Tag: news

Despite the recent bout of price weakness, gold American eagle coin sales from the U.S. Mint have picked up significantly from last month.

The latest bullion coin sales figures from the U.S. Mint show a tentative pickup and robust retail bullion demand, with September sales stronger for both the  American Eagle and American Buffalo gold coins as well as for the American Eagle silver 1oz coins.

U.S. Mint Gold Buffalo Bullion Coin (1 oz)

Month-to-date for September, gold Eagle sales across all coin sizes have already reached 43,200 oz compared to total gold Eagle sales of 25,000 oz in August. This is also well ahead of September 2013, when total gold Eagle sales for the month only touched 13,000 oz.

Year-to-date American Eagle sales have now reached 364,200 oz.

Gold American Buffalo 1 oz sales so far this month have reached 10,500 oz, up from 8,000 oz in August, and 5,500 oz in July. With a strong first quarter, year-to-date American Buffalo sales are now running at a cumulative 135,500 oz for 2014. 

Taken together, U.S.  Mint gold Eagle and Buffalo sales for 2014 have now reached 500,000 troy oz, or 15.5 tonnes.

While this gold total falls short of the 1.1 million ozs of gold coins sold by the US Mint in 2013, if Q4 of 2014 continues the trend seen in Q3, then total gold sales by the Mint could reach just shy of 700,000 oz for all of 2014, which demonstrates an element of resilience in the face of the ongoing gold price weakness. 

 

U.S. Mint Silver Eagle (1 oz)

Silver American Eagle 1 oz sales are also stronger for the month-to-date, at 2.42 million ozs compared to 2.0075 million ozs for the full month of August. 

While these monthly totals are weaker than the monthly sales in August and September 2013, which came in at 3.625 million ozs and 3.103 million ozs respectively, the year-to-date silver total for 2014 is running at a relatively strong 30.53 million ozs, and if the trend continues, silver sales may finish 2014 in the region of 40 million ozs which compares well with the 2013 silver sales total of 42.675 million ozs. This is because although 2013 silver sales has a very strong start compared to 2014, this year has seen relatively strong sales across most months. 

The U.S. Mint is unusual in that its gold and bullion coin sales figures are updated very frequently and, as far as possible, the figures include sales activity in the most recent week or previous week.

Working stock of gold bars in the United States Mint Facility in West Point, New York – Bloomberg

Other government mints such as the Royal Canadian Mint and the Royal Mint in Britain do not have such real time bullion sales reporting. Publically available bullion coin sales data from these institutions has to be sourced from their quarterly, half yearly and annual report updates. 

However, in Australia, the Perth Mint does release monthly data on gold and silver coin and bar sales with a one month lag. Data for August shows gold sales stronger at 36,369 ozs compared to 25,103 ozs in July, with silver sales also up strongly at 818,856 ozs compared to 577,988 ozs in July. 

Overall, the U.S. Mint bullion sales figures, due to their real-time nature, are used extensively in the industry as a proxy for retail gold and silver investor sentiment, and are even included in a number of well known bullion bank commodity and precious metals research reports.

While extrapolating the U.S. Mint figures to other Mint bullion sales requires caution, the sales trends of the U.S. Mint tend to be confirmed when quarterly data from the Mint’s main competitors is put into the public domain. 

By Ronan Manly, edited by Mark O’Byrne

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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1v9UF89 GoldCore

by Keith Weiner

 

The European Central Bank again cut the interest rates it controls. Notably, the deposit rate was moved deeper into negative territory. It is now -0.2% (minus 20 basis points, that is not a typo). The ECB says it’s trying to nudge prices higher, but it’s actually feeding the cancer of falling interest.

The linked article above, like most, is focused on the quantity of euros and the presumed direct relationship to price. The following bit of editorializing from that article is uncontroversial in Frankfurt, London, New York, Mumbai, or Shanghai.

“Inflation weakened to a five-year low in August, just 0.3% in annual terms. That is far below the ECB’s target of a little under 2% over the medium term, raising fears that the region could face a debilitating stretch of weak or falling prices that hampers debt-financing and investment. Those fears intensified as market-based measures of inflation expectations weakened, too.”

Every assumption in this short paragraph is wrong. One, inflation should not be conceived as rising prices. There are many reasons for prices to rise or fall that have nothing to do with the currency. For example, every business is constantly working to cut costs. Without monetary debasement, and a steady stream of onerous new regulations, prices would be falling.

Two, inflation is monetary counterfeiting. Inflation is the fraud of selling a bond into the market, when the debtor lacks the means or intent to repay. The deadly danger is that it seems good to creditors who buy it, often using leverage. Eventually, every fraudulent debt will default.

