Friday, May 31, 2013

White House Invites Chinese Communist Thugs To Participate In U.S. Military Exercises

I’m not going to tell readers what to think or how to interpret this article but there are many factors in play.  I would encourage you to read this and form your own views.   But I have written extensively about many topics as it pertains to this article and want to make a few remarks taken from themes in those countless posts.  

  1. Democrats have done more to sell out this nation, and more importantly, human freedom and democracy, than any Republican.  Although they both are clearly complicit.  It’s rather ludicrous to try to define the various levels of complicity and involvement.  Selling out is selling out.  But Clinton and Gore are the godfathers of globalization.  They deregulated the national borders of private, for-profit capital.  The current White House is being fingered in this op-ed for what most certainly can be argued as poor decision-making and a clear lack of sound judgment.   I can only imagine these poor judgment policies are made because of the massive exposure of class-based, American private, for-profit capital in China’s markets.  Just like Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler for the same reasons of class-based, global private, for-profit capital in Nazi Germany.  In other words, appeasement of evil is made on behalf of the profit-motive of our corporate masters and elites who have no problems selling out democracy and human freedom for their love of money.
  2. Class-based, private, for-profit capital is responsible for the rise of China.   Private, for-profit capital has stolen America’s technological leadership and given it to communist thugs.  Politicians enabled this.  Capitalism loves any nation that embraces it as only being subservient to the state. ie, Any state that allows it to run roughshod over humanity and democracy.  Capitalism loved Hitler and loves communist China.  Private, for-profit capital loves any nation that allows it to destroy the environment, destroy human dignity and enslave people for its own benefit.  Capitalism is perfectly psychotic when deregulated as Clinton and Reagan both did.
  3. Class-based, private, for-profit capital has given China the technology that has allowed them to hack our military and commercial enterprises to effectively steal all of our advanced technology secrets.
  4. Class-based, private , for-profit capital doesn’t care one iota about human freedom or democracy.   It has become supranational and thus can engage whatever resources wherever necessary to loot, pillage and steal whatever it wants.  ie, The state has become subservient to private capital.   That dynamic, enabled by Bill Clinton and Al Gore and pushed heavily by Obama is going to massively fail.  The state or democracy will reassert itself just as happened when private, for-profit capital became supranational leading up to World War II.  That doesn’t mean war is a guaranteed outcome but as noted many times, we are likely in a war cycle.
  5. Class-based, private capital or capitalism is consistently the primary driver for global armed conflict.  Many dynamics lead to this outcome including the use of state force to align domination of foreign economic markets, domination of economic resources and arming & enriching thugs, dictators, communists and fascists in the name of private, for-profit capital. 

We need truly public capital and public money.  Not the faux public capital markets we have today.  We need democratic banking and democratic money that has a primary intent of human development and democracy.  Not class-based profit.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:21 AM

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Facebook Censors Freedom Of Expression - Mom Who Protests Genetically-Modified Food

You had to know this was coming.  Or something like it.  Facebook only exists because of the corporate state.  It has evolved into an invention created to monetize profits derived from the corporate state ad spending aka propaganda.  Whether it’s because Monsanto is a client of Facebook or some other reason, it doesn’t really matter.  Eventually corporate image is going to clash with freedom of expression as Facebook users employ the platform to resist the corporate state .    Facebook exists to serve corporation profits not freedom of speech or democracy.  One cannot serve both money and truth.   

Social media is a good thing.   Corporate-backed and corporate profit-driven social media sites…….  um………  well I wouldn’t bet any of them will exist in a future reality.   I have been horrendously bearish about the future of corporate-funded social media sites.  Facebook and LinkedIn founders have both remarked that the age of privacy is over.   These are clearly megalomaniac statements that only serve the purpose of personal greed, money and power.  Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter and others need you to give up your constitutional freedoms to be viable.  These corporations want to track and collect personal data about you and sell it to other corporations and states.   The government has admitted to using Facebook to illegally spy on Americans

Contrarily, I have noted numerous times that privacy is the new property.  In other words, at the time of our country’s founding, private property was the driving issue against the force of tyranny.   As noted on here many times, property was far broader in context in 1776 than it has become today.  My person, my mind and expressions of that person and mind were considered property.  That is far more important than the right of owning a car or plot of land and the state knows it.  That’s why this broader context has died over the last two hundred years.  So that the state can control and abuse more and more of our property freedoms.   The corporate state and capitalism have essentially claimed you as its property to do with as it pleases.  Let me count the ways….

Are human beings going to truly be free or are we going to give up our freedoms so the corporate state and Homeland Security can supposedly protect us?  Or should I say, control us?  If we are going to truly be free, our constitutionally-guaranteed and natural rights-granted privacy is imperative.  Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, corporations, the state, etc. are on the wrong side of history and freedom.  They will lose this battle for human dignity and respect.  It’s just a matter of time.  

posted by TimingLogic at 9:08 AM

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Obama Scandals, Financial Markets & 2013 Debt Default/Monetization Update

I want to make some remarks about something I have written about quite a few times over the years.  That is, that 2013 is the year that I believe the U.S. could either default on or monetize some of its debt.   Well, 2013 is here so it’s time for an update.  Now, there is going to be some sidebar discussions about coterminous and tightly coupled issues and a few reasonably short rantings in this post but they are somewhat necessary given the intent of this post.   

I suspect the recent scandals of the Obama administration are tied directly into the White House.  Whether politicians can conjure up plausible deniability as was the case under Iran Contra or not, no one knows right now.  But midlevel bureaucrats or government workers don’t generally use public resources to target American citizens for political purposes or have a reason to lie about the incompetent Benghazi mess and issue conjured up political fatwas as cover-up  or having ardent Obama political supporters use the Department of Justice’s resources to illegally tap cell phones of journalists who are critical of potential White House crimes and substantial incompetence.    The mainstream media’s political bias in one direction or another to support its respective political “team” or defeat the other “team” is simply more of the endless insanity of political theater.  These are real scandals that involve potentially very serious crimes. 

This type of behavior is typical of a day in the life of a politician.  Pass legislation or sign unconstitutional presidential orders, obviously with special interests in mind, that f**ks up the economy or other people’s lives.  Then when the shit hits the fan due to the unintended consequences of that legislation, pass new legislation in an attempt to fix the mess created by politicians in the first place.  Then when that shit hits the fan due to the unintended consequences of passing legislation to fix the original unintended consequences, pass more legislation with even more unintended consequences ………… and on and on and on.   Eventually, you get to the point where we have over one million pages of codified legalese code that makes lawmakers and the legal community rich because no one can breathe with hiring an attorney.   At that point the system is so f**ked up, the only way to fix anything is to hit reset and wipe the slate clean.  Of course, hitting reset isn’t done by choice but when this massive corruption and political megalomania causes the system to implode.  (This is also how central bankers work in their illuminated mindset.)  That is really how our economy and society have become such a clusterf**k.  Politicians are almost always some of the least capable people in society with the most obtuse megalomania.  They are the first to tell us how they are going to “fix” our lives that they f**ked up in the first place.  I think it’s highly plausible the Republican-controlled House will eventually bring articles of impeachment against Obama before his second term ends.  Who knows if he will actually be impeached.   Of course, the reality is the Republican-controlled House should be impeached too.  Well, and the Senate and the corporate Supreme Court. 

