD and the US treasury market has been the bastion of “perceived” security and caution.  Grounded with the strength of an economy and a political system that by-in-large is able to sustain itself from little geo-political interventions.  What other country and currency is able to offer a bit of security and comfort in a world of contortion, confusion, and malfeasance? Yes.  That’s right. As I write this, we are getting word of a possible EBLOA case in NYC. So I am keeping my fingers crossed.  

I challenge the central banker, manager, trader, and investors to manufacture and financially engineer a safer and better alternative to the USD.

E Pluribus Unum

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