Three, central banks keep trying to engineer rising prices, in the name of some sort of good, like Stalin and his Five Year Plans. The economic theory that demands this is frivolous at best. There is no there, there. This does not stop the central planners from trying their worst anyway.

Four, it should be obvious by now that central banks do not have control over prices. If they did, we would not still be struggling with prices that stubbornly refuse to rise. How many times has the ECB tried to get prices to rise since the last acute phase of the monetary crisis?

Five, falling prices do not hamper financing or investment. Look at the massive investment in first electronics, then computers, then computer networking, and most recently communications. Prices have been falling, for a long time and by a large amount even in nominal dollars.

Finally, we must distinguish between the prices of consumer goods and the prices of assets that are bought with leverage. The latter is a threat to those who borrow short-term to finance long-term assets. For example, when a real estate developer sells 3-year bonds to buy a large commercial building. Since the developer can’t amortize the debt in three years, it will roll its liabilities—sell new bonds to pay off the old ones. This is a form of counterfeit credit. One way to get in trouble is if the market value of the property falls. Then the bonds cannot be rolled.

These are some of the errors in the conventional, quantity analysis approach. It’s the wrong approach, though it seems intuitive. Suppose we think about wheat. We consider if we had ten huge bags of grain how would we feel if a truck pulled up to attempt to deliver the 11^th. Or if we had a basement full of copper bars and contemplated buying more. No one wants to bury himself under a hoard of useless stuff.

Money is not like any commodity. No matter how much money we have, the thought of receiving a big check in the mail is exciting. We don’t think we have too much money already. Even the most die-hard gold bug, is eager to sell you his newsletter in exchange for dollars. No one rolls his eyes or sighs at the prospect of making more money.

We cannot assume that a rise in the money supply translates into a rise in prices. It might or might not. However, there is a danger in focusing too much on prices, and missing the terminal monetary problem. Imagine a doctor obsessing over a patient’s body temperature. He could easily miss the signs of cancer.

I saw a different approach in an article this week. The author suggests that rates on government bonds are now negative, because investors trust they will get their money back. Presumably, this school of thought regards the US government as less trustworthy because the Treasury bond pays a higher yield. This approach is also wrong.

Let’s take a look at the yield curve in Germany.

There is a reason why the yield on government bonds in Europe is falling to zero and below. Banks have a choice to hold cash or government bonds, with the main factor being liquidity. However, when the ECB lowers the deposit rate for bank cash to below zero, this changes the incentive. The lower the yield on cash, the more the banks will tend to prefer bonds.

I am no European political expert, but perhaps this is the intent of the ECB. Perhaps they would simply like to buy more government bonds, but cannot or dare not due to treaty, law, or politics. But they clearly have the power to create incentives for banks to do it.

The right approach to understanding what’s happening in the euro begins with the observation that a paper currency like the euro is a closed loop system. You may think that you can protest a negative interest rate by getting out of the currency. For example, you can buy antique Ferraris, paintings, real estate, stocks, a foreign currency, or even gold. This may protect you personally, but it does not alter the trajectory of the interest rate.

The former owner of the asset is now the owner of those euros. What will he do with them? Deposit them in a bank. What will the bank do? Buy a bond. At one time, all roads led to Rome. Today, all monetary roads lead to the government bond that backs the currency.

We are all disenfranchised by the regime of irredeemable money. The central bank may have some control. Or, as I argue in my theory of interest and prices, they have little control but set up a positive feedback loop that drives interest to zero. However, the people have no control. The rate has been falling for decades, pushed down by massive forces beyond even the control of central banks. The price of the bond, and hence the interest rate, is set free from constraint.

Consider for a moment, the price of wheat. If the price falls below the cost of growing, then farmers stop planting it. Alternatively, if the price rises above that of other starches, then manufacturers will stop buying wheat. The cost of wheat and every other real thing is dependent on the price of oil, machinery, labor, and many other inputs, it is tied to everything else in the economy.

By contrast, the bond price in a paper currency is not tied to anything. It could collapse and give us an interest rate of 17%. Or it could have a 33-year bull market, and give us an interest rate below 1% (the bond price is inverse to the yield). The rate can keep falling.

There is a cancer metastasizing in the body economic. Zero interest is creeping out from the short-term credit facilities provided by central banks. In Germany, it is now out to the 4 year bonds. Zero interest on overnight deposits is like gangrene in your fingernail. When it hits the 1-year bond, it is spreading to your whole finger. The 2-year bond is like the lower part of the hand. The German 3-year bund now has a negative yield. The all but zero-yield on the 4-year bond is like rot moving up towards your elbow.