The great irony in these recent debacles is that the most impeachable offenses by politicians are ignored because both parties are complicit in substantial impeachable corruption, treason, high crimes & misdemeanors, war crimes, bribery, financial fraud, crimes against humanity, crimes against the American people, incompetence (which is an impeachable offense) etc.  Impeaching Democrats over these acts would also involve impeaching the far right wing of the fascist Democrat-Republican Party, the Republicans themselves and vice versa.  So, instead the Omerta culture of secrecy and corruption that defines politics, in order to cover both party’s asses for the real crimes, keeps most horrendous impeachable offenses from actually being investigated.  And who knows what we don’t know?  As I have said numerous times on here, the political corruption is  almost certainly far, far worse than anyone could ever imagine.  And I, for one, can imagine a lot.  I can imagine the CIA might be involved in much of these scandals given how Obama has granted the CIA unprecedented powers in his unconstitutional shadow wars and black operations.   And anyone who questions these policies, such as Tea Party activists, could become their targets.  Of course, as all politicians can’t wait to tell us, Jesus of Nazareth and his pacifist teachings guide them in their policies of debt slavery, war, murder, spying and mayhem.  I don’t trust anything any politician ever says any more than I would trust Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy.   I’ll give some the benefit of the doubt if I can corroborate reality.   Obama isn’t one I give the benefit of the doubt.   

For many years now, I have pointed to three future dates that I am watching regarding the back end of this storm.  Those are 2013, 2016 and 2022.   Well, 2013 is now here.   In my prior posts on a 2013 debt crisis, I have noted that default(likely selective foreign holdings) would be a willful act of belligerence.   

So, why this post right now?  Well, two major developments have happened recently as it pertains to potential monetization or default.  And regardless of the message for public consumption, if this would ever come to pass, there almost certainly would be nontransparent political strategy involved.   

The first development is that the House Republicans passed a bill prioritizing debts in anticipation of a possible debt default.   To my knowledge, this is the first time in U.S. history something like this has ever happened.  And this prioritization ties in directly with my remarks leading up to 2013 that our debt default could be focused on foreign holders including China.  Prioritization is pointing to that distinct possibility.  Obviously this would be a premeditated act of belligerence.  Loot China, extort massive profits, devastate their environment, manipulate commodity prices used to create the China bubble and extort massive profits, then default on their U.S. debt.  What comes after that?  Tariffs on Chinese goods.  Look, for many years I’ve essentially said a trade war or even outright war is highly possible between the U.S. and China and I’ve posted some very lengthy and detailed analyses of how this will likely unfold.  We already see it today in Iran and Africa where China and the U.S. are involved in attempted to outdo each other to control natural resources and potential future consumers for capital markets, the control of oil, the control over the currency used for global trade, etc.   China’s communist dictatorship is wildly corrupt and evil.  Those who mock the U.S. and somehow view China as some docile giant are truly fools.   This is a nation that has murdered 70 million of its citizens, has death vans that are sent around the nation to murder people inside of vans made for this purpose and uses the force of the state for genocide of untold tens or maybe even hundreds of millions of unwanted children.   Then there is the fact that China has literally stolen untold numbers of military technology secrets from the U.S. and Europe as well as untold technology from American companies.  That we have a Bill Clinton and Al Gore created and Wall Street endorsed “free” trade agreement with this nation is effing ludicrous.   It’s much more than ludicrous.  It’s as Cicero noted in my last post. 

The second development is that global markets had the largest intraday reversal since 2012 on Wednesday.  And while Bernanke was testifying at that time, IRS officials were also testifying.  And the buzz in the trader community is that it was the IRS 5th amendment plea that caused the market to reverse.  The reason this testimony was so important in financial markets is that these scandals are starting to look serious enough that there is a growing concern a debt compromise or austerity measures will not be met this year.  In other words, there is starting to be conscious recognition that a debt default might actually happen.  The U.S. has never officially defaulted on its debt and a conscious recognition it actually might do so is no small development. (Some people have cited U.S. actions in the past that were never official defaults.  One is the devaluation of the dollar during the Great Depression.  Another is the breaking of the gold standard under Nixon.  Another a mischaracterization of currency issued to fund the Civil War.  The U.S. has never officially defaulted although these examples could certainly be considered unofficial defaults of some degree.  It’s really a matter of ideology or beliefs as how these events are characterized. )

None of this means a 2013 debt crisis is going to happen.  But we certainly are getting closer to the precipice than we have ever been.  Is that a coincidence that I have been noting for years 2013 is the year I believe this event could come to pass and now in 2013 we are seeing the first signs of such an event?  Ha!  As I have noted before, the U.S. never has to default because all of its debt is domestic.  ie, It is denominated in dollars and that means all they need to do is print money to cover debts.  People hoot and howl when they read that U.S. debt is domestic but that’s because they have no idea what they are talking about.  That China has purchased dollar debt means what?  It’s U.S. domestic debt.   It’s not denominated in yuan or IMF SDRs or other foreign currencies.  It’s denominated in domestic currencies.  We owe it to ourselves regardless of any hooting and howling by fanatics. 

China is the country holding the bag in its Nash Equilibrium with the U.S. as noted many times on here.  When that equilibrium is broken, and it will, there will be consequences on both sides but the fundamental issue is that China will almost certainly eventually be denied foreign capital, technology and investment that has been solely responsible for its bubble.  And to top it off, its dollar holdings could become worthless.  Nothing new on here but just a reminder for newer readers. 

So as noted on here many times, all that needs to happen to monetize debt is the Treasury issue $16 trillion in new debt, have the Federal Reserve step into the market and buy all of it,  issue a credit to the Treasury’s Federal Reserve account, and move the decimal places on the computer screen a dozen places to the right.  Voilà.  The money exists in the Treasury account to pay U.S. debt bond holders.  Or build bridges, roads, high speed rails, pay off student loans, fund Social Security or whatever.  (None of this should be controlled by politicians but instead by transparent democracy. ie, We The People.)  If you wanted, you could let debt come to maturity rather than pay it all off at once and do this in stages over decades if inflation is a concern.  But there are better policy-driven methods to insure inflation doesn’t become an issue.   Now, you can’t do this without limits and regulations or you’ll burn the currency.  And debt should probably always remain a method of funding for certain projects.  But this is basic math and managing it could be accomplished by a deft 6th grader.  There really is no limit to how this can be accomplished.  An act of Congress would likely be necessary to do this in one fell swoop as there are artificial  limitations to the size of the Fed’s balance sheet, but then the government is so completely out of control and unbound by constitutional powers that reality doesn’t even exist anymore.   So who knows what the hell might happen.

In a world where politics, the state and institutions of the ego have become so universally and completely fanaticized, there are plenty of nutjobs, monetary illiterates and uninformed ideologues out there who continue to believe the U.S. should default.  Frankly, were our debt foreign, I would support a default.  As I have noted with Greece and elsewhere, they should default on their foreign debts.   Many supposed “conservatives”  have repeatedly said we should default because we are broke.  Well, we may have limits to the amount of debt we can manage, and we passed that long ago, but we certainly are not broke.  Contrary to the lies and propaganda created by political megalomaniacs, Wall Street criminals and corporate psychopaths, wealth is not determined by little pieces of colored paper or lack thereof and how much of it these kooks allow into our economy.  Or by any particular illusory financial or monetary system.   Wealth is created by the monetization of science and invention and its associated productivity so that we don’t have to lead an existence defined by work or suffering.  Now, if you want to toil your life away to endlessly consume for our corporate masters, then that’s your ego’s prerogative but I would prefer a much more quality-driven life.  By the way, all we do is use colored pieces of paper to encourage this.  We could use juju beans or cans of beer or rocks or simply do away with money.   Money is an irrelevant factor to human progress.  In fact, I could make a very strong argument it stifles human invention and science.

Calling for default is either a severe ignorance or a desire to use violence to bring this system down and inflict unnecessary pain in the process.  I dare say a little bit of schadenfreude.  I want to see this system replaced but I have no desire to use violence and terror to do it.  Even if the people who created this misery are criminals.   We need to see the restoration of the rule of law and human decency not more lawlessness psychotic behavior as is embraced by the corporate state today.  So even though the U.S. has monetized its debt in the past, actually quite a few times in the 20th century, we don’t really know how insane politicians will get.  Default is possible even if it is completely ludicrous and unnecessary.  One has to remember that politicians generally aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and are prone to substantial violence; our world is made endlessly violent through politicians.  