What will they do when necrosis spreads up to the shoulder and beyond?

We need a new concept to understand the nature of the problem. The bur
den of debt is
a measure of the pressure on debtors. The net present value of a stream of future payments depends on the interest rate. This is not just the interest rate at the time the asset was purchased. The present value should be recalculated whenever the interest rate changes. Each time the interest rate falls the net present value rises.

This seems good for the bond speculator, who gets a capital gain. However, this is a zero sum game. His gain comes at the expense of the bond issuer. The bond issuer feels an increase in his burden of debt as rates fall. With each halving of the rate of interest the burden doubles. Of course, the falling rate is also an incentive to borrow more, because the monthly payment is lower. Debtors owe more euros of debt, and the burden of each euro owed is doubling. Here is a graph of the history of the German 10-year bund, a reasonable way to measure burden of debt.

In June of 2008, the 10-year bund yielded 4.5%. This is labeled point 1. By August of 2010, point 2, the rate was cut in half to 2.25%. The burden of every debt in Germany—and arguably Europe—doubled. In July of this year, it was lopped in half again to just about 1.13%, at point 3. Now it is 0.94 and well on its way to the next milestone of 0.56%. Not coincidentally, Japan is already there.

This burden of debt is one of the most important concepts, because the entire basis of the system is debt. One man’s debt is another’s asset. The ultimate asset is the debt of the government. If debtors begin to default in earnest and if one default causes others in a cascade, then the system can collapse like dominoes.

The analogy of dominoes is apt because creditors are themselves debtors. They are typically leveraged, so a small loss can cause insolvency.

The financial system must collapse—necessarily so—when the interest on the long bond hits zero. Debtors cannot hold up an infinite burden of debt, and that is what a zero long-term rate means.

Consumer prices in Europe may continue to eke out small gains, especially as the carry trade begins to press down the value of the euro compared to the dollar. Or prices may begin to fall, perhaps slowly.

Either way, who cares? The patient’s arm is turning black.

 

The Gold Standard Institute Presents The Gold Standard: Both Good and Necessary, in Manhattan on Nov 1. You are cordially invited to join us for a discussion of ideas you won’t get anywhere else. The gold standard is the monetary system of the free market—of capitalism. Dr. Andy Bernstein, a rock star of the liberty movement, shows why capitalism is good. In my talk, I explain why capitalism is impossible with fiat money, and why we have not recovered from 2008, and we won’t without gold.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/XZS7xe Gold Standard Institute

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

In an apparent attempt to advise investors on how they can take advantage of America’s transformation into a neo-feudal oligarchy in a 50-page research report, Morgan Stanley has put together some very interesting charts.. We will be sharing many of them in the next few days but none is more telling and depressing than the one that shows how the U.S. leads the developed world in the share of low wage jobs…

 

 

Of course, this shouldn’t come as any surprise to readers. I have covered the death of America’s middle-class for many years now, most notably in the post from last summer: How Does America’s Middle Class Rank Globally? #27.

As the middle-class has been destroyed, and the poor placated temporarily by various government benefits, the oligarchy has had free reign to thieve and expand its wealth at a dizzying pace. The Federal Reserve fueled stock market has been a key tool in the process of keeping the 1% silent, as the chart below demonstrates:

 

While I can’t say the above is surprising, it certainly seems to confirm my prior contention that the stock market is merely: Food Stamps for the 1%.

U.S. policy is all about keeping the 99.9% quiet and distracted, while the oligarchs strip-mine the nation. Unfortunately, that strategy is working... for now!

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Ce0O6r Tyler Durden

“We’re suffering from central-bank-induced bipolar disease, bouncing from joy to despair number by number,” notes Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow.

“We certainly have aspirations of better growth, higher inflation and a road map,” but he adds, this is simply “another way of saying we’re completely data-dependent.”

As Eric Green at TD wrote, that explains why yields are more correlated to data surprises than at any point this year.  

You could see it as numbers came out last night that were statistically inside projections, and markets responded exactly as you’d expect.

And then there is Bill Dudley, who made it quite clear yesterday you shouldn’t put too much weight on the dots, that economic projections are guesses by nature.

*  *  *
So “good news is bad news, bad news is good news,” for the foreseeable future; and The Fed is entirely making it up as they go along now, having exposed to the world the reality that QE does nothing for the real economy.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1mNUYW1 Tyler Durden

“We’re suffering from central-bank-induced bipolar disease, bouncing from joy to despair number by number,” notes Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow.

“We certainly have aspirations of better growth, higher inflation and a road map,” but he adds, this is simply “another way of saying we’re completely data-dependent.”

As Eric Green at TD wrote, that explains why yields are more correlated to data surprises than at any point this year.  

You could see it as numbers came out last night that were statistically inside projections, and markets responded exactly as you’d expect.

And then there is Bill Dudley, who made it quite clear yesterday you shouldn’t put too much weight on the dots, that economic projections are guesses by nature.

*  *  *
So “good news is bad news, bad news is good news,” for the foreseeable future; and The Fed is entirely making it up as they go along now, having exposed to the world the reality that QE does nothing for the real economy.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1mNUYW1 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: Bread and Circuses.” – Juvenal – Satire (100 A.D.)

  

Roman satirist and poet Juvenal was displaying contempt for a degraded Roman citizenry that had shunned civic responsibility, shirked their duties of citizenship within a republic, and had chosen to sell their votes to feckless politicians for assurances of bread and circuses. Rather than govern according to noble principles based upon reason, striving for public policies that led to long term sustainability and benefitting the majority of citizens, politicians chose superficial displays and appeasing the masses utilizing the lowest common denominator of "free' food and bountiful spectacles, pageants, and ceremonies in order to retain power.

The Roman Empire’s decline stretched across centuries as the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizenry allowed demagogues to gain power and barbarians to eventually overrun the weakened empire. While the peasants were distracted with shallow exhibitions of palliative pleasures, those in power were debasing the currency, enriching themselves, and living pampered lives of luxury. The Roman leaders bought public approval and support, not through exemplary public service, but through diversion, distraction, and the satisfaction of base immediate needs and desires of the populace. Satisfying the crude motivations of the ignorant peasants (cheap food and entertainment) is how Roman politicians bought votes and retained power. Free wheat, circus games, and feeding Christians to lions kept the commoners from focusing on politicians pillaging and wasting the empire’s wealth.

History may not repeat exactly because technology, resource discoveries, and political dynamics change the nature of society, but it does rhyme because the human foibles of greed, lust for power, arrogance, and desire for conquest do not vary across the ages. The corruption, arrogance, hubris, currency debasement, materialism, imperialism, and civic decay that led to the ultimate downfall of the Roman Empire is being repeated on an even far greater scale today as the American Empire flames out after only two centuries. The pillars of western society are crumbling under the sustained pressure of an immense mountain of debt, created by crooked bankers and utilized by corrupt politicians to sustain and expand their welfare/warfare state. Recklessness, myopia, greed, willful ignorance, and selfish disregard for unborn generations are the earmarks of decline in this modern day empire of debt, delusion and decay.

“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.” – Aldous Huxley – Island

Rome was eight and a half centuries old when Juvenal scornfully described the degenerative spiral of the Roman populace. Still, the Western Empire lasted another three centuries before finally succumbing to the Visigoths and Vandals. The far slower pace of history and lack of other equally matched competing nation states allowed Rome to exist for centuries beyond its Pax Romana period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity, which lasted for two centuries. Prior to becoming an empire, the Roman Republic was a network of towns left to rule themselves with varying degrees of independence from the Roman Senate and provinces administered by military commanders. It was ruled, not by Emperors, but by annually elected magistrates known as Roman Consuls. The Roman citizens were a proud people who had a strong sense of civic duty and made government work for the people.

During the 1^st century B.C. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies and civil wars, while greatly extending their imperial power beyond Italy through military conquest. After the assassination of Julius Caesar and the ascension of Augustus to emperor in 27 BC, after a century of civil wars, Rome experienced an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. During this era, the solidity of the Empire was furthered by a degree of societal stability and economic prosperity. But it didn’t last. The successors to Augustus contributed to the progressive ruination of the empire. The repugnant reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero reflected the true nature of the Roman people, who had relinquished their sovereignty to government administrators to whom they had granted absolute powers, in return for food and entertainment. It was the beginning of the end.

The American Republic began as a loose confederation of states who ruled themselves, with little or no direction from a central authority. The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781 by all 13 States, limited the powers of the central government. The Confederation Congress could make decisions, but lacked enforcement powers. Implementation of most decisions, including modifications to the Articles, required unanimous approval of all thirteen state legislatures. After winning the war for independence from England, the U.S. Constitution, which shifted power to a central authority, was ratified in 1789. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was passed in 1791 with the purpose of protecting individual liberties and insuring justice for all. Their function was to safeguard the citizens from an authoritarian federal government. These imperfect documents would benefit and protect the rights of the American people only if applied by moral, just, incorruptible, noble, honorable leaders and enforced by an educated, concerned, vigilant citizenry.