Regardless of when, the U.S. will eventually be forced to monetize its debts if this global system isn’t changed.   If and when this happens, people in the U.S. and elsewhere will see that debt is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by class that wishes to enslave humanity for their own megalomania.  We could see people refudiate (I’m channeling Sarah Palin) debt on a national or even global scale if the state monetizes its debts. (or defaults)  ie, If a wildly corrupt government, and most people understand it is corrupt on some level, doesn’t have to pay its debts to the banking criminals, why do I have to remain a debt slave?  Having the whole world witness this act of government monetization could be the driver for the beginning of the end of debt slavery and this evil financial and monetary system.  It could awaken the conscious mind to a greater truth for people who have a limited understanding of what is going on.  If the government can wipe away its debts with the stroke of pen, then why can’t it do the same for me?  That will be a glorious day for humanity and freedom.

posted by TimingLogic at 5:17 PM

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Bogus Schemes And And Politically-Created Fraud From America’s Longest Depression Foretell Of A Greater Truth That Lies Ahead

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.  The traitor is the plague." – Cicero Marcus Tullius 106-43 BC

Given the heightened exuberance of financial markets and the perceptions of a return to prosperity created by the illusion of a dying monetary system, this is a good place to repost a Courier & Ives print I have put up here a few times in the past.  Along with it is some text below from one of its prior posts.

Every single financial activity that is glorified today was recognized as a Ponzi scheme 135 years ago. (As shown in the 135 year old graphic below.) By the way, that includes the state’s infatuation with gambling, taxes on finance and finance industry lobbyists funds as a source of political revenue. It’s actually quite amazing and frightening to view this print because 135 years ago the U.S. was in the midst of the longest protracted depression in our history. A depression created by elitists, banksters, the finance industry and politicians. What have elites and politicians learned in the last 135 years? What have we as a society learned about sustainability and economic democracy? The answer is clearly nothing.

courier

Click on the graphic for a larger view

These cycles of endless misery and injustice of private, for-profit capitalism are repeated time and again.  When private entities control our banking and corporations (and as a result, substantially influence and create our social values) and our money, this is what the end result will always be – Ponzi schemes, bubbles, fraud, legalized theft, tyranny, poverty, misery, slavery and economic injustice.  As noted in two of the bubbles in the print above, that includes public office and public policy that is used by politicians and political gangs who rig the system for private, for-profit capital gangs to loot, gamble, pillage and steal from the good people of this nation and the good people around the world.   Who create a world of impoverishment.  Poor people are most often poor because they have been impoverished by others.  People aren’t born poor.  They are made to be poor.  By beating people down and controlling them rather than empowering and exalting human expression and human decency.  Poverty in a world of abundance that exists today is a barometer of the level of control exerted by the state and the level of corruption that exists in society.

Public office and public policy are clearly bubbles today as well. (And as a result, the lobbying bubble, the lawyer bubble, the law school bubble, etc that created the political and policy - legal red tape, endless mounds of legal code, useless rules, overregulation, rigging the economic & political game, etc that are indeed bubbles themselves.) 

As noted on here many times, whenever the best jobs in any economy are government or banking jobs, doom of the system is imminent.  Neither produce or make anything.  Neither are productive resources in our economy that translate into sustainable wealth or technological advances that benefit humanity.   The reality is both only exist by preying on the productive assets and people of our society.   They are parasites who attach themselves to the productive assets in society and suck them dry. 

Ayn Rand may have been dubious in her glorification of class-based, predatory corporate capitalism but she was surely right about the looters, moochers and parasites that use class and political authority to enslave people.  She should know as she lived through the communist takeover that became the Godless Soviet Union.  Just like we are living through the corporate takeover of what has become the Godless corporate state.  Private, for-profit bankers and politicians serve no purpose to a democracy or a free people other than mooching, looting and parasitically attaching themselves to productive assets and people.  Public capital markets, public banking and public money owned by democracy and public servants serve a purpose of empowering democracy, human development and economic freedom.  We have none of that today. 

The global economy peaked just about the time this Courier & Ives print was released.  And, it peaked for decades to come.  Globalization peaked in 2008 and that peak could very well be forever.  Yes I realize forever is a long time.  But most trade under a global capitalist system is meaningless and useless to a free society.  It’s part of the overproduced make-work required to keep private, for-profit capital in power.  It serves our masters who tell us what we need or want rather than what a free society needs or wants.  And if capitalism is failing permanently, so too will the false paradigm of exploitative, predatory, environmentally-destructive global trade we see today.   We could see a future reality where global trade literally collapses to some very small percentage of what exists today.  Forever.  And, even so, that trade could look very different than today.  I’ll talk about that some time in a future post but it certainly is not a future prosperity most people have ever even considered. 

In case you have trouble reading the “bubbles” above in the Courier & Ives print, I have included them below.   All of the schemes are exactly the same as today.  Nothing ever changes when it comes to financial and political fraud and corruption.  The only thing that has changed is the amount of leverage granted through financial “innovation” and financial “engineering”.   More pointedly the extent of the corruption or con that is perpetrated on society and its victims has achieved unprecedented leverage and scope. 

Gold Mine Bubble - Bogus Schemes - Gambling - Speculation - Lottery - A Big Bonanza - Fancy Stocks - Railroad Bubble - The Capital System - Jockeying - Capital Prize $100,000 - Pools - Gift Enterprises - Public Office - Puts And Calls - Rings - Betting - Policy - A Lucky Hit - Something For Nothing - Grand Prize $100,000 - Inflation - Games Of Chance - Rag Money (Paper currency)
posted by TimingLogic at 10:26 AM

Monday, May 20, 2013

The Pope Calls Free Market Capitalism The Cult Of Mammon Responsible For Global Suffering

“The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them.”

Another editorial on the Pope’s speech titled The Pope and Godless capitalism.  I like this editorial because I have often characterized the corporate state as Godless, which it clearly is.

And lastly "The capitalist morality is a rejection of God.

I have decided to interrupt my posting schedule to put this up.  I often wonder what level of human decency exists in the Vatican but apparently it is still able to rise to the level of a public lashing of corporate capitalist criminals and the criminal politicians who rig the system for them. 

One of the Pope’s recent statements in his excoriation of the “cult of money” is that “money should serve rather than rule”.  The only way that is ever going to happen is with democratic, public banking and democratic, public money that has an intent of serving democracy and human development.  This is the moral crisis of our time as written on here literally hundreds of times over the years.  And that means capitalism or private, for-profit capital must go.  Human development, economic freedom and democracy will never be served by class-based, private, profit-driven interests.   There is no precedence for it and there never will.  

This speech is very important.  There are over one billion Catholics in the world and most Catholics view the Pope as the Holy Father or moral leader.  Whether he is or not is irrelevant.  Beliefs create reality.  And dare I say, it’s not too much of a stretch to state that most people on this earth view their spirituality as a higher authority than corporate capitalism or the corporate state.   The Pope’s statement really isn’t something new.  I have heard countless religious and spiritual leaders, priests, ministers, rabbis, monks, etc talk about the injustices and human suffering caused by corporate control and private capital.  ie, Corporate capitalism.  Prior Popes have rebuked capitalism and Marxism but never to this degree.  At least not that I am aware of.  But then never has the evil of private, for-profit capital been so viscerally exposed and never has their control over the world been so universal. 

Really what this comes down to is the cult of money as noted by the Pope.  Without money most corporations simply would not exist.  Most companies don’t serve society or human development.  They are vacuum cleaners that exist to do nothing more than suck up money.    Without money most major injustices in the world would not exist.  And organized criminal syndicates would likely disappear.   Let’s be honest.  Many corporations today are nothing more than organized crime syndicates.  Whether that is a company that exists to patent food or a genome or a Wall Street firm that gambles with other people’s money or a fast food restaurant that pays nonliving wages and serves up toxins for profit. 

I  have had friends and readers laugh off my remark that someday money will disappear.  Forever.  They can’t see that world existing.  Just because you can’t “see” it doesn’t mean it will never come to pass.  History is full of changes and inventions that no one could see coming.  This entire crisis is based on that dynamic.  In fact, that is history.  Most people’s minds become their prisons as they live in a fear-driven (control) reality created by the ego or manufactured self.  And that prison steal’s the mind’s ability to create and dream.  The day that money disappears will happen.  It’s just a matter of when.  And it will likely happen not because of virtuous choice but because of necessity or crisis.  Do you need money to build a car or house or grow food?  The only reason we need money is to create a system of class and control.  A system of exploitation, violence and predation. 

Rich and poor alike?  The rich respect poor people?  Are you kidding me?  Even though the Pope and Vatican’s statement is rather pointed, there remains a vein of political correctness in their statements that veils truth.  I would guess that is to protect the income stream from rich Vatican donors.  Remember, the Vatican too serves mammon whether that is money, real estate holdings, investments, hierarchical power and control over other people, etc.   Every hierarchical institution of the ego or of man serves a primary intent of control rather than discovery and truth.  

The rich have seldom ever respected, protected or promoted the poor.  Or more broadly, it’s really about respecting, protecting and promoting those whom the ego believes is of a lesser class.   If they did, there would be no poor.  I can think of a few examples.  Eunice Kennedy Shriver started the Special Olympics.   By the way, donating some part of a fortune is not really selfless nor is it about respect.   That is, unless it’s done anonymously.  Otherwise, getting your name on a new hospital wing is always about the donor receiving ego-stroking.  How many people give away their fortunes anonymously to help impoverished people?  And even when those cases exist, how much of it is simply ameliorating the ego’s guilt for having so much excess in a world where so many have so little?  Is this selflessness that comes from the mind’s higher power?  It is truly love, respect and concern for our fellow man?   

The modern world of science and its associated productivity is a world of abundance and there is enough for everyone.  Scarcity or lack of supply that exists today is a control-based myth perpetuated by class and illegitimate authority.  When it comes to food, shelter and healthcare or the basic necessities of life, there is ample abundance.   The patriarchal capitalist system that has existed for half a millenium doesn’t just not respect poor people, but its endless overt and covert violence preys on and exploits poor people.  This class-based system of control could never exist without that predation and exploitation.  Private capital sucks the excess work or intellectual capital, or as they like to call it, surplus value from those it exploits for monetary gain.  That is only how class ever exists.  And austerity today is the attempt by the world’s class-based capitalists and the class-based politicians who selfishly do their will, to steal literally every ounce of dignity and humanity that  impoverished people have left in order to  save their class rank and wealth.    

Certainly all people are worthy but many are disconnected from their higher power or their humanity and thus are capable of tremendous ego-driven rationalizations and its endless evil.  As John Dalberg-Acton wrote, many people of class believe they are more worthy than others – “great men are almost always bad men”.  Once you understand how becoming “great” in a class-based society involves somehow taking from someone else or compromising your own humanity, then it’s not too hard to appreciate that money, class and power are the root of all evil and that great men are indeed almost always bad men.  Or, at least most supposedly great men suffer from greater delusions of narcissism, psychotic behavior, greed, covetousness, exploitation, predation, violence, victimization, etc.  In other words, the endless evils of the ego.

Actually if we are talking in “Christ’s name” as the Vatican remarks above, then one should consider what Jesus of Nazareth said as it pertains to topics that overlap with poverty, class and capitalism.  That is, to release oneself  from the evils and suffering of attachment to money, fame, worldly possessions, class and the ego-driven identity we derive by being part of the social system that exalts these ego-driven values.   For the only way to achieve a higher level of enlightenment or divine connection to the universe is through releasing the ills of the ego.  There is a reason that the documented teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were almost always from the countryside.  Well, except when he went into the temple to confront those that had turned a sacred site into a free market capitalist moneychanger enterprise.  There is some indication his sect of Judaism rejected society for all of its ego-driven evils and suffering and instead chose to live completely outside of society and its worldly influences.   Social values are transient and generally determined by the values of class and title.  Human values are timeless and are derived by our own divinity or higher power that exists inside all people.  Even if we are disconnected from it.  That is, mercy, respect,  kindness, acceptance, compassion, equality, dignity, etc.

One cannot serve God or our higher power or selflessness or our own divinity and mammon as private, for-profit capital always has and always will through exploitation, predation and victimization.    A world today driven by the exaltation of money certainly is evil.   It is no coincidence we see truly unprecedented evil on every continent and nearly every country around the world today as global, deregulated, private for-profit capital terrorizes untold numbers of humanity, the natural world and our planet.

Any time anyone tells you that basic human needs and basic human dignity cannot be met for all people because there is not enough money available, as is the case today, even though the technology (productivity), food, shelter or healthcare facilities are available to meet those needs, that is nothing but ego-motive and its manifestation of evil.   At least that is evil as defined by the Sermon on the Mount - the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Regardless of what or whom you belief Jesus of Nazareth was, he certainly was not a card-carrying member of class-based, profit-driven, free market capitalism.  And apparently he died owning nothing nor having any money.  I do believe that was a conscious decision from what I understand.  Neither was Guatam Buddha nor any of history’s great divine, enlightened or spiritual beings card-carrying members of capitalism or its exploitative and predatory class-based values.  

We know where Jesus of Nazareth probably would be if he were living in capitalist America today.  He’d be living down at that local homeless shelter because he rejected all worldly possessions, consumerism and money.  He wouldn’t be dining with the moneychangers on Wall Street or the criminals in Washington who wage endless war or do the moneychanger’s evil.  In fact, good class-based capitalists would surely have him arrested if he happened to veer a little too far into their gated communities and rebuked them for their idolatry of mammon.  And if he got too uppity and his message became too popular, thus threatening their power, class and authority, they would certainly destroy his reputation with lies and deceit or even murder him as has happened so often whenever someone threatens this system.  Just like the ego-driven elites and the status quo  did 2000 years ago. 

I find it hilarious that power and the state has always exploited people of Jewish faith as those who killed Jesus of Nazareth.  It’s the same type of exploitation we see of different “classes” of minorities in the U.S.  be they black, red, yellow or white or the common trait of often being denied a living wage and human dignity and thus are unable to consume all of capitalism’s make-work.   So, to the corporate state they are part of the disposable society I have written about.  This mythology regarding Jewish people serves power’s purpose of dividing and controlling people by creating boogeymen and diverting responsibility.  Of keeping people beaten down to maintain class and wealth as happened when the state adopted Jesus’ teachings for purposes of control.   It’s such textbook behavior for predators. 

The reality is all Semites loved Jesus of Nazareth during his life because he gave those who were exploited power through realizing and accepting their own divinity.  It was the class-based status quo who killed him.  Because it served their purpose of maintaining class, wealth, authority and control over society and humanity.  It was the religious, state and business leaders of the day that his message of equality, kindness, mercy, freedom and detachment threatened.  But what really chapped their ass was that Jesus of Nazareth taught people that the greatest power in the universe resides inside of each person and the world around us.  That message sucks for those who wish to maintain class and control.  Because the only way class and control can be maintained is if the masses outsource their own divinity or power to those who wish to exploit and victimize them.  Once people realize they have the power within themselves to be free and worthy, class and authority can no longer exist.  Only law based on natural rights.  That’s what really threatens our masters.  Because without emotional bondage placed there by those who wish to control us, the human mind is free, divine and all-powerful.  True freedom exists within the mind.  That’s why they killed Martin Luther King.  It’s the reason tanks mowed down thousands in Tiananmen Square.  The same would certainly happen to Jesus of Nazareth were he alive today.  Or anyone else whose truth gained or threatened to gain a large audience against those who exalt the cult of money, control, class and power over discovery, truth, decency, freedom and human values.  Just as they did 2000 years ago.