As with the Roman Empire, the quality of leadership has rapidly deteriorated over the last two centuries and now wallows at disgustingly low levels. These leaders are a reflection of a people who have abandoned their desire for knowledge, responsibility for their lives, work ethic, belief in freedom and the U.S. Constitution. The Juvenal of our times was H.L. Mencken who aptly and scornfully described the citizenry in 1920 as an ignorant mob who would eventually elect a downright moron to the presidency. He was right.

“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the
office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” – H.L. Mencken

A Republic was formed 225 years ago, as opposed to a monarchy, by men of good intentions. They weren’t perfect, but their goals for the new nation were honorable and decent. Ben Franklin had his doubts regarding whether we could keep a republic. He had good reason to doubt the long-term sustainability of this experiment. Freedom is not something bestowed on us by men of higher caste. We are born into this world free, with the liberty to live our lives as we see fit, the opportunity to educate oneself and the freedom to succeed as far as our capabilities and efforts allow. Only a self-reliant, virtuous, moral, civic minded people are capable of enjoying the fruits of freedom. Once corruption, self-interest, greed, and dependency upon government bureaucrats for sustenance become prevalent, the populace seeks masters who promise safety and security in return for sacrificing essential liberty and basic freedoms.

The country has defeated foreign invaders, withstood financial calamities, endured a bloody civil war, benefitted immensely from the discovery of oil under its soil, became an industrial power, fought on the winning side of two world wars, and since 1946 has become the greatest imperial empire since Rome fell to the barbarians. Over the course of our 225 year journey there has been a gradual relinquishment of the citizens’ sovereignty and autonomy to an ever more overbearing central government. Lincoln’s unprecedented expansion of Federal government authority during thwe Civil War marked a turning point, as state and local rights became subservient to an all-powerful central authority. Individual liberty has been surrendered and freedoms forfeited over a decades long insidious regression of a once courageous, independent, self-sufficient citizenry into a mob of cowering, willfully ignorant dependents of the deep state.

From the inception of the country there has been a constant battle between the banking interests and the common people. Bankers have used fraudulent fractional reserve banking to speculate for their own benefit, made risky loans, and created every financial crisis in the country’s history. The profits from excessive risk taking are retained by the bankers. The inevitable losses are borne by taxpayers with the excuse that the financial system must be saved and preserved. The storyline never changes. The beginning of the end of the American Empire can be pinpointed to the year 1913, only 124 years after its inception. Private banking interests captured the monetary system of the empire with the secretive creation of the Federal Reserve. The power of the central state was solidified with the implementation of the personal income tax, allowing politicians to bribe their constituents with modern day “bread and circuses”, paid for with money taken at gunpoint from them by the central state. We are now nothing but the hollowed out shell of a once noble Republic.

A century of central banking and heavy taxation of the people by bought off politician puppets has coincided with a century of war, depressions, currency debasement, overconsumption, obscene levels of consumer debt, trillions of excessive debt financed government spending, hundreds of trillions in unfunded entitlement liabilities, and a persistent decline in standard of living for the masses due to Federal Reserve manufactured inflation. We have failed to heed the lessons of history. We have repeated the blunders committed by the Romans.

The American Empire will not be murdered by an external force because it is too busy committing suicide. The moneyed interests, corporate oligarchs and their hand-picked politician front men see themselves as conquering heroes. Their colossal hubris and arrogance is only matched by the ignorance, gullibility, quivering fear of bogeymen, and susceptibility to propaganda of the general populace. The Wall Street bankers and feckless politicians are not gods, they are only men. Death is the great equalizer for emperors and peasants alike. The only thing that remains is your legacy and whether you positively impacted the world. It can be unequivocally stated that those in power today are leaving a legacy of despair, destruction, and debt.

Empires are born and empires die. The American Empire will not be sustained for eight centuries, as the swiftness of modern civilization, nuclear proliferation, religious zealotry, and sociopathic leadership ensures we will flame out in a blaze of glory before reaching our third century. The spirit of independence, idealism, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, knowledge seeking, advancement, and goodwill towards our fellow citizens that marked the height of our fledgling country has succumbed to a malaise of government dependency, cynicism, living on the dole, financial Ponzi schemes, willful ignorance, materialism, delusion, and myopic self-interest. The moral decline of the American populace has been reflected in the deteriorating quality of leaders we have chosen over the last century. Prosperity was taken for granted and no longer earned. We abdicated our civic responsibility to corrupt financiers and power seeking politicians. As time has passed, the ruling elite have grown ever more powerful and wealthy, at the expense of the peasantry. These sociopaths see themselves as god-like emperors, on par with the vilest of the Roman emperors.