Class-based, private, for-profit corporate capitalism appeals to humanity’s most unevolved, unaware, unmindful, unenlightened, unspiritual part of our psyche.  That is, the ego.   Which, by the way, is why the most unevolved, unaware, unmindful, unenlightened and unspiritual people rise to levels of authority within the class-based system of control that has defined our world pretty much since the beginning of time.  It’s also why modern capitalist society is dying.  Because being driven by the exaltation of our unevolved psyche or the ego over our own divinity, it truly is Godless.

The time has come to rid ourselves from the class-based control of private capital over democracy.  It is time for economic freedom, public capital and public money.

What we witness today is truly a battle between good and evil.  Will we continue to live in a world driven by the unevolved ego?  Or as our perceptions of reality are destroyed will we evolve to a world based on our higher power or the evolved human psyche?  ie, The Age of Aquarius?  The answer is B.  But first we have some unfinished business.  More on that in late June or July.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:33 AM

Friday, May 17, 2013

Stupid Is The New Black–Tesla Stock Worth More Than Fiat

The only reason someone starts an auto company is because of passion or stupidity or both.   Sometimes that combination actually can be a winning one for obvious reasons.  That is, if you are passionate enough, you can often create solutions to large obstacles.  If one contracts much of the component engineering and/or production to the massive excess capacity of auto suppliers, it certainly is possible to start an automotive  company comparatively cheaply.  ie, The excess infrastructure, engineering, production and design capacity exists and that can allow for a reasonably low-cost startup when using a prudent sourcing, engineering and design strategy.   In fact, Tesla probably could not even exist were the economies of scale and excess capacity within the auto supplier and auto industry not to already exist.  It uses a former GM facility and its stamping equipment to build its cars and in a bout of corporate cooperation, Toyota formed a joint venture with Tesla to share battery packs with its RAV4 in addition to much of the other supplier-provided componentry it uses.  But battery advances are happening so quickly Tesla almost certainly will have to change its strategy.  And, at what cost to a startup in a very capital intensive business?  Future manufacturing and production innovations may  make the success of smaller auto firms a reality but today building a sustainable boutique auto firm is challenging at best.   Tesla relies heavily on the existing overcapacity in the auto industry just as Fisker did. 

I certainly have no desire to minimize the accomplishments of Tesla Motors.  In a financialized world where temporary perceptions of wealth are created through pushing paper, they actually make something of value.   And they seem to have gotten a lot right.  That said, I suppose anyone with a guaranteed government loan and a few dozen laid-off automotive designers and engineers in the Detroit area could probably start a car company.   But this is a very tough business and that is the reason why more people aren’t starting auto companies.   There are large barriers to entry and as noted in many posts over the years the capital requirements to sustainably engineer, design, build, maintain and service a single automobile model are very substantial.  The cost to actually build a sustainable auto company are even more obscene.   Any single leap in technology could leave a startup with limited capital lagging competitors or worse.  And without deep pockets, it’s hard to catch back up.  Tesla is essentially a single model auto experiment that has yet to prove its sustainability.  Personally, I wouldn’t classify it as a legitimate auto company.  Yet.  They haven’t even begun to tackle the endless red tape and legalese of dealership franchise laws.   And that’s just the beginning. 

Over the last five years Tesla’s cash flow has never been positive and it has deteriorated  500% in that period of time.  Now some of this may be explainable as they ramp up production but then again, taking ten years to ramp up production isn’t going to lead to success.  Additionally, Tesla benefits from government subsidies for electric vehicles or it would be an even tougher road to profitability.  And although Tesla reported a minor profit this past quarter, it is bleeding cash at a very rapid clip.  In other words, Tesla already needs to raise more capital.  So, just a few days ago the company announced it was going to issue more stock and debt.  And its founder was going to purchase $100 million in shares at this price.  Even though that means stock and value dilution, the shares exploded higher.  Ahem.  Obviously, the rationale for a higher stock price would be that Tesla needs more cash so its business must be good?  Ha!   The reality is there is no rationale other than financial manipulation.  Tesla is lucky that credit is extremely loose right now thanks to the money-pumping Fed that is recreating more future crises.  If the economy turns south again, Tesla’s cash flow problem won’t be easily solved as a company with a cash flow problem isn’t likely to be able to easily tap credit markets, if at all.

“The stock (Tesla) is trading like it’s 1999 and we’re in the Internet bubble again,” said Maryann Keller, principal at consulting firm Maryann Keller & Associates in Stamford, Connecticut. “It has nothing to do with Tesla’s fundamentals. It has to do with pie-in-the-sky aspirations that don’t reflect the realities of the auto industry.”   -- Maryann Keller, auto analyst

It has been half a dozen years since Maryann’s name has come across this blog but she’s the real deal.   I used to write extensively about the auto industry and my knowledge of its   operations is competent.  Maryann is the only auto analyst I trust.   Let me also addend Maryann’s remarks.  Tesla’s stock price is really more of a reflection of too much leveraged money chasing too few financial assets rather than pie-in-the-sky aspirations although one could proffer that they are on in the same.  Aspirations matter not if there is no speculative money bubble to ram Tesla’s stock to the moon.  One of my long-time theses on here is oil is headed for a price collapse as the reality of this cycle reveals itself.  The fundamentals behind that thesis are starting to line up quite nicely yet no one believes this is possible because propaganda has conditioned people to believe we have run out of carbon-based energy sources.   If that happens, electric cars are likely to head the way of the Dodo bird without some very substantial propping up by government.  I suspect government will have its own problems that will be too distracting to worry about electric car subsidies.   Then there is the small problem of the largest money bubble the world has ever seen and that it has no reflection of true wealth.  As central banks torch their currencies, the future for expensive cars may not be a very compelling one.   These factors may mean the limited resources of Tesla could very well lead to its demise given it is exclusively an electric car company without the intellectual capital, operations, money or lines of credit needed to adjust.  ie, Their $90,000 electric car may serve nicely as a dual purpose boat anchor.

Wall Street is now valuing Tesla Motors at a higher worth than Fiat.  Tesla has produced 10,000 cars in ten years.  Its current electric car with a price tag upwards of $90,000 has received great reviews.  I have no doubt it is a great car for the price of a home in many markets.  But let’s get real.   Fiat makes 20,000 cars a day.  Literally.  (Well over 4 million a year)  That includes the brands of Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Maserati. (drool)   The new Alfa 4C may be the most beautiful car ever made and its going to be $35,000 less than a Tesla when it hits showrooms in a month.  Plus it will be powered by an internal combustion engine which I consider to be a plus when it comes to sustainability.  At least given current technology and developing macro factors.  Bigger surely is not better when comparing Fiat to Tesla.  And as noted on here many times, this cycle will likely see the demise or substantial shrinking of many large corporations.  That might even include Fiat.  But critical mass is very important in a highly capital-intensive business.  Fiat has that critical mass.  It’s intellectual, design, engineering and production capital are staggering comparatively.   That Tesla is worth more than Fiat is absolutely ludicrous Wall Street bubblenomics.   That Tesla’s owner has agreed to buy another $100 million of stock at this price shows how this current generation really has no idea what the future holds for them.  They have lived in a money bubble for so long that most have no idea what reality looks like. 

Tesla’s stock price is simply another reflection of the endless distortion of financial assets that defines our criminal financial and monetary system.  Endless speculation has driven Tesla to a level that is absolutely ludicrous while the city of Detroit, as just one counter example, has greater than 50% unemployment.  ie, The United States’ citizens of Detroit are denied access to society’s capital needed to become productive, inventive, creative and self-sufficient contributors to democracy while private, for-profit capitalist financial predators steal our democracy’s money to manipulate Tesla’s stock for their own outrageous fraud and paper profits.  Who wins and who loses? 

What did the United States’ citizens of Detroit do to deserve their enslavement to poverty and injustice?  Absolutely nothing.  Victimization is inherent to class-based, private for-profit capital.   So Tesla’s management, the investor class,  hedge funds and investment bankers become richer for doing absolutely nothing productive while tens of millions of American citizens rot.  All the while democracy loses its economic vibrancy that would be gained by empowering the citizens of Detroit and elsewhere.    For now.  These endless frauds and schemes are just perceptions of wealth and just like every other financial bubble and every other false perception of reality, eventually the illusion disappears and reality reveals itself. 

This is the same type of financial fraud that defined the Internet bubble and almost everything in our economy since the Reagan administration-created S&L crisis.  In fact,  we have a current  generation of uber wealthy who have all been benefactors of the massive fraud that defines private, for-profit capital and its deregulation.  Untold numbers of companies came public in the 1990s with no real business model and no earnings whatsoever.  Untold hundreds of thousands of people defrauded society by going public and looting the treasury with the help of Wall Street during the deregulated Clinton era.  Just as untold numbers have defrauded society since with ever-more financial schemes and bubbles.   Many of these people are considered our corporate and social leaders today because money talks when democracy is for sale.  The corporate state wrongly considers class-based wealth as a barometer of intelligence and so those who have the money make the rules and that means the rules are going to reinforce their continued accumulation of society’s resources.   It’s everywhere. 

Seemingly nonfinancial firms are just as complicit.  Even firms like Google that are benefiting from the massive ad bubble.  Their IPO price and subsequent revenue and earnings are all driven by a larger dynamic of financial fraud created by the money bubble.   Were these not bubblenomic times, Google’s IPO price, ad revenue and profit may be 10-20% of what it is today.  Google itself may be completely unaware of this dynamic and running its firm by the rules but it still contributes to economic aberrations and manipulation by assigning paper wealth to people that isn’t actually real.  As noted on here countless times, that too will pass when the corporate ad bubble pops and/or the dollar loses its reserve currency status.  (Although Google, like every other deregulated capitalist firm large enough to manipulate governments rigs the rules and cheats democracy whenever it can get away with it.  Just another example of what has been written on here time and again.  Corporate tax receipts are at the lowest levels since at least the 1950s.  They are probably the lowest in history but I don’t have data going back that far.)

These dynamics are representative of our financial and corporate capitalist system’s endless crimes of treason and crimes against humanity.

No assets on Wall Street are valued at any level of reality.  We haven’t seen stocks priced at fair value in decades.  Which is one reason why my long-time downside target for the S&P is and remains at 200-450 or its 1990-1995 price levels.  It’s all one big Ponzi scheme in the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen. 

We need a public banking and financial system whose primary intent is to serve democracy and human development and not financial looters, corporate masters, crony networks, criminals and predators.  

posted by TimingLogic at 11:35 AM

Monday, May 13, 2013

Global Capitalism Running Off The Rails - Timely Remarks About Corporate Earnings, Financial Assets And The Global Economy

I want to start this post off by reminding readers of remarks made by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson back in 2007 before the collapse.   I remember Paulson giving a TV interview where he waxed poetic about unprecedented strength of the global economy and unprecedented global prosperity.  When it comes right down to it, Hank was truly an ignoramus as are most politicians and corporate bureaucrats.   Contrarily, I had been writing that the world was experiencing the biggest bubble in history, the world would shudder and shake when this cycle ended and that all of the wealth created under globalization could very well disappear.  It certainly wasn’t because I was some genius but that I had my eyes open to the reality of what people like Paulson created.   By the way, that was an incredibly lonely position at the time.  Again today we see a similar type of optimism within the establishment bureaucracy as the perception of a post-crash asset recovery unfold.   (We are seeing extreme levels of speculation in equity futures & derivatives markets as I type this.  The looters are showing nearly unprecedented levels of arrogance and risk-taking in their actions regardless of any blow about this being a “hated” rally.  I’m still comfortable with a projected peak in equities in the middle or second half of this year.)  But how the world has changed from that pre-2008 perception of global prosperity under which  Goldman Sachs was telling us it was doing God’s work.   Now, while we see the perceptions of recovery in the assets controlled by corporations and elites, we now also see unprecedented poverty and strife as the world burns at the hands of politicians, private for-profit bankers and corporate capitalists.  Yet what I see in my experiences is that most people who are doing extremely well under this system have closed their mind to what is going on around them.  The ego can and does rationalize anything, especially when it comes to its its belief systems involving attachment.

Unlike 2008, today countries around the world are experiencing structural economic crises that cannot and will not be fixed under global capitalism.  Yet hot money fresh coming from Europe in lieu of the Cyprus confiscation, hot money rolling out of falling commodities, central banks seeking higher returns, hedge funds & global banks and the endless leveraged manipulation of the carry trade are fueling artificial demand and the associated  speculative rise in global asset prices.  Mind you, all of this is occurring without an antecedent rise in wealth.  As the always brilliant-less Alan Greenspan has been quoted, rising asset prices creates the confidence of wealth needed for people to go out and spend.  Of course, reality is that only true social wealth creates sustainable, rising demand for assets.  Simply more of the illusions created by the renter class that owns all of the assets.   We have now seen over 300 stimulative central banking and policy-driven programs around the world meant to bail out the small number of people who control the world’s assets while allowing widespread misery and poverty to flourish. 

I  now appreciate how much I underestimated the mind-boggling corruption that defines class-based corporate capitalism and the captured global political class of thugs that does its will.  I certainly never believed politicians, bankers or corporate bureaucrats were virtuous but the entire world is clearly run by an unprecedented global class of criminals whose common shared interest is in serving class-based private, for-profit corporate capital(ism) at the expense of human dignity, human rights, economic freedom and democracy.

Asset prices have seen large rises recently and U.S. equity prices, as one example, are now the second most expensive in the top 30 world’s exchanges and the most expensive in the developed world on an expected future earnings basis.  As I noted on here many times before the 2008 collapse, on a fundamental basis the U.S. equity market was many times more expensive than the market in 1929.  You know, before it fell 90+%.   Corporate fundamentals have deteriorated significantly since and financial assets, including equities, are now even more overvalued.  Eventually, the illusion of financial markets/assets and the reality of the underlying economy will recouple.  That is, true wealth is not a function of highly-levered, fraudulently-manipulated financially-engineered asset prices that provides perceptions of wealth and control for a small number of renter-class royalty.  

I want to remind readers that I have noted on here that some day the stock market in our nation will disappear.  Forever.  That it is not necessary to a functioning democratic, merit-based economy.  Frankly, it has become a detriment to a functioning economy as noted on here through many dysfunctional dynamics.  One must consider that this cycle could be that some day.  So while many talk of investment haircuts or market corrections, there is a much greater reality that exists.   Haircuts and financial asset declines could be 100% and permanent on many, if not all, markets.   If you understand my posts stating that we are likely living through the end times of  capitalism, just as we recently lived through the end times of communism, then you must appreciate that capitalism’s funding and financial mechanisms will ultimately disappear as well.   This is not a prediction but a serious possibility that no one is considering.  It will happen some day.  The only question is when.  (My long-time downside target on the S&P remains 200-450 if capitalism  makes it through this.  As time goes by it has become ever-more apparent to me that it likely won’t.)

Let me also remark of those who are now calling this the start of a  new bull market.  As noted on here before, we cannot be at the start of a new bull market because the companies, markets and technologies don’t yet exist for that to happen.  And the existing corporate structure of control, political bribery and market-rigging ensures that will never happening under this current reign of corporate terror.  We must see new ideas, new innovations, new economic opportunities, new markets and massive new employment opportunities from these innovations and opportunities for a new bull market to appear.  Otherwise, this is nothing more than the existing debt-based illusion of capitalism’s overconsumption, overproduction, money printing and financial fraud that serves only illusions to keep the current capitalist class-based power structure in place.  Are we about to see a new bull market in PCs, genetically-modified foods, healthcare that serves little to no benefit to society, military spending, portable phones, financial speculation, overconsuming more overproduced, toxic junk from China and the overproduction of antidepressants and liquor to numb society into surviving another bout of this psychotic corporate-state-controlled world?  And is this going to create tens of millions of high-paying, wealth-creating new jobs in the U.S.?  Or more marketing, advertising, political consulting, lobbying and finance jobs?  Need I even answer that?