Historians will mark 1980 as another turning point, when the nation capitulated to the financiers and ceded control of our destiny to Wall Street bankers, the military industrial complex, and globalist billionaires. The final deformation from a productive society built upon savings, capital investment, and goods production to a borrowing, gambling, and consumption society built upon debt and profiteering by powerful corporate and banking interests had commenced. The peak of this warfare/welfare state insanity was reached in 2000 and the road to decline and decay is now littered with the figurative corpses of a gutted middle class and the literal corpses of men, women and children across the globe, killed during our never ending imperial conquests. The ruling elite sense the futility and foolishness of their folly, but their insatiable appetite for wealth, power, triumph and glory blind them to the destructive consequences of their actions upon the nation and their fellow man. Power and dominion over others is a powerful aphrodisiac for our current day emperors and self-preservation at all costs is their mantra.

While they bask in their perceived triumph and glory, achieved through rigging the financial and political systems in their favor, they should heed the faint whisper in their ear that all glory is fleeting.

“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” – George S. Patton, Jr.

The decline of the Roman Empire can be attributed to a number of supportable hypotheses, which have been documented by historians over time. They include:

• Perpetual warfare depleted the treasury and wasted the manhood of the empire. The use of mercenary armies eventually led to the sacking of Rome by the very armies they had employed.
• Military overexpansion and spending resulted in resources being diverted from technological advancement, maintenance of the civil infrastructure, and worthwhile investments to support economic growth.
• Excessive welfare spending, oppressive taxation and currency debasement widened the gap between rich and poor, resulting in discontent, mistrust and rebellion.
• The emergence of an all-powerful centralized authoritarian government ruling by mandate, racked by corruption, and kept in power by bribing its subjects with promises of bread and circuses.
• Emperors and Senators became oligarchs and their conspicuous consumption provided proof of their corruption and decadence. The widespread corruption and incompetence of its leadership led to a waning in civic pride among the citizens.
• The decline in productive commercial and agricultural industries due to high taxes on producers, used to support the military empire, contributed to the circumstances that allowed barbarian invasions to succeed.
• The moral decay of the people was caused by the influx of slave labor from conquered territories, resulting in a decline in middle class work ethic, and the subsequent rise in the level of citizens on the dole. An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power.

In Part Two of this tale of two empires, I’ll document the parallels between mistakes made, eternal human foibles, military misfortunes, financial misconduct, and moral decay, that denote the decline of the Roman and American Empires.

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

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: Bread and Circuses.” – Juvenal – Satire (100 A.D.)

  

Roman satirist and poet Juvenal was displaying contempt for a degraded Roman citizenry that had shunned civic responsibility, shirked their duties of citizenship within a republic, and had chosen to sell their votes to feckless politicians for assurances of bread and circuses. Rather than govern according to noble principles based upon reason, striving for public policies that led to long term sustainability and benefitting the majority of citizens, politicians chose superficial displays and appeasing the masses utilizing the lowest common denominator of "free' food and bountiful spectacles, pageants, and ceremonies in order to retain power.

The Roman Empire’s decline stretched across centuries as the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizenry allowed demagogues to gain power and barbarians to eventually overrun the weakened empire. While the peasants were distracted with shallow exhibitions of palliative pleasures, those in power were debasing the currency, enriching themselves, and living pampered lives of luxury. The Roman leaders bought public approval and support, not through exemplary public service, but through diversion, distraction, and the satisfaction of base immediate needs and desires of the populace. Satisfying the crude motivations of the ignorant peasants (cheap food and entertainment) is how Roman politicians bought votes and retained power. Free wheat, circus games, and feeding Christians to lions kept the commoners from focusing on politicians pillaging and wasting the empire’s wealth.

History may not repeat exactly because technology, resource discoveries, and political dynamics change the nature of society, but it does rhyme because the human foibles of greed, lust for power, arrogance, and desire for conquest do not vary across the ages. The corruption, arrogance, hubris, currency debasement, materialism, imperialism, and civic decay that led to the ultimate downfall of the Roman Empire is being repeated on an even far greater scale today as the American Empire flames out after only two centuries. The pillars of western society are crumbling under the sustained pressure of an immense mountain of debt, created by crooked bankers and utilized by corrupt politicians to sustain and expand their welfare/warfare state. Recklessness, myopia, greed, willful ignorance, and selfish disregard for unborn generations are the earmarks of decline in this modern day empire of debt, delusion and decay.

“Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.” – Aldous Huxley – Island

Rome was eight and a half centuries old when Juvenal scornfully described the degenerative spiral of the Roman populace. Still, the Western Empire lasted another three centuries before finally succumbing to the Visigoths and Vandals. The far slower pace of history and lack of other equally matched competing nation states allowed Rome to exist for centuries beyond its Pax Romana period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity, which lasted for two centuries. Prior to becoming an empire, the Roman Republic was a network of towns left to rule themselves with varying degrees of independence from the Roman Senate and provinces administered by military commanders. It was ruled, not by Emperors, but by annually elected magistrates known as Roman Consuls. The Roman citizens were a proud people who had a strong sense of civic duty and made government work for the people.

During the 1^st century B.C. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies and civil wars, while greatly extending their imperial power beyond Italy through military conquest. After the assassination of Julius Caesar and the ascension of Augustus to emperor in 27 BC, after a century of civil wars, Rome experienced an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. During this era, the solidity of the Empire was furthered by a degree of societal stability and economic prosperity. But it didn’t last. The successors to Augustus contributed to the progressive ruination of the empire. The repugnant reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero reflected the true nature of the Roman people, who had relinquished their sovereignty to government administrators to whom they had granted absolute powers, in return for food and entertainment. It was the beginning of the end.

The American Republic began as a loose confederation of states who ruled themselves, with little or no direction from a central authority. The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781 by all 13 States, limited the powers of the central government. The Confederation Congress could make decisions, but lacked enforcement powers. Implementation of most decisions, including modifications to the Articles, required unanimous approval of all thirteen state legislatures. After winning the war for independence from England, the U.S. Constitution, which shifted power to a central authority, was ratified in 1789. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was passed in 1791 with the purpose of protecting individual liberties and insuring justice for all. Their function was to safeguard the citizens from an authoritarian federal government. These imperfect documents would benefit and protect the rights of the American people only if applied by moral, just, incorruptible, noble, honorable leaders and enforced by an educated, concerned, vigilant citizenry.

As with the Roman Empire, the quality of leadership has rapidly deteriorated over the last two centuries and now wallows at disgustingly low levels. These leaders are a reflection of a people who have abandoned their desire for knowledge, responsibility for their lives, work ethic, belief in freedom and the U.S. Constitution. The Juvenal of our times was H.L. Mencken who aptly and scornfully described the citizenry in 1920 as an ignorant mob who would eventually elect a downright moron to the presidency. He was right.

“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” – H.L. Mencken

A Republic was formed 225 years ago, as opposed to a monarchy, by men of good intentions. They weren’t perfect, but their goals for the new nation were honorable and decent. Ben Franklin had his doubts regarding whether we could keep a republic. He had good reason to doubt the long-term sustainability of this experiment. Freedom is not something bestowed on us by men of higher caste. We are born into this world free, with the liberty to live our lives as we see fit, the opportunity to educate oneself and the freedom to succeed as far as our capabilities and efforts allow. Only a self-reliant, virtuous, moral, civic minded people are capable of enjoying the fruits of freedom. Once corruption, self-interest, greed, and dependency upon government bureaucrats for sustenance become prevalent, the populace seeks masters who promise safety and security in return for sacrificing essential liberty and basic freedoms.

The country has defeated foreign invaders, withstood financial calamities, endured a bloody civil war, benefitted immensely from the discovery of oil under its soil, became an industrial power, fought on the winning side of two world wars, and since 1946 has become the greatest imperial empire since Rome fell to the barbarians. Over the course of our 225 year journey there has been a gradual relinquishment of the citizens’ sovereignty and autonomy to an ever more overbearing central government. Lincoln’s unprecedented expansion of Federal government authority during thwe Civil War marked a turning point, as state and local rights became subservient to an all-powerful central authority. Individual liberty has been surrendered and freedoms forfeited over a decades long insidious regression of a once courageous, independent, self-sufficient citizenry into a mob of cowering, willfully ignorant dependents of the deep state.

From the inception of the country there has been a constant battle between the banking interests and the common people. Bankers have used fraudulent fractional reserve banking to speculate for their own benefit, made risky loans, and created every financial crisis in the country’s history. The profits from excessive risk taking are retained by the bankers. The inevitable losses are borne by taxpayers with the excuse that the financial system must be saved and preserved. The storyline never changes. The beginning of the end of the American Empire can be pinpointed to the year 1913, only 124 years after its inception. Private banking interests captured the monetary system of the empire with the secretive creation of the Federal Reserve. The power of the central state was solidified with the implementation of the personal income tax, allowing politicians to bribe their constituents with modern day “bread and circuses”, paid for with money taken at gunpoint from them by the central state. We are now nothing but the hollowed out shell of a once noble Republic.