That is, at this very moment corporate balance sheets across the board are deteriorating at a rate not seen at any time in the last twelve years.  Yes, that's right.  Worse than anything experienced under George Bush.   This ties in very nicely with my game theory post that corporations are headed for a massive hard landing and that many major corporate names will very likely disappear in coming years.  - My July 18th, 2012  post titled “Buffett Breaks His Cardinal Rule And Invests In IBM”

Two months after I posted the above remarks Thomson Reuters announce the largest downward earnings revisions since in the last eleven years.   It was the first quarter that the S&P 500’s cumulative revenue growth turned negative since the 2008 crash.  S&P 500 revenue contraction is an unheard of dynamic.  Well, it was until 2008.  Now we have seen it twice since as results this quarter have also been horrible for many multinationals.  Again, today the S&P’s cumulative revenue growth is being reported as negative as financial assets and equity markets make all-time highs. 

To give some indication of how disconnected financial markets currently are from reality, let’s look at some very disconcerting and deteriorating economic highlights from around the world in 2013.  These highlights are starting to confirm large disturbances in the global capitalist overproduction (and resultant required overconsumption) bubble that appears to be starting to pop.   

  • Copper demand, as noted on here many times as a proxy for the global economy, has collapsed in China.  Demand in China is 35% sequentially on a monthly basis, an unheard of decline.  The price of copper has been declining for years and was down 34% from its peak as inventory has exploded for the first time since the housing bubble peak.  In the last week or so, prices have moderately recovered on a reflex rally.  China’s most recent trade results are completely bogus and people are starting to understand how deregulated capital and hot money is severely manipulating China’s Ponzi trade numbers.   The Chinese ministry of propaganda, caught with its pants down,  has finally acknowledged this.  As I noted leading up to the collapse of its stock market bubble in 2008, the communists had lost complete control of their economy and their money.  Soon thereafter we saw a massive collapse in their equity markets and their overproduction bubble as tens of thousands of factories were shuttered.  The same dynamic is building today as the communist central planners have again lost complete control.  Remember, deregulated capital(ism), aka free market capitalism, is the precursor for all capitalist-created economic disasters and it is the key component to the U.S.-China free trade or looting agreement.  (Remember, as noted on here at the peak of copper’s bubble back in 2008, copper costs 7 cents a pound to mine.  It was selling for $5 a pound at the time.  Copper and all commodities are being manipulated by Wall Street as I have written on here ad nauseam.  Copper will almost certainly fall 80-90% still from these prices.)
  • Excess crude oil supply imbalances are now the greatest in recorded history.  In other words, the world is now awash with the greatest excess supply of crude oil in history.  Even more than when crude was $10 a barrel in 1998.  (A long term thesis on here is that crude is likely going back to somewhere around $10-20 a barrel.)  And gasoline demand in the U.S. is falling at the fastest pace since the 2008 collapse.  As noted on here ad nauseam, peak oil like anthropogenic global warming is a myth.  And Wall Street manipulating petroleum prices is a foundational element of hoodwinking people into this propaganda just as similar junk science-propaganda is behind human-caused climate warming.  This has been a consistent thesis on here for the last eight years and now many people are finally starting to understand how true this really is.
  • Semiconductor companies are seeing bookings for new equipment often fall precipitously, margins implode, large amounts of business deferred and may be ready to  revert back to the dominant trend of the last few years of falling revenues for the entire industry. (As noted on here many times over the years, I hate technology stocks.  Most companies are last year’s dead wood.)
  • Caterpillar’s earnings were down 50% and revenues are down dramatically.  Asian demand for heavy constructing and mining equipment is down a whopping 25%.  So much for those distorted China trade numbers showing a massive increase in exports.  Massive collapse in demand for construction and mining equipment and associated commodities is impacting the entire commodities and cyclical/industrial business complex.
  • Most recent data on exports of U.S. corn are down the most ever recorded at –54%.   So much for Monsanto dominating the world.  Is this a trend and a sign of rejection of GMO food and food slavery by corporate America?  It’s too early to tell.  But I have written on here that we could most certainly see starvation around the world as this system unwinds.   Of course, this could simply be production arbitrage or  corporations shifting production of GMO corn to South America where costs are much cheaper. 
  • Vladimir Putin just remarked of an “alarming” economic slowdown in Russia. 
  • Greece and Spain have just reported record unemployment and Italy just formed a government that cannot govern while Germany’s economy continues to slip with every euro nation’s production contracting.
  • Commodities across the board peaked two years ago and have been falling ever since.   For that reason, it should be surprise to anyone gold aka anti-democratic money of which the majority is controlled by criminal central bankers, copper or anything else is falling. 
  • The Chicago Business Barometer just reported the lowest reading in the last three and one half years.
  • Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are all seeing industrial production shrink and factory orders fell to a seven month low in the U.S.
  • IBM’s server revenue imploded 17% and the CEO blamed it on salespeople not moving fast enough.  That’s clearly wishful thinking.  The same dynamic is being reported at other companies including the night-of-the-living-dead zombie, Dell.   (Remember, last June I wrote that IBM was putting in a major top.  Maybe its last top.  Forever.  This past quarter IBM missed earnings for the first time in eight years and reported its single-day largest share price drop in a decade.  It’s just the beginning.  It’s going to get much worse for business technology, software and consulting related corporations.   Most of these companies are dead wood that have been pulling proverbial rabbits out of their hats for a long time.  Rabbits that really create little to no quantifiable return on investment or productivity enhancements for clients and almost no value to society but that allow their profit schemes to stay afloat.   These companies have transformed into bureaucracies that serve little purpose other than enriching their executives and a place for its countless workers to collect a paycheck.  Just like the massive, state-backed Soviet corporations.)
  • IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, BPO, contracts have collapsed and are down over 30% globally in this last quarter, a staggering drop. (Again, I wrote years ago that the BPO, IT outsourcing, Indian outsourcing/software bubble story was peaking and we were likely to see a major shift against this business.  Not only are we seeing revenues collapse, but Congress is now considering legislation that could start putting nails in this business model’s coffin and in India’s software, BPO and outsourcing bubble.) 

These are simply examples.  While there are many financial-related and service-related companies still doing well, these companies rely substantially on corporate cash and usury for their profits.  They are benefiting from the central bank reflation bubble.  Additionally, these businesses consume wealth and capital rather than create it.  They take money and wealth out of the economy and out of our pockets.   They either consume or destroy wealth and jobs.    They are that loud sucking sound that is simply part of the renter class that enslaves democracy to private, for-profit capital.  Most of these are companies and jobs our society would be better off not having.  Then our wealth could be spent on more productive outcomes that benefit our citizen’s and community’s quality of life.

The above highlights are not small perturbations in the global economy.   These are growing crises and large shifts that are a result of huge drops in overproduction (and resultant overconsumption) and associated capitalist business demand.  As is often cited with military bureaucrats for their closed-mindedness and ignorance, the Federal Reserve and other central banks are still fighting the last war.  ie, Their concern about providing bank liquidity to ensure there is no repeat of 2008 is the war they are still waging.  It is the last war and not the current war that should be waged to stave off future crises.   As discussed on here ad nauseam, 2008 was not a banking or financial crisis as incompetent bureaucrats in politics, economics, Wall Street, central banks and university professors in the economics, business and financial community have told us.  It was a crisis of capitalism.  And now we are starting to see exactly that with global capitalist production and global demand beginning to recouple with the initial signs of large declines.  What, pray tell, are central banks going to do to stop the fall of capitalism and its endless overproduced make-work?  Buy copper and then dump it back in mines?  Then mine it again and dump it again?   Or buy computer equipment and then scrap it?  Then buy some more and scrap some more?  Or buy more real estate and bulldoze the massive oversupply of commercial and residential development?   That’s essentially what has been happening for the last 30 years.  That is, corporate capitalism’s endless make-work.  And bankers are once gain lowering borrowing standards to re-ignite even more demand for make-work.  What’s next?   Maybe they’ll bring George Bush out of retirement to tell Americans to go out and spend their welfare check to buy more overproduced make-work.  Or a house or a car or more junk made in Chinese sweatshops as he did after 9-11. 

So, if we take into account last September’s earnings were a result of horrible 2012 3Q results, we haven’t really seen any growth in almost a year.   As noted on here ad nauseam, a service economy cannot grow.  Period.  A fact lost on everyone in politics, finance and economics who keep seeking these growth-at-all-cost policies needed to inflate away their massive debt bubble.  In fact, a service-based economy is why we have this debt bubble and horrendous wage growth in the first place. (I’ll show you mathematically why a service economy cannot grow at some point.  And how it is tied to slave wages.) 

Most of the perceived economic growth in the last 30 years is mythical.  It was based almost exclusively on excessive money printing and the resultant accumulation of our massive debt bubble to keep this system from dying.  Remember, I have harped on here countless times that U.S. economic activity peaked around 1980.  That’s an important date I will continue to point to until I come back with a very substantial post on why it is so important.  And it is important in ways you will never read anywhere else. 

That we have seen hundreds of monetary stimulus actions around the globe since the 2008 collapse is simply confirmation of thirty years of failed global economic policies are now careening out of control.  It’s preposterous to blame this on George Bush as so many liberal idiots do.   Not that Bush did anything but continue the same failed economic policies of Reagan and Clinton.   The ever-increasing speed and size of these required stimulus policies that must be employed to keep capitalism’s wheels from running off of the rails shows how incredible unstable global capitalism is.  I’ve called this part of the “quickening” before.   It’s exactly what one would expect of a complex system that has passed the tipping point.  ie, Greater and greater instability requiring more and more force or stabilization (stimulus) efforts unfolding at a faster and faster pace.  For conspiracy theorists who believe events in the world today were planned by global elites, you have to be kidding me.  No one can plan and control anything with trillions of moving parts.   Instead, these are simply reactionary measures by the status quo in an attempt to maintain their control over the global production and finance system, and as a result, over us.   They are simply forcing austerity onto the rest of us in order to try to maintain what must inevitably end.  That is, their class-based overproduction and overconsumption Ponzi scheme.  They too will be joining the rest of the world and experiencing a collapse in perceived wealth, status and success.  Just like 1929 when the vast majority of the elites, bankers and capitalists living large and enjoying the overproduction and overconsumption of the Roaring 20’s ended up destitute.  Again, another long-time thesis on here.

With more than 300 stimulative polices announced around the world since the 2008 collapse we still see global unemployment is rising as are economic disturbances.  That includes in the U.S. where the employment ratio and other real-world measurements continues to point to a massive structural crisis regardless of the pablum puke Obama, dimwitted Democrats, political propagandists, the mainstream media and corporate bureaucrats feed us.   And global production peaked back in 2008.  That means the majority of jobs created since are low-wage, benefit-less slave labor jobs created in the mythical service economy.   Essentially what this tells us is that no amount of money has had any effect in saving the global economy.   All it has done is recreate bubbles, not the least of which are financial assets and real estate.  They’ve thrown unprecedented resources at this system and it’s once again failing at an alarming rate.  Just as I have said it would countless times.  This is not a crisis that can be fixed by the Federal Reserve; the elites, corporations, politicians and other benefactors of this scheme can’t be saved by the public-private fascist partnership, the Federal Reserve, that has allowed them to continually loot the public treasury.

DOWDAX

Dow Jones Industrials & German DAX (in green)

DAX

Australian dollar/Japanese Yen & German Dax (in green)

Let’s once again look at an update of charts shown on here before.  The Australian dollar/Japanese Yen carry trade along with the German DAX and Dow Jones Industrials equity indices.   The correlation is 100%.  You don’t need a PhD to understand why all assets are correlated down to minute-to-minute actions in financial markets and headed higher.  For now.   It’s not because the economy is doing well.  It’s unprecedented leverage taken from the carry trade and flooded into already levered financial derivatives, futures and assets along with the unprecedented spending of the people’s money to save the corporations and elites that owns all of the world’s assets.  Period.   In other words, it’s incredibly leveraged, artificially-manufactured financial engineering meant to bail out the most leveraged bubble of all.  That is, that 1% of the population controls the other 99% by defeating democracy, creating economic slavery and indebting us to a system of usury and graft.   The leverage in this “financial engineering” is unknown to anyone but most certainly more than one hundred to one and in some cases possibly even more than one thousand to one by the time the wages are paid at that Chinese iPhone sweatshop.  

The reflation trade is only meant to bail out trickle down economics.  To bail out those who have stolen all of the world’s assets and wealth so that they can maintain their perceptions of control and wealth.  That is, class-based, private, for-profit capital(ism).   These are the only people (and corporations) who really own all of the assets being reflated by massive leverage, money printing and central banks.  That includes gold, by the way that is almost completely controlled by central banks and global elites.  There is no true wealth behind any of these monetary and economic stimulus actions or in the rising price of financial assets.  It’s just an illusion created by manipulation and looting.  By artificial levered demand.  A massive concerted Ponzi scheme meant to save global private, for-profit capitalism and private, for-profit banking and our elite masters.  A Ponzi scheme that terrorizes billions who have to stay alive in this hell.  A hell created in the minds of megalomaniacs, psychopaths and predators who have enslaved us to its madness.  This illusion will certainly pass as all illusions do.

This latest quarter’s results are pointing to very large disturbances once again building in an uncontrollable and inherently unstable complex system.  It’s all working out exactly as I have been writing it would for the last eight years… albeit slower than I expected. But then I never could have predicted hundreds of stimulus actions by the bankers and capitalists using the people’s money and the associated increased taxes/fees/costs/usury/austerity to save themselves while having not a care in the world as the rest of humanity deals with the death, misery and suffering of its wake. 

The world power structure of the state and its invention of class-based economic looting and slavery -  private for-profit corporate capitalism - that runs roughshod over human rights and freedom is and always has been truly evil beyond words.  Since democracy’s attempted regulation of capitalism has been completely gutted starting with Reagan and substantially more so under Clinton/Gore, who literally burned capitalism’s regulatory structure to the ground, we now stand witness to its most glorious manifestation of pure evil in its complete deregulation.   It is perfectly predatory, exploitive and violent.  It is perfectly psychotic as are the people who defend it.

This current environment is much worse than anything leading up to 2008 and it is worsening.  Just as I said it would be.  And it’s across the globe just as I said it would be.  When I first wrote the end game for the global economy would involve most crises being outside of the U.S., that was a very, very lonely position.   The 2008 Wall Street crisis then made it even more lonely because that was perceived as a U.S.-only financial crisis.  Can you remember how peaceful and prosperous the world seemed just a handful of years ago?  How the world has changed.  It is literally on fire.  And so have the perceptions changed for almost everyone from peace and prosperity to utter madness and chaos.  Just as quickly as perceptions changed from the pre-2008 crash to one of awareness at the world’s crises and misery, the current crises and misery could be constructively ameliorated were virtue, truth, public service and selflessness  to replace psychotic politicians, bankers and corporate executives in the determination of humanity’s way forward. 

As has been uniquely written on here ad nauseam since the 2008 crash, globalization and global finance are dead.  2008 was the final nail in the coffin.   We are simply witnessing  capitalism’s last, best attempt at saving itself rather than serving, protecting and defending the populations it is  supposed to be serving.  

Change you can believe in.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:59 AM