A century of central banking and heavy taxation of the people by bought off politician puppets has coincided with a century of war, depressions, currency debasement, overconsumption, obscene levels of consumer debt, trillions of excessive debt financed government spending, hundreds of trillions in unfunded entitlement liabilities, and a persistent decline in standard of living for the masses due to Federal Reserve manufactured inflation. We have failed to heed the lessons of history. We have repeated the blunders committed by the Romans.

The American Empire will not be murdered by an external force because it is too busy committing suicide. The moneyed interests, corporate oligarchs and their hand-picked politician front men see themselves as conquering heroes. Their colossal hubris and arrogance is only matched by the ignorance, gullibility, quivering fear of bogeymen, and susceptibility to propaganda of the general populace. The Wall Street bankers and feckless politicians are not gods, they are only men. Death is the great equalizer for emperors and peasants alike. The only thing that remains is your legacy and whether you positively impacted the world. It can be unequivocally stated that those in power today are leaving a legacy of despair, destruction, and debt.

Empires are born and empires die. The American Empire will not be sustained for eight centuries, as the swiftness of modern civilization, nuclear proliferation, religious zealotry, and sociopathic leadership ensures we will flame out in a blaze of glory before reaching our third century. The spirit of independence, idealism, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, knowledge seeking, advancement, and goodwill towards our fellow citizens that marked the height of our fledgling country has succumbed to a malaise of government dependency, cynicism, living on the dole, financial Ponzi schemes, willful ignorance, materialism, delusion, and myopic self-interest. The moral decline of the American populace has been reflected in the deteriorating quality of leaders we have chosen over the last century. Prosperity was taken for granted and no longer earned. We abdicated our civic responsibility to corrupt financiers and power seeking politicians. As time has passed, the ruling elite have grown ever more powerful and wealthy, at the expense of the peasantry. These sociopaths see themselves as god-like emperors, on par with the vilest of the Roman emperors.

Historians will mark 1980 as another turning point, when the nation capitulated to the financiers and ceded control of our destiny to Wall Street bankers, the military industrial complex, and globalist billionaires. The final deformation from a productive society built upon savings, capital investment, and goods production to a borrowing, gambling, and consumption society built upon debt and profiteering by powerful corporate and banking interests had commenced. The peak of this warfare/welfare state insanity was reached in 2000 and the road to decline and decay is now littered with the figurative corpses of a gutted middle class and the literal corpses of men, women and children across the globe, killed during our never ending imperial conquests. The ruling elite sense the futility and foolishness of their folly, but their insatiable appetite for wealth, power, triumph and glory blind them to the destructive consequences of their actions upon the nation and their fellow man. Power and dominion over others is a powerful aphrodisiac for our current day emperors and self-preservation at all costs is their mantra.

While they bask in their perceived triumph and glory, achieved through rigging the financial and political systems in their favor, they should heed the faint whisper in their ear that all glory is fleeting.

“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” – George S. Patton, Jr.

The decline of the Roman Empire can be attributed to a number of supportable hypotheses, which have been documented by historians over time. They include:

• Perpetual warfare depleted the treasury and wasted the manhood of the empire. The use of mercenary armies eventually led to the sacking of Rome by the very armies they had employed.
• Military overexpansion and spending resulted in resources being diverted from technological advancement, maintenance of the civil infrastructure, and worthwhile investments to support economic growth.
• Excessive welfare spending, oppressive taxation and currency debasement widened the gap between rich and poor, resulting in discontent, mistrust and rebellion.
• The emergence of an all-powerful centralized authoritarian government ruling by mandate, racked by corruption, and kept in power by bribing its subjects with promises of bread and circuses.
• Emperors and Senators became oligarchs and their conspicuous consumption provided proof of their corruption and decadence. The widespread corruption and incompetence of its leadership led to a waning in civic pride among the citizens.
• The decline in productive commercial and agricultural industries due to high taxes on producers, used to support the military empire, contributed to the circumstances that allowed barbarian invasions to succeed.
• The moral decay of the people was caused by the influx of slave labor from conquered territories, resulting in a decline in middle class work ethic, and the subsequent rise in the level of citizens on the dole. An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power.

In Part Two of this tale of two empires, I’ll document the parallels between mistakes made, eternal human foibles, military misfortunes, financial misconduct, and moral decay, that denote the decline of the Roman and American Empires.

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

China is increasingly relying on ‘student interns’ to make gadgets like iPhones in Western China, according to The Wall Street Journal, where lower wages make it harder to attract ‘real’ migrant workers. As the following brief clip explains, the government has created ‘vocational’ schools in very rural areas of China for high-school students but the quality of education (and ‘jobs’) is not what they had hoped…

 

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So with that in mind, we hope you enjoy your iPhone 6 plus…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1vep7gw Tyler Durden